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Hisoka is a study in contradictions, and it makes it difficult to pick a place to start with his personality, knowing I'll also need to explain the inverse as well. This concept of the inverse is appropriate to Hisoka: his main weapons are playing cards, which are analogous to the tarot. He calls himself the Magician, a major arcana card which suits him well, both upright and inverse. He is a powerful magician, and yet dresses like a common clown. He thrives on being mysterious and inscrutable, and yet is astonishingly honest and blunt in his darker desires. To that end, I will outline some positive traits and then their more negative inverses to weave the full picture of this strange character.

POSITIVE. The positive aspects of the Magician is his deep sense of self and his innate skills. Hisoka knows exactly who he is and what he wants and has devoted his entire life to that pursuit, all we know about his past is fighting. He is extremely driven, and with his own drive, drives other to pursue excellence as well. Although he is initially introduced as a villain within the story, his challenges towards Gon consistently drive the young hero to try his hardest and accomplish his goals. He has been known to actively help Gon achieve his goals himself, and has also impeded Gon's progress when the boy tries to get ahead of himself and may be harmed. So while Hisoka is picky about who he invests his attention in, and his own end goal is the desire for a worthy battle, he nurtures and protects those he has faith in.

Whether they want his attention is entirely a different matter.

The Magician is deeply intelligent, sharply observant, and quick to make use of golden opportunities. So far, we have seen no one who surpasses him in abilities, and the only character he backs down from has been Illumi. Stil, the fact that he spends time with the assassin clearly denotes his desire to fight him, per Hisoka's goal-orientations. He is even eager to fight Chairman Netero, who is the most senior member of the Hunter Association and respected for his great powers. Hisoka's skill comes from his innate knowledge of the mystical nen and his creative flexibility with it. His main skill is Transmutation, and the two abilities he's named -- Texture Surprise and Bungee Gum - - are all about their multi-purpose uses. He also shows several skills, especially in first meeting him, which can only be explained by the use of other abilities on the nen wheel. This again makes sense for him as the Magician, as the tarot card shows a mastery of all four elements. He also mocks an opponent, Kastro, for wasting his capacity by focusing too closely on mastering one complex Enhancer skill, rather than spreading his attention out amongst a variety of more flexible attacks. He also comments to Machi that it is no problem if people figure out his skills, because he is clever enough to use them in more than one way. What I want to highlight with these example, is that Hisoka's ability to come at you from many different directions and change plans mid-thought, is a credit to his personality.

Creative and incisive, he is just as capable of beating someone mentally and emotionally as he is of beating someone physically. And honestly, he rarely seems satisfied to simply best someone physically. He didn't finish off Kastro until he had disrupted his opponent's confidence and seen the fear in his eyes.

NEGATIVE. To be blunt, Hisoka is an amoral asshole with his own code of values that looks nothing like the values of polite society. He is a liar, a criminal, a thief, an exploiter, an imposter, an assassin, and a charlatan. He kills others for small slights because life is insignificant to him unless he somehow decides you're special, by way of a personal rating system for how entertaining you might be. Most people are just numbers to him, and even though he grows fond of Gon, it's only because the boy's power is so monstrous. Hisoka never exposes himself as a person, the few small snippets we know about him are that he maybe grew up poor and ate a specific kind of candy as a child: but he's probably lying. He has no attachment to his past and only looks forward, he uses this utter lack of context to confuse and manipulate others. He infiltrated the Ryodan by pretending to care about their goals, but all he cared about was fighting their leader. This isn't to say the Ryodan ever trusted him, but he did succeed in fooling even a group of hardened criminals into accepting him into their midst. It's because it's impossible to tell when he is, and isn't, lying. The one thing we know to be absolutely true is his love and lust for battle. He does nothing to hide this, and there is something kind of admirable about his openness, even if it's ugly.

For all of Hisoka's control and intellect and purposefulness, he has also shown that he can act without thought and be impatient. When he doesn't get what he wants during the Hunter Exam (ie to shred Gon to ribbons) he becomes overcome with bloodlust and goes off blindly to kill someone else, anyone else. His hunt for powerful fighters can be shown in a positive light, as dedication and a hunt to challenge himself, but because it is his only real driving force and all the rest of his behavior is quite superficial, it seems to actually suggest that life is quite empty for him. He craves adrenaline and challenge, like a sociopath would. He isn't afraid for his own life, never expresses sincere sorrow or regret, and never doubts himself. He is entirely self-centered and cares about his amusement and pleasure above any one else's happiness or safety.

