#hetalia alternate stories

[abunadafamily]

Stop 🛑🛑🛑

Urgent

MAKE A GOOD MEMORY, IF YOU IGNORE MY WORDS, YOU WILL KILL MY FAMILY, YOU LET US SUFFER…

Give us a glimmer of hope,

Help us survive,

Give us the desire to live,

Help us smile

Any donation and any sharing will be very precious to us 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼

@fancysmudges @brokenbackmountain @just-browsing1222-deactivated20 @mothblossoms @aleciosun @fluoresensitive @khizuo @lesbiandardevil @transmutationisms @schoolhater @timogsilangan @appsa @buttercuparry @sayruq @malcriada @palestinegenocide @sar-soor @akajustmerry @annoyingloudmicrowavecultist @feluka @tortiefrancis @flower-tea-fairies @tsaricides @riding-with-the-wild-hunt @visenyasdragon @belleandsaintsebastian @ear-motif @kordeliiius @brutaliakhoa @raelyn-dreams @troythecatfish @theropoda @tamarrud @4ft10tvlandfangirl @queerstudiesnatural @northgazaupdates2 @skatezophrenic @awetistic-things @camgirlpanopticon @baby-girl-aaron-dessner @nabulsi @sygol @junglejim4322 @heritageposts @chososhairbuns @palistani @dlxxv-vetted-donations @illuminated-runas @imjustheretotrytohelp

[kostevysen]

Me about to write a whole new Hetalia AU with this song

[fireandiceland]

Wanted to ask Spain and Prussia too but I arrived late so now I gotta be extremely predictable and ask for Austria. And maybe Italy, please..? 🙈

It's okay, I was already waiting for someone to ask for Austria hehehe ;)

Austria:

Italy:

send me a character and I'll assign them an archetype

[thirdlotusprince3]

Sci-fi fantasy / sci-fi Alternative Universe story prompts.

Write a Hetalia / countryhuman country in Eastern Europe or Asia as a land of fairy citizens living in trees.

Write a single Hetalia / countryhuman Asian country as steampunk, or the whole continent.

Write about a fictional golden age of piracy that existed in Eastern Europe, East Asia, or existed until modern time.

Write about a world that has been swept up with dusty dunes. How do the Hetalia countries / countryhumans, people in Asia, Europe, the Americas, Africa live?

Write about where one continent (Asia, Africa, Europe, North America, South America) represents the Moon, and the other the Sun. People with clothing like the moon and moon powers, people with clothing characteristics of the moon and sun.

Write an Hetalia country / countryhuman in 2589 and it has space pirates or cowboys.

Write about a Hetalia country / countryhuman, but it has a mix of ancient and futuristic design. (Ancient/futuristic architecture clothing, music)

Write about a second ice-age? How has it affected the world. How is one Hetalia country / countryhuman dealing with it?

Write about an existing continent. Each Hetalia country / countryhuman in it represents, characterizes an element.

Write about the old world (Europe, Asia, Africa) but it had cowboys in it.

Write about a Hetalia country / countryhuman in (Eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa) and it is a mermaid country underwater.

Write about a Hetalia country / countryhuman in Latin America in 2569 and it is cyberpunk.

Write about a fictional country that was formed when two existing countries had a joint colony.

Zap a historical figure from the past, place them in the present. What do they do?

Write about a drastic atmospheric change. The cold countries (Canada, Russia, Finland, etc.) have become hot and tropical, the hot countries (Latin America, Africa, Caribbean, Oceania, Southeast / South Asia, Middle East etc.) have become cold with heavy snow.

Write a historical event, but it had modern technology.

Write a historical time period, but it has superheroes.

Write about some Hetalia countries / countryhumans. They each represent, characterize a season.

Write about some Hetalia countries / countryhumans. They each represent, characterize a holiday, (Christmas, Halloween, Easter etc.)

[tyiaunia-harris]

Natalia was looking for her husband Toris at the coffee shop, he promised to meet her at.

"Now, where did that idiot go?" Natalia muttered to herself as she was about to call him on her phone, before she felt hands on her eyes.

"Guess who?" "Heh, you're voice gives you away darling."

Natalia turns to find her husband, Toris who gifts her a boutique of common flex and ruta, their national flowers.

"Sorry I'm so late, I was trying to be careful picking them from-"

Toris's sentence is broken with a kiss and a hug from his wife, which he gladly returns.

"Enough talking, I believe we have a date to attend. And snice you've been so sweet, I shall reward you later~"

And with that, their date was a success.

[aphpuffinchild]

since it's out i can finally post my piece for @hws-anthology as well as the timelapse for it. as is arguably all my hetalia work, it's a love letter to my friend @pyrrhocorax 's fic Sendlingur og Sandlóa - i'll ramble a bit about how much it means to me, as well as the symbolism i wormed into this piece below the read more :)

i originally had two pages planned for this piece, potentially more - the fic is a good 74k words long and certainly not light on scenes i could and wanted to pull from, but various things led into other various things and one page was all i could manage, so i tried to cram in what i could, so here's that (in a rough, somewhat arbitrary order of focal points)

the opening chapter! the car is a framing device for the piece as much as it is for the journey the characters will take following that first chapter, so i wanted to use the car window/shapes as a literal framing device in my drawing

joi, shaky at best in his sense of self, sees no reflection in the window, instead there's a silhouetted raven to signify the search he must go on to find it

while not perfectly transcribed by virtue of wonky (plus an extra) line(s), the notes coming from joi's headphones are the opening to the song sendlingur og sandlóa, the fic's namesake, which a loved one kindly transposed by ear for me for the purpose of this piece

in a similar vein, the stickers on joi's suitcase are of a purple sandpiper and a ringed plover, the birds after which the song is named - here they are as transparents and in their original colours

i wanted to create a sliiight impression that joi is the one knocking over the chessboard, representing his repeated rejections of it (both physically, and the things it represents)

the chess pieces were also chosen specifically! originally i was going to use a black rook and a white pawn to match chapter 41, but for the sake of having alternating colours and the rest of my metaphors working (iirc) i swapped those colours around. that, and i wanted to match chapter 13's white king and black pawn - the black pawn stuck, the white king was colour swapped for colour cohesion reasons like the other's. (visual contrast was important to me, but the white queen blending slightly into the sky was okay for symbolism reasons) (there was also black king, white rook from chapter 3, so it all worked out anyway - there's a lot of chess in this story and i only had space for so many pieces and colours, basically)

speaking of which, the black pawn is for joi (chapter 13), the white queen is for halle (someone who, from joi's perspective, can go anywhere, vs joi's pawn, someone to be used -> see chapter 35 and perspective).

the king piece is falling (but hasn't quite fallen) between halle and henrik (chapter 3, 7, 13, though i most clearly thought of 19)

the person in the top right corner is eduard! i desperately wanted to include him because i think he's deserved it, and i considered a lot of ways of working him in, but i think an ambiguous silhouette that isn't Quite part of the main picture works better narratively

note also that he's separated from the other's through a red curtain, to represent the iron curtain (naturally) i wanted it to match ber + tino's part in some way, to sorta emphasise their similar foundations despite being split apart across places

the flowers at eduard's window are placed and chosen purposefully as well! orange/red zinnia's outside (for familial ties, steadfastness, friendship and remembrance) for what eduard puts out in to the world, then lily-of-the-valley for tino and cornflower for him inside to show what he wants to hold close :)

halle and joi are the only characters with their eyes open - halle looks towards the viewer/author/reader/joi, while joi looks away all together. if you've read the fic (which i assume you have because i can't imagine this is interested to read otherwise) you probably don't need me to explain why that reflects their roles in the story

similarly, every character apart from the brothers is turned towards another in some way (eduard does not count when his flowers do, and his role in the story is based around that disconnect partially anyway) tino towards ber and eduard (and hana, i guess), ber towards tino, henrik to halle, halle to henrik (though he looks away - his values are elsewhere even when they are together). joi, at best, looks at his own reflection in the window

the colour scheme, while arbitrarily picked from gradient maps based on what i felt "fit" has been approved by the author as being very "SoS core"

finally, the poem on the note, chapter 46

all that being said, i can and will now talk about my personal relationship with SoS, so unless that interests you i imagine the post is done now! thank you for reading :)

the first comment i posted on SoS is dated 2nd November 2016 - logging into my old account i can see i bookmarked it on the 31st August that same year, so i can safely assume i first read or at least found it then. a month after my first comment, i posted another on a different account, pouring a few bits of my heart out and the author responded! we went back and forth a bit and eventually talked (i think) via tumblr for a little, but the majority of our conversations were via skype for whatever reason (we didn't call, just texted). it was a lot of me looking for writing advice, insight to their work/process/skill, talking about The Brothers and talking about psychology/the brain on a general and personal level. i think if i read our conversations back now i'd cringe, given that i was an awkward, fumbling 16 year old, but i dont think anything else wouldve been fitting given the subject matter. eventually our conversations fizzled out and we stopped talking for years, but i'd go back to SoS routinely and cry.

in may of 2021, i posted another comment during what in hindsight was definitely another relatively minor mental health episode - i think it was half trying to emphasise how important the work was to me on the off chance pyrr saw it, and half a bid for connection since i had no idea if they even remembered us talking. i assumed nothing would come of it, and for about a year that was true - until pyrr responded after all in february of 2022 - i'm happy to say we've been talking consistently on discord since then. i feel a little weird speaking too intimately about our friendship as it is now since it's not just my story to tell (though pyrr, if you're reading this) (i'm sure you are at some point) (you're welcome to talk about it however, i just didn't want to without consulting you) but i can say with some certainty that it's at least a little bit my fault that we have a sequel now - cementing my place as official number #1 fan and validating the me from almost 8 years ago in a way i don't think either of us processes well.

