#anyway at what point in losing my mind do i start to pioneer the ship art for that infamous green website

[venlazlo]

EDIT: I've redrawn this!

these two are actually driving me insane.

[arkus-rhapsode]

My Current Thoughts on Fairy Tail

Hey guys. This is a bit of an off the cuff post, but fuck it, I want to talk about this. There isn’t going to be any flash or snark, this just going to be me speaking from the heart.

So we got only two more chapters of Fairy Tail, and the raws of 544 are already out and it’s not good. Like by no means is it good. But I think people are waiting for me to review this chapter, and I will, but it’s not good, but this is not 0/10 worthy. Like is this one of the worst chapters of Fairy Tail? God no! But I do wanna take kinda this time to reflect on this series.

I make it no secret that this arc is awful and before someone does the inevitable “Well if you don’t like it don’t read it”, I hope you realize that I’ve taken the time to list everything positive that comes out of a chapter as well as the bad. I don’t imminently write it off as “This sucked”, but what’s good about the series has kinda been fading for a while now. Now is Fairy Tail the worst manga out there? Fuck no. If you honestly think FT is the worse manga then I dare you to read Freezing or Wolf Guy or Air Gear. I stayed with this series because despite every flaw it had, nothing was ever bad enough in the past to be like, “Wow this is awful”. This series produced a lot of likeable characters, pretty fun world, and some legitimately great moments and arcs. So telling me to abandon a series that gave me all that before this current mess, and before it really got bad, like don’t tell me that.

And don’t tell me that these flaws have been here since the beginning, because I’ve read this series since the beginning, it did not suffer some of these problems. Was there fanservice? Sure. Was there friendship speeches? Yes. But here’s the thing, every shounen series has done stuff like that. Like this is something that wasn’t pioneered by FT. But the difference was like tons of other shounen series, FT knew how to balance those aspects with compelling narrative and character development. Like early on, there was consequences like death and expulsion. There was a genuine edge. Not everything was an easy answer.  “because we’re fairy tail” wasn’t the end all answer. But then around like the Oracion seis arc it started to take a lot more of the easy answers.

Like it wasn’t fully consuming the story, but it started to become noticeable. It wasn’t till the GMG that it just consumed the story. It feel back on the lazy elements. And I know tons of people were declaring FT garbage at that time and some still kept reading and I can tell you why I wasn’t blasting the series when that happened, because before this arc there was nothing really horrible. Declaring a whole series trash because of one arc is so damn reckless, because with the story not over and all the stuff that came before the GMG, you know that Mashima would’ve learned and noticed what was happening and he did. 2/3s of tartaros felt like a goddamn apology letter. Like it was doing things similar to the beginning of the story, but then near the end it kinda started falling back on it’s repetative easy answers.

I think that Mashma, just did that because I think he just lose some of his spark. Like he wasn’t going to try and take as many chances. And that sucks. Mashima seems like a very nice guy, he always is working, and damn I give him credit on how much effort he’s put into his art. That what hurts when the story telling doesn’t match the effort being put into the storytellng.

Look Im not going to blame the whole decline in quality on the shippers. Trust me, love the big 4, hate the big 4,but shipping has been around for a while and I don’t claim I can’t see why a guy writing a story is trying to appease the most vocal fanbase. Now do I think shippers are except from criticism? No. But then again, it’s not them writing the damn story. Is the fact a lot of them stick around solely for the ships kinda head scratching? Yeah, but here’s the thing, I’m sure a lot of people have felt that way at one point or another. I fully admitted to getting into the series because of a ship. Ships are one of the most subjective things on the internet.

But, back to this rant, these last two arc are just so bad. There’s no real effort, there’s no real consequences, and it’s just so easy. For the longest time this series wasn’t awful, maybe just hovering around average, but nothing truly bad outside GMG. But Avatar and Alvarez have just been disappointments. Again there is like no effort and that hurts even more because this is the conclusion. So many things are to be wrapped up in the last arc that have had this great build up and it just crumbles. Like it’s so hard to watch characters I like just dick around or this big thing I’ve been waiting for just to be resolved in such a wet fart manner.

Like are these last two arcs enough to call FT a bad series? No. Even with all the shit that’s pulled, it’s not enough to screw over all the beginning arcs and tell someone not to read it, but these two arcs have confirmed that this is a terrible conclusion. 

Ugh... Look despite all this crap, I can’t say FT is the worse, but this arc definitely is. Anyway you’ll see my review later but honestly I just wanted to say what’s been on my mind for a while now.

[jeymien]

Hello Supergirl fandom!

 So last night I posted from my ipad app (omg, does that suck, ended up with my post as the title and it was huge.)  Somehow I ended up with 70+ notes too!  Which, I know is like nothing to most tumblr users but I am still a noob and for some reason I’ve decided to get into tumblr fandom with Supergirl.  Which… wow, this is surreal.  The last fandom I actually really participated in was Tin Man.  Tiny tiny fandom on LJ.  I’m usually a lurker, but something about Kara and Mon-el has totally clicked with me.  I’m still trying to figure out what it is that has motivated me to be involved - especially with the ship war that seems to be going on.  I came to tumblr thanks to Darcyland (I’ve read the crap out of Darcy fics but really haven’t gotten involved with people there other than tumblr following).

