Alfie the story

"Alfie" is a webcomic scripted and drawn by the artist known as InCase. "Alfie" began in June 2014, when the first version of the first page of Chapter 1 was posted on the web site buttsmithy.com.

If you go to the site today, however, you'll see 2010 on the first page. That's because the Chapter 1 which is currently displayed on the Buttsmithy site is actually the second edition of Chapter 1. InCase redrew the entire chapter so that it has a more finished less sketchy look and replaced it in situ. The date shown is the result of InCase deciding to edit the date to something before the actual start date. This was to prevent confusion when readers saw later chapters with posting dates that were earlier than the first chapter's posting dates.

Eustacheus posted a detailed explanation of the date discrepancy in the comments on the current page 1. Refer to this [http://disq.us/p/25a51cr link} for more details.

"Alfie" currently has 16 finished chapters, and will be completed with 19 chapters, which will include the epilogue.

## Characters

### Havlin

* Alfie: a young havlin woman.
* Vera: Alfie's mother, and Derik's wife
* Derik: Alfie's father, and Vera's husband
* Melinda (aka Melly): Alfie's best friend

### Trade Caravan

* Marco: Alfie's friend and lover; caravan guard
* Lydia: friend and lover; caravan guard
* Ozge: friend; Voch'Khari guide through Redwood
* Hana: an unintentional enemy; member of the trade caravan
* Ailduin: elf; caravan sponsor; Vera's special customer

## Color

The artist's use of color has varied considerably over the years. The original Chapter 1 was mostly in black and white, with four pages done in color. Three of the color pages (17, 18, and 19) were integral parts of the story flow, while one appears to have been a study as it was not in the main story sequence and in fact was a colorized repeat of part of page 15.

The second version of Chapter 1, and Chapters 2 through 6, were all in black and white. The work has been in color since the beginning of Chapter 7, but the color schemes have changed over the years. Chapter 10 is notably different, using a very restricted color scheme which consists almost entirely of shades of red, gray, and tan. Both the use of color and the designs of characters have evolved over the years.

## Setting

The world of Alfie is a fairly traditional High Fantasy world populated by many sentient species with different characteristics, often based on J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying system, various twenty-first century video games, or world mythology. Technology and culture are loosely based on the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, filtered through a similar pop culture lens.

### Races

#### Named races

* Humans
* Havlin
* Elves
* Goblins
* Voch'Khari
* Green Men
* Snake People
* Giants
* Swamp Dryads

#### Unnamed races

* Rat people
* Spider people
* Slime people
* Oni
* Dragon people
* Deer people
* Bullmen

### Languages

Most of the character dialogue in Alfie is represented by modern informal English. Whether this is meant to be a literal representation of what the characters are saying, or a translation, is unclear. InCase has noted that he goes to trouble to avoid what strike him as overly modern terms like "gay" in the dialogue.

In addition, Voch'Kari and Goblins each sometimes speak in their own language, each of which is represented by a fictional glyph set.

## Updates

Many fans have noted that the artist's rate of updates has been remarkably greater than that seen on many other webcomics. InCase originally updated at the rate of four new pages per week, while it was common for some comic sites to be updated no more than once a week. This decreased to three times a week: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

While compiling Chapter 16, InCase began to suffer from artistic burnout and slowed to one update per week rather than take an extended hiatus during the chapter. The fans reaction was to encourage InCase to take care and do what was best.

Chapter 16 was completed on June 15, 2022. InCase declared a six-week hiatus, with plans to post the first page of Chapter 17 on August 3, 2022 and then post updates after that at a rate of two updates per week. No particular days have been dedicated to updates at this time.

The public comment section of the Buttsmithy web site uses Disqus. That was instituted on October 27, 2018, in an effort to solve problems with someone spoofing the user handles of other readers in order to post unsuitable and inflammatory messages.