…its evolution from dude bro comic to terf Q horror vacui screed.
April 30, 2022 1:31 PM Subscribe
Twitter user @bitterkarella read 20 years of the Sinfest webcomic (unrolled) so you don't have to (and you shouldn't).
On his Garbage Day blog, Ryan Broderick read the thread so you don't have to (but you should) and summarizes it, in part, as "…the comic’s 22-year evolution actually gives us a startling insight into how a very specific kind of internet man would shift from angry nerd to anti-'woke' transphobic fascist."
Read the blog entry for a quick view, or the twitter thread if you have the stomach for seeing how this whole thing played out over the years. It's a weird portrait of parts of the early web and how they morphed into this whole thing /waves hands at the current state of the web.
Read the blog entry for a quick view, or the twitter thread if you have the stomach for seeing how this whole thing played out over the years. It's a weird portrait of parts of the early web and how they morphed into this whole thing /waves hands at the current state of the web.
Did every 2000s web comics artist either go bananas or quit? If so, then I'm glad Achewood ended when it did
posted by Countess Elena at 1:50 PM on April 30, 2022 [11 favorites]
posted by Countess Elena at 1:50 PM on April 30, 2022 [11 favorites]
Questionable Content (2003-present) still seems okay, so I don't think Jeph Jacques has gone 'round the bend. In addition to characters of various and sometimes evolving sexualities, there's at least one trans character. She's portrayed positively and when other characters have learned about her being trans they've reacted well.
posted by indexy at 1:57 PM on April 30, 2022 [33 favorites]
posted by indexy at 1:57 PM on April 30, 2022 [33 favorites]
Well, damn. I remember reading Sinfest as smart with sharp satirical elements, but I fell off reading it quite a few years ago. It just kind of stopped being important enough to keep as one of my morning comics. Maybe there was a reason for that.
Every once in a while I idly wonder what Sluggy Freelance or Wapsi Square or Between Failures are doing these days and I hesitate to find out.
Though, I can report that Questionable Content is still going strong and better than ever. I never stopped reading it. Just don't go in the archive before about #1500 or so, some of it didn't age well.
I'm also told that Jeffrey Rowland is still a good. Cannot confirm that directly; his comics were another victim of one of my media divestitures.
posted by Horkus at 2:02 PM on April 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
Every once in a while I idly wonder what Sluggy Freelance or Wapsi Square or Between Failures are doing these days and I hesitate to find out.
Though, I can report that Questionable Content is still going strong and better than ever. I never stopped reading it. Just don't go in the archive before about #1500 or so, some of it didn't age well.
I'm also told that Jeffrey Rowland is still a good. Cannot confirm that directly; his comics were another victim of one of my media divestitures.
posted by Horkus at 2:02 PM on April 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
@bitterkarella is also the author of the outstanding Midnight Society series, which reimagines horror (and other) novelists as kids telling stories around a campfire.
posted by wanderingmind at 2:03 PM on April 30, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by wanderingmind at 2:03 PM on April 30, 2022 [10 favorites]
Something Positive is still going strong. It started in 2001.
posted by garbhoch at 2:31 PM on April 30, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by garbhoch at 2:31 PM on April 30, 2022 [8 favorites]
Midnight Society is one of the best things about Twitter tbh.
posted by Kitteh at 2:43 PM on April 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 2:43 PM on April 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
Every once in a while I idly wonder what Sluggy Freelance
Sluggy is still active but in the final stages of being wrapped up entirely. That said, you'd have to go pretty far back to understand the current strips. Perhaps it's best to remember it as it was.
posted by tommasz at 3:03 PM on April 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
Sluggy is still active but in the final stages of being wrapped up entirely. That said, you'd have to go pretty far back to understand the current strips. Perhaps it's best to remember it as it was.
posted by tommasz at 3:03 PM on April 30, 2022 [7 favorites]
This thread is like huffing some college nostalgia right from the tank. I’d forgotten all about some of these strips. Glad to hear QC is still happening; Jacques always seemed like a decent guy.
As far as Achewood goes, while I would love more of that sprawling monstrosity, Onstad seems to be in a good place these days and that makes me happy.
posted by hototogisu at 3:05 PM on April 30, 2022 [11 favorites]
As far as Achewood goes, while I would love more of that sprawling monstrosity, Onstad seems to be in a good place these days and that makes me happy.
posted by hototogisu at 3:05 PM on April 30, 2022 [11 favorites]
Just don't tell me that Boondocks went off the rails.
posted by clawsoon at 3:14 PM on April 30, 2022
posted by clawsoon at 3:14 PM on April 30, 2022
https://www.nukees.com/ is from... yikes, January 1997 and maybe possibly meandering to a conclusion. Perhaps.
LICD is not perfect, but generally aligns with my screamingly leftist views
posted by Jacen at 3:25 PM on April 30, 2022
LICD is not perfect, but generally aligns with my screamingly leftist views
posted by Jacen at 3:25 PM on April 30, 2022
I've just been tricked into reading a bunch of Sinfest comics. Well played.
posted by goatdog at 3:25 PM on April 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by goatdog at 3:25 PM on April 30, 2022 [3 favorites]
How does this /b/ to /pol/ to Q pipeline actually work? I can kinda see the line from /pol/ to Q, but it still seems like a bit of a gap that folks might not naturally cross without some impetus.
posted by majick at 3:26 PM on April 30, 2022
posted by majick at 3:26 PM on April 30, 2022
Luckily, JERKCITY now known as BONEQUEST is still going strong. (NSFW, rude, gay)
posted by panhopticon at 3:38 PM on April 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by panhopticon at 3:38 PM on April 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
I feel like I understand (and disagree with) most of the far-right culture war positions. But the wave of anti-trans stuff just doesn't make any sense to me. Why are these lunatics suddenly so obsessed with trans issues?
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 3:45 PM on April 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 3:45 PM on April 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
I had not thought about Sinfest for years when this thread came around. I think the last time was a few years ago when people were looking back at it and going "wow, Sinfest dude sure turned into a terf, ugh".
I am not a fan of the politics expressed in where it's ended up at all, but I gotta say: Dude's doing some really nice art. Those backgrounds in the color strips are fucking gorgeous. It's a shame he turned into such a pinhead.
If we are also mentioning nineties webcomics people who have not become pinheads, Dana Simpson, formerly of "Ozy and Milly" and "I Drew This", is killing it with her current strip "Phoebe and her Unicorn".
posted by egypturnash at 3:47 PM on April 30, 2022 [8 favorites]
I am not a fan of the politics expressed in where it's ended up at all, but I gotta say: Dude's doing some really nice art. Those backgrounds in the color strips are fucking gorgeous. It's a shame he turned into such a pinhead.
If we are also mentioning nineties webcomics people who have not become pinheads, Dana Simpson, formerly of "Ozy and Milly" and "I Drew This", is killing it with her current strip "Phoebe and her Unicorn".
posted by egypturnash at 3:47 PM on April 30, 2022 [8 favorites]
Oglaf continues with its customary raunch and vigor and NSFW inventiveness. And Cat and Girl keeps being fun and weird and smart.
posted by cgc373 at 3:49 PM on April 30, 2022 [24 favorites]
posted by cgc373 at 3:49 PM on April 30, 2022 [24 favorites]
But the wave of anti-trans stuff just doesn't make any sense to me. Why are these lunatics suddenly so obsessed with trans issues?
They're picking at what they perceive as the weak link. They can't overtly bash women, minorities, or gay folks anymore, but trans folks are still vulnerable.
If they can cement that trans folks aren't worthy of respect, dignity, or protection, they can then try to push it back to attacking gay folks.
Almost all of their rhetoric is copy-pasted from 20 years ago with a find-and-replace of "trans" for "gay".
posted by explosion at 3:54 PM on April 30, 2022 [35 favorites]
They're picking at what they perceive as the weak link. They can't overtly bash women, minorities, or gay folks anymore, but trans folks are still vulnerable.
If they can cement that trans folks aren't worthy of respect, dignity, or protection, they can then try to push it back to attacking gay folks.
