I would have wiSSSShed... what is missing from SSSS?

[Jitter]

Catbirds opened a thread to discuss our thoughts and feelings about the SSSS now that it is ending: https://ssssforum.com/index.php?topic=1265.0 They also encouraged discussions on what we would have hoped to see in SSSS, what developments we would have hoped that didn't happen or didn't happen fully, etc.

In the hopes that both the feelings part and the "missing things" part of the discussion will draw lively discussion, I open here a separate thread for the latter.

So, what would you have wished to see in the future stories that will not be? What open ends do you think were / will be left hanging (we can come back to this after the finally final chapter of course)? Is there something you hope NOT to see in the wrap-up we are soon getting?

Did you recognize themes or arcs you were hoping to become major elements, but didn't? Or that went to a different direction than you expected or hoped?

What bugs you? What would you very much want to know more about?

Let's remember that SSSS will not be gone from the face of the Earth once the comic stops updating. We hold this world and these characters in our minds collectively and we can and will work with it. So maybe some of the open ends we list here will be answered later!

[Jitter]

I'll start. These are not the only ones, but:

I very much wanted to learn more, a lot more, about how the versions of magic work. What can be done, is there a certain set (probably as of yet still unknown to all of the mages, but in principle a limited pool of opportunities) of things that can be accomplished or is it up to the ingenuity of the mage to come up with new things to do.

And, I don't understand what happened with Lalli and Emil's friendship. You probably can't have evaded the knowledge that I ship them, but that is something I would not expect on the comic itself, and that is fine. However, their evolving friendship seems to have disappeared early during Adventure 2. They are not in any sort of hostile terms, but ever since Lalli left the letter on Emil's nose, and Emil told him he was upset that Lalli left just like that, there hasn't been anything about their relationship being anything different than between anyone else. That makes me sad, and also it is a problem storywise, because I don't see any reason for Emil to be on the trek at all, if not for his reluctance to part from Lalli (in a friendship kind of way!).

[moredhel]

There are some things I would have wanted to learn more about. Just some things that come to my mind spontaneously:
- differences between the societys and the everyday life in the nordic countries.
- the forther developement of the characters especially Reynir will he become a sort of scouting in the wilderness mage or will he change his mind on farm magic?
- the social life of trolls. So far we have seen trolls just eating each other and cooperation in the same species of troll (wolves) and cooperation between different variants of trolls (the bears and the kade). Are there more variants? Could trolls (at least with heavy use of magic) form sort of a society?
- any informations about other parts of the word. There are parts of the world with cold climates that could keep trolls less a problem like greenland northern part of north america southern part of south america. Any area anywhere with very high mountains.

[Kiran]

I do wish that the fire that was seen in one of Emil's dreams would be explained. Was a village being burnt down? Was the forest on fire? Was it in Östersund, from where I believe Emil came from? This is the only thing I feel is somewhat missing.

[Jitter]

Kiran, it was a common hope among the fans that the third adventure would have taken the team to Sweden and the fire had bee explained. Sadly, this is not going to happen, at least in any near to medium term. Many of us also speculate the fire had something to do with the way the Västerströms aren’t wealthy any more.

[wavewright62]

The backstories of other characters were hinted at, presumably to be revealed in Advs 3-5.  (Yes, at one point on a stream Minna mentioned Iceland as being the setting for Adv 5!)

Caution: Salt ahead...


Mikkel's backstory in particular leaves so many holes: where did he and Trond meet? did Trond already fire him once? WHAT HAPPENED TO HIS TWIN MICHAEL? What's the deal with his eyesight/processing ability?

Emil's backstory, as mentioned, was foreshadowed and now left dangling.  The fire. His parents. His nanny.  How the hell they managed to get chocolate in a hamlet in northern Sweden.  Also, he has so much development potential going forward, but like Jitter I am sad that he has been almost a non-entity this adventure.  He could share dreams with Lalli! He could read some Finnish!  He managed a big troll slaying!  yes yes go on, and then.... he complained when the bear wouldn't attack him, and he.... um...

