Sorry: I haven’t been updating this very often or regularly in the past couple of months. Sorry about that by the way. I’ve been preoccupied with uni stuff for a while and my exams are coming up as well so I will be for some time. That said, there is another reason I haven’t posted something in this liveblog for a while: Misfile. I read it, I liked it, but... I had a lot of trouble trying to say what I wanted about it. It tests my patience just a tad, so even though I really do like it, I feel like being a little harsher than it probable deserves. Just read the post below, I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to stop myself from ranting about it anyway but I’ll try, really I will. Enjoy... hopefully.
Misfile
[Trope Page] is a comic about what happens when a celestial bureaucrat screws up. Long story short, he lit up at work, his boss walked in so a guy is now a girl and a different girl lost two years of her life, although she still has her memories from the time. Suffice to say that said bureaucrat was fired. From heaven. Did I mention he was an angel?
I can’t quite decide what genre Misfile would come under. I’m leaning towards slice-of-life but it’s far too story orientated for that. It’s not a comedy work either, nor is it really a fantasy piece, despite the whole angel thing. I suppose it could qualify as a drama, but I’ve never been the best judge of that genre and it’s such a generic title that it doesn’t really explain much at all. I’ll leave it up to you. I can say with certainty, though, that it is an Embellished Webcomic (which, I have recently learned, is not the same as a Life Embellished Webcomic. Who knew) although that still doesn’t tell you much about it. With over 2000 strips, Misfile is also a fairly respectable long runner, having started sometime in 2004 (my memory’s not that great with dates) and updating daily, although I’m not sure if it started out as a daily comic.
I usually talk about plot either after I talk about characters or at the same time, but I’m going to put it first here because it’s less likely to lead to a rant.
The comic’s plot is... alright I suppose. All snark aside that first paragraph is pretty much all you need to know at the beginning. All credit to the author though for making it a hell of a lot more interesting and engaging than I make it sound. The problem I have with it is that it sets everything up, hovers in the background and then disappears. Sure, it pops its head in every now and again to see how things are going on but otherwise it pretty much leaves the comic to its own devices.
Well, that’s the over-arching, all permeating (but not really) central premise plot at any rate. The smaller (relatively speaking) plots are more or less all character oriented. Which I see as a good thing, but other may not. Take your pick. Generally speaking, there will be some event, a race, a vacation, the appearance of a new guy, which will be the focus of the story side of the plot, and there will be multiple character interactions, revelations and conflicts which are the focus of the character side of the plot. Naturally these play out at the same time and overall it’s a pretty sound mix. Chris Hazleton (the author) has done a really good job of both keeping those two parts separate and intertwining them when appropriate. It makes for a very interesting, very engaging experience.
I realise that I may not have made it clear in that last paragraph so I’ll say it here too: most of the plot is character oriented. Not necessarily character driven (although a lot of it is) but character oriented. When there’s a big race coming up, it’s not the race that you care about, it’s the characters and how they react to it. In this example, while the race may be driving the plot (oh god, no pun intended, I swear) but the comic usually focuses on how the characters react to the race, what they want and need and how it effects the various relationships between them. And that, at least, is executed with a rare perfection. Seriously, great storytelling, I don’t know how to make that clearer.
Now we get to the point that I’ve been desperately trying to avoid because it riles me up: the characters. First and foremost, the characters are pretty damned good. They have solid personalities, grow, change and develop over time and their interactions are both similar and varied enough to give you a really good idea of how the characters think and feel about the conflict at hand and each other. That’s the glowing praise out of the way. Now...
Are you familiar with the trope ‘Wangst’? If not, go read the trope page I pot-holed. I like Ash, I really do, s/he’s (I think I’ll use ‘she’ for simplicity’s sake. Feel free to mentally include the ‘/’ or exclude the ‘s’ as your viewpoint requires) a great character, well rounded, well developed and interesting to read. She also has every right to be angsty and sad over the fact that she is now a ‘she’ when she used to be a ‘he’. That’s kind of a big deal. But there is only so much angst you can squeeze out of any given conflict before I stop giving a damn. I am this close to putting her in with the other characters I label ‘whiny bitches’, but I really, really, don’t want too. I think it was right fucking here that I said “enough”. Don’t get me wrong, it was a gradual slide over a longer period of time, but that was the breaking point. Why? Because she’s bitching about a situation she not only cannot change but which she is also making no effort whatsoever to change. That’s not the bad part though. I could stomach that for a while, hell, I did stomach that for a while. But she’s been harping on about from the very beginning! Not constantly and, again, not without reason but God Fucking Damn It! Get over it or do something about it! I no longer care that you are now a girl and not happy about the fact, I no longer care that you are having trouble adapting to this situation and I no longer care that you feel sad and insecure because of these things. And the most annoying part of it is that the reason this bothers me so damn much is that I do still care about the character as a whole. Take that as a testament to just how great the writing and storytelling really is.
I’m being overly harsh and lot more vindictive than I wanted to be because (I know I’ve said this a lot, but it’s the honest to god truth) I really do like her as a character. She just... aggravates me now when she gets angsty over that particular issue.
*sigh*
/rant
Misfile ladies and gentlemen! A comic with superb storytelling, excellent characters and a decent plot. And gender-bending angnst. If you’re even remotely interested you should go check it out, link is in the intro as always. You (probably) won’t regret it.
Thanks for reading.
