Sign-up post for Issue 6

[5thofficial]

After a well-deserved break, cornerflag returns with a special post-World Cup 2010, pre-Women's World Cup 2011 special: unlike most of the previous issues, which focused on club football, the theme for Issue 6 will be uncommon intra-national team pairings or platonic twosomes.

Writings on any national team in any tournament or competition are welcome, from the 1974 World Cup to the 2008 Olympics, from the women's senior team to the men's U-20s -- to name just some examples. This issue will still follow the rules and guidelines of previous issues, with a few modifications:

• "Intra-national team" basically means the players/managers in your story must from the same national team -- including women's and youth teams. Stories concerning former teammates will be considered, as long as they have played for the national team at the same time at some point, even if just for a friendly. We would prefer that at least part of the story is set within a time when they're both called up to the national team (allowing for time between one tournament and the next international match). Managers are acceptable as one half of the pairing/twosome. ETA: Amended 17 July for clarity and more leeway for writers.
• We realise that "uncommon" is open to interpretation. However, for the purpose of this webzine, a common pairing is defined as one that has significant fandom presence on communities such as footballslash and/or has its own LJ communities. Therefore, intra-team pairings that will not be considered would include Terry/Lampard, Ballack/Frings, Podolski/Schweinsteiger, Klose/Podolski, Ramos/Torres, Silva/Villa. Also, even if all 1,000,000 stories of a pairing was written by the same person, it would still be considered as having a significant fandom presence. (Please also note Rule #6.)
• Each country's national teams are limited to two stories of any genre, plus an extra slot to be made available for a gen fic. A second extra slot for each country will also be given to a story featuring footballers from the women's national team.

To sign up, please leave a comment with the following information:

1. the team and characters/pairings you intend write for,
2. whether it's gen or slash (both m/m and f/f) or het,
3. and a pseudonym, if wanted. Please indicate as such if that's the case -- your comment will be duly screened.

This post will be updated with a list of writers sorted by countries, so you can see if all the slots for a particular team are taken up.

Argentina
1. stickmarionette: Leo Messi and Diego Maradona, gen
2. Dan: Hernán Crespo and Claudio López

Australia
1. vlieger: Lucas Neill and Harry Kewell, gen

Colombia
1. great_whatsit: Ivan Ramiro Cordoba and Mario Yepes
2. Gia: Carlos Valderrama and Juan Pablo Angel, gen

England
1. rakel_imagine: Steven Gerrard/John Terry, slash

France
1. onthose_strings: Karim Benzema/Yoann Gourcuff, slash

Germany
1. 4or5paragraphs: Mario Gomez/Manuel Neuer, slash
2. reeking: Sami Khedira and Bastian Schweinsteiger, gen

Italy
1. applefic: Andrea Pirlo and Gennaro Gattuso
2. caydelaura: Andrea Pirlo and Daniele De Rossi, gen

Japan
1. thepianopoet: Okada Takeshi and Hasebe Makoto, gen
2. acchikocchi: Hidetoshi/Nakamura Shunsuke, slash

The Netherlands
1. mshotpants: Giovanni van Bronkhorst/Wesley Sneijder, slash

Portugal
1. hoppipolla: Raul Meireles/Ze Castro, slash
2. aviz: Cristiano Ronaldo/Carlos Queiroz, slash

Serbia
1. mercurialmind17: Siniša Mihajlović/Dejan Stanković, slash

Spain
1. alterego_lab: Cesc Fabregas/Sergio Busquets, slash
2. angualupin: Andres Iniesta/Xavi Hernandez, slash
3. meretricula: Andres Iniesta and Victor Valdes, gen

United States of America
1. nahco3: Landon Donovan/Tim Howard, slash
2. canarycreams: Benny Feilhaber/Jonathan Bornstein, slash

Uruguay
1. zimena: Diego Lugano/Diego Forlán, slash

If you're participating for the first time, please read the rules and guidelines post, which includes guidelines on how to submit your stories. The deadline for story submissions is 12 September 2010, 11:59pm GMT. ETA: If you saw this post earlier, please note that I've slightly changed the deadline date, to take into account the weekend.

Issue 6 will be published on 18th September 2010.

Welcome back, everyone! Should you need moral support while writing, flaggeddown embraces you with a cuppa. Sign-ups are open up to a week before the submission deadline.