This story was really interesting to read- what with all the technology parts and whatnot. Poor nations though, having to go through all of this...

Will you be continuing this?

GEORGE ORWELL'S BOOK 1984 WAS THE BEST THING I READ.

Pfft, I completely forgot that America comments in this chapter that Clark and Hall had been suspicious of the two of them before they were hacked. I guess that my long paragraph from the last review actually *was* about an intentional element of the story. Silly me and my impulsive tangents. XD

Expanding on one of my previous reviews, I guess that the Chinese Civil War was being fought before WWII and economic liasions probably wouldn't have prevented the founding of Red China, but in that lies one of the fundamental flaws with the economic fundamentalism that Hall seems to tout. As much as using national personifications as stock exchange calculators may reduce the risk of another global recession on the scale of the Great Depression, economy alone would not prevent a nation invading another out of pure hatred or spite or indignance or miscommunication or whatever. I guess that the liasions would be beneficial to the Marshall Plan and the Americanization of the world (*cough cough* American pie C;), but the reconstruction of Europe and Japan didn't last forever. What benefits would economic liasions reap after the world had been rebuilt? And civil wars, especially civil wars such as the aforementioned Chinese Civil War that didn't really involve other governments, would be largely unaffected by economic liasions. Are these liasions really preventing the spread of Communism, or is Hall trying to believe that to rationalize his job - and the usage of these nations - as something actually useful to world peace?

And, as much as the emotions and individual wills of the nations obstructed the will of the government at times, those very human qualities probably also would've been helpful in other cases (as FDR and Churchill seem keen on driving the U.S. and the U.K. together in some of your earlier fics for the sake of relations, olololol). Though, it's also interesting to note that Germany (the actual country) functions perfectly fine without either of its representatives in Shatter, apparently, and it's been proven in several of your very similar works (and arguably even in canon!) that a nation is nothing without its people but its people are fine without their nation. But, then again, countless tomes of history and potential power would have been lost upon a nation's forced demise, leaving me to wonder what motive the attendants would have to destroying something so potentially valuable. Even if it's in self-defense, would shooting a superhuman nation that could yield more than a slightly balanced national economy really be beneficial?

Ah, the moral and logical conflicts in your fics interest me so~.

But wait, nations *do* remember most of their histories, even it's sometimes clouded by memory loss or false legends (i.e. the myth about George Washington's cherry tree), right? So wouldn't their knowledge be valuable to historians and to the wiser of world leaders? ...Or am I missing something here and I'm merely acting upon my totally-existent kink for history and alternate utopian timelines? XD Idk, maybe the answers will be revealed in a future chapter (or sequel, I'd honestly die to see that) or maybe the answers already *have* been revealed and I've just missed them.

This is why it's actually worthwhile to reread and reread and reread your fics until one has beaten the living hell out of them to let intricacies and nuances fly everywhere. :)

AJDJSUWIDJDNDIIU THE FLUFF IS TOO MUCH TO BEAR. I LOVE FLUFF THAT HAS CONTEXT IN WAR OR SHARED STRUGGLES, IN CASE I HAVEN'T ALREADY SCREECHED ABOUT THAT ENOUGH ALREADY. XD No matter how much I reread Shatter or A is For or Nylon or Hey Young Blood, I'm always wooed by your style of writing fluff. :3

I swear the Shatter artwork is like 89% done and finals are the only reason why I haven't finished it already. Though, maybe finals and end-of-school stress stretching out my worktime on the piece will be beneficial in the end. Idk. There's happy accidents in everything.

I love to hate Hall. He's a quirky character and the Big Bad, but at the same time I absolutely despise him for putting Artie and Al through all of this convoluted hell and using the visage of their dead colleague to rattle them. XC

I should've mentioned this earlier, but Artie can *bake* in American Dreamsville? Le gasp. I never would've expected him to be able to actually bake an apple pie no matter what world he's living in, no offense intended to Arthur's dubious cooking skills. XD

I was going to say more, butttt then I forgot. Maybe next time I read through this (for like the tenth time) I'll leave more reviews as I hunt for more details that I've missed in my previous readings.

AND NOW, I WILL REREAD ALIGN AND TRY TO GET STUFF DONE AND WAIT FOR THE FINAL CHAPTER OF THE WANING (if I can even manage the last two). XD

(A sequel to this would honestly make my entire year. Even if it puts some of your other works on hiatus, I'd still drop everything and masquerade in a weird outfit for a month if I could see this get a conclusion and a sequel. There's just so much untapped potential in the concept of nations as human-yet-not-human beings/machines.)

