Post by: catbirds on September 28, 2021, 10:45:23 PM
If anyone doesn't know what it is and is curious about what Minna made just before making SSSS, then this should be a great place to start! And if you're here to take a trip down memory lane like myself, that's also good! I loved the story a lot when I was a, uh, younger teenager :V so it's kind of nostalgia to me.
So, to start, does anyone have any suggestions on how much you want to read at once? A couple pages a week, a page a day, or a chapter a month? And if we want to rotate who starts discussions and such. We could also discuss themes, the relationships between characters, artistic choices, Finnish folklore/mythology references, or whatever else comes to mind when you read the comic! Some discussions like general analyses could come at the very end!
Spoiler: a note on certain words in the comic • show
For pre-reading discussions, we could chat about what we enjoyed about it or how we found it the first time around or anything else that isn't in "spoiler" territory, in case anyone hasn't read it yet. Anyway, let me know if you're interested and want to lead a chapter/section discussion! Maybe even a specific one you liked? Also if you're reading it for the first time and want to participate in discussions. I'll set the start date to about two weeks from now, for now :)
Reading Schedule
Prologue & Chapter 1 ~ October 15
Chapter 2 ~ October 22
Chapter 3, up to page 111 ~ October 29
Chapter 3, to end of chapter ~ November 5
Chapter 4, up to page 179 ~ November 12
Chapter 4, up to page 226 ~ November 19
Chapter 4, to end of chapter ~ November 26
Chapter 5, up to page 331 ~ December 3
Chapter 5, to end of chapter ~ December 10
Chapter 6 ~ December 17
Chapter 7 ~ December 24
Chapter 8 ~ December 31
(Wow, finished just in time for the new year!) (unless otherwise requested)
Post by: RanVor on September 29, 2021, 02:38:27 AM
Post by: Opaque on September 29, 2021, 09:08:10 AM
Post by: thorny on September 29, 2021, 12:46:46 PM
I'd be willing to give it another try; but can't guarantee I'll stay with it.
Post by: thegreyarea on September 29, 2021, 05:37:08 PM
I've never read ARTD in full, just fragments, several pages each time, when it somehow was referred on comments, here at the Forum or at Disqus. I began reading it once but for some reason left it for later... Well. I guess later will be in two weeks! :)
I also came to know it's existance some time after reading SSSS, probably because of the vote reminders on Disqus.
I'm curious to read it, anyway. It seems interesting, and Minna's art is a delight.
As for inappropriate words or jokes... Unless they are prevalent enough to make reading it unbearable - which I get is not the case - I can overlook them and focus on the bright side.
So I'll be waiting for you to set the date. And thanks for starting this!
Post by: thorny on September 29, 2021, 07:58:55 PM
As for inappropriate words or jokes... Unless they are prevalent enough to make reading it unbearable - which I get is not the case - I can overlook them and focus on the bright side.
I think reading it along with a batch of other people who I know agree that they're inappropriate might help.
Post by: Yuuago on September 29, 2021, 08:32:05 PM
The above discussion made me think to look at a (relatively spoiler-free) review I wrote of aRTD (https://yuuago.dreamwidth.org/3390133.html) back when I first read it several years ago. It mentions the same caveats as above, but I also had some construction-related issues - I felt the prologue and the first few chapters were very clunky and weirdly-paced and hard to get through. Honestly, even though I really love this comic, I still feel that way.
So, if first-time readers find they're having trouble getting into it, I suggest trying to stick with it until the end of Chapter 3; the third chapter is where I feel it finds its feet.
Post by: Róisín on September 29, 2021, 11:49:46 PM
Post by: catbirds on October 01, 2021, 11:02:20 PM
Grey, I hope you'll enjoy the art! The lineart was done traditionally and you can tell by the way the lines look. And I liked the art in aRTD a bit more than the art in SSSS, but that's personal preference. You'll see.
I do hope we can have an open discussion about things we like or don't like about the story as we go through it, though! My first reading of the story was pretty shallow because I didn't enjoy the beginning much, kind of like what Yuuago described, so I read it hurriedly and forgot about it several times before I made it past chapter 3 or 4? I've also seen a range of opinions from "spent the entire time disliking Hannu" to "spent the entire time crying," but not much back-and-forth discussion and analysis about the story both because (according to Minna) there aren't really that many profound themes in the story and because there probably wasn't a centralized forum for it like the SSSS forum. Not that it's likely something on that scale will happen now, but hopefully this re-read will be a good place to discuss the story in general.
Anyway, I'll start setting up a schedule for now! It'll be in chunks of 25-50 pages a week, assuming we'll be taking our time with it. The first chapters are pretty short and mostly introductory, so we could probably read a few of them at once. These are mostly based on what I feel are natural transitions in the story. Feel free to suggest alternative dates and page arrangements (because I'm pretty inexperienced at organizing Forum Things ;D). You can also read ahead and just participate in the discussion as we go along (and hide major spoilers, should they be brought up). If you've read it before, you also do not have to re-read it to discuss it :P
Also note that the chapter length almost doubles between chapter 3 and 4.
Tentative reading schedule
Prologue & Chapter 1 ~ October 15
Chapter 2 ~ October 22
Chapter 3, up to page 111 ~ October 29
Chapter 3, to end of chapter ~ November 5
Chapter 4, up to page 179 ~ November 12
Chapter 4, up to page 226 ~ November 19
Chapter 4, to end of chapter ~ November 26
Post by: Jitter on October 02, 2021, 09:16:10 AM
I also very much like your call to open discussion. You are absolutely right that this and other reading etc events like this need not and should not be limited to praise!
As for my own opinion, I’ve never really cared for it a lot. Hannu is a brat! The ways Minna has used the underlying tradition are clever, but the characters aren’t really to my liking. I don’t know, maybe I’ll join you every now and then nevertheless.
Post by: LetsEatBees on October 02, 2021, 12:16:46 PM
When I first read ARTD I had a lot going on in my life, so I tried to finish it
quickly and I don't think I really got to appriciate it.
I had recently re-read it in preperation to re-read SSSS; and I realized it a lot
more than I first did, I liked the pacing from chapter to chapter and the dramatic build up
was good within chapters and accross the narritive.
The R-word didn't really bother me, was kind of a blunt reminder of what people
used to say more often in the 2000's.
Would be fun to talk to more people about ARTD generally, maybe about some story or mythology
aspects if possible. This sounds fun, I look forward to it. ;D
Post by: Jitter on October 02, 2021, 01:16:46 PM
Post by: catbirds on October 14, 2021, 11:28:27 PM
I just realized that there may be a little bit of a time zone difference for some people, so I'll post this a bit early.
So, now that it's the 15th of October, let's start the discussion for the prologue and first chapter of aRTD!
If you're new to the story, feel free to talk about how you like it so far and what you're expecting. And for those who've read it, hide spoilers.
I'll start!
First things first, the art style is very cute! I think this was the first time Minna's drawn humans (?) and also her first complete comic, so it's nice to see the way their faces are drawn pretty experimentally. I can notice a few inconsistencies here and there with colour, lineart, facial expressions, etc..., but overall, it's lively and fun... for now. It gets much more stylized and dramatic later!
I... enjoyed the interactions between the family members. My experience with a big family is that there's never total agreement over anything. It's not particularly pleasant when you experience it, but when you don't get to be with your family, it suddenly gets very lonely... though it's fair if that sounds awful to you, actually. I kind of understand Hannu's distaste for family gatherings, too. The hiding away from the crowd and all that...
The plot itself is pretty normal at the moment. I mean, the task that they were given wasn't very interesting. The solution kind of feels like it was meant to be a joke, too. But that's fine, I think it does get a bit more involved later on.
Spoiler: for chapter 6 ish • show
The prologue was also an interesting idea for starting a story, but I wasn't too interested in it personally. It's still very lighthearted, but maybe a little bit too lighthearted? Though maybe it has some relevance to Finnish mythology that I'm unaware of. I think it might be a parallel with the family of humans, but something about the family dynamic of the foxes kind of bothers me.
Anyway, that's all I can think of to say for now! I'd love to hear your thoughts on these chapters :D
Post by: JoB on October 15, 2021, 02:25:00 AM
I think this was the first time Minna's drawn humans (?) and also her first complete comic, so it's nice to see the way their faces are drawn pretty experimentally.(She did the cover art for the Zarkora miniseries (https://www.zarkora.com/) before ARtD, though. Certainly a couple more humans in other covers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minna_Sundberg#Selected_works) and personal artwork (http://www.minnasundberg.fi/gallery.php) as well.)
(Edit: Hold on, why is the reference to Zarkora marked as being from 2015? When vol 1 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fyrelit_Tragedy) is said to have been published in 2012? Anyway, I might've been wrong about Zarkora in particular being pre-ARtD ...)
Post by: Opaque on October 15, 2021, 10:10:45 AM
The interactions between the characters are really good too. Although the dialogue can be a bit stiff in places it's not too bad. Puppyfoxes arrogance comes across right away in his interactions with Hannu and Ville which I find entertaining. He's the kind of character you like to dislike. I also agree with Hannu about Paju. I would also get anxiety if I were around her too long. Although I like how she treats him like he's not a full grown adult.
Overall, these chapters were a fun read.
Post by: Jitter on October 15, 2021, 12:09:57 PM
Yeah ok no. There are fat jokes on pages 1 and 2! It’s worse than I remembered. They are also very nasty to the kids although I do admit kids of that age are terrible (mine are 17 and 15).
It’s not all bad of course. I like the colors am much of the art. The page layouts are nice, especially considering this is her practice work.
I was reading both English and Finnish. Mostly the English is a lot better! But the radio announcement is better in Finnish. There are quite a lot of differences between the languages, all minor but still.
A couple of possibly interesting points about the Finnish. Puppy-Fox is called he. Or wellm well, hän is gender neutral but it’s the pronoun that in proper Finnish is used of people, and is not used of animals. This is probably because the Foxes speak a bit formally in any case. But then, in the human side, Hannu is called it, se. This is common usage in spoken Finnish but looks weird written, as most of the other vocabulary is not quite as informal.
Another thing is that in the translation, a pun is lost. The word for auroras is in Finnish revontuli, fox fire (fire of fox, would it be fox’s fire? Looks weird). I think the connection to foxes appears in other cultures too, but in Finnish this is the official name of the phenomenon although they may sometimes be called auroras or fires of the north (pohjantuli) or sky fire (taivaan tuli).
Post by: thorny on October 16, 2021, 11:48:49 PM
-- any connection between the feast-shy Hannu who runs off to the woods and Lalli?
-- "merely a horse's serving"? I would think that a horse's serving would be quite a lot. Is this an idiom in Finnish? (There's an idiom in English 'to eat like a horse', but that means to eat a great deal.)
-- Hannu trying to sneak by crawling along the floor while all the students turn around to stare at him got a laugh out of me.
-- I keep expecting a hawk* to show up. But "redtail" here is the fox, isn't it?
-- Jitter, thanks for the information about the Finnish; which I have none of.
-- I do like the art.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-tailed_hawk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-tailed_hawk)
Post by: catbirds on October 17, 2021, 05:22:22 AM
The interactions between the characters are really good too. Although the dialogue can be a bit stiff in places it's not too bad. Puppyfoxes arrogance comes across right away in his interactions with Hannu and Ville which I find entertaining. He's the kind of character you like to dislike. I also agree with Hannu about Paju. I would also get anxiety if I were around her too long. Although I like how she treats him like he's not a full grown adult.
Yeahhh they're very lively interactions, though it's unfortunate that they get scattered across time and space and do not talk much until the very end of the story! But that's the way it always is, and there's always the one-to-one interactions you get in each chapter. Puppyfox was well-written, and it's funny how he only arrives all mysteriously to deliver more bad/frustrating news to our protagonists.
A couple of possibly interesting points about the Finnish. Puppy-Fox is called he. Or wellm well, hän is gender neutral but it’s the pronoun that in proper Finnish is used of people, and is not used of animals. This is probably because the Foxes speak a bit formally in any case. But then, in the human side, Hannu is called it, se. This is common usage in spoken Finnish but looks weird written, as most of the other vocabulary is not quite as informal.
Another thing is that in the translation, a pun is lost. The word for auroras is in Finnish revontuli, fox fire (fire of fox, would it be fox’s fire? Looks weird). I think the connection to foxes appears in other cultures too, but in Finnish this is the official name of the phenomenon although they may sometimes be called auroras or fires of the north (pohjantuli) or sky fire (taivaan tuli).
I've been wondering how the story would sound in Finnish for a while! Hmm, the foxes might use the gender neutral human pronoun because they perceive each other as, like, basically other people maybe? I'm not familiar with the Finnish language, but that sounds like what the dialogue might've been getting at.
As for the fox fire/revontuli part, I always thought the foxes were just very significant in Finnish mythology. This article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_(mythology)) names one creature associated with fox fire/auroras. Is the part about there being a full council of them mostly fictional? I remember there were some other things in SSSS that Minna took creative liberty with, like something about the parts of Finnish souls.
So what is in these buns, which have no lactose, nuts, apples, cinnamon, or gluten? Or raisins.
-- any connection between the feast-shy Hannu who runs off to the woods and Lalli?
The buns might be just a jab at various health foods and the way they're marketed. Though I think that's kind of unfair because some of these are things that lots of people might have allergies to (or can't digest?), like lactose, nuts, and gluten.
I think Hannu is a lot more unwilling to do work and mostly evasive, whereas Lalli's preference for the forest is partially for work reasons :) Both are shy, though.
Post by: JoB on October 17, 2021, 05:31:59 AM
So what is in these buns, which have no lactose, nuts, apples, cinnamon, or gluten? Or raisins.Well, since they supposedly can cause obesity, there need to be some digestible calories in them. Possibly plain fat (which serves as a flavor amplifier, too).
