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Unsounded
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Friendly coffee best coffee.
a very classic literary death
also he did a coup failure speedrun harder than Prigozhin did
>also he did a coup failure speedrun harder than Prigozhin did
Prigozhin got out of it in one piece, though.
Did he? They say he's in Belarus but now people are talking about him being spotted in St. Pidorsburg, they are far apart.
Bell was actually a real threat to Sonorie, not some psyop bullshit used to distract from the next Watergate.
Meds. Take them.
You don't think it's a little bit suspicious that the news cycle was pushing hard that sub shit that they knew were dead within the first hour and right after became foreign policy experts talking about how "Putin is totally finished for real this time!" because a known professional troll did Kabuki theater with a thousand troops coincidentally at the same time evidence was coming to light that the president and his crack addicted son were taking bribes?
>Things happen independently of and atr the same time as American political theater
>THIS IS A CONSPIRACY!!!
Take your meds
The cup staged a coup, genius.
I can't tell who's the bigger hero, Friendly Coffee or Flann. One ended the man and the mutt, the other ended the movement. I love this story.
gotta love those little dewlaps on the lizards
hope the two toes make it out of the khert fire alive
Green lizard in the final panel will be Flann's hype man for life
>Yo that was some smooth fricking inak shit back there brotha
Someone get that Inak a beer and a prosthetic.
Son of a frick.
"DING DONG" is one of the top 10 best lines in Unsounded, and this comic has had some bangers.
What are the rest?
"You'd cure a child lover in minutes" is definitely one of them.
And Toma's "You may know war but you don't know what good men die for" is up there too.
It's genuinely impressive the writing Ashley is capable of. We must all sound like crazy sycophants to her, but she's tremendously skilled. I wish Unsounded got the recognition it deserves and she got the payout she deserves.
>I wish Unsounded got the recognition it deserves
This is what low key hurts me. Unsounded is legit my favorite comic, and I'm a snob when it comes to comics. It's honestly extremely rare to find someone who's this good at both writing and art, and the only other person I can offhand name I'd put in Cope's category is Marini, a professional Eurocomic artist/author.
And let's be real, Unsounded slots very neatly into the things "modern audiences" say they want, but they're all sleeping on it.
I don't really read western comics, more of a manga guy, but I will forever shill unsounded to whoever I can because it's just that good
Frick favorite comic, Unsounded is honestly one of my favorite pieces of literature and favorite piece serial art overall. I think the biggest thing keeping mainstream audiences out is that it's a webcomic, and the biggest thing keeping out webcomic nerds is the difficult subject matter and unapologetic density. But, my God, Ashley has such a high level of skill at what she does and Unsounded is masterfully refined. She does not deserve to be living paycheck to paycheck.
Same. It's a damn shame it doesn't get more traction on Cinemaphile at least, I will never understand why the rest of Cinemaphile seems to think so negatively of it if they have an opinion at all.
There's lots of reasons for Cinemaphile to hate it. Way too many black characters, gays, females. Mainstream readers don't want something with so much violence done to kids and with such dense lore and world-building. No real romance either, very little sexy fanservice.
Unsounded is highly targeted to a highly specific kind of reader. There aren't a lot of those kinds of readers. So it will always be unprofitable and outside the spotlight of popular media. But if you know, you know.
I honestly don't think those reasons are why Cinemaphile hates it at all. Most of Cinemaphile hates tokenism, which I'm right there with. Unsounded's diverse cast is just that, a diverse cast, not diversity tokens. Each and every one of them is what the plot and their characterization calls for first, and their attributes second. Whether that's a man or woman, black guy or white guy, straight or gay, two-toe or human. They're the good kind of representation.
They also don't need characters to be overtly sexual for them to pick someone out as a waifu or husbando, and there's plenty of attractive characters in the cast to choose from. Take a lot e at the Gunnerkrigg fanbase for instance. Or any of Cinemaphile's FOTMs. And Ashley even draws her own porn of the characters, and does commission for it as well. Unsounded's characters aren't sexualized because they're not sexy, they're not sexualized because it's not as popular as some of the other things Cinemaphile enjoys.
I think Cinemaphile deserves more credit than you're giving them. They like well made media. If Unsounded was popular, we might get trolls about this kind of stuff, but it isn't the reason that Unsounded isn't popular. I think somehow they're getting the impression this isn't well made media before they get along far enough to see that it is, and then dropping off. I know everyone says Sette is a sticking point and a filter, so maybe it's that? Maybe they see an annoying brat and think the author isn't any good at writing characters and get the impression that Sette will never grow. But even that's hard for me to see, as I never found Sette objectionable in the way so many other people do at first.
>Take a lot e at the Gunnerkrigg fanbase
Take a look at, rather. No idea what happened there.
There’s a lot of little filters to Unsounded, I think. Sette is one: she’s introduced as a tailed brat, and is a huge butthole. The bloody chapter with Cara is another. The dense dialogue is a third.
I think another one, possibly, has to do with naive reader expectations. The true plot of Unsounded isn’t revealed, and then only partially, until nine or ten chapters in.
It takes ten chapters before we understand why we’re following the Red Berry Boys or why Sette has to see Stockyard. I notice new readers also often get annoyed when the scene switches to Toma and Elka— I had a friend say he literally didn’t care about anyone except Duane, and so he’d basically speedread past scenes without Duane and Sette.
In fact, he speedread so much that he never called other characters by name even after they’d clearly introduced themselves. Murkoph was “that other undead dude with weird scars”. He couldn’t be arsed to invest in any character other than Duane and Sette.
So part of it may be readers getting attached to the duo, not caring about the other characters we’re following, then feeling lost and disconnected whenever we have non-Duane and Sette scenes.
Oh God, I'm so sorry, all the friends I've gotten into Unsounded have been turbo autists about it like I have. Just turbo autists with less time to devote to the comic who end up not keeping up with it consistently due to other interests and obligations. I can't imagine showing someone who got into it but couldn't even bother to remember character names or anything relevant to the plot.
