So I Thank That We Have Fanfictions That Can Explore Things Deeper! - Tumblr Posts
So I forgot to make another rambling post, we continued our Fairy Tail rewatch. We're part way through grand magic games and the fury I feel at how it was written knows no bounds. Time for a bulleted post.
Warning, I'm going to be angry and really tear into the arc:
The hatred the citizens have for fairy tail is so stupidly convoluted and done just to make the audience root for fairy tail. You're telling me the entire populace hates a guild for just kind of sucking in games and not being that great? When we had the arena hating Rebecca in one piece, it made sense because to the general public, she was from the family that slaughtered citizens and brought terror to the land. In fairy tail it was done to make us care.
Raventail had literally no reason to be competing, and everything surrounding them is contradictory and infuriating. First, it doesn't make sense for them to join a big spectacle of their goal was to get information from guild members. Why wouldn't they just kidnap laxus or one of the other characters to force them into revealing things? Also, them being a dark guild, which we are told aren't sanctioned guilds, and yet Jellal not being allowed to go after them "because of interguild conflict." No, mashima just wanted them to be there. It makes no logical sense for Jellal to be held back on the principle of not stirring guild conflict when Raventail isn't recognized as a guild. Ivan having a much more down low confrontation with Laxus and Makarov would've been so much better than us getting some dumb plotline about how "laxus beats them all because they're just weak" like we get in every single arc. They only exist to give fairy tail a rival to fight and the "cruel guild who doesn't care about it's members and only wants power" is already filled by Sabertooth. What purpose did they serve?
Why would mashima have Flare be sadistic and gleeful if she was only doing what she did to try and save herself? It makes literally no sense for her to act the way she did. It would be one thing if we got any indication in her scenes that her personality was an act put on for Ivan, but we see her laughing and jeering with her guild even when she's not the main focus so why would she be excited if she didn't actually want to do it?
I really hate how no other guild is allowed to be in anyway as strong as fairy tail once our main characters are introduced. It makes fights so insanely boring. We never get actually shown instances of characters getting stronger, the show tells us they did and we have to believe it.
Heaven forbid a woman be allowed to actually win in this show unless she's Erza Scarlet. No girl is allowed to just be a strong fighter in their own right. Lucy gets humiliated and abused constantly during the GMG for no reason other than making the audience hate enemies. Wendy isn't allowed to go into the Cheria fight and properly win or lose (don't even get me started on the forced in red herring of Cheria being evil). Cana can't have her own strength or abilities despite testing to be an S-Class wizard. Apparently none of the mermaid heel women are allowed to actually be strong wizards outside of Kagura because heaven forbid we get actually challenging match ups.
How is it that we supposedly have Lacrima watching the game and judges/guards keeping an eye on things and yet apparently no one notices Raventail cheating? And when someone does notice them he just ignores it? What is even the point of any set up and world building if we throw it out the window just to make conflict work in your story. Mashima forcibly sets up a "Fairy tail vs the world" concept for GMG and it's so stupid and badly done that I don't even get mad at the other characters. I get mad at Mashima.
I'm chosing to ignore the random fanservice fight because it was pointless and so many characters were weirdly written just to put them in skimpy outfits. If I have to think about Asuka being thrown in during the swimsuit one I think I'll go insane. Also just made me disgusted at all the grown men leering at girls they watched grow up. Such as Makarov who consistently calls guild members his children.
Bacchus deciding he wants to force Lisanna and Mirajane to sleep with him if he wins because heaven forbid we get an antagonistic dude who is written as hatable without making him a creep. Heaven forbid women have agency.
Why was Lucy the one to go back in time when we have Levy narrating? I thought Celesital Wizards couldn't go through the gates they make, or at the very least that time gates took so much energy they killed the ones that use them. Even if it wasn't levy I would've preferred a different character coming back through time to warn everyone.
Mashima flopping between Natsu not caring about naked lucy/people to Natsu suddenly wanting to see her naked within the same arc, baffles me.
The way Mashima writes Mavis makes me so uncomfortable. Another grown women with a petite body he infantalizes. This woman was in her 20s when she died and he treats her like a child.
Erza vs 100 monsters is the one good scene in this arc.
TL;DR- I actually thought I'd enjoy this arc because I loved it as a teenager. But I'm so unbelievably angry at everything happening that I actually am having a horrible time.