(If you’re not already familiar with the story, go here. You have to read before you can create!)

Can You Fiction?

AUTHOR SAD LONELY. HELP [FUTURE CONDITIONAL ASK]?
Well, if we were on social media, which we are, we’d come up with a way to encourage fan content!
EXAMPLE COPYRIGHT [NO EXTRA] SUBSTITUTE C-R-E-A-T-I-V-E-C-O-M-M-O-N-S-L-I-C-E-N-C-E [SMILEX2 ASK]?
Right! 2-3-4!
Oh yeah, wow!
We don’t lock our front door, get in here and explore, no cover charges, only love
Got no inhibitions, got no reputation, so feel free to tear it up
Reality is fluid, depends on how you view it, glad to wear a different hat
Who cares if we get paid? Countin’ up the friends made! Can you fiction that?
Can you fiction that?
Oh yeah!
Hey Milo, take a verse. Just kidding, hon.
Take a piece of fiction, add a couple mix-ins, set the blender high or low
Everyone tells stories, just don’t make ‘em boring. Some flowers need to climb to grow
We respect a modder, everything is fodder, nothing's canon anymore
Now your favorite OCs can play with Milo and me
And we can all be dinosaurs
You know there's nothin' out there you can't do
Yeah, AO3 has won a Hugo too!
Erase the lines, rewrite, redraw, remix, react
Be a better writer, push the boundaries wider
Can you fiction that?
YOU MAKE [FUTURE CONDITIONAL ASK]?
Really!
All of us are makers, givers too and takers, hey it’s super fun to share
If you want less drama, dial down the trauma, or make it darker, we don’t care
Lock us in a tool shed. Say there’s only one bed
Or maybe genderflip the cast
Bring on all the crack fics, we’re not here to sink ships,
Can you fiction that?
Can you fiction that?
Can you fiction?
You’re gonna hafta use your brain
Can you fiction?
We don’t really have to explain
Can you fiction?
You ain’t gotta spend a dime
Can you fiction? Can you fiction that?
Can you fiction that?
Use it how you need it
Don't forget to read it
Can you fiction that?

Ha, ha, ha. Anne Rice will never sue you now! Too soon?

We don’t know how to thank you guys. (We shouldn’t have to thank you guys, transformative works should be protected!)

See ya later, new creators!

Are you sure you won’t come with us to AO3?

Can’t, fandom, but when you get clicks, remember to link back here to the original!

Hello, New Creator!

Oh, boy! You’ve read at least some Tin Soldier content and now you’re all set to create some content of your own!

I want to create an anarchic, lateral structure for my content to nest in, where we can all be creators and play together and share. Nothing more complicated than how we used to play at recess and birthday parties! Unfortunately, I can’t just declare my ideals and let you go because peaceful anarchy is not the default for an IP, and there are legal hurdles and people who just want to watch the world burn. I’m going to try to lay out some ground rules, which are subject to change as needed. At the moment, I don’t have a fandom and I’m having to guess what kind of playground safety is necessary.

Let me first state the obvious: Tin Solder content must have something to do with Tin Soldier. We have to establish a baseline or I’ll end up hosting Omegaverse fics. You must use at least one of the following resources from the original Tin Soldier, which I’ve created: Characters, Setting and Mechanics. That’s the people I’ve made, the universe I’ve put them in, and the way their reality functions. If you’re not using any of that, you’re not creating Tin Soldier. Go make your own website, then come back and make something Tin Soldier and link us to your other stuff.

Here you will find a beginner’s guide for navigating Our Universe, and posting and submitting your content. For our purposes, posted content exists somewhere on the internet. Submitted content is something you want me specifically to look at for some reason — either I’m going to adopt it into my canon or publish it someplace or link to it or something. I exist across many hosts now and each one has different ways to contact me. The default will be: email tinsoldier.space@gmail.com. No one has ever submitted anything ever, so I don’t check that mailbox as often as I should, but I will get back to you eventually.

I can only host images and text, but you can use any media you want and host it anywhere you want — you don’t even have to come back and tell me about it, but it would be nice if you did. Audio and video formats can be hosted elsewhere and linked. I can remotely play YouTube stuff in most places, and I may be able to do that for other things — it will be an experiment!

If you just want to play together, make stuff and share it, I’ll keep it simple:

The Basic Rules

Be Excellent to Each Other. Be Excellent to Our Universe.

