bird loving with the birds: hatoful boyfriend.

I've seen Shuuya being used, yes.

 

yeah, i don't get that one at all. sakuya/ryouta is so lovely on its own. why throw yuuya in there? he's so clearly the cool uncle to the other two's ridiculously wholesome nuclear family.

also: i've never actually seen hatoful incest that actually presents itself as anything other than your average cutesy ship. what's with that? maybe i've been reading the wrong fic (and i don't exactly go out of my way to seek out sakuya/yuuya art), but you'd think creators would at least attempt some acknowledgment of the issues there.

 

yup, it's shuuya.

...ryuuji, shuu, yuuya, ryouta. methinks the author has a very specific taste in names.

 

Sakuya/Yuuya specifically... let me try to break this down as to why so many people just sort of sappy shonen ai that up. at least the logic I see.

If they weren't brothers, they would be set up to be a pretty good ship, and a pretty standard one. You have a particularly snobby rich kid that dislikes another guy purely for snobby rich kid reasons, and the other guy seems mostly unfazed by it and likes him anyway, often teasing him about it all, which sends guy one into a tizzy. That's a fun dynamic to watch, removed form everything else. Despite the fact that they start off with an antagonistic relationship (albeit pretty one-sided) they find out more about each other (depending on the route/game you're playing) and Sakuya learns that Yuuya had a reason to be fond of him all along, that they had a more involved history than he knew about, and that he actually has a lot to make up for, considering the sacrifices Yuuya has made for him. That ends in a dramatic sacrifice pretty well posed to trigger 'no that's bad and I wish things had been better' responses in readers. The urge for fix-it fic, if you will.

IF they weren't related (pretend with me for a second) it would be pretty well set up to be a popular fanship, since there's drama and some animosity but no real poisonous relationship (they don't hurt each other/do awful things to each other, Sakuya's animosity is mostly born of prejudice and not personal loathing, which is evidenced by the fact that he slowly warms up to Yuuya as he actually gets to know him/drops that prejudice as his worldview widens) and, again if they weren't related, you could see this as a situation where star-crossed people were born into different classes and couldn't see how well they got along because of their situation, or where one person was protecting another from the sidelines without wanting the other to know that, because he didn't want pity or even thanks. Because he didn't think the other one even liked him, and certainly wouldn't If He Knew. These are situations that are hardwired as 'romantic' in many people's minds (because they're dramatic and interesting and full of possible catharsis) and they're bound to set off alarms, especially if you're used to looking for shipping material (and many long-time fans are)...

Until you remember that they are brothers. Whoops, scrap that. False alarm, situation that would be romantic in some cases is platonic in this case. Most people (I assume, like, do you think I'm writing this because I haven't thought about this) would say that. Some people don't care. Which would be reason number one why you would just ignore that: you don't care. You're used to shipping weird shit and already have the tools in your head for 'not even addressing that' that you developed for weird ship x five years ago in the war. OHSHC ruined you and you can't afford to care and face your past sins anymore, who knows.

Honestly I think that when a lot of people see a relationship like this, see that there was potential for drama and forgiveness and making up and schmoop that didn't/couldn't happen in canon, they want that fix-it fic but either don't really want to/don't have the time for a 200k fic addressing the ramifications of what you're writing here. The bottom line is that there are a lot of people who are so freaking used to seeing a fraught situation like this as romantic that they want to read it as romantic, because that's fun. They also are used to making weird ships work for the sake of slash, because that's what they've had to do for queer content up until now. And some people would feel that tension and drop it, and some people look deep inside theirselves and realize that they don't care that it's incest, they literally don't even care, they want the fic that scratches the itch they developed when they (mis)construed Yuuya's quiet self-sacrifices as romantic and they don't care that they have to ignore some shit to get it.

There's also the very unfortunate, very ugly truth that scientifically, the 'no don't fuck that are you mad' trigger that in born in natural siblings is born usually from growing up with each other, not just being siblings. Do I even want to talk about that? Not really but it's something I see used either as an excuse or as world-building often enough. 'Sibling I was raised with' and 'estranged sibling' really are two different relationships and that makes some people feel better.

Personally, I am disappointed by incest fic that doesn't make me feel incredibly uncomfortable. I thrive off of that. Get weird, I say! But some people, they don't want to get weird. They want to get illogically sugary, and they want to do so in 3k words, because they don't have time for 200k and might not be able to do it justice anyway. There's no excusing in incest fanships. There's just how much sense you can make it make in the time you have and how much you can disable people's caring in order to get them to read it. If you and a small parcel of fans start with 'I got rid of caring in 2008 to ship something absolutely batshit that I NEEDED to ship,' then you can dive right the fuck into 'here's sibling incest cuddling I wrote because I lost control of my life ten years ago and have decided to just have fun with it.'

And some people also just have incest as a kink, and they look for it, and they want to explore that without rehashing 'this is my fetish and I like to explore it in fictional outlets' every time. What the hell are these people doing with bird dating? I dunno, but here they are. Seize the major malfunction my friends.

Or don't. You also have the right to not. I only wrote all of these words because I asked myself 'you know, I do that. Why do I do that?'

