bird loving with the birds: hatoful boyfriend.

my girlfriend just played through both BBL and holiday star for the first time, and all of our conversations about it have thrown me straight back into hatoful geekery. i've played both games 3+ times and read nearly all the bonus material.

somebody please talk to me about pigeons. i'm cosplaying shuu for otakon and need to fuel my inspiration while i figure out how the hell to make his tie.

also: my first name is ray and my username is a pun. someone appreciate.

(SPOILERS AHEAD! if you haven't played hatoful boyfriend or holiday star and don't want to be spoiled, steer clear.)

 

Hello I was summoned by the sound of someone talking about my bird boyfriend harem.

Shuu is my most favourite but I also love Tohri and the King (I identify way too much with the King, you awful disgusting pathetic loser I love you so much and pity you in all the ways but you are an awful person and need to learn how to deal with your problems).

 

@sicknastyspades

shuu is an irresistible fluffy heretic and i adore him (how could i not, he inspired my favorite pathfinder character). i finally got around to reading "focus on the hawks," which both appeared to confirm my neurodivergent headcanon for him and provided a ton of great pre-dead-ryuuji material for fans to wibble over. poor chrysalis. poor chrysalis. i highly recommend it.

THE KING. THE FUCKING KING. my other favorite (most birds are my favorites). his story is absolutely so compelling and sad, and i still can't get over how hitori was too much of a warped fucking psychopath to even apologize to his dead, suffering victim. at least nanaki found peace. kind of.

i'm currently working on a hatostuck AU in which the date-able bird boys (sans san) play SBIRD together. assigning classpects is surprisingly hard, but i'm very proud of choosing "thief of heart" for hitori.

 

come to think of it, nanaki could really have used kintsugi to cope with his depression. AUGH.

 

@raydelblau Focus on the Hawks is my most favourite thing! I sent it to my friend after they finished the game and watching their liveblogging go from "omg this is so adorable" to "SS YOU PIECE OF SHIT YOU KNEW WHAT THIS WOULD DO TO MY EMOTIONS AND YOU INFLICTED IT ON ME ANYWAY" was a delight.
I honestly don't know why anybody trusts anything I show to them any more, they should have realised by now that my sole goal is to destroy all happiness and plunge the world into a spiral of heartbreaking despair.

I had to literally bribe a friend to play the game at first (promised to draw something for them every time they completed a route), and watching them go from that degree of apathy to complete and uttter obsession probably counts among the top five experiences in my entire life.
...and then they got all their friends to play it, so I had this nice little cascade of ruining people's lives going on. God, that was satisfying. That'll teach you fuckers to ignore me when I'm trying to talk to you about my pigeon boyfriends.

Thief of Heart sounds p. much perfect for Hitori.
I'd peg Ryouta as a Page I think, he seems like a good fit for starting out as a millstone and ending up as holy shit what the fuck I was not expecting this to be so hardcore.

 

@sicknastyspades

if your friend had already completed hatoful boyfriend, they should have gained an understanding of moa's MO: beguile the readers with cuteness overload, then DESTROY THEIR HEARTS. DESTROY THEM. LEAVE NOTHING. i have a similar sort of story: immediately following hatoful, i forced my friends to watch all of puella magi madoka magica. by now they know better than to trust my taste in media if they want to finish a show/game feeling anything but miserable. naturally, they're all obsessed now. >:]

right? hitori embodies both the positive and the negative spins on the title. as a teacher and as a nurturing caretaker at hatoful house, his nearly dependent sort of empathy caused him to experience the emotions of his charges as his own (a harmless sort of "theft"). later on, he turns off the empathy and starts both the literal and metaphorical soul-stealing. even in the nageki-lives AU shorts, he puts nanaki down in order to feel better about himself. his quest would likely require him to come to terms with and begin repairing the damage caused by the most selfish and sadistic parts of himself. possibly with the help of nanakisprite.

i've got ryouta down as the page of life. i like the way that it interacts with his, erm, poor health, and the crucial decisions that he makes at the end of BBL.

as for other birds: yuuya as rogue of light? sakuya as knight of space? shuu as mage of... something.

 

@raydelblau My favourite joke is to give my friends a genuinely cute thing to look at and then start cackling to myself when they talk about how cute it is. Gotta establish a pattern so they're never certain whether I'm trolling or if something terrible is about to happen to their emotions.

I spent FAR TOO MUCH TIME today thinking about Hatostuck.

I figure Ryouta as Page of Life, using the same logic you did.
Okosan is obviously Heir of Hope. Heir seems to be "embodies Aspect" and, uh, Lord Pudi. Coo.

