ITP I run with scissors.
METAPHORICAL SCISSORS. Which hopefully I won't trip and fall and kill myself with. Haha, we'll see. XD
This is mostly jote_jote and demoneyeskyo87's fault! :P But it's also something I've kind of wanted to post for a while, because even though when it comes to KHR I pretty much exclusively write gen, I do still ship things! And 8059 is one of them. And so this is a post about why I like 8059.
Please note the wording of that, btw--this is an essay about why I like it! Not why it's canon, or why it is the best pairing ever!! or anything like that. That would require much more logic and research than I am willing to put into this. XD So yeah, it's just my explanation for why I ship it.
Okay, the first thing I need to emphasize right off the bat is that Gokudera is my favorite character. That means that when it comes to KHR pairings, particularly pairings that involve him, I have a huge bias toward him and am maybe a little overprotective, and most of my reasoning will thus revolve around why a pairing is good for him, not necessarily the other way around.
What this means is that he is very much not a fandom bicycle for me, because I am extremely discriminating when it comes to people I can see him paired off with. A character has to a) genuinely care about him, b) be someone he can get along with for more than two seconds, and c) be someone he cares about in return (more than on a basic "okay, yeah, we're allies" level). Right from the start, this eliminates about... 95 percent of the cast. XD Picture a little Venn diagram, if you will. All around outside the circles, we have characters that either actively wish Gokudera bodily harm, or at the very least don't give two shits about him. Wow, that's a lot of characters. XD
FIGURE A
If you love me, you'll forgive the part where this ugly thing was whipped up in MS Paint. Now, let's look over at the circle on the left! This is a list of all the characters who do care about Gokudera. Er, well sort of, anyway. Notice how there are only like... five people. And one of them is a question mark.
Now take a look at the circle on the right! These are all the characters who are capable of getting along with Gokudera. Mostly these are characters who are allies and/or people that Gokudera can either respect or at least work together with. However, pretty much all of them are more or less indifferent to his wellbeing, at least beyond "I suppose it would be a bad thing if you died."
Next we have the little green box in the corner. These are the people who, amazingly enough, both care about Gokudera and can interact with him without him throwing a tantrum! However, they're also all people who Gokudera himself wouldn't normally think about twice. XD I consider them incompatible shipping options because there is either no chemistry there, or he doesn't really respect them even if he can be civil with them, or they're his sister. Um.
So last but not least, that leaves us with the tiny little purple wedge that consists of people from circle A and circle B who actually overlap. There are, let's count them, a grand total of THREE people here.
Three people. Yeah. Way to be shippable, Gokudera. XD
So basically those three are the only ones I've ever really considered shipping Gokudera with. So now that we've narrowed the field down with my retarded logic, let's look at our remaining options.
Tsuna
At first glance, there's nothing wrong with this one. Gokudera is one of Tsuna's closest friends, and Tsuna is pretty much Gokudera's savior, king, and reason for living all wrapped up into one. Except... that right there is where we end up hitting a snag. The thing is, Gokudera puts Tsuna on this amazing pedestal of amazingness, where everything Tsuna does is good and perfect, and he himself is absolutely Not Worthy. And Tsuna, for his part, is the kind of guy who absolutely can't stand being put on a pedestal. He is Mr. Normal, or wants to be, anyway, and in spite of his caring for Gokudera, that's the one thing he really can't get past. So for this combo to ever work, Gokudera would have to drastically relax his stance on Tsuna Worship, and Tsuna would have to get over his uncomfortableness at being the object of said devotion. (And also the fact that he's canonically attracted to someone else. XD) Which could in fact happen eventually! But for now, it's an issue.
TYL!Haru
TYL!Haru benefits from being paired up with TYL!Gokudera, who is hopefully a little more relaxed, confident, and open than his younger self. She also benefits from having had ten years to mature herself, into someone who's perhaps a little less obsessed with Tsuna and a little more open to the fact that love can come about in any number of ways. Honestly, this is one of my very favorite pairings, and I really think the two of them could hit it off. But it's still not without its own share of problems, which mainly stem from the fact that the two of them haven't had any interaction in the manga for a gazillion years, and so most of my reasons for shipping them are based on little more than headcanon. And also, there's the whole thing where even in a perfect world, this probably wouldn't happen for a long, long time--there's a reason I used the whole TYL! clause for this one. :P
Which leaves us with...
