So, this one time at band camp... a teenage girl found a magic flute that revealed to her that she is The Wotch, an extraordinarily powerful magical girl who appears once in each generation. Her magic is discovered by two boys shortly after she transfers to Tandy Gardens high school, and the three wrestle with magical emergency after magical emergency, brought on by a shadowy Big Bad figure. Hilarity Ensues... and "no gender is safe".A Webcomic with a Mundane Fantastic theme, varyingly zany adventures with an overarching Myth Arc, and almost every possible variety of Shapeshifting oozing out of its suddenly feminine ears. The art goes from poor to unspectacular-but-fitting. The Wotch has a sense of fun and does some good romps if you can get into it and like, or don't mind, the levels of things turning into other things.Spawned a number of spinoffs, the most notable being The Wotch: Cheer, about a group of jocksturned intoCheerleaders. Cheer! now has its own page so please post all Cheer! related examples there.
This comic provides examples of:
A Boy and His X: "A Girl and Her Blob", the Ming + Myrrh Lower Deck Episode. The series itself could be considered "A Boy and His Wotch," but the trope doesn't fit due to Anne being a sentient human main character.
A-Cup Angst: Anibelle is constantly teased about the size of her, er, "wings and horns" by her much more developed sister Drax.
Sonja: Let;s see... I'll take a large popcorn... Some nachos... A pretzel... Bag of M&M's... And Reese's Pieces... And Junior Mints... Slice of pizza... A pickle... Maybe some cotton candy... Hm... What to drink...
Larry: Let me guess: Diet coke?
Sonja: Are you calling me fat?
And I Must Scream: A running "gag" of sorts is that anytime anyone is turned to stone, they are sentient during the statufication. Specifically follows the characters of Scott and Rosetta around, though it does get fixed, at least in Scott's case. Played for laughs less more than for horror.
Art Evolution: Since it returned, the creator of City Of Reality has taken over as artist, leading to much better art quality. Even before that, compare this to this.
Badass Normal: Robin, a completely average teenager with a bit of martial arts training can somehow hold his own with supernatural creatures on a fairly regular basis. Most of the time he waits until Anne or somebody else magical is distracting the creatures before charging in, and half the time Anne's slapped him with a spell that augments his natural fighting prowess considerably. He's aware he's still near the bottom of the totem pole, and a bit sore about it too.
Big Eater: Myrrh — literally so, as processed sugars seem to cause her body to grow to insanely huge sizes. In addition, her body seems to eat regardless of her intention — getting hit with a dodgeball caused it to embed inside her and start to digest.
Bilingual Bonus / Stealth Pun: Just as Jason said that the werewolf couldn't be Samantha Wolf (way too obvious), she shows up. For those who don't speak French, Speak of the Devil translates roughly into "When one speaks of the wolf (he sees his tail)".
Largely averted as most transformations are fairly quick and "poofy", but played straight by Xaos, who inflicts slow and horrifying transformations as punishments.
Recently, Miranda inflicted a gradual form of the usual gender-bending on the Masquerade-breakingSchool Newspaper News Hound and two innocent bystanders as punishment. It even rewrites reality so that only they remember what was "normal" for them. This is portrayed as freaky and wrong, and all laws of narrative causality say that it's going to blow up on her face big time.
Break the Haughty: The increasingly annoying Lucius and Maggie of the "The MOST Most Dangerous Game" arc finally get their due when they nearly kill Robin, angering Anne enough to force her into the Wotch equivilant of the Avatar state. What really sells it is that, A) due to a Schedule Slip, we've been waiting two years for this, and B) that even as everything crumbles around them they try to cling on to their smug attitude. They failto do so.
Bit character Myrrh started off as a random doodle on the spinoff comic artist's art gallery and was imported into the main comic proper.
... As was the centaur girl, Glock's MIB group, and doubly so for the Samantha Stone (once for the design and once for the name)
Not a full-fledged character immigration so much as a trait immigration, but the first time Anibelle's Mismatched Eyes are clearly visible is in a guest comic. The next time she appears in the canon, this is part of her character.
Also, Xaos' secretary.
Cargo Ship: In-universe example (if one-sided in affections): Cassie / Mall plant
Cute Mute: Myrrh. Innocent? Check. Doesn't speak? * Holds Up a Sign Saying Yes* . Otherworldly? You bet. Unaware of Social Conventions? Oh yeah. Cute? ... Maybe. But then again, this is her original design, so...
