England is technically Roman Britain (Albion or Older Britannia aka Mama Britannia “died” when Romans invaded her land resulting in England’s birth). Which, based on historical timeline, makes Italy older than him (or at least Romano).
Thoughts on APH fic writing, common characterisations and pair dynamics
This is a long personal ramble about exploring societal biases and pushing back against them by experimenting with fanfic. Some of the fics I’m talking about here were never posted haha. I dunno, maybe they were personal. You may read or ignore (or read halfway and ignore). Not sure why I’m thinking about this today.
I was looking through my Google drive today and reading some stuff that I started and abandoned - Hetalia stuff from WAY before I got into NedCan as the SHIP ABOVE ALL SHIPS for me. Omg some of the stuff I wrote, but I did notice some interesting things...
I experimented a lot, but mostly did AUs because I also wanted to explore the dynamics within my favorite pairings if I changed certain major assumptions. Now when I pair characters, I believe that I pair them in any shape, universe or form - canon, AU, M/M, F/M, F/F, genderfluid etc (I’m not really into alpha/beta/omega AUs so I can’t really make a call on that), supernatural, space AUs, etc. But as a bit of a personal social experiment, I wanted to see how society has entrenched certain assumptions in me about relationships. I did this by...writing about space (Star Trek AU, the characters as different alien races), by looking at which character the fandom tended to ‘feminize’ and switching that up (so for PruAus for example, where if anyone is suddenly a Nyo counterpart, it’s usually Austria who is feminized) and seeing if I could keep the dynamic and all the things I loved about that pairing the same.
It’s easier with aliens than it is with societal assumptions about gender. This surprised me but shouldn’t have, though it was interesting to explore what I personally had to fight against in my own head (how characters interacted with each other if one of them was a woman instead, and with Hetalia it’s usually M/M...sometimes it didn’t make a difference...sometimes it was a world of a difference...and that bothered me...so how could I recognize it to do something about it?).
By far the most unpopular Hetalia fic I’ve ever written was a Fem Prussia / Austria thing about them meeting on a train. I’m not surprised that it’s not popular because there’s no real resolution and all they do is talk. They met in an in-between phase of their lives, so there was no place for them to go at that time. In the scheme of fandom, it didn’t have ‘popular/cute’ written all over it, but it was selfish writing, something I had to write for myself at the time due to circumstances. I decided to write Prussia as a woman because other than the fact that Nyo Prussia is one of the more conventionally ‘sexy’ anime women in Hetalia, Prussia is often interpreted as the hyper masculine one, especially in PruAus pairings. On the flip side, Austria is interpreted as a caricature of femininity (really can’t blame the fans for this as Hetalia itself is a huge joke about caricatures). Julchen was in the Army, or at least on her way to joining the Army, while Roderich was a composer. But rereading the fic now, it’s clear that I have failed in many ways to write these two exactly the same as I would have if I were writing about two men or two women.
It was also Fem Spain / Austria. I wanted to explore this idea of Austria being unabashedly him, petty, elegant and obsessed with music...but still strong in character (I mean, he’s based off a nation that was an Empire after all), and still having some quality that made him fairly irresistible. Admittedly I chose to write Fem Spain because Spain is also one of those characters that is more often interpreted as highly masculine. I had planned on exploring N. Italy/ Fem Germany in that universe too, but never continued in that universe.
I kind of tried this again later on when i was into NedCan, mostly because I was wondering why half the NedCan fanfics on AO3 featured Ned/Fem Can. I mean, I love NedCan in all its forms but I didn’t see why my boy Canada’s qualities had to be assumed to be more easily interpreted as feminine (I mean I know why, but I didn’t necessarily agree with it). So I tried writing Fem/Genderfluid Ned with Can but in a Dutch golden age/pirate AU and...well the AU itself was fun but the story was very time consuming. (I also don’t know how clear it is that Ned is Genderfluid?)
For as much as I love APH Canada, I seem to have an extraordinarily difficult time writing him, which was mostly why that particular fic went on hiatus. I’m not so sure why it’s so hard to write him. I knew what drove Anneke, but Matthew? He was so torn between family and self and Anneke, without anyone asking him to be that even I froze up, unable to decide what to do next. I suppose I had to stop at that point because I was in a similar place (still in a similar place) personally, feeling torn between many things, and trying to choose self, but not really being able to fully be consumed by that decision. It’s hard to choose yourself, it’s so crazy how hard it is to do that.
So I’m not trying to make all my couples heterosexual or gay, but I’m kind of using them as a means of exploring ways of fighting back against my personal biases. Hetalia characters lend themselves to interpretation because there’s so much unsaid for all the caricature and stereotype. When I wrote Unity, people thanked me for not writing Finland as a weak character (he’s like...the scariest character, arguably, in that whole fic). Romano in my football AU is just a child but shows so much inner strength even if his outer strength is not as demonstrative. But frankly, I don’t quite see how *any* of the nations could be perceived as weak I mean...nations are nations for a reason. Personified, every nation/character is a complex marriage of good and evil fighting for a unique identity amongst the others and isn’t that just what being human is?
