I would like to share my updated HC about Alluka (mainly for linking to DxC) because my opinion about the situation has somewhat solidified and matured. Here comes a long ass thesis about Alluka’s entire situation:
I do not ascribe to the “Alluka is a girl/trans girl” headcanon. This has gotten me hate and death threats in the past, causing me to abandon the HxH fandom altogether. But I’ve stopped caring. It’s fucking stupid. It’s a cartoon. No one should be afraid of backlash.
So now that that stupid shit is out of the way, I want to share how I reached this conclusion. My first and biggest issue with it is if Alluka is trans, it makes the Zoldycks (and their butlers) into transphobic monsters for absolutely no reason. Illumi and Milluki (and arguably Kalluto) refer to Alluka as their brother. The butlers refer to Alluka as “bocchan” which is a strictly male form of “young master” so if you subscribe to Alluka being trans and the Zoldycks being transphobic, you’re automatically including the butlers as well, which seems even less characteristic of them.
People want to label the Zoldycks as “bad” and just make them willing to do anything bad, but torturing their children and denying them freedom of expression and identity are two entirely different things. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come across “Killua is gay and his family abuses him for it” fics, and I’m so disappointed at this mischaracterization.
The Zoldycks have a 10 year old son (and from my perspective, an 11 year old son as well) who they allow to dress femininely. Milluki is a shut-in who doesn’t seem to fight/kill with his physical body despite it probably posing a huge inconvenience to their business of assassination. We have nothing in canon that even remotely suggests that the Zoldycks try to control their children in this way or make them feel bad for their freedom of expression (as long as they work for and serve the family, of course.) Otherwise, they wouldn’t allow this behavior.
“But maybe the Zoldycks don’t know/they just don’t care about Alluka’s feelings” to this I say have you seen Alluka’s bedroom? Alluka’s clothes? They know enough about Alluka’s tastes to stock his room with pink, girly things. They have another son who wears kimonos. Why would they draw the line at referring to Alluka as a girl if he was a girl or felt like a girl? It’s a stupid line to draw that makes no sense given what the freedom of expression they’ve allowed their children so far. Tbh the Zoldycks aren’t creative or modern enough to think of “misgendering” as a form of disrespect or aggression. These people torture their children they aren’t going to bother with intentionally misgendering them. So I’m incredibly sick of the “Big, Bad, Evil Zoldycks Misgender and Gaybash” headcanons.
So then what is going on with Alluka? In the pursuit of applying a (very western) explanation to Alluka’s situation everyone seems to have forgotten the biggest factor of Alluka’s entire existence: Nanika. When you consider why every family member and butler except for Killua refers to Alluka as a boy, what is the major differing factor between Killua and the rest of his family? Killua sees Nanika as a person. No one else does. The Zoldycks only see Alluka as a person, not Nanika. I think this is the major factor that leads to the referential gender confusion.
This begins to get into headcanon territory, but I believe Nanika is a female spirit/creature that due to inhabiting Alluka from a very young age (possibly birth) has warped his own self-identity in a lot of ways. He probably doesn’t know where he begins and Nanika ends, and neither does Killua. If a young child grows up with the consciousness of an already-sentient being inside him, he’s going to warp his personality to match that of the being. Their personalities are largely the same, and it’s not a coincidence - Alluka has learned his entire sense of self from Nanika. This is why Alluka refers to himself in more feminine ways. The rest of the Zoldycks are firmly in the “Nanika is not human/not to be treated with kindness” territory, so of course only Killua would refer to Alluka/Nanika femininely. He doesn’t see Nanika as a parasite latched on and changing Alluka, the rest of the family does.
Killua is known to be an unreliable narrator in the past, especially concerning his family. He’s a kid, and while it’s expected and reasonable that he’s overly dramatic about it all, he’s still unreliable. You can’t take everything he says at face value. That’s speaking from a writer’s standpoint.
When he acts as though the Zoldycks don’t care about Alluka, that’s shown to be not true. They could have killed Alluka a long time ago, not put him in a room filled with toys. When Kalluto joins the spiders he says it is “to save his brother” but that makes no sense if applied to Killua. How would joining the spiders save Killua? But if it’s referring to Alluka, that means that, again, Alluka is being referred to as a boy AND that the Zoldycks are actively trying to find a cure for Alluka’s “curse.” I personally believe Silva’s standpoint of “they’re not family anymore” is not a finality (ex-communication) but something he has to tell himself and Killua to keep them vigilant about the lockup. Alluka will become family once Nanika is exorcised.
If the Zoldycks care about Alluka enough to keep him alive in a pink room filled with toys and let him dress the way he does, possibly sending their youngest to join a gang in order to find a cure, why would they not know/not care about Alluka “being a girl?” It makes no sense.
I have never seen an actual claim of Alluka being trans that wasn’t rooted in some kind of weak and often transphobic claim.
Why do people consider Alluka trans? Because of the way he dresses? Saying because this child dresses a certain way he cannot be anything other than trans just reinforces gender roles. Those are sweeping assumptions that are inherently sexist and transphobic. “Clothing doesn’t have to be gendered” but because Alluka is in pink people assume he’s a girl.
If you headcanon that he is trans for your own reasons or because you want representation, why Alluka? I have less of a problem with someone saying, for example, that Chrollo is a trans man. Because he appears to be a cis male, which many trans men do. That is representation, not picking the character who has the most ‘conflicting’ gender issues and automatically dubbing them trans.
Still want to headcanon Alluka as trans/a girl? Go for it. But don’t act like it’s canon and everyone else is wrong. And for the love of god, you heathens, quit sending people hate and death threats over a goddamn cartoon.
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