Thinking about nyo!France and names... I tend to have her going by either Marianne or François depending on the situation (she does the George Sand thing thru the 1800s, yup) ... But had the thought that of course both those names are self-selected, which is why they're both so unsubtle with the "I Am France"-ness. And possibly the same wrt Francis Bonnefoy.
This also got me thinking more generally about France / nyo!France names, not necessarily what anyone’s “real” name is because that’s fairly meaningless, but
1. What name might she use day to day among friends maybe?
and
2. What is her super long four name name?! Lol why are we even messing around with "Francis Bonnefoy" when names like “Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin” or “Maximilien Marie Isidore de Robespierre” are fairly concise for the 17-1800s? :D
(I havent come to any decisions, except that I kinda like Aurore actually, but it's fun to think about...)
yes yes hetalia is a webcomic where nations are characters, and obviously seen multiple times throughout, nations feel a connection to their people .
but what is a nation in hetalia? are we talking purely by an ethnic sense or a civic sense? is germany germany for those of german ethnic lineage or those who have german citizenship. geographical maybe? but what about those nations whose borders have shifted drastically throughout history like hungary. is she still the nation of those ethnic hungarians in romania and other countries? this would interestingly take into account groups within countries who do not consider themselves to be a part of the nation. some scots living in the uk do not consider themselves to be british. how would england/britain feel toward those people?
is it purely through how human self-identify themselves? one can be of spanish, moroccan or chinese descent and be british, french, or swedish by means of citizenship and being born in or living in that country for a specific amount of time.
is it a combination of all of these factors? ah but you would have to take into account countries like the united states, whose population, apart from 1-2%, is not indigenous within its borders. would the countries from which these us citizens have knowledge of these people? would this connection fracture after a few generations or after the descendants no longer feel a part of the home nation? would poland feel connected to poles in chicago who maintain linguistic and cultural ties or anyone of polish descent even if they feel no connection to poland at all?
hetalia is all very interesting and leaves much to be answered....
HELLO, this is so late and um, it's more stream of consciousness/something between a drabble and those 50 sentence prompt comms than, um, answering the questions directly! so just some Thoughts about this lady, as I continue to try to figure her out! (Also for luxury: baths. But that's obvious and canon!) But yes. HERE ARE SOME THOUGHTS!?
--
She is not a teenager anymore. Some people see her that way, and she can probably pass for a teenager with the right outfit, but she isn't, in any sense, anymore. Possibly the way you know this is when you stop declaring you've grown up and figured it out, and start being a little sympathetic to your younger self. So she's wary of declaring it but she has felt more secure these days.
Because, yeah, she remembers being -- feeling -- fifteen. It wasn't so long ago. She remembers feeling alternately capable and competent, and a mess; call me again when I'm a little more myself.
It's not that this doesn't happen anymore, but it doesn't happen as much.
She remembers fifteen-fourteen-thirteen-twelve, and were those growing pains or hunger that felled her as she stumbled out of the truck to paint over road signs, and why out of the hundred plausible reasons is she crying?
-
She remembers Slovakia's cheek smelling too much of cologne, and noticing at the same time how it was peppered with stubble, how his cheek and chin and nose were all angles these days, gawky and eager as she felt.
It was like heat was radiating off him. He was so aggravating but she craved his attention.
Those pages of her diary she looked back at with a burning shame, later with a smile, then protectiveness. A sense of injustice not for herself now but for all her past selves and other selves around the world, girls thinking themselves fools and geniuses, martyrs and traitors, and totally alone.
You feel like you've been the same inside, but then remember something like this and you feel startled and… you feel pity? But still not completely removed. Something like… a mother? It hurts your soul but you bear it with understanding.
-
At least once she figured, maybe she'd seduce him. It shouldn't be hard, he was always following her around. Only it never happened somehow, and she couldn't be sure which of them prevented it.
-
Fifteen, and narrating her every move — renaming everyone in her head and herself as well — this is the real truth and without it they can't touch me.
Attempted mental conjurations, prayers, fits of piety, (flares of real belief, joy, rage, transcendent love and forgiveness. It's always harder to write about the sunshine, of which there was plenty too.)
— going on about her business with rivers and oceans inside her, revealing them to no one, putting on makeup like a uniform.
Sometimes. Well. Sometime it feels like the only choice. To detach, uncouple from the world.
(Feel nothing feel nothing but see it all and forget nothing.) Poland knew about that. She said: be a camera — don't look away. They stuff your mouth, but you refuse the blindfold - be a camera.
But you're nothing special. A lot of people grew up in wartime. And a lot never did grow up.
(We're all special then, we all matter. Tempting as it is, don't you ever forget it.)
-
For a while all she can countenance in her reading, in her head, is the surreal and grotesque: bodies but not her body, her body but not her self, her self but not her will.
Romance stories are far more alienating and disgusting somehow.
Anything tentative, gentle in potentia in imagination in that direction popped like a soap bubble at her first kiss, their first kiss, when—tongues, thick, and awkward—foreign objects—
Give it time. Why does everything take time?
-
There were a number of years in which she seemed to always have bruises on her hips and elbows from walking into things. The gap between her self and her self... Her hips wouldn't fit into trousers like she expected, and she didn't get used to that jolt of surprise. She cuts her hair with kitchen scissors.
