Unity
is a collection of hard science fiction webcomics in a shared setting, written and drawn by fluffy as part of Busybee Comics.
The stories center around a generation ship populated by sapient descendants of a variety of terrestrial animals. The first story, Ascent, is a noir mystery about the circumstances of Juni Melrose losing its memory and some of the consequences of this; later stories vary in tone and themes.
Tropes include:
- Animal Is the New Man: The webcomic takes place on a massive Generation Ship where the humans who originally crewed it seem to have gone extinct while the fauna evolved sapience in various ways. The main character is distantly descended from the platypus.
- Arc Words
- "It means they like you"
- In the Alt Text: "Nobody notices Agent Harris until it's too late"
- "The square root of love is happiness"
- Brain Uploading: Juni, whose neural patterns were uploaded for a simulation which eventually turned into an AI.
- Conlang: Several examples, including different forms of Hiero◊ throughout history, retroactive obscured scripts for real-life human languages, and general examples of translation difficulties throughout. The author seems to have a bit of a problem with this.
- Formerly Sapient Species: For all the advanced animal descendants around, there's no sign of humans until the "plains apes" many use as livestock appear.
- Furries Are Easier to Draw: Humans do appear later on in flashbacks and hallucinations, though.
- Identity Amnesia: At the beginning of "Ascent", Officer Juni Melrose remembers quite a lot of its technical knowledge ... but not its name or how it ended up in the hospital room it woke in.
- I'm a Humanitarian: As eventually discovered in the "Meat" arc.
- My Hero, Zero: The eventual name of a semi-artificial consciousness that seems to be running things.
- Ragnarök Proofing: Unity has been underway for a long time. It's only falling apart after over 21 million years.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Sasha wears a ribbon on one of her antennae to emphasize her female gender identity.
- Truly Single Parent: Hira, not to mention most future Melroses (although not Ivo).
- The Unintelligible: Kandra Corentin, who speaks entirely in honks (although the other characters try their best to understand him anyway); lampshaded (and called out in the title) in this strip.
- Universal Universe Time: Averted; all timekeeping is based on local intervals (even when broadcasting to the rest of the universe).
- Which Me?: Zero, be it in discussing the past with Tamu or communicating with its other selves.
- You Wake Up in a Room: Ascent, the first story, starts with the protagonist waking up in an unfamiliar room with no memories.
- Zero-G Spot: Sam and Juni, sitting in an observation pod...