Almost all of their rhetoric is copy-pasted from 20 years ago with a find-and-replace of "trans" for "gay".
posted by explosion at 3:54 PM on April 30, 2022 [35 favorites]
Sinfest was a highlight of the Daily Bruin when I was at UCLA in the 90s. From its early online incarnations, though, the trajectory became increasingly clear. Tatsuya Ishida's next step surely is just Ben Garrison.
posted by tclark at 3:59 PM on April 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by tclark at 3:59 PM on April 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
This is fascinating and horrifying. I started reading SINFEST in the early 00s and did not at that time go back to the start, so those first year strips are eye-opening. The thread is too long for me, so I peaked out and read the blog post, and what the HELL, man?
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:03 PM on April 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:03 PM on April 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
At least some webcomics creators end up surfing to another title, which may or may not contain elements of their previous title(s). Jon Rosenberg in theory is still doing Goats, but hasn't updated it in several years and it's been a while AFAIK that he's even mentioned finishing it. He does, however, do Scenes From a Multiverse, updated sporadically but still good.
As for Tatsuo, he always struck me as someone who was technically good practically from the beginning (lots of others, including Rosenberg and Jeph Jacques, improve remarkably over time; others... don't), but his characters and gags seemed like a more cynical version of Bloom County in the early aughts; I noped out quite some time ago, and, like a lot of other people who did, am simultaneously horrified and just plain agog at where he's arrived at.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:07 PM on April 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
As for Tatsuo, he always struck me as someone who was technically good practically from the beginning (lots of others, including Rosenberg and Jeph Jacques, improve remarkably over time; others... don't), but his characters and gags seemed like a more cynical version of Bloom County in the early aughts; I noped out quite some time ago, and, like a lot of other people who did, am simultaneously horrified and just plain agog at where he's arrived at.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:07 PM on April 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'm old enough to mentally refer to this as Dave Simming.
posted by phooky at 4:19 PM on April 30, 2022 [57 favorites]
posted by phooky at 4:19 PM on April 30, 2022 [57 favorites]
Sinfest was one of the first webcomics I ever subscribed to back in the mid-00s, and it stayed pretty decent and even somewhat affecting with its gentle satire and pretty artwork until the abrupt shift into "The Sisterhood" and radical feminist ideology in 2011. It was a refreshing message for a medium so often mired in sexism, but Tats drove it so relentlessly and for so long that the strip became preachy and boring, and I dropped it from Google Reader within a year.
I rediscovered it last summer, and wow, has it changed radically. Seems like the entry point was a radfem crusade against sex workers and porn in the early 10s, which in the Trump/COVID years incorporated anti-trans and anti-vax themes, and then post-1/6 shifted into full-on anti-woke/antifa/Big Tech scaremongering, most recently reinforcing the bullshit smear against teachers as some sort of pedo-reptilian manipulators brainwashing kids. IMHO this hard turn into assholeville has been exacerbated by his dependence on Patreon money and his need to pander to the right to maintain income. (Ironically, despite railing against Twitter he still regularly posts there, though he does save his dumbest takes for the right-wing clone Spinster).
The best thing about this sad affair has been finding /r/Sinfest, which ruthlessly mocks the hypocrisy and incoherency of Tats's increasingly shitty Chick tracts. There's a running gag of "Pettyfest" parodies that edit recent strips to make fun of Tats or subvert his message, and yours truly has an ongoing series of Patreon Watch posts tracking his steady ebb in funding. I also highly recommend both this extensive /r/HobbyDrama recap and The Webcomics Review's periodic coverage of the strip's decline, written by a webcomic maven who knows it better than most.
posted by Rhaomi at 4:21 PM on April 30, 2022 [10 favorites]
I rediscovered it last summer, and wow, has it changed radically. Seems like the entry point was a radfem crusade against sex workers and porn in the early 10s, which in the Trump/COVID years incorporated anti-trans and anti-vax themes, and then post-1/6 shifted into full-on anti-woke/antifa/Big Tech scaremongering, most recently reinforcing the bullshit smear against teachers as some sort of pedo-reptilian manipulators brainwashing kids. IMHO this hard turn into assholeville has been exacerbated by his dependence on Patreon money and his need to pander to the right to maintain income. (Ironically, despite railing against Twitter he still regularly posts there, though he does save his dumbest takes for the right-wing clone Spinster).
The best thing about this sad affair has been finding /r/Sinfest, which ruthlessly mocks the hypocrisy and incoherency of Tats's increasingly shitty Chick tracts. There's a running gag of "Pettyfest" parodies that edit recent strips to make fun of Tats or subvert his message, and yours truly has an ongoing series of Patreon Watch posts tracking his steady ebb in funding. I also highly recommend both this extensive /r/HobbyDrama recap and The Webcomics Review's periodic coverage of the strip's decline, written by a webcomic maven who knows it better than most.
posted by Rhaomi at 4:21 PM on April 30, 2022 [10 favorites]
(Note all links above are to mirrors or third-party articles; /r/Sinfest avoids linking to his shit directly and I tend to agree)
posted by Rhaomi at 4:26 PM on April 30, 2022
posted by Rhaomi at 4:26 PM on April 30, 2022
I kinda drifted back and forth with Sinfest for a long time, sometimes checking it regularly and sometimes not. I read through that Twitter thread when the re-read was ongoing, and it turned out it was longer than I had thought before I finally noped out completely. I'd like to say I left because of the ideology, but really it was mostly because nothing ever went anywhere. (This was well into his SWERF phase but before his TERF phase.) I do wonder how much of the stuff I had pegged as winking back in the day was actually fully serious.
Every once in a while I idly wonder what Sluggy Freelance or Wapsi Square or Between Failures are doing these days and I hesitate to find out.
Last I checked on Wapsi Square it was completely unrecognizable. Not because of ideology that I noticed but just because it had shifted to different characters, and because every slice-of-life comic from that era eventually makes a hard turn into fantasy or sci-fi.
posted by ckape at 4:31 PM on April 30, 2022
Every once in a while I idly wonder what Sluggy Freelance or Wapsi Square or Between Failures are doing these days and I hesitate to find out.
Last I checked on Wapsi Square it was completely unrecognizable. Not because of ideology that I noticed but just because it had shifted to different characters, and because every slice-of-life comic from that era eventually makes a hard turn into fantasy or sci-fi.
posted by ckape at 4:31 PM on April 30, 2022
God it's been like 15 years since I've read Sin Fest. Thank God it's been 15 years since I read Sin Fest?
posted by pan at 4:46 PM on April 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by pan at 4:46 PM on April 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
I'm old enough to mentally refer to this as Dave Simming.
Your grandfather knew it as Al Capping.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 4:49 PM on April 30, 2022 [18 favorites]
Your grandfather knew it as Al Capping.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 4:49 PM on April 30, 2022 [18 favorites]
I'm old enough to mentally refer to this as Dave Simming.
oh dang man I remember twenty-odd years ago, when I was actively interested in becoming a comics writer, and I heard a lot of praise of Cerebus -- comparing it to Citizen Kane because it was so innovative, and all that. I tried the first issue (having been assured that he didn't go crazy for many issues) and I thought it was gross and tiresome already.
I am glad to be of an age when I can say a flat no to vile shit that's set up as important. But I do wish I had been able to see my way clear to getting into comics writing. It wasn't just the misogyny; the business just was all so opaque at that time, and now that I think about it, that's probably got more to do with misogyny than I realize.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:01 PM on April 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
oh dang man I remember twenty-odd years ago, when I was actively interested in becoming a comics writer, and I heard a lot of praise of Cerebus -- comparing it to Citizen Kane because it was so innovative, and all that. I tried the first issue (having been assured that he didn't go crazy for many issues) and I thought it was gross and tiresome already.
