Post by Germany on Jul 10, 2010 0:07:28 GMT -5
Darker Reflections Canon
[/font]Yes, we have our own canon universe. Why? Because it’s nice to have consistency, and a clearly-stated canon reduces confusion among players about what to expect from this site. For the most part our canon is the same as the creator’s. However, in areas where the creator was unclear or left the nature/abilities of countries and/or their relationships among themselves and others ambiguous, we have taken a bit of artistic license and interpreted some observations in ways that made sense to us. The conclusions we came to may or may not have been what the creator intended. In a few places we have deliberately departed from the official canon. ((There are a total of 2 secret words hidden throughout the Rules and Darker Reflections Canon pages. They are not immediately obvious or set off by anything special, they're just words that *really* don't make sense in context with all the other words around them. You will have to actually read the rules and canon to find them, but trust us, you'll know them when you see them. When you find them, send an admin a PM containing both the words and put Italian Pasta in the "Did you read the rules and canon" section of your application profile. ))
Following, in list-form, is our canon. Explanations for our interpretations follow each “fact” that makes up the glue of the Darker Reflections Universe.
Biggest Change to Official Canon:[/b] In this universe, the absolute longest Prussia can live is February 25, 1947, as this date marks the official dissolution of Prussia. When he actually dies is up to the player, should anyone decide to take him, but he can’t be around after this date.
Why?
Because countries die when their government collapses and/or they are dissolved into other countries ( see the last part of “Nature of Countries“ section ), and Hetalia’s creator has not ( to our knowledge ) explained why Prussia should be immune to this when no other historical country he has portrayed so far was. It's also fun to play around with a plot-twist not present in many other Hetalia canons, just to shake things up. ^^
Nature of Countries
[/size][/u][/color][/center]• A country spirit ( a.k.a. nation spirit ), is the personification of a country and has a magical symbiotic link with its land, people, and government. In other words, nation spirits have two bodies: their land body, which is the land and everything on it within their borders, and their “human” body, which is a living, breathing, flesh-and-blood physical form that has every part magically linked to some corresponding part of the country’s land body. Countries usually refer to their land bodies as their “houses”. The link they have with their actual land, though strong, is weaker and of lesser importance than the link they have with their people and government, as it takes humans to create and maintain countries.
Explanation: Mostly official canon, though the creator leaves it somewhat ambiguous as to how exactly this symbiosis works and how deeply it extends.
• A nation spirit is a reflection of its people. However, this does not mean that every physical and psychological trait they have is determined by the “average” of their people, only that they tend to look their nationality and reflect the majority beliefs/customs/cultural practices of their people. In cases where there is no strong majority favoring a certain appearance/practice/etc, they can fall anywhere within the range present. In other words, they have a tendency towards being stereotypical — especially in areas where there are extremely entrenched norms — but they have their own individual quirks, attributes, and styles of thought as well.
Explanation: Official canon.
• Every part of a nation spirit’s spirit body is magically linked to a part of its land body, and which body-part corresponds to which region usually changes many times over its lifetime as it gains or losses land. Most of them have cities for eyes, and their capitols are generally their hearts, brains, or other vital organs. The connection is such that harming one harms the other; for example, poking one’s eyes usually causes a power outage in the corresponding city, and a power outage in an eye-city can cause temporary blindness in one or both eyes. Natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions all affect the nation spirit’s human body, as do wars, famines, epidemics, social unrest, political struggles, and mass murders. The exact effect and severity these have on the nations’ human bodies depends on an impossibly large list of variables including-but-not-limited-to the country’s size, strength of spirit, human population, and economic health. An earthquake that would cripple one nation for months or years may simply be a short-lived minor inconvenience to another. Cuts on the human body can translate as floods in the area they correspond to ( though this isn’t a given: it depends on the situation, climate, season, etc. ). They can and do get sick, but their illnesses are usually brought about by economic woes or other social happenings on a large scale. It takes a widespread epidemic through their people to infect them with the illnesses experienced by humans.
Explanation: Not official canon in the strictest sense, but it makes sense and, as far as we know, does not contradict the official canon.
