Now, I haven't read this one recently, but hopefully you'll allow me the brazen chutzpah to share some thoughts and pics, right here. (I mean, it was already on my list, and I just figured-- let's get to it, matey)
Anyway, for me, Gemma Bovery was hugely significant to me around 2yrs ago, when it re-lit my fire to learn français, once and for all. Since then, by hook or by crook, I've genuinely worked much harder both via the DuoLingo app, as well as across my attempts to read French BD in general, getting me to about the mid-A2 level now in French, perhaps? (oof, it's a process, anyway)
Okay, what I find immediately, *highly* unique here is the way in which this BD combines both text and illustrative passages. I mean... sure, you can see this across many (or most?) children's books, but these days? It's more like... 'coucou, not how we do things in comics et BD!' XD
And of course, as English-speakers, we get these little bits of easy French words and phrases to discover across these comics. Not sure about you, matey, but it just really WORKS over here, I think, perhaps, maybe.
Without diving too absurdly deeply, there's a love-triangle working here, or quadrangle, or maybe just a bunch of unfortunates converging upon devastating topic of choice? :S
But the main thing, really? It's all about Joubert's (the baker) fascination with Gemma suffering across a bad marriage, her terrible taste in men, and just rotten, lousy work, at the end of days.
Now me-- I'm used to judging these works (heaven help my idiot opinion), upon a gathering of things, let's say, but this is one of those that, to me, examines some rather deep workings of a woman's soul, as seen from an immediate distance.
Unfortunately, that's not what I'm talking about, either.
What I'm talking about is something like a sufficient, critical mass needed to help .ee (and any other place) survive in the long run. Two years ago I thought there was a real opportunity and possibility based on what the Reddit execs were publicly doing... how many users it both pissed off and motivated. That in turn brought about a burst of user energy, directly reflected by the significant migration to FV, which of course included participation, and at best, valuable content-creation, curation, useful posts & comments, and responsible moderation. That was a significant, known movement, and IMO a positive one, even if it wasn't going to last indefinitely.
As a personal example of a 'motivated user,' I saw the need for a certain community which was nowhere-else present across the FV, and decided to create it. Over the past two years I've populated it with 400+ posts, most of them in the form of mini-articles. Other people also chipped in here and there, and there have been healthy comments and subscribers to sort of flesh the whole thing out over time.
For the most part it's been a fun (if sometimes extremely frustrating) little hobby, but it's still basically a one-man show, despite almost 2yrs and 1,210 subscribed accts. Point is-- at the end of the day it's been a small project that I thought worth maintaining as both a thank you to .ee and a tribute to the FV as a whole. Lemm.ee didn't necessarily need that kind of contribution from more than a handful of users, but as said above, it needed a certain critical mass to make it work across the server as a whole, and a minimum of posters contributing vile content or simply being disruptive assholes.
At one time I thought community spirit (for what that's worth) would kind of tilt things in a long-term sustainable direction. But it seems I was mistaken, and thus we have the announcement today. IMO I'm not pointing fingers; I'm observing.