Humans are ending up nastily again. Oh that humanity.

Otter Soldiers is a comic that was never supposed to be born. But accidents do happen, and once the situation had advanced enough, abortion was out of the question.
That's how it goes sometimes.
Otter Soldiers is also a comic I drew more to practice drawing comics than to create some unquestionable work of art, and the motivation behind putting it online was, and still is, the thought that you people would help me with this practicing by commenting what you see. In other words, all kinds of feedback is more than welcome, even now that new pages have become extinct.

If you haven't read any of the comic in question yet, I'd recommend you not to explore this section any further. It was made to be more of a "If you don't understand/remember something, check here" thing, not so much a foreword thing you'd want to read as your first introduction to this site. Spoil not yourself as you would not have others spoil you either, said Jesus and dropped dead.
Now you drop somewhere else, too, for now, if you haven't been there already.

The known ledges, now revealed with your safety in mind
Finland Stuff
Cultural and geographical confusement minimized
Inner Logic Stuff
Confusement beyond culture and geography somewhat lessened
Just Stuff
In case you're still confused, you big confused thing of confusement
Names
Translation and pronounciation
FAQ
Frozen Artificial Quackers, duh
Copyright
The boring legal stuff

Finland stuff
As this comic is primarily targeted at a Finnish audience, there are some things I'll not bother to explain in the comic itself just because finns know them already.
But as often as I notice such things, I'll do my best to shed some light into them here.

Elves
I wasn't sure if I should use the word "elf" in the English version, because that'll probably make everybody think of Lord of the Rings, Legolas and the like. But that's the only word I've ever heard to be used of Santa's lil' helpers. Finnish "elves" would actually resemble more garden gnomes or Disney's Snow White's dwarves (which Tassukorva mentions on page 61), but I haven't heard of "gnomes" being associated with Santa, so elves it is. And as Tassu says, elves come in many forms these days.
Before christianity reached Scandinavia, there were all kinds of little gnomes and spirits and pagan gods running about in forests and barns and whatnot, and the gnomes (or elves, since they are the same word in Finnish) were often kind of guardian spirits for farmhouses, bringing them good luck and stuff. But only if treated well.
I'm quite sure this folklore had its part in making Santa what he is considered today, along with the myth of St Nicholas, children's poetry by - among others - Duncan Emrich and Dr. Clement Clark Moore, and of course the Coca-Cola advertisements.

Korvatunturi
No, it's not something I made up for this story.
Korvatunturi is the name of a fell (look that word up, if you don't know what it means) in Finland's Lapland, and the place finnish parents mention to their children when they ask where Santa Claus lives in. It's a very convenient place for that indeed, because it's located on a border zone between Russia and Finland, and no one is allowed to visit it, not without a very very special reason. So you'd never know what exactly you'd find if you went and took a look.
The name means "ear fell", and it's because the shape of the fell resembles ears, apparently. It is said, that through these ears Santa can hear all children and tell whether they're naughty or nice.
Well, could. He's dead, remember?

Crows
The crows in Finland are Corvus corone (hooded carrion crow), not Corvus brachyrhynchos. Hence the grey body with black head, wings and tail instead of an all-black bird.
Just thought I'd mention this, too.

Winter
First snow falls somewhere around late October - mid November in southern Finland, and it's November at the beginning of the comic. Also, sun sets at about four o' clock pm then, so this is why Rei and Orvi are in such a hurry to get home before dark.
During the christmas week there's only a couple of hours of dayligh at the arctic circle.

Placenames
Finland is (officially, but not in practice) bilingual, and some places have both a Finnish and a Swedish name. This is mostly in the coast area, where the percentage of Swedish-speakers is the biggest and where most of the big cities were founded during the period of Finland being a province of Sweden. Some placenames have been very forcedly translated and make you wonder if a translation would have been needed at all. In the cases mentioned in the comic (page 25) the Swedish name is actually the original one, but it's been done the other way around, too.

Inner logic stuff
Things I definitely made up.

The horse spirits' wings
The leaf-like wings of horse spirits are a visual manifestation of their spirit abilities being in use, and the closest to their "true" form we'll see in the comic. As spirits they are more energy than material beings, after all.
When spread, the wings will allowe the horse spirits and their mortal companions to visually and audially hide from creatures of their choice. Usually other humans are able to see and hear them, but that is merely a matter of how low a profile their current activity requires. The wings will also hide footprints that the creatures they hide make within their radius, which is quite large, but once out of reach of the wings' influence, the footprints and other marks become visible.
A horse spirit is always able to pass through material objects such as doors and walls and even living beings, so they don't have to worry about accidentally walking into someone when they're invisible, but mortals who use the wings' protection must be careful of this. The wings' protection also only applies to living beings, and sounds made by creaking doors and the like can not be muted by them even if the sound comes from them opening the door, nor can they make it invisible that the door is being opened. An exception to this are human clothes, because they are a part of the human (their fur), just like to an animal a gun is a part of human (their claws). The horse spirits don't actually even wear clothes, that's the way they have decided to look like.
Elves and crows can sense the wings to some extent although they can't see or hear them and the wings are not the only things to cause sudden local energy peaks. They will feel the presence of something and not be quite sure what, but if this happens very often and is in correlation with other occurrences that refer to horse spirits being near they are sure to pick a trail of some sort.
Tassukorva has the same abilities as the horse spirits' wings, and she is invisible by default.
Pages that include explanationary bits of wing and horse spirit visibility related chatter are 14, 35, 63-64, 76, 82-83, 87-91, 152-154 and 233-234.

