Latest Page Discussions/Comic Update Chitchat

[thorny]

Grandma, you're making another mistake --


This one, I hope, will be more repairable.


-- at least, it looks like they're getting a chance to talk. And I love that first panel.

[wavewright62]

But - Onni had two jobs.  *ahem* Lalli.
Or maybe keeping them both safe was the one job, but it was not a complete fail in either case.
So, who wants to place bets on Reynir finding his spine again and telling her off?  Just me?

[thorny]

Maybe Tuuri's about to do it.

[Vulpes]

This page is more like it. This is what I've been missing through all the bear business. Nice balance of drama and humour, and it's beautiful.

[catbirds]

The last two pages were the first ones that made me think about the characters in a while. It's been months since the dialogue made my heart twinge a little, though it's probably unfair to expect it to happen all the time because a lot had to happen to get here! But it's been a long time since we've had a particularly emotion-driven scene.

Still kinda sad that we're inching closer and closer to the ending, but hopefully the pages towards the end will be more of things like this.

Spoiler: more thoughts on the pacing • show

Sometimes I think that SSSS suffers a little from too much travelling, in that there's a bit too much of physically going towards one place. Especially in a world where you're constantly on the run from terrible beasts that wish to kill you. And it's possible to make those journeys interesting if, say, they were doing anything aside from trekking and being on the run, but they rarely interact with the environment in a non-combative (?) way.

Say, if they were to stop and appreciate the trees or pick berries for a while and talk to each other about their favourite food or something, it might've been a bit less of a blur of hiking and running. Adventure 1 had a few more of those and that was what I liked about it. These are just my thoughts though, I've never written a complete story before which is unfortunate, and I know a lot of readers just like the slow worldbuilding, the trolls, and the info pages.

[Maple]

With SSSS coming to an end soon, I'm still a bit sad. I know it's for the best- if Minna's heart isn't into it, then she shouldn't do it- but I feel like this is something that was planned to be much longer. If nothing else, I would love to see the notes Minna has on where she planned to go next (Since we had a Denmark and Finland adventure, it feels natural to have adventures for the other three countries as well).

Ah well. I have plans for fanfic, and I know I'll look forward to what others make too.

[Jitter]

I am sad

[JoB]

According to what Minna wrote, the next chapter will start sometime in the first week of November - I suppose there's no point, then, to have a chapter break filler following YoinkTober ... ?

[wavewright62]

I'd agree, JoB, on the timing.

Whenever someone leaves the fandom, we wish them well despite our sadness at our loss. As the creator Minna's a more crucial cog, but we just have to wish her well with moving her life forward to where *she* needs it to go.  (And hope that that direction is not damaging to others despite our fears.)

We have rich headcanons about what happened before, and what happens next. I think it's best to pursue those ourselves.  After all, pushing Minna to explain what her assumptions were surrounding what happened before ...didn't work out very well for any of us, did it? 

We as a fandom have collective knowledge in a huge range of fields, and that was something that made it very fun for us to hang around and learn from one another.  Minna didn't have that, she was just in it to draw her OCs having a cool adventure, and that took all of her time and then some.  I wish that she could have learnt alongside us and incorporated those learnings, but it didn't work out that way.

[Róisín]

Wavewright, I think you are right there. Let us carry on our own traditions, both of creativity and of kindness. Suits me. Minna is her own person, and as with any young person faring forth into the world and making choices and decisions, all we can do is wish her luck and the best possible outcome.

[Jitter]

I asked about the chapter break thing when I got the chapter timing from Minna, but no one really signed up to it, precisely because of YoinkTober I assume.

Mirasol suggested we continue the YoinkTober event with encouraging anyone who feels like it to provide something on the theme of Transformation and Change during the days between and of October and start of chapter.

I think that is a very good idea and the prompt extremely fitting (just as it is for the entire YoinkTober). Maybe I’ll make an event invitation to this effect?

And you guys are absolutely right. We have been preparing for this, we have restructured the entire forum and started some new things. I feel like we will survive this. Nevertheless it does hit me in the feels, when I actually see it spelled out.

[Róisín]

Sounds like a great idea! And I do hope that we will survive.

[Jitter]

Hot off the stream: the next chapter will be the last one. It will be followed by an epilogue that is going to be maybe around 20 pages long. Minna hasn’t decided yet whether there will be a break between the last chapter and the epilogue, or not.

I also asked about a Q/A session, Minna said she’ll be happy to do that in a stream but is not going to arrange a written session e.g. in Disqus. She also predicted most of her answers are going to be in the lines of “I don’t know I hadn’t really thought about it”.

We also talked a little about the plans she may have had for the upcoming adventures. She explained her process a bit. She had a bunch of loose ideas for how the story might continue, but she hadn’t written anything yet. If she had intended to do another adventure, she would have been writing it towards the end of this one.

For example, I asked whether it would have happened in Sweden, and she described that she had several ideas set in Sweden, Norway or both. But hadn’t settled on any one of these as the next one.

I feel better knowing that there isn’t an unrealized plan for the continuation of the story. Firstly, it would feel like such a waste! And secondly it leaves more room for the fanworks

[lwise]

Will you post a report on the Q&A stream?  I always seem to mess up the timing and miss the streams.

[Jitter]

I will, although it's a while before it happens. There is a few-month's-worth of story left, apparently. The epilogue will be a bit over a month long, and there is an entire chapter before that of course.

The streams can be watched in recording for a week or two afterwards too.