-- any connection between the feast-shy Hannu who runs off to the woods and Lalli?Hannu doesn't particularly like being outside, and they're very much polar opposites WRT work ethics, so my guess is that they're simply both not very sociable. ("And me", says the donkey ...)
Of course, as page 15 (http://www.minnasundberg.fi/comic/page15.php) shows, Hannu was already in the habit of talking to Ville, at least. Just with slightly less verbose answers. :3
-- "merely a horse's serving"? I would think that a horse's serving would be quite a lot. Is this an idiom in Finnish? (There's an idiom in English 'to eat like a horse', but that means to eat a great deal.)Couldn't find a hint at a Finnish idiom offhand, but could it actually mean "a serving of horse (meat)"? I expect an agricultural society to have workhorses which would get slaughtered and turned into a meal rarily, and certainly not at an age yielding prime meat.
-- I keep expecting a hawk* to show up. But "redtail" here is the fox, isn't it?Most certainly. I mean, who else would be the dreaming "redtail" giving the entire œuvre its title? Ville?
-- I do like the art.Me too, and I'm discovering additional details even now. Like the middle room in the school having a lot of foxes in portraits, as if they have been manning (foxing?) the position of the headmaster before Ms. Tikkanen. Or the address on the envelope (http://www.minnasundberg.fi/comic/page28.php) reading "probably somewhere, some country". (Considering that puppy-fox' official name (http://www.minnasundberg.fi/characters.php) is "Pikku-Repolainen", I presume that "Repopost" translates to "fox mail", even though Transgarble refuses to comment on that?)
(It also refuses to translate "kuikan puoti" on page 6 (http://www.minnasundberg.fi/comic/page06.php) ... while Tuomi crying for "muuuum" himself on page 10 is, of course, a slam-dunk.)
I forget ... the little white birds on page 12 (http://www.minnasundberg.fi/comic/page12.php) have some meaning in Finnish mythology, too, don't they?
How come that Hannu has no idea of the floorplan (http://www.minnasundberg.fi/comic/page36.php) (beyond the classroom right at the entrance, if he even knew that beforehand) of a school that he himself went to? (And while I'm ready to accept that this school has an outhouse, is it realistic that the classroom(s) take up only a third (http://www.minnasundberg.fi/comic/page38.php) of the footprint?)
Hmmmm, it seems that Minnas Finnish alphabet here (http://www.minnasundberg.fi/comic/page42.php) is missing not only the "Ö", but also the "Swedish O" (Å), which would be common among Fennoswedes like herself? But it does include "W", which is rather optional for Finns ...
Is that actually a remnant of the school building - piece of floor and a supporting pillar underneath, IIUC the Finns are used to houses with a raised floor because of their winters - that Hannu's left standing on on page 48 (http://www.minnasundberg.fi/comic/page48.php)? I initially thought it some sort of table, but a table in the middle of the woods with nothing to sit on next to it doesn't make a lot of sense ...
Edit to add: There don't seem to be any ZIP numbers starting "1234" in Finland (closest I get is 12380 in the Leppäkoski/Kiipula area), and the real-world Hokanniemi and Hokansalmi (http://www.minnasundberg.fi/comic/page21.php) are 30 km apart bee-line, with 80+ km of streets to get from here to there, thanks to Finland being the land of lakes.
Post by: Jitter on October 17, 2021, 06:11:50 AM
The council of foxes doesn’t ring a bell, so if it’s based on something it’s older than the everyday folklore that is still around. I just got a few books, I’ll try to remember to look up what they say about foxes or fox spirits. But I do think this is just an element made up by Minna, based on the word “revontuli”. The official and most commonly used name for fox in Finnish is btw kettu, but repo and repolainen are also known by everyone and used in e.g. children’s stories and songs.
The foxes calling Puppy Fox and the others (Moose at least is referred to) by “hän” (he/she) works in Finnish too, these animals/animal spirits are clearly persons. But it makes the way Hannu and other humans are called “se” (it) even more conspicuous.
Repoposti is indeed “fox mail”, Kuikan puoti = Kuikka’s shop where Kuikka is the family name of the owner(s). Kuikka is the waterfowl loon, it doesn’t have any connotations to crazy person like the word loon has in English.
Post by: JoB on October 17, 2021, 08:14:30 AM
The foxes calling Puppy Fox and the others (Moose at least is referred to) by “hän” (he/she) works in Finnish too, these animals/animal spirits are clearly persons. But it makes the way Hannu and other humans are called “se” (it) even more conspicuous.Did Ms. Squirrel actually do that? Because apart from her, the only spirit animal in prologue and ch1 who even knew about Hannu and his villagemates is Puppy-Fox, and I bet that HE had to be actively convinced not to refer to most of his fellow spirits that way (as long as someone might hear him) as well ...
Post by: Jitter on October 17, 2021, 11:30:49 AM
Did Ms. Squirrel actually do that? Because apart from her, the only spirit animal in prologue and ch1 who even knew about Hannu and his villagemates is Puppy-Fox, and I bet that HE had to be actively convinced not to refer to most of his fellow spirits that way (as long as someone might hear him) as well ...
No, the foxes are not referring to Hannu at all. I mean in the village, for example on p 8 Paju tells Jonna to call Hannu, she literally says “call it and tell to come here”. Now, again, this is common in spoken Finnish, if this were a real situation or e.g. a TV series, “soita sille” (call it) would sound a lot more natural than “soita hänelle” (call him/her). But, in written Finnish it’s a lot less used, even when writing dialogue where presumably very informal language is used.
Post by: Suominoita on October 18, 2021, 07:44:16 PM
Post by: catbirds on October 22, 2021, 12:03:38 AM
It's been fun reading this, and I remember I really liked it because it was the only time I could recall Hannu had to use something a little more scientific to solve a problem. It's pretty common knowledge that lightning just hits the tallest metal things in open fields, though, but it's still cool to see.
Uhhh... I could not stop imagining Ville as a ferret. It's the legs! Snakes do not have legs, and yet snake-ville does? It's such an odd detail that makes me think of him as a dragon instead. And there's also the fur???
But otherwise, this was just a pretty fun, quick chapter! The thing going on in the background has yet to rear its head, so it's just simple problem-solving right now. It makes for a really cute chapter! It's also around here that I thought the story would tip towards Hannu learning to get along with his fellow villagers again, considering how much he knew about most of them. And the art's begun to find its footing here, too. There are way fewer inconsistencies and it's just generally a cute art style. The animal faces still look a little strange, but Hannu is drawn much more consistently. I'm excited to talk about what happens later!
Spoiler: up to the end of the story • show
Post by: JoB on October 22, 2021, 03:27:40 AM
Uhhh... I could not stop imagining Ville as a ferret. It's the legs! Snakes do not have legs, and yet snake-ville does? It's such an odd detail that makes me think of him as a dragon instead. And there's also the fur???
Spoiler: preliminary and spoiler-y comment • show
You bet it is ... :3Spoiler: up to the end of the story • show
Post by: Jitter on October 22, 2021, 04:16:20 PM
Speaking of layouts btw. JoB, in chapter 1 the building is a school, not the village school. The headmaster says “this is not my office, this is not even my school” when she snaps out of it. And yeah, I think it’s a part of the school building’s floor Hannu is left standing on in the transition to chapter 2. In the end of C2, there’s a piece of the barn wall next to them where they fall down.
Back to Chapter 2, plowing a field full of vipers was one of Lemmimkäinen’s ordeals in the Kalevala. I also like that about this chapter. And also the fact that apparently it really was the Viper of light (panel 2, page 71) that came for the snakes, and not a mass murder of beings sentient enough to have a religion.
Post by: JoB on October 23, 2021, 05:46:35 AM
Uhhh... I could not stop imagining Ville as a ferret. It's the legs! Snakes do not have legs, and yet snake-ville does? It's such an odd detail that makes me think of him as a dragon instead. And there's also the fur???Took me a while to find this one again ...
(http://www.minnasundberg.fi/voteincentives/dragon.jpg)
... as you can see, Ville still has fur and his curly tail there. (Not Minnas first non-scaley dragon, though.)
As much as I did enjoy the interactions with the villagers, I really start to wonder why he knows everyone so well but also hates interacting with them."Everybody knows everyone else" is standard fare in small villages, whether you like anyone among them or not. Note that the roads out of it seem to have car tracks, but no (wider) bus tracks are to be seen, so getting out of it without having your own car might be nontrivial ...
This was a nice chapter. Hannu was being polite to the old cow
Spoiler: moderate one, for entire rest of comic • show
Back to Chapter 2, plowing a field full of vipers was one of Lemmimkäinen’s ordeals in the Kalevala. I also like that about this chapter. And also the fact that apparently it really was the Viper of light (panel 2, page 71) that came for the snakes, and not a mass murder of beings sentient enough to have a religion.I'm not too sure how different that "Viper of Light" is from the very Mr. Viper hanging out
Post by: Jitter on October 23, 2021, 08:06:46 AM
"Everybody knows everyone else" is standard fare in small villages, whether you like anyone among them or not. Note that the roads out of it seem to have car tracks, but no (wider) bus tracks are to be seen, so getting out of it without having your own car might be nontrivial ...Spoiler: moderate one, for entire rest of comic • show
I'm not too sure how different that "Viper of Light" is from the very Mr. Viper hanging outwithon Mr. Kuitunen (http://www.minnasundberg.fi/characters.php), given his mode of travel (http://www.minnasundberg.fi/comic/page150.php). Some sort of avatars of the same entity, I'd say. I don't want to know how much help he would have offered if Hannu had actually killed all those Ukko-wormshippers ...
JoB, you are right about the small villages, although it doesn’t seem to be quite that small - the elderly Kuitunens say they have last met Hannu when he was little, so maybe closer to 20 years ago, or in any case at least 10. It is of course possible they are mistaken, as Hannu seems to know them a little better. Sill, they have a school with several teachers etc, so not quite a tiny village although definitely small enough for it to make sense that Hannu can quickly work out who the leader is in each case.
As for the Viper, you are probably right. The point however stands, I’m glad they weren’t killed :) The fact that Hannu didn’t hear their talk doesn’t help after he believes Ville about the fact that they do talk.
On JoB’s spoiler
Spoiler: show
Post by: JoB on October 23, 2021, 09:39:12 AM
JoB, I love dragon Ville :)(Me too. Became the vote bait in Feb-2013 (http://www.minnasundberg.fi/comic/page340.php) (Warning: Gore in unrelated comic page above) and held the office for quite a while ...
FWIW, you might remember that we could ask for custom-made art as perks in the Indiegogo campaign to get the ARtD book printed. As it happens, I asked for a reptilian Ville, so I have it on good authority that the curly furry tail even persists in a pronouncedly scaley form.)
On JoB’s spoilerSpoiler: show
Spoiler: entirely offtopic now, but a tad sardonic • show
Post by: catbirds on October 24, 2021, 01:05:42 AM
Jitter, it's cool that you mentioned the Kalevala because the first time I read it, I had no clue what the Kalevala was. There are probably way more references than easily compiled, though, so I hope one day I'll get a chance to read it and make some connections with anything else in the story.
Anyway, I'm also glad the snakes lived.
Spoiler: moderate one, for entire rest of comic • show
First things first, wow, that's such a cute dragon-Ville! I wonder what else I missed by totally ignoring the comments :0
Spoiler: rest of the comic i think • show
"Everybody knows everyone else" is standard fare in small villages, whether you like anyone among them or not. Note that the roads out of it seem to have car tracks, but no (wider) bus tracks are to be seen, so getting out of it without having your own car might be nontrivial ...
I had a rather different experience living in a small town (with only one school, of around 20-ish kids) but I'll chalk that up to small town culture being different in the one where I lived (more heavily tied to conformity, compared solely to what I see in aRTD). Ummm... well, there's also that most of my family didn't speak English. There are other towns where there are minority groups and they prefer it there, though.
JoB, you are right about the small villages, although it doesn’t seem to be quite that small - the elderly Kuitunens say they have last met Hannu when he was little, so maybe closer to 20 years ago, or in any case at least 10. It is of course possible they are mistaken, as Hannu seems to know them a little better. Sill, they have a school with several teachers etc, so not quite a tiny village although definitely small enough for it to make sense that Hannu can quickly work out who the leader is in each case.
Hmm... Well, we know that 1. the village was probably sprawling somewhat, with farms and probably a lake? So maybe it's a lot of people over a large area with the same gathering place, and 2. you could fit the entire village in one circle of picnic tables. Plus, maybe some people aren't in attendance. But does this also mean that this could've been avoided if only people weren't gathered?
Post by: Opaque on October 24, 2021, 03:33:48 AM
The interactions in this chapter seem a little more straightforward I think. Especially when speaking with Junnu. Maybe Junnu is a straightforward kind of person. It helps get to the point faster. Helping the cute little snakes. I like that Hannu had to use his head this time around without the help from Puppy fox.
My grandparents used to live in an adorable little farming town in Kansas where everyone knew everyone. It only had one Elementary school, Middle school and High school. I like to imagine Hannus village is around the same size. The town is definitely large enough where you might not actually meet everyone there but still know about them. Some of the people he knew he probably heard of them from listening to his friends talk about them and other goings on around the village. So, you might not speak to some people frequently but still know a lot about them from the gossip chain. Other people who live on the surrounding farmland would come to the village to shop, catch up with friends, etc. Which is how the old farm couple met Hannu. They may have talked with his parents frequently even when Hannu wasn't present. If I remember correctly, during festivals people would celebrate on the farmland instead of the town. Maybe that's why there are so few people who got caught up in Puppy foxes little accident.
I apologize if read like incoherent ramblings. I was very tired when I wrote this.
Post by: JoB on October 24, 2021, 04:12:21 AM
Spoiler: rest of the comic i think • show
Spoiler: spoiler, spoiler, Ville gets to be a broiler • show
It's up to you to decide how much you're willing to believe of the informationSpoiler: rest of the comic i think • show
But does this also mean that this could've been avoided if only people weren't gathered?
