#Versal Biology Lessons

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Versal Biology Lesson: Shards

Across the many worlds of the Verse there exist many different types of person: the gelatine, the serpentine, those with fire inside and outside of their bodies, and the hardy shards just to describe a few. “Shards of glass”, whose number includes underground 🐬Moistystopian🐬 streamer Cirava Hermod and the aristocratic Lalonde twins of Tick-Tock Town, are so named thanks to their bodies having a highly similar build to thick inanimate glass. This anatomical quirk has its upsides and its downsides for any given shard and can take form in many different ways.

A shard’s skin is highly protective. The bodies of shards are infamous for their skin, which is denser than the skin of a non-shard’s skin. Along with just being thicker the skin is flawlessly smooth, cool to the touch, often has a glossy or metallic sheen, and in the vast majority of individuals the skin is at least partly transparent. This transparency not only allows light to partly pass through them, but leaves much of their internal anatomy visible to the naked eye. Combined, these qualities have the effect of making shards highly durable and protected from many everyday dangers, with many circumstances that would give non-shards cuts or bruises will literally only scratch the surface of a shard (especially true of bladed or slashing weapons like claws or knives.

Shards’ bodies have three types of glass skin. As a consequence of being more durable, glass skin is inherently less flexible than non-shard skin. It’s still skin, so it can bend slightly, but not without effort and physical strain. To circumvent this, shard bodies have three different types of skin which collectively gives their bodies an optimal balance of natural defense and maneuverability.

The most flexible of the three skins is aptly nicknamed “flexiglass”. While still dense enough to ward off claws and knives, flexiglass is the least dense of the three skins but provides all joints the full range of motion available to non-shards. Flexiglass parts of the body are anywhere that needs to frequently bend or twist, namely the neck, shoulders, elbows, and knees.

The sturdiest but least flexible skin is “hard glass”, which makes up the majority of a shard’s body. Consisting of any area which does not need to make major movements, hard glass areas of the body include the back of the head, the chest, the back, and non-joint parts of limbs such as the thigh or forearm.

The middle ground between these two skins is called “twainglass” since it posses the durability of hard glass and the flexibility of flexiglass (though not to the fullest extent in either quality). Twainglass parts of the body consist of anything which needs ease of movement but also needs adequate protection, namely the face, hands, feet, and pelvis.

To be clear, these are not different layers of skin; on a technical level shards have a single layer of skin (like everybody else) that simply has three different compositions based on which part of the body it covers. The shift from one composition to another is gradual, though that gradient isn’t visibly apparent. The body of a shard is coated in thin grooves which divide these different areas of skin (scientifically these are termed “microfractures” but colloquially known as “fracks”), which are at most 4cm deep. By having the gradation between skin types occur below the surface within these grooves, the body is able to maximize the surface area coverage for any given type of skin. Fracks take many shapes and serve as identifying marks since any individual shard’s fracks all take the same shape.

Shards can be many colors and transparencies. While the majority of shards have “colorless” skin that takes on a crystal-blue hue many others have a variety of vivid colors from gold to magenta or even black or white. Different shards likewise can be more or less transparent than another, including fully opaque shards with a metallic chrome gleam to their skin (who have the self-granted nickname “jewels”). Any given shard’s skin color has no correlation to the color of their blood, and as an example it’s entirely possible for a troll shard to have golden glass skin but fuchsia blood. The skin’s color can change over time or be temporarily altered through the use of cosmetics, lotions or creams allowing the skin to absorb chemicals to dye it (though this effect fades after 3-4 weeks and can negatively impact their health over long enough periods).

An individual shard can be many colors and transparencies. A shard’s body isn’t restricted to only a single level of transparency or a single hue, and can display multiple types of either feature. In terms of color, multiple colors will blend together in a smooth gradient (there are no hard stops outside of a visual line with fracks) and while most multi-hued shards only have 2-3 colors spread around the body some rare others have been seen with upwards of 5 unique colors. Transparency gradation is comparatively rarer than color gradation but operates on similar principles. Color, regardless of hue, is only an aesthetic different and has no significant impact on the defensive properties of the glass skin. Transparency differences have a negligible impact, with more transparent sections being evidently more fragile than opaque section.

