#and also the tail fairy people

[susie-dreemurr]

Life just hasn’t been the same ever since I stopped obsessing over mediocre shonen anime :(

[shima-draws]

Catching up on more recent FT stuff and um

EDO LUCY HAS A KID?

EDO LUCY AND EDO NATSU ARE MARRIED??? AND HAVE A DAUGHTER?? NALU CANON???

Also oh my FUCKING god look at him. He’s such a proud dad I’m going to throw up I love him so much

And the fact that Natsu gets attached to her IMMEDIATELY and goes into overprotective Dad Mode when she’s not even his daughter, technically (and Gray too over his own Edo kid 🤧)

Natsu: I’ve decided I’m taking her home with me. No objections

HOMIE DEADASS IS SIGNING THE ADOPTION PAPERS ALREADY. It was love at first sight. Natsu loves her so much he wants to kidnap her. Shut UP,

[heartonxions]

levy!! your hot bra-ed wife is meaning business!! she wants your cuddles naow!! do not mess with her!!! get off that damn book!!

[tingyyytingsss]

I gotta be real fair to nalu and say that they really have only known each other for two years and some change at this point(most of which natsu fucked off to who knows where to train without notice). Its crazy work to confess love to someone during all that. Especially for lucy who uprooted her life, got knocked into a coma and woke up to her father dead and most of her community decimated.

[bambamnesiac]

You have been bapped!

tch, you dont know who youre talkin to, kid

[thesirenwithnovoice]

Thoughts about how different mediums of a same story may give you different views (and rambling about the Tower of Heaven)//TW: violence

Lately I've been wondering about how manga readers might have very different visions than anime watchers of a same story, because althought the plot remains the same, some little details can change our whole perception of a story.

This reminded me of the first time I read Fairy Tail and how terrified I was at how cruel and dark the Tower of Heaven's arc is.

Jellal's face (that by that time, were only an 11-years-old kid) drippling blood while being tortured shocked me so much as a kid and I still find it one of the most disturbing scenes in the manga, lol.

In the anime, the content itself is the same. We know the kids are slaves that go throught different kinds of abuse, however, I find the manga way gloomier and more graphic. And althought part of it might be just a personal opinion, it's not entirely without basis: Mashima uses different techniques in his art to represent facts whitin the story than the animators, and it leads to a topic I really love: semiotics - how we interpret images, and how detais can be used to convey a certain felling throught art.

Colors and composition helps A LOT creating an atmosphere and causing a feeling on the reader. Proportionally speaking, a manga doesn't have colors, but it has it's own alternatives - the Tower of Heaven arc, in comparison to the rest of the manga, uses a lot more black and hatching.

One can argue some scenes are still "visually darker" in the anime, since it has the advantage of being able to play with shadows and colors in a broader aspect; however, since Fairy Tail is not an anime that changes it's saturation or colour pallete, the loud colors in most scenes end up not helping building the same dreadful atmosphere.

(It doesn't mean you can't make a scary story using bright and colorful tones, tho. A great example is the movie Midsommar. But it's not an easy task!)

Erza's childhood memories in the manga also carry a "dirtier" feeling; the kids are always covered by bruises, and the background is rougher. Also, the anime chooses to represent slavery in a more fanciful way: the kids wear stylized handcuffs and are assaulted with magic attacks, what inevitably softens the scenes by distancing them from real life slavery.

In a story, an act of violence will always be more shocking if your brain is able to automatically make a connection with real life. Seeing blood conveys a feeling of disconfort easier than a character being hit by a wave of magic, even if the author tells you "this is painful"; that's why some people say they started to find difficult to watch horror movies involving kids after becoming parents, because after experenciating something in real life, they connect with fiction harder.

The above scene causes me very different feelings in each media. In the manga, the despair in Jellal's face when seeing they removed Erza's eye is much clearer, and his skinny body, his eyes filling up with tears (he doesn't cry in the anime) shows not only a feeling of worry, but of utter dread and helplessness. All that helps endorsing the fact that, doesn't matter how brave he is, they are still just fragile kids, unable to protect themselves from the cruelty of the world around them.

I want to make it clear, though, that this is not in any way meant to be a critique to the animation team, or an affirmation that one type of media is better than another. We all have our personal preferences, but each media has it's target audience and objective. Fairy Tail's animators certainly do know how to convey the same feelings on the public, they just choose not to, for a variety of reasons. Probably because the anime is aimed for a broader and younger audience, many scenes have been softened or censored somehow. Also, animation consumes more labour than a manga page, so unless you have a lot of time and investment, the art tend to be simpler.

