Misfile

Ahh...

That car salesman is so jovial about being smarmy that I can't even hate him properly.

Suddenly, mythos building.

And now an indication of how little time has actually passed. "Physics and chemistry make snow."

And the funny thing is in this little technical blurb, she's right.

Since the author is a car enthusiast I've always assumed every time anyone's talking about cars in Misfile it's a case of Shown Their Work... Or even that trope where an author intentionally plots the story in a way that lets them show off their particular field of knowledge in a way that would otherwise be clunky and get in the way of the story... Is there a trope for that?

It's close to Author Appeal, I think.

Ah, yeah, that does seem to be it. The way the description is written, it sounds like it's focusing on fetishes and the like specifically, but the way it's commonly used, Author Appeal seems to totally cover cases like this.

edited 27th Dec '11 10:01:44 PM by girlyboy

I like that Burt also doesn't drive as well on ice.

...And Burt is defeated by—the very person he told his evil plans to. Go figure.

Well he did make a crucial mistake of not practicing on an ice track.

Huh, I was actually honestly thinking that this one might end with Ash losing! It was suspenseful. Which is a good thing.

edited 15th Feb '12 8:11:58 AM by girlyboy

It was suspenseful AND short! Very well done considering how this comic can drag.

I recently met someone with whom I talked about sex change fantasy comics. I brought up Misfile, and her reaction - before I even finished the sentence -

"HAVE THEY FUCKED YET?"

Nope. :P

Your friend is astute.

They really need to fuck.

In fairness, they are a hell of a lot closer than they were before. At least Emily finally admitted "Yes, I love you, why aren't we making out?"

This strip actually gives me hope that we might be seeing some development on that front from Ash as well in the not too distant future.

The current strip is definitely playing up the "Karma is a bitch" routine.

I can't help but feel like They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot here. I know that Ash is a great racer, but I kind of wanted her to lose (perhaps even due to Bert being underhanded or just outright better) and Emily having to deal with losing her car. It would have been interesting because if Emily would have blamed Ash then Missi or someone else would have brought up that it was Emily's idea to bet her car in the first place.

Instead, nope. Ash wins again (has she even lost to anyone other than Kate?) and now has yet another car.

Yeah, I agree that it would have been more interesting to see Ash lose the race. That's one of the major problems with the comic right now - none of the characters ever seem to struggle with anything anymore.

Heck, from the moment Emily wagered her car, the whole storyline had "Like You Would Really Do That" written all over it.

edited 16th Feb '12 8:43:39 PM by DW

, Eh, I don't agree. The storyline did make it believable enough that Ash may lose.

I had a sort-of related discussion on a different webcomic's site a few days ago — someone pointed out that sometimes people seem to be upset at seeing webcomic characters who are actually successful in their fields; like there is some strong desire to see them fail. But why should it be so? I mean, a Boring Invincible Hero is one thing, but Ash is clearly not that. He's far from perfect, and it's shown that he has to actually work hard and deal with a lot of stress and pressure to keep winning these races. He's just really good at racing. That's his thing, after all. So why shouldn't he keep winning? True, if taken too far or handled badly it can make the strip boring, but while I think the strip has flaws and boring bits, I don't think Ash's tendency to win is amongst them. He just comes across as a character who is believably good at this particular task, as opposed to someone who keeps winning just because the author says so.

edited 16th Feb '12 10:18:29 PM by girlyboy

Plus there's this implication that Ash gains energy somehow when people believe in her, meaning that the bigger the audience the better the chances of her winning are.

Maybe I'm just seeing treasure maps in the hieroglyphs, but we've already got a guy who can talk to cars and another who can see angels (not to mention angels), so I don't think its too far-fetched.

I'm not arguing plausibility. I'm just saying that when a character never loses, it tends to get boring and predictable.

I... Was also talking about that. I'm saying that the way the story is written keeps the character's continuous victories from becoming boring or predictable. Each race is still an interesting challenge. In addition I, for one, thought this race might indeed end in a loss, which shows that the author has managed to keep the tension going (well enough for some readers, at least), and has kept victory from feeling inevitable.

Showing that Ash has to work hard for his victories and showing that he has real talent for racing doesn't just make it "plausible," it also keeps it from getting stale or boring. A character who keeps winning seemingly arbitrarily is boring. A character who keeps winning because — as we are actually shown — he works hard and struggles for each victory, is still interesting however, no matter how many times he wins.

... Burt's complete destruction after the race, however, was a bit too much. It did keep the story from dragging on, but I would say that this part did fall on the "arbitrary" side of things, and Ash just getting lucky. Kate showing up to just deliver that one line also came across as being really random. Perhaps the point was to show that she was, indeed, there to support Ash, or to tie up the loose end of Rumisiel talking to her about Burt, but with how brief and pointless her appearance ended up being, it comes across as being a bit clumsy. But the race itself seemed good to me.

That's an interesting point. For now I'd just chalk it up to regular everyday psychology, but you're right that in this setting, a more supernatural explanation would work as well...

edited 17th Feb '12 10:11:51 AM by girlyboy

Does anyone else get annoyed with Rumisiel basically every time he opens his mouth to lecture Ash about the finer points of ethics and behaviour? Seriously. He has no moral ground on which to stand, seeing how the whole unpleasant premise of the entire story is entirely and completely his fault. It's a good thing Ash reminds him of this, at least, but ugh. He really has no right to lecture anyone about anything, ever. He should stick to being the perpetually-drunk comic relief, because I think his character development may have skipped a few steps...

edited 2nd Mar '12 11:23:00 PM by girlyboy

^ Actually he's the best teacher of that. He knows firsthand from experience how bad many of those things are and since he's been removed from booze for so long it's kind of like the recovering drug addict in the sense that he's incredibly and brutally honest.

So annoyance he is not.

On a somewhat random note, anyone else hear Emily as Monica Rial—specifically, Tsubaki?

edited 3rd Mar '12 11:49:51 AM by Discar