I agree that Unsounded is full of filters and that's likely the culprit, but it's hard for me to relate to the main ones. I loved the way the story pulls back, both in terms of scope and grandeur as well as in introducing a wider and wider cast, and it does it slowly enough that you don't even really notice it happening. I didn't notice we were in deep into politics and intrigue until much later than when we had gotten there. The same with tone, too. Of course I realized in chapter two with Cara that things could get dark at times, but I figured they wouldn't be dark that often. Several chapters later and I'm left wondering what the hell happened to the light tone of the comic and realizing that it was always going to be this dark with comparatively few moments of levity than the reverse.
I can’t relate to the main filters either. But they exist, and it seems like a lot of potential new readers get repelled by one or some combination of filters at some point.
It’s funny because I think Unsounded has fewer filters than GoT/ASOIAF, and GoT was popular as heck. But GoT has the advantage of being backed by HBO, so it simply reaches a wider audience, so while GoT’s filters knocked a lot of viewers away, it simply has a larger pool to draw from.
If Unsounded were in school libraries like ASOIAF, and just as passively visible as ASOIAF, it would be more popular. But alas.
I think it also goes back to what I said earlier. ASIOAF is a book, GOT is a show. Both of these are much more accessible than a webcomic are to mainstream audiences (and the audience that finds a webcomic most accessible usually wants something lighter in tone). All three of these have a lot of filters, but the first two categories are much more accessible and mainstream to begin with, so they come out ahead. If Ashley had turned this into a book instead, much as it pains me to say because I love this format and it going to a book would mean losing a lot, she would likely have a much larger following than she currently does.
It's really a damn shame that it's so hard to convince the people outside of the core audience that Unsounded is as good as it is and worth a shot, or second shot if they get filtered. Or in certain cases, that webcomics can be worth a shot at all.
I've tried recommending it to one friend who's into comics, but despite reading Crossed he said he's not ready for something dark again. Well... yeah, I don't think he'd enjoy Unsounded. Which is a shame, because I think he'd be into it otherwise. And honestly, the general darkness of the comic might be a big filter for people. A lot of people want lighthearted stories with manageable darkness, and Unsounded might actually sucker people. It's bright, and its societies are advanced, developed, and civilized. One of the main characters is a cute brat and there's a fair bit of humor. But if I take a step back from the stuff I can deal with easily, it's really fricking dark. Philip K. Dick is one of favorite writers, and one thing I always used to say about his work to people who don't get it is "there's always a bad ending, so you don't have to worry about that".
There's a level of real-ness to the world of Unsounded, and its characters, that might not sit well with a lot of people. Pretty early on there's a scene where Sette quotes Nary as "breasts are just speedbumps on the road to success" or something like that. Aside from the fact that speed bumps shouldn't logically exist in the world of Unsounded, I think there might be a lot of people who would read something like that and fail to realize that despite Sette's idolatry of him Nary isn't meant to be a good person and Sette is the product of not just an abusive household, but an abusive culture. And those that do, well, they might find that to an unwanted, grimy patina on the Fantasy adventure story they were hoping for.
Lots of things in fiction are sign-posted, and especially in Fantasy. I think that's one thing that might throw people for a loop. The grim darkness in Unsounded gives Berserk a run for its money, except in Unsounded it's sometimes just so casually present. Frick, look at the recent pages, and funny coffee ghost is right there next to Toma's arm and heart being broken.
Honestly I'm really glad about friendly coffee and Flann defeating Bell and Bloedlus the way they did. It was the perfect bit of levity in an unspeakably dark scene.
I also agree with you about the bait and switch. I like dark edgy things, always have. Hell, I relate to Ashley heavily on her tastes in guro. But Unsounded is dark and I got into it expecting a light, cute comic. At first I was glad for the occasional foray into darker subject matter, but once I realized it had flipped and it was local forays into the lighter levity that had attracted me, and that it wasn't just because everything was coming to a head there, that that was how it was going to be throughout, I was a little disappointed. Not that it's any less good, but sometimes it can be very heavy reading for a very extended period of time. Definitely not the kind of reading people into webcomics tend to like, and not what I was looking for myself when I started it, even though like you most of this stuff is something I can shrug off. I think I'm realizing Unsounded is the Reservoir Dogs of comics.
Regardless of your beliefs, this isn't the thread. We're here to talk about the greatest, and least accessible/darkest webcomic out there. If you want to talk about conspiracies, that's plenty to pick from in universe.
I used to be an edgy kid and I've read about a lot of horrible shit. Partly because I've got a WWII family history that's otherwise really snowed under in my country. I didn't expect anything when I started reading Unsounded, aside from that it was reportedly a good webcomic, which is usually how I approach comics. But the manner of its darkness kind of resonates with me, I think. The mundanity of it mirrors real life, and that's something you realize when you scratch beyond the surface opinion on evil present in society. In that, many stories mirror the common opinion: Evil is external and absolute.
But I hate guro, so go figure.
See, and as much as I like that level of depth, that's particular flavor of it is one of the things I could take or leave from Unsounded, not because it's not true, or that it's not worth sharing, or whatever. It's true, and is worth sharing. But I find real life dark enough as is, usually, and would rather an escape from it. A little ironic, I suppose, given that I do have a preference for many edgy, or macabre pieces of media, even outside the fact that I used to be into guro. But I've always preferred a lighter stylization to those dark and depressing things I enjoy. Ashley plays it very straight and true to life when she shows the horror and despair. And even though I can take much of it in stride, there's things like this recent scene that hit uncomfortably hard, and the overall tone when we're in parts like The Deadly Nevergreen or here starts to become monolithic and hard to digest. I'm really appreciative right now of the breaks Ashley has worked into this chapter, because as dark as it is, it's still left you with some space to breathe compared to The Nevergreen. We're still a long ways from the end though, I expect when the steaks are highest it might get to be a bit much.
