Fanfic / Paradoxus

Clockwise from the upper left: Bloom, Galadwen, Stella, Trisha, Daphne Altalune, and Stacy. Artwork by Silvstardust.

"No puede existir la paz sin haber luchado por ella, no puede existir la gloria sin realizar sacrificios". ^TranslationThere can be no peace without a struggle, there can be no glory without sacrifices.

— excerpt from Paradoxus.

What would happen if the Burning Legion invaded Magix? Well, this fic is the answer and it's not pretty. Azeroth and Magix happen to make an interdimensional contact and, as a result, Magix catches the attention of the wrong kind of people. Isis is turned into Argus 2.0, Solaria's fairies and witches are hunted down because of their light magic, and two of the most powerful fairies to ever exist (Bloom and Stella) are assassinated by the Burning Legion's new Demonic Lady. A war of dimensional proportions ensues, alliances are forged, betrayals run rampant, and the Peggy Sue route seems to be the only option left.

Auch.

Paradoxus (by Bloom_Farella, Daybreak, Popsicle, and Crowgirl; plus Silvstardust as the official illustrator and Lila Gaela as an occasional aid) is an ongoing fan fic hosted on Wattpad.

It crossovers two franchises that superficially appear mismatching seeing they target different demographics. However, once one digs down enough, striking similarities will be found. To begin with, both World of Warcraft and Winx Club are fantasy with a dash of sci-fi worlds inhabited by magical-wielding people from different races. They are also part of dimensions with several other planets wandering out there and were brought to existence by gigantic deities who disappeared shortly after their creationist sprees — respectively, the Titans and the Great Dragon. And, of course, a twisted version of them: Sargeras and the Shadow Phoenix. Heck, even the concept of a planet/land ravaged by power-hungry, teamed-up forces of evil is common ground. Domino on Winx Club's part and Argus, the Outland, and Silvermoon (to name a few) on World of Warcraft's side. For a more specific example (and exploited by Paradoxus), Queen Daphne, the nymph, has a backstory pretty similar to that of Sylvanas Windrunner: destroyed homeland, cruelly killed by evil seconds in-command, and raised as bodiless spirits to haunt the place.

Alternatively, fairy Magical Girls meet a Crapsack World Role-Playing Game. A Dark Fic in all of its glory.

In a very World of Warcraft fashion, Paradoxus follows a number of parallel plots that interact with each other, branch off, and ultimately converge. Furthermore, it stars an Ensemble Cast made of both canonical and original characters — most of the latter being Fan-Created Offspring. The main trio consists of Stacy (Stella's daughter) and Bloom's two daughters: big sister Daphne Altalune^note  who, from here on, will be called by her middle name in order to avoid mistaking her with her aunt, Queen Daphne, the nymph and little sister Trisha.

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This fanfiction provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents:
  • Given how much the guy hates his mother's guts for abandoning him, Riven proves to be not only an absent father for Harmony, but it's even dismissive of her and it's implied he would have turned his back on her the moment he caught wind of Harmony's sexual orientation. That's why Harmony spends more time with her grandfather Ho-Boe and her "aunt" Galatea than she ever did with Riven.
  • Sky was once a loving, attentive father. Once. Bloom's death breaks him so much that he feels his life has lost all semblance of purpose. To cope, he withdraws into his duties so utterly, that he neglects his kid daughters. He stops being affectionate and doesn't even blink when they are turned into bitter, traumatized Child Soldiers. When he finally comes to his senses, it's far too late; his daughters don't want anything to do with him anymore.
  • Daniella Alsing, Stella's business partner, is an absolute monster toward her twin sons. To prevent her husband from leaving her, Daniella gets purposefully pregnant. When that failed, she lost all interest in the twins — it's not rare for her to leave them on their own for weeks with no babysitter and without stocking the fridge nor making sure they attend school. Years later, the twins forge a name of their own through their rock band. As narcissistic parents are bound to do, Daniella sucks on their fame by announcing to the media how much she loves her sons. Oh, and she constantly sets up scandals involving them so Stella's fashion company (now Daniella's) gets media attention.
  • Thankfully, this trope is averted with the major canonical characters, i.e., the six Winx plus Roxy, Queen Daphne, and Sylvanas. All of them are protective, caring mothers who do their best to raise their children in healthy environments and not impose their own worldviews onto them.
• Accusation Fic: Half the plot-relevant characters from Paradoxus think the Winx should have gotten rid of the Trix permanently. Because they didn't, the three witches kept coming back again and again like some kind of insane Whac-A-Mole game. Other villains, namely Lord Darkar and Valtor, were not only beaten but utterly destroyed (at the time this fic was conceived anyways). Do we see them re-emerging from their holes like cockroaches? Not at all. And the fic not only lampshades this, but plot-wise, the Trix team up with Eudora, help her invade Magix, and to crown it all, they take their revenge on Bloom through her youngest daughter and traumatize said daughter so much she gets lost in rage and pain.
• Adaptation Name Change:
  • Isis, Diaspro's homeworld, is renamed Gemsler to better fit the kingdom's Gemstone Assault magic.
  • The Bloomix transformation, whose name is openly disliked by the fandom, is called Armix in this fanfic. The explanation for the canonical name is that it was a spur of the moment due to the Winx not knowing the transformation already existed under a different name.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • For all the resentments they carry, Trish and Alty are the nicknames the sisters have assigned to each other. We see them being used in casual conversations and text messages. They are a hint that their relationship is still salvageable.
  • Bloom refers to her best friend Stella as "Solecito", which translates as "Little Sun".
• Altar Diplomacy: Bloom and Sky’s marriage helps lessen the animosity of Domino's people towards Eraklyon — the latter betrayed the former in its hour of most need. It doesn't hurt Sky himself played a great role in Domino's restoration. Though not all of Domino's denizens are that ready to forgive the betrayal that trapped them in stone for almost two decades and turned their home into a frozen wasteland. The couple had two daughters, one to be the crown princess of each kingdom. With whichever daughter who had the Dragon's Flame being Domino's heiress.
• Alternative Calendar: The diegetic calendar is counted in years after or before Domino's restoration. This means that dates are only mentioned when the characters are in the Magix dimension, never while in Azeroth. Dominis have also their own names for each month. The third chapter is the first in which this is done; by contrast, the prologue noticeably lacks it because it's meant to be a mysterious In Medias Res.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Eraklyon and Domino’s nobles are backstabbing scum who helped Eudora invade Magix and engage in all kinds of political corruption.
• Asimov's Three Kinds of Science Fiction: In the setting, there are two ways to travel through time —magically, which is incredibly difficult and requires the approval of demigod-like entities, and scientifically, which was created with the express purpose of circumventing the limitations of the former. Trisha and Tecna are the masterminds behind the scientific marvel that is the Nimbus spaceship. Some paragraphs are spent mentioning that it's Trisha who comes up and computes all of the calculations required to send the ship back in time, while it's Tecna who designs the spacecraft. The reason for such a ginormous effort is to solve a problem: Bloom and Stella have died and the Magix Dimension is in shambles thanks to the Burning Legion, so by preventing the two powerful fairies' deaths, they are expecting to improve the situation. By the time the plot proper starts, the Nimbus is just getting its finishing touches, so it's not a Gadget-type of story. Neither it's a Social-type since it's a military grade-only technology not available to the wider public nor used more than once.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Unless properly taught, runic magic is way too mana-draining to be consistently useful. Add to it that only people with Asser blood^note Solaria, Whisperia, and Domino's royal families can make use of it. Sucks Trisha and Altalune's mother, aunt, and grandmother are all either dead or missing in action — because, whenever they try to use runes, they get temporarily paralyzed from mana depletion. Runic magic can, for all of these shortcomings, be used to predict the future (though vaguely), fuel overpowered elemental attacks, and produce epic weapons when carved into them.
• Bilingual Bonus: Exaggerated. Paradoxus is written in Spanish, but from time to time the characters talk in Icelandic (Domino's in-universe native language) or German, hum songs in English, and thank the fans of their band in French. A good portion of the epigraphs at the start of the chapters are written in either of those languages. Perks of having several authors, huh?
• Black-and-Gray Morality: Black, gray, and every shade in between.
  • While the characters trying to avoid their dimensions succumbing into chaos have committed plenty of questionable deeds for the greater good's sake, most of them don't indulge in unnecessary carnage or gratuitous cruelty for personal gain/enjoyment. Justified since they have been hardened (or already were) from the horrors of the dimensional war they are waging and fighting in. Doubly justified in that they are losing the war and, thus, cannot go through the idealistic route of helping and saving everyone. Furthermore, a few of these characters have had to thread among power-hungry, influential political figures. These 'good guys' are also deeply flawed individuals.
    • As per World of Warcraft's tradition, Sylvanas, Galadwen, and Iladris look down on non-elf races, especially humans. Because of their influence, Bloom's daughters also sport this view and the only reason they aren't hypocrites is that everyone considers fairies as an elven race.
    • The Tyrannus Division prioritizes the mission's goal over basically everything else. Deviating resources to save every goddamned victim is deemed as a waste (there are too many of them and the personnel is too scarce) that won't help win the war. Most of the cast belongs or is associated with this military branch.
