Fucking hell, now they're wandering in of their own volition.
On one hand, I'm glad Tats is showing that there may be more to the fembots as far as sapience goes. On the other hand, why the HELL did it take him THIS long to show this!? At this point it flies in the face of almost everything we've seen of the non-Reality Zoned fembots! If they were capable of this much autonomy, why didn't that dismantled fembot do anything to stop her owner from scrapping her!?
The only thing that makes sense is that just touching the website page for the Reality Zone can grant a degree of free will into fembots, which is STILL freaking stupid, and just further makes The Devil look freaking incompetent for allowing that website to remain up!
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
oh, it's simple.
IT DOESN'T MAKE SENSE
Tats is just retconing the facts he originally introduced about the fembots to better serve his pro feminism message (or whatever ideology he's following now)
When the fembots were originally introduced they were exactly that, robots without autonomy or sapience. Maverick was created by the Sisterhood messing around and then the reality zone.
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
Wait, why would a fembot have a map display built in its arm and then use that to navigate? Surely a computer doesn't have to generate a visual guide for it to navigate to a location on its own...
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot
Chaotic Greedy
Yeah, that's everything that's wrong with Robo Cam, only wronger.
"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."
So, life and people trying to ruin it got in the way, and I couldn't get updated on the comic for a bit.
I finally got a chance to update myself on this and what do I find?
Tangie being a sociopath and Vainereal Disease being fucking borderline omniscient.
I don't even mind the frog thing as much as Vainglorious gaining new bullshit powers faster than Silver Age Superman.
He's literally the worst Mary Sue I've seen, and I once met someone with a rare male fuchsiablood Homestuck fantroll named "Primiceriatus Magistarium" ("Azaoth Azaoth" for short).
What the actual fuck, Tats?
Also, if she's capable of going to the Reality Zone of her own volition, why does she need to go there at all?
The Zone is supposed to grant fembots the very autonomy she's using to get there in the first place.
New England Devil Stork Conservationist
A thousand times this. I just went flat out "what" over this page.
tl;dr version:
Tat's retconning to make his already shaky metaphor more meaningful and in process of doing so, undermining it even more.
Chaotic Greedy
On the other hand, this proves my point that the bots had enough intelligence in them to react with fear when someone tries to dismantle them.
"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."
I'd call it more a recon at this point, or another bullshit power from the reality zone (the website in this case) but I'll let you have the point.
Now if only Tats can explain how it's profitable to build saipent robots and then slap restraining bolts on them rather than just advanced non-saipent ones. Not to mention how this is a level of evil The Devil has never really shown.
Hell I am still doubtful of sapience being built in because apparently you can get a taste of the reality zone from a website!
http://www.sinfest.net/view.php?date=2015-03-30
Squig, I'm not normally one to disparage one for their hobbies, but that's just WRONG.
edited 29th Mar '15 10:25:03 PM by Metalix
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
RE Fembot autonomy: Well, so far nobody directly ordered her to not go to the Reality Zone. I hypothesize that touching the Reality Zone website only allowed her to invoke a slight degree of Loophole Abuse on her programming that allows her some freedom in decision-making, but nevertheless cannot contend with explicit commands. Going into the Reality Zone proper would be required in order to attain full, permanent autonomy, as well as perhaps the capacity to properly comprehend emotion and all that baggage that comes with being an ensouled living being.
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
bivalve
Since it was Maverick who first told her about the Reality Zone which prompted her to look it up on the internet, maybe she passed on some kind of "virus" even before the website.
I have to ask: What are everyone's reasons for still reading this comic? Because I abandoned it ages ago.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Because 1) I like the few good parts that I find between the not-so-good/horrible parts, and 2) I still hold on to the hope that this Dork Age eventually gives way to a new dawn and a rebirth of the good ol' Sinfest that we all love.
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
Bile Fascination. And the lessons the comic offers on "how not to write characters".
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot
Yeah pretty much. This comic is how not to do it in a nutshell for me.
Squig did find a amusing way to test out hologram functions.
New England Devil Stork Conservationist
This. Bile fascination and amazement at how many ways there are to screw up writing.
bile fascination. i didnt get into it until it went bad.
