Latest Page Discussions/Comic Update Chitchat

[thorny]

I still think there is no real malice in either of them, just ignorance, cultural narrowness, and little understanding of themselves or other people.

Exactly.

And, of course, aggravated by the fact that they literally don't speak the same language. This is the first chance they've had to actually talk to each other. (They were both too exhausted, I think, in the first shared dream.)

And I think they're doing pretty well. Lalli recognizes when his phrasing's been taken wrong, backs up, and explains what he meant. Emil, instead of staying angry, backs up also and recognizes and accepts the explanation. While nobody's apologizing in so many words -- and I rather doubt they're going to -- Emil's recognizing that Lalli actually is a mage, and is asking about it; and Lalli's doing his best to explain. And the next brief burst of frustrated anger turns back into more explanation again.

I wouldn't expect them to stop at this point and go back over everything that's gone wrong since they first knew each other. They need to focus more on understanding the current situation. And I think Emil already knows that Lalli wasn't getting jollies from hurting him, Lalli doesn't need to spell it out -- if Emil thought Lalli'd hurt him for the fun of it, he'd hardly have thanked Lalli for doing it.

A lot of us live in a culture in which a long discussion going over all the previous problems is what would be expected, yes. Not all cultures are like that.

[Róisín]

It would be wonderful if detailed explanations and complete mutual comprehension could happen, along with therapy to unpack everything that had ever happened to or between them. Wonderful. But alas, they are far from the encounter groups of academe, and are young soldiers in a fictional world that is in some aspects a dystopia. I suppose I am less outraged by them because in the real world I have known quite a number of uncouth, uncultured and uncivilised folk, and most of them were good people under the roughness. So I am prepared to wait and see how the boys, and events around them, actually pan out.

[thorny]

I suppose I am less outraged by them because in the real world I have known quite a number of uncouth, uncultured and uncivilised folk, and most of them were good people under the roughness.

And I suppose I'm not upset by their not having a long cathartic discussion, and by the group in general's not doing so for that matter, in part because, while the society as I'm living in it now might well indeed expect to deal with problems by sitting everybody down with a counselor and working through every detail, this more-or-less same society, when I was a child and teenager in it, would have been much more likely to do nothing of the sort. I grew up surrounded by adults who had just been through WWII -- and who for the most part didn't talk about it. Awful things happened, and, if you were still alive afterwards, you were just supposed to get on with life.

I think that for a lot of people, the talk-everything-out technique is more useful; though I think that for some people it's the reverse. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if the year 90 society is the result of a fairly long stretch during which the people who survived were the ones who, finding themselves still alive afterwards, spent what spoons they had left dealing with what was likely to come up during the next day or the next week. Much of the trauma experienced during the year 0 transition must have had to be walled off in order to have any chance of making it to year 2. And I would expect that to still be reverberating, if considerably attenuated, by year 90.

[Buteo]

And I suppose I'm not upset by their not having a long cathartic discussion, and by the group in general's not doing so for that matter, in part because, while the society as I'm living in it now might well indeed expect to deal with problems by sitting everybody down with a counselor and working through every detail, this more-or-less same society, when I was a child and teenager in it, would have been much more likely to do nothing of the sort. I grew up surrounded by adults who had just been through WWII -- and who for the most part didn't talk about it. Awful things happened, and, if you were still alive afterwards, you were just supposed to get on with life.

I think that for a lot of people, the talk-everything-out technique is more useful; though I think that for some people it's the reverse. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if the year 90 society is the result of a fairly long stretch during which the people who survived were the ones who, finding themselves still alive afterwards, spent what spoons they had left dealing with what was likely to come up during the next day or the next week. Much of the trauma experienced during the year 0 transition must have had to be walled off in order to have any chance of making it to year 2. And I would expect that to still be reverberating, if considerably attenuated, by year 90.

Yes, this exactly.
I was thinking about the lads while driving about on errands today, and I come home to see that you have described exactly the conclusion I came to.

[Róisín]

I can't do spoilers. Warning of unpleasant real-world things below which are not for the squeamish.

Pretty much that, yeah. I was a child and teenager through WW2 and its aftermath, and that was how it worked. People shut up about it, and tried to get on with life. Sometimes that worked, often it didn't. Many of my family didn't make it, and some of those that did were left permanently damaged. My dad, in particular, had been captured during the Pacific War, by the Japanese, and had been a longterm POW, presumed dead, and had been tortured and otherwise very cruelly treated, including being starved to the point of nearly dying of beriberi and having his hands severely and permanently damaged. He had been an army medic. When we got him back there were years of nursing him through physical and mental damage, constant pain, screaming nightmares, the lot. When he finally remarried (that was when my brother and I were teenagers; our mum had died of TB when I was quite small, which is why we were raised by the grands and greatgrands) things got a bit easier, but it was never good.