...Most likely I'll reread this again in a few month's time and write yet another slightly-rambly review to express my new perspective on your fic. XD

Have a good day! :)

The peace achieved by forgetfulness that Japan talked about during his discourse with England sort of reminds me of the world of "The Giver", a dystopian novel I am about to read through about a dystopia where the past is deliberately forgotten so that there is no pain. Perhaps that correlation is deliberate...? Nevertheless, that bleeding of themes does interest me - and who knows, maybe my read-through of "The Giver" will provide another new lens to look at this fic from. :)

After rereading this chapter and taking the next chapter into account (where England hints at Colossus in front of the Russian attendant to Hall's horror), I've speculated that maybe Clark and Hall *did* know about the secret world America and England were escaping to together well before the events of the fourth chapter, hence Hall's caution about America and England's couplings and his remark in an earlier chapter that Arthur is teetering on the edge of trouble, but they were hesitant to act upon it and reset both America and England's personalities because a.) inputting economic data manually would be a hassle, especially for Clark and b.) they were too distrustful of some of the other attendants (i.e. the Russian one) to make a breach as large as America and England's privy to their colleagues. That's just my thoughts, though, perhaps the breadcrumbs you dropped here and there aren't actually interconnected and I'm hopping to a conclusion that isn't true. But thinking about Hall and Clark as being aware of America and England's secret escape long before the events of the fourth chapter makes the entire fic even more interesting to reread.

So dummy!America dragged England into a brawl to break open his combat lock and to retrieve the Colossus data still stored within England? Given what they were about to get up to in the next chapter, it makes sense that America would try to get England in fighting shape as efficiently as possible so that they could make their escape well before Clark and Hall detected them. For all of America's obliviousness and possessiveness, he sure can be smart when the fancy takes him. :)

I like the efficiency and deadly precision of Arthur's fighting style. Although, imagining America absorbing half of a tank into his body like a cyborg is almost as scary as the sheer potential of a nation-supercomputer connection. O.o

What if the nations are human computers that are more powerful than anything else that humans can ever dream of building? I mean, they remember centuries, even millenniums of history far better than a normal human would, and they've been proven (not just in this fic but in several others of a similar nature) to hold a special aptitude for handling weapons, machinery, and even giant supercomputers. Even though Portugal canonly isn't very good with machinery, at least during the Industrial Revolution, and several other nations have never really gotten on well with industrialism in general, they've all still got powers (at least in the form of quasi-immortality) that surpass those of any human. Perhaps that's why super-industrialized nations such as America, England, and Russia have been shown to demonstrate powers with machinery and weapons that are both fascinating and oh-so-frightening at the same time. O.o

George is really adorable! 3 It's a shame that he exists only within America and England's shared consciousness and he probably won't appear again in this fic or its potential sequel. :(

Tbh, Shatter feels like a dystopian fic that mixes together elements from various visions of the future from different periods in 20th and 21st century futurism, combined into a mixture that doesn't overtly lean towards any of the numerous visions of the near future that Western literature has conceived over the years but has elements of many of them. No wonder why I enjoy this fic so much; it's a smorgasbord of science fiction and romance tropes smushed together into a pleasant mixture (as gross as that comparison sounds, haha).

I'm loving the level of depth and complexity this fic has to offer. 3 Rereading this is like replaying a fantastic Homeric video game, for lack of a better comparison, as I keep on finding new nuances to the themes in this fic every time I reexperience it. Really, your talent for crafting interwoven narratives with complex themes is admirable. :D

On to the next chapter, with it's over-the-top tank-busting Nazi-smashing shenanigans! :D

Oh, so the Great Wipe occurred in October of 1945, apparently? Not-so-subtle indulgence of your love for the month of Halloween there, eh? :)

The presentation of the nations that have had their original personalities wiped (Alonso and Valentino) is strikingly similar to the presentation of executed religious criminals on the Wall to ward people off from committing the same crimes.

I do feel bad for South Italy. He had to watch as his friend (Antonio) died because of him, and then shortly afterwards see his beloved younger brother (Feliciano) die in a frenzy of grief and suffering. Although both France and England seem to have felt some semblance of horror and remorse over the deaths of Antonio, Ludwig, and Feliciano, South Italy must've felt incredibly grief-stricken by their cold-blooded murder, as those nations were pretty much his closest friends and family.

This fic is actually longer, at least in terms of wordcount, than a lot of short novels that you can find on the shelves. And with maybe ten or twenty thousand more words, it would be as long as a good-length novel on the shelf. I know because I actually checked. :) I have way too much free time sometimes.

