Lovely People aka 'the bunny comic'

[esedege]

Hi there again, you actually lovely people

I've kept reading this thread, but I've decided not to keep reading SSSS. I still hurt a bit, and I've come to see it through a detox glass. Not sure brooding here is gonna help, tho, so let me say I'm glad to have found you all, even so late into this whole experience.

I've read here about Minna keeping Saami people, and other currently extant minorities in Nordic countries out of SSSS, Windfighter mentions ableism is present in LP, and catbirds does the same about non-European influences going poof by the time SSSS starts. Are we sure those are conscious decisions, and not simply bad writing? I mean, if I were to write a SSSS-esque story set in Spain (where I am from), I should immerse myself in the history and internal conflicts and peoples that inhabit this country. So I'd add Romani, people of Arab descent, maybe (I'd have to actually do the research for this one to take percentages into account) people of Subsaharan descent; depending on where the story is set inside Spain I'd need to keep in mind two to six languages (sadly not as closely related as Nor-Dan-Swe-Ice are) and a bunch of Spanish dialects for funsies… and that's only pertaining ethnicity and languages. Are we sure she did the research before starting SSSS –or LP–? Could it be that, as she has had to keep the story going we've become more aware of the limitations? Are we not reading some points in hindsight –including myself with that "illegal refugees" thing–? I'm genuinely asking because I've never watched her streamings nor followed her anywhere else but here, and maybe it's just a Critical Research Failure. If she's being always such a recluse, she may have developed a distaste for anything foreign to her small world, not even knowing the scope of it. Let me put this bluntly: do you consider her to be a learned person?

I think this is a perspective worth considering, although I'm not defending her: as of LP, she seems spiteful, full of hatred and self-righteousness, and maybe even pain, but as all that is wrongly directed at me –among lots of others– I'm not quite inclined to show much mercy or comprehension.

Back in track, and maybe as a personal conclusion, not doing the research is kinda one of the most "appreciated" characteristics of a bigot. Yea, I'm still hurt.

[Edited to ad an 'a' to Saami, just to be sure.]

[Sc0ut]

Are we sure those are conscious decisions, and not simply bad writing?

Her reaction to the criticism tells you if they're conscious decisions or something she accidentally overlooked. SSSS has been going on for years, people have been pointing out the lack of non-white characters in the setting for years. At no point has Minna responded with anything like "it was an oversight on my part, but I understand why it matters to some/ I'd do it differently if I had to do it again/ I will include non-white characters now because I want to correct my oversight". She did imply that PoC might have survived in other areas but never went as far as to explicitly state it. Just baiting, baiting, baiting, like with the queerness: write in such a way that both someone who wants a world without PoC and someone who doesn't can enjoy the story. It's one of the things that makes me the most wary about the comic and tbh a big reason why I've been distancing myself from it even before LP was published.

I also need to point out that the comic does not exist in a void. Europeans especially will be more aware about the fact that Norse mythology specifically, and European folklore more generally, have been coopted by far right groups, and online they are often used as signals for this type of views. As sad as it makes me to say it, having been a fan of these things, I am now automatically wary when a webcomic, band, blog or whatever is steeped too much into this culture without explicit signs that they welcome the categories of people that the far right hates.

[Yuuago]

I've read here about Minna keeping Sami people, and other currently extant minorities in Nordic countries out of SSSS, Windfighter mentions ableism is present in LP, and catbirds does the same about non-European influences going poof by the time SSSS starts. Are we sure those are conscious decisions, and not simply bad writing?

I can't speak to the rest, but. Regarding the Saami people. It isn't that she just didn't include any Saami people in the comic.

It's that the Saami languages are canonically listed as dead, and author's commentary (in response to a question about that) is that the Saami people "melted into the rest of the population".

When the real-world context is that these are people who have been subject to cultural genocide, and subject to attempts to forcibly "melt them into the population", this is... I'm not really sure how to describe it.

