lgbthxh+

[azureblue]

[CROSSPOSTED FROM GOOGLE DOCS, JUNE 2020]



welcome to my google docs 2.0 im here to prove that its gay asf for hunter to times hunter

i will not focus on relationships to prove gayness other than what they mean for personal development and will instead focus on personal portrayals of trauma allegories and stuff because that is what is more convincing and devastating. TO ME. but also canary and amane are lesbians anyway

cw for discussions of transphobia and homophobia both in the context of hxh and also out of it. also i vacillate wildly between referencing the anime and the manga depending on how i feel so there is that

part i: gender ambiguity + nonconformity

gender nonchalance

togashi's band of gnc characters are pretty obvious to anyone who has consumed hxh in any form even without going into the details of it but i'm going to just compile all of them here because it is also interesting to see the divergence in the way they are treated in the narrative

disclaimer before i go into this that i talk a lot about how gender is just not at the forefront of these people's minds and that they fixate more on ____ more than they care about gender and i know that obviously it isn't necessarily something most cis people think about on a day-to-day basis either so it may not seem like a compelling argument but. to me i see it as a deliberate intention on togashi's part of writing these characters in a way that draws the focus of the audience away from gender and framing it as secondary to their character motivations and actions. just in case that's misconstrued in any way

kurapika

#GENDERPIKA is present from the beginning just in the way he looks. like he really just doesn't give a fuck about his gender or like tbh anything other than vengeance and doing the exact opposite of whatever self care and self-help is supposed to be. it almost seems redundant to try to expand on him here but i'm going to do it anyway for my personal satisfaction if nothing else. not that dressing or presenting in ways that are traditionally associated with either masculinity or femininity are actually concrete indicators of anything all on their own obviously but:

more than the actual act of disguising himself as a woman, which frankly anyone could've and probably would've done in this situation, it's the fact that he doesn't outright deny it + 'anyway, you should watch what you say, since it may be the last thing that comes out of your mouth' that's more compelling and indicative of kurapika's general stance on this to me. because in this moment obviously he doesn't give a fuck about that, not when the object of all his obsessive vengeance is right there, and especially not when gon and killua are still in danger and in the hands of the troupe. but in general it's kind of like well kurapika as a person is so… tightly wound and one track-minded on vengeance that it doesn't feel like something he would assign a ton of importance to in his day-to-day interactions with people. it's secondary to him and cements the archetype of Pretty Boy Who's So Androgynously Pretty That People Easily Mistake Him For A Girl But Also He Doesn't Care Too Much About It Either Way that togashi so loves.

kalluto

speaking of Pretty Boy Who's So Androgynously Pretty That People Easily Mistake Him For A Girl But Also He Doesn't Care Too Much About It

kalluto's kind of an interesting case because so little is known about them at this point that it's hard to tell but again i think togashi doesn't tend to do anything without a reason so it's worth considering… it might seem like a moot point to bring up but the most logical response to 'hey little girl' from any 10 year old boy would be surely to deny it, but kalluto doesn't address it at all.

kalluto really doesn't show up enough for there to be much else to say on this in a concrete way but i do also really like the analysis that the reason kalluto tends to dress more in a way that performs femininity than not stems from the zoldyck relationship chart in which kalluto has no relationship to anyone except love for kikyo and envy for alluka

kalluto obviously doesn't have a prominent place within the family—they don't have the seniority that gives them a place in the hierarchy, they are not the designated heir, they don't even have the negative 'attention' (if you can call it that, but that's almost certainly how kalluto perceives it) that alluka receives. they don't even have a unique area of expertise to contribute to the family that milluki seems to as the token technology dude (in election arc all the scenes monitoring alluka are carried out from milluki's room with the others observing). so even though kalluto feels no particular love for killua (as far can be gauged from this chart), i think it's safe to infer that kalluto acts based on what they think will earn their mother's love. and kikyo cares for little other than bringing killua home to the zoldyck business in whatever fucked up way she can, which would also make sense as to why kalluto joined the troupe with seemingly nothing but the goal of bringing killua home.

