Rants, rants....more rants.
Nov. 17th, 2009 04:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spottoAkira once told me something her sister said: "Strong opinions: Sagittarius."
Also useless opinions, but I tend to write them down anyway so I don't forget! That's what stuff like Livejournal are for, after all!
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My rants usually consist of fandom about my favourite characters, current events, nitpicks about life or anything else, and hamsters. Well today will be slightly different, since it still is a fandom rant, and so 99.7% of my readers will probably skip this, but if you're interested...read right ahead! It's moreso an examination of characterization anyway!
First let me start off by once against stating my ethnic race and my birthplace. I was born in Vancouver, Canada...and my parents came from a little village in Guangdong Province of China. The nations I choose to rant about today are actually....America and Taiwan.
How this is slightly different is already obvious, seeing as these countries are not exactly my favourite. Actually they're far from it, and there are reasons for that. I used to like America a lot more in the past. He was a character on-par with the rest of characters I enjoyed besides certain Asians who usually were on top, but America has sunk this past while. Taiwan is a different spectrum entirely. I dislike her for different reasons, and not exactly for as simple and shallow of a reason as: "She's a girl in the way of my OTP" or something like that. I rather avoid shipping wars all together.
Let's start with America. The first obvious reason is that I'm Canadian. Before Hetalia I cared not about America too much. They were just our neighbours down south and that was about it. After that, I started to dislike them more and more because I actually started to notice a lot of the things happening down there and current events in real life, really. I've ranted before about the far-right conversatives and how utterly stupid they're being. I'm sure there are far-left liberals, or at the very least outrageous people of both sides who are equally as stupid, but I'm noticing it now because of the huge media attention to Obama.
Before him there was Bush, and when I was younger I cared nothing about Politics. All I really knew was that Bush was stupid and declared a pointless war for the purpose of oil, but besides that I didn't care. Maybe conversatives liked Bush and thought the people opposing him had ridiculous reasons to do so, but I'm largely biased as both a Canadian and a not-very-much a conservative. It just sounds so ridiculously to call Obama the coming of Satan when Bush was the one who declared a War and got millions of people dead, but some people that voted for him didn't care and just ignored what he did and continued their life.
Besides immense stupidity, I think another reason Obama is getting a lot of shit from the stupid people is the timing. He became President at a very bad time, a time with economic woes, and with America in shambles. People like to quickly blame everything about that on the President, even if he was just there for about five days and all those things were the fault of the previous president.
I'm not sure why I rack my brain so hard trying to figure out why these people think this way. Why Fox News even exists, why people are even paid to have these opinions. I know lots of people tell you that everyone has the right to their opinion, but these opinions just make absolutely no sense. There is no evidence to back them up. It reminds of me of when people in the past thought women who were weird were witches and so should be executed. I guess all I can say is that people are stupid and trying to figure out why will break my brain.
Back to the actual topic on hand, which is actually America as a character, not his exact country...I can't exactly pinpoint why I didn't like America as much anymore. Can it be popularity? I know it's a silly reason, but I tend to dislike characters if I see them too often in fandoms, but I actually don't think that is the reasons considering how much I like England and that Japan is quite cool. (Japan in J-fen or the Japanese fandom, he's not so popular in the Western Fandom.)
So why is it? Perhaps my Canadian blood is naturally telling me that all American's should be hated just because I am Canadian. That hockey is superior to football, and that American's have corrupted us Canadians into calling it Football and not American Football, and using the dreaded word soccer for actual football. America seems like quite a lovable character. I love Korea so much, so why not America? Why?
As I rack my brain I try to think of other reasons I'm like this besides my Canadianness. This is because while I do like the character of Canada he is not my favourite. Perhaps my bias towards Asians just shines so strongly that even my Canadian patriotism is faded, but before Hetalia I was never as proud to be Canadian as I am now despite having been a hockey fan (though not as seriously until recently) since bloody 1994!
