#deepwells

fucking Crazy theyre just out there doing shit. do you see this

Been thinking of the role of witchcraft in contemporary fantasy lately. Female power has been a stand-in for villainy in a lot of witch stories. What's a better way to use the trope?

In our next adventure I'll cast Marinka as the grand dame of a traveling circus, a predatory con artist who uses her magic in ransom schemes as she moves from town to town. Like in the story, she will have the power to make people love her, and to turn them into animals when she is no longer pleased with them. I considered giving her a motivation - she had been manipulated through love in the past, she had been made to feel powerless before - but this veered too close to the stereotype of the bitter, wronged woman as magical villain. It's too easy to cast a feminine villain in this role, as an emotionally driven and reactive person who is lashing out instead of following her own ambition (and masculine villains tend more towards stark ambition than emotional reaction, though it's more of a mixed bag). The folkloric Marinka entranced the purported hero Dobrynya after he killed her dragon boyfriend, which honestly doesn't seem like a disproportionate response to me, but once again boils down to revenge.