this fixation on killua as a desperate search for approval and individual purpose within the family can also explain the envy for alluka—that she is invariably killua's favourite member of the family, even though kalluto is his younger sibling just the same. i like the analysis that the decision to wear a kimono is simultaneously an attempt to 1) emulate alluka's gender presentation and gain killua's love the same way alluka does, which they may have interpreted using 10 year old child brain as killua simply wanting a younger sister to care for, and 2) play into kikyo's expectations. i joke that the zoldycks are wasians so in that vein kalluto's choice to also wear more traditionally japanese (or whatever the in-hxhverse equivalent of japan is. wherever hanzo is meant to be from) clothing is also likely to play into that (since kikyo also wears a kimono in the earlier flashbacks).

no matter what kalluto's motive may be in experimenting with gender presentation, no matter how convoluted and dependent on other people's approval and love it may be, it doesn't change the fact that they are experimenting and could just as well find something they think is fitting for them.

neferpitou

yeah.................................. who else has an entire section of their wiki page devoted to people not having any idea what their gender is

i basically don't have much else to add onto this by way of analysis because most of the facts are already there but if i dig deeper into pitou's psyche surrounding this particular issue the most natural conclusion is that it's unclear but it's also likely just unimportant to chimera ants and to them as an individual. one of the interesting things about chimera ants to begin with is that they are painted as vicious and inherently barbaric before they are even mutated with other animal species and humans, and then as their genetic pool is saturated with more human traits they become more organised and 'civilised' with more individuality characteristic of humans rather than the collaboration of an ant colony (eg the squadron leaders who break off from the queen after meruem's birth), but the flip side of that is they absorb even more of the violence and greed from gyro's employees.

so then with that varying combination of traits in mind it's hard to problematise what exactly constructed concepts like gender mean to chimera ants when diluted with all different types of species, especially when each of the chimera ants are mostly also depicted as taking on different physical and mental characteristics specific to what kind of animal they're crossed with. if you consider pitou's position as a royal guard it's likely that even the biological aspect of reproduction and things like that are inconsequential—squadron leaders are loyal to the queen only up until the king is born, and when the queen dies they tend to break off and become their own kings to start their own colonies, but royal guards are meant to always be devoted to the newborn king. to me it just seems like it's not something that's important at all in the context of pitou's motivations and obligations as a character, and so it makes sense for it to be completely ambiguous and addressed as such. so once again in a yet again different way it's just an example of the fact that it does not matter to these characters

kite

human kite's relationship to gender is mostly similar to kurapika's since they both emerged from togashi's early yu yu hakusho kurama prototype, but chimera ant kite whose spirit and memories get incarnated into an assigned female body is where it obviously gets even more complicated. and also i lied about the uniqueness of pitou's gender ambiguity page because kite has one too. and so does alluka but anyway that's the point of this doc

im citing my good friend helena here regarding chimera ant kite's pronouns:

so in the conversation with koala, kite uses the pronoun “atachi”, which sounds like a weird baby speak version of the feminine pronoun “atashi”. but upon further reflection it goes deeper than that bc they later switch to the hyper masculine pronoun “ore” when talking to gon, meaning this baby talk isn’t just an inherent part of their reincarnated character. the significance here is twofold:

1. kite demonstrates awareness of the body they now inhabit, the soul of the girl, and their male past life, and switches pronouns based on purpose of conversation + the emotional connections each person has to them.