it's here that i feel the need to talk about my other dear friend, @hws-lceland , who i'm grateful to have met through the zine's discord server. i'm sure they're reading this too, and a lot of what our relationship means to me is stuff that's probably a bit too vulnerable for either of us to speak publicly, but i *can* say that i love them very much, and i'm really grateful to have someone else to understand, and that he read SoS for me. i thought he needed it, and i hope i was right

sendlingur is...endlessly important to me. i'm aiming to not write an essay here (a goal i think i've already sorta shot in the foot) but i think it's important for me to talk about some of this a little loudly, all the same. my writing has changed because of the series - remeeting with pyrr and showing them some of my more recent work was interesting since it was apparent even to them the influences i'd taken (to be fair, in one section i explicitly asked and did borrow a format of theirs, but this goes beyond that). when i was 16 i asked my mum to read the fic in a desperate bid to be understood. i've cried reading the fic many, many times. i've signed off letters and poems with my switched around version of i'm sorry / thank you / i love you (i swap the first two around) many, many, many times, including in a close friend's wedding gift. SoS has very sincerely changed my definition of love. the name halle is a part of my abstract mindscape. id already considered changing my name to johannes anyway and this fic certainly didnt help. i've gained a friendship of 7 and a half years through it. i've gained another newer one now, too. i am not well. i wasn't well then, reading it, and it hasn't fixed me (i am worse, now, arguably), but it healed something, or at least made me feel understood. i could go on, and maybe sometime i will (there were so many things i wanted to include in my piece and pay homage to!), but for now i will thank anyone who took the time to read all this (again), and say that i look forward to experiencing the sequel

as always, i'm sorry, thank you, i love you

[jewsinfandoms]

"War and peace"

What is “Jews In Fandoms”? The past several months have not been welcoming for Jews, but we’re still here! Jews have long been part of fandom and this prompt list will celebrate our love and passion for our favorite things. Whether it’s fanfiction, fanart, headcanons, meta analysis, fan recipes - you name it, we’ll take it. The main requirement is that all entries must involve Judaism in a positive way. 

How does it work? Every second Sunday we will announce a new prompt. You will have time until the next prompt to write, draw, cosplay, sing or contribute in any other way, as long as it is related to the prompt.

Post it on your Tumblr account, and don't forget to tag us @jewsinfandoms, so we will reblog it before announcing the next prompt in a showcase post.

Please remember to tag your creation with all the appropriate content warnings and triggers. These are trying times, and we want to keep everybody safe and informed.

Who can post to the AO3 collection? Everybody! You may add your entry for the JIF prompts, or older works that are Judaism related. The collection is moderated, so it might take us a while to approve your work. Here is the LINK.

In hope of quieter times, what will you write about? What about some Hetalia fanart? Or write a different ending to Captain America: Civil War? Maybe an alternative to the love story portrayed Casablanca?

We accept all fandoms. So long as your fanwork meets our other requirements, follow your hearts’ desire!

NOTE: This space is Zionist-friendly. Israel is a huge part of Judaism and home to half of the world’s Jewish population. Your work doesn’t have to involve politics, but please be respectful of this integral connection.

No fandom-bashing and/or ship-bashing. Again, be respectful.

You do not have to be Jewish to participate, but you must be an ally to Jewish people.

Here is the masterlist of the last prompt, Hope.

[mangofresca]

skip your early classes, let’s learn how our bodies work chapter one: i

“So,” Lovino starts, speaking slowly and deliberately as he puts the pieces together on what may be the dumbest puzzle he has ever seen, but by God it may just be dumb enough to work. “You want us to get married to get better financial aid. Right?” Antonio nods. “Right.” “And then, you want us to get divorced after we graduate. Am I understanding this correctly?” Antonio nods. Again. “Yes.” After a minute of deliberative silence on Lovino’s part and impatient, twitching eagerness on Antonio’s, Lovino hums, shrugs, and turns back to his laptop. “Minimum three free meals and a nap. With pasta.” Or, a story of two idiots in love, as told in three parts. multichapter, spamano.

Words: 16,000, Chapters: 1/3, Language: English

Fandoms: Hetalia

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Relationships: South Italy/Spain (Hetalia), France & Prussia & Spain (Hetalia), Belgium & South Italy (Hetalia)

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - College/University, Friends to Husbands to Lovers, because who wouldn’t marry their buddy for some extra money, Fake Marriage, Mutual Pining, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Codependency, Antonio and his floaty inner monologue my beloved, this could double as a character study if you squint hard enough, A few other characters do make appearances but not enough to be worth tagging, Appalling use of parentheses and italics (but what else is new)

im hesitant to say im back, but im not not back, y’know? i still have much on my plate and will be prone to sudden bouts of disappearances in the near future, but ive also been sitting on this behemoth for far too long. the plan is to post a chapter a week, but we'll see how that goes. ive never written anything as long as what this fic will be, so be kind, please. ok thx!!!!!!!

[minanini]

Asakiku week 2025 Day 2

Entry to the @asakikuweek2 Day 2

Characters:

Japan (Hetalia)

England (Hetalia)

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe - Witchcraft

Mystery Stories

Flowers

Words:1,466

Link to the AO3

White rose was as innocent as the white petals it possessed.  Orange rose was as happy as the orange petals it possessed. Blue rose was as mysterious as the blue petals it possessed. Red rose was...

Honda looked up, holding a bouquet of the white chrysanthemums that he bought not so long ago. The church he was going to be built on the hill that was situated away from the little village he stayed for his summer break. He was a simple student from Japan learning design in England. In fact, he could return to Japan, true, but his friend Alfred took him to some small old village. He was trying to get inspiration for his comic, while Honda was just... tagged along. Nothing more.

But the more time he spent there, the more he started liking this village. It even had its own little legend, although a strange one – it was titled as the simple “Four roses”. Jones didn’t like it, calling it some “old and boring fairy tale for toddlers”, but Kiku was fascinated by it.

Four brothers of the one house that were called by the roses that were growing in their garden. White Rose brother was the eldest, and he was titled as the “most innocent of them all”. He was a bit stern, but he possessed a kind soul and innocent heart, so he left the village to help another one. And then he vanished; so did white roses – they withered the day the brothers heard that White Rose brother was no longer alive.

The second brother was trying to help them get through the hard mourning times, as he was trying to live up to his title “the happiest of them all”. He smiled, sang and danced – he’d done anything for his two brothers to smile. Yet one day this poor rose withered as well, since he couldn’t bear the responsibilities he was met with. He was found lying in his red blood among the orange roses that were tainted with the blood. “I’m sorry” was the only message Orange Rose brother left for his younger brothers that were deeply wounded by the sadness and mourning...

But the third brother did nor succumb to despair; he decided to run away from the village instead. It was rumoured that he was a powerful mage or even a witch, so slowly, the village was turning their backs on the brothers... Yet when he heard the “no” from his younger brother, he didn’t persuade him to change his answer, he just accepted it and mysteriously, as he was titled “the most mysterious of them all”, disappeared, never being heard of ever again. Yet his roses did not fell or withered; they were alive, as were alive red roses.

No one remembered how Red Rose brother looked like. But every storyteller of the village was telling as the one: he was wicked. The actual witch of them all and the one who made poor brothers wither, always remembering how the Orange Rose brother died, while his roses were tainted with the bloody red...

Yet one kind French man told Kiku something more about this brother. He was the youngest and the most closeted off. He never talked with outsiders, yet he was always known for his healing abilities – he was the best healer in the village. Harsh, a bit rude, but gentle healer that was doing his job as no one could do. He was mourning every brother in his own way – he came up with the medicine he named after the White Rose brother and he left a self-drawn portrait of the Orange Rose brother for everyone to see. 

But one day, blue roses just disappeared without any trace. Thus, he was proclaimed the last and only brother of the roses. Red rose was left all alone with his healing duties, yet one day something drastic happened–

Kiku gently put the flowers down on the tombstone. It was foolish of him to feel sorry for someone who probably was just wrongly accused of the witchhood, but he couldn’t help himself. Not when that French man was telling how much he cared for the garden and how hard he was trying to help people during the strange pandemic that occurred. Yet, he was met with the raging townsfolk that decided that Red Rose was the one who wronged all of them and made the God angry with the village, thus being the reason for the strange illness among them.

...It’s idiotic. Kiku knew that. Yet this bouquet that was lying now on the old stones that were forming the “Rose brother’s tombstone” and he could only question where the red rose was on it. White, orange, and blue... yet no red. It was saddening; it was...

“Oh my,” Kiku turns around to see someone in the black robe with their hood on. Although the voice was more of a man than of a woman, he couldn't tell who that was... “I could never imagine that someone would put flowers on this grave after all... these years.”

The figure came closer, taking chrysanthemums in their arms. Kiku didn’t see their faces, so he could hardly understand what exactly this person was doing and feeling, but somehow they felt... really strange. They didn’t feel like someone really dangerous, yet they didn’t look like someone to be trusted. 

“What’s the name of these flowers, buddy?”

This question was a strange one. Aren't chrysanthemums a well known flowers in Europe...?

