Why We No Longer Need Shows Like Fate: The Winx Saga

[Applause] look at us who would have thought that we'd be here again certainly not me hi besties i'm shania but i go by the moniker shanspeare here on youtube if you're a subscriber coming back into my life congratulations you have one last thing in common with my father if not that's weird so there's like a thousand of you here today that's so crazy i mean it's not surprising because i do deserve this but it definitely would not be possible without you guys so thank you for all of your views thank you for all your comments thank you for all your likes thank you for subscribing to me thank you for wanting to be here with me it means the absolute most to me we're all just besties here we're all just best friends i get a lot of comments saying that you guys want to be best friends with me and the point of this is we're already besties we are the besties for the rusties so a few weeks ago i made the very dramatic declaration that i would never ever ever ever watch the entirety of the wink saga ever again because i was simply not wooed it didn't whine and dine me it didn't give me a black card to go to sax and spin to my heart desire it was a bland first date with poorly written one-liners and drab but not terrible fashion choices i was not going to call back for a second date except i've been getting bullied non-stop since that video for watching the first episode and writing the series off as a total lost call i haven't gotten bullied that bad since high school and to be fair i looked like this so i had to see why people were defending this show so bad it felt like netflix was paying people to hate on me so i watched the whole thing and here are my thoughts if you look at any other teen drama of this time period you'll notice a few recurring themes number one there is a subversion of nostalgic kids media wherein a classic is transformed for modern audiences number two you have unrealistic plot lines and even more unrealistic one-liners disguised as relatable zingers not me i dropped out in the fourth grade to run drugs to support my nano number three you have sex or sexual implications a lot between underage kids all the time it never stops four and the last one you have darkness not your regular darkness but an advanced darkness that leaves you squinting at the screen i mean am i supposed to be able to see that because i don't faint the wink saga has all of these qualities and more it has subverted their original series which features dark plots sure but it was also balanced out with humor and bright colors and you know actual saturation the netflix adaption however decided to suck the life and the color scheme right out of the settings right out of the clothing and right out of the characters themselves like riverdale which is admittedly not a netflix show and the chilling adventures of sabrina which is fake the wink saga has an obsession with dreariness i say all of that to say i don't really mind it i'm 21 years old i don't watch shows aimed at children very often unless is related to my childhood and satisfies my sweet tooth for nostalgia so i don't mind that the show has altered the color scheme and introduced dark elements and sex but they could have used the darkness in other ways that could have aided in storytelling and dynamic the way the harry potter movie franchise starts off bright with harry entering this magical world full of wacky treats and flying football and it slowly descends into darkness as the tension raises specifically the opening warner brother logo which darkens across the span of the movies fake could have utilized this darkness but instead they harnessed it for edgy points because that's what they think young adults are into what with shows like riverdale and chilling adventures of sabrina faring well i got a few comments saying that it also wouldn't make sense for fate to utilize bright colors in the show because the show itself is dark which simply isn't true stella does wear a few outfits that are fairly bright and pastel throughout the show and it doesn't look out of place musa wears lavender once or twice and bloom wears bright reds modern girls did an amazing video highlighting this topic with examples such as euphoria which deals with the same age demographic and darker subject matter but the people are dressed like this so it's possible and just because something is meant for older audiences doesn't mean it has to be dark it's a fallacy that kids like brighter colors and adults should sink into a great palette once they hit a certain age the thing that bothers me that opens this conversation up to a broader topic is the fact that this show is not winx and because it's not winks it begs the question why is it marketed as such now i watched the winks when i was younger and probably stopped watching around 12 years old in favor of other shows at the time i don't remember major plotlines but i don't have to remember the winx club in its entirety because the most memorable things about the show are not in the adaption now and it's pretty obvious the fashion the light-heartedness the color scheme the authenticity of it all fate the wink saga feels like a cash grab at best with netflix choosing to adapt something memorable from our childhood and regurgitate it as a lackluster rendition of other popular teen dramas of our time just to ensure it has an audience and that's the thing if fate the wink saga wasn't an adoption and instead was introduced as a stand-alone television series there wouldn't be as much content to critique about the show emphasis on as much because like sex and an underage teen drama there's still plenty left to get through agonizingly so let's analyze this series as an original bias free series starting with [Music] one of the main problems i have with the