#oh nice lots of unconnected supernatural events

[radioactive-juice]

There is alternate shit universe now ????????

[mynameisnowwyrm]

Spoiler warning

TL;DR horrible adaptation, but very enjoyable on it’s own

(Also just wanted to say I was so sure I was going to hate this bc of what’s different but they changed so much the cartoon and the live action are barely connected in my head)

Okay my review will be split up into two parts: fate: the winx saga as an adaptation and as a standalone work

As an adaptation:

0/10. Maybe 0.5 if I’m being generous.

The things that were unchanged from winx club:

There are characters named Bloom, Stella, Musa, Aisha, Sky and Riven

Aisha, Bloom, Stella and Sky resemble their cartoon counterparts

Riven is an asshole

Bloom is a dumbass

Magic exists

The specialists exist

Main characters go to schools for magic and specialists respectively

The dragon flame is a thing

Witches exist

Other than that it’s a completely different show. The plot vaguely resembles season 1 of winx club only in that Bloom is trying to discover her true heritage. Musa, who is supposed to of East Asian descent is not, Flora was not included and in her place is a different character with similar powers, Tecna was excluded entirely ( I believe this was to distance the show from the futuristic elements of winx club and focus only on fantasy, which doesn’t make sense since they changed Musa’s powers ).

The magic system was changed. Fairies don’t on the regular transform since in the show the know-how to do so was lost, though Bloom does unlock the ability in the finale. Instead of each being a fairy of an individual concept, everyone’s powers ale element based, with Musa’s powers being changed to her being an empath. While this does feel more generic, it makes more sense from a world building perspective and I can see why they changed it.

The fashion is horrible. You will never be able to convince me teenagers dress like that. One of the reasons the original cartoon was enjoyable was all the colourful, fun clothing. The clothes feel dated and too mature for the characters, like I can see a twenty-something person in 2013 wear some of those outfits. It especially feels like a missed opportunity since 2000’s fashion is coming back into style.

The characterization of some of the characters compared to winx club was hit and miss. Riven was an ass and Bloom was impulsive and naive, which is accurate, but Stella, oh Stella was a disappointment. Stella was a jealous, manipulative bitch, which in context of her character backstory makes sense, but is so far from her original portrayal. Cartoon Stella was spoiled and at times self centered, but she was also genuinely kind, helpful and bubbly. To see her character take a 180 and become the all too familiar jealous ex archetype was upsetting.

Now, aaaaall that being said, I don’t believe we should judge this as an adaptation. They changed so much that it is quite literally a new story. So let’s see how it stands up on it’s own.

Summary, taken from the wiki

The series tells the story of Alfea, a fictional boarding school where teenagers study. The world inside this universe is not only magical and full of monsters, but it is also a world of real teenagers who do the most common things: make friends and enemies, go out and of course... fall in love. They are eager to find their place in this world. This universe is different from the one we have all known for a long time.

The attention is focused on a group of proud teens, also well-designed female characters. Sometimes they are heroines, sometimes weak girls. Sometimes they are friends, sometimes rivals. Of course, they are not perfect, but they are real. A group of girls who did not know each other until they are included in the same team inside a school that is strange to them. They will meet forces that are beyond their control and things they do not understand. But, throughout the series, they will find themselves, form an indestructible bond, and transform into powerful and strong girls, ready to change not only the supernatural world, but also ours.

Character summary:

Bloom is a newly discovered fairy from the human world who is attending Alfea college in the otherworld. There she meets her new roommates: chatty Terra, athletic Aisha, uptight Stella and stand-offish Musa. She also meets Sky, Stella’s ex, who is training as a specialist.Shortly before coming to Alfea, Bloom discovers she has magic powers by almost burning her house down and killing her parents. She is distraught over this and it is why she is eager to gain control of her powers.It is discovered that Bloom is a changeling, a barbaric practice where a fairy baby is exchanged with a human one. This leads Bloom on a quest to discover her true heritage.

Musa is an empath, she can feel the feelings of everyone around her. To shut them out and escape she listens to music through her headphones. This leads to her initially coming off as uncaring when Terra tries to get to know her better.

