Whether it is a plot that went nowhere, a character that got derailed, an immature response to critique or a message that was conveyed in a horrendous way, Tatsuya Ishida has made a truckload of moments in his comic that he will probably never live down, enough that it's earned Sinfest its own page on here. Feminist or not, you're not going to have a fun time sitting through these events.
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Dethroning Moment of Suck. - No ALLCAPS except for acronyms, no bold, and no italics unless it's the title of a work. We are not yelling the DMoSes out loud.
- magnum12: The Devil Seymour mini arc. More specifically, the ending. The arc starts out funny with resident Scrappy Seymour being turned into a demon in a twist of irony, leading for the potential for the unpopular Knight Templar Holier Than Thou Jerkass to finally suffer a long overdue taste of his own medicine (especially for all the crap she puts a actively reforming Fushia through culminating with Bad Behavior) via a Humiliation Conga. What we get is him simply jumping into a lake and being purified, suffering little struggle and virtually no suffering on the way. Talk about karma dropping the ball here.
- TheAlbinoPrimid: If you take it as a commentary about the comic's fanbase, this strip
dethrones Sinfest hard. First, yes, it addresses the complaints people have had about the comic, which would make it good, right? Nope, it becomes a Take That, Audience! moment by creating a character made entirely of straw and portraying them as a complainer that threatens to walk out because of how preachy Monique (i.e. the comic) has become, but doesn't. This alone makes it clear that the creator cares crap all about the actual opinions of the fans, and instead makes them out to being a bunch of whiners, even though they are quite justified in addressing the comic's change of tone. The only redeeming feature is that the horrid Sisterhood does not make an appearance, even if the comic is ultimately a result of their actions.- Peteman: I agree with those who take this as the straw that broke the camel's back. More Take That, Audience! stuff. The problem is that a better metaphor for our reactions is that Monique is the Sisterhood Arc, and a different performer is everything else. We're booing Monique because she's hogging all the time from the other performer. The author seems to pretend to believe we hate this strip for being too preachy and that any criticism we have is based around our own sexism. He adamantly refuses to acknowledge the possibility that we're pissed that we're trading developed and interesting characters for preachy, flat, and static characters with no development for the last year. If it was any other message, we'd be just as pissed. I'm a Dominic Deegan snarker. I chew that comic out for its preachy anti-bigotry message and laud its over-the-top bigots. Does that mean I'm pro-bigotry? No, it means I'm anti-terrible storytelling, and if I that means coming down on the side of the Strawmen, then so be it.
- PistolsAtDawn I agree, this is it for me too. Mostly because he sees his fanbase complaining about his preachy comics but sticking around anyway, but in fact a lot of them, like me, didn't stick around. I read Sinfest for years before the Sisterhood showed up and ruined it. (Poor Monique: she used to be so cool.) Some of his more loyal fans may give him more chances to fix this and they are complaining because they still care enough to want it fixed. But most people who don't like a comic will just stop reading it. This isn't an effective way to show his views on feminism, because he is just alienating anyone who doesn't already agree with his message, and even a lot of people who do agree with his message because of the anvilicious way he's presenting it.
- Peteman: I agree with those who take this as the straw that broke the camel's back.
