#sinfest

[prokopetz]

As someone who follows a lot of webcomics, including some very long running ones, I'm suddenly curious: have you any thoughts on the decline and fall of Sinfest?

I was there when Sinfest went off the rails, and it's kind of hilarious because it didn't go at all the way most folks assume it did. A lot of people have only seen the comic's early days and what it's doing this week and conclude it must have been a straight line from the former to the latter – which honestly isn't a bad guess! – but it actually went through a milquetoast liberal feminist phase somewhere in the middle, if you can believe it.

The trouble is, the comic's author had this whole Grand Philosopher of the Internet shtick going, and this was back when just having a regularly updating website made you kind of a big deal, so they were accustomed to being treated as an authority on whatever subject they saw fit to shoot their mouth off about. However, when the comic took a turn from edgy T&A pop culture parody to didactic feminist allegory, practically no one was prepared to take it seriously; the comic's established readership was broadly unreceptive, and whatever new readership the comic was trying to court found the idea of suddenly treating the Calvin-and-Hobbes-with-tiddies guy as an authority on the topic of feminism laughable.

Of course, I said practically no one. There was, in fact, one notable group who were perfectly willing to kiss the Calvin-and-Hobbes-with-tiddies guy's ass. I'm sure you can guess who.

(To be 100% clear, I'm not saying "oh, Sinfest's author was forced to go down the transphobic radfem pipeline because we nasty leftists were mean to them". They're a colossally entitled twerp who voluntarily got in bed with fascists because couldn't deal with not being taken seriously as an authority figure, and they made their own choices. I'm just remarking on the particulars of that trajectory!)

[thewebcomicsreview]

I know you've consigned sinfest to the dustbin of irrelevance but the latest arc is so mask off about his feelings regarding porn and woman. It's weird. It's so open and out there about his whole madonna/whore issues but he doesn't attempt to even address it. His whole ass is on display and i don't know if he's even aware.

I suppose I appreciate that he’s taking a break from the racist caricatures, even if the Wojak Popemen are tremendously lazy an-

Is that the Nostalgia Critic?

Anyway, while this story is stupid and offensive it’s at least Tats’ own bizarre hangups again and not warmed over /pol/ memes. I guess he needed his own brand of insanity to fill the gap of 4chan going down, but that makes this storyline useful in that it’s maybe the clearest window into what’s left of Tat’s mind.

So, Snow White is tricked into eating an apple. This makes her “love the stranger” and not be hateful, which is presented as a bad thing.

Specifically because she’s kind to “creepy” animals, which the name of the strip makes clear are a metaphor for nonwhite people. There was a long time where I thought “Tatsuya Ishida” was a pen name and he was a white dude IRL, like marvel contemporary “Akira Yoshida”. Some research revealed that he was using the name Tatsuya Ishida for his college strips so I figured that was his real name because no way was he that committed to the bit. But there are times when I wonder, man.

But anyway, Snow White is a Pure White Wahmen who’s been converted to being liberal/leftist by an evil queen. Who is a trans woman. Which you might go “Obviously” over except remember that Tats hates Jews now and considers them in charge of everyone else he doesn’t like. But here with Snow White trans women are back as the main Thing Tats Hates, which is certainly interesting.

Prince Charming sets out to rescue her and is constantly distracted by various racist things happening by. Also Tats hates Trump this week.

Or, sorry, Drumpf, which is a nickname resist libs gave Trump in 2017 that’s so tired that the guy who came up with it publicly apologized. I’ve seen /pol/ types refer to Trump as “Drumpf” when mocking liberals (as in “This’ll get Drumpf for sure guys” sarcasm) so it’s’ kind of bizarre that Tats is using it unironically as an insulting nickname here.

Charming finds that Snow White is a lib now and calls her a slut for it.

Which makes this Snake imagery very Eyes Emoji, but moving on

Prince Charming saves Snow White from being an eGirl, and a bunch of other women are like “Hey we are also being sexually oppressed help a bitch out?” and he heroically refuses because he can care about exactly his women and zero others. Given how Sinfest’s descent started with him become a Radical Feminist who hated porn (and that was his only feminist belief), this is kind of a wild shift.

But on the way home the Prince suddenly gets horny for a second. Religion shows up so that Tats can be mad about them for a bit.

