Lovely People aka 'the bunny comic'

[Dilandu]

But the bunnies are -soooooo- cute!

Well, not for Australian, who wage unrestricted biological warfare against their rabbit population (with strains of lethal pathogens produced in laboratories and mass-released on regular basic) since XIX century... 

[Rowan]

So yes, it's a very efficient way to vent out dissent. All the State essentially need, is to anonymously provide dissidents with small amount of vital supplies, so they would not attempt to go back.

It's hard being an American and reading 'SOCIAL MEDIA TOOK MY UBI AWAY!!!! >_<', and realizing that the exiled bunnies still have more rights and privileges than anyone I know.

[PyroDesu]

None of James' writings seem to be part of the sect's bible.

Testimony only. Faith and love are not dynamic. You have to declare your faith, find means to use media to project your testimony, but acting with love and care is vanity.

Oh, I think we're missing more than just James, if I recall correctly.

Matthew is, at the very least, mutilated. Because between Matthew 6(:5) and Matthew 25(:31-46), that second statement should be reversed - declaration of faith and testimony is a private matter, and works of mercy paramount.

[Rowan]

Oh, I think we're missing more than just James, if I recall correctly.

Matthew is, at the very least, mutilated. Because between Matthew 6(:5) and Matthew 25(:31-46), that second statement should be reversed - declaration of faith and testimony is a private matter, and works of mercy paramount.

My heart  THANK YOU.

[Songbird]

Yep. And allowing them to self-remove from society, State essentially get rid of potentially dangerous dissidents (who otherwise may start to make bombs & Molotov cocktails), without the need to resort to outright repressions. Imprisoning dissidents, exiling them, or just killing always cause uneasiness in society. But if dissidents are essentially exiling themselves, without any outright repressive actions from the government? Essentially they would just brand themselves as bunch of self-centered weirdos, who cared only about their "righteousness".

So yes, it's a very efficient way to vent out dissent. All the State essentially need, is to anonymously provide dissidents with small amount of vital supplies, so they would not attempt to go back.

Now, that's a story I'd like to read. I can think of many occasions in which allowing self-exile has happened in the past but the premise of a government that not only purposely guides but aides the opposition towards this goal is intriguing.

[Rowan]

Now, that's a story I'd like to read. I can think of many occasions in which allowing self-exile has happened in the past but the premise of a government that not only purposely guides but aides the opposition towards this goal is intriguing.

Plymouth Colony, North America.
Liberia, Africa.

Pretty sure there are others, but those two popped up in my historical brain.

[Songbird]

Plymouth Colony, North America.
Liberia, Africa.

Pretty sure there are others, but those two popped up in my historical brain.

This is different. A bit closer to Liberia or the current practice of states in US of busing the homeless to different parts of the country, but still different.

I don't know if I'll be able to accurately express this, but it's the stealth aide detail. The people leaving are none wiser of both the ultimate goal of the government (make them leave) or the help in achieving this they received. They believe it's their own idea and merit. They're also technically not at the bottom of the society, though they're fleeing to avoid this loss of status. How a government would even justify this for the circle of people in power, or their absence to the society in general, or ensure they wouldn't return; what's the impact of these people in the outside world—is it empty? If yes, why? If not how will things unfold (likely bad if history is any indication)?

[PyroDesu]

My heart  THANK YOU.

I may no longer believe, but I was raised in the Methodist church, and actually still attend services on occasion for my grandparents' sake (besides, some of the liturgy is fascinating even from an atheist perspective).

John Wesley was apparently fond of the Gospel of Matthew. Show the world the way of God by doing good works in His name, not by spitting fire and brimstone. Sure, it's still evangelical, but I think it's a much more tolerable form.

[thorny]

Warning: long post! starting with a long speech on one subject, and then a batch of shorter comments.

Didn't know, someone can be traumatized because someone else called him a sinner. It's not a sarcasm, I'm actually surprised by this vulnerability.

i think the core message there that might have alarmed people could have been the implied proselitism part where she talked about spreading Christ's words but proselitism is also a very big part of the doctrine of 99,9999999999% of christian branches so its not really fair to associate that with radical cults

Coming back to this -- I do think there's a difference in perceived meaning of the same words going on here.

