#shannon manor

[mapas-fantasticos]

Map of the webcomic Dragon Sanctuary by Shannon Manor.

[shannonmanorart]

Shannon Manor Art on Etsy

I'm realizing I never posted about my new store on my Tumblr! I'm real great at promoting lol

I've got books, prints, stickers and charms up for sale! Currently, both of my webcomic trades are sold out but Act 1 is being reprinted and hopefully I can reprint Act 2 soon as well!

[oc-cinematic-universe]

Shannon, wizard student who uh. hm. well. she sure is one big part a demon's plan to kill people huh

VS

Bocephus, band leader who acts very punk but is actually a sweetheart. Hitman as a side gig

[tea-books-and-middleearth]

Top Ten Tuesday - Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the First Half of 2023

Top Ten Tuesday – Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the First Half of 2023

Hi friends, this week’s Top Ten Tuesday is Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the First Half of 2023. I’m always really bad at being aware of what is coming out, even by authors I love and try to keep up with, so making this list has definitely helped me find some upcoming releases that I hadn’t heard of that sound amazing. Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by Jana over at That Artsy Reader…

[fallen-feather1992]

Hey guys! Just reblogging this in hopes that more people will see it! Check out my first published short story!

Set in a modern college setting, Shannon Holmes and John Watson meet for the first time as college freshmen, when they become roommates. They must navigate each others personalities and learn to live together, while also attempting to save one of the classmate's lives.

New Story!

Hi guys! I know this is a Layton Blog, but I wanted to share some exciting news!

I published my first story! It's just a short story, but this is still a huge thing for me! It is a modern retelling of the Sherlock Holmes stories, set in a college setting.

If you want to check it out, please follow the link below. Thank you, guys!

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

Queer Books November 2023

🌈 Good afternoon, my bookish bats! Struggling to keep up with all the amazing queer books coming out this month? Here are a FEW of the stunning, diverse queer books you can add to your TBR before the year is over. Remember to #readqueerallyear! Happy reading!

❤️ The Pirate and the Porcelain Girl by Emily Riesbeck 🧡 Heading North by Holly M. Wendt 💛 The Wisdom of Bug by Alyson Root 💚 Trick Shot by Kayla Grosse 💙 A Holly Jolly Christmas by Emily Wright 💜 Outdrawn by Deanna Grey ❤️ Yours Celestially by Al Hess 🧡 The Christmas Memory by Barbara Winkes 💛 Violet Moon by Mel E. Lemon 💙 The Santa Pageant by Lillian Barry 💜 Only for the Holidays by Shannon O’Connor 🌈 Homestead for the Holidays by Wren Taylor

❤️ You Can Count on Me by Fae Quin 🧡 No One Left But You by Tash McAdam 💛 The Worst Thing of All is the Light by José Luis Serrano, Lawrence Schimel 💚 Today Tonight Forever by Madeline Kay Sneed 💙 Wren Martin Ruins It All by Amanda DeWitt 💜 Emmett by L. C. Rosen ❤️ Finding My Elf by David Valdes 🧡 Tonight, I Burn by Katharine J. Adams 💛 Gorgeous Gruesome Faces by Linda Cheng 💙 Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree 💜 A Power Unbound by Freya Marske 🌈 We Are the Crisis by Cadwell Turnbull

❤️ The Manor House Governess by C.A. Castle 🧡 You Owe Me One, Universe by Chad Lucas 💛 Last Night at the Hollywood Canteen by Sarah James 💚 Skip!: A Graphic Novel by Rebecca Burgess 💙 Something About Her by Clementine Taylor 💜 Touching the Art by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore ❤️ A Nearby Country Called Love by Salar Abdoh 🧡 Normporn: Queer Viewers and the TV That Soothes Us by Karen Tongson 💛 Sir Callie and the Dragon’s Roost by Esme Symes-Smith 💙 The Order of the Banshee by Robyn Singer 💜 Once Upon My Dads’ Divorce by Seamus Kirst, Noémie Gionet Landry 🌈 Forsooth by Jimmy Matejek-Morris

