WE WON ;_;!!!

FUNimation's Hetalia Fan Video Contest.

...

WE WON. (FUNimation Blog post)



*deliriously throws self around!!*

This really makes me feel proud, excited... a whole lot of things, really.

The whole thing was so last minute. When I found out about the contest (thanks to the tumblr blog of TristenCitrine Hetalia Brand manager), I immediately knew this sort of thing was perfect for _anatra_, glayish, and I!

We've already been making stupid videos for, what... 5 years? Lol. Ever since we've known each other anyway.

_anatra_ and I hastily wrote 2 scripts for 2 separate entries so we'd have more of a chance. We really didn't have much time to film at ALL. Right after work on Friday we grabbed _anatra_ at Finch, and then drove back up to our house to film as many scenes as we could.

We ended up filming until 11pm at night, then stayed up to around 1am prepping our costumes for the morning. We got up DAMNED EARLY for a Saturday (7am, whyy). Literally flew straight into costume and filmed non-stop until noon. Ate a much needed lunch (pastaaa), and then we jumped into the Mustang to drop _anatra_ off at her LARP for the rest of the weekend. (Which, by the way, is in the middle of NO WHERE, and I had to drive on a crazy dirt road in a forest wtffff!!;;; )

After that we edited our entries and submitted them on youtube as per the contest's rules....





OH LAWDD WHYYY XDDDD


WE THOUGHT THE CONTEST WAS GOING TO STAY 18+, OK? LOL. (They opened the contest to younger fans a couple days before deadline, and we had already submitted.. otherwise I probably would've tried to be a bit more tastful XD;).

Apparently there were almost 100 entries!! INSANE. I didn't get a chance to watch all of them, but from the ones I did, a lot of people had really good things to say. It made me worried about us even getting in X_x! (You can find all the entries by searching FUNimation Hetalia Fan Video on youtube search).

...BUT. We did get in!! Thank you FUNimation :'D!

My entry got into the top 12 finalists and was uploaded onto the FUNimation Channel.

The rules were that the Grand Prize Winner & Fan's Choice would be the video with the most amount of views until Oct. 20th, 11:59PM, and another grand prize winner would be chosen by the FUNimation team.

SO...

Of course I was at home constantly f5-ing the blog page for our link to go up, so I could start spreading it far and wide.

Due to some aggravating youtube issue (still not sure why), 7 of the 12 videos went public, while 5 of them remained unwatchable. (YEAH our entry was one of the unwatchable ones, OF COURSE OTL; ). For at least 2 hours we kind of agonized over this fact considering FUNimation's youtube channel has close to 300K subscribers, and the views were going up into the hundreds for the other vids.

As soon as the video went public:

LINK SPAM FURY!

I definitely could never have done any of this without glayish and _anatra_. They both may be Slytherins, but they put up with me and my moods and my issues with pure unadultered COURAGE.

_anatra_ and I posted little Help the Axis! videos we had prepared beforehand just in case we got through to the finals.








msdbzbabe (MsDBZbabe on YouTube ), our friend who was INCREDIBLE and WONDERFUL, helped us too, by posting a little vid on her channel to her 27,000+ subscribers!





Can't thank her enough for all her help in pimping our video. We're all major fans of DragonBall Z and each others' fanwork, so for her to post about Axis Powers Hetalia (which she is not currently into) was really amazing of her. Then again she's always been super generous and somebody funny yet unbelievably kind. We're lucky to have met her at Anime Central 2010 and hung out with her the following year at Anime Central 2011! ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

jiyoon (Adri aka Cho to my Harry Potter), was the best damn friend EVER. ;_;. She tirelessly watched the video OVER AND OVER for every single hour it was up so that our view count would soar to the top. She didn't even sleep. She got her boss at work and her boyfriend to do it, too. Her boss slowly started questioning his sexuality because of our crossplaying.. XD.

Seriously, I know we could not have done it without jiyoon. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥


Those two weren't the only ones, either ;_;!!

Malindachan (DevART)
Kaiser-Mony (DevART)
evilqueen112 (of APH-Yaoi Club ) (DevART)
LiquidCocaine-Photos (DevART)
Polveremagica (Tumblr)
akintak (Tumblr)
GoodHetaliaCosplay (Tumblr)
tamayouchi (DevART)
LivingIchigo (FaceBook)
Carolanne (FaceBook)
Shelley (FaceBook)
Morisa (FaceBook)

ALL OF THEM blogged or posted about our video so that we could get more viewers!! Forever thanks!! All it took was a simple post from these fantastic people and our video went up thousands of views. T_T

And I can't forget everybody who said they watched & rooted!!

lonym82
blulious
izunadrop247
kintaei
neocloud9
shadowtwinz
sppandaaa
darth_teca (congrats on winning the Team Hetalia chosen Grand Prize!! I knew it would be you! <3!!)
animetomboy
tylika
didgeridoodle
+ more from FaceBook & YouTube!

Thank you guys, it was because of you that we won!

Also, every single last person on my DevART Page and on YouTube who watched over and over and shared the link with others. It was all because of that.




Now, for a few things I don't talk about much...

Last year I entered into 2 Hetalia/FUNimation related contests. The Postcard Contest (draw a postcard) and ACP's Italy Cosplay Contest (cosplay look-a-like). Each time I've entered, I've always had the most awful ideas about how I would fare.

Especially for the Cosplay Contest. Not so much because of my sewing or wig styling skills, but because.. well I'm NOT Italian and don't look very Italian at all really.

Most of the time it just doesn't register I'm mixed race or have a different skin tone from anybody around me at all. But with Hetalia, things like not being the same nationality as your nation just automatically stick out. Not necessarily in a bad way, but, it's there.

And I've always hated that. I admit, it's always been a source of stress in the back of my mind every single time I put on my Hetalia cosplays. I'd get dismayed and there's a neverending nagging feeling that everyone I meet is thinking, "She's great, but..."

Ironically, the Fan Video Contest was to describe why you love Hetalia and why others should, too.

The cosplay was one of my reasons, but... I've never felt more ill at ease cosplaying from a series then with Hetalia cosplay... I don't know why I had so many hang-ups about it, but they were there. I was actually deathly afraid of being slurred out on the FUNimation channel (it's happened to me on my own DBZ youtube vids afterall), but... yknow what..

All that fear was really for nothing.

Because even with all the crazy exposure, even being subject to the scrutiny of thousands of people, even when it's a series based on stereotypes... nobody said one stereotypically bad thing about me.

In fact, people have said only the nicest things.

So for all the fuckers who say shit about Hetalia fans, THEY ARE WRONG. And the cosplay is definitely one of the very best reasons for loving Hetalia.

DBZ fanboys still have my r@ge & hate, though. >_>. All of it. ...also to all the entries that persisted that tired old "Who?" joke about Canada... maple leaf forever :J



I guess what I've taken from this whole thing is that I am very lucky to have such close, funny, loyal, and talented friends who will pull together at a moment's notice to do stupid stuff like dress up and brave windchill and cold and no sleep and broken f5 keys to come out on top.

If you want something to happen, you have to ask for the help and do whatever you can to make sure that what you want becomes yours.

It's not really Hetalia I love... it's everyone who helped and worked and stayed by me to make this a reality.


Thanks all....
We're the Axis Powers! :'D