Author Topic: Upcoming new bunny comics i.e. Minna’s next work  (Read 40596 times)

Jitter

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Upcoming new bunny comics i.e. Minna’s next work
« on: January 07, 2022, 02:24:22 PM »
Edited on January 2023.

Information about this thread, please read

Minna’s personal testimony comic A Meandering Path has been published and her next work, Journey Upstream has launched. This thread is for discussion of these works, their Christian and possible other themes etc. This thread is more of a meta-discussion, not about the stories per se but the messages and the thoughts and feelings provoked by them.

This thread will not use spoiler tags, all content and plot points can be discussed openly.

This thread contains direct and stark criticism of the strongly Christian works. It is not intended as criticism of Christianity or religion as a whole, but some of the discussion is likely to contain elements that criticize or comment against certain aspects of what some readers may consider important for their faith.

This thread is NOT reserved for negative comments about the works. Positive comments, praise, and counter arguments of the criticism presented is welcome.

Everyone is expected to NOT engage in criticizing the opinions, views or faith of others. Criticism of an aspect of religion is not intended as general religion bashing, and conversely, disagreeing with it is not to be taken as a blanket ”I’m right and you are wrong.” This is a discussion, not an argument.

At the time of writing the thread has remained very civilized, let’s keep up the good work!

Moderator out.



If you’d like to discuss these comics in a similar discussion style as for other comics here, discussing the events and characters as the story unfolds, please open a separate thread with the title of the work in the title.


As the first information about Minna’s plans is coming out, I open a thread to discuss it if anyone wants to.

As has already been established, it will be very Christian and completely different from SSSS. Still, perhaps even more different than I at least thought. Here’s the first info:  https://hummingfluffstudio.substack.com/about

Discussion about feelings caused by the end of SSSS should go to that thread in the SSSS board, this thread is for discussion about the future work. I assume some of us will follow the new works (while some won’t), so we should have a place for that too. Here is that place.
« Last Edit: January 14, 2023, 11:22:36 AM by Jitter »
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Re: Upcoming new bunny comics i.e. Minna’s next work
« Reply #1 on: January 07, 2022, 04:37:38 PM »
From the title alone, I don't think the autobigraphical one will be to my tastes. I'm always a little miffed when I see anything suggesting that religion is necessary to be happy or a good person.
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Jitter

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Re: Upcoming new bunny comics i.e. Minna’s next work
« Reply #2 on: January 07, 2022, 05:54:43 PM »
She says it’s going to be her personal testimony so I’m expecting an illustrated version of the afterword of Lovely People.

I think I will likely be curious to read it nevertheless, although I’m not expecting to like it (I don’t even like the bunny art). I obviously don’t know her personally, but she seems like someone sort of familiar, so I’m curious to see how did this happen. Of course the testimony will present everything as she sees it now, but still she can be a great writer, so it may offer some interesting insight.
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Re: Upcoming new bunny comics i.e. Minna’s next work
« Reply #3 on: January 07, 2022, 07:28:36 PM »
That is exactly why I am considering to read this. Because I want to find out how this has happened. But I am not sure if it will really tell this.

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Re: Upcoming new bunny comics i.e. Minna’s next work
« Reply #4 on: January 07, 2022, 09:21:31 PM »
Thanks for setting this thread, Jitter!

I'm curious too about the path that Minna took, of course because it's a person that I admire in artistic terms. I've never been much an autobiography lover, so if it was someone else I probably wouldn't bother even trying it. So I'll try to follow it and see what comes.

The second project can, eventually, have interesting pieces, but overall doesn't sound very appealing, particularly with the strong theological content... I studied on a catholic school and had my (life) share of "illustraded ways to be a better person following the Bible". Oh, I'll check from time to time, but doesn't seem to be my cup of tea.

Now the bunny part (on both)... I have nothing against bunnies, but I don't think Minna's (great) talent really shows with them. It would be a surprise if they come out above average, and that's a shame because Minna made some of the most beautiful illustrations I've seen, and that's what catch my attention since the beginning. I hope she reconsiders after the first year drawing herself as a bunny... Those slice-of-life stories doesn't need bunnies!