• All nation-spirits begin their lives as proto-nations: See the country “Creation/Birth” section at the bottom of this page for more details on this. Proto-nations become true nations once they successfully attain independent sovereign rule and are officially recognized as such by established nations.
Explanation: Based on the fact that we see some nations as children before they actually become true countries.
• All countries are born at least bilingual: they speak main tongue(s) of their people, and a default “country common language" called Shaykomay. Normally Shaykomay is only spoken by countries ( they are born knowing it, after all ), but humans are capable of learning it if they can find someone willing to teach them.
Countries, naturally, are also capable of learning other human languages that don’t come “naturally” to them in the regular human style, although they tend “catch on” quicker and attain fluency faster than most humans.
Explanation: France refuses to learn English, England doesn’t speak French, and all countries can communicate verbally with each other just fine, even if they don’t share a common human language. This would about have to be the case. I have taken a liberty in naming the language because it's nice to have something to call it instead of just "the common tongue" all the time.
• All countries, regardless of their personality, have an inborn desire to reveal their true identities and abilities to as few humans as possible. This is an effect of the magic that creates them. Aside from their bosses, they only reveal themselves to trusted humans on an as-needed-to-know basis, or trusted humans that they are exceptionally close to.
Explanation: Countries are not seen revealing themselves to everyone. It makes sense that they wouldn’t want to anyway, given the enormous problems that could create for them.
• Countries can die, but it takes a lot to wound them seriously enough to kill them. Even countries hellbent on killing each other have a hard time actually doing it. In order for a country to die, its government must collapse or dissolve, or it must be completely be made part of another country ( losing its own borders and recognition in the process ). There is a bit of wiggle-room here, as given the right conditions a country is capable of surviving a temporary collapse in government.
Attacks on a country’s human body are not as important symbiotically as attacks on its land body. As long as its people, culture, and government remain intact, nations can survive the complete dismemberment of their human forms.
Explanation: That countries can die is official canon ( source:Hetalia Wikia, particularly where it is mentioning Ancient Rome ). And this seems to coincide ( mostly ) with governmental collapse, which stands to reason.
Abilities/Attributes
[/size][/u][/color][/center]• Physical Strength ~ All countries are stronger than humans, but just how much stronger they are varies with respect to the military might; economic power; overall hardiness; and, to some extent the population size of the nation in question. The strongest countries are 12-20 times stronger than the strongest humans.
Explanation: This one has basis in America’s feats of Herculean strength, both as a child and adult. However, it makes sense that all unicorn healthy countries would be stronger than individual people, even if, in some extreme cases, only marginally.
• Running speed ~Varies, somewhat with respect to the country’s vehicles and technology but also affected by other complex factors. The fastest can reach running speeds of 200mph. 60-100 mph is the more typical range.
Explanation: This is the only thing that can explain how Italy made it across all of Switzerland and into Germany in one night running on foot ( actually, it’s only one of two things: he would also have to have phenomenal endurance ). From the official canon it appears that he would be one of the fastest nations, but surely the others wouldn’t be slowpokes by human standards.
• Endurance ~ Depends on the country and its overall health/power/situation, but the most hardy can withstand multiple gunshot wounds in areas that would cripple humans and keep moving ( albeit more slowly ) and run hundreds of miles before collapsing from exhaustion. How much sleep they can function on without being exhausted also varies with respect to the country’s overall health/power/situation.
Explanation: Italy’s cross-country run comes to mind. Also that funny bit where England is complaining while there is a mini-rocket smashed into his head.
• Healing ~ Should harm befall them, countries are legendary healers. How fast and how well they recover depends on the nature and cause of the injury or illness as well as another behemoth ( Note: "behemoth" is being used as an adjective here. It's NOT one of the secret words. ) list of factors, but strong and/or extremely spirited countries can recover from serious wounds in the timeframe of days. The weakest countries, by contrast, can take many years — even decades — to recover from some types of illnesses or injuries. Economic wealth, military might, spirit, and land body size are some of the strongest variables in how quickly a country heals.
