Lovely People aka 'the bunny comic'

[Róisín]

Tarnagh, pretty much that. And that quote from Henley’s ‘Invictus’ below your post.....that is a poem I love.  And it chimes in with my own Pagan viewpoint that every individual needs to take responsibility for their own judgements and their actions based on those judgements. You can’t just ‘cast your burdens on the lord and bear a song away’, while leaving behind the scorched earth ruins caused by your previous actions, and taking no responsibility for any of it.

Wavewright, glad you feel you can moderate this discussion. Thanks for that.

[Tarnagh]

Tarnagh, pretty much that. And that quote from Henley’s ‘Invictus’ below your post.....that is a poem I love.  And it chimes in with my own Pagan viewpoint that every individual needs to take responsibility for their own judgements and their actions based on those judgements. You can’t just ‘cast your burdens on the lord and bear a song away’, while leaving behind the scorched earth ruins caused by your previous actions, and taking no responsibility for any of it.

Wavewright, glad you feel you can moderate this discussion. Thanks for that.

Invictus is my favorite poem, hands down. With everything life has thrown at me, it's pretty much the underpinning of whatever you'd want to call the ideology by which I live my life. I don't have a name for it. "Atheist," I suppose. The whole "don't be a dick" thing I've mentioned of course, but ultimately no matter what, personal responsibility is paramount. I am responsible for what I do, how I act, how I treat others. I'm answerable only to myself for that. I try not to let myself down too often.

One of the first belief systems I turned to after I left Christianity was Wicca. I still keep a shadow of The Rule of Three with me. I call it "The Law of Karmic Returns." Or, as Newton put it, "For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction."

ETA: One of the things that I've kept from That Time in My Life was something - ironically enough - that I heard a pastor tell us in chapel one day. The gist of it was that "Christian" means "Christ-like." That is, living our lives to the best of our ability the way Christ lived his. In the sense of *that* definition, I'm still a "Christian" because I've cared for the sick, I've helped the poor, I feed everyone ... my children are in their 30s now but when they were growing up, I just did a head count to see how many of their friends I was feeding that night. "Seventeen? Okay so that's THREE boxes of pasta ..." The few that are still living this this area still call me "Mum." I guess the difference is that I do these things because I grok that they're just the right thing to do, not out of hope for any eternal reward or fear of any eternal damnation.

[Róisín]

Tarnagh, you do seem to have worked out a system that lets you live a moral and responsible life by your own choices. It also ties in with the Buddhist concept that there are some souls who have attained a stage of personal and spiritual development where they don’t have to get back onto the wheel of life unless they want to, but who choose to do so and reincarnate rather than entering a state of Nirvana because they feel the urge to help other people to attain that state - a sort of ‘nobody left behind’ philosophy. I think from memory that they call that being a Boddhisatva? Dunno if I have the spelling right? Can any Buddhist comment on that?

But yeah, I do think taking personal responsibility for your actions and their consequences is a biggie.

[Engelszorn]

My apologies, I realise I can't critise someone for being offensive and then doing the same myself.

[Tarnagh]

Boddhisatva?

Obviously not a Buddhist, but I've heard that term before from somewhere in my travels. I just looked it up (you did spell it correctly ) -
Boddhisatva: (in Mahayana Buddhism) a person who is able to reach nirvana but delays doing so out of compassion in order to save suffering beings.

I don't know if I'm as enlightened as all that, but compassion and empathy certainly drive me. I've been through Rather A Lot over the years, and I can relate on a personal level to people who are struggling in various ways because of that.

And yes. Personal responsibility. Always.

[Sc0ut]

Belittling our younger members (what are you, 14?) is not acceptable.

Feel like I need to clarify this since I'm the one quoted. My intent was not to belittle younger members, though I understand why it reads like that. In fact, maybe you remember (or can check back) earlier yesterday I had responded to another member who seemed young to me with entirely different wording, because their own approach was different.