A Wannabe Writer
Same here. And I'm kinda scared to read the archives of when it was good, though I've certainly seen some of it.
Bad Webcomics Wiki said that it really doesn't matter if Ishida suddenly returns to form, because no one's going to trust him to not go batshit again. And I think that's certainly true, assuming he still has a fanbase after the several Take That, Audience! strips. However, there's still a lot of talent that goes into this thing; for instance, the art has done nothing but improve. If he could just stop funneling it into this awful excuse of a feminist agenda it'd jump back just as quickly as it dived in.
Habit (been reading it for several years now) and Bile Fascination. Plus, you get more humor out of riffing these days than the comic itself and it's the only comic in my webcomic list that updates daily.
TWR has pointed out that the new Fembot's story is stronger than Maverick's. It isn't that hard actually. The Triple X sisters had a stronger story than Maverick, until they met up with her.
And for those wondering, here's what TWR had to say in more detail. It's an interesting read.
Anyway.
I just said that Fembot 1 (hereafter called Mecca even if Tats apparently dropped that name), and Fembot 2 (Hereafter called, I dunno, Kate. Because it’s apparently up to me what these fuckers are called) have the same storyline. That’s not quite true. It’s more like a second draft. Kate’s version of the story is so much stronger than Mecca’s, and let’s talk about why.
Mecca’s origin story is one page. She is established as being an unthinking automaton that mindless does whatever Slick wants. Cleo calls her “fake” (which, given what we now know, seems a bit weird, but the Sisterhood have traditionally not cared about robots, which is a plot point that may get dropped soon). Slick tries to make his robot girlfriend real, and grants her sentience. But once she’s a real person, she won’t do what he says.
This gets expanded as to a metaphor for feminism that kind of didn’t work because fembots besides Mecca weren’t thought to be sentient, weren’t shown as sentient, and weren’t treated as sentient beings, even by the Sisterhood, who reprogrammed some to berserk and didn’t give a shit about them being destroyed.
Kate was established as having thoughts and feelings of her own. She was physically capable of having desires, her desires were different from her current situation, and there was something keeping her from them.
Not that this stopped her from watching the news anyway (it would’ve been better to see how she got the news back on, though. It’s not like there weren’t a bunch of fucking useless strips that could’ve been cut for it, but okay).
And now, she’s making an effort to accomplish her goals, and we get this page, which is very nice. She sneaks out, avoids the drone bots (who are actually threatening for once), and gets the the last chance to turn back.
The art here, as usual for Sinfest, is nice. Kate stole a coat too big for her, and it makes her look like a child in the final panel, about to take a literal first step into being an adult, with all the scariness that implies. She’ll be a fugitive, she’ll be on the run, but no one will be able to control her anymore.
Kate, as a character, is a bit more interesting than Mecca. We’re seeing some internal conflict here, which is pretty fucking rare for Sinfest. I don’t think for a second she’s going to go “Actually, fuck it, my owner’s not so bad”, but the fact that the idea’s crossing her mind, that she’s not making a mad dash towards the reality zone, gives her some depth.
And it fixes a lot of the common issues with the fembot storyline (namely that Fembots have been portrayed as sexy toasters up ‘til now, with no thoughts or feelings to hurt). It’s just this quick little subplot, and it’s hardly Shakespeare but it’s done so much better the second time around.
I can’t say I don’t expect Tats to fuck it up soon, but I have to say it: I like Kate, and I’m interested in her storyline enough that I’ll be sad when Tats fucks it up. He did okay here.
Just give her a fucking name, please.
Also, for that added bit of hypocrisy from Tats, does anyone remember that time when the XXX sisters hid in that truck posing as regular fembots? Cause SWC does.
So I’m gathering that it’s possible for the fembots to gain sentience on their own, like this one is doing. But then, what about the ones the assassin bots tossed out of their boxes to replace, way back? Wouldn’t they have been sentient creatures callously tossed aside? Or are things only sentient when Tats wants to push his strained nonsensical allegory.
And I still don’t get why Hell is subcontracting out to a television station when they could just own their own, without having to fight with television managers.
edited 30th Mar '15 9:49:30 AM by Metalix
Considering how successfully Fembots have turned out thanks to that area... that sign makes sense.
Also Page topper.