yuuago | Contact/Spam post

CONTACT
Anonymous commenting is on and IP logging is off. (This goes for the rest of my journal too). If you have something you want to say to me that's unrelated to other posts in my journal, this is the place for it. I love talking to people, so just comment away!

Note: My journal has a permanent "reverse friends-cut" policy. If you find yourself tired of reading my daily nonsense, just remove - no worries!

[*Most recent page]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From: (Anonymous)

I'm posting as anon cause IT JUST FEELS RIGHT.
and i'm posting it here because. . . I dunno . IT JUST FEELS RIGHT. and i'm too afraid to post it elsewhere :|

I'm tired so thoughts are coming in pretty slowly, and they are coming in pretty jumbled too. Not to mention I held off writing this for a bit, ahaha cause I wasn't in the mood to tl;dr but yeah. and then there's the fact that when I'm tired I have a non existent attention span

This is all nonsense. Really. I went off on a tangent, I don't even think what I'm talking about is even relevant to what I was supposed to be talking about. so this is more or less some random rambly bits on my thoughts on these two. For taking so long this should probably sound a great deal more intelligent, but whatever. Such is life.

also I don't know if the fact that I ship these two like FedEx has any, err, influence on what I wrote. I think it's pretty easy to assume that this can be mostly platonic, for all your Est/Fin lovin' needs

okay the bit where I actually started typing is here:

I mean, maybe it's not because I'm thinking coherently, but I don't even know where to start with the matter you gave me! I see that kind of thing and I'm just, well, totally boggled.

It's not like Sweden's a great deal more powerful than him anymore, they're fairly even now, I think. Certainly comparable. I don't really want to make too many assumptions as far as that concerned, as I'd probably have to dig up some information and statistics and all, but the bottom line is that Sweden isn't this powerful empire looming right beside a small little ethnic group anymore.

I don't think lots of people even bothered giving thought as to why Finland would be afraid of Sweden in the first place (back in the day), though it doesn't take much thinking as to figure out why he would be. Sweden had enough power back in the day to totally own Finland, if he so wanted to. Finland just didn't have the means to protect himself. I mean, if I recall correctly, Finland didn't even have it's own army or anything, cause all Finns went to fight for Sweden and not Finland (I could totally be wrong, though). We all know that Sweden fails at expressing his benign intentions, so thanks to that you got a Finland who was continuously afraid of him because he didn't know that Sweden just simply wouldn't harm him like that.

Actually, Sweden being powerful and all would probably explain a lot as to why Finland seemed to latch on to him in the comic. I'd assume that that would imply some kind of self-awareness in Finland. He must've known real well that as a nation, he was pretty weak so it's best he appears likable to Sweden. Independence would be ace and all, but being as weak as he was, being under control a more powerful nation was certainly better than having to fight against one, you know? And being under a powerful nation would probably be easier if you were on good terms with them, which is probably were you get endearing nicknames such as su-san :| (though I personally would prefer Finland calling Sweden like, oh, Sve or something. Ruosti's/Ruo's cute, but considering the Swedish attitude towards the Finnish language back in the day, I don't think that'd be wise).

Ooh, that reminds me: it's really strange to hear people refer to these two as married. I mean, in the sense that say, Austria-Hungary was "married" (or Sweden-Norway, cause I know you'd like that more. THough, err, I dunno if they're even the same sort of deal because truth be told, I don't know anything about the Sweden-Norway union. Speaking of that, how's the fic going? ) Sure, you could maybe argue that Finland was sort of playing a more traditional role of a "wife" in that he was with someone and his voice didn't matter so much (though you'd have to make your argument pretty carefully) but I mean, even though Finland played a big part, especially in fighting wars and all, there wasn't a real union of governments, was there? Finland was a province of Sweden. I don't think they were married any more than Estonia was married to Sweden, you know? OKAY BUT MOVING ON TO HOW THEIR RELATIONSHIP NOW ISN'T LIKE IT WAS BACK IN THE DAY

