Take the kitchen sink and TF it into a monster girl!

TSF Showcase 2024-49
The Wotch (Season 2) by Anne Onymous and Robin Ericson

Hello and welcome to the second part in my three part series covering the classic transformation webcomic The Wotch. This is the middle chapter, covering the series’s second season, running from April 2004 to November 2006, spanning 9 parts and over 300 pages. Which, considering the density of The Wotch, is a lot.

If you need a refresher on the series, check out my showcase on season 1, and once you’re properly prepped, let’s dive in! Because this, this right here, is when things start to get good! We’ve got interdimensional travel, werewolves, crossovers, romance, real consequences, ageplay, and even feminism!

Table of Contents:

Part 10: Revenge of Ishtarru

Functioning as a sequel to Part 5, Revenge of Ishtarru picks up two months after part 9. Characters have been getting on in their lives, things have been calm, and Jason has been doing research into djinn, not quite able to get over Angie’s departure. As for Angie, she’s not doing too well, working as a waitress and getting fired after she turns a steak into a cow. …Wait, how? A steak is a part of a cow, and it’s not clear what part of the cow’s life she returned it to. Can she do the same thing for a human skeleton?

With no place to go, Angie wanders the streets where she just so happens to run into another djinn, but this one has elf ears. Her name is Kali, and the two are longtime friends, but Kali is far less… generous than Angie. She is the typical genie who twists one’s words and views humans as playthings at best and burdens at worse. Angie, like many people with bigoted friends, tries to look past this though and think back to the better parts of her friends.

While catching up, Kali informs Angie that she sent a ‘welcome present’ to the person with the Bottle of Ishtarru. Cutting away to Jason, he gets a standard Aladdin-style genie lamp in the mail, only to get promptly spirited away to genie world. Anne and Robin naturally go to investigate it after Jason is absent from school the following day, but first they need to get past Robin’s younger brother, Kirk. Or rather Kirkashi, and he’s the platonic ideal of a Naturo kid. He wears his headband at all times, has a scarf that covers his mouth and flows like a cape, and knows when to stop the kayfabe. He’s a very minor character and never a main part of any storyline, but I just find him to be a cute addition to the roster, and surprisingly entertaining.

Finally arriving at Jason’s house, Anne and Robin find that Angie and Kali have already arrived there, looking over this mess. Angie naturally wants to bring Jason back to his world, and seeks Anne and Robin’s help, but Kali insists that humans, or rather mortals, cannot enter her gated community. She eventually relents, allowing them to enter a market straight outta Aladdin (1992), or Shantae (2002), architecture and all. However, it is not a realm of gods running around, as while genies here do have some magical power, their “cosmic powers” are only present in the main dimension.

Angie, Anne, and Robin all quickly begin devising a plan to infiltrate the head castle of this city, but before they can do anything, Kali narcs on them, calling guards to ka-poof them away. Angie is angry at Kali for this, but Kali insists that genies are supposed to be racist, and the Angie that she knows is as much of an anti-mortal bigot as any greathearted genie. And until Angie remembers who she truly is, their friendship is over.

Cutting away, we are introduced to Amaar. A cigar-chomping nugget of a man who dubs himself as the genie boss and has a fascination over the Bottle of Ishtarru. Its true role was only referenced last time, but here we get an info dump that this bottle is a great genie ruler from 2,000 years ago. One who wanted to liberate genies of the realm they have been trapped in for so long and grant them dominion of the mortal world, without being forced into servitude. Big plans for a little man, but for all his ambition, he does not invest enough in his security. Anne and Robin swiftly make their way through this facility, ka-changing guards into potted plants while Angie rescues and changes Jason into Sonja in a genie outfit as a disguise. Because if Jason is going to be involved in magical circumstances, he really should be a girl.

The four reconvene, but before they can escape, Anne’s tracking spell goes haywire and guides them deeper into the castle, where they find a massive mural dedicated to… the Wotch. Up to this point, we knew precious little about what being the Wotch meant, beyond some vague shocked comments from others, but here we learn that the Wotch is a title passed down through the generations. And the first person to serve this mantle came into prominence 2,000 years ago, when she was partnered with a white knight known as Worlock. Or in other words, not only is the Wotch mantle as old as the common era, but she was partners with a heroic version of Melleck Xaos, the overarching antagonist.

While this is by no means an original origin, it shows a clear attempt to make the world of The Wotch bigger and more vast. It gives Anne more of a legacy to fulfill, and raises questions for the reader to pursue. Why did the original Wotch— referred to as The First in the cast listing— perish? How did her powers get passed down? Why did Xaos fall to the dark side? Again, pretty basic mysteries, but it’s something.

Anyway, the mural depicts how the Great Ishtarru was a genie hell-bent on conquering the human realm and who wished to destroy humans by any means possible. But the Wotch and Worlock showed up, defeating him, and sealing his power away. Amaar interrupts the heroes before they can finish reading though, and informs them that he intends on sacrificing Anne to revive Ishtarru, or at least his power. He lets Angie off the hook, choosing to believe that she was a double agent thanks to a word put in by Kali, but Angie does not take this out. She is determined to do the right thing, and brushes her friend aside, this time saying that she doesn’t ever want to see Kali again. Kali probably should put in a call to stop Angie here and now, but the creators need to ape the colosseum set piece from Attack of the Clones.

In the… great genie colosseum, Amarr stages a sacrifice, tying up both Robin and Jason to watch as their friend is murdered while espousing more lore and exposition. However, right before he can stab Anne, she pushes him away and frees herself. Angie shows up to free Robin and Jason, and the four engage in battle as genies come pouring in from the audience. The humans fare pretty well for people with no real combat experience, but before things can get too crazy, Angie pleads to her fellow genies to not hate the humans. Explaining how the situation has changed over 2,000 years, and this land, once seen as a prison, has truly become their home. Kali, predictable, butts in to say that all humans are bastards, because of events that nobody alive today was able to experience.

However, this does not stop Amaar from attacking Anne, turning this into an even-matched one-on-one battle… until Robin calls Anne the Wotch. This word is enough to make the amulet of Ishtarru, which Amaar was wearing for a ceremonial reason, to awaken, transforming him into a super genie. Anne tries everything in her mental repertoire to defeat him, but Ishtarru shrugs off every attack, no matter how creative. However, as Amaar states that no mortal can defeat him, Anne gets an idea. To not only attack him with her magical projectiles and elements, but to attack him by… turning Angie into energy and having her strike the glowing red weak point. Not sure how Angie can become energy like that, but it works. The only way to defeat a genie is with another genie!

This kills Amaar— marking the first, and I think only, person Anne has killed— and in the wake of this, there’s now a power vacuum in the genie world. Some believe that it is time to move past the old ways, stop viewing humans as their enemy, and focus on improving the society they have. While others want to uphold an ancient tradition of bigotry. Feel free to make your own political parallels.

At the height of this battle of ideas, Anne, Robin, and Jason leave. Jason yet again says goodbye to Angie, his affection for her having blossomed into a full-blown love after seeing more of her bravery and spirit. He tries to hide his feelings as he goes back home and returns to normal, but he still wishes that she could be here with him. It’s a bittersweet ending for sure, and one that… sadly is never followed up on. Beyond faint cameos or callbacks, Angie does not appear for the rest of the series, leaving her fate, and the fate of the genies, unknown.

…Actually, that is not strictly true. This is just the last adequately preserved appearance of Angie, as she did appear in subsequent bonus storylines drawn by guest artists who progressed her story. I only know this because I spent hours bopping around in the WayBack Machine for this retrospective, and I was unable to fully recover these storylines. I love it when artists don’t respect the things that other artists made for them!

Overall, part 10 is a great return from a long hiatus. This promises that the second season will see bigger shifts and changes, more continuity follow-ups, and more dire threats. Sure, it took two months to get here and the update schedule went from five times a week to just three, but things were looking up for the series. And nothing would impede season two now that things are finally organized. Onymous and Ericson have a plan, worked out their schedule, and it’s not like Onymous’s schedule would collapse after a successful spring and summer. …Right?

Oops! A Three Month Hiatus!

Welp. While part 11 started publication without any problem of major delays, it went on a mid-issue hiatus on September 27, 2004 and did not resume until January 5, 2005. 19 pages into a 25 page issue. This is a full three month break, which for a kid or teen, is a small eternity. So, why did this happen? Well, Archive.org is a powerful tool, but it cannot preserve everything, and a lot of what was published during this era was not preserved. I wasn’t even able to figure out how many images were published during this time, so most of my information comes from a news archive.

Based on this, it seems like the creators had “writer’s block” that prevented them from finishing the chapter they should have written before illustrating. Onymous was busy with work and school, preventing her from drawing for the comic. Ericson was busy with work. And the two were trying to rake in money both by opening up commissions during a hiatus, and said commissions were also delayed. This led them to start their first of many donation drives to both keep the site active, and they seem to have achieved their goal in a day or two.

**I also found this update of them asking for money.**

Also, around this time, they were charging money for “bonus pics”, a practice fairly mundane today. But the fact they are doing this while the main comic— the main thing that people are there for— was on hiatus, should be emphasized. They were asking for money through several avenues while asking friends to make content, possibly uncompensated, to keep their reader base coming back during a hiatus.