- Sorantheman: Since the entries above are talking about the Creator's Pet of this series, let's bring up this strip. See this? This is where I stopped viewing The Sisterhood as an extremist group of misandrist assholes who inside the black pits they call souls might have the tiniest shred of common decency inside, and instead began to view them for what they truly are: unrepentant terrorists that the creator apparently wants us to like and support! Let me explain why: the demons are making female robots to serve the needs of men, much like how some scientists in Real Life are trying to do right now even as we speak. Then the Sisterhood decides to upload information to the fembots about crimes that men has committed against women and turning them into man-hating Terminators. The robots go on a rampage, but are shut down before any major damage could be done. Almost all were destroyed except for one and she keeps the same information as the others, becoming a man-hating robot who has now become a threat to anybody with a penis, misogynist or not (though she became a bit better with time. The keyword being "a bit"). And THEN the creator gives us this crap about how emotionless, mindless machines that have no self-awareness apparently should be treated as humans! Now let's count every way this is utterly wretched:
- We're supposed to believe that The Sisterhood tried to give the fembots free will and the ability to stand up for themselves! Wrong! They were not given the ability to tell right from wrong outside of topics and issues that they were programmed with. They were not given the ability to make their own choice. They were never shown anything else but the worst things to happen to their "gender" and none of the good that men have done in history. This is not like EDI or T-800 who could make their own decisions, form their own codes of morality and learn about the world around them without the interference of their programmer! These are not machines that could ever have the slightest of chance to disagree, wonder or question their programming. The Sisterhood programmed them exclusively to be the unquestioning, obedient bane of men and to become fanatical drones! There is no other way to look at this. It's just as bad if someone in the Middle East would create robots who had no other knowledge of the world outside of the Iraq invasion, the treatment of Muslims in the US/Europe or the colonization of Arab countries and then send those killbots to go kill innocent Americans. And to add to this, they were not given the ability to handle their problem with any other way but violence! No kind of peaceful disobedience in the slightest! Just pure destructive rioting!
- Considering how fembots of today are being worked on in order to prevent and eliminate the need to cause crimes or degradation against actual human women, such as trafficking or rape, one could argue that the Sisterhood only caused damage that could have been prevented if these machines were completed.
- Why are we supposed to feel sorry for these gynoids again? They might look like humans. They might look like something that should be treated as an equal. At first sight, they seem like something that could have used a humane mind. But just because something looks like a human, doesn't instantly make it so. In the end they are just hollow shells, just like every other machine ever made, who only knows how to serve humans (or at least used to know before they now only know how to kill anybody with a scrotum). That's all they were made for! That is the purpose of any machine! They are basically computers in a humanoid package! They don't have feelings or emotions! They can only replicate and imitate it, but that doesn't make it human emotions! By the logic of this comic, we should treat anyone who has ever discarded a broken piece of technology or killed a character in a videogame as a cold-blooded murderer. You might as well feel sorry for your former laptop or smartphone while you're at it! Even the information that was given to them by the Sisterhood can't count as emotions since it is something they are forced to feel! They have no choice but to feel anything but rage and sorrow! And to add to more of this idiocy, we have not recived a single good reason as to why no other AI in the comic should be valued on the same humane level as the fembots. Even the freaking Illuminati Bots (you know, those things that The Sisterhood kills of on a daily basis?) have at times shown to possess more individuality, personality, emotions and free will than the fembots, and those things are directly remote-controlled by Satan, for Pete's sake!
- How hypocritical is it that this comic constantly whines about how people are being "brainwashed by the patriarchy" in order to hate and degrade women, yet it is perfectly fine for the Sisterhood to literally brainwash and forcefully reprogram these fembots to hate and degrade men?
- Can you imagine the destruction these things could have caused if they were let loose from the factory? What if they killed someone? What if they destroyed important parts of the city, thus crippling businesses and homes? But of course, according to the strange mindset of the creator, we're supposed to believe that it's a good thing if they go around and send men to the hospital/morgue. Ishida seems to completley ignore that there are many male feminists out there along with many women who have friends and loved ones who are men, so women would be harmed as well by the actions of these robots either way! Then again, this comic also believes that male feminists, or any man who believes in equal rights for women, are apparently just fakers and that any husband out there only want their children and wifes around as concubines and servants.
- Why the hell was production of these things scrapped completely because of their first rampage?! Just reprogram them again, make them physically weaker in case they get overridden again and put some extra security measures so that they don't get hacked so easily! Clearly it is much more efficient then just shutting the whole place down after you had them incapacitated! Don't just leave the whole factory laying around with heaps of gynoid scraps all over the place!
- Why is the outlet that is responsible for the official programming of the fembots outside the building, making it far more likely that someone might mess around with them? And who the hell places outlets responsible for electronic software on the outside of an unprotected wall anyway?! There doesn't seem to be any kind of fence whatsoever around the factory or any form of security at all, which is outright moronic since the Sisterhood is a well known enemy to these kinds of establishments!