I also get the feeling that the bunnies option for both projects reflects that, on her head, they will be some sort of continuation of "Lovely People", a comic that she obviously enjoyed making so much that she didn't felt any need to apologize when it became clear that it hurt, on a way or another, a sizeble part of her fanbase. (that shrank to half, or less, thanks to that *).

That side of 2022 isn't looking quite enticing, you know? However I'm hopeful that we will find many more sources to fill our hunger for good stories and art.

* No, I don't have the data, but one can see how the number of comments on Disqus got much smaller, just like the votes on ARtD on TWC. (votes on SSSS have that strange "distortion" I've already talked many times, so I don't consider them a reliable indicator)
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Re: Upcoming new bunny comics i.e. Minna’s next work
« Reply #5 on: January 08, 2022, 03:24:20 AM »
I can see why people would be curious about the autobigraphical one. On my side, I never quite had a solid construct of Minna in my head, so my interest in her journey to Christianity is nowhere near strong enough to voluntarily to go through a work that looks like it's going to go the "Christianity good, everything else bad" route.
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Róisín

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Re: Upcoming new bunny comics i.e. Minna’s next work
« Reply #6 on: January 08, 2022, 08:57:58 AM »
I have more interest in the autobiographical aspect of the new comic, though perhaps not for the more usual reasons. But I would like to see how Minna perceives her journey. My reasons are that I am interested to see how Minna chooses to handle both her own nature, her religious conversion,  and the events that affect, possibly even shape, her life. I come from the position of a mother, one who has two children whom I would guess are the same style of precocious genius as is Minna. Their three siblings are bright enough, and all five are nice people, but I am curious to see how different Minna’s life solutions are to what my middle daughter and younger son worked out for themselves, and how the addition of religion affects this process. Interesting questions.
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Re: Upcoming new bunny comics i.e. Minna’s next work
« Reply #7 on: January 08, 2022, 11:28:54 AM »
I can see why people would be curious about the autobigraphical one. On my side, I never quite had a solid construct of Minna in my head, so my interest in her journey to Christianity is nowhere near strong enough to voluntarily to go through a work that looks like it's going to go the "Christianity good, everything else bad" route.

Me neither, unless it's short enough to read in an evening, I don't see much value in picking apart her journey to where she is now. It's kind of sad to me that we've basically communicated directly with each other before (as many of us have through her twitch streams or twitter) only for her to write about the "other" the way she does now, and decide to spend an entire year of her life putting together a comic justifying it. But that's enough of a "construct" of her for me to know I should probably just stop.

But it's understandable that some SSSS fans would feel otherwise, and hey, it's a free webcomic that's merely clicks away at the end of the day, so why not?

As for the art, I have no clue why she'd choose to represent people as bunnies. Was LP really so successful at carrying out what was her plan all along that she stuck to the art style?? Also my very personal perspective on her art is that once you practice to a great extent and do enough observational studies, you begin to be able to pick out errors or flaws that are quite evident in many of her pieces, though most of the ones i've stared at are from some time ago, since her recent work is just a bunch of comic pages that aren't quite her 100%. But her art's still good nonetheless, and if these flaws escape the notice of most people, then I don't think it matters too much.
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Though I'm not nearly as practised as her in drawing anyway, my brain's just better at observing than my hand is at drawing. Aaargh!

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Re: Upcoming new bunny comics i.e. Minna’s next work
« Reply #8 on: January 08, 2022, 03:46:04 PM »
As for the art, I have no clue why she'd choose to represent people as bunnies.

I'm tempted to say, because some part of her mind knows she's being unrealistic.

However, lots of SSSS is unrealistic as well, so that's most likely not the reason. -- though I do think the very realistically drawn (when she's having a good day, anyway) human characters help to ground the otherwise-fantastical SSSS world. Maybe she doesn't think to ground her new comics because she does think they're otherwise realistic, however unrealistic I'd be likely to find them. Maybe she thinks the bunnies are cute, and thinks she can use "cute" to draw in people who won't otherwise read what she thinks is a serious discussion.

