#misfile

[zkfae]

[Obsessively rereading these throughout high school/college]

"Still cis tho!"

[mlembug]

After all this time the webcomic Misfile still holds up.

[thewebcomicsreview]

What are the main influences that you drew upon for your comics?

So the biggest influence would have to be ASequentialArt. The guy who makes it is the artist of Saffron and Sage and thus his influence is rather more direct; any kind of meta-fuckery in Legend of the Hare or Saffron and Sage is either Carlos' idea or something I thought he'd like. The big parallax finale of Legend of the Hare was his idea, and one of the low-key reasons I'm dragging my feat uploading that comic is that I don't want to have to figure out how to set it up again!

Kill 6 Billion Demons inspired the idea of having "Lore" under the Legend of the Hare pages, though that idea crashed because no one cares about my lore.

Gunnerkrigg Court inspired the idea of making Saffron and Sage episodic, an idea I actually regret a little, which is an essay I've been meaning to write.

It's a small thing, but Homestuck inspired my character writing just a little by making me think of "rules", like how every sentence out of Liri's mouth ought to deserve an exclamation mark or how Saffron often talks in sentence fragments because she's a busy woman and doesn't have time for superfluous words.

Prequel Adventure, Narbonic, and Latchkey Kingdom are all comics I like that have similar vibes to mine in one way or another, but the comic whose writing feels closest to my own might actually be Cassiopeia Quinn. If you take Cassiopeia Quinn and you mix in a bit of Katia Managan you get something not entirely dissimilar to Liri Bloom.

Final Fantasy XIV (specifically Shadowbringers and Endwalker) isn't really an influence, but it is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. Those expansions are very thematically dense in a way that both inspires me to try better and makes me want to give up and quit. That's sort of tied in to why I regret the way I wrote Saffron and Sage episodically, and perhaps one day I'll write that essay. I'm pretty consistently on the precipice of quitting Saffron to try to start a new comic; I'm a notorious dilletante.

But if you look at how horny the characters in my comics tend to be when the comic itself dares never show a boob, you can probably see the deepest influence of all, the one I dare not speak even to myself, which is all the trashy quasihorny shounen manga I read in high school, and the early webcomics like The Wotch or Misfile that had a bit of that energy that stuck to me indelibly no matter how much I try to pretend otherwise.

[clockworkprism]

Was just catching up on Misfile/Hell High and the author has just come out as trans. Probably not the biggest shock to anyone, except the author themselves who said they had been in denial their whole life (they haven't announced a new name or pronouns yet and said they will keep their name for now)

I'm not trans but that comic was my first experience getting some understanding of the experience of gender dysphoria. Then I started going out of my way to follow artists or programmers who are trans to try and understand the community better, and I was surprised to see misfile actually has mixed reviews among trans people themselves. Very curious to see someone reanalyze the comic with this new information in mind.

[teffiebell]

Just...

Why do relationships have to be so hard? They're supposed to be natural and beneficial!

They should be easier and less confusing, dammit!

Why can't I at least know what I want? It's not fair when my feelings fight each other inside my own head!

[polarseven]

ALRIGHTY FOLKS

Here it is: the BIG list of webcomics I currently read, that are NOT on Webtoons, in no particular order:

Dumbing of Age - Long-running, DAILY UPDATES (?!?!), and a webcomic I've been reading for years. Not for everyone, but definitely good.

Love Not Found - Want all rep, with no queer bait? You got it! We got lesbians, gays, straights, polyamory with ace people, queer platonic relationships, more lesbians! A webtoon I absolutely love, and one that doesn't shy away from intimacy of many different kinds.

El Goonish Shive - Slam packed with a magic system that makes no sense, pages and pages of exposition (that makes it make sense), and a lot of transformation stuff! Diverse cast, art that gets better over time, and has a side comic with canon and non-canon stories! DEFINTIELY check this one out if you like weird magic stuff.

Misfile - The comic that made me realize I was trans a decade before I realized I was trans. Re-reading the ending, it doesn't end comfortable for me anymore, but still the first webcomic I ever read, and one pivotal to me, and who I am today.