Spoiler: 3vul • show
¹ Accideeeeent Totally Not His Fault
Post by: Róisín on October 25, 2021, 11:32:52 PM
Post by: catbirds on October 29, 2021, 04:14:56 AM
This is the part where I started breaking up the chapters because 3-5 are super long… not sure why! But if you feel the pacing of this reading is too slow or fast, please let me know! I'm still hoping to finish it juuust around when SSSS ends, give or take a few weeks, as a sort of transition.
So, it's a watery chapter! I like the setting for this and the bright cyan hues, though nowadays it feels exceptionally vibrant for one of Minna's stories. And the water is stylized and interacts with the panels in neat ways! Also, the plank walkways everywhere are cool. And, ummm, the flat-colour houses! It's a very visually interesting fishing village.
It does suck that Ville got turned into a seal and the first few pages are almost all fat jokes, though. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth, though the good parts of this chapter are definitely worth it to me. I don't really have many other issues with the chapter, except that it might be a little boring? It has some good moments, though.
One of the strengths of this chapter is that this is kind of where the strength of the friendship between Hannu and Ville becomes apparent! Their interactions feel much more fleshed out, rather than Ville more or less just hanging by an appendage and providing commentary. I don't know if this was planned all along or if Minna adjusted the plan as the story unfolded, though. The part where Hannu tries and tries to drag Ville through the forest and seemed to feel bad for letting him get scratched felt too real, considering I'm also one of those people who feel closer with a pet than any human. My favourite is probably page 83, the panel where Hannu's touching Ville's nose.
Does anyone else remember having an experience that was just like the one on page 111? I've had similar experiences where i've taken things and ran, and adults would yell at me the exact same thing. Is it a universal experience???
As someone who lives in a small town in country South Australia (under 1,000 people with most of them living on adjoining small farms, vineyards and in isolated houses on acres), it is a rare occasion when most of the inhabitants are in town at the same time.
More speculation on my part, I think it could be that there are small clusters of people who know each other in small town areas with sprawling farms (in the context of aRTD). And how long people live there also affects things, but even then, I agree that it feels impossible to be perfectly aware of everyone in any town with a population greater than 250, maybe up to 400, and that's on the higher end!
That's all I've got for this week! I actually binged the entire comic a week or two ago because I was That eager to get to the intense part, but it'll be a few weeks before that happens!
Post by: thorny on November 03, 2021, 09:05:59 PM
This whole chapter is one long fat joke. yucch.
Mixed with falling down and getting bruised and being shat on by birds being, probably, supposed to be funny. Which it ain't.
Still good art, though.
-- is Ville turning into a bigger animal each time?
Post by: catbirds on November 03, 2021, 10:50:02 PM
In my opinion most of this could've been skipped, but I don't really know how to phrase that. I liked their bonding moments, like I said, and I like that they have to work together to solve the problem, but couldn't they have done it without the fat jokes? Maybe Ville could've been a seal with legs or a… frog or an otter?
I don't think lamenting it could change it now that it's eight years finished, but the position they were put in in the narrative deliberately makes it so that fat jokes are a thing even when there are other options probably.
If you want to find out Ville's transformation pattern (and a different small spoiler LOL):
Spoiler: for the rest of the story • show
I don't want to be overly negative about the story, though. In the end it's still a giant mixed bag for me! I loved some parts and hated others, but the parts that I loved captured my attention enough for me to get attached to the story.
(Also dont worry if you're a little ahead, the pacing is just for the discussion)
Post by: Jitter on November 04, 2021, 12:57:20 PM
In my opinion most of this could've been skipped, but I don't really know how to phrase that. I liked their bonding moments, like I said, and I like that they have to work together to solve the problem, but couldn't they have done it without the fat jokes? Maybe Ville could've been a seal with legs or a… frog or an otter?
It would be entirely possible to say "you are heavy" instead of "you are fat". But no.
It wouldn't make much difference in some cases, because for example I am heavy because I'm fat. But Ville in this chapter is heavy because he was magically transformed into a seal!
Unfortunately some jabs about fat people still happen even in the streams. Not regularly, but it's not something that was left in the 8-year-old practice comic. I am sorry to say.
Post by: Opaque on November 04, 2021, 06:26:48 PM
All the fat shaming in the comic makes me think about what Mina thought about herself at that time. Some artists will use their art to express how they feel about stuff in there life. Maybe she's unhappy with her own appearance and being mean makes her feel better. Just speculation due to the frequency of her fat jokes. That's just how it looks from an outside observation. I'll also say that I do not know who Mina is as a person.
I'll also apologize. If this came off as belittling people feelings about weight that is definitely not what I intended.
Post by: catbirds on November 05, 2021, 02:41:54 AM
My thoughts on it are pretty much the same as my earlier post on the chapter, so far the plot hasn't really become as apparent yet. It's still kind of a monster-of-the-chapter story. Uhhh... it's a bit lighter on the fat jokes, thankfully! There's a pretty meaningless joke about therapy there, though, and pretty much every chapter opens with fat jokes until UHHHH chapter 6?
Some moments here and there with the art strike me as just a little off and I've finally figured out that it's because the animals have very human-like faces... hmmmm... (see the seagull on page 128). But that effect basically goes away completely after this chapter.
The parts where Ville is swimming underwater has some cute illustrations (p. 121, bottom left)!
The fish part was pretty anticlimactic though, but that's fine.
Errrrrr... overall, I'm getting the sense that I was a far more insufferable (younger) teenager than I thought I was! It's a fun read, but some parts make me think, "wow, how did I enjoy this?" Not that I ever enjoyed making or hearing offensive jokes, but I sympathized with (the less intense parts of) Hannu's attitude way more than I do now... :'D
Brief warnings on the next chapter just in case:
Spoiler: warnings for chapter 4 • show
It would be entirely possible to say "you are heavy" instead of "you are fat". But no.
It wouldn't make much difference in some cases, because for example I am heavy because I'm fat. But Ville in this chapter is heavy because he was magically transformed into a seal!
Unfortunately some jabs about fat people still happen even in the streams. Not regularly, but it's not something that was left in the 8-year-old practice comic. I am sorry to say.
I agree, especially since Ville is almost always a totally different animal. And it's not that seals don't have a lot of fat on their bodies, but they definitely could've just avoided making it about calling Ville fat in almost every instance where he's a big animal. Especially because of the degree to which he's treated as essentially a human character. Speaking of, it might even have been more appropriate to comment on practically any unique non-human non-dog trait Ville had. That'd add much more to their interactions, I think.
There were a couple in SSSS as well, especially when Emil and Reynir were in Lalli's dream, I think. I haven't seen any streams recently. But for aRTD itself, I mean I'm pretty sure that comic is set in stone and won't ever be altered. I don't even think there are ads on that site anymore, so it's probably pretty much never going to change at this point. It's sad that they're still so normal and frequent, even as people have gotten more aware of social issues.
Personally I've found that jokes about my appearance just make me too self-conscious, though it's not comments about my weight most of the time.
Generally I dislike fat jokes. I use the term joke very loosely here cause they're not really jokes but fat shaming. I'll usually give a pass to characters like Hannu or Puppy Fox though because they're terrible people. Hannu is not above making fun of people because he's a bad person, that's his personality. Awful. It's in bad taste but for bad people I can see them saying those things. Other more decent characters would not get a pass of course and if Hannu was an actual person he would absolutely get an earful for being mean. Maybe accidentally get pushed out of the boat... but alas he is only fictional.
Hmmm... yes and no. The jabs don't really add much to the setting, so even though they're just irrelevant lines said by a bunch of lines drawn on paper, it's still totally unrelated to the issues at hand (the setting, the plot, the main Problem, etc...) and usually a whole detour from the actual plot of the chapter. I've found that the richest interactions between Hannu and Ville are the ones where they're being, like, decent people to each other, but that may just be me. And uhh... yeah, Hannu's just a pretty awful guy! But that gets expressed in much more explicit terms later on than a bunch of jabs that even people who think they themselves are angels will say.
None of us know enough about Minna to comment on her own feelings about it, though, and we'll probably never know.
On an unrelated note, I visited an archived version of the page and it's been fun flipping through the older things! Interesting how aRTD was once placed on the same level of hierarchy as the rest of her portfolio, and reading the old logs is fun. Some of it is about how SSSS was developed, in much more detail than I can find elsewhere... cool!
Post by: Róisín on November 05, 2021, 03:21:17 AM
As a tiny red-haired child with glasses I was teased a lot, but I got by with being smart. I did not enjoy the experience. And as an older adult with some quite ugly scars, especially on my legs and lower body, I have had remarks made to me along the lines of ‘How dare I show my scars in a public swimming pool and frighten the children’ which I took to mean that the adults saying such things personally didn’t like the sight. Children are generally fine and are more likely to ask me how I got the scars. My husband said, when somebody asked how he coped with my appearance, that the scars just came with me being me. Bless him!
So reading about poor Ville being teased so was something I found sad, but I presumed that it was in the story to demonstrate that Hannu was simply Not A Very Nice Person.
Edit: something I meant to add was that society having more expectation that people would be courteous to others about their bodies is still a relatively new thing, and would have been a far less common view back when Minna was writing this. It may simply be that the idea of not teasing people about their bodies was far less widespread in the time and culture in which Minna wrote this. After all, many things written even ten years ago are now thought offensive that would simply have been invisible to people then.
Post by: Opaque on November 05, 2021, 09:47:56 AM
Post by: Jitter on November 05, 2021, 01:50:31 PM
Besides that, I like a lot much of the art of Ville swimming in the lake. The landscape panel on p 113 is also nice. And the scene where Ville is the best doggy (p 120) is heartwarming.
Post by: catbirds on November 12, 2021, 07:31:27 PM
It's been such a busy week for me that I've almost forgotten to think about this comic! But we're still getting through it I think!
Yeah this chapter starts with another fat joke. Hmmm....
On the other hand, it does also have much more of those horror elements that Minna's comics have been known for. Things creeping in the woods, things that physically exist and you can attack, but are silent and hidden most of the time. And don't really do the slasher kind of thing that we see in movies. I'm pretty fond of this kind of horror, mostly because I can't stomach other types...
On the second or third read-through, I found Ville's ears funny because his form is so close to what a moose is that the few dog features are just so confusing!
Also, they haven't brought up the hannunvaakuna before this. It's a neat mention (it's appeared on Hannu's design's before, but wasn't discussed).
Reading the comment on page 177 (http://www.minnasundberg.fi/comic/page177.php) does make me very concerned, though. Two comic pages a day is absolute overkill, and even drawing one a day while in post-secondary is soooo much. I can't even keep up with my own schoolwork despite having neglected my own art projects for like two months, though I guess it's a little different for me.
Well, aside from that... pretty art! Lots of nice spreads this chapter, and there's a whole tonne of panels that just feel so soft because of the colour palette. This chapter is far from the softest one, though. Actually I'm pretty sure it just becomes more of a struggle for Hannu after this, but that's going out of the chapter page range so we'll leave it for when that discussion comes!
I continue to be disappointed by my teenage self for indulging in this story and thinking Hannu was cool!
I am ok with the fact that I am indeed fat, but fat insults ire me greatly. In SSSS there’s also he way Onni calls Mikkel the fat Dane. In that case it’s definitely used as an insult (although Mikkel doesn’t hear it) and cannot be explained as some sort of description or joke, as Onni says it because he’s angry. As if being fat (which Mikkel isn’t at this point in the story) is generally bad. It’s puzzling and disappointing especially as Minna really has realistic body shapes.
Yeah, one of the things that drew me in to SSSS was that characters weren't all the same body shape, and perhaps that they weren't drawn to be fanservice-y. Not that that's inherently bad, but it was nice to read something without it (especially because when I started SSSS, I watched a lot of anime). It's super confusing as to why Minna would put it there, especially since I can't recall any other instance where something someone can't control is the butt of a joke. There were some about nationalities in the earlier parts, but SSSS was at least partially about overcoming such differences.
But like I said, there's definitely not much to look forward to for Minna's "sense of humour" in these comics. There's been offensive statements here and there, and ones that aren't really all that bad but aren't really all that funny, either. Personally I felt like the one about getting high on page 176 is pretty meh, and a whole bunch of other ones are just Hannu being terrible or someone having a rough fall.
Post by: thorny on November 12, 2021, 09:24:14 PM
in which it's made utterly clear that Hannu is a very unpleasant person.
And nobody else in the strip is pleasant either.
And even Ville behaves like a fool.
And there are more fat jokes. now joined by jokes about old people; and "retard" as an insult.
-- good grief, it's a troll moose! -- with troll speech, even --
(yes, I realize it's not a troll, and was made out of plants. But it sure looked like one.)
an interesting take on what dogs want. But when I was a child, and we had Old English Sheepdogs, they definitely didn't want me to ride them.
It does seem that Hannu and Ville care about each other. The only redeeming feature Hannu's got, it seems.
And it's still good artwork. Last panel on 261 is lovely.
Post by: catbirds on November 13, 2021, 01:02:59 AM
OK, so here are my notes on chapter 4:
in which it's made utterly clear that Hannu is a very unpleasant person.
Entire re-read summed up so far... It's kind of weird that Hannu's just this unpleasant, even though it's not always necessary for protagonists to be kind always. And it gets worse as we draw closer to the end, by the way. I'm just so confused about what the point of it all is. But I'll just follow the line of reasoning of whatever Minna has said about how at the time, she had no intention of putting any meaningful themes into her stories. This was before LP.
Not that it makes me doubt their friendship, really, but I can't help but shake off the question that if Hannu's willing to treat even his childhood friend (Paju) and parents terribly, then isn't the relationship dynamic between him and Ville flawed and terribly imbalanced? Ville's entire thing is basically "Loves Hannu Would Do Anything To Make Him Happy," and it's a little bit different, but Hannu does have people who treat him the same way.
