Mastodawn

This reality is utter shit, so sometimes it's good for your mental health to take breaks from it. Enjoy some fantasy fiction.
Witch's Familiar & Whimsical Stories includes a sardonic talking cat and a cross-dressing witch:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0CVQTPYSS/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.tfQoz8HnKf2VombwqWN6ceNs9aoSJw0fCg6SP_N95VaUXN9mBlHPTh43SnuWTlJZ8GUmJmEgUtqkTU54yC0ofnkSLHBRIr3cSPU4yYu8mY_03qVChv-WFP3p2X5DIs528wt14gm8wp2njj9s8TQuljFTydNwLkI5v1lThRBvCc15NqXMD1hBUT-MEkyVjK-dHbGFc8c1EgXbYbxWM00ahQ.NAHE-CcYMjQsp3w8LXhwxz0aJlYUf40fxJbxXqYq7cc&qid=1725151995&sr=8-1

#fantasyfiction #WritingCommunity #Whimsical #witches #dragons #witchcraft #cats #witchsfamiliar #whimsicslfiction #feministfiction #feministfantasy

Johanny Ortega Nov 11

What the Wicked Movie and The Ordinary Bruja Have in Common

https://youtu.be/R2Xubj7lazE?si=rKLN8Q-ceSHQ1yHO

When people think of Wicked, they often picture Elphaba—the “wicked witch” who was never truly wicked, just misunderstood. But peel back the layers of glitter and green skin, and you’ll find a story about identity, belonging, and what happens when society punishes women for being powerful. That’s the same heartbeat pulsing through The Ordinary Bruja.

Both stories take the archetype of the “witch” and strip it bare to reveal something deeper: how women—especially those who are different—are often vilified for simply existing outside the norm.

1. The Cost of Being Different

In Wicked, Elphaba’s green skin makes her an instant outcast. People project fear and judgment onto her before she even speaks. In The Ordinary Bruja, Marisol faces her own form of invisibility—she doesn’t look like the witches people expect, and she’s spent her life shrinking herself to fit in. Both characters learn that difference isn’t a flaw; it’s a mirror that exposes other people’s discomfort.

Psychologically, both stories explore what happens when self-doubt becomes a curse more powerful than any spell. Elphaba’s power grows when she finally embraces her true self. Marisol’s story mirrors that revelation—she learns that self-acceptance is the real act of magic.

2. Sisterhood and Complicated Bonds

Elphaba’s connection with Glinda isn’t simple—it’s rivalry, love, frustration, admiration, and growth all tangled together. In The Ordinary Bruja, Marisol’s relationship with Kia carries that same messy humanity. Kia challenges her, loves her fiercely, and sometimes hurts her—but through that tension, both grow stronger.

Both duos show that sisterhood isn’t always soft. Sometimes it’s confrontational, reflective, even painful. But it’s through those relationships that each woman discovers her strength and the courage to stand in it.

3. The Villainization of Power

Elphaba becomes the “Wicked Witch” because she refuses to play by the rules of a hypocritical world. She speaks truth to power—and gets punished for it. Marisol inherits a legacy of women silenced and shamed for their gifts, and she must decide whether to keep hiding or finally confront the darkness that thrives on her fear.

Both stories force audiences to question: Who gets to decide what’s wicked? And why is it always women who pay the price for wanting agency?

4. Magic as Metaphor for Identity

In Wicked, Elphaba’s magic is wild and uncontrollable—tied directly to her emotions and sense of justice. In The Ordinary Bruja, magic works the same way. Marisol’s power responds to her feelings—grief, shame, longing, courage—and often manifests before she understands it.

Magic becomes a mirror for identity: the more they embrace themselves, the stronger—and freer—they become. The act of “closing the door” on doubt in Marisol’s story is the same as Elphaba’s “defying gravity.” Both moments scream the same truth: liberation begins when you stop apologizing for your light.

5. Rewriting the Witch Narrative

Both Wicked and The Ordinary Bruja reclaim the witch as a symbol of resilience rather than evil. They show that “ordinary” women can carry extraordinary power—that trauma, heritage, and womanhood are threads of the same tapestry.

Where Wicked reimagines the fantasy of Oz through empathy and complexity, The Ordinary Bruja grounds that same theme in Dominican-American magical realism, ancestral legacy, and psychological horror. Both remind us that the scariest monsters are rarely the ones with spells—they’re the systems and insecurities that try to silence us.

Why It Resonates Now

In an age where women are still told to tone down, translate, or tidy up their identities to be accepted, stories like these feel revolutionary. They remind us that the “wicked” woman and the “ordinary” bruja aren’t villains—they’re survivors who finally stop asking for permission to exist.

Both invite readers to ask the same question:
What if embracing who you are is the most radical spell you’ll ever cast?

Would you go watch? I certainly will!

SaleProduct on sale

The Ordinary Bruja: Book One of Las Cerradoras Series – Johanny Ortega

$4.99 – $23.99Price range: $4.99 through $23.99

Marisol Espinal has spent her life trying to disappear from her family’s whispers of magic, from the shame of not belonging, from the truth she refuses to face. She’s always wanted to be someone else: confident, capable, extraordinary.

But when strange visions, flickering shadows, and warnings written in her mother’s hand begin to stalk her, Marisol is forced to confront her deepest fear: what if she isn’t extraordinary at all? What if she’s painfully ordinary?

Yet Hallowthorn Hill doesn’t call to just anyone. And the more Marisol resists, the stronger its pull becomes. The past she’s buried claws its way back, and something in the mist is watching—waiting for her to remember.

If Marisol cannot face the truth about who she is and where she comes from, the same darkness that destroyed her ancestors will claim her, too.

Somewhere in the shadows, something knows her name.

And it’s time for Marisol to learn why.

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