Woo boy HxH reddit has a recent thread titled "How do you feel about the whole KilluGon shipping?" and some of the responses make me wonder why I still frequent that hell site. Of course the 'killugon shippers' are pedophiles came back into play. Plus people masking their homophobia as "people who ship them have never had a best friend before". smh
Okay, so I checked out the reddit thread you mentioned and maybe it’s because it has already been at least 10 hours, but I have seen a lot of reasonable responses and defense against those “pedophilia” and “friends only” accusation too! So not all hope is lost for the reddit crowd, I supposed.
But yeah, the cries of pedophilia and how 20+ people need to slink off and die rather than ship 14 years old romantically remain grating as always when Naruto, BNHA and numerous other shoen series fandoms would never hear a peep of this. Funny how all the romance = sex and predatory 20+ people shipping killugon bla bla bla only appeared when the canon ship is not het, isn’t it? -_-
(Yes, I am saying killugon is as good as canon! Het ships have been built on much less, both substance wise and age wise!) Honestly, as someone who seriously don’t want to ship killugon romantically before CA arc beat me into a pulp, there’s no heterosexual explanation for this.
The best friends only excuse is totally hilarious though. It’s pretty clear they either swim in denial or they never had a best totally platonic friend before! >o< Whether it’s Killua iconic “Gon you are light” monologue, the double/lovers’ suicide mention, or the way Killua question his own motivation for stalking Gon’s date with Palm… these little things add up and yeah, it’s not completely platonic for sure.
That said, it’s also kind of sad. It’s like these people doesn’t realize you could (and in fact should!) be friends with your romantic partners. That having romantic relationship with someone shouldn’t invalidate or prevent friendship with them. Combine with the romance = sex attitude and their love lives just seem so sad.