I havent sent u a question in so so long, i started to miss your posts :((

so there has been a discourse on twt about illumi having incestious feelings for killua

what do you think of this?

Aww, thank you for missing my posts! I've just been absent as a result of less free time, I still deeply love HxH and want to be more active when I can!

So, I can see why this is a controversial subject and people might have varying opinions on it. Please hear me out before sending me angry opinions on this. Also, be aware I'm going to speak frankly about this, so please be careful if this subject is triggering to you.

For what it's worth, I do think there's a subtext of incestuous feelings to Illumi's obsession with Killua, and that the topic arises naturally from the way Illumi's feelings are framed. It doesn't mean Illumi has necessarily overtly sexually assaulted Killua (though that's a very dark interpretation that one could make), but rather that Illumi's fixation on Killua extends beyond that of normal siblings and crosses over into something more unhealthy.

Now, of course Illumi's obsession with Killua seems to come primarily from his prioritizing the family structure and enforcing Killua's role as heir, so controlling him is the main focus, but I'd still argue that Illumi's obsession with Killua is framed in a way that essentially parallels Hisoka's obsession with Gon, which...quite obviously has a sexual element to it. Having this degree of possessiveness and preoccupation over a younger sibling strikes me as potentially emotionally incestuous. I think especially of these two scenes in Election Arc when I make this assertion:

Illumi believing that Killua loves him more than anyone else shows that his perceptions of Killua's feelings are out of touch with reality and he sees himself as the most important and beloved figure in Killua's life. Illumi has deluded himself into thinking this even though we, the audience (and even Hisoka), know this is absurd and that Killua is trying desperately to escape his grasp. When even Hisoka is saying you're crazier than him, you know something is wrong.

Also, this scene:

Hisoka specifically riles up Illumi using vague phrasing (やる, yaru, which can mean to kill or to have sex with--Hisoka specifically uses 殺る, which means to kill, but I'm sure the double meaning is intentional nonetheless) and a hand gesture with a sexual meaning towards Killua, knowing it'll set Illumi off. Yes, this is typical Hisoka behavior, but I do think he added the sexual implication because he knows it will trigger Illumi further than simply threatening to kill Killua. I certainly don't believe this emotion comes entirely out of some wholesome desire to keep his younger brother safe, either...

We are only given so much information on Killua's home life and the degree of abuse he faced, and I think there's room for interpretations wherein Killua may have been subjected to sexual assault. However... Togashi generally keeps information related to the Zoldycks a bit tongue-in-cheek to keep things from getting too heavy. I believe he would have been more outright with it if he wanted the readers to get that far with their inferences, and he likely would have made it more of an area of focus in that case. I don't care for the idea that any actual sexual assault occurred between Illumi and Killua, because I feel Killua's background of abuse is sad enough as it is, and the thought of it is just so unpleasant and upsetting. For me personally, it doesn't add anything I want to explore or think about to Killua's arc. However, everyone can come to their own conclusions on this, as canon is rather vague.

I watched that discourse go down on twt and people were so strangely hostile about it. It did end up getting me to think about how incest is seen more as sexual deviancy than it is abuse, especially online and in fictional media, which colors the way people react to and engage with it. I think open-minded discussion like this is good to have and I'm sort of glad to see it's migrated here, where I feel like the HXH community is more measured and less incentivized to start fights (though that could be just my own bubble of mutuals).

As for what I feel like I can add to the discussion, I think the way Illumi takes joy in the idea that Killua will ask Nanika to kill him because the resulting guilt will mean he'll "live forever in his [Killua's] heart" is particularly striking

I think that this ^; the fact that Illumi considers himself to have raised Killua alongside their father; this conclusion made by Bisky (which only emphasizes things more concretely revealed in the Election Arc)

along with the frequently memed on observation that Illumi is super hypocritical about Killua being forbidden from friends because he allows himself to have what seems like a close relationship with Hisoka...

...and that conversation with Hisoka during the Election outlined above pretty obviously show that Illumi's love for Killua and the abuse he inflicts on him are inextricably linked, and that it's selfish in nature. It fulfills some emotional need, whether that to be in control of something or to receive what he perceives as affection. I'm on the fence about whether Illumi literally thinks his abuse is a form of love and that Killua's emotional submission to him is proof of his feelings being mutual in the way he talks about it with Hisoka—or if Illumi is marginally more self-aware and knows Killua wants to escape from him, so hurting him is a way of keeping him close and fulfilling the needs he has for reciprocity in that he's making Killua care about him at all, regardless of the nature of that care (which is exactly what he thinks will be the result of his ultimatum with Nanika). The bottom line is that Illumi does want Killua to pay attention to him, to care about him and serve an emotional purpose for him, in a way that disregards and objectifies him.

I do want to note that this sort of seems, to me, unique even among the Zoldyck family. Or at least a result of Kikyo, who shares the same emotionally obsessive characteristics as Illumi but can't enact the same violence on Killua because the Zoldycks are patriarchal. I do think the context of the family structure is important.

