the mortis work log

[skinstealer]

OH JESUS CHRIST IT'S BEEN SIX MONTHS
OUR LIFE IS SOMEWHAT BACK TOGETHER NOW
WHEE

uhhh stuff we will probably be doing this week- as always no promises, this is more for our own reference than anything.

• we are working on a NSFW twine with como! it should be out early september at latest. it's universal constants relevant, and features a character we haven't had on screen in a very, very long time...and it's technically originated as a oneshot donation! wow, two birds one stone!
  
• plaything update not currently planned, us and shivers both have a ton going on right now and it's just not ideal. similar for route 2B for MT 2.0- soon, but not now.
  
• MT 2.0's first update for issue #2 is in fucking hell right now because our shoulders have been dead for a while. the first panel out of 4 for it is done, but it fucked up my arm real bad last night and i kind of want to wait for the move to be over and see what happens then. we'll see, but probably not this week.
  
• we move on the 2nd! we're getting the last prep work done for it IRL, and should be okay for it. it's gonna be a fucking stressful day, but the end result is us getting to a new, permanent home- and one us and como can share safely for a long time to come. as such i have a shitload of cleaning to do, by our metrics anyway.
  
• we have started taking petz commissions, and are trying to get into a regimen of doing Something hexing-related every day. this may sound like overdoing it, but petz is one of the few things we can do that doesn't put any physical strain on us, and is a self soothing activity once we make a habit of it. our best coping periods in our last living situation were when we were taking nightly time to do petz. that's the goal!
  
• as such, we're alternating Work Hexes and Fun Hexes. today was a fun hex day, so...tomorrow? work. gonna be doing a request hex for a friend, Rats on discord. it's gonna be a spoooooky clown. hooray!
  
• probably one session of our infinite fusion egglocke squeezed in there, that would be nice. it'd be sitting down with pokemon for 2 hours sometime, which is easy enough to squeeze in. we'd really like to blog about that, too!
  
• if the stars align where our brain works and we have the spare time to do it, we're gonna try to finalize route 2A for MT 2.0. it is almost fucking done with its final draft. i'm gonna lose it. 
  
• probably gonna squeeze in a couple of SS14 sessions. not gonna make that nightly/daily, but it'd be nice to make time when opportunities arise.
  
• also como has to go fucking get barbecue from the barbecue place nearby because jesus fucking christ we move in a week and we have a 50 dollar giftcard and that shit is not cheap and we want it. this is important. i will not be reviewing that because it would be highly identifiable and i don't want to doxx myself. thanks
  

things i would like to get back to in the near future-

• we are working on a petz solo RPG and i really need to fucking get back to it. it's pretty sick and our playtesters enjoyed it a lot.
  
• obviously, return of plaything and maze trials when our body and brain are fucking behaving enough for it. those two projects are HUGE priorities for public posting rn, so stay tuned.
  
• our other public posting project priority (wow) is, of course, universal constants. who could have guessed? episode 4 is halfway rewritten, we have one more big scene to do for the main draft. that is likely waiting until our mystery NSFW twine is written up, which means the epiosde ideally won't be worked on too long after we move. this one's gonna be a doozy. please brace for horny because we are unhinged and unchained from here on out.
  
• we are currently watching Stone Ocean and i am developing opinions on it. Big opinions. brace yourself for full review when we're done with it, which may even happen before the move, we shall see
  
• we have uh. a couple memoir pieces we're working on. we've hesitated to write directly about our life, but...recent stuff makes us think we probably should. not just the hellish experience of the past 4 months, but all of the huge life revelations we had in the process. a lot of it is stuff that i've never seen people talk about, and i feel like it's kind of things that Need to be talked about, and demonstrated. so we'd like to, and we have some good stuff for it. stay tuned, one of these things is gonna take five million years and the other is probably sooner? we'll see. not planning on posting previews for either of them publicly.
  
• petz videos and streams....
  
• getting a shitload of twines out. we were going to this month and then we got run over by like 5 metaphorical cars in a row and somehow came out better for it- but we do have twines to get out. current roster of stuff lined up ASAP: a chunk of plaything in twine form (will probably take a bit, we want to add bonus content), MT2.0 #1 (will involve written bonus content that i gotta figure out, as well as some fancy javascript work!), universal constants episode 3 (fairly straightforward, this one will likely be first seeing as i can do it in an evening if i'm in the right headspace for it), and i feel like i'm forgetting something but we are starting there.   
  

other things...

