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Something random I find super interesting within the Winx worldbuilding is the fauna & monsters populating Magix, outside of Fairies
Trogs, Undines, Hunting Trolls, Elves, Leprechauns, Elfs, Gnomes, Pixies, Dragons, Dinosaurs, Fairy Beavers... the geography and biodiversity of Magix is quite interesting 🤔
Marlborough downs, cloudy skies
Winx Club Rewrite - Trogs, Downland, and Princess Amentia
Biology
Trogs are a sentient species of magic users who are humanoids with characteristics of amphibians and arthropods. They have soft, flexible exoskeletons which are made of chitin and collagen which are able to expand with internal changes such as pregnancy or weight gain without forcing them to molt. Most Trogs have insect like wings and a plethora of various arthropod features which can include bioluminescence (like fireflies), different wing types, stingers, fangs, stronger plates, segmentation/body build differences, pinchers, extra eyes, extra limbs, etc.
Trogs begin their life cycle as eggs, then hatch into soft shelled larvae before slowly growing limbs like tadpoles. They then molt for the first time into their child forms, molt once more in their teens, and a final time when they are a fully grown adult. This is their last molt generally speaking. Trogs are able to breathe both through lungs and through cutaneous respiration through their skin and have to stay in moist, cool environments to stay healthy, especially as larvae when they are extremely sensitive to dehydration.
Trogs function much like bee hives. They are not a hive mind, however they live in a hive structured society. Trogs are individuals with personal ambitions and lives despite the hive social hierarchy. They are made up of sterile worker females, male drones, and queens. Virgin queens are referred to as princesses and make up the smallest part of the population. The queen can reproduce with drones and in rare cases, other females, but those unions only produce sterile female offspring. The queen of the hive lays all the eggs, who are then distributed throughout the hive to be raised by the other adults. The queen only raises princesses generally but may choose to raise the other larvae from her husband’s clutches. Generally the father of the clutch is given first pick on the eggs and will take some of them to raise. Trog eggs and larvae have a very high mortality rate, meaning many eggs in a given clutch are unviable and fragile larvae die easily. It’s a numbers game for Trogs and this has led to some disturbing solutions.
Abductions
To prevent inbreeding, Trogs trade drones with other hives but they also have found that abducting human males from the surface has increased genetic diversity. This has led to generations of Trogs abducting and imprisoning humans, which in Downland specifically, usually means male students from one of the three schools. The prisoners are allowed to leave after ten years, but by that point have lost all contact with the outside world, have Trog children that can’t survive on the surface yet, and have endured abuse long enough for it to be normalized. Many end up staying in Downland, living with other civilians and raising their children. This horrific practice is practiced by the queens and their guards, but is not indicative of the average Trog, who does not have any power to stop this from happening.
Culture
Culturally Trogs do not conceptualize family as genetically based, though fathers often raise some but not all of their own larvae. Because everyone is descended from the queen and raised by adoptive parents, family ties are chosen. Family units are formed primarily through caring for larvae and business partnerships. While marriage does occur, this is purely a social arrangement and almost all couples are unable to produce offspring. For the Queen, marriage is more about her personal nest. The Queen chooses her husband to be her primary partner socially and will generally raise any children produced from that union, but will have many other sexual partners for the sake of hive diversity.
The Queen has complete control over who she marries, who she mates with, and how eggs are distributed. Because the Queen’s premature death can lead to population collapse if she does not have a successor, queens have immense social and political power within their hive, which can allow them to act tyrannically with little consequence (cough Amentia cough).
Some hives have multiple active queens while others only have one. Downland has two during the events of the main series.
Trogs are avid brewers and have a strong cultural importance on the process of making alcohol. Their drink of choice is a combination of mead made from their own honey and wine made from subterranean berries. Their cuisine includes a lot of moss, bats, cave fish, aquatic arthropods like crayfish, mushrooms, unviable eggs, and subterranean plants that photosynthesize using the light from the local crystals. And lots of booze. Booze for days. You would also drink if you lived in Downland.
Princess Amentia
Amentia is the only surviving princess of the current Queen of Downland. Unless her mother is able to produce another viable princess, Amentia is the only future Downland has, which has allowed her to act cruel towards her workers without consequence. This only exacerbated the entitlement she was already brought up to have. In my rewrite, Amentia is… not defeated with the power of love. She’s defeated with the power of Stella hyped up on vitamin D gummies beating her with her scepter. Brandon ran back into the palace to help free the other prisoners, starting a riot with the aid of Stella, Bloom, Aisha, Sky, Riven, and Diaspro. The humans escaped and the students fled by ship, leaving Downland behind but Brandon was never the same afterwards.
Amentia is left publicly humiliated by being beaten to a pulp at her own wedding, having her chosen drone rescued, and the other humans escaping. The only person she felt secure around while healing from her injuries was Sponsus, who she married. Amentia’s ego was deeply bruised by this incident, her carapace permanently dented. She vows one day, somehow she will get her revenge of Brandon and Stella… and in next gen she will.
