ok but can we talk about fairy tail's seven year time skip and the gaps that occurred in relations through that time?
like imagine you're erza and the guy you've known since you were a kid and you care so much about is responsible for so many horrible crimes but it wasn't really his fault, not really, but you discovered that too late. and you have hope that he'll go back to how he once was but now his memory is gone and he's gonna be in prison likely for the rest of his life but there's a chance. then you go to tenrou island and you think it's the end but when you wake up it's been 7 years and now you're still 19 years old and jellal is at least 26 and he's got his memory back and he's trying to make amends and he's so far away in life experience and relations with people and you feel you were left behind, he didn't even need you by his side to grow, to be good, and he won't really need you again
now imagine you're gray and you discover one of your oldest friends, like your brother, betrays you and the beliefs of the person you had in common but then the situation gets resolved and you can find peace between each other. but now lyon is seven years older than you and he's had longer time to advance his magic, ur's magic, and you know he's had to mourn both you and ur, and potentially looked at his magic and thought he was the last one from that little family of three from all those years ago. he doesn't know ultear, who has grown since the last time you saw her a few hours ago no wait, seven years ago, and she's also trying to make up for her many mistakes and she's more kind and gentle but you won't get to know her because she's already gone so soon after you returned
it's just so sad to think deeper about the consequences of seven years passing, lives continuing on without you and thinking about how everyone that loves you and you love thought you were dead and you don't know how to fix things or fit into this new time
this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.
good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.
sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.
so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.
one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.
Someone asking me for my hobbies is so humiliating.... I like to play and have fun. I like to smile and draw. I like putting words in an order. Sometimes I laugh and grin.
Chinese artist Shou Xin creates the most wonderful cats with just a few pencil lines