#the first is a lot more exposition-y and is less quest based

[violexides]

i have been on the verge of sneezing for 20 minutes and i have been completely unable to i fucking hate it here

on another note, time to Attempt to write the second chapter of the dark brotherhood au

[fairytail-whathesays]

So uh, I don’t know how coherent this will be (forgive me, it’s almost midnight here) but I’ll try anyway.

I’ve been rereading FT after not touching it for years (I am in the middle of the Galuna arc, btw, so anything after that is not as fresh to me) and I was struck both by how much better than the latter canon the early parts were (if only for the lessened fanservice, and the still believable situations) and by how a lot of what I hate about FT is already rearing its ugly head.

That they are. The real problems behind Fairy Tail start with Phantom Lord, and I honestly enjoy Galuna Island a lot more than other arcs.

Case in point: what is basically the first friendship-nakama-etc speech, courtesy of Makarov himself. (I am not 100% sure it is the actual first, but it is probably the first to be that overt and long.) And honestly, this, coupled with what Makarov said to Romeo way back in the Balkan/Vulcan arc, already makes me hate him.

Rebelling against authority is cool if that authority is corrupt. Saying “fuck you” against authority that really wants you to quit destroying property and punching people is not cool at all. Especially if your longtime friend is a member of that authority and catches shit for all of your wrongdoing.

And, having read your post about the reasons you hate Makarov, I noticed that - chronologically - it starts with Gajeel. So, uh, I wanted to add something about him that you had not written about yet, as far as I know? (and, I mean, I might have missed it if you had since I only discovered this blog today! Though i have been binge-reading it for some hours…)

It is often said -and shown- that Makarov believes FT mages to be his “children”, and tbh this shows the kind of father he is…

What I consider his “first offense” comes with his reaction to Romeo’s plea (that someone PLEASE look for his dad, since he took on a job he said would take 3 days and it’s been a week) : he literally brushes him off with the worst words he could have said. “No way! Your dad is a mage! We have no mage here who can’t take care of himself! Go home!”, and later on, to himself: “if he goes to help Macao, it will only hurt his pride. No one can decide what he should do, just leave him alone.”

Fuck, I never remember that until people bring it up–but now that you mention it, I remember thinking that was really shitty, too. 1) A man’s pride is not worth less than his safety and life or the damage it causes his child to see that life in danger, and 2) that just fucking stupid. “Mages can take care of themselves”? He was up in the mountains and it was below freezing. Makarov acts like mages are immortal and infallible and that not returning from a three-day mission after a week is cause for no concern.

Then of course, when Macao is rescued by Natsu & Lucy (and he was very much in need of rescuing), he is grateful, and his pride is not damaged at all, as he tells Romeo of how he managed to defeat 19 monsters by himself.

Thanks, Makarov. Now we know who to trust.

Mirajane, in her exposition mode, says he is actually quite worried - I can believe that, but his reaction is not good at all. And I can understand where he comes from - his words clearly come from some bad experience - but still: he is the guild’s master. Is “everyone here can take care of themselves, and thus nobody should help them, and they should be left alone” the right attitude to take with this kind of things? …Nope, no it isn’t, especially when he is dealing with literal children (whom we know have been part of FT and will soon be again. Since they were FT mages, I expect they, too, would have been considered capable of taking care of themselves?).

Right you are.

The best thing about this? Laxus later on fucking calls him on it, when he refuses to go looking for Natsu and Lucy and drag them back from their stolen S-ranked job: “Don’t be ridiculous… I have another job to take care of. ‘There isn’t a single mage that can’t take care of his own stuff’, right?”

(This, btw, is the exact moment this character became my favorite)

Translation: Double standard? Not on my watch.

Which makes me wonder, how many times has Makarov said that?

Still, I suppose that -as Hiro Mashima does show some self-reflection for once- he did not actually think what Makarov said to do was the best course of action. Although it does not really excuse him pretty much using it for years before Natsu stole that S-ranked quest…

Imagine if that had been the guild’s reaction when considering whether to rescue Makarov from the Alvarez Empire. “Eh, Makarov can take care of himself. He can handle it”. And Makarov, of all people, should’ve been able to. 

Anyway, going back to the whole maybe-first friendship speech (or at least the first one I noticed) : that speech was particularly appalling, at least to me, for being awful both in-canon and out of it.

Let’s start with the out of canon (uh, Doylist point of view I think?):

Yep!

It was bad writing. Pure and simple. The situation is: Kageyama, our resident Eisenwald Shikamaru-expy, has been saved by Team Natsu but has subsequently betrayed them, escaping with Lullaby. He manages to get to the regular meeting of guild masters, and attempts to play the cursed flute in front of Makarov. At that point, though, flashbacks start to happen: at first to the reasons his guild is doing it, then to things Team Natsu said to him - that what they are trying to do won’t accomplish what they truly want, some positive stuff from Gray - anyway, sorta standard stuff, but still effective. He’s sweating and hesitating - and at that point, the dreaded Speech commences: it is, tbh, a mess that boils down to “Alone, we are weak. Together, we are strong” ™ - which ends with Makarov revealing he Knew All Along, and Kage admitting his defeat.