-
Later, staring, fascinated, at the muscles in Hungary's arms. Like something on a weight-lifter from the TV Olympics, they literally glistened with sweat; a whole drop of it fell off onto the floor. Those arms, those muscles, the turns and curves and thickness of them, seemed thrilling and indecent on a woman, like something that modesty should cover. There was no way she was going to stop staring. The sudden, undirected impulse—the desire to hang, fluttering, off one of those great arms, like the cover of a pulp novel, or is it jealousy…?
Insane, embarrassing contrast: the smell of her sweat, different by a thousand miles to his: Slovakia, smelling of boy, indoor nervous sweat through the underarms of his shirt. They'd almost always been friends, and yet it took so long to figure that out.
-
And now, she still likes hanging out with the tourists sometimes. She's on-call for a riverboat tour.
America is still so volubly appreciative of Dvorak she can forgive him for borrowing the guy for all those years. Besides which he wrote her lovely letters home.
-
And now she plays tennis. She feels gloriously spring-heeled, wound tight and released, unleashing all her force and intention on the ball, flying. Chasing every single one down and smacking it back. She still cuts her own hair, sometimes with whatever scissors are handiest, but aims for a vaguely horizontal line and doesn't obsess over it.
And running — she runs for miles in the dappled sun, until the sweat turns to salt on her forehead, and cold water tasted, poured luxuriant down her throat and over her face and hair is the sweetest thing. Pure and potent as song, as the yearning cello melody, as blown glass, as the cool inside a church or the sharp sunshine without.
So I'm going to generally not talk in terms of ways in which my beloved nyos "are similar or different to the original versions", but rather just in terms of what they are like. Because... why should I treat them as derivative or auxiliary anyway? as far as I'm concerned the nyo ladies are the og and best :D
If I'm talking about a character, half the time you can assume I'm talking about the nyo, and it's just that in some ways the non-nyo character is similar to them!
character: hate them | don’t really care | like them | LOVE them | THEY ARE MY PRECIOUS
ship with: don’t know??
friendship them with: ugh I’m boring, Poland... Hungary spa-rivals extraordinaire!? I don’t know if they’d be friends but has anyone done anything with her having a bit of a chat with Prussia about various things and cities -- and their shared love of diary keeping over the years...?
general opinions: SHE’S SO VERY COOL. I love her look too. And still another mystery lady for me. I absolutely loved those strips introducing her and Slovakia. I had some questions or maybe issues about the way she was described as serious/hardworking/patient but most of what we saw was her getting impatient with Slovakia and it being cute... worth exploring~ I have very little handle on her voice or what she’s like still!
character: hate them | don’t really care | like them | LOVE them | THEY ARE MY PRECIOUS
hmm now here “like” feels too weak, tho idk about LOVE..... he’s a top lad (with issues) and he’s up there with the ones I care about, despite everything lol.
ship with: Heh, Poland... I really do still like this weird old ship. Sadly of course they too might be having a slightly awkward time of it currently, but then they both are with politics in general in their own countries so;; And I’m just very amenable to persuasion by any good fanwork on either fruk or usuk. I might tend more towards France, but on the other hand, I have several other people ship France with so sdfjsdf, get in line egg lad. Also Canada? Oh! I absolutely loved him with Japan when I first came into this, whatever happened with that ship, it’s cool... So I suppose he’s another I definitely don’t see as prioritising romance on purpose or when he doesn’t have it going on already, but you could also interest me in Many more ships.
friendship them with: .... o good grief isn’t it funny/tragic that my immediate and stronger than usual reaction was PFF FRIENDS WHAT. Like that time in 2014/5 I wrote a jokey line where nyo!Po called him “mr. I’m too-good-for-the-EU” and then a couple years later I’m head in hands that was a JOKE, I was KIDDING ...
ANYWAY. Please be friends with the rest of Europe, dude. But also in terms of what I do like to see -- Lithuania! in light of those strips where he’s the one seen looking out for Lithuania and setting him up with work at America’s, and also since I wrote the modern werewolf AU when he was the side character that threatened to take over. They can have a chill friendship actually, I think. Seychelles after that Royal Honeymoon bit that was adorable. Latvia because of The Cake Song.
general opinions: so, also, I live in England which isn’t completely irrelevant.
idk, I’ve very rarely made him like the protagonist in anything, but I do really like having him around, and he’s one I have definite voice for. I’m also super interested in nyo!egg these days.
so I realised when I looked at the actual hetalia page on ao3 today that I don’t have basically any interest in what about 95% of the fandom is up to or into....
thinking about it for another ten seconds though I realised that probably 95% of the fandom don’t have any interest in say 95% of content either! because it’s just such a big sprawling thing of a fandom that functions a lot of the time as little silos like here on tumblr annnnnd that’s absolutely fine really.
and while I may not have any interest in your spa mano soulmates dystopian highschool amnesiac coffee shop AU where one of them is also a pirate ..... I’m totally behind your right to create and consume that stuff to your heart’s content. I’ll just be over here in my vaguely historical but probably nothing too serious nyo lietpol coming to understand each other better vignettes where one of them plays the piano.... *waves*
