Hiiii, intro post! I'll leave it pinned so it's visible and take the opportunity to advertise my ao3 :333
What you need to know about me:
Minor | She/her | English/Spanish
ENTP | Aquarius | Queer
MY AO3:
https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Hiako
I usually post gonkillu fanfics, mostly in Spanish, but I'll be uploading English translations soon!
Along with fanfics and fan art, I'll also be posting analyses of HxH. this is the fandom where I am most active :P
Fandoms:
Hunter x Hunter, Jujutsu Kaisen, Banana Fish, Ao no Flag, Look Back, The Long Walk, Avatar: The last Airbender.
Other series/films/books I like:
Everything everywhere all at once (the best film ever lol), Bones and all, Mr Fantastic Fox, Koe no Katachi, Call me by your name, Over the Garden Wall, Arcane, The summer Hikaru died, Scott Pilgrim vs the world, The Olw House and Steven Universe.
Music:
Car Seat Headrest, Mitski, Billie Eilish, José José, Taylor Swift, Perfecto Miserable, My Chemical Romance, Joji, Adrianne Lenker, Beach House, Olivia Rodrigo, Conan Gray, Girl in red
The Balances and Imbalances of Gon and Killua's Relationship
Gon and Killua have such an interesting dynamic because it's not a 50/50 give and take. It often skews one way, with Killua doing the giving and taking nothing in return. It gives their relationship a lot of nuanced depth, and the complexities of it are fascinating from an analytical viewpoint.
Due to this, there are many points in the story where their feelings and actions are unbalanced. It's very interesting to take note of and see the effects it has on both of them.
Balances
During the Hunter exam, they mutually find friendship in one another. Gon, with his strange sense of morals, immediately accepts that Killua comes from a family of assassins. He's never had a friend his own age before then. Killua takes interest in seeing someone his age at the exam, and with Gon accepting his circumstances without thought, he finally finds a chance to fulfill his wish of living a normal life with friends. They both seek out what they've never had within each other.
When they train together during Heaven's Arena, Greed Island and Chimera Ant, it is always together with neither gaining advantage over the other. In Heaven's Arena, Killua intentionally waits for Gon to recover and keep his promise to Wing before continuing to learn Nen. There's a desire to stay on the same page.
There is a mutual desire to stay together, and Gon invites Killua on a journey for the both of them to reach their goals.
Gon's affinity for Nen is in sheer power, while Killua's is in mastery of usage, making Killua a great supporter for Gon to unleash his power. As Biscuit said, they make a great combination, allowing each other's strengths to shine. This is best seen during the dodge-ball match, when Killua acts as a cushion between Gon and Hisoka, and when Killua uses his hands as support for Gon's punches. Killua's instinctive usage of Nen allows for Gon to focus all his power in both catching the ball and blasting it.
In Greed Island, there is a mutual need for the other. Gon sees Killua as his best friend and trusts him more than anyone else, and Killua feels needed by the person he needs most. Gon values Killua to the point of wanting to introduce him to Ging the moment he finds him. They each have undying trust in the other. This is the closest their relationship becomes to being balanced.
Imbalances
Killua is willing to give up his life to let Gon get away when they're being held captive by Nobunaga in Yorknew. Killua begins to prioritize Gon over himself. Gon does reject the idea and gets mad at Killua for being reckless, but ends up being a hypocrite in the process. Gon is ready to throw his life away for anything if it means getting satisfaction, while Killua is willing to do it only to protect Gon. This marks the beginning of Killua weighing Gon over the world, whereas to Gon, Killua is just his trusted best friend.
During the scene in Greed Island where they're both glad to have met each other, the depth is vastly different. Gon is glad to have met such a great friend who will go along with him no matter what. On Killua's side, he is thankful to have met Gon because Gon changed the entire trajectory of his life. Gon would have ended up where he was regardless of who he was with, but Killua only ended up there because of Gon. While there is a mutual feeling of camaraderie, the scales weigh much differently.