So, Kara and Mon-el.  Supergirl.  CW-DCverse.  Barry.  Oliver.  And what I call the Oliver Queen method - as he’s the one who has pioneered this path for now and it seems that Barry and Kara are doomed to repeat it.  The “I know better than you because I’m the hero so I’m going to make the decisions for you” path. You know the one.  The one that ends up usually destroying the hero?  

Best exemplified on Arrow in season 3 and 4.  Oliver literally implodes his life in both seasons by making decisions that affect other people without consulting them.  Now, Oliver’s got some major trust issues, so that’s why his story played out the way it did.  And Oliver’s learned the hard way that maybe, maybe he should open up to people.  Will season 5 mess with that?  He’s opened up a lot this year.  

Next up, you’ve got Barry.  Now Barry has loss/abandonment issues.  Can’t blame here, he did watch his mother die and then his dad went to prison.  Barry’s also has this same hero reaction - he’s the Flash, he knows better.  At the end of season 2, he makes the same decision after losing his father.  And we have Flashpoint, where Barry has still not learned that he needs to consult with people - the whole situation with Iris anyone. I swear, the villain this year *isn’t* Savitar.  It’s Barry.  He’s the one who keeps sabotaging his own life.

Then we get to Kara.  Kara’s first season as one where she listened to everyone else.  She didn’t seem to be falling into that trap.  In fact, she may have found herself listening too much!  Cat ordering her around at work, not being assertive with James (seriously, that relationship was doomed from the start.  He spent almost the entire season unable to make his mind up between his girlfriend and the new girl he’d met..  Add in the mentor relationship he had with Kara…) The only time she didn’t seem to listen to anyone was when Alex tried to get her to stop being Supergirl.  Thank goodness Alex came around, eh?  Then at the end of the season, Kara faced the hero’s challenge of giving her life  to save everyone.  Which has lead into this season where Kara is actually very different from season 1.  Kara’s issues at this point?  Control issues.  She’s making decisions for herself.   Yay, independance, it’s awesome!  But with this, she’s also making assumption about others.  She’s projecting her feelings on to Mon-el, our new cast addition.  He’s the most obvious one she’s doing this with, but she’s also done it with Winn and James’ choice to become Guardian (seriously, James can’t do it properly without Winn and so they are BOTH Guardian imo).  She’s obviously having issues with worrying about the people she cares about being in danger.    As I pointed out briefly last night, Kara’s break up with Mon-el is a pattern of behavior since she met him.  She has made constant assumptions about Mon-el but not listened to him.  She’s been very reactive.  She does believe she knows, best, and actually,that she knows everything about Daxamites, their culture, their government. Ironically, as Mon-el is going about learning everything he can about her and her world, Earth- to the point of asking her best friend for advice, which was to ask Kara and listen to what she wants.   Kara could have actually have really used this advice from Winn.  Oddly enough though, when both Alex and Winn, the people who know her best, try to give her advice last night, she completely disregards them.  I’m not sure she really did listen to Mon-el’s last speech to her.  Her response was not really in response to anything he said.  She’s made her decisions and assumptions based on her feelings and beliefs.  Not his.  He has his family and people back!  They could have their planet back!  Why wouldn’t he want that?  After all, it is everything she’d be happy to have (see Black Mercy in season 1).  And this is the crux of the matter with last night’s episode.  Kara tells Mon-el that relationships are work in last night’s episode.  And he really, really tries.  He reaches out to her.  But for some reason, Kara takes the easy path, the path she thinks is the better path.  The path she can control.   She ends the relationship.  I don’t think that’s what she really wanted though, but I think that with the reveal of Mon-el’s lie and the her realization that she never really knew who Mon-el was, she thought she had lost control.  (regardless of the fact that I think she got to know the real Mon-el, he got to finally be himself and make his own decisions.  I’m getting the impression he never got to do that on Daxam.  Look at how his bodyguard drags him to the pod in the flashback.  For all he was a Prince, I’m not sure he ever made any real decisions - look at how he reacts as he’s being dragged.  There’s people crying for help and he is stopped with indecision before being dragged along again.  In his evacuation of Daxam, he’s not even given a choice.  Just told what to do.)

Ooops, I veered off there.  Anyways, as many have pointed out, it’s obvious the writers want Kara and Barry in the same headspace for the crossover tonight.  The headspace where they can see that making decisions for others isn’t how you should go about doing things maybe?   That giving up love because you’re scared something will happen isn’t the right thing?  I don’t know.  But I think that right now, both Kara and Barry are in the same place.  I just hope they can manage to move past the Oliver Queen method.