Lovely People aka 'the bunny comic'

[Sc0ut]

Think of how simple, how easy it would have been for there to be a non-Christian (at the start) character introduced early on, who also suffered under the heavy hand of this dystopia, and the main characters recognized this, and reached out to them, and they left together and the character converted because Christianity offer an alternative, offered salvation from the evils of this society! How it would have demonstrated that the main characters embraced the Christian love for their fellow man (err... bunny) that Jesus did. And considering her own recent conversion, it would have been easy to write from experience!

Easy to write from experience... really doubt about that. Nothing in the comic or her afterword suggested to me that her conversion got her to feel more connected to, or caring towards, other people - least of all non-Christians - and she was an avowed recluse to begin with.

I saw snippets in the thread (as much as I've been able to read) about Minna's disparaging comments about certain communities, etc. Does anyone know particulars? (Like what comments she's made, what communities she's against)

I didn't even know she had expressed negative views of certain communities/people.

Thanks!

As far as I know, she hasn't expressed any negative views explicitly. We're mostly drawing conclusions from her reactions (or lack thereof) to various concerns that readers of SSSS have brought up - like her defensive and dismissive reaction to being called out on her choice to make a joke containing a racial slur in the comic. But personally I only used to follow the comic and her comments there, people who watch her streams might know more.

[catbirds]

I saw snippets in the thread (as much as I've been able to read) about Minna's disparaging comments about certain communities, etc. Does anyone know particulars? (Like what comments she's made, what communities she's against)

If you wish to find the specific moment, a recorded version of the stream can be found here. She starts saying the Things at 22:10 and it continues until somewhere around 30 minutes. It was also transcribed on a tumblr post, but I don't know if there's a problem with linking to someone else's tumblr post on this forum.

As for the comic slur, that was in 2016. Just google "SSSS Emil slur" or something and it'll probably direct you to a forum post around the time when people started discussing it. The page where it actually happened was page 549, and the dismissive comment was page 550. The slur was changed not long after it was posted, I think (I wasn't there when it happened), so you won't find any trace of it on the page itself, except maybe in the comment archive.

I hope it doesn't come off as digging up old wounds, but I feel like I've alluded to this enough times that I should probably take some responsibility and guide people to something showing exactly what happened.

Easy to write from experience... really doubt about that. Nothing in the comic or her afterword suggested to me that her conversion got her to feel more connected to, or caring towards, other people - least of all non-Christians - and she was an avowed recluse to begin with.

I mean, again, I don't want to try to pry too many details about her life out of whatever she's said, both because why would I want to read things she's written at this point and because I don't care about content creators 99% of the time, but it's not even clear if she's studying her faith with other people. Like, for all we know, her lifestyle may not have changed at all and she might not even attend church. Not to mention the "I'm not like the other Christians" attitude that the bunny comic puts forth. If someone can verify that the church just Doesn't Work That Way, though, that would make that possibility meaningless.

[Superdark33]

If you wish to find the specific moment, a recorded version of the stream can be found here. She starts saying the Things at 22:10 and it continues until somewhere around 30 minutes. It was also transcribed on a tumblr post, but I don't know if there's a problem with linking to someone else's tumblr post on this forum.

Theres no rules about it but heres the post either way!

https://superdark33.tumblr.com/post/626897379697770496/superdark33-xollos-verdisketch

Its got a transcript and all.

As far as logical explanations go, it seems to me much more likely that its her bigoted views that brought her to whatever branch of christianity shes part of rather than anything the other way around.

[GMantis]

What exactly is bigoted about criticizing protests that blatantly violated the Covid restrictions, as well as the hypocritical reaction of authorities and media to these protests? Or maybe it's the dislike of city life that is supposed to be bigoted?

[Ragnarok]

Theres no rules about it but heres the post either way!

https://superdark33.tumblr.com/post/626897379697770496/superdark33-xollos-verdisketch

Its got a transcript and all.

As far as logical explanations go, it seems to me much more likely that its her bigoted views that brought her to whatever branch of christianity shes part of rather than anything the other way around.

'Cities make you mentally ill'.

...

Well, okay then.

[Maple]

What exactly is bigoted about criticizing protests that blatantly violated the Covid restrictions, as well as the hypocritical reaction of authorities and media to these protests? Or maybe it's the dislike of city life that is supposed to be bigoted?

Those specific things aren't bigoted, but they are often the end result of bigoted thinking.