My grandpa, also an army medic, was at Gallipoli. Enough said, I think. My favourite uncle was permanently damaged by mustard gas, in France. There's more, but enough horrors. The point is, all of these people went on to live useful and productive lives, after. Not the lives they could have had, but lives. And there was little help to be had, mostly none. A TPI pension and cheap or free medical treatment for the worst-off of them was about it. The world was overflowing with damaged people back then, and the resources to help them all didn't exist, even for those governments and societies that cared about their folk. Many didn't. I heard a lot about this stuff because even as a child I was someone to whom people told things (still am). And I lived through the aftermath, and am still here, living what seems to me, despite its problems, to be a fairly good life, because I am a stubborn b****.

Anyway, the point to this rant is just this: Minna has created a fictional world in which the background, the characters and the events depicted all seem to predispose to the worldview that s*** happens, you survive and then you go on. Damaged or not, grieving or not, broken or not. While this is, obviously, a far worse world than that in which I passed my childhood and adolescence living first on a hardscrabble subsistence farm, then in a very rough and ill-provided returned-soldier settlement, then in the Australian Outback,  the aspect or 'survive however you can, happy or not, well-adjusted or not', definitely resonates with me. Many people had it far, far worse than I did. I have friends who survived the Nazi internment camps as children, were kids in London during the Blitz, starved in occupied Belgium.....(that latter person became a quite well known lecturer, writer and gardener, spreading the knowledge of how to grow and make the best of food in the most difficult of circumstances. Many of the others grew up to be doctors, conservationists, activists for the poor, the displaced, the forgotten. Their experiences shaped their future lives).

But none of these people had the benefit of the counsellors, therapists, psychiatrists that are nowadays taken for granted. And somehow they managed. The people in Minna's creation may very well manage too, and even turn out in some cases to be, or to become, decent folk despite their experiences and their deficiencies. I have been watching with increasing dismay the comments beating on the writer and the characters for being as they are, and wondering whether these commenters have forgotten their own empathy, sympathy and humanity, or have ever even met anyone less privileged than themselves?

Apologies for the wall of text, but it needed saying. End of rant.

**Edit**: In no way do I intend any disrespect to those who do need and use such services, nor any diminishment of their suffering. But I am saying: Minna's world is unlikely to have much of those facilities, and within the lifetime of some of us here present, neither did our world.

[Lazy8]

This isn't the case with me, but I am aware that many of those people "beating on the writer and the characters for being as they are," do in fact have legitimate traumatizing real world experiences that are in fact legitimately triggered by the way that certain events in the comic are treated. Are you accusing these people of having "forgotten their own empathy, sympathy and humanity, or have ever even met anyone less privileged than themselves"? Even in the case of someone having had a legit panic attack over the latest developments between Emil and Lalli, are you going to accuse them of having no empathy or humanity because this bothers them?

Personally, my problem has never been that legitimately messed-up characters are acting in legitimately messed-up ways. My problem is that the messed-up and even occasionally abusive ways in which the characters treat each other is never acknowledged as a problem, and instead we're supposed to think that it's cute. And yes, this makes me angry - for the same reason it makes me angry that we were expected to think the messed-up, abusive relationship in Twilight was romantic. Yes, I went there - and while SSSS has a whole lot more potential to be a good story than Twilight could ever dream of, I'm still seeing the same fundamental problem.

What also makes me angry is that every time I point out that something is unhealthy or that the characters are treating each other horribly and that they're going to have to change their behavior in order for this to be a legitimately healthy friendship, I feel like I keep getting dogpiled by people lining up to tell me that I'm wrong, and even more people egging them on with comments like "Yes. This." "You show that commentator who dares have issues with the way the comic is written."

Look, I know you didn't name names, but it's pretty obvious I'm in that list of people you're talking about who keep "beating against the author and the characters". And yeah, it's a little hard not to take that personally. So guess I'm one of those overprivileged people "who've lost their own empathy, sympathy and humanity" because I have issues with the way a webcomic is written.

