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asaelThis is meta! About Mukuro and Hibari. I wrote it. Aggy found the pictures and laughed at me while I wrote it. Thank you Aggy. Please click the cut. There are pictures!
Once upon a time, I told Aggy (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nonartisan) I would write Mukuro & Hibari meta. So here it is. This is just my opinion, of course, but I'm supporting it with canon evidence. It's not exactly that I think that everyone writes them wrong, but everyone seems to take it as a given that Mukuro is the one chasing after Hibari, and that Mukuro is the one who's interested in him, while Hibari couldn't care less (except to be annoyed, maybe.)
Canon pretty much says the opposite when it comes to these two. From the beginning, Mukuro does show that Hibari at least registers on his radar – he knows Hibari is the strongest in Namimori, and he goes out of his way to take him out when it comes to that. Obviously he did his research in order to find out how strong Hibari is and what his weaknesses are, but even then, Hibari was never his final goal – just a step on the road.
Mukuro is impressed by Hibari, though, because Hibari is stronger and more stubborn than expected – attacking Mukuro even after his body is too injured to continue.
Mukuro is surprised!
We can see that he IS interested in Hibari, since he shows up before the Mist Ring battle just to comment on Hibari's growth.
Look, Hibari's checking out Mukuro's ass!
So I'm not saying that Mukuro is completely uninterested.
What I am saying is that Hibari is much MORE interested. He's got Mukuro on his mind basically from the moment he gets beaten, and that doesn't disappear throughout the course of the manga. Fighting Mukuro again (and beating him into a bloody pulp) is one of Hibari's prime motivations that we see.
For example, after Gokudera's ring battle, Reborn is able to stop Hibari from attacking the Varia only by telling him that if he doesn't, he'll get to fight Mukuro again.
You can't win, Hibari! His head is too big, it will crush you.
We rarely do get to see any signs of Hibari's motivation for the things he does (and I really don't think he needs it, most of the time), but when we do – it's usually Mukuro.
Later, in the TYL arc, Hibari fights Genkishi.
Hmm, I wonder who he could be talking about.
He says that he is the best choice to fight Mist users, because he hates them so much (and he's spent so much time training to be able to beat them). Obviously there's no one he could mean except Mukuro. So ten years later, Hibari is still chasing after Mukuro, which is definitely not something he'd do if he just considered Mukuro an annoying pest.
Kusakabe's fishing! Maybe he ships 6918.
He also states clearly that he's not interested in Chrome if Mukuro's not inside her.
Mukuro still holds some interest in Hibari, as well, since it's stated that he was observing Hibari when inhabiting the owl, but it doesn't quite seem equal.
Hibari was acting on intuition that the owl was Mukuro... that's cute.
We get as little of Mukuro's true motivations as we do of Hibari's, but Mukuro's don't seem to involve Hibari in any way, or if they do, he never mentions them. He's interested, but not as creepy-stalkery-obsessed as he's often written. If anyone's the stalker here, it's probably Hibari.
Mukuro does keep an eye on Hibari over the years and over the course of the manga (visiting him before the Mist ring fight, Muku-owl observing him, Mukuro sending the files to Hibari's server instead of the Vongola's), but HIBARI is the one who's obsessed with chasing after him. He recognizes Mukuro's strength through Chrome ('if you die, we'll all be in trouble'), and has made a point of training to be able to fight Mist users (otherwise he wouldn't have done so well against Genkishi - Genkishi is startled that Hibari can see through his illusions), and he talks about Mukuro like ALL THE TIME (he even asked about Mukuro in the drama CD). In fact, it seems like besides the obvious things (dominating Namimori, biting herbivores to death), Mukuro is one of the few things that will motivate Hibari, whereas Hibari doesn't seem to hold that much interest for Mukuro. He's more interested in Tsuna (but this meta is not about Tsuna).
This seemed obvious to me just from reading the manga, but fandom seems to have such a different view of their relationship that I occasionally wonder if we're reading the same manga. Thus, the meta. Anyone is free to disagree, but now the world knows why I think it's strange that people always write Mukuro chasing after Hibari, rather than the other way around – since to me, that seems a lot more canon.
And I know that the world cares very much about my interpretation of the text of a silly shounen manga.
THE END >:O
I mean, look at him. Why would HE need to run after anyone?
Once upon a time, I told Aggy (
nonartisan) I would write Mukuro & Hibari meta. So here it is. This is just my opinion, of course, but I'm supporting it with canon evidence. It's not exactly that I think that everyone writes them wrong, but everyone seems to take it as a given that Mukuro is the one chasing after Hibari, and that Mukuro is the one who's interested in him, while Hibari couldn't care less (except to be annoyed, maybe.)Canon pretty much says the opposite when it comes to these two. From the beginning, Mukuro does show that Hibari at least registers on his radar – he knows Hibari is the strongest in Namimori, and he goes out of his way to take him out when it comes to that. Obviously he did his research in order to find out how strong Hibari is and what his weaknesses are, but even then, Hibari was never his final goal – just a step on the road.
Mukuro is impressed by Hibari, though, because Hibari is stronger and more stubborn than expected – attacking Mukuro even after his body is too injured to continue.