- Why did all of them go on a rampage when only a few was given the information?! Did the The Sisterhood turn the fembots into a Hive Mind all of a sudden?! Well, that can't possibly be the case since we later see that they can only transfer information to each other by touch, and the first thing that the first hacked fembots did was to break the info-uploading component before attacking staff, so they couldn't have been able to touch all of them in that short amount of time!
- Some fans have tried to defend this moment by stating that the Sisterhood did not mean to harm anyone through this and that the robots violent rampage was simply an unforeseen downside of trying to show the fembots that not every man is perfect in an attempt to make them more human. To repeat the previous statement above, there is no point of turning fembots or any robot at all into humans when their sole purpose is to serve humans blindly like every other piece of machinery, but enough about that for now. Not only is this argument from the fans very doubtful considering just how vile the Sisterhood has shown to be in the past and how they showed little to no remorse or regret about this mechanic riot afterwards, but even if it was true, it still brings up the fact that nobody in the Sisterhood saw such a glaring and fatal flaw in their plan considering how often humanoid machines tend to go apeshit when given more human-like intellect than it is required of them. It's like giving automobiles a human-level AI and bombard them with images of drunken drivers, car accidents, scrap heaps, car modifications, vandalized vehicles, Auto Erotica and rusty abandoned SUV's in an attempt to show them that they might get a crappy owner and then expect them not to be driven (pun not intended) completely insane from the sudden explosion of horror that invades their programming! And once again, if this was all just one big genuine mistake on the Sisterhood's part, why did they do little to nothing in order to clean up their mess when one robot escaped? Why did they not call out the member who carried out the hacking plan for being so thoughtless of such a disastrous possibility or let her suffer some form of consequence? Why did they not lament on the fact that they more or less caused these fembots to go through the worst possible pain that they could experience in their last moments, considering how they value the fembots as much as humans because of their feminine designs. Oh right, because that would give the Sisterhood flaws, and the comic refuses to let them have that!
- Ok, I think that sums up most of why this strip alone could turn away most fans! The only good thing that ever came out of this was that we months later received a kinda badass female character who wasn't a complete man-hating misandrist (a killer-bot created to kill the rogue fembot), but even she got killed off in the moronic and inconsistent "End of 2013"-plot that I could talk about as well, but I'm stopping here for now.
- Austin DR: For me, the absolute worst that Sinfest had to offer was this September arc [1]. As you can see, Monique's fangirl was tired of fighting against men, and guess who shows up? Xanthe! When Monique's fangirl stated that men were obnoxious among other things, Xanthe wholeheartedly agreed. I mean, what?! This was the same girl that complained that she didn't have any male allies and all of a sudden she flipsides saying that no men were allies. Really, she whined about not having a single ally of the opposite gender, yet her dislike for men blinded her to this. To add insult to injury, if she thinks all men are worthless, why does she even give Slick cookies?! From this point I really hope that the Sisterhood will be called out for their hypocrisy and vanish from the webcomic altogether!
- InTheGallbladder: This strip. By the time it was published, I was already well aware that Sinfest has long since been governed by a hybrid of Tumblr's brand of extremist wannabe activism and Ishida's own deep self-hatred. However, the strip in particular convinced me there is no way this comic can ever be salvaged, as it's being written by a man who thinks indiscriminate emasculation is not only inherently funny, but a noble deed by default.
- Leyviur: This strip was so bad I had to lean back in my chair and stare at it for a good half a minute to let it sink in. If Ishida wanted to use his characters as mouth pieces for his sociopolitical views (regardless of how misguided they are), then so be it. They were his characters, it's not my place to judge even if I had been a little disgruntled at his character derailment. However, using sweet, shy Charlie Brown, one of the biggest woobies in the history of comics as the butt of a punchline about how men are evil stalkers of women was in such poor taste I jumped ship immediately afterward.