Now, this was something that happened 20 years ago. It existed in a different online culture. I am most likely missing some context that would likely have happened in the forums. And frankly, I do not care to bring it up for the sake of drama. I am just reciting the facts that I was able to recover… because the whole situation was bloody weird.

Part 11: Moon Over Tandy

After a fantastical chapter, part 11 goes back to Tandy Gardens, where the newspaper crew is compiling the strange happenings across their town. With said group being Ivan Bezdomny, the aspiring journalist, Mingmei Wu, a teacher who was turned into a Japanese schoolgirl in part 4, the currently body swapped duo of James and Irene, and also Jason. Their latest fascination is a series of large furry, bipedal animal sightings that happen around the night of the full moon. Which obviously means werewolves, and the most obvious suspect is Samantha Wolfie. A student who was previously turned into a wolf girl in part 6 and one of the only people not affected by the Mythos Virus in part 9.

Robin and Anne hear this information from Ivan and assume that this is a problem they can solve with a bit of magic. So they put up an anonymous note on the school bulletin board, Wolfie promptly grabs it, and her best friend, Katie McBride snatches it away from her, thinking it’s a love letter. Instead, she pieces together the truth and is not remotely surprised her friend is a werewolf. In fact, she offers to go to the meeting with her.

At their meeting, Anne, Robin, and Jason all mask themselves with cloaks to protect their identities, but Katie promptly sees through their disguises and they reveal their plan directly. Anne chants a spell to transform her into a werewolf so they can give her a reversal serum to prevent her from ever transforming again. The transformation goes well, with Wolfie becoming a wolf girl and retaining all of her faculties. However, they inadvertently awakened something within Katie.

In the first page of the part, she was bit by a stray cat, and rather than just be an innocent bite, this caused her to become a werecat, complete with orange hair, fangs, and a bigger bust. But Katie has never become a were-thing before, and has no means of controlling her impulses. She pounces at everybody, leaps into the night, and Anne chases after her, turning into her cat form from part 3 and engaging in an almost literal catfight. Wolfie, however, knows that violence won’t solve anything and digs through her toy chest to find an… emerald necklace that looks like a Koopa shell from Mario.

This is right when the three month hiatus I detailed above happens, and when the comic finally resumes, Wolfie explains what this necklace is. That it is actually a family talisman that is given to werewolves to help them keep their minds human. However, Wolfie comes from such a long line of werewolves that the magicks of this necklace have become embedded in her bloodline. …Wait, so why does she have it? And why is Wolfie so committed to getting rid of this curse then? If it affects her whole family, why is this a big deal for her? …Because rewrites, probably. Again, Onymous had a bad case of writer’s block and couldn’t explain what this talisman was meant for, and this is what she came up with. I call this sort of thing a soft contradiction, where you can tell the original intent was changed, but the story still functions fine.

Through the power of teamwork and magic, Anne and Wolfie successfully get the talisman around Katie’s neck and she returns to her senses. She’s naturally confused, writing this off as a dream at first, but Wolfie tells her the details off-panel, and she’s bummed that she will have “two fantastic monthly events now. One of which turns [her] into a vicious monster, and the other into a were-cat.” A line that took me off guard when reading this. For some reason, I assumed that female werewolves just did not menstruate. My reasoning is that wolves do not menstruate, so if one turns into a werewolf, and can adjust their cycle to peak at a full moon, I’d assume that would cause things to cancel out. Same with cats, who sort of menstruate, and go into heat cycles pretty much constantly, pissing over everything. Which is why you should sever your cat’s genitals. To keep their piss away from your computer!

…Anyway, while this isn’t great for Katie, she has Wolfie, who has been living with this condition for years, and a new magically inclined friend in the form of Anne. In fact, Anne even reshapes the talisman to resemble a shamrock, because Katie’s a prideful Irishwoman like that.

That would be all for this part, but the creators included a sequel hook where one of the transformed cheerleaders, Cher Lita Harper, sees the cat who bit Katie and brings them into her home. Also, this cat is named Curiosity the werekitty. Now, this might be addressed in the sister webcomic, Cheer— I have not read through it in at least 15 years and did not read it for this showcase. However, I doubt that it comes up there. Some wild stuff happens in Cheer, including demon transformations, but I did not see any werecats when manually downloading most pages.

As a chapter, Moon Over Tandy shines more of a light on its supporting cast, giving them magic powers, even if they are rather limited, and introduces more mythos. The Weres as they are referred to, do come up several times throughout the remainder of the series, and from what I can tell, Wolfie and Katie were among the more popular characters, in part because they are an obvious lesbian pairing. Even if Katie keeps pulling out a ‘no homo’ card by talking about how hot she thinks Orlando Bloom is. They’re redheaded were-creatures who are on the volleyball team and have a material size difference. You’d be stupid to not make them lesbians.

Part 12: War Stories

War Stories is a 24 page side story that is meant to show more of the world conquered by Xaos. It is a clear answer to requests to learn more about this world and its characters, but I am not a fan of it. I think it is a largely disposable chapter that adds very little to the ongoing storyline. It introduces too many characters, is disconnected from the world and characters people have gotten invested in, and it’s all fairly generic.

Pretty much every character is an archetype. They are introduced in such close proximity that there is little time to get to know them. And the entire thing feels… bloated yet boring. Any genre savvy person can tell that these characters do not matter in the grand scheme of things. And the most compelling character present here is easily Xaos. As the readers, we know he is going to be the big bad, that he has a connection to the lineage of the Wotch, and has been the endgame big bad boss since page 13.

So I’ll just start with Xao’s backstory to get it out of the way.

Some time roughly 2,000 years ago, Melleck was wandering through an expansive desert in his white metal armor, where he was found by an unnamed race of cloaked figures. These figures foresaw a prophecy of a dark lord coming to rule this land, and trained Melleck as their dark soldier, never explaining the prophecy or their true intentions. Under their control, he was a weapon of immense destruction, allowing the cloaked ones to reclaim their lost land. However, Melleck eventually learned he was being used and that if he was deemed a threat, he would be destroyed. So Melleck did a genocide.

However, Melleck did not seek further destruction. Instead, he secluded himself, entering a millennia-long slumber before Kohain Ravime, then a disgraced academic, ventured to Melleck’s domain. This process took Kohain years, saw him lose everything, but he eventually found Melleck’s… cave? I guess you’d just call it a cave. Kohain then awakened Melleck, gifting him a new helmet and a magical doodad before informing him of the myriad prophecies that surround him. Chiefly, ones pertaining to his partner, the first Wotch.

Xaos’s fondness, if not obsession, over the first Wotch is also expanded on in another flashback showing Xaos on the battlefield. There, he knocks off the helmet of a female soldier with an uncanny resemblance to the first Wotch, including her headband. Except this soldier goes against his expectations by stabbing him with a sword, when the first Wotch hated swords. Xaos kills this soldier, treating us to the bloodiest panel in the series, but swiftly retreats, as he is too hurt by his own memories and past to continue fighting.

This is all effective backstory. We understand that Xaos had a fall from grace, was effectively molded into being a weapon, and hid away before being awakened. The reader is given so much more information on Xaos that they can ask far more questions than before. What happened to the first Wotch? Why was he lost in the desert? How were his morals swayed, given how heroic he seemed in his battle against Ishtarru? It builds suspension and curiosity.

As for the rest of this chapter, it’s basically a snippet from a fantasy story or JRPG, showing an oddball grab bag of resistance members trying to save this seemingly doomed world. With the party members being as follows:

General Tigerclaw: The determined leader who can be reckless due to her inexperience, yet highly values her allies and will do anything she can to save them.
Elise Redd: The hotheaded and fierce fighter who will not back down even when she really should, much to her party’s frustration.
Ehud Petros: A warrior from an army who fought Xaos in battle before who tries to act as a cautious voice of reason amongst the party.
Skythropos: An ally with immense knowledge, and is a member of a race of perpetually cloaked creatures that was nearly genocided by Xaos.
Theodore: A young mage with untold power and who is routinely told he may fall into the dark side unless he keeps his principles.
Avriem Xiliarkos: An experienced mage who functions as the betrayed old man with valuable knowledge to impart on his younger allies.
DeFrain: A playful pirate who knows when to stand down, but will also gallantly waltz into danger. Also, he has a magic eye that sees through walls.
Blackbeak: DeFrain’s hook-handed penguin partner who speaks in wawks.

After getting back Tigerclaw in part 8, the resistance is hunting for yet another pearl, this one the Pearl of De’Kashra. Their adventures take them to a desert, where they exchange a lot of stories about their past run-ins with Xaos, and fight a giant sand worm to get the sand worm. All while characters talk and talk, Onymous and Ericson getting crazy with the amount of text on each page. I understand the need to tell a story and build characters via dialogue, but this is a comic, and all this text breaks the flow that comics should have.

They rest after a job well done, just sleeping on the sand, but they wake up to see that old man Avriem is handing over their pearl to Kohain. This leads to a fight scene that is mostly notable in showing that Yukio, the trench coat assassin guy, has the ability to switch between a male and female form and, like Wolfie and Katie, is a Were. …More on that in the Interlude.