Shards can still be wounded. While glass skin helps prevent injury, it’s not impervious and there are ways that shards can be hurt. High-pressure impacts and blunt force trauma are particularly capable of cracking or breaking the skin; this include sudden falls onto hard surfaces, enforced punches, hammers, and in certain situations gunfire can manage to deal lasting damage (mainly dependent on how it fires bullets and the range they’re fired from). Once damage gets bad enough to break through the surface, it quickly becomes apparent how shards’ glass skin is a double-edged sword: injuries may be harder to acquire but any injuries they do get are much worse. The skin cracks with the wound running deep into the body and that wound can take weeks to heal over completely. It won’t heal over cleanly, either, partly thanks to scar tissue forming underneath the skin and partly due to a visible “ring” that forms on the surface marking where the edge of the wound used to be.

Medical treatments for shards are not simple. While shards are known to have superb health in general, the nature of the skin impacts what kinds of medical treatments shards can have. Anything that can be ingested works normally, the problem of giving an injection without struggle has long since been solved with specialized syringes and patches, but traditional surgeries (that don’t cause more complications than they solve) have been functionally impossible for generations. Many shards with internal issues have had to rely on magical medicine to cure their maladies, a process which (considering how selfishly magic tends to be hoarded around the Verse) is financially costly and necessitates seeking out a specialist. The need to ensure they can reliably find help has, over generations, led to many shards taking up magical professions (medical or otherwise). Modern technology is slowly finding ways to reliably and safely treat shards but in their current state those methods are as expensive and arguably riskier than the magical options.

Shards can be as tall, short, thin, fat, or muscular as anybody else. The unique qualities of their skin don’t significantly alter how a shard’s internal anatomy works, and their organs and skeletal structures function the same as any other member of their species. The ability to gain or lose muscle and fat is not hindered, and at best the skin only affects how fat and muscle is distributed around the body and how that physically shows on their figure. Specifically, it usually works out that instead of softer builds shards have stocky or sturdy builds that ultimately reinforce the already-noted defensive upsides of their body. It should be noted that, as a consequence of being denser than non-shard skin, the glass skin itself adds to a shard’s weight such that a shard would weigh a handful of pounds heavier than a non-shard with the exact same shape.

Shards tend to have short hair. The physique of a shard isn’t impacted by their skin but their hair is. Thanks to how pores manifest on glass skin, your average shard has less body hair but what does exist grows short, grows thick, or both (i.e. hair on the head rarely grows past neck-length). There is no effect on what color a shard’s hair can be though it often appears darker thanks to the thickness of the hair itself. One notable quirk specific to shards is that some can have hair as transparent as the skin, an effect that’s difficult to spot at a distance for multiple reasons and is only really visible upon closer inspection. See-through hair is a trait shards can pass down to their children (shard or otherwise).

If you have questions about shards that weren't answered in this post, the the inquiries office is always open. The next VBL will likely be covering star-skinned folks like a certain Harley and Kanaya, and released before that Harley and Jake's revamped sprites go up.

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Versal Biology Lesson: Telepaths

The majority of trolls in the Verse possess some flavor of psychic powers, the menu including telekinesis, mind control, and chucklevoodoos. A troll will typically only have one power, though some exceptional cases can be found with two powers; anything past two is entering the realms of fear or fiction. What power a troll ends up with can vary wildly based on which caste they’re born into (one example: animal communion occurs most frequently in the off-bronzes, though you can find trolls with that power all the way into the off-cobalts). 

Telepathy is a power you can find scattered through the whole hemospectrum and the multicolored array of mind-readers and mind-speakers can be split into two categories: two-way telepaths and one-way telepaths. The former, while much rarer, is capable of both reading the thoughts in another person’s mind and projecting their own thoughts into that foreign mind. The latter are much more common but are only capable of doing one feat or the other, and are divided into another two categories based on what they’re capable of: receivers and broadcasters.

One-Way Telepathy: Receivers

A telepathic receiver (AKA: Telereceivers, Receivers, Ceivers) is a troll capable of psychically reading the minds of other beings.

When a ceiver digs into any given mind, what they find can come in a variety of forms: audio, visuals, audio-visual experiences, and in some cases just reading emotions and moods better than normal empathy could. What a ceiver gets back is out of their control, being dependent on what kind of thought they’re reading. If the mind being read is thinking of an image they’ll get an image back, and if they’re thinking in words they’ll get audio back, etc.

