The Stand Still, Stay Silent Fan-Forum
Worlds and Stories => SSSS & ARTD Board => Topic started by: LilG on April 27, 2021, 06:59:50 PM
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Sooooo...
Minna has decided to obliterate all “City of Hunger” content she has ever posted. If you look up “City of Hunger” in your browser, the site (https://www.hummingfluff.com/) that would have formerly contained all the sci-fi goodness we’ve come to appreciate has been replaced by a single site which does nothing but promote her cursed bunny comic...
THANKFULLY...
The Wayback Machine (https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.hummingfluff.com/) has most of her devlog pages backed up on there, through which one can still scroll. The only exception is page 27 (https://web.archive.org/web/2/http://www.hummingfluff.com/?id=devlog&postin=27), which unfortunately didn’t get archived, so whatever images were on that page we may only find through uploads on sites like Pinterest.
ALSO, the page which had the game prototype (https://web.archive.org/web/20180415085602/http://www.hummingfluff.com/?id=devlog&postin=18) is archived with a link to the prototype which still works (https://www.dropbox.com/s/yy5osgev2rpwe91/CityOfHunger%20prototype.zip?dl=0)!
DOUBLE ALSO, in case Minna decides to purge her Dropbox, I have saved the game in my Drive (https://drive.google.com/file/d/10JLbrzIetMSuFVr1GdiIJwQR8WbyaKyo/view?usp=drivesdk) and I don’t plan on removing it from there *any time soon.
*ever
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How sad to throw all that work away. :(
Thank you for saving it, LilG!
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Thank you for these links!
It was nice seeing this game's creation in real time, even though we never got to see what the actual story was about and we'll never be able to enjoy it :( Let's treasure what we still have of it!
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Thanks for posting that, LilG! Sevseres already had comented it elsewhere, so I'm not surprised, just sad because the game art was great! Couldn't she just create a new page and leave the old ones? Well, I don't want to go analyzing her motivations. It's good that we can still have access to those beautiful creations, and one of these days I may try that prototype just out of curiosity...
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Thanks for saving these! And we can still write fanfic and create art for this brilliant work. Where should we do that, please?
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This board will probably suffice for that for the moment, Roisin.
Oh, there was one particular background that I liked and kind of wanted to do fanart of from one of her streams that never made it onto the blog postings. All I remember about it was that it was mint green and had a deep blue body of water. I probably won't see that again :P Headed off to recreate it with only my imagination now.
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GOOD NEWS!
Kat_o_Nine_Tails over on the SSSS Discord has saved every piece of CoH artwork posted by Minna on her devlogs and Twitter (including those that were on page 27, so when I say everything I mean EVERYTHING) and compiled them into a Drive which you can access here (https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HBfnoV4z49_JFg5yq5OUsse06Rk_cVH1?usp=sharing).
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Whooooooa. There aren't even links to SSSS and aRTD on this site. I would expect at least that from an artist's brand website, which I've always assumed hummingfluff dot com was (more or less).
this might be a good sandbox for some SPACE SCIENCE
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I seem to remember that in one of the first streams after LP came out she was considering to reveal her planned CoH story in some format. I guess that plan is out now.
I am saddened anew.
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Whooooooa. There aren't even links to SSSS and aRTD on this site. I would expect at least that from an artist's brand website, which I've always assumed hummingfluff dot com was (more or less).
this might be a good sandbox for some SPACE SCIENCE
The original CoH pages didn't have links to them either, if the Wayback Machine is any indication. I think the hummingfluff site was exclusively for her journey through putting together the CoH game, separate from the comics. I could swear that there were links to the comics but nothing I'm finding via the Wayback Machine indicates that is true. My mind playing tricks on me, no doubt.
I wouldn't take that lack of linkage to mean much, since there weren't ever links to the comics on that site. And it looks like she's using it now to promote her new stuff exclusively.
Well. Good for her, I suppose. I'm not signing up for her newsletter so unless she chooses to announce her new works on the SSSS page, I'll be missing out on that. Oh. Darn.
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I'm kicking myself as I write this for making a controversy out of something that so far isn't, but I cannot not do it. :'D It'd feel profoundly unethical from my part to not raise the question after seeing this thread.
One of the biggest heartbreaks you can feel as an author is to see your creation taken from you. To see it taken from context and redistributed, to see it even used by strangers as means to make money, to be unable to let it disappear. The loss of control over something you personally built and cherished and cultivated for so long before it meant anything to anyone else on earth is horrible. Wanting to make something disappear does not mean you stopped caring about what happens to it.
The act of salvaging and sharing this content to let the people following the development get their proper closure is an impressive display of compassion, don't get me wrong. But it's also something worth reflecting on. How much sharing, for how long is appropriate, if any? It'd be good to get Minna's permission; trying to get permission carries the inherent risk of attracting her attention to it and if irritated enough, reporting it to take the backup down.