Detox Camp - Ooo, a comic that started being published in 2018?? That's basically hot off the press!! It's brand new!! Go read it and support the author!! It's about a girl who gets sent to a camp to cure people of internet addiction, and said camp's struggle to survive the Alaskan winter. A bit confusing at times, but definitely worth checking out.

The Last Halloween - When/if Abby Howard updates this again I will lose my shit. I've been waiting and I'll keep patiently waiting. I mean, uh Comic about the end of the world! Your worst nightmares are real, and so are everyone elses'! Local small child Mona is sent on a task so save the world, and she'll probably fail, but that's ok. If you like gore, horror, or Abby Howard's other work (Slay the Princess, Scarlet Hollow), you are required to check this out! I'm not asking! This is a threat.

Paranatural - MAN this comic is good!! It has some of the best dry humor I've ever seen in comics, a lot from the protagonist. The visuals are GORGEOUS and it's also got the greatest visual gags in any comic I've read. Ghosts and spirits are real, and a group of middle schoolers are in a club dedicated to those who can weild those powers, led by their dorky, loser teacher. What a nerd. Eventually the comic becomes slightly more like a novel, with interspersed drawings. The humor is retained, if not heightened, and the drawings that do remain are much more impactful in contrast. Absolutely amazing comic. It also has a 50-page hitball arc, which is probably one of the most amazing sequences in comics that I had the pleasure of reading in real time, over the course of six months.

Bittersweet Candy Bowl - You want DRAMA? I'm talking that heart-wrenching, devastating, highschool drama that leaves you in pieces, screaming at the characters and how understandably dumb they are? This is the one. One of the comics I've been reading for the longest amounts of time, this one follows a group of kids/teens as they navigate highschool (and 8th grade for a little bit). Lots of romance, depression, angst, self-discovery, and a LOT of mistakes. The only comic I'm a patron for on patreon, just to read the pages a week early! They also redid the entirety of the first THREE volumes, rewiting, redrawing, and rescripting it to flow better!! Insanely good, near the top of my list, PLEASE read it.

Go Get a Roomie! - 18+!! Comic for adults!! This ones a HEAVY hitter. This comic made me cry, it's an absolutely beautiful comic. I remember I found it years and years ago, almost a decade ago, and couldn't get into it. It just wasn't the right time for me. Now, having read it about a year ago, I read it at exactly the right time when I needed it. Dealing with romance, intimacy, sex, friendship, many aspect of queerness, purpose, love, self-discovery, lack thereof, and more, with some of the most beautiful art I've ever seen that's able to capture some of the most human moments when it wants to, and not afraid to be goofy either, this is definitely not one you want to skip on.

Pia and the Little Tiny Things - Guess what Clove the author of the one right above this MADE ANOTHER ONE THAT'S RIGHT THERE'S MOOOOOOOORE!!!!!! Set in the same universe, with no reason why as to yet, we have a comic that I could already write at least one essay about!!! Filled with symbolism and metaphors, This follows Pia and the friends she makes after moving to a small French town. Very queer yet again! It has one of the most easily hateable villains I've personally ever seen due to the reality of their nature, This one captures the small moments and humanity in us all even more. Everyone in this comic is drawn human, and beautifully so. I don't have the words to describe it. It's breathtaking. Also, if you like bugs, check it out! There's bug facts between the chapters, and lots of symbolism with those as well!

HOO boy

why don't we take a quick breather? This list has gotten pretty long and I'm sure it's a lot to take in. Maybe save the post as a draft to come back to and check out later? I do that a lot to bookmark posts, idk if anyone else does.

Take a breath, maybe open all these and throw them in your comics bookmark folder to read soon, or months or years down the line. Whenever you want to or are ready to read them!

Ok, good? Everyone got a little mental break from reading? Cool, let's get back into it!