“...Chrysanthemums, sir.” “I see. So it’s not roses, after all... how peculiar.” “You think so...?” “Usually, people leave white, orange and blue roses here. Usually white ones.”

The person took the bouquet, pressing it into their chest. And, somehow, it felt rather... endearing, although it wasn’t their bouquet. Yet they acted like it was meant for them and it was creepy; creepy, but somehow charming.

“I thought it would be really rude to the youngest brother...” “Oh, you’re about that wicked witch?” “...I-I’m sorry?” “You didn’t know? He was the witch that killed his brothers. ...Or, so the townsfolk say.”

“I don’t believe that.”

The other person hummed with interest: “Really?”

Kiku answered with honesty in his eyes: “Really.”

The person laughed. It almost sounded like hysterical laughter. Kiku even stepped back, feeling that it might be the time for him to run away. But then the person took their hood off, showing a... quite handsome young man. His green eyes pierced through Kiku; his smile made Kiku gulp a little. He was blond, taller than Kiku, and he was looking at him like he was looking through his very soul.

“I see. What an unusual guest I have here.” “...“Guest”...?”

The man walked closer, touching Kiku’s chin gently. He gave him the sweetest smile, but then he put his finger onto Honda’s lips, telling him to be silent with this gesture.

“I have good advice for you, youngster,” he tilted his head, looking somewhere away. “Sometimes folks are right, sometimes they are not. Never try to think who’s in wrong and who’s in right by yourself. It's futile,” he laughs a little, taking his hand from Kiku’s chin. “Since the truth was lost long ago. But hear my yet another advice...”

Kiku felt that someone was standing behind him now; it was the man with the charming green eyes. He was before him a second ago, yet now he was behind, still holding Kiku’s bouquet close to himself. He gently put his free hand onto Kiku's waist, leaning closer to his ear.

“No one mourns the wicked. And so should you. Never mourn me.”

The next moment Honda blinked, there was no one. No other person, no flowers, nothing – just a simple warm wind blowing somewhere far, far away...

The next morning, Kiku found a strange, peculiar vase on his bedside table that was never meant to be there. It was really simple with a bad shape, but... what was inside really made Kiku give out a sigh of shock. White rose, orange rose, blue rose... and two red roses. Yet the moment Kiku touched the coloured roses they withered – only a lonely, white one was left. And somehow, it made Kiku’s heart race. 

Later, he would find a note underneath the vase. 

You probably heard the story of the Rose Brothers, I believe, right? But they never tell what red rose was, so let me tell you. Red rose was as bloody as the red petals it possessed. Be aware, my dear chrysanthemum. Never trust anyone, even me; even your friend. Yet don’t try to push me away or pull me closer, since I’m always near. May this rose bloom into the colour of the feelings you will feel for me. I hope it won’t be black. – Arthur.

[iam-lnt]

I'm curious about the Hetalia fandom in China. Can you share some stories (fandom culture, fanfic/fanart, event, etc) in there? 🫶🏻🌹

In recent years, I have had the opportunity to know some Chinese Hetalians, and I find them very friendly (including you, too 🫣).

Most of my favorite couples are not too... popular in China (🤕), so the chances to meet someone share the same passion is much lower (😭), but everyone I met who sailed the same ship 🚣🏻‍♀️ with me is really nice 💕

Thank you for answering all of my random questions 😭‼️

disclaimer first: I have *been* in the hetalia fandom in China, yes, but strictly speaking I'm not actively involved in events/offline meetings/fandom chats etc. so this may be a biased viewpoint. BUT it's still a viewpoint, and since you asked I figure I should tell you as much of what I know as possible.

So...here we go! 🤓☝️

(This whole thing looks like a whole ass analysis bc that's how my brain have been working for the past few days. I rly want to sound like my inner enthusiastic self but somehow it turned out like this. urgh💦）

From my experiences, I'd say Chinese hetalian fandom is most similar to that of Japan/ Korea (typical east Asian bunch bruh). And on a macro scale, Chinese hetalians share basically the same material with every other hetalian around the world.

Here are some things abt the fandom culture as a whole that I can categorize and tell you:

Censorship issues and avoidance

Due to certain sensitive contents and the...weird Internet regulation laws i guess, main streaming sites such as Bilibili does not have episodes like the April fools' one, the Valentine one, the first episode of the horror movie one, and the whole freaking season 7. ofc the consensus here is that we all have various ways of getting the missing episodes' resources, so yes we know Ludwig proposed using a tomato ring and we know everyone served bc Antonio was being stupidly kinky (kinky-ly stupid?)

This also applies to how Chinese hetalians would refer to the characters. Like elsewhere, we either call them by their human name (e.g. Alfred, Alfred F. Jones) or the nation name (e.g. America).

- In the human name scenario, it can be just "阿尔弗雷德" ("Alfred" in Chinese), or it can be various nicknames branching out from the name "Alfred", like “阿尔弗"("Alfie")/"阿尔" ("Al").

- In the nation name scenario, though, dashes are used to separate characters to avoid unwanted problems. "美国" ("America") will thus be typed as "美/国". As you can see that's pretty troublesome, especially if there's more than two characters in a name. So, alternatively, countries names are also nicknamed using various ways like what it sounds similar to, either in English, Chinese, or the original Japanese. Now that's a whole different language thingy topic to expand on...I'll just leave it here

Fandom events and interactions

That's something pretty popular on Lofter i think, tho I've never participated in one. Basically, a bunch of people will gather up for a week/month/specific anniversary of celebration, in which they contribute art or fanfics to a character/a ship/a group using a special tag.

Oh right Tumblr has those too...just remembered. Okay I guess then that's easy to understand ✌️

Some may have group chats with oomfs that like the same ship/character. These chats can be using communication apps like Wechat or QQ. It's like a oomfs pro max chat box where they joke and rants abt everything.

Others would go to offline events, organized by fans or comic cons officials. Cosplayers and artists would do their thing of serving the fandom with amazing works.

There's also this obsession with buying official goods like badges and cards, putting these goods in neat arrangements and decorations, and photographing them. I'm not sure what that's called but I've seen fans do that with their fav character(s). Pretty sure it's also a thing elsewhere.

Fanfics. fan arts and ships

Let's just say the popular ships will always be popular ships. Tho I'm highlighting the fact that russia/china is a pretty popular ship up there with UsUk/FrUk/Gerita etc. best I can comment is "because history" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Fanfics and fan arts are posted on sites such as Lofter. Bilibili is used more for editing/animation. Lots of good stuff can be found bc istg there Chinese hetalians cook HARD. Also fun fact: those posted on ao3 have a high possibility of being or having smut/r18 stuff bc...see censorship lol

---

riiiiight i think that's about it for this time! you can see I've locked in for this answer bc there's little emoji used lmao

ngl your questions can get my head working and thinking so i like them very very much! You can relax and "tutoyer" yourself w me 😏

[platonic-pals-punchout]

WELCOME TO PLANTONIC PALS PUNCHOUT!

If Saturday cartoons taught us anything it’s that The Power Of Friendship is the ultimate weapon that can defeat any obstacle! But can it defeat...other friendships!? 

This tournament will pit Dynamic Duo vs Dynamic Duo to see who has the Ultimate Friendship. They will do this by punching other pairs in the face winning polls! The competition will be single-bracket-style (because that’s the only kind I know how to do lol)

[SUBMIT HERE!] but read the rules first :3 We have 100 fandoms represented by over 130 submissions! Thanks so much to everyone!! Preliminary polls are being organized NOW to limit the number of pairs to 1 per fandom. 

Rules: 

👉Characters must be (or once were) canonically friends, which means they’ve had on-screen/in-text buddy time together, or have mentioned their friendship explicitly. Characters who start as friends but lose their friendship are allowed! 👉No real people, real people playing themselves (DSMP, etc), or country-fictions (Hetalia, etc). I may accept pets or OCs IF they get multiple submissions from different people and there’s room left in the bracket (I feel bad when they lose :(  )  👉No Harry Potter or Attack on Titan. 👉Pairs only. As fun as groups are, I worry that having more characters on their team may sway the votes. Characters with DID or who otherwise have alternate identities count as a single character. 👉Canonically romantic pairs must have significant on-screen/in-text platonic time, and/or emphasis placed on buddy-hood over romance throughout the story.* (a good example is Phoenix Wright & Miles Edgeworth) This is semi-subjective & somewhat controversial, so I’ll be prioritizing purely platonic friendships. Friends With Benefits™️ are totally fine as long as they are actually friends.  👉Familial pairs are fine as long as their buddy-hood is emphasized throughout the story. (a good example is Goofy & Max) 

*Sometimes characters only get together late into the story, or use the Power of Friendship even after getting together, or their relationship is on the vague side, so these duos may be included ^^ Essentially, even if they get together romantically, you’re still submitting them as friends, and confirming that their relationship is portrayed as comfortably platonic more than romantic/pining. 

As for me, my name is Murphy (he/him or she/her), I’m arospec, Autistic, and I’ve never run a tournament before. I can’t make polls on desktop for unknown reasons & barely know how to use mobile, so this blog might be a bit...scuffed, at first ^^; please be patient with me.

Shameless self-plug: if you like my me, please check out my [YouTube channel] where I do art & science education, or my [Warriors/art tumblr]. Thank you!!

[hetalia-club]

Share the plot sis!

YOU GOT IT!

Here is the Hetalia fighting game I have thought about for nearly a decade now.

