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

Wow! Have you seen this content? We got stories and characters and a whole universe! Do you feel inspired?

Well, slow down and let me explain what’s going on here, because I am not playing by the rules. I think the rules are stupid, and they’re killing art, so I am misbehaving with purpose. If you’re going to use what I’ve made, you’ve got to misbehave too. I can’t promise I won’t ever get so desperate and hungry that I sell out, and in that case it’ll be up to you to keep misbehaving as best you can. For now, we exist in a paradise that should hold up as long as I have enough to live, recharge, and keep creating, and I am your Genderless Lord of Misrule.

Ideas are not property. That is not an opinion, that is a fact. “Intellectual property” is a convenient legal fiction that allows for all kinds of exploitation and I’m not having it. To the best of my ability, I am licensing and distributing Tin Soldier and Soldier On as if they exist in reality, not the Kafkaesque Twilight Zone maintained by capitalism and copyright. That means I might get into trouble, and you might get into trouble, and you might be able to get me into trouble. I must ask you, in good faith, not to get us into legal entanglements neither you nor I can afford.

If you can just hold it in your mind that ideas are not property, and behave as such, we should be fine. (As long as I have enough to live and my health holds up!) But I’m going to unpack that for you. If you use my content — even if all you do is share what you think about it in a public forum — I’m going to assume you read all of this and agreed to it. I am not a lawyer! However, if it is required to have an EULA for ideas you hold in your brain, this is my best attempt at one.

The Creative Commons License

I’ve gone through a few iterations of license and settled on CC BY-NC-SA. Barring catastrophe, that’s where I’ll stick — perhaps with an update as Creative Commons grows and clarifies its language. This means you’re free to reprint, remix and adapt this stuff — if you give credit where credit is due, don’t sell it, and don’t modify the license. But let me tell you why.

BY

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not very popular. I tried to get published traditionally, I did try, but I’m not bolted together tightly enough to make it through that obstacle course. At the beginning, if I’d had a chance at legitimacy, I would’ve taken it and shut up. But I didn’t. Now I’m older, wiser, and more irritable. I see yet another broken system that’s hurting people, and if I can refrain from participating in it, I shall.

So, this stuff is free to use. Have all the ideas you want! But if you share them, please tell people where to find the original. Link them to this site — or wherever I end up if I piss someone off and get exiled from my current domain. I’m saying some important things and I want to be seen. I need you to help me out with that.

NC

This is garlic to keep the vampires away. I don’t want some goddamn creatively-sterile executive to trip over my work and say, “Well, if I’m okay to sell this, I’ll just take it, produce it with way more money, and keep all the profit! Ha-ha, support the original, while I do everything in my power to put it out of business! Then, when it’s gone, I’ll just program an AI to make more of it!”

I’m not telling stories to help Disney line its pockets a little more. I’m telling stories about human beings for human beings.

If you are an individual who needs to eat, and you’re not hurting anyone, I do not mind if you make something based on my work and sell it. You may charge a fair price for your labour, like I’m trying to pick up a few bucks for mine. But I’m not selling an idea, and neither are you. If you look like you’re operating an idea-based empire, and I find out about it, I’m gonna knock on your door and say, “Hey, WTF?”

And please, for the love of god, don’t make me come back with a lawyer. I’m trying to avoid legal entanglements here!

SA

In a perfect world, this would be enough to keep Disney away. Due to the unequal distribution of resources, it’s not, but this is still the most important part of the license.

If ideas are not property, they are shared. I believe that to publish something is to give it to the world. I am using a lot of ideas that have been in the world for a long time, and I am not paying money to the estate of Joseph Campbell or asking if I may pretty-please subvert his concept of a Hero’s Journey. I’m not mailing Victor Hugo or Andrew Lloyd Webber a few bucks so I can produce a French-fried revolution. I’m not even going to speak to that other author whose status-quo-dependent magical world I’m responding to with my own. I am a thief of intellect, standing on the shoulders of thieves — but we only took what should’ve belonged to us all. I’m not going to turn around and pretend I own what I’ve “stolen.”

I’d also like you not to turn around and pretend you own what you’ve “stolen” — but I can only ask you to do that when you’re using my work. Society has decided that ideas are property, so I can only keep mine, specifically, from being treated that way.

This is to protect both of us. I exist on the internet, I cannot go in fear of fanfiction, speculation, analysis, or people leaving comments hoping that something will happen. If you said it, it’s out there and people can use it — not just me, anyone! Taking an idea and running with it is not (should not be) plagiarism. Plagiarism is taking the credit for someone else’s labour — and publishers do that all the damn time. An idea existing in your head is yours — and once you’ve expressed it, it’s everyone’s.

