Sorry, Aisha/Nex Fans. It’s Over.
The more I talk to the Winx fandom, the more I realize Aisha and Nex will never redeem themselves as a couple in Winx Club. “Riven 2.0” is now the definitive way to interpret Nex’s character. People dismiss any argument for Aisha/Nex with, “Well, I don’t like Nex.” And the series’ popularity dwindles each season — or each episode.
Who cares about Winx season nine? It doesn’t matter what Rainbow does. The damage to this couple’s love story is permanent.
Knowing this, I might shift my focus to my non-Winx Aisha/Nex blog: AishaAndNex.com. There, the Winx canon is irrelevant. I will treat these characters as my own.
It’ll be hard to attract people outside the Winx fandom, but I want to try. An unbiased audience is what this couple needs. Right now, I’m writing about…writing, which isn’t getting much attention. I wonder why. ?
If you have better promotion ideas, let me know.
this makes me so sad.. this ship never gets the love it’s deserved.. at almost every winx post the fans are writing about how they want Nabu back and she should leave Nex..
Nabu’s been dead for longer than some Winx fans have been alive. Rainbow’s not gonna bring him back at this point, especially since the series will probably end soon. Plus, they doubled down Aisha and Nex’s relationship in season eight. He’s not going anywhere.
Regardless, it’s impossible for the Winx fandom to ever love this couple now. ? I’m just gonna focus on telling better love stories about them. I came up with a crazy idea of rewriting Winx season two and three with Nex in it and merging Aisha and Nabu into one character. It actually works too well. ?
Also apparently you can’t even say anything about Nabu being a Marty Stu or anything else otherwise controversial in this fandom. One fan actually offered an idea different than what is commonly presumed for Aisha in an unpopular opinion that accidentally started a mess that wasn’t intended to get started (the opinion was that Aisha was *possibly Mid-Eastern due to the Arabic origins of both of her names). I actually agreed with the unpopular opinion to an extent since “not from earth means no earth descriptions apply or any could” and Aisha’s story seems rather Israeli when you think about it (you might know the story about how somebody who lost everything but got it restored doubly because they didn’t give up.) and it makes a dubbing shenanigan relevant to the plot when Layla is used. Too bad Rainbow didn’t ever make that work when 4kids dumped the Layla name on them out of nowhere…also Ash can be found in Aisha and Layla means Beauty and all that happens with the name ish that Ash was turned to Beauty by changing a few letters. Where would it happen in the story? Nabu’s death, her Agro-Moment and Bloom welcoming her back without any problems with her. Bloom is the only one who stood by Aisha the whole time as any true friend would, even if it meant they had to fight a few times. The others kinda did the whole “put down the sick puppy” routine, when Aisha returns, she would now be called Layla as a nickname or something. (I hope i haven’t pressed any buttons of yours, sorry if I have.)
Also I agree that Nabu and Aisha should be one and the same character since they pretty much are…infact Nabu could have been seen as Aisha’s character growth when she stops being so cold as a tide change.
The Winx fandom can’t see Nabu as anything but the most wonderful guy ever. Yet they’re ticked that Rainbow killed him off. It’s weird how no one’s figured out the two are connected. Rainbow made Nabu seem like the most wonderful guy ever because they were gonna kill him off. ?♀️ It’s Step #1 in “How to Write an Emotional Character Death 101”: make the audience love the character.
As for Aisha’s supposed ethnicity, I don’t think we can use character names to judge something like that in this show. Most Winx characters’ names relate to their powers (Stella, Flora, etc.), hint at their story and/or character type (Riven), or reference a figure from mythology (Daphne, Thoren, Diana, etc.).
For example, Aisha’s mother’s name is Niobe. If we use the ethnicity argument, she’s Greek. I doubt that’s what Rainbow was going for.
Instead, it’s another character from mythology. According to The Bump:
Interesting. Not sure why Rainbow picked that name, but okay. ?
Anyway, Aisha’s two names may have Arabic origins, but I think Rainbow chose them for their meanings. “Aisha” means “life” or “alive”, of course, and “Layla” means “born at night” or “dark beauty” (might be what they were going for). Of course, our society is obsessed with race and culture, especially right now, so I’m not surprised the fandom is more focused on assigning her an ethnicity than on symbolism. (That’s not directed at you.)
I just think of her as a dark-skinned fairy. ?♀️ I like that she doesn’t have a defined race because it makes me feel like we could live in a world where that’s possible.