• one of the hex commissions is a trapling variant- halloween themed! whoo! this means we're gonna get off our ass and release some wattplants files for petz properly...anyone interested in poking around with those?
  
• i'd like to figure out some threads related to the SS14 server we have going on, though i'm not sure if vyn would be up for linking the IP outside of the discord...still, it'd be nice to have somewhere to post about it. we'll see.
  
• slay the princess gets the director's cut soon(?) and i'm gonna explode. we will probably post a lot about that.
  
• when beastie ball comes out i will explode even more and you will never hear us shut up about it until the end of time.
  
• we will be getting VEEERY into toy collection, crafting, and photography at the new place. you have been fucking warned. the posting will not stop. beware.
  

[skinstealer]

good afternoon folks i am waiting on aforementioned barbecue. as it turns out the site DOES accept gift cards for delivery and i was lied to. so that's coming soon

i am guessing twine work will get done today but we'll see. depends on how como is feeling
shoulders are doing pretty good so far but i am not about to test fate. gonna let them rest today, take muscle relaxants tonight now that i know they aren't sending me to turbo hell, and then do some stain removal stuff tomorrow, ideally. gotta get that done.
messaged our new landlord about moving stuff. should go fine.
i think i will settle down after food to do a petz comm while watching jojo. clown time!

that sounds solid for now, i think. we'll see how it goes, i'm a little head-fuzzy today from having to do four goddamn phonecalls but with some food and rest i should be a-okay. onward.

(also, as a refresher- comments, questions, and casual discussion ARE welcome here!)

[skinstealer]

okay, well. that was the best meat i've ever had in my life. shoutout to the local barbecue chain and pork belly burnt ends. i feel like crying now, it was that good.

which brings us to Tasks, because that absolutely blasted my energy back. como is writing some project stuff atm and i don't want to disturb him, so i'm going to work on some slugs i think. our petz bazaar shop cleared out nearly entirely overnight so i gotta restock that son of a bitch.

here's an optional question for those reading (and you can answer this whenever not necessarily immediately as i post it, open question)- if YOU had to make a cool color palette, what would you base it on? it'd need to have 14 colors, but similar hues/etc are fine, and limited palettes aren't really a problem. what would you do?

[King-Clod]

I'm always a sucker for sunset color patterns, or general sky themed ones

[skinstealer]

[image description: a bunch of nudibunches- petz bunnies with seaslug + sea snail features- in shades of blue, teal, purple and cream]

bitches love my slugs (i made these last night but whatever)

[skinstealer]

I'm always a sucker for sunset color patterns, or general sky themed ones

this gave me an excellent idea for a palette, actually. noted for later!

[skinstealer]

[image description: more nudibunches, this time in bright, vibrant colors- especially pink, green, orange and purple.]

slugs x2. i nap now

[skinstealer]

our friend will helped us make a gimmick batch o'slugs. hooray


[image description: 6 nudibunches. 2 of them have bright, neon colors on black, 2 have a heat-map style color scheme, and 2 are magenta and cyan.]

[skinstealer]

well shit got kind of fucking weird and crazy. hello! i have a lot of updates but let's just keep to the big one for now:

WE CAN DRAW AGAIN

namely, we have completely switched over to trackpad art. it is fun as fuck and causes WAY less fucking strain on us than tablet. it's almost like we hate working with tablet and have wanted to return to trackpad art as a primal urge that we ignored for years. incredible! we want to draw so much fucking more, and in LARGE amounts- but now with breaks! as it turns out it is way easier on our brain to pick something up and put something down when it doesnt feel like there's a physical commitment. healthier work habits ahoy!

so, we definitely love art again- here's two big evidences of that.

first off: a fusion grid adopt batch! it will probably be a bit before these guys are fully unleashed because i want to do ~presentation~, but they'll be 35 USD each. around half of them will probably be preclaimed by the folks who helped us pick the types for this test run, but we'll see. i'm going down a list to have people pick.



[image description: a grid made up of tiny previews of TCP hybrids, with the left side of the grid being vintage, armor, antihero, and dog types, with the top side being proxy, bisection, bedtime and chaos. i promise these will be described better when the full designs are revealed for the big thread.]

this is our first time doing something like this, and i'll be honest- i'm fucking obsessed. this took under 3 days to make 16 little guys and i'm insanely proud of all of them. this should be a fun way for us to flex our design muscles, and get some income in the same stroke. good stuff. it was also very fun to figure out what traits go into a hybrid from each type, consistently...i'd love to see what yall think too.

secondly...