Your average telepath is going to grab these thoughts “off the top”, which is their way of saying a person’s immediate thoughts or what’s being deliberately sent their way. It’s only the advanced telepaths that have honed their skills to the point of being able to dig into unconscious memory and subconscious thought. That level of intense mind-searching is only really possible in a one-on-one interaction, and the person whose mind is being dug through is going to be conscious of the effort and can force the foreign presence out with enough concentration.

What’s not limited to one-on-one interaction is the basic ability to read minds, and a receiver is actually able to cast a wide psychic net and get information from dozens of minds at once. The problem with this isn’t necessarily mental strain (they can keep the process up for a while before it starts having a physical toll) but that the more minds they read at once the less accurate of a read they’ll have. Reading one mind makes it easy to get specific words and clear images out of the interaction, but more minds muddles the details and a ceiver has to settle for a broader picture.

Ceivers that are still learning to use their powers run into a common problem of not knowing how to “turn off” their reception, resulting in their mind being bombarded by every stray thought around them. To prevent themselves from getting migraines (or worse) they’ll seclude themselves from the outside world until they gain more experience, with mixed success as some psychics have needed serious medical aid after isolating for weeks straight.

One-Way Telepathy: Broadcasters

A telepathic broadcaster (AKA: Telecasters, Casters) is a troll capable of sending their thoughts into another person’s mind.

When a ceiver reads a mind what they get back is outside their control, but a caster has full control over what kinds of thoughts they send to people. It’s easy for them to send their voice or an image, though advanced broadcasters are able to project their current mood and influence someone’s emotions. Moreover, the person who’s receiving a caster’s thought typically has no choice in the matter; unless they have sufficient mental blocks or an immunity to psychic powers they’re going to get what the caster wants to send them.

Casters are able to send their thoughts out to whole crowds of people at once without difficulty (their audience doesn’t even get any decline in quality). The musical performance genre of psychoncerto takes liberal advantage of this with its artists singing sets to potentially hundreds of people at a time. The main caveat to doing this is that exerting psychic power to that scale for an extended period of time results in the psychic’s usual woes: migraines, eyebleed, etc.

A necessary aspect of casting one’s thoughts is being able to point your thoughts at a specific target (or targets). In most cases, a broadcaster needs to be aware of a person in order to send their thoughts to them. Vitally, that awareness is not limited to being able to see them; if they have a solid idea of their physical position in space, even through an opaque wall, the caster can still send their thoughts to that person. The only times where this isn’t case are when thoughts have been cast by accident or when a caster gets lucky and happens to find a mind by pure chance.

Accidental casting is a frequent growing pain for young casters learning how to master their psychic powers. Their difficulty comes in not knowing how to stop casting their thoughts, resulting in awkward periods where their private thoughts are exposed to the whole world around them. It’s a problem that even some aged telepaths can still run into and, with no way to tell if they’ve done so, they can become paranoid or wary of others as a result.

Two-Way Telepathy

A two-way telepath (sometimes referred to as just “telepaths” or “twopaths” to differentiate them from one-way telepaths) is a troll able to both read thoughts and cast thoughts at the same time. They’re the rarest kind of telepath (1 in about 250 trolls luck out) and get the best and worst of both skills.

While all twopaths have access to both casting and receiving, the majority tend to excel in one talent or the other. If they reach the level of receiving skill to pry into a person’s innermost thoughts then their casting skill will be above-average at best; the same goes for their ability to receive if they have an advanced enough casting ability to emotionally manipulate others. 

In spite of not being able to use both powers to the same level, what they have over one-way telepaths is the ability to use both at once. A fledgling twopath has to mentally switch between which power they’re using at any given moment, but experts are not only able to selectively juggle psychic interactions over multiple minds at once (even on the scale of a hundred-strong crowd).

The caveat to possessing this level of mental manipulation is that they’re more vulnerable to a telepath’s ailments: headaches and migraines are frequent after using their powers, fatigue and lapses into unconsciousness, bleeeding (from the eyes or otherwise), etc. Using their powers simultaneously brings these ill consequences about even faster and they can only maintain that peak of their ability for minutes at a time without suffering long-term damage.