From: (Anonymous)

I mean, it's obvious that there'd be lots of differences depending on the year. Getting close to the end of the eighteenth century, for example. That's a time period I'd love to find more good fic on with these two, because I think it'd be so neat to see Finland really conflicted about his relationship with Sweden. You had people thinking that he should stay with Sweden for various reasons, some were opting for Russia for various reasons, and some didn't really care as long as Finland would end up being treated better than he was at the time and etc etc etc. Alas, pretty most of all Sweden/Finland + Russia fanworks can be summed up as "ohh no evil Russia-chan takes me away from precious su-san T__T *is whipped and raped and hurt by russia*" cause, you know, it's not like Russia treated Finland a lot better (prior to Russification) than Sweden did or anything. Ahh man, can you just imagine what that whole bit would do to their relationship dynamics? There's no doubt Finland would seriously start re-evaluating his relationship with Sweden Sure, he'd still feel loyal to Sweden to some extent (I remember my book saying something. . . something about not putting really putting Finns against Swedes in battle, cause the loyalty was still there? idk, brb going to the library), but, well, it'd be different. I'd think that by that time Finland wouldn't be in the whole "okay-lets-try-to-get-sweden-to-like-me-cause-he's-scary" sort of mindset anymore (I dunno when that'd end, really), but it'd just go further. I can see Finland being more confident before Sweden now, and probably before everyone else, what with the national awakening that was going on. Sweden would probably start feeling guilty, even prior to Finland being annexed by Russia, especially since Sweden appeared to care for him a lot, but his government did subjugate Finland pretty bad over the last few centuries ( I do think that to some extent even Sweden-the-character did view Finland as, I'm not sure how to say this, but beneath him culturally?) Err, I dunno about you but I can see Sweden starting to doubt the idea of Finland still staying with him, even prior to Finland actually being turned over to Russia. Ah, well, there's certainly no doubt that by the end of a century with Russia, Sweden thought of Finland of its own nation considering how it recognized Finland as a nation like, half an hour after Russia did :' ) (and I mean, really, that's a huge difference to how it was before)

Speaking of Finnish independence, you know what I don't get? Why some people think that the first thing Finland would do is run back to Sweden. Err, shouldn't Finland maybe spend some time with his own people, drinking vodka and celebrating and all? Maybe he could go out for a drink with Estonia or something, I don't know. Point is, by then, Finland doesn't have that same kind of dependency on Sweden anymore. They're always going to be dependant on each other to some extent, I mean, they're right next to each other but it's different. Shit's changed, and I'm too tired to recall what I know about that time period (not much).

ughh the annoying thing with trying to figure these guys out is that there's the character, the government and the people. especially when you take into consideration the not-so-nice way the Swedish crown treated Finland, sometimes. I mean, if Sweden (the character) had it his way, I certainly don't think a third of Finland's population would've died in famine back. . . back whenever it was, end of the 17th century. (and then you get weird facts like the fact that the famine didn't really hinder Finland's loyalty to the crown that much. which makes no bloody sense. Seriously, why can't the relationship between these two be straightforward ;___;)
and then there's stuff like in the Winter War, I guess. Government couldn't do anything, but Sweden (character) surely wanted to help and I heard that there was sizeable support for Finland among the public to. I hear there were posters put up that said stuff like "Finland's cause is our cause" and stuff like that ;3;

From: (Anonymous)

I'm getting verryyy tired now but er, as far as relations today go, ahh I'd love it if people could make do a bit with the attitude some Finns have towards Sweden today. I think I've only really seen it done once, but it was pretty neat to see. I mean, especially since you had Finland being a bit of a dick to Sweden while still being oh so adorable at the same time. I want to see Finland being all competitive towards Sweden with Sweden not really being that into it himself (he's too busy making fun of Norway and Denmark, clearly).
I really need to learn more about the actual relations between these two countries though. I like those little tidbits you even get from people at the meme, people from Finland and Sweden when people ask them what the countries think of each other.

