#i have wonderful voice actors.. a bestie who's helping me color stuff... and the power of silly cartoons to get me through this | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

moonlightreal · 3 years

Text

Fate ep 3, second half

Welcome back! So I’m enjoying the heck outta Fate… but not as a Winx thing. I mean,

Things Fate has in common with Winx:

Some of the names.

Things Fate does not have in common with Winx:

The rest of the names, the characters’ personalities, how magic works, how the world works, who’s dating who, the color of Riven’s hair, how many drugs everyone’s doing, the style of clothing, who the teachers are, what the school looks like, what Bloom’s parents are like, etc. etc.

If they’d just renamed it Elemental Academy it’d still have been a fun show and we could’ve skipped all… this…

Gods I wish we could’ve skipped all this.

But weirdly separate from all this, I’m reviewing a show with some teachers who I like.

The students of Elemental Academy are headed to the quietest rave ever! Lots of purple lightbars and everybody’s drinking! Ok, if the teachers know how many substances their students are using shouldn’t they at least try to not let them? Ok, I can see Silva having a grand time making everybody do grueling workouts while hung over but substances and healthy fighting form don’t go together longterm.

Terra explains. This is the east wing of Alfea, “It used to be used for war preparations but since there hasn’t been a conflict in a while no one really comes down here. Except for tonight!”

I want to know what the last war was about, who fought in it, who they were fighting against, how often wars happen in the Otherworld… but Bloom wants a beer.

Ohmigod Terra brought pot brownies! Ahahahahaha! That was literally a joke on discord weeks before Fate aired, that Terra would be the fairy of pot brownies. Also Musa has gorgeous eye makeup. Race stuff aside, Elisha Applebaum is really pretty. Sam comes over, and there’s Dane. Sam gives Terra grief about the special brownies. And Dane ditches her to go offer Riven and Sky some special brownies. Poor Terra.

Bloom finds Sky and asks about Silva and Sky opens up to being upset, that Silva raised him and having Silva’s life in danger is messing him up. Then Sky asks Bloom about her parents and she says it’s complicated and she maybe needs more booze to go into it. Sky wouldn’t mind a distraction himself, so off to drink it is!

Debauchery! Beer pong! Bloom and Aisha versus Sky and Riven! Everyone drinking lots of cups! Bloom uses her power to make beer hot, which is neat since warmth seems much more useful than fire. Aisha tries to use her magic to bounce the ball out and ends up blasting all the cups and drenching Riven. Who probably deserves it just on genera…. Yup, here he is, telling Bloom about Sky’s last girl! Ricki, Stella’s last roommate and bestie until she flirted with Sky and Stella blinded her. On purpose. Bloom can’t believe it. Sky just says, ‘Yeah. that’s the story.’ But the mood is well and truly killed, and Bloom goes off to find Aisha.

Stella is in a dress solid with sequins, standing with a student in a full beard, I think.

Looking for Aisha Bloom wanders into a storage room for war stuff, and finds a class picture! There she is, the dream woman standing with a class of specialists! I think she must’ve been the Specialist trainer before Silva.

Sam and Musa flirt. Smooching!

Then Musa senses Terra coming as a wave of social anxiety and Sam vanishes through a pillar to escape. Terra wants Musa to read Dane’s mind to see if they have a chance. Musa says there is a chance.

Dane, riven and Beatrix have found the war supplies too. Plate armor! This world still uses plate armor! They do a three-way smoking of one joint, which is so gross. I know covid wasn’t a thing when this was made but eeeeeeeew the poor actors! Riven is his horrible self and teases Dane about how much Terra wants his dick. And Riven whose shirt was splashed with beer, wants to steal Dane’s. Run, Dane, find better friends!

We jump to Stella and the bearded student who is ladling out punch. Sky comes right over and goes, ‘We need to talk about Ricki!” right there in the middle of the party. Stella is horrified. They back and forth… the jist seems to be that the rumor isn’t true. Stella didn’t blind Ricki on purpose but she wants everyone to think she did. Probably she did it by accident and would rather be thought of as evil than weak, which is kinda understandable. But Sky points out that being with Stella now makes him look like a total nut.

Text arrives! The Burned One is dead! Whew!

What? How! The trained adults never succeed in this kind of story! At least they lived.

