Hey, took me a minute to answer this because. Thank you.

This message means a whole lot, even if it does make me feel a little bad for not being up to writing more of those stories. I know I want to continue them, I just… can’t. Not yet. I am still writing, at least, just in other fandoms- Warhammer, mostly.

I’ve been drifting away from DSMP (and kind of minecraft in general) for some time now, mostly only here for the third life series and the awesome fan art. Those fics are the only really substantial thing keeping me from leaving completely, to be honest. The fact that so many random strangers ran across it and read it and liked it.

It’s a lot of pressure, I’ll be honest. I’ll be continuing both at some point, because there’s jokes I want to tell and monsters I want to show and characters I want to project onto, but… you are right. It will be a while.

ahh thanks so much!!

Hmmmm lemme think... Ok!! Since I have been dm'd about OC's (which. Wild. I'm famous enough for people to make OC's for my universe) I've come up with a rough set of guidelines for mutations.

There are Two kinds: Animalistic and Not Animalistic (scientific, I know).

Inanimate is a person growing into a tree, slowly turning into metal or stone, and is generally the most unfortunate of the two. The Slug fits into this category as it's a living stomach/mouth and not any particular animal. People could also end up as sentient piles of goo, incredibly hostile pieces of architecture, with the only through line being that they manage to keep at least one defining human characteristic. I.E eyes, a face, a mouth somewhere, That Tree Is Bleeding, a lot of hands, etc etc

Animalistic is far more common. This is your Phil, your Techno, your Tubbo. Your gazelles the Wolf and the poor pizzeria employee. They are a mix of human and animal, animal and animal, and animal and animal and animal and animal. It is very rare for you to become just a straight up perfect animal. There aren't any people wandering around as a fully functional horse. There's always something fucked up about them i.e extra eyes, antlers/horns, multiple limbs, wings, scales, fur, teeth, etc etc. They are overall the more hostile ones, and will often form "packs" as one person half mutated is more likely to spread similar mutations whether then just the virus. The Unique people (Phil, Techno, Squid when I figure a way to write him in) were all infected very early, and then stayed contained/alone for the majority of their transformation. Other people ended up copying others.

This copying can happen with Inanimate mutants as well, but is much rarer as Inanimates tend to not move much, so you could just. Walk out of their contagious sphere. idk if I'm using that word right or if any of this made sense.

As for the update schedule... Uh... Whenever the next update is done, I guess? I try to have at least one chapter out each month, but that's about it. Leans towards the end of the month tho.

Predictability- mmm... It has to do with your situation. You adapt to it, to yourself, in a way- but that principle is more obvious in extreme examples like the Slug or the Employee or the car people I have yet to introduce. Other then that it's whatever I think would be cool.

I have no idea how the "science" of it would work, but random chance is high up there for sure. Other then that, people who are blood related have similar mutations, even without them corrupting each other. This doesn't really count as a spoilers because what else was I gonna do for them: Tubbo is a goat and Shlatt is a ram. Shlatt is Tubbo's uncle, and so they ended up with very similar mutations if not exact. It's very hard to get something exact unless it got passed to you through someone else, a la the herd of Gazelles. They don't have an official backstory but I like to think they were a tightly knit early morning jogging group.

As for influence besides minecraft skin and canon lore... I guess fanon lore? Like Shlatt and Tubbo's skins don't have horns but guess what I'm giving them! Other then that not really. Just the occasional personal headcanon or bit I think would be cool.

Ohohoh! A chance to show off fanart! Neither of these designs are “canon” per se but they are very good and more people should see them. But yeah, Phil has wings for arms. It’s kinda inconvenient.

https://sossmoss.tumblr.com/post/661021606534070272/ayyy-i-did-a-little-doodlin-for-one-of-my-fav/amp

https://twitter.com/PollenSlime/status/1385868540394098689?s=20&t=2ROPXsOjcRL9glNC0gp7Iw