YMMV / Misfile

• Alternative Character Interpretation
  • Emily is either a heterosexual girl attracted to Ash but unable to go further in their relationship because Ash is currently a girl, OR a lesbian/bisexual in denial who simply doesn't want to accept that she's attracted to another girl. Which interpretation of her character you believe depends upon which side of the shipping war you fall on. Ash's own insistence that she's a he doesn't help matters.
    "The only things I know she wants are things I just can't give her…"
    "Ash, I'm NOT a lesbian. It's hard for me to be with you. It's hard for me to explain it to myself. Girls don't 'do it' for me. Just you. And like you said, you're not a girl."
  • There's also Rumisiel, who is either a textbook alcoholic stoner who needs to be pummelled at every opportunity for being such a massive Jerkass loser, or he is a pretty decent guy who has some major self-esteem issues which caused him to take refuge in aforementioned substances and is actually of at least above average intelligence.
  • This is probably way off the wall, but God: an omnipotent slacker who passed off his job to the Celestial Bureaucracy, or an active deity going out of his way to set up circumstances to improve the lives of a bunch of humans and help a pair of angels atone for mistakes while fixing up an imperfect filing system prone to a misfile.
  • Missi: Rich kid so used to getting what she wants she refuses to accept anyone dumping her, or does she genuinely love Ash?
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: A Ford Sierra / Merkur XR4 powered by a Windsor V8, like the Monster XR in the comic, seems kind of out-there at first, but Ford themselves have not only done this before, but even made road-going examples as well. Meet the Ford Sierra XR8, of which only 250 were made for the 1984 model year, and sold exclusively in South Africa.
• Angst? What Angst?: Rape, or at least an attempt, is very easily brushed off by the female characters.
• Anti-Climax Boss: Out of the racers Ash has faced so far, Sheldon seems to have been the easiest to beat. That could just be because of all the lead up though.
• Anvilicious: While Chris is usually pretty good about it, there are a few strips that make it more than clear that Ash's character is supposed to be read as transgender, and that everything he goes through is supposed to drive home An Aesop about accepting trans people, except for the ones that are supposed to drive home An Aesop about accepting gay people.
• Archive Panic: This webcomic posted a new update every weekday, almost without fail, since February 2004, before it finally ended in August of 2019. Even discounting a few dozen chapter bookends and filler comics, that's still a substantial amount of material to get through, especially since pages tend to be pretty wordy.
• Arc Fatigue: One of the more common complaints against the comic is its slow pace (which is a bit ironic when it's a comic about racing). It's been running for years and its main plot is not even close to being resolved or even has been hinted that it will be in any way. The creator has said that it will end when Ash graduates high school… Which has been being discussed as just about to happen for some time but just never comes.
• Base-Breaking Character: Missi started off as The Scrappy, but has since evolved into one of these thanks to her positive qualities balancing out her negative ones.
• The Chris Carter Effect: The comic has been going for over eleven years, and in all that time no significant progress towards getting Ash's misfile sorted out has been made. It's at the point where it's hardly mentioned anymore even in-universe, with more focus being given to the racing and Ash and Emily's relationship (which is itself in a near standstill due to the two not wanting to go any further until Ash is a man again).
  • Possibly Justified, since it's made extraordinarily obvious that both Ash's and Emily's lives are markedly better as a result of the misfile – they just haven't come around to seeing it that way, especially Ash.
  • And then it ends within one volume. Everything was solved by changing the paperwork even MORE!
• Designated Monkey:
  • Rumisiel gets so much crap, sometimes it makes you forget his incompetence and negligence obliterated two people's identities.
  • Cassiel. It's heavily suggested that she regularly gets the short end of the stick from The Powers That Be, possibly because of her uncle.
• Designated Villain: Heather, of The Resenter variety. Though later strips show she does have positive qualities as well, so it's kind of a Deconstruction.
  • Cassiel as well, despite being treated like trash by pretty much everyone, the worst she's done is made the guys drive a long ways for no reason and served Rumisiel and Vash sub-par snacks.