The Six Commandments

• Read. We are text-based. Listening and understanding means reading carefully and asking for clarification when needed.
• Respect. Obey boundaries, label things appropriately, give credit where credit is due. Be kind and understanding and act in ways deserving of kindness and understanding.
• Repurpose. Sharing is caring. Tin Soldier is meant to be shared; your content is a contribution. We ❤ Creative Commons, Fair Use and the Public Domain. When you use another person’s content, give credit and add value.
• Create. If you’re enjoying what’s here, please give something back. Even if it’s just a comment about how neat a thing is. 
• Donate. Support Tin Soldier and the Charity of the Month here, or pick a cause of your own.
• Engage. Give attention to get attention. Don’t just dump content and run, stay around and talk about it, give other people’s creations a look, and boost us across platforms so new people can engage too.

The Curse

It’s Retribution, the Curse Owl!

Break any of the rules or violate what may fairly be called human decency, and misfortune will come on swift wings and nest in your home. Unless it is a hip misfortune, then it will probably use an Uber or another rideshare application. Your creations will turn to dust in your hands. You will die in obscurity, but not before everything you care about is pried away from you. Karma will take a crap on your head. The Furies will hork up pellets in your shoes. You will be vulnerable to demons, mysterious rashes, and any and all coronaviruses — including the crummy beer, the common cold, and the 2019 franchise with all its sequels. Every bad thing that happens to you can be attributed to the fact that you screwed around with the infinite, and there will be no absolution — because I do not control these forces, I just point them in your direction and they do whatever they want.

And I will ban you from everyplace I can!

The Complicated Stuff

Okay, most of this crap here is for navigating Capitalism as safely and kindly as possible. I am not a lawyer, but I did marry an accountant. There is probably more here than you need and some of it is wrong. This is just my best effort to take the obvious bumps out of the road so we can have as much fun as possible.

There are also a few common-sense things about sharing and interaction, and a preliminary way to organize spin-off universes if you need that.

You may skim the following, but we’re going to move forward as if you understand and agree to it.

