The Good Witch
"It's the job of The Good Witch to keep wishes in balance, to grant and to withold. And occasionally, to pass the torch when she's fed up with the job. Now the latest Chosen One has The Power..."
A story by Hipper Reed that started as a webcomic before being converted into a Web Serial Novel (found here).
"The Good Witch" isn't just a person, it's a title passed down with magical powers. The Good Witch is supposed to use these powers to grant wishes for the downtrodden and desperate until she tires of the job and passes the title and magic to her successor. The comic begins when the previous title holder decides her final good deed will be fulfulling the lifelong desire of a transgirl named Angel by passing the Good Witch's gender-based powers to her. Since the Good Witch is, by definition. female, passing the magic to Angel not only makes her a genetic girl, it also retcons most people's memories and so grants Angel's wish to have been born female, thus killing two birds with one stone. The previous title holder then vanishes, apparently dying.
Unfortunately, Angel has no particular interest in the "helping others" part of the job description. She starts her new career by getting some revenge for the wrongs committed against her in the old timeline, and then proceeds to use her powers for almost entirely selfish purposes. It doesn't take long for Angel to rack up an enormous karmic debt which is inevitably going to come back to bite her.
- Adventurer Archaeologist: Angel's father, apparently. Oddly for this trope, it seems to have no connection to her transformation. Amusingly, the children think he's got a boring job.
- And I Must Scream: Angel does this to Mike/Michelle more than once. Ironically, she did it when he was trying to warn her of a threat from another mage.
- More applicable to all of the thugs, bullies, and random innocent bystanders she turns into sentient inanimate objects.
- Art Evolution: Slow going, but the art is definitely improving.
- Bad Habits / Sinister Minister: The minister of a nearby church is actually an anthropophagic alien, and his "nun" is a brainwashed tool.
- Baleful Polymorph: Angel has turned multiple people (some who asked for it but mostly random innocent bystanders) into trees, toys, inanimate objects, small children and even an entire marching band just for fun and she likes to use her reality warping powers to randomly shuffle the genders, ages and family dynamics of the townsfolk around her just because it amuses her. She's even turned people into clothing just to restock her mother's store.
- Big Brother Bully: Mike to Angel in their original history.
- Blondes Are Evil and Innocent Blue Eyes: Angel has blonde hair and bright blue eyes, obviously to convey an innocent appearance, as opposed to her actual personality.
- Brainwashed: The "Happy Spell", Susie and Molly. It's implied that Roxanne the jock-turned-cheerleader can't talk about her change, which forces her to let her parents think she was transgendered and got an Easy Sex Change on her own.
- Bunny Ears Lawyer: The Lit teacher, who seems to genuinely think that Shakespeare is God.
- Butt Monkey: Mike/Michelle, Angel's older brother, was abusive to her in their original past so Angel takes every opportunity to torment him/her with her powers.
- Casanova Wannabe: Chase, at least to date.
- Cowboys and Indians: Two boys in a filler strip.
- Darker and Edgier: This comic is a twisted take on The Wotch. Both main characters are given godlike powers to arbitrarily rewrite the fabric of reality for their own amusement on a seeming whim of the universe, but here Angel abuses the hell out of them to seek revenge on all those who abused and slighted her back in the previous reality, and beyond.
- Different for Girls: Mike/Michelle, Roxanne, Susie whenever her Fake Memories stop working with "Different for Little Girls" layered on top. Roxanne is an odd case combining Different for Girls with The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body because even though her mind is unchanged her transformed body seems to have come with a full set of built-in female living skills which cause her cognitive dissonance every time her body automatically does something feminine.
- Double Standard: There have been 5 and a half gender flips in the comic so far (Angel, Molly, Michelle, Suzie, Roxanne... Chase) and all have been Male-to-Female. And who knows what else Angel has been up to behind the camera.
- Which considering Angel makes sense as she thinks Girls Are Just Better
- Empty Piles of Clothing: All that is left after a life-absorbing evil minister sucks up his victims.
- Expy: Susie is pretty much exactly the same character model as Daisy from the author's previous series Brainfood.
