(If you’ve been sent here by a friend with no other context, you can skip down to the bold text.)
On June 20th, 2021, Tin Soldier will reach 200 installments! This is a cause for celebration, but you also need to be aware your Author and Illustrator (me, and also me) has reached 40 years old, and after an extra stressful year and yet more health issues I’m desperately seeking a sense of purpose. I also have three total Patrons as of this writing and still haven’t figured out how to break even on the monthly expenses. (I’m working on it!)
For tax reasons, the monthly charity donation is coming out of my personal expenses and will continue to do so until Tin Soldier turns a profit. This is not about the money. I can afford a few bucks to pretend I’m a writer. This is about me suspecting I could keep up the donations and stop putting all the work into the art and the writing and do the same amount of good. More, if my health stabilizes enough for me to donate plasma on a regular basis. (I’ve got that universal plasma. I’m a bloodbag!) My brain and my body do not work, and have never worked, well enough for me to do a real job. I had some doubts, but after four years it turns out I can do this. I just don’t know if I should.
I promise that if I continue to function on a reasonable level for long enough, I am going to finish Year 3 and give everyone a conclusion of some kind. But it was always my intention to pick up the story 10 years later, with the kids grown up, and tell an even bigger story with higher stakes and some real villains. I was going to take a break to plan and catch up to all my redraws and come back. I’ve spent a long time laying groundwork that won’t be resolved if I don’t. I don’t know if enough people want this to justify it.
A free web serial is not a great fit for conventional publishing, I’m terrible at advertising, and I don’t have a lot of funds to throw around. This stuff isn’t the kind of bite-sized content that does well in a social media feed, and I don’t want to join Facebook because my abusive family can find me under my real name (and there’s the moral and political issues too). And I’m kinda nuts. I’m bad at social, isolated, and when I reach out I’m pretty sure I come off as nuts.
If you like this stuff and it makes you happy or you donated someplace because I gave you a nudge or it makes a difference to you if there’s any more here to read ever, I don’t know that unless you tell me. I don’t know it unless you tell me and keep telling me, because most people who decide they don’t like it and take off aren’t going to tell me or let me know why. I have a hit counter that lets me know I have some repeat visitors, but I can’t tell how many real human readers it adds up to.
So I’m asking you in the most honest way I can. If you’re reading and you want to keep reading, please check in with me, either here or at Shots! Shots! Shots!, which has our 4th birthday bonus art in the Liner Notes. Okay? Thank you, but I’m not done with you yet. Once you’ve done that, grab two friends or people you know vaguely by the ear like Moana on Maui and drag them back here. Two people for 200 installments, okay? Point them at this post, so they can check in if they start reading and would like to keep reading. Or if, miraculously, they’d like to create content. Especially if they’d like to create content. (I had dreams of creating a way for fan writers and artists to donate their talent to worthy causes instead of just money – because fan writing and art doesn’t make a lot of money. This may be arrogance, but I hear Jim Henson started Fraggle Rock because he thought it’d be cool to create a TV show that brought about world peace.)
Anyone who has been nudged in this direction by a friend or acquaintance: Hi.
New Readers can start here, and New Creators can start here. Our Story So Far has summary information if you want to pick up the story from the most recent plot arc, or you can begin at the beginning. If you like this place, please let me know in the comments (I need to approve you, it will show up eventually), then grab two people you know and drag them back here. (The Support page has even more ways you can help, if you want.) Thank you.
Okay. Now, because I won’t ask you to do anything I wouldn’t do myself, I am also going to reach out to a couple people I vaguely know. I’m like Hyacinth. I don’t do friends. I kinda know Ursula Vernon due to some funny fake labels, and I barely-kinda know Dana Claire Simpson, due to some Ozy and Millie-related shenanigans in college. (Two decades ago, my god.) I warned you, I do tend to come off as nuts. Nevertheless, I will try to grab them somehow. I will come back here and update you so you will know how that goes and if I’ve been slapped with a restraining order for stalking.
Officially, 2for200 is over after I post my 200th installment. I will stop bugging you about it, but I will leave this post where it is with open comments in case anyone shows up late. Check #200’s Liner Notes and I’ll have some kind of bonus for you, probably art that’s meant to be printed as a sticker sheet, although you’ll have to print and cut them out yourselves. I’m trying not to spend more than I’m worth, folks.
