#also I’d like to clarify that there’s nothing wrong with fanon interpretations I love those too honestly

[natsubeatsrock]

The Rewrite of Fairy Tail: Bonus (Gruvia)

How will I handle Gruvia in a romantic sense? 

Well, I've lived long enough. This might be one of the most contentious parts of the series. I alluded to this earlier, but there's no way I won't upset someone by posting this. 

I feel the need to reiterate an important point I've made many times before in this series. My interpretation of how Fairy Tail should be changed is not the only way to change the series or even the best. Everything I'm writing is based on my own interpretations of the series. Even as that interpretation is filtered through multiple readings of the series and about five years of interactions with the Fairy Tail fandom, it is still only one person’s interpretation. I try not to apologize for having the biases I do and, at the very least, do my best to explain how I got to the conclusions I have come to.

I want to start there because there are a lot of interesting ways to deal with Juvia and Gray's relationship as it happens in canon. While I've been an outspoken critic of Gruvia's handling in the series, the possibility for change is not lost on me. I even mentioned a while back that I'd be more apt to make Gruvia canon over Nalu if I were behind Fairy Tail. Heck, I started typing the second draft of this post not long after the chapter in the sequel that implies Gruvia being more possible in the future. I could take any number of routes with Gruvia and find reasonable justification within canon to do so. However, I can only (seriously) go with one interpretation of the ship for rewriting Fairy Tail.

With that said, I want to divide Gruvia's development into three sections: Phantom Lord to Edolas, Tenrou to the Grand Magic Games, and after the Grand Magic Games. How do I want to change what happened during each section? 

To be honest, I don't think there's much of a problem with Gruvia in the first section. If anything, I may smooth over some of the more contentious parts of this section of the series. However, I don't think that it would be a good idea for Juvia to not resemble her canon self in her over-the-top displays of affection for Gray. That feels like too much of a drastic change. 

Though, as I mentioned before, it's after Edolas when things get interesting as Juvia starts to make more active attempts at a relationship with Gray. Even then, I don't want to do too much different before the end of the Grand Magic Games. Considering I want Juvia to have more interactions with her friends, she may get talked out of some ideas. 

Some, of course, being the operative word. Like, does she decide to drug Gray into liking her and almost “destroy the guild” in the process? Probably not. Does she decide to go follow Gray and Erza on their mission? Probably, but not because she isn’t advised to do otherwise.

And then we get to the rejection scene at the end of the Grand Magic Games and we have a real decision to make. There are three ways I see this can be handled: a weak option, a hard option, and a soft option. As I like to remember them, they are interpretations from canon, fanon, and no one I know. (I tried to make them rhyme.) 

The canon interpretation, as you may remember, is that Gray tells Juvia that he doesn't reciprocate Juvia's feelings for him. (Choosing a translation for that would be fun.) However, Juvia effectively rejects the rejection Gray has of her. In the original, Juvia sees it as a way to make Gray like her more. In Fairy Girls, this is clarified as Juvia interpreting Gray's rejection as him being shy with his feelings. 

Frankly, it's hard for me to want to do this. The issue is not that Juvia likes Gray despite being rejected by him. Even if you want to argue that Gray isn't necessarily being sincere in his rejection, I don't think Juvia should act like his rejection doesn't matter. And if that actually was how he felt about Juvia, be it for the time or the rest of the series, it's incredibly disrespectful of Juvia to act this way. Effectively, it's a weak way to keep the Gruvia song and dance going along until Mashima decides to end it for all of us.

By the looks of it, a lot of fan writers seem to think the same way.  Their attempts to write a Gruvia rejection scene have evolved into what I consider to be the hard option for a Gruvia rejection. For the uninitiated, allow me to ruin any Juvia x [not Gray] story you may ever read. As you can expect, Gray decides to tell Juvia that he doesn't like her. However, he does so in a way that makes it very clear that Juvia was not and will never be able to make Gray like her. This usually results in Juvia being in a state of emotional availability (to put it lightly, in some cases) for [not Gray] to sweep Juvia off her feet and make her forget about Gray. Often with, and/or leading to, sex.

While I don't terribly mind this in fanfiction, I don't love this as a reflection on Juvia's ability to be in a romantic relationship that doesn't involve Gray. Nor do I think that it's possible to do this and keep Gray as a sympathetic character, let alone in character. If you're writing a story not bound to the rules that I am, these aren't bad things, in my opinion. But considering I am writing the rewrite with the rules I’ve put on myself, I can't do this.

The third option is one I haven't really seen done by anyone trying to put Juvia in a ship that isn't Gruvia. Some writers may skip the second option but they'll just cut to Juvia in the relationship they're writing for or ignore Juvia liking Gray and not liking him entirely. (Again, that's fine but not for what I'm trying to do.) The idea is that Gray still rejects Juvia but it doesn't break her or their overall relationship. They are still friends and can work together, but Gray is not, at that moment, interested in pursuing a relationship with Juvia.

I don't even think it's wrong for her to still want to be with Gray or even continue to work towards making Gray like her. However, what needs to happen is that, from this point on, she should be more subtle about it. This means that the dynamic changes from arguably willful ignorance towards Juvia's feelings to an actual sense of misunderstanding between them where Gray thinks that Juvia is content with his answer even though she is not. This state shouldn't be terribly hard for people to spot out. I have ideas for how this can look but I don't want to spoil too much. 

However, we get to what may be the most important question I can deal with: do they end up together? While I wouldn't call this a hard answer, I'm currently leaning towards no for at least three reasons.

First off, they didn't end up as canon.  While Mashima seems to be pushing them towards a trajectory of canonicity, he didn't keep them together at the end of 545, my cutoff point for considering canon ships. While their conversation in that chapter has been interpreted by many to be a romantic on Gray's part, I can't say they're canon considering he left Juvia at the end of the chapter. At best, it means he's genuinely willing to start a relationship with her when he returns. At worst, he's only entertaining the idea. Only time will tell how Mashima goes with this. (We don't call the man Trollshima for nothing.) 

Second, I don't really need them to be a couple. I don't know that anything is lost by Gray and Juvia not being a romantic couple. Much of the good about their relationship, as I interpret it, wouldn't be lost if they decided to stay friends and ended up in romantic relationships with other people. In addition to that, I'm not as invested in making them be a couple as I am for other smaller ships in the series I could also work with to make canon. 

But more than either of those arguments, there is the big elephant in the room: Juvia's death. (What? Thought I forgot what day it is?) I don’t have a definite stance on whether or not Juvia should die around the same time she does in the original in my rewrite of the series. There are a number of factors going into my decision based on how it played out in canon that I can easily spend a separate post about why it's not an easy decision. However, it's obviously impossible to make Gruvia canon if I decide to kill Juvia.

Based on Part 19

#the rewrite of fairy tail #anti gruvia #ish? i guess? #it's more like #not really pro gruvia #but not as hard as i've gone on it in the past #also... #happy august 31st! #i need a name for this day #5 years in a row #i talk about juvia dying