I have spent too much time sitting around thinking about what a Hetalia fighting game would be like/ I think a dating sim was a dumb idea for a game and a fighting game would just be better tbh. So the game would play like a typical fighter akin to Mortal Kombat so like a side facing fighting game. They would all have their own skill sets, finishing moves and what not that was heavily influenced by their culture & personalities. Now I don't think it would be as violent as Mortal Kombat (Though I think that would be fun and play into the absurdity that is Hetalia and it is an M rated series and they could get away with it if they wanted. Plus they are all immortal so that would be a good 'yeah he's fine' type thing, you may have gotten cut in half but rub some dirt in it, tis but a scratch.) They would have outfits you could choose from & unlock as you play. Costumes would be based on things like Magical Strike, Cardverse, Gangsta, Historical, Pop Culture references. I also think it would be fun if they could all wear each others clothing. So the outfits were not all character based and you could put let's say Russia in America's Cowboy outfit and that would be fine.

A mechanic I imagine is a Specials Bar

Specials Bar- would be the meter you build up In order to do your special/finishing moves. You would build it up by landing hits and combos. And successfully evading hits and someone else’s special attack by timing it just right.

Fighting styles would be something like this England: Would use magic almost entirely. Would have a wand. Mostly a mid-long range fighter but would have a ‘vanish’ type move you could do to make a quick get away. Arthur and a few others would have a separate bar called a ‘magic meter’ that could be used for separate things like the vanishing in a cloud of smoke or combo breaking. A full magic meter could be used to cancel a special/finishing attack. He would have to charge the magic meter making it difficult to build up but worth it if you could pull it off.

Italy: would have really good evading, a quick dash you would have to time just right to avoid and would have quick high hit count combos. He would be a speed fighter for sure. Would mostly use his fists but would pull a knife out of his boot during combos. Unlike other characters who need to hit other characters to build up their specials bar. Italy’s specials bar would build up very slowly as he’s hit as well.

America- would be a slower character but a really heavy hitter to balance him out. His combos would now be high hits but instead like 2 or 3 really good punches. Would have pistols you could use to stagger and block cancel.

So The game wouldn't be set in an actual war because that would be fucked. But instead it would make up it's own scenario that I think would work really well.

They game would focus as Italy as the starting main character in the story. It would start off as Italy waking up one morning and realizing from watching the news all the other countries are gone and have replaced by doublegangers. He travels around the world freeing the other countries from their captors. Which are, you guessed it the 2p characters. As you free other countries you gain the option to use them in fights instead of Italy, but Italy will still be the main character. The 2ps are not recolors but are instead totally separate characters with their own move sets & finishers. You are trying to solve the mystery of who these people are, why they look like everyone, where they came from and who is in charge of it all. It's reveled that 2p Italy is the ring leader behind the whole thing & they are from an alternate dimension.

so yeah...that's it

[unhetalia]

I love thinking about the concept of Nations (as seen in Hetalia) and thinking about how they would actually work in an alternate real-world reality, and a lot of the time I tend to disagree with what we've seen from Himaruya's canon.

I like to think that there are actually different kinds of Nations - those that are a combination of land, history, and culture, and those that are a combination of history and culture. The former won't fade even if their people stop becoming 'part' of them, and this explains Prussia. Rome, Ancient Greece and Germania were the latter type, and faded when their people did.

What the two types of Nations have in common is that they care deeply for those living on their land. This is why I don't think it would work to have Nations working with the government.

I do think older Nations would have made this mistake, but they would have quickly realised that ruling over the people =/= caring for the people. (The French Revolution's bloodiness being France's way of wiping his existence from the minds of an entire bloodline.)

Different countries definitely have different stories, but by "modern" times, there are many countries who have nothing to do with their governments at all.

Each Nation 'helps' their people in different ways, and despite all of them having different levels of closeness with other Nations (that don't usually have to do with politics), they tend to take their work of protecting the land and people seriously.

Their 'world meetings' are not government sanctioned, it's all just meetings of how they can effectively work both separately and together to keep their people and the lands safe.

Nations are protectors, guardians, and historical observers, but it is always humans who precipitate events.

[shachaai]

[Hetalia Version] The Lindworm’s Lullaby Chapter 1

Chapters: 1/14 Rating: Explicit (For Gore) Main Relationships: Arthur Kirkland (England)/Gabriel Cardoso Fernandes (Portugal) Characters: Arthur Kirkland (England), Gabriel Cardoso Fernandes (Portugal), Original Child Character(s), Ludwig Beilschmidt (Germany), Julia Blumenschien (Fem Prussia), Kiku Honda (Japan), Lovino Vargas (South Italy), Assorted Others Other Tags/Warnings: Alternate Universe - Human AU, FBI Murder Mystery/Thriller, Case Fic, Adapted from a Hannibal Fic, Baby Fic, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha Gabriel Fernandes, Omega Arthur Kirkland, Pre-Relationship, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Single Parent Arthur Kirkland, Violence and Gore Canon-Typical to Hannibal Levels, Cute Moments and Murder, Murder Scenes, Dead Bodies, Poisoning, Discussions about torture/infidelity/rape

The FBI is called in to investigate when a series of bodies shows up around Ohio: all of them alphas, and all of them skinned alive. With the killer’s motives a mystery, Ludwig Beilschmidt pulls Arthur Kirkland from the classroom and his vigil at the comatose Madeline Williams’ bedside once more to lend his insight to the case - with very little mind paid to the fact that the busy Arthur, omega and single mother to a six month-old daughter, might have some scheduling issues. Necessity - and pressure from Ludwig - drives Arthur into reluctantly asking Gabriel Fernandes for a favour at short notice. Gabriel is delighted to help Arthur with babysitting - once he has, of course, recovered from both the surprise of learning that Arthur Kirkland even has a baby to care for and, presented with the adorable armful that is a sleepy Lenore Kirkland, feeling a little skinned raw himself.

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Chapter 1: some late visitor entreating 1. A few important things to acknowledge before you read on: This is absolutely one of my Hannibal fanfics that I (lightly) filed the serial numbers off of just to reapply Hetalia details instead. It was a dare, okay. If you’re not into artistic horror and murder scenes of the kind Hannibal provides in abundance (or are simply not old or mature enough to watch that show in the first place), this is not the fic for you. Read at your own risk. 2. You don’t have to have watched Hannibal to understand this story, but it may deepen your understanding of the general universe if you have. (This story takes place between S01E2 Amuse-Bouche and S01E03 Potage.) 3. I won’t be posting this on AO3 (I changed a lot, but not enough for it to feel like its own thing to me), so feel free to copy and paste this fic elsewhere for ease of private reading; I don’t care. 4. No insult is meant to any country/nationality by the character assignments/roles; I just picked personalities that I thought might be the closest to my original portrayals.

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You are made of flesh and nerve and thought, of heart and love and wonder and grief, as I am. - Jeanann Verlee, For the Woman Who Loved the Predator More Than His Prey

But it is better to dissect than abstract nature… - Francis Bacon, Novum Organum

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Arthur Kirkland’s lecture hall is dark, its only true light the bare bald glare of the projector screen on his back. It reflects back on the eyes of his attentive students in the audience: on the white sclera, on the thin glowing rings of alpha red and omega gold. On the occasional flash of fangs when lips part and teeth chew down on lips, shadowy heads bending over the desks in front of them to type or scribble notes.

Arthur, front of room and frowning against a headache that is determined to rise even in a room hush with learning, leans back against his desk and resists the temptation to reach up and knuckle at his eyes. Monday afternoons drag on for everyone, and, if Arthur yields too visibly to his own tiredness, many of his students will take his cue and switch off to follow suit.

“Opisthokonta,” he declaims instead, pausing momentarily for the clicks of pens and keys to find themselves a new line. (Or the spelling.) A percussive response, mentally filed away as rote by the time Arthur has gotten to this, his third identical lecture of the day. “The large supergroup of eukaryotes - that would be organisms whose cells contain a nucleus - which includes both the animal and fungal kingdoms.”

Arthur taps a button on the projector remote in his hand, patient against the reactive flinch that goes through his audience as the screen behind him switches from plain white to the - primarily - black, intricate branches of a phylogenetic tree. “If we, humans - not-so-proud members of the biological kingdom Animalia, if anyone was in doubt -, trace back far enough on the genetic family tree, we discover our distant cousins in the Holomycota clade down the street: fungi, and those eukaryotes liker to fungi than animals.”

No pointing out of the relevant branches on the diagram is required; Arthur had highlighted Opisthokonta, Animalia and Holomycota in red on the tree before uploading his presentation.

Another tap of the remote, and the phylogenetic tree is replaced with a blare of technicolour: a photograph of a killer, and one familiar to Arthur’s class of FBI trainees at that. Another reactive flinch goes through Arthur’s students  - less pronounced than before as their eyes adapt -, the mingled scents drifting in the currents of the room sharpening with recognition.

One Berwald Oxenstierna, recently apprehended, stares out stoically from the projector screen, the look in his frozen eyes as strained as the smile failing to stretch his lips. The media had given the beta man many names when the details of his crimes had finally come to light - the Gardener, the Mushroom Man - and used just as many different candid shots as they could get of him, but Arthur, unwilling to slap garish and distracting headlines into his presentation, had snagged the photograph on Oxenstierna’s last work ID - now stored in Evidence - to use instead.

(It’s a terrible photo with the light reflecting blankly off of Oxenstierna’s glasses, and something small and cruel and petty in Arthur had picked it almost precisely for that reason.)

