Gillian Owens is a character played by Nicole Kidman in the movie Practical Magic. Gillian is the sister who runs away to start living life as soon as she can; the party girl who basically goes from man to man trying to find one who sticks. When one of the men is trouble for her, she comes home and needs her sister, Sally, to help her out with a little of the family magicks.
I loved this movie, and also the book by Alice Hoffman that the movie was based on. It’s about being afraid, and how we decide to deal with our fears, especially in the context of relationships. Gillian is a bit of a trouble-maker, the wild-child, and I’m sure I could come up with a few more stereotypical hyphenations, but her place here is as a foil for her more conservative sister.
Willow Rosenberg is a character from the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, played by Alyson Hannigan (now-Denisof). The character appears in both the television series and the comic books which continued the story. She is Buffy’s best friend and becomes a powerful witch.
One of the things I enjoy about Willow’s character is that she is incredibly dynamic. In some ways I think her stories, and the changes her character goes through, are more complex and inspiring than even those of the story’s main protagonist. She is constantly trying, succeeding, failing, recovering, and discovering.
One of my favorite characters in the Looney Tunes cartoons is Witch Hazel. I love fairy tales, and since many of the episodes she is in are evocative of fairy tales (or, hey, Macbeth) I was enamored. Rather fabulously, at one point when Witch Hazel drinks a beautifying potion she had concocted for her “rival” witch (Bugs), she turns, to her horror, into a pin-up style redhead.
For as long as it manages to survive on YouTube, you can watch the whole of the cartoon this happens in (“Broom-Stick Bunny”) below:
Coincidentally, this is an especially notable short since it is the first one where June Foray does Witch Hazel’s voice for Warner Brothers. She is better known for doing Granny’s voice in the Tweety cartoons (or doing any of dozens of other voices in cartoons by other studios).
