A question has arisen elsewhere: Does Tats read this forum? This seems like a good place to discuss it ...
I think he does, for two reasons:
- He's an author and an artist, and both types of creative people tend to be curious about what people think of them. (In fact, I am personally acquainted with a number of well-regarded SF authors, and several of them have massive egos. I won't name names!) "Ego-surfing" on the Web is a thing. This forum is open and accessible to ordinary search engines. Tats wouldn't have any difficulty in finding us.
- On several occasions comments here have been reflected in the events of the comic, notably when the loathsome, decaying zombies have parroted word for word criticisms of Tats' dogmas that people here have posted.
What say you all?
Edited by Hexapodia on Sep 13th 2020 at 3:15:10 AM
I confess to having very mixed feelings about Sinfest. I usually like the art (although sometimes Tats is lazy), and before 2012 I loved the comic. It explored aspects of the human condition with humor and tolerance; all of the characters were flawed, they were all aware of it, they didn't like to admit it, and they forgave one another. Monique was a flirtatious young woman who started out as a bit of an airhead but quickly evolved into a smart, sarcastic, self-aware character; she had a ... well, not a love/hate relationship, more of a "Do I love him"/"Jeeze, he can be a jerk sometimes!" relationship with Slick. Some of the strips are a bit cringy from a more modern, "enlightened" viewpoint, but I enjoyed them.
Then in October 2011 Tats was bitten by a radioactive feminist spider. Very abruptly new radical feminist characters were added to the comic — girl children who were wise beyond their years and who knew that they were always right. (The author agreed with them.) Under the influence of a magical Red Pill, Monique suddenly cut her hair, abandoned "girly" clothing, lost her sense of humor, cut off her friendship with Slick, and shortly thereafter became a lesbian. The changes did not sit well with many readers, and Sinfest lost a lot of fans.
In response to criticisms, Tats nuked his own forum. He set up a new forum exclusively for a radfem viewpoint; it pretty much died from attrition.
Since then the comic has become more extreme, with Tats publicly announcing in his forum that he doesn't care about developing characters any more, that he only cares about his Sacred Message. He really has turned Sinfest into the radical feminist equivalent of a Jack Chick comic.
Many of us keep reading only due to a fascination with the downward evolution of the comic.
Ditto. It was one of my favourites and that's why it's such a shame that the comic has gone on a downward spiral for almost a decade. It still had some fun moments from time to time, but these lessened gradually until the comic went from genuinely enjoyable to something you read because you are worried and can't look away. The last bit I really enjoyed was the ongoing relationship between Fuchsia and Criminy, which continued for a few more years IIRC. But after that storyline disappeared I went from reading daily (in the hope that Tats would get back to the status quo) to increasingly sporadically. That way the changes seemed even more drastic and scary and these days I only follow Sinfest because I started lurking in this forum. :P
It would have been preferable if the comic was abruptly cancelled with all the plotlines left unresolved, because then I could have made up my own resolutions. Hell, my hypothetical fanfic would be guaranteed to be better than all strips post-2015.
Regarding the Sunday page ... What if the assassinbots had picked up the boxed wokebot and carried the entire package into the Reality Zone? (Perhaps with Fuchsia's help to BOMF! a tunnel under the fence.) What would the wokebot have transformed into?
Are fembots good or bad now? Are all fembots irredeemably reprogrammed into wokebots? Will we ever find out how Hekate deals with the three "indentured servant" fembots/wokebots at the Witch's Inn? Can Hekate, or the Assassinbots, or "Nana" reprogram the wokebots? Inquiring minds want to know!
I actually think that the critic character ("I give it FOUR dingleberries!") is the comic's representation of this forum. Mostly, we are displeased. But occasionally we get a comic we like.
Likewise, that same comic where Vainglorious swaps the critic over to the pretty fangirl who squee's over his work is basically him saying "My art is NOT for you" to any critics. In contrast to the other forums I have seen on Sinfest, this one tends to be more objective.
Edited by Gibson35 on Sep 13th 2020 at 7:21:28 AM
I just came to talk about how horrible Sinfest is.https://www.sinfest.net/view.php?date=2020-09-14
Liberty is back and again she seems to not like the direction Sam is taking( as usual).
Is Ms Liberty glaring at the Samtron 3000, or at the Woke Pastor?
And what does she think is so bad about "wokeness," if those really are the things that it advocates?
Her eyes have irises, but they don't have pupils. I guess that's an improvement over the fembots and many of the demons, who don't have either of those.
If she's looking at the TV screen then it should be the Woke Pimpastor she's glaring at
He and Liberty have a history in which he tried to brainwash her, she posed dramatically, and the Volcano from Hell kicked his ass in a non-fatal way
So Liberty has good reason to dislike him
P.S. ' Nope, that storyline with the Pimproaster Volcano was even more stupid than it sounds. My personal view was it was the worst storyline ever seen in Sinfest, beating out some pretty stiff competition
Skynet Is Inevitable. Skynet IS...Undergoing Repairs Atm.Please re-insert plug and rebootFrom what we’re seeing, Liberty’s beef is with Woke Pimp, rather than with wokeness itself, at least for now. She doesn’t trust him, and for a good reason.
Speaking of which: Tats is really going all in with the “wokeness is a religion” thing.
Make no mistake, to some folks on the usual places like Twitter, it kinda is, in a metaphorical way, so it’s not like Tats is ENTIRELY wrong on this one.
But like I said in my long winded rant that I removed, Tats is the last person who should complain about “woke/cancel” culture, when he himself not only nuked his own forum to “cancel” one portion of his base who disagreed with him, but insists in portraying his opposition as grotesque strawmen.