entirety of fate the wink saga comes from his treatment of its characters or lack thereof bloom suffers from main character syndrome stella is intolerable until the very last episode musa is mean most of the time tara is treated terribly by her friends as well as the show itself and aisha is just there when they're all together you have to take a break from the quote-unquote banter to ask yourself if they even like one another it's like the writers only view women as snarky or boy obsessed or the dreaded not like other girls trope yet these characters are certainly complex except for aisha because god forbid a black character have any storyline outside of helping the maine white character that complexity doesn't show itself in the writing so much as it shows itself in my feelings for these characters one moment i like them the next they fall flat and the latter tends to happen way more often than the former that begs another question does complexity excuse undercooked and contemptible characters let's start with bloom the story centers around bloom and her connection to archaic fairy magic immense fairy power and you know everything else too because she is the main character after all but the presentation of her character tends to depend too much on the fact that she is the main character at times bloon can come off rather rude snarky standoffish and a little edgy there's nothing wrong with that especially because she is a teenager who tends to have anger issues due to her uncontrolled firepowers and insecurities but also she's human not everyone can be unproblematic it's just not realistic but she's never held accountable or called out for her behavior sure aisha calls her selfish once in the show toward the end when the plot calls for her to quote unquote turn her back on her friends other waspish characters like stella and riven are ridiculed for their behavior rightfully so bloom treats aisha like a pot to hold all of her baggage and never really cares to check in on aisha when she shows signs of isolating herself her relationship with tara is half-baked with the one chance for a heart-to-heart falling away so tara can once again make bloom the center of attention there was one scene where aisha was clearly wanting to study her magic powers but bloon jumped at the chance to make it about her once more she pushes aisha's homework to the edge of aisha's desk in order to put her work in its place if bloom weren't the main character i would envision her in the same boat as stella look down at ridiculed and isolated stella herself is intolerable throughout most of the show up until the mid markup episode 4 where we get an insight into why she allegedly acts the way she does but despite having a total change of heart by the end of the first season zella is pretty much the same person she makes leaps and bounds towards liberation such as running away from her abusive home ending her toxic relationship with sky in order to focus on herself but her off-putting relationship with tara her rudeness to aisha and her overall mean girl persona stays she's one of the most complex characters in the worst ways possible instead of subverting the stereotypical feminine blonde mean girl trope that hollywood loves to project fate decided to keep the ball rolling even after stella was meant to undergo character development it felt rushed uncared for and lazy i guess the only good thing is they didn't feel the need to totally get rid of her love of pinks and fashion i mean if we were to ignore this musa is another character whose complex presentations leave you confused a lot of her zingy one-liners come off rather rude and her treatment of tara is quite possibly the worst out of the entire character list outside of riven of course i want to write her attitude off as a reaction from having to feel everyone's emotions all the time which could definitely overwhelm anyone but in path or not her treatment of tara comes off as unnecessarily mean at times ignoring her avoiding her making weird remarks about how her and tara aren't actually friends and by the end of the season it all just goes away musa is dating tara's brother which i assume could get awkward if you hate your boyfriend's family they move on no harm done no foul right well wrong because if i were tara i would have found myself a better friend group centuries ago tara like flora and the original series is sweet as can be she cares a lot about her friends and stands up for other people numerous times she's talkative and passionate and all around smiley and people still treat her like [ __ ] her weight insecurities and general anxiety about social situations are the reasons people namely musa and riven dislike her and center her as the butt of all of their jokes and let me emphasize here again tara is the butt of almost every joke in the series whether it be a joke about her weight or someone silencing her for the sake of comedy it's not funny tara happens to be the best character on the show and if you look past the unforgivable act of whitewashing her character i'm actually thankful that her character exists she's a breath of fresh air and distracts us from the waspishness of the others the one character who we don't need a distraction from is aisha and that's not because she's cool or lovable like tara i mean i love her but it's because the writers literally don't give her a story line aside from a couple exceptions the only time you see aisha doing anything throughout season one is when she's helping bloom she helps bloom when bloom loses control outside the barrier she's always looking after bloom babysitting bloom checking up on bloom helping bloom saving bloom caring about bloom we don't see what aisha does for herself when she's not in bloom's butthole except the one scene where she's swimming for fun and even