Finding Darwin - A really cute webcomic started by a personal friends of mine, @paddleboatonfire! It follows Kira as they try to find their lost dog, Darwin. It has some of the most natural dialogue I've seen in comics, which is in part due to the fact that they're not afraid to hand-letter a lot of the conversations to really bring the characters and dialogue to life!! It's an absolutely amazing story so far, and only having started in September 2022, if you want a brand-new comic to read, this is the one!! The angles of the characters are creative, and the whole comic is drawn so expressive! The worldbuilding has been fascinating so far, those we're still learning a lot about it, since not a lot of it has been shown yet! PLEASE go check this one out, Boat does an amazing job drawing it, and it's sooo cute and good, they deserve all the attention they can get!

octopus pie - Ohhhhh boy, NOW we're reading webcomics! Octopus Pie, the story of a bunch of 20-somethings in brooklyn navigating their lives! With some pretty high-brow writing that makes you envious of it and want to be able to make cuts that deep in real life, Meredith Gran absolutely blows it out of the water ENTIRELY in the development and growth of these characters. They feel REAL, fleshed out, they make mistakes, compromises in their morals that we can all relate to, and all come together for one of the most down-to-earth comics I've read in my entire life. Meredith Gran also make the point-and-click adventure game Perfect Tides, which you should ALSO go check out!!!!

Drop-Out - I would recommend being careful reading this one if you're not in a good place mentally. This is a journey about two characters, Sugar and Lola, and their trip to the Grand Canyon, to kill themselves. It was hard for me to read at times, and after finishing it, I was so, so glad I read it through. Folie has a talent for writing these characters that just...god, it's something about them, and it's with every character they write, but it's absolutely the most vulnerable, ugly, passionate emotions I've ever seen in comics. It's rough, and it can be unfriendly to read, but sometimes things like that make it all the more important to read them. More of Folie's works can be found here, and they have several other comics that are really, really good as well, such as Catharsis, and Fresh Meat. All of them are phenomenal, and deal with mental health in the most brutally honest way I've ever seen. Highly worth the read, and the effort it can take to do so.

Lackadaisy - You've probably heard of it due to the phenomenal, beautiful animation released, but it's a comic!! Cats during the prohibition struggle to keep a speakeasy open, and follow the intrigue and action that follows!! Full of cats, with a unique cast of characters ranging from poetic maniacs to bayou mercs, this one is an absolutely stunning piece of visual work that's well worth your time.

srriz! - 18+!!! A mostly wordless comic following a mute protagonist, Srriz!! The one is definitely the MOST like Homestuck, having videos, animations, and even a section of gameplay?!?? It follows Srriz, a...somewhat competent explorer/treasure hunter, trying to open a chest. Yep, that's it. And it's absolutely incredible. It uses the space that webpages allow in an amazing way, giving the feeling of going deeper and deeper into the exploration of this cave and trying to figure out what's going on. Somewhat interactive at one point, though I'm not sure if it still is. 100% worth checking out!!!

BONUS COMIC THAT'S WORTH GOING BACK TO THROW ONE MORE IN THE LIST!!!!

Broodhollow - One of the single best horror webcomics I've ever read, this thing is TERRIFYING. Written by Kris Straub of Local58 fame (which you should also go check out), this is easily one of the best horror comics out there. It IS, as far as I know, on hiatus, but at this point I think it might be better to call it canceled. It's one of the few, if not the only webcomic I HIGHLY recommend reading despite no signs of ever being finished. It's got phenomenal, nightmarish art, and will absolutely run shivers down your spine as the town of Broodhollow and the demons it houses rear their head, but never show their true colors.

Ok, I think that's a big enough list of webpage-based webcomics I read, with zero webtoons (or twitter comics) included in this list. There are more that I've read that were canceled, put on indefinite hiatus, or finished that I'm not listing for now since this post is long enough and it's currently 6:45 am, but I might devote those to a post of their own one day. Feel free to ask me about ANY of these webcomics, as I could gladly talk about how good they are for SO long. Thank you to ANYONE who got to the bottom of this post, because I KNOW it's a beast, any please PLEASE tag and let me know if you've read any of these or started reading them thanks to this post!!! Now if you'll excuse me I have to throw about a million tags on this

People don't like to admit it bcs cringe or w/e but Homestuck really did revolutionize the webcomic as a storytelling medium and I am endlessly frustrated that before webcomic artists could really stretch our legs fucking webtoonz swooped in, set a new, more restrictive standard, and then monetized and monopolized the ever living fuck out of the concept of The Webcomic until it drove away anyone who couldn't be a professional quality manga artist for free, and now the only webcomics that actually feel like spiritual successors to Homestuck are so obscure they're basically cult classics that you have to beg people to read.