Thanks for listening, for reading, and for your help. If there’s anybody out there.
Hallo there! I have thoughts and feelings. I’m going to ramble about them a bit because then I have the excuse of going “no filter” and I won’t worry (as much as usual) about conveying things in an optimal fashion. If I stress about that too much I probably won’t say anything.
I started reading Tin Soldier because of the labels you sent to Ursula Vernon. She kindly passed on that you were writing a story of some kind and after listening to some old episodes I finally got around to checking it out. I have this vague feeling that I had at least one false start–went to the site, read the first chapter, then got distracted and forgot about it before hearing about it again and coming back. Anyway eventually I read more and got hooked and signed up for your patreon and here we are.
When I started reading I was working at a different job. I wont bore you with the details, but this job had a peculiar nature–for a significant portion of each day, I had a task that basically required me to flip a switch or push a button at precise but somewhat spaced intervals, for around 3-4 hours, barring accidents or unusual events. This was monumentally boring once I got good at it so I had to find something to occupy my brain to a very specific degree, so that I wouldn’t go stark raving mad but also retained enough awareness of my environment that I could still Do The Thing What I Was Paid For. It turns out reading web serials on my phone with a digital timer in the corner of my eye fit that niche nicely.
So what I’m saying is, I read a lot of web serials. Other stuff too, and not always, but I was, conservatively reading for something like 10 hours a week? The Wandering Inn, and The Gods Are Bastards, and A Practical Guide to Evil, and the Sister Seekers back when it was still serialized, etc. etc…. And of course Tin Soldier, which I went seriously fanboy over after bingeing on the backlog for a week.
About a year ago my job changed (for the better!) but that took away my designated “reading web serials” time so my reading got much more limited and erratic. I still read! But I’m not there, like, first thing the next morning after every installment.
I think I mentioned once a long time ago that I feel weird commenting on old chapters of serials and things. I have pretty bad Social Anxiety and I do the thing where if I don’t respond to a text or email *right away* then I feel guilt and shame and embarasment about the delay, and then hide and hope nobody notices I ghosted them, which is of course wrong and stupid and profoundly unhelpful but that’s anxiety for you.
So what I’m saying is, my neuroses mean that if I don’t read an installment of a story and then comment on it *right away* my brain will make me reluctant to comment *at all*. and then I feel guilty for not supporting the author whose work I love, etc. etc. I imagine I don’t have to explain anxiety loops to you.
So in a way this is a good thing. Kick my butt to make me support the artists I love! I’m still here, and I still want to know how the story goes. I know you are doing a ton of work for very little recognition, but for my own selfish reasons, I want you to continue. I hate saying that because I know a lot of artists who got totally burned out, myself included, by facing external demands to be creative. I very carefully try to walk the line between encouragement and being unreasonably demanding of someone who is providing me very laborious entertainment for basically free (Patreon at this level doesn’t count, I don’t pay you enough to take any position of privilege here). But you asked for it, so dammit, I’m telling you. I love the story and I want more of it. So there.
That said, I’m not unreasonable. You’ve put a ton of work into this website when, honestly, just posting the story would have been enough. For me, anyway. If I may take your license to be selfish a little farther, I would say I would prefer you drop some of the extra content if it means you can devote more energy to the story. Not that I don’t love the worldbuilding extras, and I understand the fun of it if you’re doing it for your own benefit–I have a friend with an unfinished story-universe he’s been working on since junior high school, and I love working on the world stuff with him for its own sake, even outside of the story it’s ostensibly in support of. I guess what I’m trying to say is, if you need to cut back in order to avoid burnout, then please do, unless you don’t want to, in which case don’t?
I’m bad at this. But I have given myself permission to ramble so I will persevere.
Anyway, I totally get not doing the Facebook thing. And I hate suggesting this, because this is exactly the sort of thing I judge other fans for doing because it totally disrespects the utterly asymmetrical nature of creator-fan relationships. But if you ever want to just, like, talk story stuff, or vent, or hang out or something, with a person who likes a thing you are making, I’ve got Discord and various other fairly anonymous communication methods at my disposal. Gah, I feel dirty and clingy for suggesting that. But I will be brave and trust that you will ignore the suggestion and not hate me forever and still let me read your story if you aren’t interested.