Like, there are ways to acknowledge them in the worldbuilding without actually writing any Saami characters, if it was a matter of her just not thinking she could do a good job or not wanting to cover that area. She did that with Estonians! Their language is listed as small but still living, and she's stated in response to questions that there are still populations of Estonians, though the known world populations don't currently live in Estonia. But in regards to the Saami, she point-blank said "These people are all gone".

Reading what she said made my hair stand on end. She might be a recluse, but I don't think this can be just brushed off as not knowing things.

[Windfighter]

oh no, this is what I mean when I said I'm bad at words! LP's technology is bad-message is mostly about twitter or whatever it was called in the comic and doesn't quite??? go as far as saying disabled people suck and it was probably not a consious decision of Minna to even imply that in the comic. the author's note saying that medication is bad actually and you should repent your sins against god instead IS however a pretty ableist view and I can say that as someone who has somehow gotten it into my head that if I need to take medication I might just as well die and I didn't realize just how bad that take was for me until I couldn't even take iron supplements without getting a panic attack (for anyone else though I would have fought for their right to whatever medication they needed so it wasn't like I saw medication as a Big Bad or being sick or disabled as the Big Bad, it was just for me. I didn't have any other value so my only value was that I was pretty healthy, albeit a bit messed up in the head *slaps head* this bad boi can fit so many unhealthy takes)

....askkgjsf I got off-topic. Anyway I didn't mean to say that Minna purposely added "Technology is bad" as a way of saying "disabled people are bad", I just realized that that was A Thing that could be read into it and I needed to yell it somewhere :$

[Raaffiie]

esedge, I feel the same way. At first I had some doubts and just felt confused because the change seemed so sudden. But as time passed, rather than things getting better, it only grew more bitter. The more I read and the more I thought back to SSSS, the more uncomfortably aware I became of how much of Minna's choices and her comments in SSSS I had just brushed off in the past with 'well, she's a recluse, she probably doesn't know any better' or 'it's just a story decision, she doesn't actually feel that way.' That's not to say that things like the lack of racial diversity, the distaste for cities etc. are definitively reflections of her own mindset either. As was mentioned many times before, we'll never truly know the author's intentions because we don't really know the person. But the same is true for any author, and from a personal perspective I can't say that I care much about that lack of absolute certainty. There are so many works out there to appreciate that aren't accompanied by that kind of bitterness, even if one cannot be absolutely certain of the intentions of those authors either. Signs of good will are generally all that we have to go on as a fan of anything, and it's been severely lacking here. Reading the transcript that was shared, and seeing the comic being advertised on social media without anything resembling a warning, was the last straw for me.

If there's anything I'll be taking away from this situation, it's to be even more wary about the kind of things I'm willing to forgive from an author and how those things add up when you put them all together. I'll see if I keep hanging around the forum - I only just got here, and you guys are too nice a bunch to leave so soon. But otherwise, personally, I'm done with the whole thing.

[LetsEatBees]

I should probably say how I feel now while this topic is still fresh.

I should mention upfront that I have not had traumatic experiences with religion. I have found most Christian media to be empty, fear mongering, condescending, or willfully ignorant, and yea, Lovely People pushed a lot of very annoying buttons.

In my opinion lovely People almost got me invested, I thought the dystopian social credit system was delivered in a good, creepy, way. What with how all-encompassing yet mundane way it's treated in universe.
Once the religious stuff started to take over the whole narrative my thoughts were thus:
"Say sike right now.."
The afterword was a special kind of "what" as said by someone earlier in the thread it sounded like disorganized stream-of- consciousness rant, personally while I thought Minna was just kind of conservative leaning recluse I never thought she was so bitter and judgy.
(was hoping she was just kind of boomer, basically) Also the part where one of the bunnies rants on the internet about her followers struck me as a bit too personal, it suggests that she really has not gotten over the whole "Emil" incident and at that point I just lol'd, she might be less nice than I thought she was.(seriously I was so confused for like weeks)

I've been anxious about how SSSS would end or degrade in quality since the announcement of the side comic, I’ve also been honest with myself about how no matter how it chose to end I probably would never be satisfied with it. But I kind of hoped there would be maybe a year or two more before that, but now it seems the worst case scenario has happened where the author touches’ the series and runs.