• Die for Our Ship: Some fans consider Missi The Scrappy depending on how much attention she's paying to Ash.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Kamikaze Kate.
  • Rachel and Girl-Ash gained fans rather quickly.
• Fan Nickname: Logan, before his name was revealed in the comic, earned the nickname 'Cloud' due to his haircut. And when Logan and Eponine started getting interested in each other, they were called 'Cloud Nine'.
• Game-Breaker: Ash's Monster XR, which is so wickedly over-the-top for a high school street racer that it must remain parked, lest it suck all of the dramatic tension out of the storyline and threaten his underdog status.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In this strip, after Emily's mother tried to persuade Emily that she shouldn't associate with Ash because he (or rather "she", from Emily's mother's perspective) was sleeping around (having overheard parts of Emily's earlier conversation with Ash) with other men, Emily replied that Ash only did it once and was so off-put by it "she" wanted to never let another man touch her, and her mother voiced her concern about whether Ash's experience was rape and if she was okay. Just a moment of awesomeness for Emily for being able to put her overbearing mother down, right? Except not, as the story progresses further it becomes apparent that the misfile did leave Ash feeling violated and scared, and it is very likely that at that moment he really felt raped.
  • Rumisiel's line from very early on, "Enjoy all the extra time you've got" – spoken when Emily realizes she has to repeat two years of her life – takes on a whole new meaning once you learn that without the misfile, Emily would probably be dead.
• Hollywood Homely: Missi is supposed to be flat-chested. Of course if it were drawn too subtly, you couldn't see her breasts at all… which is apparently not the point. She wears padded bras most of the time.
• Jerkass Woobie: Cassiel. Everyone assumes the worst about her because of her family, so she's learned to return fire. When someone actually thanks her for something she's completely floored because no one has ever done that before.
• Memetic Badass: Doris became popular on the forums after her first (and at the time of this writing, only) appearance.
• Memetic Mutation: "THE POWER OF BOOBS COMPELS YOU!"
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • Many fans can't understand why Ash would ever want to be male again.
  • A bit of point-missing from the creator - one chapter looked like it would finally resolve the Ash and Emily romance when it the subject was suddenly dropped and the scene changed. The fans got enraged at how poorly this scene was resolved and how stagnant the series was becoming, so Chris decided to write a post commenting that… we shouldn't be so upset that Ash and Emily didn't get together in that moment.
  • Despite the protagonist being male inside a female body and numerous filler specials pointing this out, along with Word of God, many readers insist Ash is a strong female character.
• Moe: Ash, especially with Missi being Ash's girlfriend. For that matter, Missi herself.
• OT3: The series is now having Ash, Emily, and Missi hanging together so much that this has begun to enter the minds of several followers.
• Nightmare Fuel: How the Celestial Depository works, and the fact that Satan has a rival version.
• Periphery Demographic: Misfile seems to attract readers who don't typically like Gender Bender stories because it deconstructs or inverts the usual Gender Bender tropes. Crosses over into Misaimed Fandom with Christians attracted by the whole angel thing despite the heavy lesbian subtext.
• Recycled Script: One of the complaints about the series is that stories where Ash has to remember he is no longer a boy kept being re-used and none of the lessons he learns seem to take effect.
• Shipping: More than the Panama Canal handles per day. Often lampooned as actual shipping (of freight by sea) on the forums.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: How many comics have fans argue over the same pairing? (male Ash/Emily vs. female Ash/Emily)
• Tearjerker: When Kate talks to her dead sister Angie in this strip. I dare you to not feel anything!
• Unpopular Popular Character: Many fans feel that Rumisiel gets too much crap from the cast. Which is ironic, because the guy himself believes he deserves it – the flaws his brother and Dr. Upton point out are quite evidently there. More importantly, it's Ash and Emily who gave him the most crap because he upturned their lives (especially Ash, who's understandably having an identity crisis thanks to the misfile). Additionally, later books have shown Ash and Rumisiel are reaching a kind of understanding, anyway.
• Wangst: Much of the comic finely treads the line, but so far it hasn't really stepped over.

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