Future of our Fandom

[Jitter]

Future timelines from yesterday's stream. Minna estimated that Adventure 2 will be going on until next year, apparently sometime early 2022. So, we have time, but not indefinite time.

She also mentioned that the story will end in something open like Adventure 1 was, so that if she in some point in the future feels like it, or "can't come up with any other idea" she can make another adventure. Upon which point I commented that she'll not be likely to be killing everyone off, at which point she added that it could of course be a backtrack to the prologue, or another time jump, or whatever, and that we can't trust her not to kill our team Of course it's not something she'd comment on, but I'm hopeful at least some of the characters will survive (I'm HOPEFUL they will all survive, but you never know...)

She also confirmed when asked that book 4 printing will happen and she's also prepared to print Adventure 2 into physical books, if Hiveworks wants to and feels it's a viable business at the time. I personally doubt it will happen, as it would be probably three books making the printing at very minimum a three year project (likely closer to 6) and the demand is likely to be diminishing after the updates cease.

Furthermore I think she was talking about her next idea when I joined the stream, I'll try to listen to the recording to find out what it was.

[thorny]

Thanks, Jitter. Very useful to have this relevant info from the streams for those of us who don't want to go there.

[Jitter]

BTW she has removed her affiliate status with Twitch so the streams don’t bring her any money directly, so if someone wants to join to get information, it will not result in monetary support.

[RanVor]

BTW she has removed her affiliate status with Twitch so the streams don’t bring her any money directly, so if someone wants to join to get information, it will not result in monetary support.

Huh? That's a weird decision. Did she mention why?

[Jitter]

It happened a few weeks ago already. I don’t know the exact reasoning but I think it has something to do with how one is supposed to be not greedy. I may be wrong though.

[thegreyarea]

Future timelines from yesterday's stream. Minna estimated that Adventure 2 will be going on until next year, apparently sometime early 2022. So, we have time, but not indefinite time.

She also mentioned that the story will end in something open like Adventure 1 was, so that if she in some point in the future feels like it, or "can't come up with any other idea" she can make another adventure. Upon which point I commented that she'll not be likely to be killing everyone off, at which point she added that it could of course be a backtrack to the prologue, or another time jump, or whatever, and that we can't trust her not to kill our team Of course it's not something she'd comment on, but I'm hopeful at least some of the characters will survive (I'm HOPEFUL they will all survive, but you never know...)

Thanks! It's good to know. If adv.2 extends until the ides of March* 2022 we would have aprox. 10 months or 140-150 pages (depending on chapter breaks), so the current story will (probably) be under 600 pages. It also means that if we reorganize the Forum by the end of Summer it would be well on time (can I suggest the next equinox, just as a reference? It's a good, balanced moment).
I like open endings, and also like that she considers the possibility of a continuation. It shows that she still enjoys the comic (or, at least, doesn't dislikes it).

Spoiler: speculation • show

Of course it could also be that she may be aware that's not that easy to build a fanbase to support one's work, and therefore considers that throwing away the one she laboriously constructed through so many years isn't a good move. At her place I'd consider developing that CoH story, maybe inserting new main characters, but that's me...

*Hopefully no one gets stabbed (or eaten) in the process.

She also confirmed when asked that book 4 printing will happen and she's also prepared to print Adventure 2 into physical books, if Hiveworks wants to and feels it's a viable business at the time. I personally doubt it will happen, as it would be probably three books making the printing at very minimum a three year project (likely closer to 6) and the demand is likely to be diminishing after the updates cease.

I'm very happy that book 4 will happen, because the story deserves it, and even more since I'm hoping to buy them all together to save on shipping.
I'd try to make the second adv. a single book to minimize the gap with the end of updates, and costs. I'd almost certainly buy it.

Huh? That's a weird decision. Did she mention why?

It happened a few weeks ago already. I don’t know the exact reasoning but I think it has something to do with how one is supposed to be not greedy. I may be wrong though.

Makes no sense to me. The platform will just put what she would get into their own pockets.

Thanks for watching it for us, Jitter!

[Jitter]

She was also colouring today's page on Saturday. It's of course possible that she had just saved the least spoilerific pages for the stream, but she didn't use to be working on the pages for the following week before, she always wanted to maintain a decent buffer.

I hate to say this but I have to wonder if this has something to do with the quality of the art.

[thorny]

Keeping with your spoiler, and therefore also spoiling a comment on it:

Spoiler: speculation • show

Of course it could also be that she may be aware that's not that easy to build a fanbase to support one's work, and therefore considers that throwing away the one she laboriously constructed through so many years isn't a good move.

Spoiler: show

Except that she's apparently perfectly willing to throw away a lot of that fanbase rather than saying 'Sorry I upset so many people! Didn't mean it to sound like that. Will reword the afterword a bit and put a note in the ads for Lovely People that it's a Christian-themed comic.'

[catbirds]

I did manage to listen through the stream recording last night and I heard her say that the decision not to work on big art pieces was just because she tended to draw a little lopsided when she tried to talk and draw at the same time. I've tried drawing and painting while talking to people too, and this happens very easily just because you're expected to take your eyes off your work pretty regularly for eye contact, interaction, etc… It probably does also have to do with her wanting to finish SSSS sooner, though.

As for the decision of removing her twitch affiliate, the cited reason from a few months ago was that money makes it less enjoyable or casual. I think removing it also removes ads from her streams, but I'm not sure because I always have adblock on. And I'm not sure if this still somehow puts profit into amazon's pocket or means her channel is dead weight on their servers, but the company seems to be the type to monetize every possible pixel on their sites.