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Versal Biology Lesson: Gels

Folks like Tyzias and Galekh, whose bodies are slimy and fluid, are collectively called gelatines, though most people just shorten that and call them “gels”. Gelatines are not a specific race within the Verse and it’s more accurate to call them a specific type of person in the same vein as “having a snake tail for a lower body” or “being a half-bug centaur” or “having multiple arms”.

Either you’re a gel or you’re not. Gelatines are born the way they are, and barring some Denizen-level magics you can’t transform yourself into a gel. The majority of gels are trolls thanks to their mutation-friendly biology, but human or even leprechaun gels are entirely possible. The latter two require a lot more odd circumstances to occur but biologically speaking they’re entirely plausible.

Not all gels are the same. One of the ways that different gels stand out from each other is in viscosity; some are fluid and watery while others are dense and made up of solid goop. Coloration can vary wildly, as can composition. Tyzias’ body is heavily similar to caffeine while Galekh’s body more closely resembles an opaque heavy tar. Another gelatine could have the transparent appearance of water, the dense swill of fruit pulp, or even resemble any number of acids.

Gels have consistent mass. Gelatines build up their bodies the same way non-fluid folk build up weight. Once a gel gets past their race’s relative age of puberty their bodies have built up 90% of the mass they’ll ever have, and the rest comes in slowly over the rest of their life. To the benefit of drippier gelatines, some of that mass can be temporarily lost in safety but an excess of lost mass can be detrimental to their health. Food, rest, and general self-care helps gels build their mass back up.

Gels have a consistent shape. While their fluid anatomy allows them some freedom in their body’s shape, they maintain a set structure and any transformations will eventually fall back to that structure. Moreover, those transformation aren’t able to spontaneously add or remove mass, they’re just moving what they have around their body. As a general example, a gelatine could form a tendril out of their mass but at best it’d be able to stretch 3-4 feet away from their body. A gel’s shape usually takes after their respective race but any number of other quirks can sneak into their biology to complicate things (i.e. serpent-bodied gels).

Gels have a “skeleton” that keeps them together. Every gel has a structure in their body that acts as their center of mass and (put simply) as a hybrid skeletal-nervous system. This can manifest in one of three distinct ways: an exoskeleton, an endoskeleton, and a membrane.

An exoskeleton like Tyzias’ means their body is more rigidly locked to a specific shape but they’re less prone to dripping and are better protected from outside forces.

An endoskeleton like Galekh’s gives a gel much more freedom of movement and a greater ability to transform their bodies, but also exposes them to the elements.

The third option is that they develop a thick membrane as an outer layer to their slime bodies. This tends to be rare and these cases are called gummies due to having a similar body structure to certain candies. Their boneless bodies are even less capable of transformation than a gel with an exoskeleton, but they’re not as threatened by their environment as a gel with an endoskeleton is.

Gels have the standard array of internal organs. Outside of their central structures, gels have the same stomachs, brains, hearts, and whatever as anyone else of their respective race...well, mostly. Some organs have some specific adaptations to their slime anatomy but generally there’s little difference in function or form. This also means that they’re as vulnerable to physical and mental injury or illness as anyone else, though their slime bodies allow them a measure of self-defense by moving organs around (within reason). This also means gelatines can grow hair but you see that more often on gels with an exoskeleton since they have the proper base for it, though gummies can have a similar feature growing out of their heads.

Gels don’t melt. While gels have a fluid anatomy, they don’t dissolve when they’re wet. A gelatine’s center of mass and their organs are still there to keep their bodies held together, so instant dissolution and death just doesn’t happen. In a rainstorm, for example, a gel could just “drink” any water that comes their way by absorbing it into their slime mass, and at worst they’d experience some brief water bloating. Do not confuse this point to mean that gels experience bodies of water the same way anyone else does; if a gel was tossed into a pool they wouldn’t die but the water would interfere with their ability to move and they’d have difficulty getting out on their own, and drowning is entirely an outcome they need to worry about.

Gels are vulnerable to the temperature. How drastically the weather affects any given gel depends on their individual composition (thick, smooth, goopy, fluid, etc) but in any case it does have an impact. Dry climates specifically are the worst for a gel to bear because they can start to dry out, making it harder to move around and eventually they’ll start rapidly losing slime mass. Frigid temperatures can make them sluggish but it’s a lot more bearable for them than intense heat.

