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hopeswriting · 2 years

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i don't know what *fanon reborn* looks like and at this point i'm too afraid to ask

hi nonny, thank you for the ask!

LMAO yeah that's valid actually. and for the quick disclaimer my understanding of fanon!reborn might not be accurate anymore because i know him from way back when i was also reading a lot of khr fics (my brain keeps telling me 2014, but i think it's more like 2016/2018), but basically fanon!reborn is... an asshole for no good reasons and also all the time.

and this is when you tell me “but hope, you just said canon!reborn is an asshole too!”, and you’d be right to because yes i did and yes he is! but where fanon!reborn is an asshole just for the sake of being cruel or because he actually wants to hurt the people he’s being an asshole to, canon!reborn is just one big troll who loves chaos and loves to mess with people whenever he can. but for the sake of fun and being funny. and because the intentions aren’t the same they come off differently in each case, and in the case of fanon!reborn he just comes off as a bully. so even when i could tell the moments where i was supposed to laugh, i was always just left being like “that was just unnecessary and uncalled for yet again. why does anyone even put up with him??” instead.

(this is also when you could tell me “but hope, don’t you think canon!reborn is a bully too? like with tsuna or skull? that’s just writing reborn in character!”. and i’m not gonna argue with you on this one because i think this is typically a case where it depends on your personal sensibilities and where you draw the line, and, well. reading reborn as a bully is of course very easy and understandable, and it’d be hard to argue it’s not canon, but the way i’d personally put it instead is that yes, he very often crosses the line/boundaries of other people, but unknowingly.

for me it comes back to his intentions again, and the way i see it reborn only always mean to tease and not bully. and yes, even when he goes the violent way about it, even if of course it doesn’t make it right. and he probably doesn’t even realize he can and does come off as a bully to other people, because he just assumes that where he thinks their lines are drawn is, in fact, where they’re drawn for real. and confident he’s right about it because how often is he wrong, right? it lets him dismiss complaints about his attitude (tsuna), and even people telling him very explicitly times and times again “hey, can you please stop treating me like that? i really dislike it” (skull) without a second thought.

also re: him being violent and not meaning anything out of it or thinking it’s a big deal. and again, it doesn’t make it right and it is a big deal for the people he’s violent with, but i think it’d be doing a disservice to his character to judge him on that without keeping in mind why he thinks that way. and the why is simply because reborn is mafia to his core and may or may not have known anything else his whole life. and violence is just one of the languages that comes the most naturally to him to interact with the world and people, if not the first one altogether. but that’s actually not even relevant here because to him he’s probably not being violent at all. all those punches and kicks and pinches etc? to him it’s probably just his equivalent of a tap on your hand. a flick on your forehead. him pinching your cheek, etc, etc, you get it.

and i can’t quite imagine what he’d consider as proper and genuine violence would look like when he’s the world’s greatest hitman, but i certainly can believe reborn can do so much worse than anything we saw him do in canon. and that still being seen as acceptable for mafia-standards. i mean, remember what nono did to xanxus? and how that was him being merciful with him? and the way iemitsu knocked tsuna unconscious in one punch to teach him a lesson (< in the literal way, i don’t mean he just wanted to beat his son’s ass for the sake of it lol)? so not only reborn’s behavior is actually super mild (to him), it also literally doesn’t even make it as something he even calls violence to begin with (again, to him).

and okay that was a long digression lol, oops, but yeah, the way i see it reborn is a bully to the people he only means to tease because they just don’t have the same boundaries, but he never actually goes out of his way to be hurtful to them with his behavior in a way where it’d linger and would make them come to resent him. like, the intention is never to actually harm. because yes he can and is mean and doesn’t care to be nice/kind either, but i still genuinely believe he doesn’t have a mean streak in him all the same. i mean, just look at his interactions with lambo. if he doesn’t care about you then that’s that, he’ll just move on with his life and ignore your very existence, and will deal with you only when you actively remind him of your existence again. and even then while still mostly ignoring you lol. and personally i think that makes him more complex and compelling as a character than him just being an asshole with people because he knows he can get away with it as one of the strongest people in the world.)