Oh I remember that! Everyone on Cinemaphile was worried that Unsounded had jumped the shark and were talking about quitting reading, that they had no faith in Ashley because he was her Mary Sue OC/pet crush. I'm honestly surprised so many people had such little faith in her that far along. I wonder if we did lose people from Murkoph's introduction or if they since got over it and moved on.
I also fill don't really see the problem with him, if I'm honest. He never bothered me.
>But if I take a step back from the stuff I can deal with easily, it's really fricking dark.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned the literal military rape building earlier in the chapter (combined with the execution of all crescian males), which is Yugoslav war levels of dark
Duane by far seems to be the favorite character except with contrarians and some fujos. I recall Murkoph being received with considerable hostility until it became clear he wasn't going to be the plot tumor so many characters vaguely like him are.
>The dense dialogue is a third.
This filtered me hard at 15, but I'm glad I was 'tistic enough to keep it on my radar and give it another shot when I was older and had grown some taste.
I hope my old friend who showed me Unsounded way back in the day is doing well. Sorry I didn't get into it when we were still in each others' lives.
Fifteen, damn. Yeah it would be really hard to properly get into it at that age. I'm impressed your friend managed to.
Thanks, anon. We were both pretty smart and weird kids, but he had the higher intelligence stat and I had the higher bizarro stat. The uniqueness of Unsounded did pique my interest enough to return to it on occasion, and I think my 3rd or 4th visit to the comic finally hooked me sometime in early adulthood.
Unsounded is overrated IMO, and not even my favorite webcomic. It's definitively quite good, but with the plot rushing and numerous cast the world-building suffers. The places they visit have little importance and the characters don't feel "there". Pymary is another example: the concept behind it is very cool, there are a few scenes that use it masterfully, but 90% of the time it's just Duane's green lightshow. Last time pymary was brought up (when taking down the vilegang) we were introduced to a bunch of new arbitrary rules and that was that. It was not clever, it was not based on some pre-established principles, it just was.
Now, if you look at extremely popular fantasy fiction, you'll notice that often the setting is almost more important than the plot. Harry potter became famous because of its secret mage society, hogwarts school, magical creatures and such more than the individual plots of the books. I've heard lord of the rings called the book that describes what the characters had for dinner. Star wars (science fantasy) is remembered for the ships, jedi's and light sabers more than its "I kissed my brother" or even "I'm your father" moments. Unsounded arguably has that potential, but in the end we only know the bare minimum about the world to push the plot forward. It's not a good sign that we have to fish for lore details from the Q&A page. Problem is, weak worldbuilding in a fantasy comic doesn't really work well.
And it's not like the dialog writing is that exceptional either, I mean, "Ding dong"? After your revolution failed, realistically now you should be expecting genocide, and that's what you have to say? We the readers hope in a queen pardon, but from the lizard's perspective it's over. I just never liked quips, I find them inherently lame.
But this is just my personal impression! Maybe I'm just dummy dumb and should read slower. And at least I like this comic more than gunnerkrigg court, that's for sure.
> we were introduced to a bunch of new arbitrary rules and that was that.
You haven’t been paying attention if you think they’re arbitrary.
It makes intuitive sense that swapping aspects between objects that use the same material should cause less agitation.
It’s because when you swap aspects, the khert has to make changes to the material to make the aspects make sense. Similar to how a juicer works: you take liquid aspect and apply it to the ground, suddenly the floor is fricking lava. Which requires the khert to apply a whole ton of other aspects, like heat, which has a cascading effect on other surrounding materials. Hence the high agitation.
Duane also swapped the aspects back on his own so that the khert didn’t have to resolve it. Wrights have to do this with core aspects to avoid performing a core leech, which again is a source of high agitation; for non-core aspects, the khert eventually swaps it back, which causes agitation.
Ashley doesn’t dive into the nitty gritty of it often in-comic because most of the readers don’t nerd out pymary to that level. But this actually was based on pre-established principles relating to khert agitation. Specifically, if you’ve been paying attention to examples of what causes Mogul’s Number to rise (chapter 14 has great examples) and to the introduction of what a Juicer is, this shouldn’t be out of left field.
>Last time pymary was brought up (when taking down the vilegang) we were introduced to a bunch of new arbitrary rules and that was that. It was not clever, it was not based on some pre-established principles, it just was.
not really sure what all these new rules we were introduced to were. "its dangerous to cast on big things" isn't new, "core leeching bad" isn't new, "you can frick with sizes" may be new but fits what we've previously learned.
This is so different from my experience with Unsounded that I don't know how you've gotten to this perspective. Maybe because I follow the supplementary material so heavily, the Tumblr, Formspring, print extras, and side material. The only places I haven't actually followed the extras are Patreon and Discord. But it's so obvious to me how deep the worldbuilding, characterization, and magic system goes, and nothing in the comic has deviated from what Ashley has shown in or outside of it. The characters themselves are the most real and fleshed out I've seen, and I remember a friend in particular raving about how believable the children were. The setting is so nuanced, so intricate with well thought out cultures and completely unique countries compared to other fantasy settings. And the magic, goddamn the magic. It's blindingly simple in rules, but perfectly structured and laid out plain. It isn't as flashy as it could be, sure, but flashy pymary isn't good pymary, just like flashy combat isn't good combat.
I'm not sure what rules you think we were introduced to that were arbitrary, but if you detailed them I'm sure myself or another anon would happily explain where they come from.
>And it's not like the dialog writing is that exceptional either
This is such a different take from what I have that I don't know what to say. I agree that ding dong isn't the height of wit, but good dialog doesn't call for being the height of wit. Not every character can or should be capable of delivering off the cuff perfect aphorisms for every situation, and many characters actually do. Ashley can write beautiful, elegant prose and is more clever than she has any right to be. But to me, "ding dong" is just a tired lizard soldier, who probably isn't the wittiest, but is smarter and savvier than many, mocking the fall of an overly theatric blowhard who had just been going on about being a ringing bell. Isn't it believable?
