Futurama Madhouse

"This is a fan site, so we encourage fans to submit their creations. Anything Futurama-related has a place at The Futurama Madhouse. If it does not fit in any of the existing sections we'll simply create a new one. Mark LeWald, creator of FM's former self The Leela Zone, said “The Leela Zone is an establishment for all genres of creativity. Drawing, writing, graphics, etcetera. Express yourself.” And even though the name has changed, that is as true today as it was in the beginning. Any Futurama fan stuff has a place here."

The above is quoted from our About This Site section and is our guiding principle - it's what has made Futurama Madhouse/The Leela Zone The Oldest Living Futurama Fansite and (in the opinion of many) "the best Futurama site on the planet!". Your creation is just as important to us as it is to you and you're here because you want to know how to get it put up on Futurama Madhouse for the whole world to appreciate. So read on ...

Sending your Fan stuff to Futurama Madhouse

Send your story, pictures etc via e-mail to one of the webmasters listed under "Send Fan stuff" at the bottom of the left hand menu on the Futurama Madhouse main page. Simply click on a webmaster's name and that should open a window of your e-mail client with the email address already typed in (alternatively, Windows users can right-click on a webmaster's name and select “copy e-mail address” (wording may vary depending on browser), Mac users can ctrl-click or right click. Then paste it into the To: line of your e-mail client). Attach your masterpiece, type a friendly explanatory message and title the E-mail appropriately (e.g. fan art by CosmicF). Your work will then, in time (hopefully a short time), appear on the site in the appropriate section.

If this is your first time submitting, please be sure to tell the webmaster the name you'd like your work to appear under, be it your real name or some nom de plume. Make sure you're clear on this. And even if this is your 218th submission, please put your screen name in the message or subject, your webmaster will appreciate it because they get a lot of stuff through their inbox and it can get hard to remember who's who sometimes.

Remember, it doesn’t matter what fan stuff you send which web master - they take it all. Note though that we've heard rumors that our Webmasters are "normal" humans and sometimes those get busy with real life crap or take up new obsessions or get abducted by aliens, so a quick perusal of the main page will show if any are less active than others.

For notes specific to types of fan stuff, see the appropriate section below:

Sending Fan Fiction

File Formats

The preferred file formats are Microsoft Word (.doc), OpenOffice Writer (.odt), or Rich Text Format (.rtf).

MS Works users please save as "Rich Text Format (.rtf)".

We can also take plain text (.txt) and HTML (.htm or .html) formatted files but please see the notes pertaining to these two types in the next section.

Formatting your fan fic

Ok, so you have this fan fiction you are writing and you want some special formatting like bold and italics and such. How to you do those? MS Word and OpenOffice users, you are in luck, 'cause all you have to do is use the built in features like the bold, italic, and underline buttons in your tool bar.

Also, if you are using a word processor like Word or OpenOffice, please let the application handle line wrapping by itself - do not press the Enter key at the end of every line. This may make it look pretty on your screen, but it screws up the resulting HTML code and the webmaster will have to spend time and effort sorting it out. Note that the above applies to long lines of contiguous text. It's perfectly fine and necessary to press Enter for paragraph breaks and between lines in script formats.

Plain text files: If you send fiction using a plain text format, you'll have to include the appropriate HTML tags to make words appear as italic, bold, etc:

	Italics	<i>blah blah blah</i>
	Bold	<b>blah blah blah</b>
	Underline	<u>blah blah blah</u>
	superscripts	at the 7<sup>11</sup>

HTML files: Other than the basic HTML formatting code in a text file as above, please don't send us a HTML file just because you think you're saving us work. You aren't. It may be counter intuitive, but it's less effort to put up a fic from a Word or OpenOffice document than it is HTML code.

Fonts: Font specifications are prohibited and will be stripped out of your fic. This is because you don't know if FA1 or Nimbus Roman or Omicronian OCR-b is installed on your reader's system and if the font you specify isn't there, the host browser will substitute something and results can be unpredictable. Also, users often select fonts they prefer to use, sometimes to assist with their ability to see it.

Font sizes: Font size changes will be allowed within reason. Please make sure you let the webmaster know about them.

A few more notes on Fan Fictions:

"Fan Fiction" is a broader category that it might sound. We have a thesis in there, and probably one or two other things that don't exactly fit the classic definition of fan fic, so basically anything written that involves Futurama fits if there isn't a better place to put it.

Mature plots and language - These are OK to a point - after all, pushing the envelop is what fan fiction is all about. We prohibit blatant pornography so keep any intimate scenes tasteful. Same with language - please restrict swearing and curse words to those that are in the show. The basic rule is that if it's said in the show, then it can be freely said in a fan fic. Stronger language may be permitted in some cases if used sparingly and it's use is artistically justified.

