About

A fun day at the beach? Warm nights under the stars? Indulge in your most creative seasonal fantasies with Solstice, a TGCF P4P zine centered around summer! Solstice will include both fanart and fanfiction of your favorite Tian Guan Ci Fu characters.

Schedule

*This is a tentative schedule, dates are subject to change

Mods

Catty | she/her

Catty is an artist and writer who has organized many an event, and is excited to take her lit mag experience to create a proper zine! She spends most of her creative time in hualian brainrot, and can usually be found either drawing them, writing them, or screaming over other tgcf content. Her favorite character is the one and only taizi dianxia Xie Lian!

Fern | they/them

Fern is a writer (primarily) and artist, with experience organising fandom events. They’re a multishipper who likes a wide variety of content and spends most of their free time writing far too much (cursed) fanfiction. Their favourite character is Mu Qing, and they are an avid defender of him, though they love almost everyone in the novel.

Charlie | they/them

Charlie is an artist and writer who has experience running and modding for events. They're fairly new to the tgcf fandom but is excited to get stuck in and rub their gay little hands all over new content. You can mostly find them yelling about angst and crying over art. They can't pick a favourite character right now because you really expect a gay to make decisions?

Clay | they/them

Clay is an artist and writer who has experience running fandom events, as well as experience organizing a local literary zine. They're incredibly attached to Hualian and Fengqing, and would give up everything for Dianxia. If you spot them and they haven't moved for a week, don't be alarmed, they're just reading another novel or creating niche content for themself.

Application Guidelines

The following are the basic guidelines necessary to apply to this zine. All applications will be judged blind following a set of criteria, which can be found here.

You may apply for multiple roles, but you will only be accepted for one role.

Applications will open at 10 AM UTC-5 and close at 10 PM UTC-5 on their respective dates.

For more information on how the applications will be judged, please refer to our FAQ.

General Application Guidelines

  • Submissions will be accepted as links. We would prefer this to be a google drive folder containing your portfolio, but individual links will be considered as well. We will not be reaching out to fix broken links.

  • At least one piece must be from TGCF, involving only characters from TGCF with no crossovers. This is so we can see how you represent/stylize your chosen characters. If none of your pieces are from TGCF, your application will not be considered.

  • This zine is SFW so SFW submissions are preferred, but we will accept NSFW pieces.

Writer Application Guidelines

  • 2-3 pieces that best represent your writing. These will be used to look at your characterization and storytelling, including plot, flow and grammar.

  • Maximum total word count of 6,000 for all the pieces combined.

  • Pieces can be published or unpublished. We accept completed works and sections of larger works.

Artist Application Guidelines

  • 3 pieces that best represent your art style. These will be used to look at your overall ability and technique, including an understanding of composition/perspective, anatomy, value, and color theory.

  • At least two of the pieces must be fully rendered, finished illustrations so that we can best get a feel for what you can create.

  • Both manhua and donghua art will be considered. Please only use fanon designs if the character you are submitting art of does not have an official design.

  • Both traditional and digital art will be considered, but traditional art must be scanned in high quality.

Merch Artist Application Guidelines

  • 3 pieces that best represent your art style. These will be used to look at your basic art fundamentals and design skills.

  • Both manhua and donghua art will be considered. Please only use fanon designs if the character you are submitting art of does not have an official design.

  • Both traditional and digital art will be considered, but traditional art must be scanned in high quality.

  • At least one of the pieces must be merch work, so that we can get a feel for your design abilities

FAQ

1. What is a zine?
A fanzine (or zine for short) is a non-official publication produced by fans of a certain work. It can be either a digital PDF or a physical book, and often contains a mixture of art and written work for a specific fandom.

2. Will the zine be physical or digital?
We would currently like to produce a physical zine, and will likely make a digital zine available as well.

3. Is the zine for-profit?
We are a P4P (pay-for-production) zine. No profit will be made from the zine, with all prices only covering the costs of production and shipping.

4. Will there be merch with the zine?
Yes, merch bundles will include prints, acrylic charms, and stickers.

5. If there is a physical zine, will you ship internationally?
Yes, we plan on shipping internationally. We are based in the US.

6. What kinds of contributors are you looking for?
We are looking for page artists, writers, and merch artists.

7. How many contributors will there be?
We will be accepting 30-35 page artists, 15 writers, and 6 merch artists.

8. Can I apply for more than one role?
You may apply for more than one role, but please note that you will only be accepted to one.

9. How will you be judging applications?
We will be judging applications blind in order to best give everyone a chance at getting accepted. This means that we will not take names or social media into account while judging the applications. Different mods will be responsible for wiping the applications of any identifying information and judging them. We will have multiple mods looking at each application, and all applications will be judged based on a set of criteria (which can be found here) to ensure that the results are as unbiased as possible. For more information on the basic guidelines, please check out our app guidelines page.

10. Do I need to submit new content for my application?
Any content, old or new, is welcome, as long as it fits the application guidelines.

11. I haven’t finished the novel yet, can I still apply?
Yes! This zine is theme focused, so knowledge of the full source material is not necessary to apply. However, do be aware that we will not be filtering out spoilers in the accepted contributors discord server or in the finished zine, and can not ensure that you will be able to avoid spoilers should you get accepted.

12. Will you have guest contributors?
We do not plan on having guest contributors, as we would like to make the available creator spots accessible to everyone. If there are any artists or writers who you would like to see in this zine, please direct them to our application!

13. How will contributors be compensated?
As of right now, we intend on giving contributors a free copy of the zine as compensation.