This is a messy hard question without a correct answer. There was a break of trust between author-audience in how other projects of her were handled, there was a break in CoH where people following it where suddenly left out in the cold. Yeah, once we got the quiet notice the development was dropped one might have suspected content being taken down was on the table, but it's not correct to rely on this in lieu of a clear, transparent heads-up to get the message across. Those invested in the project expected it to remain online until further notice, they've grown to trust her and part of that trust manifested as not expecting she'd take anything down without warning.
So, the question is against all odds you managed to salvage this content, but do you want to knowing the other side of the coin? How to achieve proper closure without taking control from her? Is there a middle ground to be found?
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So, the question is against all odds you managed to salvage this content, but do you want to knowing the other side of the coin? How to achieve proper closure without taking control from her? Is there a middle ground to be found?
Personal feelings about her work aside, I can still find reason to respect this. She doesn't seem to regret the journey of trying to make a game, but we should get a clearer answer on how much she wants her work to stay floating around on the internet.
(In the past, she's been okay with her language tree floating around without due credit, but that's different)
I mean, I'm still thinking of how I can benefit from this archive, and the answer is Not Much? The one map that interested me never made it off stream and the demo is totally silent and very very short. So if she would rather not have any of it around, I'm not sure how much we would lose, though your feelings and everyone else's might differ.
That said, I think being an Artist On The Internet does require you to just. lay down your fear and accept that there will be things floating around outside of your control. Whether it's someone reposting (which you can and should get taken down because copyright) or it staying on someone's blog/phone gallery long after you've disappeared from the web. I didn't know that my old posts got deleted if I left this forum so no trace of my past account exists (except something in an advent calendar thing), but sometimes I still cringe at the fact that there are some very, very early and perhaps what I'd consider crude? drawings still within the SSSS fandom circle on tumblr (it's okay that they're there, I think they were charming somewhat, but if you showed them to me I'd get pretty flustered). That's there pretty permanently, and I do have to accept that there is a chance people will see a pretty messy phase of development if they know where to go. So I guess what I'm saying is that there's a possibility someone would've done this kind of thing anyway, or that it would've stayed floating around through some other means, though obviously sharing it is a different story. That's more of a practical take on it, on how what you did on the internet Stays On The Internet (forever. kind of), not a judgement on the ethics of saving artworks from an internet artist who has clearly deleted something. It would put a lot of this moral anxiety to rest if someone were to ask her permission, and I have a feeling she wouldn't be too harsh about it judging by how she has responded to this kind of thing in the past.
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Songbird, I see your point.
This seems to me like an author printing a beta version of a book and giving them to some people to read. The objective here is to show the work and get attention, so when its final version is effectively published there will be people interested. (Note that AFAIK she didn't ask for comments or contributions, it was all to show her work and create some hype).
After some time our author decides to cancel the project and removes the stand where those copies were before, freely accessible, replacing it with something else.
I see no ethical problem on the ones that already have those copies sharing them privately with some friends, unless the author specifically asks for not doing it.
That's different from setting up a public place to display and share that work, even if that place didn't make any money. In this situation, and considering the author attitude, we can imply that she doesn't want that kind of public display happening anymore, or else she would have left the copies there for anyone interested even knowing the project was cancelled.
By the absence of any statement in the line of "I don't see myself in that work any more, and I don't want it shared in any way" my understanding is that she doesn't care (unless, I presume, someone tries to make money on it, or sets it on a page for everyone to see)
TL,DR: I think there is a grey area here that allow us to admire and show that work in an ethical way, unless stated otherwise (see catbirds post on the topic) and as long as it is done in this small corner by a limited number of people.
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The act of salvaging and sharing this content to let the people following the development get their proper closure is an impressive display of compassion, don't get me wrong. But it's also something worth reflecting on. How much sharing, for how long is appropriate, if any? It'd be good to get Minna's permission; trying to get permission carries the inherent risk of attracting her attention to it and if irritated enough, reporting it to take the backup down.
For starters, I'm not sure that the Wayback Machine (which, as mentioned, has everything CoH except devlog entry 27) is something that even Minna as the copyright holder can easily tell what to do, much less that it's up to us to influence.
Second, the content of http://www.hummingfluff.com/robots.txt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots_exclusion_standard) (right now, at least) is
User-agent: *
Crawl-delay: 10which implicitly permits crawlers, indexers, spiders etc. free access.
Third, I still remember somebody bringing it to Minnas attention (via Disqus) that someone illicitly made commercial use of her language tree (http://sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=196) artwork and she replied that she's not going to do anything about it, so I doubt that Minna would have such feelings and take action.
(And fourth, we could discuss endlessly about what is or isn't supposedly permissible in the "no explicit agreement" default case, if the differences between the limits of "fair use" in U.S. and German copyright are any indication.)
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For starters, I'm not sure that the Wayback Machine (which, as mentioned, has everything CoH except devlog entry 27) is something that even Minna as the copyright holder can easily tell what to do
When the snopes messageboards disappeared (without warning, we'd been told they were being migrated to Discourse) apparently the many years of old posts were also prevented from showing up on the Wayback Machine. All you can get is:
Sorry.
