All He Ever Wanted

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N. Italy: At least the Fascists have parties too. Hey! That was a really nice joke, fratello! S. Italy: It's really not a joke. N. Italy: No, no. It's a joke because they're the Fascist party and they're having a parade. It's surreal. S. Italy: Surrealism isn't a joke either.

Considering that webcomic and anime Axis Powers Hetalia requires Politically-Correct History in order to keep the series as lighthearted and satirical as it is, the fandom's come up with some downright disturbing things in the way of Fanfic.

All He Ever Wanted takes the premise and conceit of Axis Powers Hetalia (namely, personifying the Nations of the world) and uses it to explore the events of an Alternate History where England kept its 50-year alliance to Japan and joined the Axis Powers (which is not that farfetched a historical possibility). All He Ever Wanted follows the Nations through a prolonged World War II and the often-painful choices that this time of conflict forces them to make. Where Hetalia itself would Hand Wave the darker parts of a Nation's history for the sake of the story that's being told, All He Ever Wanted approaches them head-on, and has the characters do the same. However, your mileage WILL vary in regards of how well-done it is or not. And this is all that should be said about it in the main page.

The AHEWniverse project is ongoing, and as such this page contains only tropes that have already been exhibited in the stories. Please keep it spoiler-free!

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This Fanfic contains examples of:

• Accidental Murder: You shouldn't have loaded the gun, Italy.
• Action Girl: Hungary. In name mostly.
• All There in the Manual: Having the historical background for the events usually helps you to understand the fics.
• Alternate History
• Anachronic Order
• Author Avatar / Possession Sue: A rather common accusation leveled at Austria because of of his very... polemic characterization here.
• Big Brother Is Watching: In Communist America, movies watch you.
• Bilingual Bonus: Try decilingual bonus.
  • Also, though the installments are written mostly in American English, the characters' voices follow anglicized grammatical structure of their own languages. Japan uses no contractions, Russia uses short sentences but long paragraphs, France always inflects upward, etc.
  • When Austria tells Messaien what he is, Messaien thinks he means to say that he is Austrian and says "Your French needs work." Austria clarifies: "No, I am the State".
• Bittersweet Ending: Romano, aka. South Italy leaves his brother, with the implication that there will eventually be fragmentation and an Italian civil war. However, in doing so he "attains" Spain's respect and love.
• Bling of War: Everyone by 1960.
• Blood Knight: Prussia. Oh, Prussia.
• Bound and Gagged: Vietnam.
• Butt Monkey: Poor Korea.
• Byronic Hero: England, when he's not being a Villain Protagonist instead.
• Calling the Old Man Out: America to England.
  • "Then stay out of my sky, Dad."
• Came Back Wrong: Word of God says four characters will die. Three already have, and the authors have left tracks stating that they, being Nations, are not gone for good. Greece has already been reincarnated, and Switzerland is a poltergeist. But as for France, well...
  • Cerveauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuux.
• Chekhov's Gun: Isn't loaded!
• Chickification: Pulled on Hungary, a fearless Action Girl in canon... whom Prussia easily captures, then brutally tortures and rapes to "teach a lesson" to her beloved ex-husband Austria, whom Prussia is holding hostage..
  • Vietnam. In World War Two, Vietnam the country had already started fighting for its independence from France. In Hetalia canon, Vietnam the Moe Anthropomorphism is mentioned to be a Plucky Girl who follows the example of the many emotionally/physically strong women in her history. In the fic, Vietnam the Moe Anthropomorphism is... Bound and Gagged.
• Color Coded for Your Convenience: The Fascists wear greyscale, the communists and socialists wear blood and gold.It is implied that civilian Nations wear colors, mostly those not associated with either side; when Austria is let out of his glass box, he wears first a red, then a blue scarf.
  • Also, the Fascists wear gloves.
• Dark Fic
• Darker and Edgier: As usual, considering the authors.
• Dead Guy, Junior: After Italy kills the Greece we know, the new personification of the country shows up in the form of a little girl.
  • "Heathen! Traitor! Loser! ...Are you my mommy?"
• Deconstruction: Of its source material.
• Deconstructor Fleet: Of several fanfic genres.
• Drink Order: Italy drinks all the colors of the world!
• Driven to Suicide: At some point around the time England went mad, hundreds of citizens of the Empire and Commonwealth engaged in mass suicides, many hurling themselves off the White Cliffs of Dover. Those who couldn't get to the British Isles did the same thing in Calcutta. By 1949, several thousand have killed themselves.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Austria.
• Enemy Mine: France and England, because it's too canon for Foe Yay.
• Evil Albino: Prussia
• Evil Sounds Deep: Subverted, England sings as a countertenor.
• Exactly What It Says On the Tin: The Drunken Fascist Orgy.
• Famous Last Words
  • "Are you sure I cannot have a cigarette?"
  • "Then kill me, Italy, kill me like your grandfather killed my mother--"
  • "Oh. Red."
• Fascist Italy: And how!
• Five-Bad Band: The Fascists
  • Big Bad: Prussia
  • The Dragon: Italy, god help us all.
  • The Brute: Germany
  • Evil Genius: Japan
  • Dark Chick: Hungary
  • Only Sane Man: England. Well, for the first half...
• For Want of a Nail: That was one very special relationship.