The resistance stages a good fight, yet things come to a pause when Xaos shows up and grabs the pearl. Avriem explains that he did not betray his allies, but merely wanted to secure their protection by giving the pearl to Xaos. Meaning he’s an institutionalist who is willing to deal with tyrants to secure a temporary victory while ignoring the long-term ramifications of seeding powers to evil. Elise Redd is not having any of this though, and attacks Xaos with her big stick, yet is quickly corrupted by his hand. With just a single touch, Xaos turns Elise into an inhuman, almost demonic, creature known as a Fallen.

With one party member down, Theodore lashes out at Avriem, who has a last-minute change of heart and teleports his allies away before surrendering to Xaos’s forces. The remaining party of six then find themselves far away, and Tigerclaw now conveniently knows a key detail of Xaos’s plan. That he wants to become some sort of god that rules over all dimensions by merging his power with that of the Wotch. And since nobody in the party knows what a Wotch is, they assume that they must be one of Xaos’s allies, and a serious threat.

I must stress that this is not a bad story. It just feels too distant and inconsequential for me to really get invested or view it as a key part of this narrative. The backstory for Xaos is important, even cool. But the resistance members and their banter does little for me, especially when I know how little role they have in the rest of the story. Well, Tigerclaw is a major character in a season 3 chapter, I guess.

Part 13: Accidental Wotch
or The Accidental Centaurs: Wotch This

Accidental Centaurs is a webcomic that ran from January 15, 2002 to June 28, 2020. Its writer and artist, John Lotshaw, sadly passed away in November 2021, and following this, his website came offline. Nobody was paying the bills, so his work was largely erased from the internet. He did produce physical books of the work, but those only compiled select stories. Similarly, while there is an archive of 400 comics available on Archive.org, that is ultimately an incomplete comic. Much of the series is rendered inaccessible, and that is an absolute shame.

After just two decades, despite being publicly available for so many years, this series is partially lost media. It is sad, if not horrifying, to me that works this new are at such a real risk of being lost to time. Despite what I want to think, link rot, digital decay, incomplete archives, and the simple ease of destroying digital files puts all online creations at risk.

**There is context for this. I don’t know what it is, but it exists.**

It is why I am such a diehard when it comes to preservation, why I have a veritable library of TSF comics stored on my computer, and why I am at a constant war with storage maintenance. Because I have had works I love, works that influenced me in ways I can scarcely imagine, just disappear. And as people flock more toward closed platforms, to corporate server maintained monoliths and extremely difficult to archive platforms like Discord, I fear this problem will only worsen. …Which is also why I criticize Onymous and Ericson for doing a crummy, half-hearted attempt at preserving their own creation. The Wayback Machine should be a last resort.

But enough about that, let’s talk about The Wotch’s big crossover with a comic that I have never read. Because it is actually important to the overarching storyline, kind of.

Accidental Wotch is pretty much your standard portal-based crossover story. Anne, Robin, and Jason are all isekai’d to the OtherSpace, where they team up with three leads of Accidental Centaurs. Alex and Samantha, a pair of scientists who became centaurs as they entered this realm, and their irreverent and loudmouth companion, Lenny. Who is technically a djinn, but one operating under different standards than the djinns in regular continuity. He’s basically just a purple ghost, and always reminded me of Stretch, one of Casper’s abusive brothers, crossed with the Beldam from Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (2004).

It’s a very brief story, only lasting 19 pages— 16 depending on how you count, and sporting the unique approach of alternating artists every page. On one hand, this is a really cool collaborative effort that gives each artist the ability to perform their own interpretation of the characters and world. It feels like an earnest and effortful collaboration, because it had to be in order for the project to work. On the other hand, this can be a source of artistic whiplash and inconsistencies. Colors, design details, proportions, environments, and general sensibilities.

I’m not crazy about Lotshaw’s artwork here, but I respect it and the level of detail and personality he interjected into each panel. He is a more capable artist than Onymous and is able to stage far more dynamic and complex scenes, peppered with small, sometimes compressed, details. However, it also looks… strange. The big noses afforded to some characters, the dot eyes, the gourd-like head shapes, and the messy line work for certain hair. Something about it just looks off. Also, he chose to hand write his text, and it is at times illegible. However, I should note that many of these eccentricities were eventually addressed as Lotshaw grew as an artist and rebooted his series.

Moving onto the story itself, it’s about as basic as you could ask for. Anne, Robin, and Jason all literally fall on the main trio of Accidental Centaurs, and find their bodies transformed, as humans cannot exist in the OtherSpace. Anne becomes a naga without arms— or maybe the right term is just an armless snake girl. Robin becomes a winged fire-spitting anthropomorphic dragon man. And Jason becomes a female centaur. Immediately after arriving, the armless and powerless Anne gets captured by an army of flying monkeys, who take her to a cloaked figure in a castle on top of a mountain.

Using Lenny’s levitating magical powers, and Robin’s dragon strength, they barge into the castle and make their way to the throne room in half a page, where they meet… The Wicked Witch of the West. No, I’m not kidding. They seriously are going with an Oz reference here, and what’s funny is that this event is semi-regularly referenced. You gotta respect that commitment.

Anywho, the Wicked Witch has turned Anne into a magical staff, but because this is Anne, her only powers are ka-girl and ka-girl-critter. Or, in Lotshaw’s case, ka-zap into whatever thing he felt like drawing. This makes for a frantic transformation ‘battle’ sequence that culminates in Anne and Samantha fusing into a busty two-headed four-armed centaur that speaks with two voices in unison, implying they share a consciousness.

This is… a pretty ideal way to end the crossover. Both The Wotch and Accidental Centaurs are transformation-centric comics, and this is having two characters fuse, i.e., transform, into a singular being. However, they are not something normal looking. They look like an abomination that God should have never allowed on this Earth, and also like a creature who sparked a sexual awakening in at least three people. It was too weird and out-there for me as a teenager. But as an adult with a history of bizarre fascinations, I love this!

With this immense power, the heroes turn the Wicked Witch into a frog, and a flying monkey turned winged fox girl flies her to fight another day. (A day that never comes.) With her departure, life returns to the battered lands surrounding this castle, and the heroes transform the remaining flying monkeys back to their original forms, allowing them to return home. Anne and Samantha unfuse, Anne somehow uses her snake tail to open up a portal with Lenny, and as they depart, Lenny informs Jason that Angie misses him.

The characters then return to their daily lives. Anne is shaken by the words the Witch said about a dark overlord watching her, Jason is hiding his feelings for Angie, and Robin is left wanting to help protect and support Anne when the going gets tough. Now, Robin already learned that Anne can take care of herself, and the last time he tried to get stronger, he nearly doomed the whole world. However, as a flyer for a martial arts class lands in his face, he starts getting ideas.

As a crossover, I can only judge so much, but I admire what was done here in terms of the production and intent on display. Lotshaw produced these extra-long tapestries for his pages. The transformation-filled finale was a treat. And while this was all fairly basic crossover fare, this was back in 2005, so I can only imagine the back and forth and collaboration necessary to keep things consistent enough.

Part 14: Date Night… of Doom!

**See! I told you that part 14 had the first speaking role for a Black character**.

And after two otherworldly chapters, it’s time to get back to normality. Or as normal as this series gets. Date Night of Doom is the first chapter of The Wotch to try juggling an A and B plot, both of which are, naturally, date nights. One following Jason as he, under his Sonja persona, goes out on a date with a man he unconsciously flirted with back during Myths and Legends. And another that builds upon the romance between Robin and Cassie, to help develop the central love triangle. It’s an approach that speaks to the narrative ambitions Onymous and Ericson had, and a desire to get back to basics after two otherworldly adventures.

The set-up is that Jason wants to see the film adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy— a mediocre relic that time has completely forgotten— but nobody wants to go with him. So he opts to finally go out with Sonja’s admirer, Larry. Meanwhile, Robin is pursuing his newfound interest in martial arts by attending the same dojo as his brother. And you know it’s a reputable dojo because it’s in a mall, right next to the magic shop. But before Robin can learn anything but the basics, Cassie drops by with a love portion for him. Because of course she would try making a love potion, as that has always worked and never had any adverse consequences.

She actually keeps trying to get him to try the love potion throughout his time at the mall. Spiking a drink she thinks is his, handing him a bottle so he can hydrate after his workout, but someone else always gets it instead and suddenly becomes infatuated with her. Including a bush she pours the potion in. It’s a familiar outcome that has been mirrored countless times, but I appreciate how this is not just an isolated incident, as there are small references made to this throughout the series. From Kirkashi getting a perpetual crush on Cassie despite not knowing her name, to the bush somehow sending her dirt, leaves, and mall maps.

However, rather than just avoid Cassie, Robin also runs into Jason as Sonja. He’s confused as to why Jason is just casually going out like this, thinking it’s weird and wrong for Jason to try on dresses, plan for a date, and use his hot redhead privilege. Robin tries to get Jason to stop this, but Jason carefully skirts around this and uses the situation as another opportunity to push Robin into pursuing Anne. Because that’s easier than addressing the reasons he might enjoy being like this.

Tensions run high, Jason slaps Robin with a dare, and Robin promises to ask out the next girl he sees who, surprise-surprise, happens to be Cassie. Robin asks her out, and after some shocked pauses, the date night is set. Well, for the most part. The story takes a while to build up to the events of the date night, playing into the feud between Robin and Jason for a bit, and entertaining an incidental C-plot where Anne babysits Kirkashi, Lily, and Jennie. And when the date does begin, it’s really just the characters going out to the movies.

