Lovely People aka 'the bunny comic'

[thegreyarea]

Jitter, I fully agree with you, particularly on discussing and speculating over family relations.

Gweeno, I see your point on the amplification, however I believe the situation here at the Forum cannot be compared with a social network. This is not Minna's feed on FB. She will only come here and read this thread if she wants. She is perfectly aware doing that will take her to negative opinions. As a responsible adult, she must be ready to read those opinions and consider if they are valid or not. And if there are a lot of them it has a meaning too.
Note that I'm not talking about hate speech or personal insults, because we luckily have moderators and, as you pointed, the discussion has been civil most of the time.
An author that wants to be present on the net, usually receiving positive feedback, should also be able to hear and process critics. And if one feels those critics as personal... Well, that's probably the consequence of assuming personal beliefs as the focus of said artistic work, effectively entangling both things.

I also would like to thank you and any other mods involved for the great work. I can choose to read or not this thread according to my state of mind, but you chose to do it anyway for us, and sometimes must be hard.

[Superdark33]

If Minna or whoever ends up reading these 40 some pages of discission and ends up hurt or otherwise angry at us for thinking what we do,

Good.


I might mock or insult or belittle or call names (all of which are hilarious by the way) on other channels and mediums, but not here.
Im not going to delve into personal life details or speculation abt how her family is taling it or whatever, i dont care about them.

But im not going to be gentle.

[thorny]

*makes sure NOT wearing the Skald's cape*

The following is from me, not from the Forum staff.

Could we not discuss Minna's dad and his comments any further? He wrote here and in the Disqus comments, but he's just another commenter.
 
[ . . . ]While Jouni was the one who brought up his direct connection with Minna, that doesn't mean he equals Minna and we shouldn't think he does, even if it does muddy up the artist / audience line just like many of you commented.

I don't want to be tone policing, and I definitely don't think we should tolerate intolerance. But I do think we must make a difference between Minna's father and Minna the artist.

True. But, if we're to discuss Minna's response to criticism: that response from her doesn't come out of nowhere.

And I woke up thinking that what I want to say is that I see a commonality in that response: if criticized, don't seriously think about the criticism. If there's clearly a lack of understanding, quite possibly in both directions, don't try either to understand the criticizers or to explain oneself to them. Just shut down and ignore them; and in defense of this define them and their pain and/or other criticisms as not being worth responding to -- in Minna's case by saying that we only disagree because we haven't converted to her specific branch of Christianity and everyone who hasn't is therefore bound to be wrong; in Jouni's case by announcing that anyone not posting under the name on their official legal records is very likely just a troll. And in both cases, they feel the need to tell us about it -- Minna by continuing to push Lovely People on every page of SSSS and without clear descriptions; in Jouni's case by that drive-by post.

Is Minna responding that way solely because of family influence? Of course not. But the influence of her family very likely has something to do with it -- we're all influenced by our families, although sometimes we react to that influence by opposing it. And it's not only how she responds to this particular criticism that's influenced by the framework of her mind as a whole; it's also the artwork itself.

Let me make a caricature of this argument (yes, caricatures are by definition exaggerated) to show you why I'm not readily accepting its inherent logic as valid:

Hmmm, I (creator) should try out this Interwebz thing.
Ooooh, a hundred times as many people patting me on the back! I'm famous now!
Umh, wait, there's a hundred times as many people pecking on me now, too.
Bad people! Leave my corner of the Interwebz!

Note that the influencer in Lovely People is perfectly happy with the situation as long as others are universally praising her; and is willing to betray her friends as long as others are still praising her -- but rejects the entire system absolutely and as a whole the minute the online people produce criticism instead of praise. This isn't posed as their providing thought-out criticism of something the influencer might have actually done wrong, of course -- it's posed as their knee-jerk rejecting her for something she's doing (feeling bad about losing her friends) that's actually right.

And that problem with the comic itself is coming exactly out of the mindset that happily accepts praise from any source, but rejects criticism without genuinely considering it.

[Haiz]

[katiemeredith]

Although I had commented about 5 or so pages ago...I had not actually read the comic in its entirety, just the author's notes and the post here. I figured that it simply wasn't worth my time and that I would rather be reading this discussion instead. However, I went back and finished Lovely People in an attempt to procrastinate my psych homework. And man, did I overestimate Minna's quality of writing. But hey, now I can appreciate Haiz's great drawings!!

I actually found the first and second act to be of much higher quality than the third, and I don't think it's just because the bible was rarely mentioned then. To me, it was clear that this was intended to be a religious take on the totalitarianism of Orwell's 1984 and the technology Bad/Society owo of Black Mirror's Nosedive (as previously mentioned here). Having recently read 1984 and I am a big fan of the 3rd season of Black Mirror, it was so interesting to see the complete absence of the Things that make 1984 and Nosedive so effective.

