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natsubeatsrock · 6 years

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“Lisanna meant more dead than alive.”

This statement is one that I've seen pop up very often. This always comes up whenever the discussion comes to her in-series role post-Edolas. As the argument goes, she was important to characters before she was thought to be dead. But when she came back, she had little to do with and was pushed to the sidelines.

A few years ago, I would have probably made a different post than this. What I would probably have done is defend Lisanna's usefulness in series to characters after her return. I'd maybe even blame the fandom for how things ultimately went down and point out the hypocrisy of this statement.

However, I've thought about this particular statement more as I think more about changing the series as a whole. One of the tricky things about what I want to do is make stuff that didn't happen in any form of Fairy Tail seem at least plausible. To do anything important, I have to justify my decisions with

I want to (and plan to) give her more stuff to do, but there's kind of a limit. Like, I could absolutely do stuff like make Lisanna about as important as Lucy to the series if I wanted to. She could be a member of Team Natsu who gets her own major fights and substantial screen time. However, at that point, I feel like I'd go too far past what could have happened.

And, after the whole thing with Mashima in France, I started to ask myself a different question: Would we, as a fandom, actually want Lisanna to do more in the series after coming back?

Off the bat, part of me is skeptical of this question because of the reaction to stuff like additions to the anime. Shinji Ishihara and his team added a ton of stuff about Lisanna that wasn't in the original manga. While I think that they're all amazing additions, especially when they deal with her impact on other characters, this isn't the consensus opinion. To many people, this is exactly the kind of thing that drove them to believe that she was going to do more stuff in the future. They wish this kind of stuff wasn't added so they wouldn't get their hopes up for the future.

But, that might just be me being pessimistic. I mean, after all, that's the anime. Any changes from any manga into anime usually are met with some level of hostility by fans. It would be insane of me to think that they could just add more moments for Lisanna and it not get ripped apart as stuff that didn't happen like most other anime-only moments.

And, of course, it's not like every addition the anime made was treated well by fans. Some (usually the Nalu-oriented stuff) are well-liked, but fans considered the anime-only arcs to be among the worst, usually citing Daphne arc as the worst arc in the series. (Not for long, though.) And Gruvia fans aren't too happy with how Juvia was treated in some of those arcs.

What about if Mashima himself decided to incorporate more of Lisanna in the manga? That's definitely worth thinking about for a bit.

After all, we apparently almost got a love triangle between her, Natsu, and Lucy. Would we be able to handle the implications of Lisanna getting enough time for fans to genuinely be convinced that she might end up with Natsu? (Not that what we got stopped fans like me, to begin with.) What's more, would this fandom be okay with the possibility of her actually ending up with Natsu?

And I know some of you may be thinking, "That would be weird, Natsu and Lisanna wouldn't be that popular." What if it were? What if Mashima actually wrote the series so that more people were convinced that Nali was going to happen over Nalu? Heck, what if that wasn't the case and it just happened that Nali ended up actually being the more popular ship?

Of course, that's only ships. There's plenty of other ways Lisanna could have been more important in the series after her return. For instance, what if she actually did join Team Natsu? Yeah, what if probably of the only things I like about those "Lucy leaves" stories actually end up happening and Lisanna actually gets to work along with Natsu, Lucy and the rest of the main gang?

What would that be like? How would she stack up against some of the more serious threats in the series? (Hopefully, her Tartaros matchup would be better than Lamy.)

But that's not the only way she could have become more important. What would it be like if Lisanna were to actually get more important moments as a side character?

Here's a simple one: What if she were the one to take Wendy's place in the Grand Magic Games, instead of Elfman? That would mean she takes them up to compete in Labyrinth, she's the one who gets to fight Bacchus (for herself and Mira, no less), and she'd still probably end up severely injured after the fact. Is that something that would honestly be seen as okay for Lisanna to do?

Now, I'm not going to pretend that I absolutely know how the fandom would react to these questions. However, I don't want these to be questions that the fandom as a whole considers. I feel as though you should ask yourself some of these questions. I think it would be irresponsible for me to do this and not give my own opinions on this.

I'd absolutely love to see more of Lisanna. I'd love to see how a potential romantic relationship, successful or otherwise, would be written between her and Natsu with a love triangle in mind. (Though, I'm absolutely not disappointed that we didn't get a love triangle.) I'd love to see what it would be like if she were an actual member of the strongest team. It would be cool to see how she would act in a fight post-Edolas. I mean, she showed more progress in her magic than Elfman.

On that note, I don't know that Lisanna going instead of Elfman is that insane an idea. Obviously, it didn't happen, but it's not like it couldn't have happened. Lisanna proved to be better than Elfman at Take-Over magic before going to Edolas. With enough training, she could probably outdo Elfman again in terms of skill. Of course, I say that and I'll probably make it so Elfman goes like in canon proper.

The one thing I would be worried about is that I'm not sure how getting more of Lisanna would impact her character. As the series went on [insert specific characters here that we all disagree got worse over time] were written as worse than they were introduced to us as. Of course, the rest of the series fell off after [insert point when the series fell off we can't seem to agree on]. However, it especially hurts to see characters act against established motivations of and learned lessons from previous arcs.

With Lisanna, we didn't have as much time to establish her character as, Juvia or Levy, secondary characters fans argue got worse as the series went on. However, a basic idea for her character was set in the moments we got. I'm afraid that Mashima would either turn away from her gentle side and turn her into just a prankster or turn from her playful side and only make her a sweet character.

But it's not like I'd expect the majority of the fandom to catch on to that anyway. I don't see a lot of good fan characterizations of Lisanna. That's not just from the perspective of "I can't believe that you idiot Nalu shippers would write Lisanna as even close to how you do when she kicks Lucy off Team Natsu" I took well over a year ago. Like, I can count on one hand the number of writers I've seen give good, canon-based portrayals of Lisanna Strauss in fanfiction. Everyone else usually writes Lisanna as “Diet Mirajane, with a twist of Lucy” or just “Diet Lucy”. Then again, half of the writers who write Lisanna in a way I like ship Nali and agree with a lot of the stuff I've said about it over the years, so take that for what you will.

And this goes back to the main question at hand: would the fandom actually want more Lisanna Strauss in canon? From what I can tell, most people don't even know that much about Lisanna in the first place. Of course, a good part of that is exactly why the argument for more of her happens at all. However, you're not getting a whole lot of it from the perspective of wanting more of her. You get it from the idea that she shouldn't have been brought back or existed in the first place.

The difference between the two is important. One is seeing how awesome a character could be or already is and wants to see those interesting things brought out more. The other is comes from wondering if something could somehow be made to be more useless than it already seems. One of these mentalities results in a character like Levy getting more screentime than originally intended. The other results in characters taking pot shots when the anime gets abridged.

There goes me being pessimistic again...

In Conclusion:

Regardless of how you feel about Lisanna's handling in canon, it's interesting to think about how she could have gotten more of a chance to shine. Still, I'm doubtful if the fandom wants more or less of her.

Oh, by the way, I participated in r/anime’s 750k writing competition a while back. I wrote in defense of the idea that Fairy Tail is a series that has good ideas with bad execution. If you’re interested, especially if you aren’t following my rewrite series, check it out. Be warned that I was a bit “stuffier” writing that essay than I normally am here and I don’t think it’s some of my best writing (as some people commented).

#fairy tail #lisanna strauss #fairy tail fandom #anti fairy tail fandom #ish? i guess?#ft rewrites #well not really #this was queued

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