I think a lot of Christians who are used to hearing 'we are all sinners' in non-toxic churches read that as 'nobody's perfect, but that's OK because Jesus will forgive you'; and also assume that accepting Jesus as God is something that anybody can do, plus maybe that everyone will get another chance to do so at or even right after the last minute, plus I think in some churches that maybe Jesus will forgive you anyway.

While a lot of the rest of us are hearing 'you deserve to burn in Hell forever and also to have whatever troubles you have while alive in this world, because there is something essentially Wrong about you, and you aren't doing something to fix it which is in fact impossible to do.'

Some Christian congregations really do preach that eternal torture; others seem to find some way out of it. Minna reads a great deal as if whatever she's converted to is likely to be of the first sort.

To start off with: people can't just decide to believe something. I can't just decide to believe, at least without massive injury to my brain, that there are no cats that are expecting me to feed them and will be seriously upset if I don't, or that it doesn't matter how upset they are. (Fill in young children, if you've got any, instead of cats, and try it.) And I am no more capable of believing that Jesus of Nazareth was and is the one and only God of the Universe than I am of believing that Arthur of Britain is. Or that my brother-in-law is. I could lie to humans about it, sure, and start going to church. But if the God they believe in is real: that God would know I was lying, and would presumably punish me just the same. (And lying to humans wouldn't even get humans off my back, since there must be hundreds of different Christian and Muslim and for those born Jewish even a few Jewish sects that are all telling me I must follow their particular version or be doomed. Reducing that number by one wouldn't remove the problem.)

So what I'm being told to do, in order to stay out of Hell or even according to Minna (and, over human history, quite a lot of people with more power than Minna) to have a half way decent life right here, is to do something flat out impossible.

And that's for those of us who are cis hetero! but just aren't Christian, and don't have some other inwoven religious identity. For those who are not, whether or not they're Christian in a denomination (they exist) which accepts this: they're being told by those religious people who don't accept it that the very essence of their being is an abomination to the entire universe; that they are indeed, existentially and inescapably, Wrong. Not wrong like parking in the wrong place and you get a ticket. Not wrong like being bad at math, or even not studying, and failing the test and having to repeat a grade, or not get the job you wanted. Not wrong like well, nobody's perfect. Wrong like being rejected by the universe, and deserving to be tortured for all eternity. For not being somebody that you find it impossible to be.

For some who are of other religions, the religion may be interwoven with daily life, sense of place, sense of self in such a way as to give the same reaction. Religion may not be separable from their sense of who they are. And no, that doesn't mean they automatically think the same way as Minna's thinking, just filling in something else in the place of "Jesus": lots of people don't think that everyone has to be the same person, or to be a member of their religious group, however strongly they feel that they have to be part of it.

as an aside and since i already committed to not using caps this is going to be very hard to read i'm sorry,

I don't know why you're committed to not using caps; but as you're apparently not committed to not using either punctuation or paragraph breaks I'd strongly recommend using a great deal more of both of them.

i think a very big part of the negative reactions from this come frome experiences with the good old crazy american evangelicals that were so popular back in the 70s through 90s,

As others have said; they haven't gone away. Not only have they not gone away, they've had, or been used to have, major and IMO strongly negative effect on our politics, which includes plenty of attempts (some of them successful) at imposing viewpoints of one particular branch of Christianity on the supposedly secular society as a whole.

And others have pointed out that this isn't only a USA problem.

  so she has put out quite a lot of pages after her conversion and the story hasnt yet taken a considerable turn ([ . . .]  so really, even if you cant like the author anymore i wouldn't worry about ssss being changed by this

It's hard to tell, as we don't know what either the overall arc or the details of the story would have been if she'd written it without this influence. The fact that she hasn't had everybody in the comic convert to Christianity or be destroyed for not doing so doesn't mean that there haven't been any changes; and as I doubt she had every detail written out in advance, there may be important changes in detail even if the overall arc remains the same.