From a purely storytelling point of view, I was - devastated, honestly. I had really gotten into that character (Shikamaru-expy and all), and was legit tearing up a bit at how Team Natsu’s words had had such an effect on him even when they weren’t even trying to Make Him Good or anything. It would have been very powerful, imo, if what had actually happened was that he simply gave up after having those flashbacks, realizing that he never really wanted to kill the guild masters and that he was just lashing out at what he believed to be an unjust world and system etc etc. You know, character development and all - all the more powerful since he never received a Friendship Speech, but simply was impacted by a few comments.

Instead…well, Friendship Speech™, which didn’t even fit into the whole thing (I mean, what has “having nakamas” got to do with what he was doing? Eisenwald’s whole problem is that they were kicked out of the League and made illegal & dark, and that they consider it to be unjust and want to get back at those who did it. That’s… that’s his guild’s issue. His nakama’s issue. The problem with him and his guild wasn’t that they were, Idk, loners without friends or whatever: it was that they were going to kill innocents and people barely connected to those who made them a dark guild, and also that they never quite examined why they were kicked out, and why they were not blameless at all, and did deserve it*), and lessened SO MUCH the impact of a villain deciding that he was on the wrong path mostly on his own, with just a bit of help and without that help being so over the top and condescending.

Way to hit the nail on the head. There is an external problem and an internal problem. The external is their perceived unjust treatment; the internal problem is their extreme reaction to it, nor merely a lack of unity or family attitude. 

Then we have the in-canon problems and- I might repeat myself, you’re warned (it’s almost 0100 uuugh). Okay, so: I can accept Makarov knowing what that flute is and what it does (since even Lucy did), and being confident enough that he could stop that kid if he truly seemed to be ready to play it (he can be fast, and he simply had to extend his arm and take it). But- that speech. Man, that speech.

He is going off an infuriatingly vague and cliched speech, basing it off- what? What does he even know about Kageyama? Does he even know about Eisenwald? Probably not, since he was simply leaving because he got worried about Team Natsu being, well, a thing. Why, then, is he lecturing this person - who, for all he knows, might belong in a guild as nakama-y as FT? (oh, wait, my bad: only the good guys are allowed to have True Nakamas ™. Bad guys get the False Nakamas, if any, who would gladly kill you for power. Always. At all times. For any reason.) He just sounds arrogant, full of himself, and very much trying to do the all-knowing wise mentor routine. With an added bonus of straight up manipulation - telling him that he should not rely on tools but on friends (insert sparkly), and thus should not use that flute (what, not because he would kill innocent people in it? Because using it would be weak? Wow, thanks Makarov, so deep). There is no way in hell this could work if Mashima hadn’t really, really wanted it to. If I was Kageyama, I’d play that flute just because of that speech. That’s how much I hated it.

So if he had followed through with Makarov’s advice, he’d have returned with allies and then slaughtered the guildmasters? Nice advice. It’s doubly stupid because Kageyama is an example of relying on friends–Erigor fell down on the job and cannot complete it, so Kageyama is picking up the slack and completing it for him. Yeah, their end goal might be murder, but the principle is the same: relying on one’s friends.

*Ok this is going to be a really weird rant, but hear me out: the plight of Dark Guilds, and mages from them. For Eisenwald, it wasn’t really explored whether or not all of them were taking up assassination requests or it was just Erigor (or idk, Erigor and a few others). There must have been at least some members of the guild who never killed anyone - and at least some who were unaware of it happening in their guild. Then the guild was ordered to disband and declared dark. …We don’t really see this in canon, but IMO mages from dark guilds probably find it at least somewhat hard to find a good guild to join. And anyway, it does mean giving up your guildmates, and the guild (which, if it happened to FT, would never be supported by the narrative). Honestly, I am not condoning the things dark guilds do - but declaring a guild dark like that is not only harsh but also actively encourages the members of that guild to do Fucked Up Shit, even if they weren’t doing it before. Couldn’t there have been some inquiries, those truly responsible be arrested and the guild, without the worst members, allowed to go on? Only arresting the guild master and declaring the guild dark and ordering it to disband is the worst course of action the council could have undertaken.

That is a weird rant. I didn’t ask this question because the feeling I got while watching the Erigor arc was that most of the members overall didn’t have a problem with murder, but perhaps I’m wrong for assuming that. But generally, I wouldn’t consider that an ill response, since once lives are taken you have to take measures. Dark guilds can be forcibly disbanded when the Magic Council hire light guilds to do so, so it would make sense that they aren’t worried about backlash. 

I… probably have more to say, and what I did say I wanted to say better, but I’m tired as heck and I’ve ranted long enough now. I hope you can glean something halfway coherent from this, and also wanted to let you know your analyses are brilliant and I love them <3 Thanks for reading all this, and please maybe let me know what you think?

I think you made a lot of good points. I’m now stewing in my hatred both for Makarov and for Mashima’s tired, exhausted narrative choices. Thanks for sending!