I have been trying to prepare myself to move on to something else ever since the end of adventure 1, but for whatever reason I just don't feel ready to let SSSS go. I'll be honest SSSS got me through some of the worst days of my life, and most fandoms/media I was in just sort of lost momentum or properly ended, can't say I’ve been in a situation where the author just kind of spat in my face. I feel stupid for feeling so attach to this comic, but I’ve really never found anything like it and it's not something I can really replace.

[esedege]

Wow, I feel my last post needs and explanation/expansion/revision.

First of all, Windfighter, there's nothing you have to apologise for, I was the one unable to put two and two together (aka, your comment and her afterword despising medicine in general and medication in particular.) I'm truly sorry for any stress I may have caused you.

Secondly, thanks to Sc0ut for teaching me this.

Europeans especially will be more aware about the fact that Norse mythology specifically, and European folklore more generally, have been coopted by far right groups, and online they are often used as signals for this type of views.

It makes total sense for the far right to appropriate the folklore. However, I was totally unaware of that, as Spain lacks any sort of ancient folklore (as a whole, not sure if there are some traces of Celtic or Basque folklore in the North part). Our neofascism, for example, longs for Francoist dictatorship, i.e. National Catholicism. I'll be more vigilant in the future.

When the real-world context is that these are people who have been subject to cultural genocide, and subject to attempts to forcibly "melt them into the population", this is... I'm not really sure how to describe it.

Yeah, if she said that (and I'm using 'if' just to make the sentence flow, I have no reason to doubt it) that can only be read as 'I want to get rid of these people and there's no in-universe reason to do that, so this'll have to work' that could either mean bad writing (counter-argument taken by her keeping Estonians alive) or blatant racism. I have to admit to you, Yuuago, that I may have read back then it but my knowledge of the Saami people almost ends with me knowing about their existence, so even if I read it it would not have had an impact on me then. But that (lack of) reaction boils down to me being ignorant.

Her reaction to the criticism tells you if they're conscious decisions or something she accidentally overlooked. SSSS has been going on for years, people have been pointing out the lack of non-white characters in the setting for years. At no point has Minna responded with anything like "it was an oversight on my part, but I understand why it matters to some/ I'd do it differently if I had to do it again/ I will include non-white characters now because I want to correct my oversight". She did imply that PoC might have survived in other areas but never went as far as to explicitly state it. Just baiting, baiting, baiting, like with the queerness: write in such a way that both someone who wants a world without PoC and someone who doesn't can enjoy the story. It's one of the things that makes me the most wary about the comic and tbh a big reason why I've been distancing myself from it even before LP was published.

You've convinced me almost completely, though I can still see her making an unconscious mistake and doubling down on it instead of conceding. Self-righteousness doesn't come by accepting your mistakes and growing as a person, you know? You have to work hard for it

I'm not a very sensitive person about these matters (I'm trying to improve tho), but reading your last sentences it's dawned on me that I have surely been cheated on in that regard more than once, even though I can only pinpoint Modern Family ('Yay, our gays are very gay! But they won't ever kiss onscreen till backlash comes haunting us!' being the main reason I distanced myself from it).

That 'You can project and hope, but I'll have none of those stinky things in my story' attitude kinda reminds me of some other author that keeps twisting her characters after the story has already ended just to appeal to minorities without having done a single thing for them where it matters (aka, in her books). But, alas, I'm not sure Minna will accept those anymore.

I'd like to link that last quote from Sc0ut with this one by Raaffiie to make a short off topic that I'll hide.