In the dodge-ball match, Killua willingly gives up his hands for Gon's victory, and Gon naturally expects him to. Gon takes Killua's actions for granted, despite that it will severely injure Killua. This is where it starts to become really evident that Killua will give his all for Gon while expecting nothing in return. Gon will run ahead with his recklessness while expecting Killua to follow, but Killua is the one who puts in all the effort to keep up. To Gon, Killua is an existence that he expects to stay by his side, whereas Killua is struggling to stay there and meet those expectations.
It's all give on Killua's side, and he receives nothing in return from Gon. Killua treasures Gon unconditionally. He never asks for anything in return, and Gon's twisted morals and expectations skews Killua's perspective into thinking this is normal. Killua thinks that he must do anything he can for Gon, or he's not worthy to be by Gon's side. Gon, outside of taking on the Zoldycks because he didn't like the idea of Killua being forced to do something he didn't want to, never does anything in particular for Killua's sake. And even then it was for his selfish satisfaction of his morals. Gon's nature pulled Killua out of the darkness that shrouded him, but that was never intentional on Gon's side. He treated Killua as he would any of his friends, but Killua treats Gon as one-of-a-kind.
The Chimera Ant arc is where this all comes to a peak. Desperate to feel needed as Gon goes down a steep, dark path, Killua begins to feel insecure at Gon's side. He doesn't feel like he can keep up, and feels as if he'll be discarded if he doesn't meet Gon's expectations. He feels he can do nothing at his side, and all his thoughts are centered around Gon. Gon at this time is thinking of nothing but Kite. Killua is blindly reaching his hand out into the darkness, hoping to stumble upon something, anything, that can help Gon. Meanwhile, this all goes unnoticed by Gon, and he even scoffs at Killua's attempts to calm him down, saying that Killua is only able to stay calm because it has nothing to do with him. Killua feels rejected on every level—he tried and tried and tried to reach Gon, but fell behind. Gon is still recklessly heading forward, and Killua is no longer able to keep up, no matter his efforts. Killua is even willing to die alongside Gon against Pitou; if he can't help Gon, he may as well die with him. Gon never looks back until the final moment. He doesn't realize how hard Killua has been trying until it's too late. He's taken everything until then for granted. And despite it all, Killua still risks everything to take Alluka out of the Zoldyck mansion to save Gon's life.
And we never see the resolution to this because the apology scene was skipped over. We don't know how or if Gon will reflect. But we do know that they talked and decided to part with a smile. The most telling part is in the alleyway where Gon says that they shouldn't stay there any longer, otherwise they might end up crying if they hang around any longer. Gon is clearly upset to leave Killua's side, but Killua's expression is far more sad; he's parting ways with the one who meant the world to him.
Gon does still treasure Killua greatly, but he never reciprocates the thought of throwing it all away just for Killua. Gon's priority is his own goals because he is self-centered, while Killua's priority is Gon because he's far too selfless. Their relationship is severely skewed. The reader knows exactly how Killua feels, but can only assume for Gon.
It's such a nuanced, complex relationship, and it's really fascinating to compare the differences in how they see each other.
In a romantic perspective as well, Killua's feelings run far deeper. If they were ever to become romantically involved, Killua would likely have to be the one to pursue him. Gon is too goal and self-oriented; he wouldn't reject it, but he wouldn't prioritize it either. He would have to make a conscious choice if he wants to be with Killua, rather than just letting it happen.
some analysis really doesn’t even need to be defended. togashi wrote killua as a gay child developing his first crush. this is undeniable and queer fans should stop providing caveats for cishet fans trying to make the existence of this obvious plot point seem debatable. sometimes a boy’s first crush is a boy. simple as.
Do you think Killua and Gon will eventually reunite? And if so, what are your hopes for their reunion?
I've seen varied takes on the status of their friendship following their parting that range from pretty bleak to hopeful. Some people think Killua is mad at Gon for his behavior and is stepping away from their friendship and essentially replacing Gon with Alluka and may have no plans to reunite with him. Others think Killua carefully constructed the scenario of "I just want to hang with my sis for a bit, see ya later" so that Gon would not catch on to the fact that Illumi is pursuing Killua and Alluka, and that Killua only left because he wants to keep Gon safe from that situation. What are your thoughts?