I am now going to do a too-long writeup on (mostly) 1984 and Nosedive, reminiscent of an in class activity for an introductory Interpretation of Literature course 

Spoiler: show

In 1984, the readers experience the perspective of Winston, one who is in a pretty good position in the Party (gets to rewrite history, swag. kind of like that influencer bunny, also swag). However, unlike our cast in Lovely People, he is acutely aware of the dangers of Big Brother, and the audience understands how Horrible governmental control is because the audience and the protagonist empathizes with them. Unlike the homemaker bunny, he sees the socially/politically shunned and like...cares about it.

It just feels as if Minna included the World Council and their control as a way for the readers to be like "silly bunny! this is obviously Pretty Bad", which is not nearly as effective, in my opinion.
It's clear to the reader, and the protagonist, that the current system is Bad because it not only affects the protagonist, but also the people around them. I can't empathize with someone like the influencer bunny who only ditches her life of privilege and wealth because those things are revoked.
(i don't know, 1984 is just a lot better than Lovely People because the audience is acutely aware, for the entire novel, of how Bad this thing is. for part of it, i found myself thinking "well, teenbunny and husbunny have like, fairly fixable situations if they like, mass tweet propaganda" or "well, has christianbunny tried reading the inclusive bible? i mean, if you're reading the irl bible in English you literally are reading bible 2.0. hell, you could consider christianity the bible 2.0 to the jewish torah...)

People care about 1984 because the Party hurts people, hurts all people. I'm not religious, so maybe I'm being insensitive, but not being able to read your religious book is So Terrible and Exactly Like the Genocide of Uyghur People Right Now. I mean, when I attended church, a lot of them focused on the idea that your deeds and soul mattered more than being able to read or quote passages. From what I understand, having a bible is meant to be a source of comfort and used to reaffirm faith, but is by no means required. However, I was lucky to belong to a fairly liberal catholic church that actually likes Pope Francis....

I believe that Lovely People is more like Nosedive than 1984, though. I think that this comic could have been a pretty good interpretation of that concept, albeit scathingly unoriginal. However, like 1984, Nosedive was good because it is universally applied to Everyone, not just people who read the bible and dislike change. But, I feel like we've already decided that this comic was not intended to be good/worthwhile to everyone.

It would be too much energy and too many opinions to express my full discontent with the way that capitalism is SO present and pretty much the big reason why Alizongle sukz and the World Council is able to keep people happy (with overconsumption). One of my gripes with this story is that it could have been a lot better if Minna was picked up by a group of theory connoisseurs versus a religious sect. To each their own, I suppose.

I really like(d) Minna's work, so it was sort of jarring to see a decrease in quality.
If the World Council didn't like True Bible, then why would it continue to exist for the days/weeks (?) that it did?
Why did it take 2.5/3 acts for the True Bible to be deemed bad? I didn't even know Influencer Bunny was religious until she said "sike!" at the end! Where was the anger from in Influencer's apology video? I feel like the audience was only shown how passionate she was about influencing others, even if that meant lying. Not as if we were keyed in on that being a problem, though.
As much as I dislike evangelizing, I would have rather read well-written story that I agree with rather than a poorly-written story that reaffirms my beliefs.

[Róisín]

What Katie said, mostly. But I also think that we should cut Jouni some slack. I can tell you from personal experience just how hard it can get being the parent of someone famous in his own right, as in my younger son, or married to someone more famous though having some fame in her own right, as in my youngest daughter. It can be hard to deal with people having Opinions about your kid, or their work, with which you may seriously disagree, or having them trying to use the connection to get close to/exploit/get an insider story about your kid. Makes life hard sometimes, and I come from a family that has older members who are writers, politicians and the like, so am probably more used to it. Just worth a mention.

[SkyWhalePod]

What Katie said, mostly. But I also think that we should cut Jouni some slack. I can tell you from personal experience just how hard it can get being the parent of someone famous in his own right, as in my younger son, or married to someone more famous though having some fame in her own right, as in my youngest daughter. It can be hard to deal with people having Opinions about your kid, or their work, with which you may seriously disagree, or having them trying to use the connection to get close to/exploit/get an insider story about your kid. Makes life hard sometimes, and I come from a family that has older members who are writers, politicians and the like, so am probably more used to it. Just worth a mention.

Thanks for the thought, Róisín. As somebody who was raised as an only child by a single father, my heart goes out whenever a dad steps into a mess for their kid. It doesn't become a magic wand that waves away whatever he says, but it does give me more sympathy.

[Windfighter]

Wrote a thought that that got proved wrong just two comments down so I'm hiding this under a spoiler just so other won't go "oh no, thanks for explaining" while scrolling by but I'm leaving it because otherwise following comments won't make sense xD

Spoiler: show

This is only semi-related to Lovely People, but it is still semi-related so I'm gonna mention it here because

One thing that as irked me through this is the downvotes. I see people saying we used to never do it as if it was a kindness we showed but... We used to be unable to leave downvotes. I tried a lot of times by mistake (cats stepped on the mousepad, misclick when I was trying to figure out where the pointthingie was, when trying to follow a link or trying to upvote and the computer suddenly decided I moved the mouse despite not doing it) and a few times on my own comments out of curiousity.

