I don't think they're grayscaled, the colors are just muted. The rest of the humans walking around are also dull-colored, marking possibly the first time we've ever had a visual acknowledgement that:
a) Normal men exist! They aren't universally johnbies! Huzzah, a small break in the pervasive misandry that has plagued this comic for years. We may or may not ever see them again, but at least for a brief time, we can be certain that the world of Sinfest has a male population that didn't grope the nurses in the maternity ward immediately after being born! And it's not just Criminy!
b) Normal women exist! They're just out, walking around, existing like normal humans. Not devil girls, not prostitutes, not Sisterhood revolutionaries or manipulation targets by the D-man himself. Finally, we have the first vague glimmers of Tats getting away from his own personal Madonna-Whore Complex where women can only be victims or heroes.
c) Normal men and women both present, and complicit in the Patriarchy without being depicted as abusers or victims respectively. At long last we have indication that supporting patriarchal social conventions doesn't always involve being a drooling rapist defending their right to consume women's bodies like fun-size Snickers or a brainless walking fleshlight who just can't figure out how to not do porn on her own, gosh darn it.
Finally. It really says something that "the presence of normal human beings" is such a refreshing change of pace in this comic.
Perhaps even Tats realized that filling this page with zombies wouldn't make any sense.
There still is one though and it manages to affect Not-quite-dissociating Prostitute back to her body for no reason except Tats wanting it to happen.
This whole storyline is just incredibly convoluted, confusing and unsatisfying.
Second wave feminism largely ignored issues of race and "abnormal" (for lack of a better word) gender identity, if not outright hostile to the latter. A big part of the evolution of feminism was to acknowledge that, yes, black women need feminism too, and, yes, they are doubly discriminated against. The same thing happened for lesbian women.
The irony of "woke" is that being "woke" has meant vastly different things over the last century or so, and feminists themselves were absolutely not immune to that.
And I'm not at all surprised that Tats does not depict black women. His cast has always been very white, from the start really. When black or gay people did appear, they tended to be stereotypical, especially the latter. Though it may not be racism so much as the sort of colour blindness a lot of white writers have.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesAt least Tats is aware of his racism on that front. Clio is the only prominent character who's anything other than white and there have been a few comics focused on or commenting on her problems with discrimination, but for the most part she's just the anti-porn Sisterhood agent and not much else. The Sisterhood and radical feminism inform every aspect of the comic, but the actual Sisterhood members don't get a whole lot of development beyond "yes, they actually do hate men, and don't distinguish between 'passive beneficiary of a system they don't control and aren't aware of' and 'serial rapist'.
If there's any reluctance to openly discuss racism as a central topic, I imagine it's because Tats is trying to stay in his lane. Which is a bit silly, since he's written an entire garbled world built on trans-exclusionary radical feminism while being a dude, but I'm not inclined to declare what someone else's boundaries ought to be.
3x That was actually the reason why I was trying to find his picture in the UCLA yearbook. There was only one photo submitted of him and it was a very old black and white photo that seemed more like a high school photo. When people draw, they tend to draw more in their race, even as children. All his characters look white, which got me thinking: what if he's just a major white weeb who uses a Japanese sounding psuedonym? That was why I was trying to find a picture of him.
Anime fans who are in it DEEP will take on a Japanese name, like Kiero Sojiero, the subway samurai. And from what I see, it is mostly white people who get to crazy levels of "woke".
Anyway, I found nada so meh.
Edited by Gibson35 on Jul 14th 2019 at 12:08:35 PM
I just came to talk about how horrible Sinfest is.Excuse me? Why can't a white person have a Japanese name, now? Japanese people are white, too, after all. Or are we calling Asians "black" too, now?
On top of that, he could easily be of mixed ethnicity. Plenty of Japanese immigrants in the US.
I am not sure what this hunting for his "real ethnicity" is in aid of, anyway. Are you trying to "out" him, or something? Would it prove anything if he was or wasn't fully Japanese?
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesNo, it really wouldn't prove anything
Can we stop with the creepy cyber stalking of the author in this thread? We have enough red meat to chew on with the crazy stuff he posts on the internet already
Edited by NeedsAirCon on Jul 14th 2019 at 7:21:23 PM
Skynet Is Inevitable. Skynet IS...Undergoing Repairs Atm.Please re-insert plug and reboot![]()
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There is one aspect of Tats' ethnicity that bears on the comic itself. Although Tats doesn't emphasize it, over the years various readers have speculated that certain characters have been depicted as Asian or mixed-race. Both Monique and Miko have been shown with violet or lavender hair (or highlights), which is an established trope for Asian ancestry. Miko, of course, has a Japanese name.
I don't think we've ever seen a non-white person deliberately do something evil, unless you count the Technicolor devil girls as something other than white.
Edited by Hexapodia on Jul 14th 2019 at 1:03:04 AM
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I always kind of took Monique as latina. But putting it that way, that also makes sense. There was this video where Japanese people watched anime and tried to guess at random characters counties of origin.
Usually blondes were seen as American unless in certain cases.
Edit: found the video.
https://youtu.be/q_Xd2xLAjDM
Edited by Gibson35 on Jul 14th 2019 at 1:11:28 AM
I just came to talk about how horrible Sinfest is.
Roundbird with knives. Knife Bird.
Are we REALLY going to opine him not fucking up racial topics? I mean, REALLY? Let's be honest, he'd fuck it up beyond all sight, the man has no conception of nuance or individuality.
It would be nuclear-grade awkward.
Let's be happy he isn't touching that, shall we? Cuz christ almighty, I don't wanna even imagine the batshit madness that would come leaping off my screen if he did it.
@Redmess In the USA, at least by the medical establishment, Asians and Whites are considered different ethnic groups. I don't know, nor care why, I'm not a doctor, I just know that when I fill out health insurance and new patient forms, that's a thing. I presume it's some kind of healthcare related thing, but again, don't really know.
All I know about race is that some races have different healthcare issues due to genetic shit, like skin cancer, sickle cell, etc.
Edited by Raylas on Jul 14th 2019 at 4:41:15 AM
In the USA, at least by the medical establishment, Asians and Whites are considered different ethnic groups.
The word has a different meaning in Europe (or at least in the UK). In the US, "Asians" typically are East Asians — Chisese, Japanese, Koreans, Thais, and (usually) Filipinos. They used to be called "Orientals" until someone issued an edict that the word was racist. South Asians are seldom called that; they're more typically identified as Hindi, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, or whatever.
In Britain, people identified as "Asians" are almost always immigrants from Muslim-majority countries (and their descendants). This can lead to confusion when news reports from Europe are read by Americans.
In the US, Blacks and East Asians see each other as belonging to different racial subgroups, and they don't often mix.
Edited by Hexapodia on Jul 14th 2019 at 5:08:40 AM
He's probably thinking that "White" simply means "person with 'white'-colored skin". It's... a lot more complicated than that. For instance, by some definitions "White" excludes Europeans from Mediterranean-native ethnicities such as Italians and Greeks because of their "olive" skin color.
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
Don't worry. Tatsuya is equipped to find it.
https://www.sinfest.net/view.php?date=2013-04-06
Edited by Gibson35 on Jul 14th 2019 at 7:51:32 AM
I just came to talk about how horrible Sinfest is.https://www.sinfest.net/view.php?date=2019-07-15
So...I guess that whole out of body experience was totally pointless then?

Tats is again being confused how to utilize his metaphors correctly again.