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Bal Masqué (The Masked Ball), (Detail), (1880), by Charles Hermans (Belgian, 1839 – 1924), signed ‘Hermans’ (lower right), 126 1/2 x 158 in. (321.3 x 401.3 cm), Private Collection
Transformation and Inversion: The Curious Rewriting of Agatha and Rio from Canon to Fanon
In advance, this is largely written based on my perception and understanding of the characters within the context of canon. There are viewers who may have other interpretations and disagree with where I land on some traits surrounding Agatha and Rio. However, I will try to keep to broad strokes about the characters within those contexts. This is not a condemnation of larger tropes and patterns in the fandom, but instead a step back to look at them and explore the characters: who they are within their source material and where they have ended up within a transformative sphere.
So! Let’s begin. And I think, beginning by defining, broadly, who these characters are within canon will help to explore where they end up within transformative variations of themselves.
Agatha Harkness, the Witch Killer
Agatha Harkness, the Witch Killer, is a centuries old witch we are introduced to in WandaVision and come to know better in Agatha All Along. In WandaVision she is playing the part of the Nosy Neighbor Agnes.
However, upon revealing her true identity as Agatha Harkness, we are introduced to one of the great contrasts of this character: the masks she wears and plays for cons and who she is without those.
When we pick up Agatha All Along, we are introduced to Detective Agnes O’Connor. This is the identity Agatha has constructed herself into, to understand her captivity in her own mind (left there by the Scarlet Witch’s spell).
As described by the costume designer, Agatha’s Road outfit was meant to bring a sort of androgyny to her look. Mimicking a dress in the shape of her coat, but once it is opened, it reveals the pants underneath. Agatha “wears the pants.” Jac Schaffer was described in the artbook as excited to bring masculinity to the character’s design.
Agatha is also described as beyond gender, and has an interest in having something of men’s tailoring to her looks.
Agatha within the context of canon is curious and hungry for her craft. She is, technically, the nerd of the pair. We see this to some extent within the Detective Agnes and Agent Vidal dynamic. Agnes speaking, Rio listening. Agatha’s interest as Agnes being the murder, which is par for the course with Agatha who is a murderer.
It is Agatha who manages to give away how to beat her because of her own inability to shut up. And it is Agatha who makes silly dad jokes.
As well, it is important to point out, that Agatha of the two, is the mortal. She is a witch, but she is the more “normal” of the pair. She is the one who managed to catch the eye and heart of a cosmic entity.
Rio Vidal, Death the Original Green Witch
Rio Vidal is Death, the Original Green Witch.
We are introduced to Rio Vidal while she is playing to Agatha’s Hex fantasies as Agent Vidal. This role sets up the dynamic the pair has overall within canon. Where Agatha is lower on the ladder, Rio is a power at play. She is, after all, in reality: Death, a cosmic entity.
In this role we see a softer, but still snarling and prodding creature that she can be; however, once Agatha wakes from the Hex, we are introduced to Rio’s complexities. Now she is hunting Agatha, and arrives in an assassin outfit. Dangerous and sharp, she comes to both warn and threaten Agatha.
In that outfit and her Road look, Rio reveals swathes of flesh. This is partially to acknowledge her bodily structure, hinting at her reveal as Death. But she is also described as seductive and a cool girl by promotional materials and the artbook. The artbook calls the look they had wanted for Rio pre-Road to be “fierce.”
Where Agatha is famously an outcast among witches, Rio is “the” green witch, and even while she is off-putting, others are instantly drawn to her. Alice and Jen comment on wanting her number. Billy describes her as dangerous but charismatic.
Rio is strange. She rarely speaks at length, instead preferring a few words. Most of the time instead, she listens to Agatha. (Though she does also listen to the coven when they are speaking around the campfire, while also fucking with them a little).
Importantly, Rio is the cosmic entity of the pair, powerful and otherworldly. Schaffer said with Rio she wanted to tap into the divine feminine energy with Rio and her existence as Death.
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Now, let’s change gears and look at fanon, and who Agatha and Rio have become in the two years they have existed within the fandom’s hands.
It is well within a fandom’s purview to rewrite the characters as they see fit. That is the purpose of transformative works. There are readers who never even interact with the source material and are only exposed to the fanon versions of the characters. This is merely the state of fandom spaces, and people who enjoy reading fanfiction or interacting with popular art in the social media age.
However, that does lead to interesting interactions and conversations about who the characters are and how they are viewed.