If there's anything I'll be taking away from this situation, it's to be even more wary about the kind of things I'm willing to forgive from an author and how those things add up when you put them all together. I'll see if I keep hanging around the forum - I only just got here, and you guys are too nice a bunch to leave so soon. But otherwise, personally, I'm done with the whole thing.

Spoiler: show

I recently edited a post I made in this very thread to erase the name of an author I enjoyed but I discovered to be a rampant homophobe.

Not two days ago, I was reading a subreddit revolving a certain YouTuber who's been "canceled" by part of Twitter (man that place is nasty when it comes to civilised arguing) and stumbled across a throwaway sentence about Neil Gaiman being a homophobe too. Man that hurt me. I have Sandman (looking forward to the series), Sandman Overture, spin-offs with Death, Fragile Things, Good Omens, Coraline (both book and movie), Smoke and Mirrors, The Ocean at the End of the Lane…

But, thankfully, it was what is called a nothingburger. He stated that the two main characters in Good Omens are not gay, in spite of them being interpreted by men, and the chemistry and love they show for each other. Pretty homophobic, right? Well, they're an angel and a demon, who are not sexed. They are not a male angel nor a male demon, how could they be 'gay'? He said in a follow-up that they could be/are in love, as asexual partners. So it was the audience who was projecting sex and gender into them, and Gaiman was ahead of us. Thank for coming to my TED-Ed

–––

That's what the spoiler said originally. However, after Raaffiie quoted and inadvertently showed me that my spoiler could be open to misinterpretation I contacted her to clarify. I don't think it's honest to modify what's above the line but neither to let my lacklustre writing make Gaiman to seem like a homophobe. This is the core of what I sent to Raaffiie:

What Gaiman said dignified and empowered the asexual collective of the LGTBQ. He showed the audience –including me– that he thinks that that collective exists when he's writing, he considers them non-invisible people and he's not going to detract from them any achievement. That's why I said he was ahead of us. He made me realise, me being a gay man, that love is love and I can claim what's mine but should never project at the expense of deformation. Heck, I'm friends with a couple that seems 'cis' but is none of that: she (she uses this pronoun as she doesn't care) is agender and asexual, he's is asexual (no sex drive). Aziraphale and Crowley are more an embodiment of them two (not a perfect one, I know but still) than whatever my oblivious mind had desired.

I just don't feel ready to let SSSS go. I'll be honest SSSS got me through some of the worst days of my life, and most fandoms/media I was in just sort of lost momentum or properly ended, can't say I’ve been in a situation where the author just kind of spat in my face. I feel stupid for feeling so attach to this comic, but I’ve really never found anything like it and it's not something I can really replace.

Hi, LetsEatBees! I agree with you as a whole, but wanted to highlight this you said about SSSS. I loved the art, and I invested so much in the characters, and I was eager to know more about the rash origin. Now I think that discovering that origin, as much as healing or reverting it, was completely out of the scope of SSSS. Even more so because Minna wrote herself into a corner: people in that world have accepted their destiny, there's no coordinated attempt to really improve. I'm not saying it could be easy living in that universe, but SSSS is completely defeatist in that regard, so in the long run I'm not sure if it could be nothing but episodic and samey.

———
Ok, the One Last Edit!

Raaffiie, this off-topic spoiler is just for you! I've been meaning to do it since ages ago!

Spoiler: show

Don't read Stephen King. He's awful and incompetent writing anything but gore and distraught. Half of the subreddit r/menwritingwomen is dedicated to him and his 'descriptions'.

[Raaffiie]

Reacting to off-topic spoilers with another off-topic spoiler

Spoiler: show

I recently edited a post I made in this very thread to erase the name of an author I enjoyed but I discovered to be a rampant homophobe.