Miranda: We must be extra cautious. It is not as though this threat will announce its arrival. [cut to]Janitor: ...Setting up this gym myself. This is just cr— [finds Note] Whoa, what the? What is this? Note: To whom it may concern. Lord Sykos is announcing his arrival. Please take the time to prepare a proper welcoming party of at least thirteen maidens to greet him.
Earthquakes Cause Fissures: Spoofed when age-regressed Anne triggers an earthquake that causes a fissure that "Miss E"/Teen-Lilly falls into— only to find out its just a foot deep.
Even the Phoenix Is Ashamed: Miranda treads perilously close to the Moral Event Horizon when she genderbends Ivan and indirectly does the same to two of his friends for trying to tell the truth about The Wotch, plus altering reality so no one except them remembers they were ever their original sexes. She only stops short of it by expressing some conflict with the decision shortly after chewing Ivan out for complaining about this setup, but the moment she starts to justify it to herself, she's cut short when Arizona gives her a silent Death Glare.
Expressive Accessory: Evan's shirt has a big "E" on it (Most characters call him E). When he turns into a 4-year old girl, it changes to a lowercase "e", and most people call him Lilly (Lil' E). During Chapter 17: Adventures in Babysitting, when Lilly gets a magical age-up to her teens, her shirt has a cursive, lowecase "l".
Fountain of Youth: 21-year-old Evan seems to be addicted to spending his off hours as the four-year-old Lily, which does sound like an awesome stress reliever. It's pointed out that such escapism is not entirely healthy, and he's occasionally shown making an effort to improve his adult life.
D.O.L.L.Y. The acronym is never explained, though it has been almost explained three times. They only get as far as "Daughters Of" before being cut off.
There's a kid on a skateboard who runs into telephone poles a lot. See here and here. He gets a slightly more important role here.
The book "Sonjette" throws at Teen-Lilly to get her attention here is called "How To Become More AWARE Of the Mystical World Around You".
Furry Fandom: Oddly, an in-universe example: A furry fandom is intentionally cultivated and abused by lycanthropes for use in keeping up The Masquerade. For example, they host a tourist festival/furry convention at "Werewolf Mountain" and encourage people to dress up in fake ears, fursuits and other such getup... which allows the werewolves to walk around openly shifted without any problems. Some of them even run stores while fully wolfed-out.
Gender Restricted Ability: Wotches cannot be male. To the point that they're immune to genderbending. Presumably the Worlock can also only be male, but it hasn't been brought up so far.
The leader of D.O.L.L.Y. comes back to gloat on top of a nearby roof, just in time for the Genre Savvy Miranda to Shoot the Dog.
She also decided it was a good idea to betray two extremely powerful magic users, at least one of whom was more or less totally loyal at that point in time, for extremely flimsy reasons.
Genre Savvy: Jason catches on to his Gender BenderRunning Gag fast, and at one point volunteers for a female role in a caper without realizing that there are perfectly serviceable girls available because he assumes he'd end up that way anyway. Miranda also gets a few moments of these, not that Anne and crew will listen to her.
Heroes Want Redheads: If it were not for Jason's strange obsession with redheads, he and Robin would not have discovered Anne's secret in the first place and missed out on crazy adventures and much hilarious gender bending.
I Need You Stronger: Xaos explicitly states this as the reason he hasn't taken Anne down yet.
Implausible Fencing Powers: Blackbeak's pirate penguin prowess with a sword is too great to be captured by mortal art, it seems.
Impossibly Cool Clothes: Gailadrea, a Dryad who wears a bikini top and miniskirt made out of growing leaves. Mind you, her hair is also made out of leaves, pushing this into vaguely Stripperific territory...
Karmic Transformation: DOLLY is defeated when Anne turns many of them into boys, also the chauvinist Jerk Jocks who become the Cheer! Squad are examples. See also Karmic Death above.
Latex Perfection: Myrrh's latest trick is to shapeshift into a normal looking person, clothing and all. Only downside is the green hair. Oh, and if she is distracted at all, she explodes.
Uricarn: I enjoy being your bit of controlled chaos. Beats just wandering aimlessly finding cheap thrills like I was doing after exterminating the rest of my kind. ...Which was kinda stupid in retrospect. Probably should have let myself grow up a bit before making that decision...
Literal Genie: Lampshaded once, as a disease caused involuntary wish-fulfillment.
Taken a step further when the gang unwittingly triggers a civil war between the genies who believe this trope should be followed and the genies who believe following said trope is wrong.