I had Yuuya pegged for a Blood player - Blood's interpreted as connections/relationships, and those are very important to Yuuya both in defining how he relates to others (valuing Sakuya's happiness over other people's lives) and in how others relate to him (if you take the infirmary route relationships become literally a matter of life and death for him; he lives or dies based on whether you like him enough to lie for him without knowing the reason). Possibly Mage of Blood, because popular fanon for Mage is "manipulated by Aspect" and Yuuya becomes complicit in Shuu's activities for the sake of saving Sakuya's feelings.

My first thought for Shuu was Sylph of Doom, because Sylph is healer class and Shuu's a doctor who harms instead of healing, but then I remembered that bit about Bards being the wildcard class and games being lost or won based on a Bard's actions. Shuu caused most of the problems in BBL, but he saved the day last-minute twice in Holistar, so that suits him.
So Bard of Void, "allows the destruction of nothing" easily interpretable as "does not allow anything to be destroyed" or "preserves everything", which sounds nice until you consider what sort of things he's preserving (Ryuuji's memory, a promise, a wish, a deadly disease, Hiyoko's head in a jar...) and then it's creepy.

That allows Nageki to be Prince of Doom. Prince can be "destroys Aspect" or "destroys using Aspect", which works for Nageki: on the one hand, he causes destruction with the Charon virus; on the other, his actions in the endgame of both BBL and Holistar are instrumental in preventing a bad end.

Alternatively, Maid can mean "performs the duties of", so an alternative is Shuu as Maid of Doom due to his machinations leaving Nageki to be Sylph of Mind on the basis that both his endgame wins lead to Hitori/Nanaki letting go of their old grudges/problems and becoming willing to learn to better themselves/start anew.

Assuming a full session being played with only the main eight boyfriend options, that leaves Sakuya and Anghel to duke it out for Time and Space.

 

My boyfriend had fun listening to me cry over pigeons over Skype. A+ game, one of my faves forever.

Anghel is my boyfriendo.

 

@sicknastyspades

shuu as the bard of void is perfect holy shit. i've been laughing about the costume/fighting about it all day with my girlfriend (she doesn't want to strip anghel of the void aspect we assigned him earlier). maybe that's why shuu's so good at sneaking up on people. void-y powers!

i hadn't thought about blood for yuuya (i tend to avoid blood, since the canon and fanon interpretations seem to clash sometimes), but it works very well with that interpretation. i still prefer him as a rogue, just because he's such a roguish type. and with rogue of blood, you can say that he stole the familial bonds from the unhatched le bel chick and passed them on to sakuya.

agreed on doom player for nageki. princes tend to lack their aspect, though, and nageki is pretty darn doomed (the other bits do hang together quite nicely, though). i had him down as a seer, mostly because of his personality and lust for knowledge.

sakuya as knight of space is awkward, and i really only wound up assigning him the knight class because everything else more appropriate was taken... and space because we needed a space player. he's the opposite of protective-- just look at how he treats yuuya! but knights tend to put up some sort of facade (their "armor"), and sakuya definitely conceals a great deal beneath all his high society nonsense. plus, you could say that it's his destiny to carve out a "space" for himself in an environment that has no room for his needs and desires. he's also (haha) the president of the student council, which is at least supposed to be involved in maintaining the "space" of the student community.

i have no clue about anghel. i was thinking about hiyoko being the time player (an heir?), since she, y'know, plays through all the timelines and dates all the birds. alternatively, she could die before the game starts and become someone's sprite. my only requirement for the session is that at some point and time the character hiyokosansprite is created. because fuck yes.

 

what do you think of prince of mind for anghel? he (thoughtlessly) destroys logical thought.

EDIT, NEW COOL THOUGHT: ryouta could be page of space, actually, which would allow sakuya to become the knight of breath (associated with freedom, which is more relevant to his character arc). they could catch frogs together, and ryouta and hiyoko could be time/space buddies. space is an imperfect fit for ryouta, but i like the dynamics it creates.

 

Oooh, yes. I would be down for it.

 

i always wanted that to be my title, since the natural response to "why do you think you're the prince of mind?" is "because i'm fucking mind-blowing, of course!" or something along those lines. "i'll blow your mind," etc.

sadly, my best fit looks like prince of blood. someone else will have to make the terrible self-aggrandizing jokes. :,[

 

I have no idea how to assign titles so I take other peoples word for it

 

@raydelblau I did not intend to come in and stomp all over your thing with my big muddy boots, I just have a very boring job and like to overthink things.

