mantisgodiveblog

[mantisgodiveblog]

We probably should not make a post on here every time we try and work on getting our stuff to postability, but we do want to assure people we haven't straight-up abandoned this project. Unfortunately, we also have... negative time right now, between kitten season bringing fosters, October bringing writing and art challenges, and monetary issues forcing us to seek out modes of being paid (which in our case, is 4-6 hours of Course that we can get a grant to go through).

Though we are still slowly chipping away at things, and Gaining Skills The Government Wants To Be Better Represented means that we have gotten some degree of "semi-disposable income" (technically a one-time payment but falls into the category of "there'll be more later in the program and it's meant to get us through the year and buy anything we need to attend and we already had most of this junk on hand from the last time we did schooling"), we really, really don't have the time to do almost anything that isn't necessary for keeping us or a resident animal alive, and we're dedicating the hour or so that we have free to either socializing or working on October art challenges.

We're working on it, slowly. There probably isn't going to be enough time in the day for us to breathe until the holidays, and what small work we can do on this probably won't result in anything for a while yet. Though we would dearly like to be capable of dedicating more time to porting and liveblogging here, the chunk of backlog we have is stuck in Discord not because we didn't want to chat about it in more active time, but because typing things out on our phone during lectures and public transport is functionally what we have as free time right now. If you have the time, we've been writing regular, non-liveblog fic you can read. If you don't...

In theory, the next time we'll have the chance to breathe is in about a month and a half in the winter holidays, and in practice, it might be longer. Having to deal with institutions like this is wretched for our mental health even if we aren't dealing with incompetence in people older than us. There's a multitude of reasons none of our previous ventures into academia have ever resulted in a degree, and we're in the thick of it right now. For now, even if we can manage periodic updates... god, we'll be real with you. We generally try to keep things as private as possible, and we may regret being as specific as this later, but at this point down the road, we're so far past done that sticking a fork in us would evaporate it.

We have a very, very long fuse, and a lot of patience, and that has been starkly necessary for the vast majority of our life. About a month of four to six hours of class, in combination with general issues with an ongoing Incident only ending a month or so ago where an admin of a specific Discord managed to exacerbate some key issues with two of our closest friends to the point of causing multiple panic attacks, in combination with money issues from everything in the world getting simultaneously worse and more expensive, is rapidly bringing us to the end of it. We do not believe that we can provide a decent liveblog if we are constantly on the verge of clawing someone's ears off, and quite frankly, we don't think we're going to have the time to sink into a project that requires a computer until we have enough time to make a meal that is more complex than fried dumplings.

We thank you for your patience. We certainly need it, at the moment. We will be back at this the moment that we are capable, and trust us, we would not be absent if we weren't capable. We hope and trust things will get less miserable soon. We hope and trust

[mantisgodiveblog]

Against all odds, we have survived. We're taking a university course now, because the government will pay us for it and we do need the money, but it has unfortunately been eroding at our sanity somewhat, and we are learning nothing that we don't already know. We are, however, getting money.

We have somewhat of a backlog on Discord at the moment, as it doesn't have a daily upload limit and also it's easier to stick things on while we are being told things that we already know by people who are phrasing in in ways we find significantly misleading or incorrect (note: we don't use apps for things the vast majority of the time and if we access Tumblr via browser it immediately fucks up our formatting on PC, which can last several months). We will, hopefully, be posting these soon, but all is dependant on if we can actually scare up the time between courses to conglomerate that and fix any formatting errors in thoughts and such.

If that will happen any time soon... good question! Every time that our work practicum teacher opens her mouth, we take points of physical damage, and we don't think she understands the fact that getting back after we walk to a place also involves walking. We've had a lot going on for a while now and very little of it has been good. We're on new meds, and if the gods prove merciful, we won't have to tolerate this particular clown show past March. If there is no mercy to be found, however, we might have to keep doing this until June, in which case you can probably expect the quality of this to take a sharp downturn as the short time we have already spent in this program is already having immediate and catastrophic effects on our mental health.

