Elf!!

he came to show the bug. this evil bug absolutely doesn't like u.

Anyways, here are moments where Gon cared/helped/saved people who weren't useful to him.

mito, who couldn’t have been older than fourteen at the time, got custody, but what we know about gon is that he was basically raised by the forest and hid at least some of his adventures and revelations about ging from mito. he didn’t have any friends his age and was more entrenched within the animal kingdom than humanity. and this makes sense, because he had a very young mother who under no circumstances should be expected to be perfect by any stretch of the imagination, and no father. the animal kingdom is one in which violence frequently occurs, but we see through gon’s rescuing of kon that he believes even this can be rejected (i go into gon’s morality and rejection of a lack thereof here).

he was poor, lonely, getting taken around his island older women with a “mania” (as in the original japanese) for “young boys”, his best friends were literal animals, he thought his father’s occupation was more important than caring for him, and he was constantly exposed to the violence of nature and this naturalizes him to the violence of the hunter world especially early on in the story (before yorknew, before he really begins to start developing stronger questions about moral sensibilities). mito tried her best but there’s no getting rid of the fact that gon was dehumanized from a very young age—knowing he was sort of just an inconvenient thing to his father and taking more solace in nature than humans. it’s easy to see how gon, who sees himself as Thing (shown in how easily he disregards his body and well being and never considers his safety or well being) would get attached to and feel deep empathy for killua and develop a desire to save him.

however, all killua sees of gon’s life is the kindness of gon’s mother, gon’s adoration for her, and the extent of his loneliness is only briefly expressed. even in the scene where gon opens up about his difficulties on whale island he’s still proposing his friendship as the solution to killua’s woes and we see her the kernel of their codependency. gon knows killua has been tortured by his family; killua has been able to verbalize that it makes him miserable. but when gon describes the adults in his life that have failed him, like ging, it’s always with flowery and adoring language. so both killua and the audience are lured into the idea that gon is a perfectly happy, stable child that can act as killua’s savior.

gon is honestly a very dissociative character (i go into his romanticization of the troubling mentors in his life here) and speaks with a lot of blind optimism because getting realistic about his circumstances isn’t generally something a 12-13 year old can bear. “my dad isn’t in my life because being a hunter is more important than me” transforms into “being a hunter must be awesome enough to abandon your son”, “i’m responsible for kite’s arm getting sliced off in front of me” becomes “kite is alive”, “grown men keep beating the fuck out of me” becomes “i’m glad to get stronger”.

it’s confirmation of kite’s death that breaks not just one illusion but all of the illusions he relies on to carry on. his protective shell shatters and the entire philosophy with which he approaches life is invalidated. as how he lives becomes worthless, he becomes worthless, and then goes on to commit what can only be called a suicide attempt. as i’ve said before, traumatized little boys can’t save other traumatized little boys and shouldn’t be expected to. gon does not suddenly become a bad person because he didn’t fulfill a savior fantasy, because he wasn’t perfect, because he carried out the sort of violence practically everyone else in his life has.

even after being healed gon is doing better than he was at the climax of CAA, yes, but he’s clearly internalized some troubling ideas about himself (“you were weak. never make that mistake again.” “maybe i wasn’t cut out to be a son.”) and all i have to say to anyone who sincerely thinks gon had a good normal life and just went crazy for no reason is this:

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!

a huge part of hxh is that the spectacle of violence against children should *not* be normalized, that it leads to horrific consequences, and the romanticization of the suffering of children is deeply troubling. hisoka subverts the typical “mentor” who would groom the protagonist into violence on the basis of gaining strength trope in shounen into a very literal grooming that makes gon’s “strength” into an avenue for hisoka’s sexual gratification. gon’s personhood and story are all wrapped up in multiple forms of violence; emotional, physical, sexual, systemic.

gon justifies so much of the violence against himself because he believes it will all result in some grand climax for his adventure. but both gon and the audience he’s leading’s expectations are subverted when in reality, the abuse he suffers that stakes all of his worth on strength forces him into a place where once he feels like he can no longer give to a mentor or the association or base his worth in their praises, he tries to kill himself and then loses all of his power for the forseeable future (if not forever). the forced maturation he had to deal with was so unnatural and actually stunted his ability to grow organically. “i’m not a kid!” says the 13 year old on his way to kill an ant using rock paper scissors.

still, even once we do see killua's perspective of silva for instance, silva is portrayed by killua as pretty kind and understanding (at least for the life killua leads), but this is also another way one of the children in the story frames their abuse as natural or sympathizes with their abuser (as gon does frequently with hisoka as well). it’s only after killua is reminded of the imprisonment of alluka that he realizes his father is a “bully” just like the rest of his family, all of whom tried to “put needles in his head”. killua understands the extent of this violence only when it’s enacted against alluka, as gon does only when it’s enacted against killua.

but anyways, i feel like if you view the levels of physical abuse, sexual harassment, and actual mutilation gon experiences throughout the story as a shounen inevitability, of course you'll think him eventually lashing out is out of character or just reduce it to it being simplistically edgy (i.e. comments about how he lost his humanity just because he's actually grieving for once instead of bottling up his pain).