WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW it's been wayyyyyyyy too long since the start of this project, but can you believe at last that it's done?????? Hetalia in 2024...brings a tear to your eye, don't it?
Anyways, at long last here it is, the Always With You Nordic Zine
speedpaint here!!
since the zine is out now i can post my piece for it :) as is the theme for my zine pieces apparently, this one is another based on a fanfic that meant a lot to me as a teen, only this time its My fic! it was an incredibly specific, somewhat melodramatic alien au in which norway was a grey alien, iceland was a living planet, finland was a shooting star and sweden was the man in the moon. denmark was a normal human who was, for reasons, canonically a practising christian. shoutout to my former gf for drawing the original drawing of norway as a grey alien to extraterrestrial by katy perry, thus sparking this entire saga all those years ago. i hope i've done past me's work justice. wahoo!
since it's out i can finally post my piece for @hws-anthology as well as the timelapse for it. as is arguably all my hetalia work, it's a love letter to my friend @pyrrhocorax 's fic Sendlingur og Sandlóa - i'll ramble a bit about how much it means to me, as well as the symbolism i wormed into this piece below the read more :)
i originally had two pages planned for this piece, potentially more - the fic is a good 74k words long and certainly not light on scenes i could and wanted to pull from, but various things led into other various things and one page was all i could manage, so i tried to cram in what i could, so here's that (in a rough, somewhat arbitrary order of focal points)
the opening chapter! the car is a framing device for the piece as much as it is for the journey the characters will take following that first chapter, so i wanted to use the car window/shapes as a literal framing device in my drawing
joi, shaky at best in his sense of self, sees no reflection in the window, instead there's a silhouetted raven to signify the search he must go on to find it
while not perfectly transcribed by virtue of wonky (plus an extra) line(s), the notes coming from joi's headphones are the opening to the song sendlingur og sandlóa, the fic's namesake, which a loved one kindly transposed by ear for me for the purpose of this piece
in a similar vein, the stickers on joi's suitcase are of a purple sandpiper and a ringed plover, the birds after which the song is named - here they are as transparents and in their original colours
i wanted to create a sliiight impression that joi is the one knocking over the chessboard, representing his repeated rejections of it (both physically, and the things it represents)
the chess pieces were also chosen specifically! originally i was going to use a black rook and a white pawn to match chapter 41, but for the sake of having alternating colours and the rest of my metaphors working (iirc) i swapped those colours around. that, and i wanted to match chapter 13's white king and black pawn - the black pawn stuck, the white king was colour swapped for colour cohesion reasons like the other's. (visual contrast was important to me, but the white queen blending slightly into the sky was okay for symbolism reasons) (there was also black king, white rook from chapter 3, so it all worked out anyway - there's a lot of chess in this story and i only had space for so many pieces and colours, basically)
speaking of which, the black pawn is for joi (chapter 13), the white queen is for halle (someone who, from joi's perspective, can go anywhere, vs joi's pawn, someone to be used -> see chapter 35 and perspective).
