gar
Original: gar on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
A bearded man in robes (recently deceased) stands before an enormous golden gate that stretches up out of frame.
Voice from above: WELCOME! Looks like you're going to to... one sec, ah...
Panel 2:
The man, frowning.
Man: Hell.
Panel 3:
The man, now red-haired and agitated, throwing up his hands.
Man: What?! I obeyed all the rules! I kept the Sabbath, never killed anyone, never performed any erotic activities vis-a-vis the anus!
Panel 4:
The man gestures emphatically.
Man: I wanted to stuff butts and be stuffed in turn, but I didn't because I wanted to bask in the eternal light of the Lord!
Panel 5:
The bearded gatekeeper figure replies.
Gatekeeper: That's the old rule-based system. It was good enough but we've done much better recruiting since we switched to a sabermetrics approach.
Panel 6:
The gatekeeper, standing at a podium/lectern, addresses the man.
Gatekeeper: You're good on the usual criteria, but when we compare you to a standard reference man and plot the rest of history, it turns out we'd be better off without you. Your "goodness above replacement" score is negative.
Panel 7:
The man looks up.
Man: Wait, God is an applied mathematician?
Gatekeeper: Yes, that's why the universe works but the details don't make any sense.
Votey:
Text only (the man's thought/aside):
(Oh god, do we need "standard reference human" shirts?)
A bearded man in robes (recently deceased) stands before an enormous golden gate that stretches up out of frame.
Voice from above: WELCOME! Looks like you're going to to... one sec, ah...
Panel 2:
The man, frowning.
Man: Hell.
Panel 3:
The man, now red-haired and agitated, throwing up his hands.
Man: What?! I obeyed all the rules! I kept the Sabbath, never killed anyone, never performed any erotic activities vis-a-vis the anus!
Panel 4:
The man gestures emphatically.
Man: I wanted to stuff butts and be stuffed in turn, but I didn't because I wanted to bask in the eternal light of the Lord!
Panel 5:
The bearded gatekeeper figure replies.
Gatekeeper: That's the old rule-based system. It was good enough but we've done much better recruiting since we switched to a sabermetrics approach.
Panel 6:
The gatekeeper, standing at a podium/lectern, addresses the man.
Gatekeeper: You're good on the usual criteria, but when we compare you to a standard reference man and plot the rest of history, it turns out we'd be better off without you. Your "goodness above replacement" score is negative.
Panel 7:
The man looks up.
Man: Wait, God is an applied mathematician?
Gatekeeper: Yes, that's why the universe works but the details don't make any sense.
Votey:
Text only (the man's thought/aside):
(Oh god, do we need "standard reference human" shirts?)
Alt text
A seven-panel SMBC comic. A bearded man in robes arrives at the gates of the afterlife, a towering golden gate. A voice greets him: "Welcome! Looks like you're going to to... one sec, ah..." then concludes: "Hell." The man, now drawn red-haired and furious, protests that he obeyed all the rules — kept the Sabbath, never killed anyone, never did anything erotic involving the anus despite wanting to, all to bask in the eternal light of the Lord. The gatekeeper explains that the old rule-based system has been replaced by a "sabermetrics" (baseball statistics) approach: comparing the man to a standard reference man across all of history shows that heaven would be better off without him, giving him a negative "goodness above replacement" score. The man asks, "Wait, God is an applied mathematician?" The gatekeeper replies, "Yes, that's why the universe works but the details don't make any sense." Votey aftercomic: a single panel of text reading "(Oh god, do we need 'standard reference human' shirts?)", riffing on the baseball-statistics theme.
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.