Sigrun had the most unexplored potential - her upbringing must have included so much danger and violence, and yet her character development started sliding in Adv. 1 already. Her last piece of genuine development was her angst when she was ill.  I don't really get a charge out of her supposed drifting toward a hookup with Mikkel, which I guess was the whole point of her even being on Adv. 2.  She was introduced as a zesty character with a taste for Bold Adventure, but she & Mikkel have skipped straight to the companionable cuppa together stage. She had more frisson with Reynir playing Rock, Paper, Scissors, Sheep, Gun. Bah. 

Lalli ... who? Oh, right, him. His development has been to accept the utility of an umbrella and show just enough attachment to a toy to advance the plot by a tiny increment.
An adventure is set in Finland - finally, an opportunity to capitalise on the fact that no one speaks the lingo EXCEPT him!  What a delicious turnabout!  Except that everyone they meet speaks Icelandic and/or Swedish.  Who knew that polyglots like Tuuri were actually so numerous in Finland, and all of whom wanted nothing more than to have a companionable cuppa with Mikkel & Sigrun?  Lalli goes and hangs out with Emil & Reynir, not talking, even after they meet up with Onni.  Again I say, Bah.

Bjarni - the only character other than the crew and HQ staff (and their progenitors) to get an official character intro box.  I assume his part in the story was scheduled for the Icelandic arc.  Or something.   

All the wire in Finland - currently strung along pine trees in the back country.  No trolls encountering this to bother Onni anymore?  Seagulls perching on it, maybe?

I also thirsted for the knowledge of other survivors and their benefactors elsewhere on the globe, but am content to leave this to us fanfic writers.  I don't have massive confidence in Minna's capacity to tell those stories, ya know?

Cinnamon and cardamom and possibly coffee and sugar - what the hey? I am highly skeptical the famed Icelandic greenhouses would be a source for these. Nup.

Kaino Hotakainen.  The only major Prologue character to (supposedly) not have some impact on the main story.  Why was she introduced (even an official character box) and fleshed out if only to disappear?  I really hoped for her to be the kade, such a twist. 

[catbirds]

Oh, so many things.

Like what Jitter said, I thought there'd be much more development with all their interpersonal relationships, especially between Emil and Lalli. Relationship or not, these two were in each other's dreams and fighting for their lives together and everything! I really wonder where all that's gone recently

Oddly enough, I actually can't remember the fire thing, despite all the people who seem to have been more curious about it than anything.

The biggest thing I wanted was some explanation of Mikkel's backstory, probably. I spent ages wondering if we'll ever get any explanation of his twin/sibling, or if we'll meet anyone even, or get a clear hint. Ambiguity is fine, but it's also very frustrating to always have little to no explanation.

I totally agree with Wave on Sigrun's development. I'd reeeally rather not see her going straight into a relationship (and honestly I did not see her as straight at all but that's personal) but anyway! It's fine if she's a little interested in romance, but I always saw her as the proactive-and-competent-yet-a-little-airheaded type. It just felt like such an abrupt turn to everything from adventure 2, and honestly I can't recall anything she's done since the crew left. Hopefully we'll get a couple of good moments from everyone once the crew get back together, though.

Maybe some hint of contact with people in other survivor groups. Maybe someone finding something from a group that worships German or Celtic or (by some odd chance considering the distance) Greek/Roman gods. I'm hesitant to count the one instance where they went into someone's study and saw some illustrations of some mountains in China, since that was from before the apocalypse and not really an instance of a nearby culture doing something. But it was still a neat scene KIND OF. Even if I don't think Minna could tell stories about people from completely different cultures well, the connections between Norse and Germanic gods might've worked with the story, too. This one's probably the most important one I can propose because the story is a lot more focused on exploration than most other webcomics.