And here Bloom is photographing the specialist alumni photos. Beatrix comes in and says, ‘Are you photocollaging at a party? Why are we not friends?” Bloom asks who the woman is but Beatrix says she doesn’t know.

Bloom goes and shows the pictures to Aisha. Dowling is in the photo so she must know. Aisha wants to ask Dowling tomorrow when they’re sober but Bloom’s keen to go now. Aisha basically says if Bloom is dumb enough to go demand answers at midnight while drunk, Aisha’s out.

In the headmistress’ office Beatrix and Callan are ready for another go at the secret passage trap! Since Bloom asked about Rosalind, the plot is thickening and they have to get through now! But they haven’t disarmed the trap. So Beatrix lightnings up and tosses Callan through the door. That was direct! The guy goes blue in the lips and falls down probably dying. Beatrix goes through the secret door and down the stairs beyond.

Sky finds Silva but oh no, he’s not better! It was the wrong Burned One! There are more! Sky says he’s done waiting, he wants to fight. He storms off.

In the cafeteria Dowling and Harvey mourn. It’s their job to fix this Burned One problem and they’re not having much luck.

And here comes ragey drunk Bloom! She holds up the picture and demands an infodump. Rosalind was the headmistress before Dowling during a “difficult period in Alfea’s history” And Rosalind’s dead.

...no she isn’t. Obviously.

Bloom can read the Plot as well as I can, and heads down to the stone circle to make contact! While drunk at night. But this is awesome, she flames up her hands and lights a ring of braziers and the magic silver vessel. Her jacket’s on fire too. Then the flames all go out and she droops over crying. Sky runs over in battle kit and Bloom tells him about the changeling thing and how she just wants answers. Then she asks why Sky’s dressed for battle. Sky’s going Burned One hunting! And Bloom thinks she can track the thing, she can sense them. Now Bloom’s the sensible one who suggests telling Dowling but Sky runs past her into the forest and Bloom takes off after him.

Now there’s that plot I knew should be there!

We cut back to the party where Terra is playing beer pong and gets to hug Dane who is topless ‘cause Riven stole his shirt. I think Riven is playing some kinda wingman here.

Stella rushes over to ask about Sky, and Riven stirs the pot basically saying he spilled the “blinding” thing to Bloom then jumps into, ‘no no, they’re just friends, no need to blind her too!’

Stella: “I wouldn’t waste my magic on a changeling!”

Show, if you do not tell me what the stigma of changelings is about--!

Riven didn’t know, so Stella just stilled some beans back as getting revenge on a completely different person?

Bloom sends a text. Emergency Burned One hunt at the stone circle!

It interrupts Musa mid-snog with Sam.

Beatrix walks down a dark hallway and finds… the barrier-ed door from the trailer!

Bloom and Sky pass through the barrier and end up in a place that looks like where Bloom was trying her magic a few episodes ago. Bloom says it’s close. Sky wants to know why Bloom can track it, Bloom wants to know that too. They go back to back but the Burned One looms

Magic battle! Sky gets in a few sword swings before he’s knocked down! A voice calls, ‘Close your eyes!” before Stella unleashes blinding light! Terra uses her cousin’s favorite trick and vines it to the ground and Bloom throws fire calling on Aisha to help put it out. And Sky skewers the Burned One with his sword. Down it goes!

But Musa can tell it’s not dead yet. It leaps up—then catches fire from the inside, shining orange light, then falls again. This was a top quality battle!

Dowling appears behind the girls and confirms it’s dead now.

Beatrix emerges from the tunnels to find Callan still frozen and blue-lipped. Was Dowling’s trap actually killing him or was it just keeping him paralyzed? We’ll never know because Beatrix uses lightning to blast him to dust!

I mean, Callan wasn’t much but that’s put Beatrix solidly in irredeemable territory.

But good news, we saved the more interesting adult! Silva is on the mend. Well enough to immediately give Sky grief about going after a Burned One like an idiot. Sky only cares if his mentor is better, and he hugs Silva. Sweet moment all round.

The girls are getting the same from Dowling. But Musa sensed a tiny bit of pride in the headmistress.