    • Nymph precognition unveiled to Queen Daphne not only about Bloom and Stella's deaths, but the inevitability of the matter. She, along with Flora of all people and Galadwen, used that knowledge to pull the strings on Trisha, Altalune, and Stacy's lives so thoroughly that the main plotline and several secondary ones happened because of them! If that doesn't scandalize you, keep in mind Altalune and Trisha (especially Trisha) suffered A LOT due to their manipulations, even to the point of getting part of their traumas because of that.
  • However, the characters pointed out as the villains of the story have gone as far as to:
    • Eudora killed two women (Bloom and Stella) she had nothing personal against in front of the former's kid daughter just to get rid of the threat the latter represented. Furthermore, Eudora Would Hurt a Child and left said child with a life-threatening injury and unnecessarily deprived of her mother.
    • Eudora has unleashed an Undead Plague so vile both the original Scourge and Sylvanas' Blight pale in comparison. All semblance of self-identity is utterly erased (interpret it as your soul is impossible to recover by any means), the victims die even more painfully, and the environment's life is sucked out faster and more perniciously than any previous strain hitherto conceived. And she unleashed it on dimensions (which includes several planets) never impacted by the Plague in the first place.
    • The Council of Rocalucce is so rotten to the core it's entirely to blame for much of the conflicts in the story (interplanetary, terrorist, and civil wars alike) — including Eudora's devastating impact on Magix. Nearly all of the Councilors abuse the immense power they've stockpiled for selfish gain and have bribed, blackmailed, and threatened their way out of prison several times. Many of them are rapists, slave traders, and pedophiles as well.
• Blood-Splattered Innocents: kid Trisha witnesses Bloom and Stella’s death and, of course, gets all splattered by their blood. This causes her to develop a trauma; in her broken psyche, her hands will forever be stained with her mother’s blood. A symbol of her perceived weakness and her greatest failure.
• Canon Illustrations:
  • The Fan Art made by Silvstardust, who was not part of the roster of creators at the time, was adopted by the four authors as official illustrations of the characters. Her artwork can be seen on the fic's cover (depicting Galadwen, Bloom, Stella, Trisha, Altalune, and Stacy) and in an entry devoted to canon and fan art of the story (it being a Juxtaposed Halves Shot of Bloom and Trisha). The illustrations are done in the Winx art style and get down little details such as the fact neither of Bloom's daughters have pupils. They also depict the girls' weapons as per the World of Warcraft canon.
  • Over the years since the fanfic's conception, Popsicle has drawn some Side-Story Bonus Art of the characters. One example is a Family Portrait of Characterization of Bloom and her kids. Bloom is a very loving mother, so she's proudly wrapping her young daughters with her arms and looking proud, the shy Trisha is embracing her teddy bear and looks timidly at the camera, and the bombastic Altalune is making a V-sign with her fingers and smirking.
• Cerebus Roller Coaster: Downplayed. The prologue of this fic has Altalune waking from a Flashback Nightmare from when she found her mother and Stella's corpses and her sister's unconscious body at the brink of death. She then promises herself she shall Screw Destiny and save them and is comforted by a friend in a heart-warming moment. The next three chapters are more light-hearted and have their fair share of comedy — Sylvanas is saved from the Jailer by Galadwen and later we follow Bloom's antics when she is forcefully teleported to Azeroth and befriends Sylvanas and Galadwen. Some chapters later, the narration jumps back to Altalune and the present and the signs of Magix not being a Sugar Bowl world get more nuanced. However, the reader is still sheltered from the worst of it because the characters travel to a time where there was still peace. The ugly truth is only thrown in the reader's face in all of its Crapsack World glory when Altalune gets trapped into the past (she will eventually fade out) and the characters return to the present to fight a Hopeless War against the Burning Legion. From there onwards, the mood doesn't recover. The story hits its darkest point when after being tortured by the Trix, Trisha gets an overdose of angst, bites back, and starts her Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Crapsaccharine World: In Winx Club, Magix is an upbeat, light-hearted Sugar Bowl. In Paradoxus, Magix only appears to be one while in peacetimes, but after Bloom and Stella's deaths, it unravels as an outright Crapsack World. Because, well, when a war of dimensional scale breaks, it's pretty difficult to keep the Sugar Bowl appearance. It doesn't help that the very corrupt Council of Rocalucce and the nobility of several kingdoms were rewarded with power by helping Eudora invade Magix and, consequently, have grown complacent enough to drop the façade. In peacetimes, they made an effort to pretend that, respectively, they worked for the three schools' best interests and were helping the recently crowned queens rule their planets better.
• Dark Fic: It would be tempting to say Paradoxus is a Darker and Edgier and Bloodier and Gorier of just Winx Club given the latter has never shown blood, the only Killed Off for Real death is a tad ambiguous, and though constantly forced to face the season's Big Bad, the characters stay happy and with good mental health. By contrast, World of Warcraft doesn't shy away from blood, some of its characters are varying degrees of insane and broken, has killed characters both temporarily and permanently, and overall has a more somber tone. However, even by World of Warcraft's standards, Paradoxus is dark and bloody. Here are some examples:
  • For starters, Bloom and Stella's deaths. World of Warcraft has never killed its beloved main heroes in such a cold-blooded fashion. They are always heroic deaths or, if push comes to shove, usually characters witnessing their deaths are either too young to remember or grown-up enough to cope with it better. Bloom and Stella died defenseless because their magic was canceled by the Shaab Stone. Bloom and Stella died at the hands of Diaspro, a person whom they wronged and got almost fatally wronged back yet they forgave and left alive. Bloom and Stella were assassinated in front of Bloom's little and innocent daughter who, at the time, was 10 years old and uselessly tried to protect them with her tiny bow. If that's not dark enough, said little daughter sustained a fatal injury and only survived thanks to the Dragon's Flame healing magic and time travel ripple effects.
  • Barring the Weaponized Offspring of some non-human races, World of Warcraft has never portrayed human nor humanoid Child Soldiers. In fact, even the gameplay renders the children untouchable and if they get injured or die, it's never made explicit. In Paradoxus, the protagonist trio has been exposed to and fought in the dimensional war shortly after their mother's demises. That is, twelve years old at most. The three of them have sustained intensive training, had their first kills at an age most girls are busy with puberty, received multiple severe injuries ranging from life-threatening to amputations (Trisha lost her eye, Altalune lost her hand), and overall have had a taste of why being motherless and in the middle of a war is hell.
• Death by Origin Story: Bloom and Stella's tragic demise set in motion several plot events such as:
  • Trisha pretty much inventing time travel^note  by scientific means, that is. Magical time travel already exists, but it's restricted to demigod beings such as nymphs and the bronze dragonflights. Can you blame her? The girl misses her mother and has had to suffer several traumatic events in the war from a young age without her protection. The same applies to why Altalune wants to go to the past. Stacy's reason also includes finding a way to prevent or at least lessen the impact of the genocide of Solaria's light fairies and witches.
  • Trisha, Altalune, and Stacy risking their necks in order to obtain the second-to-top fairy transformations in the Paradoxus fanon. Trisha and Altalune faced the hydra in Domino's Royal Palace to obtain the Bloomix while Stacy risked her magic in the quest for the Sirenix. And they had to do it while still being teenagers (their mothers gained those transformations as young adults).
  • Queen Daphne, the nymph, unethical and manipulative ways towards her family's life and feelings which caused them severe trauma in the process. However, if she wasn't willing to take radical measures, there wouldn't be a Magical Dimension anymore and everyone would have died or been corrupted by either Fel or Eudora's Plague. In her case, it wasn't only Bloom and Stella's deaths that prompted her to act like this, but also Altalune, Trisha, and Stacy's.
• Decoy Protagonist: The third and fourth chapters make it seem as if Bloom is The Protagonist or, at least, the first main character until her daughter Altalune takes over the role. Especially as Bloom is introduced investigating a string of attacks by the Burning Legion on Eraklyon; her magical bonding with Galadwen not helping matters either. Alas, it's her daughters whom the plot revolves around; in the fifth chapter, we go back to Altalune's P.O.V. and it's revealed that the main plot unravels from her and her sister's travel back in time.
• Demographic-Dissonant Crossover: World of Warcraft is an MMORPG targeted to males between the ages of 18 and 28. Meanwhile, Winx Club is a Western Magical Girl cartoon aimed at females ranging from 4 to 14 years old.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Barring Sylvanas, all of the main characters of World of Warcraft either appear just once in very minor roles (Tyrande, Anduin, Genn, Nathanos, Lorthemar), are merely mentioned in one of Sylvanas or Galadwen's musings, or are outright ignored. Valeera might be a middle point, what with being Stacy's mentor in the ways of the Rogues, but has yet to make a significant contribution to the plot.
  • Also, the Winx girls (well, they are women now) themselves have suffered this fate. Bloom was a Decoy Protagonist for a little while, Stella and Musa's antics are shown now and then (though the latter's role has been growing over time), Tecna has only entered the stage to fix a mess with Alfea's Simulator, Aisha showed her face to speculate about the time travelers' identities, and Roxy's entrance is long overdue. The trope is averted with Flora since she's revealed as one of the Chessmasters of the story.