But those are all just useless musings. Thankfully, Hannu's totally 100% not real I hope... And I still believe that people genuinely want to be good even if they don't always know how.
Post by: Jitter on November 13, 2021, 05:13:52 AM
There was this obnoxious person complaining through a story with some interesting ideas and occasionally very great art, but there was nothing for me to identify with or to feel for. And everyone else seemed happy with it. I am glad to see especially you, catbirds, wonder so openly about how much you liked it. Teenagers are probably much more likely to identify with Hannu, as being self-centered and confrontational goes with the age (sorry any current teenagers reading this, but it’s true! Science! Plus it’s an important phase in development of one’s personality). Actually Hannu would work a lot better if he were, say, 16. For a 24-year-old it’s surprising everyone else seems to put up with it.
Also that Oona girl is scary! Actually small children can hurt animals badly by accident, but he doesn’t look small enough for that! And it’s even shown that she does it on purpose and knows it’s wrong. She is not shaping up to become a nice person.
Finally, the commentary about wasn’t Ville smaller before is a nice touch, an actual fun bit of fun for a change.
Post by: thorny on November 13, 2021, 03:38:41 PM
Now some teenagers write very adult work; I'm not saying that just because somebody's still in their teens they can't do so. But it does cast some possible light on some of the negatives about this work; and in particular maybe on Hannu's immaturity.
I also find myself wondering whether Minna had, or was fighting not to have, some form of anorexia at the time. But she may just have been hanging out with the sort of high school crowd for which going on about whether somebody (often even including themselves) is "fat" is a near-obsessive form of conversation.
None of that makes all of these negatives all right; but might be another reason for the improvement between this and SSSS; which does indeed still have signs of some of the unpleasantless, but manages to produce a number of sympathetic characters; including Turri, who shuts down an early fat joke with such vehemence that IIRC she doesn't get any more of them, even from the same people. (She's rather nasty herself in the way in which she does it, but overall she's IMO definitely a sympathetic character.)
Post by: Róisín on November 13, 2021, 11:14:05 PM
Post by: catbirds on November 14, 2021, 12:34:02 AM
It's definitely not worth it spending the entire time treating it like this is what Minna will be like forever. It's clear she's changed. But also personally I don't think her sense of humour has gotten to any point that is not offensive. And I don't think that with LP she changed for the better, but that's up to personal interpretation I guess?
Anyway, it eases my mind a little bit that Minna's explicitly stated that she wasn't interested in putting serious themes in her work. A Redtail's Dream is still nostalgic for me even if it hasn't aged well, but I wouldn't take it as some essential, monumental work of art that changed our lives forever.
I also find myself wondering whether Minna had, or was fighting not to have, some form of anorexia at the time. But she may just have been hanging out with the sort of high school crowd for which going on about whether somebody (often even including themselves) is "fat" is a near-obsessive form of conversation.
In all likelihood? Yeah, probably. Definitely one of my least favourite things about high school was that making fun of yourself was the only way to be socially safe sometimes. But I don't know enough about Minna to speak about her experiences and I wouldn't ever assume anything about it. Also, it's interesting that Hannu is six years older than Minna was at the time. I used to make OCs who were like, eighteen, thinking, wow, a mature adult! The most recent one is 23. I don't think I need to explain why that's at the very least inaccurate. Hannu's very clearly an overly immature adult, which is definitely one of the downsides of writing a character older than you. The same applies for the entire village, actually.
I am glad to see especially you, catbirds, wonder so openly about how much you liked it. Teenagers are probably much more likely to identify with Hannu, as being self-centered and confrontational goes with the age (sorry any current teenagers reading this, but it’s true! Science! Plus it’s an important phase in development of one’s personality). Actually Hannu would work a lot better if he were, say, 16. For a 24-year-old it’s surprising everyone else seems to put up with it.
Also that Oona girl is scary! Actually small children can hurt animals badly by accident, but he doesn’t look small enough for that! And it’s even shown that she does it on purpose and knows it’s wrong. She is not shaping up to become a nice person.
Hmmmm I feel like there's somewhat of a stigma on teenagers with the whole belief that they're self-interested to the extreme and overly confrontational, as some kind confirmation bias since you probably only notice the self-centred and confrontational teenagers, but also I'm contradicting myself by claiming that because I definitely was self-centred a few years ago. Then again, though, being self-centred isn't exclusively a teenage thing.
Spoiler: til the end • show
I kind of forgot where I was going with this. I guess life gets complicated in your teen years and the social pressure is a lot, sometimes some people will deliberately trample on you and in my case I dealt with that by being a loner and indulging in whatever aRTD is, even though Hannu probably wouldn't have been a nice kid in high school either.
And yeah, Oona definitely knows what she's doing. Pretty much all the kids in this village are at each other's necks.
Post by: Róisín on November 14, 2021, 06:01:07 AM
And as to older people coming up with equally weird and vile themes: yeah, that happens, sadly. I haven’t seen it so much in my generation, since most people in their 80s have lived through enough real-world trouble to make them a bit more open and tolerant unless they have been really spoiled and sheltered, but the post-war generation seems more inclined to nastiness, especially the men, who were definitely more spoiled and sheltered in the aftermath of WW2, where so many boys were lost.
Post by: JoB on November 14, 2021, 08:22:27 AM
an interesting take on what dogs want. But when I was a child, and we had Old English Sheepdogs, they definitely didn't want me to ride them.It might have to do with the fact that so many dogs today are "mere pets", rather than literal work dogs bred for obedience. Children "riding" a dog seems to have been more common some time ago (including yours truly, though I don't remember any of that myself).
Spoiler: Edit • show
Maybe Ville could've been a seal with legs or a… frog or an otter?I never checked in detail, but with foxes on northern lights duty, lightning-associated adders,
Spoiler: show
Post by: Jitter on November 14, 2021, 11:30:52 AM
Catbirds, it really is Science! Studies have shown that for example the mental capacity for empathy diminishes during puberty, although it of course returns later and develops further. And the confrontations are required to break free of the symbiotic relationship with the caregivers, most typically parents, but it reflects wider. So, it’s not only confirmation bias, the stereotype based on facts :)
Post by: thorny on November 14, 2021, 11:41:25 AM
W...ell. I wouldn't exactly call 18/19 years old a kid. She started it in her first year of university
Maybe I misinterpreted something. I thought I saw something in the comments in which she said she was still in high school; but maybe I misunderstood terminology that's different than in the USA. I don't remember what page it was on; if I come across it again, maybe I'll quote it here and people can sort it out for me.
I don't know enough about Minna to speak about her experiences and I wouldn't ever assume anything about it.
Oh, definitely. I was only making possible guesses; didn't mean to imply that there was anything definite about them.
I feel like there's somewhat of a stigma on teenagers with the whole belief that they're self-interested to the extreme and overly confrontational, as some kind confirmation bias since you probably only notice the self-centred and confrontational teenagers
Sorry if it came off like that! I know and have known teenagers who aren't/weren't like that at all. Like most other things about humans, it varies considerably. I meant more that some people who are like that as teenagers are not like that when they're older; though some take longer to grow out of it than others, some never do, and some people actually become more like that as they get older.
And there are, in some schools, student social groupings which are like that, and which reinforce that behavior in their members. ARTD seems to me at some points to be seeing Hannu's whole town as like that.
-- JoB, your link won't load for me, and tells me that it's because my browser's not up to date, and offers me what it says are links to updated browsers. I'm using an entirely updated version of Firefox; just doublechecked. It's possible that the link's reacting to a selective script blocker that I'm running, but what that usually gets me if it's breaking a site is a notice to turn Javascript on; so I don't know whether something's weird about the site you're linking to and it's trying to get me to download something that's not legitimately one of those browsers.
Post by: JoB on November 14, 2021, 01:38:22 PM
-- JoB, your link won't load for me, and tells me that it's because my browser's not up to date, and offers me what it says are links to updated browsers. I'm using an entirely updated version of Firefox; just doublechecked. It's possible that the link's reacting to a selective script blocker that I'm running, but what that usually gets me if it's breaking a site is a notice to turn Javascript on; so I don't know whether something's weird about the site you're linking to and it's trying to get me to download something that's not legitimately one of those browsers.Never mind; apart from a number of comments that don't really add anything, it's a bunch of B+W photos showing kids riding (large-ish) dogs, complete with clearly not-in-our-times kids' clothing.
FF 94.0 + ABP here, but no outright script blocking, no comment about it not being satisfactory ...
Post by: Róisín on November 14, 2021, 08:51:21 PM
JoB, I couldn’t see your pictures either, but in my case the link wanted me to sign up to a website to view them.
And thorny, I too have known a number of empathetic teenagers. I think their being like that is a mixture of nature and nurture - the kids I am closest to at present whom I would call really empathetic are all the offspring of parents who are that way, and live in environments where such attitudes are encouraged. It is not surprising that many of them are kids whom I have met through community projects such as the recycling centre, community garden and riverbank cleanups. There is something in the ‘me, me, me’ culture that discourages empathy.
Post by: catbirds on November 19, 2021, 08:14:53 PM
I'm so late this time! It's close to the end of the semester so school's starting to get really busy, but once it's over, I want to do a more detailed analysis or almost-essay of the going-ons in this story.
I think this is the part where most readers might start to think the story will make an actual attempt at making Hannu learn a lesson, which, y'know, doesn't turn out to be the case. When that part comes, it'll be obvious.
Some parts of this chapter are a little funny, but also that's because Hannu's just being really rude. If he said most of these things to a real person in the real world, he'd get a smack in the face. Not to mention that I don't think Hannu would be very well-liked if he were in a larger town, but also everyone hates everyone else here so... Oh WellTM.
The moose is pretty interesting. Yup. Though I tried to find an equivalent in whatever's available on the English internet, and I couldn't find any mention of Hiisi who were so malevolent, unless you count the post-Christian-contact ones. I'll chalk that up to creative liberty or maybe the Terrible Fox Child just really wants the humans in the dream to have a bad time. Who dreams of problems they can cause humans, anyway? Also, the design of the moose is pretty underwhelming from a distance... it really is just a moose made of wood, the horror probably comes from the fact that it's trying to kill them.
Jouko's a pretty decent character, too. He's probably the only one I can tolerate so far, mostly because he does try smacking (or flicking) some sense into Hannu. Well, I mean, I hope he didn't do that when Hannu was younger, but Hannu's an adult and probably needs someone to smack some sense and existential awareness into him. And Mr. Moose is alright, too.
Well, that's all I can think of so far! Great art, though I wonder if Minna got tired of purple by around this point.
Maybe I misinterpreted something. I thought I saw something in the comments in which she said she was still in high school; but maybe I misunderstood terminology that's different than in the USA. I don't remember what page it was on; if I come across it again, maybe I'll quote it here and people can sort it out for me.
Meeeeeeh, I honestly don't think it makes much of a difference. Here in North America and maybe, maybe, also in many cultures, we're too used to our life stages all being approximately the same. Really, you're not a totally different person the moment you get out of high school. Being 19 instead of 18 or 17 doesn't make that much of a difference unless it's coincidentally a year in which LOTS changed for you.
Sorry if it came off like that! I know and have known teenagers who aren't/weren't like that at all. Like most other things about humans, it varies considerably. I meant more that some people who are like that as teenagers are not like that when they're older; though some take longer to grow out of it than others, some never do, and some people actually become more like that as they get older.
Nooo that was about Jitter's comment, but I agree that people are too different and change at wildly different paces to gauge or place on a timeline accurately.
Catbirds, it really is Science! Studies have shown that for example the mental capacity for empathy diminishes during puberty, although it of course returns later and develops further. And the confrontations are required to break free of the symbiotic relationship with the caregivers, most typically parents, but it reflects wider. So, it’s not only confirmation bias, the stereotype based on facts :)
I did a quick search... I can't find any articles saying that particular thing, at least not in English, but several do say that empathy needs to be developed throughout puberty and that it's not the same as childhood. But I'm not really a developmental psychologist, so uheehhh... I'll let this one go for now. Personally I viewed the confrontational side of adolescence as being more about the desire to stand up for yourself (in a generally unfair society), and a number of my friends were... not confrontational at all, but many others in my school were. If you can recall, when and on whom was the study conducted?
It still stands that clearly Hannu was more understandable to me as a teenager than me now, though, so there was probably still a decent amount of truth in what you learned on this topic!
I missed a lot of the angsty teenager phase, I think, both because I had a lot of what most people would nowadays consider adult responsibilities from late childhood on, and because until my midteens I didn’t live anywhere with enough people to have anything like a high school.
I agree and this was interesting to read, because it's pretty clearly the environment of high school that makes students like that. Modern high school isn't a great place to learn, in my opinion, since it's basically mandatory even when some people aren't really interested in it and you spend over half your waking life involved in education and related activities, and to make it worse people cut funding so that the environment itself is terrible to learn in, even when the things you're learning are super important for understanding the modern world now. It might've been different like sixty or seventy or eighty years ago, but I wouldn't know!
And as to older people coming up with equally weird and vile themes: yeah, that happens, sadly. I haven’t seen it so much in my generation, since most people in their 80s have lived through enough real-world trouble to make them a bit more open and tolerant unless they have been really spoiled and sheltered, but the post-war generation seems more inclined to nastiness, especially the men, who were definitely more spoiled and sheltered in the aftermath of WW2, where so many boys were lost.
My experience with working with people older than eighty is that a lot of people with interesting stories to tell don't have the means or the physical ability to do it in any way other than orally, which is unfortunate because very few people listen to them. Though it's kind of terrible that two terrible wars happened in the first place...
