Latest Page Discussions/Comic Update Chitchat

[Róisín]

Sorry, Plinkett, but I think you're wrong.

 A lot of the storytelling is in the art as well as the words, and following the expressions and body language of the characters adds a whole dimension of emotion and reaction to what we get from the words. I think the characters are learning and growing, just slowly, as in real life. Most people don't have abrupt epiphanies which cause them to suddenly change their attitudes and presumptions and alter the way they live and how they perceive and interact with other people. When that does happen it tends to be the result of things that shake up their lives forever. And it isn't always good change. Gotta watch those epiphanies: it's as likely that someone will decide that they really do hate everybody as it is for them to decide that they love their fellows and from now on it will all be sunshine, rainbows and cute puppies.

 We've been following this tale for years, so to us it seems as if the story has been going on forever, but to the characters it has been maybe between two and three months. Most of that time has been passed in the level of action and stress that precludes introspection, or the level of falling in a heap after said stressful action that just gets you through to the next day. I think they are learning from their experiences, just that the tale is being told in a way that is more European than American, a way that assumes the readers are capable of understanding subtle hints and allusions and are content to watch the story develop rather than having everything resolved in an hour-long episode with no loose ends. More classical storytelling than modern, which is an odd fit with the graphic novel format. Rather like how the writing of, say, Jon Inouye is in novel format, but would work better as a comic, had such been a possible medium for serious storytelling back when he was writing. But I digress.

And one final element: I think Minna is still learning. This is her second full-length work. It's easy to forget that this artist and storyteller is young, I believe only in her mid-twenties, and very few artists, storytellers, musicians, sculptors, poets or whatever have completely mastered their craft by that age. We are watching a work in progress, not viewing a mature and finished masterpiece. Her timing isn't perfect yet, nor her understanding of emphasis, and of how heavily points have to be made before most of the audience can understand them. I think that in trying to avoid the kind of heavy-handed storytelling that comes with a laugh track and a complete biography of every character she has perhaps veered too far into subtlety.

But that's just my take on it. I like a subtle story, and I like a puzzle story where the reader has to work to figure out what is actually going on, and I love detail, but hate to be spoonfed that detail as if I were too stupid and impatient to follow the tale at the pace the author sets. I'll wait and see how it pans out in the end before I form a final opinion.

[MR_PLINKETT]

Goodbye? Because you don't seem to be enjoying reading this anymore. Perhaps a clean break with the community here would be best for both parties.

Sorry if I came off as harsh. I've been here since day one with ssss. I was in the early days of aRTD. I left for a while and came back at chapter 10.

It just hurts me man, minnas stories have been a part of my life at this point. I can't just give up on ssss yet. I've invested far to much time in it. And I just don't like the way the story is going and it hurts man.

It hurts so much.

[thorny]

I'll wait and see how it pans out in the end before I form a final opinion.

This.

We have no idea where Minna's going with this story. That's not bad telling. That's good telling. She doesn't have to do plot number 6B where everyone can see what the outcome is bound to be. I'm a lot more likely to feel betrayed by a storyteller who does fit everything into the standard tropes than by one who doesn't.

And I think that stopping where they were to sit down and hash out all their emotions and all their previous mistakes would have been, to put it mildly, not a bright idea. They're not sitting around a table doing an RPG. They're in a hostile environment, with enemies chasing them, and out of contact with their pickup crew, which will presumably not wait forever. Whatever state they're in emotionally, if they're going to have any chance of living they have to squash it down for now, so they can get up and move.

(Not to mention that they did take the time, and the energy, for a funeral service. And we don't know who said what while they were doing that; it hasn't been shown.)

[|Yucca|]

Not to mention that they did take the time, and the energy, for a funeral service. And we don't know who said what while they were doing that; it hasn't been shown.

I think this a thing with SSSS that bothers me the most. Certain key points in the story, especially times when a debriefing should have happened, haven't been shown for some reason. Not everything has to be shown, but leaving out story critical moments in favor of showing the team doing laundry just feels a bit weird.

Don't get me wrong though, I like that mundane tasks are shown too, gives depth to the story. But since Minna's page budget clearly is lavish, it feels even more strange to leave out important stuff.

[Dilandu]

accepted a suicide mission to start with.  They got themselves into deeper s*** by going after the serum. And on top of all that even when they were faced with fixing their issues and problems AFTER A CHARACTER COMMITTED SUICIDE? They go right back to goofie antics. No introspection, no questions about 'why are we f***ing up right now', no deeper searching even after a team mate dies.

