The first cover. Pictured: Planchette and her familiar Winston in front of their new house.
"Little witch Planchette is tired of living in the suburbs, so when she sees a great deal on a house in a magical town, she takes it! The only problem? It's full of ghosts! With the help of a shy siren, a cursed girl, and a pigeon witch, will she be able to exorcise her new home?"
— Description on Tapastic
Unfamiliar is a Fantasy webcomic written and illustrated by Haley Newsome. It follows the adventures of the witch Planchette as she moves into a new house in a new town.
It can be found on Tapas here
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Not to be confused with the fanfic of the same name.
Unfamiliar contains examples of:
- Aerith and Bob: There are names such as Planchette and Pinyon alongside names like Sun and Alice.
- Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Sun, at least in the beginning, who speaks to Planchette rather coldly.
- Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Pinyon, prior to meeting her bird familiar, already dressed much like one with her feathery hat and cloak. Her legs are also drawn as long, thin black lines, much like a bird.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Ari, Pinyon’s familiar, apparently took so long to find her because he kept getting distracted by other things.
- Big Damn Kiss: Babs kisses Sun during a dramatic moment in order to show how she feels about Sun and to convince her her feelings are genuine.
- Bland-Name Product: Hex-Mart, Witchyhow.
- Bunnies for Cuteness: Winston, Planchette’s familiar, is an adorable fluffy white bunny. He’s a Deadpan Snarker, but he’s still adorable nonetheless.
- Cats Are Magic: Bab’s familiar is a feline creature.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Planchette is a full-fledged witch and is shown performing magic in the first page. However, she's only good at food magic. She's not much good at any other kind of magic, like exorcising ghosts.
- Curse: At the beginning of the comic, Sun is under a curse that ruined her face, which in turn, caused people to be drawn away from her all her life. Just when Sun gets her curse removed, a different curse is placed on Babs, that causes any food she holds or tried to eat to instantly go bad. It turns out that the cause of both is the Fairy King in an effort to make Babs his bride, when Sun finds out she demands he undoes everything, when the Fairy king wonders why Sun would willing take back a curse she hated so much he realises its because Sun is in love with Babs.
- Cute Witch: Pretty much every witch in the series, including the protagonist.
- Cyclops: What Sun’s curse manifests as.
- Bab’s familiar, Marlow, is also a one-eyed cat.
- Deadpan Snarker: Winston
- Deal with the Devil:
- Alice has apparently done this many times, in exchange for immortality and necromancy.
- The Fairy King attempts to do this with Sun. He reveals the reason her curse was removed was because he did it to get her to bring Babs to him, Sun tells him to stuff it and give her the curse back.
- The Ditz: Planchette goes all the way to Pinyon’s house to ask if she knows where Alice lives, who she looked up online. Pinyon asks why she couldn’t just look that up as well, and Planchette has a moment of realisation.
- Familiar: Winston for Planchette, Ari for Pinyon. Most or all witches in the comic’s universe are said to have them, though exactly how they work hasn’t been explained in-comic yet.
- Four-Temperament Ensemble: The 4 main characters have personalities that fit well into this and balance each other out.
- Sanguine: Planchette is cheery, optimistic, and excited to be with others.
- Choleric: Sun has a little bit of a temper, and can be emotionally distant at times, but she's nonetheless determined in her own goals.
- Melancholic: Pinyon is selfless and reserved, though pretty insecure as well
- Phlegmatic: Babs is friendly and reliable, though she can be a little too yielding for her own good.
- Friendless Background: This is the case for 3 of the main characters
- Being the only witch in her old home in the suburbs, Planchette had a hard time making friends.
- Because Sun's curse causes people to be drawn away from her, she had no friends before the events of the comic. It’s implied that the curse is actually not that serious and only Sun herself can see what she thinks makes her unapproachable. Babs, confused, states that she isn’t ugly, and it’s only during instances when Sun looks into a mirror that the audience is made aware of what she sees - black tentacles that her hair doesn’t manage to hide. Therefore, having a Friendless Background may be a case of Your Mind Makes It Real for Sun.
- Because she is half siren, people have always been naturally drawn to Babs. However, because they were only drawn to her because of her natural powers, and not for being herself, she never felt like she had true friends.
- Genki Girl: Planchette is very cheerful and energetic.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Pinyon is blonde and kindhearted. Despite having little talent in magic, she still drove off a fox spirit that was about to eat a small bird. This bird would then become her familiar.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Babs is half Siren, on her mother's side. Later subverted when it's revealed she was lying because she was ashamed of her father, and is fully siren.
- Hartman Hips: Planchette is very bottom heavy.
- Innocently Insensitive:
- Planchette is prone to this, such as asking how one of the ghosts recognises Alice despite her now very old appearance, leading to Alice snapping at Planchette.
- Babs has a moment as well, assuming Sun is using repel spells to keep others away from her, when it’s actually her personality and looks.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Bab’s sisters. It’s implied they’re not the most pleasant people around, but they’re correct that if Babs goes so far as to sort of disown their father and distance herself from her sisters, she has no right to come to them to ask for help for Sun’s problem.
- The Hermit: Babs became one, shutting herself off from society because she didn’t want her siren powers to keep attracting unwanted attention to herself.
- Living Aphrodisiac: What Bab’s siren powers naturally does. This ends up drawing a lot of unwanted attention to herself. Babs can also manipulate others into doing what she wants through this power, although it’s established she hates using it.
- Muggle Born of Mages: What Pinyon was at first believed to be, due to how little talent she possesses in magic and how she hadn’t found a familiar yet despite being over 13, the age at which most witches find one. Thankfully for her, this is Subverted when she saves a bird she finds she can communicate with.
- Mundane Fantastic: How magic is treated in-universe. There are magical items sold in convenience stores and articles on Witchyhow on such things as "How to Exorcise Your Home".
- Otaku: Babs owns many anime figurines around her home.
- The Power of Friendship: Babs helps one of the ghosts pass on by being kind and helping get her hair out of her face. This gets Lampshaded by Planchette when she says "Babs dissolved a ghost with the power of love!"
- Rose-Haired Sweetie: Babs, who’s half-siren and the sweetest ‘popular girl’ you’ll ever meet. Even her hair highlights and Wingding Eyes have heart shapes!
- Sadistic Choice: After revealing that he was the one who got rid of the curse that messed up her face, the fairy king gives Sun a choice: If Sun agrees to bring Babs to him so that he could force her to marry him, she gets to keep her face, and the fairy king will return the photo of Babs note ; however, if she refuses, the fairy king will still return the photo, but he will also put the curse back on.
- Ship Tease: Sun and Babs get this a lot. Its revealed that while in school the two kind of idolized each other, though ironically they both praised the other for things they weren't particularly proud of or in control of. When the two make an agreement to help each other out with their problems, Suns curse and Babs crippling social anxiety, they quickly become extremely close and very protective of each other. Babs seeing how mistreated Sun is by her boss uses her Siren powers, something she hates doing, to give her more free time. When sun finds out that her curse was actually undone by the Fairy King in an effort to get Babs as his bride, Sun with no hesitation demands it back, with the Fairy King realizing she is in love with Babs. Any doubts about Babs feelings are cleared up when in order to convince Sun that she does care about her and won't abandon her for any reason, Babs ends up kissing Sun.
- Spooky Painting: Planchette’s new house has these.
- Wingding Eyes: Approximately once a page, sometimes more.