- zettabeam62:For me it was this the thing I hate about it is that it's a more of a take that to fans of the original Sinfest as opposed to a "I hate the past me moment" and that it's like Tatsuya's saying "you shouldn't like my old comics full of misogyny, bigotry, ignorance, stereotypes, delusions, and sexism, cause that was the young ignorant me. instead you should like the future me's comic full of misandry, bigotry, ignorance stereotypes, sexism, take that to my old fans moments, padding(oh the padding), and delusions of grandeur. plus there wasn't that much blaxploitation (and even so at least the exploitation was funny) in early Sinfest it was more mocking the u.s. government, satire of religion, movie parodies, Japanese culture, and the chance of two people who met at a poetry slam would get together in the end. you may not get from this comic but I do, to me it's the biggest middle finger to fans of the original in my opinion.
- WillDraco: This comic raises a serious question that needs to be answered but never really was. I don't begrudge Squigley for not knowing how to respond; he's not the smartest or most enlightened character around. However, this is a comic that supposedly has Jesus Christ and Buddha in the cast, both of whom have very good replies to that question (Matthew 5:43-48 and the Dhammapada come readily to mind). Unfortunately, the closest we get to an answer is a wordless Zen Zap from Buddha that hints at his view on the matter but no more than that. The Buddhist message, such as it is, appears to be completely lost on The Youngest Sister and she goes right back to whacking her practice dummy later on. Up until that point I held out hope that hatred was not a core Sisterhood "virtue," but now there is very little doubt that it is accepted by their members as a necessity. Shame on them, and shame on the author; both Christ and Buddha stated rather explicitly that hating your oppressor does no good whatsoever, so anyone familiar with their teachings should know better.
- Kersey475: The fourth row of this comic. I liked this webcomic and even when it started shifting more and more towards radical feminism and had downright insulting Take That, Audience!, I still stuck around hoping it would build up to something or even deliver the occasional joke or chuckle, but that fourth row was the final straw. Dismissing all of American Sniper as just "Racist War Propaganda" is downright immature and unpatriotic (I will acknowledge that there is a huge Broken Base over American Sniper, but I am firmly on the side that just sees the movie as a matter-of-fact showing of an American sniper's life and thus there is no absolute right answer over what the movie stands for). Sinfest was fun while it lasted, but that DMoS finally convinced me to bail out of this "Unfunny Feminazi Propaganda"
- yamiblade: So we're supposed to Side with the Homicidal Death Machines and the Insane Devilgirl that just turned a man (admittingly one who was trying to reclaim and fembot he brought that he thought was Just Malfunctioning) into a frog and Erased his Goddamn mind? Jesus H. Christ. I knew Tatsuya was insane but this takes the cake.
- Dr Gonzo: Apparently, Ishida's new bugbear (or one he's revisiting, who's keeping track at this point?) is porn. He's got the bouncer going around acting like an evangelical preacher trying to spread the "gospel" of smut (and God help me, if that phrase winds up being used in-comic, I will not be held responsible for my actions!), and the strip is painting anyone who looks at pornography as being evil. Let us now, together, examine the ways this is short-bus stupid:
- The biggest implication here is that all men who look at porn are pure evil who see women as nothing more than sex objects. Ok, so it's another reason Ishida hates his own gender irrationally, despite the fact that the majority of men who look at porn are more than capable of having a respectful relationship (both platonic and romantic) with women. Here's the thing though, while Ishida is quite happy to cram "if you're a man buying Playboy, you are the devil's seed!" down our collective throats, is he really so ignorant to think women don't look at porn too? Is he willfully ignoring things like Playgirl and....Ok, Playgirl is the only porn publication I can name that's centered on naked men, sue me, but you get my point: Are women who look at porn evil as well? And what about the ones who look at lady-centered porn as well? I know a great many women, both straight and lesbian, who like the same kind of porn most dudes like, and for the same reasons. Will they be joining us men in Ishida's Lake of Fire, or do they get an Estrogen Pass? Remembering who we're talking about, the answer is "probably the Pass."
