Unicorn Jelly Chapter 2 post 3

originally posted at https://comicalmomentum.tumblr.com/po...

We’re introduced to Lupiko’s abusive aunt Muri, who was mentioned before on Lupiko’s character sheet. It’s pretty unpleasant going.

The art has gotten kinda copy-and-pastey in the last few strips.

Ooh fancy tetrahedron lightbulbs! This consistent triangles motif is pretty cool - I’m looking forward to the (inevitable) detailed breakdown of this universe’s alt-physics.

Chou is becoming very endearing.

You know for a comic called Unicorn Jelly it’s not much about the unicorn jelly at all is it?

Anyway yeah Chou helps her find the hidden will left by Lupiko’s mother so they can kick Muri out of the house and stop her extorting them.

Ooh, con-lang/con-script. Everyone ready to brush up on their base-7 maths?

A small lampshade is hung on the idea that this one script is used throughought this particular ‘universe’ but I’m inclined to forgive that because a con-script for arithmetic is a cool and unusual thing.

Another one for some common symbols.

Three weeks later, having discovered a cellar and quickly sold the house, Lupiko and Chou are now quite wealthy? And attempting to flee Muri…

Ooh more worldbuilding. There is a division between ‘crystal’ and non-’crystal’ life. There is an ‘endless variety’ of crystal life, but only ‘14 species’ of non-crystal life including plants. Humans are presumably one of them; grass is another; the ubiquitous tree a third?

To me this seems to suggest the crystal life is native to this universe, but the humans etc. are not. There’s also a mention of colonisation of Tryslmaistan (the tetrahedral ‘universe’ the story takes place in) on the first con-script page.

Oh well here come the answers! The 14 kinds of ‘red’ and ‘green’ life (animals and plants respectively) are:

Red:

Green:

Also foxes, dogs, sheep and geese were present but the ‘first people’ (presumably colonists from another universe) weren’t able to sustain their populations.

All other life is ‘blue’ crystalline life.

Oh OK so the Latin alphabet exists in this world as ‘alpabe runes’, considered ancient and no longer widely used. All the more reason to think the red and green life is descended from a group of English-speaking colonists carrying species they expected to be useful. However, while the cards are written in English, instead of ‘b’, the Alpabe runes have the Hebrew letter ב (bet); instead of c, the Hebrew letter ח (het) (I think?); instead of N, a letter I can’t identify with a spirally bit that might be pe but probably isn’t.

There’s an AU strip rendered in Talcrylic script with Alpabe inserts. I’m not sure quite how much of the script JDR worked out in advance and how much she just made up on the spot, but it’s interesting.

As increasingly often seems to be the case, many of our questions are answered on the next page. The Alpabe alphabet is cobbled together from four different alphabets (which Choi is somehow able to group for us just by looking):

  1. Latin alphabet: ADEFGHIKLOPRSTUY
  2. Hebrew alphabet (serif forms in the strip; they’ll appear sans-serif on your dash though): ב (bet, replaces B), ח (het, replaces C), and ש (shin)
  3. Katakana and Hiragana:
    1. Hiragana: わ (wa), ず (su with a dakuten), の (no, replaces N)
    2. Katakana:  ミ (mi) and ジョ (shi with a dakuten and a yōon which together make a ‘jo’ sound; this is my best guess and I’m not sure)
  4. Greek alphabet: ξ (xi, lowercase for some reason) and Φ (phi)

That took some deduction but I’m pretty confident of my conclusions!

We’re introduced to the vlax, a lifeform that can ‘bridge the different worlds’ of organic vs crystal life, but causes mutating effects in red and green life. It is given the binomial name Vlaxiform mutans, but JDR capitalises the second word so maybe it’s not a standard binomial name. There is a disease called the ‘weakness’ which afflicted the ‘first people’, but they are able to survive by using V. mutans - at the price of steadily accruing mutations.

So we also learn that ‘elves’ and ‘ogres’ were originally humans who became altered in a hereditary way by V. mutans.

At least at the edge, worldplates are in fact incredibly thin - only maybe tens of metres, if that, judging by the picture.

So a complicated bunch of events unfold:

It’s clear enough from that point on what’s happening. Choi goes to ‘mercy kill me’ rather quickly. Also tidbit: the acceleration due to gravity in Tryslmaistan is \(8.7\unit{ms^{-2}}\).

AU strip: the Tryslmaistans have been using Vlax and selective breeding to diversify their ecosystem.

In the process of the rescue Choi hits her head on the broom which causes her to briefly see Uni as an actual unicorn. When they land back on the worldplate, she can’t speak and is digging a hole.

The cache of books under the house was forbidden, and now it’s in the hands of Muri and Al Makineri. Muri is plotting behind Makineri’s back.

And JDR made a card game “not unlike Dominoes mixed with Uno by way of Magic the Gathering” for Unicorn Jelly here which we’ll look at later this evening or tomorrow!

Comments

Add a comment
[?]