Guidelines for Posting on the SWAT Kats Fan Fiction Archive:

We will accept any piece of fanfiction based on the series SWAT Kats: The Radical Squadron with a rating no higher than R, written in English or Spanish. We can receive stories in most text formats (*.wpd, *.doc, *.txt, *.rtf) and in html. But, please, if you use *.doc or html format, do not send them with embedded or otherwise attached images. We cannot host images or sounds for your stories. You may, however, program your html to link to them on a site of your own.

Submitting:

To submit, e-mail us at submissions@fyresight.com  Please attach the story in format form to the letter.

We have a template listing the information we need from you at the top of each story.  Please read it and use it so that we don't have to mail you repeatedly to retrieve all the information we need.

If you want, one of us can review and critique any fan fiction before it is posted if you're worried on how it might be received. Some of the best authors on this archive wouldn't post until DJ Clawson pushed them into it, and their work is some of the best up there.
 

Guidelines for Writing SWAT Kat Fan Fiction

There are a few unwritten laws of fanfiction that we just want to clarify so we don't have to tell every other author personally that we can't understand what they're trying to write about because of some simple mistakes.

1. Usage of names and secret identities.

Jake and Chance - usage of these names indicates the two are not in flight suits, but something else, or have lost their masks

Razor and T-Bone - usage of these names indicates the two are in flight suits

You cannot switch between names randomly in the narrative text of a scene because you're sick of calling T-Bone by his name fifty times in the same paragraph and you're looking for another name to refer to him as. The usage of names tells the reader exactly how they are dressed and which side of their alter-ego they are playing, because that is no longer obvious due to the fact that we're not all watching a TV screen.

If a switching of names occurs in dialogue, that means Razor has simply decided to call T-Bone "Chance" for no apparent reason, or vice versa. While there's nothing technically wrong with this, unless they're in the hangar, it's kind of awkward if he does that and no one listening over the radio band or hanging around notices. Just picture the scene in your head on a TV screen : Razor, standing next to T-Bone and Callie, decides to call T-Bone by his real name. Now, Callie has to notice that, and the story has to indicate it. (note : there is a mistake in the show where Razor does this outside of a MASA station in "Ci-ka-ta" -- that's a voice-over mistake and nothing more).

2. Crossovers and conflicts with the show.

The show assumes one major thing : the SWAT Kats live on a kat planet, where everybody else is a kat and there are no other species. While the show doesn't actually come out and say this, it's what the fans tend to assume after watching.

If you are going to bring in a non-kat character, like for a crossover or you just want a dog in there for the fun of it, you must indicate this in the introduction before the story and explain that this character comes from another city that contains other species, or another universe. You may also take a character from another show who was previously human and just say "well, in this universe, they're a kat", but you also must indicate it in the introduction (see DJ Clawson's "X-File #10-1115" -- Mulder and Scully are both kats).

Further, if your fanfic changes the concept, names, jobs, etc of the show or its characters, please note this at the start of your story. Either specify that the story is a deliberate effort at an Alternate/Parallel Universe (often called an "AU") or that you have deliberately changed a single detail, like someone's name, because you just didn't like their original name. Why do this? Well, most importantly to you, it confuses your readers when they start a fanfic and it refers to Jake's best friend and SWAT Kat partner as Butch. Who on earth is Butch? Chance is the other SWAT Kat, right? At best, your readers are confused. At worst, they think you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

Look at the opening notes of Greg Williams' Down, But Not Out. It contains a good example of backstory and other explanations to explain the author's additions and adjustments to the SWAT Kat world.

3. Character names.

If you are uncertain as to the spellings of the names of the SWAT Kat characters, here's a basic list: Chance Furlong, Jake Clawson, Callie Briggs, Mayor Manx, Commander and Felina Feral.  Villains: Dark Kat, Dr. Viper, the Pastmaster, Mac and Molly Mange/the Metallikats.  (All spellings taken from episode titles and the second season credits.)

For further information on spellings and general show trivia, try:

  • The SK Zone
  • The Swat Kats Encyclopedia
  • Archive Policies

    Policy on Ratings
    Please note that our ratings system, while favoring it, does not necessarily conform exactly to that applied to movies or television in the United States, or any other country.

    We do not do rate stories based on their quality. It's not our place to tell you how good the story is or not -- you have to read every piece for yourself and make your own decision.

    For those of you who disagree with the rating policy on homosexuality, please understand that this is a safeguard for the people who are bothered by it and don't want to read your story because they will be offended (and feel compelled to write you or us an angry letter about how offended they are).

    Things that are not accepted :

    Policy on Sex

    Preferably any sexual content would be implied only.  SWAT Kats was a children's cartoon and some readers may be more than a little surprised or offended to find two cuddly cartoon characters engaged in detailed sexual activities.
     