Also, do you think Togashi is hinting/building up to killugon as a pairing, even if it is ambiguous?
Thanks for your hxh posts and meta!
these are great questions! first of all, i don't see any world in which killua is so mad at gon that he'd never want to reunite with him. killua loves him dearly, and i'm sure killua of all people understands how trauma can negatively impact your behavior and why gon in particular lashed out. we have to remember that killugon spent two years together, and most of those two years were filled with mutual encouragement, growth, adoration, etc. their loyalty to one another is pretty unbreakable and killua gives no indication he doesn't want to see gon again. on the contrary, it's implied the two of them agree their separation is necessary and needs to be quick because otherwise they wouldn't leave each other. but i also don't think killua's primary consideration atm is protecting gon from illumi.
i think, realistically, they both realized after CAA that they have an unhealthy codependency that was negatively impacting their capacity for growth, and that they accomplished all they really could together (caveat: at the stages in their lives they are currently at!! not permanently). killua and gon had two goals with their friendship: for gon to find his dad, and for killua to find something he wants to do beyond be friends with gon. gon found his father, and killua rekindled his relationship with his sister who he's now resolved himself to protect. i don't think killua is replacing gon consciously but i do think that's how it's played out thematically.
as gon said, they'll always be friends, but i think this time apart is necessary because they spent two years attached at the hip while going through severely traumatizing circumstances and clearly didn't really know how to Exist without one another. but while killua has experienced tremendous growth, the reset button has basically been hit on gon's life, and he doesn't seem impressed with his accomplishments. there's so much left unsaid and unfinished with gon's character in particular (and he seems to be more self loathing and empty than ever), so i do believe he'll be returning eventually (if not within the next 20 chapters).
now, if killugon do reunite, i don't think they'll ever be as reliant on one another. if they do return to the story as a duo i imagine alluka will be returning with killua and he might finally resolve things with kalluto, and i think their reunion would result in a core four reunion in general ( + bisky is back in the main plot) so they'd have a lot of other emotional support avenues available that would allow them to be together without engaging in the self destructive/codependent tendencies that resulted in their friendship becoming too complicated to be healthily maintained. what i wish for in my little killugonnie heart for their reunion is quite literally just a hug. i talk here about how little they touch each other throughout the series and i think a declaration of their bond through physical affection would actually prove they believe they can have a healthier bond. and of course, for them to actually communicate for one would be lovely, but hxh isn't a series necessarily hinged on catharsis so i can see a lot going unspoken between the two of them for the remainder of the story.
as for whether or not i think killugon will become romantic, i think togashi has already taken multiple avenues to at least confirm killua's feelings. togashi has an interest in BL and shoujo; he's cited mineo maya (a BL author) as one of his greatest inspirations, has often talked about his love for shoujo as a genre and how he likes incorporating it into his stories, and even tried to submit a BL story to shounen jump before it was rejected and he went ahead with hxh instead. togashi has written multiple queer characters in yu yu hakusho, level e, and hxh, and in general from telling anecdotes about his gay friends to working with and eventually marrying takeuchi (who also wrote queer stories) he just seems very tapped into the culture and genre. i mean we're at the point where we have an on page lesbian makeout in the current arc.
i would be genuinely shocked if togashi was not writing killua as gay intentionally. even beyond the shoujo tropes used in killugon's relationship, you have killua saying he'll commit "shinjuu" (an intimate suicide) with gon in the worst case scenario of CAA, have them deliberately paralleled with merukomu, have them compared to lovers by illumi and hisoka when discussing nanika's powers, have killua handing gon a card in greed island that references proposal, mariya ise (killua's 2011 VA) sharing her interpretation that "of course killua is in love with gon. otherwise, why would he go that far for him?", palm saying "love can just happen sometimes, don't you think?" directly to killua after the you are light scene, killua being the only one to not fall for the heteronormative tropes playing out on aiai, and not to mention all of the explicitly romantic teasing in the hunterpedias, stage plays, figures, movies, etc that togashi absolutely has an eye on. i would argue that we are at the point in canon where killua's feelings for gon are extremely explicit already.