Leafspeak
Leafspeak is the horse spirits' telepathy-esque ability that allows them to speak among themselves without anybody else hearing them. It also blocks the people they're normally allowing to see and hear them, or they can decide to include mortals to the conversation if they wish. It's called leafspeak because in that state it's the leaves, their wings, that speak, while their material forms remain in the background.
A leafspeak conversation can quickly cause the horse spirits and humans involved in it to exclude all surrounding occurrences from their perception, in which case they for a while exist in a reality of their own, or rather move to the level of reality spirits normally operate on. In this state their material forms begin to fade from vision as well as the world around them, until they decide to return to normal communication. Any humans involved in leafspeak conversations are visible as a whole the entire time, as their material form is their true and only form, while the horse spirits' is merely a facade.
In the comic leafspeak is featured with a curly swirly font for the horse spirits, and a slightly simpler version of it for humans, who can only take part in, not start leafspeak conversations.
Pages that include leafspeak are 33, 66, 91-94, 152, 164-165, 195 and 234-238.

Spy Transmitters
Since a while after Santa Claus' death every human child born in an elven-occupied country has been installed with a device referred to in the comic as spy transmitter during their stay at the maternity ward. Those who had already been born at the time Santa Claus perished got theirs installed in different, varying conditions, with varying degrees of success, but nearly everyone has one. Most of those who don't are old people, as they'll die soon anyway.
The spy transmitter (as it's unofficially named on page 34, and renamed "kepsura" on page 237, both by Orvi) both sends and receives signals, and monitors and manipulates its host, keeping in uninterrupted contact with Korvatunturi. It observes the human's level of niceness and notifies the elves of too frequent and severe naughty deeds, which helps them pick the individuals they are better off without and need to eliminate. It also works as a reality-twister like the horse spirits' wings, except it only affects its host's own perception of reality including memories, and works without the host's consent or knowledge. Its most common use besides of the monitoring of nice/naughty balance is blinding the humans from things they aren't supposed to see and erasing memories of eliminated people ever having existed.
The device the elves use for controlling the spy transmitters is called a computermorganism. The horse spirits can intercept some of the signals between those if they want, and they don't need any extra equipment for that.
A large amount of blue disables the spy transmitter, although never completely, and the transmitter can also be removed -it is located in the head. Complete removal can be a bad idea, though, as Reiska points out on page 99.
Spy transmitter-related gibberish on pages 23, 31-32, 34, 37-41, 63, 75-76, 86, 99, 111, 130, 187, 199 and 236-238.
An example of consequences of disturbances in a spy transmitter's memory erase (besides of Orvi's case of deliberate disturbance with her blue room) on pages 46-48.
Naughty and nice are explained on page 60 by Tassukorva.

Raisins
Raisins are ambulatory and bloodthirsty. They operate with a hive-type collective mind and while limited in individual activity, can together be quite creative in ways to cause harm to other organisms. Apart from the things that require swarming, and attempting to get chocked on when eaten, they can also slowly cause damage a little at a time, if they are continously eaten for a long time, even in small portions.
For example, getting used to the taste of raisin can be dangerous, for it then becomes standard and ordinary and is no longer paid attention to. Also, bits of raisin will gather in your system and pile up with time, and after gaining enough mass the raisin stuff can cause serious malfunctioning especially in the brain, and the smell of raisin will lure other raisins to you.
The raisins' abilities and methods are discussed or exhibited on pages 6-7, 13, 30, 34, 51, 60, 64-65, 71, 87-92, 107-109 and somewhat 129.

Wispyre waders
"Spirit world public transport", as expressed by Orvi. The wispyre waders are living machines, and understanding that is irrelevant. Unbeknownst to most mortals, they perambulate all over the world, following their own paths, and if you happen to find or arrange yourself to be on said path, you may get to ride in them - as long as you know to look for a wispyre wader, one is always found. How much doodad is found in the cabin varies with different individuals, but generally, the younger the wader the simpler the interior decorations (on the outside the waders' age is only visible in its size, which may actually vary back and forth very quickly depending on the situation, but definitely within limits). Standard equipment includes a soft base well suited for sitting and sleeping on, walls that are transparent from the inside looking out, adjustable lighting and a seasickness prevention system (in other words, you can't feel the wader's seesawing gait while inside it).
Wispyre waders are capricious travelling things, and you can never really know after how long and through where you'll reach your destination, and if you're not sure of where you're going, you may not even reach it at all. Despite all this, they are rather popular among their users, as they really don't have much alternatives: wispyre waders don't take you somewhere but to somekind. Just like a person can seem completely different depending on who's perceiving, so can places, and wispyre waders are a way of travelling into a place's some aspect others might not have come to think of, or which may be completely unreachable by ordinary means of travel (temporarily or permanently). Especially Korvatunturi, which is deliberately protected against people accidentally wandering into the real thing, requires either a wader or other special skills (that some creaures, such as horse spirits, possess naturally) to find in its actual state: if you have it, you end up at the elves' worldtakeovering fortress, if you don't, you end up at a regular mountain.
This ability affects the passengers the whole time they spend in the wader, and all effects aren't even known or been able (or bothered, since they don't seem to be harmful) to explain. The landscape seen from inside a wader can filter into something very different from what it would look like when seen from outside one, and those who travel overnight tend to have dreams that make sense in strange ways, to mention a few.
The wispyre waders existed and were in business already before the horse spirits and elves started bickering, and they're not on anybody's side.
You can see wispyre waders on pages 144-151, 153-156, 162-166 (and very tinily on page 168) and 188-190 (a baby) and also 257-265 (an adult). They are discussed on pages 145-146, 148, 233, 257-258 and 260. A sample of a dream had inside a wader can be found on pages 156-161 and 171-172 and it's discussed on pages 169-172 and 238-241 (and, as can be concluded from the dialogue on page 241, also pages 213-214).

