Something @pacificpikachu Said Got Me On A Train Of Thought That Led To This, But I Wanted To Sort Of

something @pacificpikachu said got me on a train of thought that led to this, but i wanted to sort of sketch this idea out: mariya ise’s confident and casual, immediate confirmation that killua is in love with gon is surprising in one way, but in another, to me, it’s not surprising at all.

hunter x hunter has always been very different from other shonen with queer stuff.

think about how niuya was posting her killugon ship art on twitter openly during production and faced no consequences. the staff has always been open about “shipping” them. it’s no a coincidence. there’s literally a drama cd from 1999 of leopika called moody restaurant that’s literally just leorio and kurapika fucking while roleplaying as a waiter and customer at a restaurant. that’s real.

there’s a huge difference in staff/official attitude toward all of it from something like…….. sorry im just trying to think of a random example here not trying to shit on anyone. idk narusasu or something like that. you know? it’s really openly noooot the same thing

and another thing iseven aside from the fact that’s always had lgbt characters in his work, togashi has been open about being a fudanshi since the early 90s, people just didn’t talk about it then. he first cited patalliro as an influence in an author’s note about yyh. he’s cited mineo maya. mineo maya was one of the only male BL authors from the first wave of shoujo BL back in the 1970s. like togashi, he is now happily married and has a biological daughter, but he frequently expresses himself through drag and takes photos, and is open about how much he enjoys exploring gay love and gender nonconformity through fiction. he doesn’t identify as gay, but he sure as fuck isn’t cishet!!

like togashi has always been open about the impression maya’s work made on him and it confuses and shocks western fans because of the cultural difference. western fans approach hxh from a very post-2010s queer rep perspective. but togashi has never included queer characters out of the western conception of representation. he has always included them because he likes writing queer characters and he wants to. that’s it.

and once you realize that, you also realize how a character like hisoka and killua can coexist. if you think that the only reason a writer would include a queer character would be to perform A Social Good, it makes no sense that you can have a character like hisoka, who some fans see as reinforcing negative stereotypes, and this hugely empowering and affirming character like killua at the same time. the answer is simply that togashi wasn’t thinking about only creating positive queer characters when he wrote hisoka, because he wasn’t doing it as a social good or as a chore. he is influenced by old BL and he writes queer men into his work because he likes writing them. that’s it.

god. big fucking rambling post. i guess my point is that hxh has always been an openly queer series and it just doesn’t go about it the same way we expect openly queer series to do today.