#ellipuukangas

[ruth-westside]

You've got yourselves a petition, laddies.

I don't know if a petition will ultimately make any difference. However, it certainly wouldn't hurt to show SSE how much interest there is in the books and comics if they ever find themselves in a position where they can rehire some people.

My reach only goes just so far and I'm still not that great at places like instagram or twitter. So if people would like to spread the petition around, that would be lovely. 💕🙏

For those who might be lacking context for all this, I linked it before but I'll do it again. Post 1 | Post 2

And as a reminder for who made what: The books, of which Helena wrote many. And the site Elli stored all the SSO comics on.

[juliettefarbrooke-sso]

a piece i commissioned months ago from @ellipuukangas but never shared! juliette, daisy, and cato all taking a nature hike.

[knoockies]

commissioned this piece by the brilliant @ellipuukangas🫶

[ellipuukangas]

Piece for the lovely @pandoriasmostwanted ♥

Thank you so much! ^u^ If anybody else would like something similar, please do get in touch! You can either DM me here or pop me a message on Disc under the same nick (@ellipuukangas)

[foggy-milk]

Gunnar Thrymson - Galloper Thompson

Missing him

Dedicated to- @ellipuukangas 🫶 <3

[jorvikcity]

Girlfriend reunion 💞🏳️‍🌈 by @ellipuukangas !!!

[amelias-hart]

Had the fantastic opportunity to get another commission from @ellipuukangas a while back. This is Mätane, my plant lady in my home game. She's our party wizard, is bankrolling the party from her potion shop, and unnecessary proof that the only romance plots I will engage with are one's where the more POV character is one-sidedly flustered about how much they like the other person. Her hair flowers also grow to reflect her mood and she's gotten away with it with her crush cause he doesn't know flower symbolism. I love her.

[pixelhorses]

I would like to remember everyone, that during the pride comic (drawn by the lovely @ellipuukangas ) derek and Syntax clairly went on a date together and it is criminal how little content I see of them!

[regancastlelion]

along with rewriting soul rider lore, I've been considering kind of rewriting Jorvik lore. Like heavily base a lot of the rewrite on the comics from SSE's Instagram (shoutout to @ellipuukangas for the gorgeous comics) and if I get the books in the near future, any lore I find in those too.

But I'll be adding some more of my own stuff too, like what kinds of creatures live on Jorvik aside from the real world ones and the druids, witches, ancient warriors of destruction, etc.

SSO has so much potential with it, and as a writer myself, I think they could do with the help.

[inkowl13]

According to the spoilers, Fripp and Avalon are in the library of Fort Maria. I wonder what they are doing there? Are they looking at the portal? This is kind of the second time in the story where Fripp goes beyond not only the Secret Stone Circle, but beyond Valedale as well. Speaking of druids. We (apparently next year or in a year) are waiting for the renewal of the Hollow woods and Valedale. Do the developers plan to update the druid model or at least the textures? Speaking of Avalon. I understand that, probably, the developers have a concept that Avalon, due to his faith and character, does not want to be different from the rest of the druids (outwardly). But in terms of design? Don't know. After all, we, unlike our character, know what he looks like thanks to the comics by @ellipuukangas. It is not necessary to change Avalon's cloak (or whatever this clothing is called), just remodel the figure, make a face, distinctive details (a bag with books and herbs, for example, or a belt with flasks with potions, or a distinctive ornament on clothes). In the end, you can give the druids masks, just Avalon during the quest and cut-scenes can remove it.

[inkowl13]

Oh, that explains a lot. Just in recent days, I wondered why they chose one of the most complex, specific, non-universal and, most likely, not something that would be cheap to transport a product out of the whole variety of goods. Candles are quite heavy and fragile if they are in glass or even plastic. There are many things that are much easier and cheaper to produce (with the exception of paying the artist or designer) like stickers, posters, enameled pins, t-shirts. At the same time, they cancel a bunch of their projects (I was told today that the Mistfall series was canceled), they fired the wonderful Helena Dahlgren and @ellipuukangas​. Apparently everything is so bad there, if they decided to go on the topic of AI.

sso's candle, and jumping into the ai bubble for publicity and investment

so yasmin told me to write about this bc not everyone might realise it. its a bit of a long topic so prepare. for legal reasons this is all my personal opinion :3

first off - the sso candle doesnt actually have anything to do with ai. i just wanna get that out of the way. i will come back to this later.

the sso candle ai promotional event is 2 things to me. one is, "probably someone at the company knew someone at the other company bc why else would this specific random collab ever happen" (and theyre not even a candle company? its a perfume company?)

