Backstage for "Birds" (Patreon)

So when I first read about the game Hatoful Boyfriend ("Hato" means pigeon in Japanese), I misunderstood the backstory, and thought it was about a world where all the men had turned into birds, and it's a dating sim where you try to date a pigeon. I thought it was kind of silly to take a premise like that and just, like, make a dating sim out of it.

Turns out I was wrong, but I think my idea is better; Hatoful Boyfriend is about a world where birds developed sentience and took over human society. Including going to human-style schools and having human-style names. I think that if you are going to name a pigeon Ryouta Kawara, and have him go to high school, it really ought to be because he used to be a human boy before he turned into a bird.

This isn't really a story per se. I feel like I can get away with it because China Mieville's "The New Death" is a "story" that does nothing but describe what happens to society when all of a sudden dead bodies are always prone and facing you with their feet, like in video games. There are a lot of stories that could be told in the world of "Birds", and I cheated by writing an extended worldbuilding essay instead. 

Maybe I will, in fact, write a story about high school students dating, and one of them is a pigeon.