[Róisín]

You weren't in that list at all, actually, because you come across as actually thinking about what you say. Not everyone does. I don't find such behaviours cute, just sad, and a sad result of a sad world. I'd like to see them fixed, yes, and for the relationships to be healthy, and for their world to be better. I'm hoping that may ultimately be the point of the story. But they have to start from somewhere, and it seems to be reasonable to start from the position to which their world, as depicted in the story, has brought these characters. By definition, they are not going to be models of psychosocial adjustment. The interesting and worthwhile part of the story, hopefully, will be seeing them grow into more rounded, well-balanced and acceptable characters. And along the way, to grow into people who can have those healthy relationships. I don't expect the process to be easy, though maybe easier than such things are in real life, because even the best-realised fictional characters are less complex than real ones.

I did try to read Twilight, because the kids of my acquaintance seemed to be about equally divided between 'Ooh, how romantic' and 'I'm not even sure I could say why, but it squicks me out'. I couldn't wade very far through the execrable writing and general vileness, but I got far enough to agree with the second group of kids. I don't think this is that sort of story. I certainly hope not. If it turns out to be such, I'm out.

I have only sympathy for people who are legitimately triggered by these events in-story. I'm well aware that dreadful things can happen to people in the world, having lived through some of them myself. And of course I don't deny their right to be upset, or to be triggered. But I don't think it is fair to direct this general level of venom at a story in progress, a work which is only partly made, before we know how it is going to turn out. I'm prepared to wait and see.

**Edit** Sorry, that posted when I wasn't finished writing. What I had been about to add was that my reason for citing some of my own darker experiences was not to elicit pity, because I don't want it or need it, but by way of explaining that yes, I do understand about people having terrible and traumatising experiences in the real world, and I do understand that sometimes those experiences can turn the people to whom they happen into people for whom it is hard to feel sympathy and empathy because they can be assholes, or prickly and difficult to know, or insular and isolated, or scarred, or angry, or untrusting, or, or, or. But they are nevertheless still deserving of our understanding and patience. I try to give that understanding and patience to people in the real world, and can't help also feeling it for well-realised fictional characters. In summary, I'm prepared to wait and see before judging.

[wavewright62]

I did not have to wait years between the Harry Potter books, since I came late to the party and read them all in a row.  I imagine the triggering and angst brought up by that series was similar, perhaps, as the story arced from magic owls and a hat that knew just where you belonged, to traumatised kids being used as cannon fodder by adults.  And while that story ended up too pat for my liking (the Epilogue made me gag), there were years to wait while the story just got darker and more dismaying before some redemption came. 

[thorny]

I didn't think it was "cute" that, for instance, Lalli threw soup at Emil. And I didn't take it as intended to be cute. I took it as being intended to show that Lalli was incapable of dealing any better with his frustration at being unable to communicate.

These people are damaged. The society they're living in -- the societies, really; Lalli was in many ways not raised in the same society as Emil was -- is/are damaged. While not all the details may be right, that part is realistic enough. It's far more realistic than if the society, or the individuals, were being portrayed as ideal. Not only do we have the remaining results of the massive trauma of year 0, but the nightmare is ongoing; the world is still full of trolls, pleading for help while trying to trap others into their horror.

But that doesn't mean that the people are all horrible people; or even that the society is. The fact that it's necessary to do terrible things to survive doesn't mean that the things aren't terrible. But it also doesn't mean that they aren't necessary.

The problem may be partly that I get the impression that Minna thought, originally, that she could somehow make a lighthearted story out of this. I don't think that's possible, and I think her story has overtaken her original intentions -- writing has a way of doing that, for many authors. That doesn't mean she can't get lighthearted moments into it (people in even the worst situations often find things to laugh about, and need to); or that the story may not wind up, overall, hopeful -- these humans have made it to year 90, after all, and they're overall gaining ground (sometimes literally), not losing it.

[Sc0ut]

I wanna share a thought that's deviating from the current discussion, but is still in the vein of discussing the darker, possibly unintended, implications of the comic.