My experience is that when someone enters a space that was civil with obviously inflammatory behaviour and a mod is not around to immediately step in, the best response is to make a short comment that clearly describes their behaviour as inacceptable, so as to prevent people wasting too much time on long, good faith answers that try to argue with the troll (which is exactly what they want, and will often derail the discussion by focusing everyone's attention on them). That was the context in which I used that phrase. Offering another possibility to just "this sounds like trollish behaviour to me" was an attempt to be generous and provide them with an out in case they really did not mean to offend. And well, to me commenting without quite literally reading the room first, letting emotions run amok, and feeling smart and special for having the most predictable opinion is in fact consistent with the behaviour of some (though certainly not all) young teens online. For the record, I have had the experience of responding in good faith to what immediately looked like trollish behaviour in this community way back, because I was trying to follow community standards closely, and that lead to pages and pages of well meaning people trying to nicely explain things to a troll and getting angrier and angrier because of being constantly miscontrued, until a mod belatedly understood what was going on and intervened, so I for one am not doing that again - if I see behaviour that looks trollish, I'm calling it out, even if I remain open to the possibility that I'm misinterpreting it.
 
That being said, I do value the younger members of fandom spaces, I know they don't all behave like this (and even if they do it's not even that big of a deal, until they attack others like fyrekitty did) and in the light of that I will try to express what I mean in a different way, if something similar happens again, and I appreciate the mod note.

[fyrekitty7]

You all are missing my point completely, and missing the irony of this very situation. I'm just trying to stick up for her, which is more than most of her "fans" seem to be doing. Personally if I were her, I would be getting pretty disillusioned with having such a fandom after seeing the amount of criticism over the religious choices she's made. It seems like a lot of you are really grasping at straws to find wrong doing in her actions, looking for microaggressions and reading into things so very deeply for any negative implication you might be able to construct. If you don't like the story so what? There are countless bad stories, disagreeable stories, unpleasant stories, etc. It's the nature of free expression and that's okay, or would you rather live in a world where people who say things you don't agree with get punished?

It's interesting that it is seemingly offensive for me to be defending Minna on a forum dedicated to her work, but it's okay for others to essentially mock, demean, and insult her, looking for the worst possible interpretation of what she's said. Seeing how offended people are at the bunny story it's not unexpected, it's sad to see though.

[JoB]

The teaching that you are fundamentally terrible is bad

I agree that it can easily get grating, but the fact is that even if you were to remove all religions from the face of Earth, that concept would still be very much alive and well. Look at ecological footprint, look at what modern psychology (and criminology) has found out about the base instincts in every human being, look at pretty much every philosopher telling people they ought to change, look at the parents pondering whether they should send their kid to a Better School™ and trying to match the effect on the kid's later income to the expense. "You start out negative [to everyone else] and need to improve, pronto" all around, and not all of them are just ideological make-believe.

i DO respect her decisions to end the comic whenever she wants to end it (it's probably a mercy at this point), not wanting to work on certain projects anymore

Indeed, us disagreeing as much as we may want with what Minna wants to focus on instead does not make us a iota more entitled to see her continue doing SSSS than we were before.

Also, I've been wondering what continuing SSSS might do to Minna, assuming that we're reading her right as saying "I'm continuing this for y'all but my heart isn't it anymore". It threatens to paint her memory of SSSS as a time where she was lugging a ball and chain along, preventing her from doing what she wanted, and such a memory might cause her not to want to come back to it even if she turns away from her current path later on. A year-or-so of "meh, for old times' sake" in return for slamming the door eternally shut behind her, is that the deal we want ... ?

(Of course, right now, we probably couldn't get the message of "it's OK, don't bother" across to Minna if we tried, so it's an academic question for now ...)

It's gonna be fun when she gets to the part about Jesus being both God and human in her theological studies Seems like nobody has spoiled that part for her yet.

God sent Jesus to reshape the world, which obviously needed someone to get His hands dirty, but for a divine and eternal end; I don't think that that will cause a double-take.

Missing the entire new-testamentarian vibe of God, Jesus, and their plan loving the whole of humanity and giving them all more and more chances to redeem themselves before Armageddon hits, rather than Just Getting Over With It™, is much more of a biggie IMHO.

This story is so much less provocative and controversial than, say 1984 or Animal Farm. Of course I'm sure you'd all like to see those books burned for being too bad and mean, or paranoid or whatever.