[image description: a couple of closeup crops from an illustration. in one, a distressed TCP face is covered by some sort of sliced surface featuring a scribbly spiral eye and wiggly mouth. another is a small pretzel type TCP, looking freaked. another is a fleshy closeup that's harder to make out.]

ROUTE 2C IS BACK IN BUSINESS

i made the cover for 2C in a few hours! far longer than usual for us, but frankly, it came out stunning enough that i don't think people would even be able to tell the difference between it and our old style unless they were looking for it- and we can only go up from here.

2C has...i think 2 panels to do, and then update 1 can come out. then we're back in business, just like that. hooray!

i hope this stuff makes yall excited too, because goddamn

[skinstealer]

beige here, updating this again i suppose. we shall see

uhhh current docket. we have three twines planned for the last 2 months of 2024, potentially some smaller ones mixed in but We Will See. one of them is almost entirely done and is LONG overdue (universal constants ep 3 lol) but needs some pretty serious editing work to meet our current prose standards. MT 2.0 #2 is obviously one of the other major ones. we'll be finishing 2A...this week or next, god willing, and then it's a matter of getting everything organized and polished up.

the third twine...well, it's even more overdue than the universal constants one. yes, folks

it is time

for the plaything mirror twine.



the first chunk of it will be up through the pool scene with cross, and will be a whopping 23k words long. we're looking at an estimated 40k words for issue 2 of MT2.0, and UC is around 8k words. you're going to have plenty to read this winter!

ideally thisll get us back in the saddle on releases. UC ep 4 is well under way and is over halfway finished writing-wise, and we're hoping to knock out a large chunk of it with como today and with any luck, wrap up the script for it by the end of next week. MT2.0 issue 3 we are waiting on finishing #2 in entierity before doing the heavy lifting of dev work, but will probably begin character development in our background processing this week. how does that work? maybe an explanation for another day.

today, my plan is finishing the UC ep 3 edit (hopefully) so i can get that bitch in twine ASAP. saying itd be out today is kind of pushing it, but this week would be nice, especially with the election threatening to make us doomer out. we'll see. we've been fussing with TCP designs again as well and that's been very nice, so i'd like to do a couple of those in between more in-depth work for enrichment and also commission fulfillment. aside from that...

we'll see. let's start there.

[skinstealer]

things i (ivy) have done todya
- organized things for advanced TCPdex
- concepted 5 petz files
- made the rough mesh for my sona avatar
- begun work with vyn and knux on the second life TCP avatar system- they will be much more involved, i hope people who crave a roleplay experience are excited
- started a skybox build for aforementioned reasons
- did a bunch of welfare calls
- survived an allergy attack

[skinstealer]

scapula mortis here with a proper formal announcement or three, i'm gonna try to stop stressing about whether we're upkeeping this consistently bc what matters is the work itself. here's the state of affairs

we are very sick still and managing that along with life stressors, but getting back to work is significantly helping. we're resuming work on projects we had in progress before life flipped us around, and that feels good. getting agency and control back, etc.

maze trials 2.0, more specifically issue #2, the angel code, is not dead, we have the notes down for the remaining illustrative work and will be returning to that as soon as we can guarantee consistent drawing sessions being a thing and us and como can wrap up the overseer commentary for 2A. we are also working on overall worldbuilding and character development, especially in the overseer and lore integration department. this is still our overall Main Focus aside from universal constants, and we hope to have that out in the relative soonness.

universal constants is almost done with its fourth episode, which will be posted on itch as soon as humanly possibly after completion and thus put on a public stage. i emphasize this because this is the first UC episode that warrants the #vore tag, which is easily the biggest draw to our current published works (aka Room 107) and will be a REALLY big deal for the project. us and como are very very proud of this. episode 5 has...i think about half of it written up as of months ago, but i need to sit down and refine that writing and review our outline for the rest of it. it will probably be a bit, either way, because como has a lot of Very Large Project things to get done first. all the same! it's happening.

plaything is in a bit of a limbo currently, but with getting back to work, i am planning on returning to the formal twine release. i forget how much we've talked about that, but it contains all the way through the first pool scene with willow/crossbone, and should be a pretty solid introduction to people getting into it. we are still deliberating on bonus content/illustrations/etc, how much we want to include, the works, but this has been on the table and still is.