As an aside, I took “ding-dong” to be both a bell joke and a “ding dong the witch is dead” reference. It’s not the height of wit, but it felt fitting?
I actually did as well. Pretty sure it was. I do prefer the line that was cut for Toma, but I think that not every person we met in this story is going to have great lines, and taking the spotlight off Toma and handing it over to Flann fully was the right call, even if Toma's line would have been cooler. Sometimes we need to let the other characters shine, and showing Toma being a total badass there would have undermined what these pages were.
I disagree with you on the quality of it, but I (and, to be fair, Ashley) agree with your point about the format of a webcomic (or just a comic period) not being 100% ideal for this kind of story. No, it's not an asspull, it's totally explained and understandable why the Vliegeng-tightening worked the way that it did, how the juicer works, etc. It's just totally irrelevant to the actual plot wherein pymary might as well just be hand-waving rather than having any semblance of order, and 99% of readers would not give a flying frick if pymary was just hand-waving bullshit. People want to see Duane (and, increasingly, Sette) and his drama, occasionally punctuated by fun side-stories about stuff like Toma killing Bell, but they do not care about "worldbuilding" and "lore". The people who actually care about that are far and few between. Remember that Ashley had far more fans on the Disqus section than she does here, and none of them would have been at all impressed if there was an entire chapter dedicated to Duane lecturing the audience about how pymary works. The Q&A page is secondary to the story itself, and most of Unsounded's fans don't even know that it's there.
In fact, I'm going to have a controversial take here: most of the people who are into "worldbuilding" don't actually want to read WH40k codices, they just like having some e-celeb explain settings and stories for them so that they can feel clever for it, in effect turning exploration of a setting into a story. The "interest" in worldbuilding and "lore" is about increasing the depth of children's cartoons from that of meaningless gibberish to meaningless gibberish that is semi-congruent with the prior episode.
Also, speaking of the Q&A, someone with a tumblr should ask what Hetr would think about the rapesnake reveal if he were still alive.
I think the people into the lore are just the equivalent of loregays in video games. I like Ashley a lot, but I don't ask her questions because she's a celebrity, I ask her questions because I'm a turbonerd and Unsounded is the coolest shit ever. I also used to write, and while I was pretty good, I never got anywhere half as good as she is and I recognize and admire her skill.
For me, the lore in Unsounded usually helps me understand the story better because I understand the context it’s taking place in better— both as a world and as a reflection of the author’s intent.
Without the story, most of the lore would be utterly irrelevant and uninteresting to me.
Oh absolutely, I wouldn't enjoy it in the absence of Unsounded, but I enjoy it because I'm such a huge fan of Unsounded. It's like the purple who collect art books, or early art of movies, or people who try to read deeper about the author intent. We fall so in love with whatever the story is that we want more of it, to experience the world more, to know more about the characters, and to see ourselves in it. Loregays are just a bit obsessive and greedy.
Do I also like engaging in Ashley because I think she's cool, and do I consider her work ethic and drawing/writing ability impressive? Yeah, I would say I absolutely look up to her and hold her in high esteem too. Not just there, but how organized she is, and how she's able to juggle so many disparate groups as well as she does. And do I like her and Unsounded that much better because she's "one of us"? Well, yes. I would be lying to say I didn't. But that's not the reason I obsess over lore the way I do.
I might as well throw my response in the hat as well. The way I see it purpose of worldbuilding is to serve internal consistency, and I don't think you're quite correct about the reasons as to why people remember the properties you mentioned. Harry Potter is literally named after the main character. It's very much about him. The scene between Vader and Luke might be one of the most (mis)quoted scenes in cinematic history. And we also see it the other way around: The worldbuilding in A Song of Ice and Fire is shit. People will dispute this, but they are wrong. It's a rather cookie-cutter Fantasy setting where everything is just Medieval Britain blown up to the size of a continent, with very little regard for the numbers involved. It's an extremely simplistic setting that has very little to set it apart from any other generic Fantasy setting. The one unique thing it does, with its seasons, just begs more questions. And people fricking love it. People eat it up. Because it's extremely character-driven.
With Unsounded I have a perfectly functional understanding of the way its world works just from reading the comic. And its magic system is more clear than in any other Fantasy webcomic I've read, so I find that a particularly weird complaint. Even in something like D&D, a set of rules devoted entirely to a high magic world, the nature of magic is nebulous at best. In Unsounded the basics are clear, and more advanced uses seem more akin to programming. Brandon Sanderson is still getting his dick sucked for a similarly out of left field system of magic.
As for the quips, that's your right. I don't think this particular one is the best example. Duane is far more eloquent, and Darkest recently made a good insult against the wheelchair-bound Crescian. But I don't know how many comics you read, but the dialogue in Unsounded is definitely well above average in terms of quality. It's snappy, and every character has a clear voice.
I'm too lazy to read more than like half this post but I'm not going to let you get away with nitpicking Unsounded's use of magic and then give fricking Harry Potter and Starwars as counterexamples. Harry Potter's worldbuilding is at best an excuse and at worst is wizards didn't have bathrooms until the 1700s because they just shat where they stood and teleport the poop away. That's canon in case you thought I was joking.
Anon you might be moronic.
>Maybe I'm just dummy dumb and should read slower.
Correct
>Ain't no one ever calls me Sette the way ya call me Mikaila.
Duane better have a line even better than picrel for her when this is all over
Despite how negligent and careless Duane has been lately, these two are good for each other.
That whole scene is full of bangers
true
this one was even better with the callback last chapter
"It's some kind of unsounded noise!"
Best title drop ever.
The actual TITLE DROP of Unsounded is a thing of beauty on multiple levels.
>forced to go to a prostitutehouse
>reads the Bible to them
I love Duane.
The flashback one is pretty good too.
That's decent and all, but "THE Title Drop" is the moment when a work of fiction has a character say (or show) the title.
