User blog comment:Miskos3/Fairy Tail Chapter 488: The Two of Us, Always, Review/@comment-24546844-20160606192748/@comment-25111584-20160607071320

I am almost always in complete agreement with your comments. This is one of the rare occasions where our views differ. XD
 * Gajeel's Death: This scene showed Gajeel's development in a nutshell. Sure, Gajeel disappearing only after getting to say his piece and no Alvarez soldiers trying to make mincemeat of a distracted Lily and Levy is somewhat surprising, but these trivialities can be easily explained away. I myself am not moved in the least by the scene, but that's not because of anything wrong with the scene itself. As a standalone, it's pretty well-written and emotional, although kinda run-of-the-mill.
 * Mest's screw-up: If this were not FT, I'd actually applaud Mest's act.
 * He was basically making the best out of an incredibly bad situation, courtesy of the idiocy of his Guild and especially Lucy. The best result that Brandish could get out of the negotiation would be August trying to get Zeref to call off the genocide after getting his hands on FH and maybe sparing Lucy. But Mest, Happy and Natsu would definitely die here and the Guild would be assaulted. And Brandish, after fulfilling her bargain of attempting to negotiate, would definitely help August in eliminating their enemies as anything otherwise would be betraying August himself, not just the Empire.
 * However, this is FT. A sense of naiveté, stupidity and overall childishness have pervaded FTverse ever since the Alvarez Empire arc. It might sound weird, but in-universe logic dictates that, had the negotiations turned sour, August would have allowed the FT Mages to return due to a convenient and misplaced sense of fair play. In fact, the negotiations might even have worked, and let's all ignore that Brandish's talk about noble ideals is absolute drivel completely out of keeping with the militaristic state she is part of, that the purposeless war is actually meant to get FH to Zeref in order to Acnologia as August himself stated, and that she's talking about genocide to a person who has remorselessly slaughtered who knows how many Mages in Bosco, not to mention the fact that she herself nonchalantly almost committed a minor genocide on Caracole Island. Mest is the evil, conniving bastard here, while Brandish is the pure and innocent maiden who was taken advantage of, no matter how retarded that seems out-of-universe.
 * TL;DR: Because of the weird and perverted brand of common sense FT flaunts, Brandish is seen as an angel who has been heartlessly used as a tool to further the goals of the evil and stupid goals of Mest, even in-universe. Hence, this is a screw-up instead of brilliance. The PIS which makes Brandish stab August in the gut instead of the head is kinda proof of this.

P.S. I hope Gildarts doesn't just randomly appear now. In fact, I hope Gildarts vs. August doesn't happen. Oh, and Mest shouldn't die. Make the fandom suddenly hate him and then kill him off? Damn, epitome of bad writing. e_e