For want of Japan, poor France was lost; For want of poor France, America was lost; For want of America, his mind was lost; For want of his mind, the Empire was lost; For want of the Empire, the war was won, Though not by the Nation who started it all.

• Four Is Death
  • Who knows four?
    • I know four!
• Genre Savvy: Austria knows just what kind of story this is. (That's how he wrangles a happy ending.)
  • England qualifies as Dangerously Genre Savvy since he's practically writing the story at this point. And it only gets worse when he goes crazy.
  • France and America have proven to be Wrong Genre Savvy.
• Good People Have Good Sex: Subverted. Oh god is it subverted. (Poor America.)
  • In fact, this seems to be a running thing with the sexual relationships in AHEW. Prussia's among the worst of the lot and enjoys himself immensely, specially through raping the few AHEW-important women; England and Japan are happily malevolent together through the entire first half of the chronology, so much that France complains about how much time England spends having sex; and, well, the Drunken Fascist Orgy.
• Grey and Gray Morality: Neither the Fascists nor the Communists are immune from atrocities, but neither is presented as completely monstrous. May be Black and Gray Morality if you give the Communists the benefit of the doubt.
• Hidden Elf Village: China.
• Historical Domain Character: FDR, Winston Churchill, King Ned, some Italian guy with a nice pair of shoulders, some Austrian guy with an evil moustache, Herr Beck, Olivier Messaien, Beniamino Gigli, General Gamelin, and that's just so far.
  • Churchill gets an Historical Villain Upgrade, though this is Truth in Television given his personal politics.
• Historical In-Joke: Too many to list.
• Holy Roman Empire: The WHRR is an attempt at renewing this through the unification of the European continent.
• I Have Your Ex-Husband: Prussia uses Austria to force Hungary to collaborate.
• It Got Worse: Take a wild guess.
• James Bondage: Austria is imprisoned for most of the continuity, both because of the Austrian Anschluss and his ethnicity.
• La Résistance: Greece.
• Les Collaborateurs: Hungary and Liechtenstein. Or are they?
• Lyrical Dissonance: Fratelli d'Italia in "All The Rest Have Thirty One", Vesti la giubba in "Put on the Costume", "The Sun Whose Rays Are All Ablaze," and pretty much the entirety of "FULL STOP", or whenever England sings at all.
• Mad Oracle: In the second half of the continuity England is either this or a Talkative Loon. The one thing that stands in the way of his being purely a Mad Oracle is that he can't see the future; he can see the story, because he can see all stories right now, and all of them are true.
• Magical Realism
• Malevolent Architecture: Switzerland's House.
• Manipulative Bastard: England and Japan.
• Meaningful Funeral: France has an entire installment devoted to one, complete with England getting drunk and hallucinating him, Canada organizing the ceremony through his tears, and Magnificent Bastard Prussia telling a touching story about a one-legged whore.
• Mighty Whitey: Discussed, as the perpetual thorn in Japan's side.
• No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: Japan to Korea, England to China.
• People's Republic of Tyranny: The United States of America, the Northern Territories, and the Subequatorial States.
• Propaganda Machine: On every continent.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Italy.
• Rape As Drama: Specially Hungary and Liechtenstein, the only two AHEW-important female nations.
• Scarpia Ultimatum: Prussia forcibly brings Hungary to the captured Austria's cell and violently rapes her saying that it's for Austria's "benefit".
• Shout-Out: All over the place.
  • "Excepting February" is written in homage to House of Leaves, with Switzerland's house getting walled in.
  • In England's arc in particular, there are excessive references to his literature and culture: "Lavender's Green" is a particularly long string of references.