Not two days ago, I was reading a subreddit revolving a certain YouTuber who's been "canceled" by part of Twitter (man that place is nasty when it comes to civilised arguing) and stumbled across a throwaway sentence about Neil Gaiman being a homophobe too. Man that hurt me. I have Sandman (looking forward to the series), Sandman Overture, spin-offs with Death, Fragile Things, Good Omens, Coraline (both book and movie), Smoke and Mirrors, The Ocean at the End of the Lane…

But, thankfully, it was what is called a nothingburger. He stated that the two main characters in Good Omens are not gay, in spite of them being interpreted by men, and the chemistry and love they show for each other. Pretty homophobic, right? Well, they're an angel and a demon, who are not sexed. They are not a male angel nor a male demon, how could they be 'gay'? He said in a follow-up that they could be/are in love, as asexual partners. So it was the audience who was projecting sex and gender into them, and Gaiman was ahead of us. Thank for coming to my TED-Ed

That's the thing, isn't it? It's rare to find a case where you can point to one little thing an author said and conclusively say something about their intentions from that. And even if it does turn out that there is an ugly side to their personality, it doesn't necessarily reflect on the merits of their work. A work that is created by a flawed artist can still do a lot of good simply by people's interpretation of it. So personally, I'm generally inclined to give those kinds of minor incidents the benefit of the doubt as far as my own experience with their work goes, especially if the artist is humble in their response to the criticism. But the flipside to that is that one can end up forgetting about those incidents entirely, and develop a bit of a blind spot to the total image that those minor incidents can add up to, until it comes painfully crashing down at some point. (And yeah, boy, I hope that's not applicable to Neil Gaiman. I've only read Good Omens myself but I really enjoyed it.)

This discussion has at the very least been very educational in that way, because it's the first time for me that it's both hit so close to home and that I've really been able to process my own thoughts and feelings about such a subject over a longer time. Like you said, the back-and-forth that happens over these types of subjects can often get so nasty that it's hard to know what to do with it.

Don't read Stephen King. He's awful and incompetent writing anything but gore and distraught. Half of the subreddit r/menwritingwomen is dedicated to him and his 'descriptions'.

Thanks for the warning. I don't really interact with book communities that much, so all I knew was that he had a reputation of some sort.

[Vulpes]

Europeans especially will be more aware about the fact that Norse mythology specifically, and European folklore more generally, have been coopted by far right groups, and online they are often used as signals for this type of views.

Thanks for that, Sc0ut - I suppose at some level I was aware of this, and really should have been properly clued in, so I'm glad you did clue me in! I will be appropriately wary from now on.

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!! I've missed your hilarious contributions to advent calendars and chapter breaks. And I agree with thorny, you certainly can express yourself, very eloquently and thoughtfully. Excellent dump, I hope it was cathartic.

I just read a bunch of comments here and I'm sorry, my eyes can't take scrolling back to see who said it, but someone used the phrase "last straw" in reference to LP and Minna's handling of the fallout. That's how I've been feeling about it.
When I first stumbled on SSSS, I was immediately captivated by the art, the story, the relatable characters... all of it. I was slightly annoyed when my SO immediately pointed out that it was "a white supremacist's dream" or something along those lines - annoyed precisely because I had noted the all-white cast and said to myself, "Well, the author probably doesn't feel comfortable writing non-white characters. Heck, I would feel uncomfortable writing a character from a different social stratum, so who am I to criticise?"
I caught up to The Emil Incident, and found that a bit of a head-scratcher, not having seen it in real time. But I chalked up her response to snippiness due to having got a ton of really unpleasant email. Not an excuse to be dismissive, but at least an explanation.
Then I kept hearing about other stuff in other places, but always second- third- or whatever-hand, with no easy way to confirm, so I suppose I stuck my metaphorical fingers in my ears and went lalala because I was enjoying the story.
When she announced the side-project, alarm bells went off - not for what happened, but it sounded like she'd lost interest in SSSS, even though she said she hadn't. I started bracing myself for a premature end to SSSS, but I was not prepared for LP and that screed that followed it.
Now that I think about it, LP and its fallout is less of a last straw as a last load of bricks - it was a lot to process. I guess it forced me to take my fingers out of my ears and stop saying lalala, as well.
The news that she's actively (and deceptively) advertising LP is yet another last straw - if there was any last lingering doubt that she was intentionally drawing people in to read LP, whether they'd be okay with its message or not, it's gone.