I'm unlikely to read the new stuff. I don't want to be preached at; I don't want to encourage people to do that sort of preaching (which is not an objection to people doing the sorts of preaching that don't denigrate others -- some of that I'll even read, or listen to); and I don't generally like talking-animal comics in which the animals act like humans rather than like members of their own species. There's usually too large a chunk of my head saying 'if these characters are going to act just like humans, just draw them as humans'.

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Re: Upcoming new bunny comics i.e. Minna’s next work
« Reply #9 on: January 09, 2022, 02:46:59 AM »
As for the art, I have no clue why she'd choose to represent people as bunnies.
I'm not sure that there needs to be much of a reason. Minna definitely is no stranger to anthropomorphistic protagonists, including "bunnies". Drawing humans comes with the risk of falling into the uncanny valley if you don't get it right, a risk you might want to avoid if you'd rather focus on a message.

(Which is not to say that Minna shouldn't be well aware of the possible "cute lure" effect; it's been mentioned quite a lot in the reactions to LP, after all.)

I don't generally like talking-animal comics in which the animals act like humans rather than like members of their own species. There's usually too large a chunk of my head saying 'if these characters are going to act just like humans, just draw them as humans'.
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Re: Upcoming new bunny comics i.e. Minna’s next work
« Reply #10 on: January 09, 2022, 11:31:38 AM »
I'm not sure that there needs to be much of a reason. Minna definitely is no stranger to anthropomorphistic protagonists, including "bunnies". Drawing humans comes with the risk of falling into the uncanny valley if you don't get it right, a risk you might want to avoid if you'd rather focus on a message.

(Which is not to say that Minna shouldn't be well aware of the possible "cute lure" effect; it's been mentioned quite a lot in the reactions to LP, after all.)

Good points and all, and I'm aware of the fact that a lot of young artists on the internet start off with drawing anthro/animal art because you avoid the "uncanny valley" type of effect, but SSSS has been fairly capable of conveying its… themes… well, plot, I guess, with its pretty normally drawn cartoon humans. As in these humans aren't realistically drawn, and yet they're still recognizably human at almost all times and have next to no risk of being in the uncanny valley.

You're probably right, it's probably just "hey this art style was cute and got my audience with christians" or just because she feels like it IDK.

Honestly in all my time looking at her sketchbooks, videos, etc, I don't recall ever seeing her draw a study of a human face.

However, lots of SSSS is unrealistic as well, so that's most likely not the reason. -- though I do think the very realistically drawn (when she's having a good day, anyway) human characters help to ground the otherwise-fantastical SSSS world. Maybe she doesn't think to ground her new comics because she does think they're otherwise realistic, however unrealistic I'd be likely to find them. Maybe she thinks the bunnies are cute, and thinks she can use "cute" to draw in people who won't otherwise read what she thinks is a serious discussion.

I'm unlikely to read the new stuff. I don't want to be preached at; I don't want to encourage people to do that sort of preaching (which is not an objection to people doing the sorts of preaching that don't denigrate others -- some of that I'll even read, or listen to); and I don't generally like talking-animal comics in which the animals act like humans rather than like members of their own species. There's usually too large a chunk of my head saying 'if these characters are going to act just like humans, just draw them as humans'.

Yeah, I do think getting new audience is a big part of it. And maybe even grabbing a younger audience too — draw in new readers and all that. IIRC a significant portion of commenters mentioned the need to show LP to their children, which is quite unfortunate.

From a practical perspective, having bunnies do the talking DOES make illustrating easier in some ways. For instance, less complexity in the hands and relatively simple facial expressions, a predictable face shape, etc… Makes it a little more efficient. But it does come at a loss of something… the new comic probably won't be the same as LP because LP used its characters in an incredibly utilitarian way (to its detriment lol), whereas this one's about Minna herself, a human whom she knows, but using this particular style of bunny art that she's so fond of just makes the characters feel so proplike… did I mention the character designs for LP and the weird bunny on the cover are both pretty bland in terms of design? Yeah.