Terra is an earth fairy with a particular talent for making plants grow. She is very nice and chatty, eager to make friends, but not afraid to stand up for herself. She struggles with finding someone to like her and compares herself to “cool girl” Beatrix who has boys following after her.

Aisha is a water fairy who swims twice a day every day. She comes off a a good person who wants to make friends and do the right thing. She also tries to do everything in her power to protect her friends.

Stella is a light fairy and princess of Solaria, the realm in which Alfea resides. She is repeating her first year due to an event prior to season one where she lost control of her powers and blinded her best friend. She is very uptight due to her perfectionist mother and tries to exert control in every other area of her life, when this doesn’t work, e.g. when someone flirts with her on-again-off-again boyfriend she gets jealous and causes trouble. She is also generally rude to the people around her.

Sky is a specialist legacy and Stella’s on-again-off-again boyfriend who has an interest in Bloom. His father was a famous specialist and he was raised by his father’s best friend.

Riven is Sky’s roommate, best friend and a genuine asshole. He insults and antagonizes everyone around him and gets involved with Beatrix. He seems dissatisfied with the life of a specialist.

Beatrix is an air fairy with a lightning powers. She seems mysterious and looks to be the villain of the season. She has enlisted the help of Riven and Dane.

Dane is a first year specialist who first seems to be friendly with Terra but gets sidetracked after spending time with Riven and Beatrix.

What I didn’t like:

The world building is sparse and the magic system is generic. I feel like things could have been better expanded upon. Throughout the show they bring up archaic fairy magic but it’s never really explained how that’s different from current fairy magic.

The interactions between Riven and Dane come off as a bit queerbait-y although they could be setting things up for a second season.

Everyone is constantly so rude towards Terra. Even her supposed friends are mean to her. What gives?

Stella was constantly rude to everyone but by the end they are all the best of friends when she really hasn’t changed much. Also Stella being the jealous controlling ex archetype and not enough people calling her out on her bullshit.

What I did like:

For a Netflix teen drama there is surprisingly little sex between the teenagers. This might be subjective but it was refreshing for me.

Again subjective but I could definitely relate to Bloom’s antisocial teen flashbacks

Beatrix was a fun villain

Though the story might be a little generic, I felt it was compelling throughout. I genuinely wanted to know what happened next.

The story was well paced. It never felt like anything was dragging along

Overall:

The show was definitely enjoyable to watch. There is a lot of room for improvement. It sometimes felt like different plot lines were unconnected and the costume choices leave a lot to be desired. Aside from that they set up a solid story and likable characters (some of whom I love love and love to hate) which I very much want to see further developed in the future. As a stand-alone work 6/10

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

@propinquitous tagged me to talk about myself, and yeah, I generally do that when people don't run away fast enough, so here we go!

Name: Hth is my real-live name; it is pronounced “Heather.”

Fandoms: Oh, I dunno, I guess it depends on the entrance requirements?  Right now I'm pretty absorbed in The Magicians, but I also follow fannishly and have recently written for Schitt's Creek and Supernatural, and I follow fannishly but do not write for the MCU and Star Trek and Star Wars and, like – other things, as they catch my fancy?  Also many others over the years, but that's kind of where I am these days.

Where You Post: AO3, like all the classy bitches.

Most Popular Oneshot: According to kudos on AO3, it's In the Hands of Yes, a Stargate: Atlantis fic which I posted there in the Year of Gay Jesus 2009.   Aliens make Rodney and Ronon get married; they're fine with it.

Most Popular Multi-Chapter Story: I actually very rarely wrote those until pretty late in my fannish career and I really only have four or five to choose from, but so far it's my current Magicians coffeeshop-AU-with-no-coffeeshop WIP, Pretty Good Year.

Favorite Story You Wrote: My favorite is always the one I'm currently writing, so definitely Pretty Good Year, but if you exclude that one as having an unfair advantage, I think – damn, I don't know.  I'm pretty partial to Casanova (Fucked Me Over), the canon-verse Supernatural story I spent half a year on and nobody besides me gives a shit about (that's not true, I had some very nice commenters, but it's – more true than not).  I don't know, I think maybe it's just too personal to resonate with other people?  But I reread it periodically, and it's really satisfying to me every time, which is rare.