• The Determinator: All of the Oðrsson females. Playfully lampshaded by King Oritel, who married one of those women, while he looks at his family's portrait and has a goodbye talk to his oldest granddaughter before she parts to the past.
  Oritel: Ese dragón de bronce no os tenía en cuenta a vosotras. Condenadas Oðrsson, si no lo consiguen a las buenas, lo consiguen de la manera que sea. Tu madre estaría orgullosa de vosotras, tenéis su espíritu. ^TranslationThat bronze dragonflight didn't take you two into account. Damned [female] Oðrsson, if you don't get it the easy way, you get it no matter what. Your mother would be proud of you two, both of you have her spirit.
• Didn't Think This Through: Altalune's plan to save her mother and Stella is, essentially, sneak behind them, render them unconscious with copious amounts of chloroform, and keep them in the ship until past the day they were assassinated. If this was a normal Winx Club fanfic, it would have probably worked just fine, but she's forgetting three minuscule details. One, Bloom and Stella are more powerful than Altalune and company, so kidnapping them is not exactly a piece of cake. Two, there's nothing stopping Eudora and Diaspro to wait it out and kill them another day, while Altalune and company have a time-limited sojourn in the past. Three, even if the Winx are now unpaid, volunteer professors in Alfea, both Bloom and Stella are queens who have to administer their kingdoms. Therefore, Altalune and company are relying on sheer dumb luck to catch those two in Alfea and alone. Why Altalune? Why? Really, it's better if you let the planning part to your sister. Not even your mother was this bad. And you're surprised it failed?
• Elemental Rivalry: Altalune is an Ice Person and Trisha plays with fire. They are sisters and have a Cain and Abel relationship in which they constantly quarrel, throw insults, and often come to blows. It gets even more nuanced (and angsty) after they get Character Development — Trisha pulls a Face–Heel Turn as a result of too much emotional pain while Altalune realizes the shitty sister she's been to Trisha and wants to save her. So, now they are on opposing sides. Kind of.
• Emotional Powers: Fairies need positive emotions (and good mental health) to fuel their magic. In the Winx Club canon, this was more of an informed drawback. The authors of Paradoxus, however, exploit the idea so their main characters (Altalune, Trisha, and Stacy) actually struggle to call on their magical affinities and fairy transformations because of too much trauma from the war. That's the reason we almost always see them relying on the abilities they learned in Azeroth, where magic is more about channeling external sources than drawing from oneself. Only when Character Development kicked in, were they able to access their fairy magic.
• Epigraph:
  • The prologue opens with a bit of dialogue between two Named by the Adaptation, OC Stand-Ins who by the time the fanfic takes place, are both long dead —Hellis, nymph of the sun, and Nótt Skoð, nymph of time and the void. They are talking about how You Can't Fight Fate, a Central Theme of the fic. Their inclusion also serves to establish three facts that are mostly reread bonuses. One, the Great Dragon's nymphs are going to be of key relevance throughout the plot. Two, it reaffirms that time travel kickstarts the plot but also foreshadows that it's part of the reason why things are the way they are. And three, it brings attention to an important detail, that Nótt's reincarnation (aka Morrigan, Queen Daphne's daughter) is an important behind-the-scenes player.
  • Unlike the prologue's, the first chapter's introductory quote is not attributed to any character and it's much more straightforward in its connection to the fanfic's plot and Central Theme. It crystallizes every important character's hopes that going back in time would solve their problems. Trisha and Altalune are determined to save their mom from an untimely death, Sylvanas wants to protect her people while staying away from her hellish afterlife, and Aen'da seeks an ally against the Burning Legion.
  • The second chapter begins with another unattributed quote that makes reference not to the central theme but to the main characters' wants throughout the plot. They all wish to preserve all the fragile, loved things or people they lost in a previous timeline thanks to the chaos brought by the Burning Legion. In Trisha, Altalune, and Stacy's cases, it's their mothers. For Galadwen, the aim is to prevent as much destruction as possible by eradicating the demons with a united elven front.
  • The third chapter's introductory quote that it's indeed Bloom's encounter with Galadwen that sets the events of the plot—they are two who were fated to meet. It makes Galadwen aware of Eudora already making moves on the Magix dimension and makes her realize the true Aspect of Fire is not a bonafide elf but a fairy carrying a Titan-like deity's power.
  • Chapter 04: Subverted in the sense that all chapters prior, the prologue included, open with a quote or bit of dialogue. This one doesn't, implying that the meaning of the third chapter's epigraph still applies. Since Bloom already met Galadwenl, the only other relevant thing that happens is Galadwen's accidental bond with Trisha through her mother. In other words, the "starting point" might be not what it seems at first glance.
  • The fifth chapter's opening line aptly describes the Oðrsson sisters' The Determinator attitude toward the Legion's invasion and their mother's demise. They are unwilling to resign to their and the dimension's doomed fates without their most powerful guardian fairies; they also rebel at the thought of their destroyed family. It also shows that, given how much they've lost and been through, the sisters would rather die with a bang while trying to improve their situation than just accept it all quietly.
• Establishing Character Moment: Aen'da is introduced in the prologue as a powerful yet awkward Kaldorei/Sin'dorei hybrid. Proof of the former is that with one shoot from her bow Delune she can access the Maw where Sylvanas, thrice sent there, is without worrying about not going back. The latter is accomplished the moment she opens her mouth and doesn't quite know how to explain to Sylvanas why she's rescuing her from there or who she is. She admits not having prepared a speech.
• Evil Versus Evil: The ' Trisha versus Eudora' conflict turned into this after the former crossed the Despair Event Horizon and started a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Said rampage is outright villainous regardless of how justified it is and how much the people on the receiving end had it coming (those bastards betrayed their dimension for power and facilitated Eudora's invasion). Both of them have a high body count, lay waste while caring little for whoever gets caught in the crossfire, and have killed and tortured people to further their own twisted (respectively) goals/ideals. What morally lightens the former's actions and renders them a very dark gray is the fact that those atrocities succeeded in turning the tides of the war in the good guys' favor where everything else failed. Besides, it's not like she enjoys the suffering she has brought. She's merely too overcome with mourning and rage to think straight. And, to nail the coffin, it turns out she was subtly maneuvered to do so by someone else.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Eudora vastly overpowers every one of the heroines regardless of which franchise they are from or whether they are original characters. Any attempt to beat her, either idiotically solo or in a group, would end in a humiliating defeat. Exemplified by Altalune when she decided to stay in the past for a chance of beating Eudora in exchange for her own continued existence (pesky self-correcting timelines) — she promptly gets curb-stomped so badly she would have died if not for Queen Daphne and Galadwen's intervention. This trope is made even more glaring when it's revealed not even Bloom, the bearer of the magic that created the Magix dimension, ever had a possibility against Eudora.
• Fan-Created Offspring: Paradoxus features the daughters of canonical characters from the two franchises (as well as those of original characters) as recurring characters at the very least. And, of course, the main trio is made of these.
  • As for Winx Club: Bloom and Sky had Trisha and Altalune because Queen Daphne was rendered sterile as a product of her years as a bodiless spirit and both Domino and Eraklyon needed an heir. Stella and Brandon got Stacy then Stella found how terribly painful is to give birth and decided to stop there. Aisha and Nex had Niobe then Aisha had the same realization as Stella and, besides, Nex fell ill a few years later. Flora and Helia had Gilliam and, because Flora was made aware of what was about to happen to Magix, she decided not to bring another one. Tecna and Timmy got Zoe and that was enough for them. Musa and Riven had Harmony but probably didn't make more babies since Musa realized their relationship wasn't working and it would be a toxic environment for a child. Roxy and Manuel got Rosalie in what was probably just a coincidence since Roxy is not a Bloomix fairy. Queen Daphne was, after several attempts, ultimately able to conceive, so she had Morrigan with Thoren.
  • As for World of Warcraft: Sylvanas Windrunner's case is a variation of the trope because, as an undead high elf, it's biologically impossible for her to bear a child. However, she can certainly adopt defenseless babies from out there — and she did. Baby Iladris was going to be sacrificed by her own mother in the hopes of reaching their not-so-distant relative Kael'thas Sunstrider. Galadwen came to the rescue but, after imprisoning the mother, didn't know what to do with the baby and just went to knock on Sylvanas' door. In a bot of impulsivity, Sylvanas decided to keep the baby and raise her as her daughter because, as it turns out, the Banshee Queen wanted to form a family when she was alive.
  • As for the relevant original characters' offspring: Daniella (Stella's partner in the fashion industry) had two twins Leonard and Maximillian, the first of whom serves as a love interest for Trisha. Finally, Vidia, who is one of Trisha and Stacy's closest friends, is the daughter of a nobleman from Eraklyon and a fairy from Earth.
• Fantastic Racism: Given this is a World of Warcraft fanfic, this trope is all over the place. In fact, people from Magix are the only population that averts this trope. The rest of the magical species plus Earth humans hate each other's guts.