and that’s of course totally fine because to each their interpretation of the characters, right? but what really rubbed me the wrong way and broke my suspension of disbelief is that the attitude described above (the fanon one) is always glossed right over. and it’s because they actually didn’t mean for him to come out that way, were actually going for some fun banter/teasing and reborn being his canonical troll self, and so he was never called out by either the narrative or the other characters for his attitude. except he didn’t come out like that, not to me anyway, and i just couldn’t keep buying that reborn cared about them or that they cared about him in return.

and i think i can actually guess why fanon!reborn missed the mark with me so often. he just fell prey too to that-idk, trend? where the fans latch on a few selected core traits of the personality of a character, and reduce them to them and them only. which was bound to miss the mark with reborn when canon!reborn is all about balance between all the different sides of his personality. it’s like, he’s literally the biggest threat in the room at pretty much all times except for when his fellow arco are around (and even then because he’s canonically the strongest arco), but he’s also a very playful character who likes to mess around and doesn’t take himself seriously, but he still doesn’t make the mistake of ever letting other people forget he is the biggest threat in the room, but also doesn’t make the mistake of letting it get to his head, and that’s, imo, the framework within which he expresses his personality accordingly.

but okay, let’s just pick and choose the traits of his personality we like best, that too is fine, whatever you want to do, right? and at least when it comes to reborn his fanon version isn’t an entirely different character like *coughs* luce *coughs* some others we shall not name lol. but it’s just my luck that the way they wrote those selected personality traits the most often, and the way they interacted with each other’s really just irked me to the point i couldn’t keep reading those fics. and that’s why fanon!reborn personally doesn’t do it for me.

(and in case you’re wondering about what i think those personality traits are, i don’t want to go in details with them because i’ve already said plenty here that might tick people off lol, but the way i see it it goes something like this:

(canon) reborn likes chaos and fun and to mess with people, and is all around a very playful character. he's rough in the way he expresses that but never has the intention to hurt even if it does end up hurting the people around him because he mistakes where their boundaries are -> (fanon) his playfulness doesn’t survive the trip to fanon (lol) because they get his intentions and inner working/reasoning behind it wrong, so he just comes off as an asshole who likes to be an asshole and hurt the people around him just because he can.

(canon) reborn is the world’s greatest hitman and the strongest arco and is among the best in many other fields too and knows it -> (fanon) reborn is better than everyone at everything and is full of himself and barely has to lift a finger to make other people do what he wants.

(and my issue here is that 1) reborn knows exactly what he’s worth and is very confident in his own skills, yes, but that’s exactly why he doesn’t feel the need to flaunt and reassert how better he is than everyone else all the time, and 2) reborn being among the best of the best himself, it means most of the people he’s surrounded with are also among the best of the best in their own right, the arco first and foremost, and like. they’re prideful in their own right too and would not just let reborn boss them around. they wouldn’t hesitate or be afraid of standing up to him or challenging him either, even if yes, in the case of a full-blown confrontation, reborn is the one most likely to have his way.)

(canon) reborn isn’t one for big show of emotions or being open about or straightforwards with his feelings, but he still expresses himself and is able to get his feelings across in his own way -> (fanon) reborn is too cool to show he cares, but he’s so perfect at it he never shows that he does, in fact, care, and you’re left wondering if he really cares and why anyone would care back enough to put up with him.)

#katekyo hitman reborn #khr #khr meta #khr reborn #khr asks #khr fanon #being brave and putting this in the tags #/not/ to start beef lol but because i'm genuinely curious about what you guys think on the matter too #does this read as harsh tho?? because that wasn't the intention #like i said it's just a matter of different opinions and different interpretations #so just to be clear this /isn't/ an attack on anyone #Anonymous

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