Post by: Róisín on November 20, 2021, 01:04:51 AM
While my family had been quite well-off so that we still had the remains of a large and multilingual library, and while many of the older rels had travelled widely, done much, and were willing both to share their knowledge and donate to our library the books they had brought back, what we didn’t have was a lot of money. But we coped. So I learned from them as I could and then proceeded to educate myself as well as I could. We were quite poor, most of our good land having been taken by the English over the previous few centuries, leaving us with one cold, rocky and bleak farm on the far west coast. No internet back then, of course! By the time I finally met a modern school system in my mid teens I had enough of an education base to get through the rest of my secondary and tertiary education on academic scholarships. My gran wanted me to have a science education, so that was what I aimed for and got.
But living like that either teaches you empathy or turns you into someone who hates everybody. I was lucky enough to avoid the latter, and never learned to hate people!
Post by: Jitter on November 20, 2021, 08:55:07 AM
Spoiler: show
As if I didn’t already know “people” may as well mean just male people as not. I’ll get back to the actual topic later!
Post by: catbirds on November 22, 2021, 12:06:22 AM
But living like that either teaches you empathy or turns you into someone who hates everybody. I was lucky enough to avoid the latter, and never learned to hate people!
Eeegh... yeah. That's unfortunate, I guess it ends up like this no matter which path you take. The more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess...
It's quite fortunate that you grew up in a community with the resources for you to learn. A lot of my older relatives can't even read LOL. And self-motivated study is pretty difficult, especially when you have that many responsibilities. I know most of my friends would've just goofed off and gotten drunk instead if they had the choice, not that that's worse than paying attention in school because I was definitely bored out of my mind in high school and sometimes hoped (in a lighthearted way) that some accident would befall me get me dismissed early. Oh, that actually came true I guess. I got dismissed three whole months early from high school because of COVID. Also my friends had ADHD.
But hey, it's not all bad! Also, I feel like you vaguely managed to attain the knowledge that you would've gotten from your grandmother, what with your knowledge of plants and other things which I can't list right now. But that's only vaguely speaking, I don't know what else happened.
Also, this kind of reminds me of how my father's life went, except he got denied entry to university because of institutional corruption. But that's a story for another day.
The latter one indicates that the observed development is indeed a result of several factors, and as the studies I took a cursory look at were heavily concentrated on white, middle class American and European families, it is blatantly obvious my initial claim was very lazy! Thank you for calling me out on it!
The field is fascinating but unfortunately I don’t have time to look any further. This already is enough to show how I have read in something like a magazine or newspaper an article blanketing “teenagers go backwards in empathy” and just swallowed it whole, when the research has indicated white European boys exhibit this.Serves me right :) As if I didn’t already know “people” may as well mean just male people as not.
Spoiler: show
Post by: Róisín on November 22, 2021, 09:03:35 PM
Post by: thorny on November 22, 2021, 09:57:30 PM
It would be awful!
(I was the weird kid who had the word BUT written in large print all across the notebook binder we carried around classes all day.)
Post by: Róisín on November 22, 2021, 10:19:56 PM
Post by: catbirds on November 23, 2021, 02:34:01 AM
But -- but -- but -- if you could learn Everything In The World, if it were possible to do that: what would you do the day after, and for the rest of your life?
It would be awful!
I had a similar fear and I still kind of do now that I'm still in the years where you just learn until you "don't." It's terrifying to just keep tumbling down that hill and accumulating knowledge until you hit a wall, but I guess that's what experts in a field are supposed to work with. As Roisin said!
Like, I hated so much the idea that I would not be learning EVERYTHING in university, just one specialized field, and I couldn't even pick one in the end! But I think for our own mental health and the well-being of all others, we're supposed to learn things together (as humanity).
But also in the information age, it's pretty overwhelming no matter how much you want or don't want to learn.
Post by: Róisín on November 23, 2021, 03:13:21 AM
Post by: tehta on November 23, 2021, 04:12:34 AM
I had a similar fear and I still kind of do now that I'm still in the years where you just learn until you "don't."
I am not sure I understand that. What years are those?
My experience of learning is:
-- I am very much a generalist. I was interested in All The Subjects at school and still enjoy reading all sorts of random nonfiction.
-- I am also a specialist, in that I have a PhD (in a subfield of Artificial Intelligence) and now use my expertise in industry. Anyway, I am very much aware that, even in my field, I don't know everything and never have, and even if I learned everything one day, the boundaries of knowledge would have moved the day after. And even AI aside, my software-related job requires pretty much constant learning to stay on top of things.
Post by: catbirds on November 24, 2021, 03:11:51 AM
I am not sure I understand that. What years are those?
Eeeeh... I don't really have a specific age in mind. A couple of older people I've met while working downtown pretty much just stopped doing any learning after they graduated university, but that's a really small sample size either way.
I mean, it's hard to quantify knowledge in any case, but generally when people get jobs that are completely draining and repetitive, and maybe they're always in poor working conditions, they don't have their minds on learning or artistic pursuits (not impossible, but it's difficult). A lot of people I've seen on this forum have had some amount of post-secondary education, but I know plenty of people who don't have any experience in academia and require judgement and problem-solving to do their jobs and learn for as long as they work.
Of course, not everyone has this experience and this is pretty loaded coming from a... kid? It's really just about me and my fear of stagnating. I also have a lot of really scattered and general skills and interests, and when I'm tired because school feels like a slog, I kind of just... stop doing the things I love for a little while...
Post by: Róisín on November 24, 2021, 08:06:05 AM
Post by: moredhel on November 24, 2021, 08:51:58 AM
I mean, it's hard to quantify knowledge in any case, but generally when people get jobs that are completely draining and repetitive, and maybe they're always in poor working conditions, they don't have their minds on learning or artistic pursuits (not impossible, but it's difficult).I can not imagine that it is possible to do a draining repetitive job without doing something creative or learning something interesting in your free time. In the years I had such a job, times in wich I could not learn something new clearly made me suicidal.
Post by: catbirds on November 24, 2021, 08:24:43 PM
Then there are the people who do some ghastly mechanical slog of a job and at the end of the day write, sing or play amazing music - I have known a lot of those down the years. Plus we have a number of them among the volunteers for our community projects, who live for their volunteer work, which can be incredibly creative. Jobs that keep your family fed are not always the most inspiring things.
I can not imagine that it is possible to do a draining repetitive job without doing something creative or learning something interesting in your free time. In the years I had such a job, times in wich I could not learn something new clearly made me suicidal.
Yeah, that's why I say it varies. For me being creative and learning takes a lot of time and energy, but it's a far more rewarding type of fatigue. It's like a really good workout, whereas slogging through tiring work you don't care about is closer to the feeling of propping yourself above a pit of venomous snakes for a whole day.
Roisin, where you live, it might be that the culture allows for people to express themselves with music out loud. Unfortunately, here, that type of experience is much harder to find unless you're very involved in a cultural group, but people still try to get by. I did that kind of thing a little when I was 16 or 17, and it was a pretty neat experience even if you can still find embarrassing photos of me on the internet because of it :3
Post by: Róisín on November 24, 2021, 10:45:08 PM
Another context in which I encountered that sort of background cultural involvement was while working in factories. I did this as one of my many side jobs while doing my first science degree, since while I had an academic scholarship which covered fees, tuition, and most of my books I still needed to pay for food and any extracurricular texts I wanted, and I helped my grandparents to support the family and raise my younger siblings while they also cared for my crippled-veteran father. I could always find such work since I actively wanted to work night and evening shifts, which most people did not. Most of the people doing such shifts were migrant women, often speaking little or no English, and even while working flat out we had a good time.
My favourite such job was working nights on the production lines of an old cereal factory in Carlton, right next to the brewery and only a short walk from the university, the museum and state library, the Queen Victoria Market and my two favourite folk clubs.
Workers on the line would sing, talk, and playfully learn bits of one another’s languages, which is where I picked up the fragments of Greek, Italian and Turkish I have. It was very hard, dull and repetitive work, but the interactions kept our minds alive, and I at least learned a lot of useful things.
Nowadays, in a much gentler context, I hold a monthly come-all-ye music night at my house. The next one is going to be this coming Saturday, since South Australia has done so well at controlling Covid that we are now allowed up to 30 people at a private event. I don’t expect anything like that number, but it should still be fun.
And catbirds, it sounds as if you had fun, even if the result was ‘embarrassing’ photos.
Post by: catbirds on November 25, 2021, 10:42:15 PM
:sparkle: Discussion for the remainder of chapter 4! :sparkle:
I know we've veered significantly off the direct discussion of the comic, but I think it's fine, considering this conversation is worthwhile anyway and pretty relevant to the theme our discussion has taken on. That'd be the meaning of maturity, culture, and youth, I think. Also we've more or less reached a consensus that Hannu is kind of a brat and the story's thematically in shambles, even if I think the pacing and the structure make it at least an enjoyable read if you overlook all the offensive jokes.
And general warnings going into chapter 5:
Spoiler: show
So, this last part was a very cool fight scene to me, and it had some genuinely interesting stakes. Unlike the last chapter, they were way more involved in actually defeating the beast, and the parts where their lives were at risk felt genuine. I still don't really enjoy the "motive" they gave the wood moose Hiisi, which is a bunch of woodland spirits just really have it out for humans, but still. I guess maybe Puppy-fox dreamt it up. (Also if I'm misunderstanding something, please let me know. I really don't know much about Finnish mythology)
Uhh... I forgot about the R-slur. But the rest of the ending was decent! But also going by the way Jouko or Mr. Moose puts it, doesn't this mean Hannu's concussion carries through to every subsequent dream world? Though I'm not sure if it's a concussion or something else, but Hannu definitely did get smacked pretty hard, and that probably means he got a pretty bad head injury. He must be made of steel, too, considering what he's been through. And I guess it's here where we establish once and for all that Hannu's just an awful guy! Just an awful guy, which... ok I guess.
I think Hannu's a little bit overpowered in this dream. It makes me really wonder what he's done as a child, especially with him knowing how to get out of the avanto, shoot crossbows, etc etc... But maybe he's just in his element, whatever. I've heard it's pretty common for children in small towns to go wandering into the woods for Fun. And other times, he's pretty vulnerable, which is strange because there sure is a lot of sympathy being put towards this guy who's just kinda awful and never reciprocates kindness (except when contractually obligated because of a little fox spirit). In that sense, I'm quite glad that this story is restricted to one village.
As a side note, I can't remember if I've said this before, but I'm totally okay with the idea of a character who's awful. It's just when they're treated with more kindness than someone who is just decent that I start feeling a sort of, uhhh, resentment.
BUT as usual, that's just me! ;D
Bright and active minds need to talk, sing and tell stories while so occupied, or go mad. And I have found that logic applies on small non-mechanised farms all over the world, including country Australia.
Yeah, it was probably a much more relevant thing back when people had to do things by hand. I still sing to myself when I do work, or put on some music that I enjoy, and it helps a whole lot. But I guess there's no rhythm to farming with a tractor, maybe? Or no group element? IDK.
Workers on the line would sing, talk, and playfully learn bits of one another’s languages, which is where I picked up the fragments of Greek, Italian and Turkish I have. It was very hard, dull and repetitive work, but the interactions kept our minds alive, and I at least learned a lot of useful things.
Personally I think factory work in the past came with a whole slew of other issues, including the poor and kind of unregulated working conditions and overcrowded living quarters, but at least you had this. I kind of wish they still allowed that... Most factories I've been in were too noisy and workers stood too far apart to have reasonable conversations.
Also, I would probably have spent all my time biting my lip and worrying about whether I'll mess up. But again, just me!
Nowadays, in a much gentler context, I hold a monthly come-all-ye music night at my house. The next one is going to be this coming Saturday, since South Australia has done so well at controlling Covid that we are now allowed up to 30 people at a private event. I don’t expect anything like that number, but it should still be fun.
This sounds fun! If conditions don't worsen, hope it goes through, but if you do need to postpone it, well, the time will come eventually. I'd like to attend something like this. My friends are always too shy about singing in a group, which sucks because it's one of my favourite activities.
And catbirds, it sounds as if you had fun, even if the result was ‘embarrassing’ photos.
Aha, well, I also got a neat banner, a shirt, and some arthritis, but it was the most lively and passionate thing I've done in my life. Totally different from, say, painting. You lose yourself in a different way with music and dance.
Post by: thorny on November 25, 2021, 11:33:08 PM
And I guess it's here where we establish once and for all that Hannu's just an awful guy! Just an awful guy, which... ok I guess
I think what bothers me isn't just that he's an awful guy; but that his being awful doesn't seem to be any sort of plot point, or character development, or whatever. It reads more as if this is just what Minna, at least at the time, thought of as normal.
I guess there's no rhythm to farming with a tractor, maybe? Or no group element? IDK.
Not generally a group element, though that depends on the work; but definitely a rhythm.
A more stretched out rhythm than for most handwork, but it's there. Dowwwwwwwwwwn the length of this field, lift equipment, turn with right brake, lower equipment, uuuuuuuuuuuuupp to the other end, lift equipment, turn with right brake, lower equipment, dowwwwwwwwwn again, till you've done the circuit, start the next one, repeat . . .
oh look there's the hawk! and a cat at the edge of the field, both hoping for mice --
And I tell myself stories while on the tractor, all the time. Or work out plans for the next year. Or think of what I should have said at the planning board meeting. Or occasionally think up a poem. Going in circles on a tractor can be very useful for getting one's head going at some types of thinking.
Post by: Jitter on November 27, 2021, 06:17:45 AM
I think what bothers me isn't just that he's an awful guy; but that his being awful doesn't seem to be any sort of plot point, or character development, or whatever. It reads more as if this is just what Minna, at least at the time, thought of as normal..
Yeah, he’s just terrible and nobody really seems to mind! I very much like Mr Kuikka here for telling Hannu off. I don’t approve of physical punishment, but I have to say I was all for it when Hannu got snapped by him on p 215.
