[Manga] Why I think Fire and Flame aren't fodder (please read before bashing!)

A couple things of note before I start. I understand the idea of Fire & Flame being anything other than fodder trash is unpopular and that even if I bring up sound reasoning for disagreeing with that notion, there's a strong chance the post will be bashed anyway; all I ask is that people who do want to engage in discussion actually read my reasoning instead of just being like "not reading; how dare you defend trash", but obviously, you're entitled to not read it. I also wanna note that this post isn't to defend Team Natsu vs. Fire & Flame as I don't like the fight and it uses the characters poorly, nor is to stan Fire & Flame since they've never given me reason to stan or even be deeply invested in their characters, even if I find Wed somewhat and Bestia very interesting; I'm making this post because after looking back at how the fight's presented, I feel there's evidence to suggest this, which people are entitled to disagree with.

To start off, as I mentioned in this post here, Wed fought for 18 Chapters worth of content; fighting Erza on and off screen from Chapters 173-182/3ish (about 10 Chapters) before fighting the rest of Team Natsu alongside his Guildmates on and offscreen from Chapter 183-191 (8 Chapters). So they were fighting powerful enemies like Team Natsu for quite a long time. And the Manga makes it clear the fighting is going on even when we don't see it with moments like Team Natsu preparing to fight Fire & Flame as a coordinated team, Lucy summoning Taurus for the fight (Chapter 185), only for us to cut back to them checking on each other after that portion of the fight.

Now, as I've said in previous discussions, I don't feel the length of a fight on its own can be the sole determining factor in scaling. It's impressive when characters can last a long time in a fight for sure, but A) a stronger opponent can lose a fight quickly due to circumstances (like Alta Face when Team Natsu gained power from its Magic) and B) a weaker character can last quite some time against a stronger character also due to circumstances (Time Rift Acnologia couldn't kill the Dragon Slayers so he fought them differently than he normally would). Another negative of so much of this fight being offscreen is that we can't really say the caliber of what Team Natsu or Fire & Flame were throwing at each other when we didn't see. So it could totally be an example of possibility B from before.

But what I will say is that Team Natsu didn't have any reason not to fight hard here, especially since Chapter 191-192 showed that they believed defeating Fire & Flame would turn the people of Dramil back to normal which they wanted to do, and I can't see their previous fights hampering them too much (with the exception of Gray and Erza) since there'd been time since Natsu and Lucy's previous fights and what Lucy and Wendy had weren't really drawn out fights to begin with. In fact, considering the almost playful manner of the Signario Sisters and the fact Ignia didn't want Natsu dead, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the F&F members were holding back, but that's not something that can be confirmed.

But I think an important factor to note is that the members of Fire & Flame weren't just fighting one member of Team Natsu during that fight. There's talk of Natsu vs. Wed, Gray vs. Lecka, Lucy vs. Luso, etc, but that's not how this went; we see those characters clash at points and those Team Natsu members are the ones to land finishers on those Fire & Flame members, but it was a team fight where multiple members had some encounter with each other. For example, almost every Team Natsu member except Lucy (unless I'm forgetting) dealt with Raj at least once, Wed not only came off a fight with Erza and fought Natsu; he was shown dealing with at least Gray, Luso took hits from both Natsu and Gray; not just Lucy, and I think Natsu hit every F&F member at least once.

So it's important to note that Natsu melting Wed's sword and the anticlimactic finishes from Chapter 191 didn't happen in the vacuum they're often presented as. It's not like Natsu showed up, touched the sword lightly, and it melted or like Team Natsu just showed up, fired their finishing moves, and Fire & Flame just disintegrated. Those endings were anticlimactic, but they weren't all that happened and came after a lengthy period of them using their powers against and taking hits from multiple members one of the strongest teams of Mages in the known world. Both sides would whittle down their power (except the Signario Sisters cuz of Alchemy, but the next thing would apply to them), accumulate damage (including off guard strikes), and in the case of those like Erza and Wed, would wear down their weapons.

We obviously can't describe what happened offscreen, but we can't exclude that it and the rest of the fighting happened. And the fact that this Guild, including a weak member like Raj who was partially defeated by Carla in base, could fight Team Natsu for so long when Team Natsu would likely be fighting at least decently seriously, that doesn't sound like fodder to me. I mean, even if they didn't win, they fought multiple members of Team Natsu for all that time and lasted FAR LONGER than someone with a better reputation like Misaki did. And yes, Misaki was finished off by a stronger attack, but we know a weaker Wed can tank that attack from a less worn down Erza and have no idea the full extent of attacks he took from Erza and Team Natsu. Again, this doesn't make these fights great; they underutulized the characters, were mostly offscreen, and had anticlimactic endings. But just looking at the circumstances and the fight as a whole, I just personally can't see them as fodder; fodder wouldn't have lasted after taking this many hits from multiple Team Natsu Mages. I get being disappointed in them. But in my (almost certainly unpopular) opinion, I can't see them as fodder.