Sinfest

Of course Sad Sally isn’t going to do anything, because if any of the downtrodden female characters gain any agency at all over their lives it makes them useless to the narrative. The narrative being that women can never have equality because men never let them. Of course, Jesse Jackson once said “you can blame someone else for putting you down but you can only blame yourself for staying there”, but hey, he was a man, so his views don’t register.

http://www.sinfest.net/view.php?date=2019-01-15

I'm torn. On the one hand, I'm not really getting a whole lot of excitement out of this. On the other hand, she's just managed to score some points with me. She's got a bit of guile in her.

Well, I'm gonna come forward and say... this is probably the stupidest thing Tat's ever done. If the debt is exploitative and abusive, why are both The Pimp and Sally acting as if it's somewhat legitimate?

Why is Sally acting as if liberation is something that is given by The Pimp, instead of something that the exploited girls take by themselves, for themselves?

Seriously, Tats is going against his own narrative.

Not that it's the first time, but I think it's the worst I've seen.

If the The Pimp dies, the debt also is forgotten, isn't it? So ...

This situation has potential for conflict, character growth, and action. Naturally, Tats will ignore the opportunity.

If I were writing this thing, here's what would happen:

• The Whore With No Name naively believes Viper the Pimp when he agrees to forgive all debts
• TWWNN rescues him
• Viper renegs on the deal, laughs at her, and tries to take her back to the BOMF District
• Struggle ensues
• Fuchsia and Criminy come to TWWNN's aid
• Crim is injured
• Viper either is captured and has his memory erased with Lethe water, or else (more likely) gets away
• Amber does a news story on the incident, interviews Crim in hospital, and plays up Crim as a hero on HellTV
• Fuchsia becomes insecure and thinks that Crim is in love with Amber
• Fuchsia, jealous, accuses Crim of infidelity and breaks up with him
• Amber tries to start a relationship with Crim — maybe with success, maybe not
• Blue comforts Fuchsia
• Blue thinks to herself "The plan worked!"

Edited by Hexapodia on Jan 14th 2019 at 10:02:09 AM

@ Garvalan

100% agreed. I also think it would help if the audience knew what debt they are talking about, but as it stands now it just looks like something that Tats made up on the spot.

That's pretty much because he most likely did. At no point during the flashbacks to Sad Hooker Lady's past did the concept of debt ever come up.

It's a really strange thing to bring up as the first thing you say after you've already walked away and see your "captor" lying badly wounded in front of you.

Again it's an example of Tats shitting storytelling.

When she said it, I took it as a given that the pimp was using debts from overinflated prices for room and board to keep his stable of hookers locked to him. But yeah, this should have been mentioned sooner.

It doesn't square with the big stack of currency that TWWNN packed into her bag when she left her apartment, though. Maybe she had the money and decided to stiff him.

Is it weird that the first thing I thought when I read today's comic was "What debt? Nobody mentioned any qucking debt before!"?

Tats has the unfortunate habit of mixing up parts of stories. He has Sad Prostitute Girl escape from something he hadn't established the boundaries of. He's seemingly trying to do it now by suddenly mentioning a debt that was never brought up before, but the effect is just weird.

Especially since (what Hexapodia pointed out as well) she managed to somehow flee with a fat stack of cash despite Tats establishing she was poor. With the poor part being strange as well since she isn't addicted to drugs and works in a profession that people get into because it tends to pay well. Which would make the debt to the pimp make sense (if he was squeezing money out of her for living expenses somehow, which I find doubtful if you see how she lived), but again doesn't add up to her fleeing with a pile of money.

Either the fat stack of cash makes sense, or the poverty does. If she has it both then it really requires further explanation exactly how she manages to do both, which would make for an interesting story that would make the audience relate to the struggle of STILL NAMELESS Sad Prostitute Girl better. Was she doing a job on the side? Did she hide money from her oppressor? Was she deliberately living as poor as possible to be able to pay off a debt?