Magical Girlfriend: Anne & Angie, although Anne and Robin never quite got the Relationship Upgrade. The latest strips certain made it look like Anne was starting to get jealous of Cassie, although since Anne is the poster child for Oblivious to Love, probably not.
Magic Pants: Played Straight for 90% of the Comic, including the "Clothing changes to match the new body" version. Often mixed in with costume play. Subverted twice, in this filler comic. and here.)
Mandy's Law of Anime Gender Bending: Most of the time, it has been subverted on a couple of occasions more recently though. The first Wotch was subject to this, too.
Tandy Gardens High School shortens down to TG, which are also the only letters on school T-Shirts worn by characters - most obviously the Spin-Off Cheer Squad.
No Man of Woman Born: Ishtaroo: "Your most powerfull display yet, and a direct hit, but it makes no difference. No mortal can..." *Gem of power Cracks* "Hurt... Us?" Angelique (A genie): " No mortal, true. But I'm no mortal!
Orcus on His Throne: Xaos does pretty much jack, although this is later explained: He's waiting on Anne to grow up. He's farming her. He's slightly busier when it comes to his own dimension, though he still prefers to delegate the more tedious jobs to his Dragon.
Orphaned Series: Averted. The first few postings under this entry are out of date.
The last official story comic was posted over a year ago, on August 21, 2009. Since then there have been two filler arcs, but no real updates, not even news updates. The forums have been abandoned by the staff, although apparently the artist and writer have mentioned on other forums that the artist is swamped with her college courseload, and there's also apparently an embarrassment factor for having left the comic hanging for so long. In other words, there may be a revival, but it's unlikely at this point.
In addition, the artist of City of Reality mentioned in his hiatus posting that Anne would be working with him on City. This pretty much places the final nail in the coffin for The Wotch, although he does mention that the "partnership may go two ways".
The forums haven't been abandoned, though. They just have a new name: The 910CMX Community. And the rebranding might not have as much to do with the Wotch being orphaned as El Goonish Shive joining the 910CMX lineup.
They've officially returned, though with a new artist.
Orwellian Retcon: A 2005 filler that originally featured Anne's husband at the time has been altered to feature the strip's webmaster instead.
Parental Abandonment: Through the first season, although no one's parents are ever seen.
People Puppets: Cassie in Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Perky Female Minion: Aimee — a subversion as Aimee used to be male and is choosing to act out this trope, she even drops out of character to ask Anne to not mess it up for her.
Schedule Slip: The comic used to update MWF, but later started bouncing between once a week and T/Sa updates. When it came back after its most lengthy hiatus (see below), it's been generally good about sticking to its official once-a-week schedule, though there have still been a few skips or delays.
Series Hiatus: Several times, due to the author going back to school, getting divorced, and a dislocated elbow. There was also a hiatus that lasted so long (nearly 2 years!) that many considered it an Orphaned Series until it was finally relaunched on August 8, 2011, with City of Reality's Ian Samson taking over artwork duties.
Shoot the Dog: Miranda's actions at the end of DOLLY, as well as — probably — her treatment of Ivan after he broke into her house. Although, she's getting pretty close to the Moral Event Horizon when she said that Ivan was lucky she didn't just kill him, and the fact that she doesn't care at all about the innocent bystanders who were affected by her spell.
It's worse than not caring, she deliberately included them as additional punishment for Ivan.
She did seem not so happy about it a few pages later, but then again it seems a bit like the threat of the curse was what made him desperate enough to try to tell someone... giving it qualities of a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.
Unsound Effect: Ka-GIRL! Also some others, like "floaty".
Wasteful Wishing: "I wish you were a redhead!" Funnily enough, the genie talks him out of it! Although, in this case, it's only because the genie can't grant wishes that affect herself.
, an extraordinarily powerful magical girl who appears once in each generation. Her magic is discovered by two boys shortly after she transfers to Tandy Gardens high school, and the three wrestle with magical emergency after magical emergency, brought on by a shadowy Big Bad figure. Hilarity Ensues... and "no gender is safe".A Webcomic with a Mundane Fantastic theme, varyingly zany adventures with an overarching Myth Arc, and almost every possible variety of Shapeshifting oozing out of its suddenly feminine ears. The art goes from poor to unspectacular-but-fitting. The Wotch has a sense of fun and does some good romps if you can get into it and like, or don't mind, the levels of things turning into other things.Spawned a number of spinoffs, the most notable being The Wotch: Cheer
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