2. the “tachi” part of atachi very possibly isn’t baby speak at all but rather a reference to the suffix “-tachi”, meaning “we” or “us”, meaning kite regards themselves with renewed understanding as a gestalt with both masculine and feminine personas.

so kite's gender identity is portrayed as more fluid than kurapika, kalluto, and pitou—there are actually active differences in the way they refer to themselves in a way that is constructed around who they are or want to be in that moment. when koala seeks kite out, it's because he associates kite with the girl he killed, so kite uses the neological "atachi" with more feminine connotations. their situation with gender is incredibly, unprecedentedly complicated, so it would make sense that conventional pronouns wouldn't be able to cover it. but when talking to gon, who sought him out specifically for the spirit of who he used to be and what he meant to gon, it similarly makes sense for him to switch back to that because that is what his identity is constructed around in that moment. it's likely that kite uses traditional masculine pronouns around the rest of the amateur hunters as well.

i do think it's also important to note that all of these characters have gnc in common but each have different manifestations of that that contribute to their own characters in their own meaningful ways. kurapika seems to simply not care when he has other more important things on his mind, kalluto also doesn't seem to care that much but in a way that seems to be much more exogenous and reactionary than kurapika, there's confusion and ambiguity surrounding neferpitou simply because a clarified gender identity means nothing to them and wouldn't contribute to their actions or decisions, and kite's gender identity post-reincarnation is fluid. the subtleties in the characters mean that none of their experience with non-binary gender is quite the same as the other.

part ii: killua

killua is gay

this whole thing is about killua is gay and to me it's more about the nuances of his character than overtly being like Killua Likes Boys because that is a surface level analysis of a //togashi deuteragonist// and thus a major disservice to his character. but also he likes boys anyway in his very preteen water sign way and if anyone wants further argument in favour of that then some of these (NOT everything. because a lot of it is just subtext that encompasses like the entire animanga which i could collect but is not the point of this proof) will cement it probably:

• his reaction to the entire gon palm date

  • on the surface level: his obvious displays of jealousy, the way he asked gon about his experience with dates in the least subtle way on earth, his feelings of (rightful) protectiveness (since palm was a creep) that led him to follow them on their date

  • on a deeper level: ensuing events with rammot and the role of the aforementioned feelings in finally ripping out illumi's needle in his head. i'll expand on this more in the next section

• whatever the shit this is supposed to mean

as an allegory for gay people

this could be a separate dissertation all on its own but essentially killua's entire character arc can just be so easily interpreted as an allegory for the gay experience… not to imply that the gay experience exists as a monolith that can be encompassed in one single character of course but from escaping his suffocating family to finally experiencing friendship and genuine care with gon and his self-actualisation as a product of both of these things, it just feels very familiar as a narrative. like to me there is no other way to interpret the way his development is framed in the narrative and i'm simultaneously very interested to see how anyone could possibly disprove this and do not give a fuck about anyone who doesn't agree. and also he is gay anyway

confusion around familial obligations

in general i feel like i don't have to do much explaining by way of how "toxic family who doesn't care much about you as a person so much as they have expectations and a predetermined carved-out role for you to fulfill that you don't identify with at all because it undermines and prohibits all potential for authentic self-expression" is a reflection of how gay people tend to interact with birth family but. you know

from zoldyck conditioning and from illumi in particular, killua leaves his family thinking himself as inherently unworthy of friendship. after gon proves himself to be vehemently Killua's Friend in the aftermath of the hunter exam and refuses to leave kukuroo mountain without him, killua follows him in his travels but still doesn't accept the idea that gon would be friends with him just because they're friends. killua's trained to view it as a transactional relationship—gon saved him from his family, so he must follow him and protect him to the best of his ability in return, otherwise he won't be deserving of gon's goodness and friendship. this much is pretty obvious once you get to chimera ant, but it's present even from the very beginning when killua visits whale island and mito with gon.