It's always disappointing when someone whose work you admire turns out to be less of a decent human than you assumed. But sometimes you can ignore that and still enjoy the work. But in this case her response has been terrible, not only has she revealed some pretty unpleasant character traits, she's also shown zero empathy to her long-time fans, or anyone else who took offense.

Eh, sorry, off on another gloomy meditation! I didn't think it possible to be so affected by something like this, but it's certainly made me think about a lot of stuff, regarding the comic and beyond.

[Haiz]

hello again.... i have feelings on the topic of good faith/bad faith assumptions and deeming whether or not Creator Good or Creator Bad...

here are some things i have experienced:
- media letting me down and causing actual ramifications on my life or lives or others
- people telling me i cannot like a piece of media because They Heard It's Bad
- some people on social media turning against me to the point of creating a public callout and listing Reasons Why Haiz Is Bad

point one: i am always going to advocate for media striving for diversity, inclusivity, and compassionate portrayals thereof. i sincerely believe going the extra steps to be inclusive will pay off and at the very least, getting sensitivity readers should be a common practice. i will also cut indie creators more slack than giant corporations with huge teams and budgets. i know from firsthand experience that doing harmful representation doesn't happen in  vacuum - there's a notorious episode of House MD that did an extremely poor job of portraying asexual people, at a time where asexual people had no representation anywhere in media, that directly affected how my own mother viewed asexuality. it directly impacted my life. i say this to make it clear that i don't ever want to handwave the importance of good representation.

i also really do believe ssss as a story would've been much better if it had made the smallest of efforts to include non-white people and saami people. i don't think a story can ride on Good Representation alone, but weaving in inclusivity into an already compelling story can only enhance it, i think. i also don't think it's possible to include every group or create a perfect representation of every group you DO include. i think every piece of media is flawed, just as every creator is flawed. i also think it can be very constructive and good to discuss and analyze these flaws and gaps in stories.

point two: the efforts of wanting Better Representation and More Diversity often comes with a backside of "these pieces of media are morally good and these pieces are morally bad". that's.... one heck of a conversation to have, so i'm not going to delve into it fully. a lot of conversations about flaws in media stop being constructive when they become a tug-of-war over whether or not reading a book or watching a tv series makes you a bad person. it also becomes real easy to create bad faith arguments over how this media or this creator are Bad Actually based on a limited pool of information, or worse, hearsay. again and again i have experienced people who have heard from someone who heard from someone who read a book i like that the book has a Bad Thing, and so they send me a message, did you know you just shared a piece of art from a Book that is Bad? and i always have to ask, what about the book is so bad, or answer, yes i have read the book and i am aware and critical of the bad thing in the book. it's not like i'm unwilling to have that conversation, but it's hard to have it when the other side, who has more often than not read the book, is just telling me to stop liking the book.

if this sounds like i should be able to relate to the story of lovely people, haha, just wait

point three: just as it's easy to make bad faith arguments about how this liking book actually makes you bad, it's easy to make anyone out to be bad if you really go in for it. and people do, constantly! just like some of the posts before this one discuss within spoilered parts. while it was not for reading Bad and Evil books, i too experienced people who decided (for petty vendetta reasons) that i was bad and people should actually be very wary of me and my Manipulative Charming Ways for.... reasons. you'll have to decide for yourself whether or not you trust me when i say i had not done anything actually wrong, but you'll probably believe it when i say it was a deeply upsetting and harrowing experience. not the reveal that these specific people hated my guts or anything, i knew that. but the fact that to some degree, it worked. a lot of people i thought trusted me, suddenly turned out to not trust me at all - or maybe they were on the fence but did not want to get punished for the crime of associating with me. fair enough! my friends really did go through some wingers for that, but that's another trauma for another time.