Downland
You just entered the underground cavern you discovered, only to hear a thunderous roar behind you. It’s a cave-in! With the entrance sealed, your only hope is to work your way through the ten caverns that lay ahead of you. With any luck, you’ll get out in one piece. If you’re really lucky, you won’t leave empty-handed, as there’s a fortune in jewels and money scattered throughout the caverns. But beware the dangers that lurk within, or you’ll never see the light of day again. Programmed by Michael Aichlmayr for Spectral Associates, Downland was released on a cartridge for the TRS-80 Tandy Color Computer (aka CoCo) in 1983. It looks easy to play, but can be very difficult to master. You have four lives and no continues, and there is no way to earn extra lives. Working with what you have, you must guide your nameless adventurer through the ten caverns (numbered 0 through 9) that make up the underground. It’s not a straightforward trek, as there are times where you’ll have to double-back into caverns you’ve already passed through to get items that you’ve missed. The caverns range from simple to navigate to ones that require all of your skill just to get through.
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Masterlist
Princess Amentia of Downland (Queen in 4Kids dub), first appearing S2E4, is the ruler of a small kingdom of people called Trog (which I have a few problems about that we’ll talk on later). She is a dominant, perfectionist that falls madly in love with Brandon, Stella’s boyfriend. She serves as a minor conflict and minor ally to the Winx against Darkar. And while I think Amentia is a unique character that should’ve been explored more, she is also written off as a pitch poor portrayal of women in positions of power and borders on racist stereotypes. It’s unfortunate that I’ve yet to see any posts or articles talking about the inappropriate portrayal of her character and her people.
Not only is she a powerful ruler, she is also an impressive warrior, and so are many of her people. Despite their impressive nature, she and her soldiers are written as brainless brutes. Especially the soldiers. This is a common portrayal of unfortunately several brown people, but especially Indians & Arabians (also Natives, with how they’re written as savage and uncivilized) All of these cultures are stereotyped as being controlling, the same way Princess Amentia is. But I specifically want to talk about her being a woman in a position of power first.
In the world of Winx we don’t often get female rulers, which is strange as the Magic Realm has various societies and cultures but for some reason they’re all Kingdoms? Another rant for another day. But my point still stands, she is, other than the Queen of the Earth fairies, the only female ruler and indisputably the only female warrior. Yet, she’s controlling and doesn’t understand the idea of consent. She’s selfish, self-centered, and uses her position as a way to, frankly, just be a bitch to everyone. While she has good qualities, like being a strong strategist and, of course, fighter. She’s written so shallowly for the sake of being a low-stake conflict instead of a fully-rounded character. It’s sad to see the only woman in power to be written in such a bitchy way as many women with positional power are viewed.
It’s also gross with the way they solved this conflict by forcing her to fall in love with someone else without her consent nor the work necessary to make a happy couple. I know one of the dubs made it where she realized Sponsus is her soulmate instead of falling in love with him on the spot, but I’ve always hated the soulmate trope because, in this case, it just feels like an easy fix.
Now onto the stereotypes, it was always something I noticed even as a child. It’s clear the Trog is a weird mix of Aztec & Orientalist aesthetics. Amentia wears what looks like a dupatta in her military outfit (a strange contrast to her immodest outfit which goes against the usage of the dupatta). She also wears a bindi or a Tilaka, which personally I think it is more of, which isn’t specifically a problem but helps to prove the Trogs are pulling from Indian asesthetics. Her and the other female Trogs dress in what looks like bellydancing costumes or vaguely Aztec costumes. And while I don’t have a problem with her or the Trogs being inspired by various cultures, the fact that they’re portrayed as savages leaves a sour taste when paired with their outfits being poor, sexualized versions or shallow depictions of real cultures.
Not to mention the forced marriage conflict, is strange. I get using arranged marriages as conflict, this happens in several series, it literally happens multiple times in Winx alone. But it feels downplayed for how uncomfortable Brandon was and for how often Amentia forced herself on him. And while this may be a stretch, it just looks like they’re minimizing female-initiated sexual assault and harassment.
Lastly, the name Trog. This is literally an insult in the english language, it being a shortened version of Troglodyte. It’s already a shitty move to name a species after an insult but to have these stereotypes on top of it, is so much worse.
Amentia deserved to be taken seriously as a character and not a gross interpretation of women in power, her being aggressive and forceful are not what make a powerful woman powerful. She deserved to learn how to fall in love and not to pick a suitor based on looks or her perfectionist ideas. Her people deserved to stand as interesting characters without being stereotypical or shallow. Also it would’ve been great to see her pop up again in later seasons, especially S3. As one of the only kingdoms that doesn’t use magic it would’ve been interesting to see where she stood against Valtor.
There is so much that could’ve been done with her personality and a character in her position, yet they threw them in for low-stake conflict and filler content.
In short, Princess Amentia deserved better.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Enchanted moments - season 2
Chapter 4 - Love is ... underground
Crashing a wedding has never been so dramatic.
Happy new year, everyone! I hope it’s a good one <3
I’m officially back in business, so here’s the new chapter to EM2 It was my favorite to write, so I hope you’ll enjoy it too Tell me what you think about it <3
Serendipitous Secrets & Surprises Ch 13
Rita Calhoun x fem!reader Warnings: language, usual SVU case talks. For reference, the Abby Stewart case takes place during s17’s “A Misunderstanding” if you want more backstory/foreshadowing
That Friday, you were more than thankful to be off work, and finally out of the house with your wife. Even if it was just bar seats at Forlini’s, where you would constantly be badgered by coworkers on both sides, you were happy to have finally gotten Rita out of the house and away from work. The two of you were picking over plates of zucchini fries, stuffed mushrooms and calamari, having ordered the mains to be taken home. You were sipping on a glass of pinto while Rita had opted to go stronger with a scotch, it had been a rough week after all.
USA 1987