So do you think it affects the plot, Siren?

In my opinion, yes, even if just in a subtle way. In the manga, I think this raw brutality helps Jellal's character to gain a more interesting complexity. To me, he feels less like a hero and more like what he actually is: just a really kind and brave kid trying his best to protect his friends.

Another major change they made in the anime was removing the ambiguity (something that happened more than once in Fairy Tail's adaptation, such as in the famous kiss scene), leaving clear since the beginning that Jellal was a victim of a mind controlling spell; while in the manga, until Urtear's confirmation at the end of the arc, we do not know for sure if he have been brainwashed or just convinced to adore Zeref.

And as much as I can see why some fans might hate it because it leaves room for people to see Jellal as a bad man, I (as someone who is not afraid of loving evil characters, heh), find it interesting and somehow enriching to the plot, because it gives the whole arc a reflection: is extreme suffering, specially at such an young age, capable of changing someone so much?

We are left questioning what did "Zeref" say, or do, that made him change so much. And having so many real life examples where despair has made people easy victims of manipulation throught faith or falling into extremist ideologies, after we seeing Jellal's pain and fragility in a tangible way, it's not that hard at all to understand how he went insane and managed to drag all the other slaves along with him.

Also, I think it makes it easier to understand Erza's empathy towards him. Jellal and Erza are characters connected not only by the affection they nourish for one another, but also for sharing the same pain. She is the only person that fully understands the horrors he lived in the tower, since they were the only kids that have been in the torture chamber. And althought she never tries to justify Jellal's actions, Erza does not only show him compreension, but she feels guilty for not being able to retribute his protection and prevented him from losing his mind.

That doesn't mean, tho, that there weren't many other clues he was not acting on free will: be it his grotesque change of personality, his hysterical laughter out of nowhere or his motivations that doesn't hold (because they were never his to begin with). To me, all that at first glance makes him closer to Batman's Joker, someone that grew insane after so much suffering, than a villain that's genuinely just plain selfish and thirsty for power. And that only makes me find him a creepier villain, since personally, I find sadism and insanity way scarier than ghosts.

So this is just a looong collection of thoughts about how small choices can change a lot the "feeling" we get from a scene or a character. I hope someone can find it interesting too. There are many other examples of adaptations where it happened, and if you remember one you'd like to share, I would love to hear!

Last but not less important, all the love for Mashima's art, the Tower of Heaven arc (that is a personal favorite) and Jellal, a character I deeply love and one that holds for sure the strongest spirit in the manga for being able to become such a kind and mature man despite everything he has been thought. ♡

[celestialulu]

some nalu headcanons bc i feel like it’s been a bit since I’ve shared some :) :

-Natsu ends up having some of Lucy’s scrunchies/hairbands on his wrists because she leaves them lying around and her hair comes loose while fighting a lot so he thinks it’s handy to have on him + it’s a little part of her he likes to keep around

-Once Lucy broke her arm and Natsu could tell she was getting frustrated because she was struggling to hold a book so Natsu tried his best to read it to her even though he’s a very slow reader (she tried hard to stay awake to listen but she ended up falling asleep to his voice)

-also the reason why Lucy broke her arm wasn’t from a fight or any sort of mission it was because she literally slipped and fell in her apartment (Natsu and Happy found her soon after and panicked before Happy ran to find Wendy)

-Lucy likes to cook and bake new things but sometimes they don’t turn out quite well and she can tell by peoples reactions that they aren’t that great but Natsu will eat everything and insist that it’s good (she knows he’s lying but it still makes her happy) (he will also eat anything)

-The guild sometimes has a trivia night where they do trivia/quizzes and such and he never used to care much about participating until Lucy joined because they would always be a team and since Lucy is really smart she will get most of the questions right

-Even though he knows he never knows any right answer to the questions Lucy will always ask what he thinks the answer is because she always values his input

-Natsu also loves it because this is the type of event that Lucy will get REALLY competitive over and he finds it really funny + endearing because she’s a bit of a nerd

-Natsu ends up carrying Lucy home after a lot of missions because of her habit of passing out after using too much magic

-Ever since Lucy rewrote the book of END she’s occasionally had troubles with her health like feeling dizzy, shortness of breath and her heartbeat randomly spiking but hasn’t hold anyone and she especially tries to hide it from Natsu

[lisannastraussisanangel]

Little headcannon of mine that I wanted to share with you: Irene knows that August and Zeref are related (She's a dragon ya know, sense of smell and all that) but she doesn't really say anything, maybe tease August a bit, but she doesn't interfere cause she knows that when it comes to family, its pretty complicated..