Generally i agree with you on that “not from earth/no race” thing, but the majority of this fandom is like the mirror in the Snow Queen according to Overly Sarcastic Productions. “It’s The everything sucks filter…congratulations for inventing Twitter a century and a half early”…this happens before “Kristoff” gets zapped in the head and heart both. I had just seen a certain parallel, but also that i still just felt that “oh Aisha’s just Aisha.”
l was trying to tell a fan who kept insisting this, that and the other was why Aisha could be anything…Greek even came up at one point as again i have recently been watching the aforementioned YouTuber’s fiction videos (and if you’re in ancient Greece, get out while you can and have watched the niobe video, arrogance was the other big problem besides…Zeus, arrogance really spun a web there.) as you know i’ve likened her to Wonder Woman a few times too… and don’t you ever say “ethnicity is irrelevant because it’s never brought up”…”oh no that’s erasure of characters that could be used for particular thing is erasure” and used to use Flora as the example why, but this fandom is “You Can’t Do That!, If modeling doesn’t matter, then neither does story, and we hate that not from Earth argument because it makes no sense to us! They have to be this!” To me if it was that important to Rainbow we wouldn’t see Musa wearing and having a favorite color of yellow now would we? (I’m sure those Sunny Zenith outfits set somebody off because of that, fashion wise i’m more mad at Stella for allowing Bloom to wear bright red even though it’s not that much. ?)
I think this article I came across recently explains this phenomenon well: “Pixar Taught a Generation How to Have a Moral Imagination”. Here’s the best quote from it:
A lot of people in this fandom are kids or were kids when they first watched Winx Club. I think they never grew out of that need to see themselves as the characters. That’s why Winx characters aren’t complex, anyway. They’re skins (no pun intended) the audience is supposed to step into.
It could also explain why the fandom’s still so obsessed with Nabu. They became Aisha when she was dating him, so they internalized her emotions when he died. Now they can’t separate themselves from those emotions. That’s why so many of them say, “I love[d] Nabu,” not meaning “I loved him as a character” but “I was in love with him”.
I think that’s why it’s hard for me to relate to the fandom right now because I’m older, and I don’t look at the characters that way. I judge them based on the story and other stories I’ve read, not based on whether I like them or not. I don’t want or need to be like any of these characters, so even when they do things I don’t approve of, I’m able to look at them as a story in progress rather than judging them on the spot. In other words, I want to see who they become before I judge them. Characters change all the time.
I don’t know if the fandom will ever change, but they haven’t yet, so… ?♀️
This fandom is like a brick wall sometimes. Anyhow, myself and a friend of mine tend to do this with Bloom and write stories about old traits rarely being used. Typically in my stories I tend to go “of the Winx, Bloom is the most likely to remain a teacher at Alfea and what if her constantly drawing is why she rarely blows up at anybody” route. Currently doing an AU where in the Winx counterparts who are boys called the Dreamix Club are mentored by Bloom, Roxy, Musa and later on Flora (who i plan to place in the “Faragonda” role because she’s not a derogatory flower, she’s a buttercup and her being “Faragonda” gives her something more to do and makes her nature magic as strong as it should be by now…someone else is going to be the punching bag though, probably Stella’s counterpart because despite his name, he’s more lunar than solar, but his personality is where the solar naming comes from as opposed to using lunar magic). The AU is what happens if Earth never lost it’s magic and if Valtor actually won season 3. By Earth never losing it’s magic it allowed for Roxy’s counterpart to be present in the story from the beginning (because an animal magic user is quite useful, he specializes in spiders though) and Musa’s counterpart is used as the leader of the boys group. The name came after the Winx and remaining boys got to know each other (Valtor’s hiding the other 4 in a pocket dimension and he actually did do the “never strike Stella’s counterpart thing”) and Bloom wasn’t really sure what to call them because two sets of Winx could get confusing in the multiverse (and in this multiverse dreamix and Onyrix are canon to the main winx)…so the boys just picked one because they have a dream of a better land since Earth is still able to be defended, but they must return to the destroyed magix at the end of the day, because their clubhouse is all that remains.
I might actually write my AU where Nabu (and Roy) never existed, and Aisha dated Nex in Winx season 2 and 3. It would also give me a chance to expand the lore of Paladins. There are fragments of cool ideas for them buried in the show.
There’s tons of cool ideas to use buried in the show. Half of them come from the disaster that was season 6. Cool ideas, trash execution…like Power Ranger Anniversary seasons (except for Wild Force)
Well, I really am sad about it. I think that Nabu himself wasn’t an unlikable character despise being flat and a bit of a Mary Sue, but after scrolling through the fandom and seeing all the fans being all “Nabu will always be the best, and Aisha was only truly in love with Nabu” kind of stuff, I don’t know about you, but I will start not liking him as much. I think they really should give Aisha/Nex a shot! So bad that not everybody comes across your website… because, I can tell you, after reading a few of your posts and rewatching season 6, I fell in love with the power couple too!