This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine.
So it can be done, though I don't know how it was done.
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(And fourth, we could discuss endlessly about what is or isn't supposedly permissible in the "no explicit agreement" default case, if the differences between the limits of "fair use" in U.S. and German copyright are any indication.)
Art on the internet operates on a little bit of an honour system in that there are probably millions of instances of sharing art that don't explicitly break copyright law/fair use, but are generally considered uhhh not right because it takes exposure away from the artist and might not give due credit, or they just want control over their art like Songbird said, or any other one of like 500 other possible reasons. It's more for smaller artists, though. I'm not sure where Minna's artwork fits in on this, but like I said, especially once an artist gets bigger distribution/archiving outside of their control or knowledge is pretty much guaranteed.
At the end of the day, it comes down to respecting Minna's wishes if we find a way to get her to clarify her stance on archiving CoH-related artwork. Without that, I don't think we can make a totally fair judgement.
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Other than writing fanfic for Minna’s work I have never published stuff online, but have fairly lengthy experience of doing so in anthologies, newspapers and magazines as well as recording some of my work or permitting others to record it, or using or allowing it to be used in radio programmes. I don’t at all mind walking into an Outback pub or a folk festival session and hearing my stuff being sung or recited by people who think of it as traditional and don’t know who made it. Indeed, I feel honoured when that happens. It’s all part of the Folk Process!
And I have happily donated work to the Street Poets project (a group who recite poetry or hand out printed sheets of poetry to passers-by in the streets because they believe that knowledge and appreciation of poetry is a part of our culture that is being lost and is worth preserving). I am willing to do that because I know that the guy who started the project did so out of his meagre salary as a schoolteacher, and that it largely ran on donations. Nobody made money out of other people’s work.
However, I successfully sued the fellow who was selling my work and that of several other poets collected and reprinted as being all his own work. I and several of the others were able to produce copies of where the work had been printed in magazines, anthologies or newspapers, at much earlier dates than his collections. That sort of thing where somebody takes the work without permission and uses it and sells it as their own is just not on. But I do think that writing fanfic for something is okay so long as the author is acknowledged, and that the author has the right to at least express an opinion and object strongly if somebody steals their work and sells it as their own.
But I don’t think that is what the Wayback Machine is doing at all? More like preserving the material for purposes of review or archiving and keeping the material from being lost?
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That said, I think being an Artist On The Internet does require you to just. lay down your fear and accept that there will be things floating around outside of your control.
True. But knowing other people do unethical or dubiously ethical things with people's art online shouldn't make you feel better about doing it yourself. That's like saying "well, when people get into a car they're aware they might get into an accident, so I might as well drive recklessly, they're aware of what they're getting into".
As much as I am vocal about my disapproval of some of Minna's views and actions, I am firmly against using that to justify disregarding any of her rights to her own work. The moral thing to do here is to ask what her preference is in terms of her CoH work being hosted elsewhere for people to enjoy, and then respect her wishes. We can talk till the cows come home about grey areas and "maybe she's okay with it anyway" but all of that is just rationalisation of sketchy behaviour.
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ScOut, I agree with you. Someone should ask her, and the right thing is to respect her option.
However she had all the opportunities to express that option, and did not use it. She could post on hummingfluff, prior or simultaneously to her new message, what is her opinion. Or somewhere else. So far all we know is that she cancelled the project and decided to pull it out of her page. It's reasonable to interpret her attitude as "I don't care".
There's also context. Sharing one pic is different to share the whole archive. And how it's done is also important. Someone posting her work without permission on a Deviantart page would be wrong, no doubt. Having a link inside a Forum that, as she's well aware, used to discuss that work, as a kind of memorial, I don't think is wrong, unless she specifically says so.
We are "inside" a space dedicated to discuss that work, not "in the open" on a place with thousands of visitors per hour. It's not the same.
So my understanding is that, unless she says otherwise, it's not morally wrong to have that kind of respectful and somewhat restricted sharing among us.
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As much as I am vocal about my disapproval of some of Minna's views and actions, I am firmly against using that to justify disregarding any of her rights to her own work. The moral thing to do here is to ask what her preference is in terms of her CoH work being hosted elsewhere for people to enjoy, and then respect her wishes. We can talk till the cows come home about grey areas and "maybe she's okay with it anyway" but all of that is just rationalisation of sketchy behaviour.
Yeah, I can feel a shrivelled core of spite somewhere in my emotions, but still, as someone who did do art on the internet in two different periods, I feel like we need to ask her. A deliberate act of archiving is greatly different from sending a picture to a friend on tumblr or discord and causing it to be permanently up on that site. Grey, IMO just because someone hasn't said something doesn't mean they do not have a stance on it. A lot of people do not put their own thoughts and feelings on the internet all the time, and her act of deleting her entire website could be interpreted as any number of things.
I'll hop in and ask on the stream tomorrow (bleh). Afaik that's the most direct way to ask her, as she might not be replying to comments even though LP discussions have calmed down in the SSSS comments.
