Hi! This is coming from a place of respect, and I really don’t mean to offend, but I was a little surprised that all of your contributions to Austria week were swissaus? Obviously you can ship what you like, and I know they’re important to you, but I think a lot of us were hoping for more variety, or at least one piece focused on a canon dynamic like aushun or pruaus. Especially since swissaus isn’t really seen as endgame by most people. Just something to consider for next time!
Hi anon! Thanks for noticing my devotion 💅🏻
It means a lot that you scrolled through every single one of my contributions. That’s commitment. Really. I hope you enjoyed them as much as you hated them.
Also, thank you for the classic sandwich method: start nice, insert the unsolicited critique, end on a vague “just something to consider.” I see you. I’ve taught writing workshops.
So. Let’s talk about why my entire Austria Week was SwissAus, and why I won’t be apologising for that.
(And it’s not all of them. Three are solo pieces, and one includes Hungary and Prussia. Hihi. But anyway.)
I. 👏🏻Creative👏🏻autonomy👏🏻is👏🏻not👏🏻a👏🏻public👏🏻utility.
Austria Week is a celebration of Austria. It’s not an obligation to platform every (or any) ship equally. I write what moves me, what ruins me. What I can craft with emotional depth and narrative cohesion. That happens to be SwissAus—because, and this may shock you, I love writing about emotional repression, historical tension, unspoken devotion, and characters who hurt and heal each other in ways they don’t fully understand until it’s too late.
If that’s not your flavour? That’s completely valid. But telling a creator you were “disappointed” they didn’t cater to your ship preferences is not “feedback.” It’s entitlement.
II. “Canon” is not a creative muzzle.
The implication that I “should’ve written AusHun or PruAus because they’re more canon” is… fascinating. But let’s entertain it.
Do you know how many fanworks there are for AusHun and PruAus?
Do you know how few for SwissAus?
Do you realise that every rarepair begins as “not canon” and that fanfic exists to explore the what if, the nuance, the depth that canon glosses over?
Not but really, let’s really talk about this.
I keep seeing this idea that SwissAus “isn’t canon,” as if that’s a trump card. As if “canon” somehow justifies one ship over another. Let’s be honest: this is Hetalia. A series where the characters are anthropomorphic representations of geopolitical trauma, making pasta jokes while crying over historical wars.
Canon has Italy as a useless lead and America as a loveable idiot. Canon says Austria and Hungary had a marriage, sure—but how canonically romantic was that marriage? Canon also says Switzerland and Austria grew up together. Canon also says nothing definitive about who they love now.
You’re choosing to read certain dynamics as romantic and others as platonic. That’s your lens. Your choice. So let’s not pretend that “canon” is a fixed moral compass when it’s a buffet of suggestive crumbs, tonal whiplash, and historical allegory.
And here’s the core of it:
Canon is a foundation, not a ceiling.
If all you ever do is reassemble canon into different orders, you’re not building, you’re shuffling. I write characters as if they’ve changed. Grown. Been wounded. Forgotten and remembered. I treat them like living beings who carry centuries of grief, guilt, devotion, shame, longing. Because I believe that’s realistic. Not in the “slice of life” sense, but in the way good fiction always is: emotionally true.
So when someone tells me “Switzerland will always be repressed” or “Austria has forgotten their childhood friendship centuries ago,” I ask:
Why wouldn’t Switzerland—after a century of silence and war and distance—finally find himself at a loss for what he’s running from?
Why wouldn’t Austria, who’s lost more than anyone and had to perform composure his whole life, still ache for the one person who held his hand before the empire swallowed him?
Why wouldn’t they change?
You let Prussia grow emotionally in your fics. You let America suffer existential dread. You write France having deep regrets. You bend canon all the time—to make your ships work, to make your headcanons fit.
If you make your characters realistic enough, you can justify literally every ship.
That’s not a flaw. That’s the entire point of writing transformative fanfiction. You’re not painting by numbers, you’re writing people. And people are messy, layered, shaped by time, desire, grief, need, fear, memory.
I’m not claiming SwissAus is the only valid ship. I’m saying it becomes completely believable when you let them evolve past their repression and silence—when you ask what grief and closeness and longing would do to someone who never learned how to speak his love aloud, and to someone who’s always needed to be chosen.
You could write Austria falling in love with America. With England. With Russia. With anyone. You could write Switzerland with Belgium. With Japan. With France. It’s all there, if you develop it.
But if you can do that for your OTP, then I can do it for mine.
III. No one is obligated to carry your banner.
You don’t ask a poet why every line is about the same person. You don’t tell a composer to “try someone else’s theme.”
There’s this subtle expectation in your message: that creators “represent” fan groups, and if they don’t serve all corners of the fandom buffet, they’ve let people down.
But I’m not the fandom’s lunch lady. I’m not here ladling out equal portions of every ship. I’m here in the metaphorical kitchen with burnt fingers and bloodshot eyes, trying to make art. That means sometimes I write 20k of domestic trauma and tongue-kisses on the wrong body part. Sometimes it’s SwissAus for every prompt. And sometimes—brace yourself—I don’t write anything at all.
I’m not “hogging” the tag by contributing. I’m filling the void you noticed… by creating.
IV. Rarepair creators already live in hell. Let us have this.
Do you know what it’s like, loving a rarepair?
Do you know what it’s like scrolling through a tag and seeing maybe one post a week and half the time it’s someone saying “I don’t ship this but here’s my fucking opinion why lol”?
Do you know what it’s like spending hundreds of hours building a story for two characters no one else cares to write, knowing it’ll be ignored by the main fandom, and still posting it anyway because someone, somewhere, might read it and feel seen?
That’s the corner I live in.
And if Austria Week gave me one excuse to come out swinging for my ship? Damn right I took it.
V. You don’t have to read it. But don’t guilt-trip me for writing it.
If you wanted more AusHun, you could have:
- Reblogged prompts to your circle
- Messaged your favorite creator and said, “Hey, I’d love to see your take on this ship!”
What you shouldn’t do is show up in someone’s inbox and imply that what they wrote wasn’t enough. That their passion project somehow took away from your experience. That they “should’ve thought about other people.”
No one’s stopping you from loving popular ships. Just don’t make it a crime for the rest of us to love something else—and love it loudly.
So, to wrap up: yes. I wrote only SwissAus. I will continue to write SwissAus. And if next year I write an entire week of Austria/Belgium or Austria/Jesus Christ or Austria/his own reflection in the mirror—that’s my prerogative.
What’s bothering you isn’t that I only wrote SwissAus. It’s that I wrote them so well, you had to see them. And they wouldn’t let you look away.
I rest my case. And this kitchen stays open.
🔊 TL;DR: I wrote SwissAus for Austria Week because I love them. If you wanted more AusHun or PruAus, you could’ve written it. Don’t guilt rarepair creators for being loud when the room’s been empty.