Here is an example, courtesy of my own grandma:

Grandma: Maple, you should live in [small town] with the rest of the family. It's just not safe in [big city]!
Me: I've never felt unsafe living in [big city], what do you mean?
Grandma: You know how it is. Crime is higher in the city. It's so much safer here, and less crowded.
Me: I haven't had any problems with crime?
Grandma: Well, with THOSE PEOPLE around, there's always going to be crime.
Me: ...'those people'?

Yeah. It ended up being that my grandma is racist and thinks that any area with a large population of nonwhite people will have problems with crime, because 'those people' commit crimes all the time. So her initial statement of "it's not safe in a big city" seemed innocent, but there were bigoted reasons for why she thought big cities were not safe.

(I am not saying that Minna is racist. This is just how words that sound okay can sometimes be hiding more hurtful thoughts.)

[Vulpes]

Those specific things aren't bigoted, but they are often the end result of bigoted thinking.

Here is an example, courtesy of my own grandma:

Grandma: Maple, you should live in [small town] with the rest of the family. It's just not safe in [big city]!
Me: I've never felt unsafe living in [big city], what do you mean?
Grandma: You know how it is. Crime is higher in the city. It's so much safer here, and less crowded.
Me: I haven't had any problems with crime?
Grandma: Well, with THOSE PEOPLE around, there's always going to be crime.
Me: ...'those people'?

Yeah. It ended up being that my grandma is racist and thinks that any area with a large population of nonwhite people will have problems with crime, because 'those people' commit crimes all the time. So her initial statement of "it's not safe in a big city" seemed innocent, but there were bigoted reasons for why she thought big cities were not safe.

(I am not saying that Minna is racist. This is just how words that sound okay can sometimes be hiding more hurtful thoughts.)

And racism doesn't have to manifest itself in obviously negative ways - "positive" stereotypes are still damaging. It always made me wince that my parents both said (more than once), "Black people have such a great sense of rhythm." Okay, they meant it as a compliment (especially my mother, she had a BA in music), but it's still a stereotype. Just as damaging as "Chinese are so good at math" or "Girls are naturally quiet" or "Boys are naturally brave" or any number of other stereotypes. They put people in boxes. My parents thought they were showing how non-racist they were by mentioning a positive quality, but it meant that they were still putting all Black people in a box marked "great rhythm", which probably came marked with a bunch of other assumptions as well, some of them a lot less favourable.

I know that I absorbed a lot of their attitudes, communicated in various subtle ways, and have to work hard at identifying them when they bubble up. One of my red flags is when I find myself thinking that "category of persons X" has "good attribute Y". What else do I believe about "Those People"? Do I really believe the stereotype? Does it help me understand the particular instance of "category of persons X" that I'm dealing with?

Superdark, thanks for the links, I don't follow the streams and I find tumblr completely confusing (can you tell I'm not a millenial?    And there's another stereotype  ) so I too was in the dark about the BLM business. It makes me sad (again) that she doesn't seem to get the point. I know that I have a lot of work to do on my own prejudices of various sorts, but I do hope that I listen better than she seems to.

[Róisín]

Maple, I sympathise, having had to deal lifelong with a few of those stereotypes myself, I know how it is. Start with ‘girls can’t do science’, then go on to ‘women can’t have a career as well as kids’, ‘you can’t do music/poetry and science’, ‘girls can’t do martial arts, and they certainly can’t compete in or teach them’, ‘women who work in the bush, alone with a bunch of men who aren’t their family are of course (fill in pejorative term)’, ‘Irish people are just stupid, even if some of them do have lovely singing voices’, ‘people who live in the bush are ignorant as well as stupid’ ‘girls can’t do blacksmithing’, ‘nobody will ever love you if you aren’t pretty and don’t flirt’ (this to a short, plain, non-flirty woman with more than a few scars, who has nevertheless been very well loved), ‘old people are all senile idiots’ and on and on. After awhile it gets quite boring.

[lallivaesterstroem]

Hello all! I am a long (long) time reader and lurker on the forums. I haven't participated yet, but I've been reading this thread every single day since it was posted- I have a whole lot to say about this whole thing, about the way Christianity affected me, trigger warnings, and a looot of other things. Most has been said already and I really don't want to take up too much of anyone's time.

What prompted me to finally post is that I saw an ad for Lovely People today while looking through stories on Instagram. I put the screenshots in an imgur album here. You can also see the very short description Minna wrote for the comic (which has the same issue as the longer description on the site).

I don't know if she ever advertised her works before- at least not on Instagram/Facebook, it seems? If anyone wants to see for themselves: go to her Instagram profile, tap "About this account" and then "Active ads". Either way, I suppose I just wasn't expecting to see it. If anyone has any thoughts on this, please do weigh in. I am still trying to make sense of mine.

