#love to read about how ppl interpret the canon into the modern concept of Jobs

[ash-and-starlight]

Would you have any thoughts about the Gaang in a modern au (either with or without bending), especially jobs? I legit love how there’s never been a consensus of how they’d live, especially job wise, in the fandom — except for Katara, she is absolutely a doctor, surgeon, ER badass. Personally, I love the thought of Zuko as a child protective agent, and Sokka as a high school teacher, not just for the dramatic Zukka potential lol haha either way, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

aaa ok i love and adore to see how their roles get translated in modern au’s in such clever ways, i loveee your ideas for zukka workplace drama that’s so 🥺 ok i’ll list some of my faves but feel free to add

-doctor katara SO TRUE and activist katara also so true either way she’s helping people and giving all she’s got

-aang also activist monk-turned *insert job that has to do with flying?? or meteorology??* AND i love the silly little headcanon he and zuko are lion dance partners dkfjdj

-toph wwe champion. without question

- jet could also work with kids tbh as either a child protective agent too or teaching martial arts classes for kids as some sort of social program he zuko and toph have an underground fight club every tuesday he and iroh have a wholesome breaking bad situationship going on with banger edibles

- zuko the guy with 294737 job options tbh either as jasmine dragon clerk, firefighter, historian / khon expert and standing authority on the ramakien, parkour guy, sword guy, guy who goes to business school just to learn how to efficiently dismantle dad’s financial empire, and i am extremely partial on muai thay champion-instructor zuko who has like a post-injury gym program just for the zukka of it all of him helping sokka with his leg during rehab 😌

- sokka also guy that can do anything tbh wether working as inventor or in tech/mechanic fixing things, working at a science museum (hi robin), marine biologist (hi kath) working as an astronomer or at the planetarium bc he’s always been fascinated by the night sky and the moon, artist, poet, mythbuster, sword guy as well, all of these at once. most importantly he has an insanely popular food blog on the side

- suki kendo captain of an all-girl club

- florist mai. (specifically ikebana artist) which is comic canon and in context made little sense but i love it it’s beautiful bc it brings me to

- tattoo artist ty-lee 💕

- and azula uhhh nepobaby electrician

#i am kIDDING about azula but also not #*there is not job consensus in the fandom* babe i don’t have job consensus within MYSELF #anyway love to put those guys into situations #love to read about how ppl interpret the canon into the modern concept of Jobs #oh a thing i don’t think i’ve ever seen tho is zuko still being a royal while in a modern au?? #like he’s just some guy but at one point iroh drops the bomb of ‘yeah u know centuries ago our family was part of the royal line 🤪 #i think i would have been the firelord haha ✌️’ #and the whole gaang now just has to live with this information #i think it would be funny ekhfhd #ANYWAY #awesome question sorry for going off and still making no sense with my answer ily #ash replies

[cutesilyo]

Don’t know if you’re still full of energy to answer this ask but what do you think Nation-tans are or what they represent? i personally love how Hima made them so humane they’re able to entertain themselves with little pleasures like owning pets and— and the likes. And they work under their government but, oftentimes have opinions that aren’t politically driven, because propaganda can’t be the quintessence of being a nation-tan, their identity is also be with culture and ppl.

omg chiring-art i admire you so much and i admire every single piece of art you do so i am personally so EXCITED to answering this ask for you. ill try my best to answer this with care.

this ended up pretty long though, sorry! tl;dr: i think nations represent culture more than their government, and they take government jobs because its convenient. i also feel like nations are intrinsically connected to human perception of them and disconnected from linear time

my idea of the nations is an amalgamation of stuff other hetalia fans have said, the few interpretations we can get from canon, and things i’ve read concerning other mythologies and monsters. there is a stark political and legal delineation between the terms “nation” and “state”: a nation being the cultural identity shared by a group of people living in the same borders, while a state is literally just territory with a sovereign government. i certainly think the nations represent, well, their nation — the totality of it, the land and the culture and the history and the people — more than their governments, primarily because himaruya bases their personalities mainly on national stereotypes (which are derived from history and culture) and not on political, governmental action. it’s why hetalia, despite the subject matter, can be as light and comedic as it is: the focus isn’t on history enacted by a wacky cast of characters, but rather on a wacky cast of characters that just so happen to embody history.