I work in German IT with all its privacy protection laws and *I* whack people with a figurative 1984 when they're not paranoid enough to see the point of such protection. Try again.

But I think her comment about the comic having the right effect could be a decision to start some drama, then watch with "her bowl of popcorn" as she said years ago.
It looks to me like a piece of why she released Lovely People and responded to the criticism this way is likely that she wanted that extra icing on the cake of internet drama surrounding her – without being an active player in the turmoil. Everyone else is stirring it up for her.

Hm. At the same time, when it comes to contact with actual humans, Minna tries to avoid it if at all possible - like, back when setting up in Mora, getting anxious about the technician coming to connect her land line, or about visiting the woman who'd be her accountant. I'm under the impression that making the conclusion you propose would be even worse news, as in a total mental one-eighty, or complete dehumanization of "net people" ...

[Sc0ut]

Also, I've been wondering what continuing SSSS might do to Minna, assuming that we're reading her right as saying "I'm continuing this for y'all but my heart isn't it anymore". It threatens to paint her memory of SSSS as a time where she was lugging a ball and chain along, preventing her from doing what she wanted, and such a memory might cause her not to want to come back to it even if she turns away from her current path later on.

This is a good point. I for one would prefer if SSSS were left on a hiatus indefinitely at the nearest non-cliffhanger point, with the possibility of Minna returning to it when and if she genuinely wants to draw it again, rather than her trudging through making hundreds of pages that *she* doesn't enjoy and her new found audience might not either, at a time when she has alienated a large part of her traditional following to varying degrees. As disappointed as I am in her recent behaviour, there's a small part of me that hopes she will change her world view again, this time for the better (by which I don't necessarily mean I dream of her becoming an atheist again, just maybe adopting a more moderate and tolerant understanding of Christianity, the one she mocked in her new comic, that is).

[Dilandu]

Armchair diagnoses of mental illness and psychological issues in others, are deeply offensive and not acceptable.  (In this context, 'crazy', 'narcissistic', 'manipulative', and the like)

As old Russian proverb states, "every groundhog which eat a bit of grain, claimed himself to be agronomist")

[Róisín]

Sc0ut, I have found that responding with courtesy and patience, at least in the initial stages of the conversation, or until the person proves beyond doubt that they are just being a dick to sow discord, is the best policy. I wasn’t in the Forum or the comments in the early days of the fandom, though I have been reading since the early stages of A Redtail’s Dream, since I lacked the technical skills to create and use accounts and had to wait until my techno husband was able to set up such things for me. I think that was around April 2015?

But I certainly encountered enough people being objectionable because they had no custom and usage that required them to treat people decently. Yet by having civil and patient interactions with them, and by gently and repeatedly explaining what was the nature of our custom and usage here, at least some of them turned into pillars of the Forum and the Commentariat. And several of them explained that the reason that they had initially behaved so badly was because they had thought that that was the norm for the whole Internet, because it had been so in the sections that they had previously frequented.

When I first joined, my beloved said to me that I had ‘lucked into the deep end of the Internet’ with these sites. I think, at the time, he was right, and I really hope that we may eventually return to being one of the more civilised and considerate sites on the internet. Good manners, courtesy and consideration for others are not things which I consider signs of weakness and of being easy to exploit, but rather indications that we are in a good place to have informative and interesting discussions. Long may we continue so!

(By the way, for anyone who is interested, I spoke to Star on the phone tonight, and things continue to slowly improve for him. And I have a lift to the hospital tomorrow to visit him, which saves me a painful hour-long walk, and lets me bring him more clean clothes and library books and some of Dusty’s apples ( most of my apple crop failed this year, but Dusty’s place is more sheltered than is ours. So all good!)

[Gwenno]

You all are missing my point completely....

While you are free to your own interpretation, I'd strongly encourage you to have a closer look through the thread so far in more detail before settling on this conclusion. Yes, I know it's a long read by now, but if this is really that important to you, it will probably be worth your while.

The points that you are making have not only been addressed, but they have been discussed in great detail multiple times, and it is no Minnion's responsibility to use up their time and emotional energy to respond if you are unwilling to do the same.

