Then there’s the whole thing about the two countries. One gets hit by a cataclysmic storm caused by magic, so naturally, the solution is to send in the wolf barbarians to raid the neighboring country. Because... why not, right? Get me some food, let’s burn down the crops, and break some shit, ‘cause we can’t grow it ourselves! Bravo, Gwen’s people—way to show how much you care about solving the problem by making it way worse. The whole thing is like the worst case of “misguided good intentions” that you can possibly imagine. Magic to control weather? Yeah, let’s just throw some big rain dance spells around and hope that nothing gets destroyed. Oh, what’s that? Uncontrollable hurricanes? Good job, magic users—way to screw everyone over. Top marks for thinking ahead.

Then we get the classic setup where Winifred and Gwen are both going after the same bad guy—Julia, the vampiristic witch. Oh, and what happens when they meet again? They get in each other’s faces, have this big rival showdown because apparently their conflicted feelings are just waiting to explode, only for them both to just stop fighting for some forced “moral resolution.” Who wrote this, some guy who got hit in the head with a rolled-up scroll too many times? "We’re not so different after all"? Oh, great, yeah, we’ve seen that in 500 other pieces of media.

And of course, the climax of their "rivalry" is them learning about each other’s pain and becoming "understanding." BRAVO, that’s what we needed. The one thing this rivalry lacked—understanding and empathy! What a revelation! You see, that’s the secret ingredient to any good rivalry: not the clash of wills, not the epic battles, but simply the realization that they're both actually on the same side and that fighting is pointless. Tremendous writing, really.