If you have questions about gelatines that weren’t answered in this post, the inquiries office is always open. I can’t say when the next installment of this series will be, but there will certainly be another one because the Verse has more than enough biological oddities to cover.

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Year 7 Retrospective & Looking Forward into Year 8

Hello, everyone! TickTockStuck is officially eight years old today!

Our previous Looking Forward hoped that our 7th year of operations would’ve been a lucky year for us. Aside from how absolutely and completely wrong of a prediction that turned out to be for the world in general, TickTockStuck actually accomplished quite a bit! To wit:

The Flag Friday project finished up, and to those who have only come in recently and want to learn more about Tick-Tock Town itself, there’s a handy masterpost available for you [ right here ].

Can you believe the TTS Extended Zodiac hasn’t even been running for a year yet? That anniversary is coming up on the 29th and in the time since it started it’s gotten over 350 signs up! It’s coming back soon, and if you haven’t already checked it out it has a whole sideblog dedicated to it [ over here ].

We started up a new series of Biology Lessons to deep dive into some of the more notable biological quirks the citizens of the Verse have. So far there’s only two entries, for slimy Gels like Tyzias and Galekh and telepaths like Marsti and Chixie, but see below for future plans and see [ here ] to check our existing posts.

We started getting some new subpages for the blog up! Firstly was the [ Daemondex ], where information about the various types of haunt in the Verse is kept, and recently we got ourselves a new [ Aspect Catalog ] for all the aspects of the Verse. And they’re still updating! See below for future plans regarding both of these pages, and future ones.

Multiple updates to [ the Atlas ]! Multiple planets were added, some rearranged, and some just given more fleshed-out entries. New entries in the Atlas are for the Land of Tainted Elixir and Radiant Salt, the Land of Dunes and Darkness, the Land of Smoke and Mirrors, the Land of Vines and Masquerade, the Land of Fortune and Marble, and the Land of Ice and Towers.

In order to make sure some of these heftier updates could get out on a regular basis I had to put a more-or-less moratorium on some of our lighter content like the Fun Facts™ for a time, but we’ve slowly been rolling those back into our weekly posts. They’ll be back for the foreseeable future, and with them are some other heftier updates. Given the state of everything right now there’s definitely a lot up in the air, but my to-do list for now includes (amongst other points):

We’ve still got a few more updates in store for the Atlas, some planets left to provide entries for, plus the eventual visual update I have in mind for when it becomes a full subpage like the current Daemondex and Aspect Log. Speaking of which, both are due for further changes, and soon. 

The Daemondex is due for a brand new section on Painful Demons and a requested entry to go in as soon as I can get the work in on them, and 

The Aspect Log still needs two aspects to round out the canon twelve but future updates are going to start covering the virtue/vice aspects of the Verse! As part of those updates, symbols and the associated color palettes for various aspects of the Verse will be forthcoming.

Any art-related assets are in Nebulous Release territory for reasons I won’t reiterate here but they are being worked on. The big holdups in that territory are the shipbeasts (of which we got a new request earlier this year), the aforementioned new demon, and the remaining Troll Call trolls.

The reworking of the Cast Page is still forthcoming; considering how many different characters there are running around the Verse the eventual broken-into-subpages are going to need a lot of art assets and I don’t have a solid ETA on how long it’s going to take to get all those together.

More Versal Biology Lessons are on the horizon, and I’m already drafting up entries for firebreathers (like Bronya and Polypa) and star-skinned folks like Kanaya and a certain Harley.

Our previous Looking Forward brought up the idea of finishing off the rest of the sprite edits (for the Felt, the dancestors, etc). That’s still a goal, but I’m adding a secondary goal on top of that to revamp some of the old sprites since some of them are still pretty rough and others could use a design uplifting.

On that last point: there’s a lot for us to get caught up with in Year 8...so why not start taking bullets off of this list right away? I’m actually already in the process of re-spriting some of the originals and making new sprites for characters that have gone far too long without them, and the Alphas are first up!

Stop back in an hour for a new-and-improved June and a brand new Jane!