❤️ A Common Bond by T.M. Kuta 🧡 Risk the Fall by Riley Hart 💛 Just a Little Snack by Yah-Yah Scholfield 💚 Home for the Holidays by Erin Zak 💙 NeurodiVeRse by MJ James 💜 Dark Heir (Dark Rise #2) by C.S. Pacat ❤️ sub/Dom by Rab Green 🧡 Bitten by the Bond by Elaine White 💛 Heir to Frost and Storm by Ben Alderson 💙 The Sea of Stars by Gwenhyver 💜 Bad Beat by L.M. Bennett 🌈 Idol Moves by K.T. Salvo

❤️ Plot Twist by Erin La Rosa 🧡 In the Pines by Mariah Stillbrook 💛 The Crimson Fortress (The Ivory Key #2) by Akshaya Raman 💚 Only She Came Back by Margot Harrison 💙 Megumi & Tsugumi, Vol. 4 by Mitsuru Si 💜 Pritty by Keith F. Miller Jr. ❤️ Just Lizzie by Karen Wilfrid 🧡 An Atlas to Forever by Krystina Rivers 💛 Come Find Me in the Midnight Sun by Bailey Bridgewater 💙 Bait and Witch by Clifford Mae Henderson 💜 Shadow Baron by Davinia Evans 🌈 Day by Michael Cunningham

❤️ Livingston Girls by Briana Morgan 🧡 Delay of the Game by Ari Baran 💛 The Nanny with the Nice List by K. Sterling 💚 A Talent Ignited by Suzanne Lenoir 💙 A Kiss of the Siren’s Song by E.A.M. Trofimenkoff 💜 Rivals for Love by Ali Vali ❤️ Whiskey & Wine by Kelly Fireside, Tana Fireside 🧡 Buried Secrets by Sheri Lewis Wohl 💛 Ride with Me by Jenna Jarvis 💙 Living for You by Jenny Frame 💜 Death on the Water by CJ Birch 🌈 Merciless Waters by Rae Knowles

❤️ Vicarious by Chloe Spencer 🧡 Sapling’s Depths by Spencer Rose 💛 That French Summer by Sienna Waters 💚 System Overload by Saxon James 💙 King of Death by Lily Mayne 💜 Warts and All by Ashley Bennett ❤️ Principle Decisions by Thea Belmont 🧡 The Best Mistake by Emily O’Beirne 💛 Sugar and Ice by Eule Grey 💙 Until The Blood Runs Dry by MC Johnson 💜 Splinter : A Diverse Sleepy Hollow Retelling by Jasper Hyde 🌈 The Mischievous Letters of the Marquise de Q by Felicia Davin

❤️ The Queer Girl is Going to be Okay by Dale Walls 🧡 Til Death Do Us Bard by Rose Black 💛 Leverage by E.J. Noyes 💚 Alice Sadie Celine by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright 💙 Godly Heathens by H.E. Edgmon 💜 Gwen & Art Are Not in Love by Lex Croucher ❤️ To Kill a Shadow by Katherine Quinn 🧡 Warrior of the Wind by Suyi Davies Okungbowa 💛 For Never & Always by Helena Greer 💙 A Demon’s Guide to Wooing a Witch by Sally Hawley 💜 Heaven Official’s Blessing: Tian Guan Ci Fu Vol. 8 by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù 🌈 A Carol for Karol by Ann Roberts

[izunias-meme-hole]

Looking back at Umineko, I find this situation in Ep2 ultimately so funny yet so goddamn agonizing. Like on one hand, yes this is a case of Battler being stubborn in the earlier games and something that seemed utterly preposterous at the time. Like I familiarized myself with Kanon to some extent, there's no way he would've killed Jessica, let alone be the assistant to some murderous figure.