but the other thing which is the main thing, is that we've entered the ai boom, or ai economic bubble. before this there was a crypto bubble, there's sort of been a mobile bubble, and we have the old classic dotcom bubble. summary of tech bubble is, a new shiny thing in tech makes ppl go OOOH!! I WILL THROW MY INVESTMENT MONEY AT THAT!! I BETTER HURRY AND NOT MISS THE TRAIN!! IM GOING TO GET FILTHY RICH BY INVESTING IN THE FUTURE!!! and many of these ppl dont actually understand the tech, and can therefore be exploited by startups or new projects targetting these investors, by just saying "we use the shiny thing that is the future and will make people rich".

just like the dotcom and crypto bubbles, everything that has "ai" in it is currently getting lots of attention both from media and from investors. things that are about "ai" are currently like "wow! youre using modern tech and this is the future!" and for all those ppl who dont know that much about ai or tech, or tech ppl who are easily influenced, it makes companies look cool and modern and forward if they include that current shiny thing.

what does sse achieve by making promotional vids and posts about an ai candle? attention from media and potential investors. the playerbase doesnt care. their target audience arent ppl who generally care much about ai, or even support its usage in creative fields.

they also count on that the playerbase wont be mad enough about it bc most players dont rly care or understand. which is prob going to be an accurate prediction. so they dont especially lose on it unless theres a genuine uproar, but even then, theres a lot of space in "genuine uproar" that still results in "no such thing as bad publicity".

so, thats my perspective on why sse did the ai candle thing. publicity for investors and the industry and media. it helps both sse and the little weird "ai" (side eyes) scent company who both get ai bubble points here. its completely unrelated to what players want or care about (and as many have said, players actually do want to buy things from sse - like plushies and other merch).

now to the last point. the candle isn't even ai, and it's really just an ai boom trending word thing for attention.

some ppl on ssoblr dont really understand what ai is or how it works, or how its already been in use for a long time. im not really gonna explain all of that but i do ask you to like... watch a video or read a wikipedia article or something and please educate yourself on what ai is and isnt. anyway,

supposedly this company feeds pictures into whatever ai model theyre supposedly using. the ai supposedly spits out things like "sunshine :) dirt :) chupacabra :)" from the customers phone pics and then actual perfumers mix blends based on what the ai supposedly told them from the pics.

idk if ur catching on here but, there are trained perfumers here who have seen the customers' pics with their own human eyes. they humanly blend scents based on the content of pics theyve humanly seen. (unless all perfumers at the company are also blind and the ai is their only way to find out whats in the pics, and if so, power to them, ofc.) and, at best, an ai has supposedly told them some generic image analysis terms, which are unlikely to be very helpful to the art of scent design.

there is absolutely nothing the supposed ai is actually doing here. theres no reason for it to be here. it contributes nothing to the process. exceeeeeppppttttt..... clicks!!!! articles. videos. wow! crazy ai scents! wow! ai horse candle!! thats crazy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so future!!!!!!!!!!

the scent company is a classic tech bubble startup (allegedly from my perspective in my opinion). they dont even use ai (allegedly from my perspective in my opinion). they want a quick buck for looking like a modern futuristic business to the FOMO investors who fall for this every single time theres new shiny tech (allegedly from my perspective in my opinion). and sse collabs with them for pretty much the same reason (allegedly from my perspective in my opinion).

[ruth-westside]

SSO's Books + Comics petition - A small update

People will probably get a bit annoyed at me for doing this but I'm at a loss for what else to do and it would feel weirder if I did nothing.

Sagefeather, a player on SSO Amino contacted me a little while back with a desire to help try and get SSE to rehire Helena, Elli, and Christine. They also suggested reminding SSE themselves via customer support or as comments on their social medias the first Monday of each month.

Sounds good to me. Spaced out but persistent. And the petition is still pinned on my blog if people want to sign it.

For as much uproar as there was at the news that Elli and Helena got laid off, there doesn't seem to have been much effort put into trying to convince SSE to bring them back.

Maybe people think that SSE shouldn't bring them back, or the trio should turn the opportunity down because of the manner in which SSE laid them off in the first place. I wouldn't blame people if that's the conclusion they've come to, given the information we have.

But Helena and Elli themselves have expressed sadness and disappointment at the situation in an "I was looking forward to creating more content with the characters" sense for the most part.

Do I think the trio should take up the offer if SSE ever presented it to them? I don't know, but it's also not my choice to make. I just want to encourage the possibility of a choice.