  • Sylvanas hatred comes from the fact it was a human, Arthas Menethil, who destroyed her precious homeland and condemned her to the Undead, thus sentencing her to a hellish existence in a limbo between life and death when she dies. Moreover, he kept her in a spiritual form, far from her corpse, and mind-controlled her until she freed herself. If that wasn't enough, humans look down and are awfully prejudiced against her new faction, the Forsaken. In the Paradoxus continuity, it was Genn Grayman, a half-human, who killed yet again, preventing her from seizing the Val'kyrs' power. Sylvanas gleefully murders him again later and holds no contempt about rising human casualties from the death to add them to the Forsaken forces.
  • Iladris, Sylvanas' adopted daughter, has, well, adopted her mother's worldview so she also disdains human beings, though maybe not as scathingly.
  • Galadwen's reason to despise humans is less about her being on the receiving end of their cruelty and more about her getting a bigger picture thanks to her interdimensional travels (she's been at it for at least half a millennia) and finding humans are always the same each time. Each human civilization she has encountered has been belligerent, brutish, environment-destructive, and xenophobe. Moreover, the humans of the Earth's dimension actively hunt down and slaughter fairies (a kind of elf in this fic) and other magical creatures out of prejudice whenever they were aware of their existence. Another nail in the coffin was that she found the humans of Azeroth had subjugated the once-proud Kaldorei race. Kaldorei elves surpass them in both experience and wisdom yet the Alliance's leader is the human faction. So, Galadwen regards humans as forms of life even lower than most animals and doesn't care at all for their well-being. She may be a Goddess' Chosen One, but she won't lift a finger to help a human in distress not even if their civilizations get destroyed by the multidimensional conflict she tries to stop.
  • Some humans on Earth actively hunt fairies/witches down to imprison them and kill them right there if feeling merciful out of religious prejudice. You see, since magic on Earth was restored, it broke the monotheist religions' base of beliefs. After nearly a decade, there are people who, unable to deny their existence, demonize and dehumanize fairies and witches. It doesn't help that the majority of magic users (and the most powerful) are women and those religions don't have the greatest of relationships with women. Remember the witch hunts from the Middle Ages? Well, they are an unearthed trend now.
• First-Episode Resurrection: In the first chapter, Sylvanas, after her canonical assassination by Greymane, is given the opportunity to return to the point before she was crowned Warchief by a mysterious time traveler in exchange for her loyalty and trust.
• Flash Forward Fic: Given this is a crossover, the exact amount of time in the future varies from one franchise to the other. But, overall, it's enough for the Winx Club to have spawned and raised teenage-to-young-adult daughters or, in Sylvanas' case, adopted one.
  • Paradoxus diverges from World of Warcraft at some point between the end of the "Warlords of Draenor" expansion and the Battle for the Broken Shore. Since Sylvanas doesn't become Warchief, a good chunk of the ensuing canon events never occur. So the tense peace between the Horde and the Alliance extends for a longer period of time. When Magix makes a rather random contact with Azeroth, 150 years have passed since then. The actual present in Paradoxus is set about 30-40 years after that (at least if we go by Iladris' age).
  • The time we have flash-forwarded in Magix (from Winx Club) is easier to keep track of. When Bloom gets forcefully teleported to Azeroth, it's been 5 years after Domino's restoration so it's about a year after the sixth season^note  Paradoxus doesn't take into account later seasons because they weren't aired then. The course of time is slower in Magix than in Azeroth, so between first contact with Azeroth and the actual present only 18 years rolled by.
• Flashback Nightmare: Altalune receives one of these in the prologue, just before she leaves to start the events of the main plotline. This unpleasant dream of hers is also a Past Experience Nightmare and a Guilt-Induced Nightmare at the same time — it was about her childhood trauma when she found her mother and Stella's corpses along with what she thought was her sister's. Truth be told, little Trisha truly was on the brink of death.
• Foreshadowing:
  • "Chapter 03":
    • Bloom is led to the point where she gets forcibly teleported to Outland by a quickly moving shadow.
    • Domino's Elder stating that newborn Altalune is not fated to become Domino's future queen indicates that this role will be filled by her younger sister Trisha, whose conception we learn of in the next chapter.
  • "Chapter 04": Bloom discovers that she's pregnant with Trisha through her blood pact with Galadwen, meaning that her youngest daughter is also bound to Elune's chosen.
• Forgotten Phlebotinum: The five time-travelers might need reminding about the Memory Stones. The paradoxes preventing them to achieve their goals may have been still in place, but it would've been far easier and war budget-friendly to use the Memory Stones presented in Winx Club's seventh season to get to the past. Nevertheless, it's justified since Paradoxus started to be written at a time the seventh season wasn't even rumored, and thusly, it would have been a pain for the authors to change such a key Plot Point in favor of humoring the new canon.
• Framing the Guilty Party: Bloom's sudden disappearance in the third chapter sends both Domino and Eraklyon into a tizzy. Due to Eraklyon's civil war against warlord Yoshinoya, he's their main and only suspect, which leads to his execution at Queen Daphne's hands. Unfortunately for him, while he's guilty of terrorism and kidnapping, he's got nothing to do with Bloom's situation; that's Eudora Budhartil's fault.
• Fusion Fic: The Setting Merge flavor, to be specific. Azeroth and Magix now just happen to exist in the same multi-dimensional universe, it's just they are too far apart that, normally, they would've never interacted at all. Normally. Here we have Galadwen and Eudora's constant interdimensional traveling and meddling and Queen Daphne's time travel shenanigans, so things are definitely not normal (more like deranged). Now, there are already some canon points that keep this idea within the realm of possibility: there are elves in both franchises, interdimensional traveling is confirmed and used in both of them, and both of them have entities capable of creating entire dimensions (the First Ones for World of Warcraft and the Great Dragon for Winx Club). Though it's worth noting the Great Dragon is not equal to the First Ones, but to the Titans (like Sargeras), which helps to even out the power scales and avoid a Power Creep, Power Seep scenario and allows for the teaming-up plot this crossover roots from.
• Generational Trauma: Sky's parents have a loveless marriage, in which Samara was forced to marry Erendor because he was Eraklyon's soon-to-be king and Erendor only ever saw her as a prize and a way to strengthen the crown's ties with her aristocrat family. This kind of thinking —that people are only valuable depending on their nobility rank— is so ingrained in Erakli culture and the royal family that Samara and Erendor don't really care about Sky. They raise him believing that he's only worthy of love and attention when he's fulfilling his royal duties and ignoring his own wishes. Then Sky meets Bloom, who cares about him for being him and not a crown prince. He rebels against his parents and latches onto her to the point that his self-worth is dependent on Bloom. When Bloom dies, he falls into a deep depression and dissociates from the world, only going on autopilot and severely neglecting his daughters. They are literally sent into war zones to train and he doesn't bat an eye. Altalune, his eldest daughter and the crown princess, finally explodes when their first conversation in years is about how she has to marry the heir of this Erakli nobleman. She and her little sister Trisha spent their teenage years yearning for the affectionate father they once knew but now they have stopped loving Sky. Even then, both of them believe themselves superior to others because they are royalty.
• Gotta Kill Them All: Trisha, once she loses it after her sister’s death. She stars a vengeful rampage with one goal in mind — to exterminate every single person that has contributed to Bloom (her mother) and Stella’s untimely deaths. This, of course, includes Eudora herself.
• Harmful to Minors: Stella and Bloom's assassination is this to Trisha, Altalune, and Stacy. Trisha witnessed the whole affair from the exact moment where Stella and Bloom's magical powers were nullified to their ruthless murder, therefore shattering her (justified) childish idea of her mother being invincible. She also tried to protect them using her bow, but predictably failed. And if that wasn't enough, she too nearly died in that incident. Altalune and Stacy later found the fresh corpses — pools of blood and gruesome injuries included. At the time, Trisha was ten, Altalune was eleven, and Stacy was twelve.
• Heart Is Where the Home Is: The ninth chapter establishes Trisha and Stacy's betrothal situations as opposites.
  • Stacy is encouraged to play this trope straight seeing that her crush, Oropher Whisperwind, is the crown prince of Alpheim, while she's heiress to Solaria. Either of them would have to renounce their realms for it to work, something both are unwilling to do. Trisha advises her to kinda follow in her mother's steps; to meet some Solari plebeian who is not as arrogant as Oropher and truly loves her.
  • On the other hand, Trisha is engaged to the son of Lady Taylor Eirsdottir Oðrsson, Duchess of Viniitar because he's earned the favor of the corrupt Domino's Council. In her own words, it's just a way to climb the nobility social ladder because she's the Domini crown princess, so Boomer is implied to be a jerkass. Whom Trisha loves is Leonard, an Earthling wizard. She still plays the trope sort of straight because Leonard is her Childhood Friend and she's spent much more time on Earth (and Eraklyon) than in Domino even before the tragedy because Altalune was supposed to be Domino's heiress.
• The Hecate Sisters: Played straight with the three characters pulling the strings behind most of the plot. Galadwen is the adventurous, lively Maiden who travels across time and dimensions to fulfill her role as Elune's Chosen One at all costs and still looks for her place in the world. Flora is the caring, compassionate Mother who is nevertheless willing to take difficult decisions to preserve what she loves. Queen Daphne is the wise, unsentimental Crone who was molded by the memories of her past nymph incarnations and the Sadistic Choice she's presented with to save the Magix dimension.