Päänsäkissas
Nothing too extensive is known of these rather rare animals, but they live in a commensalistic symbiosis with humans and some other creatures of adequate intelligence. More specifically, on top of their human's head, which is why it's easy to mistake one for a hat. A päänsäkissa feeds on thoughts that have wandered off their "train", and therefore does not survive long periods of time without a head to lounge on, although it can move on its own, too (by flying). This doesn't affect the human much at all, as the thought has already left their head by the time it's eaten, but some who have lived in this kind of relationship claim their thoughts have been often clearer when they've worn the headcat on their heads. Researches have not been able to prove this, and it might be some sort of a placebo effect.
One notable side effect of living with a päänsäkissa has to do with the way they are passed from human to human. That can only happen out of the human's voluntary decision, as a gift (otherwise the headcat is quick to return to its previous haver, there are no records, however, of what would happen if the person who has it died), and as this happens the headcat forms a connection between its giver and receiver, making it possible for them to locate each other at any time one of them wears the cat. This was discovered in the year longago by James Prettygoodman, as he realized the extra heartbeat he could hear inside his head belonged to his at that moment very longed for wife, who had given him his päänsäkissa. The heartbeat got more and more audible as he approached his wife's workplace, where he planned to go spontaneously drop by to cheer her up, disappeared as he forgot the whole thing when distracted by a free ice cream cone, and became audible again whenever he thought about his wife if she wasn't with him at that moment.
The päänsäkissas assumedly have numerous unofficial names, as people who have a headcat rarely know anybody else who has one, and they also tend to not make a big deal out of having one. The word "päänsäkissa" used to describe them in this article is from a guest comic by Jason Meador, see the picture section (and see the name explanation part of this page for other information).
It is not known how long a päänsäkissa lives and how they reproduce, if they do. Or what kind of droppings they make out of trainless thoughts.
In any case, one of those things lolls on Orvi's head almost all the time after page 51.

Tassukorva's "kind"
The kind are an unspecified amount larger than three, and they are all perfectly completely exactly alike. They have no names except the ones given by the creatures they hang out with.
That's all.

Just stuff

Nosebleeds
First, just forget about everything anime and superhero comics have taught you about the subject. Epistaxis, as fancypants call it, usually happens as a result of a cold or some other such sickness you catch easily when you're already in crappy health, being punched in the face or having once been punched in the face and the then ruptured nasal blood vessels being easily ruptured later too, low breathing-air humidity especially in the winter, or picking that said nose.
Or cancer. And some other pleasant and ordinary things.

Names

First, some general info on pronouncing Finnish words and names:

-Stress is always on the first syllable.
- The R is pronounced as a rolled R, like in, for example, Spanish and Italian.
- The Y is a vowel. It sounds a bit like U or YU, only the sound is made more at the front part of your mouth rather than in the middle, and lips are slightly more open. Kind of like "eww". If you know German (or Estonian for that matter), they spell it as ü.
- Ä and Ö are not A and O with umlauts. Ä is pronounced as the A in "cat" (as opposed to how the A is pronounced in "car"), and Ö is close to the sound you hear in the word "bird" instead of the vowel I that apparently isn't pronounced, or the "err" sound someone makes when they're thinking hard.
- If you know Japanese, sometimes it helps to think of the word as romanjized Japanese.

Then the names (in order of "appearance", creatures and place names last):
Reiska Tellervo Lilavati - Aune-Tuulevi Ryöppä - Outi Vilina Jänis - Mursantero - Kommakko - Merisarpio - Veera and Severi - Juksa Mainio Jean-Yves Hakulinen - Tassukorva - Marko Pytteli - Teemu-Sisko Näätäsorva - Sointu Myötäjättiläinen - Juuti Vanamo-Päivikki Öltårsäk - Susikki Lilavati - Anulouna Hillevi Pälkähä - Hupa - Erkki Horsmikko Pulliainen - Tonttu - Lintupölliäinen - Torvinen - Furktus and Römökaattus -Tiuku - Tuovi Iines Ritva Lilavati - Aulis Lasse Jänis - The Bigpigs - Other horse spirits - Hermanni Paskimo - Wispyre wader - Uvula - Päänsäkissa - Kyrönkärjenniemi - Korvatunturi - Snöreby - Kynkkävaara - Helsinki, Tampere or any other real finnish city

Reiska Tellervo Lilavati - Reiska is a Finnish name, but more of a nickname and more often associated with men than women. Tellervo is a normal female name, slightly old-fashioned but not weird. Lilavati is a coinsidence I came accross in math class: if you consider it a Finnish word, then it means purple vase, but apparently the same word in Sanskrit means "free will of god" and is the name of a book on mathematics.
Some of the comic's plot is also directly based on an online conversation I had during a game, and in which I told my opponent elves had killed my little sister using raisins and made me their guinea pig and that they are shamelessly spying on people even now and crows are trying to take over the world. My handle was Rei in that game (and it's not taken from Neon Genesis Evangelion, Beyblade, Sailor Moon, or any other anime for that matter, thank you very goddamn much for asking).
Ray-skah Tell-eh-rvo Lee-lava-tee, the ee's being quite short.

