Shout Out / Unsounded

• In the author's own words, "Unsounded is full of references to Melville’s life and work, both subtle and thematic, and blatant. One recent blatant reference is our pig friend: stuck full of spears with a corpse hanging off him by a rope. Very White Whale. If he hadn’t struck Lemuel, Roger’s entourage would have slaughtered him since he saw them. If that wasn’t the fickle hand of God, leading Danila to his death one moment and sparing Lemuel’s life the next, I don’t know what is. A more brick-in-the-face allusion [Chapter 14] is Captain Claggart, who is named after a character from Billy Budd (and who acts a bit like him)."
  • When asked why she gave the comic the title she did Ashley quoted its use in Moby-Dick before explaining;
    Something unsounded hasn't been plumbed yet. You don't know how deep it is or what's at the bottom. It's an unknown - like Death, like the limits of a man, like God, like eternity.
  • The tagline for the seventeenth chapter is "And All the Time, That Smiling Sky", a Moby-Dick quote from the sentence "And all the time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea!"
• Quigley Down Under: Mathis Quigley's family name is taken from the film, as confirmed by this author post.
• Lemuel Adelier takes his given name from Gulliver's Travels, as confirmed by the author here.
• When voyaging in the Khert^note A sort of Astral Plane you really wouldn't want to fly on and looking for a way out, Sette indignantly and emphatically states I aint dead!
• Murkoph compares himself to Sleeping Beauty after Sette frees him from where he was imprisoned in the khert.
  Well me darlin' benefactor, ya kissed the sleepin' beauty...and got 'im all fluttery for a reciprocal tonguin'.
• Chapter 13's subtitle: "For Whom Do I Hope For Help, O Heavens, If Cruel Are Those Who Love Me?" is a Shout-Out to La Susanna.
• Captain Claggert, Duane's superior in the military back when he was younger, is oddly enough a dead-ringer for Mike Stoklasa from RedLetterMedia. The wright under his command also happens to look a fair amount like Rich Evans (and is even named Evans) from the same channel. There was also concept art for a third character that looked like Jay, but the author felt that he couldn't be included without the reference becoming too bloated for the story.
• Billy Budd: Captain Claggart is named for a character from Billy Budd.
• To Legacy of Kain:
  Ilganyag: The Lady remembers much that others have forgotten.
• Ariel (Plath): The scene with Ana and Cutter on the riverbank under the moonlight was confirmed by Ashley to have been crafted with Plath's "Edge" in mind.
• Chapter 16's title, "Passionate Intensity", is a reference to The Second Coming.
• Duane Adelier is named for and physically resembles Vagrant Story's Commander Duane, having started out as a character when the author role-played as Commander Duane with friends and then built him a backstory that got further and further from the Vagrant Story character.