I'm pretty sure it's fairly obvious now though. America may be amusing, interesting, and the perfect character for his country, but I actually find him kind of dull. Perhaps it truly is because I see him too often, but unlike others I really can't get into the AmericaKorea craze, or AmericaxANYONE for that matter. I think he makes those pairings really boring. I don't see him as particularly hot or handsome or interesting or anything! Yet I used to support America's Asian Harem, I just don't really care for it anymore!
He's just...that generic idiot. I mean France is a pervert but also an arrogant yet clever bastard. England is very interesting. He seems a lot more complex than America, and it's not just because of his tsundereness since even that trait is starting to become generic, but more than that. He does stupid things when drunk. He's supposedly trying to act serious and mighty, was once the strongest empire ever, but always makes you laugh somehow. I really like characters like that. Russia has his crazy thing, but he's also cute when not crazy. The generic thing about a yandere is when they look like a cute little kid, but Russia looks all big and menacing, and yet when you see his face he seems really cute. His mentality seems really cute, so it throws you even more offguard when he turns crazy.
Finally, China acts like an old man. His personality doesn't seem to be as ridiculously overused as others, and well maybe being Asian I just like him, and also he reminds me of England for his love of cute things. This immaturity when you're not even supposed to be immature is adorable, but for America it's just annoying. It's like watching a baby cry, or a teenager act emo, or something like that! What's so interesting seeing America eat hamburgers when it's been done over and over and over again! A fat American feels like an old joke!
Even Germany, Italy, and Japan are more interesting than America. Japan has that whole "inside" feel where he seems awkward everywhere he goes and he has his closet perversion, while Germany is really sweet for...you know, for GERMANY. Even when you think Italy might have the pants in that relationship you see him drop those pants again (even literally) because he's too shy to tell Germany something when he has never been before!
In short, America is flat to me. He's too obvious. It's boring, really boring to me now. The only thing interesting about him and his country are the idiots in there, which I'm actually trying to avoid because I'm facepalming one-too-many-times. He's just so over-the-top, but not enough to BE over-the-top that makes him so completely boring.
And to add to that, Canada is not my favourite very much either because most of his personality DEPENDS on America, so my appeal for Canada's character starts going down if the whole point of his personality is to just be behind America, even if that's accurate these countries so familiar to me now get done too often that I just find it boring. Now how did I change my opinion on calling Japan boring, to calling Japan awesome and not giving a damn for America now? I don't know what happened.
Speaking of Japan, that brings us to Taiwan. I'm not having the same rant on Taiwan like I did on America. While I don't care for her much either my rant on her is rather different.
She is a character who has a lot of potential. I rarely see people actually reach her potential. I don't really read fanfics, so my interpretation on Taiwan largely comes from roleplays, which aren't all that interesting. If there are good Taiwan fanfics out there that actually make her interesting I could read them. Unlike America who has a lot of obvious stereotypes to form his character, causing him to become to boring to me since I see it so often, Taiwan is the exact opposite.
I haven't done much research on her, but trying to dig your head to find a canon for her is hard. What kind of Taiwanese stereotypes are there that aren't the generic Asian stereotype? The reason Hong Kong has a separate character from China is because of how much potential he had too. He was raised by England of all people. A country and character who I like to think drastically helps others around him to form their personality. This is largely because he has such a diverse personality in the first place, and that he has a lot of history. He also has many colonies so he has influenced quite a lot of people, not just in his own race, which is why Hong Kong is so interesting.
China has influenced all the Asians, but not really anybody else particularly outside, the fact that Hong Kong has been influenced by both these powerhouses of a character really gives Hong Kong a huge boost. His interpretation can be ANYTHING. A mixture of two weird things could bring out a really interesting character, which is why I love Hong Kong so much. My headcanon could change about him next week but I would still love him because he is such a versatile type of character. His character design helps, obviously.
Now Taiwan has this boost too, but instead of England she was once a colony of Spain I believe. Spain isn't as strong of a character as England. I don't think he would be as popular as he is without Romano. His personality, and Romano to some extent, depend on each other. I don't have anything against USUK except I find it kind of boring, but many USUK shippers heavily base these two characters off one another. I see nothing wrong with that, but the UK has a lot of other history as well, so he should be even more of a stronger character, so strong in fact that America shouldn't influence England as much as the other way around. After all, British people today don't really give a damn about the Revolution. They know that their history is not solely just raising America and fighting America and loving America. That's why I love England so much. He has a very interesting and entertaining rich history.