killua's uncertainty in what he actually wants to do stems from the fact that it's taken him 12 years of his life for anyone to imply to him that there is something else he can do with his life rather than listen to what his parents have planned out for him and run the family business, because he's never given the chance or resources to explore what other options could even be out there for him. even though silva lets him go, there's deeper lingering effects on his psyche that hold him back from letting him live his own truth. the most obvious of which being illumi's needle that physically puts a restraint on pushing his boundaries to confront his fears and adversaries (maybe the most literal form of gaslighting ever). and although that's posed as a literal way illumi can control what killua does, he does enough of his own growing over the series that it comes naturally rather than appearing out of nowhere

found family + breakthrough

honestly no idea how togashi managed to capture the specific gay feeling of having a dramatic crush on your best friend in your early preteen years that feels so strong that you might die with it that has a significant impact on your psyche and your development as a person as a straight married man with children but he did it. the timing of the whale island episode at the start killua's hero worship view of gon that stems from an unhealthy, warped transactional view of friendship means that in the moment, gon is the only logical conclusion for killua to come to wrt where he wants to go. since gon is the one who saved killua from his family and his duties (both in the literal sense of dragging him out of kukuroo mountain and in the metaphorical sense of showing him that there are other options, like friendship!), of course killua would follow him around to help him find ging.

killua travelling with gon is framed as an interim activity while he figures out what he himself wants to do in life, and ultimately it does turn out to be that way post-chimera ant and election arc, but i think in the moment it doesn't really feel that way to killua at all. proving himself to be worthy of gon's friendship so long as he has something to offer him becomes the most important thing to him, and he can't really fathom doing anything else beyond that.

and it is gon who shows killua for the first time in his life what it means to have someone truly and unabashedly care for you. like i think oftentimes people tend to make the argument that killua ends up putting way more into the friendship than gon ever did, but i think it's more the subtleties of just his companionship that pushed killua towards friendship that are majorly important to HIM. in the same sense that gon saves him physically from a meaningless life & death under the zoldycks, he continues to save him by showing him companionship and friendship.

circling back to gon and palm's date and the implication that has on killua's gay little character development. i think that's the most prominent and indicative example of this whole thing because as much as he has grown and changed over time, he still has a psychological block from growing up under his family and equating his entire self worth to as much as he can contribute to the family business (which then becomes how much he can contribute to helping gon)

it's significant that he's driven to follow gon and palm out on their date by his jealousy and protective instincts for his best friend on a date and it's significant that his encounter with rammot where he is finally faced with the fact that he cannot keep running away like he always has, because this time it means that if he runs away and survives, gon (nen still restricted by APR) would be put in life-threatening danger. and it's significant that struck with the decision between his (self-perceived) selfish instincts to run away from fights he feels he can't win and between protecting his best friend is the event that finally pushes him to rip illumi's needle, the physical manifestation of all the remaining abuse & control he's suffered from his family all his life, from his head. it's this desire to protect gon and prove himself worthy of his place at gon's side that finally pushes him to remove the remaining psychological ties to his family and illumi.

self worth

but obviously that's not fully it—killua's character development doesn't start with removing the needle, and it can't end there either. it starts with a series of subtle changes to his character from his original lack of direction and lack of security in his self image to being slowly but surely more confident in his own abilities to the point where he stops worrying about other people underestimating him, and eventually culminating in being driven by his desire to stay friends with gon to remove illumi's needle. but just because he's free of his family's influence and free from the things they expect from him doesn't mean he's fully confident in his own worth and himself. he was raised to believe that he is only useful as a person so long as he contributes to the family business, and though gon saves him from that, killua defaults to placing that on only being useful so far as he is useful to gon, who he put at such a high pedestal as the sunshine being of light that saved him from his fate that he doesn't end up realising how harmful that can actually be until the palace invasion.

the flip side to gon being so vehemently Killua's Friend in the hunter exam that he so easily came to think of the two of them as friends is that he overlooks and takes for granted exactly how much that friendship means to killua. killua also develops a warped sense of friendship based on service because of it and other factors: the fact that he repeats his 'no thank you between friends' policy to ikalgo and palm the moment he declares them friends is most indicative of what he thinks about the duty of friendship. he believes that help—and occasionally, martyr sacrifice, like the dodgeball game in greed island—in that way is something that is necessarily something friends do for each other. if you apply that same philosophy back to the relationship he still shares with gon, it can be extrapolated that he thinks that since gon has extended the courtesy of friendship to him, in return it is necessarily his duty to protect and do nice things for him as part of the debt that he has to continuously keep paying off, so there's no need to address it with gratitude (nor is it necessary to address a failure to do so with apology, by extension).

