Sinfest/Headscratchers

• After constantly asserting that the devil basically controls the world, and that demons exist for the sole purpose of corrupting people, out of the blue we're excpected to believe that demons are a poor, innocent, unjustly oppressed minority, for no reason other than to make us feel sorry for Fuchsia?
  • He only controls certain aspects of the world, namely the corporate sector. The things he doesn't control are pretty open with their hatred for demons. Remember that during that time, Fuschia was in the middle of her character development, trying to change her ways. At that point, IIRC, she was in the Anti-Villain / Punch Clock Villain stage of her change. Those who are familiar with redemption tropes know that things like that can be very discouraging to those seeking it.
  • Also, the Devil controlling anything doesn't mean his underlings get anything out of the deal. He's the Devil, after all. He's not very nice.
  • Just look at when Fuchsia and Blue try and unionise... he's basically a good boss so long as they do what they're supposed to, but a very bad one as soon as someone steps out of line even slightly.
• From reading this page, you'd think Fuchsia was the main character, not Slick.
  • That's because she's Troperiffic more than anything else.
  • Well... also Ensemble Darkhorse.
• At this point I can't tell the hero from the villain. God and Satan Are Both Jerks, and every character on the character page from Slick down has disappeared for weeks at a time, had too many Day in The Limelight strips to count, and had a clear Character Focus stint sometime in the past, so those avenues of judging morality are closed, Lighter and Softer has rendered nearly everyone completely harmless or not harmful enough, and I'm just not sure who to root for. IS there anything to root for? Conflict kinda just peters out with only the barest sense of closure nowadays, noone does anything high-drama for more than one colored Sunday page.
  • The point of the comic appears to be a mix of gag a day and slow 'realistic' changes. It took Fushia over a year to start being mostly good, where in other stories, this would happen in a few months to possibly even a week or so. (Not a bash on those kind of stories mind you.) The point is that there is not 'good' and 'evil' but that everyone makes bad mistakes and amazing sacrifices. You can see the good and bad in everyone and learn to love them with all that 'evil' inside them. Besides, Crimmney, who seems pretty good.
• Is it funny anymore?
  • Sometimes funny, sometimes insightful, sometimes heartwarming. Still worth a daily read if you want more than a gag-a-day strip (and if that's all you want, try Bug instead).
  • Not unless you're a tumblr feminist. Even then probably not.
• The mere existance of that short bitchy femnazi riding around. I really thought this comic had matured beyond such juvenile "Family Guy" characters, Seymour's fanaticism nonwithstanding.
  • The fact that her and the effects of her actions have become the focus of the strip doesn't help her case either.
• Ezekial and Ariel were bleeding all over Crim in the "Dig" arc?
• It is appalling really, how low Seymour has sunk. In the beginning he was insufferable, but had ups and downs like everyone else. But fast forward some years and suddenly every single frickin' character has pulled back their Jerkass tendencies, if not undergone a complete personality overhaul, My God, What Have I Done?, or Heel Face Turn EXCEPT him. even Baby Blue gets Jerkass Woobie scenes, even Lil' Evil has Pet the Dog moments, but Seymour has reached the levels of The Fundamentalist and Flanderization that Seth Mac Farlene needed to publicly apologize for. By the time Satan Bomfed him, it wasn't even Karmic Justice, it was shooting a rabid dog in the leg and leaving him to bleed out.
  • You're obviously forgetting that Seymour has Pet the Dog moments as well. His entire relationship with the newest devil girl is the embodiment of pet the dog - but since it's SEYMOUR I guess that people just don't care, right? I don't know, let's see. Instead of instantly writing her off as a savage monster like he had with Fuchsia or zenzapping the demonhood out of her without her consent like Slick and Monique did - he actually tried TALKING to her, helping her, as well as showing concern for her well-being in general. And she was happy to see him, so we can assume that even though he did accidentally say something offending to her - which he realized immediately after he had already said it and tried correcting himself - she didn't hold anything against him. Because he was still rather pleasant to her.
    • Seymour's still a hypocritical, misogynist pig. Sure he may have the rare Pet the Dog moment (key emphasis on rare), but anything he does is instantly negated in the fandom's eyes by two words: Bad Behaviour. Since he's a fundamentalist, he should be treated like he does others with his Knight Templar views. "No atonement, no forgiveness."
    • In his defense, he did suffer from karmatic backlash for a while and is now being pulled back. Hell he is acting a lot better now than he did in the first part of the strip.