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Grey, IMO just because someone hasn't said something doesn't mean they do not have a stance on it. A lot of people do not put their own thoughts and feelings on the internet all the time, and her act of deleting her entire website could be interpreted as any number of things.
I'll hop in and ask on the stream tomorrow (bleh). Afaik that's the most direct way to ask her, as she might not be replying to comments even though LP discussions have calmed down in the SSSS comments.
Well, I did not say that she doesn't have a stance. As a matter of fact I said quite the opposite, that we should respect her wishes about her work.
As you said, her acts may be interpreted in different ways. Since she's not, at all, a beginner in sharing her work in the Net, I think it's reasonable to interpret her silence (so far) as "I don't care". That can change if someone tries to put her work on display somewhere else. However I believe that none of us is going to do anything like that.
I hope that you manage to get some clarification from her on that. I may even show up there if I have time (Saturdays are always busy days to me).
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Okay, uhh, I'm a bit confused but I think the important part is we're all more or less in agreement with asking her for permission? Outside of what's going on on Wayback Machine, clearly that's a different thing and I'm pretty sure most of the archiving isn't done manually by employees anyway (crawlers? user input? otherwise automated? idk). That feels like more of a preservation thing, which relates more to how history and the internet should go. However, if Minna does decide to interfere with that and erase her pages from there somehow, then there's not much we can do about it and it's totally her choice to do that.
Also Sc0ut, I already replied to your post earlier but just to clarify: Sorry, in retrospect, I don't think that was a Take that I should've added because it can be read as trying to defend sketchy/dubious behaviour in the context of Minna's CoH work and this thread. It's more to say that there will definitely still be bits of CoH art/other records lying around somewhere, not to justify our archiving of it, but I wrote it pretty badly.
Well, anyway, I guess all that's left is to ask her.
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It’s great if you can get to the stream and ask! I don’t think I can make the stream tonight, and definitely not all of it.
While you are at it, if it seems possible maybe also ask whether she intends to do something with the material still. I think she said earlier she was thinking of releasing the (small) story she had in some way.
Also I see you’ll be a citizen soon (again?). Rest assured there will be cake.
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Huffs, okay, apparently the CoH devlog still exists somewhere but Minna just hasn't linked to it. It's under some other URL in the same domain??? http://www.hummingfluff.com/devlogindex.php (http://www.hummingfluff.com/devlogindex.php) is where it is now. No clear answer on fan archiving otherwise, but it seems we were worried about the wrong thing. The URL would've been pretty hard to guess though ;D
Jitter, as for the story summary, she said "most likely," so that's something you should look forward to maybe. Buuuut also she says if she gets too tired out by it then she won't, but that's up to her. Apparently, kitty would've been a cyborg cat that picks up random items or something, that's all I picked up from the stream.
I'll stay in the stream for a bit more in case she says anything else.
(and no, I never made it into the safe-zone on my last account, lol :P Can't wait to make it at last)
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Huffs, okay, apparently the CoH devlog still exists somewhere but Minna just hasn't linked to it. It's under some other URL in the same domain??? http://www.hummingfluff.com/devlogindex.php (http://www.hummingfluff.com/devlogindex.php) is where it is now. No clear answer on fan archiving otherwise, but it seems we were worried about the wrong thing. The URL would've been pretty hard to guess though ;D
Thanks for going there to ask, catbirds! So this was not so much "The Great Purge" but rather "The Great Hide". It's good to know that she didn't delete all that excellent work. :)
Jitter, as for the story summary, she said "most likely," so that's something you should look forward to maybe. Buuuut also she says if she gets too tired out by it then she won't, but that's up to her. Apparently, kitty would've been a cyborg cat that picks up random items or something, that's all I picked up from the stream.
Ok, let's hope she doesn't get tired, and it's good that she's (more or less) willing to properly wrap all that, even seeing the game now as something that doesn't worth her time.
(and no, I never made it into the safe-zone on my last account, lol :P Can't wait to make it at last)
You deserve a party! There will be cake and squirrel cookies! :D
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Thanks for going there to ask, catbirds! So this was not so much "The Great Purge" but rather "The Great Hide". It's good to know that she didn't delete all that excellent work. :)
Whoops, I forgot to add: she says she just "wasn't sure where to link it" or something along those lines, so not so much a Great Hide but more like a doorway ending up inaccessible because of renovations. Some speculation would be required, but I think at one point or another the www.hummingfluff.com site will become more of the central hub for her current and future work. I mean, relative to her other site design examples, the homepage's current state does seem somewhat taped together.
EDIT: ALSO the url might change at some point in the future, she seems to be in the process of moving things around.
You deserve a party! There will be cake and squirrel cookies! :D
A big thank you! I'm pawing at the stash as we speak...
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You can practically taste the treats already!
(https://i.imgur.com/VS4jJsg.png)
And thanks for the intel!