The fight scenes are cool, and I like the design of the Moose of Hiisi too! In the real world, Hannu would have died in the avanto, even if he hadn’t already been concussed, but this is not the real world. The way he starts feeling good due to hypothermia is realistic, it eventually causes a sort of euphoria and the person just decides to take a nap in the snow, and never wakes up again.
Oh and moose can swim, and dive, they are very good swimmers and cross open expanses of lakes to get to islands. They also dive for water plants into depths of several meters.
Post by: Róisín on November 27, 2021, 11:34:13 PM
And thorny, are you familiar with that beautiful Stan Rogers song ‘The Field Behind the Plow’? I think it catches the feeling you were talking about very well indeed.
My music night happened, though with only half a dozen people. We still had fun, lots of good music, talk and storytelling. I made a big pot of vegetable soup as well as roast beef fillet and baked vegetables, Dusty brought along his esky with icecream and berries (I don’t have a working freezer at present, so icecream is a rare treat for us). We had a good feast along with the music. I have so much missed being able to do this every month, and look forward to the end of the pandemic for this among many other reasons!
Post by: catbirds on November 28, 2021, 01:39:53 AM
Yeah, he’s just terrible and nobody really seems to mind! I very much like Mr Kuikka here for telling Hannu off. I don’t approve of physical punishment, but I have to say I was all for it when Hannu got snapped by him on p 215.
Me too. Personally I feel like everyone in this small town has a distinct selfishness or cruelty to them (with the exception of like, one or two characters I guess?), even if one can also make the argument that they DO care about each other, just in a different way. But they all seem so immature, though I've met children who are, you know, empathetic and all.
But Hannu's the worst of all. He doesn't even attempt to reciprocate any kindnesses and he's actually framed as manipulative and abusive (especially and even more so later, but spoilers etc...)
In most narratives, and I've heard it's well-portrayed in LOTR but I've read absolutely none of the books myself so I don't know, kindness is something that exists in most people, even if they do selfish things to survive or occasionally have a moment of weakness and do something cruel.
But in aRTD everyone's just kinda terrible and unhelpful!
I think what bothers me isn't just that he's an awful guy; but that his being awful doesn't seem to be any sort of plot point, or character development, or whatever. It reads more as if this is just what Minna, at least at the time, thought of as normal.
I kind of agree, even if I also want to think that Minna did not see everyone in such a spiteful and cruel way. Like, it feels kind of weird because Minna's still young and has years ahead of her in terms of art-making, but now that I see that this is how it started, eugh. I guess I can see the seeds of LP here, as much as I hate to admit it.
(And I half-intended to use this re-read as a chance to reflect on how Minna's work has influenced me and how I'd move forward personally, but I'm kind of just terrified now.)
The fight scenes are cool, and I like the design of the Moose of Hiisi too! In the real world, Hannu would have died in the avanto, even if he hadn’t already been concussed, but this is not the real world. The way he starts feeling good due to hypothermia is realistic, it eventually causes a sort of euphoria and the person just decides to take a nap in the snow, and never wakes up again.
Yeah, it's such an appropriate design for something that looks perfectly normal in the woods and completely terrifying at the same time.
I've heard that you can survive falling into freezing water if you wear something that keeps you afloat and warm, but Hannu isn't wearing that, clearly. But hypothermia, that's something I've never experienced. It's such a strange reaction in your brain for something that's sure to leave you dead? Comatose at least?
Oh and moose can swim, and dive, they are very good swimmers and cross open expanses of lakes to get to islands. They also dive for water plants into depths of several meters.
Yup, I've seen those pictures online! And I've always been very shocked. Apparently, one of the moose's main predators is orca whales, which confused many people on the internet because they didn't know moose could swim.
And I tell myself stories while on the tractor, all the time. Or work out plans for the next year. Or think of what I should have said at the planning board meeting. Or occasionally think up a poem. Going in circles on a tractor can be very useful for getting one's head going at some types of thinking.
Sounds relaxing if you're doing it on a nice day! I like the thought of seeing animals and nature as you work. Though I've always preferred picking and peeling fruits and beans by hand, since it feels just like the right amount of activity to me.
My music night happened, though with only half a dozen people. We still had fun, lots of good music, talk and storytelling. I made a big pot of vegetable soup as well as roast beef fillet and baked vegetables, Dusty brought along his esky with icecream and berries (I don’t have a working freezer at present, so icecream is a rare treat for us). We had a good feast along with the music. I have so much missed being able to do this every month, and look forward to the end of the pandemic for this among many other reasons!
That's awesome <3 A lot of the time, hanging out with a small group is just as fun. How was the singing? Also, cool, apparently esky is an Australian thing. Hopefully more people come by soon, though it'll still be a bit of holding your breath with the virus!
Post by: JoB on November 28, 2021, 03:09:11 AM
Oh and moose can swim, and dive, they are very good swimmers and cross open expanses of lakes to get to islands. They also dive for water plants into depths of several meters.
Yup, I've seen those pictures online! And I've always been very shocked. Apparently, one of the moose's main predators is orca whales, which confused many people on the internet because they didn't know moose could swim.Unless I've misunderstood, the moose in the Nordic have to go graze underwater, because plant life on land alone wouldn't provide enough sustenance for such large herbivores to survive the winters up there ...
Post by: Róisín on November 28, 2021, 05:45:53 AM
Post by: Jitter on November 28, 2021, 10:39:38 AM
Thorny I forgot to thank you for your description of rhythm of tractor work! It’s always interesting to learn how people view and feel about various activities, and your description evokes a sort of beauty to it all!
I have also been privileged lately to see animals during my work day, there are a couple or perhaps three red squirrels living in our garden and and I see them on most days when working on my desk. And even when the squirrels don’t appear, there are birds. It’s a delight! Some while ago a small flock of bullfinches were jumping in the bushes, it’s been ages since I’ve seen them although they are not particularly rare (yet…)
Post by: Róisín on November 28, 2021, 09:33:31 PM
We have lots of insects too: my European bees in their hive plus many different native bees, lots of moths and butterflies, mantids and mantispids and all manner of tiny crawling things. I love watching the animals.
Post by: catbirds on December 03, 2021, 01:58:53 AM
Taking a break from my (due very soon) French assignment because I'm so tired! Ugh, I'll get through it eventually.
The bear chapter isn't my favourite, but it's definitely one of the cutest with the Hannu/Ville interactions. People are generally afraid of bears because they're big and strong (enough to kill you), so seeing them snuggle up to sleep or work together is very nice. But also not recommended in real life! I wouldn't go near wild animals at all. Also, the intensity of their interactions with the crows is... well, it's there. Terrifying.
It's also funny to see Hannu get terrified when he wakes up to Bear-Ville. Also, this weird stylistic thing (p. 306) that Minna does where the eye colour is practically glowing and waaay more vibrant than usual when characters get scared? Interesting. A bit of a side tangent, but I have pretty dark brown eyes, and it's always amusing to me when I think about how that thing wouldn't work at all if you tried to draw me in a cartoon. (I like my eyes, though. Minus the myopia.)
Weird side note about her comments on p. 324. Are portfolio review days standard in European art schools? Here, we just get into an art school with whatever we have and then just work and work on our art skills for however long our programs last.
General comments:
- I noticed a while ago that aRTD doesn't have ads on it anymore. How long has it been like this? To be fair, I'm pretty sure SSSS is Minna's primary source of income anyway, and aRTD has far fewer regular users.
- It's nice reading comic pages that clearly were very enthusiastically drawn. I mean, we've already more or less agreed that this comic is pretty problematic in some respects, but it's still clear that she put a lot of attention and care into drawing these pages. It's just something about the way the characters interact with the world that makes them feel a little more realistic and makes you care about what they're doing and why and how (and also kind of why I want Hannu to just be a better person, but alas,). Also, her comments are very spirited, even though I'm pretty sure she was tired all the time, with her being a uni student and having either insomnia or migraines or both? Either way, with the general mopey-ness of how the current SSSS pages are unfolding and how we're reacting to it, reading aRTD is a nice change in perspective.
- I should read the comments more often.
Always nice to see wildlife while working outside, isn’t it? We have many different birds, ranging from tiny wrens, honeyeaters and silvereyes to big kookaburras, magpies, Australian ravens and mountain jays, plus owls, hawks and the occasional wedgetail eagle.Wow! Australian birds are my favourite. They're so colourful, and some videos uploaded by Australians just show such bright and happy little creatures bouncing around outside. I have two budgies at home and I love them dearly, but of course, I'd love to see all the other birds of Australia.
Star (my husband) likes folk and filk, used to play the dulcimer but not so much any more. He has one of those beautiful dark brown deep singing voices. The others both like general folk, and one of them composes a lot of music for his kids. He and Dusty play a lot of instruments between them and can play some of mine that my damaged hands can no longer manage. Liz has my big harp until my grandkids need it, and I can still play bodhran and small harp. We had fun.Sounds like it. I kind of wish that such community music events were still prioritized in any cultures where it was ever a thing! A lot of my friends learned to play piano and violin only for formal events, which are probably fun, but I just wish we could have a cheerful session of singing and dancing like that.
My family is pretty devoid of instrument owners. I should look into that.
Post by: catbirds on December 10, 2021, 10:35:35 PM
Anyway, obligatory warnings for chapter 6:
Spoiler: show
This chapter is definitely one where I wonder how Hannu is still alive. Unless the snow and the hood were great cushions... those impacts just look like they really hurt.
Also, I loved the part where Kokko comes swooping in. Hmmmm... I'm fond of the muted colours in this chapter, and the streaks of orange when Kokko appears still feel incredibly magical. And the way the hot winds he brings are stylized is perfect for the mythological setting. This is the feeling that I loved so much about this comic, and probably the one I'll remember for the longest time, despite my other feelings surrounding the comic.
I think probably my biggest nitpick with this chapter is the portrayal of ravens and the wanton killing of them at the end. It's one of those animals that I think gets misunderstood because of their appearance, but that's probably just me.
Hmmmm... I don't know if there's much else to talk about. Not positively, anyway. I enjoy Hannu and Ville's interactions, but they don't really play off each other in interesting ways and in my opinion their relationship dynamic undergoes minimal change throughout the story, aside from what happens between transformations. It's nice to see the genuine fondness they have for each other, though, especially at the very end of the story, but for the most part the discrete chapters are somewhat of a weakness for this chapter. Especially since their task this time requires them to leave the villagers entirely, it's pretty much just like a fetch quest.
I still enjoyed the "action" in this chapter, though. If we don't consider all the implications I mentioned, it's still a pretty entertaining and silly sequence of events that seem almost impossible.
Post by: JoB on December 11, 2021, 04:08:25 AM
This chapter is definitely one where I wonder how Hannu is still alive. Unless the snow and the hood were great cushions... those impacts just look like they really hurt.They sure did, but a) that's not his actual body (and if there were a strict correlation between the real and the astral one, the latter could not get more or less injured than the former, which is frozen in time for most of the story), and b) what would happen if he died only in the dream, as he's already headed towards Tuonela along The Birds' Path there, anyway?
I think probably my biggest nitpick with this chapter is the portrayal of ravens and the wanton killing of them at the end. It's one of those animals that I think gets misunderstood because of their appearance, but that's probably just me.Well, those ravens are most definitely not a representation of the average real world raven, but some of the story's villains, including the monologueing about their (modestly) evil (but still perdition-promising, though they probably didn't know that) plans. In both cases, they chose to interfere with the heroes first. (I'm not sure whether we can credit them, rather than Minna / the comic's rating, for Hannu and Ville remaining entirely unharmed by their actions, but that's why I'm not saying that they attacked first.)
If you read the comments on those pages, I would have recommended that Hannu instead used death threats against Kurri, or took him hostage, and I still stand by that, but I can't say that I'd consider that that much morally superior ... Hannu and Ville are fighting for their, and others', lives there, after all ...
Post by: catbirds on December 18, 2021, 12:24:04 AM
Uhhhh... yeah. Very concerning, Hannu's kind of just an awful guy here. I don't like it much because at the end, he insists that Tuomi will be fine, but Tuomi is a teenager who thinks no one understands him and Hannu just kind of makes it worse by 1. assaulting him, 2. destroying something important to him, and then 3. possibly drowning him? It's a little Yikes. But hey, if Minna's ultimate goal was to show how terrible Hannu is, then she's been pretty successful by far. I know I cringed at this chapter a few years ago, despite understanding Hannu up until that point.
My more generous interpretation of this chapter is that he's just very irritated after this long journey. Not that you should start being terrible to people after being tired, but Hannu's definitely weary by then. Also, I can vaguely understand why the adults in my life tolerated me as a teenager because of this, but still... eh. Not fond of this, anyway.
To be fair, though, it does make it more dramatic, but I dislike the narrative's attempt to wrap the chapter up by saying Hannu was right or is wiser. Well, that sums up my feelings about most of these chapters. It'd be fine if Hannu weren't depicted as wiser for this, or for generally being unempathetic.
Alternatively, I hope this isn't based on Minna's personal experience, on either side of this interaction.
What else... Yeah, this has my favourite colour palette because of how muted and quiet it is. It feels so peaceful... Also, the paintings of the rocks in the background make them look like they're shrouded in mist.
They sure did, but a) that's not his actual body (and if there were a strict correlation between the real and the astral one, the latter could not get more or less injured than the former, which is frozen in time for most of the story), and b) what would happen if he died only in the dream, as he's already headed towards Tuonela along The Birds' Path there, anyway?
LMAO sorry I thought I replied to this last week. Must've forgotten to click post. Ummm.... it's pretty ambiguous and I think Puppy-Fox initially meant to use him to get away with his mistake because of his current real-world condition, so if he died it wouldn't have been a big deal. The only indication of how he "heals" or gets injured is one throwaway line (http://www.minnasundberg.fi/comic/page263.php) by Mr. Moose, saying that he heals slower than if they were in the real world, which makes no sense or indicates that they're all souls that are still in some kind of stasis.