Arthur raises one hand, gesturing to the screen behind him and feeling each button on the sleeve beneath his blazer press firmly to his wrist. (The cuffs on omega sleeves are unforgiving bastards.) “Berwald Oxenstierna was interested in a family reunion. He used his position as a pharmacist to tamper with his victims’ medications, inducing diabetic comas in seven men and women of mixed dynamics before planting them in the ground. Still - however temporarily - alive, but highly unlikely to ever regain consciousness. Fertiliser.”

Tap. Pause. Tap. Pause. Tap. Arthur cycles through the crime scene photographs taken of Oxenstierna’s ‘garden’, waiting briefly between one image and the next to give his students time to absorb both the layout of the scene and what it might infer. The seven graves all in a row, and the gradual - and thoroughly documented - excavation of each. The decaying, fungi-ridden bodies of six of the victims in the arms of the on-scene emergency medical technicians: organisms raised from the earth more humanoid than recognisably human. The quickly-snapped shot of the - at that point - still-living victim being wheeled towards an ambulance.

In the blanketing darkness of the lecture hall, someone audibly gags.

Arthur ignores them. The trainees will need strong stomachs if they hope to work in the field one day, and a few crime scene photographs is the very least they should be able to handle. (Crime scene photographs do not, yet, communicate smell.) “Decomposition was enthusiastically encouraged. The victims were all buried in high-nutrient compost and fed intravenously with a regular supply of dextrose, advancing both the growth of the local fungi and the gradual decline of the victims’ endocrine systems.

“Despite what you may immediately assume from these photographs, for Berwald Oxenstierna’s seven victims, death, eventually, came by way of kidney failure. Something almost entirely incidental to their killer’s greater vision.”

A new gust of air disturbs the room: the door to the lecture hall opposite Arthur’s desk has opened, and a familiar bulky silhouette slipped inside. Content for now, it seems, to loiter in the doorway with shoulders broad and grim. Blocking the exit.

Arthur’s headache picks up another irritable notch as glowing alpha eyes meet his own across the room, a slow and steady thud in his skull sounding in pace with his heart.

Arthur raises his chin and turns his gaze deliberately to sweep across his students instead, a challenge to the class. Someone needs to make sure the next generation of FBI agents can actually rub two brain cells together. “To Oxenstierna, the point was not that his victims died. His goal was evolution: for the fungi to grow, for his victims to join the vast, intelligent mycelial networks that can stretch for miles under the surface of the earth. Crossing the boundaries that occur naturally between organisms in life. And death.

“If you walk into a field of mycelium, they know you are there. They respond to your presence. They communicate.” Arthur switches back to the presentation slide using Oxenstierna’s work ID, the sombre visage of the killer behind Arthur matching his own flat glare out at the room around them. “Berwald Oxenstierna viewed his own actions as helping others to communicate - with nature, with each other, and with themselves. Connecting individuals into a greater whole. He was caught only because others finally stumbled onto his garden and because, after the FBI rescued his eighth victim before she could be planted in a new location, he was desperate to communicate with others himself.”

Such a pity certain people (an invasive species whose greatest attribute, if gossip is to be believed, is either their ability to wriggle their way out of libel cases or their outlandish choice in plumage) had decided to help Oxenstierna with that mission.

“To that end, the attempted abduction of a comatose patient from John Hopkins Hospital was Oxenstierna’s last bid for understanding from others before being caught. Rather than attempting to escape, he chose to make what amounts to a personal plea for empathy.” To Arthur. “To feel as he feels. To see as he sees.”

In another world, at another time, by a different method, Arthur might have listened to Oxenstierna’s entreaty. In this world, however, Oxenstierna had chosen the still comatose and incredibly vulnerable form of Madeline Williams to try and deliver his message: not a step but a whole leap beyond the pale for those already pricked in tender places by the abuse of innocents.

Arthur is ever-vigilant now of sleeping defenceless daughters: holding one by blood and one by guilt-ridden proxy as equal weights now against his heart. He had saved Madeline once already when her obsessed, serial-killing father, unable to deal with the thought of his little girl growing up and leaving him, had slaughtered her mother in front of her before putting a kitchen knife to her throat. Arthur would be damned if he let the likes of a fungi-focused wallflower take her before she even woke up into her new life free of her father’s chains. 

Arthur’s fingers still itch now, twitch, at the memory of that day in the hospital basement. Of Madeline’s hair spread like a long golden fan on the starchy hospital pillows of the hospital gurney Oxenstierna had tried to whisk her away on, and Oxenstierna clutching at his own shoulder, bleeding on the floor. The beta man’s pallor curdling like spoilt milk.

(What would have happened in a world where Arthur was a better shot?)

Arthur’s tongue flicks out briefly over his dry lips, feeling the pulse of his heartbeat between his brows. “The desire for understanding is a dangerous thing. Luckily for us, however,” another slow pass of Arthur’s gaze across his class, the darkness that renders one student almost indistinguishable from the next, “it is often the way we catch the supposedly uncatchable.”

The lecture concludes not long after that, Berwald Oxenstierna’s crimes only the tail-end of a much longer lesson, and the yellowed lights of the lecture hall buzz back to life overhead. The students blink back into animation with them, and cobwebbed dreams of blood and shadows flee away.

Arthur talks briefly through his students’ next assignment before everyone starts gathering up their belongings - and pointedly reminds the two hopefully querying hands raised in the audience of his office hours. Class is dismissed a few minutes shy of the Academy bell, and the tide of students streaming out of the lecture hall is a cacophony after the almost reverent hush before.

The silhouette by the door is a silhouette no more. Ludwig Beilschmidt, head of the BAU, had stepped to the side to allow Arthur’s students to pass him by but now, as the last of the stragglers make their way out of the room, approaches Arthur’s desk, his hands lax in his pockets with a studied casualness: affability that doesn’t quite ring sincere when Ludwig’s shoulders are so stiff.

Arthur is rapidly becoming versant with what that stance means when it is adopted by Ludwig Beilschmidt, of the warmer and bread-and-chocolatey notes of Ludwig’s alpha scent when the man hopes to be cajoling. Cedar and yeast: similar but distant to the woods that surround the Wolf Trap refuge Arthur calls home, life and death and the cycle of decomposition as the leaves are falling. Let’s not vex the moody omega before he performs his party trick.

“Do you think they followed?” Ludwig asks in lieu of a greeting, making no pretence that they both don’t know that Arthur had long since observed him by the door. Ludwig’s honesty is of the perfectly reliable kind meant for blunt force trauma: a crowbar, plain but useful.

Arthur keeps his head low but neck covered as he continues packing away his belongings: prey behaviour, hoping to be left alone. “I’ll let you know once I’ve graded their essays.”

Ludwig waits patiently, solid and immovable with his weight on his heels. Ever hoping for word of a new FBI Wunderkind.

Alas, to only have disappointment to provide.

Arthur sighs through his nose, shoving the last folder into his satchel with a little more force than may be strictly necessary. “A few of them still mistake understanding for condonement.”

“That sounds like an issue with objectivity in the field.”

“That what you’ve come looking for?” Arthur asks dryly, lifting his eyes to Ludwig’s chin. They both know this isn’t a social visit, for all Ludwig had the courtesy to wait until the end of Arthur’s class. Ludwig’s suit is still too sharp, not a strand of his blond hair out of place. “Objectivity?”

Ludwig nods, shameless about it. “And your particular type of understanding. We have a new case in Ohio, Arthur. Three are dead on-scene. The flight leaves shortly and I would like you to ride along, tell us what you see.”

“What, now?” Arthur baulks, seeing the immediate confirmation in Ludwig’s expression. Though his lectures might be over for the day, Arthur has other obligations. “No can do.” He finishes buckling the straps of his satchel closed, already shaking his head to Ludwig’s next protest as he knots a brown scarf around his nigh-bare neck. “My babysitter doesn’t work Mondays.”

Ludwig huffs sharply through his nose, his scent turning to something exasperated, peppery and hot on the tip of Arthur’s tongue like chillies and burnt coffee. Arthur prefers tea but is growing unfortunately familiar with the taste of caffeine served this way - though Ludwig at least, still, has the decency to keep the heat of his disapproval on Arthur’s face rather than on the obviously unmarked slope of Arthur’s neck that Arthur’s scarf fails to conceal. If you won’t talk to your family, you should at least have a mate to take care of this.

It’s easy enough for a mated alpha with no children of his own to pass comment. Alphas with absolutely none of the manners their mothers ever taught them always pass judgement with their eyes long before the stereotypical bullshit comes tumbling out of their mouths, and there are plenty out there that have something to say about an omega being unmated at Arthur’s age, no claiming bite or collar on his throat, especially when that selfsame omega is newly a mother.

Ludwig would have an easier time of getting his way with things if Arthur had a mate or family he actually tolerated to drop his baby off with - but, oh, woe, tragedy indeed, Arthur’s private life and personal decisions fail to revolve around the self-proclaimed needs of one Ludwig Beilschmidt.

“Is there a problem with the services the Academy’s crèche provides for your daughter?”

“The crèche closes at 9, Ludwig,” Arthur points out as he slings his bag over his shoulder and rounds the desk, keeping his tone extraordinarily reasonable, he believes, for a man with a bad head half dreaming of getting home with his daughter sometime soon, half calculating when he can take his next dose of aspirin. “When all the sensible students and professors have head home. Can’t get to Ohio and back before then.” Even assuming all their flights will be on time.