Yet after the whole Sayo Yasuda reveal in Ep7, it's revealed that yes, he technically WAS the culprit in Jessica's death, same with Shannon, because both were actually "BEATRICE" who had the servants of the manor at her beck and call. Battler was surprisingly so fckin' close to learning who she was in this small instance, yet rejected the possibility because it came from the witch's mouth, and because he didn't want to suspect anyone he knew.

Like, MY GUY SHE GAVE YOU THE ANSWER! I mean anyone would find the idea completely asinine, BUT MY BROTHER IN CHRIST SHE ACTUALLY TOLD THE TRUTH-

[mercurygray]

hi merc! i’d like to request ‘rosie cheeks’ for Fred from the prompt list!! :) thank you!

Shannon, thank you for this perfectly excellent excuse to do some very necessary backfilling here.

Friday night meant the dress uniforms were out.

"I guess this is pretty small time for you, after one of the big London canteens," Helen said as the four of them entered the Officers Club, the band in full swing and the room already filled with men excited to let loose a little.

"Dancing is dancing and men are men," Fred said with a shrug, pitching her voice a little higher to be heard over the music. "It's just a question of volume."

"Oh, you'll get volume, all right," Tatty assured her. "We've got a footbath at home; you're going to want to soak your feet later."

A familiar face peeled away from his pack to meet them at the door. "Ladies, you all look lovely, but I'm gonna ask Fred here if I can have the honor of her first dance."

The chivalry hit different when it came with that accent, and Fred tried very hard not to smile too wide. "Well, thank you, Lieutenant Biddick. You may."

Most men would have taken her hand first, after an invitation to dance, but the pilot pointed an accusatory finger. "Now, what did I tell you about calling me Curt?"

"Wouldn't want to step in on whatever girl back home has that honor," she offered diplomatically, following him to the floor and joining hands.

"No girl back home. But if there was, wouldn't mind if she looked like you."

Fred tried again not to smile. Sure, and they all say that. "And where's home, Curt?"

"New York," Curt said, emphasizing each syllable like it meant something special. "Brooklyn, specifically. Where you from, Miss Fred?"

"Madison, Wisconsin."

"Wisconsin! Gonna have to talk to Major Egan about Wisconsin, then. He's from Manitowoc." The word tripped out of his mouth in a jumble, Mandiawalk, which was pretty close to how folks at home said it, too.

The song was a slow one, so they talked about baseball and that new league that Wrigley had started - Curt didn't know how to feel about a bunch of girls running bases but he thought the uniforms were cute - and then the song was over and she was being introduced to Charlie Cruikshank - "But his friends call him Crank!" and it was another round of where you from, where you going to add to the ever-growing list of names and faces she needed to commit to memory as the music picked up and the laughter got louder.

It was a few hours later when the band decided to take a break and stand down so the musicians could get something to drink themselves. Fred had sat out the last few just so her brain could catch up and she could make a dent in her drink, but Tatty and Helen were still working the crowd like champions. Mary was back at the bar grabbing another round - soda waters this time. Drunk or sober there was still a long ride back to the manor house, and the donut machine tomorrow morning wouldn't care how much you'd had to drink the night before.

Crank circled back, one of the band members in tow. "Brady, you met our new Red Cross girl yet? This is Fred. Fred, this is John Brady, another one of our pilots. He flies with Hoerr, and Hambone."

Fred nodded and tried to insert that information into the jumble of mental flash cards that had been accumulating in her brain all evening. Brady was slim and tall and brown-haired, and there was a pipestem sticking up from his shirt pocket. She hadn't been close enough attention to the band to know what instrument he played. "Saw you playing along in back there - are you a musician, too?"

Fred felt her cheeks go rosy, and instinctively closed her fist, like somehow that would make the motions she'd been making to match the notes go away. They never tell you in training that the job's easy until someone sees you.

"She brought a guitar," Mary offered, clearly trying to be helpful as she returned from the bar.