This might end up as a really long analysis about what a human soul is, so maybe not tonight for me unless anyone wants. But hopefully Puppy-Fox has a backup because either way, he wouldn't be able to get away with even a couple souls slipping through.
Well, those ravens are most definitely not a representation of the average real world raven, but some of the story's villains, including the monologueing about their (modestly) evil (but still perdition-promising, though they probably didn't know that) plans. In both cases, they chose to interfere with the heroes first. (I'm not sure whether we can credit them, rather than Minna / the comic's rating, for Hannu and Ville remaining entirely unharmed by their actions, but that's why I'm not saying that they attacked first.)
If you read the comments on those pages, I would have recommended that Hannu instead used death threats against Kurri, or took him hostage, and I still stand by that, but I can't say that I'd consider that that much morally superior ... Hannu and Ville are fighting for their, and others', lives there, after all ...
Hmm... Well, I'm not a fan of ravens being depicted as evil in general. It's kind of just an overdone trope that I don't care much for, but it's not a big deal if it does happen. Either way, the ravens are a weird addition to the setting and they feel kind of... out of place? At least they're dream animals, probably. Keeping track of how this thing works is starting to get difficult, though.
But like in Chapter 6, the conflict does add something interesting to the story, even if it feels tangential. I've never heard of any cases of ravens being that deliberately cruel, though. Or that they can actually hurt people? I mean people are so much larger and birds usually have better things to do.
Also, I'm pretty sure neither the ravens nor Hannu are good
Post by: JoB on December 18, 2021, 12:34:21 PM
Uhhhh... yeah. Very concerning, Hannu's kind of just an awful guy here. I don't like it much because at the end, he insists that Tuomi will be fine, but Tuomi is a teenager who thinks no one understands him and Hannu just kind of makes it worse by 1. assaulting him, 2. destroying something important to him, and then 3. possibly drowning him? It's a little Yikes. But hey, if Minna's ultimate goal was to show how terrible Hannu is, then she's been pretty successful by far. I know I cringed at this chapter a few years ago, despite understanding Hannu up until that point.It's certainly a harsh treatment, but if you have a look at the comments, Minna repeatedly confirmed that Tuomi and his human friends, possibly even Pikku Jänis, would have been DEAD if Hannu and Ville hadn't gotten them shoved out the dream pocket's foxhole and back into their real world lives. Add to that that we later see the resurrected people (Paju at least) remembering almost nothing of what had happened ...
I dislike the narrative's attempt to wrap the chapter up by saying Hannu was right or is wiser.That sounds like you assume that Minna wrote the chapter, and particularly that resolution, for the specific purpose of promoting violent solutions to real-life disagreements. If that were the case, I'd wonder why she would've felt necessary to add the other chapters to ARtD ...
Alternatively, I hope this isn't based on Minna's personal experience, on either side of this interaction.Note that Hannu specifically called his approach waterboarding (which it wasn't), in a comic page drawn 2012-ish, relatively shortly after it became a matter of public discussion in the U.S./Iraq context (the ICRC report on its use in Guantanamo was published in 2007, the last publication on interrogators having used a "modified" procedure of their own design came 2014).
I think Puppy-Fox initially meant to use him to get away with his mistake because of his current real-world condition, so if he died it wouldn't have been a big deal.With the usual segregation between humans and the spirit world shown in ARtD, even a living and remembering Hannu (plus all the trips his soul would continue to make on The Birds' Path, from everytime he sleeps to his final transfer to Tuonela) would not have been a serious threat to Puppy-Fox' cover-up. He might have liked coincidally getting rid of Hannu the fast way (which still wouldn't have removed Ville as a surviving witness that the spirits can talk to), and he positively tried to kill them both when he thought his peers might find them red-handed, but he thought out loud (at us readers) that it would take several other spirits in the know to really blow his cover, while only an entire group of out-of-turn-dead humans would, in turn, draw their attention.
Speaking of which, I just noticed something: Puppy-Fox handed Hannu and Ville the amulets, which were in the shape of the avatar (or whatever to call it) of some spirit animal that was present in the dream pocket. Simultaneously, he was afraid of the actual spirit animals finding out what he was up to. But the latter turned out to be aware of what their avatar had experienced in the dream pocket, as evidenced by Ms. Squirrel and Mr. Viper trying to get into the Fox Meeting to alert them to the goings-on. So, by setting up six or seven such dreams (I'm not sure whether chapter 7 qualifies as just another fox dream, or The Real Realm of What I Won't Spoiler Here), he effectively created 6-7 witnesses to testify against him. Doesn't that mean that he totally blew his cover himself right from square one!? Maybe Kokko should've pointed out to him that he had already lost ...
But like in Chapter 6, the conflict does add something interesting to the story, even if it feels tangential. I've never heard of any cases of ravens being that deliberately cruel, though. Or that they can actually hurt people? I mean people are so much larger and birds usually have better things to do.Corvids do remember human individuals who mistreated their kind, so "why does that raven keep picking on that one guy!?" scenarios are entirely possible - if the eyewitness is unaware of how the "victim" initially wronged the bird.
Also, ravens are inextricably linked to centuries of public executions in Europe where the delinquents' bodies were left on display and ravens proved their status as carrion eaters. Including their endearing habit of picking out eyes first, to reduce the effectiveness of any resistance that may still happen.
Post by: Róisín on December 18, 2021, 06:31:42 PM
Post by: catbirds on December 26, 2021, 05:45:49 AM
Uhhh this is my favourite chapter! Also coincidentally the most gory, subjectively. Chapter 5 and Chapter 8 are also quite gory, but in different ways. This one's more horror-gore, but it's unrealistic enough to not bother me too much! This chapter's short and to-the-point, despite that the big reveal of Hannu being... almost dead is one of the most important plot events. A lot goes on in relatively few pages, and it becomes this swirling banner of orange and purple, punctuated by red. Accidental or not, Minna struck gold with the colour choices, I think.
If I'm understanding it correctly, it's a glimpse at what goes on in Tuonela? Quite different from the most recent depiction of sleeping souls in SSSS. I wonder what drove Minna to change how she depicted it... maybe Tuuri would just be more convenient in bird form :V
There's still the underlying feeling of "wow these people all kind of suck" for me, but all the existential terror and stuff in this chapter just did it. It also makes me feel a little bad for Hannu for once. Surely nobody deserved that kind of end.
It's certainly a harsh treatment, but if you have a look at the comments, Minna repeatedly confirmed that Tuomi and his human friends, possibly even Pikku Jänis, would have been DEAD if Hannu and Ville hadn't gotten them shoved out the dream pocket's foxhole and back into their real world lives. Add to that that we later see the resurrected people (Paju at least) remembering almost nothing of what had happened ...
That sounds like you assume that Minna wrote the chapter, and particularly that resolution, for the specific purpose of promoting violent solutions to real-life disagreements. If that were the case, I'd wonder why she would've felt necessary to add the other chapters to ARtD ...
Uhhh unfortunately "they'd be dead if not for me" doesn't really slide off as a good reason for people to be terrible to someone they helped, but oh well. I don't really think "it's okay to do something that would normally scar a teenager for life as long as they don't remember it" is a great line of thought either, but you're right, it is, in fact, a dream. But it seems like Paju's brief statement implies that some feeling or urge follows them back into reality. That kind of gets into speculation about how the magic in this universe works, though, and I don't think even Minna fleshed that out totally. (Besides, I don't think Puppy-Fox ever mentioned that they wouldn't remember any of this)
It's obvious that Minna didn't write any of it to directly parallel how real people should act, but it's true that Hannu is ultimately rewarded for his poor behaviour and selfishness, what with his parents coddling him and most other villagers tugging their hairs out while he shirks his duties and social obligations in real life. Especially after chapter 6, as I said, the framing of the final scene is that Hannu just imparted some wise advice and his actions in the chapter are fine. But you can also briefly see this right after Mr. Moose's lesson on morality and I think around when Hannu meets the ravens, where he says something along the lines of how he doesn't care about what others say?
I don't really know what to make of this because characters who are self-motivated or morally imperfect are usually interesting, but Hannu's just so grating to me because the story seems to point to that one of the messages is that the way Hannu acts is good. I think it'd have been nice to just see an instance of how Hannu's actions hurt people (in real life, not in the dream), since if the story was going for a realistic "small village" dynamic, it's impossible for his actions to have not caused harm. Even if Hannu learns nothing from it. But that's a bit of a tangent. This is probably a wish-fulfillment story, after all, and it might even be unrealistic for me to expect all that from someone's "practice" comic.
Personally, I've found that the small selfish actions that someone like Hannu would take will add up over time to create an exhausting and imbalanced relationship. Not to mention how so many of the other villagers are also terrible to each other in small ways. In my mind, going into that throughout this comic's run of like 550 or so pages would've given the villagers a lot more depth, but whatever. Minna was 20 ish when she made this comic, it's actually unrealistic of me to expect that someone at that age knew how to portray human relationships perfectly. Speaking from experience. Even if it irritates me.
Speaking of which, I just noticed something: Puppy-Fox handed Hannu and Ville the amulets, which were in the shape of the avatar (or whatever to call it) of some spirit animal that was present in the dream pocket. Simultaneously, he was afraid of the actual spirit animals finding out what he was up to.
Yeah, upon reflection, I found that this made no sense to me whatsoever. My guess is that the animals were needed somehow to sustain the dream, but again, speculation. Either that, or those pockets are hooked up to some master dream-network where all these important mythological figures are? I don't know, it's hard to wrap your head around why there was a "genuine" Kokko's nest or a "genuine" Tuonela, etc etc... unless there's some degree of reality to what they're seeing, in the context of the spiritual stuff.
It is certainly true that real-world corvids have long memories for people who have wronged them. So do many others of the brighter birds. I have seen it happen with magpies, hawks, keas, other parrots, seagulls and most notably a female plover, who for several years singled out to attack one man among a group, he being the one who had accidentally trampled her nest. Interestingly, she could pick him from the group whether he was in or out of uniform or whether he was wearing hat or sunglasses or not. Birds are often smarter than humans expect.
Huh... can birds recognize faces? I know my birds can recognize me with or without my glasses on, which is pretty fascinating. A lot of animals are very smart, too. Surely they'd also know when people did something kind to them, but considering how humans relied on animals for food or were often violent to them or feared them for diseases, maybe that kind of story's just a lot rarer.
Post by: thorny on December 26, 2021, 03:04:37 PM
If I'm understanding it correctly, it's a glimpse at what goes on in Tuonela? Quite different from the most recent depiction of sleeping souls in SSSS.
It made no sense to me at all that (among other things) the Swan runs away from Ville, as if Ville could possibly pose any threat to the manifestation of Death itself.
Huh... can birds recognize faces? I know my birds can recognize me with or without my glasses on, which is pretty fascinating.
It might not be the faces that they're recognizing. I think it's quite clear that at least some birds can recognize individual people; but I don't know whether there's been any research as to how they do so. Most humans tend to rely on vision in general and on faces in particular; but birds might be doing something else entirely.
Post by: Róisín on December 26, 2021, 09:56:45 PM
One of my late aunts who was a wildlife carer and especially liked rearing orphaned native birds, or caring for injured ones, was certainly recognised and remembered by many of the birds she had cared for. I have seen magpies, kookaburras, butcher birds and various corvids that she had cared for and released back into the wild bring back their offspring to show her. The birds would line up their youngsters on the clothesline, tap on the kitchen window to get her attention if she was not already in the garden, and she would come out to them and feed them tiny pieces of raw meat, insects, fruit or seeds, depending on what those particular birds ate, and she would make friends with the young ones. When she died in extreme old age she was found by the young man who had come to cut her hedges, where she had been sitting on the back verandah with her morning cup of tea in her lap and several birds complaining at her feet.
A young friend who had cared for and released an injured young Australian raven had him come back to visit many times after she had returned him to the wild, and again, he could distinguish her among several people.
Post by: JoB on December 27, 2021, 02:51:13 AM
If I'm understanding it correctly, it's a glimpse at what goes on in Tuonela? Quite different from the most recent depiction of sleeping souls in SSSS. I wonder what drove Minna to change how she depicted it... maybe Tuuri would just be more convenient in bird form :VI'm certainly not an expert on Finnish mythology, but off the top of my head, I'd guess that ye olden Finns did not spend much thought on what bodily form the dead might have in Tuonela ... the lucky few returning from there in human bodies while everyone needs to be carried there by normal-sized birds does not exactly promise an easy-to-find, contradiction free answer. :3
Uhhh unfortunately "they'd be dead if not for me" doesn't really slide off as a good reason for people to be terrible to someone they helped, but oh well. I don't really think "it's okay to do something that would normally scar a teenager for life as long as they don't remember it" is a great line of thought eitherWell, yes, certainly. If you can come up with less terrible measures (or better reasoning, and all the pondering done within the original strict deadline, of course), be my guest. And yes, I'm aware of the "ticking time bomb" fallacy and willing to comdemn the couple policemen it led to think that the rules would not apply to them and this particular bad guy (looking at you, chief Daschner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jakob_von_Metzler)). The difference (to me ...) being that Hannu has certainty about the consequences of inaction (as far as a mere human can get from the spirits), and is giving a net gain even to the person he's treating poorly (as apposed to forcing the guy to "take one for the team"). Well, in the case of this one person he treats (particularly) poorly ...
(Besides, I don't think Puppy-Fox ever mentioned that they wouldn't remember any of this)... true. I guess I inferred it from his general impulse to hide his mishap not stopping him from returning the villagers to life, but it's unclear how he'd rate living human witnesses in comparison to fellow spirit ones. (Or dead humans, who apparently still get to talk with The Swan before going into perpetual silence, for that matter.)
