#we discussed about tsuna also seeing reborn often at a lot of places but never got in contact (bc we thought of him living on a mountain idk

[keirientez]

Pokemon trainer AU, Reborn is the champion meanwhile Tsuna is his apprentice. Tsuna’s design belongs to my friend @Cloud_Knee (Twt or X)

[hopeswriting]

ok so i was just reading your tags on a post talking about skull/reborn and i kinda wanna know how you think their relationship would work or the kinda writing you trust for them? (i kinda wanna write my own skull/reborn fic lol but wanna keep them in character while doing so)

hi, thank you for the ask!

okay so, i’ve only written this ship substantially like twice myself lol (tho i’m not unfamiliar with writing their dynamic as i’ve written my fair share of poly!arco fics), so i wouldn’t call myself a specialist of them, but i do like to think i have a good grasp on both their characters. and my issue is that fanon doesn’t often get them right in and of themselves to begin with, and so of course when writing them together/about their dynamic, it inevitably gets them wrong. (imo anyway, and here’s the disclaimer that this is all of course only my personal opinion, which everyone is welcome to discuss!)

i don’t think it’s on the fans tho! the way i see it they’re canonically kinda tricky to pin down to begin with, both individually and together. reborn is because even if he’s the co-protagonist, he’s all about being the one in control, the one remaining steady and unfazed no matter what, and the anchor and guiding force of tsuna’s, and by proxy of most of everything that happens in the manga too. which means it’s easy to reduce him to that know-it-all, perfect-at everything, better-than-everyone-else god-like figure, and to overlook the other facets of his personality that nuance that side of him (because i do think that god-like writing he’s often given is definitely in character for him to some extent, don’t get me wrong), because in comparison they appear a lot less often throughout the manga. and even if you do take them into account, it’s hard to pin down when and how and how much reborn allows those other aspects of himself to come out.

skull’s tricky simply because we got very little about him, making him almost a blank canvas, so it’s easier to just make that canvas into whatever we need it to be, while overlooking or disregarding the little we did get about him. and when you do try to take it into account, we got so little about him it’s hard to extrapolate on it to a substantial extent, or draw a pattern between them to get an idea of what being “in character” would even mean for him.

meanwhile when you write them together, i think their dynamic is actually less tricky and just plainly misunderstood. like we can all agree they’re canonically on bad terms, or that there’s beef between them at the very least, canon makes it pretty clear. it’s also pretty easy to guess why that is, but where most people lose me is on the how it all comes together to them having the dynamic they have in canon. and basically, not only there's no actual hate or animosity between them, i think more importantly there’s no disrespect between them or any intention to hurt.

now the last two ones were mostly about reborn, because no matter how he may (purposefully) act or what he may say, if you look closely it’s clear he actually doesn’t question skull’s place among the arco, nor does he question the fact he has the skills to back it up, even if, yes, he’s simultaneously aware skull is the weakest of them, and uses that fact to make fun of him and shape the way he acts with him. he does only make fun of him tho, because reborn’s intention is never to actually hurt him or be cruel with him or look down on him, etc, etc. he only ever means to tease.

which doesn’t mean skull still isn’t hurt by the way he acts with him or doesn’t resent him for it, because he very much is and does. but i don’t think it’s the kind of hurt depicted in most fics that’d make him leave the arco or other such extreme reactions or show of rejection. because yes there’s no actual hate or animosity between them, but also more importantly there’s comradeship between them, just as there is between the other arco, whatever you think comradeship means here. reborn and skull do care about each other.

so like, it’s all about boundaries, instead of them taking an issue with each other’s personality the way it’s often made to be in fics. because being both aware of the other’s background (reborn being mafia to his core and skull being a former civilian), they both get and understand and respect where the other comes from being the way they are, that’s not the issue between them. but then reborn thinks he was able to infer all on his own where skull’s boundaries are, and thinks they both tacitly met each other in the middle, but meanwhile instead of skull assuming he just doesn’t know better and correcting him about it, he assumes reborn does it on purpose because he doesn’t acknowledge him. and this is where it gets super funny because they apparently never got the opportunity to clear that one misunderstanding between them for, like, decades lmao. like, by the time the manga ends they’re still misunderstanding each other, and still aren’t even aware of it to be able to do anything about it. 😭😂😂

not sure if that was all very clear? but if it wasn’t, i actually already got the opportunity to talk about this in this reblog chain about fanon!reborn where we also got to talk about his dynamic with skull! here’s another one about his dynamic with skull, and this one adds onto why i think fanon!reborn isn’t, in fact, in character for canon!reborn. and because this is also relevant and helps to get the full picture of where i’m coming from with this post, here’s my thoughts on skull and how to write him in character.

so to answer your question, i personally think that for their relationship to work, they both need to first realize they started on the wrong foot and have yet to do anything about it, while in the meantime still making them care about each other. that is, only in the cases where you want them to be on better terms with each other of course. as far as just writing their dynamic as it is in canon, you just need to write the strains in their relationship not because they don’t like each other or anything of the sort, but because they’re wrongly assuming the wrong things about each other.

and likewise for the type of writing i trust with them. for me it has to be one that takes care to keep the balance between all those different aspects of their dynamic, and how their respective personality affects it too one way or another. it has to keep the balance between “hey, i do care about you and i’ve literally no intention to hurt you, never had” and “hey, you’re still very much hurting me, and i’m hurt even more because you don’t seem to care about it even when i’m repeatedly telling you you are hurting me??” and “i hear you but also not because this is one of those times my high self-esteem is backfiring against me, and so i’m not even considering the thought i might be wrong about how i’m definitely not crossing your boundaries” and “yeah, this sure is one of those times you being among the best of the best backfires against you, because i’m not even considering the thought you’re not purposefully going out of your way to hurt me, and aren’t well aware you are hurting me”.

and when i say their personalities also affect their dynamic, it’s how you also need to keep the balance between “you’re a former civilian, so of course you react and are affected more strongly to the way i am, but that doesn’t mean you’re still not aware i mean no harm like everyone else” and “you’re mafia to your core, so of course you don’t care to treat me any less roughly/violently than you usually treat people, even knowing i’m a former civilian because you’re likely looking down on me for it” and “from my mafia’s pov i’m definitely meeting you in the middle here, what do you mean you want me to try harder??” and “from my former civilian’s pov this doesn’t look like the middle at all, and wow, you really don’t care about how hard i’m already trying to be up to your standards, huh?”.

and this is where i think it’s tricky to get their dynamic right, because the thing is those assumptions they make about each other are all based on true facts they know for a fact about each other. reborn is mafia to his core and presumably has been all his life, while skull is a former civilian and became mafia only later in his life when he was chosen to be an arco. but instead of them putting both these facts together and going “okay well, there’s no way meeting each other in the middle would mean the same thing for the both of us, and there’s no way we can just accurately guess what it means for the other without explicitly talking about it, so let’s do that first things first”, we got all of the above instead.

also one last thing tho you might not need it, but even in what i call the good timeline arco fics where they start on the right foot right away, this is still worth keeping in mind. not all of it of course, but reborn being mafia while having the personality he has, and skull being a former civilian while having the personality he has will always shape their dynamic no matter what. the same way it’d shape skull’s dynamic with any other character that wasn’t a former civilian too of course, the other arco namely come to mind, but we’re talking about reborn here, you know lol. and not only that, but i think reborn in particular is really the perfect example of this.

hope this helped, and good luck with your fic!