We do not recommend going to university in any circumstances, but we are unfortunately aware that it may be necessary to get such things as a fancy piece of paper saying you are employable. Additionally, we would tell you to calibrate your expectations for anyone with a degree lower, but apparently what we consider the basic level of knowledge you should know before saying anything on any topic is everyone else's "bachelor degree and a bit", so our estimations on what people think is a high degree of knowledge to have are probably also off.

Any donations go to the Fund To Compensate Us For Having To Correct A Teacher Multiple Times In A Lecture And Then Looking Up Her Sources Later And Discovering They Are Blatant Misinformation. We are very tired. Please do research on things before talking about them. Thank you.

[mantisgodiveblog]

BREAKING NEWS: area wizard previously only tangentially aware with podcast's second campaign via its first two arcs and the falling-off of its viewership finally actually gets around to listening past Arc 2 and realizes abruptly that OH SHIT the wizard liked this podcast because it's Really Fucking Good

[mantisgodiveblog]

We're engaged now.

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Odile as a sexy catgirl. Send post.

[mantisgodiveblog]

At about two months since we've last posted, it once again comes to us to assure you we're still alive, and also inform you that our current draft of our catchup/revisit post is more than 1k words long and we might need to shave some of it off due to lack of evidence because we cannot go off of vibes alone.

To thank you for your patience, we will offer you one (1) textpost, which we assume will make up for everything while we spend our allocated time something like 80-90% in the states of "Art Fight" and "Being Physically Attacked By Our IRL Commitments".

Please hold.

[mantisgodiveblog]

theres also this which. ig is definitely smth i drew

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Our apologies to the In Stars And Time tag for the massive pile of links. At least there's a Read More this time.

[mantisgodiveblog]

In Stars And Time asks & interactions masterpost

(The In Stars And Time liveblog masterpost is here)

ACT 1 ASKS

Asks from thatdoganon 1 - A Visitor From Ao3 | Asks from thatdoganon 2 - Traces Of Characterization | Asks from thatdoganon 3 - Spoiler Warning | Asks from thatdoganon 4 - Bunny Comic | Asks from thatdoganon 5 - Memory AU and Loop | Asks from thatdoganon 6 - Memory AU Part 2

Asks from lukiyu 1 - Memory Of Yourself | Asks from lukiyu 2 - Bunny Comic

ACT 2 ASKS

Ask from thatdoganon 1 - Act Shift Maintenance | Ask from thatdoganon 2 - Start Again | Ask from thatdoganon 3 - Royal We | Ask from thatdoganon 4 - Coin Chat | Ask from thatdoganon 5 - Two Conversations A Day

Ask from thatdoganon 6 - Memory Of Pillars | Ask from thatdoganon 7 - Regarding The Novelization Of A Tear's Sleep | Ask from thatdoganon 8 - Loop's Name | Ask from thatdoganon 9 - Image Limit | Ask from thatdoganon 10 - Siffrin Is Portrayed As A Roach

Ask from thatdoganon 11 - Incorrect Answers In The Tutorial | Ask from thatdoganon 12 - Some Traps May Be Activated | Ask from thatdoganon 13 - Early Interactions | Ask from thatdoganon 14 - How Did You Do This? Why Did You Do This? | Ask from thatdoganon 15 - Regarding Sickness

Ask from thatdoganon 16 - One (1) Raw Potato | Ask from thatdoganon 17 (ft. lukiyu) - Suicide Mention Correction | Ask from thatdoganon 18 - Live Mantis God Reaction

Conversation with lukiyu 1 - Memory Of Yourself | Ask from lukiyu 1 - Start Again: A Prologue | Ask from lukiyu 2 - Loop | Conversation with lukiyu 2 - Silver Coin Chat | Conversation with lukiyu 3 - Visual Novels And Railroads (addendum - the author muses upon its own potential dickishness)