Personally I'm pretty disinterested in Trolls, but there probably are ways to make them more interesting to everyone. moredhel, some of your ideas are nice, especially since it's clear that trolls are in fact capable of thought.

Overall, yeah, character development would've been great, but it also feels like the world had a lot of untapped potential. Though I understand that world-building can get out of hand if you don't know where to stop. And some small details can probably be filled in with personal interpretation and fanfiction!

[JoB]

Oddly enough, I actually can't remember the fire thing, despite all the people who seem to have been more curious about it than anything.

Well, it was just a two-half-pages thing in the comic itself ...

[thorny]

Pretty much with everybody here, that I'd like to see backstories of all the characters, with a look around their communities as a whole like the one that we got through Lalli's eyes of what his was like right before it was destroyed.

And I've been wondering whether, in Minna's mind, the only point of entwining Lalli and Emil was to allow Onni to feel all right about deserting Lalli in order to go try to save Ensi; or whether she actually was shipping them, and now doesn't want to go there; or whether she just lost interest in the minds of her characters, with the result that they all turned into sort of bear-fighting stick figures. Because it does indeed seem as if that whole relationship got dropped into a hole somewhere -- after having been so important to create that it was worth Tuuri's death. (Though I suppose that Minna's statement somewhere in the comments that Tuuri dying was essential for the next direction of the story might have referred not to that, but to bringing the Swan into play.)

While I'd also like to see an explanation of how trolls work that would make sense out of the various sorts of trolls that we've seen, I stopped expecting one a while ago: I think Minna's been making up trolls in order to fit each specific story line, and not paying attention to whether they fit in any unified theory. If the story needs nearly mindless trolls who all have different shapes and who scream for help while trying to kill anyone they can sense, including anyone they previously loved, then there are some. If the story needs beast trolls who are still capable of loving and caring for and helping each other, then there are some. If the story needs a troll who's still in control of her mind, then there is one. If the story needs a whole batch of identical trolls that can travel in daylight, then there are some. If the story needs a troll/kade who can plan far in advance to entrap mages, then there is one. And so on. We may be able to come up with a coherent explanation of how all this fits together, but I don't think Minna has one, or is or has been interested in developing one.

And it would indeed be interesting to know what's going on elsewhere on the planet; but I don't know that Minna was ever interested in that, either. But I did get very much the impression that she was, originally, interested in her characters and in their communities and in how the individuals and the communities interacted with each other; and that she had, if only vaguely, additional stories in mind about all of them.

I think the focus on the fire in Emil's dream may be because it's hard to see why that was brought up at all, if it wasn't part of a story that Minna was at that time intending to tell.

[lwise]

I think Tuuri's death was necessary for Onni to go to Finland at all.  If she had survived the expedition, she would have wanted to go on more.  She would never have been satisfied to go out just once.  But then Onni would have to stand ready to protect his little sister and could not go after the Kade.

[Suominoita]

I'll start. These are not the only ones, but:

I very much wanted to learn more, a lot more, about how the versions of magic work. What can be done, is there a certain set (probably as of yet still unknown to all of the mages, but in principle a limited pool of opportunities) of things that can be accomplished or is it up to the ingenuity of the mage to come up with new things to do.

Well, me too... but well... Icelandic magic is based on drawings and runes in a certain manner. You only have so many runes to use along with Icelandic mages having a school for this, so there is a set, but Reynir has shown you can be creative too. There is also the thing about many Icelanders seeing spirits but not do magic as that is only something a mage can do. Infopage: Prophetic dreams is what they're known for. Did they foresee something about the Rash back in the Y0? Say, if enough of their government actually became mages...

Meanwhile, Finnish version is based on spoken or sung language. Many Finns know some magic but only mages see spirits. Now, if there were mages in Y0, Tuuli Hollola probably. Seeing spirits: Possibly crazy person as Y0 people would think of it. She also knew a thing or two about traditional sauna-birth apparently.

