Tin Soldiers
is a Captain America fic about Captain America's online fanbase within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, serving as a metatextual commentary on real-life fan culture. Online users on livejournal and tumblr discuss meeting Steve Rogers on jogs, appropriate behavior towards Steve, the potential that Steve and Bucky were romantically involved, and casting choices for an upcoming miniseries about Cap's time in the 40s.
And then they get a report of a bomb going off in D.C....
Tin Soldiers provides examples of the following:
- Cluster F-Bomb: Several of the entries are written with a lot of profanity.
- Epistolary Novel: With a twenty-first century twist. The fic is predominantly told as a series of Livejournal and tumblr posts.
- Famed In-Story: This fic is an offshoot of Steve Rogers being this. It focuses on his online fandom.
- Fangirl: Most of the characters.
- Heteronormative Crusader: User howlingcommando15. Most of their comments complain about the fandom insinuating that Steve and Bucky were in a relationship, claiming that they were disrespecting a national figure. When they turn out to be right, he gets mad at Steve.
- Loony Fan: While the majority of the characters present in the fic work hard to avert this, they sometimes discuss these sorts. User fisherkings kicks off a discussion of these in chapter one and urges the others in the community to respect Steve's boundaries.
- Lower-Deck Episode: Focuses on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, especially the Captain America-centric events, from the perspective of regular people, mostly fangirls on the internet.
- Mass "Oh, Crap!": The characters have an extended one of these as the fic begins to cover the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
- Meta Fic: This fic also serves as a commentary on fan culture, being told predominantly in the form of Livejournal entries and tumblr.
- Noodle Incident: We don't get precise details on why havanass was banned in the spot_your_cap community, though from the context it's probably because they were inappropriate towards Steve in public.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Most if not all of the characters are known only by their online handles.
- Real-Person Fic: This isn't one, but in-universe people have written Real-Person Fic about Steve Rogers (and probably a lot of the other Avengers). He's usually shipped with Bucky. One line notes that there are 25704 works with them listed as a pairing on what is implied to be Archive of Our Own.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: Cap gets up and leaves midway through testifying on Capitol Hill about the events of Winter Soldier.
- Shipper on Deck: Most of the characters in the fic really ship Steve and Bucky.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: A discussed trope with regards to Steve. During a conversation about respecting his boundaries, user thegreendot brings this up as a theory about Steve (and as a reason to just leave him alone already).
- Shout-Out: One character has the online handle lyanna-stark.
- Stylistic Suck: The author begins the fic with a quick note assuring that some spelling/grammatical/other errors are just part of the fic and intentionally there to copy the way some people write on the internet.