"I play a little," Fred clarified, intervening before anyone jokingly brought up the possibility of her doing concerts. The guitar had been - a whim, really, a cheap way to break the ice in case it was really needed. She'd dragged it halfway around the world thinking it'd be cute, maybe, but now that she was here it just seemed hokey - cowboy songs and singalongs. She hadn't needed it, when she'd been on the canteen - no one was staying for more than a day and it wasn't a problem because she wasn't sharing a room with anyone who'd talk about it. But Thorpe Abbotts, it seemed, was going to be different. She would be here a while, would know these men - and Mary Boyle noticed things and liked to talk.

"You'll have to join the band some time, then, Fred," Brady said with a smile.

She met his eye and had a sudden sinking feeling he actually meant that, and felt her cheeks burn a little more.

[homesickfornowhere]

Books that I’ve read recently and would recommend. 🖤 Part 2

A Dowry of Blood by S. T. Gibson. A reimagining of Dracula’s brides, written in letters to Dracula from his first wife, Constanta. I love anything vampire-related and can’t even describe how much I loved this book.

A God in the Shed by J. -F. Dubeau. A fantastic horror novel set in a messed up little town. A murder investigation, a serial killer, a god trapped in a shed (literally), the occult, ancient evils, blood and gore, and lots of twists and turns.

The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang. A historical/grimdark fantasy novel heavily inspired by the Second Sino-Japanese war. Very violent and graphic, but an amazing read.

My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix. A fun 80s demon possession story set during the satanic panic. A teen girl drops acid, gets lost in the woods, and accidentally gets possessed by a demon — and it’s up to her friend to save her. Gorey and campy.

Maggie’s Grave by David Sodergren. A pregnant woman, falsely accused of being a witch and brutally murdered, takes revenge on a Scottish town centuries later. Fun, fast-paced folk horror meets splatterpunk with an endless amount of gore.

The Island by Adrian McKinty. A tense, fast-paced thriller set in in an island off of the coast of Australia. This book genuinely stressed me out and made me want to bite my nails, but I couldn’t put it down. A bit of Wolf Creek vibes.

Delicious Monsters by Liselle Sambury. A ghost story and psychological horror with dual timelines. Family drama, a haunted house, toxic parents, etc.

Never Lie by Freida McFadden. A psychological thriller with a great twist. When their realtor doesn’t show up, newlyweds take shelter from a blizzard in a manor that belongs to a missing psychiatrist.

Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim. This book and the world within it makes my heart flutter. A dreamy, whimsical fairy tale blended with East Asian folklore.

The Overnight Guest by Heather Gudenkauf. An atmospheric mystery/thriller. A writer travels to an isolated farmhouse where two unsolved murders and the disappearance of a girl took place decades earlier, and plans to finish her book while snowed in. Things go down hill after she finds a young child outside and decides to bring him in from the cold.

Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati. A retelling of Greek mythology, and such a beautiful and heartbreaking book.

A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon. A a high fantasy novel and standalone prequel to The Priory of the Orange Tree. Amazing world building, amazing writing, amazing characters, and dragons.

Ring by Koji Suzuki. I’ve always loved the films, both Ringu and The Ring, but I’ve never read the book until now and I highly recommend it if you haven’t either.

[es-eternalstyle]

A dignified Derby shoe, made for a distinguished Gentleman. Harry Lawtey presents the Shannon at its most sophisticated - as the man of the manor, in an 18th-century English estate.

Church���s

[shannonmanorart]

I've added my commissions to my ko-fi!

Please follow the link to see the details! The page defaults to my sketch prices so be sure to check the add-ons for ink+flats and fully rendered options!

There are 10 slots currently open!

[These are for personal use commissions, my freelance prices vary per project and would be discussed]

[lover-of-mine]

You know what now that you bring up the Ana breakup the wildest thing of it all is he doesn’t use Shannon as an excuse. He doesn’t say “I’m not over my son’s mother.” Or “I’m not ready” they literally just talk about how he hoped if he stuck it out eventually he’d love her. I saw someone point out that it very strongly parallels a scene from the TV show The Haunting of Bly Manor.