Not that SSSS was peak character design either, or that there's an objective way to measure that, but SSSS characters had enough variety to seem like distinct and unique personalities even at a glance. The bunnies pretty much just convey 1. emotion and 2. the fact that they're different people (ahem) based on like fur colour or what dress they're wearing or whatever else. (There are ways to make animal characters interesting, but LP and this comic are not that lmfao)

Either way, considering this comic will mostly be preaching and talking about how the life she lived before was terrible and full of sin or whatever, I can't imagine why people would enjoy reading that. And most people on this forum who aren't devout and enthusiastic christians do seem to only want to read it to see how we managed to end up here. Thinking back to the way people approached LP ages ago, I wouldn't dare recommend other people to read this one either, unless I got very tired and drunk one night on a discord call with my friends and a chain of coincidences led to me opening Minna's new homepage.

Uuuuugh what was I saying… yeah the use of bunnies kind of doesn't have any relevance to the plot or themes or even personalities and is uninteresting, I'm glad we're looking at other webcomics now, still if you plan to read the webcomic and write something here about it that's cool too. I'm interested in hearing what people will say about it, but probably won't spend much time thinking about or looking at the comic itself.

Ok sorry this post went on for way too long, I hope it doesn't sound too whiny but odds are it'll come off that way anyway.

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Re: Upcoming new bunny comics i.e. Minna’s next work
« Reply #11 on: January 09, 2022, 03:34:52 PM »
It is possible to do an effective animal comic that isn’t revolting: Doc Rat and Footrot Flats spring to mind, also Digger, but LP seems to have been done much more as ‘suck innocents in with cute’.
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thorny

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Re: Upcoming new bunny comics i.e. Minna’s next work
« Reply #12 on: January 09, 2022, 06:10:00 PM »
Part of what's interesting with Digger is that the talking animals don't behave like humans. They don't behave exactly like the members of their species that exist in this world; but they behave a whole lot like them, and in ways distinctly unlike at least most humans. [ETA: just as Krosp in Girl Genius behaves a great deal like a cat. Or both cat and rats in Pratchett's Maurice. It can certainly be done; but it's not generally done by making the talking creatures just stand-ins for humans.]

And, while Digger herself is in some ways cute (though watch out for that ax), "cute" is not a word that I'd use for the hyenas.
« Last Edit: January 09, 2022, 06:13:43 PM by thorny »

Róisín

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Re: Upcoming new bunny comics i.e. Minna’s next work
« Reply #13 on: January 09, 2022, 09:37:05 PM »
And then there is Florence Ambrose, the Bowman’s Wolf in Freefall. She is a real delight. Highly intelligent (she would have to be as a spaceship engineer), genetically engineered from wolf and human DNA, and a generally competent person. The author has covered some interesting ramifications of this origin, including that she seems to not have very good colour vision, so has trouble with fashion and whether or not human clothing suits her. This is especially relevant because her two shipmates are a robot with a very weird sense of humour and a squidlike alien, both of whom are at least nominally male. The robot at least knows that when he sees a humanoid female wearing something he has not seen her in before the proper action for him is to compliment her on the new outfit. And that when a humanoid female asks him if her bum looks big in this the sane response is to run away.  Freefall can be funny, touching in unexpected ways, and well worth a read. And some of the aliens are really alien.

One of many things I love about Footrot Flats (dunno if that comic is online, I have only ever read it as the physical books) is the way that Dog, Jess and Horse (the cat) are clearly animals, as distinct from Wal and the other humans, yet are still very much their own people.
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Re: Upcoming new bunny comics i.e. Minna’s next work
« Reply #14 on: January 09, 2022, 11:17:49 PM »
This?

https://www.footrotflats.com/

Looks interesting. Too late here to look at it much right now.

-- and yes, I love Florence; who is indeed a fascinating mix of wolf and human -- done by an author who's clearly put a lot of thought into how such a mix might work. Is Freefall on the list for Comic of the Month yet?