Well, maybe exactly because it was ACTUALLY a poorly-planned expedition from the beginning, huh?

No one talked about what happened. No one. F***ING NO ONE. NOT EVEN CARING EMIL LOOKS SAD. The only one i'd expect to not be to shaken up is sigrun because ya know she's the most experienced.  But she's being written as if this has never happened before and mikkel is suddenly 'in charge'. It's like minna forgot the characterization behind them.

They are caught transport-less and protection-less in a very dangerous conditions, with the situation out of control and developed absolutely unexpectedly. No one of their previous assumptions involved a bunch of ghosts & eight-legged horse - which for some reason took a grudge against them, and not only trailing them, but also is capable of RATIONAL thinking and actual planning. Basically the dangers of the whole situation just leaped from ten to twenty points on Sweden railroad scale. They simply have no time or place to just sat around and reflect.

The serum line that minna had written so much about, you know that thing that got them into this mess to begin with? GONE.

Sigh.

1st: Even the current un-workable serum is truly enormous progress for Known World anti-Rush programs.

2st: The fact that Denmark was able to came so close to workable solution just in a few weeks basically serves as a clear hint that other countries may be more lucky, and there are other peoples in other parts of the world. With WORKING solution.

3st: Even if serum could not work as protection for humans, it could possibly be weaponized as chemical weapon against trolls and giants. After all, they require brains to stay put... and serum KILL THE BRAIN. No need to reclaim areas by force - just disperce the serum aerosole (better from the air) and wait until most of Rush creatures would drop dead.

[Kis]

MR_PLINKETT,
I'm sorry that this story made you feel that way. I think you've done great sharing these emotions instead of keeping them to yourself (even if not all of us agree with your opinion). I know what a huge impact SSSS can have on us, so discovering that said impact wasn't all that great was... well, pretty horrible. However, I hope you'll stay and maybe some day will enjoy how the story goes again. And thank you for making me think about what's been happening in comic from different point of view

[MR_PLINKETT]

MR_PLINKETT,
I'm sorry that this story made you feel that way. I think you've done great sharing these emotions instead of keeping them to yourself (even if not all of us agree with your opinion). I know what a huge impact SSSS can have on us, so discovering that said impact wasn't all that great was... well, pretty horrible. However, I hope you'll stay and maybe some day will enjoy how the story goes again. And thank you for making me think about what's been happening in comic from different point of view

I mean I'm not leaving, I'm gonna be here to the very last page that minna has posted. It's just some frustration I've been having for months now and I can't keep it inside me anymore. I just needed to get it out there even if it is toxic.

[Róisín]

Plinkett, better out than in, as the saying goes. Hope you feel better for the vent.

[Sc0ut]

Well.. that's certainly one point of view, Plinkett.

I don't know where you've been hanging out, but in my side of the fandom (which is mostly tumblr these days) many people felt outraged and even betrayed after Tuuri's death and some of the things that happened after. Heck, I'm not happy about it myself either. So while there are people who are supportive of the comic and Minna no matter what, there are definitely many others who criticize when they don't like something, and still read the comic (or cease to, in at least one case I know of).

For what's worth, I agree that more emotional displays from the remaining team would be welcome. I'm aware they are now focused on very basic survival in a dangerous situation, and simply can't afford doing too much depressive thinking, also some are possibly in shock. So while it makes total sense, the more this expressionless state continues, the more I feel it dehumanizes the characters a bit, or at least drags the comic in a much darker genre than what it says on the tin. It's one of the things I feel weird and conflicted about with SSSS, and part of it is because I can't tell if Minna does it on purpose or not. Has she deliberately labeled it as a "light-hearted adventure with elements of horror", knowing this would amplify the shock of what happens to Tuuri, or has the story gotten out of hand? Or, worst of all, does this still actually count as a light-hearted adventure in Minna's opinion?!

It's not the only thing that has bothered me in this way in SSSS. I had the same reaction to the page where the Icelandic coast guard sinks the civilian boat, and Minna's comment was to "not think about it too much", because she doesn't intend to delve into ethical matters with this story. But putting heavily ethically loaded events in your story and then refusing to address them is... well, not the most mature of choices in my opinion.

