Griffin

Do you gender trans people correctly even when they're being absolutely terrible people? Do you refuse to use the r-slur against someone who suicide baited you but is neurodivergent? Do you refuse to snark at a mentally ill person who is being genuinely unpleasant, "go take your meds!"

Do you allow members of marginalized groups to be terrible people without judging their entire demographic for it? One of the most invisible yet vital forms of privilege is the right to be terrible people as an individual rather than as a group. Do you acknowledge that there are bad people in every group, that it doesn't make their group less worth fighting for? Or do you shake your head if you happen to get mistreated by some who belong to a group and insist the entire group is awful and not worth your allyship?

You're holding an actual child to higher standards than you hold yourself, but it's the child that should be removed from public and community spaces. For your comfort.

Source

I've always loved IFS, but I think my biggest problem with it is that it leaves you wanting so much more from it. Devi is an interesting character, and giving her depth outside of getting almost stabbed is a good premise for a spin-off, but I feel she doesn't get a lot of breathing room as herself outside of how she's responded to trauma, and said trauma by extension. It's supposed to have her art, and her relationship with it, as the central focus of the narrative's conflict, but her paintings are only ever in the background and her individual relationship with it isn't expanded upon. What's inspiring her? What are these images which she's so desperate to get out of her head? How does she process the events of her life through painting? I'd like to make a post getting screenshots of all her art throughout the comics and attempt to figure out an answer, but you wouldn't get one reading her comic.

It's implied that Devi throwing herself into her work is a compulsive behavior born out of self-avoidance, at least in part, so I think this might be an intentional writing decision. It definitely leaves the ending in a bittersweet place that I find interesting, and realistic all things considered, but considering the fact that IFS dwells on this complication so much it does feel strange that the overall resolution that it comes to is that Devi's incapable of finding social furfillment, and the solution is to continue throwing herself into painting. I find it compelling that it ends on a note that's more complicated than Devi triumphing over Sickness, and magically becoming a different person through force of will. However, if she was intended to have a semi-static development, with IFS being a window-exploration of the end point she's reached more than anything else, it just would've been nice to have her art be a bigger part of the comic for that purpose. It was basically a ventpost about working for Nickalodeon though, or at least that's the impression I got, so I'm not surprised this ended up getting sidelined.

theyre not gonna read your sources.