Spoiler: show

So... I know that in theory anyone can advertise whatever they want, however they want (I'll keep my hatred of advertising in general out of this  ). What rubs me the wrong way is the same thing that many people took issue with in the original description, I suppose- no trigger warnings, this time not even a mention of Christianity, plus the phrasing "lovely soft dystopia". Unaware Instagram users who decide to click on it for the cute art won't know what hit them. I've also never seen any of her works advertised outside of comic-related websites (correct me if I'm wrong and she advertised on social media before!), so I can't help but wonder why she chose to put this specific comic out there. I was definitely leaning towards "the shock value is the point and she WANTS people to be bonked in the face with a bible" before, and now I'm almost certain of it.

[pinkysaxton]

What prompted me to finally post is that I saw an ad for Lovely People today while looking through stories on Instagram. I put the screenshots in an imgur album here. You can also see the very short description Minna wrote for the comic (which has the  same issue as the longer description on the site).

So what I'm seeing is that she hates social media (as she's mentioned on live streams) and wrote a comic partially bashing the way they advertise a better lifestyle, then posts her ads on the social media sites. Is she hoping to catch people using them, then convince them to delete their accounts? I can't say for sure whether she's ever advertised either (apart from the Hiveworks click-throughs), but it sounds like she's falling into what she was railing against in her new comic.
Usually, I'd be like, "Way to go! Get a larger audience!" But this seems like what she was preaching about before. Is the difference that she isn't an 'influencer' and the product is her own? How does one justify using more social media and advertising after telling others that is in fact the problem with our current society?

[tzelly]

What prompted me to finally post is that I saw an ad for Lovely People today while looking through stories on Instagram. I put the screenshots in an imgur album here. You can also see the very short description Minna wrote for the comic (which has the  same issue as the longer description on the site).

I don't know if she ever advertised her works before- at least not on Instagram/Facebook, it seems? If anyone wants to see for themselves: go to her Instagram profile, tap "About this account" and then "Active ads". Either way, I suppose I just wasn't expecting to see it. If anyone has any thoughts on this, please do weigh in. I am still trying to make sense of mine.

I saw this this very ad on the book of faces the other day and nearly lost it. My way of handling it was reporting the ad as inappropriate for that's how I found the comic. Its seems to me like a wide net to trap more people into reading something they are not prepared for. This worries me. I also wander if this marketing is really her idea. for as you stated she has never done anything like this before as far as I know.

With my life getting kinda really stressful at the moment, I completely forgot I saw it until now, thanks for sharing!

[Windfighter]

So I've been staying out of this whole thing because I do not have a way with words like the rest of you. I cannot express myself at all. I've been following the thread and nodding along with it a lot though because you manage to put words to stuff I picked up subconciously when I read the comic. So I'm just here to dump a few things because this thing has been on my mind since I read it and it's getting irritating

Okay so here we go with the dump:
1) I was warned about the comic. I read a post that said it was chick tract and if you read it you had to be prepared. so uh... I had no idea what chick tract was so I thought it was a newfangled spelling of chick flick because the internet loves to make new spellings for stuff. I went in expecting fun adventures, Friendship is Magic, fashion and Boys are stupid and the meaning of life or something. It was not that.
(this is more my own fault than Minna's and considering my own inability to write summaries I can't fault her for the lack of it but ye, she's seriously lacking in that department for the bunny-comic and by now I'm 100% certain she's doing it on purpose)

2) The art felt less substantial than other art Minna has done???? I dunno I can't express it better. It felt so unreal and I just couldn't take it seriously

3) So I started the comic and the first page had me superwary because it made it seem like Minna was pro faceless entity watching your every move and judging you for what you do and who you interact with and who only supported you if you gave them your undying love and attention. I kept going because surely? she wouldn't? and some pages later there seemed like it would start actually talking about how that wasn't good.
but it didn't
and then it ended with a confirmation that a faceless entity watching your every move and judging you for what you do and who you interact with and who only supports you if you give them your undying love and attention was exactly what Minna was pro, it just was a different faceless entity

4) the afterword! Odin's beard, that was just *dies* And the author's note after that??? I mean ye I also post stupid shit on the internet but I don't have an audience of thousands of people and Minna need to understand that she IS actually one of those influencers already