Ask from lukiyu 3 - Chat Mechanics | Ask from lukiyu 4 - Early Memory Of Pillars | Ask from lukiyu 5 - Whatever Mechanism Detects Death | Ask from lukiyu 6 - Loop Kinning | Ask from lukiyu 7 - Inevitable Crabs

Ask from lukiyu 8 - Odile Low Health Portrait | Ask from lukiyu 9 - On Self Deprecation | Ask from lukiyu 10 - Wizard Kinning | Ask from lukiyu 11 - Garden Room Heads-Up | Ask from lukiyu 12 - Loop-Ends

Ask from lukiyu 13 - Fonts And Deuil | Ask from lukiyu 14 - Cats, Mice, Toxoplasmosis

Ask from Anonymous 1 - Bug Fables propaganda | Ask from Anonymous 2 - Fancypants Rogue skillsets | Ask from Anonymous 3 - Loop Kin Diagnosis | Ask from Anonymous 4 - Siffrin Kin Diagnosis | Ask from Anonymous 5 - Four Billion Loop Kin Points

Ask from Anonymous 6 - Charisma Modifiers | Ask from Anonymous 7 - Mr. "Is a beau" | Ask from Anonymous 8 - Steam Time

Ask from v3-launch-unit 1 - Same Conclusions | Ask from v3-launch-unit 2 - Not Starting Again

[mantisgodiveblog]

We went to update our current compilation post and discovered that we've hit the link limit, so we'll have a new pinned soon. Planning on dumping all the new links into a reblog. Our pinned is likely to get very long, or otherwise start utilizing a lot of read mores.

[mantisgodiveblog]

Right, since we're here, further info.

We have refined our plans for writing somewhat, with the aid of friends. Though a VERY light outline, so as to accommodate for the fact that we don't necessarily know what's going to happen, we have an idea of mechanics. We fully intend to continue updating as we continue playing,

As is, it is likely that the work we currently have up on AO3 will become a rough draft slash "feeling out" of a future fic that diverges more from canon. Future of this particular idea is largely undefined, at the moment - if all goes as planned, then the first draft will most likely remain up as a separate work to finished, both for archival purposes and because we expect things such as plot to change significantly with interference.

Considering that this is a time loop game, you, our dear audience probably have a decent grasp of butterfly effect and compounding changes already. In normal ISAT, the player is thus far a non-entity - whether or not this will change remains to be seen, but becoming an entity sooner will always change things. As we get a further handle on things and continue to orient ourself, plans and precise plots will change, and the presence of a rough draft will allow us to get a better idea of what we want - not faster, perhaps, but certainly in a way that will get us more quality results in the long term.

(...coincidentally, this liveblog and the massive amounts of internal monologue that it contains are also a pretty good look at what our readthrough and drafting process looks like while working on most of our other fic, which should probably give you a good idea of why 90% of our published works are one-shots and one-shot collections and our only longer work has been unfinished for two years, despite having a handful of chapters already finished)

You will hear more of us. You have no choice in the matter.

[mantisgodiveblog]

“an innocent kid. its bleeding can fill the belly of even the strongest warrior, but do you have the heart to do it?”

hooved

0 power - 1 health - 1 blood

worthy sacrifice - cards bearing this sigil count as 3 blood rather than 1 blood when sacrificed.

morsel - when a card bearing this sigil is sacrificed, ⁣it adds its stat values to the card it was sacrificed for.

hidden trait - hearty meal

when this card is sacrificed, add an additional +3 power, +2 health to the card it was sacrificed to summon. this trait stacks with the morsel sigil and stat increases from the campfire event.

teehee. people are going to yell at me for this one i think. ANYWAYS!! BONIBAHS!! THE KID!!! my poor little blorbothing. they get extra card art because they’re my favorite (joking). writeup below!!!