• A Hero Is Born: The third chapter's opening scene is that of Queen Daphne, Marion, Sky, and Thoren in a waiting room while Bloom gives birth to Altalune, one of the heroines of the story and Domino's heir presumptive. As it's customary for Domino in this fic, as soon as she's born, the princess' runes are read by one of the realm's elders—they conclude that her path will diverge from that of her mother and that the one who'd inherit the crown hasn't been born yet. The trope is Played With as this is not the actual beginning of the fic, although it's one of the plot-relevant, chronologically earliest events.
• Hero Looking for Group:
  • Galadwen's whole shtick is that she trots the universe's many dimensions and timelines seeking elven populations to unify against the threat posed by the Burning Legion. In a 'The Outsider Befriends the Best' way, she focuses her efforts on faction leaders. The ones she pursues the most are what she calls the Elven Elemental Aspects which, while not her True Companions, are among her most valuable allies. This includes Sylvanas Windrunner (Aspect of Dearh and Galadwen's sarcastic Lancer) and Bloom Oðrson (Aspect of Fire who ends up being Galadwen's ambassador with the Magix Dimension). Additionally, there are Flora and Queen Daphne of Domino, with whom she pulls the strings of the plot from behind the shadows.
  • Queen Daphne remembers the original timeline, a Bad Future in which everyone she loves dies and the Burning Legion destroys the Magix Dimension. As a result of this experience as well as her duties as Nymph of Magix, she seeks allies to help prevent things from worsening. Her first Secret-Keeper is her reliable husband Thoren, her Living Emotional Crutch. She picks Flora because, out of all the Winx, she's the most level-headed to resign herself that they can't thwart Bloom and Stella's deaths. When she meets Galadwen, their greater good-geared mentalities cause them to recruit each other in their respective plans. Finally, when her daughter Morrigan is revealed to be the newest incarnation of the Nymph of Time, Queen Daphne tells her the truth and even consults with her about which events in the timeline are immutable.
• Home Guard: Supposedly, the students of Alfea (fairies), Cloud Tower (witches), and Red Fountain (specialists) are trained to be the guardians of their homeworlds and, by extension, of the entire dimension. Unfortunately, having their regulating entity, the Council of Rocalucce, utterly corrupted by power-hungry bastards means these students get far-from-optimal training. When the dimensional war against the Burning Legion knocked on their doors, they either deserted or were promptly killed. That’s why the Tyrannus Division was formed.
• How We Got Here: The first four chapters are devoted to partially explaining why Altalune and Trisha have arrived at the conclusion that taking drastic measures is the only way to prevent Altalune's nightmare in the prologue from happening.
  • First chapter: The narration goes back 150 years into the past and switches the POV to that of Sylvanas'. Through her, the key figure that eventually connects Magix with Azeroth is introduced.
  • Second chapter: The first contact between Magix and Azeroth is shown; 100 years after Sylvanas is restored to life, Galadwen has been dimension-hopping nonstop seeking potential allies. This leads her to eventually stumble on Magix, where she immediately detects the powerful magical aura of the Dragon's Flame, of which the bearer at the time is Queen Marion of Domino, pregnant with either of her daughters. 24 years later, she goes there again, where she sees the Winx being interviewed about Earth's newly-restored magic.
  • The third chapter explains how Bloom is made aware of Azeroth's existence and, (implied) through her, the rest of Magix. It's also confirmed that Magix has already attracted the Burning Legion's attention, with three Erakli cities having already been attacked with extreme prejudice.
  • Galadwen and Sylvanas exchange relevant information about their respective dimensions with Bloom in the fourth chapter. That conversation culminates in Bloom striking an alliance with Galadwen and Sylvanas about Queen Daphne's eerily similar backstory. It's partially explained how the Oðrsson sisters get involved—Trisha, an unborn fetus in her mother's womb, unknowingly gets included in Galadwen and Bloom's pact.
  • Subverted. The previous chapters of the fic have centered around slowly revealing who the corpses in Altalune's nightmare belong to and why she's so hung up on that plan of hers to fix everything. In the fifth, the narration suddenly cuts back to her point of view—in as much as can be said for a narrator who briefly jumps to other characters' perspectives from time to time—while there are still many unanswered questions. Furthermore, both the actual plan (time travel) and her motivations are revealed by her musings here as opposed to during the flashback.
• Improbable Taxonomy Skills: In the second chapter, Galadwen refers to every human population she's ever met during her interdimensional travels as Homo sapiens even though she hasn't visited Earth's dimension yet nor she's the kind of character to bother to study human phylogenetics that much. Galadwen has a curious and even scientific disposition most of the time, however, she's also a Fantastic Racist biased against all non-elves and finds humans too brutish and violent for her interests. All in all, her qualifying all humans as hominids in the sapiens genre is more of a shortcut to showcase how, from her perspective, human beings are all the same.
• Improbably Female Cast:
  • ALL of the children the Winx had are female. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. Justified, though, because all of the Winx were gifted (or, in Queen Daphne's case, already had) a spark of the Dragon's Flame. It's stated in-universe said power is passed on matrilineally, so every person with even a mere spark of it is going to have a female firstborn. Of course, only Bloom's daughters will actually inherit it, but her friends and sister have been affected by the Flame nevertheless.
  • And that's not even counting the all-female, personal army that the Vakdrak are.
  • Or that the mentors of the protagonist trio are all women — Sylvanas trained Trisha to be a Dark Ranger, Galadwen oversaw Trisha's studies about time traveling, Veleera showed Stacy the ways of the Rogue, and Snotra made a fine swordswoman of Altalune.
  • Or the villain herself, Eudora, who joined forces with the Trix sisters and Diaspro.
• In Medias Res: The prologue begins explaining why Altalune and her little sister Trisha are about to embark on a risky plan to somehow prevent their mother's murder. It's not known how or why Bloom died, much less how they are going to accomplish it or why Trisha thinks Altalune's plan is foolish. Furthermore, we don't know who the three women watching from afar are.
• Intercontinuity Crossover: Paradoxus is an exemplary case of Rule 50 because, as stated in the page description, it mixes two franchises that definitely don't belong to the same continuity and don't even target similar audiences — Winx Club and World of Warcraft. Again, YMMV about whether it's a Weird Crossover, but its authors have made quite the effort to mesh both universes as seamlessly as you can get given the circumstances.
• Killed Off for Real: Played with. Some deaths will cause the branching of the timeline so two alternate ones end up being created. One where the characters died and another, out of the time travelers' reach, where the characters lived. Such is a nearly impossible feat and, in either case, the characters are effectively killed off and will remain like that. Other deaths, however, are mere collateral damages and thus, can subvert this trope if someone bothers themself to travel to the past and prevent said deaths from happening. Bloom and Stella's are the former case and play this trope straight. Meanwhile, Altalune, Trisha, and Stacy's are also a subversion since they died in the original timeline and were saved by Queen Daphne's medling.
• Left Field Description: In the prologue, Altalune's Nightmare Sequence ends with her bolting upright in her bed, panting. Her heartbeats are compared to a jazz musician playing the piano —an everchanging rhythm and a drumming of keys.
  "los latidos al estilo de un pianista de jazz, estrellando los dedos sobre las teclas"
• Left for Dead: Played straight two times and, predictably, a mistake that later came back to bite the perpetrators in the ass.
  • Diaspro never bothered to check if ten-year-old Trisha and Bloom were as lifeless as Stella. Sure, she checked if the queen of Solaria got a free ticket to the afterlife, but that was because she was her primary target. Trisha and Bloom, on the other hand, were simply collateral damage.
  • Eudora herself not bothering to check if Altalune was dead only serves to show her overconfidence. It's justified, though, since Altalune didn't even manage to scratch Eudora during their fight, proving herself as not being a menace to the Demon Lady. Guess whose time travel managed to change the future from a Crapsack World to a World Half Full?
• A Lighter Shade of Gray:
  • The protagonist trio (Altalune, Trisha, and Stacy) is this in comparison to the true masterminds behind it all (Galadwen, Flora, and Queen Daphne). All of them are on the side of the good guys and don't want the destruction of Magix, but the latter three will bite the bullet and manipulate even their loved ones if that's what is needed to save their corresponding dimensions.
  • This trope is later subverted with Trisha, who goes from light gray to very dark gray (arguably even black at some points).
• Meanwhile Scene: Right as Bloom is starting her journey to Silvermoon with Sylvanas and Galadwen in the fourth chapter, the narration cuts to Queen Daphne and Sky interrogating Yoshinoya, whom they suspect of kidnapping Bloom. After he proves too stubborn to tell the truth (or, well, too surprisingly innocent of the deed to know what's going on), Daphne executes him. She comforts herself and Sky by adding that, if Bloom had died, the Flame would have returned to her or gone to baby Altalune.
• Mirror Character: Discussed in the fourth chapter. During one of their snarky spars, Sylvanas reveals her backstory to Bloom, who immediately picks on the similarities with her sister's own tragedy. Both Queen Daphne and the Banshee Queen have had their beloved homelands destroyed and been cruelly killed in battle by insane, evil seconds in command of greater-scope villains, who then raised them as bodiless spirits. On her part, Sylvanas feels an instant kinship for this stranger and resolves to meet Daphne someday. This not only opens paths for a friendship but also highlights how Queen Daphne is as prone as Lady Sylvanas to take extremist, drastic measures for problem-solving—something mentioned in the nymph's musings in the third chapter.
