User blog comment:TheCarrotSaysYumYum/FT0 8 - Magnolia is on Fire?/Blue Cat Happy, Review./@comment-25111584-20150220171721/@comment-25111584-20150223083625

When one goes hiking or hunting or w/e into mountains, forests, etc. and the path is as crude as shown here, one tends to make notes of landmarks so as to not get lost. Geoffrey is a smart man, he would obviously do this.

Goeffrey might have lost a sense of distance, so fell for Mavis' trap upon seeing Magnolia. Not saying that's unbelievable. But, while approaching, he should have easily realized that something was wrong. It doesn't matter that Magnolia was an illusion, he should have realized that it was one even before he reached it. Something on the lines of, "Wait, where'd that weird shaped tree I passed earlier go? Did I miss it? Maybe. But ... that stone is nowhere near Magnolia! The town's a fake and they expect me to fall for it? The fools!"

We already know that he can keep his cool when in a tense situation, so can't really say that he was in too much of a panic to notice these things. Mavis and the others have no way of knowing which objects he uses as landmarks, so they can't meddle with them.

Basically, Geoffrey's intelligence and all the great qualities he had shown earlier got nerfed just to let Mavis' strategy work. He either never kept landmarks (a stupid thing to do for an intelligent man like him) or was in too much of a panic (a pretty pathetic thing for someone who looked so cool in his last battle). Sorry, not a great fan of things like this.

But, eh, as you said, to each their own.