#for me pre timeskips also has pre gmg

[shadowqueens]

“How I hate to spend my evening alone.”

from this meme

flare's declaration came not without its warrent. the sky was becoming dark with the beginnings of twilgiht sparkling in the sky. some people have left the guild already and of those that lived here — some had went to the dorms. zilla wiggled her toes in her shoes, feeling a small amount of bravery for her response.

"well..." her voice was quiet, as it usually was. "i could ... spend it with you. we could go to my room and have ... a sleepover?" zilla had read about sleepovers. they seem fun. and her room was bigger than the average dorm, as it was in the private wing of raven tail, across from master ivan's room.

[fanstuffrantings]

It always felt like such a waste introducing raventail in this arc and then never seeing them again - they should have had their own arc!

1000% agree. Part of what doesn't work about them in grand magic games is we have no basis for how strong they are to begin with so this idea of them being defeated by Laxus really holds no weight at all. Even beyond that how they got utilized in the GMG was such a waste, I know Mashima wants to portray Ivan as pathetic but in the end it results in me not caring that Laxus defeats him and not even feeling like they were actually family ever to begin with.

I've said before we really needed more arcs pre timeskip just to pad things out a bit because the S-class exam happens way too early into the series. I think Raven tail happening right before the time skip and maybe even being an arc that leaves fans feeling angry and unfulfilled with Raven tail escaping in the end, would set up fantastically for their take down in GMG.

"But laxus wouldn't be there" we focus on Makarov and Ivan during the arc. We focus on the older members of fairy tail who would've been around when Ivan was part of it and how they react to seeing him again. Wakaba, Macao, Gildarts potentially (Several others in my rewrite would also be around his age.).

Part of what I don't like about Laxus beating Raven tail alone as well is it really just proves what his father did to him was correct. We get told Ivan implanted a lacrima in Laxus as a child and it's outright said to be horrible and monstrous. Yet Mashima then shows that Laxus has worth because "actually he's so strong he can beat his dad now". The better way to handle it would be Laxus learning the strength of relying on others and how he's more than just his physical strength. We could've had Makarov and Laxus potentially tag team taking down Ivan and it would've been far more emotional and fulfilling to me.

Raven tail is built up pretimeskip with Makarov sending Gajeel in to gather information and the culmination of that is so anticlimactic and infuriating. They get so wasted.

[fanstuffrantings]

I have a theory that there was a lot more planed with Raven Tail, but it was cut. It was like hyped up so much to end up being nothing. Also can we talk about how Ivan wasn't arrest. I mean all he did was break rules in a silly little game. That isn't a thing someone would be arrested for. Right? So really Ivan can just show up when ever. I also have the opinion that after the tower of heaven to the S-class trails a lot of things weren't planned out well. The series was supposed to end at the town of heaven. I mean you see this with Lisanna randomly coming back and just nothing being done with her. We don't even see her and Nastu like being besties or bonding again. I have always seen the 7 year time skip as a soft reboot/reset for the series. That's when things were planned out better, but he had Raven Tail built up already. He had to do something with it.

I fully agree on so much, though I think Mashima did have bare bones of early arcs figured out (battle of fairy tail feels like it was intended) but the execution was figured out he wrote it.

Even with tower of heaven I feel like he threw things out there only knowing the ending he wanted. "That was the last time I saw erza smile for a while" is a foreboding line that really has no proper pay of and has always bothered me because the implication (to me) is that erza is badly effected by the event for arcs to come. But by the very next arc she's fine.

I said before that timeskips are one of my favorite part of shounen series. I love seeing how people change with the passage of time. The hype of seeing your favorite characters reappear years later always hits. But fairy tail manages to royally screw it up by not giving us any characters left behind to be properly invested in, and the status quo being pretty much unchanged despite almost an entire decade passing. It also happens so early into the series that Mashima finds time to cram yet another pointless time skip in before the series ends.

I have always felt that he writes based on what interests him and that his interest and change quickly. I say this as someone who has a similar issue of often losing interests in the things I'm working on. His writing style feels familiar. So I'd fully be willing to believe he got overexcited about doing a timeskip even if he hadn't set it up properly and rearranged things to make it work.

I think ultimately though, his flaws with rushing are not as noticeable until we get to post tartaros where you can tell not only does he not know where to go, but he also has lost his drive for the series. I remember when Alvarez/post 1 year time skip was releasing weekly I just didn't actually care about what happened. If memory serves around this same time he was releasing Fairy tail Zero chapters and the stark difference in general vibe between them was so noticeable. It felt like he was excited to write zero and had passion for it that was very much lacking in the core series.

At least in the pretartaros content you could point to some moments of foreshadowing (like tartaros actually being mentioned pre timeskip as one of the guilds in league with Grimoire Heart and Oracion Seis) but Alvarez came out of nowhere at the speed of light to end fairy tail because Mashima needed an end but didn't want to actually go through setting things up since it would take time.

Edit: honestly everything done with raventail was baffling. How exactly does a dark guild get approved to be made official just because they ask nicely????? Like maybe I could believe it if it had been something they'd been working towards for years but the implication being they only joined because makarov and Laxus were there to explain lumen histoire makes me doubt that. Mashima really didn't want to actually deal with them 😭. Arrested for cheating in the gmg is so lame man.