the king piece is falling (but hasn't quite fallen) between halle and henrik (chapter 3, 7, 13, though i most clearly thought of 19)
the person in the top right corner is eduard! i desperately wanted to include him because i think he's deserved it, and i considered a lot of ways of working him in, but i think an ambiguous silhouette that isn't Quite part of the main picture works better narratively
note also that he's separated from the other's through a red curtain, to represent the iron curtain (naturally) i wanted it to match ber + tino's part in some way, to sorta emphasise their similar foundations despite being split apart across places
the flowers at eduard's window are placed and chosen purposefully as well! orange/red zinnia's outside (for familial ties, steadfastness, friendship and remembrance) for what eduard puts out in to the world, then lily-of-the-valley for tino and cornflower for him inside to show what he wants to hold close :)
halle and joi are the only characters with their eyes open - halle looks towards the viewer/author/reader/joi, while joi looks away all together. if you've read the fic (which i assume you have because i can't imagine this is interested to read otherwise) you probably don't need me to explain why that reflects their roles in the story
similarly, every character apart from the brothers is turned towards another in some way (eduard does not count when his flowers do, and his role in the story is based around that disconnect partially anyway) tino towards ber and eduard (and hana, i guess), ber towards tino, henrik to halle, halle to henrik (though he looks away - his values are elsewhere even when they are together). joi, at best, looks at his own reflection in the window
the colour scheme, while arbitrarily picked from gradient maps based on what i felt "fit" has been approved by the author as being very "SoS core"
finally, the poem on the note, chapter 46
all that being said, i can and will now talk about my personal relationship with SoS, so unless that interests you i imagine the post is done now! thank you for reading :)
the first comment i posted on SoS is dated 2nd November 2016 - logging into my old account i can see i bookmarked it on the 31st August that same year, so i can safely assume i first read or at least found it then. a month after my first comment, i posted another on a different account, pouring a few bits of my heart out and the author responded! we went back and forth a bit and eventually talked (i think) via tumblr for a little, but the majority of our conversations were via skype for whatever reason (we didn't call, just texted). it was a lot of me looking for writing advice, insight to their work/process/skill, talking about The Brothers and talking about psychology/the brain on a general and personal level. i think if i read our conversations back now i'd cringe, given that i was an awkward, fumbling 16 year old, but i dont think anything else wouldve been fitting given the subject matter. eventually our conversations fizzled out and we stopped talking for years, but i'd go back to SoS routinely and cry.
in may of 2021, i posted another comment during what in hindsight was definitely another relatively minor mental health episode - i think it was half trying to emphasise how important the work was to me on the off chance pyrr saw it, and half a bid for connection since i had no idea if they even remembered us talking. i assumed nothing would come of it, and for about a year that was true - until pyrr responded after all in february of 2022 - i'm happy to say we've been talking consistently on discord since then. i feel a little weird speaking too intimately about our friendship as it is now since it's not just my story to tell (though pyrr, if you're reading this) (i'm sure you are at some point) (you're welcome to talk about it however, i just didn't want to without consulting you) but i can say with some certainty that it's at least a little bit my fault that we have a sequel now - cementing my place as official number #1 fan and validating the me from almost 8 years ago in a way i don't think either of us processes well.
it's here that i feel the need to talk about my other dear friend, @hws-lceland , who i'm grateful to have met through the zine's discord server. i'm sure they're reading this too, and a lot of what our relationship means to me is stuff that's probably a bit too vulnerable for either of us to speak publicly, but i *can* say that i love them very much, and i'm really grateful to have someone else to understand, and that he read SoS for me. i thought he needed it, and i hope i was right
sendlingur is...endlessly important to me. i'm aiming to not write an essay here (a goal i think i've already sorta shot in the foot) but i think it's important for me to talk about some of this a little loudly, all the same. my writing has changed because of the series - remeeting with pyrr and showing them some of my more recent work was interesting since it was apparent even to them the influences i'd taken (to be fair, in one section i explicitly asked and did borrow a format of theirs, but this goes beyond that). when i was 16 i asked my mum to read the fic in a desperate bid to be understood. i've cried reading the fic many, many times. i've signed off letters and poems with my switched around version of i'm sorry / thank you / i love you (i swap the first two around) many, many, many times, including in a close friend's wedding gift. SoS has very sincerely changed my definition of love. the name halle is a part of my abstract mindscape. id already considered changing my name to johannes anyway and this fic certainly didnt help. i've gained a friendship of 7 and a half years through it. i've gained another newer one now, too. i am not well. i wasn't well then, reading it, and it hasn't fixed me (i am worse, now, arguably), but it healed something, or at least made me feel understood. i could go on, and maybe sometime i will (there were so many things i wanted to include in my piece and pay homage to!), but for now i will thank anyone who took the time to read all this (again), and say that i look forward to experiencing the sequel
The wait is finally over! We proudly present the Hetalia World Stars Fan Anthology!!
The anthology can be viewed in this google drive. There is a high quality and low quality pdf.
I also just want to thank everyone on the mod team for their hard work helping me with this project, and an even bigger thank you to @raven6229 for putting the entire thing together!
Lastly, thank you to all of the amazing people who contributed to this MONSTER of a love letter to Hetalia. 364 pages of content is no small feat, you guys are great.
