Webcomic / A Redtail's Dream

Hannu and Ville

"The northern lights pretty much take care of themselves, Puppy will be perfectly fine. And I'm sure he appreciates being given such an important task, so he'll be careful. He couldn't possibly cause any disturbances."

— Fox Spirit Prologue, Page 5

A Redtail's Dream is a webcomic by Minna Sundberg. It is a tale steeped in Finnish lore, revolving around the tribulations of a human boy named Hannu and his dog, Ville, as they embark on a reluctant journey through the realm of dreams to correct a cosmic mishap on the part of the young spirit, Puppy Fox.

Left with the task of managing the northern lights while his relatives have a private meeting, Puppy Fox finds himself in a world of trouble when he accidentally transports a mortal village into the spirit world. Before he can send the village back, the human souls are caught by the spirits of the Bird Path and snatched away to the realms of sleep. Desperate to fix the situation before his family finds out about it and grounds him, Puppy enlists the aid of a pair of mortals who happened not to be in the village at the time of the accident, and were therefore missed by the birds. The story follows the two, Hannu and Ville, as they try to retrieve all of the villagers before Puppy's desperation peaks and he sends all of them to the afterlife to hide the evidence of his blunder.

The 556-page comic ran for two years, updating every day except Sundays from September 2011 through October 2013.

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This Webcomic provides examples of:

• All There in the Manual: The reader never really gets a backstory for Hannu and Ville, which is a shame because there is one established by the author and it provides some interesting insight into Hannu's character. Apparently his parents were overbearing and spoiled Hannu, and it is indicated that this is why he's such a lazy jerk nowadays. This information is mentioned in only two places; on the character page and in the buyable mini-comic about how Hannu and Ville first met.
• Amplified Animal Aptitude: Justified with the animal spirits, since they are not mortal. Played straight with Ville, who is a normal mortal dog and really shouldn't have any reason for being as intelligent as he is.
• Animalistic Abomination: Sweet lord. Ville and Hanny meet up with various beasts from Finnish mythology, all of which are horrific.
  • The Elk of Hiisi appears to be made of rotten wood, with vegetation growing out of its empty eye sockets and what appears to be either moss or skin draped across its back. More importantly, it can't be killed by conventional means due to it not a living being.
  • The swan of Tuonela is ''far'' worse. Its outer appearance as a giant swan does nothing to hide the fact that it is a terrifying Psychopomp. Its true form is a massive, abominable bleeding swan.
• Arc Symbol: The "Hannunvaakuna" or "Seal of Hannu" appears somewhere on Hannu's clothes in every dream world from Chapter Two and onwards. It is briefly referenced in Chapter 4 as bringing good luck and warding off evil spirits, but past that seems to only be decorative. In Chapter 7, the Hannuvaakuna amulet that Hannu was wearing finally serves a practical purpose- it shields him from the attack of the Swann of Tuonela, preventing it from giving him worse then a bruise and a few scratches.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Swan of Tuonela pulls this. She was already way bigger than a mortal swan, but at Hannu and Ville's refusal to leave the realm of death that is her domain she transforms into an even bigger rotting monster swan and attacks them.
• Bad Boss: One of the ravens is apparently in charge and bosses the others around. He also openly admits that he'd have no qualms killing any among the flock if they disobey his orders, or just annoy him enough.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Puppy Fox, though he's more affably nice than sincerely pleasant. Not only can he kill everyone in his dream world on a whim, and has already tried, but when Hannu and Ville commented that he didn't look very impressive for a spirit, he turned into a giant, flaming monster, asking which form they prefer. Obviously, they went with the former.
  • Ville may usually be the sweetest dog ever, but don't even think about harming Hannu when he's around.
• Big Brother Bully: Paju is this to her little brother Tuomi. In the prologue she breaks his guitar when he refuses to stop playing it noisily or move from near her table at the party they were preparing for.
• Big Eater: Ville is more or less constantly hungry.
• Bizarre Taste in Food: Hannu does not like normal bread. He prefers it burnt.
• Bolt of Divine Retribution: Oddly enough, the vipers in the second dream world want to be hit by one so they can ascend to heaven.