Cassie dresses up for the event, while Robin is just treating things as casually as can be. Jason is dressed up like a daughter for sale at a rich man’s gala and fully takes advantage of Larry’s affection by buying snacks and imposing rules. And the titular doom does not arrive until over halfway through the story, when a pair of demon women zap into the world. They are Drax and Anibelle, a pair of resistance fighters from Xaos’s world who are here to find and apprehend the Wotch, only knowing that she is a powerful magic user and nothing more.

Jason tries to ditch Larry after the movie, but gets accosted by generic jock #9 who pulls the body language excuse to do with him what he wants. Through some tag-teaming though, Larry and Jason knock this would-be rapist out and walk home together, actually talking to each other for the first time and realizing that they both love comic books. Which really should not be a surprise— Larry’s standard outfit is a Batman shirt— but it leaves Jason conflicted. Larry’s the type of guy he could be great friends with, but Jason’s nowhere near ready to even consider that part of his sexuality. He tries to push him away, saying that he’s a guy, but Larry thinks this is just a case of him playing ‘hard to get’ and smooches Jason on the lips, mortifying him.

It’s all a further muddling of Jason’s gender identity, perception of himself, and his broader desires. The series never really does much with it beyond hints and playful nudges— because this is a silly webcomic from the 2000s— yet there’s a lot to look into if one is inclined. It at least has the impression of a queer narrative.

Meanwhile, Cassie takes Robin to a goth nightclub to party, dance about, and have some fun. Robin lets loose, enjoys the atmosphere and company of Cassie, and it looks like the date’s about to turn around. …At least before the demon girls bust down the bathroom walls of the club, addressing Cassie as an ally of Xaos and tossing her onto the top of a neighboring rooftop. …Because fight scenes are cooler when they’re on rooftops.

On that note, the following fight scene is the first real look we get at Cassie’s true power set. Enraged after the demons assume she is the Wotch, she develops an aura of burning flame, shooting fireballs at the demons, and parrying their blows, only stopping when they ask her about the Wotch’s location, where she hesitates. While Cassie is filled with rage at Anne’s powers and friends, she does not want harm to come to her. She’s a rival, but not a villain, or even really an anti-hero. But the demons do not like her way of dodging their questions and try to kill her with a… magically infused chainsaw.

Cassie is left bound, barely able to move, and has death looming over her, yet she paid close enough attention to her opponents’ fighting style to see that one of them had a pouch of magic crystals. So, knowing nothing about what could happen, she shoots a fireball at it. Which, conveniently, causes the demon to drop a dimensional crystal that unceremoniously warps the two back home. It’s a bit of a cheap conclusion, not as elegant as many of Anne’s solutions to these problems, but that makes sense. Cassie is far less experienced and gifted than Anne, so she should rely on luck and intuition.

This all leaves Cassie exhausted, but at least she gets to walk home with Robin and can cap off the date with a goodnight kiss. …Or so she planned. Rather than just kissing her and giving her what she wants, Robin decides he needs to fess up to Cassie, telling her this was a dare date. He tries to preface this, but after such a stressful night, Cassie cannot take it and goes back home, burning with rage as she prepares to burn her framed photo of Robin. …Only for her sorrow to win in the end. She might have been used, but damn it, she still loves him!

While the story definitely had a few weeks where the story was just standard teenage sitcom drama, and the story… is not as fun as Slumber Party… of Doom!, this is another good addition. It progresses stories relevant to two of the main characters, involves the other world in a meaningful way, and gives Cassie some much appreciated attention. But this is all preamble to my aforementioned favorite part in this series, where Anne faces the consequences for her actions.

Part 15: Consequences

Something that I feel the need to praise The Wotch for is its adherence to continuity. It’s a series full of silly transformations and assorted hi-jinks, but it is not willing to just forget the fact that these are people’s lives that are being messed with. And while Anne might not be directly responsible for their misfortunes, with her level of power, she’s responsible for protecting this town and its people. Because without her, they’d only have to worry about a family of werewolves.

At this point in the series, the members of the newspaper club have begun to notice some of the artifacts of these changes. The cheerleader squad referencing events nobody can remember. Irene and James, who have been swapped for months, are still acting weird and getting their pasts mixed up. Mingmei Wu has been making odd comments since her debut. And I have not mentioned it, but there’s been a centaur woman working at a grocery store for the past few parts and, somehow, nobody has noticed.

The first visit on this tour of consequences is that centaur woman, Allison Taverner, who is just casually going about in her shop before Anne points out she’s half horse. She explains that she was not affected by the Mythos Virus and just assumed it was a slow day at her family’s grocery store. Presumably, she also didn’t look out of the windows or notice a bizarre lack of cars moving around outside. However, when Anne’s antidote rain fell on her, she became a centaur. And she transformed in the store bathroom. The best place for horseplay, and the worst place for horse TF.

Before Allison can deal with this transformation, she is approached by a cloaked woman with a phoenix that briefly appeared in Myths and Legends. She does not state her name, but immediately tries curing Allison, throwing spells at her and having her phoenix cry on her. However, nothing ultimately works, and through a particularly dense wall of text, she explains that Allison is stuck like this. Her grocery store is located on an interdimensional nexus and her prolonged exposure to said nexus has affected her body. Kind of like how the Wotch crew transformed in part 13 when entering OtherSpace. So when she was hit with the Mythos Virus antidote, it locked her into her centaur form. Not even the strongest of magics can help her now, and it’s not like artificial bodies or body swapping is a thing in this multiverse. …Wait?

**Just look at this text! Now that’s what I call a *comic*!**

The cloaked woman’s solution was instead to cast an illusion spell that will make people perceive her as a regular human. Well, unless it is pointed out by someone else. It’s an excuse for the creators to just have a centaur running around… but that’s not really a bad thing, and Allison seems to like being a centaur, even though her job is not suited for a centaur. The most valuable skills in a grocery store are the ability to stock shelves, fit in small spaces, and clean up messes. All of which are exponentially more difficult when Allison is so much taller, longer, and generally less mobile in small spaces. If she worked a desk job and got a custom standing desk, she would be fine. If she was a farmer, this might even be a benefit in certain circumstances But she is physically not made for running a grocery store.

It’s a dire consequence, but through some narrative wrangling, this is ultimately not Anne’s fault. There was no way she could have known this would affect Allison, and if anything, I would say that the cloaked figure was at fault, as she could have thought outside the box to fix Allison. But she got lazy!

Next up, Anne needs to deal with the consequences of what she, or at least her facets, did to Mingwei Wu, the Japanese teenager with a Chinese name who was formerly Professor Sorgaz. I already went in detail on her origin, so brush up on part 4 if you need a refresher. After getting transformed into a happy-go-lucky girl without a home, she wandered the streets of Tandy before meeting the same hooded figure with a phoenix. One who cast a spell on her to help her acclimate to her false life and supplemental spells to ensure she will be able to attend school and have a decent life. However, the Ming identity was created as an incomplete and temporary fix that would eventually come crumbling down as her true self reemerges.

Which is precisely what happens when Ming starts investigating the disappearance of Sorgaz, entering Sorgaz’s former classroom and experiencing a flashback to her creation. How Anger-Anne changed their body and Joy-Anne changed their mind. Ming then heads to Sorgaz’s abandoned house, dressing in his clothing, in hopes that things would make sense, but they simply don’t. Flickers of a past life clash with a new life. They are left confused, at a true crisis of identity, and there is only one person who can help. Anne.

As Ming conveys their story before Anne, she rushes to fix it, grabbing the necessary spell book, but as Ming waits, they are left to say goodbye to their friends. To Katie, who housed them, becoming the closest thing to family in their new life. And Wolfie, who shared their interests and became their close friend. There are many others who will need to hear this news secondhand, and Ming needs to come up with a way to say goodbye to all of them. Those who valued Ming as a partner, and even those who had feelings for Ming.

This leads Ming to search within their mind, to assess the options available to them. What they want from life, with who they want to be. And the dialogue between the two is… awfully one-sided. The Ming personality insists that order should be restored, that she should be erased, and her very existence is a lie. While Sorgaz says that his life wasn’t anything remarkable. He’s a man in his 40s with no family, barely any friends, who lived a life of solitude, working away as a teacher, teaching the youth about the past. He had a home and his life wasn’t anything to scoff at, but he was never satisfied with how his life played out.

Ming still does not feel right about this, about having him disappear, but Sorgaz says that this is not an either or scenario. They are two minds in one body, but they could combine, taking Sorgaz’s knowledge and Ming’s potential to become something more. With this offer, Sorgaz’s mental projection of himself shifts, becoming a twin of Ming. Together, they are still Mingwei Wu… but a new and improved version.

…Okay, I will say that I am conflating things and reading between the lines with that summary. But that’s because I can see what the creators were going for and I love this. While I try to keep an ‘open to anything’ approach, my favorite type of transformations are ones where people learn and grow, where they change who they are on many levels, and where they retain what came before. This is seen in certain works where characters become new people after swapping bodies, or live in a transformed state for so long, they simply become new people. But my actual favorite thing in all of TF is when two people become one, taking the best parts of both, and becoming something more as a result. This is a very rare type of transformation, so much so that I lack any ready examples I can point to, and is such untapped ground that I’m unsure of what necessarily makes a good one.