(tw: bloody hands, brief shot of a baby snake)
Trailer for my new fanfiction project.
Click below the cut to read more (and link to first chapter).
Yet another summer is just around the corner in the years following the events of Sendlingur og Sandlóa.
But this summer is anything but average – instead of their annual get-together, the Nordics are scattered across Europe. Iceland and Norway spend the entirety of the season together alone in the mountains where they learn to see each other in a new light. Finland and Sweden join Estonia and play a game of chess in the countryside under an old oak tree. Denmark, alone, drifts aimlessly, coming to terms with solitude in his own way. The past rears its ugly head. So does the future. A concert is held for the rest of the world to hear, unplugged, without headphones. Cracks start to form slowly, and then all at once.
House Sorrows is a story about work, play, pleasure, growth, the trials of adulthood, the struggle of authenticity, the crisis of self-identity, the philosophy of nature, the bonds that connect us to our eventual fate, and an exploration of what being a nationperson even means on an anthropological, ecological, and biological level.
If Sendlingur og Sandlóa was a sigh, House Sorrows is the subsequent breath.
(Reading SOS is not a requirement to enjoy House Sorrows).
(A Nordics+Estonia-centric canon-adjacent fic)
FIRST CHAPTER HERE
heres to a new beginning end midpoint! congrats to @pyrrhocorax on the release of Sendlingur og Sandloa's sequel, House Sorrows! :) got the privilege of reading the prologue early so i wanted to do a little thing in celebration! i. was gonna do something based on the video trailer (which pyrr kindly showed us ages ago) but i could only physically watch it once because it injured me grievously a little. my bad
my version of 2p iceland (as peer reviewed by my close good friends) has a few key traits i need to outline here
there is no 2p mr puffin, and 2p iceland reacts to mr puffin by actively trying to diminish his entire species. he sees that bitch of a bird and desperately needs to make them extinct
iceland as a character is genuinely ambiguous ambition wise - not unopinionated, but certainly not driven or pushing for goals. because of this, 2p iceland needs to be innately pushing for eco terrorism at all times
2p iceland does not bear inherent ill will towards people, but desperately needs everyone to be full of micro- ideally macro - plastics.
2p iceland doesnt have any particular reason for this and is not looking to find it. its fun. he has zero desire for introspection not because hes afraid of what he'll find but because he just doesnt care. hes fine
overtly nicer than iceland on a social level
dumping so much waste in the ocean on purpose. kill yourself
the anti-autist. he LOVES change, especially relating to the climate. to be clear, hes still autistic.
still not interested in war. he doesnt have a military why would he. what if humanity got worse and succumbed to fossil fuels or something
can you fucking believe they said this while wearing headphones. just like johannes in the hit fanfiction sendlingur og sandloa. what a fucking freak. @pyrrhocorax
can I request norbul? if i'm not mistaken there was this old christmas comic from 2010 where norway saw bulgaria in his military uniform and called him cute
anon,,,,,,how dare you get me invested in another rarepair,,,,
maybe you could draw nyo england and nyo canada together? any sort of interaction would be swell ^_^
i wanted to draw something cute about them having matching hairstyles or nyo eng being alice and canada being like the sleepy dormouse but this is all my brain would let me do !!!!!! i like 2 think nyo eng usually covers her freckles with makeup. but they ARE there.
send me hetalia charas to doodle please :)! ill doodle interactions and scenarios and such :) idk :) any chara is fine i cant promise ill do any and all ship art but im open :) if u have a rare or unpopular little guy you wanna see............now is ur chance.............
reading the cyprus kitawiki page and "He is a bed-wetter, and apparently pees in the shape of the Cyprus island." WHAT KIND OF TAKE IS THAT HIMA?!?!!? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!!! GIRL?!?!?!?!?
dont put this on my dash as well you stupid heathen bitch was it not enough to remind me of what i blocked out 5 years ago in the group chat. i hate you. you better write the most gut wrenching cyprus prose imaginable or im killing myself
titsay
andulkaphoto
annaxmalina
prguitarman
turnnoffyourmind
janainaart
izzy806