Between asking SSE for more books and comics versus complaining about barn-scented candles, the former sounds like more worthy cause to put effort into so I'm going with that.

[juliettefarbrooke-sso]

i commissioned a character sheet of juliette and cato from the amazingly talented @ellipuukangas i highly recommend commissioning her if you ever get the opportunity!

[ellipuukangas]

WEBCOMIC PEOPLE

Do you have a comic you make you'd like to share with me?

I'm working on fixing the remaining code for Tistow's website and I want to go back to the ye-olde way of linking and sharing people's comics with small button graphics on the sidebars.

So if you have one, or know anyone who would like their comic shared on our website, please let me know! You can either reach out to me here or on discord (ellipuukangas).

I'm really out of the loop with what sized buttons people use nowadays, but I'm hoping folk can point me in the right directions.

The internet seems to be going the way of the dodo at the moment and I'd like to do whatever little bit I can to help share folk's art through my silly little rat comic.

[writingonjorvik]

Again, let me know if y'all find more!

Elli's Socials

Tumblr: @ellipuukangas

Instagram (main): https://www.instagram.com/ellipuukangas/

Instagram (Tistow): https://www.instagram.com/tistowcomic/

Instagram (Honey & Tammie's): https://www.instagram.com/hanijatami/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElliPuukangas

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/alwaysrats

Kofi: https://ko-fi.com/tistow

Tistow: https://tistow.uk/

Linktree (for anything I might have missed): https://tistow.uk/links

Helena's Socials

Instagram (English): https://www.instagram.com/helenadahlgrenofficial/

Instagram (Swedish): https://www.instagram.com/helena_dahlgren/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4261882.Helena_Dahlgren

Website: https://helenadahlgren.com/

Christine's Socials

I'm still trying to find hers, will keep y'all posted.

In light of everything going on with Elli and Helena and Christine and the whole publishing department, I wanted to make a post as a published author about how to best support creators, particularly authors, in the digital age. I'm going to say upfront that there will not be links in this initial post, but I'll reblog it with links. I just don't want this post to get suppressed. It's amazing as an author to see all of the love and support going to Elli and Helena right now, because that is so incredibly rare to see for creators and it makes a huge difference. I genuinely think that based on how quickly SSE has responded indicates that they're listening, so keep up the pressure. So lets talk about a few things to help even more.

First and foremost, follow authors' socials! This is the most obvious, but more followers means a bigger reach and on some platforms is required to have access to certain features (like Instagram used to require a certain follower count for links in stories). And engage with their content when they post it! Shares and reblogs have the biggest weight with content interaction, so it is massively important, not just liking posts.

Second, stay up to date on their other projects so in the event of things like what's happened with SSE, the creators are still getting support. Are y'all following Tistow? You should! It's really good. What about Helena's original horror stories? I'm not fluent enough to read Swedish books yet, but I've heard only good things. Creators are rarely just a singular franchise or IP, so if you want to support them, make sure you're checking out their other works.

Third, and this is chiefly for authors, leave reviews!!!!!!!! This is incredibly important. Did you know that Amazon won't recommend a book until it has at least 50 reviews? Not even confirmed buyer reviews, just 50 reviews. Reviews are MASSIVE (and that's not an under-emphasis) for the visibility of creators. Even if it's copy-pasted on multiple platforms, go leave reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, B&N, and whatever retailers you're picking books up from. It makes a serious impact.

Now, I'm not saying that if all of y'all left reviews on mass for the SSO books and comics (where you can) and following these creators on all their socials would fix everything about the situation. To say the least, even if SSE does reestablish their publishing department, this mess happened in the first place. So please expand your support for these creators beyond just their SSO based platforms so that regardless of the outcome, they get back on their feet.

Again, I'll be reblogging this with links and socials, so let me know if you find any I've missed and I'll add them. But genuinely, seeing this for other creators is so inspiring. At least for me, and I can't speak for Elli or Helena or Christine, but this is what so many creators hope for, a community that cares so much about them and their work that they'll speak up about it and loudly. Imposter syndrome has been such a common trait with so many creators I follow or have met, and the visible, tangible proof that people care about you cuts incredibly deeply in such a positive and healing way. It's not just a silly little horse game's books and comics. It matters. And even if it's not for me, thank you for being good to creators because they deeply, deeply deserve all your love and support.

[carina-go-lightlee]

I’m so pleased that I could get a commission of Carina (the strong, silent type, probably thinking about trees) from the amazing @ellipuukangas!

Elli’s commissions are open and she’s raising money with them for her foal’s surgery. Go commission her!!!