When it comes to the topic of whether this can be labelled incest, I think people get hung up on deviancy, like I said earlier. But everything I've ever looked at about emotional incest or "covert incest" describes it as mostly a result of dysfunction within the larger family unit (particularly in patriarchal families, where dominance is prioritized), not an intentional action nor a set of specifically romantic or sexual feelings—as is the case for most forms of familial abuse. That's why I think it's more productive to talk about the super-basics of Illumi's feelings and motivations toward Killua rather than have an unsolvable, subjective debate on what they could be labelled as or whether Killua was potentially physically abused in that way. Potentially could be whatever. The world could potentially be made of pudding. It's up in the air. Speculating about that sort of thing is just not the most relevant to this conversation specifically, in my eyes.

The parallels with Hisoka highlight a broader theme throughout the series - dominance and lust and/or reproduction are constantly being intertwined. Hisoka is the most obvious, showing essentially no line between violence and lust, but it proliferates. The Chimera Ant arc does this on a huge scale, with the reproduction of the ants being reliant upon consumption and aggression toward humanity both to feed the Queen and to conduct the Selection. (It also does this on a smaller scale, from Bizeff's sex trafficking to Zazan and Yunju's human pets.) Pariston manipulates and dominates hierarchies purely for pleasure, often coded as libidinous. Even Greed Island is fundamentally an act of love (either Ging's intent for Gon to experience it or Battera's love for his wife [I'm not claiming either of those are, like, good expressions, but whatever]) that slips incredibly easily into violence. The Phantom Troupe acts the same way, with their love for their dead friends spiraling into violence on a grand scale. (I admit, I'm not quite sure what to do with the Spiders here, they feel different in a way I can't quite articulate. But that's beside the point!)

So it makes perfect sense for Illumi to be operating in this same framework. Whether or not he's consciously lustful toward Killua (which I don't think he is), he's certainly consciously attempting to dominate him in a way that slots perfectly into HxH's themes of dominance and lust being related or identical. He's attempting to viciously protect and reproduce the family system through Killua in a way that acts like incest even without active sexual contact.

On the note of 'people get extremely reactive around discussions of incest' - that's part of why we see so much incest in Gothic literature: it's an efficient way to get Wrong Love. If you want to establish 'love that has twisted on itself to harm the lovers/others/society', incest (along with pedophilia and, less commonly these days, homosexuality) is a clear way to do that. Given that 'twisted, malformed love' is the whole Zoldyck throughline, the incestual subtext can absolutely be read. They're even existing within Gothic genre signifiers (castle, hawk, indicators of nobility) separate from the rest of the story, making the path there clearer.

Finally, if you'll forgive me for getting a little Freudian (like him or not, his theories were foundational to certain eras and genres of literature): Illumi is basically inserting himself as Killua's superego, and he's doing it with pins as a penetrating force. Again, it doesn't have to be literal sex for the interpretation to be legible - the same way Hisoka using Bungee Gum to put Gon on a leash during their fight is legible as "he's trapping Gon in his orbit to control his future" without showing the actual mechanics of long-term grooming.

Hi ! After seeing so many posts about Togashi dropping subtext about Killua’s possible romantic feelings for Gon, I thought it’d be a good idea to make a sort of “masterpost” with all the subtext that Togashi has included into his work.

I usually see a lot of people trying to say that HxH isn’t about romance and that Togashi isn’t interested in writing romance into the manga, but when you analyze all the subtext that’s been going on the further Gon and Killua’s relationship progresses, I think it’s incorrect to say that Togashi has never hinted at the possibility of romance in HxH.

This is going to be a long post, enjoy your read!

Also, please note that I will only base this analysis on the manga, so there can be no mistake that “maybe this is just something the anime made gayer” : i want to prove that the subtext is 100% intentional on Togashi’s part.

I’d also like to mention, although I will analyze it further after listing the subtext, that Togashi is a VERY smart man. There are always little details in the story and/or foreshadowing that are easily missed at first but when you notice them, it truly makes you understand how much attention and care Togashi puts into his work. There are countless details and symbolism that are analyzed daily through wonderful meta posts, from the main 4′s birthdays and their link to their character or the religious symbolism in Kurapika’s story arc…. Togashi loves to foreshadow and plant little details into his work, so when Togashi plants subtext, I’m sure he 100% knows that he’s writing it, and it can’t be seen as unintentional.

I’ll also link all my references for this post at the end of it, so feel free to read all the additional textposts and content if you want to know more.

Well, let’s get into it!

EDIT : i can’t believe this post is still being used as a reference it makes me so happy… thank you so much !!! i edited this to tweak it a bit because i wrote this a while ago and the phrasing seemed off to me, so if you’re reading or re-reading this post, hi, welcome to masterpost on gay subtext 2.0 !

let’s travel the world!!! Just you and me!!!! ☹️☹️☹️☹️