✾ – Why I chose my character.

Oh, goodness. Great question, Tintin! By the way, you are a super cutie in case you weren’t aware. I have really enjoyed following you and hearing of your exploits via Emi.

Let’s see.  Why did I choose Hakuba, of all characters, to play? 

Backstory: 

A few years ago, I met a girl whom I’ll call Clover through a mutual friend (hi Krista!) who invited her along to one of my Conan parties. Those are basically ‘eat curry, sushi, junkfood and cookies shaped like Conan’s head while marathonning the movies/arcs/specials/etc’ all day long. 

Clover and I hit it off and started to talk online, discovered we were both RPers, and had a mutual thirst for DCMK. It was her idea for me to start RPing as Conan, which I was hella nervous about because I’d really only RPed as OCs until that point. 

BUT, with a little brainstorming, we came up with this incredibly epic plot to resolve the series once and for all, and we divvied up the characters accordingly. She picked Kaito (her favorite) as her MC, and took on the task of writing Heiji, Kogoro, the Detective Boys, Ran, Chikage, Gin, some OCs, and various other side characters etc…  while I took on Conan/Shinichi, Yukiko, Yuusaku, Sonoko, Eri, Vermouth, Vodka, Akako, Aoko, Kazuha, aaaand… Hakuba. 

The fun part of the story was that Clover, like many people, didn’t like Hakuba to begin with because he’s not only an antagonist for KID (her favorite), but also one for Hattori Heiji (whom we all adore). But, since my introduction to him was a bit different (Sunset Mansion was my very first exposure to him, followed by Koushien, then the MK cases), I saw a very different character than perhaps others did, and took on the task of engineering him to be a character that you (hopefully) can’t help but fall for. 

Hakuba, to me, is very interesting because even though he’s one of the four Gosho Boys, he has very little exposure series-wise. He’s only in DC twice and only in MK a handful of times, and we know very little about his background. We do, however, know some very specific things canonically that allows us to extrapolate a LOT of possibilities.

As a writer developing a character, this is gold. 

Here’s what we do know:

• He’s driven and determined with concrete goals (career)
• He’s well on his way to achieving these goals (over 500 cases in Japan alone, Scotland Yard has worked with him before and wants to again)
• He has personal motivations that are important to him (learning a criminal’s modus operandi) 
• He’s good at billiards
• Seems very comfortable with adults/professionals
• Flirtatious and chivalrous with women he doesn’t see on his level (yes, he’s sexist — it’s part of his White Knight syndrome, which I’ll go into later)
• Has relations with the media (TV, newspaper, probably magazines, an agent)
• He’s a proficient austringer (if Watson is, indeed, a female Eurasian Sparrowhawk, he must be one of the youngest licensed hawkers in the UK— those birds are for advanced austringers only, and you can only become one if you pass all sorts of tests… those birds are only with you on a relationship of mutual trust; if he wasn’t good, she wouldn’t stay with him for a second)
• His father is kindly toward him, but has no problems embarrassing him in front of others (there’s the whole issue of nepotism in Japan, and it’s got to be awkward to be the son of the Superintendent General)
• He is frustrated by Nakamori-keibu not listening to him, but is quick to make sure that Conan’s voice is heard in both cases 
• Keeps accurate time with his watch + excessive note taking
• Has eidetic memory 
• Has access to his grandfather’s laboratory + seems to know how to use it
• Travels often (London, France, Japan at the very least)
• Has a governess who drives a fancy sports car; it’s pretty clear that he comes from money. Wears fancy suits. His idea of ‘casual clothes’ is not wearing a tie and not buttoning his jacket. 

and so on…

All of these traits appeal to me because they’re interesting problems to have to deal with in terms of getting a profile down…

• if he hunts with a hawk, he can’t be afraid of getting his hands dirty 
• if he’s solved so many cases, he’s not going to be skittish around blood
• if he’s been living in England for all of these years, there must be something going on between his parents – his dad is obviously Japanese, being the Superintendent General, so what of his mother?
• does his meticulous time-keeping habits have anything to do with the problems sometimes inherent with having an eidetic memory?
• If he openly flirts with girls/people  unlike the other Gosho Boys, what is his experience? Is it merely cultural difference? 
• If he’s born on August 29th, that puts him right at the deadline for the school year in the UK. That makes him the youngest of his class, and potentially the youngest of the Gosho Boys if they’re all 17. Is he used to being the smallest/not taken seriously? 
• If his mother is British and living in England, there’s a good chance that their family is at least somewhat religious. Incorporating that into his character would be a great contrast against the others, who have their own varying Eastern religious beliefs (and not). 
• It also counteracts (and balances) the logical detective side with things of a spiritual nature, which honestly fits with a more idealized perspective aaaand scientific theory. Since he’s “proto-Shinichi” it makes sense to me to switch him to the other side of the coin. While Shinichi says “ghosts can’t exist because we can’t prove that they do,” Hakuba says “ghosts might exist because we can’t prove that they don’t.” In this way, he pairs well with Heiji because they’re both more on the superstitious side. 

So I start getting these ideas, and I’m getting really excited. There’s a ton of material that I can work with, here, all derived from canon extrapolations. 

• If Watson trusts him, he’s probably very good with animals
• I’ll make him an Animal Lover as part of his introvert/social awkwardness around his peers. He always deals better with critters than people, and that’s a soft spot. 
• If he’s, say, Catholic, it would make sense to send him to a boarding school for part of the time in England, since they are well-off and he seems very prim and proper.
• This allows me to make plenty of biblical references in posts and view the Japanese world from a Christian perspective (which works for me because I was raised Christian and I’m only sort of familiar with Japan, so this is a good vehicle for me to explore spirituality of differing types and the fallacies therein)
• We can also work in a bit of painful backstory here because there have been several instances of child abuse at these boarding schools, which I think could be useful to drive Hakuba’s need for understanding motive. Why did this happen to us? Why would someone do this? Why would God allow it? Why did I allow it to go so long? 
• This also gives him secrets to keep, which is fun in RP
• …and also more cases solved in his past as well as potential future villains.
• Working with Scotland Yard means that he’s had a lot of opportunity to learn policy/procedure and probably get a lot of really fantastic outside world perspectives. 
• Shinichi got to travel a lot with his parents, it seems, so Hakuba is his natural counterpart in this sense. Kaito and Heiji, however, seem bound to Japan so far… which means bringing different experiences to the Gosho Boys as a whole.

…anyway, this is just an example of the process I’ve gone through to invent this character, but I guess you could say that I really love his type of character. That is, a young teenager trying to solve adult problems while struggling with a myriad of complications, many of them stemming from his own inexperience or miscalculation. I love that he has a TON of problems just because he is who he is, and he’s busily trying to solve them ALL by himself because he feels that he has to. 

Hakuba is a walking contradiction. But in him I see potential for a funny, sensitive character who is competent, merciful, and helps to round out the team with common sense, determination, and a gentle hand. 

…like really, I think he’s the only one of the Gosho boys that is a true pacifist, which is funny. 

I hope this sort of answers the question. I guess it’s just… I really relate to him in a lot of ways, and I think I can bring a lot of insight to his character, and in a way that will not make people hate him so much.

The END!