Now I’m going to post this before I chicken out and delete the whole thing.
I know exactly the anxiety you’re feeling right now, so quickly (even though I just got done running errands in the rain and the brain is not fully back in communication mode): Thank you for this. You did good. You didn’t hurt my feelings or make me feel too pressured or crowded or weird or anything. Thank you for talking. I know it is super hard. (Boy, do I. Take a look at my characters!)
A lot of the worldbuilding stuff isn’t too bad. I’ve had brief periods where I’ve been doing a lot, and the Gazetteer’s Worldwide section really got out of hand, But that’s settled down. I know the Character stuff needs updating, but judging from site stats people don’t seem to use it, so it’s low priority.
What’s yanking me in three directions at once is redraws and new illustrations for the old installments, illustrating and writing the new stuff, and outreach. I wish like heck Yahoo didn’t buy webrings and ruin them, because that’s the type of Web 1.0 level advertising I need. On a larger scale, I’m just noise.
A lot of the extra stuff if me trying desperately to give New Readers a way to pick up this huge story in a way they’ll enjoy. But I think 90-99% of the new people who show up here are from that new aggregator I used to frequent (I just don’t have the energy anymore, but they still approve my weekly links to Tin Soldier), and they figure out this is part of a long work of original fiction, and they don’t want that and they leave. I’ve had a few people comment that are just angry as all hell that I dare ask anyone to read something I wrote. This is from a website that is a collection of links to things people wrote and message board for commenting on them – but only certain kinds of things and people are OK. At least to some minds.
I wouldn’t be as worried about collecting the old installments and making them look nice if I had a better way to do outreach. Collections that you can page through offline with an e-reader of your choice are just another option I’m offering in the hope that New Readers will like it. When I expand to Pillowfort (hopefully sometime in the next couple weeks here, they’re coming back in the 29th), that’s yet another option. And more formatting and work and a deadline for more illustrations.
If I were content to hang out here in obscurity, I would have a lot more spoons for this. But I got an idea in my head like Kermit the Frog in the Muppet Movie. I thought I had a song to sing that might make people happy. If I give up in the future, that’s me admitting that, OK, nobody wants to hear a frog sing ‘Rainbow Connection.’
Honestly, ‘Rainbow Connection’ is just the right level of melancholy for my creative experience, if you really listen to it. Jim Henson’s favorite, and another they sang at his funeral, was ‘Just One Person.’ “Why not two/three/four/etc.?” is supposed to be rhetorical, like, “Why don’t we get ice cream?” But I’m not actually getting any ice cream here, so I’m using a lot of energy trying to answer that question.
But thank you for being One Person at this moment in time. Now I gotta scroll down and look at that other thing you’re probably nervous about. I will try to get back here fast with more good things to say.
Also, I hate talking about projects I’m working on before they are finished because. but under the circumstances I will show you an an unfinished thing I was working on, and then got stuck, and then distracted, and anyway here’s the thing:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eH2tliUYj_Ad61kGzAPTd9FVieG7MRN_/view?usp=sharing
Maybe I’ll start working on it again. How tall are the ceilings at 217 Violena Street anyway?
Oooh, rendering. I tried to do that in Sims 3, but I just couldn’t get the scale to look right. Meaning, realistically, while each storey should be about the standard 10 feet total, with maybe an extra 5-10 at the roof peaks, to get that wacky Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends look I imagine, you might have to jack them up a little higher. Hard to do in Sims 3, so it ended up looking too boxy and sensible.
I am so non-spatial. I got the floorplan and the illustration to look as close to my imagination as I could, while also making sense, but I think if I were really true to what I’ve written, it’d look like an Escher drawing. For instance, I’ve recently realized the back of the house doesn’t allow for Sanaam to climb in Room 202’s window on his anniversary. I might have to add an overhang or something for the poor guy.
If you ever get it done, let me know and I’ll put it up as my very first Showcase content!