#follower chat

@auburn-haired-sadist Wow. Just…wow. I have so many things I want to say about this fic but not the words to do so. Wonderful isn’t enough of a word to describe it.

Hitori is such a complicated character, and you’ve done such a fantastic job of capturing him. I think it’s easy for some fans to forget that, fucked-up murderer he is, this is a man/bird who has care-giving ingrained into his very being, who spent years nurturing younger siblings, who lived a good portion of his life essentially as a parent. All he ever wanted was to take care of his siblings, and losing that, Nageki, his last link to that happy time.

Sleepy math daddy is a character that I very desperately want to…not like per se, but respect. And it’s hard after Holiday Star, because Kazoo is so innocent, so trusting. Hitori has no place to judge Shuu for directing  his pain outwards, because he did the same. He found the most vulnerable party, someone he honestly could have used to fulfill is craving to take care of someone (because Lord knows Kazoo needed someone to take care of him), and instead he not just killed him, but did so with unnecessary cruelness. I can’t count the number of times hindre and I have discussed this with each other, asked “why couldn’t he have just stayed until Kazoo was gone?” And in truth I could write paragraphs about Hitori and his resentment towards Kazoo’s suicidal idealization when poor Nageki never had a chance at life but that’s not my point here. My point is, I feel the utmost sympathy for Hitori but lack most other feelings, and this fic really helped me with that. To see him in a light that’s not entirely negative. Because if nothing else, by post-BBL he’s not much more than an exhausted man trying to move past his regrets.

“You get to shape whoever you are, now, and it turns out that who you are is mostly someone who wants to sleep and eat, cook and get groceries, balance a budget and do the laundry and all the thousand little things that make up life when your life is not a sword weighing over someone else’s head.”

This line. There are many lines in this fic that took my breath away but this one here. My poor heart. What a sad, sad bird we have here. Unlucky enough to be from a universe ruled by the cruel goddess known as Moa.

(I didn’t say much about Shuu here but also feel you did a perfect job of portraying his neglectfulness towards himself.

You sigh and tilt your head back, letting it rest on Shuu’s shoulder without making eye contact. “You have another appointment for physical therapy this afternoon.”

“I have experiments,” Shuu says, after a moment.

You put a little steel into your tone when you say, “You also have physical therapy.” Shuu makes another, more defeated disgruntled noise after a moment, and you continue on, airy again. “I think I’ll take a nap before, but I’ve booked a taxi anyway. Don’t ignore it.” Like Kazoo, Shuu is someone who needs a caregiver, though for different reasons. His entire world is research and he seems to forget that there’s a world at present, that he himself has needs that need to be met. Man’s only vanity is clearly his ribbon, smh.) tl;dr Ash you’ve given me such feels this morning and I’m at a loss on how to express it. :’)

UM, I THINK YOU WILL FIND IT IS YOU WHO GAVE ME SUCH FEELS THIS MORNING........

Hitori is a complicated character. I’ve always harbored just the tiniest pinch of worry about my Worst Bird tag for him - not because I don’t think he’s the worst bird, as far as my judgements go he absolutely is, but because it reduces the complexity of his character. And the complexity is the thing I love most about Hitori! My favourite characters always end up being the most awful, unrepentant people - people who are driven by their own motives and believe so powerfully that they are right, or even that whether they are right or not doesn’t matter. Writing that sort of mindset is always a tough mental exercise.

I think it’s important, though. I’ve talked with Logic before about how the silly birbgame explores abuse, and, well. An important, distasteful-but-necessary component of abuse is that abusive people are just Normal People. Kazuaki Nanaki was the first bird I romanced, and I was in hook-line-and-sinker. Because he was a Normal dating sim route - haha, hot for teacher, that’s a little skeevy but why not it’s a cultural narrative just roll with it - and then he had Dating Sim Tragic Backstory - and then, oh god, the hints all clicking into place as Hitori lost his shit in BBL. He’s broken, and he’s cruel, and he’s single-minded - but he’s a person. He’s also selfless, caring, and dedicated.

And hoo boy. Holiday Star. Holiday Star may be the greatest characterisation piece I have ever - read? experienced? It hurt so much because it - it showed the cracks in Hitori being pried apart, the divide between who he became and who he could have been. And then that was compounded by the shrine dates and the Kyoto trip - he’s still no cardboard cutout, is what amazed me there. It would have been so easy to just wipe the board clean of Hitori’s sins and make him warm and caring and nurturing - but Moa brought his negative qualities even more to the forefront. He was quietly, carefully bland as Kazuaki Nanaki, but living as himself? He’s overbearing with Nageki, disdainful with Kazuaki. Like you made the distinction - in the shrineverse, I can respect Hitori, I can even admire him for the sacrifices he’s made, but he’s not very likable.

AND ALSO: And in truth I could write paragraphs about Hitori and his resentment towards Kazoo’s suicidal idealization when poor Nageki never had a chance at life but that’s not my point here. NO BUT OH MY GOSH WHAT A GREAT POINT. I am so here for all the compare-and-contrast Kazuaki and Nageki meta. This shit is my lifeblood.