Mukuro is surprised!
We can see that he IS interested in Hibari, since he shows up before the Mist Ring battle just to comment on Hibari's growth.
Look, Hibari's checking out Mukuro's ass!
So I'm not saying that Mukuro is completely uninterested.
What I am saying is that Hibari is much MORE interested. He's got Mukuro on his mind basically from the moment he gets beaten, and that doesn't disappear throughout the course of the manga. Fighting Mukuro again (and beating him into a bloody pulp) is one of Hibari's prime motivations that we see.
For example, after Gokudera's ring battle, Reborn is able to stop Hibari from attacking the Varia only by telling him that if he doesn't, he'll get to fight Mukuro again.
You can't win, Hibari! His head is too big, it will crush you.
We rarely do get to see any signs of Hibari's motivation for the things he does (and I really don't think he needs it, most of the time), but when we do – it's usually Mukuro.
Later, in the TYL arc, Hibari fights Genkishi.
Hmm, I wonder who he could be talking about.
He says that he is the best choice to fight Mist users, because he hates them so much (and he's spent so much time training to be able to beat them). Obviously there's no one he could mean except Mukuro. So ten years later, Hibari is still chasing after Mukuro, which is definitely not something he'd do if he just considered Mukuro an annoying pest.
Kusakabe's fishing! Maybe he ships 6918.
He also states clearly that he's not interested in Chrome if Mukuro's not inside her.
Mukuro still holds some interest in Hibari, as well, since it's stated that he was observing Hibari when inhabiting the owl, but it doesn't quite seem equal.
Hibari was acting on intuition that the owl was Mukuro... that's cute.
We get as little of Mukuro's true motivations as we do of Hibari's, but Mukuro's don't seem to involve Hibari in any way, or if they do, he never mentions them. He's interested, but not as creepy-stalkery-obsessed as he's often written. If anyone's the stalker here, it's probably Hibari.
Mukuro does keep an eye on Hibari over the years and over the course of the manga (visiting him before the Mist ring fight, Muku-owl observing him, Mukuro sending the files to Hibari's server instead of the Vongola's), but HIBARI is the one who's obsessed with chasing after him. He recognizes Mukuro's strength through Chrome ('if you die, we'll all be in trouble'), and has made a point of training to be able to fight Mist users (otherwise he wouldn't have done so well against Genkishi - Genkishi is startled that Hibari can see through his illusions), and he talks about Mukuro like ALL THE TIME (he even asked about Mukuro in the drama CD). In fact, it seems like besides the obvious things (dominating Namimori, biting herbivores to death), Mukuro is one of the few things that will motivate Hibari, whereas Hibari doesn't seem to hold that much interest for Mukuro. He's more interested in Tsuna (but this meta is not about Tsuna).
This seemed obvious to me just from reading the manga, but fandom seems to have such a different view of their relationship that I occasionally wonder if we're reading the same manga. Thus, the meta. Anyone is free to disagree, but now the world knows why I think it's strange that people always write Mukuro chasing after Hibari, rather than the other way around – since to me, that seems a lot more canon.
And I know that the world cares very much about my interpretation of the text of a silly shounen manga.
THE END >:O
I mean, look at him. Why would HE need to run after anyone?
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no subject
Date: 2009-01-02 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-02 06:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-03 06:22 am (UTC)I do wish people would write 1869 more. Hibari just seems to be the fandom's uke bicycle (though I honestly don't know where that comes from at ALL), so I guess it's no surprise that there's a lot more 6918.
I definitely agree that power plays a big part of why Mukuro almost always is written as the seme. Power and height. XD Hibari is short, after all, and the height rule is somehow embedded in anime fandom. For me, the dynamic plays out more realistically if Hibari is the aggressive one, because it fits his personality better, but I think I'm in the minority on that.
I agree with basically everything you said in your comment. ^_^
no subject
Date: 2009-01-03 06:43 am (UTC)Haha, fandom's uke bicycle completely applies to Hibari. He's almost (though not whored out quite as much) the Cloud of the Reborn series. (_ _;) You're right, I completely forgot about his height. Maybe it's since I haven't looked into their TYL stats and you don't really get to see Mukuro and Hibari standing next to each other TYL so it never occurred to me. Hibari is definitely more agressive in his pursuit of Mukuro. Now that I think about it, theoretically if he's the strongest of the guardians TYL, that's assuming he's stronger now then Mukuro as well... right? I don't know.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-03 08:41 am (UTC)I'm more a Mukuro fan than a Hibari fan, so I often roll my eyes when I see some Hibari pairings. Especially since the guy seems to dislike everyone, and yet, he gets paired up more than anyone else. XD Yeah, Hibari is shorter than Mukuro in 'present-day', and I don't know if there even are TYL stats anywhere - I'm sure he's grown, though.
I don't know either... I do think Hibari is physically the strongest and best fighter of the guardians TYL, but just like when they fought before, Mukuro has no problem using dirty tricks to win. XD So while I do think Hibari would win in a straight out fight, I don't think Mukuro would let things come to that. >.>;; But that's just my opinion.