Before Lovely People we Literally Could Not leave downvotes on comments. It was a function Minna turned off to help keep the place positive (I remember she talked about it somewhere but I can't for the life of me remember where????) and it has been So Long that now we just believe that it's a choice we've made as a group. I wonder if it was an unfortunately timed update rolled out by disqus, or if it was a deliberate choice to turn it back on again right at this point because.... why?*

I dunno, the thing just irks me. And not because I got downvotes myself because I totally deserved them, albeit for other reasons than the downvoters think

*of course, any downvotes at this point is just proof that Lovely People was a brave thing to publish because anyone speaking against the harsh way it delivered its message is running propaganda for the Woke SJWs and thus deserves downvotes and any downvotes on a post saying Lovely People is thoughtful and brave is just the Woke SJWs trying to cancel Minna just like the comic warns about. But eh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Edit: It is of course also a possibility that we've had that option for a while but since people who regulary hang around knew downvotes weren't possible (or even something we did) they just didn't try and then suddenly Lovely People. A bunch of new people who didn't know the that the downvote is supposedly turned off and goes to show everyone else that it no longer is and then the sudden avalanche in downvotes. It could be. I guess

[thorny]

Windfighter, are you talking about downvotes on the Discus comments? I'm not seeing them here.

[Windfighter]

Windfighter, are you talking about downvotes on the Discus comments? I'm not seeing them here.

Oh ye, I meant in the disqus comments I figured that was obvious since I mentioned Minna shutting them off and she's not on the forum but I could have been clearer, sorry!

[JoB]

Edit: It is of course also a possibility that we've had that option for a while but since people who regulary hang around knew downvotes weren't possible (or even something we did) they just didn't try

I remember downvotes being disabled (as in, people tried and they didn't work) years ago, and wondering about a downvote - a Guest downvote, no less! - on one of my posts at some time within the last year or so, before LP, so I'd vote for the "Disqus broke Minnas config" scenario.

(Sorry for not posting a specific example, but there doesn't seem to be any other way to find such than scrolling through entire comment sections and picking it up by eyeball.)

(Edit: Got one.)

[Windfighter]

I remember downvotes being disabled (as in, people tried and they didn't work) years ago, and wondering about a downvote - a Guest downvote, no less! - on one of my posts at some time within the last year or so, before LP, so I'd vote for the "Disqus broke Minnas config" scenario.

(Sorry for not posting a specific example, but there doesn't seem to be any other way to find such than scrolling through entire comment sections and picking it up by eyeball.)

(Edit: Got one.)

I would have believed you even without an example, but thanks for informing me! Stupid Disqus breaking things for us, but it feels less =/? now so that's nice!

[Kis]

I see people saying we used to never do it as if it was a kindness we showed

Oof, I am definitely one of those people. I apologize for misinforming others, I didn't even know turning off downvoting was possible But now that I think of it, it does sound like something Minna would do. What a bummer. Or, more exactly, what a series of bummers which just keep pouring from all directions now :/

[catbirds]

I would have believed you even without an example, but thanks for informing me! Stupid Disqus breaking things for us, but it feels less =/? now so that's nice!

For what it's worth, there wasn't much of a reason to downvote prior to people coming in with opinions about LP. Not that I checked it much, but wasn't it mostly praise, poetry, and fun theories? The exception would be JoB's link to comments related to the american election and other political events, which were in theory not allowed in the comments but uhhh not anymore (LP is inherently political in the modern context, so it makes little sense to ban politics when you're always providing a link to LP). That is, unless you had some particularly strong unpopular opinion on kade physiology, but uhhh, why would anyone? (If you do, that's cool)

*of course, any downvotes at this point is just proof that Lovely People was a brave thing to publish because anyone speaking against the harsh way it delivered its message is running propaganda for the Woke SJWs and thus deserves downvotes and any downvotes on a post saying Lovely People is thoughtful and brave is just the Woke SJWs trying to cancel Minna just like the comic warns about. But eh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I know this is sarcasm but this is too accurate :')

[Windfighter]

Oof, I am definitely one of those people. I apologize for misinforming others, I didn't even know turning off downvoting was possible But now that I think of it, it does sound like something Minna would do. What a bummer. Or, more exactly, what a series of bummers which just keep pouring from all directions now :/

Oh no, as JoB kindly informed me - it used to be like that but it seems disqus actually screwed it up around a year ago, and like catbirds says there hasn't been much need for downvotes! I do still think a lot of people remembered that we used to be unable to and thus didn't bother to do it (proof: my post xD), but it's less bummering knowing it's been like that for a while and I just didn't notice it!