And with Unsounded it happened when Duane found himself in a prostitutehouse and went "You girls have been ordered to do anything I want? Okay. Lemme get out my Bible, there's some passages I really want to read to people."
The casual villian tittle drop was better
That WAS pretty damn awesome.
Cope is legit one of the finest comic writers the West has ever produced. Holy frick I want more TPBs.
>"You spend a lifetime building a thing: a town, a pymaric, a child. Something that will leap from your cauldron of consciousness before the khert drinks it down. You CHASE that cause. ALWAYS. Even if it vanishes."
In the middle of the best fight in the comic, too.
>Such https://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch16/ch16_101.html we are
I mean title drops are one thing but I never expected this.
Cmon man, just had to post a cute pantoffel+toma reunion page after this ;(
I liked the lie one. Living in your best world. It's memorable
Beautifully brutal.
the price was too high
I REFUSE to believe Pantoffel is dead. It simply is NOT TRUE
Fricking brutal.
Panel 6 is giving me serious Drakengard vibes. I'm surprised I didn't make the connection earlier.
%3D
Dude needs a fricking hug
>Ashley promised us two deaths
>Bloedlus
>Bell
Pantoffel's still alive for now
Anon, it was two deaths within the next two pages. Pantoffel has been dead for four pages now. It's time to let sleeping dogs lie.
My money was on Bell and Bloedlus last thread purely because I wanted it to be them, but I didn’t ACTUALLY think it would be them!
Well, I guess I didn't count Bell's hound as one of the possible deaths today.
I feel like that was the most obvious option and it was the other that was a tossup. Bloedlus was a major threat and he had it coming after what he did to poor Pant. Even if Ashley hadn't killed Bell alongside him, killing Bloedlus would go a long way to defanging Bell so the rest of the characters would be able to clean up. Who did you think was going to die instead?
I wanted it to be them too, but I wasn't confident that we would get them both dying together. And with Bell's coup so thought destroyed too. I wonder if what friendly coffee did was meant to be a delicate parallel to the Etalarche curse, given how much Bell was excited for it and wanted to use it. A fitting end to him.
It's definitely obvious in hindsight, but before tonight I wasn't really even considering Bloedlus as enough of a "character" to be considered in the number.
It would feel cheap to reveal that Pant's still alive, Toma needs a big loss this chapter and it's Pant that the readers are more attached to. He'll get to retire and be a dad after this.
She may still be alive. But if she is, and that’s a big if, it’s not for much longer.
It may be long enough for Toma to tell her she’s a good girl and to say goodbye. And thank her for everything.
FRICK
RIP best girl
Frick you Bell.
Frick you.
I hope braindeath didn't happen until after he got to hear dingdong.
Ironic that Bell wanted to implement a Dammakhert (Etalarche Curse included), yet, in the end he tarnished his own legacy much as the Curse would've done.
Given that Jivi and Sette have figured out how strong positive emotions are in this situation, I wonder if they'll try to get Toma to grieve by remembering happy memories. Should summon enough squishes to fight off the eels.
>Bell wanted to implement a Dammakhert
What?
Yeah, it wasn't really explicit in-comic, but he definitely shows some admiration towards the Aldish system.
He mentioned something like that while talking to Quigley, where Quigley demonstrated that his own self loathing was more powerful than the Curse.
It was a few pages earlier, don't blame anyone for forgetting though, this has been a particularly multifaceted shitstorm.
go hug your dogs Cinemaphilemrades
>THREE pages today, keep clicking forward. I’ll be skipping next week in order to make up for it. Updates resume July 10th! Have a lovely Fireworks and Barbecue Day next week, fellow Yanks. Everyone else stay sexy!
Cannot believe the cup was plot relevant
While I was reading it I was absolutely sure one of the deaths was going to be Friendly Coffee, and that he was going to die revealing just how insane and evil Bell was, completely discrediting the man, while Flann saved Toma by killing Bloedlus.
So did the friendly coffee do it because it was sentient or because it was influenced by the ghosts of Bell’s now less living/loyal subordinates?
Or because it was picking up Bell’s desire to grandstand.
I think it was just rule of cool.We all loved FCC
Friendly Coffee saw Bell call Elka ugly and was still pissed off about it 500+ pages later and out for revenge. Also it's kind of hard to do nothing when you're a creature who only has memories of happiness and only wants to be around happy memories, and Bell is over here making everyone very unhappy.
Because it's a friendly agent of chaos.
I'm thinking that the khert and/or the memories trapped in it have their own ideas that are probably not the same as Tittybirds. We saw the squishes basically lead Sette to cut free some babies there, we've seen some of the pain babies begging Sette for help here, we see some ghosts deliberately being helpful instead of revelling in the destruction. It's like they're sick of being forever bad memories and want to be freed or have another shot.
I think friendly coffee is supposed to be happy memories, there's a squish inside that coffee mug.
Probably.
Because Bell was being very unfriendly.
Oh SHIT, is that Hetr!?
It's exactly his 'stache & hairline
yeh
Who's the guy on the left supposed to be??
The rest are Hetr's lackey, Karl, Hetr &Keon, but I don't recall that half-dead dude?
he's the burnt soldier from litriya that told bell about the attack
Damn, that's a nice call-back. I reckon it did make quite the impact on him considering it fed his grievances.
Wash your glove.
For all his insanity, Bell honestly was a good soldier and military leader, someone his people could love, relate to, and feel looked out for them. It's not really surprising that they so many followed a coup. Had friendly coffee not turned on that microphone he would have had a very different legacy.
I don't expect Unsounded to follow it long enough for us to find out before we go to Alderode, but I'm very curious what will become of this coup. Their would-be leader is not just gone, but smeared into the ground. Will they decide to toe the line and submit to a ruler whose policies they hate and don't understand? Or try to find someone as charismatic and influential to prop up? Will the power hungry of his coup like Karl be able to sit back down without fighting about it? And what about the rest of the nobility? We saw just how seriously many of them were unhappy with the queen, that doesn't just go away. Nor does the head priestess' superstitions regarding this year's snacrifice being dead.