This merged consciousness thing has been something I’ve been aware of since I was… seven, when fusion was introduced in Dragon Ball Z. (Side note, but there is a surprising amount of TF in Dragon Ball, especially the Pilaf arc.) However, The Wotch was the first permanent representation I had ever seen, and it stuck with me. Both as a fantastical idea, and in a more grounded sense. The idea that a person can change, that who they are now and who they were might be two separate things, but in the mind, they are all an amalgamation, all part of the same system. One could choose to erase one or the other, clawing to a former glory or denying who they once was, or they could take the best of all worlds.

…Now, is this the best example of this idea? No. Viewing this critically, the execution is kinda shallow, does not impart on the meaning behind this change, and is over and done with far too quickly. It also avoids the messy details of erasing one’s life. Sorgaz mentions how they could access his bank account, and Ming breaks into Sorgaz’s house to grab his clothes, but… what happens to his less liquid assets? Who gets his car? Did he pay off his mortgage? Is his house going to be repossessed? How are his bills getting paid? What about his retirement and savings accounts? Did his parents leave him any money, like good parents should?

In the real world, there are walls and barriers between people getting their assets transferred. While it makes narrative sense for Sorgaz to abandon his own life, the logical thing to do would be to take a month to close his life. To get back into his body, adopt Mingwei, sell his house, his car, and claim to be going off to see the world, only to disappear, leaving Mingwei with all of his assets.

Then bam, she would get to start her new life with a retirement account that she’ll be able to withdraw from in 20 years and probably $50k in cash to start out her life. Combined with the smarts she inherited from Sorgaz, and the likely scholarship she would receive, she would have the best possible head start into her adult life. …But that’s also boring, not the reason why people are here, and a petulant little detail only accountants would care about. To paraphrase what I said when discussing one of the earliest MTF possession stories, An Exchange of Souls, nobody wants to read about fictional people planning their estates. People want to read about buck wild transformations where the mind, soul, and body alter in ways that defy the rules of reality!

…I just spent 1,000 words talking about a third of a chapter. Either I need to stop, or I need to go even more in-depth with these things.

The third person, or I suppose group, are the four football players turned cheerleaders. Alexandra King, Cher Lita Harper, Johanna Star, and Samantha Smith. (Yes, there are two Samanthas in The Wotch and another from the Accidental Centaurs crossover. This is why you should always make a name spreadsheet.) This transformation was caused Anne’s feminine pride back in part 4, and it’s the most obvious long-term transformation that Anne has done so far. Changing four people in one go, and affecting school sports teams, and just leaving their parents to… just accept these changes, as seen in a “one shot” published right before part 10.

After Robin reminds her about this incident, Anne splits off her feminine pride and interrogates her for answers, where she gives a predictable spiel about how these people… sucked. The football players were egotistical, devoted to appearing macho above all else, and chose to harass women just to maintain their stature, neglecting other aspects of themselves to maintain this harmful veneer. However, all feminine pride Anne did was change their bodies and minds, and did nothing to alter reality or their school records. Instead, both Annes intuit that this must have been the work of this cloaked woman. Oh, and while talking feminine pride Anne winds up futzing with the bookshelves in this room and casting a spell. This is important for later.

Still, regular Anne is committed to doing the right thing and begins gathering information on one of these cheerleaders, Lita. And what she finds is that… things are pretty much better this way. Lita’s mother says that Lita’s so much happier now that she’s a girl. That she is able to openly be herself, is getting better grades, and has more friends than ever before. Cher’s DND group gives pretty much the same story. They used to hang out with Leo in secret, because Leo was scared of being thought of as some nerd, but Lita doesn’t care, and is better liked by the crew.

The main three then go visit the cheerleaders during practice, and they seem like a well-adjusted group. Sure, Alex is overly verbose and hyperbolic and Jo flutters between being a ditz and saying things that teeter on being profound, but their minds got scrambled. This is an acceptable outcome. And by most accounts, they’re just… better off like this.

Everybody is happier, doing better in their lives, and from what the cheerleaders remember of the ‘jocks who were harassing Wolfie’ they do not think highly of who they used to be. They are ‘better off this way,’ so even though Anne could inform them of what happened and let them choose, she opts to just leave this be. Learning they were transformed would not help them through their life, it would only cast doubt on their existence, and sometimes… ignorance is bliss.

Oh, and as for James and Irene, they come up to Anne’s door and she swaps them thirty seconds later. Both are dazed at how easy it was to fix this, and they just leave. You might call it an anti-climax, but the series was so flippant about their body swap in the first place that this is appropriate.

With this all done, and with Anne finally facing the consequences for her actions, she had had a revelation about her role as The Wotch, what it means, and what she wants to do. She has achieved a lot in these past few months… but she’s done.

Anne packs her books and everything magic into a box of expanded holding and gives it away to Milo, not even bothering to sell it. She does not care about what Jason and Robin have to say, she just wants to go back to being little miss Anne Onymous and live out a normal life. She ditches them as she arrives home, and as she enters her room to sulk, she finds that all of her books have returned. The person responsible being none other than the cloaked woman who helped others throughout this chapter, and the very same person who enchanted Anne’s flute last summer. Her name is Minerva West, and she was the Wotch.

Goldarn do I love everything about this ending, and this entire chapter. Revelations after revelation, the most serious look yet into how these transformations affect someone’s life, a deluge of closure and progression for both minor characters and Anne herself. And it also serves as an introduction to a figure who turns out to be Anne’s predecessor, and someone who will, inevitably, become her teacher. So much happens, and it’s all dope!

Tangent: Cheer

Before beginning, now is a good time to bring up The Wotch’s spin-off companion series, Cheer. A comic created by Tselsebar, made largely without the involvement of Onymous or Ericson. I lacked the time to read prior to this, but maybe I’ll cover it some other day.

The series followed the four football players turned cheerleaders as they went on their own manner of adventures. Which, of course, gradually blossomed into something more extreme and magical. Publication began on August 9, 2005, technically three days before the start of Consequences, so people already knew going in that the cheerleaders would stay just as they are. But, let’s be real, there was never any doubt.

Unfortunately, because it was a product of 2005 and was hosted as a subdomain of thewotch.com, this also means Cheer was subjected to the same decay as The Wotch. Looking through archives of cheer.thewotch.com, and the news section below the comic, it tells the story of the site and the series. Basically, things went fairly smoothly throughout the first few years of the series, putting out nearly 300 comics by February 2009. Then the series moved over to its own platform, using the CMXpress web engine, and switching over to the URL cheercomic.com.

Archives for this new site are far less complete, and the comic staggered for its first year, releasing only about 20 pages. Then from January 2010 to July 15, 2011, only 9 comics were released, including the final one drawn by Tselsebar. He seemingly struggled on the next page for nearly two years before asking his friend, Theresa Pertierra, to help him draw it, and she in turn drew three pages, released from May 9, 2013 to May 23, 2013. Then the site just wallowed around until February 2016, seeing no updates, until it went offline.

Cheer’s website was eventually revived by long-time Wotch fan and fellow transformation artist CDRudd and his site SailorSun.org. He worked with Tselsebar to bring back Cheer as a subdomain of his site, and you can read what I believe amounts to every page of the main comic. This is a great preservation effort, and I would like to thank CDRudd for hosting this comic, as it would be far too easy for it to disappear like dust in the wind. And because the web archives are incomplete.

…But per my sleuthing around the Cheer websites, I discovered that CDRudd made the same mistake as Onymous and Ericson, and a few new ones.

The news section where Tselsebar would post updates or add commentary to each page was not carried over to the new site, robbing readers of valuable context.

Guest comics, desktops, bonus images, and various filler comics were not carried over, and while I did not check closely, I am comfortable saying some of them are just not archived.

There were a few comics that were fully colored on the old sites, namely a good chunk of the first storyline second page of the series, but these were not hosted on the SailorSun iteration.

Though, most perplexingly, CDRudd completely screwed up the dates for these comics, and with them, the file names. They claim the series updated weekly at a steady pace from March 9, 2004 to April 20, 2010, which is just inaccurate on all fronts. I do not understand how this even happened. The old websites name each comic after their upload date. Did Tselsebar just not give CDRudd this information? Was this an automated system used to quickly get the main comic up? I don’t know! And I’m not a journalist, so I’m not going to ask people who have been doing dope stuff since I was just a kid.

I know that I keep harping on and on about fully preserving old works, but… that is an essential part of discussing something that originated in the Web 1.0 era. Things break, they fall apart, and unless creators are determined to save the works they have spent weeks, months, maybe even years of effort on, then they will be lost. Or at least really bloody unpleasant to acquire.

Edit 12/19/2024: Originally, I referred to the Pertierra, the artist who did the final three pages for Cheer as Dan Pertierra, per the archive of the old Cheer website. However, a reader informed me that Pertierra now goes by Theresa. The relevant section has been corrected accordingly.

Part 16: Enter The Wotch?

After three years, The Wotch has finally introduced the almost obligatory figure for any magic-using teen, a mentor figure. Her name is Miranda West and… she’s about what you would expect from the archetype. A strict teacher who wants to do things by the book, approaching the art of teaching with the more rigorous 20th century manner her teachers instructed her. She disapproves of Anne’s ‘tag-alongs’, viewing them as both a distraction and liability. But that’s mostly because she wants to save Anne from the trauma and heartbreak of losing someone dear to her, as it is implied that she lost her two best friends when she was young.

