The End of the World As We Know It - A1 Prologue

[tehta]

Finally reading the Danish chapter, including the comments.

I was pretty amused to see commenters on pages 12 and 14 theorize that the ever-present cats are a disease vector. And someone proposes zombie cows, years ahead of time. And people suggesting that Michael borrow clothes from his sister. But the news reports are a little disturbing for me, because they remind me of the start of Corona. Which I didn't enjoy, at all. (Also, I have predictable feelings about the whole refugee thing.)

Reynir in comments of page 20! Still with the aRtD face structure, though.

I find Signe very, very appealing as a character. (Look at page 17!) I wish we could have seen more of here. And hey, I feel like she and Michael do have sparks. Although I am not 100% sure why, because she is more awesome than him.

[dmeck7755]

Reynir in comments of page 20! Still with the aRtD face structure, though.

I find Signe very, very appealing as a character. (Look at page 17!) I wish we could have seen more of here. And hey, I feel like she and Michael do have sparks. Although I am not 100% sure why, because she is more awesome than him.

Reynir looks very female to me in that picture. 

Michael is not a dummy, which is why he and Signe ended together
Maybe their snarkiness factor is the catalyst.  (He is pretty snarky 12,15, 16,17). Anyone who likes cats is not all bad  >ˆ-ˆ<

[moredhel]

Reynir looks very female to me in that picture. 

For me Reynir always had some genderfluid vibes.

[JoB]

I was pretty amused to see commenters on pages 12 and 14 theorize that the ever-present cats are a disease vector. And someone proposes zombie cows, years ahead of time.

And within the zombie cow thread on page 14, a certain "JoB" calls it "very unlikely that cats just happen to be immune." What a dummy ...

[tehta]

Ah, that'd be the sockpuppet, I am sure

[Jitter]

I really like the way Minna draws water, both these stormy seas and the sunlit calmer waters later. And the rain is impressive too.

On page 21 Minna writes “I never watch TV debates, because I get upset when I see that not everyone in the world has the exact same opinion as I have on every single issue. But I imagine that they are typically concluded with a slap-fight. Yes?” Obviously she’s exaggerating for humorous reasons but yeah. She hasn’t completely grown out of this.

This arc finishes with “things always work out’ while the previous one was “if you wish for bad things, they will happen”. Which is the more ominous?

[wavewright62]

Wow, that is an interesting catch of Minna's comment.  At the time it would have seemed funny, much less so now. 

Spoiler: egregious self promotion time • show

I still like my take on how Signe Arrives on the Madsen Farm
The basic premise: Signe doesn't proceed to the farm with Michael, but stays with the boat and its crew initially.  She finds her way there in what I imagine is true Signe style.

As to the pages:
Signe completely independently echoing Michael's snarky, "I thought so, too."
The boss scolding Michael that he told him not to go on his "fun little trip."  No, he did not, he only just found out about it while it was in progress.  Devil horns indeed.
New reaction images added (to augment the ones already there):
 

[Jitter]

Wow, that is an interesting catch of Minna's comment.  At the time it would have seemed funny, much less so now. 

There’s actually a lot of interesting things already by this point in the author comments and fhe copious comments she used to make at the time as responses in the discussion. At the very start she’s commenting how it’s weird to not update on weekends too! Did she work even harder at that time? She’s taking Wednesdays off to work on the ARtD book, and yet keeps expecting herself to at least post a blog entry on Wednesdays. It’s a wonder she didn’t burn out years ago!

She’s also commenting how hard it is for her to be around people. In that respect finding a community in her church seems like a very good thing for her. I hope it brings her happiness and balance.

[dmeck7755]

Spoiler: egregious self promotion time • show

I still like my take on how Signe Arrives on the Madsen Farm
The basic premise: Signe doesn't proceed to the farm with Michael, but stays with the boat and its crew initially.  She finds her way there in what I imagine is true Signe style.

Spoiler: show

She raised her chin imperiously. “I’m looking for Michael Madsen, from Copenhagen. He said his sister had a farm out here. I’m assuming you’re not his sister, but my apologies if you are.”

I laughed so loudly, I scared my cat.  I so like your Signe

[wavewright62]

Awww, thankee

[tehta]

Well, this is a fun comment (page 22):

You know, I'm somehow getting a very unrealistic vibe from the way that people are talking to each other here. It's a big, cosmopolitan location now and yet people are still talking to each other as if they were in a tiny village where everybody knows everybody and you have to get along with your neighbours, even if you might not want to.

The interactions would feel more realistic if everybody tried their best to ignore even any eye contact with anybody else while being minimally polite. At least, that's how I feel, having lived in a big city for nearly two decades (Toronto).

Have you ever lived in a big city, Minna? Or are Finns actually so attentive to each other even in cosmopolitan places?

And by "fun" I mean incomprehensible  to me, as most of the people in the comic are speaking only to those they know, and the main interaction is between a waitress and a customer.

Also: let me join the 'love for the Signe story' train. I definitely agree that a delayed arrival makes more sense than her just joining Michael straight away. But what did she grab from the boat?

[Jitter]

Wave, great story!

I have another explanation. Michael wants to bring in something useful. And I don’t mean the umbrella.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28056672/chapters/68737032

[thorny]

All of this about wearing masks and people not wanting to wear masks and arguing on TV about it is kind of unnerving, looking at it from post - 2020.

And nobody in the comments seems to have noticed anything at all about Minna's blaming the Rash on immigrants, and specifically on illegal immigrants at that. At least, unless she removed those posts.

-- another thing I notice in the comments on some pages is an awful lot of click-on-this assorted spam. It occurs to me that I didn't notice the dates on it, though, and it tends to be later in the comments: maybe it was added after Minna quit paying much attention to the pages?

-- did anybody get a picture of Magnus the cat, that you didn't have to have voted at the time in order to see?

[JoB]

And nobody in the comments seems to have noticed anything at all about Minna's blaming the Rash on immigrants, and specifically on illegal immigrants at that.

Not at the time (as far as I remember), no. People remembered later on, though.

-- another thing I notice in the comments on some pages is an awful lot of click-on-this assorted spam. It occurs to me that I didn't notice the dates on it, though, and it tends to be later in the comments: maybe it was added after Minna quit paying much attention to the pages?

Having the comments section auto-closed after a while was a rather late add-on feature even with Disqus; I don't remember it ever having been available with IntenseDebate. The fact that the still-visible "Reply"s do not work anymore is IMHO rather an unintended side effect of updates to ID than an orderly closure.

-- did anybody get a picture of Magnus the cat, that you didn't have to have voted at the time in order to see?

Beyond the one on the family forest, you mean?
Well, technically, there's the wiki, and Googling. But no, nothing beyond these two pictures IIRC.

[Jitter]

Thanks JoB for digging it up, I hadn’t seen it. Are all the old vote baits somewhere one could see them?