So do a lot of other countries, including Spain. Spain is always portrayed as a nice guy, but from his history he seems like a bit of a bastard. This missing piece in his history (even Japan is shown as a bastard sometimes in the strips) kind of hinders his personality. I don't read or look up much about Spain, so I'm not sure if this trait is added in fandom, but I mostly just see Spain being a nice guy and teasing Romano plus a huge love of tomatoes. That's about it.
So it's kind of hard to base Taiwan off that if she was influenced by him. If we take into account OF his history it would be much more interesting probably, but the lack of any of that I see (Again I could be wrong since Spain is not my favourite character so I don't go around staring at his fandom) makes it hard to do anything with Taiwan in the first place. Just being influenced by China is not good enough because lots of countries have. It also doesn't help that Taiwan is pretty recent, I don't see much of an identity there as strong as other identities.
But using what we have, we assume, even if it's completely historically inaccurate, that since Taiwan was influenced by Spain, perhaps Romano rubbed off on her as well? Maybe just a little? I don't find Romano all that interesting to be honest, I mean I can see his appeal, but it's somewhat one-dimensional. Not a lot of characters are interesting in this fandom actually, since it's just a silly comic and the entire premise of the comic is laughing at obscure things about history. I don't think the creator cares too much about characterization, and yet people still want more countries to have more character. Such as someone appearing in the comic for once, or anything like that. Fandom is much more powerful than an appearance in the comic I believe, or else how did HK even come to form? Still, seeing him there along with many other introduced countries would be nice.
What I dislike about Taiwan would be if she acted like a Yaoi fangirl. This has been done. Her name is Hungary. You already have the somewhat tsundere-girl in Seychelles (who I'm surprised isn't as popular as she can be. She also has a lot of potential and lots of canon to back it up, though it's still not much it's a lot more than a lot of other characters) constantly-crying-oversided chest Ukraine, and finally batshit insane Belarus. Now after listing all that I just realized how not-very-interesting the females actually are. It seems Hungary and Belarus have the most personality and that's pretty much it.
Maybe it's harder to think of personalities for females? That's quite possible, being a fan of Negima there are quite of lot characters who could basically not exist since someone else fills a perfectly similar role anyway. The males seem to have taken more of the personality-types avaliable, or maybe the countries that happened to get a female personifications just don't have a lot of identity as a country?
The downfall of that is Canada, who stole the "I have no identity" identity already, so even not having an identity is not unique and thus redundant and boring. What do you do now?
I guess the clear answer is that there are too many characters, and not every country has enough diverse history or stereotypes to make them into interesting characters. Taiwan isn't even considered a country in some places, so you know...but Sealand is interesting because of how extreme he is. There's four people living in his country, he's some steel island thing, and he wants to be a country. That's funny. And it works, so Sealand exists in Hetalia.
Making every character super perverted, super moronic, super bigoted etc. has been done already even if it makes no sense. Why is Denmark portrayed as a bastard or a pervert or something despite a lot of his high quality-of-life or generosity as a country today? Partly because of history probably, but it's also because it's funny. Isn't Denmark usually called the Canada of Europe? Then it just makes no sense anymore. That's the only basis for him. So if a country at the very least resembles their own country in their own way, I don't see the problem fleshing the character out to unknown territories.
And after this whole rant, I guess my appeal for Hetalia isn't actually the history, but the concept of history, stereotypes, and the influence of other countries to form a character's personality. Without having to create a backstory yourself and instead taking one that actually exists makes a character start to feel more real, and perhaps that's why other people enjoy Hetalia too? It's not a pathetic reason, with so much potential "canon" the storytelling possibilities are simply endless. I don't really like all those silly animes coming out where a person personifies a train station unless that train station has a lot of history and is well-known, and so the person can develop a history. Characters based off metals might work actually, if their personality is based off how the metal reacts, what it does with other metals. In this way learning about Science could be easier. Everything is easier if you can relate to it more, after all...
