strange ask maybe, but as one of the few ppl I know who actively writes/creates for DmC, I was wondering if you had any tips on writing and portraying the more,, occult/wicca stuff that Kat does? I want to be able to write Kat doing that kind of stuff (and just write Kat in general) but I'm very worried I'm gonna misrepresent/spread misinformation,,
(I also get a bit skittish just,,, looking stuff up with the amount of misinfo out there on these kinds of topics lol)
Hello! I'm always happy to help with DmC stuff and I have some thoughts on this! It's definitely a subject with a lot of misinformation and appropriation that can be hard to parse, particularly as someone outside of the community, so I actually asked some of my friends about it who are like inside the community and I'll share their thoughts as well as well as some resources from them.
First I want to talk a bit about how I approach her and her magic use.
With Kat and her magic, I do tend to push for a more fictionalized version of magic use. This is part of why I push the idea of Limbo as a body, and Kat's spells being more pheromone based science to manipulate said body, rather then rooting her in real world magic and occult practices. It's a very unfortunately maligned community, and it's not one I would like to inadvertently do more damage to. So that's been my compromise for a long time, treating Kat's spell casting as more of a science rooted in Limbo's biology and getting the reactions she wants out of it.
That said, we do see her use sigils a lot in game so that is a bit of real world magic that I personally do pull on for her and mix with this idea of Limbo as a body, I have a post on that here that one of my witch friends chimed in on! And I was also recommended this video on sigil magic (my friend also said that he thinks this YouTube channel could be a useful source in general for you!)
Now, onto more direct things stressed by my witch friends that I also wanted to stress.
Big bits of advice that me and my friends wanted to stress was there's a lot of cultural appropriation tied to witchcraft due to new age movements and wicca. So one of the best ways to combat that issue, if you want to base Kat's magic in real world practices, is picking a specific cultural background for her and drawing from that. But also paying attention to what are closed practices within that background that perhaps should not be depicted by authors who don't practice the work themselves and would not be allowed to in real life, even if the character themselves is within that cultural background and would.
I was recommended some authors and books as well, Roger J Horne as a good place to start book wise and New World Witchery by Corey Hutcheson specifically for American folk magic. Narrowing down a region the game is set in, or Kat is from, could be helpful from the American folk magic angle.
I think our conclusion as a group was like, it might be best in the reboots case to fictionalize and separate from real world witchcraft as much as possible but all of this is a good place to start if you want to base her practices in real world magic respectfully. Also no White Sage or Paolo Santo unless she is of specific indigenous groups and the practices are not closed to outsiders. I know that stuff is everywhere but those are closed practices.