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7-29-20 Wednesday Update

Atlas v1.6

There’s only one real big update today but it’s a doozy, a new entry in [ the Atlas ] about the planet of Blood, Heat, and Lust: the Land of Pleasure and Flesh, a world covered pole-to-pole in a neverending sea of flesh and viscera capable of adding any living organism into its mass with a single touch!

I’ll definitely be posting more about it today (I had to cut out roughly 1/3 of my original notes for this write-up), and its associated aspect in the Aspect Log will also be updated soon.

The TTSEZ is back!

Today is the one-year anniversary of us starting [ the TickTockStuck Extended Zodiac ], and while it’s been on a break for a while it comes back today! Final reminder that it’s going to be once-a-week for a little while we finish getting our backlog set up, but in all other respects it’ll be like we never left.

Future Updates

I’ll be balancing the next couple weeks between TTSEZ work and getting the next set of sprite revamps done, so updates might slow down for a bit. If there’s an update next week it’ll be for a new Versal Biology Lesson.

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7-22-20 Wednesday Update

Aspect Log v1.0

We’ve officially gotten all 12 canon aspects into the Aspect Log! With the new Mind and Time entries we’re almost ready to start getting TTS-original aspects detailed - Blood still needs its section on its associated planet but as soon as the relevant Atlas update goes up we’ll be all ready to move forward.

Future Aspect Log updates are likely going to be infrequent mostly since it relies on how quickly I can get the high-quality images for the TTS-original aspect symbols done. Woe and Jest are all ready to go, so expect those first.

Future Updates (Today)

June and Jane’s cast page posts are going to go up later today. No new art but they’ll be slightly more detailed than the existing versions. Speaking of which, the old cast page posts (with the old sprites) are going to stay up for posterity, but they won’t be linked on the cast page anymore and I’ll be leaving notes on them saying they’re outdated.

For those of you following the TTSEZ, we’ll also have an update later today about the upcoming set of signs, so stay tuned to that blog.

Future Updates (Next Week & Beyond)

There’s one more update to the Atlas for the immediate future so that Blood’s entry in the Aspect Log can be finished, which likely is going to go up next week.

I'll be starting work on TTS Rose and Roxy this week, and it’ll likely be another 2-3 weeks before those two come out (approximate; I do want to give them the full treatment like June and Jane got but like, in advance so I’m not rushing art out the day of).

Before Rose and Roxy go up I want to get a Versal Biology Lesson out about glass-skinned folks, because I do have a bit to say about them. That’s not gonna be next week but the week after at the earliest.

General reminder here that the TTSEZ comes back in limited release form next week, the 29th.

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TickTockStuck in 2020: Looking Forward

Next year is going to be a big year for both TickTockStuck and for me personally. Without inundating you with the full details, there’s going to be a lot of changes for the better happening around here on the real world side of things. The end goal of what’s going on is to getting me back to a place physically and mentally where I can update TTS as regularly as we used to.

Our to-do list heading into next year is pretty extensive, and I’ll say for the record that I’m not making a hard promise that I’ll get everything on this list done by the time 2021 comes. With that in mind I’ve been doing a much better job lately of managing my ambitions with what I’m actually capable of, so you can expect a lot of items to get crossed off.

One of our big priorities in 2020 is going to be giving our blog some refurbishing. TickTockStuck is a lot to get into for newcomers so I want to make some changes to help make things a little easier to understand, namely:

Finally getting around to writing that Introduction section.

Breaking up the Atlas into 2 pages, one for Tick-Tock Town itself and one for the planets of the Celestial Ring. This would include the two maps carried over from last year’s to-do.

A new subpage for the Verse’s aspect catalogue, split into different aspect pairs to detail both their individual powersets and their relation to each other.

While less of a priority, I’ve also got a subpage in mind for demons of the Verse; both as a catalogue of what’s gone up and to detail the many different types of demon that exist.

My plans for the cast page are still nebulous at this point, but I'm likely going to be splitting shipbeasts off from it at a minimum since less of them are distinct characters and more just “species of monster”. I generally want to upgrade this into something more substantial than just a linkstorm.

The Troll Call’s missing quartet are still on the table. My plans are still to have Remele and Lanque out first and then moving onto Ardata and Marvus, but I could change my mind on this depending on how progress on that goes.