the question is really whether or not gon reciprocates this. i think this is much clearer within thematic coding than it is within anything gon says. gon's internal world does not receive nearly as much focus as killua's, very intentionally, and this isn't just because his thoughts are being hidden, but because he simply thinks differently. he thinks based on instinct. i doubt if he did have feelings for killua that he's intentionally parsed through them. his view of intimacy is extremely skewed, which is expected from a child that has experienced being sexualized and adultified by the adults in his life. but despite all of this i do think killugon is written as a love story between two queer children.
their relationship is all about the isolation and loneliness they experience in their respective childhoods, understood by very few people, and how they can only find someone who reflects themselves in each other. the codependency they foster is very familiar to what many queer people experienced in their youth with one of the only other gay people they knew. that level of understanding just comes with an "outsider" narrative i believe is deliberately about queerness (it's relevant that it's alluka, a trans girl, who completes killua's arc wrt this). then of course you have the fact that killua's birthday is tanabata, which is literally about two romeo and juliet-esque star crossed lovers and directly parallels killua's experience with his family trying to separate him from gon. it'd be crazy if a flock of magpies laid down to bring killua back to gon, huh? i also thought it was funny the ending togashi gave that he said he'd scrapped was explicitly one where gon was in a marriage with a woman and was seemingly very miserable.
tl;dr togashi has HEAVILY queer coded their relationship and i think it's already crossed the threshold of "canon" in a lot of ways. whether or not they'll actually get together remains to be seen, because togashi doesn't always explicitly canonize pairings (a great example being merukomu) because he just expects the audience to understand how natural love, including queer love, is. i think killugon will probably end up the same way it's been for thirty years, which is two boys in love who are unsure how to express it. it's just been that way for so long i couldn't imagine the cultural shift wrt the series if there was a kiss or something. but you know...one can hope <3 togashi's really testing the waters with morena i feel and has been for his entire career, so who really knows?
i don’t think discussing “who’s the girl” wrt to killugon as if either of them could ever actually be a female character makes sense. they literally could not be genderswapped and exist in the same story. they’re so purposefully written as young boys struggling w/ masculinity + the power they’re told they’re supposed to wield by the grown men in their life trying to take advantage of their insecurities.
killua is not “like a girl” just because he’s more clearly sensitive; the entire point of killua’s arc is about deconstructing the idea that young boys need to repress their emotions, especially young gay boys coming to understand their sexualities. even the pressures of escaping his role as his family’s heir is clearly gendered. i Beg if you want to read about women just read about women. queer coding does not necessitate one of the guys involved taking a “woman’s” role.
togashi does so much work to include queer stories in his shounen at a time where it was heavily discouraged and yet fans continue exporting stereotypes onto this very delicately crafted narrative. sometimes boys like boys; togashi frames this as such a natural inclusion within the story (like alluka’s transness, morena kissing women, and other hxh characters’ gender nonconformity), as queerness itself is natural.
I'm seriously thinking about opening writing commissions because I need money lol, but I'm scared that someone will want me to write a fanfic about a fandom I know nothing about 💔 No, please don't make me step out of my comfort zone 😭🙏🏻
(I might do it anyway, but I'll wait until I'm on vacation first, mmh)
it’s 2026 and i’m gonna say when gon said “you have it easy, killua…since it means nothing to you” he didn’t mean killua’s life is easy in general and that’s a very tired interpretation. he meant killua wasn’t invested in the invasion, because from gon’s perspective and by killua’s own admittance, killua doesn’t have his own goals and is floating relatively aimlessly, unlike gon who's searching for his dad and who just lost his surrogate father figure. he means killua doesn’t love kite the way gon loved him so of course he isn’t as angry.