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Minna did say, much further back, and again when people were talking to her about fanfic in general and the Mature thread on the Forum in especial, that we could do what we liked and she didn’t care. But that was specifically about fanart and fanfic.
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Did the CoH project ever get to the point of a functional demo? I also wonder if Minna would release the existing unity project as unfinished as it is for others to work on?
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Did the CoH project ever get to the point of a functional demo?
Minna released exactly one version of the game, and that was back in 2017 - at roughly 1/4 of the timeframe during which she worked on it, so it's rather far from what she did get to. Last I checked, you could still download it from the announcement page (http://www.hummingfluff.com/devlogindex.php?id=devlog&postin=18), and I can vouch that you can get it to run even under a fairly old (even back then) version of WINE.
(IIRC you had to manually create an empty file into which the savestates would go before it would run properly; watch the error messages in the logfile to see where exactly.)
I also wonder if Minna would release the existing unity project as unfinished as it is for others to work on?
Dunno ... I wouldn't bet on it, though ...
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Minna said in a stream a few weeks ago that she doesn’t want to see her story and characters in the hands of someone else*, and she’s more inclined to destroy all of the material than throw it out for others. Earlier she was considering to release the story in some format (the story is quite short) but no news about that since.
*as in becoming official and something she would be seeing - she has repeatedly stated she doesn’t mind fanworks.
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Huffs, okay, apparently the CoH devlog still exists somewhere but Minna just hasn't linked to it. It's under some other URL in the same domain??? http://www.hummingfluff.com/devlogindex.php (http://www.hummingfluff.com/devlogindex.php) is where it is now. No clear answer on fan archiving otherwise, but it seems we were worried about the wrong thing. The URL would've been pretty hard to guess though ;D
FWIW, I had another quick look at the Hummingfluff website today - the Great Hide is still there, but the entry page now does tell people up front that both LP and her post-SSSS works are / will be focused on a Christian PoV.
(... also, the online version of the comic now has a similarly telling introductory note I haven't seen before. Both last edited 09-Oct, the metadata tells me ...)
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I’m relieved that LP now has a warning on it. Several young people I know who encountered it unawares were horrified and very put off by the ambush theology, and would likely have handled it better and read it more receptively had there been a more honest content warning. I had introduced several of the local teens to Minna’s work, knowing that the girls liked beautiful art and folklore as well as I do, and then when the awful introduction to LP happened the reaction from their parents was the sort of disgust I would have expected had I introduced them to hard porn. Neither they nor their parents were at all ready for the ‘everyone who doesn’t agree with me will Burn In Hell’ bit.
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when the awful introduction to LP happened the reaction from their parents was the sort of disgust I would have expected had I introduced them to hard porn.
... I shall reply to that after doing the Major Release Upgrade of my laptop, just in case that some of the deities who overhear me do have the option of smiting my work equipment instead of myself ...
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I’m relieved that LP now has a warning on it. Several young people I know who encountered it unawares were horrified and very put off by the ambush theology, and would likely have handled it better and read it more receptively had there been a more honest content warning.
The summary on the hummingfluff homepage is… kind of inaccurate IMO. Or at least the story doesn't tell anything even close to what Minna thinks it's telling.
But yes, at least there's something to tell us that it's a Christian Thing now. I just hope that people know that it's super inaccurate for what it's trying to explain either way.
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I had introduced several of the local teens to Minna’s work, knowing that the girls liked beautiful art and folklore as well as I do, and then when the awful introduction to LP happened the reaction from their parents was the sort of disgust I would have expected had I introduced them to hard porn.
I as a parent say this sort of christianity or hard porn. tough decision what I would consider more inappropriate.
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Aaaalright then ... [cracks mental knuckles]
when the awful introduction to LP happened the reaction from their parents was the sort of disgust I would have expected had I introduced them to hard porn.
You know, that comparison is dangling in empty air a bit, what with no information whatsoever about said parents' own religiocopulative worldviews, and whether they do actually know yours. Here in Germany, it takes an islamist cell or the Church of Scientology or something like that before the government will refuse to call a preachy entity a "church" with all the constitutional rights that come with it, but I do well remember the time when there was discussion about passing a law that the Internet shall be subject to our Jugendschutz regulations (i.e., forced to "stop broadcasting" stuff like porn until after 22:00 German time) ...
The summary on the hummingfluff homepage is… kind of inaccurate IMO. Or at least the story doesn't tell anything even close to what Minna thinks it's telling.
She's still convinced that she has a valid warning message about "social credit systems" as a whole and that her religion of choice is one, if not the only, solution to that problem. It doesn't get more "accurate" without the realization that "you'll be judged in the afterlife" probably is the second oldest "social credit system" on this planet. (Predating Christians, to be clear, and the oldest one is humans having a social life and knowing and remembering each other as individuals in the mortal coil, of course.)
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Yeah, I’m sure the concept if not the name of social credit systems has been around for as long as humans have lived communally.