on why the nations usually work under their governments, i always felt like it was out of convenience’s sake on the nation’s part. national governments will usually be involved in any major event that requires foreign relations, and national governments have the ability to reach out to every single little city, town, county, province in the nation. the breadth of government to, by necessity, be connected to every kind of sector — women, children, workers, media, education, business, transportation, military, healthcare, trade, law, the poor, science, environment and resources, oil, energy, and a PLETHORA of other things — means that, for a nation, it’s easy to use those connections to be placed in a job that they’re actually personally interested in. and for the government itself, it’s very convenient to a) have their nation in a workplace they have direct control over, and b) nations being fickle and developing different interests over time, and thus trying to go to different jobs or locations, means that the government has an “insider” that can informally, quickly, and honestly report on how this specific workforce or location is doing and if they have any concerns to forward without going through bureaucracy and red tape. so like, america will request to be placed as an engineer for NASA, and he has monthly calls with his assigned federal agent where he can say stuff like “oh yeah, we’re a little low on morale because the boss is going through a rough divorce, we need a referral for a nearby therapist stat. also johnson here wants to follow-up on the radiators he’s been requesting for three years now so a bump on that would be lit” it’s a win/win situation most of the time, but i do feel like there are some nations who don’t trust their governments enough for such an arrangement, or just want to live simple lives outside of their nation duties with no work or need for such connections.

but i digress. i guess the heart of the question is really: what even are nations?

i struggled a lot in how to word this, honestly. nations are, well, the physical representations of the culture, history, territory, and people of a nation — we all know that. but i feel the question needs to be taken to a deeper level so we can search for a more conclusive answer. history tells us that nations fall and unite and form and change and expand and crumble over time, so what determines what the nations in hetalia represent? when does a nation die and get replaced by a new nation-tan, and when does a nation just adapt and represent what they’ve developed into? in the meta-sense, we know its because hima is adapting the nations based on our current, modern understanding of history: we know which nations/kingdoms/empires stand the test of time and which don’t, so we have an idea on which ones are “relevant” enough to be their own separate character and which don’t. whatever force in hetalia that serves as the in-universe explanation for which nation-tans exist must have the same understanding. 

it’d be tempting to pin this force as fate or god or some other otherworldly being, but nations are fundamentally human constructs, and i’m a lot more interested in how that works. i read a short story before about a conversation between a human and a vampire, and the vampire says something like, “we used to be fine under the sun, but then humanity began believing that it was one of our weaknesses, and since then we've been crumbling under its light. whatever story you tell about us shapes us.” i think the same mechanism applies for which nation-tans exist and the personalities of the nation-tans themselves, and in a broader sense, it also explains why the nations are basically just normal people that don’t die. people write about nations as people all the time; not even just counting personifications like uncle sam and lady britannia, but also poetry and art of nations (represented by normal humans) doing normal people things like crying, working, dancing, etc.

but this mechanism would also have to be one that exists outside of time: 14th century england has to carry with him the conceptions and stereotypes that 21st century modern society associates with england, for example. the nature of being a nation demands that you cannot be governed by time in the same way that humans are, and it explains why nations are immortal, why they have their own rules for aging, why their sense of time is off, why humans go crazy when exposed to them over long periods of time, why animals develop longer lifespans when nations develop bonds with them, and why anachronistic one-off jokes like america trying to use google in the 40s can happen. 

im really not sure how to end this because i feel like i can ramble on forever. but to sum it all up, nations are basically a metaphysical nightmare!

#chiring-art #asks #this was the FIRST thing i saw when i woke up so i am so EXCITED #i feel like i didnt say anything new though lmao #okAY OKAY BUT WHAT IF #what if in the biological sense nations are literally just people but every cell is a cancer cell #and their blood has no antigens or antibodies so their blood type is essentially [REDACTED] #THIS MAKES NO BIOLOGICAL SENSE LMAO BUT THEYRE NATIONS SO #you know i actually dont know how to add tags to answered asks before i post them.......