Also the BL is just a bonus. (Everything has BL, anyway).
Also useless opinions, but I tend to write them down anyway so I don't forget! That's what stuff like Livejournal are for, after all!
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My rants usually consist of fandom about my favourite characters, current events, nitpicks about life or anything else, and hamsters. Well today will be slightly different, since it still is a fandom rant, and so 99.7% of my readers will probably skip this, but if you're interested...read right ahead! It's moreso an examination of characterization anyway!
First let me start off by once against stating my ethnic race and my birthplace. I was born in Vancouver, Canada...and my parents came from a little village in Guangdong Province of China. The nations I choose to rant about today are actually....America and Taiwan.
How this is slightly different is already obvious, seeing as these countries are not exactly my favourite. Actually they're far from it, and there are reasons for that. I used to like America a lot more in the past. He was a character on-par with the rest of characters I enjoyed besides certain Asians who usually were on top, but America has sunk this past while. Taiwan is a different spectrum entirely. I dislike her for different reasons, and not exactly for as simple and shallow of a reason as: "She's a girl in the way of my OTP" or something like that. I rather avoid shipping wars all together.
Let's start with America. The first obvious reason is that I'm Canadian. Before Hetalia I cared not about America too much. They were just our neighbours down south and that was about it. After that, I started to dislike them more and more because I actually started to notice a lot of the things happening down there and current events in real life, really. I've ranted before about the far-right conversatives and how utterly stupid they're being. I'm sure there are far-left liberals, or at the very least outrageous people of both sides who are equally as stupid, but I'm noticing it now because of the huge media attention to Obama.
Before him there was Bush, and when I was younger I cared nothing about Politics. All I really knew was that Bush was stupid and declared a pointless war for the purpose of oil, but besides that I didn't care. Maybe conversatives liked Bush and thought the people opposing him had ridiculous reasons to do so, but I'm largely biased as both a Canadian and a not-very-much a conservative. It just sounds so ridiculously to call Obama the coming of Satan when Bush was the one who declared a War and got millions of people dead, but some people that voted for him didn't care and just ignored what he did and continued their life.
Besides immense stupidity, I think another reason Obama is getting a lot of shit from the stupid people is the timing. He became President at a very bad time, a time with economic woes, and with America in shambles. People like to quickly blame everything about that on the President, even if he was just there for about five days and all those things were the fault of the previous president.
I'm not sure why I rack my brain so hard trying to figure out why these people think this way. Why Fox News even exists, why people are even paid to have these opinions. I know lots of people tell you that everyone has the right to their opinion, but these opinions just make absolutely no sense. There is no evidence to back them up. It reminds of me of when people in the past thought women who were weird were witches and so should be executed. I guess all I can say is that people are stupid and trying to figure out why will break my brain.
Back to the actual topic on hand, which is actually America as a character, not his exact country...I can't exactly pinpoint why I didn't like America as much anymore. Can it be popularity? I know it's a silly reason, but I tend to dislike characters if I see them too often in fandoms, but I actually don't think that is the reasons considering how much I like England and that Japan is quite cool. (Japan in J-fen or the Japanese fandom, he's not so popular in the Western Fandom.)
So why is it? Perhaps my Canadian blood is naturally telling me that all American's should be hated just because I am Canadian. That hockey is superior to football, and that American's have corrupted us Canadians into calling it Football and not American Football, and using the dreaded word soccer for actual football. America seems like quite a lovable character. I love Korea so much, so why not America? Why?
As I rack my brain I try to think of other reasons I'm like this besides my Canadianness. This is because while I do like the character of Canada he is not my favourite. Perhaps my bias towards Asians just shines so strongly that even my Canadian patriotism is faded, but before Hetalia I was never as proud to be Canadian as I am now despite having been a hockey fan (though not as seriously until recently) since bloody 1994!
I'm pretty sure it's fairly obvious now though. America may be amusing, interesting, and the perfect character for his country, but I actually find him kind of dull. Perhaps it truly is because I see him too often, but unlike others I really can't get into the AmericaKorea craze, or AmericaxANYONE for that matter. I think he makes those pairings really boring. I don't see him as particularly hot or handsome or interesting or anything! Yet I used to support America's Asian Harem, I just don't really care for it anymore!