I am glad to be of an age when I can say a flat no to vile shit that's set up as important. But I do wish I had been able to see my way clear to getting into comics writing. It wasn't just the misogyny; the business just was all so opaque at that time, and now that I think about it, that's probably got more to do with misogyny than I realize.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:01 PM on April 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
I think we'd all like to find the formula to understand why "Weird but funny guy" becomes "Raving hateful misogynist" but it probably is going to vary per person. Knowing nothing at all about the author, I wonder; who are his friends? Did he ever actually talk to/listen to any sex workers when he went on a crusade against sex work? Did he grow up in a strict religious background that is reasserting itself?
I wonder about that last one with a lot of these guys, actually. My dad did a similar thing, dropping his strict religion as a young man then diving back deep into it in middle age. And just in general an upbringing that stigmatizes sex and sees "too much" or the "the wrong kind" as damage is going to see the people who do those things as damaged, even lesser, people. Taking a missionary approach of "saving" them (no matter how much you thereby harm them) for "their own good" from transness or what have you. But also despising them, even hating them, for not wanting your "salvation."
posted by emjaybee at 5:15 PM on April 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
I wonder about that last one with a lot of these guys, actually. My dad did a similar thing, dropping his strict religion as a young man then diving back deep into it in middle age. And just in general an upbringing that stigmatizes sex and sees "too much" or the "the wrong kind" as damage is going to see the people who do those things as damaged, even lesser, people. Taking a missionary approach of "saving" them (no matter how much you thereby harm them) for "their own good" from transness or what have you. But also despising them, even hating them, for not wanting your "salvation."
posted by emjaybee at 5:15 PM on April 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
signal, thanks for the links. I read the bitterkarella thread and appreciated the connections she draws (for people wondering "how did this journey happen?" she gets into that, in particular in the portion starting "Sinfest 2013!!! before we start, some thoughts"). A few other points she makes:
there's multiple arcs about slick or squigley trying to "reform" and lead a moral life, reforming always being framed as abstinence, resisting the temptations of booze, junk food and especially porn ....posted by brainwane at 5:48 PM on April 30, 2022 [11 favorites]
sinfest is like a political cartoon but after the cartoon. like the point has been made and now you're just watching the actors, like a cartoon pig in a top hat with "government cheese" written on him or something, just walking around and doing normal things. its so fucking weird .....
Christ, what an asshole.
posted by jordemort at 6:10 PM on April 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by jordemort at 6:10 PM on April 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
Every so often I think about reading the last few books of Cerebus.
I doubt I ever will.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 7:24 PM on April 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
I doubt I ever will.
posted by inpHilltr8r at 7:24 PM on April 30, 2022 [4 favorites]
I'd say that the anti trans platform was more or less lurking in the background until, roughly 2014 or so. June 2015, the Supreme Court enshrined gay marriage rights in law with Obergefell v. Hodges, an act that was extremely popular with the left. There are starting to be transgender people in the news, with high profile transitions, and increasingly on television. The rightwingers can't be obviously racist, obviously anti gay wasn't getting them anywhere, too many people knew gay friends and family as just people. so.... new target.
Conservatives are inherently uncomfortable with the new, the different, the nonconformist, and us transgender people (Especially male to female, double triple especially POC MTF transgender people) are the perfect storm target of hate-mongering. Visibly queer, visibly flaunting 'expected gender norms' visibly rejecting their standards of religious beliefs and toxic masculinity, even basic masculinity itself, changing God's given Plan and body image with medication and even surgery, and of course somehow indoctrinating children. Drugs and sex surgery for children!!!! (Puberty blockers at age twelve would have been a blessed miracle for me, an utter life changing divine blessing. A simple pill that would have freed me from twenty years of quiet waking subtle nightmares where everything was hideously wrong and I didn't know what to do to fix it.)
We are trying to 'force' our way onto sports teams, legal protections, and of course, women's locker rooms and bathrooms. Won't Someone Think Of The Children?!?! (Plus, toxic patriarchy views of women as property, protecting women's 'virtue and purity' the concept that all men are basically rapists if God and man's law didn't prevent it...) And the TEFRS often unfortunately come at it from a place that... almost is well meaning, but so utterly misguided in their conclusions that it's tragic. Many women have been hurt by men. There should be places that are women only. It's when you get into gender essentiailism (original sin?) and pseudoscience and bigotry echo chambers that turns past hurts and fears into hate.
It's super, super easy to demonize us. A significant portion of MTF transgender people can't hide the fact that we are transgender. Worst off, we demand that they actively tolerate the very actions they loathe. Bigots can mumble stuff about queer and nonwhite people under their breath. It's still considered more or less ok to be disgusting and harassing to women in many parts of the world. But transgender people, demanding new names and pronouns? How do you be directly hateful to someone's face in a world where that could get you 'canceled'? It's so, so so easy to get on the news and scream about 'men invading bathrooms' and all that other shit. Never teach people to think when you can get them afraid of something. Scared people vote for the big manly men who can 'protect' them and their children from the crazy violent indoctrinating transgender crusaders or whatever.
Fascism requires victims, enemies.
posted by Jacen at 7:33 PM on April 30, 2022 [40 favorites]
Conservatives are inherently uncomfortable with the new, the different, the nonconformist, and us transgender people (Especially male to female, double triple especially POC MTF transgender people) are the perfect storm target of hate-mongering. Visibly queer, visibly flaunting 'expected gender norms' visibly rejecting their standards of religious beliefs and toxic masculinity, even basic masculinity itself, changing God's given Plan and body image with medication and even surgery, and of course somehow indoctrinating children. Drugs and sex surgery for children!!!! (Puberty blockers at age twelve would have been a blessed miracle for me, an utter life changing divine blessing. A simple pill that would have freed me from twenty years of quiet waking subtle nightmares where everything was hideously wrong and I didn't know what to do to fix it.)
We are trying to 'force' our way onto sports teams, legal protections, and of course, women's locker rooms and bathrooms. Won't Someone Think Of The Children?!?! (Plus, toxic patriarchy views of women as property, protecting women's 'virtue and purity' the concept that all men are basically rapists if God and man's law didn't prevent it...) And the TEFRS often unfortunately come at it from a place that... almost is well meaning, but so utterly misguided in their conclusions that it's tragic. Many women have been hurt by men. There should be places that are women only. It's when you get into gender essentiailism (original sin?) and pseudoscience and bigotry echo chambers that turns past hurts and fears into hate.
It's super, super easy to demonize us. A significant portion of MTF transgender people can't hide the fact that we are transgender. Worst off, we demand that they actively tolerate the very actions they loathe. Bigots can mumble stuff about queer and nonwhite people under their breath. It's still considered more or less ok to be disgusting and harassing to women in many parts of the world. But transgender people, demanding new names and pronouns? How do you be directly hateful to someone's face in a world where that could get you 'canceled'? It's so, so so easy to get on the news and scream about 'men invading bathrooms' and all that other shit. Never teach people to think when you can get them afraid of something. Scared people vote for the big manly men who can 'protect' them and their children from the crazy violent indoctrinating transgender crusaders or whatever.
Fascism requires victims, enemies.
posted by Jacen at 7:33 PM on April 30, 2022 [40 favorites]
I just learned about this comic this week after seeing it in r/therightcantmeme and honestly the thing that shocks me the most is AFAICT Ishida is his real name.
A quarter century on the Internet has led me to the default assumption that any English language content on the internet with a Japanese name attached to it is written by a white guy doing digital yellowface.
posted by The Monster at the End of this Thread at 7:58 PM on April 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
A quarter century on the Internet has led me to the default assumption that any English language content on the internet with a Japanese name attached to it is written by a white guy doing digital yellowface.
posted by The Monster at the End of this Thread at 7:58 PM on April 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
It slightly boggles me that in the flip side of this, at least four webcomic creators I read in the 00s have come out as trans (Mae Dean of Real Life Comics, Jodie Troutman of Sporkman, Dana Simpson of Ozy And Millie, and Annette Pew of Lethal Doses and Blank It). And frankly, I’d rather read their stuff than Tats, who bored me to tears in 2008 and got left behind.
posted by mephron at 8:07 PM on April 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by mephron at 8:07 PM on April 30, 2022 [2 favorites]
Diesel Sweeties, Dinosaur Comics, and Bobbins Scary Go Round Bad Machinery are still going strong, and haven't gone bonkers crazypants. Heck even gaming-centered PVP hasn't gotten all bad-politics-brain-rot (though even though the art certainly improved the writing never improved past solidly mediocre).
