#because i'd give an arm and a leg to see present tsuna and tyl tsuna speaking to each other

[hopeswriting]

[ID: Panels from the manga Katekyo Hitman Reborn. They show Tsuna with wide eyes, utterly shocked and horrified over the news of Yamamoto having been attacked and being in the hospital. /End ID]

NO BECAUSE SAME. tyl tsuna is... okay the only reason i have yet to properly talk about him is because i for real just can't put it in words. (i DID speak a little about him here, but it's still mostly me screaming incoherently about him zefcfgsdf.) like yes we got little about him, but the little we DID get about him says so much. gives us so much to wrap our heads around.

he agreed to bring their past selves to fight a WAR even them couldn't win against, including the non-fighters and children, and just so they could be MOTIVATION for his past self. he agreed to fake his death and only let hibari in the know, and to fake his death IN FRONT OF gokudera and yamamoto, like it wasn't sure to absolutely crush gokudera, to name only him. he let mukuro in vindice for TEN YEARS???? and didn't help chrome and the kokuyo gang try to free him as far as we can tell. and let chrome disappear for FIVE YEARS. and also destroyed the rings when it seemed a war was going to start over them, i guess, sure, but compared to all that? it means little tbh. (OR makes everything else even worse, because clearly present tsuna was still there and alive in him somehow. and yet.)

and all that is why i personally call tyl tsuna a goddamn tragedy. and the cherry on top of that tragedy is that it's less about what kind of man he seems to be, but what kind of man he became compared to the boy he once was. it's the fact that man came from the boy he once was. and it's like, WHAT happened to him? to the boy for him to become that man, and to the man for him to be, as far as we can tell and for all intent and purposes, content with the kind of man he is. happy, even. (or IS he??)

(and btw, that something DID happen to them is the best case scenario. instead of, oh idk, tyl tsuna just being the natural and inevitable result of vongola seeing to it they train present tsuna to meet their standards as vongola decimo.)

it's also like, did amano realize just what kind of picture tyl tsuna makes? how, when you compare him to present tsuna, you HAVE to wonder if they're even the same person anymore? did she do it on purpose? because if so, what was she trying to say by that then!!!! what does it all mean, what were we supposed to take from that???

anyway sorry i fucking went off, but tyl tsuna makes me foam at the mouth for real, you have no idea.

but moving on, now you say it, maybe that's also why reborn looks so shocked here:

[ID copied from alt text: Another panel from the manga, showing Reborn in his cursed form, looking very shocked. /End ID]

because he hears in tsuna's voice that it's not about justice, but about revenge. vengeance. he hears the anger in his voice instead of sadness or hurt. and clearly he's hard-pressed to say just when that change in him happened. has failed to realize just how along that change in him already is.

(and isn't that ironic when he's basically tsuna's blacksmith? when he's the one who leads him to the hottest and harshest fires, who drags him there kicking and screaming so he can be forged by them. so he can be forged through them. he's the one telling him how to survive them and seeing to it that he does survive them, so he can come out of them closer to being the exact blade he was sent to him to shape him into.

but now he's shocked by the results? now they don't sit right with him, it doesn't feel right seeing them in action?

does he now wish he could take at least some of it back?

he can't. not anymore.)

okay that's a very good question. and i don't want to say it but like. we know what tsuna does when he's filled with anger and hatred and hurt over what people do to his friends, don't we? we know what he's able to do to those people in cases like this. and i said that him already having done it once gave him the mindset of "i can do everything else that is short of that", but it could just as easily give him the mindset of "i already did it once, so how hard can it be to do it a second time? to keep doing it?". so like......... you know.

wait because actually, it's never said how nono broke the new of the ceremony being fake to the others. and how well or not well they took it? because i mean, sure, he's vongola nono, but only him, reborn, tsuna & his guardians, and maybe nono's guardians too knew tsuna didn't actually agree to the ceremony. but for everyone else, it was the real thing. it was tsuna officially becoming vongola decimo. they even finished the ceremony (i think we're supposed to understand it was already finished anyway??), the shimon only crashed the party after.

so like, does nono really have the kind of power to just wave it all away? and to make everyone else go along with that independently of how they might feel about it? and what i'm saying is that if the khr manga was just a little more realistic, even knowing the truth of tsuna not actually having agreed to the ceremony, everyone would likely have taken the opportunity to shackle him to the vongola decimo's title for good anyway.

The best way I can put it is by the end of the series is that Tsuna is kind-hearted still, but he's no longer the pushover he once was. If you bite, he bites back. Sometimes harder.

you put it so perfectly, i love it. it's like, tsuna knows to limit his kindness. like yes it's one he gives freely by default, one that gives the benefit of the doubt, that's compassionate and understanding, that forgives and gives second chances, but it's also one with a clear, firm and unyielding line drawn in the sand. and once you cross it, all bets are ruthlessly, and at times arguably cruelly and mercilessly off.

which is kind of an insane thing to say about tsuna, and now i need to sit down for a bit because you're making me fucking unwell over all of this rebo.

why have i never seen anyone talk about how tsuna kills byakuran? because he does, he kills him. so like, can we talk about this? and i know he's still alive in his time, but that's literally not the point, it literally doesn't matter here. especially when tyl he still very much stays dead because that's one of the conditions for everything he did to be erased. and tsuna did this, killed him. burned him alive, in fact, and in cold-blood too.

okay, so maybe not in cold-blood, because he was full of rage and hatred and pain and grief when he did it, but like. he was still very much aware that it was what he was doing. that it was what he wanted to do, because he was full of rage and hatred and pain and grief when he did it.

can we just talk about this for a minute? about what happens after when he cools down? when he realizes just what he's done? because he wanted to do it?

byakuran is literally his first kill, can we just acknowledge that? and he burned him alive of all things, like. idk, i just.

tsuna killed him. tsuna killed him. tsuna just killed someone for the first time in his life. and isn't that ironic when the whole point was so they could go back to the past where their hands aren't forced to get bloody? not as much anyway? doesn't that make it even more fucked up?

tsuna kills byakuran.

can we. can someone just talk about this with me for a second?