Aune-Tuulevi Ryöppä - Well, all are real Finnish names, albeit a bit old-fashioned ones.
Ah-oo-neh Too-leh-vee Ryu-erp-pa

Outi Vilina Jänis - Jänis means hare, Outi is just a regular name. Although it is, undeniably, the most beautiful Finnish name I know. And for some reason Outi has always sounded dark-haired to me, there was a girl called Outi in my class in junior high who had blonde hair, and I just couldn't get it to my head that was really her name, she didn't look at all like an Outi. Vilina, Orvi's middle name, is the middle name of my little sister. She doesn't like it much herself and I used to pick on her about it a lot when we were kids, but I've since begun to like it.
Oh-oo-tee Vee-lee-nah Yanis

Mursantero - Murs is short, or pseudoadjective, of mursu, which means walrus.
Antero is a name. As for the name's history, the names of all of the three horse spirit brothers are my old game handles.
Moo-rsan-teh-raw or something.

Kommakko - Old Finnish for hut, but nobody would know that anymore these days. To most people it's just a word similar to "sammakko", which means frog.
Kom-muck-caw

Merisarpio - meri is sea, sarpio waterplantain.
Merry-sar-pee-o

Veera and Severi - Both are random Finnish names, Veera female and Severi male.
Vae-rah and Seh-veh-ree

Juksa Mainio Jean-Yves Hakulinen - Juksa's first and last name are something I tend to use as an alias when I have to put my name somewhere but it doesn't really matter to anyone what name I put. The character is, after all, an old alter ego of mine that I've used in so many places that about half of my friends call me "Hakulinen" even though they know my real name, too. Mainio and Jean-Yves are also things I call myself when it doesn't matter, and they're very cool names, in my opinion. Juksa is not a real name, but it could be a Finnish name or nickname, Mainio is so splendid exactly because it is a real name and it actually means "splendid", Jean-Yves is a French name (and I ran into it watching a French TV-show), but I pronounce it in the Finnish way: if it's pronounced correctly, it's no fun at all. Hakulinen is a real Finnish surname, not really sure if it means anything in particular.
You-ksah Muh-ee-nee-aw Yeh-un-Yu-vehs Ha-cool-ee-nen

Tassukorva - paw ear.
Tas-soo-kor-vah

Marko Pytteli - Marko is a very, very common male name in Finland, Pytteli is a funny word that might as well be someone's surname. A google search returns some Swedish pages and a few Finnish ones that mention it as a cow's name.
Mark-aw  Pyut-teh-lee

Teemu-Sisko Näätäsorva - Teemu is a regular Finnish male name, however, Sisko ("sister") is a Finnish female name. Although Finnish does have a few unisex names, this kind of combination would be impossible, and is intended as a comedy relief and an excuse to not decide the character's gender. Näätäsorva means weaselrudd.
Teh-moo Sis-caw Nah-ta-sore-va

Sointu Myötäjättiläinen - Sointu is a name, and can mean either tone of sound, harmony, or chord, it's also the Finnish name of the My Little Pony Medley. Myötäjättiläinen is Finnish for front giant. It's a gymnastics term.
Saw-in-too Myu-er-ta-yat-tee-la-ee-nen

Juuti Vanamo-Päivikki Öltårsäk - Juuti is a slightly unusual Finnish name, and I assume it's a Finnish version of Judith. Vanamo ("twinflower") and Päivikki ("päivä = "day", see Susikki for the -ikki suffix) are also real names. Oluttörsäke (olut = beer) is the word for a person unattractively drunk on a public place, Öltårsäk (öl = beer) is the same in Swedish. Saw it in a magazine and forgot which.
The letter Å is just a Swedish equvailent for the regular O, although it may look strange.
You-tee Vah-nah-maw-Pae-veek-kee Earl-tawr-sack

Susikki Lilavati - Some Finnish female names have obviously been made by just adding -kki at the end of an already complete name, like Annikki or Marikki (and although it's a bit old-fashioned suffix, I imagine it's rather similar to how some English names have that -y or -ie at the end of a prefectly complete name, other such suffixes are -li (Anneli), -le (Hannele) and -kka (Sinikka), to mention a few). Susi, contrary to my previous belief, seems to actually be a real Finnish female name, although it's been given to only nine women between the years 1900-2000 and two before that as far as the Population Register Centre is aware of. Why I thought that a name as pretty and obviously similar to Suzy and the like wouldn't be a name is because it's the Finnish word for "wolf". Apparently it is, albeit rare. Susikki is not, though, that I made up.
Soo-sick-kee Lee-lahva-tee, the vowels are all short.

Anulouna Hillevi Pälkähä - Anu is, I think, one of the names that are variations of Anna, Louna is also a name, although a rare one (but I know of one person called that). Louna or Lounas means SouthWest in Finnish - yes, they have names of their own and not just combinations of the main cardinal points. I think it's much more fun that way, although more difficult for kids to learn. Hillevi... well there's nothing to explain about it, it's an old-fashioned but valid name. Pälkähä is a less used synonym for pula, trouble. I've never heard it being used in its basic form.
Un-oo-low-nah Hill-eh-vee and I guess Pälkähä is pronounced the same in Finnish and English (ignore the umlauty dots, and remember that stress is still on first syllable). Also, Hillevi is basically just Hillary with a v.