But in any case -- she's now apparently going to end SSSS once she gets to a stopping point in this particular story; and she apparently originally intended to continue it for some significant number of additional stories. I'd call that quite a large change.

  i do think there's a decent message to take from the comic even if you're not christian or religious at all, since the central theme here is about freedom of expression and the people or groups of people that think they have the moral authority to curtail it for the masses' own good, more of a "dont play god" message than anything, and frankly could work (tho in my biased opinion not quite as well) if the bible in that comic was switched for the rigveda, the quran, thus spoke zarathustra, etc

It's kind of hard to take that message when the specific Bible passage that the characters object to having changed is the one that says Jesus is the only way to salvation; and when her afterword says the same thing.

Yes, she could have written the comic you're describing; and could have done so with only a few changes from what she actually published. But what she published isn't the one you're trying to see there.

I have no problem with anyone taking that offense, but why couldn't we stay civil?

I think nearly everyone here has done so.

As a shipper I had my hopes up when the whole Emil and Lalli lost in the Silent World happened, I have done cosplay of them with a friend of mine, RPed them... and I was kinda hesitant to give those hopes up whenever Minna didn't specifically deny these "rumours". Adventure 2 arrived and that deep relationship seemed to vanish. Kinda raised an eyebrow, but didn't think much of it. Waited until it came back but insted Reynir was shoved in between.
 [ . . . ]
I spent countless hours dreaming about characters made by someone that may despise everything her own community represents.

I'm sorry, again, if my arguments don't hold the scrutiny. I understand you've build a solid discussion thread here and you can, EASILY, destroy me haha

For a second I wanted to leave this very beloved fandom and this very beloved comic behind.

Please don't be afraid to raise your voice here.

I think you've made an important point, and an interesting connection. I don't know whether Minna's actually changed what she originally intended to do with relationships among the characters; but she may well have made such changes while still saying she's not going to change the overall story arc; she may just have convinced herself that they weren't an important part of the story. This is just a supposition, as we've got no way to tell; but I wouldn't be at all surprised if she's doing things differently in portions of the comic that weren't already plotted out in detail, quite possibly without ever thinking of this as changing the comic.

I remember feeling bad about how Minna handled the Emil incident. I was discomforted by Minna's response on the Black Live's Matter protests. In both of these events it wasn't what she initially said that bothered me, but her ambivalent/defensive response. How liberating would it be for everyone to just be wrong, and she could join a join a sheltered community away from everything that has criticized her.

I must have managed to miss the BLM response. I agree with you about the Emil incident. Minna seemed incapable of just saying 'Whoops, sorry, I was wrong, I apologize and I'll change it!'; instead we got this entire defensive reaction in which she changed it, hid the evidence, and deleted a lot of the comments -- and then announced that she wouldn't include in SSSS anything at all involving anybody other than white Scandinavians (not in those words, but that was the sense) because if she did people might accuse her of getting something wrong.

I hoped she'd grow out of it. Instead, she seems to have gone further into it. Now it's 'nothing you say can affect me because I'm sure I'm Right.'

And I wonder whether she was drawn in to where she is now because whoever she's been talking with about it saw that response to the Emil incident, and saw someone with a significant following and major talent who could be pulled into a group who would tell her 'of course you were right about that joke, nobody should ever have criticized you for that' - -

This comic was ridiculously in tune with what is happening in China right now with the rollout of their social credit system. It was wonderful to see someone in the West notice what is happening there and create so passionately about it.

If she'd stayed with a critique of the social credit system in China, I might well have spent a chunk of the time I've spent posting in this thread with investigating what I could find out about that; and we might well have been having a lively discussion about it on these boards.

But framing it as 'the only possible alternative to everyone praising the Consumerist State is for everyone to praise Jesus of Nazareth instead' pretty massively diminishes the impact of anything she might have been saying about specific things going on in China.

Well, the sinister idea would be to have the World Council to covertly establish some sort of "hidden village" to where the dissidents fled. Supporting a small number of dissidents is not actually a noticeable strain on the productive consumerist society; on the other hands, non-conformists are self-excluded from society and would not attempt to do something more dangerous (like staging a revolution or organizing a terrorist underground).