In it a woman named Dani is breaking up with her fiancé because she is a lesbian and she tried to love him but couldn’t. She says “ I thought I could just stick it out and eventually I would feel how I was supposed to” and she literally says the same exact phrase Eddie does in the breakup with Ana “I should’ve said something sooner”

Oh, I never watched the haunting of Bly manor but I do remember seeing this set by @bilosan and being very intrigued by the comparison. Because the breakup with Ana is not about Eddie chasing Shannon, it is about Eddie admitting to himself that he doesn't feel the way he was supposed to but he kept waiting for it to happen. That man was SO CLOSE to a sexuality crisis during s5. There's no other explanation for the way the break up with Ana was framed. Even more when it started with Carla telling him to follow his own heart. Like? What was the reason? Someone free him already.

[daisychainsandbowties]

been thinking about lilith and nightmares

thinking of lilith waking in the dead of night, manor yawning wide and cold and wild around her. body in a too-large bed, something she is meant to grow into, like the shoes her mother always buys a size too big so that running in them is painful. it is such a strange and miserly thing to do, but lilith has the sensation that her mother is trying to put as little into her as possible.

fewer sets of shoes to throw away, fewer reminders, perhaps, that she keeps getting bigger. calluses forming in whorls of knotted flesh like the rings in trees, spelling out time and mostly, mostly the lack of it. she wishes to think that, but there is the possibility that her mother is also just strange and miserly.

so she deals with the blisters and at night she wakes up with a cry clutched in her throat. her mother is a pearl-clutcher but her daughter is not a pearl, so lilith floats alone in the flame of her fear. she learns to sit up in bed and take out her pocket torch from the drawer and shine it into all the corners, sometimes repeating something nonsensical and familiar like the creed, from mass. first in latin, then italian, slipping into spanish and rolling stubbornly into english there in the dark, knowing she cannot slip out of bed. she cannot pad barefoot down the hallways and go into her mother’s room and put a hand to her forehead or her shoulder - skin she knows will be cool to the touch. the nights are cold, sometimes, and this house not made for capturing heat.

lilith has only herself, her stalwart heart, and perhaps the word of god, syrupy in her mouth. thinking of how she learns to move around her fear, to sit looking out at the moon through the drapery of her canopy bed. the books stacked nimbly on her bedside table. none of them fairytales.

thinking of lilith after she comes back from the dead. waking up from nightmares of hands inside her body. feeling her flesh tear around an intrusion. how she couldn’t breathe while the blood rode out of her mouth. the fear coming back and back and back, heedless of time. waking up and touching the slippery scales on her stomach where the wound has pressed itself into her. wondering if it is knotted up with otherness the whole way through, entry wound and exit wound. her body, a wound.

she sleeps in derelict warehouses with the wind whistling through gaps in the roof and rattling the great metal doors that have to be hauled open by chain and mechanism. her body running hot there in the dark until she feels as if it might be unspooling, like it does when she forces it through the world like a hand into a mouth.

when beatrice used to wake screaming in the night at cat’s cradle lilith would linger in her doorway and watch shannon flush past, flooding down the stone-loud corridor. a warm tide wearing mary’s hoodie & a pair of ragged pyjama bottoms with planets on them and a hole behind the left knee. glancing over her shoulder at lilith, face blank with emotion. watching shannon ease open the door to beatrice’s room and the sudden increased volume of her shouts.

when lilith wakes in the warehouse she does it with a shudder. she does it silently. eyes opening sudden as death, and she doesn’t know it and she will not know it until she wakes in the dark with a girl’s warm breath on her face and hears the soft exclamation in the palm of the sheets, but her eyes reflect like a cat’s from the moonlight that washes down through high, dirty windows, spiderwebs disrupting the floor with their massive, light-expressed patterns. she wakes and her scream scrunches her into a ball, driving a runnel of interrupted dust in the bare patch of floor where she has curled up, feeling frayed from flickering all over the city, chasing the memory of a girl.