That’s the thing with Tats, even when he’s kinda-sorta-somewhat right about something, he ruins it by either overly exaggerating it, conflating it with unrelated problems (woke=patriarchy), drowning it in badly constructed metaphors, or directing his anger at the wrong targets (LGBT folks as a whole).
Edited by Eggmaster on Sep 14th 2020 at 9:11:19 PM
Tats loves his "wandering by a plot convenient TV broadcast in a shopwindow" trope!
What's Liberty doing off screen?
Wandering the streets 24/7 until Tats needs her to look sad?
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Hey, defeat by random exploding volcano that inexplicably only injures the bad guy standing right next to you is a satisfying resolution to any storyline!
Tats loves his "wandering by a plot convenient TV broadcast in a shopwindow" trope!
When was the last time in the Real World that any department store or appliance store had a television playing in the window? I believe it dates back to the 1950s, when TVs were rare and expensive novelties. ("Look! We have televisions for sale!") I've never seen one in a store window, and I'm an old fart ... but not that old!
Does Festerville still have phone booths?
Edited by Hexapodia on Sep 14th 2020 at 4:24:01 AM
Gibson did a very good analysis
on the topic of why that I'm going to quote here:
https://www.sinfest.net/view.php?date=2012-03-18
The resistance. The fight. The rise. The rebellion. It's what he WANTED. But what has all this rioting done? FAR more harm than good. Nothing has improved from it. In fact, things have gotten WORSE! So what is a True Believer to do when faced with the reality that what they wanted was the wrong thing or ineffectual?
BINGO! IT WASN'T DONE IN THE RIGHT WAY, OF COURSE!
Of course he is still right about everything! It's just that the movement was co-opted by the government via news, talking heads, and social media! Smoke and mirrors! We were SO close to realizing our dream, you guys! Don't worry! We'll get it right NEXT time! /s
But in reality, that is the reason why Sam's hat has those symbols. Tatsuya is suggesting that government has somehow tainted it again, as opposed to his dreams of change through rebellion has failed and resulted in MORE anger and resentment than before. But he can't say that. That would mean he was WRONG about something. Instead, the failing of his vision was brought about by external factors beyond his control. Just like everything else in his life, nothing is his fault. It was forced upon him.
His nihilistic tendencies definitely don't help him with that. The point is, if it seems like he's flip-flopping, it is because he is. He's got to explain to himself why his vision just made everything worse. It's not that he's saying that BLM is wrong; he's saying it's been corrupted. As if somehow rioting and burning down buildings would have made everything better somehow if it were just done the right way.
I mean, I've still seen a few around, and I know for a fact that they still were in at least one shop I frequently went past as recently as 8 years ago. Just showing off colour accuracy and depth and high resolutions and stuff instead.
Does anyone want to place bets this is the start of a countdown for a "save Sam" storyline, ending on November 3rd? Probably not, since I'm pretty sure Liberty dumped him before 2016. Besides, politics aside, when you're working with a buffer it's not a good idea to base your story around long term assumptions that could be wrong.
> P.S. ' Nope, that storyline with the Pimproaster Volcano was even more stupid than it sounds. My personal view was it was the worst storyline ever seen in Sinfest, beating out some pretty stiff competition
Oh, it was. This tally on Reddit sums it up perfectly:
https://www.reddit.com/r/sinfest/comments/ekelix/pettyfest_a_tally_of_the_last_six_weeks/
Not a single woman there actually saved herself, or other women. It was all due to chance and coincidence. And there's more than what that comic says: The old year had supposedly entered hell to rescue Lilith, and then left with Death and Lilith wasn't even mentioned.
https://www.sinfest.net/view.php?date=2020-09-15
Again continuation of the themes in the last strip.
https://www.sinfest.net/view.php?date=2020-09-15
Again continuation of the themes in the last strip.
Wow,
I'm trying hard to describe this as anything but blatant alt-right, anti-black lives matter protests, propaganda. I'm not succeeding
Erm, at least the rioters are caricatures of woke white people?
Anyone able to think of a way to polish this one?
Edited by NeedsAirCon on Sep 14th 2020 at 5:47:50 PM
Skynet Is Inevitable. Skynet IS...Undergoing Repairs Atm.Please re-insert plug and reboot![]()
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That’s because when Tatsuya focuses on an “enemy”, he only cares about portraying them in the worst light possible. He did that with trans folks when he compared them to groomers and pedos. (from Twitter comics)
Even if Tats isn’t an alt-righter, he might as well be, because right now he’s indistinguishable from one.
The comic title is “One nation under siege”. One would have to be willfully blind to what’s happening in the US if they believe the looters are what is threatening the stability of that nation right now. And I say this as a non-American.
It’s very reminiscent of those who point their fingers to the looters, decide they represent the entire protest/movement and say “THIS IS THE PEACEFUL LEFT!!1”
P.S: and no, it’s not just about white people because there was also a black person among the looters in an earlier strip.
Edited by Eggmaster on Sep 14th 2020 at 8:58:02 PM

How do the assassinbots survive from day to day?
Batteries, spare parts, tools for repairing 40 foot tall battlemechs. And that's assumming they don't have any need for sources of entertainment or long term plans (which they've stolen for before)
All this costs money in real life, and they've never been seen with jobs and are most definitely off the system
So how do they get the stuff they need/want without stealing it?
Every police department in the city should have their mugshots by now with all the theft that they'd need to do just to survive
Skynet Is Inevitable. Skynet IS...Undergoing Repairs Atm.Please re-insert plug and reboot