Hupa - When I was around 9 or 10 or something like that, me and my three siblings and two friends wrote and performed a play called Think about it, Eliisa. The story was pretty much that Eliisa is told by her mother that she once lost a terribly valuable coat on a field somewhere and goes looking for it, comes accross a fairy who tells her which field to look from, finds the coat and returns home. Yay.
My character was a rather obscure fellow called Hupa, whom Eliisa finds leaning on the fence at the coat-including field and who warns her not to go there because there's an angry bull in there. My only lines (which I wrote myself, omenusdays and all) were exactly the same as the contents of Hupa's first two speech bubbles in this comic's Finnish version, and my stage costume was grey overalls with horse ears, mane and tail which my mum had sewn for me for a costume party at someone's birthday. Admittedly, in the play Hupa was a human and there actually was a bull at the field, but I suppose I could say I created this chatacter as early as at elementary school age.
Therefore I also have actually no idea how I came up with his name or trademark greeting.
As for pronounciation, well, how wrong can you go with this one?
Hoo-pah with short vowels.

Erkki Horsmikko Pulliainen - Erkki is a very normal name, I think it's somewhat a Finnish version of Erik or Eric. Pulliainen is also a real name, and I'm not sure if it means anything in particular, but I've seen "tavallinen (ordinary) pulliainen" being used as an "average joe" expression. Horsmikko, however, is of my own invention. Or, it is a real word, it means a bush of fireweed, but a name it's not. Mikko, on the other hand, is a real Finnish name, and I find it amusing the word consists of what's obviously a name and what looks like an abbreviated "horse". So the word is like "horse Mikko" if you forget its meaning!
Airk-kee Horse-mick-caw Pull-ee-eye-nen

Tonttu - It just means elf in Finnish. Erkki never bothered to give Tonttu a proper name.
Tawnt-too, and the vowels are once again short.

Lintupölliäinen - Lintu is bird in Finnish, pölliäinen I'm not sure of. Pörriäinen is sometimes said of bee-like insects, the buzzing ones, and that's the closest "real" word I can think of. Also, pöllö is owl in Finnish, and pöllytä (puff) with its variations is a verb associated with feathers. Something between all of those, I think.
Lin-too-pearl-lee-eye-nen

Torvinen - The name of the head of gift wrappery in Santa's Korvatunturi in Erkki's flashbacksy eveningatafireplace story. The little elf isn't really of much importance, but its name is a joke the Finnish readers will get. There's a Finnish christmas song called "Tonttu Torvinen", "Torvinen the Elf", and Torvinen is a real Finnish surname (torvi = general word for horn/bugle/trumpet, this name was probably chosen by the songmaker because of its nicely rhyming resemblance to "tonttu"). The song mentions Torvinen is "Santa's most important employee".
Tawr-vee-nen

Furktus and Römökaattus  - Neither means anything in any language I know.
Foor-ktoos and Romo-cut-toos (with the oo vowels being short and the u in Römökaattus long)

Tiuku - Jingle bell.
Tee-oo-coo

Tuovi Iines Ritva Lilavati - Rei and Susikki's mother's name which is mentioned only once. All are real Finnish names (except for the surname Lilavati, but that could be too). Iines Ankka is the Finnish name of Daisy Duck, but that's just trivia, it doesn't mean anything considering this character.
Too-aw-vee Ee-nehs Reet-vah Lee-lava-tee

Aulis Lasse Jänis - And this is the name of Orvi's father, also mentioned only once. Again, all are real names (and male names, although "Lasse" might look feminine to English-speakers). I got his forenames from the spelling book I had in first grade of school. There was a story in it, and two of my favourite characters were called Aulis-jänis (Aulis the hare) and Lasse Laivakoira (Lasse the shipdog). I figured it'd be a fun in-joke to name Orvi's father Aulis Jänis, seeing as I'd already decided their surname would be "hare". "Aulis" means "generous", but that has nothing to do with anything.
Ah-oo-lees Lus-seh Yanis

The BigPigs - The twelve elf leaders, known in the comic as Tossuli, Teuvo, Touho, Tilaihme, Tähtisilmä, Tampio, Tupsu, Tättärää, Translatiivi, Taiteilia, Tuuvinki and Aprikoosi.
Tossuli - Tossu = slipper, the -li suffix is to make the word name-like or "cute". This could very well be the name of a Santa's elf in some Finnish children's story.
Toss-oo-lee
Teuvo - A Finnish male name.
Teh-oo-voh
Touho - "Touhottaja" means a fussy, busy person, mostly the "ineffective though fussy and busy" kind. I'm sure there are other fictional characters by that name too, but most mentionably it's the Finnish name of Donald Duck's cousin Fethry Duck.
Taw-oo-haw
Tilaihme - "Space wonder", space as in room. A common term used of more-spacious-than-they-look cars.
Tee-lah-eeh-meh
Tähtisilmä - Star eyes, surprisingly.
Tah-tee-seel-mah, the a's are pronounced like in "cat", not like in "car".
Tampio - One of the many words for "stupid".
Tahm-pee-aw
Tupsu - Tassel.
Toop-soo
Tättärää - A "ta-dah!" kind of exclamation, often used sarcastically. Presumably refers to the sound of a trumpet.
Tat-tah-rah, the a's are "cat" again, and the last vowel is long.
Translatiivi - The grammatical case Translative.
Translat-eevee
Taiteilia - "Taiteilija" with the j means "artist". Leaving out the j is a common misspelling of words with a -ja (-er in English) suffix. "Taiteilia" is also a fine song by PMMP.
Tie-teh-ee-lee-ah
Tuuvinki - A dialect word for potato casserole, which is part of a traditional christmas dinner in Finland.
Too-veen-kee
Aprikoosi - Apricot.
Up-ree-kaw-see