*cough* Erza *cough*

That makes so much sense actually. She gives a little sniffy and is like "you know what? that's none of my business" and just moves on.

I also like the idea that August knows she knows and is very grumpy about it. Like he knows she's not gonna say anything but how dare Irene even figure out his secret. Idk why but I feel like younger August had beef with her lmao

[gunkbaby]

I do wonder how much of the mischaracterisation rampant in a lot of manga/manhua fandoms is related to a western perspective

[fuckyeahfraxus]

was about to ask where the assumption comes from that Laxus may be a manwhore or anything like that but I think we know.

but if one paid attention to any of his character growth/his true character showing more and more as the manga goes on one should really come to the conclusion that this was a mask worn to assert a sense of false power and dominance.

people out there really believing that Laxus was 'tearing shit up' at Blue Pegasus, it's a bit amusing. I'm sorry (I'm not) to rob you of this illusion of Laxus being a big bad womanizer but... I mean all the power to you if you choose this for your portrayal but what we can mostly read out of canon material?

- that man would so much rather be left the heck alone and go on his missions than be involved in any unnecessary social contact let alone hook up with random people he has just met. he's been shown to feel awkward in the whole Blue Pegasus scenario, in fact, and spectacularly so.

people really be out there getting mad and wild about this lmfao.

but we love that for Laxus! makes for a softer side that's certainly charming on its own and actually goes along with his character very well.

[fangirlfortress]

Ngl he best trope is the one where, ok so there's like this people. Maybe it's a kingdom or a tribe or whatever, but it's a whole people and they're being deceived. They're generally a good people, they do what they can to survive and they love each other, and they are ruled by a good, albeit misguided person with understandable motives. Typically a queen, sometimes a mother, and she loves her people. She works, fights and shares with them - her people love her, trust her completely. But she is lying to them, maybe about a prophesy or about their own circumstances, but she is lying to them and she has been for decades, either out of the urge to protect her people or her child. Then this deception is revealed - she reveals it - and she begs for forgiveness, gives up her title and maybe tells them that she deserves to die for her crimes, that they have every right to kill her for breaking their trust and manipulating them for so long. She is crying, maybe this is on the verge of some crisis where they're all going to die because of she couldn't tell the truth, and her people are heartbroken, but forgive her immediately. They say, no, you cannot just die and be absolved of all responsibility. You have to stay and help us fix this, you have to fight. Because they love her and it is obvious that she loves them, that she did this because she didn't know any other way to protect what she cares for. And she is so beloved. Their trust is shaken, but she is their queen and she has, for so long, been one of them; someone who has sacrificed and cried and fought right alongside them, that they say no, we will not leave you. And if you die, then we will die right with you, because this is our home and you are our queen. You are one of us.

[frobby]

When I was in like middle school someone told me that they thought that sting and rogue were brothers and I think about that every fucking day

[fairydares]

Did anyone else remember that Natsu had to cauterize Macao's wound on Mt. Hakobe to keep him from dying (that's when Lucy expressed doubt that she was cut out for Fairy Tail in-manga)?? or that Kaby Melon killed himself after cutting his arm off???

[steppenwolfofslytherinhouse]

every time I start crushing on some new anime man I'm reminded that they will never be him.

the way this man loves me and cherishes me and would never EVER do anything remotely toxic to me is making my heart cry bro

[fanstuffrantings]

Fighting the temptation to pretend to be a different anon and ask for another character because that would be greedy but on the other hand I'm so obsessed with your redesigns I would be thrilled to see you do any character. Like you could pick someone who was a background character in one scene and I'd be like groundbreaking amazing I'm so invested my new favourite blorbo. Your take on Mavis especially is so good, it's given her character such complexity and interest I wish I could be watching your fairy tail rn!! Anyway hope you're having a nice day!

Thank you! This is really sweet to hear! Mavis was a design I'd been dragging my feet on actually making since 2022 but I'm glad people are liking how she turned out!

I think I'm largely so focused on the fairy tail guild itself due to that desperation for everyone to have a story that was never fulfilled (you should've seen my reaction after the 1 year timeskip when I thought we'd get arcs for each guild member to get screentime only to be jumpscared by a panel with everyone reunited). Often I'll ask "what do people want to see" because I like hearing what characters people latch onto that they want to see altered or maybe given more attention.

Everyone has been very sweet and I love seeing comments people make in the tags. It makes me day and so do asks like this.

Thank you, hope you have a good one to!

[zecendia]

If you were in the FT fandom on tumblr during the like,2013-2016 era I think you deserve a veteran discount because that`s when the fandom was basically the most active on here you were out there in the trenches.