Our 8th anniversary is naturally going to have another shipbeast going up, though ideally I’d like more than just the one.

More demons, likely in concert with the new demons subpage.

As part of the new Aspects subpage, continuing to flesh out the aspect catalogue and ironing out more symbols.

More Versal Biology Lessons; some upcoming features honing in on folks like Gamzee, Bronya and Polypa, Aradia and the other serpenaga, and others.

I won’t go into much detail here but one of my long-term goals for the year involves getting through one of the many behind-the-scenes bigger projects I’ve had in mind for some time now. I’ll be very hush-hush about them until they’ve got some meat behind them but I think you’re really going to like what I have coming up.

Naturally, the TTS Extended Zodiac is going to be a continuing feature, though any upcoming news about that is going to be detailed over there.

Thank you all for sticking with us through 2019, it’s been a wild ride but we’ve got high hopes for the future. After this TickTockStuck is officially on break until January, so happy holidays and have a happy 2020, folks.

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TickTockStuck in 2019

This has certainly been a year for us! Homestuck in general has had an exciting year, even if TTS can’t use all the material because we have a solid “No Post-Canon” limit. The latter half of the year slowed our output down considerably, for multiple reasons, but there was still a lot we managed to do that I’m very proud with and I’m looking forward to expanding on it in the future.

I did a similar retrospective and [an admittedly optimistic prospective] last year, so to get the dour half of this post out of the way let’s run through some items from that agenda that are still on the to-do list:

The TTS Troll Call’s missing quartet are still MIA, and while they’re still a top priority I can’t say when they’ll finally be up.

There weren’t any new TTS godtiers up this year, mostly because with everything else going on they’re increasingly less of a priority. Sorry if you’re waiting for any new ones but you’ll probably be waiting for a lot longer.

The two maps I wanted done are still works in progress, one is in development limbo right now and neither are likely going up until the new and improved version of the Atlas does.

The brainspawn series still hasn’t happened, though it’s worth mentioning that the Versal Biology Lessons I’ve started recently are an extension of what I want to do with it.

While I’ve brought up a few members of the Verse’s extended cast I haven’t gone into as much detail about them as I hoped I would. Largely that’s because I’m thinking about how I want to properly introduce you to them, but I’ll save any speculation for the proceeding post.

The flip side is that some items on that list did get met! We took up a slower pace in the latter half of the year while I figured out the best way to handle all of TTS’ operations, and while that pace can make it feel otherwise we actually did (and are doing) a lot this year:

The biggest shake-up in the world of TTS was the launch of [our dedicated Extended Zodiac sideblog]! The TTSEZ has been exceptionally busy since it went up in August, and by the time the year ends it’ll have put up over 260 signs, many of them fully original!

In light of last year’s Tumblr fiasco we went to Twitter! [Our main account] is mostly inactive since it hasn’t needed to fill its role as an emergency system but [its sister account for the TTSEZ] has been just as busy as its main account.

The Verse’s aspect catalogue saw a lot of detailing this year, with the TTSEZ being able to showcase many of the Verse-specific aspects and their respective symbols.

The TTS Troll Call’s one-year anniversary rolled around, and everybody got to have their own time in the spotlight.

The Atlas has undergone some big updates over the course of the year, with some planets really getting the chance to be fleshed out (highlights on the Land of Rot and Sparks and the Land of Dunes and Darkness).

Our other big project of the year was Flag Fridays! The map it was building up to may still be in limbo but we still had eight weeks all focusing on the eight districts of Tick-Tock Town and their respective histories.

Lynera had a character week to herself, including a Longform Fun Fact™ about her near-demonization and our one new demon of the year, [Gaummurrane]!

Our 7th anniversary came, and with it our one new shipbeast of the year, the [Trickey-Lime Piedra]! Both it and Gaummurrane had unforeseen technical issues keep them from being fully completed, but they’re both still in the process of getting cleaned up for reupload.

We started up the [Versal Biology Lessons], to lay down facts about the many different types of person that exist in the Verse.

There are certainly some missed opportunities and regrets with how things played out, but the problems we ran into over the course of the year have either already been solved or their solutions are active works in progress. Stay tuned tomorrow for our look forward into 2020, because there’s some big changes on the way.