Send a Synopsis: We like to have a short, usually one or two sentence description of what your story is about to put in the author index. This helps people decide if they're interested in reading your story or not. Please include one when sending your story.

Webmasters are not editors, we're not going to clean up your fic for you. At most we're going to send you a note back, either telling you to clean up your act if it's too gross, or asking if you want a do over if it's only embarrassing. And sometimes we'll just put it up anyway, we have a way higher embarrassment threshold than you should. Oh, and you did spell check it, right?

Before you sent us your fiction, did you post it in the Fan Stuff section of the Futurama Madhouse Message Board (or on one of the other forums)? If you haven't please consider doing so. You will receive more and more immediate feedback on your creation, and, if you are a new author, build name recognition. Then once your fic has played out there, you can make any changes you deem necessary, based on feedback or whatever, and then send us the perfected final version.

Fan art

Save your Fan Art as a PNG or JPEG and attach it to an email to one of the webmasters. Please try to keep the file size to under 1 meg in size (preferably 800kb or less) out of consideration for our users with low speed connections.

We can also take BMP and other common image formats, but they'll probably get converted to PNG or JPEG.

You can send multiple pictures in one e-mail up to the limit of your e-mail client.

We'll make the thumbnails so you don't have to do that.

Also notice that we have several art sections: Fan Art, Crap Art, Doodles, and Ascii Art. Doodles and Ascii Art are obvious. Sometimes the difference between Fan Art and Crap Art is a tough call and we aren't going to make that value judgment. You have to tell us if you want it in Crap Art.

Illustrated Fan Fiction

If you've created some fan art to illustrate your fan fiction, the simplest method is to compose your fic in Word or OO and insert the pictures exactly where you want them. Send us the file just like any other fan fic. The webmaster will put the pics on your fan art page and then insert links to them at the appropriate places in the text.

If for some reason, you can't do it this way, please contact a webmaster and we'll work out something that will hopefully make both our jobs easier. We try to be pretty flexible and will be happy to work with you to make it come out the way you want it.

Wallpapers

Basically fan art, but formatted to fit popular computer screen sizes. You can send it in several sizes, or send the highest resolution and we'll make the smaller ones. If you do it though, you have the control over how it gets done which may result in better quality. Also it may get put up faster if the webmaster has to do less work.

Comics

Just another form of Fan Art. It's most helpful if the file names of the pages are sequential, eg page1, page2, etc.

Video

Our video clips section is intended for Fan created videos. Formats should be common and as universal as possible, such as AVI, MOV, and MPG. WMV is also acceptable, although you are limiting your audience somewhat. We may try to convert a WMV to some other format, but video is a dark magic and we aren't always successful.

Please try to keep file sizes to 10 meg or less. We have a monthly bandwidth restriction we have to live with. To do this, we recommend encoding at 320x240.

We will not accept videos that are just straight show or movie clips - we don't want to get into any trouble with the media polizei. There has to be some creative effort on your part.

Audio

Audio clips should be mp3 format. We'll take WAV but we'll convert them to save space.

Photos

Yes, we take photographs also. We have Futurama Halloween costumes, ceramics, needlepoint, and all manner of other creations.

Poetry and Song Parodies

See Fan Fiction. If you made a recording of yourself reciting or singing it, see Audio.

Other Stuff

If it's Futurama related and you can find a way to send it to us, we'll find a place to stash it (for example, if you find a full size working Planet Express ship, I'll send you the GPS coordinates to my back yard). See the Miscellaneous Pictures section for a few examples, but don't let that be a limitation either.

And if you've perused the menu at the left hand side of the main page, you'll see we have all kinds of other weird and unusual stuff there. If you think of something and want to create it, or add to what's there, we encourage you to go for it. Please let us know if you are though, sometimes we get bored and rearrange the furniture, and stuff that hasn't generated any interest in a while gets put in the attic.

And if you have any questions ...

please please please please please contact us. Futurama Madhouse is your site and we'll help you anyway we can. We aren't gods, we're average everyday Futurama fans just like you, except we got suckered into giving up all of our free time to run a website.

A note about Plagiarism

Plagiarism is “the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work”. Please only send work that's your own. If you must use components of other people's work in your story, only do so if you have their prior permission to do so and you acknowledge their contributions within your work. Don't pass off anything that's not your own creation. If this happens, the work will be removed and the site administrators will decide how to call you on it, which might be quite embarrassing for the one who plagiarised. It's far better to show something that's your own, even if it's deemed by yourself to be not that good in quality, than claim that you did someone else's work. There's far more respect in showing what you actually did rather than what someone else did. This applies to Fan art and any other creative endeavor as well.

And Welcome To The World of Tomorrow!!!