• Bratty Half-Pint: Tuomi, thanks in part to his and his sister's competing bossy natures, the young hare spirit, and Puppy Fox.
• Breather Episode: Chapter Six is much shorter and lighter compared to Chapters Three, Four, and Five.
• Call-Back: Snake makes one to Bear's remark about Puppy being asked to water a garden and setting it on fire instead.
• Carnivore Confusion:
  • Ville asks for a steak while he is in moose form, and is disgusted when Hannu tells him that moose only eat vegetation.
• Cassandra Truth: Any time Hannu tries to explain to the villagers that they are trapped in a dream world because of a spirit fox screwing things up, the only people to believe him are the ones who already had things explained to them by one of the animal spirits. At one point he is even accused of being on drugs and in one chapter even the spirit didn't believe him.
• Crocodile Tears: Ville indulges in this occasionally to manipulate Hannu into doing what he wants.
• Doting Parent: Hannu's parents are apparently this.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Hannu gets whacked in the back of the head in pretty much every dream world he visits, and often complains about headaches. Turns out he's suffered a skull fracture in the real world and will die as soon as Puppy Fox lifts the time lock.
  • Midway through the story, Ville wonders what his future forms will be. He feels that his forms have gotten more powerful every time, which leads Hannu to suggest his final form will be a human, since he sees them as the most powerful creatures of all. In the final chapter, Ville does indeed become human.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: The only instance where Puppy Fox seems to feel even remotely guilty is when his mother discovers what he's done and cries that she's a failure for not having taught him properly.
• Foul Waterfowl: The Swan of Tuonela isn't exactly friendly, to say the least. She's hellbent on ensuring anyone who winds up in her domain stays there, as the dead are supposed to, regardless of the fact that several of the people stuck there aren?t even deceased. Of course, she's not actually evil, more incredibly stressed-out and having no time or patience for those who interfere with her incredibly important work.
• God's Hands Are Tied: Puppy is not allowed to interfere personally on the Bird Path, so he enlists Hannu and Ville to do it for him.
• God Is Flawed: For all of their age, power, and wisdom, the spirit animals pretty much have all the flaws and quirks that an average mortal would.
• The Gods Must Be Lazy:
  • Initially Puppy Fox doesn't want to retrieve the villagers from the dream realm himself because he isn't allowed to interfere there and he'd get in trouble if he got caught. However this excuse evaporates after it becomes clear that the deities of the Bird Path are well aware of what he is up to. If they already know he's there, it begs the question of why he can't just settle the issue quickly himself rather than waiting for Hannu and Ville to work things out.
  • There is also the fact that pretty much every spirit in the story is apparently powerless to interfere in Puppy's dream world, but Moose is the only one to give a clear reason why. If they are so powerless, how did they get into those dreams in the first place?
• Green-Eyed Monster: Ville is apparently jealous of another dog in the village, Astrid. Being older then him, and a hunting dog rather then a house pet, she has a lot of respect among the dogs of the village that Ville desperately wants.
• Head-in-the-Sand Management: Tuomi, the leader of the village teenagers from Chapter 6, blithely refuses to believe that puppy fox could kill the villagers at any time. So he refuses to let himself and his friends go home because he likes the spirit world better.
• Homage: The appearance of Tuonela is heavily influenced by the Kalevala illustrations of Akseli Gallen-Kallela, especially the painting "Lemminkäisen Äiti"◊
• Humanity Ensues: Ville. It ends up being permanent.
• Involuntary Shapeshifter: Ville changes into a different animal every time the and Hannu are warped to a different part of Puppy's dream world.
• Jerkass:
  • Puppy Fox is so selfish and troublemaking that even his own mother says he has no potential to amount to anything.
  • Hannu is lazy, abrasive, and self-centered to the point where he needs to be repeatedly brow-beaten by Ville and the gods not to let his family and the townspeople die. Ville seems to be the only creature in the world besides himself he gives a damn about, and even then, his affection comes and goes.
• Jerkass Gods: Puppy Fox, the Young Hare, and the Swan of Tuonela. All of them directly threaten the lives of Hannu, Ville, and a good many of the villagers. Puppy and the Swan because the villagers being there is an inconvenient bother, and the Hare because he wants to hang out in the dream with Tuomi and escape his parents.
  • In the Young Hare's case this is ultimately subverted; he honestly hadn't believed the humans in the dream were really in any danger, and as soon as he learned Puppy Fox really would kill people to cover his mistakes the next thing he did was run and let the other foxes know what Puppy was up to so they could stop him, even though at that point the only one still in danger was Hannu whom he hated.
• Kids Are Cruel: Oona, the little sister of Joona and Jonna, makes a habit of tormenting Ville for her own amusement. Unfortunately, her siblings dismiss the behavior as her not knowing any better and defend her when Hannu becomes angry.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Puppy Fox shrugs all the responsibility for his mistakes off on Hannu and Ville, then tries to take even more extreme measures and kill them all outright, just so his parents won't give him hell for what he did. His selfishness so infuriates everyone around him that the entire godly pantheon bands together to give him his comeuppance, his family casts him out of the sky and laughs as Hannu and Ville shoot him dead, and when he's reincarnated, he's forced to handle all the gods' chores himself.
• Mirror Character: Hannu and Puppy Fox are explicitly shown to have similar personalities during Moose's explanation of how the gods view people; they're both selfish, immature, and would do anything to get out of their responsibilities. The one key difference is that Hannu makes an exception for Ville, whereas Puppy Fox doesn't give a rip about anything but himself.
• Morality Pet: It would be easy to assume that Hannu is a sociopath if it wasn't for his obvious affection towards Ville.