5) not really about the comic and I don't know if I should rant about it here but i need to rant about it somewhere and since the post got quoted here: Minna's dad going "Minna is too smart to join a cult" just made me super worried about all of them because a) you don't join a cult, you join friends or family or likeminded people and b) if a cult HAS snatched her then they won't realize it because minna wouldn't fall for that so surely it's fine and it can't be a cult. Also it rubbed m the wrong way because c) there are smart people joining cults because, as already stated, you don't join a cult, you join a group of people (I saw a good post about this on tumblr a week or so ago)

6) Bible v2.0. I didn't knew if I should laugh or cry. I ended up deciding that I can't trust Minna about anything (not that I had much trust in her anyway after the shitstorm last year but that's offtopic)

7) after finishing the bunny comic my brain went "oh so this is why something's been feeling off about SSSS the last year and a half and might be why I started losing interest in it" so at least there's that. If you ask me what has been feeling off I wouldn't be able to explain it though

8 ) Teen-bunny is the only valid character in the comic and I am so disappointed that she was only used as a plotpoint to get schoolteacher to follow her christian friend so she could get converted. I also liked the Husband-bunny even though his only personality trait was Being a Husband but then he went and became christian just because he read the Banned Bible and I just "okay you just fell off the Valid Character-ladder". I don't mind christian characters and I don't mind christian themed stories but this wasn't just themed, this was preachment

It's been A While since I read the comic and I have absolutely No plans to read it again because it was just terrible so there's my rant done and over with because I can't remember anything more about it. It could probably maybe have been a good commentary about the social credit system and how having a faceless entity deciding over your fate is not a good thing and we need to be aware except for the fact that Minna seems to not care and not want to get educated enough on the subject to make an actual substantial point. "Abandon your faceless entity and follow mine instead because yours allow technology and that is Evil" is not as great a point as the comic seems to think it is.

Tunglr.hell also made me realize it's a pretty ableist view because A Lot of disabled people are dependant on technology for their day-to-day life and that is not something I had thought about myself so I want to thank tumblr for the way it keeps educating me on matters I don't know enough about. I also want to thank everyone here because if I hadn't found all of you and if I hadn't moved away from my family there's a very real possibility that I would have gone towards the same bigoted road Minna seems to have taken and I'm superglad I grew as a person (and continue growing still) enough to go in the other direction.

There was another PS I wanted to add here but I lost it and it's now 02:15 and my alarm goes of in <6 hours so I should definately flop into bed already Sorry for the rant and thanks for the thread, it has been superinteresting following it!

[thorny]

So I've been staying out of this whole thing because I do not have a way with words like the rest of you. I cannot express myself at all.

I got that far in your post and thought "I'm going to have to post and disagree with that."

And then I read the rest of your post and yup; I have to disagree with the bit that I quoted above. Thanks for the post -- and for bringing in both the point that yes smart people join cults, and also the point about technology and abledness; I don't think anyone in all of these pages had brought up either before.

[Kevin_Redcrow]

Oh, so many good comments and so little attention-span to properly reply!  But here goes:

Quoting Windfighter: I read a post that said it was chick tract and if you read it you had to be prepared. so uh... I had no idea what chick tract was...

You may have already researched Chick tract, but I'll summarize it here for those interested: From the 1960's until ? Jack Chick was the creator of cartoon-style christian tracts.  His christianity is definitely the hard-line and paranoid type: No salvation outside Jesus. Society, Government, Education, Popular Culture; all persecute christians and attempt to seduce people away from the Right Path.

I heard of one of Chick's tracts having the story of a sheriff holding a condemned robber and killer who found Jesus after he was captured and tried for his crimes.  The sheriff is not a christian but is a moral man.  The criminal is executed and goes to heaven.  When the sheriff dies he goes to hell.

Quoting pinkysaxton:

I agree with GlyphGraph about the lack of imagination of Minna's world building (especially when compared to how full and deep SSSS seemed during my first read through). We've been considering the idea that her theology research will broaden her mind a bit, and hopefully make her future Christian stories better, more relatable, and more palatable. But the fundamentalists I know are very limited in what they've read (and understand) and primarily read to memorize and repeat the convenient bits. (It's fun to get into a bible argument with someone whose doctrine is mainly secondary or culture-based – see the tattoo quoting anti-gay Leviticus.) But from her own comment that she's getting more into the theology, history, and orthodoxy, I really don't think that will happen. I think she'll further engrain herself into whatever she's received from her converters. We know she hates new interpretations and new revised printings. But who in her new circle will mention that the orthodox version was cut-and-pasted together by Constantine and his bishops? Nobody who hates sharing "Jesus loves you" over "You've sinned against God" will give any credence to the Heresy Gospels.

