The Thing I Hate Most About Fairy Tail Is That They Threw Away Interesting Platonic Relationships That

The thing I hate most about fairy tail is that they threw away interesting platonic relationships that could have been explored so well just to shoe in more content of the romantic relationships. The reason I hate the m*vis ship so much (besides the obvious p*dophillia) is because it took so much away from what could have been a really interesting relationship dynamic between Zeref and Natsu and made his death super unsatisfying. The fact that Zeref and Mavis died because "they loved each other too much" was bad enough as an ending for Zeref but the real thing that frustrated me was that Natsu just leaves Mavis to finish off the only biological family he has left and neither he nor Zeref seem to have a second thought about it. It makes Zeref's origin feel really weak in that even though he sacrificed so much to bring back his brother neither of them seem to really have any emotions regarding each other. Personally, I'm always a big fan of when a story's ending has some connection with the begging so when Zeref's story started with the relationship between him and Natsu only to end with the relationship between him and Mavis it felt like the beginning was just thrown away to give way for a romantic relationship.

Sorry for the rant your earlier post reminded me of how much I hate this ship

You have hit the nail on the head. Not just with Zervis, but with all the romantic relationships we're fed in the series. Fairy Tail's biggest flaw, is that it sets up multiple, genuine, interesting platonic relationships, and then threw them out the window midway through the series for the sake of romantic relationships that were constructed much more poorly. Personally, I think that happened because so much of the fandom fixated on ships instead of anything actually interesting about the series (which makes me *dry heaves* fucking allo people) so Mashima put more focus on them to cater to his fans.

Because, like you're pointing out with Zervis, it makes so much more sense for Natsu to be Zeref's most important relationship. Narratively. Also, it's just far more satisfying. Not just for Zeref, but Mavis's storyline also felt incomplete and cheap because of that (the focus should have been on her relationships to Zera, Yuri, Warrod, and Precht, not Zeref. And during the Alvarez arc, since most of them were dead, it should have been about protecting the guild she worked so hard to create, again, not her horrible relationship to Zeref).

It's not just Zervis we see this with though. The fact that Gray's character development changed to revolve around Juvia towards the end when he didn't even actually like her, rather than Erza, Natsu, or Lucy, you know, his fucking team. The fact that Erza became all about wanting to help fix Jellal as her main motivator. Natsu and Lucy I'm more okay with because they are friends, but I will say, I think it's wonky that it's specifically because of Lucy that all the END stuff happens, I think Zeref should have been the one to trigger it. Even Gajeel and Levy get the unfortunate treatment of only existing because of each other, which sucks, especially considering the potential they had at the beginning of the series.

But yeah no, as they are presented in canon, the romantic relationships are a goddamn scourge on Fairy Tail, and the series would be so much better without them, or at the least, they should have remained in the background rather than the forefront.

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