It is important too to note where things in fanon bloom and is shaped somewhat by canon itself, and where they are instead shaped by the fans. One aspect of transformative expression of the characters is often a framework of self shaped by the reader who may be seeking to express themselves through said character. The connection of character and self becomes intertwined, and via that entanglement, the character is rewritten and reimagined.
Rio, by and large, gets the majority of this reimagining. This can be put down to a multitude of things: she spends less time as a whole on screen than Agatha, as well as the fact she is a cosmic entity. So, for that shorter screen time, and for her mutable reality, fans take it upon themselves to reshape her.
Her characterization within the context of the show is seen as extraneous, and instead only the outcome of Agatha’s treatment. That, for the most part, Rio would be someone else: someone softer, more focused on Agatha’s needs, et cetra. That her blowing up Agatha’s door, her tantrum on the roof, are unique circumstances in her attempts to save Agatha and their relationship, and the straw finally breaking the camel’s back on her temper.
So, she is instead: a blank canvas. That is not to say there are not things drawn upon to colour her fanon takes. Popularly, Agatha calling Rio a “bad boy” is quite often used to reimagine and explore her gender expression and presentation. The turn of phrase is taken literally, and plucked from the context of the scene to become definitive for her fanon characterization. As well, the term Agatha’s actress used to try to describe the secondary parent role Rio plays; father or mom, fathermom; is also taken as a literal stepping stone for how her character is presented within fanon contexts. Rather than a title, it is seen as indicative of her gender and presentation of it.
Rio becomes less the unhinged romantic antagonist she is within canon, and instead recast as a handsome, doting partner. Her seductive and dangerous femininity, her neediness and whininess, is dropped for nerdiness and a soft masculinity.
In contrast, Agatha who is defined by her hunger for knowledge and understanding of her craft, loses her nerdiness, to instead be cast as the cool girl. Her struggles to fit in, her existence as an outcast among other witches are often set aside for a more popular feminine role (though, sometimes she is a pretty girl outcast). Agatha becomes, in many ways, more akin to the nosy neighbor costume she put on for Wanda: feminine, sometimes trapped in a heterosexual marriage, et cetra.
So then, that begs the question: who are fanon Agatha and Rio? What are their primary traits?
Agatha within fanon is often feminine. She is needy and demanding. She is cool, and someone others want and lust after. She is often painted as bemused and charmed by her nerdy partner.
On the other hand, Rio is more often cast as more masculine, with her masculinity seen as something inherent to her character. She is caretaking, protective, gentle. She is a talker, and often cast as very nerdy. Her power is largely lost, and she becomes just some guy whose heart is captured by how beautiful Agatha is.
Rio’s whimsy and playfulness within canon is adapted into nerdiness and often an interest in things like video games (ex: Minecraft) and youthful things (like Legos). She becomes affable and silly, making dad jokes. The macabre nature of her existence is often set aside, instead focusing on the green.
I think it is important to interrogate how we got to this point of thse being the defining qualities for these two characters. How have we moved from their canon selves into these often utilized fanon versions of them?
I will go out on a limb here, and suggest my belief that part of the reshaping of these characters is due to Agatha’s pregnancy. I brought up earlier that Rio is called the fathermom to attempt to describe her role in relation to Agatha’s pregnancy. Rio’s own presentation and identity is partially unwritten to play the role of father and husband. That eclipses her role as Death, her characterization as a Mother Nature figure, and so on.
To go along with that, Agatha’s more masculine traits are often dropped to fit the role of a mother and wife. Her own preference (within canon) for pants and men’s tailoring, instead is put aside to play the role of the more feminine of the two figures (traded in for dresses, skirts, crop tops, et cetra).
Agatha becomes the caretaken. She is to be doted on and cared for, and given to. Rather than the active role she plays in canon, even if from behind the scenes, Agatha often becomes more passive within fanon. She is someone, something to want, to be lusted after.
Some of this characterization can be read as a conflation of Agatha’s powers for how she exists within the relationship. Agatha as a siphon drains others, and so her entire persona, the con artist and nerdy witch and all of the other facets of her, are often set aside to focus primarily on that. Whether or not you read the description of her by the Brujapedia as a succubus as literal, this reading of her solidifies it as central to her characterization. She exists to take, and that becomes her character.
On the other hand, Rio’s wants and needs, beyond Agatha, are often diminished. Her part of the work and play, gathering her bodies, is instead dropped for merely wanting to give to Agatha. Her assisting in pulling Agatha from the Hex, becomes definitive as envisioning her as a sort of saviour figure.