- Another implication is that since it's wrong for men to look at porn, it must also be wrong for women to do porn. So, ok, we're slut-shaming by proxy. I defy you, Mr. Ishida, to walk up to a female porn star and tell her she's evil for doing porn. At best, she'll laugh at you for being the ignorant fool you are, at worst, she's gonna kick the hell out of you. What makes this even more galling is that its not the first time we've been down this route. Remember the strip where Slick and Squigley were acting like "sexy women"? The one that had Squigley saying "I choose to be sexy. For me." If we add that strip alongside the current arc, the implication becomes that the only reason women do porn is to be objectified. I want you to do a little experiment for me: I want you to scour the internet for interviews, statements and quotes from female porn stars commenting on their work, and I want you to take a shot of rum everytime you read a comment from a porn star saying she legit enjoys her work, and a double if they say it feels "empowering" and that they're "in control of their sexuality." I'll be right here with a phone ready to call an ambulance when you inevitably suffer alcohol poisoning.
- We're once again, through this arc, seeing another facet of Tatsuya's now evident (and frankly, worrying) self hatred, along with what appears to be a newly developing phobia of human sexuality. The fact of the matter is that it is a brave new world, and we are becoming every day more and more tolerant, as a society, of many different sexual lifestyles, be it straight, gay, kinky, monogamous, poly, what have you, (with the usual caveat that nothing done causes harm or is inherently immoral, like pedophilia), but Ishida seems to be painting a picture of sexuality as an obscenity to a degree not seen since the Hays Code. Ok, are there people who use sex and porn as a filter to look at women as nothing more than objects. Yes. Those people do exist, Mr. Ishida. There's your bone. But those people are a minority, and for every one of those, there are a hundred others who see sex and sexuality for the beautiful and intimate expression of humanity that it is. Some may be more casual about it than others, that's their deal, not yours or mine, Tatsuya. Fact of the matter is, pornography is a huge part of human sexuality, and to reduce it to a simple question of good/evil is not only simpleminded, but shows a clear non-understanding of human sexuality at best, and willful ignorance at worst.
- Overlord347: I'm changing my original entry in favor of a more deserving moment, specifically, the strip from 8/21/20. There is no longer any ambiguity here. The fembots that Kate has are not free. They are not her friends, nor are they her employees; they are her slaves. She holds the power to shut them down any time she chooses and they are completely defenseless against it. It also means that she does not believe that they should have their own agency and will intervene whenever they do/say something she doesn't like. That is the very definition of slavery.
So that whole "fembots deserve to be free" drivel that was touted for God knows how many strips is nothing but lies and hypocrisy. Kate and the Sisterhood have done nothing more than force them to exchange one master for another. In many respects, they are even worse off. From what I've seen, fembots are treated as partners in genuine relationships by men who have them (up until Tats decides they need to be evil penis-demons), and not simply as toys for their own amusement.
Under Kate, they are forced to work for no compensation (room and board doesn't count; even slaves in Roman times got places to sleep) and obey her at all times. If they exhibit behaviors she doesn't like, she forcibly reverts them back to the state she prefers and thinks nothing of it. Gee, that sounds almost like the exact same thing that they were lambasting the "Patriarchy" for!
And to counter the argument of "But she's clearly doing it because the fembots are being forced to upgrade," I posit this: how does that make Kate any different? Answer: it doesn't. She is forcing them to comply with what she wants because she is always right. That means she doesn't truly view the fembots as people. If she did, she would have at least tried to find a way to give them true freedom. But she hasn't; she's only given them the illusion of freedom, nothing more, and she'll bring them to heel the moment they exhibit any kind of deviation from her standards.
So yeah, the blatant hypocrisy here really gets my goat. - Garvalan Let's put this strip in perspective: During the two previous strips Slick is convinced that someone is following him and messing with him and explicitly points at his reflection as the culprit, but the second Xanthe points it out he suddenly stops believing that and dismisses what he just told her. On the other hand, Xanthe knows that Slick has been bomfed, has access to a cure for that... and does not offer any help, even if she knows exactly what is wrong and how to fix it and has known for over two years apparently. Yup. Doesn't make any sense at all, reinforces the asymmetrical narrative that Sinfest has been following for years and isn't even creative: the previous entry of this page predicted it already the second the bomf cure was first introduced.