I used to read Sinfest for a while early on, but IDK at some point I pruned it from my RSS reader because I realized I was not actually enjoying it. That wasn't any single episode that made me say "whoa hey this is despicable" it was just a sort of sense that it was just often mean and reductive in a way that low-key made my day a little worse for reading it. Note that I am someone for whom it takes like 4 albums I don't like before I stop buying new music from someone who made one album I love.
posted by aubilenon at 8:44 PM on April 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
I used to read Sinfest for a while early on, but IDK at some point I pruned it from my RSS reader because I realized I was not actually enjoying it. That wasn't any single episode that made me say "whoa hey this is despicable" it was just a sort of sense that it was just often mean and reductive in a way that low-key made my day a little worse for reading it. Note that I am someone for whom it takes like 4 albums I don't like before I stop buying new music from someone who made one album I love.
posted by aubilenon at 8:44 PM on April 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
>It slightly boggles me that in the flip side of this, at least four webcomic creators I read in the 00s have come out as trans (Mae Dean of Real Life Comics, Jodie Troutman of Sporkman, Dana Simpson of Ozy And Millie, and Annette Pew of Lethal Doses and Blank It). And frankly, I’d rather read their stuff than Tats, who bored me to tears in 2008 and got left behind.
Dresden Codak's Sen Diaz, as well.
posted by rifflesby at 8:45 PM on April 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
Dresden Codak's Sen Diaz, as well.
posted by rifflesby at 8:45 PM on April 30, 2022 [1 favorite]
Heck even gaming-centered PVP hasn't gotten all bad-politics-brain-rot
I can't speak to anytime in the last ... 15+ years? But, I will say that over a ~8 year period I had the misfortune of having to witness Scott Kurtz interact with his fans (many of whom were at the time known to him to be young teenagers). He may not have become a fascist, but good lord was he a toxic, petty asshole who regularly took to trolling and emotionally abusing people 20 years his junior.
I was real big into early webcomics, but man, something about that scene was just not right.
posted by a faithful sock at 9:27 PM on April 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
I can't speak to anytime in the last ... 15+ years? But, I will say that over a ~8 year period I had the misfortune of having to witness Scott Kurtz interact with his fans (many of whom were at the time known to him to be young teenagers). He may not have become a fascist, but good lord was he a toxic, petty asshole who regularly took to trolling and emotionally abusing people 20 years his junior.
I was real big into early webcomics, but man, something about that scene was just not right.
posted by a faithful sock at 9:27 PM on April 30, 2022 [6 favorites]
God, what a weird ride that twitter thread was; I spent a lot more of today reading it start to finish than I expected to. I'm among the folks who read it back at the beginning, kept up with it for the first few years in my webcomic rotation before just sort of falling off because even in the first few years it got pretty samey in a "I have six strip templates I write" way.
It was easily one of the best looking comics at the time; the observations in the twitter thread about his working with the idea of newspaper syndication resonates, and if he'd been writing a different, slightly tamer take on stuff maybe he could have gotten lucky there, but bitterkarela is right that even early Sinfest's mild irreverence and sauciness was probably a disqualifying factor for broad uptake.
Just absolutely bonkers to catch up on the ensuing almost two decades of strange sudden lurches in tone and ideology. It really does feel like he got hit by a metaphorical bus or two in the last five years or so in particular. And, yeah, much of it feels absolutely Garrisonian, if masked somewhat by the strip's long momentum and deep-stacked (and as the thread notes deeply confusing and inconsistent) character and setting symbolism. With Garrison it's more obvious when he's saying absolutely nothing and saying it loudly because there's not a bunch of prior context for the brain to draw pareidoliac explanations out of.
posted by cortex at 9:37 PM on April 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
It was easily one of the best looking comics at the time; the observations in the twitter thread about his working with the idea of newspaper syndication resonates, and if he'd been writing a different, slightly tamer take on stuff maybe he could have gotten lucky there, but bitterkarela is right that even early Sinfest's mild irreverence and sauciness was probably a disqualifying factor for broad uptake.
Just absolutely bonkers to catch up on the ensuing almost two decades of strange sudden lurches in tone and ideology. It really does feel like he got hit by a metaphorical bus or two in the last five years or so in particular. And, yeah, much of it feels absolutely Garrisonian, if masked somewhat by the strip's long momentum and deep-stacked (and as the thread notes deeply confusing and inconsistent) character and setting symbolism. With Garrison it's more obvious when he's saying absolutely nothing and saying it loudly because there's not a bunch of prior context for the brain to draw pareidoliac explanations out of.
posted by cortex at 9:37 PM on April 30, 2022 [5 favorites]
I used to like it, both the characters and the artwork, then I got bored. I think boredom hit me harder than revulsion, but the strip was also getting to be definitely less fun.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:02 AM on May 1, 2022
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 2:02 AM on May 1, 2022
I have seen the Midnight Society mention Tatsuya Ishida in the context of Rowling's coven of TERF death eaters, and was confused. mostly because I thought they were talking about Tetsuya Ishida, a Japanese surrealist painter who made bleak, dysphoric photorealistic paintings of sad people transformed into inanimate objects, and whose death may have been suicide.
I'm relieved to hear that Ishida-san is not an undead Nazi TERF, though annoyed that some weeb seems to have poached his name and tainted it with fascist crap.
posted by acb at 4:36 AM on May 1, 2022
I'm relieved to hear that Ishida-san is not an undead Nazi TERF, though annoyed that some weeb seems to have poached his name and tainted it with fascist crap.
posted by acb at 4:36 AM on May 1, 2022
What a ride that thread was. I've been fascinated by the Sinfest bootlegger reverse, but never enough to actually wade through the content I hadn't read, especially when so much of it is hallucinatory symbolism word-salad.
I dropped off Sinfest back in 2013 or 2014, when my feeling was "good for you on getting out of the racist/sexist dudebro shit, but the long wordless comics, the looping plotlines of the Sisterhood, and the interminable movie parodies are making everything too dull for me," and then I was mildly startled when his descent into batfuckery came to my attention in '20. It's a little sad when you can see so clearly that someone's response to getting criticized was to retaliate by going full Nazi looneytunes based on nothing but pure spiteful "enemy of my enemy" logic.
I suspect it didn't help that he'd had, at that point, years of loud idiots whining in his forums about how he didn't make dudebro jokes anymore. He'd have had ample opportunity to build a habit of just assuming all criticism was hateful whiners by the time he starting doing TERF shit and getting called out for that too.
posted by Scattercat at 5:08 AM on May 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
I dropped off Sinfest back in 2013 or 2014, when my feeling was "good for you on getting out of the racist/sexist dudebro shit, but the long wordless comics, the looping plotlines of the Sisterhood, and the interminable movie parodies are making everything too dull for me," and then I was mildly startled when his descent into batfuckery came to my attention in '20. It's a little sad when you can see so clearly that someone's response to getting criticized was to retaliate by going full Nazi looneytunes based on nothing but pure spiteful "enemy of my enemy" logic.
I suspect it didn't help that he'd had, at that point, years of loud idiots whining in his forums about how he didn't make dudebro jokes anymore. He'd have had ample opportunity to build a habit of just assuming all criticism was hateful whiners by the time he starting doing TERF shit and getting called out for that too.
posted by Scattercat at 5:08 AM on May 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Why are these lunatics suddenly so obsessed with trans issues?