Yamamoto
So there you have it; by the process of elimination, I have successfully fussed my way down to a single 59 pairing! Reason number one why I ship 8059: Yamamoto is literally the last one standing. XD
But that all by itself is a really stupid reason for shipping something. 8059 has its share of issues just like the other ones, and it's not really fair for me to bash on the others without making it take its hits as well. So let's try this--a list of pros and cons. (Once again, these are all from a perspective of "would be good for Gokudera", not the other way around. I'll get to that, just not yet. XD)
SO, PROS:
- Cares about Gokudera.
- Can get along with Gokudera, sometimes!
- Has earned a basic level of trust; Gokudera can count on him to protect Tsuna, have his back in a fight, be his partner in a badass tag-team, etc.
- Has earned Tsuna's trust, which is possibly even more important.
- Shares many things in common with Gokudera; fellow guardian, fellow classmate, both part of Tsuna's inner circle, etc.
- Able to shrug it off when Gokudera gets mad at him.
- Knows when he can't just shrug it off, and when Gokudera needs to be reasoned with or even bitched at, and can knock some sense into him if he has to, without earning Gokudera's resentment for doing so.
- Attractive.
CONS:
- Too happy.
- Too annoying (especially given his fondness for invading personal bubbles).
- Too stupid.
- Too perfect.
As you can probably tell, the cons list isn't really a list of actual cons so much as things that piss Gokudera off because of his resentment toward the final item on the list. It isn't that Gokudera hates Yamamoto; it's more that he's jealous of him. The vast majority of his dislike stems from that. This is something that's been going on since way back at the beginning of the series, and has pretty much continued over the arcs until it finally came to a head in the fight against Gamma.
Then, Gokudera's irrational hate finally reached a point where even Yamamoto was unable to just sit back and take it anymore. He laid the smackdown on him, and basically called him out on being a dumbass. "If you open your heart only to Tsuna, all you're doing is putting the pressure on him. ...You're supposed to pull the guardians together! Instead, you've turned away from them. What kind of rubbish is that?" Translation: "Trust me, you idiot." XD
This was a pivotal scene for these two, for several reasons. First, because it illustrates all of Gokudera's stupid trust issues perfectly (and it's even further confirmed later; he admits to Tsuna that he was scared, and that he took it out on Yamamoto). Second, because Yamamoto is the one doing the illustrating, and in doing so he demonstrated an amazing level of insight into what makes Gokudera tick. Seriously, he hits dead on target.
And third, because Gokudera actually listens. He realizes that Yamamoto is right, and teams up. And with the exception of a minor incident with Uri, who also taught him the true meaning of Christmas, from here on out, Gokudera actually begins to turn a corner on the whole trust thing. He stops thinking of the other guardians as obstacles or annoyances and works with them as a team, and even teams up with his former arch-nemesis Gamma to fight a dinosaur man. And it pretty much all starts here.
When you think about it, this makes Yamamoto the only one aside from Tsuna to ever successfully shounen-Jesus Gokudera. And considering we're talking about one of the most stubborn characters ever, that's saying something. It implies trust and respect on Gokudera's part far beyond what he usually lets on.
And while it remains to be seen if Gokudera still resents Yamamoto's skill and closeness to Tsuna, going by the limited evidence we have, it doesn't seem to bug him quite as much as it used to. There's hope yet. XD
So anyway, I think that more or less covers Gokudera's side of things, and I like to think that overall, the pros outweigh the cons. I mean, it's Yamamoto. HE'S PERFECT. Gokudera should be so lucky, and small wonder I think he'd be a good fit for him.
But what about the other way around, you ask? ALL RIGHT, FINE.
Section in Which I Try to Explain Why Gokudera is a Good Catch Too and Not Just Vice-Versa
Yamamoto likes everyone. If I made a Venn diagram for him, it would consist of a single circle of "People Yamamoto Likes and Gets Along With", and inside that circle would be the names of literally every character in the series, with the sole exception of Byakuran, who would be all by his lonesomes in the cold and unfeeling space outside.