The 9 o’ clock close of the crèche at Quantico is later than most places of business with crèches on-site choose to close, the increased hours only a result of the FBI Academy’s presence on a military base. Gender, dynamic and family rights have progressed in - comparative - leaps and bounds since the Stone Ages in which the Academy was first founded, and the safety and security of the nation cannot be endangered by single parents unable to find adequate childcare.

“If you’d like to bring her along -”

“No,” Arthur hisses, sudden and vehement enough that Ludwig startles back away from him as Arthur’s eyes begin to prickle - undoubtedly bleeding gold. “I am not bringing my baby to a crime scene, Ludwig.” The thought is unconscionable, a boundary blurred into something monstrous.

Ludwig’s instinctive retreat had only been half a step, and half a step alone, but that half a step had been much further than Ludwig had been expecting to go. He pushes back now, failing to see that the line Arthur has drawn lays in concrete rather than sand. “It would be no trouble to get an agent to look after her while you’re occupied-”

Sure, the nameless agent would love that.

Arthur bares his fangs, letting his irritation spill out into his own scent, the lightning-struck forest more dangerous than any burning tower. Ozone and pine: a flammable mix. “You think I’d trust her in the care of a stranger? She’s six months old!” He turns to stalk away.

“What about Dr. Bonnefoy?”

Arthur pauses, caught before he has managed to leave the hall. “What about Dr. Bonnefoy?”

“She’s the child’s godmother, isn’t she?” Oh, Ludwig is finagling now. “Unofficially.”

Unofficially. As most arrangements Arthur has with Marianne Bonnefoy are. Especially when she’s been carefully avoiding him and his questions about the new arrangements for Madeline Williams’ care after the events at John Hopkins, still wary of Arthur’s attachment to the omega girl he had orphaned.

Arthur purses his lips. “I wasn’t aware Marianne had a lecture scheduled this evening.”

“She pushed back her morning lecture today.”

Huh. “Looking to see what consultants you had on-site to grab before you left?” Arthur asks, his voice bordering on scathing - but bites his tongue at Ludwig’s immediate forbidding look in reply. Ludwig is only willing to accept so much of Arthur’s bad temper.

Lines, boundaries and connections. The give and take of favours and affection, work and home, death and delicate daughters who, outside the adult concept of time, are either sleeping or young enough to immediately forgive their mother for all the time he spends away from them.

Arthur considers, gathering up ideas like wet pebbles from the bed of the stream that runs through his mind. Feeling the weight of each before choosing which ones he wishes to discard. “...I’ll go. But only if Marianne is able to babysit.”

Ludwig is triumphant. Ludwig’s triumph dies in its nascency, because, when he and Arthur make their way over to the lecture hall assigned to Dr. Bonnefoy for her lessons, Marianne is unable to babysit. Marianne is not there.

Instead, a small handful of adoring students remains clustered around the podium at the front of the room, and the one fielding their questions is -

“Dr. Fernandes.” Arthur stops short.

“Arthur.”

Breaking off mid-whatever he had been discussing with the trainees, the unexpected figure of Gabriel Cardoso Fernandes looks, first, surprised and then pleased to see Arthur darkening his - borrowed? - door. His smile seems to be a real one; even a few metres away Arthur can see how it creases the corners of Fernandes' eyes - though some of the pleasure fades as Fernandes' gaze slides past Arthur to Ludwig coming up on Arthur’s heels.

“A moment please,” Fernandes says to both of them before he turns back to the trainees, clearly - and efficiently - wrapping up the last of the group’s questions despite how they appear to be desperately trying to prolong the conversation. Hanging on his every accented word, drawn in (or at least not dissuaded) by the - very - tight charcoal and cream plumage the alpha has chosen to peacock around in today. Little birds clustering in the shade of a broad, tall tree, chirp, chirp, cheep.

Ludwig advances even as the trainees - reluctantly - depart, towing Arthur forward with him by the sheer force of his presence. “Dr. Fernandes, good evening.” Apparently Ludwig uses the same forced joviality with Fernandes as he does with Arthur. “Please forgive the intrusion, we were searching for Dr. Bonnefoy.”

“Ah, I’m afraid you’re out of luck,” Fernandes informs them, gathering up his own paperwork on the podium. “Dr. Bonnefoy asked me to replace her in her classes today.” His expression is suitably sympathetic for the occasion, his scent of musk and petrichor by the sea as soft as the dusty shade of his charcoal suit. Beckoning others in with an offering of - not unattractive - alpha security, with a flirt of something rich and bitterly citrus when he moves and fabric brushes against the glands at his throat or wrists, the overworked buttons of his shirt straining over his chest. “She has flu, and is very cross about it.” Hence the rescheduled class.

“Generous of you,” says Arthur shortly, trying to figure out if he’s disappointed by this development or not. It would have been useful to talk to Marianne and coax the woman into a more agreeable mindset by depositing an adorable baby into her arms - Marianne favours both Arthur’s dogs and child -, but now, with no babysitter available, Arthur gets to go home.

“A small favour is nothing for a friend, yes?” is Fernandes' smooth, sincere-sounding reply - before his mouth curls upwards with a spark of intimate, invitational, mischief. One of his long brown curls dangles boyishly in front of his eyes. “In truth, I find it an interesting change to my usual affairs.”

As though Dr. Gabriel Cardoso Fernandes does not dictate the direction of the majority of his usual affairs.

Arthur snorts. “We’ll let you get back to those then. Ludwig -”

“Perhaps Dr. Fernandes could assist us instead,” says Ludwig.

The casual presumption sticks to the back of Arthur’s teeth and he is just. So tired. “Pretty sure Dr. Fernandes has had a busy enough day already,” says Arthur. His head is still throbbing.

Dr. Fernandes is still radiating a wearying amount of amusement for the end of the general Academy day, damn him and his tight suit and straining buttons. The teeth in his smile. “I still have some energy left to spare. What is it that I can help you with?”

“I don’t,” says Arthur.

��How are you with children?” asks Ludwig. Alpha to alpha.

Naturally, Fernandes only hears the most intriguing remark. “Children?”

“Child. Singular. Infant, actually.” Arthur finally yields to the temptation that has been plaguing him for some time now, reaching up with one hand to knuckle at his eye. Pushing back against the pressure pounding in his head.

“I dealt with many children - including young children - as a medical doctor,” says Fernandes, “though paediatrics was never my speciality.”

Though he keeps his own eyes fixed on a point between Fernandes' nostrils and the sharp wings of the doctor’s tanned clavicles, Arthur is not unaware of the weight of Fernandes' gaze as it travels back and forth between Ludwig and himself, the doctor deeply curious and waiting for elaboration. None is immediately forthcoming; after neatly backing Arthur into a corner of social politeness, Ludwig is waiting on Arthur to offer up his daughter as sacrifice for their travel plans, Iphigenia reborn, and Arthur is. Struggling. To imagine asking a favour of such magnitude. To work out if he even wants to.

Ludwig might be happy to deposit Arthur’s offspring into any set of arms that will hold her long enough for Ludwig to get Arthur out to Ohio to look at his crime scene, but Arthur has to put a little more thought into the matter. Conscious, especially recently, of the weight of trusting daughters (in mind, in heart, and tucked up against one’s shoulder), and the responsibilities of guardianship.

“Do you have a case involving an infant?” Fernandes inquires at last.

Arthur cannot help the way his mouth twists wryly at that. Inevitability - driven along by the determination of Ludwig Beilschmidt - bites in deep. Despite all their conversations about Madeline since they had saved the girl’s life together… Arthur had never told Dr. Fernandes he was a mother. “Ludwig has a case. I have an infant. This is apparently a scheduling conflict.”

“...I see.”

Oh, when the sound of recontextualisation is just two little words. Pebbles dropping, said so delicately. Arthur is accustomed to delicate little words that are said one way and meant another, and has had more than a few of them slung his way ever since his pregnancy first started showing. (Used goods. Whore.)

Arthur lifts his head again. Defiantly. If killing makes God feel powerful then the reverse must also be true: God giveth and God taketh away. Destruction is balanced by the act of creation, and Arthur had laboured nine long months and several longer bloody hours to bring forth his daughter into the universe. He looks at her still, sometimes, doing nothing more than breathing in her cot by his bed, and his heart burns fiercer than any heat he’s known.

There are pinwheels of golden green in Gabriel Cardoso Fernandes' hazel eyes, light and darkness both that shine with the doctor’s interest and curiosity. But not a trace of judgement. No hint of scandal or reproof.

The corner of Fernandes' mouth quirks back at Arthur in the most minute of smiles, and the breath Arthur hadn’t even realised he’d been holding shudders, startled, out of his chest.

Delicacy is not an oft-used tool in Ludwig Beilschmidt’s arsenal, not when a problem can be presented immediately to the solution. “I realise it is something of an imposition, doctor, but would you be able to watch her for the evening?” The bitter coffee-pepper taste of Ludwig’s impatience is a heavy reminder of his presence. The clock is always ticking, and it gets stuffed up Arthur’s nose. “There is a new case out in Ohio, and the team could really use Arthur’s eyes on the scene while it is still relatively fresh.”

“A girl?” Fernandes asks Arthur quietly, and Arthur looks back at him a little helplessly.

“Ludwig, you can’t just steamroll people into babysitting. Dr. Fernandes -”

“I would be happy to help,” says Fernandes, and Arthur really begins longing for some aspirin.