And the teen’s parents: he is Anglican Christian of the serious kind most often seen in England itself, she is a Protestant, I am unsure what kind, but they don’t come across as either ignorant or prejudiced. They know I am a Pagan, and that many other faiths exist in our community, and had never reacted badly to any of us. They had originally asked me to recommend books and webcomics for their girls because they knew and valued my taste in such things, having known me for many years and seen what I read in my lunch breaks when we were working on the same community projects, because all of us, including the girls, have often worked on the same volunteer projects around the town. They were happy with SSSS for the couple of years the girls had been reading it, and then when the girls asked them what Minna meant by her remarks about going to hell they were as appalled as I was. Not something any of us expected!
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They were happy with SSSS for the couple of years the girls had been reading it, and then when the girls asked them what Minna meant by her remarks about going to hell they were as appalled as I was.
... with them / their kids having had several years of first-hand impression of Minna (and her former lack of public religious positions), I don't quite see why they would still give you funny looks for having initially recommended her works to them way-back-when ...
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I presume they thought I knew about the religious stuff back then. I had known that she was a Lutheran, as were her folks, but had not known her to be the damning kind.
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She wasn't at the time, it's been like this for about a year now. So there was no possible way you could have known, when she didn't know herself :)
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True. But people are not always rational when it comes to protecting their kids, as I well know, having kids of my own (the youngest being now 47, with adult and teenage children, makes no difference really. One still cares about them.
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True. But people are not always rational when it comes to protecting their kids, as I well know, having kids of my own (the youngest being now 47, with adult and teenage children, makes no difference really. One still cares about them.
... say, those scars you occasionally mention having, they wouldn't happen to have a couple old spears stuck through them, would they? ;D
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Not generally, though I do in fact have one scar from a spear, at the top front of my left thigh. It is more ragged than a scar from such a wound should be, because it was a blunt prop spear. We were filming a reenactment scene for a documentary, and my younger cousin, who was one of my usual partners for such stunt work, miscalculated his aim by maybe an inch, while I was moving, and caught me just below the hem of my mail shirt, which would otherwise have protected my leg while still looking as if the blow were real. My heavy trews protected me somewhat, so could have been worse, but it was annoying because we continued through the last few seconds of the scene we were doing, and the march off. The march off hurt, but it looked very convincing! The wound healed fine, but the scar is ugly.
Most of my scars, though, are from the far more mundane types of injuries taken in the course of farming, mountain climbing, working in an industrial lab and working in the bush.
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I have most of the art saved there, divided into categories!
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=1eIylUV8dSx_XsZiDrFdzRTq7fvH0Yz2M
I hope this can help a bit!
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I’m relieved that LP now has a warning on it. Several young people I know who encountered it unawares were horrified and very put off by the ambush theology, and would likely have handled it better and read it more receptively had there been a more honest content warning. I had introduced several of the local teens to Minna’s work, knowing that the girls liked beautiful art and folklore as well as I do, and then when the awful introduction to LP happened the reaction from their parents was the sort of disgust I would have expected had I introduced them to hard porn. Neither they nor their parents were at all ready for the ‘everyone who doesn’t agree with me will Burn In Hell’ bit.
Personally I'd rather my kids see porn than LP. Well done porn is a celebration of humanity and encourages healthy relationship dynamics and body exploration.
LP... Is the people who complain that saying "happy holidays" is anti-christian because acknowledging not everyone is christian is wrong.
So one thing I love about SSSS is that it's so religiously tolerant. Finnish, Icelandic, Christian, and Atheist all work together for the same goal.
And aside from the atheist disbelief and Anne's very vague remarks - there's really no disrespect at all. Anne doesn't demand Reynir convert or tell him he's going to hell. Reynir doesn't refuse to help until Anne personally thanks Odin.
I know that the icelandic documents refer to the Finns as "heathens". (Which I find amusing because "heathenry" is also a term reclaimed by Norse Pagans) But it doesn't seem to be in an especially mean way just in the "people who don't worship our gods" statement of fact.
I know pagans, so the idea that those gods exist is real to me - and the world where people of differing belief systems can practice and coexist and all be right? That's the world I want.
So LP.
"Like saying Jesus is the only way to God. How non-inclusive. As if other spirituality isn't valid." From the influencer on the chat show justifying edits to the bible, who we are supposed to disagree with and see as proof of how bad things are.
That was the line that broke it for me and made me lose a lot of respect for Minna.
Because it's an outright statement that, no, religious tolerance is wrong it is Jesus or Nothing.
It just flies in the face of what I had most respected her for.
Honestly if she hadn't acknowledged other belief systems I wouldn't have cared so much. If it was just this weird bunny romp of a random place that outlaws the bible? Whatever. Work out your issues with your former atheism however you need to.
But don't sit there and say that it's *wrong* to accept other religions.