I do wonder, though, are these economic liaisons actually helping anything or are the world's governments merely trying to hamper the problem by getting their troublesome national personifications out of the way? I mean, China is still Communist here and so are Cuba and the rest of the Soviet Union, so clearly the economic liaisons haven't completely quelled the spread of certain ideologies (the Chinese Civil War would have ended at least a few months after the Great Wipe). And although these economic liaisons could probably prevent another Great Depression from happening and give nations less reason to invade each other for resources, would these liaisons really stop nations from shooting guns at each other out of pure hatred? The national personifications don't have a role in politics anymore, not really, and while that resolves the problem of national personifications influencing their governments out of emotional needs, does that really ensure that, say, the U.S. and the Soviet Union won't launch their nukes at each other without their nations backing them?
Ah, the mysteries. It doesn't seem that the attendants have really elaborated on how these liaisons actually boost or balance out economies besides some vague explanation on the theoretical impact of the forcing couplings. Maybe their lack of detail is a given, since the nations are nothing more than conveniences to them now and therefore don't need to be aware of the visible impact of their actions, but that does make me speculate about the possibilities. Conspiracy theories abound. ;D

You promised that the next part would be the final part. Knowing you, I would've laughed had I been reading your fics when this was the most recent update. There is no such thing as a final part when it comes to RobinRocks's epics. ;)

Ah, the affection between America and England here is so endearing yet heartbreaking, knowing that their love for each other hasn't been dampened by the memory locks, yet they do seem to die together seeking their freedom in the last segment. :( If the trope were not so clichéd at this point, I would've called America and England out as being classic starcrossed lovers. England seems to be bitter over America seemingly patronizing him and forcing him into a housewife's role in their American Dream home, even though he is probably grateful that they've escaped the torturous physical world together. And America... he's still blithe and oblivious here, although he's gained an edge of dark humor to his personality, probably due to 13 years of imprisonment in a world that could barely contain him when he first stepped into it. I do think that he is saddened by the sight of his lover and protector England stripped of his memories and experiences of their times together, even though their love still persists and America doesn't explicitly speak about his nostalgia to England. :(

Ah, I'll leave another review on the next part to carry across my jumbled thoughts. For now, though, have a good day, and hopefully your copious word-vomit will be dumped all over this fic sooj after The Waning wraps up with a bang. ;D

-Diurnal Days xXx

France and England act like Ofglen and Offred here, respectively, and America is the Nick to England's Offred, except that America and England have a lot of history together and they were involved with each other before the great memory wipe.

The parallels between Shatter and The Handmaid's Tale are real, even less than 1/3rd of the way through the first chapter. :)

Also, Nick, who was implied to have been part of an underground movement to ferry Handmaids out of Gilead, shares a lot of similarities to America, who takes England with him on an escape into an American-Dream-world and eventually trains England to escape their bonds so that they can live the fugitive-married couple life together (although apparently America and England were taken down by the Achilles heel called Hall). And the penetrating ambiance of unsettling unnatural silence is present in both works. And both the Handmaids and the nations have their basic freedoms revoked whilst the higher-powers-that-be tell them that the world is better off this way and that they're making sacrifices for the greater good, even if the participants are not voluntary and are held at gunpoint at all times.

But that's enough of the parallels that may-or-may-not be a result of my tendency to grab at straws. On to my other thoughts about the first chapter. :)

Gosh darn, I've reread this fic so much that I've grown to memorize each and every scene and the sequence of events it falls into. I guess that's a good thing, haha, considering that the final(ish) chapter of Shatter will most likely be connected to the tantalizing ending of the fourth and I wouldn't want to be jarred back into the narrative with a sudden kick up my ass. So I can easily fall back into the engrossing story without having to take a quick crash-course in what the fuck had happened beforehand. :)

Honestly, even though Belarus has the same amount of impact in the story as a houseplant, I've still noticed that none of the attendants nor any of the nations mention her loss after the first chapter. Was that an oversight or is Belarus simply that unpopular? O.o The fact that you've killed off the German brothers several times in your fics, almost more often than any of the other characters, garners a mention, however. They died in Align (repeatedly, in Ludwig's case, apparently), they both died in this fic, I'm pretty sure that they died at some point after one of your other Cardverse-related fics, etc. Perhaps that's an unfortunate coincidence that the German brothers have a strange affinity for dying, or maybe it's a euphemism for the great struggles that the German people underwent during the early part of the 20th century? Ooh, mysteries. :3

Your backburner has not gotten any shorter since this fic, not at all. In fact, it's grown so long that I'm pretty sure there's still some people following you in hope of an eventual update of really old fics such as Ghost in the Machine and Pangaea. XD Although, some of your unfinished fics are well-off enough as oneshots, such as Monomania and Hey Young Blood (though I'd be very happy to see an update of that last one someday!).