The horse spirits besides Hupa and Merpio on pages 226-227 are called Kuiri, Karkele, Riemupöre, Maaniskukkeli, Skythe, Tiverje, Nurja, Mesiunski and Keräpiekka (see the picture section for who's who).
Kuiri - Old Finnish for spoon.
Koo-ee-ree
Karkele - Something the churchy people once upon a time suggested to be used as a substitute for the popular swearword "perkele" (an old finnish pagan god associated with Satan since the arrival of christianity). It doesn't mean anything as far as I know.
Car-keh-leh
Riemupöre - "Riemu" means joy/delight, "pöre" doesn't mean anything. "Pore" would be bubbles and "pörinä" buzzing.
Ree-eh-moo-per-reh
Maaniskukkeli - "Maaninen"/"maanis-" means manic, "kukkeli" doesn't have a dictionary definition, but it's sometimes used to make nicknameish variations of nouns when you want to sound funny, like when you're talking to a kid for example. I recall that one of my childhood friends' dad called candy "namiskukkeli" (nami = yummy).
Muh-nees-cook-kelly (first wovel is long and the second short)
Skythe - Skythe is an old character of mine from an old comic that has since gotten a complete revamp and will be eventually published with Skythe in it but with a completely different design and name. Also, "skythe" (which doesn't mean anything in Finnish) has become something of a common noun for me and means any real person or fictional character whose personality and behaviour have a lot in common with the character who was once him and is now somebody different-looking with a different name (and that's all I'll say about him for now, you'll get to meet him sooner or later). As a private joke for myself and my partner in the crime of scripting that other comic, Skythe's wings are birch leaves. Back when Skythe was in the comic, he killed in it a character called Birch.
S-cute-heh (Not like "scythe", then)
Tiverje - Doesn't mean anything.
Tee-vehr-yeh
Nurja - Reverse side. I've mostly heard it used of clothes, but it can be more abstract, too.
Noor-yah
Mesiunski - "Mesi" is nectar, as in the stuff honey is before the bees turn it into honey. Unski is a very uncommon male name (but it's probably used as a nickname for other names, too).
Messy-oon-skee
Keräpiekka - "Kerä" is a ball of yarn, or the position a cat is in when it sleeps "curled up". A coil. "Piekka" comes from an observation I made while studying Russian. In the textbooks we had there was a story about a finn guy called Pekka (pronounced Pehk-kah) travelling in Russia, and for some reason on the tapes that we had for the textbooks he pronounced his name Pee-ehk-kah, like a Russian would (so the voice actor was probably a native Russian-speaker and not a finn). I thought it sounded funny.
Keh-rah-pee-ehk-kah (the a in "rah" is like in "cat", not like in "car")
The horse spirits on page 238 are called Mörköröykkiö and Valjustus (again, see the picture section for which one is which).
Mörköröykkiö - A bundle of boogeymen.
Mer-ker-rogue-kee-er or something... really, could I have picked a word with any more Ös? (Yes, I in fact could have)
Valjustus - "Valju" means bleak or pale, and if there was such a verb as "valjustaa", it would mean "to turn (something) bleak". "Valjustus", therefore, is "the act of turning something bleak". Also, Justus is a male name (from Latin "iustus", "just/fair").
Vahl-yous-toos
And on page 258 we incidentally meet a horse spirit called Voiksitsgytriö and hear about one whose name is Lumelemu.
Voiksitsgytriö - A random gibberish word mentioned incidentally in (at least, I haven't read it in other languages) the Finnish translation of Michael Ende's book Die unendliche Geschichte, better known in English as The Neverending Story. And I liked it (both the word and the book, actually). I pronounce it:
Voi-xis-gew-tree-err
Lumelemu - Stench delusion.
Loo-meh-leh-moo

Hermanni Paskimo - A musician we briefly encounter in chapter six. His first name is a quite normal male name, I like it mostly because it sounds a bit silly (in my opinion) and there used to be a children's TV show called Pelle Hermanni, Hermanni the Clown, which I watched but was too small to remember much about. The clown talked funny (for real, not just trying to). Paskimo is my cocktail of the words "paska" (shit) and "eskimo" I made up just to be random for the sake of being random and wrote down in a list of words to use in things.
Oh, and I have nothing against eskimos or whatever the current politically correct term for them is. Why would I have?
Hehr-mun-nee (no, not Hermione) Pas-kee-maw

Wispyre wader - The original Finnish word is tusvakahlaaja, and yes, I made it up. While wispyre is a combination of the words "wisp" and "pyre", tusva comes from gluing together the words "tuli" (fire) and "usva" (mist). Kahlaaja unsurprisingly means wader.
Tusvakahlaaja is pronounced Toos-vuh-ka-hla-ya
Wispyre just the way you think it is, it's an English translation, after all.

Uvula - Yeah, the thing in your mouth. The Finnish word is kitapurje, which means the same, but literally translated is "mouth sail".

Päänsäkissa - I didn't make it up, but I'll translate it. Pää = head, pään = head's, päänsä = his/her head's, kissa = cat. So, it's literally someone's head's cat.
I really liked the word, and I'd never bothered to give the cathat a name, so a happy coincidence ensued. As a Finnish word, it would be pronounced... well, just like it looks like it should be pronounced.

Kyrönkärjenniemi - my parody of long illogical Finnish placenames. Kyrö, to my knowlege, is river, kärki would mean the tip of something (kärjen is genetive, and so is kyrön), and niemi is cape (the geographical kind). River's tip's cape.
Kü-rn-ka-ryen-nee-eh-me (or Kyu-rn-ka-ryen-nee-eh-me)

Korvatunturi
Core-vuh-toon-too-ree

Snöreby - Remember how I said above that a lot of finnish places have both a Finnish and a Swedish name? Snöreby is the imaginary Swedish name of Nuoramoinen, the town I grew up in (it doesn't have a real one, being in the unilingual region, but my mother and I made one up because we're silly and she taught me Swedish at school at the time). Nuoramoinen, I suppose, would translate into "String-like" (due to a nearby lake called Nuoramoisjärvi - järvi being lake in Finnish - the shape of which is like a piece of string dropped on the ground), and "snöre" is Swedish for string while "by" means village. It's not a verbatim translation, but the affix -by is typical for Swedish placenames, so it's Snöreby instead of Snöresom, which would be "string-like" in Swedish.
Sner-eh-bü or Sner-eh-byu, and the R is audible, mind you.

