#I noticed a sharp drop in quality from the start of s2 but wow

[armeniuslaurant]

kind of astounding that literally five seconds after being introduced to Claire I thought "oh this could be trouble", and I googled her and the criticism is *exactly* what I was dreading.

[drops-of-moonlights]

What Winx characters do you think went through the worst character assassination?

While the obvious answer is “yes” because no one has come out of this 16-year long trainwreck unscathed, I’d probably say Bloom, Icy, Helia, Tecna, Flora, Riven and Sky. Aisha would count too, but it’s just her turning into kind of an Angry Black Woman stereotype during WOW and that didn’t carry over to the main show when S8 came around, so it’s kind of an isolated example, though by no means less horrible and stupid.

Bloom’s probably the most obvious, but also not in the way people think - Bloom’s entire personality past S5 was slowly shifting into “Sky. where is Sky. Sky Sky Sky.”, which reached a peak in S8. I don’t think she was turned into a Mary Sue like most people do post S4 (mostly because the term has been bastardized to hell and back), but I do think they exacerbated her more annoying qualities as they tried to make her seem more capable and that backfired hard.

Icy got it pretty bad as well starting with S3, when she was the most determined about getting into Vampire Aesthetic’s pants, and later continued during S5 when she was dating Tritannus. She got VERY SLIGHTLY better during S6 and S7 but it got fucked again during S8 when they decided to suddenly make this war criminal into Daphne 2.0 Edgy Ice Edition, which, while I do admit was kinda interesting, it’s kind of too late to try to make us sympathize with a literal terrorist, Rainhoe.

Helia got his even during his very first season - he’s introduced to us as a pacifist that dropped out of Red Fountain due to conflicting morals... only to reintroduce him two episodes later as the most capable warrior ever that has no issues with fighting. His deterioration picked up again during S4 during The Big Romance Clusterfuck, as his solution to Riven trying to win Musa back was “just gift her stuff. that solves every problem”, which then continued during S5 with the Krystal deal and his inability to actually attempt to clarify stuff for the poor freshman. Of course there’s the aforementioned Origami War from an earlier post as well, but overall Helia went from the artsy pacifist to literally being a Fedora Man.

Tecna’s a weird case, in that her character assasination is shared by Musa and Aisha, by which I mean the ensuing wave of hyperfeminity everyone was hit with post S5, which contrasted the most with her out of all the girls, suddenly forcing her to the same mold the rest of the girls had. It also doesn’t help that she had a soft reset of personality in S5. It’s not as obvious with her in a personality basis however, because the franchise never really cared for her, and so they don’t waste time showing us stuff about her most of the time.

Flora’s... weird, because she never had much of a personality in the first place beyond “plant” and “mom”. But starting around S6, she gained a very sudden aggression to most of what she did, and while it was nice for fights (because for once the girl was not going down in one hit), it also made her into kind of an asshole to those around her. It’s more noticeable during S7, when she’s such a dick to Miele, Amarok and Helia everytime they don’t do what she wants them to do and finding every reason she can to be irrationally angry at them, and it’s a very sharp contrast to even S5 Flora, who was noticeably more of a wimp than S1-S4 Flora.

Riven’s kind of an obvious example, as as far back as S2 they were doing a whole thing about him being less of a dick to those that care about him... that was thrown out the window in S3 and reached its peak during S4, as the main force during The Big Romance Clusterfuck. S5 kiiiiiiiiind of tried to make up for S4 as while still insensitive he’s a bit more thoughtful of Musa and her feelings, even making a song for her to make up for his attitude, but it was all forgotten during S6 as his personality became “b o o m e r a n g”. Then S8 tries to show us he changed but it’s forced as all fuck, and I can tell you with certainty that by S9 Riven’s going to be an asshole again.

As for Sky? He just kind of became even more of a shut-in regarding his emotions and thoughts when they involve family or Diaspro, and his inability to actually confront the situations he’s facing make easy drama between him and Bloom, which the writers milk for all its worth to our unending annoyance.

That’s about it, really