The really sinister idea would be to have the World Council occasionally kill everybody in that village off, re-seeding it with a few of its inner circle (assured, truly or falsely, that they'd survive and be rewarded) to welcome the next batch of dissidents until enough of them built up to be worth also finishing off. That wouldn't disturb the main society, because they wouldn't know anything about it; and it would remove any chance of a genuine reform movement developing and being brought back to the Council's people. Not to mention limiting any need for supplies.

Obviously, that's not what Minna intends to happen to her True Believers. But if I were running from that sort of society, I wouldn't stay too long where the Convenient Map had led me, if I went there at all.

[yung_chrysanthemum]

But in any case -- she's now apparently going to end SSSS once she gets to a stopping point in this particular story; and she apparently originally intended to continue it for some significant number of additional stories. I'd call that quite a large change.

Do we actually know that this is the case, or are we just "reading between the lines" on her last post?

Such a shame if that's the case. This current arc is clearly going to close out the Hotakainen story, but not offer much closure on the world itself. The big unknown of what the Y90 people are going to do with the Y0 cure left unexplored forever

[thorny]

Do we actually know that this is the case, or are we just "reading between the lines" on her last post?

I find it hard to read anything else into these portions of her note on the page 410:

I'm sailing this ship neatly into its destination bay without crashing it into the dock if you will.

[. . . ] SSSS will continue as normal until its end, and then I'll see where God takes me for the next project.

And I'm pretty sure someone at some point in this thread or in the page 409 comments has referred to something she said elsewhere, but I no longer remember where that was.

But I really can't see her waiting for multiple years for the next project, which would certainly be needed if she did several more story arcs in a similar fashion to the previous ones. Adventure 1 ran for nearly 5 years (date on the first strip is November 11, 2013; on the last, October 8 2018). Adventure 2 is currently at about 2 1/2 years (date on the first strip is October 14, 2018). I really don't see her waiting even another 2 1/2 years for her "next project"; let alone then doing multiple further adventures. I think this one is going to be wound up a lot faster than that, and there won't be any more.

[catbirds]

Adventure 2 is currently at about 2 1/2 years (date on the first strip is October 14, 2018). I really don't see her waiting even another 2 1/2 years for her "next project"; let alone then doing multiple further adventures. I think this one is going to be wound up a lot faster than that, and there won't be any more.

She mentioned during a stream that a big part of the reason why the first adventure was longer was because there was a lot of setup for the plot. Since the second adventure is more direct to the action, I think she mentioned something about it only being approximately three books long instead. That means we have around a year to a year and a half left of SSSS (approximately 800-900 pages total?).

Unless she'll shorten it, which would still be kind of sad but not unforeseen. I know I wouldn't have any interest in whatever she writes next, but that's just how it is. That being said, I'm glad she wrote the entire bunny comic out as quickly as she did. The alternative would have been an incredibly drawn-out comic that didn't reveal the message that I disagreed with until a year or so of slow burn.

[Keeper]

I will finish reading this thread tomorrow (it is alarmingly close to midnight and my typing capacity is much reduced) but I have had a few days to think about this and want to contribute as well.

I grew up Catholic, and much of my family is still Catholic, as is a close friend of mine, and I can't imagine any of them agreeing with the idea of all humans being irredeemable sinners who don't deserve mercy. Inherently flawed, yes. Original sin, yes. But it seems to me that Minna doesn't fully understand the faith herself yet, and her first interpretation of it is unfortunately one of the most harmful variations. I do worry for her mental health, as "nothing we do can make up for our inherent sinfulness" does not engender good thoughts about anyone, including oneself.

One of the things that struck me about the comic was the bit where the content warnings for the Bible are listed, including

• Harmful messages
• Causes feelings of guilt
• Sexism, racism, etc

From there they get more vague and clearly less serious, but these are all actually valid complaints one can make about the Bible. It does promote inequality between sexes. It does suggest people of certain heritages are better than others ("chosen people" themes). And there is plenty that would make one feel like a hopeless sinner with no chance of redemption ("easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle..." can you tell I went to Catholic school?).