Kynkkävaara - A fictional small town/village in Finland's Lapland just below the arctic circle. Käsikynkkä = arm in arm (käsi = arm), vaara = hill (Or alternatively, danger. But with place names we can assume it's the other meaning).
Kyunk-kah-vuh-rah or Künk-kah-vuh-rah

Some names of real finnish cities also make an appearance, so here's how you pronounce them.
Helsinki (yes, the capital) - Hell-sink-ee (remember, stress is still on first syllable, it's not HelSINki like you hear in the movies, or 'Elsinki, for that matter)
Tampere - Tump-eh-reh
And Hartola is hardly a city, but it's a real place and it's mentioned, so - Hahr-taw-lah

There's some.

Frequently Asked Questions

So what did you use to make this?
Everything. Pretty much, or at least everything I have.
Here's a fairly complete list for those interested (because I wish the people whose comics I like looking at would make long lists of the materials they use, too), and those uninterested can skip to the next question.

For paper I mostly used A4 printer paper (80g/m²), and switched to something more watercolourable when using watercolour (after I ditched it as the main shading technique, that is).
The watercolourable ones include a block of 160g/m² drawing paper (Daler-Rowney, it's A3, but I halved them so they'd fit in the scanner, and this by the way also tolerates markers to some degree), which I used on pages 49, 72, 100 (just the bottom half), 148 (fifth panel), 149, 194, 211 and 265 (last panel/background), and most of the colourbleedy pattern associated with Tassukorva; 300g/m² rough watercolour paper (Arches, 24x32cm), used on pages 81, 89, 175 (first and last panel), 190 (not the characters or the christmas lights, though), 201 and 229; 130g/m² paper intended for pastels and charcoal but which I find works charmingly with watercolour (Arches, A4), used on as many pages as 101-118, 176-179 (the blizzard), 215-216 and 230-232; some 250/m² patterned watercolour paper (it says "Classic" on the cover?), used on pages 16 (the patterned side, for the second, seventh and ninth panel), 191-193 and 213-214 (the unpatterned side) and 218 (the patterned side, for the background); and then there's still that 190g/m² A4 printer paper I used on the inkbrushed pages, those being 156-161, 171-172, 201 (the blot), 207 (first panel) and 224; and that one piece of paper I made myself at school from cotton sheets or something, and onto which I painted the Korvatunturi gift wrappery seen on page 174.
The background on page 242 is a dark coloured paper, and those travelling montage pictures really are drawn on a separate paper and torn into bits placed on top of the coloured paper for scanning.

As for inking, black felt-tipped writing pens were used just as mostly as that printer paper was for a base, sizes 0.1 and 0.8 (and 0.2 for lettering, the bold words are written with the 0.8 one) and makes Unipin Fine Line, Pilot Drawing Pen and Zebra Drafix depending on what was available. Then sometimes I employed that liquid ink (brush sizes 6 and 12), and I haven't really noticed enough differences in them for it to matter what black ink I'm using.
But not everything that's brushed comes from an ink bottle, as the markers I used for shading (Copic Ciao, and I'm sure there are cheaper alternatives, but I haven't bothered to explore them much) have a brush tip (and a regular broad tip at the other end, but I haven't had any use for that), so when I wasn't going to shade, I also used the black colour variation for drawing (for example, on pages 249-254 most of the imagery is markered black-onto-white and inversed on the computer, I also used the black marker for a lot of the sound effects, the middle panel of page 223 and the between-chapters pictures). On page 242 and after that I also used another brush-tipped pen (Faber-Castell Pitt artist pen, I guess that B is the size?) for the thicker outlines sometimes (well, pages 242, 246 (last panel), 254, 256 (fourth panel) and 260-265) when I also shaded the lineart, because Copic markers smudge with each other, but this Pitt one doesn't smudge with Copic markers.

Until page 22, the shading is mainly watercolour (those caked 6-colour things, I just used one of the two blues for this purpose, brushes are sizes 14, 12, 6 and 3) with the help of various felt-tips such as highlighters, and some pencil, and after that it's mainly those Copics with still some colour pencils on the side. My markers are of several colours, although I think 4-6 different shades of grey would probably have sufficed, because I like to literally mark with colours different areas that will be treated differently in the digital editing phase.
Occasionally the watercolours made a comeback, and were usually accompanied by white gouache. When dealing with markers I prefer to highlight with gel pens (Pentels are good) and/or white pencils.

Digital editing is done in PaintShopPro7 (because that's the image processing program I have and know how to use), and consists of, for example, whitening the speech bubbles' bases after the scanning, making those large, smooth grey areas with the selection tool (point to point, not freehand) and the Lightness/Contrast filter, and giving the horse spirits their wings (which are sometimes drawn with the vector tool, sometimes scanned from real leaves, the eyes on them are from photos, some are my own eyes).
Sometimes I also added digital elements I find less pleasant to make in PSP (like the closeupped maps on page 25, the board game path thing on page 242 and some of the speed lines on 245), so they're made in FreehandMX, which was specifically designed for fooling around with vectors.