that is set up for her to witness bloom entering the forest and eventually saving bloom from bernie alfia and its surroundings to the ground the writing for aisha's character is unimagined lazy undercooked and i can keep going but it's nothing new black characters are always the token always the savior always the comedy relief or sidekick black women especially were never able to have something of our own aisha is the only character from the main circle to not get a backstory or story arc unrelated to bloom musa has saiyam in conflict with tara tara has this guy in conflict with well everyone because everyone treats her like a burden stella has skye in conflict with also everyone because the writers made her to be a regina jordan ugly outfits and bloom has her entire history fire fairy falters and her conflict with stella because of retraction to sky and vice versa sky has bloom stella riven and his story arc with silva his father figure even riven gets a storyline and he's not even in the main circle aisha has bloom's story without any scraps of her own and the writers top that off real nice by making her quote unquote turn on her friends when she's really the only sensible one there it's overdone it's hard to watch but not as much as [Music] okay so maybe the title for this section is a little harsh but can you blame me fate takes a page out of riverdale's manual which is something no one should do not even riverdale writers and presents to us a dump truck full of wacky one-liners and attempts at being woke or at least what a 50-year-old white man thinks being woke is which is a bunch of confusing and cringy references to sexism and a double phobia whammy of homophobia and fat phobia the things that make lines like this fall under the category of worthless wack and wasteful is the fact that it's said unironically from what i could tell no one is saying these things in a mocking way or a funny way they're said to get brownie points from what the writers assume is an audience full of internet woke people but simply producing a problem dangling it in our face and proceeding to do nothing about it does not make these attempts woke if anything it makes it annoying time and time again tara is shamed for her weight primarily by riven who i guess is an antagonist but they don't really treat him as such throughout the show he's just like every other edgy boy on teen dramas loose-lipped and mean the show tends to normalize it to the point where riven does not specifically get punished for his offending remarks especially the casual homophobic remarks he makes about dane whose sexuality is fluid tara gets bullied by everyone in the show and dane has his sexuality pulverized by a 30 year old pretending to be 17. and the writers try to justify it all by making it seem like tara and dane respectively are okay with their treatment dane continues to be friends with riven and treats his comments as wacky banner and tara seems to genuinely care for stella and musa despite how horrible they are to her there's even one scene where tara asks musa to be mean to her because stella used to do that and because stella's not there someone's gotta one thing i will say to close this video out is i absolutely 100 loved the ending of the season the last 20ish minutes were the best scenes of the entire series it felt well executed enthralling and it actually produced some form of anxiety in me that made me wonder what's going to happen next and to be able to see the group together laughing and actually enjoying each other's company for once was much needed the reveal of skye's dad rosalind snapping pharah's neck like it was nothing more than a twizzler it all had me staring at my screen in total shock and that is how you do it that's how you catch someone's attention but i shouldn't have had to sit through five and a half hours of content before feeling even remotely wowed by the show it should have happened in the first episode or at least the second i got a lot of comments telling me i can't give a review of something without seeing the whole thing in its entirety but the truth is the first episode is the episode that's supposed to hook you why else would i watch it the only reason i watched the rest of the season was out of obligation to this video the writing was forced at the best of times and downright unbearable at the worst there was no care taken with the show and even looking at it objectively there's still so many flaws it's an okay show one that i've seen time and time again there's nothing absolutely spectacular besides the last 30 minutes of the last episode of the season and that is the problem i think young adults deserve a show that's inspired that's original and compelling without depending on archaic stereotypes and undercooked tropes we deserve something funny without marginalized people being the comedy relief we deserve representation outside of tokenism we deserve good quality content and i personally don't think fate the wink saga is any of that now if you watched all of that and you still want to leave a mean comment everything about the fact that we're on a floating rock hurtling with a reckless abandon through space think about it sometimes i want to take the time to say thank you so much to my patrons ramista vazzie lilly and isabella these amazing people literally are the reason i'm able to even edit this video their subscription to me ensured that i'll be able to use my adobe editing software for at least another month because the way my bank account's set up let's just say when ariana grande said i see it i like it i want it i got it i don't sing along to that part so thank you i love you stay safe

Channel: Shanspeare

Views: 160,651

Keywords: winx club

Id: v7VN-C8WnbE

Length: 17min 14sec (1034 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 14 2021