He's just...that generic idiot. I mean France is a pervert but also an arrogant yet clever bastard. England is very interesting. He seems a lot more complex than America, and it's not just because of his tsundereness since even that trait is starting to become generic, but more than that. He does stupid things when drunk. He's supposedly trying to act serious and mighty, was once the strongest empire ever, but always makes you laugh somehow. I really like characters like that. Russia has his crazy thing, but he's also cute when not crazy. The generic thing about a yandere is when they look like a cute little kid, but Russia looks all big and menacing, and yet when you see his face he seems really cute. His mentality seems really cute, so it throws you even more offguard when he turns crazy.
Finally, China acts like an old man. His personality doesn't seem to be as ridiculously overused as others, and well maybe being Asian I just like him, and also he reminds me of England for his love of cute things. This immaturity when you're not even supposed to be immature is adorable, but for America it's just annoying. It's like watching a baby cry, or a teenager act emo, or something like that! What's so interesting seeing America eat hamburgers when it's been done over and over and over again! A fat American feels like an old joke!
Even Germany, Italy, and Japan are more interesting than America. Japan has that whole "inside" feel where he seems awkward everywhere he goes and he has his closet perversion, while Germany is really sweet for...you know, for GERMANY. Even when you think Italy might have the pants in that relationship you see him drop those pants again (even literally) because he's too shy to tell Germany something when he has never been before!
In short, America is flat to me. He's too obvious. It's boring, really boring to me now. The only thing interesting about him and his country are the idiots in there, which I'm actually trying to avoid because I'm facepalming one-too-many-times. He's just so over-the-top, but not enough to BE over-the-top that makes him so completely boring.
And to add to that, Canada is not my favourite very much either because most of his personality DEPENDS on America, so my appeal for Canada's character starts going down if the whole point of his personality is to just be behind America, even if that's accurate these countries so familiar to me now get done too often that I just find it boring. Now how did I change my opinion on calling Japan boring, to calling Japan awesome and not giving a damn for America now? I don't know what happened.
Speaking of Japan, that brings us to Taiwan. I'm not having the same rant on Taiwan like I did on America. While I don't care for her much either my rant on her is rather different.
She is a character who has a lot of potential. I rarely see people actually reach her potential. I don't really read fanfics, so my interpretation on Taiwan largely comes from roleplays, which aren't all that interesting. If there are good Taiwan fanfics out there that actually make her interesting I could read them. Unlike America who has a lot of obvious stereotypes to form his character, causing him to become to boring to me since I see it so often, Taiwan is the exact opposite.
I haven't done much research on her, but trying to dig your head to find a canon for her is hard. What kind of Taiwanese stereotypes are there that aren't the generic Asian stereotype? The reason Hong Kong has a separate character from China is because of how much potential he had too. He was raised by England of all people. A country and character who I like to think drastically helps others around him to form their personality. This is largely because he has such a diverse personality in the first place, and that he has a lot of history. He also has many colonies so he has influenced quite a lot of people, not just in his own race, which is why Hong Kong is so interesting.
China has influenced all the Asians, but not really anybody else particularly outside, the fact that Hong Kong has been influenced by both these powerhouses of a character really gives Hong Kong a huge boost. His interpretation can be ANYTHING. A mixture of two weird things could bring out a really interesting character, which is why I love Hong Kong so much. My headcanon could change about him next week but I would still love him because he is such a versatile type of character. His character design helps, obviously.
Now Taiwan has this boost too, but instead of England she was once a colony of Spain I believe. Spain isn't as strong of a character as England. I don't think he would be as popular as he is without Romano. His personality, and Romano to some extent, depend on each other. I don't have anything against USUK except I find it kind of boring, but many USUK shippers heavily base these two characters off one another. I see nothing wrong with that, but the UK has a lot of other history as well, so he should be even more of a stronger character, so strong in fact that America shouldn't influence England as much as the other way around. After all, British people today don't really give a damn about the Revolution. They know that their history is not solely just raising America and fighting America and loving America. That's why I love England so much. He has a very interesting and entertaining rich history.