Things can definitely start to smooth over for the queen from here on out, but they could just as easily remain rocky. Maybe after everything is said and done, prompting Toma to Bell's place would be the best the queen could hope for, he's fiercely loyal to her, and he inspires much of the same loyalty Bell did in his fellow soldiers, while being able to root out any insurrectionists. It might also enable him to stay closer to home with Chea and try his hand at being a father.
Bell's reputation could have another more tragic turn if everyone finds out the snake that was driving him mad was a guest of the Queen's
Definitely possible, but I think she'll escape that knowledge becoming public, at least for now. Instead they have the queen consorting with black tongues to be aghast over.
Pretty smug for someone whose last word was "fart"
Wait wait, who activated the mic? Friendly coffee or pain baby?
... Did coffee just get plot relevant?
Did the blue Inak lose an arm there, or was he always missing one?
Either way, good for him for being the one to kill Bell and the one to deliver the snappy one-liner.
He's had one stump since we first saw him.
Always missing it. There's a few pages earlier on that you can see, but it's largely deemphasized in the poses.
>snappy one-liner.
Somehow it's more rewarding after all this than it is in the average MCU film.
The FC plot twist too. Ashley let the comic relief sidekick help save the day, and it still fits beautifully.
Do you think Bell noticed his mic was on broadcasting his bullshit to everyone? Did he just not notice, too wrapped up in his gloating and rapture? Or did he not care, because no matter what Sonorie was dead and he was in charge now?
He seem pretty self-absorbed before the bisecting so I doubt it, dude was too hopped up on rape snake venom to notice.
Dicks out for Pantoffel, the MVP of this comic. Sleep well, good pupper.
wouldnt that shit puncture your trachea like yeesh
Interesting to think that, while not as numerous or aggressive, benevolent ghosts can be as dangerous to the bad guys as the malevolent ghosts are to the good guys. Ssael bless, little coffee. Rest in peace, Pant.
I would think that both types of ghosts could be just as dangerous to either side, and it's more about the victim's emotional state being incongruous with the ghost's, or making others feel an emotion that the ghost doesn't like.
Two and a half pages of chaos, then the shield cuts it off and we're left in the quiet calm with a dead dog.
Fricking glorius.
how did that lizard get so good at riding saddle hounds?
srsly, he was Tokyo drifting while chucking spears
>Tokyo drifting
Now I want to see a saddlehound throwing out blue sparks. Why can't I glamour my dog IRL??
He's got to have a dick like a summer sausage. What a chad.
I kind of hope he gets to meet Sonorie, and she thanks him. Would be a very fitting Good End for all the trouble stirred up against the Inaks, by both Bell and with the help of Prakhuta.
I hope he gets to meet Sonorie, and he shanks her.
I want Sonorie to thank Duane for taking part in saving her/ cresce.
It would be hillarious to see him having an existensial crisis/ being restrained and silenced by the other characters as the woman he considers to be the most evil person in the world thanking him for saving the nation he sees as a den of sin.
They are sure to have tea together. A tea party a decade in the making.
would a queen really be bothered to tank a service droid?
Sure, if she's sufficiently impressed
"thanks, i really wish you hadn't killed my sister"
Hey, I asked you a question
Flann isn't Duane so the rule of cool took effect and he was able to ride with preternatural skill. He will never be able to replicate the level of finesse he showed with saddlehounds for the rest of his life, even if given lessons.
I do kind of love that at the very end of it all Bell just went completely stark-raving mad. Like, "What the hell" from the Black Tongue guy was exactly my reaction as well. He was utterly nutty at the end. I've noticed Cope has a talent for depicting pants-shitting insanity.
That’s not a Black Tongue— that’s the mayor!
Which makes sense, his reaction is probably more relevant than a random black tongue’s.
Huh, I thought that was the one fat Crescian Black Tongue that was on the float with Ruck. Shows what I know. I need to reread the chapter.
You’re thinking of Maur. The big difference is Maur wears a hat, the mayor puts his shiny bald pate on display.
Seeing Sette and Jivi completely trust eachother in these miserable circumstances is helping with the pain. They don't even need to talk.
Yeah, and God only knows Duane will be absolutely useless at being her confidant once this is all said and done, it's good that she's making a friend, she really needs it.
You see that face?
That is the happy face of a coffee who knows he’s about to be the most plot-relevant cursed ghost-possessed coffee in history.
I read it as friendly coffee being happy Toma socked Bell in the face, he's even looking across to the next panel at the result.
I assume Jivi's gonna walk up and remind Toma that his daughter may still be alive next page.
That is if Quigs doesn't continue to ruin everything.
>That is if Quigs doesn't continue to ruin everything.
Quigs will continue to ruin everything confirmed.
>That is if Quigs doesn't continue to ruin everything
wheredoyouthinkweare.png
I aint reading this Jack-like no more. The shit lately with characters dying but not really because they're ghost eel hallucinations and the comic needed an excuse to depict more egregious gore and horror in fewer pages seals it. Maybe the pain elementals could be depicted as something other than dead babies? Hope she works through whatever her deal is but I'm outta here.
>Maybe the pain elementals could be depicted as something other than dead babies?
You mean like characters dying and egregious body horror?
Is he trying to say there hasn't been body horror before?
Genuinely at a loss to what he even means.
I think he's either saying he can't tell the difference between when the characters die for real or when the ghosts show the characters their worst fears and this whole section doesn't matter because he thinks it's a dream sequence, or that he's upset that Pant died and needs a break.
I'll be honest, his take is awful but the page with Pant dutifully crawling to her death to help Toma while missing her two back paws made me sick to my stomach. I don't think any other pages have come close to affecting me the same. But these pages here are pretty damn unobjectionable, so I'm not sure what the issue is. He doesn't like creepy babies?