• Misery Builds Character:
  • When comparing themselves to run-of-the-mill Alfea students, the protagonist trio reaches this conclusion. On the one hand, the three are mourning their mothers, soldiering grueling training in Azeroth, and engaging in their first battles as teenagers. On the other hand, the students of Alfea, Red Fountain, and Cloud Tower get it easy with lackluster magical instruction and only worrying about their grades and the Miss Magix beauty contest. Wanna guess who are elite soldiers and who were slaughtered by the Burning Legion?
  • This trope is also the reason why the Winx women, Queen Daphne, and Marion are the most powerful fairies in the present time. They've gone through so much hardship courtesy of unhinged but powerful villains that they had to quest and pursue greater fairy transformations almost non-stop.
• Named Weapons: Barring the ones borrowed from Warcraft's lore, which are usually wielded by the plot-relevant characters, we have King Oritel's canonical sword that gets a name in this fic, Istel, and Galadwen's bow Delune, which references that she's the goddess Elune's Chosen One.
• Nature Is Not Nice: Trisha's Training from Hell in the Eastern Kingdoms' forests attests to the truth of this trope. The Dragon's Flame has healing powers able to restore a person verging death, and yet Trisha's life has been threatened several times by the creatures inhabiting the aforementioned forests.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: The result of combining Winx Club's fairies with World of Warcraft's classes. Trisha is a Dark Ranger Fairy who wields a bow and employs two different types of fire magic (one arcane and one divine), shadow magic, and basic hunter skills. She shares this with the Vakdrak. Altalune is a Warrior Fairy with ice magic, a soul-eating sword, and knowledge of runes. Stacy is a Rogue Fairy who stabs people with daggers and commands two kinds of light magic (one elemental and one holy).
• No Title: The fanfic itself may be titled but its chapters are not, merely being numbered. The only exceptions are the three interludes, which distinguish themselves for being extensive flash-backs to the immediate aftermath of Stella and Bloom's deaths and having Bilingual Bonus titles.
• One-Word Title: Paradoxus it's in Latin and translates as "contrary to expectation", which points to the fanfic's Central Theme. It also alludes to temporal paradoxes.
• Ontological Inertia: Any given timeline is defined by certain key events that cannot be changed without branching the time-space continuity off. Id est, in timeline A, Bloom and Stella were assassinated, while in timeline B, they lived for some reason (Eudora spared them, the Burning Legion invasion never happened, etc.). Thing is, B is an alternate version of A. If you somehow manage to prevent A's defining events (a nearly impossible feat in itself), you are going to jump to/create B instead of staying in a modified version of A. When you travel back from when you came, you'll return to the same future you were trying to change (A's future). To get to B's future, you'll have to go the long way. Unfortunately, chances are you will first fade out from existence and the events there are totally random, meaning you lose any foreknowledge you got from time-traveling. All in all, A will keep existing as a separate timeline because its key events have ontological inertia — they cannot be undone. In this fic, there are two defining events for the timeline: the aforementioned deaths of Bloom and Stella and the Burning Legion will invade Magix. Besides those two, things can be changed to varying extents though it's not an easy task. For example, Queen Daphne had to send back her memories so her past self could start planning how to change non-defining events that could potentially save Magix from extinction.
• Our Nymphs Are Different: Winx Club's nymphs show already a fair amount of discrepancies with the Greek nymphs. Instead of being very minor deities (if they can even be called that) tied to some natural aspect such as trees or water, they are the most powerful fairies across all dimensions and the rulers of said dimensions' fates after the Great Dragon's disappearance. Also, all of them harbored the Dragon's Flame during their lifetimes. In Paradoxus, however, they draw more from the Ainur from the Lord of the Rings than their canon counterparts. They were still created by the Great Dragon's thoughts, but they also represent one aspect of magic (light, time, shadows...). Furthermore, their souls are immortal and will reincarnate from time to time (mostly to fix messes) while remembering each iteration unless they are at peace with themselves so they can choose not to.
• Our Titans Are Different: Not only the Great Dragon is presented as being a wayward World of Warcraft's Titan with all of it entails (being a creating entity rather than opposing some higher deities), but he's also lazier than should be allowed to a divine being. That's the true reason why nymphs and bearers of his power exist in the first place. He just won't bite the bullet and protect his creations nor care about their well-being beyond ensuring his Flame can only be wielded by non-malicious, non-power-hungry females. And that reincarnation won't spare his nymphs any suffering by amnesia if they happened to fail their assigned task. Unsurprisingly, people in Magix are all atheists or agnostics at best who can't bring themselves to profess faith in the Great Dragon.
• Peggy Sue:
  • Eudora killed Stella out of fear of her Light powers (Light is the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors weakness of the Burning Legion's Fel). Bloom was kind of collateral damage but a fearsome opponent nonetheless. After their demise, the situation rapidly degenerated into a gruesome war impacting several planets, one of them even suffering Argus' fate (utterly corrupted by Fel). A war Magix was losing. Desperate times call for equally desperate (and expensive) measures, so an elite squad from the Tyrannus Division is sent to the past to try and prevent the two Winx's deaths in an attempt to turn the tables in Magix's favor. Guess who is sent? Exactly! The mini Winx! Altalune, Trisha, and Stacy because it's their mothers who they're trying to rescue, plus Gilliam as a buffer between the two belligerent sisters and Zoe thanks to her tech-oriented skills. Also, Trisha was the one to come up with the idea and the scientific basis for time travel. They didn't get the Timeless' approval for this, so science was the only option left which, in turn, presented them with the 'if I see my younger self, either of us will fade' issue. Alas, Stella and Bloom's deaths were set in stone, totally unavoidable, so their daughters failed to save them.
  • There are two more characters who embody this trope themselves. Both in a more successful attempt to change the outcome of the timelines. Partly because they are more subtle and thoughtful in their changes and because well, they use magic to do so. One of them is Galadwen, the elven Chosen One of Elune. Her job is facilitated both by her long, long lifespan and having Chronormu (a Time Dragon) as an ally. As of now, Galadwen has seen no less than three timelines where both Azeroth and Magix succumbed to Eudora. The second character goes under the alias of Indís and is able to mess with the time-space continuity due to her status as a nymph. Indís is the Tyrannus Division founder as well as its main economical and political supporter.
• Point of Divergence: The first chapter is this for the Warcraft side of affairs. The primordial change is that Sylvanas never wound up an alliance with the Jailer due to Aen'da's interference. Sylvanas is given the task of not becoming Warchief, which means most of the events of Battle for Azeroth and afterward are heavily changed or don't happen at all.
• Power Nullifier: The Shaab Stone (from Winx Club's canon) is used to temporarily render Bloom and Stella magicless so a mind-controlled Diaspro can kill them. A necessary measure for two reasons — one, Diaspro forgot to level-up past the basic fairy transformation, therefore Bloom and Stella are more than capable to sweep the floor with her. Two, Eudora feels very much menaced by Stella's light magic because she correctly assumes it's the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors counter to her Fel (demonic) magic even if it's not holy.
• Prodigal Family: In the eighth chapter, King Sky finally realizes that his daughters have embarked on an extremely dangerous mission which, if gone wrong, could lead to their fading via time paradox. Previous to that, he's spent eight years dissociated from reality, therefore neglecting his daughters and the suffering they've been enduring not only because of their mother's passing but also from the trauma of fighting a war as young girls.
• The Remnant: Whatever remains of the once-powerful kingdom of Solaria has sought refuge in Snorx, one of Domino's moons. Courtesy of the Burning Legion and their plot to assassinate Queen Stella. Fortunately, King Brandon and Crown Princess Stacy are still alive to lead their people.
• Regular Caller: In the fourth chapter, Bloom learns that it's the Burning Crusade that is behind the attacks on Eraklyon's cities she was investigating the chapter prior. She excuses herself from the conversation to go silently brood about the unending stream of fighting dimensional menaces that has been the Winx's lives up until this point; made worse by the fact they now have families and want a calm, safe dimension to raise their daughters in. Yet, when she emerges from her bath, she accepts forging an alliance with Galadwen because she now has much more to lose.
• Rewatch Bonus: Several reread bonuses, in fact. As per usual with this trope, heavy spoilers warning.
  • Those mysterious women talking about how You Can't Fight Fate at the beginning of the prologue? They are Queen Daphne and Galadwen, regretting how Bloom and Stella's tragic deaths were unavoidable all along. Also, the unconscious woman they are tending is a grown-up Altalune, newly defeated and nearly killed by Eudora.
  • The first chapter's epigraph specifies that it's the sands of time (a mechanism under the bronze dragonflight's purview) that will work a miracle. This excludes Trisha and Altalune's method since it employs scientific principles instead of dragon magic. In other words, it's foreshadowing for their eventual failure at saving Bloom and Stella.