For male transphobes, toxic masculinity probably has a lot to do with it. If you believe that (a) the penis is an instrument of domination, (b) men who are attracted to men are inherently contemptible, and (c) anyone who once had a penis is a man, then it follows that trans women are a plot to turn red-blooded men gay against their will or something like that.
posted by acb at 5:22 AM on May 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
For male transphobes, toxic masculinity probably has a lot to do with it. If you believe that (a) the penis is an instrument of domination, (b) men who are attracted to men are inherently contemptible, and (c) anyone who once had a penis is a man, then it follows that trans women are a plot to turn red-blooded men gay against their will or something like that.
posted by acb at 5:22 AM on May 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
I almost wish I had never come across this. I've been going through the twitter thread, and the early stuff, with the pretty blatant racist bullshit and outright troglodyte views on women was enough that, had I come across it at the time, I like to think I'd have noped out right away.
Yet, this thing seems to be worth the time and attention given. There's an interesting thread about it here on Metafilter, the recap of the thread was interesting enough, so, I started going through the twitter thread, and goddamn.
I can't seem to pull myself away from it. It's like experiencing an ongoing car crash in real time, only to find out that it had happened years before, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. The creator of the comic seems to be someone deeply, deeply in need of help, if not therapy, then at least someone to talk to, someone not connected to this comic and the forum surrounding it. There are so many moments where it seems like they're slowly starting to see different possibilities, and it just feels so butterfly effect: what if, at the moment where they were starting to accept the possibility of "A", someone had been there to assuage doubts and tell them to keep looking, but instead, we got a sudden pull back, or massive change in direction because someone else whispered in their ear that "A" was bad, and they recoiled.
I'm only in the mid-2010s at this point, and I think I really need to stop. The person who was writing this between, say, 2010 and 2014 so badly needed someone in their lives to let them explore whatever it was that was coming to the forefront of their minds at the time. Reading it now, processing this existential car wreck years after the fact, but vaguely in real time through the twitter recap, I just want to reach out to them, to let them know things don't need to go down the path they clearly are, but yet I see the comments about where the comic is now, and I know that, whoever this person might have been, whatever conversation that would have helped them away from all of this never happened, and it's only going to get worse from here.
I don't often, maybe haven't ever, feel like I wish like I'd never clicked on a link here before, but I feel that way now, and damn, I say that knowing I'm probably going to end up finishing the twitter thread.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:48 AM on May 1, 2022 [15 favorites]
Yet, this thing seems to be worth the time and attention given. There's an interesting thread about it here on Metafilter, the recap of the thread was interesting enough, so, I started going through the twitter thread, and goddamn.
I can't seem to pull myself away from it. It's like experiencing an ongoing car crash in real time, only to find out that it had happened years before, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. The creator of the comic seems to be someone deeply, deeply in need of help, if not therapy, then at least someone to talk to, someone not connected to this comic and the forum surrounding it. There are so many moments where it seems like they're slowly starting to see different possibilities, and it just feels so butterfly effect: what if, at the moment where they were starting to accept the possibility of "A", someone had been there to assuage doubts and tell them to keep looking, but instead, we got a sudden pull back, or massive change in direction because someone else whispered in their ear that "A" was bad, and they recoiled.
I'm only in the mid-2010s at this point, and I think I really need to stop. The person who was writing this between, say, 2010 and 2014 so badly needed someone in their lives to let them explore whatever it was that was coming to the forefront of their minds at the time. Reading it now, processing this existential car wreck years after the fact, but vaguely in real time through the twitter recap, I just want to reach out to them, to let them know things don't need to go down the path they clearly are, but yet I see the comments about where the comic is now, and I know that, whoever this person might have been, whatever conversation that would have helped them away from all of this never happened, and it's only going to get worse from here.
I don't often, maybe haven't ever, feel like I wish like I'd never clicked on a link here before, but I feel that way now, and damn, I say that knowing I'm probably going to end up finishing the twitter thread.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:48 AM on May 1, 2022 [15 favorites]
It's an incredible ride. Very much a descent into madness. And yes, the almost attained self realizations seem achingly close to being grasped before they are fled from at all costs.
posted by Jacen at 6:12 AM on May 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Jacen at 6:12 AM on May 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Tat's satire, when it was satire, was too much like Fight Club.
The problem with satirizing toxic behaviour is that the mooks never EVER see the satire.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:44 AM on May 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
The problem with satirizing toxic behaviour is that the mooks never EVER see the satire.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:44 AM on May 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Did every 2000s web comics artist either go bananas or quit?
David Willis has been writing what is (arguably) the same comic since his 1997 debut in Indiana University's student newspaper. It's gone under 4 different names, at least two complete reboots, and several genre shifts. They're the "same comic" because they feature the same cast of characters, albeit in different situations. The most recent iteration, Dumbing of Age, goes back to its roots as a low-weirdshit series about IU undergrads, but it's character-driven long-arc drama in place of Roomies!'s gag-a-day structure.
posted by jackbishop at 7:02 AM on May 1, 2022 [6 favorites]
David Willis has been writing what is (arguably) the same comic since his 1997 debut in Indiana University's student newspaper. It's gone under 4 different names, at least two complete reboots, and several genre shifts. They're the "same comic" because they feature the same cast of characters, albeit in different situations. The most recent iteration, Dumbing of Age, goes back to its roots as a low-weirdshit series about IU undergrads, but it's character-driven long-arc drama in place of Roomies!'s gag-a-day structure.
posted by jackbishop at 7:02 AM on May 1, 2022 [6 favorites]
Why are these lunatics suddenly so obsessed with trans issues?
They need a target for their hate. Trans people are now the ones it’s acceptable to hate so they can punch us.
And then they can start moving in again. The right wing has basically made it clear that next is gay rights or abortion, whichever they can break first. Some of them even are talking about breaking Loving v. Virginia.
And yet if the Rapture happened, they’d be shocked they didn’t get to go.
posted by mephron at 9:12 AM on May 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
They need a target for their hate. Trans people are now the ones it’s acceptable to hate so they can punch us.
And then they can start moving in again. The right wing has basically made it clear that next is gay rights or abortion, whichever they can break first. Some of them even are talking about breaking Loving v. Virginia.
And yet if the Rapture happened, they’d be shocked they didn’t get to go.
posted by mephron at 9:12 AM on May 1, 2022 [5 favorites]
I'm old enough to mentally refer to this as Dave Simming.
Your grandfather knew it as Al Capping.
I wouldn't put it in the same category. Al Capp had a long history of sexual assault, which he managed to skate away from, albeit sometimes barely; he "plead... guilty to a charge of attempted adultery" after one incident. And yet, he still had people claiming him as one of the Great Men of Cartooning; I got into it some time ago with some people who defended a cartoon that he did that was premised on the idea that middle-aged women didn't have to worry about being sexually assaulted (showing a number of younger women being sexually assaulted in the background). Sim, AFAIK, hasn't done anything like that, even though he's wildly misogynistic and homophobic.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:16 AM on May 1, 2022
Your grandfather knew it as Al Capping.
I wouldn't put it in the same category. Al Capp had a long history of sexual assault, which he managed to skate away from, albeit sometimes barely; he "plead... guilty to a charge of attempted adultery" after one incident. And yet, he still had people claiming him as one of the Great Men of Cartooning; I got into it some time ago with some people who defended a cartoon that he did that was premised on the idea that middle-aged women didn't have to worry about being sexually assaulted (showing a number of younger women being sexually assaulted in the background). Sim, AFAIK, hasn't done anything like that, even though he's wildly misogynistic and homophobic.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:16 AM on May 1, 2022
Gonna read this sadly, as I am also a former Sinfest fan who stopped at some point.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:33 AM on May 1, 2022
posted by Going To Maine at 9:33 AM on May 1, 2022
David Willis is something of a reverse milkshake duck, since he started out as a bit of a fundie when he was drawing his earliest comics, but has long moved well away from that mindset.
As far as I know, Shaenon Garrity (Narbonic and then Skin Horse) is still drawing webcomics and still sane.
posted by kyrademon at 9:34 AM on May 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
As far as I know, Shaenon Garrity (Narbonic and then Skin Horse) is still drawing webcomics and still sane.
posted by kyrademon at 9:34 AM on May 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
I even have the early TPBs of Sinfest, but completely lost interest with The Sisterhood. I really ought to put them next to my Cerebus TPBs...
