This year, Fortunato turns 13 years old. He is the oldest character in my OC roster. That's a long, long time for a character. And yet, for most of his history, he was kind of forgotten. Until I decided I wanted a change of pace.

As previously stablished by our last installment, 2023 wasn't my best year. After I broke up with my fiancée in 2024, I was looking to rescue ideas I'd long since abandoned. In short? I was throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. I tried quite a few things in the meantime, but none of them quite sparked joy. That was until, of course, I decided to reach way back, to a simpler time in my life.

A time where mustaches were en vogue (for some goddamn reason), nobody was anti-ship and the world hummed a different tune.

Specifically, a tune that started with nee nee papa.

Oh, boy.

So, here's something you need to know about me: I was a huge fan of Axis Powers: Hetalia when I was in middle school. It was very popular at the time— no. It was everywhere. APH was one of my very first anime (alongside gems like Soul Eater, Junjou Romantica and Sensitive Pornograph—don't ask me why I was watching it at 13, you know why) and, to this day, my sense of humour has been permanently altered by this stupid series. I genuinely attributed my good grades in middle school History class to my undying interest in countryballs for the yaoipilled.

And, of course, like any good anime fan, I had to create my own fan characters. I made Brazil, which I even have more recent fan art of (around 2024, if memory serves). He's okay!

But, one day, as I was scouring fan content for Hetalia on Tumblr, I found an ask blog.

Ask Poveglia.

And I was like... Where the fuck even is Poveglia? So I opened up Google.

Once again, my brain chemistry was altered permanently.

Poveglia is an actual place. It's a little island in the Venetian lagoon. If you're in Malamocco, you can see it from the shoreline. It's name likely comes from the poplar trees. It's tiny and has this fan-like shape. It kind of looks like a wi-fi connection. These days, it's abandoned, though there have been efforts to revitalize the area and transform it into a public park, instead of letting it rot away indefinitely. Most of those efforts come from a local group called Poveglia Per Tutti. You should support them, the project is really cool!

There's not really much there. The island is composed of an ottagono—a fortress—, a belltower and the ruins of a mental health facility. It hasn't been inhabited properly for centuries. Most of its population have been people quarantined in one way or another. The last time there were actual people living full-time in the island was during the fascist regime, over eighty years ago.

Frankly, on the surface, there's nothing to be said about Poveglia. It's just an islet, like the dozens of others in the Venetian lagoon.

What's unique about Poveglia, is its fame for being one of ~the most haunted places in the world. There's plenty of ooky-spooky "lore" about the island being a dumping ground for victims of The Black Death and that the bodies were so numerous that 50% of the island's soil is human ash. Not to mention the stories about the mental health hospital (which did exist at the time, and closed post-WW2) led by a mad doctor who experimented on patients and went insane because of the ghosts, then offed himself by plummetting from the belltower. A lot of it, as you can imagine, is bullshit.

Poveglia was, indeed, a quarantine zone during the years of the Black Death. But it had served that purpose way before Yersinia Pestis (that's a great drag queen name, isn't it?) decided to take a boat ride from Crimea to Sicily to kill half of the European population. After all, Venice is a port city; quarantine stations are kind of a necessity. At the height of the epidemic, around 600 people died a day in Venice of Black Death— the entire city itself was a dumping ground. Famously, Venice was built on top of wooden piles, which hardened into rock; space for burying that many people in such a short period was scarce, to put it lightly. I can only imagine how horrible it was to be a Venetian of that time and watch the entire city become overwhelmed with bodies. Despite the sheer number of deaths, in the modern era, you'd hardly find someone describing Venice as particularly eerie. Smelly, perhaps, but not eerie.

And while we're at it: It's also interesting how Poveglia got the short end of the stick, when Lazaretto Vecchio and Lazaretto Nuovo also served the same purpose of being quarantine islands. Those two are museums in the modern era, while Poveglia remains abandoned. God truly has its favourites... I digress.

The island has its fame—or rather, infamy. There are countless videos about the island's supposed hauntings. If you type in "Poveglia", you'll instantly get some Plague Doctor imagery. Which is hilarious, because Plague Doctors weren't even around during the Black Death. They're a 17th century thing. Creepy, for sure, but hardly historically-accurate. Which all fine and good for a Hetalia fan-character, not so much for people who are trying to discuss the island factually.

Today, as a grown 27-year-old woman, I think the island is interesting because Venice, as a city, is interesting! I mean, come on. That's a city that's over a thousand years old. The ghost shit is quaint. Part of me has this tinfoil hat theory that more people don't support the revitalization effort because they genuinely believe the island is haunted, and that being in the same place as a former dumping ground was is 2spooky4me... While they're walking on a city that's well over a millenium old. That entire city is a graveyard, man. Get over yourself.

...As a 14-year-old, however, Poveglia was a great opportunity for edgelord bullshit. I was into Creepypasta, man. Of course I would love this concept.

I really liked the concept of Poveglia, so I took it for myself and made the world's edgiest OC. With the plague doctor motiff and all. It's horrid. Coupled with the bad anatomy (not that I'm much better off today...), it's simply unbearable to look at. I will spare y'all the old art—it's a face only a mother could love, and I'm considering a late-term abortion.

And that's how Fortunato was born. A Hetalia OC and an edgelord teenage girl's wet dream. His full name was Fortunato Scordato. It can't get any more edgy than this!

It pains me to think about him, sometimes. I'm thankful most of the art of Fortunato didn't survive the years, and all that's left today is one singular sketchbook where his "original design" lives, locked away from prying eyes. (shudders)

Or well, most of it didn't survive.

I'm sure that, if you look for it, you'll certainly find my old Hetalia shit in some long-forgotten wiki, bearing my legal/uncool name (ew.) and full of my teenaged girl bullshit.

Blergh. Disgusting. If cringe could kill, it would.

There's really nothing more to it, right? That was how Fortunato was born; A Hetalia OC and an edgelord tween's wet dream that eventually was resurrected in 2025 as a "nostalgia trip". That design eventually became a fae-born priest, and then lastly, replaced altogether by his modern interation: A vampire castrato singer and yet another femboy for Pixie's roster.... Right?

Well, kind of! There is one more detail to his story that I'd like to share before we're done with this.

Around the time I created Fortunato, we were tasked with reading a book for Literature class. This book was "A Menina Que Descobriu o Brasil" (The Girl Who Discovered Brasil), by Ilka Laurito. The story focuses on the life of an Italian immigrant who moves with her family to SĂŁo Paulo when she's just a young girl, and then grows older. It was a very formative book for me. I still remember some passages by heart and I remember laughing, and getting emotional, at certain moments of that book.

The protagonist's name is Fortunata. When I read that name, I thought to myself, that's the prettiest girl's name I've ever seen. It's so unique. It means "lucky". I shall hold onto it, for later.

Cue me entering my Hetalia phase around the same timeframe, and finding out about Poveglia through the aforementioned askblog. The history and the mythos that surrounds that little island is so tragic, so over-the-top, it borders on being funny. So, I felt like such a name—Fortunato—would've been hilarious to give to a character who's so chronically unlucky.

To this day, Fortunato can't escape the ironic naming conventions. His sibling, Elia, got a normal name. He kept the ironic name and the incredibly over-the-top, tragic backstory that borders on darkly comedic.

One can only hope it doesn't come off as silly as my previous interations of him have.

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