Ludwig nods, pleased. “Then it is settled. Thank you, doctor.” Arthur chirps, irritated again - perhaps Ludwig would like to double-check this arrangement with the infant’s mother? -, but Ludwig is already back to ignoring him, marching out of the room with one last commandment: “Arthur, I need you to be ready to go in 20.”

20? 20 minutes is barely enough time for Arthur to turn his head - never mind his arse - around, not when he has a thousand and one different important things he now has to impart to Gabriel Cardoso Fernandes.

So he frowns at Fernandes. He could have gone home. “You didn’t have to do that.” Amends - “You don’t have to do this.”

“And leave you - or should I say Ludwig - without a babysitter?” The click of Fernandes' briefcase as it closes sounds like more than one thing being shut. “Arthur, you never mentioned that you are a parent.”

“It wasn’t relevant to our conversations,” says Arthur. Adding a stubborn, “I find it best to maintain certain boundaries between work and home,” to Fernandes' raised eyebrows. “Where possible.”

“Boundaries can be healthy, they say,” Fernandes observes, making a great show of reaching for his overcoat and sliding it onto his arms. Look at him, so theatrically busy and paying Arthur no mind. “Or isolating.”

Arthur just snorts again, already expecting the sting in the tail.

It isn’t like Arthur believes Gabriel Cardoso Fernandes is the sort of alpha, from more barbarous days of yore, who would either kill or drive off the offspring of alphas other than himself if children were placed into his care. Dr. Fernandes, paediatric speciality or no, has a careful touch with the vulnerable.

Snapshots of the Williams’ kitchen are seared into Arthur’s mind now, each an ever-fixed mark, the mingled smells of wet iron, sour fear and sharp gunpowder all tangled up with the sense-memory of the tiled edges of the kitchen floor biting into Arthur’s knees, the sticky wet pulsing of heartblood over his hands. When the night’s gloaming stretches out dark and dreadful Arthur remembers his own fingers - cold, white under all that blood and trembling - useless on Madeline’s throat as the girl juddered and quaked beneath him, drowning on dry land in that ever-growing river of red - and then the confident touch from Fernandes, stepping in, taking over, his palms warm and fingers sure and steady as he held the last of his patient’s precious life inside of her.

Fernandes had kept Madeline alive long enough for the EMTs to arrive, and then escorted her to the hospital. In the days that had followed, he had been just as much of a fixture in Madeline’s ward as Arthur himself. Falling asleep at Madeline’s bedside, Madeline's hand clasped safely in his own.

Take away the knife, the blood, the floor, the injury - Fernandes has hands tender enough to curve around a trusting infant’s head, long-fingered and sure, and he is strong and intelligent enough to defend her. But - take away the death, the comatose girl, the psychiatric evaluation, the talks of God and power - Arthur has still only known the alpha in front of him for a metaphorical five minutes. A few weeks.

And Gabriel Cardoso Fernandes doesn’t seem like the sort of man who would deal well with having baby spit-up on him. He looks sweet and smooth and easy-going, suave as any rich alpha going courting - or, perhaps, as slyly smug as a particularly pampered cat.

“Tell me about your little one,” says Fernandes anyway, and Arthur sighs. If the good doctor is so determined…

“Lenore,” says Arthur. She whom the angels call - as she fusses back. “Lenore Kirkland. She’s six months old, and looks like the cross between a princess, a pixie, and a dumpling. I had her in March.”

Fernandes makes no attempt to hide the keen sweep of his gaze from Arthur’s top to bottom and back upwards again, shameless in his curiosity. Making an assessment. “You have recovered quickly from the pregnancy. I couldn’t tell.” Apparently confident enough in his abilities as a medical doctor to believe he should have been able to tell that Arthur had recently carried and borne a child, ugh. “Her other parent is unavailable to take care of her?”

“He was never in the picture,” Arthur says. Flatly. His tone very much implying that if Fernandes digs at this topic any more than necessary, Lenore’s other biological parent won’t be the only one pushed out of frame.

Fernandes dips his head - taking the hint - so Arthur continues.

“You’ll need to pick up Lenore from the Academy crèche. It closes at 9, so there’s no need to hurry if you’re busy, and I’ll phone ahead to let them know you’ll be handling pick-up. You should -” Arthur hesitates, the necessary logistics of handing his daughter over into another’s care floating to mind - and then sitting horribly ill at-ease with the vision of the elegant man in front of him, “uh, you should probably take my car. For her car seat. It’s a bastard to take out and put in again so it’s probably easiest for you just to take the whole vehicle.” 

Fernandes' face does a thing. It’s a minuscule thing, so infinitesimally tiny that if Arthur hadn’t been watching the microscopic shifts of the other man’s expressions he would have missed it, but definitely a thing.

Honestly, it’s quite a beautiful thing, as the only way in which Arthur can think to describe it is Arthur Kirkland, I have seen your Volvo. (Marianne has an expression that might be a close cousin to the look, but, somehow, Marianne has learnt the arcane art of coaxing Lenore’s baby seat into agreeing with her long enough for her to transfer it between Arthur’s vehicle and her own. Arthur has yet to develop the knack of it himself.)

“I can get a taxi home from the airport,” he assures Fernandes, solicitous now he has the schadenfreude of Fernandes' dismay to cheer him for the rest of the night. (Let his shitty dog hair-covered car stand testament to a universal truth: even the most smugly prepared soul should look before they leap.)

Fernandes purses his lips, his dismay now warring with his disapproval of Arthur being put-out because of Ludwig’s demands. “At the Bureau’s expense, I hope?”

“My travel expenses will be the delight of the accounting department,” Arthur says dryly - and is promptly warmed as well by Fernandes' soft huff of laughter. So Arthur can afford to be magnanimous as he fishes out his car key. “If you want to fleece them as well, I promise to see and say nothing. You- uh, you don’t have to stay the whole evening with Lenore, you know. My neighbour is always happy to take her if you explain I’m held up - Nancy, with the bright red mailbox covered in flower stickers, house right before mine and perm you can see for miles. You can drop Lenore off there.”

“It is really no trouble, Arthur.” Fernandes - even with the dual threats of a six month-old and Arthur’s Volvo hanging over his head - still appears to be sincere, those long fingers of his brushing against Arthur’s fingertips as he takes the key from Arthur’s hand. (Citrus again. Like the type used in that English tea: bergamot.) “Though I will need your home address.”

Right. Yes. That will be another not-so-little boundary Arthur is going to have to permit Gabriel Cardoso Fernandes to cross this evening in the name of emergency childcare. “Ah. Yeah, I’ll- I’ll text you that ASAP.”

“You definitely have my cell phone number?”

Arthur nods; he definitely has Fernandes' cell phone number. Not that he has used it for much so far except to confirm two appointments with the other man at Fernandes' office.

“...Um.” Arthur stalls, drawing his lower lip back between his teeth to chew on it as Fernandes looks at him inquiringly. What constitutes a reasonable first-time favour from someone who is not quite a colleague, not quite a co-parent, and not quite an assigned psychiatrist? “If you - uh - wouldn’t mind stopping at mine either way? My dogs will need letting out for a run in the grass, and, if you could give them a scoop each of the emergency kibble in the bag in my kitchen, I’ll owe you one.”

Fernandes' head tilts minutely, studying him.

“...Assuming you don’t have any issues with dogs.”

“I do not,” says Fernandes simply, and Arthur has never been more grateful to not be asked any further questions about his pack of canines. Least of all how many he has of them.

“House keys,” Arthur proclaims instead, depositing the named items into Fernandes' waiting palm after he has dug them up out of the depths of his blazer pocket. And brushed the lint off of them. “And- uh-”

Arthur tugs the (old, mud-coloured, dog-chewed) scarf from around his neck before he can think too hard about it, stepping forward to sling the item of clothing up and around Fernandes' neck.

They share breath for a moment: vanillic paper and apples, petrichor and musky bergamot, oak and - at the soft swallow of Fernandes' throat - resinous vetiver. The scarf’s wool is scratchy in comparison to the softer (expensive) weave of Fernandes' overcoat against Arthur’s skin, and the colour of the accessory turns Fernandes' outfit into something muddy.

Uh.

Though Fernandes is undeniably the taller of the two of them, there is not so much difference between Fernandes and Arthur in height - and yet Arthur feels every single inch of that difference as Fernandes, eyebrows raised once more, looks down at both the offending scarf and Arthur as Arthur stands in front of him holding both of the scarf’s tail ends, willing himself not to flush. Arthur’s wrap shirt that day - designed with nursing mothers in mind and cut in the omega style - has a deep asymmetrical neckline, and, without his scarf as protection, Arthur’s blush would visibly flood his entire face and throat a vulnerable pink. This close to Fernandes, leaning into Fernandes' gravitational field and with the alpha’s scent full in his lungs… it would be like dripping blood into shark-infested waters.

Arthur stalls embarrassment by keeping his eyes trained on Fernandes' tanned jawline instead of on whatever look the doctor has decided to allow into his eyes, instead of on whatever dangerous twist there might be now to Fernandes' mouth. The two of them are not close enough acquaintances to be exchanging items of clothing - especially not clothing that Arthur has worn so often, that has rubbed against his scent glands and has his natural omega scent embedded so deeply in the cloth. It’s. Very personal.

“Lenore won’t settle if you don’t smell like me, so if you just.” Arthur pats awkwardly at both the scarf and Fernandes' breastbone with the flat of one hand - most likely squashing the alpha’s nipple somewhere beneath. A warm drum beats steadily under his palm and Arthur’s chest feels tight. “Sort of tuck her up against that.”

