#it's funny because they're just coincidences - they're not technically ironic

[positivelybeastly]

Scott calling Hank his oldest friend in that one panel is so funny to me, bc he’s known Bobby and Warren longer. It’s probably not that serious but I can’t help but take it that way.

To be fair though him warming up to Hank fastest makes a lot of sense. They’re both high achievers (but in different ways, so not really in competition with each other), and Hank’s friendly enough to get past Scott’s barriers, I guess. Warren is really understandable bc I can imagine Scott (possibly Hank to a lesser extent) may be alienated by his privilege (and hate him sometimes while vying for Jean).

Bobby’s exclusion kills me bc he and Hank share the “team goofball” role half the time, so it’s like he found Hank amusing but not Bobby. It’s probably bc Bobby’s the youngest (by like. 2 years tops) but still.

Scott: I care about all my teammates equally. Also Scott: I don’t care for Bobby.

"It's not my fault my jokes are funny and Bobby's aren't."

Yeah, it's one of those things where, Hank was the second to last person to get added to the team (technically last, since they retconned it that Jean was Xavier's first student but not the first X-Man, to account for all the telepathic training/psychic coma therapy they had to do), but of the O5, I actually think Hank may well be Scott's best male friend? Or, well, was, anyway.

We obviously have no idea how long it was in between each team member being added, it could have been successive days, weeks apart, maybe even months, but I always got the impression it was relatively rapid fire, so the difference in the amount of time that Scott knew Hank, Bobby and Warren could just be incremental - and like you've mentioned, Hank and Scott have the kind of personality types that gel out of the gate.

They're both deferential to authority (at least to start with); they're both relatively orderly; they both idolise Professor Xavier (again, at least to start with); and while Hank is a joker at times, especially during this time period, he keeps it much less loose than Bobby does, which I think Scott would respond to.

It's something you can see in Parker's First Class - even though Hank will do shit like this

he's also not the kind of person to question the orders of a field team leader, he just does what he's told because he trusts that it's the best course of action. Bobby, meanwhile, can barely take things seriously, because of the immaturity that dogs him for pretty much his entire life, and while I think Scott probably warmed to that as time went on and he learned to loosen up, Hank and Scott just have a great team chemistry - if you think about it, Hank is, most of the time, the McCoy (ironically) to Scott's Kirk.

Keep in mind, of course, that I don't mean the wider public perception of Kirk, I mean the actual, canonical version of Kirk, who was stated to be a walking stack of books at Starfleet Academy and who never settles down with women not because he's a philanderer, but because he's absolutely dedicated to the Enterprise.

Sound familiar?

Hank's emotionally sensitive enough not to push, but friendly and funny enough to get Scott to lighten up - and even as they change, even as time goes on, you can see that they have a really special bond. I really don't think it's a coincidence that if you look at a lot of X-Men teams, going all the way up until the 2010s, Hank and Scott are almost always put together.

Scott just . . . does not talk to a lot of people like this. I miss it.

I really hope we can get some of this back with MacKay's book. I feel like a lot of people are going to suddenly remember that Hank is an amazing character and a beautiful friend to so many X-Men when he's not being written like trash.

[littleeyesofpallas]

(I used the black and white because without any official color work, I don't actually trust the digital colorist's guesses to reflect much of Kubo's intent. Save for Mera's red hair... given the use of toner and her fire powers, I can't imagine her hair would've been anything but bright red, like Renji's.)

Hiuchigashima[燧ヶ島] MERA[メラ]:

"signal fire/hand-drill* island," "ME-RA"

*like a hand-drill for starting fires. Also a homonym with hiuchi[火打ち石]: "flint" and I've seen this part of her name somewhat erroneously translated as "tinder." Basically the common thread in all these readings being fire starters.

**taken from the onomatopoeic or mimetic sound/phrase meramera[メラメラ]: the sound of flaring up, or the sound of bursting into flames.

Tonokawa[砥ノ川] Tokie[時江]:

"Whetstone/Grindstone's River," "Time Bay"

Hashihara[箸原] HASUka[ハス花]:

"Chopsticks Field," "HA-SU* Flower"

*with HASU[ハス] here being a homonym with hasu[蓮]: Lotus/Sacred Lotus/Indian Lotus.

Nomino[鑿野] Nonomi[のの美]:

"Chisel Field," "NO-NO Beauty"

*technically it's the same either way but no[の] as hiragana is the grammatical possessive, where as in a name you'd normally expect it to be the kanji no[乃] but they mean the same thing. And incidentally the name Nonomi would normally be written [乃々実].

Tsuchimiya[槌宮] Tsumiko[罪子]:

"Hammer/Mallet Princess," "Guilty/Criminal Child."

I dunno why I thought to tackle these 5 as they really don't do much, but it feels like a neatly compact example of Kubo's naming sensibilities, because unlike characters that got to actually speak and interact with others and have any kind of a story of their own, their names are almost all we know about them; that and a few simple tonal notes in how they talk or carry themselves in the one scene most of them show up in.

Obviously the girls are each named after a tool used in sword smithing and serve that role in assisting Oh-etsu. And since they're each a zanpakutou, like the rest of Nimaiyas harem, it feels like it's implied that they are each literally said tool, instead of the more conventional katana. It's kind of weird considering how zanpakutou have worked up until this point in the story, but like much of the final arc we just kind of move on and never elaborate or explore this idea... (It almost feels like an entire Soul Eater thing is implied here, but we'll just never know...)

Its also weird that the girls get full names, with distinctly humanlike etymology and what appear to be full on surnames considering they're all zanpakutou and so you'd expect them to have a singular name, almost more like a title, and more in line with the zanpakutou names we already know.