The story of Sinfest basically writes itself and yet Tats manages to still fuck it up every time. Remember with the Vainglorious story line where he had Vainglorious easily escape from being stranded by himself in the Devil's mansion and the only tension he managed to build was a random dog chase for the final two comics?

It's as if Tats has a disorder that prevents him from building up to something!

Edited by hayate666 on Jan 15th 2019 at 11:32:30 AM

What’s the opposite of Chekhov’s Gun, anyone?

An Ass Pull

Mmmm,

Ass Pull and an attempt at Leonine contract all in the same cartoon

This storyline has been ridiculous - there's good ideas there but it's just so badly executed that even the Mary Sues are cookie cutter characters

"And shave off that stupid strand of hair growing out of your chin. Either shave or get a real beard."

We're probably meant to infer the debt based on the flashbacks. After all, the Littlest Prostitute came to the city with nothing, wound up on the street, and had to be taken in by goat-boy here. Given she seems to have done NOTHING since arriving on Fuschia's doorstep, it's probably safe to believe she did NOTHING at the Once-And-Future-Pimp's place and, given the kind facade he put on, it wouldn't be difficult for him to feign poverty and guilt her into thinking she owed him. Show, Don't Tell aside, we know how exploitive prostitution is supposed to work, so we can connect dots on our own without having to be hand walked through the process.

The problem, as has been mentioned, is that the littlest prostitute here's life does not reflect what would be the result of that. She lives in a dump, she shows no signs of being an addict, and she had that fat stack of bills which either means she's not poor or that the pimp-who-would-be-gundam allows his ladies to amass huge amounts of readily usable cash before collecting from them.

Edited by AsherTye on Jan 15th 2019 at 5:51:48 AM

The problem, as has been mentioned, is that the littlest prostitute here's life does not reflect what would be the result of that.

Well, the fact that she has a crappy life has to indicate that she's been oppressed by other people ... because she's a Woman.

In our world, hookers might be tied to their pimps due to drug addiction or personality disorders. In Festerville, a woman can only be virtuous ... so whenever bad things happen she can always say it's Never My Fault.

New strip:

http://www.sinfest.net/view.php?date=2019-01-16

Nothing like being in mortal peril to goad you into performing a good deed right?

Awesome moral.

Hey, I also owe someone some money.

I will try and find them in a life threatening situation and refuse to help them till they agree to cancel my debt.

This in no way seems incredibly immoral or illegal.

Thanks tats!

/sarcasm

Edited by bigking on Jan 15th 2019 at 9:15:49 AM

It's called leonine contract

Or

Extracting large concessions from someone who's completely at your mercy in a life or death sitaution would probably class it as an unconscionable contract which most courts would call unenforceable

Then again, debt slaving prostitutes to their work and pimping them out at the same time isn't usually regarded as the pinnacle of legality either....

Again Tat's story and characters are so insufferable that no one wants to see them in the right.

I laughed.

Not bitterly, not at Tats or anything. I just have a fondness for that type of scene.

"No, I refuse! I'm not going to do this, and there is no force on heaven or earth that can change my-"

Crash

"...Okay, we'll take my car."

Remind me again why we should see the bad guys in Sinfest as actual bad guys, please... I mean, in the past I've compared them (unfavorably) to Team Rocket, the Beagle Boys and worse. Now I started to think that the Amoeba Gang from Powerpuff Girls (actual amoebas with little muscle power and even less brainpower, who think that giving candy to kids is an evil act because of cavities) would look down on them.

Edited by alarkhar on Jan 15th 2019 at 8:23:42 PM

Eh. Common enough Joke. I'll let Tats have this one. This is Looney Toons standard.

Yeah, no two ways about it. Sinfest's bad guys are the Jobbers of Jobbers. Glass Joe and Gabby Jay would throw a fight against them out of sheer pity.

Edited by Metalix on Jan 16th 2019 at 12:10:50 PM

Wow, that was easy! In just a single comic the problem of debt is resolved!

If the pimp isn't lying here the struggle of Sad Prostitute Girl becomes even less interesting than it already was!