Miranda has a softer side, but she projects a sense of authority and control, and generally does not give the best impression. She seems more annoyed to be here more than anything, insistent on using harsh methods because Anne has a great destiny, rather than teaching her with compassion and affection. This is not always true, but her core personality remains a stick in the mud and a member of the anti-fun gang. She also has this habit of keeping her brows furrowed and eyes 3/4ths shut at all times. I know this is meant to make her seem dejected or disinterested, but in practice, she just looks like she’s sneering at everything. Like she doesn’t want to be here or be around anyone.

She gets better during Ian Samson’s run as an artist in season 3, though that’s mostly due to a more silly tone and the personality of Samson’s artwork. Her type of character really needs an arc to become endearing, or at least an opportunity to figuratively and literally let her hair down.

After making her introduction, Miranda invites Anne to visit her tomorrow for her first night of training, and this immediately invigorates Anne’s interest in magic again. Because now she can learn from an expert. Though before going there, the cast needs to attend school.

Here, we are introduced to Ms. Dahlet, a new teacher at this school taking on… history after Professor Sorgaz merged with Ming? She’s actually taking over for the gym coach, but the class is in a classroom. Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter, as it’s not like classes are ever an issue for these teens. Additionally, the newspaper club gets shuffled as Ming, James, and Irene all quit, but Scott Winters and Julie Summers join up. Not for any stated reason, but they are minor background characters, and this gives them something to do. And this trio has enough hamburger in their head to piece together that the source of these happenings has something to do with Anne, Robin, and Jason.

“Post-School,” the main three then arrive at Miranda’s house hidden deep in the woods, where Anne encounters a slime monster who grabs Robin and Jason and nearly defeats her. Just as it seems like Anne is toast, Miranda reveals this was all a test and pivots into a series of long explanations and bouts of exposition.

Miranda explains that all Wotches’ powers are linked and while one can tweak the transformations and spells of the other, they cannot override or destroy them. Hence why Miranda could not transform Mingwei or the cheerleaders, and why Anne could not fight the slime monster created by Miranda. As for Wotch history, that is difficult to preserve, as the only way it can be written or passed down is via The Wotch Chronicles, a book Anne acquired detailing the adventures of past Wotches. And while the book is physically stable, it has a deluge of missing pages, either stolen or destroyed.

I did not mention The Wotch Chronicles before, as it was largely irrelevant, but here we do learn that The Wotch is an inherently musical title, where power is always transferred via musical instruments. Just a quirky tradition that has been upheld for little reason, like how the prior Wotch is not to support or communicate with the new Wotch, and the new Wotch is supposed to seek them out. …Yeah, that last bit is just dumb. It’s like a school giving students textbooks and then requiring them to answer riddles to find a teacher if they want to be taught.

Still, Anne is thrilled to have someone offering her guidance and pointers after being self-taught for so long, and continues to throw herself into her new passions for a few days. …Until she tells her to transform a substance that is resistant to magic. A trial that Anne never actually solves, and before she can, she is lured into a trap by Kohain, who sends a troll to fight Anne. The last long-form magical battle Anne really had was back in part 10, so this gives the reader an opportunity to see how her skills have grown, and they indeed have.

She immediately disarms the troll of its club, turns herself and Robin into mice people to evade their giant opponent, uses vine magic to plant the troll’s feet into the ground, and fires the expected magic blasts. Meanwhile, Robin uses this as an opportunity to thrust himself into combat, insisting that Anne turn him into a dragon, despite the dangers that may hold for him. Except Anne is pissed that he is distracting her during combat, so she turns him into an anthropomorphic dragonfly girl. Yet, even in this form, he does make himself useful, stabbing the troll in the eye with his tail.

Before Anne can finish the fight, Miranda comes in and sends the troll into “a troll dimension” before explaining she had nothing to do with this. The group then investigates the battlegrounds for clues as to what happened, where they find that Kohain put a petrification spell on Miranda’s pet phoenix, Arizona. Presumably named such because Ericson lived in Phoenix, Arizona. How creative.

This clearly leaves Miranda distraught, but she tries to power on, voicing how “phoenixes are immune to all but the most dark magicks.” However, Anne has researched the most powerful anti-petrification spells— just in case— and is able to revive Arizona. Which has to be one of the only times a phoenix came back to life without burning to ash.

It goes to show that while Miranda may be a powerful and experienced witch, Anne is no slouch either and has both great power and the ability to think outside the box. To not let pesky assumptions cloud her judgment. It’s a good creative choice and ends this training chapter on a more triumphant note. …While making it clear that Kohain and other threats are on the horizon.

Though, before moving onto the next chapter, there’s one super minor thing that I want to highlight, as it is probably my favorite joke in the entire series. Cassie is looking over Anne in the library, still stewing with rage, and entertaining herself with vivid fantasies of what it would be like if the demon girls from part 14 were to capture her. These fantasies are a recurring element of Cassie’s, but after she imagines Anne getting brutalized with a chainsaw, she switches over to imagining confronting her about these demons. …And this conversation takes place using these dead-eyed pudgy armed hand puppets in what is referred to as Wotch Puppet Theater.

Just the sheer idea that one can imagine anything in the world, and they choose to imagine things happening as a puppet show, is deeply funny to me. Partially because hand puppets are just a hilarious idea, and because it comes out of nowhere. Suddenly… puppets!

Interlude: The Minds of Monsters

Remember how part 12 showed a look into Xaos’s world and the various characters within it? Well, this interlude is more of that, but with a different approach. It’s just five densely packed pages that show different sides of this world and its characters. They are all good snippets that flesh out this world in a far more digestible manner than part 12, and all have at least something of interest to say. But for the sake of this showcase, there is only one example I want to highlight.

The first page follows Yukio, the much teased cigarette-smoking trench coat assassin who works for Xaos and has the uncanny ability to transform into a female form. Well, here we see that this is not just a physical change, but also a mental change, as Yukio and his female counterpart, Yukiyo, are two minds that share a body. They were born as a male who was a were-girl, and would transform into a girl every full moon. For this condition, Yuio was harassed and demeaned in their home village due to widespread superstition.

This led Yukio/Yukiyo to travel halfway around the world and find a scroll that helped them locate a magic amulet that lets them shift between the two forms— their red and white yin-yang necklace. This scroll also taught them how to control their ability. A process that involved Yukio honing his mind and Yukiyo honing her body. I was not quite sure what that meant, given how little we see of these characters. So I checked the defunct wiki, and I think it means that Yukio, the boy, is the brains of this operation, while Yukiyo is the brawn, having a greater strength by virtue of being a Were form.

Despite having controlled their shapeshifting abilities, the ignorant villagers still despised Yukio/Yukiyo for allegedly bringing their village misfortune. This rejection led Yukio/Yukiyo down the life of a bounty hunter, killing to make a living, before being recruited by Xaos. …Though, this does not explain, at all, why Yukio/Yukiyo has two mental identities. None of the other Weres we’ve seen have it, and Uricarn comments on it like it’s something unique to them.

This is presented as more of an idea than a full character, but I have to say… I really like this concept. I previously voiced my love of the shared body concept in my showcase of the Birdy the Mighty OVA series, and I think the dynamic Yukio/Yukiyo has is a fascinating one. Because they are two halves of the same mind that, over time, have grown into their own personalities, rather than merge, and are presented almost like siblings. It’s a nifty concept that sadly never goes anywhere past this, as this character never shows up again. The creators just throw out this fascinating idea, one that could be the basis for a story of a genderfluid, or maybe two-spirit, individual trying to make it through a tattered world and find peace amongst their selves.

Part 17: Adventures in Babysitting

With Anne busy with both schoolwork and Miranda’s training, she has not had the free time for a lot of things, including spending time with her sibling E/Evan/Lily. …Or rather, transforming Evan into Lily. Ideally, this shouldn’t be a problem, but Lily is such a rambunctious person that she needs routine supervision, especially when she has a friend over. Evan, a young adult who’s swamped with overtime, should understand this, but this is a key hobby and form of escapism for him, so he keeps pestering his younger sister.

It’s all just a bad situation to be in, but Anne eventually relents to her brother, turning him into Lily after Jennie comes over. …And then Jennie shows off a new amulet she got from Milo’s shop, which matches Lily’s amulet. This is a detail I omitted before. That Evan’s change is not fully conducted via Anne’s magic, and instead uses a golden amulet to transform Evan into Lily and vice versa. However, its origins are never really explained and the doodad is only prominently featured in part 7, so it’s a very easy detail to miss or forget about.

Point is, Lily has a golden amulet, Jennie has a silver amulet, and as they cling them together, the power of TSF and age inversion flows through the house. Jennie becomes a teenager. Robin and Jason become little girls, with Robin having an S/TH lisp and Jason being a mouthless mute who only communicates in illustrated thought balloons. Anne has become a little boy, and Miranda, who was also around when this happened, is a little boy who is probably supposed to be two. But because drawing babies is hard, she looks to be four.