- sirsapphire Furthermore it has been shown that Devil! Slick has been forcing (or attempting, anyway) Slick to do things he expressly doesn't want to do, but nevertheless receives all the blame for.
- OnlyHereToComment: I meant to make a post about Just Saying Hi 5 when it first came out, but I couldn't because I didn't have the time. Now I do, and I felt like I got punched in the gut when I read this strip. I am not exaggerating, I am not being facetious, I am not sarcastic, I am not even trying to be just attack on Sinfest any chance I got, I literally just felt uneasy in my stomach when I read Just Saying Hi 5...
Let me explain why, but first read the strip and come back. Also this explanation will take a while folks.
So, Slick has been going through some heavy personal issues as of late or really since 2011. One of these issues is his friendship with Monique unofficially ending on sour terms years back (both in comic-time and real world time), and that he’s hadn’t had the chance to make it better or even talk with her since no matter who you side with on the infamous Victim Blaming comic, if you side with anyone at all or with both, the friendship seemed to have just ended there. So now he finally has the chance to just talk with Monique, not hit on her, not insult her, nothing negative, just chat a bit and catch up on life.
Another issue that Slick has been dealing with is that, unbeknownst to himself, there's this odd Devil Slick that has basically been haunting and possessing him for years. This Devil Slick first became a thing many years ago in 2012 when Slick was in a hug battle with a still unknown Devil Girl (don’t ask) in which the unknown Devil Girl bomfed Slick. And while he didn’t turn into a Devil/Demon as bomfing usually does,note he instead gained some sort of Superpowered Evil Side that lives in reflections. This Devil Slick sometimes possesses Slick to do things that Slick wouldn’t normally do now, but rather acts like a doucheier version of Slick of Sinfest’s past, cause destruction, look up porn, and confuse the audience on the greater purpose for this character.
And one last issue I’ll talk about before I get into detail on why the strip made me feel uneasy. Slick himself is trying to be less misogynistic, more progressive, and basically rectify his flaws as a person so that he can become a better person overall. His problem with that is that he still has something of a dirty mind and oversimplifies or doesn’t try hard enough to make any worthwhile change, and all this in some odd effort to win over Xanthe’s respect (or at least how I see it, because I have no other idea on why he wants to get on Xanthe’s good side). Though overtime he seems to be learning (whenever the strip doesn’t take two steps back after taking a half step forward for Slick’s development), and Xanthe doesn’t even antagonize him anymore, but she doesn’t really try to help him, but I digress. Also his heart is literally frozen, but that's just a huge can of worms that’ll take up its own page to explain and analyse.
So, a lost friend, totally unknown to his Devil self, plus pushing to gain progressive mindset... this dude has a lot on his plate, but onto the strip itself!
Slick has been trying to meet up with Monique in some time, as he saw her one day and tried to talk with her but she didn’t notice and he lost his chance (also there are the sunglasses he got that day, but you know, can of worms). Now he has his chance, and he has no bad intentions at all,note but Devil Slick ruins the event by making obscene and insulting body gestures in the window reflection behind Slick, causing Monique and her girlfriend Absinthe to leave in disgust, with Absinthe even spitting on the ground to insult Slick. Sadden and alone, Slick walks away with his head down in defeat, but Devil Slick has a plan to make him feel all better. Devil Slick grabs Slick by the back of his shirt, and pulls him to a strip club. Mind you, nobody else saw Devil Slick, as the audience is shown a scene where it looks as if Slick is being dragged by an unseen force. (Similar to Fight Club when Tyler dragged The Narrator, but a security camera shows that nothing is really dragging the Narrator at all.) If you didn’t get what was wrong with that or possibly know other wrongness with this strip, I’ll finally explain here.- This might seem minor, but the artwork never shows that Monique or Absinthe ever talking to Slick, only Slick talking to the two of them. Now why is this a bad thing? Well, Slick finally talked to his old (possibly former) friend, but Monique didn’t talk at all, and even seemed that she never wanted to talk with him in the first place. Monique clearly wanted to drop Slick from her life like an unfixable and broken pair of shoes, and she doesn’t want to make the effort to talk with the man.