Countries that sustain extremely severe injuries to and/or annihilation of their human bodies ( ie; taking a direct hit with a missile, losing way too much blood, etc. ) go unconscious, vanish completely from wherever they’re at, and reappear next to their boss unconscious and in one piece. Should the boss be in a public setting, the magic will “sense” this, and will in these cases always put the country in the nearest available area where there are no other people to see this phenomenon ( ie; a storage closet down the hall from where the president/king/prime minister/etc. is holding a conference ).
Explanation: Countries are seen being wounded, sometimes near death. But what would happen if their human forms were injured too severely? We like this explanation because it flows well and can wind up creating some potentially very funny situations. XD
The Connection Between Boss and Country
[/size][/u][/color][/center]• All nation spirits are magically bound to serve a “boss”. This boss is the leader of the country in question. Bosses have complete and utter control over the spirits of their nations: powerful binding magic forces the country to do whatever its boss commands even if it doesn't want to, so long as the command is preceded or followed by the words “I command you” or “I order you” or their equivalent in whichever tongue is being spoken. This type of command is literally impossible for the country to resist; when an impossible task is given the nation spirit is forced to put forth the best effort towards completing that task. One shining point in all this is that many bosses fail to be specific in their orders, leaving their countries wiggle-room with interpretation and execution of the commands.
• Powerful and mysterious magic protects the boss from ever being harmed by his/her country, should it attempt to harm its boss. The way the magic works is that it makes the country unable to make a move towards harming its boss: its muscles will not respond to its body's commands to move.
• Upon receiving a new boss, the binding magic forces the country in question to reveal its true identity and abilities to the boss. Bosses that initially have difficulty believing this will come around after a while ( the magic helps with this ).
Explanation For All Three: Strongly based on official canon, with the holes filled in. Explains why countries with bad bosses would continue working for them and why more bosses wouldn't be cowed into behaving by their nation spirit or meet untimely ends.
Creation/Birth
[/size][/u][/color][/center]• Proto-nation: an entity representing a group of people who are moving in the direction of forming their own country, but have not yet officially formed a recognized nation. In their human forms and in terms of their abilities, proto-nation spirits are indistinguishable from true nation spirits in almost every way, except they tend to be less powerful and much more vulnerable to death/dissolution.
• Proto-nations appear when a state-level society either colonizes a new area, a bunch of people want to set their ( insert city, territory, state, etc here ) apart from its parent nation or nations, a nation is politically split apart ( either intentionally or forcefully ), or a nation refuses to acknowledge that a certain people and land are part of it for whatever reason(s).
• Proto-nations can arise without parent nations, and back in the ancient past most did ( they arose out of chiefdoms that became increasingly complex ). Ones that do have parents can have any number of parents, usually 1 or 2 and rarely exceeding 4.
• A proto-nation becomes a true nation whenever it is officially recognized as such. This can be quite some time after the proto-nation itself is born ( as in Canada’s case ). Once this happens, the new nation’s age resets to 0 ( for practical purposes only — there is no change in the age they appear ) and the very first anniversary of independence is celebrated as the first birthday; the past years of being a proto-nation are not counted. All nations are actually older than their official ages, but how much older they are varies greatly, as they age differently depending on circumstances.
• Most of a nation’s kin are fictive kin. Even ones that do have a gene-flow in common thanks to sharing genetically similar people are not biologically related to each other as closely as human kin are. This is because nations don’t biologically reproduce in the same way as humans, so when they call each other “brother” or “sister” or what-have-you, it’s simply a matter of speaking. What kinship title one nation bestows upon another depends entirely on how that nation views the other and doesn't strictly follow any set of human kinship norms or rules; ie. one nation may view another as a younger brother when it is technically the parent of that nation. Countries that are most similar in terms of people, cultures, lifeways, and values are more likely to view each other as close kin.
Explanation For All Five: Totally inference, but does not really clash with the official canon. The very first countries on earth typically had no countries preceding them. Likewise, newly-formed countries may have more than one major dominant cultural influence.