    Policy on what is SWAT Kats and what isn't :

    SWAT Kats fan fiction generally means the story is concerning characters and/or situations drawn from the TV show. It can concern:

    A piece about a character who happens to be a kat and happens to live in Megakat City but that's the jist of their relationship to the SWAT Kats can be tricky. Acceptable versions of this are:

    However, we must be able to tell that your new character lives in Megakat City. And, not just a place that resembles it in name only. Look at those stories cited above. We expect to see SWAT Kat locales like Megakat Biochemical Labs, Enforcer Headquarters, and Puma-Dyne. We expect your character, if arrested, to be arrested by an Enforcer, not some "Outer Sector Security Officer." In short, if you're not going to use canon/show characters, we had better be able to identify your piece with the show in some way other than their being a kat in a world populated by felines.

    We do accept RPG-related fanfiction, but it will be placed in the RPG section of the archive, and you need to tell us that it is RPG-related. Just as a warning for non-RPGers who choose to enter that section, we are not responsible for how much the stories involve the SWAT Kats themselves (if they do at all). They may involve a number of RPG characters you've never seen on the show. If you are a RPG writer and you wish to have your stories also posted on the main archive, they must contain the SWAT Kats or other main characters from the show in some way, shape, or form and require no background knowledge of the RPG characters introduced in the stories.

    If there's any question in your mind as to how on-topic your story may be, don't hesitate to submit!  We will inform you if we have any problems with it.

    Policy on Plagiarism:

    Quite obviously, we don't expect to see you plagiarising another author's work. If you take a fanfic and replace the author's name with your own and submit it, it will be rejected and we will give you a warning. If you repeat this action, you will be banned from the Archive.

    The catch here comes when we get to story concepts. This isn't as black and white as blatantly stealing another's work. No one author can claim to be the only one who may write a "Return of Turmoil" fanfic. No one author can claim to be the only one who may write a "What if one SWAT Kat died?" fanfic. These ideas are the sort of thing several people could easily conceive of entirely on their own. And, they are broad enough that they can be explored in any number of original ways. We will give no one author exclusive rights to ideas that broad. However, we will catch you when your story has identical plotpoints to one already posted, and we will ask you to change your story.

    It goes without saying that if two stories arrive in our box at the same time and look similar that we can only assume each author has no idea what the other wrote as they haven't been posted yet. Thus, both will be accepted unless we have seen for ourselves that one has been posted on another webpage for some time prior to our receiving it. Otherwise, we cannot police other webpages. We are not going to settle disputes of whether an Archive author's fanfic copies that of an unrelated webpage we have never seen prior to the complaint. That is one persons word against anothers, and we cannot make that decision. We can only ask that it be settled between the authors. The only exception to this is if you have posted your work at an automated archive like Fanfiction.net that dates fanfiction as it is submitted. In this case, you may show us your posting as proof of your story pre-dating a copycat.

    Likewise, your story is likely to be rejected if we realize that it almost exactly parallels the plotline of a movie, novel, anime, comic book, television series or game.  This is also plagiarism.  You may be inspired by other stories, you may borrow their villains and heroes for crossovers, you may borrow technology, you may quote lines and song lyrics, you may deposit the SWAT Kat cast in the universe/setting of another series, but please always give credit where credit is due and do not copy someone else's story point for point.

    Obviously, we are powerless to do more than glare malevolently at any unrelated website that uses fanfics from the Archive without permission or steals fanfics from the Archive and claims them. If this happens, we will e-mail the affected authors so that they may request the offenders take down the stories they have stolen. Should they refuse, we would be more than happy to post a public notice informing the fandom of the theft, and, if asked, vouch for how long any given fanfic has been on our site prior to this new person claiming it. Both our mail and the domain log the date on which each story is received/uploaded. We will both provide this date and vouch for its accuracy to any author needing proof that their story was posted first.

    Policy on Archive Nicknames

    Obviously, we don't require you to submit a story under your real name. We do, however, require that your name has some originality in it. You cannot take a name of someone directly from the show.

    Examples of unnacceptable names are:

    This doesn't mean you can't have a name derived from the show. Acceptable names are: Due to excessive overuse, new authors may not use the last names "Clawson" or "Furlong." If you submit and say your name is one of those two, we will ask you to change your name. This is not just an arbitrary decision. It is beneficial to you. If there are thirty Clawsons, readers will find it difficult remembering which (Jake, John, or Jill) wrote which fanfic.

    Other Concerns

    The MARY SUE. We like reading about them as much as RPGers like RPing with them. They're too perfect for their own good, and cutting them down a few notches allows us to run the SWAT KATS Fanfiction Archive, not the "I'm in love with the SWAT Kats" Fan-personal-fantasy Archive. Read this to see what comprises a Mary Sue character.


    All fanfiction not in accordance with these rules will not be rejected, just hard to understand and we may comment on it when we recieve it.
     

    --The Management (Contains portions from DJ Clawson's original Guidelines)


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