I will try to give credit where credit is due. I may also publish my notes, so you know where I’m going with this travesty in the event of an Author Existence Failure. But you’re going to have to trust me to credit you when appropriate, like I’ll have to trust you to credit me. This is a leap of faith we have to make in order to grasp even a fraction of the communal structure storytelling used to have. I think that’s worth saving, and I think this is worth trying.

Rules to Disobey By

The Basic Rules

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

I’ll be a little more blunt, since you’re going to run away with your ideas and go places I can’t moderate or maybe even find: Don’t shit on the Free Buffet. People are trying to eat in here. If you’re trying to ruin it for everyone on purpose, you may succeed, but I will fight you with every fibre of my being, and curse you with every breath in my body. And there may be some other folks willing to fight for this stuff too.

Fuck around with Retribution, and find out whether your fragile human psyche can handle the consequences.

The Six Commandments

• Read. We are text-based. Listening and understanding means reading carefully and asking for clarification when needed.
• Respect. Be kind and understanding, and act in ways deserving of kindness and understanding.
• Repurpose. Sharing is caring. 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. Pay artists! I mean, artists in general, not just me. But also pay me, if you can.
• Engage. Give attention to get attention. If you can’t pay money, engagement is currency too!

My Best Advice for Sharing with Care

• All Tin Soldier and Soldier On content is CC BY-NC-SA.
  • If someone could reasonably say “That’s Tin Soldier/Soldier On!” then it falls under the license and you need to share.
  • Some of my original artwork has elements I paid for or stole. I’m willing to look the other way on that “NC” in most circumstances, but be very careful not to sell the “good” art with all the shading. Beginning in 2023, I’m using all original and Public Domain stuff, so you can go crazy.
• Don’t treat ideas as property. That’s a collective delusion we’ve been having for far too long.
• Take compensation, when you must, for the work you’ve put into making an idea real.
• Negotiate prices, let people pay what they can, and don’t always demand money. Compensation doesn’t have to be money.
• If you mix my content with anyone else’s, you must assume you are monkeying around with traditional copyright (unless the creator/s of that work say very clearly you’re not).
  • Obey the traditional rules of fanfiction, don’t approach creators with your ideas involving their work (you could get them in big trouble), and stay under the radar. 
  • My license does not apply to ideas that I can’t claim as “mine” under our current, broke-ass system. It won’t protect your use of another creator’s ideas, or their use of yours.
• Please don’t send me your ideas hoping that I will do something with them. I’m too busy trying to realize my own ideas. Learn to write or draw, or pay someone for a commission. I can’t work to spec, I do not have that kind of brain.
  • If you’ve had an idea and did something with it yourself, that’s different. If I’ve got time, I’ll take a look. Please include a name you’d like me to use to give you credit!
    • If you’ve guessed an upcoming plot point, I will deny everything in public (to preserve the surprise for everyone else) and give you a name check when I get there in-story.
    • If you don’t want a name check under any circumstances, let me know when you tell me about your thing. The default mode is: You get credit.
• If it’s important to you, keep a copy. This is the internet. Things break, get lost, and get removed for various reasons. This site itself isn’t necessarily going to stay where it is.
  •  None of this is copy-restricted, you can copy it however you like — the restrictions only come into play when you share it.
• Whoever put something up has the ultimate say on when and if it gets edited, or taken down.
  • If you’re working on a group project, it’s polite to get everyone’s permission before making any changes, but whoever put it up has the final say. So everyone keep your own copy.
• Do not use my content with intent to harm people for things about themselves that they cannot change. This includes but is not limited to:
  • Race, ethnicity or heritage
  • Gender, sex or sexuality
  • Disability
  • Poverty (Wealth is excluded. It is very easy to stop being wealthy. Try it!)
• Adult-oriented content (including artistic nudity) needs to stay in adult-oriented spaces! To protect yourself and others:
  • Make it very clear when someone is entering an adult-oriented space.
  • Ask if they are 18+.
  • Make it possible for them to leave without seeing anything they don’t want to see.

Creators’ Resources

Now that I’ve annoyed you with rules and instructions, let me reward your patience with a creator-friendly site map!

Please be aware that you’re poking around behind-the-scenes here. You are liable to find half-painted set pieces, accidental spills, spoilers just lying around where anyone can see them, and a general mess. A lot of this stuff is just my disjointed notes, made human-readable and corrected for continuity — often not well!