• Beyond "Bad Behaviour", what has Seymour done to acquire such a Hatedom? I mean, okay, he's an arrogant, hypocritical, asshat of a guy who thinks he's actually morally superior to every other cast member, but my God Miko Miyazaki goes so far as to justify murder with that attitude, and people kept asking for her to come back to the comic, so it can't be that. The others hurt him than he hurts the others, his antics cause him more misery than to anyone else, and overall he's little more than just full of hot air, never meaning or really acting on his condemnations. Only half the crap he gets involved in is caused by him, the other half is Baby Blue or someone else making his worldview seem almost justified. So tell me, where in his snide remarks and holy water ballons is the point where he goes from Egocentrically Religious to Complete Monster? Is something so frivolous as finally bursting the Sickeningly Sweethearts bubble that Criminy and Fuchia were in really a Moral Event Horizon? People left and right kept saying that their romance isn't meant or gonna last, and Fuschia sets herself off over her demon girl status. While stupid, one can hardly say it was "evil" of him to chew out a succubus, one who he only spoke to or was around to interact with when she was still Chaotic Evil or royally pissed off, and each time he was she would chuck a fireball at him. Is it breaking up the WAFFy romance that makes him literally worse than Satan in the eyes of the readers? Or is it the high crime of remembering a time when "sweet little Fyoosh" was anything but innocent seeming, and making us remember that she is an agent of the Devil and used to have a hell of a time doing it?
  • The ones that hate him most are the ones who are most familiar with redemption tropes. During the process of redemption, one of the absolute WORST things one can possibly do to someone on that path is slam the proverbial door on them via tropes such as Deadly Change-of-Heart and Reformed but Rejected. Tales of redemption are quite powerful because they tap our sense of hope, and Fyoosh's quest for redemption is a major part of her charm to the fan base. That is exactly what Seymour did to her in Bad Behaviour in the most spiteful, mean-spirited way possible, despite her teriffic progress on said path (Card-Carrying Villain -> Noble Demon -> Type IV Anti-Villain). Viciously stomping on someone on the path of redemption is a major fast track to gaining a Hatedom. Especially bad when one recalls that aiding and supporting those on the path of redemption and atonement is one of the core teachings of Christianity. Contrast with Ezekiel and Ariel who are fully aware of both her bond with Criminy and her quest to change. They fully support and encourage both because they know Crim is the central player to her redemption. Also add in his vitriolic Heteronormative Crusader hatred of homosexuals (he was ready to kill them for being gay). Miko is a terrible example to use as a comparison because she's a notorious Base Breaker (even more than 300 strips after her death) in the Order of the Stick fandom, much of it for the same reasons Sinfest fans hate Seymour.
    • I don't know... I mean, calling her a Base Breaker would mean there were some people who actually liked her, or at least didn't see her as The Scrappy. As for Seymour , I think everyone's problem, both the haters and the loony fanboy of a loony fanboy up there, is that while everyone and everything has become Lighter and Softer, Seymour has developed in an almost opposite direction. Even the few villains still played straight are behaving better, either Baby Blue admitting that Good Feels Good, or Satan himself becoming more Affably Evil. Seymour, on the other hand, is starting to seem like either a failed attempt at a Darker and Edgier or Knight of Cerebus character meant to contrast with the tone shift. Don't get me wrong, he definitely had his Bible-thumping moments in the beginning, but he was also constantly smiling, kept the brunt of his zeal confined to private moments of worship, treated the other characters with civility more often than not, and believed in repentance. Heck, during the first half of the comic everyone agreed he was that he was less obnoxious than Ezekial and Ariel. The deterioration of his character, the process of which was too slow to map out exactly where it became in character for him to lay the hate on someone for prejudice's sake, without even trying to get them to convert or repent, left people with the surly and closeminded undesirable that had people questioning what happened, why was the decision to make him a ineffective Windmill Crusader made, and why in conjuction with a comic 'verse that was just starting to better itself as a whole. The blackening of his view of others, culmulating in his infamous role "Bad Behaviour" as the rejector of the reformed, left everyone feeling he was beyond salvation, still calling it his Moral Event Horizon even when all became right in the relationship again. Seymour has caused no lasting harm, no real injury, and most can agree that others, both characters and fans, overreact to his actions, and he is starting to follow the trend of better morals and behavior. Unfortunatly, that may not be enough at this stage, he's buried to deep in the scappy heap. Petty were his crimes, in ignorance his assumptions, Cool and Unusual Punishment is his just desserts, and that is never going to be enough for the hypocrites that hate him for being a hypocrite.
• Actually created an edit account just to say this, but the whole Tangerine arc really bothers me in a way that borders on Nightmare Fuel (I'm too new to figure out whether it deserves to be put in the currently-nonexistent NF page). It's just that, well, do you remember how Tangerine started out? She was a regular girl walking along who got bomfed. Then there was the unsuccessful attempt to convert her by Seymour, and all the other stuff, and now she serves as a general sort of Badass Adorable, this innocent and childlike (but still sexy) person who's supposed to be somehow above good or evil, and stuff like that. But she used to be a regular girl. She had a family. Friends. She had history, and hopes and dreams and problems and all that stuff. And IT'S ALL GONE. She's basically been brainwashed. One bomf, and everything she used to be is gone, and to all the people who used to know her, she just disappeared. And we're supposed to be okay with it, just because she was given some symbolic awesomeness and an arc with Li'l E? This is horrible! ...Maybe it's because I'm not much of a fan of that comic, just a casual reader, but really, every time I see her in the strip, I can't help but think of her as a victim, and it really really bothers me that I have seen no mention of this as a problem anywhere. What The Hell, Author?
