Introduction: Where do I even begin?
Well... Aealacreatrananda (Also known as Jennifer Diane Reitz) is one of the most interesting webcomic artists i've ever heard about her. I'd describe her as a living personification of both the 20th and 21st centuries, but that would be generous. But i'm getting head of myself: this page is about her work.
Personally her work is an enormous inspiration to me. Putting her in the links page wasn't enough. So have this page.
What's so special about them?
Well you see, it's all about the worldbuilding. Oh god, the worldbuilding.
Back when it came out nobody gave a crap about that kind of stuff, but ever since the mid-2010s there's been a rise in enthusiasm over versmilitude in fictional settings. (And around the same time came a demand for more queer representation [no seriously, it has canonically trans characters despite coming out in September of 2000!])
Despite this nobody knows anything about Reitz's webcomics. There are no forums, subreddits, accounts, absolutely nothing. You can count the number of fanart they have on Tumblr and Deviantart on one hand. Very few people are talking about it.
Which to be honest is really - freakin' - sad.
The first comic is Unicorn Jelly, a charming little story about the adventures of a slime and a witch that spirals into a quest to save the universe.
And what about this universe? Well, it's weird - but it makes sense. So many things about this universe are fundamentally different to what we're used to. What's different isn't just the people, animals and geography, It has its own periodic table, for god's sake.
Everything about this universe is so alien I can say with absolute confidence that there are no other settings in fiction that deserves the title of an "alternate universe" more than the world of Unicorn Jelly.
Despite this, it keeps this spirit of whimsy so it never devolves into a dry lecture. Everything is different, alien, exotic and weird, and yet it remains grounded and strangely familiar with a cozy JRPG aesthetic.
The universe of Unicorn Jelly doesn't have round planets, it has triangles arranged in a serpienski gasket. It's called Tryslmaistan. Ours is called Mundis. These triangles are called WorldPlates and everything on them, from the rocks and the sand to the plants and animals, are made of crystals. The crystals are made of tratons, which unlike atoms aren't made up of protons, neutrons and electrons, they're made of force planes, which - okay, i'm getting sidetracked.
Humans came to this universe via the Multiversal Rain, which scooped up bits of our Earth in spheres and whapped it all over Tryslmaistan. Even though these guys came from all over the world (Their script contains characters from English, Japanese, Israeli and Finnish), they got together and founded their own civilization on the WorldPlate of Myrmil.
While trying to learn more about their universe, they set off the Trato-Yauronic Device - which knocked the WorldPlate out of the sky.