im trying to say two things here:
- it can be really really easy to twist a narrative around someone or something, especially online.
- you want to talk about how bad twitter is? i WILL tell you how bad twitter is. what i experienced and what i witness every day is hardly the tip of the iceberg of how upsetting twitter is. twitter is a wretched place that self-generates outrage for engagement as fuel. social media is a ruin og contextual collapse where anything that can be taken in bad faith, WILL be taken in bad faith. these places are intentionally designed to keep us trapped and manipulate our brain chemicals because of capitalistic cynicism. we're not equipped to handle this deluge of constant information.

by all accounts, i can sympathize with facing backlash online and disliking social media and what it does to people. i should relate to lovely people. i can see all the points it's trying to make, and i presume so does everyone else. i still think it's really flat and shallow and is written to push an agenda. i don't think throwing your phone off a bridge is the solution to the problems presented.

i don't think anyone can make a judgement whether or not minna had good or bad intentions in the past, or if the intentions were good ENOUGH if they so were, since good and bad are such arbitrary absolutes... but it's pretty well documented how her choices have dissappointed and hurt people, and i know we had at least one or two actual white supremacists trying to be slick and interact with the fandom/community back in the day, and that's Two Too Many.

i don't have a specific conclusion here or if i'm even bringing anything new and constructive to the table. i'm just really invested in these particular and complicated topics ya feel. either way i don't think anyone can say anything worse about minna than she said about herself in the afterword...


edit wait my conclusion is that it's okay to enjoy bad books if you want. you're probably not harming a community by reading bad books. but you gotta decide whether or not you're comfortable with monetarily supporting the author or if you should take a trip to the library.

[Róisín]

Understood and accepted, Haiz. And good to hear your views. I have had to work my way through some pretty toxic writings down the years, trying to keep my stomach down so that I know what is going on, because I know somebody is going to ask me about those things, or need help in dealing with the consequences of them. Needful but unpleasant.

And it is sad to hear of your social media experiences, they sound awful. Be aware that some of us value you and your work, and the best advice I can give is to go on as bravely as you can, making use of the insights you have gained in your personal growth and in whatever making you choose to do in the future. Because I know you for a maker and a keeper, with a strong creative urge and a body of fine work to show for it. Courage and luck to you!

[Superdark33]

Funnily enough, this idea that media/people can be binarily "Morally Good/Bad" us itself an extremely christian way of looking at things!

When people like Minna do that with "does it jesus or not" regarding companies, governments or people, its how they always operated, its not a surprise, thats how this religious institution has been for all of its existence.

But when people On Line try to use this sort of thinking with unrelated issues that dont amount to "Jesus or not", it becomes jarring and weird, something is off and no one can pinpoint why because most of the people in the western world or influenced by it will treat this Moral Thinking as default withlut question.


Its one thing to see a work and comments from its creator and judge them to hold X or Y views, its a whole other to fabricate extrapolations aimed at reaching a conclusion you already had, as if just saying "i dont like it" wont cut it.


Minna's words and actions are well enough reason for me to see her as nothing but a paranoid bigot who refuses to accept anything that isnt shallow praise for doing what she wants.

[Róisín]

Superdark, that seems to be a problem in most media, not just online. And the binary judgements of ‘one true way’ Christianity are mercifully not universal in that faith. I have met a lot of decent Christians who are not judgemental of what they don’t understand, and who express their views and their faith by bearing witness in their own lives to what they believe rather than by bullying and tribalism. The decent ones do exist, I’m married to one, but these years they seem to be the minority. Sad.

[catbirds]

Its one thing to see a work and comments from its creator and judge them to hold X or Y views, its a whole other to fabricate extrapolations aimed at reaching a conclusion you already had, as if just saying "i dont like it" wont cut it.