  • During "The Seventh Door", Prussia and Hungary only speak in the rhythm of Bela Bartok's Duke Bluebeard's Castle: "Judith, tell me, will you follow?" "I will follow, Kekzakallu." The title of the installment also comes from that opera.
  • "City of Light" follows and uses Dreyer's Joan of Arc as a focal reference.
  • Of all things, Japan unconsciously references Bugs Bunny in "It is my Very Humane Endeavor": "He believes he is hunting rabbits, so please be quiet." Australia attempts to point out what he just said, but Japan doesn't quite get it.
  • The title of "Yes, Virginia" is taken from a Dresden Dolls song, "Mrs. O.," and contains as many sections as the song has verses, much to the author's surprise.
    • The phrase/idiom "Yes, Virginia" was around long before the Dresden Dolls used it, just saying.
  • Count the references to Jewish culture in "Fly, Thought, on Wings of Gold", very few of which are made explicit. Also, the word Jew is almost never actually used.
  • The entire fic "Inherit the Earth" is a dark-mirror remix of the popular canonverse Hetalia fic "Kingdom of Heaven".
• Shot At Dawn: France
• Take That: To everyone who forgot that Prussia's a fucking Nazi.
  • Except historically he's less likely to be one than Germany. Prussian aristocracy hated Hitler and many of them went as far as supporting resistance movements. And Germany was Nazi first.
    • And then Prussia kills Hitler and stages said coup to bring back the Iron Cross. It's in one of the first fics in the timeline.
      • And is still more Nazi than Germany, which historically makes no sense. Do read up on Preußenschlag. A Preußenschlag, that in the fic, Prussia staged. That's anti-historical and just plain wrong. (Not to mention chock-full of Unfortunate Implications about German people as a whole.)
• The Determinator: Poland.
• The Fettered: Germany. (Ouch.)
• The Great Depression: In "Conceit and Inception".
• The Plague: Fuck you, Stalin.
• The Rashomon: So what happened during the German-Russian conflict on the (former) Polish border (or was it?) in September 1939? "The Left Hand Doesn't Know" and "What The Right Hand Is Doing" give us about four different accounts, and by the end of "What The Right Hand Is Doing," Russia still hasn't figured out what went on, or even what the Party line about what went on should be. Germany gives the situation as much resolution as it's going to get when he declares war on Russia, though.
• Theme Naming: Not the characters, but the installments.
  • Every fic that has to do with the death of a Nation takes its title from the poem, Thirty Days Hath September.
  • The fics that deal with Central Europe, particularly the German nations, take their titles from famous opera excerpts.
  • If a fic is part of a companion set, their titles will be directly related, such has "The Left Hand Doesn't Know" followed by "What the Right Hand is Doing".
• Those Wacky Nazis: Subverted to hell and back.
• The Unfavorite: Canada, Australia.
• Unreliable Narrator: All of them. Seriously. The Nations don't always believe their own recounting of events.
• UST: America and England may have signs of this, rather than misplaced paternality.
• What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic
• What Do You Mean It's Not Political?
• What Happened to The Mouse?: What drove England mad?
• What If: What If England hadn't dissolved the Anglo-Japanese Alliance?
  • Or, What if someone took Hetalia seriously?
    • Not that this story has a lot to do with Hetalia anymore except for the basic concept.
• What Measure Is A Baltic State
• What The Hell America
• White-Haired Pretty Boy: Subverted twice. Prussia is an albino, but not pretty or desirable. England, conversely, goes grey from trauma, except the eyebrows.
• World War II: In an Alternate History where the Axis had a very valuable ally in England.
• Writer On Board: All three authors have distinct styles and opinions on what they are writing.