Page 131 is a photograph. So are the photo on page 6 (actually, it's this photo), the cat picture posing as a desktop wallpaper on page 22, the background on page 183 (lichen on a rock) and the fake landscape on pages 197-200, 203 and 216-220.
The first panel of page 62 was made with a scrapeboard.

If you still want more details, ask me.

How long did you spend on a single page?
Not including the scripting and layouting step of the way, an average of 4 days, I think. I've done some of them in a day, and every once in a while when I've felt I'm in no hurry to get anything done, I've dwelled as long as a month on a page.

And the whole comic? I don't see that mentioned anywhere.
I'll mention it here. I drew the first page on November 13th 2003 and uploaded the first four pages on March 9th 2004. The last page was uploaded on March 28th 2008.

Um, what's going on?
Lots of stuff.
I'm not in the least bit amazed that you're confused at the beginning of the comic, you're supposed to be. If this is the case, just read ahead, and most likely what confused you will be explained.
But you've already read the whole thing and you still don't get it? Damn. I guess then I'll just have to admit that this is a comic that is a little confusing and hard to understand and which doesn't necessary unfold much on the first read, and that I don't blame you if you're not interested in readig it a second time. To some, SsOS has nothing to offer.
However, I will gladly listen to your questions and other expressions of confusement, and answer them the best I can. I do believe it's even good for me to find out what things scored the highest amount of people lost on them so I can make things less like that in my future comics.
There are sundry conceptions of whether questions can be stupid or not, but I for one am all for all you can offer. Ask away.

Well, actually I just meant that I can't make out what these critters are saying because they talk so strangely and your handwriting sucks.
Ooo, I see. Sorry about that.
When this happens, contact me and tell me the number of the page you find difficult to read. I do have an unusual way of using the English language, and the text indeed is, especially on the earlier pages, often too small. And since I'm definitely not doing all that just to pick on you, drawing my attention to fix-needing stuff and possible suggestions on how to fix them earns my gratitude.
Likewise, I'll appreciate hearing about and do my best to fix things like unclearly organized panels and speech bubbles (though most of the time I can't really do much about them).
I won't get depressed or angry about finding out about my failuers. After all, it's not like I'll learn anything from them if I don't even know I've failed at something.

Isn't Reiska you?
Nope. Juksa is.

You don't much like raisins, do you?
You don't say, Holmes.

I haven't eaten them either after I read your comic! I've looked at them with such suspicious thoughts and fearful loathing at the grocery store and the like, you've really had an effect on my diet!
Er, okay. That's just so off-topic it's not even on the map anymore.
I honestly didn't expect that my whimsy joke of making raisins into an incarnation of evil would result in so many of the comments I receive including some "you've opened my eyes" story about the person's outlook on dried fruit, but then again, maybe I should have, as the raisin thing is fairly easy to grasp and the rest of the comic is, as stated before, kind of not.
Well, of course you're saying that as a joke yourself, and of course I have pretty actively encouraged "all kinds of" feedback, but I think my reaction to this one's starting to lean towards "thanks, but I don't really give a shit".

Oh gosh you can draw so well! That's all I have to say, bye.
Actually, just repeat the last 31 words of the previous answer.
I know I can, and I know I can't as well as I'd like to. Sure it warms my cryopreserved heart to know I'm appreciated, but my ass doesn't need any kissing, I can wipe it just fine myself.
Chewing out suits it better.

But I'm too scared to say anything else because you're so mean!
Yeah, apparently I am, and completely unwittingly. I'm really as kind as a fluffy little kitten purring in its sleep, but somehow I manage to sound scary to some people. Do you really think I would first beg on my proverbial knees for you to please please please tell me what's wrong with my comic and then laugh at what stupid things you said when you do say something? What's the worst thing that can happen? That I'll say "I'm not (or, my comic's not), you are"?
Of course I will tell you off, definitely, if your comment just consists of some "ohmygod you're the best thing ever and I'm not worthy of even standing in your shadow, please don't be angry with me for taking your time with my stupid words" type hypocritical groveling.
Don't apologize for your existence right in the first sentence, and you'll be fine.

Allright, let's be honest. All you really want is for us to tell you how awesomely great you are and patch up your ragged self-esteem, right? This "constructive feedback so I can learn from it"-plot is a pretty bad disguise.
If I haven't been able to make it clear enough already that this is utter heifermanure and quite frankly hints at the person making this interpretation having some sort of reading disability, then I don't think you'll ever figure it out no matter how hard I try to convince you. I don't care what you think. Apparently thinking's not one of your stong points anyway.

Ravens.
No, crows. They're two different species.

Why are you using Comic Sans in the elves' speech? I thought that font's evil.
Why am I using an evil font in the elves' speech you say? I wonder.

Will there ever be a printed version available?
Maybe, some day when I have nothing better to do with my life. Probably not.
I don't think the world really needs to have this comic in more than one form.

May I link this thing?
You may.

And be an intellectual forerunner, won't you, and save the banner you wish to use into your own webspace so I don't have to host a part of your links page.

To the address
http://iperyys.net/ssos
or
http://iperyys.net

Those roads lead to Rome.
But others do not.

On copyrights
The story, images and characters are mine, apart from a few exceptions, which are Erkki Pulliainen, Lintupölliäinen, Tonttu, Furktus and Römökaattus, who belong to my brother and are being used with his permission. So almost every inhabitant of Snöreby we meet.
Santa Claus and Korvatunturi are of course not copyrighted by anyone.
A number of creatures designed by other people, as well as some people as themselves, make appearances in the last chapter of the comic. They all get a mention for their cameo in the end credits.