which in the moment sounds fine and sweet and good! but possibly one of the worst killugon miscommunications is that gon has no idea about any of this, because he simply takes friendship for friendship, and thus assumes that killua by extension also doesn't have any more thoughts surrounding that, because they don't talk about it. their dynamic just goes on with killua supporting gon and cleaning up his messes because it's what he thinks he's supposed to do, and gon kind of taking it for granted until killua's placed gon on so much of a pedestal at the peak of his fever-pitch dramatic pseudocrush by the time palace invasion and 'it means nothing to you killua' happens, and gon throws himself away for the sake of his vengeance, casting killua aside as a friend and as an ally.

given his history with brushing things off and acknowledging that It Just Happens Between Friends, it's significant then how much this has hurt killua when he demands:

with this secondary breakthrough it also then sets the tone for election arc as he goes on to save alluka from their family all over again. it's a step in coming to realise his own worth as a person and as a friend, and what gon owes to him as an apology for hurting him in this way. it also leads him to accept gon's thanks at the world tree, rather than deflecting like he would have done before. gon's helped him realise that he can be independent from his family and their expectations, but in order to truly grow into himself, killua had to come to the realisation that he can be independent from gon all on his own. gon helped him find who he is, and the next step that logically follows that is growing out of the fever pitch firstloveisms and staying true to that outside of it.

lingering long-term issues with identity and truth

because everything is linked and comes back to itself, following gon around does end up helping killua to find his post-gon purpose, in the way that removing illumi's needle meant that he was finally able to get past the mental barriers that illumi planted in his head that had wiped alluka from his memory. and because it's togashi and hunter x hunter will never be finished—though killua's arc of self-actualisation seems to be mostly complete, there are new issues raised with the resolution of old ones.

for one, he may have overcome his issues with codependency on the surface when he finally is able to accept that he'll always be friends with gon even when they aren't always together, but asking alluka whether she'd be sad if he was the only person in the world who loves him—that's also reflective of his own thoughts and experiences with Projecting All Importance Onto One Person, and speaks to the fact that there's still things to work on. obviously though his relationship to alluka as his sister is wildly different from his relationship to gon as a friend, probably-crush and ally, and it does seem to have improved a lot by nature: where his desire to protect gon stemmed from an absolutely need to do so as he viewed himself as worthless to gon otherwise, his desire to protect alluka stems from a much more healthy place. though gon and killua are somewhat parallel in strength where alluka has no training and possesses the combat abilities of a normal child, he's on more equal footing with alluka than he ever was with gon, because he placed him on such an unrealistic pedestal for a kid, flawed like anyone else.

for another, the issue of truth.

if you continue to look at this through a gay framing that has killua as the gay child and the zoldycks as the controlling homophobic family who actively repress and reject that which is true to him, this quote can be allegorized as the fact that the simple act of coming out and not hiding who you really are anymore isn't always as happy of an ending as it seems to usually be the ultimate end goal of self-actualization in western gay narratives. i think the netflix documentary all in my family presents a view of this that's consistent with the point i feel like this is making about coming out to families that highlights the nuance in having the weight of truth be lifted off your chest but knowing that still causes pain to you and to others you may or may not care about, but still have trouble letting go of completely:

It's funny how, when you were young, the truth is more important than anything else. Now as you get older, you feel that... what's important is not just the truth, but also there are other things that are just as important. For example, other people's feelings. As long as I don't have to live in a lie, and also as long as I'm not being denied to live the way I want to live my life.