Hall and Clark, alongside some of the lesser-mentioned attendants such as Tanako(?) and García, seemed like kind of flat background characters on my first readthrough of this fic, since all they really had to their personalities was a somewhat-unexplained disdain for the nations - at least it seemed. However, after reading through this fic several more times, I've picked up on the
possibility that the humans are made less nuanced on purpose - they're the great Big Bad that America and England (and, to a lesser extent, Feliciano) rebel against. The attendants are the personified faces of human indifference and desperation - they're largely insensitive to the plight of the national personifications they watch over, and their "solution" to the world's problems is to slap seemingly experimental technology onto dangerous, wild creatures and then force them into liasions against their will "for the greater good". It really doesn't sound as good on paper as it probably did around a conference table featuring old, weary men at the end of World War II. They do have good reason for attempting to corral the nations, as shown with the England-Colossus connection in the prologue that shows him *reading the goddamn future* with a primitive digital computer, and that's not even when he was really trying to explore the full extent of his potential with Colossus. Imagine what a nation could do with a nuclear arsenal and an array of high-spec supercomputers. O.o

And imagine that dreaded Mutually Assured Destruction was what the higher-ups of the world did, apparently, and then they tried containing the power of those very powerful and very capricious national personifications by forcing them into having buttsex with each other using the very same type of technology *that nations had previously used to achieve the seemingly impossible*. Really, it was only a matter of time that Alfred would've discovered how to hack that technology, even if a bunch of locks had been placed on the parts of his nation brain that held his memories and abilities.

That's the power of the American Dream, after all. America imagines what could be, and then makes it into what is, against all odds of doing so. Look at all this dreaming and imagining among nations and people that's going on in this fic. :)

I would go on about how the locks and restrictions placed on the nations may symbolize the futile human restriction of their primal emotions (hatred, love, envy, etc.) or perhaps the control of fear over what we humans can do as a species (fitting, considering the time period Shatter takes place in was in the early stages of the Cold War), but I'd rather save that for later.

The Shatter artwork is almost done at this point, so it'll be up and ready most likely by the time you read this review. ;)

Have a good day, and hopefully this'll see an update real soon! :D

(But real life is rather troublesome sometimes, and some of your unfinished fics are probably better off left untouched. So no matter what you create or update, I'll be sure to give it my earnest support.)
-Diurnal Days

Okay, hi. So I read this a bit ago however I wasn't logged on I believe til now. I friend of mine from G recommended this fic to me while I recommended to her The Waning.

Though what I wanted to say besides that you are an amazing writer and that if you plan on or have published your own original work I would LOVE to read it is this fic's comparison to this novel I recently read for AP English Lit. I don't know if you have read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, if you haven't you should as I believe its a must read, but this fic reminds me of it.

While in The Handmaid's Tale there is Christian Fundamentalism criticism, in this fic it seems to be an economical fundamentalism criticism. In the novel Offred and the other handmaids no longer think of their bodies as their own but tools to have children to the point where their own names our private to them only (now they can only be Ofglen, Ofwarren, etc.) which is similar to the nations now, they basically exist as tools for economy. Both handmaids and nations were practically brainwashed and have had their freedoms revoked with death looming constantly and sex for business being their job. America and England have the dream thingymabob as an escssped, Offred's escape is her remaining memories and the nights with Nick. And there is that defience that they all have.

All I can say is...

Awesome.

I love it. Very much. Thank you.

This is my favorite Hetalia fanfiction of all time. America and England feel so raw, so fleshed out, so real, that I feel like their struggles are actually happening right before my eyes.
Also, I love Adventure/Romance. That's kind of the feel I get from the later chapters, but the overlying theme of Romance/Angst is one of my favorites, too.
I'm still awaiting the conclusion, but I have hopes that this gem will see the conclusion and sequel it deserves someday. But no rush, "The Waning" and "Eternity" are great fics, too.
I really wish this fic had more reviews, the concept is very unique and fleshed out, and all the positive stuff that the other reviewers already said.
Keep on being awesome, RobinRocks!

Omg why is this fic so good, how is it possible that everything you write is gold omg
I hope sometime in the future you can finish this story, it's really good.

This is my favourite Hetalia fic of all time. Any chance it will be finished? No pressure!

So amazing... Hgfghkkitvcawrgnkkm *dies* update soon please!

Holy shit, I don't even have words for this. What can I even say?! That this idea is one of the most genius that I've seen in this fandom? That the way you blend flashbacks and current time is incredible? That this is now one of most favorite fic, ever?

Wow. That's all I can say. This story is just...so amazing I don't even know where to begin to comment. Thank you for writing 52k of this glorious design. I don't know how I'll be able to survive the incomplete, but that pain is worth it just to be able to glimpse this story.

OH NO I'M SO SAD! This was such a great chapter, I really love this story. You make me want to cry, you know! But honestly, I think you are a beautiful writer. Your stories are amazing. Ugh I'm so sad...

That was very stupid of Arthur to announce that he knew about the Collosus. Now they're probably going to try to destroy it or destroy Arthur's mind so that he can't use it. There goes the element of surprise .