  • On one hand, I do agree with you. It IS totally nightmare fuel if you think about it long enough... but on the other, you cannot really prove that she did have family or friends, or hopes and dreams and problems, since we never knew her before being bomfed. We were only giving a hint, based on the assumptions Monique made about her before she was bomfed and her appearance. Though, appearance not so much since you really shouldn't judge a book by it's cover an all. And it's also been implied years ago that it's a similar case with Fuchsia, what with the whole "you weren't always a devil girl" line and all that. Basically the whole devil girl scenario is kind of terrifying as a whole - but then again we're dealing with the Devil here. He's an evil man. Why would he care about the past or thoughts of some girl he can just bomf into one of his minions? He wouldn't.
    • My problem isn't with the Devil bomfing her. Of course doing something like that is totally in-character for him. My problem is that I feel that we - the readers - are supposed to just find her awesome, no questions asked, and I just can't do that. Yes, she's adorable, yes, she's cool, but goddammit, she used to have a past and she's been brainwashed into what she is today, and this really disturbs me. I can't just forget or ignore that one fact, and it casts a shadow over the whole character. And it feels like the webcomic wants me to forget or ignore it, which also disturbs me. (I also don't really understand this bit: "you cannot really prove that she did have family or friends, or hopes and dreams and problems, since we never knew her before being bomfed". We saw her being a regular person walking down the street. I assume that as a regular person, she had all those things. Unless you're suggesting she's just a complete fabrication even in-universe? That she never existed - in-universe - before the first panel she was shown in? That sounds a bit odd to me. I know this webcomic can get meta, but I don't think it would get this meta. Would it? Agghh, getting confused now...)
      • The point I was trying to make with "you cannot really prove that she did have family/friends/hopes/dreams" is the fact that every person is different - she could be an orphan, a loner, have had no hopes for the future or anything like that and we wouldn't even KNOW it because we don't KNOW what her life was like before she was bomfed and we can't prove that we do. The only thing we know is that she was happy enough with life at the moment to be smiling, pre-bomf, and she still continues to smile almost every single time we see her. And as for the brainwashing, Blue has stated that bomfing unleashes the evil inside so I don't think it particularly counts as brainwashing since wouldn't that mean that's what she was REALLY like deep down? Well, some aspects of her I suppose, considering that her bomfization WAS tampered with it by Slick and Nique after all... And whose to say that she isn't much happier as a devil girl, anyways? Again, we don't know what her life was like before-hand so we can't say that she wouldn't have given it all up anyways if given the choice. I don't see any problem with being bothered by the accidental nightmare fuel of the whole bomfing dealio, however I find your reasoning to be kind of silly?
      • She could have turned out MUCH worse than what she is now. Even after bomfing, she has only managed to fall to Anti-Villain status (Type 3 maybe with some aspects of Type 4). The charm of her character (and believe me, she's a big time Ensemble Darkhorse in the strip) is she's such a naive ditz (yes even ditzier than Flonne) that her interactions with the world make her one of the funnier characters in the strip.
        • More of a child than a ditz, I would say. One of her main points seems to be this innocent, childlike interpretation of everything, regardless of 'good' or 'evil' tags. Anyway, this issue is obviously a very subjective experience; for me, while I see what is loved about her character (and, like I said, agree that she is both adorable and cool), the brainwwashing thing always casts a shadow. I look at her, and I always wonder who she used to be.
      • I'd always gotten the impression that it was the intention of the artist for Tangerine to be the Grotesque Cute/Lightmare Fuel character of the strip. Like, everything the OP pointed was supposed to occur to us but she's so ditzy that we're a lot less scared than we should be.
• Strip #4198 "Divinity School" is pretty weird. Is it just a metaphor? A throwaway Alternate Universe? After the Li'l E Retcon, it's conceivable that this is a Retcon (and thus perhaps a Wham! Episode) too, but it's probably more a Non Sequitur Episode.
  • I wasn't really sure at first either but re-reading it I think it's a flashback.
  • This troper was under the impression it was a flashback from the start, with the brown haired boy as jesus, the blue haired girl as fuchsia pre-bomf, and the red-skinned boy as well, satan.
  • This troper thought the blue-haired girl was, well, Blue. Her Start of Darkness, maybe?
  • Criminey himself once said to Fuschia "You weren't always a Devil girl" seems like that applies to more than just Fuschia.