Just finished reading Stand Still Stay Silent for the first time, so here's my assorted thoughts:
The art in the first adventure was absolutely gorgeous, it was incredible, everything was so detailed and vibrant and beautiful and haunting.
All the characters are really fun.
I wish the comic got into their characterization, backstories, motivations, etc more. I feel like all the characters were in a permanent state of potential without ever really progressing. I wish they had more character development because that would have been fascinating, but instead they don't really change that much.
The art definitely lost quality in the second arc, which I try not to judge because I know webcomic artists often have all sorts of other stuff in their lives like other projects or burnout, but it was still disappointing.
The monsters all look really cool and are incredibly well-designed horror-wise.
The look of the world is haunting and stunning and just generally really good. So much of the worldbuilding is conveyed through the backgrounds, which is another reason I was sad the art lost quality in arc 2.
I wish the characters had stronger relationships with each other. The cast is very small and typically that means they each have interesting dynamics, and they sort of do, but only a few characters felt like they actually got close to each other during arc 1, and then in arc 2 they sort of lost that. Emil and Lalli especially had a lot of character potential together, and I thought the chapters were they had to survive together while separated from the group would lead to a closer bond, but they interacted less and less as the comic went on.
The conclusion felt sort of weird. I understand wanting it to be left open-ended, but it just ended up feeling very unresolved.
It's really rare to see a story like this that draws on culture of the Nordic countries, so that's neat.
I like the way language is utilized, especially how Lalli only speaks Finnish. It makes him feel very separate from the rest of the group, since they literally and figuratively can't understand each other, which makes it more interesting when Emil starts learning to communicate. I also wish it got more into why Lalli is so distant.
They sort of moved on from Tuuli sort of quickly, it felt a little like the author got tired of her, I think she deserved more from the story.
Mikkel was stated to have been fired constantly from all his past jobs, but he always acts very calmly, he's relatively wise, and is the most reasonable person in the group, so those sort of clash.
The fight scene between the bears and the other monster at the end sort of went on too long.
I really liked the part with Emil and Lalli being separated from the group, I felt like it was an interesting situation with high stakes that felt desperate but was still good for characterization. The monsters were also neat.
The exposition was for the most part delivered very well, it trusted you to understand concepts based on how the comic presented them first, and then after a bit it showed the informational pages that gave actual names to things and clarified them, so it didn't feel like they were unnecessary but they also didn't feel forced.
The prologue did feel a bit too disconnected from the actual story. It probably would have been fine if it didn't give each minor character so many character traits, it felt like setting up recurring characters instead of extras and would have worked better if it was kept vague.
The outfit designs are all fantastic.
There were too many dangling plot-threads left at the end, there's a lot of stuff that felt unresolved and would have been nice to see explored.
TLDR: the art is gorgeous and incredible and I'm sad it dropped in quality, the worldbuilding is really really good, and the characters were fun and all had very strong bases but felt like they were stuck in place and never really had any development, which is also sad because they all could have been especially interesting.