For a while now, the comic has been hinting that empathy is a dangerous liability: starting with the sinking of the ship in the prologue, continuing with Emil willing to endanger himself to help the troll dog. Now we actually have it spelled out that being too empathetic is basically a death sentence for mages. I hope Minna is willing to explore this for good, since this is a topic that's been on my mind for a few years now. It took me a while to figure out that in real life, the people (and animals, and abstract problems) who most need help usually are the most unpleasant and dangerous to be around of. I never see discussed even in contexts where it's very relevant, such as certain types of volunteering, nor have I seen it explored in fiction much. When it is discussed, it's often painted, deliberately or not, in a misleading positive light: that it will be easy, and that results and gratitude are almost always guaranteed if you put in the effort. If you buy that, when you do set out to help, you often end up taking a big fall. You'll often realize you do it the wrong way, you have your help thrown in your face, or you make things worse despite your best efforts. Or you become burned out and depressed when realizing you can't make much of a difference. Or you stay in an unhealthy relationship hoping you can change the other person. (The flipside to the rosy portrayal is of course the ultra cynical "you can't change anything so don't even bother trying/just stay away from damaged people".) The comic trolls who call for help are a great allegory for this, though I'm not sure if this is something intended on Minna's part. I also don't know if tackling such a topic falls within her interests or skills. I'm just gonna keep reading, I guess. Any suggestions for media that does discuss this?

[Lazy8]

The problem may be partly that I get the impression that Minna thought, originally, that she could somehow make a lighthearted story out of this. I don't think that's possible, and I think her story has overtaken her original intentions -- writing has a way of doing that, for many authors. That doesn't mean she can't get lighthearted moments into it (people in even the worst situations often find things to laugh about, and need to); or that the story may not wind up, overall, hopeful -- these humans have made it to year 90, after all, and they're overall gaining ground (sometimes literally), not losing it.

I think that that's my biggest problem with the narrative direction as a whole, and has been for a while. Minna advertised this comic as a lighthearted adventure story. Of course that doesn't mean it can't have some really dark implications - but the expectation was that the focus as a whole would be on the goofy, flawed characters doing silly things, and that the darker undertones would be left for the fanfic writers to explore.

Instead, it seems to me like she's doing this half-assed thing where she's trying to play the darker aspects up for cheap angst, but is completely unwilling to do any sort of deeper reflection that those aspects deserve, instead still clinging to that cute, fluffy packaging. You know what they say: "It's all fun and games until somebody gets hurt" - or in this case, until someone dies. Now that Minna has killed off a main character, I find it impossible to buy into any of the more lighthearted or joke-y aspects of the comic as a whole. It's like the entire rest of the cast (bar Onni and Sigrun, and not even they ever mention her name, or anything else about her as an individual - it's all about their grief) just magically forgot that Tuuri ever existed, starting a couple of pages after she died, and Minna expects us to forget she existed as well and just move on with the story already.

Just as it's hardly impossible to have an overall lighthearted story with some really dark undertones, it's also not impossible to have a dark angsty story with some genuinely good humor and fluffy moments - but only if the darker aspects are treated with the respect they deserve rather than constantly being swept under the rug. Now, every time a character falls down a hole or puts his foot in his mouth, and it's played up for laughs, I don't find it funny, I find it angering, because this is not going to make us forget that Tuuri died. It's like Emil's stunt with the flower, except on a fandom-wide scale: the writer keeps throwing pretty distractions at us in the hopes it'll take our attention away from a really big problem. Or at least, that's what it's starting to feel like to me.

[Hrollo]

I still think Minna sincerely believes she's writing a light-hearted story. It can actually be quite hard to assess how dark or light your own work is, especially when you're a rather recluse person with not much social interaction in their daily life.

I know this from direct experience. Some people reading the early drafts of my unpublished novel told me it was one of the darkest and bleakest thing they had ever read. This took me by surprise — I was certain what I had written was extremely tame and unremarkable.

[Windfighter]

It's like the entire rest of the cast (bar Onni and Sigrun, and not even they ever mention her name, or anything else about her as an individual - it's all about their grief) just magically forgot that Tuuri ever existed, starting a couple of pages after she died, and Minna expects us to forget she existed as well and just move on with the story already.

Not gonna disagree with your post or anything but this part honestly feels realistic to me? Thats how I was taught that you deal with people dying. Act like they never existed and get on with your life. And I dont even live in a warzone where I have to flee for my life!

Spoiler: some rambling • show

When grandfather died mother came in, told us the news and then added "now go to sleep, you have to go to school in two hours". Then we didnt talk about him until she said we were going to go see his body, but that was it. And then the same for the funeral - "You have tomorrow off, because we are going to the funeral." During the funeral of course people were kind of sad, but the moment it was over it was all fun and games again.
I dont really know how it was when father died, I was too young to remember, but we havent talked about him since then. Ive managed to puzzle some knowledge together only thanks to the occassional sentence mother lets slip when shes had too much to drink. Ive tried asking a couple times when I was younger, but it always caused awkward silences and a quick change in subject so Ive learned that the dead is not something you talk about.
Feelings overall is not something you talk about. They keep saying I can always come to them if it is something, but if I ever actually dare its awkward silence and quick change of subject. Honestly, this even applies to positive emotions.
...Yes, all of this has nothing to do with the world Minna has built up, Im just mentioning it to explain why the story still feels realistic to me.