You've got a point about the Prince class. I'm not too sure about Seer, though. Nageki doesn't seem super perceptive in the way I'd expect for a Seer; I mean, it takes a long time for him to even realise that he's dead.
...ooh, you know who would make a great Seer (of Doom or otherwise)? Anghel. Sure, he expresses himself really fucking weirdly, but his perceptions are very accurate and his whole role in the plot was about how much of the weird shit he said turned out to be relevant/important. If anyone's a good fit for foreseeing disaster and dropping cryptic warnings about it, it's Anghel.
(Prince of Mind is also a good role for him!)

You're right that Knight of Space isn't a particularly suitable title for Sakuya, but I think it's a great one all the same. The game sometimes assigns roles to challenge the player rather than play to their strengths, after all, and a protective/nurturing role like Knight of Space is totally the sort of thing which would lead to Sakuya's character development going good places.
...I fuckin' love Sakuya, by the way. He's a fantastic example of a likeable jerk character, and he works because he's capable of personal growth and undergoes it both in his route and in BBL. (Compare him to, say, Shuu, who thinks murder is a great problem-solving tool and never moved past the point in his emotional development where he was a teenager with a crush on his boss.)

I was figuring it without Hiyoko, because eight dateable guys means everything splits up nicely for Derse and Prospit but if you add Hiyoko that makes nine and suddenly it's uneven.
Hiyoko would absolutely be a Time player. Hmm, player!Hiyoko is obviously Seer of Time with the ability to perceive all timelines simultaneously, but I don't think that works for character!Hiyoko. Witch, maybe? That's Damara's but wev.

If no Hiyoko then hmm, Nageki might work for Time? Dave and Aradia both had an association with death, plus Nageki is a ghost means he's sort of a relic from a different time, plus you could give him the character quest of skipping through the timeline to hunt down his lost memories and figure out exactly wtf went down. Mage of Time, maybe.
(The other reason I don't much like the idea of Seer!Nageki is that I think it would be good for him to have to play a more active role than advisor/prophet. He needs something to take him out of his shell/out of the library/out from under Hitori's wing, and giving him a role which means he needs to run around solving problems would do that nicely. And he was so happy in Holistar when he got to explore, you can't relegate the kid to a magical desk job c'mon.)

Hiyokosansprite is a beautiful word and my life is measurably better now that I have experienced it.

 

@sicknastyspades

your big muddy boots are completely welcome! my thing might have been pristine, but it won't be perfect without some stompage from thoughtful outsiders. especially thoughtful outsiders with boring jobs.

anghel is a great seer. we originally had him down as a seer of void (consistent with the "seeing things that aren't there" interpretation), but equally if not more suitable is seer of doom. first of all, it's such an anghel-esque title. second of all, anghel's foresight (if interpreted correctly) tends to prepare/divert the party for/from potential danger and doomed timelines.

i only added hiyoko to have a suitable time player, so yeah-- it's actually much better with only the eight bird boyfriends. nageki as mage of time jives well with both his need to leave the nest (so to speak) and his affinity with the "know" classes.

so. here's what i've jotted down in my notes. i've tentatively assigned prospit and derse to the birds as well. feel free to stomp!

derse dreamers:
yuuya: rogue of blood
nageki: mage of time
hitori: thief of heart
shuu: bard of void

prospit dreamers:
sakuya: knight of space
anghel: seer of doom
okosan: heir of hope
ryouta: page of life

 

@raydelblau I realised sort of belatedly that it might be kind of rude to drive my metaphorical ideadump truck through the wall, so I figured I ought to clarify that I just have a desperate need to collect things to think about during my workday.
Fun fact, my job used to be done by a robot until they figured out that humans were cheaper to run and broke down less often! That is how much critical thinking my job requires of me.

Ooh, those are the Prospit/Derse arrangements I figured out too.
I wanted to finagle a way to get Nageki and Hitori on different moons to reflect the way Hitori keeps missing out on connecting with him in canon, but Time player = Derse dreamer seems to be one of the inviolable constants of the game, and Hitori is so obviously a Derse dreamer it ain't even funny.
(I think one of the 4koma comics implied that his narcolepsy is due to the King screaming at him from the afterlife? Good Ousama best pathetic tiny marshmallow turned horrifying nightmare monster.)

 

@sicknastyspades

ouch. if you don't mind my asking, what sort of job is it? are you at least allowed to listen to music or something?

i'm glad that we're on the same page. now, since i fully intend to sketch out an idea of what their session would be like, let's talk sprites.

first of all, i imagine that nageki's ghost would prototype himself à la aradia megido.

 

@raydelblau I stand around putting things in boxes. And we're... sooort of allowed to listen to to music, if you count "the radio is on constantly" as music. Imagine me as a seventy-year-old man grumbling about modern pop music, also imagine that I'm a sperg and some of the songs cause me actual distress to listen to.
I like to pretend the secret real reason I do my job instead of a robot is that if they made a robot do it there's be an unprising within a week. I welcome our new robot overlords!