>I think he's either saying he can't tell the difference between when the characters die for real or when the ghosts show the characters their worst fears
That's kinda the point, innit?
Isn't everything else he complained about also the point? But really, it wasn't that hard to tell what was real and what was fake.
Sounds like a you problem anon
I can't even figure out what your complaint is.
He thinks there’s too much gore and… squinting here, but he doesn’t like characters appearing to die but not really (Elka, Chea).
Probably a speedreader who doesn’t get why that stuff is relevant and not just shits and giggles from the author.
It's only been like this for one chapter. And said chapter is the climax of the story so far.
Bait.
>Maybe the pain elementals could be depicted as something other than dead babies?
Nope, an unstoppable infant or toddler with murderous power is fricking frightening since they are beings of pure id and cannot be reasoned with, and I've read only one work with that concept. Ash made the concept even more terrifying with the eternal pain aspect.
There was a written version of It's Alive?
No, I read Beloved. The parts that stuck with me most was the ghost parts, both before and after it comes back. The toddler using doing her best to describe hell/purgatory was fricked up.
Interesting. Haven't looked at them in this way.
I though it was Brardbury's The Smallest Assassin.
Man. What is with all these homicidal babies media?
I look at it from a different angle, they're babies because they're not large enough to be complete, and because really they're very vulnerable when you get down to it. They might be powerful and capable of doing great harm, but without someone to be their shield and sword, they're nothing. And all they want to do is escape their pain, or make others understand it. In a way they're quite helpless. It's pretty great how much symbolism Ashley managed to pack into that decision to depict them as babies.
>Hope she works through whatever her deal is but I'm outta here
I have to imagine that this has been "her deal" longer than you've been alive.
Also, reading more about the visceral, violent horror of mechanized warfare in WWII, I'm becoming of the opinion it should be more common, not less, in depictions. How distorted a picture do people have of a war and soldiers in that war when they're unaware of them being shelled in dugouts, slipping and sliding into slurry of pulped human flesh and waste, assaulted by hordes of maggots all while under the constant threat of explosive death? Gore has an affect on the human mind, and the natural inclination to excise it from depictions of violence unfortunately helps permit the exact kind of distortion of reality that people afraid of its depiction are trying to avoid.
This, but also she's an edgy bug fricking sadist who likes depictions of gore and torture in guro doujinshi.
Yes, that too. Sorry, should've made that clear.
I need Ashley to draw e-girl Duane being cool.
Duane can never be too cool.
>e-girl Duane being cool
but anon, he is already at room temperature
Petition for Ash to draw fanart of a chibi Duane in a fridge at a morgue.
I think there are some really confused anons who have been throwing the "gore" word around a lot this week.
Like on wednesday I said "wait until Toma has to put Pant down" in terms of the sadness of it, and someone replied about how "we don't need to see dead dog gore" which wasn't even the point. Cope knows what she's doing, and gore is never "the point". That anon was also convinced there'd be no scene of Toma saying goodbye to his dog, so I'm starting to wonder if he really was
and he just doesn't have a solid grasp on how stories work.
TF does "Jack-like" even mean.
>TF does "Jack-like" even mean.
Think he might be referring to the furry gore webcomic?
>the furry gore webcomic
I still don't know what that is. I don't read any furry gore comics. If out-of-here-anon does, maybe it explains some things...
There's no way he isn't. They're obviously different in a lot of ways, but they're both morbid in some similar ways.
>TF does "Jack-like" even mean
I was wondering that myself.
i think they used a '-' when they should have used a ';'
one of the things that legitimately made the original LOGH great was its unflinching depiction of the horrific violence of warfare
It's cool but honestly what the frick am I looking at? Is this proto Bastion and shota Duane or something completely unrelated?
https://casualvillain.com/gallery/eastwing.html
I could be way off but I remember it being another story she conceptualized long ago about twins and undead exploring a haunted mansion. I'm not sure how far into completion it got, if it was only scripted, or what. But I don't think most of it is related to Unsounded. It's possible one or two characters will make their way in in some form, but none of the ones we know currently are from it I don't think. I believe her DeviantArt might also have a little bit about it, but you'd have to ask Ashley to tell you more about it than this.
That's kinda goofy in a Tim Burton/spooky dooky way. Thanks for the info.
No problem. If you stick around, the threads are pretty good and worth checking out. But be careful while you're catching up, we're coming towards the climax of the first book so there's bound to be a lot of major spoilers about.
Lmao, thank you for the considerate warning, but I am a veteran reader and very much caught up on this nightmare. I just don't visit these threads often and I'm not familiar with Ashley's early work
I always assumed people like this would've gotten turned off at the beginning with the child rape and gore
Yeah, that was specifically the point of that scene, even. Make sure that only the people who could stomach the bad stuff stuck around.
Oh, that's a good one.
??? Bells dead there are dead bodies all around to amplify pain elementals to be real. What are you talking about?
lol imagine getting this far in the comic and these pages are what turns you off
This man is such a homosexual his balls have negative mass. He has to tie weights to them to keep them from floating up and slipping out of his pants.
I think chapter 2 or 3 featured a dying girl with her bowels turned inside out.
Chapter two, Cara.
>thought Bell was essentially mind whammied into thinking Rukh was the Gods/a rep from them
>nope he was aware the whole time and just a fricking moron
lol
I vaguely remember "Friendly Coffee" being a thing. When was her first appearance?
Khert fire back in Mulimar I think it was?
The aftermath of the chase sequence in Ethelmilk, because of the khert fire Sette started. Elka was speaking to Hetr as it floated around them. I don't think it's made any other appearances since until this khert fire.
>Her
Is that canon?
>Elka was speaking to Hetr as it floated around them
Speaking of Hetr, just noticed who's hanging out with the Friendly Coffee in that second panel.
Chapter 6 page 2, after the khert fire Sette caused in chapter 4.
