Open Canon & Transformative Works Policy

The Ahmieverse and its characters are offered to you as a living commons.

The worlds, characters, settings, frameworks, and lore on this site are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). That means you may:

Share — copy, redistribute, and archive these materials in any medium or format.
Adapt — remix, build on, transform, retell, illustrate, podfic, translate, or otherwise make something new with them.
Use commercially — sell, publish, or monetize your own work that derives from or is set in this universe, especially if you are in relationship with this community and bringing genuine creative labor to the work.

The one legal requirement is attribution: credit the original universe and its author, and link back to this site if possible. Something like "Set in The Ahmieverse, characters and settings created by Ahmie Yeung, used under CC BY 4.0" is perfect.

What I'm hoping for (not a rule; I'm not policing anyone)

I come from Maker and 3D-printing communities where the norm is: I made this because it brought me joy or met a need, not to protect a revenue stream. Go build something. I carry that same spirit into my fiction.

If you create something commercial using characters or settings from this universe, I would love it — not as a requirement, but as a gesture in the spirit of how this world was built — if you commit a portion of your proceeds to a cause you care about. The characters that live here were created to be positive influences on breathing human beings. If your work earns money, let some of it do good somewhere.

I specifically ask that commercial derivatives reflect genuine creative labor — your imagination, your craft, your vision. Content produced by feeding my work into AI tools and publishing the output as your own with no meaningful creative direction from you isn't the kind of building I'm inviting. Generate it for yourself if you enjoy it; just please don't sell it as genuinely yours.

Where proceeds from specific works go

Each project page will indicate, where established, where a portion of its proceeds will be directed. Suggestions from readers about where to direct proceeds from projects that don't yet have a designated cause are warmly welcomed — that is the kind of community I'm trying to build.

Currently established:

Six Seeds (Persephone retelling) → RAINN

On characters from other creators

Some characters appearing in this universe are brought forward from earlier works with love and explicit credit. Ted Wilford, a protagonist created by my great-great-uncle Norvin Pallas in his fifteen-novel Ted Wilford Mystery series (1951–1967), appears in this universe in his adult life, in the spirit in which Pallas wrote him: realistically, thoughtfully, with high regard for human intelligence and community. Any derivative use of Ted should honor that lineage.

This universe also intentionally exists in creative dialogue with Rachel Aaron's Heartstrikers/DFZ universe. One member of the Ahmieverse's extended community is an original fan creation within the Heartstriker family. If you write in that intersection, please be mindful of and respectful toward Rachel Aaron's work and any policies she has established.