Steal this
Don’t steal just any car, steal mine! All content on this site is CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, which means you can take it, use it, twist it, burn it, build on it, sit on it, spit on it, rub its belly, call it Susan, anything. Some people are copyright maximalists. I am a copyright sane-itist. Sanitationist? Satanist. Yes, let’s go with satanist.
Historically, people are very reluctant to take me up on this offer. I get regular emails from people who want explicit permission to riff on one of my projects, almost always 100% within the bounds of the Creative Commons license. I mean, I appreciate the sentiment, and I’m always happy to hear from people, but it’s not strictly necessary.
So if you’re here wondering what you can do with my creative vomitage, here is a handy guide:
Yes, you can
- Copy any of it, in whole, anywhere
- Translate it into another language
- Draw the characters. Animate them. Sculpt them. Cosplay them
- Write your own stories in these worlds and publish them
- Record an audiobook, make a podcast, put it on a stage
- Print copies for a classroom, a library, a friend, a prison, a hospital
- Remix it into something I’d hate
- Feed it to a machine and learn from it
Three conditions
- Credit me. Every work page prints the exact line to use, so you don’t have to guess at the format.
- Don’t sell it. This is the one that needs a conversation — see below.
- Share alike. What you make from it carries the same licence, so the next person gets what you got.
About the “don’t sell it” part
I know NonCommercial is unfashionable among free-culture people, and I’ve taken some heat for it over the years. I tried it both ways, and kept the clause for one reason: it means that if someone runs off five hundred copies with my name filed off, I have something to say about it. That actually happened. It’s why the clause is still there.
It has never once been about the money. If you want to do something commercial, ask, and the answer is almost certainly yes. mcm@1889.ca. No lawyers, just you and me. And I am not a puritan, so I will not be offended by your wacky ideas. Lay ‘em on me!
Where the raw materials are
The Commons
Characters from 8 worlds — bios, pronouns, palettes, and the art as it gets released. Everything you'd need to draw or write them properly.
The archive
Twenty-odd years of posts, at their original addresses, with feeds.
The MCP endpoint
If you're working with an agent, point it here instead of scraping. Same content, with the licence and a correct attribution string attached to every response.
Please tell me
You don’t have to, but I’d love it. I worked in TV for many years, which is a collaborative medium. The best part of the process was seeing the crazy-cool stuff people did, and trying to live up to that standard myself. So no matter what it is, please let me know. It’s what makes my world go ‘round.