[Tarnagh]

As for the decision of removing her twitch affiliate, the cited reason from a few months ago was that money makes it less enjoyable or casual. I think removing it also removes ads from her streams, but I'm not sure because I always have adblock on. And I'm not sure if this still somehow puts profit into amazon's pocket or means her channel is dead weight on their servers, but the company seems to be the type to monetize every possible pixel on their sites.

The answer may be as simple as this. With LP she's made no secret of how she feels about social media. Amazon was part of the portmanteau she created with "Alizongle." She may have removed her Twitch affiliate simply so she wouldn't be responsible for generating revenue to them.

[thegreyarea]

Thorny, I can't agree more with you. It would be so easy, and avoid so much trouble! And I can't imagine any reasonable motivation for not doing it...
Tarnagh, could very well be that.
BTW I didn't found any advertising on the Twitch stream. Is it just me? (yes, I turned off the adblocker and also yes, I can imagine there are other ways to monetize that traffic Otherwise why would they bother to provide the service?)

Anyway, all we've been talking confirms (to me) that we are correct in our plans to reorganize this space, introducing new interesting things for us to follow and comment. I already began my list of interesting comics/stories, in different categories, to propose later. There are so many! I believe our "problem" will be how to deal with them without dispersing too much. I'm quite optimistic!

[wavewright62]

It happened a few weeks ago already. I don’t know the exact reasoning but I think it has something to do with how one is supposed to be not greedy. I may be wrong though.

As for the decision of removing her twitch affiliate, the cited reason from a few months ago was that money makes it less enjoyable or casual. I think removing it also removes ads from her streams, but I'm not sure because I always have adblock on. And I'm not sure if this still somehow puts profit into amazon's pocket or means her channel is dead weight on their servers, but the company seems to be the type to monetize every possible pixel on their sites.

I was a Twitch subscriber to her channel, until it was abruptly cancelled in January; I received an email notification from Twitch.  This was a few weeks before the release of LP.  Minna was a little vague about it at the time, but with the parent company so obviously demonised in LP it became obvious that continuing that particular source of income would have been extremely hypocritical.

[Jitter]

I listened to the recording of the latest stream, more specifically the part about how long SSSS will still go on. Minna said “mmm... until next year, maybe”. She mentioned that there are parts where it’s hard for her to know in advance how many pages they will take, before she actually works on the pages.

Spoiler: Those parts are... • show

lots of action scenes

She also said a little about the future work she’s planning. It’s not going to be horror or post-apocalypse, but something lighter. It will be long form, she intends to plan it into adventures (she considered a bit but came up with “adventures” so this doesn’t necessarily mean there will actually be adventures in the sense many of us may be taking the word initially) that are about a year long and have a possible end point so that it will be easier for her to finish and do something else again if she feels like it.

She had considered quitting SSSS after Adventure 1 and for a bit she felt at the time that she was too tired to carry on, but then decided to do Adv 2 after all. She also mentioned having been nearly burnt out during Adventure 2, because she stopped doing the art pieces due to this. She plans to make the schedule for the new stuff such that she’ll work about 40 hours a week in the comic pages, instead of the current 60, and hopes to be able to do some bigger illustrations again. However those are not likely to feature the SSSS characters (except for what she will need for Book 4 promos) but she left a possibility that maybe sometimes.

Anyways it seems it’s not solely the religion that is behind the changes here. I can only imagine how draining it must be to do 60-hour weeks of the same story. Her new views will however likely be heavily reflected in the future work.

[Vulpes]

<snip>
She had considered quitting SSSS after Adventure 1 and for a bit she felt at the time that she was too tired to carry on, but then decided to do Adv 2 after all. She also mentioned having been nearly burnt out during Adventure 2, because she stopped doing the art pieces due to this. She plans to make the schedule for the new stuff such that she’ll work about 40 hours a week in the comic pages, instead of the current 60, and hopes to be able to do some bigger illustrations again. However those are not likely to feature the SSSS characters (except for what she will need for Book 4 promos) but she left a possibility that maybe sometimes.

Anyways it seems it’s not solely the religion that is behind the changes here. I can only imagine how draining it must be to do 60-hour weeks of the same story. Her new views will however likely be heavily reflected in the future work.

No wonder she was burning out - 60 hours/week working on anything is brutal, even if you are kind of antisocial, and no matter how much you love doing it. It's too bad that she felt compelled to maintain that kind of schedule, I'm sure most of her fans would have stuck around had she dropped to 2 or 3 pages/week, especially with the newsletter to announce the start of a new chapter for the folks who like to read in batches.

[catbirds]

No wonder she was burning out - 60 hours/week working on anything is brutal, even if you are kind of antisocial, and no matter how much you love doing it. It's too bad that she felt compelled to maintain that kind of schedule, I'm sure most of her fans would have stuck around had she dropped to 2 or 3 pages/week, especially with the newsletter to announce the start of a new chapter for the folks who like to read in batches.

Agreed. Most of us probably have enough to do throughout the day that not having a comic page to check every 24 hours wouldn't greatly disrupt our schedule. I would have been fine with 2 a week.

There's also the matter of physical health problems that can be caused by drawing too much. Most concern the wrist, some don't, but 60 hours a week of just sitting down and drawing? And for several years in a row? I wouldn't want to do that. It's way too risky in the long run.

I hope her next work is a bit lighter on her workload. Maybe make the pages smaller or square, or post fewer, or both, it's up to her.