1. All Tin Soldier content is under a blanket Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (subject to updating with similar features) — with the additional requirement that at least 50% of your profits go to charity. Simply subtract your operating costs, tax included, and divide what’s left with a charity. If you are a multi-person operation, fair and non-exploitative compensation for everyone involved is an operating cost. If you’re only paying yourself, you may either call your fair salary an operating cost, and donate half the profits after subtracting it (this may be a loophole, but please obey the spirit of ‘fair’), or just accept that your salary is half the profits. In other words, if you’re just one person, it’s no big deal if you don’t pay yourself. But if you’re an organization, pay everyone! I have to leave you the option to work out how, but definitely pay them!
   1. There are obvious holes in this blanket! See the crossover loophole below for what happens when you mix Tin Soldier with content that was not specifically created for Tin Soldier.
      1. Because of the way I create my art, some of it counts as crossover material, and you should not sell it without remixing it on the blender’s ‘high’ setting! More details here and below.
   2. Qualifying charities are not operating for profit and have not been flagged by the SPLC as hate groups.
      1. If you sell your work, you are on your honor to follow these rules, and if you break your word you are cursed.
      2. I will publish my finances here in abbreviated format and let you know who I’m donating to. I suggest you find some way to do likewise.
   3. Creators are not able to change the level of the CC license or apply traditional copyright or trademark protection to any Tin Soldier works — with the exception of the crossover loophole below, which can only subject individual works to a more restrictive CC license or nonprofit use.
   4. You will credit me on everything offsite, because if you’re not using my stuff it’s not Tin Soldier. Onsite, it’s not as important, you all know where you are and who I am.
      1. To credit me use the format: CC BY SA: Wyvr | tinsoldier.space, with a link to the Home page where possible.
   5. On your works, please use the format [YOUR NAME OR ALIAS] | [YOUR SITE, IF YOU HAVE ONE, or E-MAIL]. If someone can’t figure out how to credit you or contact you, they may link directly to your work wherever they found it.
      1. If your site has adult content, for heaven’s sake either wall it off or warn people. Don’t be rude. If I find out you’re being rude, you’re banned. No warning or explanation. See below. (Also, you’re cursed.)
      2. You may ask to be credited as ‘anonymous’ if you do not wish to give a name, alias, or link to other work.
   6. If I don’t like it, I won’t host it. Period. You are free to find another host with different rules about content. If I don’t like it, I will delete it or the link to it. Do not expect a warning or an explanation.
      1. Bearing that in mine: Keep a hard copy of your work! I’m not a real archive. I don’t have the time or the skills. Even if you don’t piss me off and get removed, I may screw up my code and break everything so badly it can’t be fixed, or get hacked or arrested or something. Your work is yours, so protect it.
2. All Tin Soldier content is cursed! See above for the curse terms. I can’t do traditional trademark or copyright protections, so I’m invoking a psychological and metaphysical threat. Human beings are wired to make these superstitious connections and you are not immune. I have set this up so you will judge yourself for your use of my content. Beware. 
3. You will not use any Tin Soldier content with intent to harm people for things about themselves that they cannot change. This includes but is not limited to:
   1. Race, ethnicity or heritage
   2. Gender, sex or sexuality
   3. Disability
   4. Poverty (Wealth is excluded. It is very easy to stop being wealthy. Try it!)
4. THOU SHALT PUNCH UP! If I’m hosting you somehow, I will judge whether you are punching up. If you’re using your own hosting, you are subject to the curse.
5. Crossovers with content which is not covered by Tin Soldier’s CC license may not be sold, unless that content belongs to you or has a CC license allowing sale. I cannot protect you from J. K. Rowling, Disney, Anne Rice(‘s estate), or any other litigious creators.
   1. If your original (non-derivative) content doesn’t have its own CC license, the portion you mixed with Tin Soldier falls under Tin Soldier’s CC license — others may use and sell what you contributed.
   2. If the crossover material does have a CC license, then the crossover is covered by the rules of whichever license is more restrictive. Please label works with a more restrictive license with that license and make it obvious.
   3. I make my art, with traced, pasted, filtered and otherwise deformed material that other people have produced. Most of this material is from the Public Domain, but some of it isn’t. I am trying to pay for my stock images now, but redraws of art produced when I was using pen and paper may include pieces of reference images that I ripped up and technically stole from I can’t remember where. (I will see about fixing that if I have time.) This means much of my art falls under the crossover loophole! In general, you should not sell it!
      1. On my honor, I will not come after you for repurposing my art unless you are hurting someone. But someone else may come after you. I paid for that photo background behind the enormous chihuahua, you didn’t. I altered it, added things and cut things out, but that may not be enough to call it mine. I’m just letting you know.
6. Works I host should use the Pain Stars Index.
   1. You may add other content warnings if you feel it is appropriate.
7. Adult-oriented content will go in adult-oriented spaces! You will warn people when they are entering an adult-oriented space and ask if they are eighteen or older. You must also expect to be asked to confirm YOU are eighteen or older. Warnings are polite and protect us from outraged moral guardians.
   1. Artistic nudity must be treated as adult-oriented. This is also to protect us from outraged moral guardians, not my personal view.
8. Posted content may be edited or removed at the author/host’s discretion. (If you’re using something that somebody else made, don’t expect it to stay in the same condition in the same place. That even goes for the stuff I’ve made.) Submitted content which I have hosted will require a written request. However, it will not be possible to remove your ideas from the (hypothetical) community. This will include any original characters, settings or mechanics you have introduced. To create something is to give it to the world — no backsies.
   1. For multi-person works, whoever posted it (whether the whole work or just a contribution) has the ultimate right to take it down, but try to work it out between yourselves amicably. I don’t have the resources to police everyone. To remove a multi-person work from someplace I run, I need to hear from all of you.
      1. Remember, if it’s important to you, keep a hard copy!
   2. Works by removed creators and ideas from removed works will be treated as if they were posted/submitted anonymously. If you remove yourself or get yourself removed, or if you remove works with your name on them, people can’t be expected to keep crediting you for your content.
9. Submitting content:
   1. Send links or attachments to tinsoldier.space@gmail.com. Please put “SUBMISSION” in the topic box, that would help me give you the attention you deserve. Every host will have its own ways to contact me and some of them may even work, but the above is the default.
   2. Include credits for everyone involved using the standard format above.
   3. Please be aware that your author/editor/webmaster etc. is operating with a developmental disorder, severe anxiety, depression and PTSD and when I get overwhelmed I tend to shut down. If you do not get a reply in a timely manner, something may be broken somewhere, or I may be listening to My Chemical Romance on a loop and afraid of my inbox.
10. Label stuff! Clarity and organization are our friends, we do not want to become the Star Wars extended universe.
    1. The default (unlabeled) state is that everyone is doing their own thing, in their own ‘verse, with the people in that ‘verse unable to affect people in other ‘verses, even if they are aware that they exist in fiction with multiple iterations of themselves.
       1. Interaction between ‘verses should obey playground rules, with reality agreed upon by mutual consent. If someone uses something that you made, the default understanding is that they have created a copy and the copy is their thing — someone cannot harm or otherwise affect your thing with their thing unless both of you consent.
       2. If you use something that someone else made, remember to give credit and offer a link to that person’s stuff. This is a gray area! People are going to come up with similar things independently! Please be respectful and understanding.
    2. I am trying to avoid a top-down structure, but there is only so much I can do. Just for clarity’s sake, you can call my stuff canon or CA, and if you want to talk about everything else in general, go ahead and call it NCA or non-canon. As it stands, I’m the one who defines what Tin Soldier is (via Characters, Setting and Mechanics), and if we don’t acknowledge the original the variations are going to become unrecognizable.
    3. If you should happen to spin off a ‘verse, either to organize your own work or to share with others…
       1. Name it! Give it a catchy name, ideally with some reference to Tin Soldier so people know what you’re doing. For example: Tin Jurassic Park.
       2. Claim it! Define the nature of it as simply and clearly as possible — how is this version of Tin Soldier different? What are you using, what did you add, and what did you throw out?
       3. Label it! Let people know when a work is set in that ‘verse.
    4. Don’t forget to label adult content too!
11. NO UNALTERED COPYRIGHTED SONG LYRICS USED WITHOUT PERMISSION IN ANYTHING YOU INTEND TO SELL! I’ve looked into this and the music industry is mad with power and too expensive and complicated for mere mortals to navigate. Song titles are okay. Music in the Public Domain is okay. (Google it and check because I got a nasty surprise with Peter and the Wolf.) Anything else has to be rephrased or switched up somehow or purchased. Copyright law is terrible, that’s why I’m using Creative Commons.
12. If you want out of these terms and conditions but you’ve used my content or content from other contributors, file off the serial numbers. This is the Fifty Shades of Grey loophole, because that whole mess started as a Twilight fanfic. If you alter something so much that no reasonable person would go, “Hey, that sounds like Tin Soldier,” you’re in the clear, even if it started here.
    1. But it would be nice of you to keep donating to charity.
13.  All that said, if I can’t pick up readers after giving it my best shot, I may have to take what I’ve made and publish traditionally just to reach an audience, with whatever kind of licensing the publisher demands. I prefer an anarchic lateral structure and I want to give you as much of one as I can, but as I write this I have no readers who want to create. I can’t build any kind of community if I don’t get more readers. If I have to reclaim any part of my authority to build and preserve a community I will come back here and revise the hell out of everything.
    1. I don’t want to do that, please don’t make me.

