The problem with Hetalia

Subject: The problem with Hetalia
Author: PoorCynic
Posted on: 2011-04-19 13:18:00 UTC

Your enthusiasm is fantastic, but I wanted to point something out before you continued crawling through the dross of Hetalia fanfiction. It's a problem I've been wrestling with without success for a while now. You see, the main characters within Hetalia are all anthropomorphic personifications. According to the tenuous tapestry of PPC canon, APs cannot be neuralyzed. In the PPC wiki's article on the Death of the Discworld it specifically says 'Due to his nature as an Anthropomorphic Personification, Death cannot be neuralyzed (although he is very good about playing along).' We could just ignore that fact and say that the Hetalia nations are somehow different APs and thus can be neuralyzed, but that feels like a cheat.

Don't get me wrong. My intention is not to rain on your parade. I just wanted the problem that I had trying to do Hetalia missions out there to see if you or anyone else had ideas in how to deal with that fact.

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Badfics by Karen Elaine DuLay on 2011-04-19 06:15:00 UTC Reply

Hello. I would like to make this post my offical place to put any and all badfics I find for the next week or so. Could somebody please put them on the Wiki for me? I'm not sure how to edit them in. Also, I'm gonna see if I can hunt up the ones I've previously posted here and get them on the list too.

Okay, here we go!

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6913976/1/AllofFreedomsHorses
Grammar and English language mangling, barely understandable on its own, and what I'm fairly sure is terrible OOCness on the Nations' part. Tell me if I'm wrong on the badfic-ness of this one, please.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5956328/1/

A girl named Amelia Dickinson attends the World W Academy, has England and America falling for her, goes to a dance with France, and possesses two magical creatures that talk. I'm pretty sure Amelia's a Mary Sue: she has a tragic past, she's got a bunch of Lust Objects falling for her, and she can see FAIRIES. And other things England can see, which nobody else is supposed to be able to see.
Claimed by OpinionedAngel, I believe?

<a href="http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3995148/1/LoveandtheTaskatHand">http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3995148/1/LoveandtheTaskatHand
A Ghost Rider fanfic starring Audrey, Blackheart's wife, who cannot be defeated by the Ghost Rider and manages to make Blackheart into a sappy, lovesick idiot. Please spork her. Painfully.

<a href="http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6680863/1/ThebWarbinbmybbHeartb">http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6680863/1/ThebWarbinbmybbHeart_b
Mikayla Runt, an American soldier, is captured by Germany...who proceeds to make her help him train the Italian troops, falls in love with her, and acts like a complete OOC ASSHOLE at the start of this fic. I /think/ it's supposed to be WW2, because of where they go to battle...but technology and women in the army make me doubt that. Oh, and they're in Germany....yet they watch American television. Tell me if she's a true Sue, please.

That's all I have for now. More may appear in time.

So... by OpinionedAngel on 2011-04-20 14:08:00 UTC Reply

Then Hetalia badfics can just be brushed over due to neuralyzing issues?

Damn. There go some of my sporking plans...

On a (somewhat) related note, suppose one took a mission in the "Red VS Blue" continuum. Would the helmets make it hard for the canons to be neuralyzed?

I'm just curious, because it's been bugging me for some time...
Speed bump by IndeMaat on 2011-04-19 14:08:00 UTC Reply

A while ago I deleted all the badfic from the unclaimed list that had been on that list for more than 18 months. What you are proposing to do, sounds to me like you are going to collect a lot of badfic, most of which is going to sit on the unclaimed list for a very long time, until there is another age-purge.

Thrawling sections of the pit for badfic is okay, but there is no need to put all the badfic you encounter on the unclaimed list. Just limit it to the stuff of which you think "this could be a good mission, but I can't write it". And no, that doesn't include every badfic you will encounter.

I'm just saying this because I don't want the unclaimed list on the wiki get even more unmanageable than it already is. The longer it is, the longer it takes to load, and I think, the less likely it will be that someone will go through the list to find badfic. Making a long unclaimed list is actually counterproductive. Besides, we already have FFnet as a quick and easy source to find badfic.

