Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25657023-20161106214626/@comment-26871067-20161115044248

I wrote an entire response to this and the wiki ate it. So, again, more simply:

1. "Cheadle pays a lot of attention to Ging" - of course she does, he and Pariston are the only ones making trouble. She aligns herself with Ging because Pariston is more dangerous and more likely to act in unpredictable ways - Ging makes weird and unpredictable decisions for his own fun, but Pariston creates actual trouble for fun. She knows the two are at odds and will be each others' opponents (up until Leorio's introduction to the race), and she knows Pariston is the worse one to win. She hounds (no pun intended) Ging so much because she needs him on her side, and as the arc goes on he backs further and further away because he's bored and is handing it off to her and Leorio. She's pissed at him, because she can't play chess at Pariston's speed and Ging can, and Ging is walking away from her as if to make fun of her.

2. "Ging has faith in Cheadle" - Other Zodiacs express that Cheadle is the backbone and balance of the Zodiacs and that without her the group would have fallen apart. She's smart, she's logical, and, without the wild cards of Ging and Pariston fucking with everything, she makes the best decisions for the coherent running of something like an election. Cheadle's intelligence and temperment are ideal for this, because she's a moderate.

3. "Cheadle's dog motif"... is cosmetic. The Zodiacs (minus Ging and Pariston) are stated to have undergone surgical alteration to fit their assigned role out of respect for Netero. We don't know that Cheadle has any enhanced senses because of it, nor that there's been any genetic tinkering that would have been passed down to a child. Additionally, Gon's keen senses include an apparent ability to see in the dark (shown when he chases the Giriko in the Hunter Exam Arc), which is not a "dog thing" in the slightest, and would be especially strange to come from her given that Cheadle wears glasses.

4. You say maybe her not treating him like a son is a jab at Ging, but here's a question: What purpose does that serve in a narrative? It only works to have one parent call the kid "your son" out of annoyance if the audience knows who the parents are.

Yeah, in real life there are definitely divorced or separated people who feel no connection with their biological children. But this is a fictional narrative, and it has rules regarding clarity. Particularly, despite how intelligent HxH can get, it's a shonen manga.

Sometimes you have to take it at face value - if you're going to write a lie or a mislead, there has to be obvious indication that there is a mislead happening (like, say, Hisoka lying to Gon, Killua, and Bisky during the Greed Island arc - we know he's lying, because we know what he's actually doing, and Bisky and Killua both suspect and state that he's lying, and we get a flashback to him crafting his deceptions for maximum narrative clarity). If you don't do that, you risk confusing and alienating your audience. Misleading in fiction is a dangerous path - you have to have something, foreshadowing or immediate debunking (see: "Kite is alive!" [hard cut to Pitou holding Kite's severed head]) or another character thinking/saying "this isn't right". Straight-up lying to your audience regarding a much-longed-for reveal is hack writing. ''People want to know who Gon's biological mother is. ''Making people think "it can't be Cheadle" via her complete disconnect with Gon and then saying "turns out it IS Cheadle" is not a twist, it's a really cheap cop-out.

With all the vitriol people hurl Togashi's way, very few people call him a bad writer or storyteller (outside of That Thing Hisoka did recently).

But here's the biggest thing:

Cheadle is not up to Ging's standards.

Ging basically says this - that she's too simple. This isn't an attack on her, incidentally. Simple isn't bad, and Cheadle's not an idiot. In fact, it's that she's smart and reasonable that's the issue. Cheadle makes sense, and Ging isn't interested in sense. He can't have any fun with her (I don't mean this in a sexual way), and he's never been able to have any fun with her.

If you already know exactly how your prey is going to move, are you even really hunting them? He knows how Cheadle will move, because she's consistent and makes her decisions based on facts and not feelings. Guiding her is too easy. Ging and Pariston are two peas in a pod - even when they're on opposite sides, they're motivated by things that are fun, and "fun" for them is ridiculously complex mental speed chess. Cheadle cannot keep up. Because, honestly, who besides them can?

To Ging, she is a boring person, and you can see it all over his face when she says something that proves she's not on his level. She's predictable, because she thinks like a rational human being. She's not interesting to him, and she never has been. His exasperation with her inability to follow along says this is not a new thing - it says "Cheadle has never been able to keep up with me in the past and that hasn't changed". He's loathe to have to slow down and explain things to her, he's annoyed that she can't figure it out on her own. He only begrudgingly spells out what's happening, and he doesn't treat her with respect in the slightest.

I cannot believe that Ging would get in a relationship with (or, if it comes down to something that superficial, sleep with) someone who he finds boring.