I find "Jesus loves you" just another way of saying "You've sinned against God" They are both limiting concepts, not expanding ones.

Based on the fragmentary picture I have of Minna, I can see her going in one of two directions.

If she means by "theology" that she intends to approach the christian faith from a broad, scholarly fashion, then she may very well become more moderate in all her views.  But from the tone and phrasing of the afterword of Lovely People, she may merely using the term "theology" to refer to an exclusive selection of christian materials which are crafted to support that brand of christianity she has chosen.

Based on her general comments she posted on SSSS updates, I see a reclusive person who isn't about to regularly attend a church in Real Time/Space. If she did, she might run screaming out of the church after the second or third service.  Nothing beats Being There with people of any given belief, culture, or lifestyle to understand what is really going on.

At least, that's what I hope would happen.  I still cannot wrap my mind around how someone who can create such a rich, imaginative, insightful story as SSSS can embrace such a narrow worldview.

I have to remember that people now spend a large proportion of their waking hours in cyberspace, just as you and I are at "this" very moment. If Minna exclusively associates with fundamentalists online, then yes, she may go deeper into the rabbit hole.

Or one day she might see or hear something  that puts the lie to the toxic elements of this religion, and as abruptly renounce it as she renounced atheism. 

Take this with a grain of salt. I haven't followed all the streams, read all of this forum, etc.  I have tried to filter some essential notions of who Minna is and why this happened. 

I will confess that my views are quite selfish, and that what anybody else chooses to do with their soul, mind, body, and heart is their business, not mine. I am still sad that this event pretty much spells the premature end of such a beautiful, unique saga that is SSSS.

[catbirds]

Based on her general comments she posted on SSSS updates, I see a reclusive person who isn't about to regularly attend a church in Real Time/Space. If she did, she might run screaming out of the church after the second or third service.  Nothing beats Being There with people of any given belief, culture, or lifestyle to understand what is really going on.

At least, that's what I hope would happen.  I still cannot wrap my mind around how someone who can create such a rich, imaginative, insightful story as SSSS can embrace such a narrow worldview.
...
I will confess that my views are quite selfish, and that what anybody else chooses to do with their soul, mind, body, and heart is their business, not mine. I am still sad that this event pretty much spells the premature end of such a beautiful, unique saga that is SSSS.

This isn't adding too much to the thread in itself, but let me put it this way.

What does the setting of a story mean to the author?

Most people on this forum probably considered it a neat little world with nature and magic, which is pretty normal stuff. To most people, it would seem benign, but if Minna has always hated city life and thought it rots your sanity or something, then SSSS becomes a setting where you don't have to deal with "those people," which definitely is not the same as what the audience has seen it as!! Not to mention that most elements of modern pop culture that made its way into cities first and has been greatly influenced by non-European cultures went poof in the setting. That's just the way that I've chosen to reason through this given my life experiences.

I once wrote a 10-page-long rant just to get my thoughts out about this thing, and while I think I did reach a little in that, this paragraph pretty much summarizes the reasoning I followed to figure out why SSSS is the way it is while the author is the way she is.

I don't want to reach too much again because I'm not familiar with religion outside of its influence on history, but I'm pretty sure most people have already said that she seems to see it as a way out of the "evil modern times" in the bunny comic. So... not a total 180, not that that's helpful considering the damage it's done already.

So I've been staying out of this whole thing because I do not have a way with words like the rest of you. I cannot express myself at all. I've been following the thread and nodding along with it a lot though because you manage to put words to stuff I picked up subconciously when I read the comic. So I'm just here to dump a few things because this thing has been on my mind since I read it and it's getting irritating

Windy, this dump was great. I mean, when this thread first started, people got reasonably emotional about this because an artist they loved turned into a bible thumper basically. I'm glad you gave yourself some time to think things out, and I hope everyone who came by since also got that time for their own thoughts.

Did we see the same post about cults, by any chance? The one I saw was about how the current state of the world made things pretty ideal for a cult boom.

Honestly, I also feel like something has been a bit off about SSSS. I've figured it out mostly, but it actually has a bit less to do with this whole thing than it does with the actual storytelling elements of SSSS. But that has little to do with this thread, so perhaps I'll save those thoughts for a rainy day

As for the art of the bunny comic and the story itself... well, it feels somehow... too clean? That's about the nicest way I can put it. It feels like discrimination written by someone who has never bothered to think about it until five minutes ago, or the feeling of hearing a rich friend gripe about not being able to go on vacation.