patreon shit is something we are prioritizing atm, both across the HD one and [BAD_DEATH]. we have a whole pile of petz hexes we've concepted and have notes for that ideally, i should be knocking some out of this week, as well as the TCP types and sketches for this month. it is worth noting that when the 2.0 and plaything twines come out, 10 dollar patrons WILL be getting them completely free.

commissions have been a bit rough, both due to illness and a lot of mental shit gumming up the works. with that said, we'd started plugging away at them last week and should continue to do so. thank you for bearing with us on that, seriously.

the tcpdex is getting worked on big time behind the scenes, though...not on the public facing end. no, i've begun work in earnest on The Advanced TCPDex: Volume 1, which should be an actual fucking pdf book thing that serves as a comprehensive guide to TCPs, as well as buckets of morbit worldbuilding and character work. this has been planned and announced for a while on discord, but yes, it does exist, and is being worked on. have a small snippet...

For the past 370 years, tiny cat people have walked among us. A relatively early creation within the Reconstruction Era, these TCPs are considered a far more modern species than the majority of the population. Only the wide variety of construct species starting in this era and continuing to be invented and manufactured can really be comparable in their prominence, and even then- it is somehow far easier to keep up with the ever-changing products of the sapience industry than it is a single, infinitely faceted species.

Some would consider the study of these creatures to be impossible, seeing as their exact populations and nuances can never truly be given a census or survey- but we here at the TCPDex Research Facility have taken up the mantle. We believe that a comprehensive encyclopedia of this species CAN be created, and updated in the same vein as any other academic text.

This is not a fruitless venture. Together, we can understand our planet's most diverse sapient species, and grasp its true potential. Within this bestiary reveals the secrets behind decades of research, working with TCPs as individuals, studying their biology and culture- and sharing those findings with you, the reader.

Do not fear the tiny cat person- as in many ways, it is just like you.

-Dr. Spinal Clot

yes, this will be in-character. yes, it will also be out of character, and include developer's commentary. it will also include in-universe pieces of media, the works. if you want a comparison to an extant piece of media, i highly recommend the Dragonology books in terms of sheer Depth and what kind of approaches will be had here. i'm really looking forward to working on this! so far, patrons have seen all there is of it, as well as TCPdex editors- considering it's kind of pertinent knowledge to, you know, the wiki itself. ZERO idea of when this'll be done, it is going to be a massive undertaking, but enjoying the process.

kaleidoclub is back in active development! with our own system shit in flux and plural media on the brain, this'll be one of our active release focuses while we get back on our feet. the great news is that we're not holding back nearly as hard anymore, and this project is going to go on all cylinders from here on out. expect Ongoing Storylines!

oneshots are back in active development as well, including ones just for our practice and exploration. that's right baby, vignettes and scribbles are back on the menu along with the funded stuff. Get Hype. new characters are coming, and we're gonna let ourselves go wild.

the house is probably coming back, like. today. i just want to do something low investment and high engagement, you know? and that's a good avenue for that. plus, people have been asking for it. may as well.

felid factor is a project i would like to return to soon, both due to system shenanigans and the fact that TCP worldbuilding is getting cranked up to 11 in terms of development shit. The Time Is Now. no concrete updates, but that's just something i'm thinking about on the side.

i think that's most everything...aside from, well, what we've been up to for the past...month...or so.

THE SECOND LIFE NONSENSE

yeah, if you're on discord you know exactly what we've been coping with. we have gotten VERY, VERY back into second life, including product development and just, making avatars/resources for other people. we have actually done so with a whole pile of people, both HD team and close friends, and have begun releasing products under the collective label SCRIMBLO WORLD. we have our first in-world store opening on friday (think an ingame "physical" location) and a lot of shit in the works, and this is my current focus overall in order to get some passive income rolling.

now, you may say, scapula, i do not play second life, that's a weird pervert game and it runs like shit and it is difficult to handle- all of this is true! but we will be releasing morbit avatars on there sooner rather than later, and already have one plaything-based design up and going. if you're a morbit discord member, you can get that shit for free, and if you're a patron for homebrew deviants, you get access to any and all avatar betas. the TCP ones...well, they're getting new versions. you'll just have to wait and see for the full plans there.

if anyone wants to learn how to play this mess of a game, let us know. we have a community space available for anyone who wants to vibe, and are more than happy to just let people chill and play with us.

okayyy that's the state of affairs. i am now running out of steam so this is what you get