Then the prince escapes through a vagina-shaped portal (symbolism protip: A man literally entering a vagina is possibly a metaphor for sex!), but when he gets back Snow White is still and eGirl and he’s still horny for her. He tries to stop being horny, but that is also bad apparently.

Not quite aligning the top and bottom text of your meme? Veeeery naughty!

Finally, they collapse into failure, surrounded by snakes which, remember, are penises here.

So, what can we divine from this? First off that Tat’s worldview is incredibly bleak. That’s not news, really, but I’m increasingly worried he’s going to shoot someone for real. This is such a dark place to be in, mentally.

It’s also, perhaps, as close as we’ll get to an origin story for Tat’s weird turns. It’s been speculated for years that Tats had a girlfriend who got him into the radfem stuff, and there’s been all sorts of wild speculation that she left him for a trans woman or something but I think this is the actual story, albeit through Tat’s warped and self-serving retelling. Here’s my theory:

Tatsuya Ishida had a girlfriend. She was very left-wing, and also didn’t like pornography. Tats glommed onto the porn connection since that was a long-standing bugaboo of his own, and made that his personality for a few years. Then Tats started getting really right-wing and the girlfriend didn’t like it and they broke up (this might be before the anti-trans turn in 2019) and he never got over it and then Covid happened and he was a conservative old dude in a bad mental place during Covid and went down the same facebook rabbit hole all our collective dads did. He tried to fill the hole in his heart with right-wing boomer 4chan memes and the spark of joy that gave him is burning out and the comic’s becoming more aimless (to the extent “hate” is an aim). Wouldn’t be shocked if he made another weird-ass political shift soon that seems left-field but in retrospect is obvious. Maybe he’ll be a “wellness” crank next and start tanning his balls.

[fipindustries]

the story of tatsuya ishida is truly tragic because i can believe the guy startd from a genuine place of wanting to engage with feminism

the problem is that the framing of it was inherently conspiratorial and tinged with a heavy dose of guilt and self loathing

and that is just not a good foundation upon which to build a sane ideology and understanding of the world and so inevitably went from that, though this

and it ended up leading to this:

he is like the textbook case of the radfem to fascist pipeline. because the guy has been making comics every day for decades in here we have a perfect, methodical and granular dissection of how the process happens.

it truly is a tragedy

[oldinterneticons]

[sistersorrow]

Sinfest existing has kinda raised an interesting edge case on Wikipedia

For those unaware, Sinfest began as a 4 panel gag-a-day UCLA newspaper comic back in the 90s before transitioning to being a webcomic, and it's most well known for a point in 2011 where the comic suddenly shifted to being a serious radfem comic about how all men are the actual devil (including the Actual Devil From the Bible, who has been a recurring character throughout most of Sinfest's run for decades) then became a TERF comic and finally slid down the TERF-to-Alt-Right pipeline and is now currently an Esoteric Neo-Nazi webcomic despite the comic being made by a Japanese American man named Tatsuya Ishida

Here's the issue: as the comic shifted gears, it alienated its audience to the point that there were simply no secondary sources being written about it that could be cited past 2017, which was still well into the comic's TERF era, meaning that with Wikipedia's standards as a tertiary source, no one could update the article to say "this is a Neo-Nazi comic now, bee-tee-dubs" cause there simply weren't enough sources to cite that weren't directly from the comic itself

It wasn't until last week that enough secondary sources were found that a section could be added about the comic's increasing obsession with conspiracy theories, white supremacy, and antisemitism

[velvetvexations]

Tatsuya Ishida has hit the point where he's lost so many marbles that I feel like continuing to bash on him could constitute lolcowing.

[freackthejester]

I check in on Sinfest every few months because I have a problem. He has gone off such a deep end into such extremely facist ideology that it's really disgusting, mixed with such an appealing art style. This guy is pumping out gorgeous beautiful stylized art that any tumblrina would be glad to even approach as a copy. Like really truly, the above is such an appealing Lady Robo Cop design. I can't believe the person who drew this is legitimately homophobic. Transphobic. Hates life and joy and is a bad person with bad ideas. But just look at it! It's so lovingly rendered and he is churning out a full color comic every single day. It's the clearest dichotomy between quality of art and quality of artist I've ever experienced. It just doesn't make sense.

[thisrobothasnosoul]

It's a shame that Tats is The Way He Is, because these character designs are cool.