I'm sorry to hear of your feelings on our application process, but I hope this will help clear some of your concerns.
Our application process doesn't ask for concrete pitches or sketches. As far as I've been able to gather, it's customary for zines to ask for pitches during the application process. I don't have a lot of experience when it comes to participating in zines, so I spend a lot of time looking into the application of other zines and conferring with my mods about the best procedures for us.
It may seem like a matter of schemantics, but we don't ask for sketches, we ask for concept thumbnails. From my understanding, a single thumbnails should take no more than a few minutes to create, and is designed to be a very rough draft of a sketch. It usually focuses solely on the main focus point, and is often subject to extensive changes throughout the production process.
While my wording was initially misleading during the first edition, back in 2022, I've since been corrected by a very patient applicant, and the wording has been justly rectified in this year's application requirements.
We ask for thumbnails, not sketches.
Adding to that, when pressed on the issue of whether this was a bothersome or unreasonable requirement during an anonymous performance survey, our contributors had no qualms with this aspect of our application process. This being said, we'll revisit this issue with our future contributors once the project is over, and will work on making changes from that.
As for our authors' application, we've actually lowered our requirements from last year's applications. Where we previously required a 500 word blurb for each of our authors' pitches, we now ask for a detailed description.
When asking for a description, we're asking for anything from a summarized run-down of the intended piece, an intended pairing (FF werewolf/human; Mer!BakuDeku; etc), character descriptions, fandoms, or any other information which may help paint a picture for us.
I've looked into a large number of writing anthologies, and our requirements are quite lenient in comparison.
This may help understand our expectations a little better:
At the end of the day, how much you give us is entirely up to you. It isn't mandatory to provide thumbnails or detailed descriptions. We have applicants who've ignored our requirements before, and it was of no real issue to us.
The reason for our extensive requirements is deeply tied to this project's missions, however, and allows us to select through a wide variety of stories and characters. The MonsterMASH! zine strives to bring people together, and create a product in which stories and art actively coexist. Our application's requirements allow us to meet our project's mission of showcasing a wide array of stories.
It helps us sort through applicants who may have pitches which are a little too similar to another's, and choose which creator would be better suited for our project. This process has worked wonderfully for us so far, and was met with fairly positive feedback.
You're under no obligations to provide us with anymore information than you're willing to offer us. We will consider your application regardless. However, other applicants who do meet our requirements will likely score higher than you, and we'll be made to consider their application before yours.
On a different note, I'd hate to leave any aspiring applicant to feel disappointed. My mods are very busy, and I feel it unfair to ask any impromptu work out of them when they're not paid to help me. However, I think it shouldn't be too much additional work on us to offer you some additional time to work on your application!
If you'd like a few extra days to turn in an app, feel free to reach out to us via email (zinemonstermash@gmail.com), and we'll see to it that you get a bit of an extension.
Thank you so much for reaching out, anon!
βMod Daddykins O u O///