And this is, of course, part of transformative writing. Finding something to use as a trampoline to imagine the character through, and reinvent them within a context that is not canon.
However, now I want to touch upon the title and the “inversion." Above, I brought up that I believe Agatha’s pregnancy plays into that.
I believe it is important to note within the context of canon traits like nerdiness, talkativeness have to do mostly with Agatha. Agatha is the character where masculinity being brought up within relationship to the character design. On the other hand, Rio’s character is described as seductive, as the cool girl, and her characterization has discussions of Mother Nature and divine femininity (for as loaded a term as that is).
Within fanon however, Rio gains the majority of what are traits associated with canon Agatha, and likewise, Agatha gains Rio’s traits. To some extent, this is simply transformative, imagining them under different stressors and environmental factors.
Agatha becomes the cool girl who is otherworldly and divine in her femininity. Rio becomes the talkative nerd who is simply lucky to get the eyes of this woman far out of her league.
But again, as I posited above, I do think this is partially in relationship to Agatha’s pregnancy. Agatha and Rio’s roles within that redefine them and their relationship to gender, expression, and presentation. Agatha becomes defined by her having a child, into the feminine, a mother and a wife above everything else. Rio becomes defined by her role as secondary parent, seen as having an inherent masculine streak for that role, and becomes father and husband.
And then there is the fan aspect of the transformative part of Agatha and Rio. This, I think, most largely applies to Rio. Like I brought up above, her character is on the screen less, and because she is a cosmic entity, most parts of her are seen as more malleable.
Rio is the person who wants and lusts after Agatha. Which I think, exists and works on some meta level for some viewers as well. Viewers who came to the show to watch Agatha, utilize Rio as a way to get closer to the character. If you wish to save Agatha, to caretake her, Rio becomes a vehicle by which to do that. From there then it does not take many more steps to begin to refashion Rio into something a viewer might wear themselves or enjoy themselves. The viewer’s hobbies and tastes become transposed onto Rio. So, the viewer is nerdy and a talker? Then Rio is too, shifting that role from Agatha to Rio.
And this, of course is a natural part of characters and fiction. Many search for and see themselves within characters and stories. So as they see themselves within characters, they take the characters and mold them around themselves to some extent. Our frameworks and lenses are how we come to understand and shape stories and characters. Our tastes and our interests shape the overall dynamics and stories we set the characters in. We cannot escape ourselves as we approach anything (we are sadly trapped in our own heads).
This is, of course, just a brief look at how fanon Agatha and Rio are presented, and the phenomena of how some of their canon characterization is swapped within that transformative dynamic. But it is interesting how two years with these characters where they have gone and what the common fandom understanding of them is. Thank you for reading!
PSA because i didn't realize they were two different things so maybe you might want to know too:
in addition to the wonderful
Queer Liberation Library (QLL)
which is a free, digital queer library, (sign up here) (they're also on tumblr @queerliblib), there is the equally wonderful
Quatrefoil Library (Q Library)
, which is both a physical library and an archive based in Minneapolis AND a free, digital queer library. (Sign up for a library card here. NB: You need an address to receive said physical card, but it does not need to be a permanent address.)
Quatrefoil offers digital cards internationally!!!!!
Per their email reply to me: "Libby is our e-book and audiobook collection. International digital cards are issued in the same way that you applied for your card and the application is on the website. Fun fact: We recently issued our first card to someone in New Zealand!!"
So as long as Libby is accessible in your country, you should be able to sign up for a Q Library card. Here's a link directly to the application form. Just as an FYI, they're all volunteer, so it can take a little while to get your access. For reference, it took about a month for them to get back to me.
in 2012 a fan asked adam horowitz & edward kitsis during comic con if emma and regina are gay for real and emilie de ravin looked like someone just told her seven days. the rest of the cast & crew didn’t even know what gay people were and maintained that position for the next ten years EXCEPT for lana parrilla who read swan queen fanfiction at some point and we don’t even know which ones.
emma and regina once sat on two different benches ten feet apart and fic writers are writing fanfiction about it until THIS DAY. they’re the second most popular femslash ship on ao3. one time emma sacrificed her soul for regina’s happiness and jennifer morrison spent two years fervently saying no homo until emma’s wardrobe consisted entirely of nordstrom’s
humans should be able to do a special Ultra Sleep after major life accomplishments where you're just out for like 32 hours or something and then you wake up fully refreshed in every way
I kissed her and forgot death. @lonely-night - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