[tehta]

I believe that Minna has said quite explicitly that she never tried to develop an overarching, consistent framework for how magic works, or how the rash led to trolls/ghosts/beasts, or all the differences between them. Her lack of interest in the rest of the world seems pretty clear too. And I actually think that's for the best! There is a theory going around that fandoms inspire creators when they are both engaging enough to get people invested, and flawed/incomplete enough to inspire people to fix them, and it certainly applies to me.

That said, cool details to hang one's work on are always welcome!

Where Minna really shone, especially at the start, is setting up flawed but likeable characters with interesting hooks. So, like many of you, I would have loved to hear more about all the backstories. And more about daily life in the various countries, too. We might find out more in the epilogue, but I am actually a little afraid of that. I am worried that I will find the epilogue flat and frustrating, since that is how I experienced the Lehto reunion with Tuuri. Er, so I guess what I am saying is that I would have liked to see more of the emotional resonance of Adventure One carried over in Adventure Two. Including the cool, unnecessary personal interactions and details that Minna used to be so good at.

BTW, I am pretty sure that Lalli and Emil were always supposed to have at the very least a close friendship: she has talked about this a lot, and has mentioned that 'a swede and a finn who become close' were two of the first characters she ever designed. And she's so gleeful about them in the early pages, calling them soulmates, hinting that they are about to hug, drawing that hair ruffle thing... I And yes, it's sad to see all that gone now. I don't think I would have minded this as much if they were just relegated to the background while some other interesting personal development took place for other characters, but we haven't had that development OR the background detail...

(But I don't mean to complain so much! Like I said, I believe that what we got was in the sweet spot of fannish inspiration.)

[crowbarrd]

Just as everyone else has said, a more thorough look into the world of SSSS; the backstories of the characters, the magic system and such. Still hanging on Mikkel + Emil's backstories !! I was really interested in the cultural aspects and spirituality + magic, the luonto and fylgja especially, as it is all so very interesting and unique. I wish there was content about that, such as more depictions of the possibilities/ of this magic. I do also wish we could see more of the side characters, and take a look at how more typical (not adventurers !) live in their world. A larger scope of the story to put it more simply. (though this is more of a personal wish than a possibility *sheepish*)

More possible wishes however, would be more depth (?) of emotion? The impact of Tuuri's death didn't seem as impactful as I thought it would be, (though perhaps its a cultural difference ? apologies if this seems inconsiderate to assume !!) since Onni and Lulli are so close to her, as well as the other characters having starter to know her better only for her to die so suddenly, I wished we could see better what each character thought of her death and how it changed them.

(also, another personal wish, Emil and Lalli's relationship !! :'()

(Talking about the rune magic in SSSS, I found a Japanese manga called Witch Hat Atelier recently which has a similar magic system and it covers it in a more in depth way. The art is gorgeous too !)

Edit: I'm taking back down of my words as I reread SSSS

[thorny]

BTW, I am pretty sure that Lalli and Emil were always supposed to have at the very least a close friendship: she has talked about this a lot, and has mentioned that 'a swede and a finn who become close' were two of the first characters she ever designed.

That's interesting; thanks for the info.

I wonder whether they're so thoroughly entwined in her own head that she doesn't realize she needs to keep showing the relationship to the readers? Maybe she assumes that since she's shown us how they got so close, and since it's so clear in her own mind that they're close, that we'll all just assume it too without needing to be shown.

(Talking about the rune magic in SSSS, I found a Japanese manga called Witch Hat Atelier recently which has a similar magic system and it covers it in a more in depth way. The art is gorgeous too !)

If it's available online, you could suggest it as a Comic of the Month, over on the Worlds and Stories board.

[crowbarrd]

If it's available online, you could suggest it as a Comic of the Month, over on the Worlds and Stories board.

Unfortunately it's not available online for free legally *sweats*, and even then the pirating websites can have some rather racy ads *more sweating*
(Though I do try to buy them to support the author when I can !!)

However I do know some good free (and legal) online comics, so I'll take a look !