You can probably tell Kubo decided to lean into this weird alliterative thing with the names. Ironically Mera is named after the meramera thing I mentioned, but her actual full name is the only one without the repetitive phonetics. Otherwise the girls all evoke the repeated sounds, Meramera, TokiToki, HasuHasu, NomiNomi/NonoNono, and TsumiTsumi. I feel like there are some sort of homonyms, or sounds like meramera, or other wordplay at work here that I just don't know enough outside of textbook Japanese to pick up on...

A random note: I find it funny that Mera's design feels like it was a last minute twist on Kubo's usual wildtype that he just knew he'd never get the chance to throw in there otherwise... Bazz-B's mohawk and fire powers, Renji's hair color, Grimmjow's eyeliner... kind of some Hiyori/Shino adjacent spunky girl energy? She feels like she'd fit that whole character type, even though we barely got to hear from her. It would've been nice to see a spicy tomboy actually involved in the story.

And maybe it's just a coincidence but it almost feels like there's a wuxing thing going on with the girls with the classical 5 daoist elements reflected in their names and tools: Fire-starters, Water-quenching and river/bay, wood "Chopsticks"/Tongs and flower, metal Chisel, and earth Hammer.

[k-s-morgan]

Yo, whoever just....SENT you UNSOLICITED ctitism??? They're either a youngling that hasn't learned the rules or fanfiction or they're just an asshole. That ask was worded very politely but that was such an assholish thing to do??? "Sadly, I will stop reading your story" DUDE WHO CARES. YOU DEADASS COULD'VE JUST QUIETLY STEPPED OUT WHEN THE STORY STARTED TURNING IN A DIRECTION THAT MADE YOU UNCOMFY WITHOUT SAYING ANYTHING. There was literally NO NEED for them to come tell you all that and the only reason they did is because they're arrogant and think that only their opinion matters. They just...disregarded creative freedom completely. You handled it well but I just wanted to stop by and tell you that your characterization is actually very realistic and it is miles better than some other fics I've seen, which I will not name because I'm NOT AN ASSHOLE. Sorry to come ranting into your inbox but that ask got me fired up.

Another message:  horrible anon that wrote the rude condescending& pathetic ask ab harry being weak for not being able to stomach tom MURDERING people i have no words. made me mad! book harry would NOT be okay with murder! & fuck them for saying those mean things ab u that arnt true. this is UR story. u can do WHATEVER u want with it. nobody has any right to demand things from u & u dont have to take any criticism if u dont want it. the entitlement of some people🤬. also i dont know why they assume you should care their going to “stop reading” like okay bye 😌 still gonna have like 200,000 hits

Another message from @likorys-shimenawa:  I didn't want to be rude the anon, but... "You know something is wrong with your characterisation when more than one person gets hot and bothered about it" seriously broke me. They DO remember that people still think Snape was an incel out for hookup with Lily? When the only person to believe that was damn VOLDEMORT? Just cause many people say something doesn't make it true. Also - Harry's 'constant whimpering'? Did they miss how he spend months hung up on the Horcruxes, doing nothing, as well?

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I decided to group most of criticism-related asks together - I hope you don’t mind! Thank all of you for your support, it really means a lot to me. I’m not very bothered by negative comments/asks, but they sure aren’t pleasant to get.

The thing with stories is that everyone perceives them in a unique way. I saw the most ironic evidence of this with my Russian Snape-centered fic. I got two comments in sequence from two different people: one said my Snape is too nice; the second one said he is too evil. Everyone else felt he was canon-like. It was funny to see these comments posted right next to each other, and none of them was technically wrong: people have their view of the character, and it won’t always coincide with that of others.

It’s inevitable to lose readers along the way. The more relevant decisions characters make, the more defined the plot becomes, and some people start finding it not to their liking. That’s okay, but it’s important to remember that your experience is your own. Others might not share it.

That’s why I‘m not going to reply to asks similar to the one I got again. I already explained my view, there is nothing left for me to add. But to sum it up for the last time:

I think Harry’s ability to love can be a curse just as it can be a gift. I think he’s pretty strong, even though this love cripples him in many ways. He raised a better version of Tom on the global scale and a worse monster on the local one. He managed to control Tom’s destructiveness for years, and it broke his heart every time Tom did something similar to Voldemort. Beth was a shock because Harry’d believed he was succeeding in making Tom better just by loving him and explaining what’s right and what’s wrong. After that, he was constantly wary, yet the more Tom lived without hurting anyone, the more hopeful Harry became. Every setback shook him, but Tom never killed again - he learned how to stop, and Harry tried to focus on this. He had evidence of Tom being better, so his expectations worked accordingly. Learning about Charlus was a terrible blow because for one thing, Harry was already feeling terrible due to killing a person and watching his student die to protect him. For another, he realized that Tom killed a part of his family again. Of course he was stunned and horrified - this was his worst nightmare come true. And the ritual was the last drop in the overfilled bowl of his patience and hopes. Harry tried to watch out for others, he forgot to watch out for himself.

In my eyes, this is consistent with his behavior in canon + the changes he lived through in WHGTB. I’m happy that many readers share this view, and I’m sorry others don’t (though I get it), but I really don’t need to know that you want to stop reading. If the story no longer makes you feel happy or interested, just close it and look for another one. Fandom is supposed to be fun, and no writer can please everyone. Characterization is a complex thing - for the most part, it’s not universal. Things you disagree with will be something others agree with and vice versa. That’s fiction, and that’s why it’s such a fascinating concept.