The Wotch/Headscratchers

• So 4 jocks got gender swapped and replaced with cheerleaders that have new personalities and memories. What The Hell Hero? How the hell isn't that murder! Made even worse by the fact they decided to leave them as is! Even if they switched them back then the cheerleaders would be murdered. The only way for it to be fixed is for them to be separated into two people. Both Unfortunate Implications and Values Dissonance.
  • This troper may be muddled, but she recalls the transformation of the teacher into a cute Asian schoolgirl to have been fairly similar - he was suddenly transformed and had no memories of his former life. Later in the story however, didn't that teacher/Asian girl get back memories of the past life and decide to stay a girl anyway? This would suggest that the memories of a transformed person's past life are there, just somehow repressed. There have been hints in Cheer that Alex King vaguely recalls her former life as a guy (she refers to the other cheerleaders as "gentlemen" and is referred to as "boy" in her dreams) and Jo outright has her old memories. It's entirely possible that the Alex, Lita, and Sam will remember their pasts as guys at some point.
  • If I'm not mistaken the Cheer girls only had there memories removed (minus Jo) but their personalities are the same, meaning of course Alex was always a Large Ham, and had a massive Ho Yay with Lita ect, they're just girls. That said it would have been better if they weren't massive Jerk Jocks in the frist place and of course only in there spin off webcomic do they even get any form of personalities, so yeah Wotch by itself only implies that being as boy means you're an asshole while being a girl means you're the real you.
    • ...if I'm reading that right, and I'm not sure that I am, most of that falls under the original post's problems. (Not to mention mine -- this one event and Anne's non-treatment of it has always, always bugged me.) That said, The Wotch has its share of "good" male characters, too.
      • ...Which are? And no, Robyn and Jason don't count.
    • Scott and Ivan come to mind, even if Ivan is a hindrence to the main character he's hardly evil.
      • Isn't he a girl now?
• So there was a middle eastern Wotch and a japanese wotch at one point. Do Wotches travel the world, or did they do it with the Worlock when he existed?
  • Did it say that the Wotch was a hereditary thing? This troper was under the impression that a random person in each new generation got the title.
• Is it me or does the author seem to take pretty long hiatuses? I already stopped reading the comic because of constant Schedule Slip, but when I decided to see how it's going, I found out that it's in another indefinite hiatus. I know that there are personal problems that could affect the schedule and I really don't want to sound like an ass, but it's getting ridiculous. Especially since the author admitted that she's stuck in a cycle where she draws back from the comic because of the increasing amount of people that lost patience with her. Something tells me even with the canon side-arc, this is not going to end well.
  • Apparently three of the hiatuses were caused by a messy divorce, the artist hurting her drawing arm when slipping on ice, and the artist going back to school.
• So what is going to happen to Ivan, Scott and his girlfriend now? I hope Ivan and Scott are turned back because if they aren't (especially Scott who was just an innocent bystander) this comic will just have reached a new realm of suck.
• Correct me if I'm wrong but... aside from Dahlet and Anneger, all the villains of this comic have been men. Not saying the villains suck, but once you notice this (and can argue that Anneger is evil by her very nature), it starts to raise some Unfortunate Implications. Already we have the idea that when you're transformed into a woman, you become a better person as suggested by many of the transformations listed above, but it would seem it's true for those who are born women as well. Granted, Dahlet seems like a power-hungry hypocrite, but the male villains far outnumber her and are equally irredeemable (Sykos is the only one I can think of to now be evil to his core and even get a Face turn).
  • There was also the Wicked Witch of the West in the Accidental Centaurs crossover.
  • The transformations from jocks to cheerleaders included a spell that enhanced repressed aspects of their personalities. The way it's explained rather strongly suggests that they'd still be acting the way they are now (except maybe less effeminate) if they hadn't been gender-swapped on top of that. So I'm not so sure about the "girl transformation makes you a better person" implication.
  • Still, it didn't come out after they did, which confirms the Unfortunate Implication.
• So why does the comic's Hatedom say that in The Wotch it's always a wonderful thing to be permanently genderbent? Sure Anne ka-girls Jason and Robin regularly but she always turns them back, and in all cases permanent genderbending is treated seriously as a majorly negative thing: DOLLY's attempts are seen as evil and Anne puts a stop to them. Miranda's transformation of Ivan, Scott, and Julie is treated as a Moral Event Horizon. The transformations of Prof. Sorgaz and the Cheer squad are only allowed to continue because the professor himself told Anne he likes it better this way and because it's demonstrated in-universe that the Cheer squad retains their old personalities, just with new bodies and slightly altered memories, and everyone who knew them, including their old families, thinks that they're happier. And even then Anne has a major emotional crisis over it and attempts to give up magic until Miranda shows up.
  • And why do people act like the normal Anne is completely at fault and an Anti-Hero for what her Literally Split Personalities did to the professor and the Cheer squad? She had no clue about what was going on and was dealing with a more visible issue (namely, Anneger going berserk) to think to ask around. And as stated before, she was very distraught when she found out and was about to give up magic.
    • I think it's more the comic's preoccupation for it that bugs people, and that it's apparently okay for Anne to do it without waiting for permission or a reason besides finding it fun. As for Cheer, the Unforunate Implication people take issue with doesn't come from Anne knowing about it (she didn't), but the fact that the comic made being genderbent against their will and never turned back an improvement. Likewise with the Professor deciding he likes being Ming better than his old life as soon as he finds out. It's not Anne's actions, it's the fact that the comic is written so these actions are ultimately for the best. The Consequences arc looked like it was going to show the negative effects of these things, but in the end, Anne found out everything was fine and there were no Consequences at all (well, okay, there was the bodyswap, but that took all of two seconds to fix). Miranda's treatment of Ivan and his crew felt more like the comic was addressing this concern by showing it can be a problem too. At least that's how it felt to me.