But like Róisín said, it's unfair to judge a work of art that is still incomplete. I'll probably keep reading to the end, even though the comic has already made me raise an eyebrow or three. Imo it's really interesting to see what choices Minna will make from now on, even if we end up getting something very different than we hoped for. I hope you stick around too, and maybe find some fanfic that takes the story in a direction you're happier with. There is a lot of fix-it out there!

I think this a thing with SSSS that bothers me the most. Certain key points in the story, especially times when a debriefing should have happened, haven't been shown for some reason. Not everything has to be shown, but leaving out story critical moments in favor of showing the team doing laundry just feels a bit weird.

Don't get me wrong though, I like that mundane tasks are shown too, gives depth to the story. But since Minna's page budget clearly is lavish, it feels even more strange to leave out important stuff.

This has frustrated me as well for a while now. I don't like to be spoon-fed all the information, but for one's brain to fill in a missing sequence, that sequence has to have (shown) consequences. For instance, if I see Reynir consistently avoiding Mikkel, I can deduce something happened between them, or at least something significant happened in Reynir's mental state (new information? Shift of perspective? definitely *something*, at least), even if it hasn't been showed "on screen". But we never had anything like that with any missing scenes - they just don't exist, left no impact whatsoever. The team acts like they never talked together about any of the emergency situations they've run into. And this is something I can't explain as good writing, no matter how much I try. I suppose it is one of the places where Minna's lack of experience shows.

[Grade E cat]

I doubt that the story that is "perfect" in the eyes of every single of its readers, or even the majority of them, exists. Yet, many seem to expect that their favorite long-runners will continue to have everything they like about them forever, despite the fact that they are produced by a person who isn't them. What I know for myself is that there are plenty of works that I like very much but are full of flaws according to experienced critics or other viewers, simply because I'm still enjoying the good parts, or because I actually enjoy some of the alleged flaws. Some of the longer ones did sometimes reach a point where they lost me, and I'm quite sure the nature of the "break-up" point wasn't that much of a big deal to any readers who are still following it. But when they happened, I didn't consider myself "betrayed" by the work or its author in any way. My attitude boiled down to "it was nice while it lasted, now let's see what else is out there".

From what I've seen in TVTropes, many extremely popular long-runners suffer what is considered a decline in later installments, sometimes due to flaws that were there all along suddenly becoming obvious. It's sad when it happens, but I also think it's a mistake to assume that any given story is (no pun intended) immune to this phenomenon.

[Vafhudr]

I'd say it's still a bit early for judgments.

The serum plotline was a possibility, and saving Tuuri could have worked on a story level thanks to that. Or at least I think so. It's certainly a possibility that I pushed for.

But it is also possible that this is not that kind of story.

If we draw back a bit, Tuuri's death is a logical consequence of the story set up. This isn't about fun time adventures - it's about survival. Tuuri died because she fundamentally didn't get that. Reality caught up to her.

There is however a certain mood clash because of that. On a page to page basis, the story is fairly comedy oriented.

Now, it is reproached to the characters that they have been fairly un-emotive about this, but consider this: what happened to Tuuri is normal to them. How many times has Sigrun seen members of her crew die in battle or from infections? How many people has Mikkel seen die as a medic? This is a direct shock to Lalli and Onni, who are direct family, and to Reynir who is a sheltered non-combatant - but how is it shocking to Sigrun and Mikkel that someone on their team has died? It's probably not very shocking at this point. From their perspective, there is a much bigger issue to deal with at the moment - getting out of this situation alive. To get caught up in emotions would only reduce their chances of survival. The prime example of this is Lalli, who by insisting in making sure that she had crossed jeopardized the team by wanting to go off by himself to do his ritual. With Emil following him, the team strength was actually cut in half. If Reynir had not been around, that would have left Mikkel and Sigrun at the complete mercy of the ghosts. Tuuri's death was sad, but this is the world they live in. Remember the title - Stand Still, Stay Silent. This is the philosophy of a hunted prey. Despite their relative success against monsters, this remains fundamentally the name of the game. The cat-tank is more accurately a mouse scurrying in a house of cats.

Minna was at a crossroad with Tuuri's ordeal. She considered not killing her, but she stayed her course because the story would have fallen apart otherwise. What this means has yet to become clear, has such we can thus assume that a considerable part of the story still lays hidden to us. The full ramifications of this event are still unclear. Combined with the slower pace of production, it has become very difficult to understand the direction the story is taking at this point.

