Let me start by saying, I’m aware this is a little high handed. But I did ask, and some of you did say you were interested so-
There’s some troubling trends in A3 fanfic re: writing Agatha, that I’d like to talk about.
I’m not calling anyone out; if you want to write Agatha and Rio living in the suburbs with 10 children and stable jobs- go for it! I’m not a cop. I’m not the boss of you. In fact, go out and do it, do it well, just to rub it in my smug little face.
But for those who are interested- some notes on writing the fundamentals of an in-character Agatha, even in an au, under the cut:
- Agatha doesn’t follow anyone’s Rules
Canonical Agatha appears to have exactly one ethical guideline: she doesn’t kill children. And that’s pretty much it. No other crime is off the table.
Which is why it’s puzzling when she’s written as rule follower (and Rio as the chaotic one by contrast). Even in a non-magic au, if she’s a lawyer, she’d better be jury tampering. If she’s an executive, she’s embezzling like a manic. If she’s a cop, she’s dirty af. If she’s a doctor- she’s female House. She doesn’t necessarily need to be a mass murderer, but when people write Rio as the serial killer and Agatha as the FBI agent, I scratch my head.
(I get that Agnes O’Connor is a person who technically exists, but I think the group needs to remember that she’s a compound being of Wanda’s sitcom hex, and Agatha’s inherent curiosity and darkness, created by Agatha’s psyche trying to get out of the weakened spell. AUs with her are fun, but she’s actually a different character than Agatha is- just as Agnes the Nosey Neighbor is also a different person.)
I get the impulse- people associate power and authority with hierarchy, and Agatha’s quest for power would lend itself to positions that traditionally require discipline and abiding by rules. But that’s not her. She’s only reluctantly in charge of anything; she’s going to avoid leadership positions at all cost, unless she’s running a con.
- Agatha is Aware she’s Queer
You’re not telling me this little shit didn’t romance her way through the girls of Salem
We can all argue until we’re blue in the face about the topic of Agatha’s sexuality, but my personal take is that Kathryn said she’s queer, modern labels wouldn’t matter to canon Agatha anyway, and this weird obsessions with labeling shit is incredibly Puritanical, which Agatha the character would hate.
Anyway. Write her in a straight marriage if that what’s your heart desires, but there’s absolutely no way that an Agatha doesn’t know she’s into women, and I’m puzzled by fics that posit it. I get that there’s a romantic aspect of Agatha finding the One and falling in love with her, but that’s like the stuff of cheap lesbian Lifetime movies (I used to secretly record them on VHS), not a realistic take.
Agatha fucks. You just tell from the canon material (she is Jolene), but there’s a weird strain of story telling that insists she’s a more uptight than she actually is. She has a body, she uses it to get what she wants, whatever that is at the time. She’s not really sexually hung up (probably as a reaction to her Puritan childhood).
Minor variation here- if it’s a closeted Agatha because of religious trauma/her puritan upbringing being filtered thought her mother being a modern fundamentalist, I buy that. But she’s still Agatha, which means she’s still queer, and I have yet to see anyone really explore that kind of trauma (which isn’t a dig, obviously that’s heavy shit).
- Agatha is Funny and Obnoxious
Writing comedy is hard. Unfortunately, Agatha is funny as fuck, because she’s had three and a half centuries to come up with material to entertain her favorite audience- herself. Rio also enjoys this about her; I imagine the Venn diagram overlap between serial killers and people who are good at comedy is pretty small, and it appears Lady Death likes funny women.
Trauma can do weird things to people, and Agatha’s incredibly traumatized. She’s turned it into humor, and weaponized it into being obnoxious- her true power is her ability to piss anyone off enough to hit her first. Then: it’s dinner time.
Agatha’s a show off and a master showman. It’s her Achilles heel, along with her weakness for kids. But you only get to fool her that way once (Wanda should take note).
- Agatha is Younger than Rio (by a Lot)
Obviously this is confusing because of the age difference between the actors, but it must be said- Agatha is approx 351 years old at her time of death. Rio is infinity years old and literally cannot die because she is the Death. I buy it when everyone’s ages are leveled out, but the younger Rio thing confuses me.
- Agatha is a Genius
Agatha is the smartest person in any room, for better or worse. She’s always got something cooking, and never just does one thing for one reason; it’s usually three things for ten different reasons, each a complex reaction to the nesting doll of her defense mechanisms.
There’s a reason her magic is (was) purely defensive- everything about this woman is geared toward her own survival first and foremost, and that clever mind ticks away. There’s always an angle with her; even in an au, this would still apply, maybe even more so because she doesn’t have phenomenon cosmic power to fall back on.
She’s ambitious- even in the throes of her enormous grief, she was still scheme hatching. She’s a master of compartmentalizing and masking. She’s a liar, and you can always trust a lying because you know that they’re lying to you.
I get it- she’s hard to write. In dnd terms, she’s chaotic neutral with maxed out int and charisma; and it’s difficult to do smart, funny and absolutely amoral. But there’s some weird fics out there that are so far off of the characters, they’re basically using the actors as face claims for their OCs. Which is fine, but maybe tag it as original work, and not A3, because I’m not detecting a trace of actual Agatha in there.