sowwyyy this one’s evil. i think the sigils are pretty self explanatory this time? worthy sacrifice lets you play super powerful cards, and morsel lets you buff em even more. plus!! with the hearty meal trait they get at least +3 in both stats! the ethics are questionable though.

this was like. the second card i designed out of all of them. my original concept (when it was like 1 am and i was half asleep) was uh… morsel, trinket bearer, and waterborne? trinket bearer because they carry the items, and waterborne to keep them out of danger. but that’s a really weird card. plus…

baby goats are called kids!! the name is wordplay!! i decided to make them a variant on the black goat purely for that reason. and just like the black goat, the symbol on their head is the symbol for sacrifices!

ok i should probably acknowledge the sog in the room. in the base game, you’re able to replace your eye with a goat’s eye. this decision does literally nothing except make the black goat cuter. and bonnie’s a goat!! so they also get silly art. they turn into a sopping wet pathetic cat. i don’t have an inhabited version of this sprite because i couldn’t. find footage of it being inhabited. which is probably because you can’t get the goat’s eye in kaycee’s mod but. eh… i don’t want to deal with the sigil patch nonsense again.

my initial sketch of this card had them as a 2 blood but… it kinda made them worse than the regular black goat thanks to the fair hand mechanic. so they’re the only 1 blood here. they’re my blorbo they can be overpowered. as a treat.

the sigil patch is many lives! which allows a card to be sacrificed without actually killing it. both for synergy with worthy sacrifice and also because i’m Evil

also additional fun fact: the black goat is actually my favorite card in vanilla inscryption!! i basically cheesed the entirety of kaycee’s mod with it. i like it a lot :). i didn’t intend to fuse my favorite character and my favorite card together but it’s a happy lil coincidence.

huh. weird. that’s the entire party right? it feels like we’re missing one though… whatever. patchless alt below!

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Still not dead, despite claims to the contrary. Our hard drive finally kicked the bucket after around a year and a half of threatening to corrupt, so we had to get that fixed. Thankfully, we are very meticulous on backing things up, and as such nothing actually important has been lost.

We are, however, now operating on a significantly older system, using a friend's copy of the game. Once we're done making sure that all of our saves are in order, we'll get back at it - though since our attention is rather split right now, it may be a few days. Art Fight, plus tournament pieces, plus everything else in our personal life... things pile up, as we're certain you can understand. We started this, and we intend to finish it.

Yet again, thank you for your patience, and here's hoping we can drag this cart back onto the road soon-ish.

[mantisgodiveblog]

Finally we return to the ring. Tonight's chapter contains: more blood, more death, and more murder. We'll probably be long asleep by the time that anyone leaves a comment of any sort, but we'll receive it eventually regardless. Thank you for your time and patience, and goodnight.

[mantisgodiveblog]

While rereading our own posts we have realized immediately that we misgendered a character in an early post. Very tragic. If it happens again we will not notice unless someone tells us probably.

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Still not dead. Reasonably un-plagued again, but we're still not at 100%. We will (probably) return soon, however we've got... six or so pieces of character art to finish within the next ~2 days, on top of propaganda and some general writing, so probably don't expect us back until that's done. Existing in a state of persistent brain fog and fatigue, as it turns out, is bad for writing. Go figure. Will probably reread our own liveblog so we remember what we were doing. Picture this as our official "we did not actually die we're just feeling like shit" post.

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Live Mantis God Reaction (I am guessing this works by replacing the tutorial guide with a different image. How fun!)

It does, in fact, work by allowing us to replace the tutorial guide with a different image! Once we've done enough of the game to delve into the files, we can probably realistically do this with any image, since In Stars And Time appears to store its images uncompressed, where we don't need any special tools to access them. Things like character portraits will probably require a lot more attention to exact dimensions, if we choose to fiddle with them - but it should be relatively easy to just... replace them, if we so desired. We could probably swap out all of Odile's portraits for clip art wizards if we so desired, so long as we knew the names of the portraits and could locate where they were stored.