Minna's words and actions are well enough reason for me to see her as nothing but a paranoid bigot who refuses to accept anything that isnt shallow praise for doing what she wants.

Spoiler: very bitter feelings • show

I'm not really sure if this particular passage is directed at the way I wasted my time last summer thinking about why SSSS is the way it is, but it does kind of feel like it…? Just for privacy's sake, I don't want to discuss my background, but in short it's more of a literary analysis thing that's 1) useful because a lot of people seemed to be scratching their heads at how this could have happened and 2) pretty much the only way I've been able to get people to understand why I'm upset when they repeatedly promote or consume works with bigoted views, which they'll continue to do anyway because I have a gut feeling they might see my struggles as rather trivial.

And I don't want to get upset more, but "I don't like it" just isn't ever the reason that I don't want people to enjoy something. More often than not, it does feed into a cycle that's been perpetuated for ages, and it does end up hurting myself and people like me, or other (more?) marginalized communities/groups in the long run, especially due to the large immigrant population where I live. Again, not that it works, but I do want people to just stop enjoying something sometimes, and I know that it's not within my right to demand it, but I still get angry at them when they think they're infallible to internalizing the caricatures in a story. I know so many white people who think they're just "not like all the other ones" and end up making the same racist jokes because they "had a friend approve of it beforehand" or something (does this sound familiar?), so no, it's not that "I don't like [a story]," it's that I wish it never existed and I scowl when people enjoy it and I want people to know why.

In conclusion, I do have a scathingly low opinion of Minna, in case there was any doubt.

[Moose]

Hello every one!
Im brand new here, i realy wish i had found this place earlier, it seems like a place thats less toxic then many other places on the webb.

Lets see if i manage to put my words out right.
When i first found the comic ssss about two years ago i first was a bit causes, i did want to end up liking some right wing fantasy show as they missuse everything norse.
But it seems to be okej.
Along the time i read the comic there was some things that started to itch a bit in the back of my head.
The lack of diversity, the fact the virus came with refuges, The absens of saamipeople and that she wrote a comment stating her political stand probanly was far from The readers (i dont remember exact quote or pagenr)

After have read in this thread more things that i dont agree with the coomic lovely peope was like the last mail in The coffin.

She is an amazing artist, she can learn to portray poc People, black People, she could have used oversea livestock as a virushotspot for exampel.
And as for the saami, i mean Come on!
I did not know it was canon that the saamis had "melted in" with the rest.
As a saami that is just...i dont know how to even adress that!
Its what has been tried to do with my people for centuries, with vilonce, forse, with shaming and stealing and it still happens today. That some trolls would make us disapear is so unlikly im almost laghing.
I understand that dealing with minoritys, with other cultures one have to make sure to not appropriate but she could have just stated "still alive" or what ever.
And btw, we saamis would probably be asome trollhunters, the majority of (south)saami stores is us fooling an killing braineating, bloodsucking, childstealing trolls

All this and then the LP story. Yeas the LP story.
As a saami i had my fear share of "Gods work"
A lot of The saami "religion" is eather gone or in hiding becous of The church demonitizing it, and even burning saamis defending it.
People have the right to there religion, but trying to force it on others, or shaming, beliving other belifes are wrong and bad is just sickening.
If nothing else turns up i will read the end of ssss but that it.
Right now im just glad i did not buy the books i intended to.
Even without the note in The end it was, in my opinion, bad. I found it lackning in The story, it missed the dept and the cute look is not my cup of tee.
I know one can only doo so mutch with short amont of pages but it felt like she rushed to produce this story, to get it out that the story was just a mishmash to get her point out.

I know some Will brush everything away, saying its not a big deal, or its overanalizing but i have learned to trust my instinct.
I read a red tails dream, it was beutiful but a bit to slow for my taste.
But a thing that stood out was all the fatjokes. Its not funny.

Well that was my toughts about all this. I hope you can overlook misspellings, english is not my first languegs and I try my best☺️