So do a lot of other countries, including Spain. Spain is always portrayed as a nice guy, but from his history he seems like a bit of a bastard. This missing piece in his history (even Japan is shown as a bastard sometimes in the strips) kind of hinders his personality. I don't read or look up much about Spain, so I'm not sure if this trait is added in fandom, but I mostly just see Spain being a nice guy and teasing Romano plus a huge love of tomatoes. That's about it.
So it's kind of hard to base Taiwan off that if she was influenced by him. If we take into account OF his history it would be much more interesting probably, but the lack of any of that I see (Again I could be wrong since Spain is not my favourite character so I don't go around staring at his fandom) makes it hard to do anything with Taiwan in the first place. Just being influenced by China is not good enough because lots of countries have. It also doesn't help that Taiwan is pretty recent, I don't see much of an identity there as strong as other identities.
But using what we have, we assume, even if it's completely historically inaccurate, that since Taiwan was influenced by Spain, perhaps Romano rubbed off on her as well? Maybe just a little? I don't find Romano all that interesting to be honest, I mean I can see his appeal, but it's somewhat one-dimensional. Not a lot of characters are interesting in this fandom actually, since it's just a silly comic and the entire premise of the comic is laughing at obscure things about history. I don't think the creator cares too much about characterization, and yet people still want more countries to have more character. Such as someone appearing in the comic for once, or anything like that. Fandom is much more powerful than an appearance in the comic I believe, or else how did HK even come to form? Still, seeing him there along with many other introduced countries would be nice.
What I dislike about Taiwan would be if she acted like a Yaoi fangirl. This has been done. Her name is Hungary. You already have the somewhat tsundere-girl in Seychelles (who I'm surprised isn't as popular as she can be. She also has a lot of potential and lots of canon to back it up, though it's still not much it's a lot more than a lot of other characters) constantly-crying-oversided chest Ukraine, and finally batshit insane Belarus. Now after listing all that I just realized how not-very-interesting the females actually are. It seems Hungary and Belarus have the most personality and that's pretty much it.
Maybe it's harder to think of personalities for females? That's quite possible, being a fan of Negima there are quite of lot characters who could basically not exist since someone else fills a perfectly similar role anyway. The males seem to have taken more of the personality-types avaliable, or maybe the countries that happened to get a female personifications just don't have a lot of identity as a country?
The downfall of that is Canada, who stole the "I have no identity" identity already, so even not having an identity is not unique and thus redundant and boring. What do you do now?
I guess the clear answer is that there are too many characters, and not every country has enough diverse history or stereotypes to make them into interesting characters. Taiwan isn't even considered a country in some places, so you know...but Sealand is interesting because of how extreme he is. There's four people living in his country, he's some steel island thing, and he wants to be a country. That's funny. And it works, so Sealand exists in Hetalia.
Making every character super perverted, super moronic, super bigoted etc. has been done already even if it makes no sense. Why is Denmark portrayed as a bastard or a pervert or something despite a lot of his high quality-of-life or generosity as a country today? Partly because of history probably, but it's also because it's funny. Isn't Denmark usually called the Canada of Europe? Then it just makes no sense anymore. That's the only basis for him. So if a country at the very least resembles their own country in their own way, I don't see the problem fleshing the character out to unknown territories.
And after this whole rant, I guess my appeal for Hetalia isn't actually the history, but the concept of history, stereotypes, and the influence of other countries to form a character's personality. Without having to create a backstory yourself and instead taking one that actually exists makes a character start to feel more real, and perhaps that's why other people enjoy Hetalia too? It's not a pathetic reason, with so much potential "canon" the storytelling possibilities are simply endless. I don't really like all those silly animes coming out where a person personifies a train station unless that train station has a lot of history and is well-known, and so the person can develop a history. Characters based off metals might work actually, if their personality is based off how the metal reacts, what it does with other metals. In this way learning about Science could be easier. Everything is easier if you can relate to it more, after all...
Also the BL is just a bonus. (Everything has BL, anyway).