- Fake Memories: (Almost) everyone in regards to Angel's past, which is why Mike/Michelle doesn't understand why Angel is so cruel to him/her. Molly's (formerly Tommy's) false memories appear to have gaps where the spell just papered over the old ones instead of creating consistent new ones.
- First Law of Gender Bending: Played with: Angel briefly considers making Mike's transformation into Michelle permanent but decides tormenting him is a lot more fun. Meanwhile, Mike's returns to his real self are just temporary reprieves intended to set him up for his next girly transformation.
- Fluffy the Terrible: A girl named Angel, who is specifically known as the Good Witch? Couldn't possibly be dangerous.
- Fountain of Youth: Mike/Michelle and Susie, in addition to their gender benders.
- Freudian Excuse: The abuse suffered by Angel in her original past fuels her revenge on Mike/Michelle and appears to be her justifcation for her selfishness.
- Friendless Background; Andrew had exactly one friend, but Angel has none --until she literally makes one--likely because she's such an obvious sociopath.
- From a Certain Point of View: When Angel reveals the girlified Mike to their mother she tells Mom "Oh, he enjoys it" (but only thanks to her "happy spell") and it's "Kind of a stress relief thing" (for her.)
- Gender Bender: Several characters, including Angel. There's also a relatively rare example of a mental Gender Bender when someone turns Chase into a Wholesome Crossdresser without actually altering him physically.
- Gender Bender Friendship: Invoked, perhaps? Angel discovers her best friend Tommy barely knows her now that she's a genetic girl so Angel "fixes" it by turning Tommy into her female best friend Molly rather than reintroducing herself.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: The entire comic can be taken as the standard "magical girl inheritance" trope gone horribly wrong.
- Or rather played so straight that it might appear that way, all while still being a Transformation Comic for the same purposes The Wotch is.
- Horrible Judge of Character: The previous good witch. She thought she was picking a new witch who would use her powers to prevent the kind of abuse she had suffered up to that point. Instead, she prompted a magically empowered Roaring Rampage of Revenge by a mentally unhinged psychopath.
- I'm a Humanitarian: The minister of a nearby church.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Angel pretty much skydives off it, without a single thought to consequence.
- Loophole Abuse: Chase is bound by a promise to his "master" not to reveal certain information, but he realizes he wasn't instructed not to lie in such a way that his friends could glean relevant facts.
- Man I Feel Like A
WomanLittle Girl: A g-rated version after Mike realizes his transformation allows him to play with dolls. - The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Roxanne's transformation from a male basketball player into a female cheerleader apparently came with a full set of cheer routines and feminine grooming habits.
- Never Found the Body: The previous Good Witch. She jumps out a window and there's a sickening impact sound, but all that's left behind is an empty dress.
- The Not-Secret: Mike's interest in dolls.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: While it doesn't involve time travel, one of Angel's teachers is not affected by the Fake Memories caused by Angel's transformation.
- Also Angel herself, but not Mike, giving her her Freudian Excuse and making his plight all the more poignant since he simply can't remember any of the slights that triggered his little sister's Roaring Rampage of Revenge against him.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: against Mike/Michelle in specific and against the whole damn world in general. You'll begin to wonder if she's going too far...
- Second Law of Gender Bending: Played with and played straight
- Shop Keeper: Angel's mother runs a dress shop, which is having supply problems until Angel decides to turn it into a little dress shop of horrors.
- Shout-Out: Characters from other Gender Bender comics appear in some backgrounds.
- Not to mention Elfangor...
- Sickening Crunch: The previous good witch jumps out a window, and a crunch is heard. When we're shown where she landed, all that's left is her clothes.
- The Sociopath: Angel. Just read the quote at the top of the Sociopath's page, then take into account how Angel's been keeping her mother's dress shop in business...
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: Chase, as part of his Loophole Abuse, Mike/Michelle whenever he says or does something that indicates he's not really a little girl.
- Third Law of Gender Bending: magically enforced--or not--at Angel's whim, depending upon which option would provide her with the most amusement.
- Transformation Comic
- Transsexualism: Angel, before her transformation.
- Villain Protagonist: Angel. There's nothing heroic about her.
- Villain Song: "Things Will be Different" foreshadows the selfish and arrogant bitch Angel will soon become.