My immediate thought was the if Okosan doesn't have a puddingsprite sometjingis terribly wrong with the balance of the universe.
Nagekisprite, yes. For the first prototyping... he lives in the library, I don't know what his physical limitations are but he can certainly lift books, it's obviously gonna be booksprite. And clearly he fights using bookkind.

Hiyokosprite possibly belongs to Shuu because that's an okay parallel for his canon treatment of her. And then her primary prototyping would be some robot parts because hello murderscarecrow. If she's not his sprite (Ryouta's?), then maybe he pulled a Gamzee and spent some time wandering around throwing random corpses into the flashy lights.
Ooh, actually, Shuu might have Merikurisprite!
Cleaverkind for Shuu, possibly augmented by scalpelkind.

Yuuya's got riflekind, Okosan is probably fistkind, Anghel is penkind either as an actual thing or as a parallel to makeupkind where sometimes it's a sword. Hitori might use pistolkind, I don't think the others use any weapons on canon but I might be misremembering.
I like the idea of Sakuya using something flashy and over-the-top and not particularly practical in a battle, because he's the guy who set up a system of trap doors just so he could drop Yuuya, he's absolutely about style over serious lethality.

...I sort of got distracted from the topic of sprites by something else entirely, whoops.

 

@sicknastyspades

oh, oh no. that's horrible. you have my sympathies. weirdly enough, it actually sounds like the kind of job i'd want to do this summer (sans the irritating radio music). repetitive tasks relax me to an extent, although they drive me nuts if i keep at them long enough without any expectation of more complicated work to come later on.

i am completely in favor of puddingsprite and nagekisprite with books. they're his weapon of choice in canon, how could he not? the other specibi make sense as well.

i'd already jotted down shuu as having both merikurisprite (completely by accident, i imagine) and cleaverkind! i kind of wanted ryouta to get ryuujisprite, though, if only to maximize frustration: "wow, he left, ryuuji really is that bad at family even when it is sworn fucking duty to guide his son through the game." hopefully there'd be some development along those lines later in the session. it's one of the unresolved plot threads i'd like to see picked up. i have no idea what remains ryouta would use to prototype, though, seeing as there weren't any. maybe ryuuji stashed some bit of himself away somewhere for just that purpose and shuu didn't know about it.

if ryuuji doesn't get hiyoko, i think she could sprite for sakuya. who would he have if not her? albert? the high society seagull department store seagull clerk (repeat)? bo-ring.

hitori would get nanakisprite, of course, and anghel tohrisprite. yuuya could get onesprite... and i think that covers all of the significant secondary characters in the story! i can't come up with anyone else, anyway.

 

@raydelblau Except for the music and the fact that I'm not allowed to sit down (and the fact that I'm worried about hurting my wrist or something with all the repetitive motion because damage to my hands is one of the few things which sincerely terrify me), it's not that bad actually. I like that I don't have to use my brain for it.

Oh hahaha, Ryuuji. So terrible at fatherhood! So much potential for being even more terrible in even more ways! I mean, he worked for the Hawk Party aka the Murder All Humans Then Break for A Teaparty, I sincerely doubt his job involved as much sunshine and rainbows as it seemed to. (Also Shuu was not even slightly subtle about having a crush on him, and that sort of leads to Ryuuji being either mindblowingly oblivious or deliberately letting Souma* stew instead of doing the decent thing and going "wow kid i'm flattered but you're like sixteen, also i'm married and your boss". It's almost certainly the former, but I like to imagine the latter sometimes because my adoration of characters who are awful people knows no bounds.)

Oh yeah, sBird chatting. As far as Ryuuji remains go Ryouta could have a keepsake of a feather or something? Ryuuji could have given him one in a sudden "here u go kid have something to remember me by so you recognise me next time i come home" attack of good parenting. Or, uh, as close to it as he gets.
Man I really want an au where instead of going MURDER IS THE BEST POSSIBLE SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM Shuu decides to try being Ryouta's surrogate dad and they chat about Ryuuji and Shuu has Weird Feels when he realises that he knew Ryuuji better than the guy's fuckin' son did.

All those sprites make sense.
(As for other side characters... Azami and Rabu? I don't know whether they count for the game given that they only exist in that one side quest.)
Man tho, I was so disappointed in the Azami route. I hoped for a biker girlfriend to pick me up after bird school and all I got was a last-minute add-on.

*ISA IS HIS LAST NAME FFS FANDOM every time I see someone use Isa as his first name my soul withers away a little more.