I made this world, so I’m the boss of canon. (I will do my best to abdicate from all other positions of authority.) When contradictions inevitably happen, the story itself is probably closer to “correct.” Sometimes, I do forget something that I stuck in my notes so I wouldn’t forget it, and then I gotta go back and fix it, or fix something, so I don’t crash the plot. Nothing here is perfect and neither am I. Everything is subject to change. I’ll do my best to let you know when I’m really unsure about something, but you’ll still find plenty of missing information and a lot of things that are flat out wrong.

Nevertheless, if you need a particular bit of information (however dubious it may be), I’ll try to help you find it. I’m still cleaning things up and updating them for this new site, but there’s some supplemental material here already and more is on the way!

I’ll break this down into Characters, Setting and Mechanics — that is, the people in the world, the world itself, and the way the world works. I’m least likely to make stupid mistakes about the Characters, and most likely to screw up the Mechanics, but I may screw up anywhere at any time!

Characters

• Characters Page — Current info relevant to Soldier On. Lacks some info due to the effort it takes to update this stuff, and not wanting to annoy new readers with spoilers.
  • Some characters have linked pages of their own with more info, but I need to reformat and update them all real bad.
• Tin Soldier’s Page — Older, similar info relevant to Tin Soldier. Has much more of the cast herd available. Click the anchor!
• Character Tags — Each instalment is tagged (more or less) with the characters who show up and make some kind of worthwhile contribution to the plot. I’ll list you the main cast here, but everyone who’s going to stick around should have a tag.
  • Hyacinth’s House: Erik/essential Erik, Hyacinth/essential Hyacinth, Mordecai/essential Mordecai, Milo/essential Milo, Ann/essential Ann, Barnaby/essential Barnaby, Calliope/essential Calliope, Lucy/essential Lucy, Dave/essential Dave, Maggie/essential Maggie, The General/essential General, Sanaam/essential Sanaam, The Monster at the End of the Serial
  • Others: Soup/essential Soup, Seth/essential Seth, John/essential John, Cerise, Alba, Diane, David/essential David, The Invisibles.
• Plot Tags
  • summary — Sanaam, or somebody, gets an update after a long absence.
  • millipede/essential millipede — Milo and Calliope’s relationship milestones.
  • magic storm — The World Turned Upside Down.
  • milo is forever losing things — Part of an ongoing series!
  • backstory — Backstory for everyone!
  • flashback — Going Back in Time!

*Note: I’m the boss of canon, and I have the “real” versions of all these people in a mayonnaise jar in an undisclosed location. That means: no matter how much you rip up your versions, you can’t hurt the real ones! …But you can hurt people’s feelings — even mine! — so try to be understanding if someone in your audience yells, “Ow!” Respect, and Be Excellent.

Setting

• Setting Page — Current info relevant to Soldier On.
• Tin Soldier’s Page — Older, similar info relevant to Tin Soldier. Archived Character, Setting and Mechanics pages available!
• Glossary — Lots of Setting-relevant stuff, but it’s organized alphabetically by word. Sorry!
• Hyacinth’s Calendar — a timeline of sorts, with significant household events and their calendar dates. Also has birthdays, Ann’s Dresses of the Week, and other date-related info.
• Setting Tags
  • society works — Social issues in the ‘Verse!
  • history — What happened, or what they say happened.

*Note: The centrepiece here is the Gazetteer, but it needs reorganizing, reformatting and updating real bad. You’ll have to be patient. I will get all of it legible eventually!

Mechanics

• Mechanics Page — Current info relevant to Soldier On.
• Tin Soldier’s Page — Older, similar info relevant to Tin Soldier. Click the anchor!
• Glossary — Lots of Mechanics-relevant stuff, but it’s organized alphabetically by word. Still sorry!
• The Gods I Know — A list of known Invisibles, their habits, preferences, personalities, and notes. May contain gods you don’t know yet, or be missing some I forgot.
• Mechanics Tags
  • magic works — Rules and applications of magic!
  • The Invisibles — God stuff!

*Note: This is my weakest area. I’m always meaning to produce more content about it and I never have the patience.

Records and Other Resources

• The One-Page, Searchable Archive — Find instalments by title and number!
• Notes on “Coloured” — Out-of-universe info on why we have coloured people and what they’re for.

An Apology

My incompetence knows no bounds, and the story itself will always be a priority, so this stuff will never get updated quickly or corrected well. I have probably given you incorrect or incomplete instructions in many places, because I didn’t do something I meant to, or because I wound up doing it a different way. I am sorry for that. I am not sorry for being an idealist/thief, but I will apologize in advance for any pain, distress, or legal entanglements I may cause by trying to do the right thing. And if, in the future, I have to sell out to keep this story alive, I hope you’ll do the right thing and remember these ideas don’t belong to a corporation, no matter what it says on paper. Ideas are not property.