All that said, it feels like shes moving towards them talking about stuff! First with the sgru and now with Lalli. Okay it hasnt been any "Tuuri was such a sweet, happy little fuzzy-ball" yet, but it has only been two/three days since her death and funeral. It took years before my family said anything like that about my grandfather when he died.

Edit: Also, is it just me or is Emil sitting very defensively in the latest page? Arms crossed over his chest, leaning slightly away from Lalli.
Emil dear, you come from a culture where that means "I dont like you", not from a culture where it means "I respect you"... Maybe he hasnt quite forgiven Lalli from calling his mind weak?

[thorny]

I do think Minna's having some trouble with the mix. The story from the beginning has had a truly horrific setting; and to a large extent the more details we've had the worse it gets. It's true that it would be entirely realistic to have at least some of the people living in this setting be lighthearted, especially by year 90 -- this is just what their world is like, and has been like for as long as anyone living can remember (well, barring centenarians, but I doubt they've got many of those.) And certainly the sort of people who'd be willing to go on a poorly funded, almost impromptu, expedition into the Silent World would be more likely to be the sort of people who'd take it as a Great Adventure to be tackled with enthusiasm (or else people who came out of desperation for lack of other choices, but none of our characters seem to have been that badly off where they were.)

But it's also true that they've put themselves in genuine grave danger; and that the world Minna's put them in truly is horrible. Maybe she just thought of it as a neat zombie story, without realizing that zombie stories, if not done as a joke, really are awful if one actually thinks about them? But it's not working out as a joke sort of story.

However: I didn't come into it expecting a joke sort of story; not after that scene with the ship of refugees. (Though I'm not sure that empathy was being shown as a negative in that story: bear in mind that the person who had to quit the job apparently got home to help start off multiple generations of successful family.)

But then, to go sailing off down another rabbit hole, I'm puzzled in general that this society has to some extent fixated on fictional zombies in the fashion that it has, not so much as a horror but as a fun thing to talk about. Are we trying to tell ourselves on some level that of course anybody can suddenly start destroying everything that they previously loved, themselves included -- and that this is somehow OK? Maybe we're afraid that we're already destroying everything that we love, including eventually ourselves (which may unfortunately turn out to be true) and we're trying to make a joke out of this, so we won't have to try to fix it?

To get back to the specific comic -- I'm going to have to agree with Windfighter, not that that's how my family grieves, but that that is how a lot of people grieve. There are entire societies where one doesn't say the name of a person who's died. That doesn't mean those people aren't grieved for!

ETA: forgot earlier that I also wanted to say: We're reading this story one page at a time. Four pages a week.

That's . . . kind of an odd way to get a story. It's not odd for comics, of course; or even new for comics; some 60 years ago I read long-running stories told in the Sunday newspaper comics, one page a week. But it does give a different kind of impact than reading, or hearing, the entire story arc all at once, or even in larger chunks as a chapter at a time or an evening's telling at a time. And IMO it makes it difficult to judge any given page; or even any given week or two.

[Sc0ut]

But then, to go sailing off down another rabbit hole, I'm puzzled in general that this society has to some extent fixated on fictional zombies in the fashion that it has, not so much as a horror but as a fun thing to talk about. Are we trying to tell ourselves on some level that of course anybody can suddenly start destroying everything that they previously loved, themselves included -- and that this is somehow OK? Maybe we're afraid that we're already destroying everything that we love, including eventually ourselves (which may unfortunately turn out to be true) and we're trying to make a joke out of this, so we won't have to try to fix it?

I don't think most people have such deep meaning in mind when they discuss zombies. My guess is zombies are so popular because they provide a morally uncomplicated target for fictional violence, what with them being already dead and usually not sentient. That allows for the easy glamorizing of violence that's so desirable in entertainment. So far so good, but it doesn't work for me at all: it's either too visually close to violence on real humans that appear sick and disabled (with realistic gore etc) and thus squicky, or very cartoony and removed from anything real and thus boring. So yeah, I don't really get the fascination.