Hence why this section is not called "Why Yamamoto Likes Gokudera." That's not even a question. Of course Yamamoto likes Gokudera. Yamamoto likes everyone. The question is, then, does Gokudera actually stand apart from all the rest, or is he simply part of "everyone"?
And for my part, I think he absolutely is part of that select "but Yamamoto especially likes..." group of people, along with Tsuna and Squalo. Like I mentioned earlier, Yamamoto and Gokudera happen to share quite a few things in common, the most important of those being their connection to Tsuna. They're his two closest friends, and his two most important guardians, and when it comes to him, there's an unsaid bond of "this guy is our most important person, and neither of us would ever let anything happen to him."
On top of that, they're, well, kind of rivals. Sort of. Well, no, maybe that's not quite the word I'm looking for. The thing is, it's a word that comes a lot in discussions about 8059, but they're not really rivals in the traditional sense, because they're both on the same side, and on top of that, only one of them is really taking it seriously. XD To Yamamoto it's just another game, while to Gokudera it's more serious business (see: aforementioned jealousy issues). But they are two highly skilled fighters who both happen to be very competitive, and who both sort of indirectly push each other to train to that next level. So it's not so much that they're rivals as that they're more or less equals, and they challenge each other. And both of them are the type of people who thrive on that sort of thing, but Yamamoto especially really needs that sort of push. So in a way, he actually is taking it seriously too.
...I lost my train of thought. Um... oh yeah. Another thing is that Yamamoto is very persistent in his relationship with Gokudera. Like, he is constantly teasing him and touching him and smiling at him and being an annoying pest in general. And yeah, he's like that with everyone, but he really does take it up a notch when they're together. (I mean, I'm not going to sift through every single chapter for panels where he's doing his Yama thing, but just. TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. :|) And on top of that, he seems to take an extra special delight every time Gokudera actually demonstrates trust in him (yeah, I do have links to those scenes, mostly because they're much rarer XD). (On the flip side, he also gets that much more rapey whenever Gokudera gets hurt.) And like I mentioned before, Yamamoto has a pretty uncanny understanding of Gokudera. Not much gets past him where Gokudera is concerned; that's shown not only during the fight against Gamma, but when Reborn tells Yamamoto and Tsuna the truth about Gokudera's family. Yamamoto makes a simple remark--"No wonder he said his family was all screwed up"--that happens to be a reference to a throwaway comment Gokudera made almost a hundred chapters earlier. Holy paying attention, Batman.
And then finally, there's one last throwaway comment, this one made by Reborn immediately after the Gamma fight: "Yamamoto said the same thing. And he also said many good things that he said not to tell Gokudera." I know this line made the ears of every 8059 fan out there perk up, because that's not just subtext, that's another character blatantly saying that Yamamoto confessed things--good things!--about Gokudera that he doesn't actually want to tell Gokudera. UM.
So yeah. At the very least, clearly Yama is very fond of Gokudera. And it seems at least plausible that there might be a little bit of crushing there...?? WHO KNOWS. What I'm trying to say is that by no means would this be an unhappy arrangement on Yamamoto's part. He likes Gokudera. A lot.
Why I Like It
So, now that I'm finally finished doing all of the things I just said at the beginning of this post that I wouldn't do, I will sum up the reasons why I like the pairing:
- It's sexy!
- It's amusing (by far the most hilarious pairing in the series, Yama/Wall aside).
- Yamamoto likes Gokudera.
- Gokudera... doesn't hate Yamamoto! XD More seriously, he's one of the few people he trusts and respects.
- They share a bond of mutual Tsuna adoration.
- They're adorable not-rivals.
- They get along. Honest to God, they do, or else I wouldn't ship it. It just happens to be in a hilarious way.
- ...it's sexy.
...Is that it? I think that's it. So that's my essay-thing! I would go back and proofread it, but. Lol. XD Anyway.
And now I can go back to failing at writing my officially-late khrfest fics. YAY. (Also, Happy Belated Birthday, nonoji! Hope you had a great day. ♥)