TL;DR LIKE I SAID, THE WHOLE LITTLE ETHNIC GROUP VS KINGDOM/EMPIRE? NOT IN TODAY'S WORLD PAL, NOT IN TODAY'S WORLD.

maybe it's lame that i'm thinking too much about a gag comic
but at this point i don't know if i'm thinking about the comic anymore ahah pff
BUT AT THE SAME TIME I FEEL LIKE I TYPED UP A WHOLE BUNCH OF NOTHING, SO IT'S LIKE I'M NOT REALLY THINKING AT ALL _{i just haven't tl;dr'd about these guys in awhile. i needed to get it out I'M SORRY I'M SORRY}
also, you'd cry if you saw how many spelling errors were in this

From:

yuuago

Posting anon BECAUSE IT FEELS RIGHT is a-okay by me, bro. And it makes sense enough to post it here. It's like page 3 is our ~special place~. Though I kind of find it hilar, the way it's stretched all to hell.

Anyway, I would think the degree to shipping would have an effect on the way one thinks about it, yes. ;p As for me, I do like these two, so it's all good. But they're complicated, which makes them a pain in the ass for me to write - but, anyway.

I certainly agree with you on the matter of time + power. The dynamic is (should be) different in modern period, compared to pre-1809 stuff, and even in the different periods before that, the dynamic would change as well (though not as drastically).

I like your explanation as to why Finland latched on to Sweden. I have the impression that even though he might not always seem it, he's very self-aware, and very conscious as to the condition of his people, and what's needed. I've heard people offer the explanation of something along the lines that "Anything else but being with Sweden didn't really occur to him" but I don't buy that.

(Also, I agree with you on the matter of nicknames, of course. In his head, he'd call him Ruotsi, but I don't think he would say it, definitely not. Sve, maybe.
... At this point I must admit that I'm warming up to the idea of modern Finland calling Sweden 'su-san', BUT that is only because of my new headcanon that Finland is a bit of a weeaboo. Fffff.)

I don't like it when people refer to Sweden and Finland as married, or as having been married. If we're speaking in past-tense, it's very problematic. The modern view of marriage implies an equal relationship, and I'd say that is very much not what the situation was for them in earlier times. Finland was a province of Sweden. It wasn't a Union. Finland's territory was more like property, really.
If we're going to talk marriage, I'd say Sweden/Norway is slightly more compatible with the idea, and it was a union, with separate governments and everything, though one was ultimately subject to the other. And Norway wasn't entirely thrilled about the whole thing, didn't really want it, but... that's old-fashioned marriage for you. (Let's not talk about the fic. I haven't worked on t for ages)

Anyway, I pretty much agree entirely with your Big Long Paragraph of tl;dr. Actually, it bothers me quite a bit when the whole thing with Russia is portrayed as a cut-and-try case of RapistRussia considering, as you noted, at first things were pretty okay between Russia and Finland. Certainly not bad, not at first. And I also agree completely with the matter of Sweden's attitude toward Finland changing quite a bit of time before the 1809 loss. You put it in a way that I had considered before, but couldn't really articulate.

I don't get why some people think that Finland would go directly back to Sweden immediately after gaining independence, either. All things considered, there would be a lot that he'd need to take care of before even thinking about igniting old flames. There was trouble brewing; Finland's civil war happened only a year after independence. He'd have to take care of that shit before worrying about anything else. Pick up the pieces.

The problem of character & government & people is indeed what makes it frustrating, but it's also what I find so interesting about this group (and also Hetalia in general). But when trying to distinguish between them all, it's hard. That's actually one of the few cases when I do think that the human names can be useful; when referring only to the person that is Finland or Sweden, as separate but also connected to all that other stuff.

Anyway. I enjoyed your tl;dr, as usual. <3 <3 Aaaa. I love it when people babble about stuff I agree with. And DON'T APOLOGIZE FOR GETTING IT OUT. I LIKE HEARING IT. Seriously!

Edited Date: 2009-11-06 07:09 am (UTC)