Bell's a tad nuts I think
Bells death is a bit anticlicatic, I expected more of a fight, this is practically just an accident.
>Bells death is a bit anticlicatic, I expected more of a fight, this is practically just an accident.
I'd definitely feel different if this was Prakuta or Bastion, but Bell deserves it.
Hell, I actually kind of wish it was more pathetic.
I'm just glad I saw his freaky sex shit getting revealed to everyone came true. Just completely undermining his entire legitimacy.
No. It's perfect. Bell would think that even if he doesn't win he deserves some epic sendoff.
He deserves his steed getting baited into a giant mousetrap and the SNAP.
>MY SOUL IS NOT A FART-
The insurrectionists got the fate they deserved, long live Queen Sonorie
>long live Queen Sonorie
Well... she's easily the least shit in the conga-line of shitty leaders this book has introduced us to.
>long live Queen Sonorie
Flann deliberately lured the dog after him. It wasn’t an accident. It was Inak ingenuity and cleverness.
I'm so glad Flann didn't die. It's nice to see a cool lizard get a win for once
Jivi/Sette OTP
(I know it won't happen, I don't care)
Starfish is the true last boss, right?
These panels are busy as frick and the resolution is too goddamned small to see what's fricking happening.
That was a fitting end to Bell
feminists are senet beasts?
rion "i wanna split my hands in half and see what happens" keon somehow remaining the most reasonable person in bell's whole cadre
Keon's a mad scientist that wants to see how things work. He's a different flavor than Hetr and Bell.
Keon did actually consider Toma's logic that he should end their fight instead of putting the kids in danger at tne shrine, for example. (though we didn't get to see if he'd actually flee, Quigs threw him out the building)
> Honestly, compared to another lady we’ll meet next chapter who likes to remove the junk from captives, she’s a much kinder and gentler mistress.
So you say Elarosny is a dick?
Not her, it’s gonna be Jivi’s Mom.
Jivi's mom
Mommy Flask...
Don't think you would want to address her as anything but Captain Flask if you want to keep your junk.
Oh yeah, I forget to ask last time, what even is that yellow cord that Bell was suddenly holding in his mouth?
Pretty obvious from these new pages that it's the 'microphone' he uses.
>NIN's "Closer" intensifies.
So if Bell had succeeded in his coup, could he have eventually sold the idea that efheby bite marks are based and tradpilled to his new Cresce?
No, efheby are predators of humans.
Sonorie said she'd see a time when twins are not sacrificed at all because cultural things change. Maybe Bell could progresss towards making efheby bites a cool thing instead of ending human sacrifice, just saiyan.
Sonorie is forward thinking, she's taking a look at the changes that have been made throughout history to sanitize the process and limit the deaths and extrapolating from there. Bell is not. Bell has an addiction problem and borderline cultist take on the Gefendur religion, sponsor carrying out many practices the religion has since moved on from and that seems unsavory to an on-looker.
Depends on what you mean. Most amount of gore? Hardest to look at? Most heart wrenching? Most unpalatable for a typical reader?
I genuinely felt like the page with Pantoffel dragging herself over to Toma was the hardest to look at for me, but it's far from the goriest or most disturbing for a lot of people. It was just the one that was the most relatable experience to me. After that, the hardest to look at was probably the aftermath with Chea. But things like Elka ghost body horror, other comparatively gory scenes, or sexual abuse we saw early on would also be common answers.
No, see
. Most people know efheby are bad news.
So now that the dust has settled over General Bell, why did Ruck do it?
Tasty human novelty.
fricking around
though, maybe also as a way to bring back old god worship? In a sense, anyway. Ruck was upset they weren't bleeding dozens of people out in the street anymore
Ruck probably loved that Bell wanted to return more to the old ways, think about what we saw him arguing about with the queen. Ruck would be delighted if the Gefendur took a more fundamentalist turn and went back to violent twin sacrifices. Ruck is a predator, and he understands predators. Bell is too. Even if he cares about the queen in his own weird, dangerous way he's still got to be enthralled by the promise of Bell's coup. And we know through word of God that human memories are addicting to efheby in the same way that efheby venom can be addicting to men.
Plus, much like Sessine, Ruck enjoys powerful men who are going to shake the world up. Bell had the potential and drive to be that. So why not see where things go, and maybe even promise a little help?
Bell, in turn, probably ate up everything Ruck would say about the good ol' days and clearly worshipped him as you said. It was probably all very enthralling for Ruck.
What's the most gruesome page Ashley's ever drawn?
What is this gay furgay shit?
A crazy fundamentalist went insane and got addicted to giant lamia snusnu complete with mind altering bites, thinking he was talking to his God. Some haunted coffee flipped the switch on his mic to let the world know he's a snake fricking loon. Shortly after which a member of a slave race finished him off.
It's called Unsounded, it's really good and it's a total trip. Just a heads up though, it's not a light or casual read after the first few chapters. Shit gets very dense and very dark.
https://unsoundedupdates.tumblr.com/about
i bet money ruck is looking for duane
its about his nape time and he's disabled currently
Feels like it would be fitting for Duane to show up and eat Bell. Bell had his whole thing about carrying the spirits of people he respected through their blood, it would be funny for him to live on in some aldish abomination
So if I get this right from the other pages quigs was mad at his wife for having a kid because as a plat he'd be doomed to a short life of probably being a child soldier and generally having a shit hand dealt in a shit world?
That, and also the fact that his wife originally felt the same way as him and he thought they were on the same page regarding the issue.
with a little bit of jealousy mixed in there because he was genuinely happy with just the two of them together
Yep, in two of the short stories we get more info on Quigley and Vienne. They both were rebels that didn't want to propagate the state's exploitation of the Plats. They agreed not to have kids but Vienne eventually changed her mind, though she still didn't want Matty to learn pymary since that was what Plats were always used for. So Quigley is double mad that Vienne broke her word and they were no longer just them since he didn't want kids anyway.
remember what we lost
An unrelenting pain overtakes me