Sky arrives, and Bloom says they should all get home, leaving Stella to talk to Sky. The other four have clearly bonded, and Stella’s clearly the odd one out. Stella says, ‘I was awful today. Seeing you scared I couldn’t deal with it.” and, ‘You’re the only one that knows the real me.” she goes in for a kiss but Sky pulls back saying, “That’s your choice, Stella.”

Stella disagrees. “I’m the heir to the Solarian throne, if you knew the kind of pressure...” and says Sky is her safety net and she needs to know he’s there if she needs him. But what if he needs somebody?

Which brings up a side issue. I don’t think Sky and Stella are doing the deed these days, but if they are or were that’s epic dumb for the heir to a kingdom. Royalty tends to care about premarital romps more than commoners, and if they came down with a case of surprise baby that baby would be a future heir! And then they’d pretty much have to get married, and if Eraklyon was on the other side of those wars nobody’ll tell us about that could add up to a real mess.

I wonder if there was sex in the past, Stella desperate for a distraction to get her out of her own head while knowing that every time the clothes came off they were taking a big risk thus creating more stress by the very means they tried to escape it.

This show tries to be all dark and gritty by having teenagers do loads of drugs but did they think of all this? It’s just practicality but it’d be plenty dark.

Over in the dorm Terra’s getting ready for bed. Musa comes to say, ‘your brother’s pretty great.’ but Terra laughs it off, not paying attention. She texts Dane to say she had fun at the party and Dane replies with a video of himself shirtless roughhousing with Riven. The phrase, “fat girl with the brownies” is the only thing that can be understood. I think Beatrix is filming, and she films the three of them doing a trio-smooch with pot smoke!

Terra cries. This show is cruel to her. Not as bad as I was expecting it to be, but bad enough. Hope she strangles the lot of ‘em.

Over with Bloom and Aisha, Bloom says, ‘You’d be proud of me, I went to the stone circle but chose not to summon all my magic and burn the Otherworld down.”

That was a choice? That did not look like a choice, Bloom.

Bloom starts in on sensing the Burned One and Dowling being sus and Rosalind, but Aisha is done being the sidekick. She suggests there might be no conspiracy and offers the really logical idea that maybe a teenage student got pregnant and didn’t know what to do so Rosalind changelinged the baby. Good on Aisha for trying to climb out of the rabbit hole, but Bloom’s too deep and says there are too many unanswered questions. I mean, she’s a destiny-ridden protagonist so she is right, but after last month we’ve seen in the real world how far people can go when they feel that they’re destiny-ridden protagonists… feels different now. The show in its cultural context.

Then Aisha says “some people” would kill to be a natural with magic like Bloom is even if she’s just an “ordinary” fairy and says Bloom should be “realistic.”

Oh Aisha, when will you learn to not say stuff? For Bloom “realistic” means birth parents who didn’t want her and gave her up. Bloom starts crying saying she has to believe there’s more to it than that. And yeah, that is understandable.

Ending scene with the adults in Dowling’s unlit office! “Bloom had a memory of the fairy that left her in the human world. It was Rosalind.” One of the guys says, “Ah shit.” As the camera moves down toward the mystery barrier in the tunnel Dowling continues, “Bloom has the potential to be one of the most powerful fairies the Otherworld has ever seen. If Rosalind is calling to her there’s a reason. We can never let them meet.’

And there’s Rosalind inside the barrier! Not dead.

Good ending music this time, but no lyrics.

I think Dowling hasn’t yet realized her secretary got lightninged to death.

I’ve also been wondering who “he” the evil overlord could be. Can’t be Rosalind because she’s a she! None of the named male characters seem at all sus. Callan’s dead, Sky’s dad is named but dead (unless he isn’t), Silva and Harvey are way too sweet, and Beatrix has no respect for any of the teenagers. Unless one of them is getting possessed maybe? Riven vaped in an evil spirit and occasionally his eyes glow and he spouts evil orders? Maybe it’s a guy we haven’t met yet, or a master Burned One on a dark throne in a cave somewhere. That’d make sense.

My main curiosity now is for Stella’s full story! Stella is an interesting character! Despicable, but interesting now that I’ve stopped thinking she’s going to be anything like the other Stella. Maybe we’ll find out… next time on Elemental Academy!

#fate the winx saga

5 notes · View notes