(I know I'm kind of bulldozing here, but I only just found this forum and have been sitting on it since I first read LP)
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As a lifelong active Pagan, from a family and kingroup and set of friends in which several kinds of Pagan, several kinds of Christian, Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, Buddhists, folk who keep several different native faiths and several other types of faith interact and coexist by agreeing to differ, I really can’t get my head around this kind of narrowness. I am suspicious of any kind of ‘one true way’, be it religious, social or political, because I can only see it as a way of exercising ‘power over’ without admitting to it. Not that I object to discussion and debate, I find it fascinating. But this kind of ‘agree with me or burn in hell’ feels to me of the argument of someone who knows that their views have no validity, either of faith or of reason. Vile stuff!
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@dreki your “bulldozing” is welcome here! If you potter around and read the thread from the time LP dropped, you’ll see that a lot of people were hurt and found some solace here. Part of the shock was how we were caught unawares, just going into “oo cute bunnies” to “WTF I have just been forcefed” with zero warning. And the way Minna was very dismissive of the many comments asking her to include a content description (which she has since addend, thankfully) made it a lot worse.
The discussions are open and will stay open, so even if this or any other thread has been dormant for a long while, you are welcome to restart the discussion! (With the exception of the role playing board, please read the rules post there).
I’d also like to say we are happy to have you join us! We have an introduction thread in the General Discussion board, it would be nice (but not mandatory) if you popped there to say hi. There is also the Getting started with the Forum message in General, which will give you some pointers! But there is no wrong or right way to enjoy the forum, just read and participate as you please.
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As a lifelong active Pagan, from a family and kingroup and set of friends in which several kinds of Pagan, several kinds of Christian, Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, Buddhists, folk who keep several different native faiths and several other types of faith interact and coexist by agreeing to differ, I really can’t get my head around this kind of narrowness. I am suspicious of any kind of ‘one true way’, be it religious, social or political, because I can only see it as a way of exercising ‘power over’ without admitting to it. Not that I object to discussion and debate, I find it fascinating. But this kind of ‘agree with me or burn in hell’ feels to me of the argument of someone who knows that their views have no validity, either of faith or of reason. Vile stuff!
I grew up in america in areas that are christian dominated - where even our "embrace all faiths" was really "embrace all flavors of christian".
Then I lived in Ireland where protestants and catholics still hate each other and were killing each other not long ago. Which just baffles the HECK out of me!
"Jesus is right. The bible is right. But there's a few details we disagree on so let's kill each other". It just makes it so obvious to me that religious intolerance isn't about God but about humans taking any excuse to be jerks to each other.
So I just really have no stomach for the christian victim complex.
I don't understand why it's terrible to allow other faiths to coexist and say "hey maybe there are different roads".
The part that most bothers me is how regional religion is. I know things are more global now - but for most of human history what you believed was heavily determined by where you were born.
It just seems ludicrous to say "so god chose this one chunk of humans and let everyone else live in delusion and burn in hell". It's just baked in racism/xenophobia.
If christianity had like independently developed in each continent - honestly I'd be more inclined to say "okay maybe that's right".
And most cultures have prophets. I don't know why it's so terrible to say "hey, maybe god talked to everyone and met them where they were and set rules that make sense for their circumstances and geographic needs".
But no. It's "my faith is the only acceptable faith"
@dreki your “bulldozing” is welcome here! If you potter around and read the thread from the time LP dropped, you’ll see that a lot of people were hurt and found some solace here. Part of the shock was how we were caught unawares, just going into “oo cute bunnies” to “WTF I have just been forcefed” with zero warning. And the way Minna was very dismissive of the many comments asking her to include a content description (which she has since addend, thankfully) made it a lot worse.
The discussions are open and will stay open, so even if this or any other thread has been dormant for a long while, you are welcome to restart the discussion! (With the exception of the role playing board, please read the rules post there).
I’d also like to say we are happy to have you join us! We have an introduction thread in the General Discussion board, it would be nice (but not mandatory) if you popped there to say hi. There is also the Getting started with the Forum message in General, which will give you some pointers! But there is no wrong or right way to enjoy the forum, just read and participate as you please.
Oh thank you - my social anxiety is at 11 right now in the real world, so joining a forum and replying to old threads and stuff is pinging that. Feckin brains.
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dreki, I tend to agree that god/gods probably talked to everyone and I do think that ultimately all the roads arrive at the same destination. Seems silly to argue when we could be helping one another along the way. I do have quite strict standards about how much interference in the lives and beliefs of other people is okay. Which from my point of view is as little as possible. Most pagans I know don’t proselytise, regarding faith as a personal matter between the individual soul and its god or gods. I see proselytising, whether applied to politics, religion or the latest health fad, as being very much a ‘power over’ thing, a way of controlling other people. Don’t like it.
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Speaking of purges, the Hummingfluff website lists Minna's completed works as: Lovely People.
Now the comic itself is on Hiveworks and I very sincerely hope will stay there. ARtD is also up. So not exactly a purge, but...
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Speaking of purges, the Hummingfluff website lists Minna's completed works as: Lovely People.
Now the comic itself is on Hiveworks and I very sincerely hope will stay there. ARtD is also up. So not exactly a purge, but...
