i feel like people are more willing to discuss killua as a victim of abuse than gon bc the zoldycks' physical violence towards him is accurately and tonally portrayed as torture, whereas all of the violence enacted onto gon is broadly seen as “normal" shounen protagonist occurrences. but this is bc the narrative is primarily through gon's perspective, who by his own admission thinks his suffering is justifiable and necessary whereas killua is a victim of injustice (perfectly encapsulated in “i can talk about dying, but you can’t”).
a huge part of hxh is that the spectacle of violence against children should *not* be normalized, that it leads to horrific consequences, and the romanticization of the suffering of children is deeply troubling. hisoka subverts the typical “mentor” who would groom the protagonist into violence on the basis of gaining strength trope in shounen into a very literal grooming that makes gon’s “strength” into an avenue for hisoka’s sexual gratification. gon’s personhood and story are all wrapped up in multiple forms of violence; emotional, physical, sexual, systemic.
gon justifies so much of the violence against himself because he believes it will all result in some grand climax for his adventure. but both gon and the audience he’s leading’s expectations are subverted when in reality, the abuse he suffers that stakes all of his worth on strength forces him into a place where once he feels like he can no longer give to a mentor or the association or base his worth in their praises, he tries to kill himself and then loses all of his power for the forseeable future (if not forever). the forced maturation he had to deal with was so unnatural and actually stunted his ability to grow organically. “i’m not a kid!” says the 13 year old on his way to kill an ant using rock paper scissors.
still, even once we do see killua's perspective of silva for instance, silva is portrayed by killua as pretty kind and understanding (at least for the life killua leads), but this is also another way one of the children in the story frames their abuse as natural or sympathizes with their abuser (as gon does frequently with hisoka as well). it’s only after killua is reminded of the imprisonment of alluka that he realizes his father is a “bully” just like the rest of his family, all of whom tried to “put needles in his head”. killua understands the extent of this violence only when it’s enacted against alluka, as gon does only when it’s enacted against killua.
but anyways, i feel like if you view the levels of physical abuse, sexual harassment, and actual mutilation gon experiences throughout the story as a shounen inevitability, of course you'll think him eventually lashing out is out of character or just reduce it to it being simplistically edgy (i.e. comments about how he lost his humanity just because he's actually grieving for once instead of bottling up his pain).
like yes, children being abused and tortured is very normal in the hxh world, but this isn't because it's Okay and Makes Them Stronger. it's because it's a lawless society run by the mafia and gangs and warlords and brute strength and unchallenged free markets and this is obviously not a healthy environment to develop in. every single child or backstory of childhood we see in hxh is imbued with a level of suffering that often turns these children towards life ruining violence, or at least participants in some level of war effort. but this is not normal! it is bad! it's why everyone in hxh is extremely maladjusted! that this seems to be so poorly comprehended in the case of gon feels very much like aha, you fell for the facade that you as the viewer are given the tools to dismantle.
