Latest Page Discussions/Comic Update Chitchat

[thorny]

Well, it's definitely a bear. And with normal-bear eyes.

Why are people in the Discus comments talking about three cubs? I only remember two. -- hmm. Apparently while two's the most common number per birth, three and even four are possible. But I still only remember two with our particular Mamma Bear.

[lwise]

Well, it's definitely a bear. And with normal-bear eyes.

Why are people in the Discus comments talking about three cubs? I only remember two. -- hmm. Apparently while two's the most common number per birth, three and even four are possible. But I still only remember two with our particular Mamma Bear.

I think they're thinking of the Mama Bear and her two cubs all being reborn at once: three cubs.

[thorny]

Ah. That would make sense: the bear in the bilberries might be having all three souls enter her, and give birth to them all in late winter.

It would be odd to have Mama Bear not be the mama, but the sibling, of her cubs. But maybe she'd just as soon be a cub again, and not have the responsibility for a while.

[lwise]

Oh, good.  Bears for the rest of the month.  *Sigh.*

[thorny]

Could be worse. Could be bears fighting Surma.

[Jitter]

It sorta looks that way. The ”matter is settled” on 542 smells of final words, considering it was going to be open-ended in any case.

[lwise]

I just hope to see our heroes again in the epilogue, at least.

[Jitter]

From tonight’s stream, the pages we are seeing now are the original epilogue. But the upcoming “extended epilogue” is extra, and will be about the characters.

[thorny]

Apparently not bears for all the rest of January; at least, not unless we're about to jump to next spring.

Or, I suppose, unless Minna's going to give us two weeks of bear fetal development. Which seems somewhat unlikely; but who knows?

-- I should go to sleep myself; though not all the way to next spring, despite the weather report (which, looking out the window, looks uncomfortably likely to be accurate. Snowing like it means it, in the Finger Lakes of New York State.)

[Tarnagh]

Oh, good.  Bears for the rest of the month.  *Sigh.*

From tonight’s stream, the pages we are seeing now are the original epilogue. But the upcoming “extended epilogue” is extra, and will be about the characters.

If what we're seeing now is the *original* epilogue, did she seriously just drop the team while they wait until spring for a boat and that's how she intended to leave them? After all the years of emotional investment in those characters, we get a month of closure for ... the bears.

I mean, good for the bears. Yay. Truly. But ... seriously?

[thorny]

Apparently not bears for all the rest of January; at least, not unless we're about to jump to next spring.

OK, I guess it is bears for the rest of January.

(Maybe I'll be wrong again? Not that there's really enough left of January to matter.)

At least they're healthy bears; and no Surma in sight. (I hope!)

-- If this is the original epilogue: then I don't think she would, originally, have been dropping the team -- just pausing and taking a break while she geared up for Adventure 3; so she'd have been returning to them. Which is not now likely to happen.

[Maple]

Seeing all this bear stuff actually has me excited for the implications. Does it mean souls that were able to pass on can be reborn? Are we going to see Tuuri reborn as someone's future kid or something like that?

I feel like this would be an excellent way to end the series (showing how, even with the world being a death world, life still finds a way) if we had gotten more closure on the team itself before this. Even ending it with "welp. gotta wait until spring to go anywhere" would have been fine if we had gotten more pages for the characters to process that this whole ordeal is over and that they actually do get to move on with their lives. We still haven't seen what Lalli and Onni think about everything, and those two (along with Tuuri) are arguably THE main characters of the series. (As it's written at least, since we only got two adventures there just wasn't as much coverage of the other four and their growth as characters.)

That said, endings are the hardest part of the story to get right, and Minna struggled with ending Adventure 1 too. So while it's a little disappointing, it's not unexpected.

[Suominoita]

Seeing all this bear stuff actually has me excited for the implications. Does it mean souls that were able to pass on can be reborn? Are we going to see Tuuri reborn as someone's future kid or something like that?

So shipping is on?
Sigrun and Mikkel sure seem like one.

If Onni or Lalli would hang out and marry a woman to have the kid with. I don't know about Onni but it seems that Lalli ends up with Emil and never so much as has an eye-contact with a woman. Who would Onni go with? The post Lady maybe?

[Róisín]

Well, in some of my fics I have been playing with the Eternal Champion trope a bit, a theme which I have always enjoyed in folklore. The hero, or heroes, continue down the ages doing their job, and in the tales often form some kind of partnership or team. I’m Tanist over on Archive of our Own, if you want to read some of them.

[Jitter]

So, the last page of the story proper.

I actually like this epilogue. Like someone pointed out, it's hopeful. It tells us that even this tortured world will heal, and there will be new springs and new babies and healthy animals again. Now, I would not have missed this, if we didn't get it, but as it is, I find it kind of uplifting.

Furthermore, this clearly shows rebirth, and Lalli's ritual working. If Minna felt very uneasy about the pagan content, she could have left this out. I think putting the skull up the tree was pretty much a must, but I don't think it would have occurred to any of us she had dropped a section, if she just didn't include this bit. For this reason as well I'm glad she made this.

The situation where we left the team was also ok as an ending, if there were going to be further adventures. Now, if the whole thing had completely ended here, it would have been irritating that it was so unclear where is the last moment we see the team. But hopefully the "extended epilogue" will have some merit to it. I have understood it will be showing the team, possibly hanging out during the winter.

I also think this page is beautiful. It's not the best ending I could have wished for, but it's not the worst there could be either.