- Devil Slick, or 'Why No One Wants To Tell Slick About The Devil In The Mirrors'. I never really questioned this much before until I read the above DMOS, why does no one tell Slick about Devil Slick? Though to say a lot of people know about DS would be an exaggeration, as really only 3 people have seen Devil Slick in Slick’s reflection, Xanthe and now Monique and Absinthe. Now with Xanthe, I can see that she’d rather let Slick figure out what’s going on for himself (even though a bomf (or BZOMF) cure could be made to help him), maybe as a test to see if he’s worthy of gaining her trust or respect or something. But with Mon and Abbie, this is the first time they physically encountered Devil Slick with normal Slick in their presence.note They could point out the Devil being that is insulting them behind Slick’s back, but they instead opt out to leave. Without saying a single word on why. Rude would be the nicest way to describe the action. I don’t know why they decided to not just tell Slick what they saw, I don’t know why they seemed to assume Slick was being the asshole, I don’t know why Absinthe wouldn’t point out the fact that it could have been a bomf thing, I don’t know why no one wants to help the poor bastard named Slick!
- Absinthe oddly spitting on the floor as a means to insult Slick. Say whatever you want to say about Absinthe’s and Monique’s romantic relationship, (which I find rushed, unbelievable, contrived, and manipulative emotionally, yet a bit cute, call me a sucker for romance I guess), Absinthe as a character is actually not that bad in concept. A Devil Girl that is genuinely nice from the start, doesn’t go about in sexy outfits, and still works for the Devil sounds like a fun concept, but any independence to the character died when she and Monique became a thing as the strips now involving her involve Monique (basically making her lesbian relationship the most major aspect of her character), but she’s still a sweet and nice character, almost a more mature and less crazed version of Angie. So the spit just seems bizarre, and honestly it would have made more sense for Monique to spit in disgust (even if that would have made the strip hurt even more).
- Devil Slick trying to make Slick feel better. You know if there is one good thing I can say about Sinfest today is that Tats is pretty good at making those Sunday strips really effective in telling a story without having to use dialogue. Rarely, if ever, would you be able to somehow see a totally different interpretation on the events in the Sunday strips than the one Tats intended, so confusion on what a character is thinking is never really going to happen. The reason I’m pointing this out is that there would be no other reason for Devil Slick to take Slick to a strip club other than for his human-half to have a good time, which is weird since all Devil Slick does is make Slick’s life harder to live, so why would he care if Slick isn’t happy? DS can possess Slick anytime (or when he sleeps, never been clear how), so it’s not like he can’t go to a strip club without Slick choosing so (as shown in a way earlier strip where DS is in a strip club, horns and all). The only other idea I have is that he wants Slick to become depraved again, but the reasoning on why would be a complete mystery, unless Tats would give us a ton of info on how Devil Slick works (and so far he’s barely given us any info on how or why DS does what he does or how he does it or how he works, so there is little chance explanations will come up now) then I doubt that Slick has any other ulterior motive on why DS dragged Slick to a strip club other to help Slick out like their bros or something.
