Ethos (magazine)

Ethos Magazine is an online magazine published independently by members of the boylove community. It is currently the only boylove related magazine in publication.

History

Formed by Kermie in 2016, Ethos released issue one on September 15, 2016, and proceeded to release every three months up until early 2018 where problems with the Ethos host and unrelated staff issues caused issue 7 to be released two months late. The name of Ethos was chosen primarily because of its dictionary definition^{[Citation needed]}: "The fundamental character or spirit of a culture".^[1] The self-defined goal of Ethos is to "portray what is true about the orientation of Boylove" as part of "an effort to make society aware of the facts about REAL Boylovers".^[2]

On October 6, 2016, Kermie passed away and ownership of Ethos was transferred to Dragonlover. The magazine continued to release going forward, despite the loss of its founder. An entry in Ethos 2 was dedicated to remembering Kermie.^[3]^[4]^[5] Following several months more of releases, Ethos ownership changed further when Dragonlover elected to place Zoomzoom4 as owner while he stepped back from the Ethos scene.

During 2017, Ethos received permission to host all existing issues of Modern Boylover Magazine. As such, all issues of the magazine were made live on the site.

At the beginning of February, 2018, the Ethos graphics manager left Ethos and the wider boylove community. Shortly later, Enchanted Island communicated to Ethos that they were going to close and that Ethos should backup all of the website data. Within 24 hours of Enchanted Island going down on March 3, the Ethos website had migrated to a new host and was back online.

Unfortunately, Enchanted Island was one of three boards to go down within the first three months of 2018. To remember all three of them, Ethos published a piece at the beginning of Issue 7.^[6] Due to the issues which had impacted the community following the closure of three boards, in addition to the departure of the Ethos graphics manager and subsequent hiring of a new one, Ethos 7 was released later than the usual date (which would've been March 15). Instead, Ethos 7 was released May 27.

Ethos 8 released on August 27, and was notable primarily because it had been identified as the largest issue that Ethos has produced at that time. Most issues of Ethos are within 20 to 30 pages, while issue 8 came to 44 cover to cover.^[7]

Ethos 9 released on December 15, and superseded Ethos 8 as largest Ethos issue produced with 50 pages cover to cover. 12 authors are credited with content in Ethos 9.

On March 27, 2019, the Ethos disclaimer was amended to allow authors to retain rights to their submissions. Instead of giving Ethos the submission in whole, authors now give Ethos a full copy of the submission with all usage rights. In exchange, Ethos agrees to attribute the original author. The original author retains all rights to their submission separate to Ethos, so they may publish it elsewhere if they want to. The older policy dictated that contributors give the submission and all rights to Ethos.^[8]

On March 31, the Ethos website started hosting all known issues of Barrilete, a boylover magazine created as a Spanish-language accompaniment to MBM between 2008 and 2011.

Ethos 10 released on April 15, totaling 46 pages. 10 authors are credited with content in Ethos 10. An article in Ethos 10, titled Ethos News, highlighted a change in Ethos submission guidelines that removed the condition of content being non-biased on the contact debate.

Ethos 11 released on August 15, and contains 39 pages cover-to-cover. There are 13 contributors involved with Ethos 11, including an extract used with permission by Tom O'Carroll on the late David L. Riegel. Early feedback received for Ethos 11 indicated an increased readership in non-English speaking countries, so a text-only copy of Ethos 11 was produced for use in translation engines.

Ethos 12 release on December 15, and contains 54 page cover-to-cover. As of the end of 2019, Ethos 12 was the largest issue of Ethos produced. 12 authors are credited with content in Ethos 12. Since Ethos 11 indicated increased foreign readership, a text-only copy of Ethos 12 was produced.

Ethos 13 was scheduled to be released in April 2020, but a sudden staff-related incident plunged the entire operation into crisis. This tumultuous period led some to doubt the future of the magazine, but those doubts proved unfounded as the organization was indeed resilient enough to overcome that speedbump and produce the new issue soon enough.

On June 27, 2020, Ethos 13 was released. While some were critical of the inconsistency of quality compared to previous issues, Ethos staff maintained that any such imperfections were the result of their attempt to get the magazine out fast enough to silence any false perceptions of Ethos's demise.

Ethos 14 was the return to glory that readers had been waiting for. Released on September 30, 2020, the issue was a celebration of the magazine's 4th anniversary, with a colorful and appealing style resembling a little boy's birthday party.

Ethos 15 was designed to be the powerhouse issue, celebrating both Christmas and IBLD, even being released on IBLD (December 21st). This was the longest (at 75 pages) and most feature-packed issue published yet, and readers took note. Early feedback marveled at the sheer amount and variety of content, including picture contests, IBLD poetry, classic IBLD artwork from years past, stories, news, interviews, opinions, informative pieces, historical information and personal reflections from boylovers.

Website

Initially, Ethos did not have a website for issues 1 and 2. A website was produced prior to issue 3 being released at the domain ethosmagazine.net, with several overhauls and reworks before a design was agreed on.

Due to technical issues and downtime on July 19, 2017, the website moved from that domain to ethosonline.net, with the ethosmagazine.net domain continuing to be disused. It took three days for the move to be completed, with the site fully operational again by July 22.

Following an unexpected setback on April 11, 2020, the magazine was forced to deal with it's well-established setup thrown into sudden disarray. After several days of re-organizing, Ethos found a new server and got a new domain: ethos-online.net.

Blue Boy News

On February 19, 2017, the Ethos website started hosting a section titled "Blue Boy News", created and named by Jonny300. It was a small area dedicated to news related to boys, and relevant to boylovers, and updated every Saturday. This was maintained by news correspondents up until Christmas 2017, where it fell into a state of disuse. This disuse caused the feature to be removed from the site in April 2018.

A year later, in April 2019, boy-related news returned to the pages, with the introduction of Ethos News. This segment has become a permanent fixture of Ethos, having been included in every issue since.

Release schedule

Since Ethos started, it was noted to have released on the 15th of every third month (March, June, September, December). When Ethos had to migrate host in March 2018, a decision was made to amend the publication schedule to every fourth month (April, August, December).^{[Citation needed]}^[9] The May 2018 and August 2018 issues are the only two to have not been released on the 15th of release month.

Volunteer driven

In the opening of issue 1, Dragonlover writes that "We are not professional writers",^[2] and Ethos has been known to periodically advertise for content submissions from the wider community. The ads are usually images accompanied with text. On the Ethos website is additionally a page informing users of the types of content accepted and a non-exhaustive list of what will be rejected.^[10]

Previous issues

Ethos 1 cover September 2016 - Issue 1	Ethos 2 cover December 2016 - Issue 2	Ethos 3 cover March 2017 - Issue 3
Ethos 4 cover June 2017 - Issue 4	Ethos 5 cover September 2017 - Issue 5	Ethos 6 cover December 2017 - Issue 6
Ethos 7 cover May 2018 - Issue 7	Ethos 8 cover August 2018 - Issue 8	Ethos 9 cover December 2018 - Issue 9
Ethos 10 cover April 2019 - Issue 10	Ethos 11 cover August 2019 - Issue 11	Ethos 12 cover August 2019 - Issue 12
Ethos 13 cover June 2020 - Issue 13	Ethos 14 cover Sept. 2020 - Issue 14	Ethos 15 cover Dec. 2020 - Issue 15
Ethos 16 cover March 2021 - Issue 16	Ethos 17 cover June 2021 - Issue 17	Ethos 18 cover June 2021 - Issue 18
Ethos 19 cover December 2021 - Issue 19