As for old Web comics still going strong, Girl Genius (2002), Freefall (1998), Gunnerkrigg Court (2005), Sabrina Online (1997), and the Order of the Stick (2003) spring to mind, the first three even still maintaining a staggering three updates per week.
posted by bouvin at 10:11 AM on May 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
As for old Web comics still going strong, Girl Genius (2002), Freefall (1998), Gunnerkrigg Court (2005), Sabrina Online (1997), and the Order of the Stick (2003) spring to mind, the first three even still maintaining a staggering three updates per week.
posted by bouvin at 10:11 AM on May 1, 2022 [3 favorites]
I remember the fish bike strip! Still good, even if the rest isn’t. Think I stopped reading regularly by 2003ish, so just must have been in the right place at the right time.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:17 AM on May 1, 2022
posted by Going To Maine at 10:17 AM on May 1, 2022
My reaction to seeing the name "Sinfest" pop up was basically Obi-Wan near the beginning of Star Wars. I remember checking it out from time to time when Eric Burns-White (remember him?) featured a good gag on his blog, but I never liked it well enough to add it into my rotation.
Concerning old-school web comics: Nukees has been plugging along on a regular MWF schedule since 1997. (!) I'll admit, however, that I kind of lost interest in it circa 2010. I do dip in from time to time, and Bleuel still just seems to be fairly sane.
posted by Johnny Assay at 11:21 AM on May 1, 2022
Concerning old-school web comics: Nukees has been plugging along on a regular MWF schedule since 1997. (!) I'll admit, however, that I kind of lost interest in it circa 2010. I do dip in from time to time, and Bleuel still just seems to be fairly sane.
posted by Johnny Assay at 11:21 AM on May 1, 2022
Still going through the thread. I stopped reading in 2003-ish, have just gotten to 2014, and the whole ride has been very “Wha…?” (Although I do understand Ishida adding more devil girl characters - @bitterkarella noted that they were the most interesting plot in the strip, so there’s a certain “if it’s working, do more of it” aspect to that. That said, the problem with experiencing twenty years of Sinfest development/degeneration through this thread is that it’s leaving out so many dang characters, arcs, etc. I don’t want the full experience -my time is slightly more precious than that- but it’s definitely a bit frustrating to get to a tweet like “Blorb has really changed” and I don’t even know who Blorb is.)
posted by Going To Maine at 12:44 PM on May 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 12:44 PM on May 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Still slowly reading through the thread, and got to this one:
when 2016 ended, shit was bonkers. it's nuts. everything is off the wall. tatsuya's worldview is bizarre... he correctly identifies the police violence of the surveillance state BUT 2016 is the year that he's also begun sliding into weirdo illuminati conspiracy shit
Nothing wrong about it, but it does sort of capture my issue with the vibe of this thread - “he correctly identifies the police violence of the surveillance state”, but there’s a sort of valence to the word “correct” -and here I am overthinking the plate of beans- that itself implies there’s some kind of overall correct analysis of something coherent in our politics that Ishida is reaching for (and that, presumably, @bitterkarella sees). There are plenty of accurate definitions of the surveillance state in the US as a bad thing, but none of those really map to the hyperbolic visions that Ishida are drawn to. Further, in the context of the 2016 election that doesn’t seem particularly relevant, beyond an argument that people didn’t want to vote for HRC because she was a creature of politics and so would be pro the status quo.
I encountered Sinfest as an adolescent, and as such it’s early years felt very adolescent and comic book. The idea of a grown adult sincerely holding the weird, comic book views of the world that have been getting drawn in the strip, way, waaaay before 2016 are, IMO, red flags. Ishida’s views of the world aren’t simply “wrong” or “incorrect” - they’re totally divorced from the facts.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:05 PM on May 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
when 2016 ended, shit was bonkers. it's nuts. everything is off the wall. tatsuya's worldview is bizarre... he correctly identifies the police violence of the surveillance state BUT 2016 is the year that he's also begun sliding into weirdo illuminati conspiracy shit
Nothing wrong about it, but it does sort of capture my issue with the vibe of this thread - “he correctly identifies the police violence of the surveillance state”, but there’s a sort of valence to the word “correct” -and here I am overthinking the plate of beans- that itself implies there’s some kind of overall correct analysis of something coherent in our politics that Ishida is reaching for (and that, presumably, @bitterkarella sees). There are plenty of accurate definitions of the surveillance state in the US as a bad thing, but none of those really map to the hyperbolic visions that Ishida are drawn to. Further, in the context of the 2016 election that doesn’t seem particularly relevant, beyond an argument that people didn’t want to vote for HRC because she was a creature of politics and so would be pro the status quo.
I encountered Sinfest as an adolescent, and as such it’s early years felt very adolescent and comic book. The idea of a grown adult sincerely holding the weird, comic book views of the world that have been getting drawn in the strip, way, waaaay before 2016 are, IMO, red flags. Ishida’s views of the world aren’t simply “wrong” or “incorrect” - they’re totally divorced from the facts.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:05 PM on May 1, 2022 [2 favorites]
Actual good 2016/2017 period strip!
@bitterkarelia: squiggly is goals
posted by Going To Maine at 3:17 PM on May 1, 2022
@bitterkarelia: squiggly is goals
posted by Going To Maine at 3:17 PM on May 1, 2022
I'm going through the Twitter thread, but yeah, even just reading the thread is a slog.
Some of the earlier TERF-adjacent comics do rely on the rhetoric that gender is just stereotypes, and forces non-conforming people into boy camp or girl camp.
But then also not conforming to boy pronouns or girl pronouns is worthy of ridicule.
The thread highlights that contrast here. With these two strips next to each other, it comes across as, "the problem with gender conformity camps is when you send the wrong person to the gender conformity camp."
And in, for instance, this later comic that just Ben Garrisons all over the page, it has Mrs. Potato Head looking on in distaste because Mr. Potato head is cross-dressing? Which again, comes across as an attitude that gender non-conformity is bad, actually.
posted by RobotHero at 3:28 PM on May 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Some of the earlier TERF-adjacent comics do rely on the rhetoric that gender is just stereotypes, and forces non-conforming people into boy camp or girl camp.
But then also not conforming to boy pronouns or girl pronouns is worthy of ridicule.
The thread highlights that contrast here. With these two strips next to each other, it comes across as, "the problem with gender conformity camps is when you send the wrong person to the gender conformity camp."
And in, for instance, this later comic that just Ben Garrisons all over the page, it has Mrs. Potato Head looking on in distaste because Mr. Potato head is cross-dressing? Which again, comes across as an attitude that gender non-conformity is bad, actually.
posted by RobotHero at 3:28 PM on May 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
That last comic literally has a Care Bear with a hammer and sickle on its stomach. Never mind Ben Garrison, even that guy who mock-editorial-cartoons for The Onion might hesitate.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:15 PM on May 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:15 PM on May 1, 2022 [4 favorites]
Reached the shiiiit tatsuya recognizes capitalism's attempts to neutralize & co-opt revolution. how can this guy be so on the ball on some things and so bazonkers on others? his mind is a rich tapestry tweet so now I don’t think I was overthing that earlier “correctness” peeving. It’s quite easy for folks to be on the ball about one thing and bazonkers about others.
posted by Going To Maine at 4:56 PM on May 1, 2022
posted by Going To Maine at 4:56 PM on May 1, 2022
Team 'huh, I'd completely forgotten that existed' here. I'm impressed at the effort at reading two decades of sinfest, but I'm lost at why you'd spend your short time on the planet doing this to yourself...