HUNTER. Hisoka strives to be the best he can be in all things. His nen is unmatched, his intelligence is fearsome, and his physical fitness is improbable. He is strong: mind, body, and spirit. This is what matters to him, because he is a hunter of power and strength. Hisoka values strength of will and intellect in others, and likes those who have a clear and determined vision, much like himself. This makes him like a number of other hunters, including Gon, Ging, Netero. He isn't that unique in this regard. This seems to be a side-effect of the kind of world that Hunter x Hunter takes place in. There are a number of characters who grew up in dire poverty, and whole countries run on slave labor and work houses. The remaining countries are run by the mafia, the common man doesn't seem to have much power in the world, and countries become geographically separated by politics and by magical beasts, that those without activated nen have no chance of defeating. Humanity lives in a tiny corner of the world, surrounded by a great wide world of monsters beyond their means. This inspires the Hunters, this is the meaning behind the Hunter Organization, to reach beyond those mundane options. In that regard, Hisoka fits right in despite his other unsavory traits.

For good or ill, Hisoka sees people for who they really are. He has no interest in material things or superficial posturing. All he cares about is how strong you are, on the inside. He sometimes acts in ways that can be seen as villainous, but is not himself a villain. His alignment is chaotic neutral, he will act in his own interest above whether those acts are good or evil, right or wrong.

OUTWARD APPERANCE. Because Hisoka is so theatrical, it's worth it to describe how he presents himself in addition to his internal workings. Hisoka never fully disguises the fact that he is dangerous, but he does play at being the jester. He speaks with drama and flirtation, and he twists words and always seems to come across as if he knows more than you do and is dancing around the edges of giving away a secret. His silly style of dress is a distraction to stop people from taking him too seriously until it's too late. The vast majority of the time he is smiling. He can and will publicly emote in other ways, but his reaction to most things is to smile at it, this is frequently condescending.

It angers and unnerves when a smile is not the appropriate reaction: that is the point.

Hisoka knows he can throw people off balance by defying expectation, and so he twists expectations with illusion.

He is a powerful magician, and he is also a powerful charlatan too.

Prompt: TDM 13

Romancing a monster, hmm? It seems their overlords have an amusing sense of humor, and it also seems like an interesting challenge. He's quite adept at manipulating mankind. Perhaps it’s a worthy consideration to see if he can apply his skills to something utterly inhuman as well? If nothing else, it might be entertaining to fight the creature, and that’s a kind of relationship all on its own. An intimacy he appreciates far beyond small talk and flowers. Still, it’s best come prepared! He dresses up in all his clown finery, flowers up his sleeve ready to be produced with a magician’s flourish.

His date is quite charmingly hideous, a many limbed monstrosity with a head like a fanged slug. He admires its atrocity with a smile, offering out the flowers, which it eats with a slobbering smacking of its insectoid mouth. It makes an ugly gurgling noise and Hisoka just bows towards it as if accepting a compliment. When it offers him one of its legs for hand-(ish-)holding, he accepts without a flinch. How romantic.

“Shall we?” he inquires, giddy with the ridiculousness of this farce.

He takes his fine many-limbed friend on a promenade through the dating sim’s streets, where no one balks at them. Their utter lack of awareness makes it all the more easy to motion to passersby and wonder,

“What about that one?”

When the creature at least makes an eager burbling, Hisoka slits the pedestrian’s throat with a playing card, letting them tumble to ground. Dinner is served. He stands back and watches his dear darling date devour its entree, declining with a cheerful smile and a polite tone when offered a bite.

The first date goes swimmingly. He is even willing to repeat the performance for the second and third, and by the time the makeover comes he is ready for a change of pace and of venue. He helps his ‘sweetheart’ to dress as garishly as he himself, and the surrealism of it all makes him laugh.

Such a pointless game. It all becomes rather uninteresting when the monster seems at peace with him. More like an slobbering pet than a relationship, not that he would know anything about either. All that has ever mattered is himself, and that isn’t about to change. Certainly not at the whims of Ceres.

As he stands in the schoolyard, drowning in flower petals, with his monstrous paramour’s many many teeth coming towards him, he decides now is the time. He strikes first, and with a noise of confusion and betrayal the creature lashes back at him, but half-hearted in its heartbreak. That too really diminishes his amusement, and by the end of the battle with the weeping horror, Hisoka is more bored than satisfied.

He leaves the game having learned nothing about love nor empathy. He walks away only contemplating how disorienting it would be to make people fight him while he wore a pink dinosaur costume.