but, what gon doesn’t understand is that because killua loves gon he loved kite. he’s a “person who's important to a person important to him”. but gon is thirteen, and shouldn't be expected to immediately understand these emotional nuances when the man who made him who he is died and he feels like he bears the responsibility. originally i was of the opinion he blamed himself and killua equally for inconveniencing kite so he was taking out that anger on both of them, but i’ve come to see it as gon telling killua he has nothing to do with confronting pitou and grieving kite as an acknowledgement that killua was just tagging along (and perhaps gon on a subconscious level felt he was taking advantage of killua’s loyalty) so he doesn’t blame him for kites death like he does himself and pitou. he therefore separates killua from the murder-suicide he comes to attempt.
most of this is likely occurring on a completely subconscious level because togashi is very particular about either shielding gon’s thoughts or communicating he acts on instinct. but i believe that what’s undergirding his behavior in CAA is that he's pushing killua away because he knows that's what will save him from the carnage (and gon already blames himself for the death of kite so why would he want to wrap killua, his most beloved, into his self destruction), when it’s really the worst case scenario for both of them, because they can't exist without one another! it manifests as a dual punishment!
personally i like when characters are good and complex so i thought it was brilliant that gon, in a moment of grief and rage, weaponized killua’s worst insecurity against him (the fact that he doesn’t know his own goals and barely feels like a person who understands the value of life) in an attempt to drive a wedge between himself and the last person really reaching out to him after an entire series of both killua and gon being expected to endlessly be on the receiving end of brutality and pain. it was even more hurtful because it came from the person who killua has spent the last two years basing his value system off of and chasing after and idolizing. "[i’ve never been on a date], i spent my entire life learning how to kill and i’ve been with you ever since" is load bearing killugon line to me. they don’t know how to Be without each other, and while killua’s response to strife once he’s pulled out the needle is to pull gon closer to protect gon and therefore his own sense of self, gon’s reaction is to push killua away.
it's crazy that killua zoldyck is just one of the most carefully and perfectly crafted characters in all of fiction with arguably one of the smoothest and most natural plot and personality developments while simultaneously being a critique of easily predictable deuteragonist tropes surrounding betrayal of the protagonist/inherent darkness/a need to be saved. like baby, killua saves himself, because despite how much he structures his understanding of himself around gon it's both unhealthy and impossible to be developed only through the lens of someone outside of you and so even though gon is a stepping stone for killua’s self actualization he isn't the solution. people complain that killugon needed each other so they shouldn't have separated but it's exactly because they don't know how to exist without each other that they need to learn to, and killua, who is the more emotionally mature of the two of them, has been much more successful as he breaks the cycles of abuse in his family by freeing both alluka (a representative of The Weak tm) and himself. meanwhile togashi hit the reset button on gon and it hurts me every day despite its thematic richness but that’s for another post.
muruem and killua both on their knees begging palm to save their beloved komugi and gon. I just realized this parallel today and im unwell.
togashi created palm to facilitate the new themes of love and coming of age in the chimera ant arc. and created multiple parallels between the two pairs
killugon is so good because what do you mean there are these two 12 year olds who are both extremely talented/specialized/strong in unique ways in comparison to any normal person-- and suddenly they find that kind of equal ground with each other. and instead of seeing each other as rivals they actually immediately become best friends. in their strangeness and isolation from other normal people their age, they are only able to seek normalcy in each other. the one whos a cold murder assassin ultrakiller is somehow less morally questionable in his true nature at heart than the happy-go-lucky kid who was just pretty much raised by animals in the forest. the sweet-at-heart murderboy kind of idolizes him actually. it gets really codependent and gay. they try to die for each other multiple times
somehow most of the time they still act like stupid 12 year old boys who hit each other with rocks
and this is probably only the tip of the iceberg of what i can even tell you about them
making myself watch the second '99 op instead of skipping it like normal and i had to pause to laugh for a full minute because of this
they just could NOT stop themselves from dressing him like a lesbian and im never prepared for it. i was full-on hunched over clutching at my stomach couldn't breathe i was wheezing so hard. it just caught me so off-guard. oh my god. i love him forever