Spoiler Alert!

All of Years 1-3 are available to read right now, and not everyone is going to read all of it before peeling off to make their own thing or read someone else’s thing. There is some really obvious stuff that it would be nice of you to warn others about, maybe it would help to let others know how far you’ve read when you interact, but I know that won’t always be practical. Just in general, though, spoilers have now become inevitable. Please do your best to accept the ruined surprises with grace and to enjoy the journey.

For future content which I sincerely hope to produce, if you happen to guess something I’ve planned, I will look you straight in the eye and lie to you about it, so as to preserve the surprise for as many people as possible. I have seen the Johnlock Conspiracy and I know fandoms won’t believe you’re not lying to preserve a surprise anyway, so if things start to go off the rails I’ll have to come up with some other way to apply a brake.

You’re also going to have to trust me about what I had planned versus things I’ve adopted from other creators. I will give credit where credit is due, but some things will be similar because you’ve picked up on the foreshadowing or by sheer coincidence. I won’t be able to produce receipts for ideas in my brain.

Incompetent Author Alert!

I have had to change the color of Ann’s dress on Erik’s seventh birthday two times because of calendar errors. I’m not anywhere near perfect. Even the published installments are subject to change because of continuity problems and the constant typos. This means my thing is as good as I can get it, but never exact. There will be updates, unnoticed contradictions, missing information and completely stupid errors. I won’t always correct this stuff as fast as I should because my main focus is on the story. I will try to admit right away when something is dubious canon (DubCA) and likely to change, but just about everything could change.

If anyone has time to do a real wiki or set us up on TVTropes, please do. In the meantime, it’s just me working on this stuff with occasional nudges from you guys when I mess up something obvious. I don’t need to write most of this stuff down for myself in that much detail, and it’s hard for me to organize. I know it’s not fair to expect you to get all the information you need from thousands of pages of narrative content that’s not indexed, so this is my best effort.