For other Minnions, please be aware that fyrekitty's posts are moderated as a precautionary measure and they may be some time in replying if there isn't a mod online to approve them (and their posts may be 'hidden' behind newer ones if the thread has been busy). I am hoping that this discussion can continue in good faith and have been thoroughly impressed by the behaviour displayed here so far, but we are a small moderating team and can't keep an eye on the thread and forum 24/7, unfortunately. If you suspect bad intent, please report the post to alert us, and we'll do our best to help.

[Miragia]

The bunnies themselves were not traumatizing for people. The pronoun thing is also very subtle, but it's mostly based on page 39 I think. The bottom panel mocked inclusive language that changed whatever the original text was to "Father/Mother/Universe," which seems to many people to be about how many texts went from using exclusively he or she to using he/she/they. You can take of it what you will, but when some people see things like this, it reminds them of when they were mocked for using pronouns which more accurately reflect their gender identity.

Perhaps someone would like to explain this one to me next? ^^

It has me a little confused. As a Christian I am not upset by the Father/Mother/Universe thing because I in any way want to make anyone feel excluded from Christianity (and I really don't think most Christians would want such a thing) or mocked for being who they are (okay, apparently many Christians are guilty of that one, which is very, very sad). But Jesus chose to use "Father". Why is it so hard for people who have struggled for their own right to the pronouns they prefer to respect God's decision to what he prefers?

Sc0ut, I have found that responding with courtesy and patience, at least in the initial stages of the conversation, or until the person proves beyond doubt that they are just being a dick to sow discord, is the best policy.

Also, Róisín, I find your approach commendable. ^^

[JoB]

For other Minnions, please be aware that fyrekitty's posts are moderated as a precautionary measure and they may be some time in replying if there isn't a mod online to approve them (and their posts may be 'hidden' behind newer ones if the thread has been busy).

Out of interest, do you mean that when such a post is eventually released, it will not mark the thread as having new content, and if it has other new content, clicking the "new" button will not take us to that "oldest seemingly-new post"?

I'm a bit confused because that's not what I remember from the occasions when posts or threads were moved after the fact, at least ...

[thorny]

Wavewright and Gwenno, thank you for moderation. If you think I in particular get outside the rules anywhere, please let me know.

You all are missing my point completely, and missing the irony of this very situation.

Speaking of irony --

fyrekitty7, attacking the thread and the group as a whole with blanket and inaccurate accusations is obviously getting you nowhere. Go back and read the thread -- yes, all 20 pages. (It's still a whole lot shorter than the Bible, no?) If you find, anywhere in there, a specific post saying that Minna (or for that matter Orwell) should not be allowed to publish; or a specific post saying that nobody ought to be Christian; or a specific post that matches anything else in your descriptions of this thread as a whole -- then quote that post (accurately, please; you can trim it, but not in a way that changes the sense), and respond to that post. I don't think you're going to find anything such, or at most an isolated sentence or two somewhere in those 20 pages; but as you think you can, then go find it, and show us the evidence.

In the process of doing that reading, please consider the possibility that you might learn something.

I for one would prefer if SSSS were left on a hiatus indefinitely at the nearest non-cliffhanger point, with the possibility of Minna returning to it when and if she genuinely wants to draw it again, rather than her trudging through making hundreds of pages that *she* doesn't enjoy and her new found audience might not either

Agreeing with this. This adventure of SSSS on its original track, judging by the first adventure, would probably have run at least another year and more likely two. That seems to me an extraordinary length of time to keep putting that amount of energy into a work if she's no longer interested in it. I think it would be better if she brings it to a point at which we find out what happens to Grandma and who survives immediately after that, and end it there at least for now. If she has to leave the survivors sitting around a fire out in the wilderness -- so be it.

(By the way, for anyone who is interested, I spoke to Star on the phone tonight, and things continue to slowly improve for him. And I have a lift to the hospital tomorrow to visit him, which saves me a painful hour-long walk, and lets me bring him more clean clothes and library books and some of Dusty’s apples ( most of my apple crop failed this year, but Dusty’s place is more sheltered than is ours. So all good!)

I am so very glad to see this!