• Moral Myopia: Puppy tries to shove the villagers into the afterlife to hide the evidence of his screw-up.
  There are enough humans in the village, no one will notice if the rest are missing. And if they do notice, I'll just deny, deny, deny!
• Morphic Resonance: In almost all of his forms Ville maintains certain aspects of his normal canine appearance. Generally this is limited to his red-orange fur color and curly tail. Particularly egregious cases are his snake form, where he still has four legs and pointy ears, his seal form, where he also still has pointy ears as well as a dense coat of fur. Ville's swan form in particular is such a hashed up mess that Hannu can't even tell what he is supposed to be.
• My Instincts Are Showing: An odd case; Ville isn't humanized except in gaining the ability to talk, however he does change shape a lot. However no matter what animal he becomes, he still thinks and acts like a dog. He howls when upset, begs constantly, and licks a rather dismayed Hannu in the face.
• Nature Spirit: Plenty of those, including the Fox family, Mr. Bear, Mr. Moose, Ms. Seal, Kokko and Swan of Tuonela among others.
• Noble Bird of Prey: Kokko, the massive eagle who is just as noble as she is powerful.
• No Social Skills: You can tell Hannu is an anti-social dick when his dog is lecturing him about being nicer to people.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: The Swan of Tuonela has to process, file, and catalog every single soul that passes on to the next world, which has given her a ton of stress and very little sympathy. She attempts to kill Hannu and Ville on the spot rather than let them save the villagers, just because it would mean less paperwork.
• Once an Episode: In every chapter Hannu and Ville go to a different dream dimension, talk to the village leader and spirit animal in residence, do a video-gamey subquest, and then the leader puts their talisman on and everyone in the dimension is saved. Rinse and repeat. Gets to the point where when Tuomi refuses to go home in chapter six that Ville immediately says "Right, we have to fix something for you first!" It gets to the point that when Kielo actually agrees to go home with absolutely no fuss in chapter 7, Hannu has a brief moment of stunned silence before grappling her into a hug, crying Tears of Joy as he declares that she is his favorite person in the world and that he'll do anything she ever asks of him for the rest of his life.
• Psychopomp: The birds of the Bird Path in general, and the Swan of Tuonela in particular.
• Race Against the Clock: A ticking clock variable is added in chapter four, where it is established that if Puppy Fox grows too impatient he might destroy the dream realm he created and send all of the human souls still inside to the afterlife to hide his mistake from his parents. In fact he almost does just that at the start of the chapter, and only the interference of the giant eagle Kokko stops him.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Every one of the dream worlds has one important figure from the village that has been informed of the situation by the spirit animals, and realizes that they are in a dream. These are the folks that Hannu is supposed to find.
• Refusal of the Call: When Puppy Fox initially approaches Hannu and Ville, they refuse to believe him and decide that they are just dreaming and will wake up soon. However when they discover that they can't leave the village and will be trapped there alone for eternity, they agree to go along with the fox's plan.
• Running Gag: Hannu slamming his head on things. Becomes Serious Business later in the story.
• Sleepyhead: Hannu's nap efforts are eternally thwarted, but that doesn't stop him from trying anyway.
• Shock and Awe: Snake seems to have power over lightening, and uses it to teleport to the door of the fox meeting.
• Shown Their Work: After Hannu falls through the ice, he shows symptoms of major hypothermia. And since he can't recover well in the dream world it got worse when the next dream landed them out in a frozen snowfield.
• Spoiled Brat: What Hannu is, according to the supplementary material.
• Talking Animal: All of the spirits are this, and the mortal dog Ville gains the ability to speak (and some extra intelligence) when he gets pulled into the auroras by Puppy Fox.
• Tempting Fate: Despite the bear spirit's concerns, the adult foxes brush off the notion of Puppy causing any serious harm while he works with the Auroras.
• 10-Minute Retirement: When Ville finds himself in terrible pain after having foolishly eaten a flock of dead spirit ravens, on top of both he and Hannu being completely lost, he declares that he is giving up their quest. Hannu, who has been ready to give up for a while, goes along with this without argument. A few minutes later one of the logger's hunting dogs finds and saves them, and the journey resumes.
• Trapped in Another World: Hannu's entire village.
• True Companions: Hannu and Ville may bicker a lot, but it is clear that they truly care about each other and would sacrifice anything to keep each other safe.
• Weirdness Censor: Because of dream logic, none of the humans notice the inconsistencies around them. Even when Hannu directly reminds Joona and Jonna that Ville is supposed to be a dog and is now a moose, they dismiss it.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • Ville calls Hannu out for being a dick fairly often, but the most notable case is the argument they have about Hannu killing small animals with a crossbow when he was a child.
  • Oddly, it is then subverted when Hannu lets slip that he also shot a human child in the leg with the bow. Ville asks if it was an accident and Hannu refuses to give a direct answer. Then Ville shrugs it off and apologizes for starting the argument in the first place.
  • Minna later edited that conversation to reveal that it was Riikka that he shot, and it's heavily implied that it was no accident.
• Would Hurt a Child: Hannu actually holds Tuomi underwater to half-drown him in chapter six to get the young boy to agree to go home.
• You Have to Believe Me!: Hannu's explanations of what is going on tend to be abbreviated, skip important details, and just generally sound unbelievable. Ville's are worse.
• Zerg Rush: Discussed by the spirit ravens. One orders the others to all attack at once, since their prey (Hannu and Ville) won't be able to kill all of them. Another remarks that he really doesn't want to be among those that will die.

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