...that said, if we're going to give sakuya and ryouta a third, consider the following: hiyoko, nageki. Discuss

 

I mean, I already ship Anghel/Nageki (as well as the much more rare Anghel/Okosan), but I do think Nageki/Hiyoko/Ryouta would work well. Not sure about Sakuya, though.

 

@littlewhitemouse, those are all good thoughts.

i am so completely on board with the point you make in the first couple paragraphs-- that sakuya and yuuya have romantic potential energy, or chemistry, or whatever you want to call it. i've thought about that a lot. theirs is one of the most exciting relationships in the story, with much more built-in potential for drama and heartache than, say, the relationship between sakuya and ryouta (which, imho, is only especially notable in BBL and leaves very few opportunities for the tension i look for in a good fanship).

but incest. and so we get (and i'm really just trying to paraphrase your post here) the various categories of fandom reaction.

(a) insta-platonic.
(b) proceed as with generic fluffy ship, completely disregard all that uncomfortable incest stuff.
(c) embrace the weirdness! adorable romance tropes + the tension that comes of tormented incestuous fantails = even more fuel to add to the engaging character dynamic bonfire. pain! angst! things for our birds to tear themselves apart over!
​

if i weren't so busy investing in my other problematic bird ship (the official fandom name for it is papaisa, how self-aware), i'd be squarely in group (c). and after reading what you've written, the motivations of group (b) certainly make a bit more... sense? but they just don't seem quite nearly as fun. yeah, yeah, time and effort and all that, but to me the twisted stuff would be such a necessary requirement for the ship, and what makes the ship worth shipping, that i wouldn't be able to make the art without throwing it in at least somewhere. ...and that's why they make chocolate and vanilla, i guess? but i do still mourn the lack of disturbing fanfic/art out there in the hato-world.

 

I'm super here for both of these.

 

I actually have a lot of feelings about Sweet Kids nageki/hiyoko/ryouta. They're all very genuine, generous people (and I use people in a 'sapient creature' sense, 'human' for the species) so every little adorable, gentle thing you can imagine a person doing is possible. I like to imagine post-BBL Sweet Kids can't really be separated again, even if they're brought back, as it is hinted they could be. They created their own world in limbo, like a kitchen in the middle of the night as you're all drinking tea and trying to get to sleep, and they're still there, in a sense, when they come back. It wouldn't be right to call it off-putting, you know, because the kids are all so nice, but....

anyway.

For all the fans, there isn't a lot of fan work. I think it's because there's such a large contingent of ironic fans or people who loved it, freaked out about it, and then left very quickly. That's ok I can't expect everyone to be dead serious about bird ships

Like I said I go out of my way for people writing things that a. are weird b. are acknowledged to be weird c. are rolling around in the weird like a horse is a dust bath. I don't actually think there's that sort of weird for this shit in particular, but again, what can I expect.

And dude Isa's crush on Ryuuji was the most fascinating thing to me. It was the fact that once, literally just once in his life, this guy was like 'hey, maybe I could be normal and feel normal, like other people,' and then that didn't work out and he absolutely struck it from the record. nope. I never had a chance at normalcy. nope. I'm going to murder these kids

 

Post-BBL epilogue seems to imply that Nageki still might be hanging out in Ryouta's body so I occasionally enjoy thinking about how that would work for Sweet Kids (assuming Ryouta eventually figures out how to repair and transplant Hiyoko's brain into a robot or something). I mean, I don't know about you, but personally I think the untested waters of Labor 9/RyoutNagek-bodyshare is a prime ship. Just saying.

RyoutNagek bodyshare being a permanent thing is also a wonderfully horrifying concept when you factor in the interests of Prof Nanaki and Shuu....... who, assuming they're living together post-BBL, would no doubt invite Ryouta over for dinner MUCH MUCH TOO OFTEN

 

yes good
I am interested in both these things.

 

there's definitely one quality fanart of just that, and it's on my phone, but i'm too lazy to post it/look up the name of the artist right now. whoops.

also: you keep saying sweet kids and i keep completing it with "and hella jeff." which kind of ruins the aesthetic.

and speaking of sweet, when is the translated version of "ask sweet shuu" coming out? it's been a month! weh!

 

excitedly waves in the general direction of this post

 

Ashkatom and my friend Choco (not this forum's Choco) got me into birb hell and now I think I will never ever escape

 

I bought a game called Reigns on a whim, only to discover that its publisher is Devolver Digital, aka the western publisher for Hatoful Boyfriend.

I only twigged to this when I saw there was an achievement for dating a pigeon.

 

Well, did you?

 

But of course!

 

I, TOO, DATED PIPPIN THE PIGEON

reigns is p gr8 tho i'm a little stuck.

 

Hi just fallen deep, deep, deep into the horrible bird moe hole again and wanted to make sure the rest of you saw this weird ship pic I found

Spoiler: shuuya, blood, looks uncomfortable

uncovered here, I think the original artist is billie here but I believe they have since deleted this (at least off of pixiv) and I get that, I get why a person might eventually regret this. that said their hatoful boyfriend tag is still lovely

i love birds oh god

 

for more shuuya, please enjoy this chef-and-waiter-style couple cosplay (the shuu is me, yuuya is @vixery)

Spoiler

 

*happy fluttering at the birdy cosplay*