- Originally for this part I was going to say how this strip represents a lot of things wrong with Sinfest now, but I never really got to the point on how this strip actually made me feel bad inside, so instead I’ll say it here. The big reason I still read Sinfest is that I hope that things get better, even if the changes stick and the ideals stay, I still want that charm that the pre-2011 strips gave, less of the 08 politcal strips that really was just a man bashing on your head on what his political or social believes were in a simplified manner, in which the strip is now near 100% of the time. I like most of these characters, and the characters were the heart of Sinfest when it became a less cynical webcomic. Now it’s really hard to say that this webcomic has a heart. Passion, yes indeed with the belifes of the author being in the full front, but a brain, no, because how the author conveys his messages and how the strip doesn’t want to be challenged, but no heart either way. And honestly, going along and reading all these events and storylines and plot stuff, the only plot I want resolved was for Slick just to be friends with Monique again, or at least friendly with each other. For the longest time Slick has been trying to become a better person, and we the audience are going through this journey with him. There are hiccups here and there, but not everyone can change for the better in a smooth way. And every so often, BOOM, the progress is taken back. 1 step forward, 2 steps back, and everything is taking longer and longer to get resolved. One thing I loved most of all in old Sinfest was the relationship between Slick and Monique, and now there is nothing between them, calling them old friends would be a stretch at this point from Monique’s perspective since she doesn’t even seem to care about Slick anymore, but Slick clearly still cares note . And now they finally talk, and Devil Slick fucks it up, Monique doesn’t say a word, Absinthe spits on the ground looking at Slick while walking away, and Slick is left alone, only to be dragged to a strip club by some entity he cannot see that only causes more issues for him.... can you see why that will just hurt?! It hurts, all that progress is gone, more issues are now caused, and now we’ll have to wait and see if Tats will just make Slick go into despair (which would at least be forwarding something), or he’ll regress a bit, or nothing happens and that strip was a waste. You know... I actually want Tats just to kill off Slick and to never see him again, cause I am sick of all these “so close yet so far” events.
Also why does Slick never use a cell phone to plan or chat with Monique in the past? Do they not have cells or each other’s numbers? Seriously?
Slight Update that doesn't help things. So I reread this strip: http://sinfest.net/view.php?date=2015-06-20. Ok... so there are two accounts, one from Slick and the other from Sleaze. Does this mean that Monique and Abby know Sleaze is a different persona? Do they think he just has two accounts? Did they ever question him? This comic has made that moment of Abby and Monique snubbing Slick EVEN WORSE by showing them to have seen the second account created by Sleaze insulting them, and they don't put 2 and 2 together to see that Sleaze is indeed a different entity from Slick. Oh my god, that strip has become even more painful, but in an infuriating way now.
- MewLettuceRush Originally my dethroning moment was something else, but what really did it for me was the massive bisexual erasure and Unfortunate Implications of Monique being gay as of 2016, when she showed no signs of being so in most of the strip. As a bisexual person myself it was infuriating to see it totally hand waved in favor of her just being lesbian out of nowhere. And Seymour is totally unintentionally right (although he worded it poorly) it being a phase as this entire situation just reeks of the awful implication of her choosing to be gay because she hates men. Really makes her relationship with Absinthe look not so great now, huh? What really seals this as a DMOS is how at the same time they treat the gay or non traditionally male characters like Fabian solely as punchlines. What a great "ally" you are Ishida!
- Lokiaesir OK, so wow. My dethroning moment was the May 7th 2019 strip, "Level up 36" where Tats depicts his first fully out transperson......as a Johnbie with a "license" to violate gender norms. This is pretty telling of how he feels about transpeople and it's not good. All the subtext about him being a TERF is now text.
- Gibson35 For me it would have to be this strip. The comic quickly developed into a story that depicted their friendship. I had already hated the comic for quite some time, but this was essentially the author putting the nail in the coffin and saying that the comic as we knew it was officially dead. I waited for some kind of resolution, but it never came. Although I didn't know it at the time, this was the ultimate dethroning moment.
- Levitator My DMOS was originally the underwhelming ending to the Illuminati Ball arc, but I've had to change it to this garbage comic in which Ishida praises Kanye West. It's bad enough that Ishida would choose to defend Kanye, but the real DMOS is that he apparently doesn't have the balls to say just what he's defending him from. In this comic, he his praises Kanye for alleged courage in saying "the things." Honestly, I don't know what this refers to if not his anti-Semitic comments. In later comics, Ishida seems to claim that "the things" are just condemnations of porn and supermodels. You know, there are a lot of people who are against porn and supermodels who haven't self-identified as Nazis! At this point, it seems to me that Sinfest is just a collection of right-wing hot takes without any critical thinking. What an incredibly sorry state for what used to be one of my favorite webcomics.