As for Evan/Lily/E, things are more complicated. Physically, they are akin to a 20-year-old Lily, but mentally they are an amalgamation of Evan and ‘more grown up’ Lily. They seem to fully remember everything, unlike the age regressed kids, and while they are mostly Evan, they are more emotional and find themself getting flustered around guys. They go by the name of Missy, derived from Miss E, and while their gender situation is weird, I’m going to use female pronouns for them, as that’s what the comic is operating under.

This is all an elaborate situation, and the initial reactions are chaotic, confusing, but also deeply captivating. Minds are rewritten, characters are acting like the people they appear to be, and all this stress is being thrown on the shoulders of someone who has largely avoided this magic nonsense. Missy eventually realizes she is the only adult here and needs to use her adult authority to basically boss these kids around, forcing them to cooperate at the risk of being a bit too mean before heading to Milo’s shop. Thankfully, we are spared the car ride with three 4-year-olds and a toddler, but there is a lot of plodding.

This is not a bad thing though. The characters are in a unique situation, operating with different minds, and effectively different people. So just seeing them try to navigate mundane social situations is entertaining. Seeing baby girl Jason rub a bunch of bottles to Summon Angie so he can get a pile of cookies. Having little boy Anne read a magic book and talk about how it’s inaccurate. Or just watching Miranda the hardass be reduced to a crying baby. It’s mundane, but with context, it’s funny seeing how in or out of character they can be.

After these antics though, Missy and Milo discover why the amulets did this to them, finding an old fairy tale where an imp gave a prince a golden amulet that turned him into a little girl. The imp challenged the prince to find a reversal before he grew up into a woman, otherwise the imp would make him his wife/slave. The prince assigned a wizard to investigate this, and while the wizard made a near identical amulet, it only undid the age regression, not the alteration of his sex. This meant the prince was now a woman, and per the agreement with the imp, the prince was now his property. Only after this did the wizard realize that they could have undid the curse with a simple enchantment, Dispellus Amulet.

This would still be no help though, as both Anne and Miranda were turned into boys by the amulet… or were they? After trying to change Miranda’s poopy underwear, they realize that was not the case, the Wotches are still girls, and they go to get Anne. Instead, they find that she’s run away from the shop and has already gotten herself into a heap of trouble. Anne still has access to her full magical powers, but does not know how to control them or her emotions. She sends food flying, sends a car flying over her as she runs into the street, ka-girls a random passerby, and creates a mini tornado of magical rage as she trips and scrapes her knee.

Lighting strikes, the ground sorta crumbles, and things go flying all as her emotions run haywire. Allison, the centaur lady, tries to go in to comfort her, but it takes Missy to come in and remind Anne that she can do anything she sets out to, even if things seem impossible or scary. It’s not a great parallel with the issues she was facing as a teenager, but it shows Missy reach out to help her sister and give her the attention that she failed to do as Evan. Anne, predictably, powers through this, and for being such a brave little thing, she and her friends even get some sweets from Allison’s grocery store.

Returning to the magic shop, Anne promptly tries dispelling the curse on the amulets, only for the spell to not work. Before they can figure out why this is, they see that the imp from the fairy tale is standing behind them, with his maid-wife-slave in tow. …Wait, so did the imp make them immortal or something? Because I know a lot of people who would be willing to take an eternity of slavery if it meant they get to be an immortal and attractive maid. …And funnily enough, all of them are trans girls.

Anyway, the imp is a real dastard who says that simply using the amulet obligates the user to an eternity of servitude. This would be a great opportunity for a magical legal battle subplot, with Phoenix Wright references a la carte, but no. Instead Missy, Jennie, and Anne all come up with a plan to trick the imp into getting out of this contractual snafu. One testing the magical abilities of the imp and Anne, while using Milo’s natural magical immunity to out-trick this trickster. The imp tries to transform him, while Missy has Anne cast a perception spell. Simple, but pretty clever.

The imp surrenders, thinking Anne may be more powerful than him, and promptly returns to his realm with his singular maid-wife in tow. Should they have saved her? Probably. But Tandy already has enough magically displaced weirdos. Speaking of which, Anne is able to reverse the transformation, turning everybody back to normal in a single panel. …And then Miranda promptly destroys the two amulets, crushing them into dust and getting out of here while she has some dignity intact.

Miranda apologizes to Anne for her display afterwards, commending her for how she handled this situation, and trying to spin a lesson from all this. Namely, don’t turn yourself into a child and control your emotions. However, Anne and Evan also learned that they were both acting selfish and, as siblings, they should keep in mind what each other wants and not put themselves first. After all, with their parents away at a forever job in Madagascar, they’re the only family they’ve got.

That brings the chapter to an end, but there is also an ongoing subplot happening throughout the chapter. Namely, pertaining to a scuffle between a couple of jocks about how to treat women before one of them is pulled away after school by Ms. Dahlet. Then, the following day, the same jock is being overly kind to Anne. A diehard goth girl, named Morrigan Woe, is then recruited to this after-school program by a girl named Natasha, only to appear in Milo’s shop later, looking for books on hypnosis. And then, later that night, Morrigan has followed Anne back to her home, presumably overhearing and seeing everything. It’s clearly foreshadowing, spaced out enough to feel minor and easily ignorable, but it’s all leading up to the big season 2 finale, D.O.L.L.Y.!

Part 18: D.O.L.L.Y.

Before beginning this chapter, Onymous, the authorial persona, begins this chapter by saying that it centers around a “feminist-army” of some sort, but she is not trying to make a political statement with this chapter. She is just writing a fun and silly story inspired by online roleplay sessions involving extreme feminists.

I find this to be a funny remnant of how politics and feminism were viewed when this chapter was published— we’re still in July 2006 for the record. The broader online culture had not had a discussion rebuking the idea of things being apolitical, so seeing someone pass off their work as having no politics in it is just funny to be. Especially with something like feminism.

The word and public perception of feminism was very much determined by men, and the only feminism most were familiar with was spun by marketing companies in the late 90s. Feminism’s goals are pretty much to treat people, of all genders, better. To free people of what can be toxic and debilitating constructs and stereotypes, and perpetuate equality. But the majority of Americans back then, let alone now, wouldn’t define it as such.

On that note, The Wotch, despite its rampant silliness, makes its stance on various political issues transparent. Part 10 was about usurping a corrupt leader and two diametrically opposed parties who have perspectives clouded by centuries of history. Xaos is a cruel dictator who abuses those beneath him and turns them into mentally shackled slaves. There are multiple, irrefutably, transgender characters in this story, and trans people are, like, half as Black people!

Moving on, part 18 is another huge and sprawling epic finale, but the core of its story centers around a group of women trying to manipulate Anne. Urging her to hate “this male-dominated world” through hypnosis and other forms of mental alteration, while spying on her interests. This leads into a trip to the Acorn Mall with Jason to hang out and transform him into Sonja, as he is “about due.” (Keep telling yourself that buddy.) But before they can get some girl time together, Anne runs into Robin as he leaves his martial arts dojo. This would typically result in some pushback from Anne, as she does not want her friends getting directly involved in combat. Instead, she rants about him being so male, thinking she needs protection, and storms off in rage.

Jason, as Sonja, tries to call her out for being aggressive, but Anne is behaving out of character and is beyond reconciliation, so she just ka-guys him before running into two recruiters. A popular girl and an alt girl who try to recruit her to an organization known as D.O.L.L.Y. Which stands for Daughters of… something or other. They never provide the full acronym, and that’s the joke!

Anne thinks this is fishy, yet agrees to at least check the place out. …Only for a man in a ratty coat and cowboy hat to appear with a magical one-button remote and body swap — sorry, force of habit— and undoes their mind control. He tries to approach Anne after this, but she threatens him, leading him to flee away. …Until the next day, when he breaks into Anne’s house while Robin and Jason are over.

This man is Glock, a government agent with all manner of magical gizmos and doodads who is investigating D.O.L.L.Y. after his partner went missing. He describes D.O.L.L.Y. as a female supremacy organization that has been recruiting girls in this sleepy little town with exploitable feminine pride. He provides no evidence for this beyond some very chunky and difficult to read text blocks, and this triggers Anne’s mind control, leading her to storm off into her room to get away from these male men and their masculine assumptions. Ten seconds later, she gets ambushed by a pair of girls with purple smoke guns and snifit masks.

Anne is then transported to D.O.L.L.Y. headquarters, located in the high school’s sub-basement, and the organization is… expectedly radical. While they do not wish to enslave all men, they want to rid the world of men, transforming everybody into women, and creating a more equitable society. Because there definitely wouldn’t be a caste system designed to protect ‘natal women’ on top and treat these ‘transformed women’ at the bottom as an underclass. Anne reasonably refuses, and gets hit with a taser.

Meanwhile, Glock, Robin, and Jason are infiltrating the school. Glock uses some of his wonderful toys to break through, only to get ambushed as they enter by the leader of D.O.L.L.Y. And it’s none other than Ms. Dahlet. Remember her? Of course you do! She’s the new teacher with long dark hair and you can tell who she is by her red shoulder guards. A visual trait unique by her… and the woman originally presented as the leader of D.O.L.L.Y. through an ill-advised fake-out, Natasha. A woman with long dark hair styled almost exactly like Dahlet, except hers is black instead of Dahlet’s extra dark brown.

This is a problem that should have been obvious to Onymous as she drew these pages, let alone Ericson as he colored them. And this is a readily fixable problem that either could have solved mid-chapter by changing the hairstyle or color, but they just didn’t.