How You Choose Your Titles: I either jack a lyric from one of the songs I was listening to as I brainstormed the story, or else I lean toward really lean, noun-based titles that kind of underscore whatever I think is the High Concept of this particular story (T-Minus 1 is about the dramatic irony of David being on the verge of his big love story and not realizing it yet, The Bee-Charmer is about slowly approaching people without spooking them, wherein Ronon is both the bee-charmer and the swarm of bees, Lexicon is about communicating with actions vs with words. Yadda yadda.)

Do You Outline?: Depends on the length of the story.  If it's a genine one-shot, where I don't plan on very many scene changes, it may just be in my head as a complete entity and I don't need to bother.  If it takes place over any span of time, and I intend to show things developing and changing, yeah, I can't pace that out mentally without taking at least a few notes. Sometimes it's just a page or so of bullet-points to make sure I get from one place to the next, and sometimes when I'm feeling my way through a story, I'll just start writing, and I'll have a mini-draft that's just like “and then this happens and then they do this, and then Character X is like, I will never forgive you! And Character Y gets drunk and” I don't know, whatever.  Those tend to run anywhere from five pages to twelve or fourteen.  My outlines usually look – mostly like the finished versions, although there's always at least one point where they start to diverge enough that I have to reconcile the two versions somehow, and that's fun.

Complete: So on AO3 I have 44 complete stories, but that is a serious lowball in terms of my whole fannish career, which – I started writing X-Files fic in 96 or 97, and then wrote voluminously until I burned out on fandom in around 2009 or 10. Not everything I wrote during those thirteen years or so is up on AO3 – some of it I just don't like well enough to want it to be that easy to find (I mean, it's all on the internet somewhere, I don't kid myself that it's not findable, I just don't want to help), and a lot of it always felt like ephemera to me – 2k or 3k of something I just wanted to try in a particular voice or a tense or commentary on a minor character or a wonky crossover idea, stuff that I feel weird about Archiving as though it was ever meant to be a published product rather than me dicking around on mailing lists or on LJ.  Also, I don't have any of the stories I wrote under the Betty Plotnick pseud on AO3, which was something like a dozen interconnected Sentinel stories and around the same number of unconnected boyband stories.  I think they're still up on the internet somewhere too, but – I don't know, it's not that they weren't good, because some of them were.  They just come from a weird part of my life and I haven't been motivated to think about them or look at them for a long time.  Maybe someday.  Anyway, if you add it all up it's a fucking lot of fic, but I think all the significant stuff is part of those 44 stories on AO3.

Coming Soon/Not Yet Started: I'm bailing through a Schitt's Creek story I signed up for right now; I think it'll be short but sweet, which seems to be the role that Schitt's Creek fandom is filling in my life at this time.  There's also an Eliot-centric fic event happening at the end of the month, and I thought I'd knock something out for that, although I still haven't decided what, exactly.  In terms of big projects, I have a running file of outlines and notes for, hrm, I think five Magicians stories and six or seven Supernatural stories (some of which I have actual words on and some of which I don't), and when I'm done with Pretty Good Year, I'll probably throw a dart at my laptop and pick one of those to actually write.

Do You Accept Prompts?: I mean – theoretically?  I never know what's going to spark in my head and what's not, but I really like hearing ideas.  I guess I accept “you should totally write this!” as long as it's understood that my response is likely to be “omg, I totally should!” followed by never doing that.

Upcoming Story You Are Most Excited to Write: I don't know, going back to that file of stuff, all of it is exciting enough to me to have put some thought into.  Maybe the Lisa/Dean/Castiel story I outlined when I got really annoyed thinking about how much wiping Lisa's memory and leaving her with a dead boyfriend in her living room would have fucked up her life, and I decided I could come up with something better than that nonsense.  I don't know if anyone would ever in a million years read a Lisa-POV story that spans four years and kind of makes Dean look like a careless dick, but it interests me, at least.

I don't know who I know that hasn't been tagged, but – how about @orchardsinsnow and @amagpie if they haven't been yet?