  • The third chapter's epigraph foreshadows that, more important than Bloom's meeting with Galadwen is her sister Daphne doing so too and unlocking her memories in the process. The two women, along with a third party, will manipulate all events from here onward to prevent this timeline from the absolute catastrophe that was the previous one.
  • The nymph Indís with her husband and recently-arrived daughter watching the time travelers depart in the sixth chapter? And that happening after Altalune was told by Blair (Snotra's daughter) that her parents couldn't bid her their goodbyes because they were busy? Oh, dear, that's because those two families are the same people but changing between secret identities.
  • Flora easily deducing the time travelers' identities in the tenth chapter? Nobody doubts Flora is smart beyond belief but, in this particular case, it wasn't her brains but that she already knew.
• Role-Playing Game 'Verse:
  • The plot is set up in a way that roughly resembles your typical World of Warcraft expansion pack storyline, just with an interdimensional flair. One of the Burning Legion's leaders starts wreaking havoc and can only be stopped by the conjoint effort of several peoples who ally. The key players are powerful characters who slowly unravel the mystery and own powerful artifacts, belong to a distinguished lineage, or both. There are several targets to kill, mooks that only elite characters can defeat, and a vast world to explore (with the corresponding fast methods of transportation).
  • Every character's combat skills follow a Three-Stat System—-weapons mastery, internal magical affinity, and external magic-wielding—that makes them vaguely resemble hybrid Fantasy Character Classes.
  • In the third chapter, as Bloom is traveling through the Eastern Kingdoms, she notices several people approaching her asking for favors, i.e., the In-Universe equivalent of quests. She ignores them in favor of focusing on returning home but is puzzled by this behavior.
  • In the fourth chapter, Bloom inexplicably stops feeling fatigued moments after entering Quel'Danas. World of Warcraft has a mechanic that allows characters to get an XP bonus after spending some time at a city, garrison, or inn because they feel rested there. In Bloom's case, she's been traveling non-stop for many weeks (normal state) but ends her journey at Undercity, from where she teleports via orb to Silvermoon (rested state). The same thing happens to Galadwen in the seventh chapter after taking in the moon's light upon arriving at the small house she owns in Darnassuss.
• Runic Magic: It is restricted to people with Asser blood and makes use of Norse runes. For example, Isa unleashes ice capable of peeling off the victim's skin. So, these runes are powerful but are excessively mana-costing to the point of burning out an inexpert caster. They can also be used to divine the future of a person as long as it's made immediately after the person's birth and in the sacred mount Ignis in Domino. They predicted that Altalune wasn't going to follow her mother's steps and will forge her own path. Years later, Altalune rejected the Dragon's Flame and chose ice as her elemental affinity.
• Shout-Out:
  • Both Queen Daphne's daughter and Bloom are otakus; whenever the narration switches to them or someone thinks of them during their internal monologues, expect a reference to some anime. In the seventh chapter, Bloom remembers being weirded out at seeing Patchamen figurines next to a Sailor Mars one she wanted to purchase while in Japan. It's a double-layered example because the Patchamen are Winx Club's version of the Science Ninja Team Gatchaman.
  • In the eighth chapter, Galadwen visits the Oathdír family just in time for dinner. The main course, prepared by Indís' husband Angus is ratatouille.
• Sidelined Protagonist Crossover: Double subverted. At first, the prologue follows some next-gen Original Character, then the narrative switches to Bloom's shenanigans in Azeroth and made the reader expect her to slowly piece together the clues and figure out the Burning Legion with a brand-new Undead Plague was behind the ravaging of several cities of Eraklyon. Thus, being the subversion of this trope. However, it next suddenly time-skips eight years into the future to learn Bloom has been assassinated and the actual protagonists of the story are Bloom's and Stella's daughters.
• Spotlight-Stealing Crossover: The plot of Paradoxus spends a considerable amount of time in Magix and the majority of its cast comes from the aforementioned dimension. Even if we only count the more plot-relevant characters, the disparity is conspicuous — the protagonist trio (Bloom and Stella's daughters), most of the Winx, Queen Daphne, Diaspro, and Sky on Winx Club's part versus Iladris, Eudora, Galadwen, and Sylvanas on World of Warcraft's part. In all fairness, World of Warcraft provides more on the worldbuilding part (the class skills, the Named Weapons, etc.), the inciting incident of the plot (the Burning Legion's invasion of Magix), and the overall tone of the story. It's just that, barring Sylvanas, all of its characters were Demoted to Extra thanks to the huge canon divergence.
• Straight for the Commander: Eudora went straight for Stella, the queen of Solaria because said planet's magic is the primary weakness of the Burning Legion.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land: Played for Laughs in the second chapter. Galadwen returns to Teldrassil after an absence of 500 hundred years; her sudden teleportation to the place causes the alarms to fire off as they are no longer tuned to identify her as a Kaldorei citizen. The Moon Priestesses and Shandris panic at what they think is a hostile intrusion; once the latter recognizes her, she's exasperated beyond measure. Galadwen merely laughs in response. It's downplayed as the night elves are long-lived creatures, so they do remember who Galadwen is and their society hasn't changed that much—Galadwen's only grip is that they are serving the (in comparison) short-lived humans instead of leading the Alliance with their experience.
  Shandris: ¡Serás idiota, Aen'da! Te desapareces por casi medio milenio, y sólo apareces para asustar. Elune, dame paciencia para soportarte.^TranslationYou idiot, Aen'da! You disappear for almost half a millennium and only show up to give us a scare. Elune, give me the patience to bear with you.
• Stripperiffic: Averted. Although they have gotten better over time, both Winx Club and World of Warcraft are infamous for giving their Action Girls excessively revealing and impractical outfits for the sake of fanservice. though. Paradoxus, on the other hand, has its action girls wearing beautiful, combat-sensible designs that cover all of the squishy parts and then some.
• Three-Stat System: In Paradoxus there exists three skill branches the characters can master to varying extents. Firstly, armed combat with bladed, kinetic, etc. weapons. Secondly, control of their internal magical affinity, usually elemental (this comes from the Winx Club canon). And thirdly, wielding of magic from external sources — i.e., one of the six magical forces of the World of Warcraft canon. Fairy/witch transformations are included in this third category because, in order to obtain them, the characters have to seek out an external source from the Winx Club canon. To exemplify this, Altalune (Bloom's daughter) excels at swordsmanship but struggles to fuel her ice magic with positive emotions — she was able to gain the Bloomix just fine (using it is another matter entirely). Gilliam (Flora's daughter), on her part, lacks any training with weapons and is only an Enchantix fairy, but has superb control over her nature magic and proves to be pretty creative with it (even creating toxins from pollen). Iladris (Sylvanas' adopted daughter) is an accomplished archer and has started to learn how to harness void magic, but has no innate elemental magic by herself.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Overall, this trope reflects the more World of Warcraft side of this fanfiction, since, in the video game, alliances are often formed grudgingly and only out of mutual interest. This is demonstrated in several examples.
  • Given how upbeat and emphasizing about the Power of Friendship Winx Club is, one would think Bloom's daughters would be a massive aversion of this trope. However, Trisha and Atalune do more than play it straight, they take it up to eleven due to them being stranged sisters since their mother died. They get physical with each other nearly every time they meet, weapons and magic included. As it is, they rarely pass time together unless there's some external reason to reunite them. In fact, Altalune has a rather toxic, jerkish coping mechanism by blaming Trisha for not being strong enough to protect their mother. The poor girl was only ten years at the time, so Altalune's attitude is totally uncalled for.
  • Another example happens between Altalune and Harmony. Altalune is an arrogant, narcissistic prick with a Hair-Trigger Temper while Harmony takes after her father, that is, she's insecure, sharp-tongued, and prone to jealousy. What's the matter, then (barring the obvious)? Well, Harmony has reached the peak of her powers and they pale in comparison to that of Bloom's daughters, especially Trisha, which causes her to envy and dislike them. She even comments out loud how "such unstable people should not be allowed to harness that much power" referring to Trisha, which Altalune doesn't take very well and lashes out (apparently, she's the only one allowed to torment poor Trisha). And yet, Harmony works in the Tyrannus Division where she's assigned an undercover mission to investigate the corrupt Council of Rocalucce, an entity that has rooted its tendrils in both Eraklyon and Domino's nobility. Something that very much concerns Altalune and Trisha as the respective heiress of these planets.
  • Adis and Joan are the Vakdrak's leaders (only below Trisha in the hierarchy) and neither of them likes each other very much. In-Universe, Adis is described as Lawful Good while Joan leans towards Chaotic Neutral so naturally, their mindsets clash spectacularly. Even though the two of them are devoted to Trisha, when it comes to the means used to attach the heiress' goals, Adis and Joan never agree. It gets worse during Trisha's Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
  • Sky's severe neglect of his daughters after Bloom's death only got him negative points in the other characters' books. The Winx and most of the specialists no longer consider him a friend and only deal with him by virtue of him being Eraklyon's king, thus necessary to war strategies and whatnots.