Creator’s Resources

Now that I’ve annoyed you with rules and warnings, here’s a little help navigating the content I’ve put here to help you! Please, do not be intimidated. Remember the magic word which will excuse your content no matter how off-the-wall it gets. All you have to do is say “This is non-canon” or label it NCA. Boom! Now you’re okay to make Milo a clever velociraptor in Jurassic Park if you want!

Non-canon is your default mode of creation. Unless you specifically ask me to adopt it and I do, you are operating in an alternate universe. If you’re going to be creating multiple works in a consistent alternate universe, you can name it and claim it, but we’re not there yet.

These resources are here so you can easily find what you do want to use. I’ve done a lot of character and world building, it’s here for you. You have to use some of it, but you don’t have to use all of it. There are infinite possible worlds. This one is just the baseline.

I’m going to list pages here under the three main headings I’ve mentioned above. Characters, Setting and Mechanics. There’s overlap between Setting and Mechanics, but I’ll try to put things you’d teach in a History class under Setting, and stuff for Science class under Mechanics.

Characters

This one is easiest for me. I’m a people person! Well, I’m a pretend people person. Real people scare the hell out of me. Character information is the least likely to be altered or contradicted, and if I do alter it, it’ll probably be a clarification and expansion.

The Characters page is here. It has vital statistics on most notable people in the cast, with links to more detailed pages for some.

These people are not adoptable. You can make as many versions as you like and use them however you want (Be Excellent!) but I have the originals in a mayonnaise jar in a safety deposit box at an unknown location. That means if you destroy your versions, you don’t have to worry, I have the backups.

Setting

This is the world and everything non-human in it. It includes geography, history, politics, and all that stuff that’s no fun to learn at school because you know there’s no way the teacher is going to blow anything up.

Setting information I provide is of dubious canon. I may contradict it in-story, but that doesn’t mean that’s not how I meant it to be, it might just mean I forgot. So anything you read might be how I intended it to be when I was paying attention, or it might be something I had to discard for the sake of plot but I haven’t updated it yet. Because of your incompetent author you are building on shifting sand. Remember, though, your default creation mode is non-canon, which means you can change anything you like. 

The Gazetteer is the showpiece here. Most of the setting information that I’ve bothered to put together is in there. I tried to make it a fun read. I’m not using most of it yet, especially the world stuff, but it’s convenient to have it if I need it. Who knows? You might have a fun time doing something in the ILV or Ifrana.

The Setting main page has more general information, and stuff I haven’t expanded into its own pages yet. It also has links and unclickable content which I intend to provide at some point.

The Glossary has weird words and weird uses of words. I do try to sneak in an occasional reminder that even though the language is rendered as English (or French, or Russian, or others in some cases) it’s not the same. For the moment, it’s also your best place to find stuff like currency denominations and some applications of magic.

Mechanics

Ooh, this is the stuff that might result in a real explosion, or at least a baking soda volcano. In Tin Soldier, the natural world is very similar to ours — the big differences are the magic system and the Invisibles.

Mechanics information is even more dubious than Setting information. I have to go back and correct how I thought things worked all the time, either because it conflicts with the plot or it just plain doesn’t make any sense. This is my weakest area. It’s a good thing magic rewrites reality. (And so does Violet.)

The Glossary has a lot of Mechanics mixed in with the vocabulary, including applications of magic and how things like lights and photographs work.

The only other thing I have for you right now is a list of Invisibles, including what they do and what offerings they prefer. I keep remembering Invisibles I’ve mentioned in-story and having to add them, and I will always be adding more, but I think I’ve hit the important ones.

Records and Other Resources

• The Archives By Plot will help you find your place.
• Hyacinth’s Calendar is a timeline of sorts, dealing with events we’ve covered in-story, as well as date-related information like birthdays, holidays and Ann’s dress selection.
• Our Story So Far is geared towards New Readers, but it does have Sanaam’s summaries if you need them.
• Notes on ‘Colored’ is an explanation of why we have ‘colored’ people in-story and why they’re called that.
• About My Art is an explanation of why I’ve improved so much since getting my stylus, and blanket credit to the stock photo people and the Public Domain. You can also create art this way, but it would be nice to pay and credit the stock photo people if you can.
• About the Author is WTF is wrong with me. I mean it as an excuse, but maybe it will give you hope.

An Apology

I’ve done a lot of work on this stuff, but my main focus is always going to be more text advancing the story on schedule. Some “links” may remain dead-ended or unclickable for a long time.

I’m doing my best!!