Who knows. Maybe by the end of this arc we will be greeted by "end of prologue". Just as how the early stories were set up for the current story, there is nothing stopping this current story arc being the set up for a wider scope story arc in the future. At this point I can't see much immediate plot pay off for the ghost lady and her hospital. But that doesn't mean there won't be pay off down the road.

[|Yucca|]

This has frustrated me as well for a while now. I don't like to be spoon-fed all the information, but for one's brain to fill in a missing sequence, that sequence has to have (shown) consequences. For instance, if I see Reynir consistently avoiding Mikkel, I can deduce something happened between them, or at least something significant happened in Reynir's mental state (new information? Shift of perspective? definitely *something*, at least), even if it hasn't been showed "on screen". But we never had anything like that with any missing scenes - they just don't exist, left no impact whatsoever. The team acts like they never talked together about any of the emergency situations they've run into. And this is something I can't explain as good writing, no matter how much I try. I suppose it is one of the places where Minna's lack of experience shows.

Indeed. This became really evident after the field standoff. There was an enormous flying and talking firebird out of the blue, and for some reason all of the non-religious people just skipped that. Not a single mention of this clearly otherworldly phenomenon the following day. Emil wanted to ask Lalli about "that stuff", but that's pretty much all.

[thorny]

Now, it is reproached to the characters that they have been fairly un-emotive about this, but consider this: what happened to Tuuri is normal to them.

I think this is a valid and very important point.

These people aren't living in the world most of us are in, in which a death before extreme old age is considered to be something highly unusual that has gone wrong, and must be immediately dealt with as a fixable anomaly, or at least as something that requires the entire community to rally at length around the survivors most affected.

They're living in a world in which (as in most of actual human history) getting to die from old age is closer to the anomaly. That doesn't mean that people don't grieve. It does mean they've had a whole lot more practice at it, and are likely to react, especially on the visible surface, in different ways than those who don't expect anyone they know to die before old age are going to react.

-- as far as what is and isn't being shown: I wonder whether Minna might be so immersed in her world and her characters that she forgets that much of what she knows about it and about them isn't known to her readers. As has been pointed out, she's fairly new at this. I once did what I thought was a complete short-short set in a world that's been working in the back of my head for many years; but when I showed it to a friend, she thought it was nowhere near complete, that it needed much more detail. When I read it over again, I realized she was right; I can taste and smell that place by now, but there wasn't enough in there for anyone else to do so.

Another possibility, of course -- and this we can't know yet -- is that she does intend to give us this information; but has reasons not to give it to us until later.

ETA: and a third possibility is that she thinks the story may otherwise take too long to get where it's going, and is trying to speed up the action by leaving out a lot of discussion. Some people don't want to read anything that's got a lot of talking heads in it. It's hard, or more likely impossible, to please all possible readers.

[Windfighter]

Or, worst of all, does this still actually count as a light-hearted adventure in Minna's opinion?!

In Minnas defense she comes from Finland, which has produced at least one light-hearted book about a group of people setting off to kill themselves! She has also lived in Sweden which has produced at least one light-hearted book that started with a man trying to commit suicide in so many ways but constantly got interrupted. Our view of what is fun and games up here in the cold north is a little bit screwed

And since Im commenting anyway, allow me to point out that we have at least been shown that Emil is being sad! First off, notice how he is standing next to the funeral!

His whole body language just yells "I am feeling sad about this". And he is also the only one actually looking at it.
Sigrun does however look sad a couple of panels later

(which Mikkel takes note of and files under "Future BlackMail Materia"l), but then she gets rational because yeah, they really do need to get going.
And then we see Emil again looking pretty sad when he and Lalli are walking to catch up with the others


...Mikkel actually seems to be the only one who hasnt really reacted to this whole thing. Yes, they dont have very strong, visible reactions but as many have said already, this is a live-or-die situation theyre in right now. Hopefully we will see them react and talk about this later, when they are finally safe on the boat or in Iceland! I am at least hoping for a Lalli/Onni-bonding moment because of this.
Anyway, sorry for the long post, I wasnt even planning on getting caught up in this discussion so Im rolling out again now! -waves-

[Dilandu]

Anyway, sorry for the long post, I wasnt even planning on getting caught up in this discussion so Im rolling out again now! -waves-

Nothing to be sorry about, your post is basically an effective sum up of different point of views here.