The fact that Minna seems to be suggesting that none of these grievances are valid, and even goes so far as to mock them is what really hurts and worries me here.

Minna did say in her notes on the SSSS page that she intends to study theology more, so maybe she will learn more nuance, but knowing what I do about religious education materials for Christianity... well, there's nothing I can do about that. Good luck to her.

[FreshTakoyaki]

Been reading for some time, was very much unaware of a lot of the changes happening or the previous controveries, since I usually didn't read the Disqus comments either. Definitely saddened to see this happening to Minna, she seems to be in a turbulent place, and I hope she does get better.

If she'd stayed with a critique of the social credit system in China, I might well have spent a chunk of the time I've spent posting in this thread with investigating what I could find out about that; and we might well have been having a lively discussion about it on these boards.

But framing it as 'the only possible alternative to everyone praising the Consumerist State is for everyone to praise Jesus of Nazareth instead' pretty massively diminishes the impact of anything she might have been saying about specific things going on in China.

I haven't seen many commenters from China here, but as a foreigner who speaks fluent Mandarin, lives in China, and has lived here and worked with Alibaba, I thought I'd chime in a bit.

First, definitely do look into the actual realities of the Social Credit system. The media often does a very poor job on reporting on issues here, for a variety of issues, the the Social Credit system is probably one of the mostly widely misunderstood.

Second, reading it really didn't come across as an actual critique of the system, but rather a 1984-esque exploration of how things could potentially evolve. Needless to say it's nothing like that, but who knows if the future could see expansions like that? There's lots of pilots going on in cities across China, some related to pandemic-era proliferation of health apps. Most are actually broadly supported, since they're seen to punish behaviors that are unacceptable but not illegal (blasting music in trains and subways and public stations and causing a nuisance; not illegal, but being banned from using those services for it actually makes quite a bit of sense to some people). There's also the potential abuses of the system, with politically troublesome people potentially being subject to similar restrictions; even if those systems aren't in place, it's easy to imagine a system like the one Minna created. Not remotely what's going on currently, but a fun imagining of a potential dystopia.

Side note: I'm surprised she went with Alizongle instead of Amazongle or Amababa. Ali is far less powerful than Amazon, and the Chinese government has actually made a big show of forcing them to abandon a lot of plans (see the Ant Finance IPO fiasco). That kind of commercial power would never be tolerated here; JD, Pinduoduo, and others compete against Ali, and all are subordinate to the whims of government.

Third, a lot of it really seemed more an indictment of the Twittersphere, outrage culture, and how fickle online "friends" are, and how they will abandon you for pretty much any reason. Those parts hit a lot closer to home; rather than a fantastic imagining of a possible worst-case scenario future, that is already here and a lived reality for many. The virtue signaling, in-groups, purity tests... this is not a Twitter thing, but a universal social media thing. It's kind of too bad she was so focused on the persecution complex and Christian threads, some really good critiques of that got lost along the way.

[Pessi]

From what I've read here, Christian sects is a thing in Finland, right?

Aren't there Christian sects everywhere? The bible is a really illogical and internally contradictory bunch of different books, it's very easy to create almost any kind of interpretation based on it and then start preaching it as God's Only Truth.

As far as I remember (it's been a long while since I've actually studied anything theology related) even within the Finnish Lutheran Church there are five revivalist movements - and of course their subsects - in addition to the "ordinary" Lutherans. These range from the kind that just have some of their own little things like a special songbook to the kind of hardcore versions where dancing, tv, make up, premarital sex (or even kissing before you are at least engaged), contraceptives, abortion, divorce and LGBTQ+ people are all abominations and doing or being one of these will mean you will be formally judged and ordered to repent if not outright thrown out of the whole community and even your own family. Our Lutheran church has "high ceiling and wide walls" meaning it accepts a very varied bunch of believers as long as they hold onto the same core belief: humans are sinners and can only attain salvation through God's grace.

Then there is of course a wide and varied assortment of more or less Christian denominations, sects and other groups outside the Lutheran church. "Becoming a Christian" can mean almost anything in Finland just like anywhere else in the world.