Witch Hunter Dorothy

~Bad Poetry~Pen Brush Sword~Tributes

Dec. 3

Written By Tiler 'Ti' Bradshaw

You know that in the Judy Garland 'The Wizard of Oz' in the scene following her agreement to kill the Wicked Witch of the West, the rag-tag group of misfit adventurers get their mid-season upgrades; the Lion is given a pair of boxing gloves, the Tin Man is granted a big cartoon hammer [I think] and Scarecrow, the 'smartest' of the group is armed with a revolver. Yeah, let that sink in. Adam and Eve require incest as writ in order to kickoff humanity as a species, and they gave a scarecrow with no brain a gun! (I know it's a joke, as he calculates solutions to their problems)

I think I recently caught this on T.V. and had crossed over into light pedantry when it comes to consuming material of an earlier era. So this painting exists because I was certainly piqued by the thought of a little girl roaming about in a fantastical realm beyond her understanding, wanting only to go home. At this, she is guided to follow a winding forked path that leads she into all manner of non-sensical danger, tom-foolery and a some especially alarming fields of...poppies? All this in an effort to reach an emerald city wherein she will discover the man who has the power, resources and perhaps the benevolence to aid the girl in her quest to get out of this realm that she clearly can't handle being a part of, but he does ask one small thing of little Dorothy: that she go and assassinate the most dangerous individual in the realm in cold blood!

The Witch has an army of halberd-wielding dudes that belong on Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, she lives in a castle of what I can only assume is "doom," and she has mystical surveillance via the largest, most crystal-ist of balls, and all that is stuff you need to deal with before she decides to firebomb you and your little dog too with her literal crowd-ending AoE DPS magic.

SO what if Dorothy was into it? What if she decided that she was going to definitely murder-ize every fucking inch of that green-assed broom-riding witch? I figured this may be my answer. Just a simple ambush, get the dog-hating lady to give chase after Toto, be ready to clock that Western Menace with a pail full of water (it is just lying around, and after all, it might even be fatal!) but if tat doesn't work, the Wizard's finest killers in the dark cloak of night can hack the Witch to pieces with an axe, courtesy of the Tin Man, and even blow her to kingdom come with seriously god-damned handgun the Wizard gave them. Also, there is a Lion who may choose to do lion things to a potential victim with prejudice.

I don't think there's anything especially of note with this composition. It's not terrible in any outstanding way, other than my general skill level at the time, and the designed constraints with Bad Poetry. I also refuses to be especially interesting outside of being kind of funny. Perhaps that's the greatest virtue of this work, it's kind of funny. Also, having a remote vehicle to make people ask "why does the Scarecrow have a gun?" is among my favorite things in this world., as it may lead them to pay closer attention the next time the movie rolls about. Everything adds up, either way. Both ways, in fact!

Yes, there's a dash - a sprinkling - of color. I left her hair red because redheads, and I kept the shoes red because it's one of the irritatingly problematic things with Dorothy's ridiculous adventure into all this preposterous shit, I mean, bitch could have got her ass killed by literally every other thing she met, and either end up Inceptioned into unconstructed subconscious limbo-space, or end up in a catatonic fugue state without the embarrassment-saving caveat of multi-level time-dilation to hide the fact that you aren't home anymore and may not return until after your body has decomposed to dust.

It's not even important stuff that she experienced, she had no arc of character or any trend of development to affect her personhood or place in either world. Truly, she merely has this weird adventure through the character arcs and archetypes of the people around her, rather than doing anything for herself. This movie disgusts me the very marrow of my bones. Can't wait to see it again.