or, how I became a born-again hetatard
I HAVE COMPLETELY RETURNED TO THE FANDOM!
lol, nobody cares.
But after having been freed the influence of the superhistorical!BNFs (whose fic depressed me and made me feel shitty about the world and about myself as a writer) for quite some time, I have learned THE TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS HETALIA.
Hetalia is not about history. It was never really about history. (Okay, it was a little early on, aka in the main storyline. But that has not been updated in forever.) It is not an allegory to RL events, despite many of the historyfic writers trying to make it that. It is not even about countries, not in the sense one thinks it should be.
It is about a universe where personified countries are real.
That may not sound like as big a difference from normal fandom's perception of the series, but it is. Hoh boy, it is. The idea of personifications of countries is nothing new, but Himaruya has taken personifications and made sure that, unlike in most works, made sure that they spend most of their time doing things that range from being vaugely and mildly symbolic to completely and utterly non-symbolic. Most depictions would simply have national stereotypes and leave it at that; Hidekaz uses national steriotypes as a base, yes, but throws some aspects of the stereotypes out, adds in a few traits based on more obscure or mundane aspects of the country, adds a few traits that aren't really tied to steriotypes at all, and in some cases gives them backstories explaining why they are the way they are that are tied to history (but somewhat independant of it).
He's also made a world that is pretty clearly a world (of the real-world-with-supernatural-hidden-in-plain-sight variety), and a few rules seem to established. Personifications aren't born via sex, but simply appear, sugesting that they aren't fully corperal and are kind of spirit-like. Some baby nations are colonies formed by other nations, others are heirs to the people and land of a dying civilization; both kinds of young nation become physically adult after becoming unified under a single goverment (culturally as well as phsically) and ataining a certain level of development and political autonomy. There are personifications of things that aren't countries, such as the media (Mr. Newspapers), powerful clans/families (Japan's hans, and Austria as "Hapsburg rule"), regions within a country (Picardy), etc. Some of these things can become countries, such as the Teutonic Order becoming Prussia and Austria becoming... Austria. Nations are capable of disagreeing or misunderstanding their bosses, and (in the case of Russia) turning on their people. I could probably go on more.
For personifiations, they're alot more person than nation. When America is discovered, the European empires argue not over who gets the land, but over who gets to keep the potential colony as a baby brother. Spain and Romano watch soccer together, and Spain takes Romano to a restraunt to cheer him up when his team loses. America and Japan visit each other's houses to watch tv and play videogames. Lithuania and Poland play chess, and Poland starts making up rules. Estonia has a blog, America makes and independent film about it, and Prussia watches it on the internet. They do people things! They care about people things! Possibly even moreso than they care about nation things!
And that makes sense, at least to me. After a while, don't you think these things that aren't really supposed to have free will and personalities might iniviably develop them anyways, the way SciFi computers with powerful AI eventually go rouge? It's a much more physical, real idea than them forever staying perfect reflections of the nation. They're going to create mechanisms to keep themselves from going batshit from all the conflicting opinions, the civil wars, et cetera.
They're going to form a singular, increasingly independant identity.
And that's why Hetalia, for a one-hit-wonder from a guy who may just have the moe equivalent of an attention disorder ("gotta do reasearch for the next chapt- BUNNIES!!!1"), is suprisingly creative, fresh, and just damn good.