Upcoming new bunny comics i.e. Minna’s next work

[Róisín]

While some animals such as cats are true obligate carnivores, to the point where cats on a vegan diet will die, slowly, painfully and horribly, most animals, including creatures we normally think of as herbivores such as horses, cattle, sheep and deer, are capable of omnivory. One of the madder Roman emperors had his warhorses trained to eat meat. And our farm animals as well as wild deer will happily munch easy prey such as baby birds fallen from their nests. Most animals will gnaw on bones, I suppose for the calcium.

Can’t say I care for the tone and attitude of the comic.

[Buteo]

I wonder what Minna would make of a turkey that belonged to a friend of mine.

The friend had caught a mouse in her grain-storage barrel. On her way to dispose of it, she paused at her property fence to talk to a neighbor. The moment she stood still, her turkey came up beside her, grabbed the mouse from her hand, and swallowed it!

Or what about my mare who came up to the pasture fence where I had placed my lunch - a hot dog. She unfolded the bun, left it on the fence and ate the meat.

Thinking about it, it seems likely that Minna would simply decide that neither of those incidents had anything to do with her, and dismiss them. It's sad (at best), what she's missing about the complexity of the world....

[Róisín]

All poultry eat mice with great enjoyment. Where I live in country South Australia mouse plagues are common. I live on the edge of a little bush town, just down the road from the wool store and across from a lightly forested block with a lot of adjoining farmland, so there are lots of rodents. Back when I had geese and a few big ducks those would actively hunt rodents, and both they and the chickens would hunt and tear to pieces any rodents that got into their enclosure. If I find a freshly killed mouse in a trap I will give it either to the cat or the poultry. They enjoy it, and it makes a change from grass and grain and insects.

Then there are owls. My next door neighbour has three big open compost bays, which are always in use because he is a processor of dried fruit. These attract rodents, so every night a pair of barn owls perch on my TV antenna where they have a good view of his compost bays, while the neighbourhood cats prowl on the ground, and everybody eats well.

[dreki]

Question can we make it so this thread can show spoilers? It looks like most of the other comic threads do.

After aRTD and SSSS, I am sad we aren't getting a higher caliber of story telling.

She has the ability to do a far better story than this, while being 100% fully Christian.

Spoiler: show

Which this still doesn't feel like to me because thus far it's kind of going against Christian belief that God created everything so animals are all perfectly made in god's plan and don't evolve, and humans were made perfect then spoiled. I dunno maybe I'm reading a different bible? Did Finnish Bible translators just go balls to the wall on making up their own story?

Dreki,

Spoiler: show

I see where you’re coming from but she’s not vegan. At least long after her baptism she was talking about making chicken for dinner on the streams. And notwithstanding whether one regards humsns eating meat as cruelty, carnivores certainly can’t be considered cruel. Or can they?

Spoiler: show

 Nooooo my headcanon D:

Some particularly radical vegans do believe no animal should be carnivorous or even eat eggs and that every living thing can survive on a vegan diet. 

Regrettably this has ended in deaths of both infants/toddlers and pets, and thankfully is rare. But yes there are people who believe carnivorous animals can just eat vegan. I blame the American education system, personally.

which really is a shame, because i would have liked to read a pretty comic that explores faith centered conundrums and challenges. like, dreamworks' prince of egypt or the webcomic daughter of the lilies. i do not have a problem with a religious story. i just have a big problem with the assumption that people are bad.

Honestly I can work with the "people are bad" if it's well executed.  And, in the Bible, it isn't "from the beginning people were evil" - it's "god made people perfect then they were tempted and strayed and now we all carry the consequences of that sin".

I don't personally agree with it - but there is a reason, yknow?

But yes I prefer when the story has more nuance and I really love Prince of Egypt and Joseph King of Dreams.

Nightcrawler from xmen is my favorite superhero because of his faith - he uses it in a way of personal empowerment,  in most (all?) canons he doesn't try to convert anyone and respects faiths, and he questions the church when it feels wrong to him.

That's the religion I can get behind.

[Haiz]

Honestly I can work with the "people are bad" if it's well executed. 