Fernandes recovers quickly, gracefully pretending that Arthur has not just committed a horrific social faux pas by thrusting a scented item at him with extreme overfamiliarity and no advance warning. (Boundaries, ha.) “It’s a good suggestion.” He reaches out to take the trailing ends of the scarf from Arthur and- and Arthur stutters backwards from the other man. Before he can do more damage.

Though it seems Fernandes had only taken the scarf to tie it into a loose knot around his throat. Ah.

“Don’t worry, Arthur. I promise I am not wholly incompetent with babies, and I have your number to call you if there are any problems.”

That is not what Arthur had been concerned about.

Well, that is not entirely what Arthur had been concerned about.

What does Arthur’s private life look like through Gabriel Cardoso Fernandes' eyes? It’s an ungainly thing to set up against Fernandes' polished veneer, to hold up to that finish Fernandes has smoothed out over his charmed existence. All that polish in Fernandes' life, his obvious casual wealth - both socially and materially -, his apparent effortless competence with everything he does. So evidently, easily, alpha that others instinctively defer to him, that Fernandes brings a cooked breakfast with him on trips afield to provide for the less prepared waiflings thrust upon him. Trace back on Fernandes' phylogenetic tree, and his ancestors must have all been the prime of their genetic subdivision.

Arthur life’s, in contrast, is nothing but lumps and bumps, like porridge that needs a great deal more stirring before it can be served for breakfast. Hic sunt dracones, something not in Fernandes' cartography: the uncharted realms of dopey dogs, daughters that are produced like magic tricks, and clunky cars with fur shed on the seats and rattling, rainbow-coloured baby toys rolling around in the footwells.

The cathedral of Dr. Fernandes' Baltimore office is a far cry from Arthur’s farmhouse out in the fields of Virginia where the afflictions of middle class single motherhood for the canine-hoarding and socially incompetent have stamped their mark. There is nothing sacrosanct in a living room camp-bed left unmade that morning, in a small army of used baby bottles and coffee cups on every flat (and some distinctly dangerous) surfaces, and chewed-up tennis balls nudged under every seat. One in every three floorboards in Arthur’s home creaks and groans underfoot, bags of unused supermarket salad expire in the limited space in Arthur’s fridge that isn’t dedicated to either homemade dog food or sanitised bags of expressed breast milk, and muddy towels damp with the smell of dog sit in the towering laundry pile next to stacks of baby onesies and the plaid shirt Lenore had vomited on two nights before that Arthur still hasn’t had the time to wash.

The only way the much more sophisticated puzzle piece of Dr. Gabriel Cardoso Fernandes fits into a jigsaw like that is by way of Ludwig’s presumption wielded as a mallet, and Arthur feels like he should apologise for the mismatch - before he is immediately resentful of the feeling, his pride pricked. And he is then, too, resentful of his own resentfulness, that, even decades on from the damp, poverty-stricken corners of his childhood, a favour still tastes bitter on his tongue, too much like charity.

And yet - there is no judgement in Dr. Fernandes' face or posture as he takes stock of their very different lifestyles. No pity, sympathy or condescension. There never has been, no matter what secrets Arthur has revealed to the alpha. Revelations of parenthood and tenderness weighed equally on the scales against confessions of righteousness, the satisfaction gained from putting bad people down.

Fernandes simply… accepts. It all. All of it.

“Right,” says Arthur. Remembers Fernandes volunteered for this (babysitting, dealing with all of Arthur’s shit, whatever else may be) and begrudgingly adds, “Thank you again. I’ll-” a gesture at the open door of the classroom behind him. Ludwig will have Arthur's head if he makes the team late for the flight, and Arthur still has some aspirin and water he needs to down before he can consent to being trapped in a metal box with Beilschmidt and his team for several hours. “I need to go now, but I’ll phone the crèche and then send you my address.”

Fernandes nods, his plush mouth still a solemn thing above Arthur’s ugly scarf though his eyes crinkle, once more, with what Arthur might almost dare to call fondness. “Safe travels to Ohio.”

…He really doesn’t know what he’s let himself in for, does he?

That’s alright, Arthur thinks as he leaves the lecture hall, raising one hand at Dr. Fernandes behind him in a parting farewell. Arthur isn’t too sure what he’s let himself in for with any of this evening’s developments either.

*****

*****

*****

No doubt some of these are more self-evident than others, but here’s a list all the same of some of our dramatis personae that have names here less familiar to fandom: Dr. Gabriel Cardoso Fernandes - Portugal Dr. Marianne Bonnefoy - Female France Madeline Williams - Female Canada Lenore Kirkland - OC, Herself

‘Lenore’ is 100% a reference to Poe’s The Raven, as are all chapter titles. It’s also a reference to Gottfried August Bürger’s gothic ballad Lenore, which has some interesting parallels with themes in this story/the series the Hannibal version of this story is part of.

NEXT CHAPTER

[white-weasel]

WIP Folder

Rules: Make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous and tag as many people as you have WIPs. People send an ask with the title that most intrigues them, then you post a snippet or tell them something about it!

Thank you @parallelunivrses for tagging me :)

I have... so many wips in a folder. Some of them are proper wips that I do have stuff written and want/intend to go back to and some are things I know I will never actually touch again (some of which are actually 10+ years, if that says anything). I've decided to just include wips here where there's a possibility I'll do something with them because otherwise this list would be too long I think lol

Being Emo About Mia Fey - Ace Attorney; what it says on the tin. I thought about Mia Fey too hard and had to get my feelings out about her dying young

BP Pt 4 - Batman; 6 years ago now (geez) I wrote a series of "Tim joins the Batfam early" fics. I believe my plan was for there to be 6-7 fics in the series, and the fics would alternate between Tim's and Jason's perspectives. This is the next part

Brad Projection Time - Mythic Quest; barely anything is written here, but the episode "Breaking Brad" made me just want to write contemplative angst about Brad

Bruce Isn't Batman (Or Is He?) - Batman; I also call this one "Bruce Wayne is Schrodinger's Batman." Basically, a fic where when Tim tries to confront Bruce and Alfred about how "Batman needs a Robin," everyone continues to deny that Bruce is Batman

Tim Thing with Not Much Plot - Batman; basically like it says, a short thing about Tim considering how his initial outsider perceptions of Bruce/Batman compare now that he's Robin

Ella Enchanted BNHA Thing - BNHA; Izuku gets put under a quirk that basically gives him the curse from Ella Enchanted for a period of time

Iida Angst Man - BNHA; I decided Iida needed more character-centered angst and decided to write a couple scenes. Mostly centered on control issues, hoarding, and compulsive tendencies

Jigsaw Sequel Outline - Saw; I've posted about this a bit here, but basically my ideas for what a sequel to the movie Jigsaw could look like if they ever wanted to continue on with the ideas set up in that film

Monoma Thing - BNHA; exploring Monoma's inferiority issues through the context of Izuku befriending him and getting to know him better

Nobody Wins - Hetalia/Hunger Games crossover; this is something I just want to finish for my younger self... it was a four part/chapter thing and I never wrote the fourth part

Silver Platters - Hunger Games; AU where Sejanus was never sent to become a Peace Keeper with Coriolanus and is set to focus on how the character could have developed up through the events of the original trilogy. Currently I'm working on chapter 3

Slight Sci-Fi Thing - Original; a short story that follows a woman ~5 years after being cloned as she considers what he life was and what it has become. I do not have much written and do not know if this will ever see the actual light of day, but I do enjoy thinking about it

Stufffff - Batman; Dick finds Tim's fanfiction he wrote about Batman and Robin when he was nine, back before he knew anyone's identities. Mostly just a fun little fic atm

Tim Drake Anti-Hero/Fake Villain - Batman, outline of an AU where, due to some different life circumstances, Tim comes to the conclusion "Batman needs a sidekick" rather than "Batman needs a Robin." However, due to some misunderstandings, his attempts at becoming his sidekick go a bit sideways and he decides to work with the cards he's been dealt. Currently just an outline rn

Tim ED Thing - Batman; I wrote a non-graphic fic about Tim being in recovery from an eating disorder many years ago. In that fic, there's a mention of the first time Tim told Dick about it, and sometimes I come back and try to write that scene

Zirk Angst Thing - Naddpod: Eldermourne; post-canon one shot that dives into some of my ideas about the mysterious winter fairy Zirk made a deal with in the finale and also Zirk telling his friends about what exactly happened in those moments. Actively working on this one and really hoping to get it out at some point here soon!

Since this is literally 16 things, I don't even know if I have 16 people to tag... so instead I'm gonna cop out and just say if anybody wants an excuse to share about their wips please go ahead and I'm being 100% serious. I love hearing about what people are working on!

[tyiaunia-harris]

It was a beautiful snowy day in Ottawa, Canada. Here in the Williams/Merlyk household, we find the lovely couple, snuggle together under a blanket, as fire warmth the two up. Anna was sound peacefully asleep while Matthew was in deep thought, about all the two have been through together, mostly all that his beloved wife had to sacrifice and go through just to even exist. Things like this made him love her ten times more and made him even more protective of his beautiful and beloved wife. As Anna softly snore and turned in her sleep, Matthew kept a close eye on the fire as if it mocked him. Thinking of all the many different ways he could murder anyone who dares to hurt his woman. As the saying goes, "You'll always have to beware of the quiet ones."