Like it's just so wild to be in high school and see Homestuck be like "we're using like fifteen different artistic mediums to tell this story bcs we can" and be really fucking inspired by that, only to grow up and see basically every webcomic ever have to conform to One Single Standard or fucking perish.

[badwhiskeydrinker]

my office just hired an archivist

I'm supposed to train them today for some reason

neither of us know anything about archiving

I don't like where this is going

[innocet]

Did you guys know that (in most cases; it varies fandom by fandom) if you have a problem with a fandom wiki, you can edit it. Because they’re fan wikis of fan knowledge. And you’re a fan. You don’t have to sit back and complain about it. You can go forth and do good. The power is in your hands. I believe in you

[phoenix]

POV you're actually in one of these webcomics...

POV: you’re a teenager and you just discovered a neat webcomic that’s kinda fun with some interesting gags in it :)

[snckt]

without a sub-sub-librarian, or even a catalogue, what is to be done?

@asouefanworkevent day four of woevember : the hotel denouement, alternatively titled,   misfiled, a collection of things not where they ought to be.

[apollos-boyfriend]

procreate should NOT have such a ruthless deletion system

[thewebcomicsreview]

Could I ask for help finding an old webcomic? It was b/w kind of manga style, about a boy who got magically transformed into a girl, but it was ALSO basically a sports anime about street racing/drifting??? I remember it being slightly too horny with really sick race sequences.

Misfile. The creator has a new comic called Hell High on the same site with similar but somewhat cleaner art.

[theothin]

holy shit

What do you think cis people get out of genderswap stories? Especially ones which are very wish fulfilment for us trans girls. Sure some mangaka are definitely eggs or repressed and it's sad but for the ones who aren't I still haven't really figured it out so I'm curious what thoughts you have

Honestly ever since the author of "Misfile" came out as trans I don't think I am able to confidently state who is likely to be cis or trans, because I considered them specifically to be in "likely to be cis" category because 1.) not wish fulfillment 2.) author had a trans parent they could write the story parts off.

I also have been trying to ask people around about this and I never got a coherent answer either. I do have a theory though:

Let's say if I asked people two questions

"how would you rate your experience living as your assigned gender"

"how would you feel like living as other gender"

I'd say that:

trans people would assign higher grade to the second than the first

cis people would assign higher grade to first than second

trans people with a high difference between the two are most likely to transition

the lower the difference between the grades and the higher the gatekeeping and other costs are, the lower the chance a trans person transitions

cis people with significant difference between the two would be unlikely to entertain the scenario of let's say, "woke up as a girl one morning" as some sort of hypothetical

so that leaves people who would rate a high grade to a first question, and a slightly lower grade to a second question (like, let's say, 9/10 and 8/10 respectively)

Are there people like that? Dunno. If these people exist, would they transition? No. Would they transition if transition was easy and not gatekept? No. If there was a hypothetical device that would let people switch back and forth easily, would they use it? Definitely.

Given an absence of such a device, what remains is crossdressing or exploring the feels through hypothetical scenarios. This leads to @ashe-delta's explanation of genderswap stories of "giving people a safe space to explore gender", or how I used to call them, "a mirror to my own heart"

With all that said, I'd say that the final answer for stories that are specifically wish fulfillment depend on the degree of it: if high, the author is likely trans/egg/repressing; if low, we're likely dealing with cis person who is not "strongly cis".

For non-wish fulfillment stories there's a bunch of explanations I could come up with, but this will go in another reblog, as I've been holding this one in inbox for a bit long already.

[kingfakey]

she's a blorbo girl in a blorbo world and i just made her have the most fucked up nightmare she could ever imagine. thank god it was just a bad dream.

[teffiebell]

Do you agree?

"Being a girl now isn't nearly the same thing as having been raised a girl. You're missing seventeen years of double standards, media influence, harassment from boys and, most importantly, the experience on both sides of girl on girl psychological warfare."

[incorrectsinnohquotes]

Candice: You realize you're a bitch, right? Fantina: It was my nickname in the class yearbook. Ah... memories...