Sinfest

1. In a rare move for Sinfest, we are actually told the stakes of a plot. Monique has caused Abby to oversleep (after already getting her to skip work entirely and force her boss to cover for her), and now Abby is worried she’ll be fired and have to work in a strip club.

2. Monique tells Abby that she supports her

3. Monique makes fun of Blue, Abby’s boss, who is already pissed at Abby due to Monique, within earshot of Blue. This means Blue either knows Monique was let into the mansion unauthorized, or Blue thought it was Abby speaking. Neither of these options are good for Abby.

4. Monique tries to rob Abby’s job.

5. Abby realizes her highest-boss, who is literally Satan, is coming back. Even knowing this, Monique insists of trying to fool the hand print scanner, which she in no way “Almost has”

6. Satan has entered the building. He is clearly angry already. Monique takes out a can of mace, intending to attack Satan.

None of this is going to hurt Abby. The story is pretty clearly pointing to Satan blaming Blue for everything, since she was in charge and everything went to shit. If anything, Abby might get promoted over this, with Blue being sent back to the club. But Monique has no way of knowing any of that. She is repeatedly and recklessly threatening to ruin Abby’s life, often for no fucking reason except her own amusement.

How in the fuck is Monique supposed to be a likable protagonist? She’s either intensely stupid and self-centered, or actively trying to get Abby fired. Either way, she’s an asshole. She’s been a radfem for years, and the one time she can improve or hurt a woman’s life in any meaningful way, she does this shit.

I don’t want to root for this person. I don’t want to see her succeed. I want to see her get her comeuppance. I want to see her have a raving lunatic breakdown, or at the very least some kind of character arc. And I don’t think that’s the emotional response Tats is going for here, so I have no idea what the fuck he’s doing. Sinfest is generally fudgy on the details, which is one of its crippling flaws, but does Tats seriously not notice what a jerk his heroine is being? What the fuck?

Sami Zayn is a character on NXT, and he’s the closest thing they have to a “protagonist” on a wrestling show, in that he’s the hero of the primary storyline. Here is what they have done to try to get me, the viewer, to want Sami Zayn succeed.

Sami Zayn is a fun-loving, cheery guy. His theme song is cheery ska music, and he looks happy a lot. On the first big show, NXT Arrival, Sami Zayn has a match with then-popular WWE wrestler Antonio Cesaro. The match is great, and very close, and Sami ultimately loses. He does, however, earn Cesaro’s respect for his fighting spirit. On the next big show, Sami Zayn is facing the nefarious supermodel Tyler Breeze. The winner will get a shot at the title. Before the match, in a great bit of visual storytelling, we get a quick shot showing that Zayn’s locker room is dirty, dingy, and badly lit, whereas Tyler’s is super swash and fancy. Sami is winning the match, and goes for his finisher, a boot to the head. Tyler, being a supermodel, goes “Oh no my face” and ducks down while covering his face with his fists. This ends up causing Zayn to accidentally hit Tyler’s fists with his testicles, and thus gives Tyler a chance to steal the win. Zayn is dicked around a bit in other storylines involving Natayla’s husband, who’s just a jerk to him. Once that’s done, it’s time for the next big show, where the main event will be a four-way match for the title, featuring Zayn, Tyler Breeze (who lost his 1-on-1 title match), Natayla’s husband, and the champion Adrian Neville, who is the other good guy in this storyline (less because of his character, and more because he does cool high-flying moves). First one to score a pin wins. Much of that match is the two bad guys ganging up on Zayn, to get him over as the underdog, before breaking into an entertaining clusterfuck type match. Zayn gets his big hope spot, knocking out Breeze and Neville outside of the ring, and using his finisher on Nattie’s Husband. He goes for the pin, but Neville pulls the ref away to prevent him from counting the three (which is legal, but kind of a dick move). Zayn goes out to confront Neville, who superkicks him and basically kill-steals Nattie’s husband to retain. Now there’s an obvious follow-up to that match, with Zayn getting a 1-on-1 match with Neville, who has become a bad guy through his underhanded tactics. Since NXT is competently written, Zayn will likely have to get through the other two bad guys first in order to prove his worth/kill time so that the big match doesn’t happen until the next big show in December.

This is a fairly basic story, and I’m using it as an example just because I’m on an NXT kick (and because pro wrestling and webcomics have a lot in common). Hero is built up as working really hard and being maybe good enough. Bad things happen, preventing the hero from winning. While these bad things are going on, a personal feud is set up between the good guy and the bad guy, because stories are ultimately about people. All the details can change, but “Guy works hard enough to deserve it, is suffers setback, and is ultimately victorious in a suitably climactic way” is a pretty easy to do storyline, and is flexible enough to be done multiple ways. Shit, wrestling’s been doing it once a month for decades, and most of it’s not written nearly as well as NXT.

So how the hell does Sinfest fuck it up so bad?!