It’s been brought to our attention that we’ve totally failed in how we've previously described the selection process for our project, the To Hell + Back Anthology. “Judges” (when we really meant reviewers) is a word that holds connotations way more intense than what we actually meant!
Because all eight of us read a metric ton of fic, and reblog a similar volume of art on a daily basis, we worried that we might recognize your awesome submissions even though they’ll have been anonymized. To help prevent bias based on name and style recognition—the prevention of which we value greatly because we want people from all parts of fandom to feel represented in our anthology—we approached our friends to help us out.
The first round of selections will be conducted by people we’re close with and trust implicitly, who have either previously been in the Supernatural fandom, are fans of the show but no longer create for it, or are just really awesome GA (general audience) fans who may not create fic and art themselves but have ample experience interacting with creative works. Their job is essentially to act as a buffer—they’ll only be reviewing submissions for coherency; if you draw us an apple but it totally looks like the ruins of the Notre Dame cathedral—or like, if your coffee shop!au, mechanic!Dean, human!Cas fic takes place in Antarctica but all of a sudden everyone’s in Maui, tanning on a nude beach? We’re gonna be so confused.
The second round of selections is essentially the same as the first, but as people active in creating SPN fanworks, we mods just want to make sure that there’s both character and world consistency in the submitted samples! So like, if your Dean suddenly starts acting like America’s sweetheart, Shirley Temple, or if your Cas looks like the current queen of England, Elizabeth II, we might think you sent in a Gish submission.
At the end of the day, our job is not to decide whose work is “good” and whose work is “bad”. We’re not here to place overarching value judgements on your creative activities, to gate-keep, or to indulge any notions about upholding a hierarchical fandom structure based on notoriety—in fact, that’s pretty firmly what we’re not about. This is, overall, gonna be a really chill process! If you like to draw or write and want to be published, we strongly encourage you to apply.
As always, if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to shoot us an ask or an email!
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