Shipping before Hetalia

[sara-rojo.livejournal.com]

Hi guys!

I was wondering if this happened to you....

Did any of you, upon first hearing the premise of the series, think about pairings before actually reading or watching a single strip/episode?

I'm asking for two reasons:

1)this happened to me in both directions; pairings I'd never had thought of (GerIta, without going further) and pairings that I shipped as soon as I heard "gay male personifications of countries" (which immediately prompted "France and England LOL" from me).

2)The second reason is that people seem to ship pairings between characters that have yet to appear, like New Zealand/Australia, Argentina/Brazil, Philippines/America, England/Portugal, Mexico/Spain....while some are evidently following previous interactions of characters in similar relationships (any colony/empire ship, for example, seeing as there are hints to five of these couples in the canon), some of them don't follow this logic. So people ship countries now, not characters...usually following a Real Life Politics/History logic, or at least that was my case with FrUK

I'm curious if this happened to you guys before you got into Hetalia, like it happened to me...



EDIT. as a post-thought question...what did you expect the characters to be? did you immediately think about some character's characterictics? did they end appearing in Hetalia? were you disappointed if they weren't?

Comments

[minavanhelsing.livejournal.com]

...Yes.

So much "yes", it isn't even funny. I was a huge Austrian history nerd for about a year before I heard of Hetalia, my favorite period being Franz Joseph's reign (1848 to 1916). During which, funnily enough, the Dual Monarchy was established (1867). xD

So the first thing I did when I discovered Hetalia was check to see if Austria and Hungary were paired. And I was so delighted to find out they were canon... <3

[sara-rojo.livejournal.com]

I'm gonna give you a little envy and say that I went to Vienna this last summer; Sissi's museum was fascinating, and the royal palace splendid (a pity that we didn't get to see the Schönbrunn). That was a really fascinating time in history, specially because the wheels of war were turning at great speed then, and I'm a fan of conspiracy theories of World War I xD

[minavanhelsing.livejournal.com]

Oh, I do envy you! So much! Are you familiar with Elisabeth, das Musical? Sorry, I ask everyone who expresses knowledge of Austria. I've always wanted to go to Vienna and obsess over the theatres.

And Europe's downward slide toward the disaster of World War I, with the decay of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the center of it all, is one of my absolute favorite subjects. -high fives you- The whole alliance insanity, and all the countries' ulterior motives for wanting to enter the war...Crazy that Australian troops were fighting in Turkey because of the assassination of an Austro-Hungarian Archduke, no? And that America became involved, too, when I bet most people in my country had never even heard of Serbia.

Speaking of conspiracies, do you have any thoughts on Mayerling? ...Even though it's probably a bad idea to get me started on that. =P

[sara-rojo.livejournal.com]

Hahaha! you really are enthusiastic. No, I don't know of that musical, my Austrian culture is not that great, but I love viennese writers and their fading romantic views on life and the Empire, like Sandor Marai or Schnitzler. I wish I could've gone to a theater or opera, but they were expensive and we stayed only for five days ^^U
(my dad went to the opera, though, and loved it)
I got to see Mozart's Requiem being played and sung on an old church though ^^

That whole period is fascinating. Everybody seemed to be onto something the others weren't, and yet, everybody was almost in the know with the others, and felt like it was inevitable. I have the hugest crush on Bismark because he was the ultime Game Master and predicted the war to a 't' a crazily number of years before it happened. The fact that some people had been turning the wheels for centuries is mindblowing, and the fact that everybody was everybody's cousin, sibling, parent, spouse, in-laws etc only ups the drama.

As for Mayerling...when they get to that part in the Sissi Museum it's so dark...I smelled something fishy too, but the guide just said that he killed himself with his mistress and illegitimate son, and that poor Sissi was devastated. It all sounded really weird...god, I love conspiraciesXD