do you mind mayhaps explaining some of the symbolism in your new comic? i think its really interesting and beautiful but im having a bit of a hard time understanding it (autism momence) so i was wondering if you could talk abt it!!
Hey! Sure!
I'll do it under cut for those who want to have their own interpretations/don't want to be "spoiled"
As I personally thought of it, unicorn as a mythical creature is all about judgement. The whole like, "will only appear for pure good young maidens" of course (which I guess it's up to the unicorn and the people sending the maiden to judge who is good and pure). But there are also stories about unicorns fleeing or attacking men, being very dangerous.
So to put it bluntly, the unicorn is sort of a characterisation of people, of ~society~ and its view on gender. It comes with a harsh judgement that is hard enough to live up to even when you try (like the girl in the very beginning who got killed, who tried but was judged to not be pure enough, not good enough, not woman enough, whatever it was). The main character knows they will fail the first judgement of womanhood, but still tries to fight within the boundries of the classical roles that are presented (the masks represent that these are Roles you can take on, like archetypes in a play). They try to fight as a hunting man/hero, and realise that since the role wasn't made for them (the sword is too heavy and the mask obscure their sight) it will kill them.
So instead, they decide to step outside of the options, to fight as themselves and take what they find useful from the roles they tried, to use in the future! Letting the unicorn live, because it's not an evil creature, it has been taught to interact with these roles. But now when the main character has taken on a role of their own making, the unicorn is harmless to them, because this is not a role it knows how to judge.