lilith and nightmares and the fact that she died, violently. as she was supposed to but not as she intended. in service to the halo but not with it spread inside her like a song. she died with blood in her mouth, mary’s shout making her name so searing; a brand not buring enough to hold her onto life. she died in a warehouse, like this, and she came back. and all of her nightmares now are about this body.

this body perforated, forcing its way out of her as if blood could stand in for words or prayers or a mother.

this body split like one of beatrice’s particles. one of her atoms. nuclear fission, and lilith wondering why anyone would bother splitting something so small. don’t they talk about pointlessness in terms of splitting hairs? her mother, grimacing at her split ends, cutting them away using her scissors with the ivory handle.

she felt more or less worth killing when she died, but coming back is for jesus and lazarus. it is for people who can comprehend it.

she wakes with the taste of iron in her mouth, until there is a little nub of scaly tissue on her tongue where her incisor always bites down, healed new into something strange so that she feels she is holding a very tiny penny inside her mouth at all times.

lilith and nightmares and the fact that she wakes from them alone. she always wakes up alone and there is never another hand to reach for, and when her body rises like a welt and turns incomprehensible is it any wonder that she takes the hand she finds extended?

not her mother’s. not god’s. not her sisters’, because her pain made no sound. not beatrice’s hand (the one she wants and wants and wants) because bea went where she was most necessary, and lilith has never been the most necessary thing in anyone’s life.

[memewhore]

Some of my pics from our paranormal Investigation at Hill View Manor in New Castle, PA a couple of weeks ago. A couple of weird things happened: I was standing apart from the group during our pre-investigation tour and I felt someone run their finger down my entire arm, with firm pressure - I really thought someone from our team had walked up behind me but I turned to see what they wanted and nobody was there. No idea what to make of that. Later, some of us were in the hall outside the cafeteria and someone whistled loudly right behind us - we turned around to look at Shannon thinking it was him and his eyes were huge, and he said, "That was NOT ME!" We have fun but we don't prank each other about that stuff. I personally didn't get any audio/video evidence of any kind. I don't know yet if anyone else did.

[sapphicagenda]

Chapter 13: Mental Bake Downs

Whisks Worth Taking (a Bake Off AU)

Fandom: Warrior Nun

Main ship: Ava/Beatrice

Sub-ships: Camila/Lilith, Mary/Shannon

Rating: E (for eventual smut)

Chapter Summary:

Beatrice has a much-needed heart-to-heart with Shannon. Meanwhile, Ava tries to keep her mind off things by helping Lilith figure out what went wrong in the tent.

Teaser:

As soon as Hans had everything he needed from the judges, Mary marched Beatrice into the Manor and told her to pack an overnight bag. Arguing with Mary after she’d made up her mind about something like this had never done any good, so she quietly accepted her fate.

At least Mary didn’t follow her into the bedroom. When she stepped out with a small bag slung over her shoulder she caught the tail end of Mary’s phone call with Shannon.

“We’ll be home by five, baby. Mmhmm. I’ll tell her. See you soon, love.” Mary hung up the phone. “All right, vamoose. Shannon’s making you rösti for dinner.”

Beatrice didn’t have to face Ava before Mary lead her out to the car park. She was still filming the post-bake interviews.

“I told Michael you’re with me, so no one will send out a search party,” Mary said as she tossed both their bags into the boot of her beat-up Volkswagen.

Keep Reading on AO3

Or start from Chapter 1!

[aimlessgeology]

The Magic of Sisterhood: Panel Presentation

Gliding on the coattails of Buffy, Charmed (1998-2006) follows the lives of three sister witches, navigating their newfound powers and defeating evil from the other side, all while balancing their delicate bonds with one another.