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:43 PM on May 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:43 PM on May 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Incidentally, as I’ve now started hate/sad reading recent strips, the current sequence is (unsurprisingly) about how Twitter has restored free speech now and that’s a victory for the feminists. And there’s -of course- other gross stuff too.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:19 PM on May 1, 2022
posted by Going To Maine at 8:19 PM on May 1, 2022
I think Rhaomi might be on to something with Patreon being an influencing factor. If he's primarily got right-wing patrons now, his livelihood might depend on making them happy. Sinfest is probably at a point in its existence where it's much easier to lose contributors than to gain them, and the right is quite accepting of defectors. Whether that actually is the reason for him going The Full Trumpy or not, he certainly has a large financial incentive to do so. There's at least a few people on Fox News in that predicament, I'm sure.
posted by JHarris at 9:25 PM on May 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by JHarris at 9:25 PM on May 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
El Goonish Shive has casually settled into a position of, boys who regularly transform into girls without complaint probably aren't totally cis, but for years now it's spent most of its time focusing on authority figures making shocked or shocking proclamations about the rules of magic, and very little time on the actual main characters hanging out. Except for the one time Grace had a birthday party that I think took over a year to depict.
Sinfest is... man, I dunno. I used to read it a long time ago and eventually lapsed. The thing I kept coming back to, reading that twitter thread, was the Sinfest website itself. There's almost nothing there, just a white background and the comic. There's never been anything else there. The author says nothing except for whatever inconsistent meanings you can read into the strip. The thread and the article don't have any articles or interviews by him to quote, just the comic. He's barely connected to the rest of the world. Does he have friends? There's no way to know. I worry for him.
posted by one for the books at 10:40 PM on May 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Sinfest is... man, I dunno. I used to read it a long time ago and eventually lapsed. The thing I kept coming back to, reading that twitter thread, was the Sinfest website itself. There's almost nothing there, just a white background and the comic. There's never been anything else there. The author says nothing except for whatever inconsistent meanings you can read into the strip. The thread and the article don't have any articles or interviews by him to quote, just the comic. He's barely connected to the rest of the world. Does he have friends? There's no way to know. I worry for him.
posted by one for the books at 10:40 PM on May 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
Yeah, I dug around but I stopped because I didn’t think the results would make me particularly happy. The forum appears to have some regulars who disagree with or agree with the strip to varying degrees, but Ishida doesn’t appear to be a part of many interactions on a light skim.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:00 PM on May 1, 2022
posted by Going To Maine at 11:00 PM on May 1, 2022
I don't think Ishida was actually very pro 45 himself... It's much more conspiracy theories, (((those people))) keeping the world a mess (and yes, I'm disappointed that there is a code for that kind of unacceptable hate. It's not ok.)... In fact, he sounds like a moderately conservative uncle who is disappointed by politics and instead of realizing that yes, one party is actively working to make things worse, they go down the rabbit hole of.... Complicating things and mixing pareidolia and of apophenia and real history and blaming the wrong things.
I'm admittedly kind of stuck on the differences between.... Humans are sporadically incredibly shitty and yes, there's a cognitive barricade between yes, this group of people is actively conspiring to destroy democracy and.... There's a worldwide conspiracy of people who have conspired to continually run the world. I guess I'm kinda stumbling around the..... Difference of degrees between reality and..... Birds aren't real, wars and elections are governed by shadowy puppet master groups instead of caused by greed and fear and tribalism, corporations are greedy and sometimes sketchy and will violate as many laws as they can get away with and.... 5g brainwashing, vaccine microchips, human rights and expanding the binary to be inclusive as some sort of oppression hate mob.... Gah.
Like, I've always been conspiracy theories adjacent. They largely amuse me, and some of the real world abuses are heartbreaking and terrible and there is an awful lot of them... It just seems like such a thin line between my position and a Wonderland of the Q anon and Illuminati and Majestic 12 and and reptilian space rays. Humans need to belong to something, and sometimes the Pachinko machine of echo chambers and pipelines lands people into the really paranoid. The world is big and scary and our lizard brains can't always comprehend. Maybe we are all truly reptilians at that level.
posted by Jacen at 1:15 AM on May 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
I'm admittedly kind of stuck on the differences between.... Humans are sporadically incredibly shitty and yes, there's a cognitive barricade between yes, this group of people is actively conspiring to destroy democracy and.... There's a worldwide conspiracy of people who have conspired to continually run the world. I guess I'm kinda stumbling around the..... Difference of degrees between reality and..... Birds aren't real, wars and elections are governed by shadowy puppet master groups instead of caused by greed and fear and tribalism, corporations are greedy and sometimes sketchy and will violate as many laws as they can get away with and.... 5g brainwashing, vaccine microchips, human rights and expanding the binary to be inclusive as some sort of oppression hate mob.... Gah.
Like, I've always been conspiracy theories adjacent. They largely amuse me, and some of the real world abuses are heartbreaking and terrible and there is an awful lot of them... It just seems like such a thin line between my position and a Wonderland of the Q anon and Illuminati and Majestic 12 and and reptilian space rays. Humans need to belong to something, and sometimes the Pachinko machine of echo chambers and pipelines lands people into the really paranoid. The world is big and scary and our lizard brains can't always comprehend. Maybe we are all truly reptilians at that level.
posted by Jacen at 1:15 AM on May 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
Sinfest, or rather Slick's head, was always featured in the KeenSpot banners to the point of almost being synonymous with the site. I think the number of times I saw that little Calvin ripoff being advertised is probably why I never bothered with the comic.
I see Sinfest left KeenSpot sometime around 2006. I bet there was drama.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:42 AM on May 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
I see Sinfest left KeenSpot sometime around 2006. I bet there was drama.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:42 AM on May 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal is still in good shape. Note-- you get a little added joke by pressing the red button.
Artistically, I'm put Sinfest in the same category as Howard Cruse and Elfquest-- I think it's an Art Nouveau influence. Is anyone else doing that sort of thing?
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:11 AM on May 2, 2022
Artistically, I'm put Sinfest in the same category as Howard Cruse and Elfquest-- I think it's an Art Nouveau influence. Is anyone else doing that sort of thing?
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:11 AM on May 2, 2022
the observations in the twitter thread about his working with the idea of newspaper syndication resonates, and if he'd been writing a different, slightly tamer take on stuff maybe he could have gotten lucky there, but bitterkarela is right that even early Sinfest's mild irreverence and sauciness was probably a disqualifying factor for broad uptake.
He may also have been figuring that the syndication of Liberty Meadows might have opened the door towards even more envelope-pushing newspaper comics. The early-2000s webcomics scene was rife with a feeling that the syndicates were about to descend. This was around the time that Sheldon left KeenSpot after being grabbed by United Features.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:08 AM on May 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
He may also have been figuring that the syndication of Liberty Meadows might have opened the door towards even more envelope-pushing newspaper comics. The early-2000s webcomics scene was rife with a feeling that the syndicates were about to descend. This was around the time that Sheldon left KeenSpot after being grabbed by United Features.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 7:08 AM on May 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
Another creator that hasn't gone off the rails is Randall Milholland of Something Positive. The first steps have nearly 2000s edginess, but the characters mature (as I suspect the author did).
I dropped Sinfest long before Obama was elected, so this change was unknown. It seems that people with those views went one of two ways. Either they morphed into Maga obsessed qanon types or they grew out of their shit and became decent humans.
I didn't know Sen Diaz had transitioned. She is probably the most surprising creator to learn about, at least for me. (I associate her stuff with the "rationalist" community, which has a tendency towards the alt right, but that's a rant I've written before and this is not the thread for it.)
posted by Hactar at 7:16 AM on May 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
I dropped Sinfest long before Obama was elected, so this change was unknown. It seems that people with those views went one of two ways. Either they morphed into Maga obsessed qanon types or they grew out of their shit and became decent humans.
I didn't know Sen Diaz had transitioned. She is probably the most surprising creator to learn about, at least for me. (I associate her stuff with the "rationalist" community, which has a tendency towards the alt right, but that's a rant I've written before and this is not the thread for it.)
posted by Hactar at 7:16 AM on May 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
Ishida absolutely could still get into the syndication game — if Mallard Fillmore ever needs a new artist…
posted by Ampersand692 at 7:48 AM on May 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Ampersand692 at 7:48 AM on May 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
Presumably, if Roe gets overturned in June the strip will careen around again.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:18 AM on May 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Going To Maine at 9:18 AM on May 2, 2022 [1 favorite]
Dinosaur Comics, and Bobbins Scary Go Round Bad Machinery are still going strong, and haven't gone bonkers crazypants.