Hannu is ultimately rewarded for his poor behaviour and selfishness, what with his parents coddling him and most other villagers tugging their hairs out while he shirks his duties and social obligations in real life. Especially after chapter 6, as I said, the framing of the final scene is that Hannu just imparted some wise advice and his actions in the chapter are fine. But you can also briefly see this right after Mr. Moose's lesson on morality and I think around when Hannu meets the ravens, where he says something along the lines of how he doesn't care about what others say?Sure, Hannu is a questionable person in general, on account of him being one when circumstances do not provide him with excuses to doing so. (Or sufficient motivation not to be.) No contest there.
I think it'd have been nice to just see an instance of how Hannu's actions hurt people (in real life, not in the dream), since if the story was going for a realistic "small village" dynamic, it's impossible for his actions to have not caused harm. Even if Hannu learns nothing from it.His tale of what he used old Pekka's crossbow for did include a shot into Riikka's leg (http://www.minnasundberg.fi/comic/page219.php) ... and how "everyone got all angry" about it. (No hint at how old he actually was back then, but he remembers and doesn't seem very sorry about his deed to this day, so ...)
it's hard to wrap your head around why there was a "genuine" Kokko's nest or a "genuine" Tuonela, etc etc...The nest was needed to establish a rapport from inside the dream pocket to Kokko (supposedly the genuine one), to get the task at hand done. It being there isn't any stranger than all the other props being at hand, from the amulets to The Horn Surma Would Run From. IIRC Mr. Bear said that the nest was not the genuine one, but some sort of reflection into the dream.
Tuonela was genuine - after all, the villagers' souls were headed there (aboard overeager birds) when Puppy-Fox established the dream pockets to delay, and eventually prevent, their arrival there. Also, Kokko specifically warned Hannu that he's about to step out of Puppy's dreams and into (the real) Tuonela.
Huh... can birds recognize faces? I know my birds can recognize me with or without my glasses on, which is pretty fascinating. A lot of animals are very smart, too. Surely they'd also know when people did something kind to them, but considering how humans relied on animals for food or were often violent to them or feared them for diseases, maybe that kind of story's just a lot rarer.I'm not aware offhand of experiments showing that birds can recognize faces, but I do remember that it has been shown that they can find (and use) abstract concepts behind photos they're shown - as in, correctly extrapolate when being shown a new photo. And of course there's a couple birds that passed the Mirror Test (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test#Birds), thus thought to have a concept of their own identity.
It made no sense to me at all that (among other things) the Swan runs away from Ville, as if Ville could possibly pose any threat to the manifestation of Death itself.It is shown later that the neck wound that Hannu and Ville cooperatively inflicted lingers and forces The Swan to rest, so there's a certain cost (of missing other work) to forcing the issue of Hannu and Ville right away. Pain and panic might also have played a role, if I interpret the Swan's facial expression correctly.
Post by: thorny on December 27, 2021, 09:07:15 AM
It is shown later that the neck wound that Hannu and Ville cooperatively inflicted lingers and forces The Swan to rest, so there's a certain cost (of missing other work) to forcing the issue of Hannu and Ville right away. Pain and panic might also have played a role, if I interpret the Swan's facial expression correctly.
But why can Hannu and/or Ville wound Death? And why should Death have been in a panic?
They seem to be dealing with a normal swan, not with the being in charge of Tuonela.
Post by: JoB on December 27, 2021, 09:36:16 AM
But why can Hannu and/or Ville wound Death?
Spoiler: for chapter 8 • show
Because their pantheon doesn't have a single omnipotent entity? Because the spirits / SoT can pull a phenix and get born again if they/she die(s)? Because without at least one mortal swan in Tuonela, Väinämöinens story would be missing a key element?
And why should Death have been in a panic?Pain and seeing oneself wounded tends to just do that to us humans, even in cases where no grievous harm was done ...
Post by: thorny on December 27, 2021, 05:23:09 PM
I know perfectly well that the Swan's not the TriOmni God, either. But it doesn't make any sense to me to have that figure be so easily damaged, or so easily frightened.
-- I guess I prefer the Swan of SSSS; who is powerful enough that Onni, an adult powerful mage, could clearly have been killed by her with his having no recourse. He talks his way out of it; but there's no sign that he'd have thought it remotely reasonable to attack her, let alone that a random dog could chase her off.
Post by: catbirds on December 27, 2021, 09:54:22 PM
Unless it's to keep up with human population growth.
But with gods or spirits who aren't human, writers can basically do whatever they want and just explain it away with "yep that's just how it works for them," as long as they're consistent with it. And they probably do find it to be an inconvenience to die.
Not totally related to the thread of discussion, but there are a couple more questions about this universe! Personally I enjoy universes where spirits can be wounded, and in the flow of an engaging story, this sort of question usually gets ignored in favour of the ~drama~
Post by: JoB on December 28, 2021, 01:48:06 AM
But the Swan isn't human.She's also not anything else I can find a well-researched psychology textbook on. :3
-- I guess I prefer the Swan of SSSS; who is powerful enough that Onni, an adult powerful mage, could clearly have been killed by her with his having no recourse. He talks his way out of it; but there's no sign that he'd have thought it remotely reasonable to attack her, let alone that a random dog could chase her off.So you want The Swan to be impervious to everything Hannu can do, and instead require negotiation skills he doesn't have (and Villes pleading in chapter 6 wasn't very successful, either). Not that that's entirely unlikely to what ultimately happened, but they did have to make it all the way to Kielo's ears to succeed with it ...
Post by: JoB on December 28, 2021, 02:05:44 AM
does make things kinda weird, especially considering [ch.8 spoiler above] and the fact that Puppy-Fox is a young and immature child in the other animals' eyes, implying recent birth, because doesn't that mean that ultimately the amount of spirit animals will keep growing???The spirit animals have stated (and, at least for the young'uns, finite) ages given on the characters page (http://www.minnasundberg.fi/characters.php). Puppy is several times as old as Little Hare.
Spoiler: on chapter 8 again • show
Mr. Moose openly admits to "getting old", however that may relate to an actual end of his existence ...
Post by: catbirds on January 04, 2022, 01:53:58 AM
So yeah, everything's on the table now! And sorry, forgot to mention that there's graphic animal death in this chapter as well.
For the chapter itself,
Once upon a time, I probably admired Hannu's pettiness and rage, if you'd call it that. I think I'm better off leaving that in the context of a comic, but at the end of these seven stages of torment, I have a hard time imagining anyone who wouldn't want to at least severely hurt the person who put them through it. Well, not person, but Puppy-Fox is a sentient being with a sense of self and everything.
Anyway, as a continuation of our discussion from last week, it's so weird that he just floats back up to the spirit-dimension-thing and is alive again? So the question of how they exist and die remains, and I have never been the type to ponder magic systems too deeply so... ohhh well.
The ending! I liked the ending, even though it's kinda weird. It's a plot twist that you wouldn't expect, but still kinda makes sense when you get to it, I guess? Well, they're living together now, sure! That does bring more questions about why the spirits allowed it to happen and the implications for how Ville would be counted as a citizen, but on the emotional side, I think it's cute. Hopefully Hannu is nice to Human Ville :3
I'll just talk a little about the comic overall :V
Compared to the earlier chapters, Minna's gotten much better at conveying the necessary story beats in fewer panels without it feeling too rushed. It's still a veeeeeeery wordy comic in some parts, though, which just means the pages all looked pretty busy throughout the whole thing, but it slowly got better at having a good balance between visuals and words.
Overall, I still enjoyed this comic! I know I was very critical of Hannu's actions throughout the chapters, and I don't really like what a cursory analysis of perhaps some accidental themes reveals, but it's still an entertaining and energetic story drawn with care and enthusiasm. It might have meant something personal to Minna at some point, too, though that's none of my business.
It does drag on at the beginning and especially on chapter 4, though, and I'm not sure why Minna made that chapter that long because I can't recall many events that would justify the page count. As nice as it is to have a comic that takes its time going places, it can make certain events from the past lose their impact when they're spaced very far apart for me. At least the void is filled with nice character moments for Hannu and Ville, usually, and that's probably the comic's strongest point! Their relationship is the most fleshed out, while Hannu's relationship with everyone else is just "stay the heck away from me, or I'll be mean"
(Personally I feel their relationship isn't balanced or is a little one-sided, but oh well. It's still good.)
Aside from that, there's also the fact that this comic was finished in two years. It's amazing how much work Minna's able to put out, though this amount of work is always at the expense of... health, usually.
Mr. Moose openly admits to "getting old", however that may relate to an actual end of his existence ...
Still going to do my best not to think too hard about it, but would that mean some are way older than or have a longer lifespan than others? Kokko, for instance, seems to be nigh eternal. They're both ancient, yet Kokko makes no mention of "getting old" beyond being wiser, meaning he improves somewhat with age?
Well, yes, certainly. If you can come up with less terrible measures (or better reasoning, and all the pondering done within the original strict deadline, of course), be my guest. [...]
This is a pretty serious thread of discussion and the examples being brought up make me too nauseous to read further, so I'm not willing to go further. But either way, for Hannu's situation, I'd still be firmly against hurting someone etc etc. but an irrational or emotional response isn't out of the question considering the pressure.
One of my late aunts who was a wildlife carer and especially liked rearing orphaned native birds, or caring for injured ones, was certainly recognised and remembered by many of the birds she had cared for. I have seen magpies, kookaburras, butcher birds and various corvids that she had cared for and released back into the wild bring back their offspring to show her. The birds would line up their youngsters on the clothesline, tap on the kitchen window to get her attention if she was not already in the garden, and she would come out to them and feed them tiny pieces of raw meat, insects, fruit or seeds, depending on what those particular birds ate, and she would make friends with the young ones. When she died in extreme old age she was found by the young man who had come to cut her hedges, where she had been sitting on the back verandah with her morning cup of tea in her lap and several birds complaining at her feet.
Aw :'( That definitely paints a vivid image. I wonder if they understood the situation...
Of course, you wouldn't think of how individual birds are if you just saw them passing by, but getting to know them like that would give you a clear view of how rich their lives are.
Pain and seeing oneself wounded tends to just do that to us humans, even in cases where no grievous harm was done ...
I agree, it's clear that the spirits can feel pain. Also, considering they're not really in their weird powerful spiral glowing mist forms (as Kokko and some foxes appear sometimes), it doesn't seem unlikely that their physical forms are very different. Why? Maybe they just like physical pleasures like eating or dancing, but that's just speculation. I actually have no idea!
Post by: JoB on January 05, 2022, 02:02:39 AM
Anyway, as a continuation of our discussion from last week, it's so weird that he just floats back up to the spirit-dimension-thing and is alive again? So the question of how they exist and die remains, and I have never been the type to ponder magic systems too deeply so... ohhh well.Whatever the details of actual spirit death may be, when the foxes agreed to let Hannu "kill" Puppy, it was perfectly clear that it would not be permanent ("Maybe he'll learn a lesson"). I doubt that they would've let it happen if there were any chance of the mere mortal offing one of theirs for (the greater) good ... Maybe Puppy would have remained in perpetual bodily limbo if his relatives had not vacuumed him back (http://www.minnasundberg.fi/comic/page539.php) into their more ethereal realm, but that's moot because they never intended not to.
The ending! I liked the ending, even though it's kinda weird. It's a plot twist that you wouldn't expect, but still kinda makes sense when you get to it, I guess? Well, they're living together now, sure! That does bring more questions about why the spirits allowed it to happen and the implications for how Ville would be counted as a citizen, but on the emotional side, I think it's cute. Hopefully Hannu is nice to Human Ville :3The spirits, all the way down to Kokkos lowest-IQ workforce members, never bat an eyebrow at having to deal with the soul of a dog, who suddenly talks and reasons like a human, as if he were a human. Also, while Astrid did not display the same properties, she was there, in a dream pocket with souls that supposedly had been erroneously carried there by the birds. I don't expect anyone on that side of affairs to suddenly go "wait, what's a dog in a human body even doing here?!?".
It is worth noting, however, that we've only seen human bodies around in Tuonela. Does that mean that only actual humans go there after their death, or can animals wind up there too, if only they previously received the pour le mérite of having their body swapped for a human one? Dunno, but fact is that even the Swan never singled Ville out as someone particularly odd to be present in Tuonela ...
About the other side ... hoo boy, yes, human bureaucracy's gonna convulse itself into a fractal pretzel *if* they ever have to look closely into the case of human!Ville. There's no way they'll ever arrive at a conclusion other than "the guy intentionally hides where he came from, and he's successful with that, alas, which makes him a criminal". There is, however, the possibility that Hokanniemi doesn't do much cooperation with the regional-to-national levels of public administration ...
(If human!Ville still has the life expectancy of a dog, chances are that it'll be Kielo who'll eventually have to sort those things out ... >:D )
Still going to do my best not to think too hard about it, but would that mean some are way older than or have a longer lifespan than others? Kokko, for instance, seems to be nigh eternal. They're both ancient, yet Kokko makes no mention of "getting old" beyond being wiser, meaning he improves somewhat with age?The characters page puts every spirit other than Puppy and Little Hare as "ancient". Nonetheless, their antics - especially Ms. Squirrel's - make it very clear that there still are major age/maturity differences between them. ("Mind your elders, punk! (http://www.minnasundberg.fi/comic/page150.php)") And sure, if they have a finite life expectancy, it may well differ between (apparent) species ...
If Puppy counts as a "puppy", in spite of being a thousand years old, how old are the particularly "ancient" ones? Were there actually any humans around when they came into existence? If not, Kokko and The Swan must've had their lives turned upside down when they got chained to the expressedly dealing-with-humans parts (nightly activities on the Birds' Path and Tuonela) of the spirit realm, right? Yeah, might be better not to think too hard about all that ... O_o