I can't. or rather, i can watch or read a story and be like "well it executed its own ideals perfectly and is good on a technical level, but those ideals are in complete opposition to my core foundational values so i can't think of it as a Good Story."

i mean, i've read a song of ice and fire/a game of thrones, a series where many of the characters famously do/or go through a lot of horrendous stuff. but the story is essentially a set of character studies - how do they find and enact their agency in the world they live in? how do they hold on to their personal values when their life and honor is on the line? what does it mean to be in power and how do they wield it? like i know thr tv series adaptation especially got a (well-earned in time) reputation for "characters doing evil things to create the most shocking twist," but the books to me always read as a glimmer of hope and defiance and trying to do good even when all the cards are stacked against it. WEIRD DIGRESSION MAYBE.

something i kept getting snagged on in the testimony comic is the part where minna goes down the politics rabbit hole on youtube, and compared a totalitarian regime to one of complete anarchy. it really strikes me as odd that while the art depicts intense surveillance, the downside listed by the text is "people in power may be corrupt". is... is that really the drawback of totalitarianism? is that the biggest problem we will encounter in a totalitarian state? not saying corruption ISN'T bad, but it's such a simplistic explanation - does it imply totalitarianism is fine if the people running it are virtuous? is it fine if all the rules are Good Rules? i mean i guess these comics seem to think a perfect society is one where everyone lives perfectly by one perfect moral code....

[Róisín]

I have certainly met sane Christians, including several Christian clergy and one church organist and composer of church music, who was a wonderful support to her community. Not to mention my Christian aunt and stepmother, who both coped well in a family of whom far more family members were Pagan or Jewish. I reckon this worked because all of these people respected the right of others to have their own faith, whether or not it was one they agreed with. The common trait I have noticed among these people is that they were more focused on the obligations of their faith than on the privileges. They gave help, love and service to others as the Christ of the Bible wanted people to do, rather than lambasting them for being sinners and feeling frightfully superior while they did so.

 I have actually read all the way through the Christian bible, plus a lot of commentary and theology, because I wanted to have a better understanding of my Christian stepmother. My mum died when I was quite a small child, and my father did not marry again until my brother and I were teenagers. I had been a lifelong Pagan, so I felt that it was only polite to acquire some understanding of her beliefs.

And Haiz, I quite agree with you about the GOT books having a more hopeful tone than did the TV series, which did seem to be oversimplified for the purpose of being shocking, and adapted for an audience who are more into being titillated than they are into thinking.

[JoB]

(Disclaimer: Have yet to read any of Minnas post-SSSS+LP works myself.)

Some particularly radical vegans do believe no animal should be carnivorous or even eat eggs and that every living thing can survive on a vegan diet.

Good luck preaching that to the animals - yes, a large part of them belong to the fauna - that we call "decomposers".

(Which raises a question I've never before asked myself: Does the concept of "vegan" truly label all uses of animal parts as off limits, including those using animals that have already died for whatever other reason than being useful to us?)

the downside listed by the text is "people in power may be corrupt". is... is that really the drawback of totalitarianism? is that the biggest problem we will encounter in a totalitarian state?

I think that you can describe its biggest problem with those words if you leave it sufficiently widely open what the definition of "corrupt" is. It might easily turn into a non-precise, unusable description that way, though.

In particular, if you regard the suppression of minorities and dissenters as "the biggest problem" of totalitarianism, all you need is some of those calling that "corrupt" (per their standards) and hey presto, we found unspeakable "corruption" at the heart of the problem.

not saying corruption ISN'T bad, but it's such a simplistic explanation - does it imply totalitarianism is fine if the people running it are virtuous? is it fine if all the rules are Good Rules?

I'm right with you to distrust anyone in politics who claims he's "doing it just for the good of everyone", but you might want to note that, as the thing transitioned from a U.S. military project (DARPAnet) to the early Internet, the actors setting the technical standards with widespread interoperability, net neutrality etc. in mind pretty much did that, and are still often referred to as a "benevolent dictatorship". The things I do, to this day, as a systems administrator quite often come from a "this ain't a vote" kind of decision-making, too. (And don't get me started on the thinking of civil defense back in the Cold War ...)