Tensions between the Halliwell sisters are high at the outset of the series, when Prue (Shannon Doughtery) and Piper’s (Holly Marie Combs) youngest sister Phoebe (Alyssa Milano) returns to their inherited home in San Francisco after a long time away. The sisters fill the archetypes of their ages. Prue, the eldest, is responsible and uptight. Piper the middle child is a fantastic mediator in clashes involving little Phoebe’s free-spirited, naive and reckless tendencies. 

The main point of the series is the ever-deepening bond between the sisters (“The power of three will set us free!” S1:E1.). The sisters act as mirrors to one another and ultimately they all provide council to one another in differing but all-important ways. 

Katherine Whitehurst wrote the piece “Growing Up in Magical Time” dissecting the female development in the magical fantasy world of the ABC series Once Upon a Time (2011-2016), specifically discussing “what ‘ideal’ female development looks like, framing the ideal female as self-sacrificial and benevolent” (11) and the show’s complex structure that includes both episodic and non chronological storytelling which assists in the complex development of female characters. 

As a product of the 1990s, Charmed is not, so far as I’ve seen it, super complex or boundary-breaking when it comes to female character development or any other issue for that matter; it’s a fairly white-bread fantasy romance comedy show, starring three attractive white women, who date a rotating cast of square-faced men, as they fight evil beings and then go home after the battle to their impossibly whimsical three-story manor in San Francisco.

That being said, there is some interesting character development and relationship dynamism at play in the series. Whitehurst’s point about the effects of ‘magical time’ in Once Upon a Time, where happenings in the magic realm lead to unpredictable, nonlinear change for the characters, applies to Charmed as well. 

The Halliwell Sisters’ change into witches marks a transition into magical time where their characters and relationships develop rapidly. They are given emotional depth because they’re grieving the recent death of their mother. The introduction of magic intensifies their lives.

The Halliwell Sisters have it all AND THEN SOME… They are magical witches, specifically “the most powerful good witches of all time,” which seems like a big thing to just… Become. 

Appropriately, all the sisters struggle with some form of imposter syndrome, though they don’t suffer equally. By the 2nd episode, Prue, the eldest, has implored Phoebe, the youngest, to not use her powers under any circumstances (even though none of them can control it).

In the 2nd episode, Prue has a fun night with square-faced man and afterwards her sisters slut-shame her (in an "empowering" way?), suggesting judgement about ideal female sexuality and what's socially acceptable for Prue, a well-to-do white lady in the 90s.

Not only does this scene reveal some of the values of the time concerning women and casual dating, but it also shows the tension that surrounds the sisters’ newfound powers. Here, their powers divide them. They can’t even agree on how to talk about it. They’re judgemental towards one another about their magic and their sex lives; typical catty ladies, amIRight?

By the end of the episode, however, Piper and Phoebe strike a different tone. Phoebe, generally the naive one, offers some sound and comforting advice to her older sister, who is struggling with the transition into being a witch. It’s kind of like the Halliwell sisters enter a sort of puberty all at the same time, which is different then the way they would have experienced such a profound change in their human lives, as they all occupy different ages, and therefore different roles.

To Whitehurst’s point that the flashback structure of Once Upon a Time shows “how the past and present resonate in unison when considered beyond a linear and ordered temporality” (9), despite Charmed being entirely episodic and mostly chronological thus far (not including the premonitions experienced by Phoebe), the text develops a language of nonlinear development by having the sisters operate as a system, whose different parts and actions influence each other in nuanced ways. The sisters experience growth together that they wouldn’t be able to separately. It is also explained that their powers continue to grow and change. For eight seasons!

CRITICAL THINKING QUESTIONS:

What does a piece’s character development writ large say about the message of a text? Are there good and bad kinds of development? Does a narrative benefit from development in one direction or another, or is a balance necessary?

What does the protagonists’ positionality as privileged women contribute to their character development? Does their privileged status have a connection to the assertion that they are “good” witches? 

Charmed doesn’t do very much in the way of challenging the status quo. What components of the show do you think would be different if it was interested in exploring an ideology different from the dominant white and western perspective it represents?

--Melissa (aimlessgeology)

@theuncannyprofessoro