John Allison is a treasure, and I always regret that I never really read him until Giant Days.
But it shouldn't ever be forgotten that Ryan North did go off the literal deep end once, but Twitter helped him climb back out.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:23 AM on May 2, 2022 [10 favorites]
John Allison is a treasure, and I always regret that I never really read him until Giant Days.
But it shouldn't ever be forgotten that Ryan North did go off the literal deep end once, but Twitter helped him climb back out.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 9:23 AM on May 2, 2022 [10 favorites]
while this isn't a particularly new observation, and definitely not a confirmation of it, it certainly is an additional data point to the whole, "anti-sex worker and anti-trans radical feminism seems to be a gateway to right-wing beliefs," hypothesis. gamergate for non-gamers, who just want "ethics in sexual essentialism"
posted by i used to be someone else at 9:53 AM on May 2, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by i used to be someone else at 9:53 AM on May 2, 2022 [6 favorites]
Every so often I think about reading the last few books of Cerebus.
I doubt I ever will.
Don't. No matter how bad you think it's going to be, both in content and in writing style, it's ten times worse.
What a waste.
posted by Furnace of Doubt at 10:53 AM on May 2, 2022 [6 favorites]
I doubt I ever will.
Don't. No matter how bad you think it's going to be, both in content and in writing style, it's ten times worse.
What a waste.
posted by Furnace of Doubt at 10:53 AM on May 2, 2022 [6 favorites]
Holy crap. This is like reconnecting on Facebook with someone you went to high school with who was mildly amusing and generally non-descript at the time but in the intervening decades has gone ABSOLUTELY OFF THE FUCKING DEEP END. Like there are certainly aspects or glimpses of the person you used to know, but everything else is madness.
Prior to 2004, I had an easy job that permitted me to start my day with Sinfest, Wigu, Achewood, Goats, and lots of the other webcomics mentioned above. Once I changed jobs, I got out of that habit. I hadn't thought about this one in many years, but the thread was like watching a car crash in slow motion. Wow.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 12:15 PM on May 2, 2022 [4 favorites]
Prior to 2004, I had an easy job that permitted me to start my day with Sinfest, Wigu, Achewood, Goats, and lots of the other webcomics mentioned above. Once I changed jobs, I got out of that habit. I hadn't thought about this one in many years, but the thread was like watching a car crash in slow motion. Wow.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 12:15 PM on May 2, 2022 [4 favorites]
Having known both men and women in basically the middle of this saga (somewhere between being a SWERF and embracing full Q nonsense) it frightens me that I knew exactly where this was headed. Is it really that shocking to you all? Yes, it's insane but for a sad, lost individual who needs to make sense of the world and themselves in it, there is an almost completely predictable logic from SWERF to Illuminati Space Lasers. But maybe I only say that having seen it now..
And boy do I worry about where those people I've known are now.. It would not shock me at all to know they ended up in the same place.. one of them even said out loud, "Holy moly, am I a radfem TERF?? Nahhhh..".
-sigh-
posted by RobertFrost at 4:38 PM on May 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
And boy do I worry about where those people I've known are now.. It would not shock me at all to know they ended up in the same place.. one of them even said out loud, "Holy moly, am I a radfem TERF?? Nahhhh..".
-sigh-
posted by RobertFrost at 4:38 PM on May 2, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'm old enough to mentally refer to this as Dave Simming.
Once upon a time, somewhere in the 1990s, I did business with the printer who handled his work. I have a very specific memory of this...
I showed up for a meeting at about pricing and printing whatnots with the owner of said printer, and as we toured the printing operation, I noticed there were lots of boxes of Cerebus kicking around.
I was like "Oh, you're the guy who prints his stuff?"
He asked me if I'd like some copies since those boxes were overruns.
I said, "Eh, sure. But the guy's got problems."
He got this look on his face and said, "Yeah, he seems to be...weird about women."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:56 PM on May 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
Once upon a time, somewhere in the 1990s, I did business with the printer who handled his work. I have a very specific memory of this...
I showed up for a meeting at about pricing and printing whatnots with the owner of said printer, and as we toured the printing operation, I noticed there were lots of boxes of Cerebus kicking around.
I was like "Oh, you're the guy who prints his stuff?"
He asked me if I'd like some copies since those boxes were overruns.
I said, "Eh, sure. But the guy's got problems."
He got this look on his face and said, "Yeah, he seems to be...weird about women."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:56 PM on May 2, 2022 [3 favorites]
Is it really that shocking to you all?
The question, I think is at what point it stops being shocking. As Ben Trismegistus put it above, this is very much like discovering an irreverent high school acquaintance has gone off the deep end. Nothing about the strip when I was reading it predicted this. On the other hand, If you started reading it during those extremely evangelical radfem strip years - maybe it ain’t.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:07 PM on May 2, 2022
The question, I think is at what point it stops being shocking. As Ben Trismegistus put it above, this is very much like discovering an irreverent high school acquaintance has gone off the deep end. Nothing about the strip when I was reading it predicted this. On the other hand, If you started reading it during those extremely evangelical radfem strip years - maybe it ain’t.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:07 PM on May 2, 2022
Incidentally, r/sinfest appears to be a fairly active community of hate readers.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:15 AM on May 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Going To Maine at 10:15 AM on May 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
I read Sinfest sporadically through the early years. Loved the art. Bro humor didn’t age super well, but I always felt that Ishida had a good heart. (Percival and Pooch, and don’t forget Criminy!)
I remember picking it back up post Sisterhood but pre TERF hell. Art was as good as ever if not better. Also, the Sisterhood drove the right people mad.
Then… it just kind of… pivoted into the current TERF hell it is now. I haven’t been back since.
It’s a shame such great artistic talent went … this way. Good thing there’s no shortage of other things in the world that don’t have retrograde agendas!
posted by snortasprocket at 4:57 PM on May 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
I remember picking it back up post Sisterhood but pre TERF hell. Art was as good as ever if not better. Also, the Sisterhood drove the right people mad.
Then… it just kind of… pivoted into the current TERF hell it is now. I haven’t been back since.
It’s a shame such great artistic talent went … this way. Good thing there’s no shortage of other things in the world that don’t have retrograde agendas!
posted by snortasprocket at 4:57 PM on May 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
Adding: I forgot the Sisterhood was super-anti-sex worker. That is not what I meant by “made the right people mad”.
posted by snortasprocket at 5:16 PM on May 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by snortasprocket at 5:16 PM on May 3, 2022 [1 favorite]
…and I just finished TDP. It’s worse than I remember, and everything after 2019 is irredeemable.
Where is the emergency eyewash?
posted by snortasprocket at 9:55 PM on May 3, 2022
Where is the emergency eyewash?
posted by snortasprocket at 9:55 PM on May 3, 2022
Thanks to Rhaomi’s comment I have discovered that I am making more on Patreon doing aggressively obscure furry and/or porn comics than Tats is by continuing a former Big Name of Webcomics and somehow this feels weird and maybe a little wrong, even despite the whole “he is a weird conspiracy pinhead now” thing.
posted by egypturnash at 6:19 PM on May 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by egypturnash at 6:19 PM on May 12, 2022 [4 favorites]
Perhaps your comments have significantly better storylines than Sinfest’s, which -beyond the politics- just seems like hopeless emo drudgery.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:24 AM on May 13, 2022
posted by Going To Maine at 1:24 AM on May 13, 2022
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This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
The thread came to my attention by way of Mae Dean of the long running webcomic Real Life, which has evolved based on the creator's personal life to end up in a much different place. (As can happen when the creator realizes she's trans.) I also find it interesting to compare Sinfest with another early 2000s, longrunner web comic, General Protection Fault, which went from nerd-focused workplace comedy strip to mild Creationist and Christian Apologia to Grimdark Sci-Fi Multiverse Fantasy... even that isn't as batshit as Sinfest.
posted by SansPoint at 1:43 PM on April 30, 2022 [11 favorites]