i don't want to get into it more in this part because i think it belongs to part iii's thematic analysis more, but it's crazy that tsubone would say this about illumi's control and killua's suffering in this scene + setting. it's followed by killua acting in this vein of thought where truth can simultaneously set you free and tie you down when he tells alluka to hide nanika away, because only that way can they all be safe. like it's crazy how much this is applicable to respectability politics in sexuality and gender, trying to cautiously adjust who you are and acting in fear of what other people would think of you, even when you've supposedly broken free of those constraints in leaving your homophobic abusive family behind.

i don't think killua's arc necessarily ends here, which we may or may not ever find out whenever togashi decides to start writing hxh again, but either way i think it's a very realistic portrayal of a path to self-actualisation that is imperfect and messy and doesn't always progress linearly. as an allegory for a gay person, as the experience of a person who really just is still struggling to find himself after growing up in darkness, or otherwise.

part iii: alluka and nanika

alluka is trans

togashi has a history of writing characters that don't give a fuck about the concept of gender because it's ultimately not important to them as people with motivations. well he also writes one whose gender is hugely important and intrinsic to their identity!!!

so the thing is that even if you remove all the nuances and subtleties from election arc re: the zoldycks' fear of nanika's power and the cruelty in the way nanika and alluka are treated for it… alluka is still trans

again it seems almost redundant to point this out when it's so obvious and widely known but it's true. i'm not going to look for screenshots of non-killua zoldycks misgendering alluka by referring to her as son/brother/using masculine pronouns but you get it.

killua is the only person in her life who has ever tried to understand her for who she is. EVER. he is the closest person in her life, and he insists that alluka is a girl. so.

nanika as an allegory

the situation with nanika and the zoldycks' reactionary treatment of alluka for it… an unknown unconventional presentation of a child resulting in fear and alienation on the part of the family and parents with no real effort made to understand, respect, or accommodate her needs as a person. it's so important to note that even despite all that has happened, nanika is kind—the people who have met violent ends as an indirect result of her powers have only done so because others have used her for their own personal greed. when she heals, she requires no payment, and i think that is such an intrinsic part of togashi's message in her creation, along with the fact that killua, the other outcast divergent child, is the only one who understands her and loves her for it.

i'd rather focus on love than hate in this analysis, because that's who nanika and alluka both are at their core, and that's what's the most important about this. nanika doesn't speak much other than in responding to commands and wishes, but when she does it's all the more significant. even when killua tells her she can't come out anymore, her only response, instinctively and repetitively:

the risk and reward of being your authentic self

like i said in killua's section, this is something that applies both to killua and to alluka + nanika. because he's still somewhat trying to clear illumi's influence from his brain, or maybe because no matter his intentions he still needs to be proactive in unlearning the things that have been taught by his upbringing, he tells nanika to never come out again for the sake of their safety, knowing that illumi is on the hunt and will do anything he can in order to control the three of them for his own ambition and gain. he knows it, and it pains him to have to tell nanika to hide away, but he does it because he thinks it's what would guarantee them safety, or, if they should fall into the hands of illumi, guarantee that she at least can't be used by illumi for his nefarious purposes.

of course, the glaring flaw in this approach is that it sees nanika as lesser to alluka when she coexists with alluka inside the same body. it's a concrete image for selective acceptance; killua's love and protection for alluka cannot be conditional on her hiding a part of herself away, the same way true love and acceptance cannot be contingent upon trying to dim a part of someone's identity and conceal it away for propriety's sake.

killua is intimately familiar with the danger of illumi's control and manipulation, so it makes sense that he would resort to extremes in telling nanika to hide herself away for their sake. and it makes all the more difference when he swears to commit and devote himself to protecting alluka and nanika BOTH, because he recognizes them as inseparable from one another, and he loves them both for it unconditionally.

and because nanika is, at her core, a being of kindness and love:

conclusion

in conclusion that's it. hunter x hunter is about being gay and trans because there is always a deeper layer and double meaning to what togashi is trying to communicate with his story on a macrocosmic level. which is in this case about being gay and trans! i am open to talking about it more if you happen to need any convincing but i am not open to criticism, constructive or otherwise.