It’s A MOSSbuik :D

Re: Vienne, the world tends to be very forgiving of brilliant yet neglectful geniuses who spend their days buried productively in their Great Works and leave the care of their children and families largely to others, provided that they are male. The female ones, not so much. Kasslyne isn't all that different from our own universe in that sense.

Yep.

One thing I wish I’d stressed more in her story and hadn’t left presumed, was the marriage itself. Vienne didn’t particularly *want* to be married to anyone, but that’s not a choice she was allowed. She was happy enough with Mathis but would have been content to remain alone with her work and her business.

Likewise she never particularly wanted children. When she actually became pregnant, she was assaulted by almost overwhelming approval from everyone around her. All of a sudden they stopped making her feel like a freak, and she felt like she’d become the woman that the entire village had all her life expected her to become. This resulted in a lot of emotional pressure to keep the baby. That’s not something Mathis could ever understand. He had his own pressures for sure and she did all she could to help him with those, but he never gave a second thought to hers.

I relate a lot to Vienne. I knew by the age of ten that I never wanted kids or a spouse because nothing was more important to me than art. But even as a relatively privileged girl Vienne didn’t get to make that same decision. Still, she made it work as best she could. And while she was not a superhero able to be a perfect wife and perfect mother and a perfectly self-actualised human being making her art and fighting for her country, she never gave up the dream.

So people of Unsounded Discord started discussing who qualifies as a magical girl in the comic and they were coming up with bad ideas like “Mikaila“. They were all obviously wrong, so I decided to take the matter in my own hands. I am so sorry.

if you want the rewards of finding a new favorite song then you have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of listening to unfamiliar music

Kelp Forest by divindk

*whispers* every time you respond to an ask here I feel so special~~~

Care to share any lore pertaining to the carvings on the wall in the inner temple, or would that be too spoilery?

We’re going to get much more into the two-toes in chapter 12. There’s an old lady lizard who will expand upon her culture much more colourfully than I can here :)

Thank you for asking, BizzAnon! And thanks for answering, Ashley~ Me eyeballs shall live another day~

From what I can make out on a first lookin’:

First pole: “Fret not my children … for there is little…”

Second pole: “Be done in this world but… Think and fixate on the *illegible*” 

Third pole: “Your I N G N (or V?) V (or U?) I V Y H T S… Brought…”

Fourth pole: “For they are not your…”

Fifth pole: “…A O E D E R H … U A U R”

*edit*

AC on the Discord deciphered the third pole as “Your ingenuity has brought,” which is delightfully ominous. Thanks, AC!

BizzAnon: Rainwalker on the Discord is trying to read all the little text on the boards around Tirna's shrine on the cover page of the first chapter. Any chance you could throw up a high-res zoom of it and spare a reader's eyeballs?

Obviously you want the story to stand completely on it's own, but do you think this blog and other ways of communicating with your audience has made you more willing to include details in the story that are more esoteric or require more context?

Mm, prooobably, but I really love dense work. My favourite media is always overwrought, busy, and layered, sucking you into a world that's been illustrated to a degree you immediately and fully buy into it. My favourite fantasy comic is Nausicaa, and it's often called too hard to read, my favourite novel is Moby-Dick which goes off on incredible tangents about the world of whaling. My favourite game is Vagrant Story which has about a dozen ways to play it and a story so sketchy in a world so rich that people are still trying to interpret what happens in it even today. I like worlds where much of what you're seeing isn't explained. You're dropped into an opaque setting, and exploring that setting and putting its pieces together is just as much a part of the experience as following the plot and the characters.

All this is to say that Unsounded would still be a snaggled jungle even if I'd made it before the internet ever existed. This is just my jam :)

There's a lot of stuff about Kasslyne you ain't gonna get a canon answer for. You'll just have to try and go there and see things for yourself.

Genuine praise and applause here, you've achieved something unprecedented to me as a reader: I feel shaken and uncertain about a protagonist I once liked, but also still completely invested in their story.

Right now (I've just read 18-80 to 84) I feel you've struck a great balance of surprise (at Duane) and trust (in your story). Perhaps because no single choice of Duane's felt out-of-character, as they slowly added up? I honestly can't predict how I'll feel about him and his flaws by the end of Unsounded, but for once, I'm enjoying that unease! Because of the care you've taken in building your characters so far, I at least still have faith in *you* to reach a satisfying ending.

Oh this should be a question, hmm. Were you at all tempted to foreshadow Duane's recent/future choices more obviously (by character or plot), softening a bit of the impact for a smoother story? Because again, I'm glad you didn't – perfectly threaded needle to keep me captivated.

So glad you're having a good time!

I hope Duane's current state is pretty well telegraphed, though I know it can be hard to remember past instances when the webcomic delivery spaces everything out. He's repeatedly shown himself to be hypocritical and selective in regards to kids. The army story ended with him continuing to train babies in the killing arts and accepting a false narrative that he had never let one of them die. This led right into him turning a blind eye to the Litriya twins for the sake of helping the Aldish invaders get to the construct facility. He felt AWFUL about this - we saw it - and tried to make up for it, but even that very action was already going against what was said in the black water: God is not attainable by transaction. Duane was trying to erase that debt to Litriya. It doesn't work that way! Like Claggart said, you got to acknowledge your mistakes and keep moving.

Duane started to. He truly did, when he spoke to Lori and the Peaceguard, then moved to go defend the shrine. But then Mikaila was there in the sky and all development was cut short in tandem with his poor rotten head.

What did he see when he and Toma and Elka approached Port Morstorben's ravaged gate? Not all the dead bodies. Not a vision of Sara asking him to help defend her people. Instead Duane saw Lemuel and Leysa and Mikaila. The eels have always known exactly how to steer Duane towards his worst self, and they use his best self to do it. They use his blind love for his family, his loyalty towards his homeland, and his faith in God. These can all be fantastic attributes or they can make a monster.

So yeah, I feel like the foreshadowing is there pretty thick. What makes it still compelling, I hope, is Duane's selfishness and reluctance to change are so often counterbalanced by his earnest desire to make things better and to help the people around him as individuals, in the moment. There's not an ounce of real malice in the man, but when Duane stews, he often talks himself into making the wrong choice. When he acts with all the compulsion of a big-hearted protector, he tends towards selfless compassion.