• Teleportation with Drawbacks: Interdimensional teleportation, especially if sudden, kill normal people if some preventive measures aren´t taken. Maybe because of a magic overdose (you need to channel lots of magic to pull on of these) or the suddenness of the travel disrupts a person's physiology too much. Thank God (or the Great Dragon, for that matter) Bloom is everything but normal. It was the healing powers of the Dragon's Flame that allowed her to survive being teleported from Eraklyon to Azeroth and have a broken arm as the only consequence. This differs from canon, where the trope was averted in the series and played straight in the comics where teleportation only causes migraines.
• Three-Stat System: In Paradoxus there exists three skill branches the characters can master to varying extents. Firstly, armed combat with bladed, kinetic, etc. weapons. Secondly, control of their internal magical affinity, usually elemental (this comes from the Winx Club canon). And thirdly, wielding of magic from external sources — i.e., one of the six magical forces of the World of Warcraft canon. Fairy/witch transformations are included in this third category because, in order to obtain them, the characters have to seek out an external source from the Winx Club canon. To exemplify this, Altalune (Bloom's daughter) excels at swordsmanship but struggles to fuel her ice magic with positive emotions — she was able to gain the Bloomix just fine (using it is another matter entirely). Gilliam (Flora's daughter), on her part, lacks any training with weapons and is only an Enchantix fairy, but has superb control over her nature magic and proves to be pretty creative with it (even creating toxins from pollen). Iladris (Sylvanas' adopted daughter) is an accomplished archer and has started to learn how to harness void magic, but has no innate elemental magic by herself.
• Three Successful Generations: Altalune and Trisha are striving to become the queens Eralkyon and Domino (respectively) need them to be. Bloom was well into her path of being a Benevolent Mage Ruler until her untimely passing away. And Marion proved to be a great warrior queen during her tenure.
• Twisting the Prophecy: Queen Daphne the nymph gets a vision from an alternate timeline where all of the heroines die and the Burning Legion is successful at conquering Magix. She checks with the nymph of time which events of that timeline are set in stone and which ones can be changed. Stella and Bloom's deaths are inevitable as it's the entrance of the Burning Legion. However, since the rest of the Winx and their daughter's deaths are preventable if they are prompted to prepare —elevating their fairy forms to the Etherix for the former and enduring Training from Hell in Azeroth for the latter—, then the chances of kicking out the Burning Legion increase exponentially. It's also crucial to protect Solaria's population because elemental light magic trumps the Fel magic used by the Legion's demons. This results in the aforementioned character allying with Galadwen and Flora as well as indirectly setting up the main characters to travel back to the past. She carefully engineers what events are changed and when the important people are informed so the current timeline ends up as way less tragic.
• Unholy Ground: Like in World of Warcraft's canon, every place infected with either Fel magic or the Undead Plague will become this. In Paradoxus, the most notorious places are:
  • Some cities of Eralkyon — the first to be attacked.
  • Erphem and Edelyn — the second ones to become life-extinct.
  • Isis — the first to have its lifeforms extinguished but better known as Magix's equivalent of Argus and the current Burning Legion headquarters.
• We Have Become Complacent: Bloom thinks this about Alfea’s lowered standards and training. They are considerably worse than they were in her time as a student and Bloom, as the weathered veteran she is, correctly fears Alfea's fairies won't stand a chance when peacetime inevitably ends. Really, those gals are far more preoccupied with the "Miss Magix" beauty pageant than learning to control their powers. This is also true for Cloud Tower and Red Fountain, courtesy of the rotten and self-serving Council of Rocalucce that has opened the door to Eudora's invasion and helped her even before the war was triggered.
• Weak Boss, Strong Underlings: General Darko Laurent of the Tyrannus Division is not someone to scoff at. It just happens that his subordinates include the Winx Club (also known as the most powerful fairies of the dimension) and their daughters. It doesn't help that he's in a universe where women are more attuned to magic-wielding than men.
• Wham Episode: When Altalune decides to stay in the past and risk it all to eliminate Eudora before she kills Bloom and Stella and before she herself disappears from existence — it's the exact Plot Point where Character Development starts for her and Trisha. The aftermath of this decision marks the start of Trisha's Despair Event Horizon which will lead to her Face–Heel Turn and Altalune's epiphany about who she truly loves and what matters the most which will lead to her trying to save her sister and finally accepting her mother's death. And not only that, but from here onwards, the angst takes off to heart-wrenching levels and it doesn't seem to want to decrease soon.
• White Magic:
  • As in canon, played straight with the Holy Light from World of Warcraft and the Dragon's Flame from Winx Club — the former is the source of life and a fundamental force in-universe while the latter is the source of magic and what created the universe. The Holy Light is both Fel and Void magic's counter (thus being the Undead and Demons' weakness). The Dragon's Flame is the Shadow Phoenix's magical counter.
  • Subverted with the elemental light magic of Winx Club because it's just that, elemental magic, so it doesn't share any properties with nor it's the same thing as the Holy Light of World of Warcraft. Eudora (an agent of the Burning Legion) ends up targeting and later killing Stella because she mistook the two fo them. This also led to the genocide of Solaria's fairies and witches early on in the dimensional war.
• Wise Serpent: King Oritel's snake "pet" is a shapeshifted Queen Marion, who has taken that form so she can build magical power and fly under the villain's radar until the biggest threat reveals itself. The complexity and length of the magic gathering show how level-headed, patient, and experienced she is in comparison to her offspring. Additionally, for those Locked Out of the Loop (pretty much anyone), she merely appears as a highly intelligent snake who can detect people's ill-will against King Oritel, thus acting like an unofficial political advisor.
• Wizards Live Longer: On principle, fairies and witches have longer lifespans than earthling humans, but those with either the whole or just a spark of the Dragon's Flame are really, really longevous — i.e., Domino's royal family. Played With since despite aging slowly, the godlike power they carry either makes them targets or causes them to be involved in conflicts. As a result, they are often killed young.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Later in the plot, Trisha turns into one. This character has witnessed her own mother's assassination in a gruesome way while still a little girl. She has been through Training from Hell since then, has awful mental health (PTSD, Survivor's Guilt, low self-esteem, and severe, chronic depression), is probably overworked, is hated by her people, and has to wage a nearly lost war to protect those same people. The nail in the coffin happens when her mother's nemeses torture her into insanity to get payback to a dead woman and so, she decides to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and die in the process, or kill herself once she has eliminated the last of her enemies. This involves burning several cities down.
• World of Action Girls: Winx Club is canonically this trope and so is Paradoxus — just adding a couple of World of Warcraft's canon Action Girls and some badass female Original Characters thrown into the mix. Exaggerated since there are only three (out of twenty female badasses), kind-of-plot-relevant male characters who can maybe live up to their female counterparts' badassery. Say we were to bar the females we never read engaging in battle in this fic, that'll only take Faragonda (a war veteran) out. The rest? Well...
  • The Tyrannus Division is a spec-ops military branch born from the cream of the crop of Magix's Armed Forces. All of the daughters are enrolled there and have had their fair share of missions and battles serving under it. The main trio (Trisha, Altalune, and Stacy) is included here as well as Gilliam, Zoe, Niobe, Harmony, and Vidia. Rosalie too but since she's still too young and her planet has not been invaded yet, she's more of a Tag Along Kid than a hardened soldier. Every once in a while Iladris shows up to lend a hand in particularly-hard missions.
  • The Big Bad herself is an extremely overpowered, dimensional conqueror and Sargeras' most recent second in command. Even if she chose to employ underhanded tactics to get rid of Stella, she's formidable in combat and able to massacre entire battalions.
  • Half of the six Winx women are queens who fight along with their soldiers on the battlefield. The other three, naturally, accompany them as high-ranking officers if only on those occasions (they go back to their civilian lives once the action has ended). All of them strategize on what to do both beforehand and afterward. Basically, what they already were in canon but being promoted to Action Moms and in a War Fic setting.
  • In this continuity, Sylvanas refused to be the new Horde Warchief after Vol'jin's demise. But that doesn't mean she too hasn't taken a level in badass in this fic. She's the Elven Aspect of Death.
• You Can't Fight Fate: In this Peggy Sue-flavored fanfic, there are some events no amount of time traveling will be able to correct, with the first arc revolving around the main characters finding this the angsty, harsh way.
  • Namely, the assassinations of the main trio's mothers (Bloom and Stella) and the invasion of Magix by the Burning Legion (one key, unavoidable event is the extinction-by-Fel of Isis, Erphem, and Solaria's colony Edelyn). The runes say so and, well, Domino's ancient rune magic hasn't ever lied, which is shown when Trisha consults her own entry in the Book of Fate only to find the pages about her visit to the past were blank. In all fairness, this result might be similar to what happened to her mother when she tried the same. In Bloom's case, it's because of an unfulfilled prophecy at play whereas Trisha's might be because she never got her mandatory rune reading at birth thus rendering her a Wild Card destiny-wise. However, it's later revealed not even magic-fueled time travel can set right what once went wrong (scientific time travel was employed first).
  • Talking about the Book of Fate, the blank pages are followed by depictions of a bloody, vicious battle between Trisha and Altalune as well as of Trisha succumbing to her dark side. Both events turned out to be accurate predictions despite Trisha's skepticism — she and her sister are stranged since their mother's demise but their spars never escalated that much and, while her mental health is far from optimal, she reassures herself she will never become a fallen keeper of the Dragon's Flame.

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