Shousetsu Bang*Bang

Mission Statement and Guidelines for Readers

Shousetsu Bang*Bang is a webzine for original queer oneshot stories. Issues are published bimonthly, and all are available online for free.

Established in 2005, Shousetsu Bang*Bang was founded with the intention of being an online, English-language text equivalent of one of those All Yomikiri Bimonthly Summer Special 100 Extra Pages!! manga phonebooks where every story is a complete romance, self-contained in 30 pages, and heartwarmingly predictable. It has evolved to include explicit queer content between participants of various genders, sexualities, and bodies. All stories in the issues contain stories of sexy romance, are between 1500 and 25,000 words (save for the December issues, which have no upper word limit.) Though tone and subject vary from story to story, the spirit of the ‘zine is one that encourages true love and happy endings.

• All our content is free. Shousetsu Bang*Bang is an entirely volunteer-run project; everyone, from the editorial staff to the contributors to the people who share links on Tumblr, gives of their time and effort freely. We host all our content at shousetsubangbang.com. Shousetsu Bang*Bang is distributed under a Creative Commons license. You may download, link to, print out, and redistribute all you like — so long as you do so freely, with the original attribution intact and with links back to the original project preserved.

• Stories have no official content warnings. You can find the full explanation behind our reasoning here, but the gist is that individual senses of what constitutes objectionable content vary widely, and we want neither to set off false alarms nor to give false senses of security. Creators who choose to warn for content in their pieces often do so at the relevant SSBB Wiki entries.

• Stories have no official summaries. All summaries, author’s notes, and relevant information are added by the creators themselves, at the creator’s discretion, and can be found at the relevant SSBB Wiki entries.

• Stories in issues are best read in order. Each issue is carefully curated by the editorial staff. While it’s not against the law to read at random or to follow a favorite author’s work, please consider approaching each issue as a whole.

• Leaving feedback is vital to the project’s continued success. Part of the reason all our content can be free is that authors and artists feel this project is worthwhile enough to donate their time, effort, and creations to maintaining. Your support shows them their work is appreciated and encourages them to keep contributing to future issues, giving you more lovely things to see and read! Our website allows for anonymous ‘likes’ to be given to entries by clicking the little green hearts at the bottom of them, and the website allows for comments (also given anonymously, if you like!). While some do, not all contributors answer comments left on their work. Some stay silent to maintain their anonymity as much as possible, some find it difficult to respond to praise, some would like to but lack the time to compose the responses they’d want to give, and some have simply moved on to do other things with their lives. However, most contributors do still keep track of the comments left for them, so you should never assume that your nice words have fallen on deaf ears; in fact, most contributors hang on every kind thing someone says about their work, whether or not they make any noise in reply.

We encourage our readers to become our contributors! We have guidelines for authors and guidelines for artists, that help explain the nitty-gritty of getting your work published in Shousetsu Bang*Bang, and you can always get in touch with us via the comments to this post, our Twitter, our Tumblr, and shousetsubangbang@gmail.com.