One-stop centre
About
Corner Flag is a bi-annual anthology of football (soccer) RPF created around a general concept: uncommon intra-club pairings/twosomes. We accept gen, slash and het; with a limit on the number of stories for each club.
Each issue following #1 will be dedicated to a more specific theme (e.g. "Winter/Summer" and "Goalkeepers"). Tentative publication dates: the opening weekend of the English Premier League; and the second round of La Liga matches, towards the end of the Bundesliga's winter break.
Structure
The set-up is based on the webzines bb_shousetsu and imaginarybeasts. Here're sample issues to give you an idea of how the anthology is structured: Corner Flag #1, Shousetsu Bang*Bang #10. All stories will be archived at 5thofficial, which is also the joint editors' account.
Stories: Rules and Guidelines (updated 1 July 2008)
The most recent sign-up post will be available under the "sign-ups" tag. Please refer to it for the upcoming issue's theme and submission deadline. We would appreciate offers of beta-reading as well, if you have the time and energy to spare.
You may only sign up for one club.
Submitting Your Story
Much thanks to Sabina for paving the way with bb_shousetsu and making our lives so much easier. ♥
Corner Flag is a bi-annual anthology of football (soccer) RPF created around a general concept: uncommon intra-club pairings/twosomes. We accept gen, slash and het; with a limit on the number of stories for each club.
Each issue following #1 will be dedicated to a more specific theme (e.g. "Winter/Summer" and "Goalkeepers"). Tentative publication dates: the opening weekend of the English Premier League; and the second round of La Liga matches, towards the end of the Bundesliga's winter break.
Structure
The set-up is based on the webzines bb_shousetsu and imaginarybeasts. Here're sample issues to give you an idea of how the anthology is structured: Corner Flag #1, Shousetsu Bang*Bang #10. All stories will be archived at 5thofficial, which is also the joint editors' account.
Stories: Rules and Guidelines (updated 1 July 2008)
- "Intra-club" basically means the players/managers in your story must from the same club -- including the reserves, women's and youth teams. Stories concerning former teammates will be considered, as long as the story is set within a time when they're still in the same club. Managers are okay. We accept any club in any league.
- Gen, slash (m/m or f/f) and het of any rating are fine. Caveat: Any person featured in your story must be a public figure or celebrity in his/her own right. However, passing mentions of people who do not fall under that category (e.g. footballers' partners) are fine.
- 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-club pairings that will not be considered would include Terry/Lampard, Rooney/Ronaldo, Ballack/Shevchenko, Gerrard/Alonso, Beckham/Casillas, Podolski/Schweinsteiger, Kaká/Shevchenko, Klose/Podolski, van Nistelrooy/C.Ronaldo, Torres/Agger, Raúl/Guti, C.Ronaldo/Heinze and Steven Gerrard/Fernando Torres.
- The editors reserve the right to ask that you change your sign-up should one of the players you're writing has already been selected by another writer.
- You're free to interpret the specific theme any way you wish -- within rational sense, please! Though amusing creativity will earn you the editors' eternal goodwill.
- Lack of good fanfic does not make a pairing uncommon. What we're looking for are pairings for whom there is a lack of fanfic in general, such as intra-club OTPs that seem to be utterly obvious and yet are only written about once in a blue moon (e.g. Gattuso/Pirlo).
- For gen fics, we're looking for interaction between footballers who don't usually feature together in fanfic -- or simply footballers who don't get much attention in fandom.
- Each club is limited to two stories of any genre, plus an extra slot to be made available for a gen fic. Another extra slot may also be given to a story featuring footballers from an affiliated women's team (e.g. the Arsenal Ladies). You will need to sign up -- first come, first served.
- Your story must be in English and at least 500 words long. No alternate universe stories, please, and your story must be a stand-alone (ie., not a sequel to another story or part of a series).
- As cornerflag expands, we understand that writers may want to revisit the universes of their past stories. You may submit a story linked to something you have previously written for cornerflag, but both stories must stand alone -- ie., a reader absolutely does not need to read one to understand the other.
- The story you're submitting to Corner Flag must not have appeared anywhere else beforehand, online or offline. However, once the issue of Corner Flag is out, you're free to do whatever you wish with it.
The most recent sign-up post will be available under the "sign-ups" tag. Please refer to it for the upcoming issue's theme and submission deadline. We would appreciate offers of beta-reading as well, if you have the time and energy to spare.
You may only sign up for one club.
Submitting Your Story
- We accept word (.doc), rich text (.rtf) and plain text (.txt) files. Your submission must be ready to post to livejournal -- ie., the editor can simply select-all and copy-paste. Please type formatting tags (e.g. italics or bold) directly into the text and turn off smart quotes. For more details/help on how to do all these, please have a look at this post.
- Bad spelling and grammar are not acceptable. The editors readily accept content that would give self-appointed moral guardians the vapours, but they will bin stories which require them to pick through paragraph after paragraph of unintelligible writing. Yes, they will do this even if it means that a club will end up having no stories to its name in the anthology.
- If you think you need a beta reader and can't find one among your friendslist, please have a look at the sign-up post. The editors' collective sanity thanks you.
- The following are writing resources that may prove useful:
- Common Errors in English.
- Turkey City Lexicon. Aimed at SFF fiction, but applicable to all genres of writing.
- Things to Look Out For. Written for bb_shousetsu and in need of updating, but it's quite comprehensive.
- How to Write a Sex Scene. Just in case!
- Football-Lineups.com. If you need to find out who played in which position for a particular match.
- fieldofplay has articles on footballers and football in general.
- Please e-mail your story as an attachment to 5thofficial@gmail.com. The filename should be your lj username - title of your story (club name).doc (or rtf/txt).
- If you'd like to include artwork or photomanips with your story, please upload the pictures to your own server and place the appropriate HTML tags directly in the text of your story, as with the formatting tags.
- If you prefer to remain anonymous, please indicate this fact when signing up. We will duly screen your comment. Include your pseudonym when submitting your story.
- Please indicate, in the body of your e-mail, whether your story was written for that particular issue's specific theme.
Much thanks to Sabina for paving the way with bb_shousetsu and making our lives so much easier. ♥