Yeah I found it sad that she divorced herself of the works that did bring her attention and allowed her to continue her current endeavors.
I hope it will stay up also. It definitely depends on how many hits the site gets and if any revenue is generated. There are supposed to be the books for Adventure II, so hopefully that long. It is worrisome indeed.
I only found the SSSS store on hiveworks. No links to the actual comic. Were they there?
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No, sorry, I have never come to the comic via Hiveworks. I meant that she has a deal with them so it’s not up to only her whether it stays or goes, although I a under the impression that the creator retains all and every rights to the work even with Hiveworks. So, if she decides to pull the plug she probably can but also there’s probably someone she needs to discuss it first.
I don’t think the adv II books will be happening, we see on the forum how the readership wanes with no updates. But of course I have no idea how well the Forumites represent the potentially buying cliemtele. If I had to guess I’d say people who have joined the forum are on the average more likely to buy than the ones who have never been here, but obviously I don’t know and have zero information about the numbers now or previously.
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Does anyone have copies of adventure II saved (for private use I think it would be legal, of course you couldn't sell or probably even distribute them)?
It seems to me it would be a real shame to have that artwork disappear entirely and forever. Adventure I at least exists in the books.
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Does anyone have copies of adventure II saved (for private use I think it would be legal, of course you couldn't sell or probably even distribute them)?
It seems to me it would be a real shame to have that artwork disappear entirely and forever. Adventure I at least exists in the books.
I might decide to.
The law on publicly published internet art is weird - and policing it is even harder.
Hiveworks has so many comics that just "went on hiatus" years ago I'd be furious if they purged SSSS.
Also their site is ridiculous to navigate if you want to find comics from it. But I digress.
I imagine Minna has a contract with them since Hiveworks helped run the kickstarters and distribute the books - so I don't think she could request they take it down easily.
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According to the Hiveworks webpage, all their artists are hosted by Hiveworks, and they do keep the finished works up too so hopefully we are safe!
Also seems like SSSS is / was one of their crown jewels, it’s mentioned second in their short pitch that lists six titles. So who knows, maybe there is enough readers to make the books happen after all.
Also also they say that they have “majority queer/LGBTQA+ and diverse creators” which I didn’t know!
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According to the Hiveworks webpage, all their artists are hosted by Hiveworks, and they do keep the finished works up too so hopefully we are safe!
Also seems like SSSS is / was one of their crown jewels, it’s mentioned second in their short pitch that lists six titles. So who knows, maybe there is enough readers to make the books happen after all.
Also also they say that they have “majority queer/LGBTQA+ and diverse creators” which I didn’t know!
Also, I am sure there are lots of people who have not read it yet, looking for comics to binge. So hopefully these people will be drawn to and and will enjoy it.
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I cannot find SSSS or ARtD on Hiveworks itself, nor on that banner of thumbnails they run on their other comics (checked from Namesake). It does look like they've finally moved a bunch of indefinite hiatus comics to that section (RIP Blindsprings).
There is still SSSS merch in their store. I believe that's in the contract, and from memory Minna was sanguine about leaving it with them.
Minna went with Hiveworks to help with promotion, printing, admin and distribution. She eschews most of that promotion & production now, especially (I presume) wanting to distance herself from a brand known for queer creators & LGBTIA+ content.
She stated last year (don't have source to hand) that if Hiveworks wanted to produce Adv II books, she'd let them, but it was their deal not hers. She estimated that there was enough material for 2 books.
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Also also they say that they have “majority queer/LGBTQA+ and diverse creators” which I didn’t know!
Yep. Webcomics have destroyed by ability to appreciate Hollywood's dregs of "representation" because in so many webcomics queerness is just omnipresent.
If you want a Finnish creator who does queer stuff -
https://www.thewitchdoor.com/
I cannot find SSSS or ARtD on Hiveworks itself, nor on that banner of thumbnails they run on their other comics (checked from Namesake).
The hive works site is crap to navigate. If you look up comics by title under 'S', SSSS is still there. If you're on mobile you may have to hit more comics and then the list still collapses fast. Seriously terrible website.
The banner is random and doesn't show all of the hiveworks comics only about a dozen at a time. Reynir's pretty face still comes up regularly. I see him a few times a week at least.
She stated last year (don't have source to hand) that if Hiveworks wanted to produce Adv II books, she'd let them, but it was their deal not hers. She estimated that there was enough material for 2 books.
I cannot imagine them running a Kickstarter without the artist on board.
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Earlier she was saying that if HW decided to run Kickstarter for the Adv2 books, she would draw the bonus content (there are a couple of illustrations and a minicomic in each book) but that may of course have changed since.
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Earlier she was saying that if HW decided to run Kickstarter for the Adv2 books, she would draw the bonus content (there are a couple of illustrations and a minicomic in each book) but that may of course have changed since.
I suppose it could go either way if she's willing to do some work for it.
Raising a quarter of a million on the last kickstarter alone is *really* good for webcomics.
They could also just do an Adventure 2 omnibus instead of two separate campaigns.