---

All that said, editing the wiki is easy. Just click on the Edit link. I believe it now has WYSIWYG editing. For the unclaimed list, click the edit link of the Hetallia subheading.

~~~ by Karen Elaine DuLay on 2011-04-19 15:43:00 UTC Reply

Mkay, got it. I just remembered a few badfics I'd seen before that I thought might be good for missions, so I've been scouring the Pit for them.

The problem with Hetalia by PoorCynic on 2011-04-19 13:18:00 UTC Reply

Your enthusiasm is fantastic, but I wanted to point something out before you continued crawling through the dross of Hetalia fanfiction. It's a problem I've been wrestling with without success for a while now. You see, the main characters within Hetalia are all anthropomorphic personifications. According to the tenuous tapestry of PPC canon, APs cannot be neuralyzed. In the PPC wiki's article on the Death of the Discworld it specifically says 'Due to his nature as an Anthropomorphic Personification, Death cannot be neuralyzed (although he is very good about playing along).' We could just ignore that fact and say that the Hetalia nations are somehow different APs and thus can be neuralyzed, but that feels like a cheat.

Don't get me wrong. My intention is not to rain on your parade. I just wanted the problem that I had trying to do Hetalia missions out there to see if you or anyone else had ideas in how to deal with that fact.

I belive that we came to the agreement, by Aster Corbett on 2011-04-19 20:26:00 UTC Reply

as I posted down there, I think the board came to an agreement on how to deal with these Anthropomorphic Personifications: certain ones CAN forget.

Such that:

Death cannot forget.
America can forget.

Death, as a concept, is not the same as America. Thus the personifications of each will take on different properties-- the properties of the base concept. America is a country, and over time, a country can forget something. Death never was able to forget, and never will be.

I added this to the wiki today, to prevent further confusion. See http://ppc.wikia.com/wiki/Anthropomorphic_Personification

Wiki is a collaborative effort, so feel free to dispute and stuff I guess.

The only thing that I'm worried about with this solution... by The 9th Blue Mage on 2011-04-25 07:23:00 UTC Reply

...Is that it may feel like an Asspull or something.
"No known anthropomorphic personifications work for the PPC" by DigitalSocrates on 2011-04-20 07:35:00 UTC Reply

Whenever I see something like this, I mentally go 'CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.'

I'm now in the process of trying to think of a character that is the anthropomorphic concept of like... shower mold. Or 'that itch on your back you just can't reach.'

Actually, that's not quite true. by Neshomeh on 2011-04-20 17:38:00 UTC Reply

I don't know if she's active or not--one of her writers has been around recently-ish, but not currently--but Agent Death is the Death of TV Shows.

http://www.freewebs.com/bookofnightmares/deathsprologue.htm

~Neshomeh

What?! by Aster on 2011-04-20 17:51:00 UTC Reply

:O !!!!

Really?! Change it! Cool! We have the Death of TV Shows! :D

Hmm, my issue with that: by Aster Corbett on 2011-04-20 12:15:00 UTC Reply

Usually an anthropomorphic personification exists to service a particular canon. Like, what would Discworld be if Death permanently went away? What would Hetalia be like if suddenly there was no Germany? Usually because these characters represent concepts, taking them away ALSO REMOVES or REALLY MESSES UP the concept.

Remember in Avatar: the Airbender when Tui the Moon Spirit was killed? Yeah. The whole power of the moon went away until she was replaced.

If you do make one of these, you had best make them something from a dead canon, a mini-fic blip, an unpublished novel, or some other place where they won't be missed.

Or... by DigitalSocrates on 2011-04-20 17:47:00 UTC Reply

Make an anthropomorphic concept that doesn't actually exist, with the explanation that it did exist before he/she left to do PPC things. :P

Alternatively by Data Junkie on 2011-04-22 19:32:00 UTC Reply

Make an OS-tan for the PPC Consoles. Because I refuse to believe that they work on anything approaching an Earth OS.
Brilliant. by Aster on 2011-04-20 17:51:00 UTC Reply

Go for it. That's quite clever.

Off the top of my head.. by DigitalSocrates on 2011-04-20 18:03:00 UTC Reply

...i thought of Flying Pigs. The anthropomorphization of the concept of pigs flying. Obviously, he/she would probably butt heads with any similar concept if she/he ever entered a fic where pigs can fly...

Of course, would that mean that pigs started flying... by DigitalSocrates on 2011-04-20 18:05:00 UTC Reply

...if she entered a canon where it is impossible? Sounds like an interesting side character to use for a one-off joke, but the flowers would probably prevent her from going on field missions after the first time. xD

Agreed by DZ on 2011-04-19 19:58:00 UTC Reply

We'd need to get creative around the Hetalia cast members. Hmmm...I say we leave it as is until we can figure out how to approach this without casing an incident.
Considering I was the one who wrote that bit... by JulyFlame on 2011-04-19 18:31:00 UTC Reply

I can state quite safely that the characters in Hetalia and the fact that they're also anthropomorphic personifications never occurred to me.

Anthropomorphic personifications of concepts cannot forget due to their nature as concepts, of course. Due to their state of being concepts their nature is very unlike that of being human, just having a humanoid shape, and not really alive.
Antropomorphic Personifications by Karen Elaine DuLay on 2011-04-19 15:58:00 UTC Reply

We had a huge discussion about those on a previous post of mine. One point brought up was that people have said a nation "forgets"--America "forgets" the Japanese internment camps during WW2, America "will never forget" 9/11, etc. But nobody ever says Death forgets.

Want to start a new discussion on it?

Hm, I think: by Aster Corbett on 2011-04-19 17:30:00 UTC Reply

because we already made all of these points, I'm just going to make some wiki edits.

It was pretty much agreed on that personifications of things that can forget (like concepts that apply to people and animals, like countries or religions or groups) can do things like forget and can for all purposes be treated like normal characters, personifications of things that have no human or animal faculties to effect (Say, a personification of a rock or a storm or other things) are not able to be hit with technology designed to modify the memories of a living thing.

So there. ^_^;