Oh, and as a last minute addition, it turns out that Ms. Dahlet’s first name is also Natasha. That was NOT clear to me while reading this part, and I only learned this when perusing the defunct official wiki. So I think this was a deliberate middle finger to the audience.

Outnumbered and outmatched, Anne complies with Dahlet’s orders for now, transforming Jason and Robin into Sonja and Robyn before being given a demonstration of D.O.L.L.Y.’s technology. The T.C.D., Transparent Cylinder of Death. Which really should be called the Transparent Cylinder of D.O.L.L.Y.-fication, as that’s what it does. Take men and transform them into youthful, skinny, busty women while a green gas mind controls them into being D.O.L.L.Y. agents.

Dahlet demonstrates this on Glock first, as he is the most macho man available, and through a brief TF sequence turns him from a 40/50-year-old guy into a stacked blonde woman with big boobs. Funny how this misandrist organization still values patriarchal beauty standards… and how they didn’t recruit anybody who’s unattractive to join them. All are young and pretty, only two are Black, and there’s not a non-skinny girl to speak of.

Bah! I’m in too deep to get distracted like this!

Point is, this TF machine is used on Glock, and the one at the controls is none other than Glock’s partner, an anthropomorphic squid alien by the name of Ti’el. Originally male, they were subjected to the T.C.D. which pulled a fantasy race sex swap on them. Turning them from a bulky critter into… basically a human woman in cosplay. Just with tentacle arms, presumably tentacle legs, tentacle hair, and breasts, like all sea critters. What, you’ve never seen a shark with breasts? For shame…

Anne looks at this display and accepts Dahlet’s offer to join, if only to double-cross her later. And to do that, she needs to deal with her inner feminine pride, last seen in part 15. She removes Feminine Pride Anne (FP-Anne) from her mind… and she finds her bound and gagged, somehow. It’s a visual choice that raises many questions, but is quickly undercut by the reveal of Anger-Anne, last seen in part 4, and still wearing the same villainess garment Kohain inspired her to wear. …Which she sadly ditches in favor of a boring D.O.L.L.Y. uniform.

With main Anne imprisoned in a magical cage, Anger-Anne explains how she escaped, and it’s a bit of a half-assed solution. When FP-Anne cast a spell in part 15, she inadvertently amplified Anger-Anne’s powers within Anne’s mind. So much so that Anger-Anne somehow cast a spell to silence FP-Anne and escaped when Anne personified FP-Anne. It makes no sense, and I do not know why she wants to be blatantly evil like this, when she just wanted power before, but whatever. It’s an excuse for evil Anne to be talking about. Also, Anger-Anne triple TFs FP-Anne, removing her limbs, shrinking her down to the size of a finger, and petrifying her before wearing her as a necklace.

It raises questions about Anne’s power level. Same with how Anne just casually turns into both living crystal and a robot in an attempt to escape from her cage, before teleporting herself free and attacking Anger-Anne in the main hall. Dahlet immediately tries to use this advantage to her own gain and has her minions battle both Annes with mind control gas… that doesn’t work on them. So, cutting her losses, she starts up a hectic three-way battle.

D.O.L.L.Y. soldiers are attacking. Transformations are popping off like they always do, including some ka-guy transformations. Glock reveals that he’s fine despite the transformation, thanks to his mind protecting cowboy hat, Ti’el recovers from their brainwashing and fights by Glock’s side. And when these two Federal agents approach Dahlet, she sends out a pair of minions armed with lightsabers. The brainwashed man-slaves of D.O.L.L.Y. are unleashed to stop Anne, but really all they want is to be ka-girled by her. And Robin’s martial arts training finally pays off as he punches Anger-Anne in the face, giving Anne the opportunity to reabsorb her.

I’m skimming over things, but I am genuinely impressed at how much more complex these battle scenes have evolved over time. The story successfully juggles every action and plot thread without things getting too hectic or hard to follow. However, it all comes to a close as Dahlet embarks on a last ditch effort, wiping the minds of all members of D.O.L.L.Y. so they cannot disclose organizational secrets. Glock uses this confusion to pitch a cover story for a ‘safety drill’, and while most are weirded out, nobody thinks this is too suspicious. Well, except for Ivan, who sleuthed in during all the action and saw the latter half of everything.

Glock, as a Federal agent, handles the clean-up for Anne, while also helping out some of the transformed students at Tandy with their ID paperwork, as they will need social security cards soon enough. Reuniting with her friends, Anne apologizes for how she acted before, saying she’s glad that Robin is trying to better himself. And as the part comes to an end, we see Dahlet standing on a rooftop, staring down at Anne as she plots her revenge… only for Miranda to sneak up on her from behind, turning her into a doll. A fitting punishment.

D.O.L.L.Y. is a dense chapter, but one that I really appreciate for focusing on a threat of an Earthly origins, rather than something otherworldly or based inherently in magic. Though, that does raise certain questions about how this all works. We never learn anything about the precise origins or resources of D.O.L.L.Y., or how they do the things they do. While the introduction of Glock and Ti’el arguably raise more questions about how this world views magic than anything else.

Still, it is a sufficiently epic conclusion, is well foreshadowed, adds a unique conflict for Anne to overcome, and the genre play goes to broaden what The Wotch can be. It has problems like just about everything the series does, and is where the text blocks start getting really bad, but I like it, and it bodes well for the series’ future in season 3.

Aside from the three month delay during part 11, the series was consistent with releases. Not always meeting its update goals, sometimes only having one page a week, but the current site shows they put out 247 pages from January 2005 to October 2006, which is pretty damn good all things considered.

Sure, Onymous regularly commented on being busy with school and work, but she has found a balance and will get through this, right?

…Well, let’s just say that I’ll cover the release history in great detail next time, with the final part that will cover the end of The Wotch. For it is both the best of times and the worst of times.

This Post Has 4 Comments

Sajah 12/17/2024 Reply

Super unfortunate about the incomplete archives of the comics. I wonder if asking on The Wotch Discord would turn anything up – if not the creators, there might be a small handful of fans who downloaded copies when the originals were still live?

Had you noticed there’s a surprising amount of writing about the comic on the site TVTropes? tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Webcomic/TheWotch And there’s still sometimes new posts about it on old social media like Reddit, and new like Bluesky, created long after the comic essentially had ended, including a post by another comic giving acknowledgment: “EXIERN wouldn’t exist as it does if it weren’t for The Wotch.”
1. Natalie Neumann 12/17/2024 Reply
  
  The Discord does have an archive of bonus artwork that I scraped through. And I just included some of it in the season 3 showcase I finalized last night. However, I think only the creators would have access to a fully complete archive. That, or someone who saved every page back in the day.
  The TVTropes page, I believe, was active when the comic was still producing regular content, so I am not too surprised. TVTropes were big in the late 2000s.
  Doing a quick check, I actually found a Bluesky account for “The Wotch” which is really just Anne Onymous’s personal account. It’s quite political. https://bsky.app/profile/thewotch.bsky.social
  I have never heard of EXIERN, but The Wotch inspired hundreds, if not thousands, of creators. That’s what happens when you’re good and a trailblazer!
rain 12/19/2024 Reply

– glock being named glock but without a focus on guns is a massive missed opprotunity
– imma say i am NOT within the group of people who’d want to be slaves for eternity, even if being a cute maid was part of the deal
– the amount of lost media withn this webcomic is kinda baffling and also unfortunate, but i would be hypocritical given how my online history is
– i find the cloak still having identifiable boobs to be kinda funny, like, could a binder not be worn? or a more baggy cloak
– i have DEFINITELY seen fusion as a tsf method but i don’t think i’ve seen fusion used within a long lasting story, absorption yes, but fusion i’ve seen only within caption series or one-off deviantart drawings, but i definitely forgot it as a method
Tasnica 12/20/2024 Reply

The Wotch’s golden age. Thanks for writing!

TSF Showcase 2024-49: The Wotch (Season 2)

TSF Showcase 2024-49
The Wotch (Season 2) by Anne Onymous and Robin Ericson

Part 10: Revenge of Ishtarru

Oops! A Three Month Hiatus!

Part 11: Moon Over Tandy

Part 12: War Stories

Part 13: Accidental Wotch
or The Accidental Centaurs: Wotch This

Part 14: Date Night… of Doom!

Part 15: Consequences

Tangent: Cheer

Part 16: Enter The Wotch?

Interlude: The Minds of Monsters

Part 17: Adventures in Babysitting

Part 18: D.O.L.L.Y.

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This Post Has 4 Comments

TSF Showcase 2024-49The Wotch (Season 2) by Anne Onymous and Robin Ericson

Part 10: Revenge of Ishtarru

Oops! A Three Month Hiatus!

Part 11: Moon Over Tandy

Part 12: War Stories

Part 13: Accidental Wotchor The Accidental Centaurs: Wotch This

Part 14: Date Night… of Doom!

Part 15: Consequences

Tangent: Cheer

Part 16: Enter The Wotch?

Interlude: The Minds of Monsters

Part 17: Adventures in Babysitting

Part 18: D.O.L.L.Y.

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Discover more from Natalie.TF

TSF Showcase 2024-49
The Wotch (Season 2) by Anne Onymous and Robin Ericson

Part 13: Accidental Wotch
or The Accidental Centaurs: Wotch This