Sinfest Cleanup

See ATT. TL;DR, there are a lot of problems with the Sinfest pages, so I'm starting this cleanup to fix them! Considering they're much shorter than the other problem pages, I figured it'd be easiest to start with the moments pages first and then work our way around. Does that sound good?

To start, Funny.Sinfest has lots of examples that are nothing but weblinks. I'll get to editing them as soon as I'm on my laptop.

Did a quick sweep through the YMMV page. I don't know how to proceed, as I don't know the comic in detail.

I was going to bump this and say that NightmareFuel.Sinfest had been cut since it was all misuse, but it's taking an awful long time for the cut to be processed, so... Well, it's on the cutlist. I'm going to go clean Trivia.Sinfest since everything that's not Image Source is complaining about the author. Yayyyy.

Okay, the Nightmare Fuel page is cut and the Trivia page has been cleaned up. You still doing the Funny page, ~@ccorb?

Li'l bump

Bumping so others can help with the cleanup. I can't, as the only things I know about Sinfest are that it gets mentioned a lot on this site, and that the comic's creator has some, err, questionable views on transgender issues. But perhaps someone with more knowledge than I can help, so hopefully by bumping someone will.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Sep 25th 2020 at 7:55:41 AM

Bumping this. I have next to no familiarity with the work (only through on-page examples and images of tropes), but maybe someone who has, will help.

SkyCat32: I think much of the problem with the Strawman Has a Point entries is that the strip has always been badly confused about its morals, even before its hard turn to fringe feminism. Some of it may be Ishida conceding that there are arguments against him (then forgetting it the next strip), some of it may be him changing his mind with the zeal of the convert.

I can at least trim the entries a bit, removing cases where the strip brings up points only to (clumsily) debunk them, and one that seems to argue with itself:

• Strawman Has a Point:
  • Slick in this strip points out that Monique has become less likeable and more one-dimensional since the Sisterhood was introduced.
  • In "Victim Blaming" Slick (clumsily) points out that if you say things to rile people up, they're going to get riled up.
  • The Devil is completely correct in his accusation that the Sisterhood sabotaged the Fembots factory and that the Fembots were perfectly safe consumer products before that.

I don't know if any of the entries have to be removed. They all seem fine and valid to me. Heck, bringing up points "to clumsily debunk them" is what a strawman is for.

At most they need more information on why we should see these characters as being strawmen.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 11th 2022 at 6:25:34 AM

So inflammatory wording is not such an issue here?

I don't see any inflammatory wording at all, tbh. That's why I was confused at the other thread. Everything reads pretty honestly yet neutrally to me, and I can't find any emotion.

I also realize we should probably link the original post for context.

Ok then.

From what I remember, wasn't part of the appeal of Sinfest in its pre-feminism days that every side of an argument was turned into a ridiculous strawman for laughs?

I think God was portrayed as reasonable, at least.

There are two entries on Strawman Has a Point that I feel dubious about. One quotes an actual reader response to dismiss it; since it's a real person (or a summing-up of what real people have said), it necessarily has a point and isn't a strawman. The other is about Squig and his third-wave feminism. Third-wave feminism has plenty of valid points, but we don't see Squig give any in the strip, he just shouts buzzwords. So I'm reluctant to say he has any kind of point. The others could stand.

I'd say cut for both of those.

I do still feel like the entries we keep should be re-written for context and clarity, because a lot of them don't actually explain why we're meant to disagree with the character.

When doing TRS cleanup, I checked the link associated with the trope entry, and the links now redirect to a .xyz link. I have since swapped in a Wayback archive link.

So, we'll have to check the rest to see if they're okay.

Posting here quickly to note that Sinfest is on the Sandbox.Pages Attracting Edits That Promote Bigotry monitoring list, and any issues that pertain to that regarding Sinfest should be brought up in the future in this thread.

A few entries that stand out to me.

The Broken Aesop entry seems to be arguing with itself, particularly the note there.

This one's a bit outdated now given what the comic's become, and is also a No Real Life trope.

I think we can remove the note (it does nothing but distract, and ultimately argues against the example, which is otherwise written specifically from an in-universe standpoint).

And we can remove the second, I think. Not only is it outdated like you said, but while Tats does have an avatar he uses in the comic from time to time, it's still supposed to be real him and not a character.

Since it randomly came to mind, has there ever been much discussion about how many tropes still use the old Sinfest for their page images?

A large amount. The Image Source subpage is quite long

Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Nov 21st 2023 at 8:12:07 AM

But it's long since been decided that we won't remove images for merely being from this dumb comic.