The Slash Pile

Title: Penny and Aggie/Quiltbag
Author: T Campbell
Illustrator: Giselle Laglace, Jason Waltrip
Format: Webcomic
Length: very very satisfyingly long
Status: Complete. And now WIP
Rating: oh, I don't know. Teen?
Link: http://www.pennyandaggie.com/index.php

It won't work to make two separate recommendations for these, because when "Penny and Aggie" ended, "Quiltbag" just started right up at the same address. But there are two stories here, the second a kind of spinoff from the first.

"Penny and Aggie" has a repertory feel to it, but be assured that the drive of the story is the complicated relationship between the title characters. They are strong personalities and classical high school rivals in an tangle of cliques and scandals. It's no spoiler that they eventually discover other feelings besides rivalry. I've loved this story forever: it was also one of the favorites of the nice fellow I married and I just spent several long hours catching up on it in his memory (yeah, well, a good dose of snark is the best memorial for him). When I got to the end -- and there was an end, and it was an organic end, not just "we lost interest so here's an epilog" (there's an epilog and there shouldn't have been, but it's all good except for that) -- the "next" arrows just kept on coming, and bam! suddenly there's "Quiltbag," about two of the side characters in college (about whom we know something of their futures due to the epilog from "Penny and Aggie") -- two of the best side characters, actually.

So it's a more lesbian story than not, but it really covers all the bases!

edit, January 20, 2011: a new URL for the QUILTBAG part:
http://quiltbag.keenspot.com/

It's updating really rapidly at the moment.