[Haiz]

In particular, if you regard the suppression of minorities and dissenters as "the biggest problem" of totalitarianism, all you need is some of those calling that "corrupt" (per their standards) and hey presto, we found unspeakable "corruption" at the heart of the problem.
I'm right with you to distrust anyone in politics who claims he's "doing it just for the good of everyone", but you might want to note that, as the thing transitioned from a U.S. military project (DARPAnet) to the early Internet, the actors setting the technical standards with widespread interoperability, net neutrality etc. in mind pretty much did that, and are still often referred to as a "benevolent dictatorship". The things I do, to this day, as a systems administrator quite often come from a "this ain't a vote" kind of decision-making, too. (And don't get me started on the thinking of civil defense back in the Cold War ...)

see the thing is that you're approaching the topic with an iota of nuance and understanding that societies & situations are complex. i am not disagreeing that there are instances where administrative decisions have to be made for the benefit and safety of a group.

the problem is that the material i'm referring to is THIS:

though i suppose "cruelty" can carry a lot of implications.

like, that is my problem with all of these works, the Surface Level Understanding of very complex issues -
surface level understanding of oppression: sometimes individual people are Mean to people who are different from them and they need to learn to be nicer
more nuanced understanding of oppression: there are many incentives for people in power to keep their power and privileges, and even if an individual comes to realise it's wrong they are many structural hurdles baked into society that makes it very hard to enact change without dismantling and reworking many frameworks. even nice and well-meaning people can and will engage in bigotry even when they don't intend to.

the work to do good and be a good person is endlessly complex even for the most well-meaning person and i think stories tackling those topics are very engaging, but the level of philosophy minna's new works are currently at is like... Is Humanity Inherently Cruel: y/n
and that's just not a very interesting angle to tackle these issues from, in my opinion.

[dmeck7755]

Angstronaut, yes, that’s exactly it! It’s wrong, but not the kind of wrong I think she’s trying for. Or maybe it is! She’s written horror before. Just doesn’t seem likely this would be intended as horror.

Spoiler: show

There seems to be a wolf or something similar happily eating mushrooms when the ”meadow” is getting started

She is giving human traits to animals and it does not work (I know she likes furries, but it is whacked in my opinion)  The furry thing makes it all weird.

Spoiler: show

She calls the animal a wolf, but it looks more like a hyena

[dreki]

I think she is trying to convey the animals as humans (Which would have worked better)  The furry thing make it all horrible weird.

Spoiler: show

She calls the animal a wolf, but it looks more like a hyena

Spoiler: show

 Belief in Jesus removes the ability to recognize different species.

[Jitter]

Dreki, I agree, we can drop the spoilers. This discussion is more about things other than the plot - as is the plot itself so far. I’ll go an edit the initial post and a recent one about Journey upstream to warn about this.

[Jitter]

I added a note on the opening post and on pages 7 and 9 (thanks dmeck and Grey, I utilized your posts) and I urge everyone to read it! The message is the same in all three places.

Thus, everyone can drop the spoilers now.

Let me know if you think there’s something wrong or missing in the message.

[thorny]

I really wasn't going to read this thing.

And the more I read about it, the less I want to read this thing.

Except -- that this discussion is fascinating, and in order to make better sense of it I do want to read this thing.

What to do, what to do . . .

[dreki]

I really wasn't going to read this thing.

And the more I read about it, the less I want to read this thing.

Except -- that this discussion is fascinating, and in order to make better sense of it I do want to read this thing.

What to do, what to do . . .

So far it's a short read. Think it took me like 2 minutes.   I think I'm going to avoid it for a few months. Or years.

Minna's such a talented story teller, that a part of me is still hoping she'll be able to course correct.

It's not like doing things for Christ means they have to be poorly done, some incredible masterpieces have been done in his name. 

[angsttronaut]

She is giving human traits to animals and it does not work (I know she likes furries, but it is whacked in my opinion)  The furry thing makes it all weird.

Making all the characters anthropomorphic might have helped with suspension of disbelief; less questions about why the rabbits are eating flesh and such when the creatures are half human and presumably have human traits. Still wouldn't get rid of all the weirdness though.