Tim’s Top 5 Witches

Dear WITCHies,

Today we have a very special treat for you! I invited Timothy Brannan from The Other Side blog to talk to us about his top five favourite witches of all time. If you don’t know Tim, please check out his blog for tons of witchy goodness. His blog really is the place to go if you love anything witch and rpg related. Plus, it has a lot of other fun supernatural things to check out too. He has also worked on projects like the Buffy the Vampire Slayer rpg – stating up one of my favourite witches of all time – Tara <3. Now, let’s get to his top five!

Oh! And let us know your top 5 favourite witches in the comments! 

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Hello! My name is Tim Brannan and I write about witches.  I have been fascinated, some would say obsessed, with witches ever since I first say the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz movie.  Over the years I have written a number of witch related RPG books and talk about them almost daily over at my blog The Other Side.  

When I heard about the new RPG “WITCH: Fated Souls” I jumped on the chance to back the Kickstarter and to support Elizabeth Chaipraditkul and Angry Hamster Publishing.

Can’t wait to try out some of these witches with Liz’s new game!

Here are my Top 5 Witches in no particular order.

Hermione Granger (Harry Potter Books and Movies) – Harry may have been the ‘Chosen One’ but you know what he would have been without the “most brilliant witch of her generation”?  Easy. Dead.  Remember in the books Hermione was shy, not very attractive and an infuriating know-it-all.  By Book 3 Harry and Ron both begin to notice, but long before her magical makeover Hermione was proving she was worth more than a full Quidditch team of Chosen Ones.  She mastered spells long before any of her classmates, she brewed the Pollyjuice potions, even in Book 3 (the Prisoner of Azkaban) she is using a Time Turner to take extra classes in the same day.  Who else has done that?  Not to mention while dealing with the whole You-Know-Who thing she still manages to fight for House Elf rights.

Plus, and let us be honest here, she could have a wicked temper.  She was the one that tricked Dolores Umbridge into the Forbidden Forest to get captured by Centaurs and she keeps Rita Skeeter trapped in a jar for the last part of The Goblet of Fire.

Piper Halliwell (Charmed) – For eight seasons of Charmed Piper went from the quiet middle sister of the Halliwell witches to the ass-kicking, demon killing leader of the Charmed Ones, the most powerful witches in the world.   She helped kill the leader of the demon-world, The Source of All Evil, twice. Three times if you count the near attempts in the later seasons.   She married a Guardian Angel (a “White Lighter” in the show), gave birth to two sons that were half-witch and half-lighter and destined to be the future protectors of the innocents of the world.  But more importantly she did all of this while keeping her family and friends safe. Well…mostly safe.

Willow Rosenberg & Tara Maclay (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) – A total cheat on my part but I don’t care!  Willow was the shy Scooby. The one that didn’t want cause problems, but she helped her new friend Buffy Summers, another chosen one, because if nothing else Willow does what it right.  She got a little taste of magical power in Season 2 and the rest. Well Willow became the most powerful witch in the series.  She re-ensouled Angel, she went toe to toe with demons of all sorts, and when a god destroyed Tara’s mind then Willow did something that the Slayer herself had not done. She made a god scream.  Willow though struggled with her power and when a stray bullet killed Tara, Willow (and the Willow and Tara fans) went crazy and nearly destroyed the world. She was talked back down, but she never seemed the same after that.

Tara was the quiet strength of Willow & Tara’s relationship.  She went from shy girl to strong confident woman and never once did she stray from her core personality of being a good and caring person. She was the heart and soul of the relationship.  No surprise that when she was killed the show’s ratings tanked.

Samantha Stephens (Bewitched) – You know what real power is?  Not strangling the annoying people around you! At least that is what I think Samantha’s real power was.  Married to a muggl-sorry, mortal, Darren, Samantha still managed to use her powers, stay out of the spotlight (or at least the prying eyes of neighbor Mrs. Kravitz), solve the problems and still look fantastic all in 25 minutes.  A lot of Samantha’s problems came from trying to please her husband Darren or from her relatives and later daughter.  With a twitch of her nose and nary a “hocus pocus” heard she still managed it all.

Rachel Morgan (The Hollows Series by Kim Harrison) – Rachel Morgan is a witch living in Cincinnati in a world where everyone knows about magic, witches (like Rachel), vampires (like her roommate Ivy), elves (like her ….whatever Trent is to her) and even pixies (like their business partner Jenks).  Rachel has a problem keeping herself out of trouble. And… then problems about getting herself much into deeper trouble. Ivy is a bad mood away from going total bloodlust psycho thanks to years of mental (and physical) abuse from Cincinnati’s former Master Vampire. And Jenks…well Jenks is a pixie and that means a lot in this series.

Rachel is one of my all time favorite witches. For the last few years I have enjoyed all 13 books in the series. I have watched Rachel, Ivy, Jenks, Trent, and even the demon Algaliarept grow into interesting characters.  It was sad to see this series end, but I am glad she it ended with the gang at the top of their game.

The Rachel Morgan/Hollows books are very much like another urban supernatural series I enjoyed and just ended on it’s 13th book, the Women of the Underworld series by Kelley Armstrong. Both feature strong world building and great strong characters, male and female.   But Rachel as a character grabbed me more than Savannah, Eve, Elena or Hope ever did.  Armstrong’s Savannah Levine might be the more powerful witch, but Rachel can think better on her feet.

Honorable Mention: Cassie (Hex), Wicked Witch of the West (Oz, Wicked), Angelique (Dark Shadows), Robin (Witch Hunter Robin), Sabrina (Sabrina the Teen Aged Witch), Joanna Beauchamp (Witches of East End), and Kiki (Kiki’s Delivery Service).

Tim can be found on the internet at the Other Side.

http://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/