User blog comment:Freelance Grammar Nazi/Kind of a Rant...?/@comment-1271618-20100703225002

I like the idea of Czech as female and Slovakia as male. It would make more sense to have Czech be the elder though, and Slovakia maybe a bit younger. The funny thing I've seen and heard about when reading up on Czechoslovakia history was that the Czechs were considered the more dominating and "masculine" and the "husband" role and Slovaks the "feminine" and "wife" role (ahh, stereotypical placements into gender roles :P ). It would be a fun reversal if Czech were the female and Slovakia were the male in that case. At the same time, it wouldn't be surprising if Slovakia became a girl instead of Himaruya's "manly" thought of their name, since on this end there are a bunch of fans that would feel it would make more sense to have them be the "weaker" one as a girl (yeeeah). It's funny to see how fan opinions differ depending on the part of the fandom. On this end, it's kind of split between Czech=girl/Czech=guy and Slovakia=girl/Slovakia=guy. Japanese fans seem to definitely favor Czech being the girl because of "cheko" and Slovakia being a guy.

But either way, I think they would get controversy and there could be unfortunate implications no matter who's what, so it's a matter of how they're presented and how fans handle them. You can't please everyone of course, but here's hoping they'll be pretty interesting.