#i think they make up the majority of the wikipedia entries on national personifications | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

violetparakeetchuggerofkerosene · 9 months ago

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national personifications are funny as a concept

like you have a polity, with a bunch of people in it, and you try to sum them up in an individual humanoid entity

and you see, they're depicted either as purely perfect or as a set of national stereotypes

obviously the first characterization is implausible and boring as fuck, but the thing with the second characterization is that groups cant be monolithic, and stereotypes of the same group can and often are contradictory, which would reasonably suggest that a personification of them would be similarly inconsistent and paradoxical

i think more personifications should be bizarre and messy and deranged actually

#what if your entire political community was represented by florida man?#or whatever your local equivalent is #who thinks theyre the hot shit #there are also real life heads of state historically and currently who represented their states #mostly royalty #imagine a personification fighting their monarch for representation of their people and fucking losing #special mention to the 3000 minervesque goddesses that were super popular in 18-20th century europe + other god-like nps in general #i think they make up the majority of the wikipedia entries on national personifications #they tend to be more idealized #another big category of nps are cartoon personifications #unlike the first group they're mostly male #and they're usually get the stereotypes #i think there's good drama from the tension between the idealized goddess versions and the flawed stereotypical cartoon versions #national personfications #man theyre conceptually weird

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