hi!! i'm a full ass grown adult and i've started hyperfixating on hetalia again for the first time really since 2014! i follow/follow back from my main, small--prince, so if you see that guy in your notes that's me.
𝒶𝒷𝑜𝓊𝓉 𝓂𝑒:
my name is ronnie! i'm also a filthy kinnie (more casual these days) so you can also call me rod/roderich but i mean i'll answer to either. i'm 24, and hetalia got me into history so bad when i was eleven that i have a degree in it now. recent Circumstances dropped me back into the fandom and i'm having a great time while also being haunted by this pile of shit manga.
𝓌𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒹𝑜 𝒾 𝓎𝒶𝓅 𝒶𝒷𝑜𝓊𝓉:
a lot. i will be doing a lot of chatting about the germanic countries, because they've always been my favorites (really normal about prussia right now), and recently i've become very interested in russia and whatever he's got going on. his various complexes.
i'm forcing myself to be brave and freak a little about my more niche/mature interests here, dark content and vaguely sexual/kink related stuff and so on, so this blog will probably be 18+ ONLY. if you follow me and i find out you're a minor i'm blocking you straightaway.
i also draw a little! i love historical costuming, historical military uniforming, and have a permanent hyperfixation on fashion and design in general, so i might post doodles and whatnot of countrypeople in fun outfits, or not so fun outfits. :]
i'll develop tags for things as i go and i'll probably put them here once i have them.
Rating: E
Pairing: Russia/Prussia + Prussia/OMC (brief), background Russia/Lithuania
Length: 9.6k words
Tags/Warnings: Rape/Non-con, dead dove: do not eat, whump, like 6 thousand words of Spetsnaz bullshit, gross/unsanitary, painful sex, brief suicidal ideation, generalised Cold War-typical horrors
Summary:
Recall:
(1) (noun) The ability to remember.
(2) (verb) To order the return of an object or person.
See also: (animal training) Fetch and recall.
Ruspru noncon fic is up, please heed the tags and enjoy!
god what if ivan impregnated gilbert during the time of the cold war in the 60s or 50s or whatever (dubcon yayyy) and while he was imprisoned in ivans manor with the rest of the satellites he and tolys kind of started psuedo-dating or messing around or got really close in some kind of way during gil's pregnancy and tolys started thinking about running away and raising the baby with gil somewhere far from anywhere ivan is and missing that younger more genuine free relationship he and gil used to have in the middle ages without ivans influence hanging over them and kind of got protective over gil to the point of defying ivan a little because hes delusional and was probably high on insane anxiety meds all the time and got punished/beaten/etc for it because the baby isnt even his it's ivan's lovely gdr or whatever and tolys isnt allowed to have it and at some point gil's made to lie-in for an extensive period of time where no one can interact with him except ivan leading up to the baby's birth because tolys was in love a little too hard and so they both need to be punished for it and tolys is terrified about whatever is going on where he cant see and only ends up being like a part-time babysitter for the child and they dont even recognize him whenever they see him because they like never interact (ivans doing on purpose) and gil cant look tolys in the eye because ivan did something to him during those months he was shut away and and and and and and
the only time prussia has ever acted like a regular person was immediately after he saw a pair of boobs, implying that heterosexual relations could turn him normal. since several hundred years have passed since then and he's still a fucking freak, we can only assume this means prussia has not engaged in heterosexual activity since then
how are so many people in the. well. i guess GilbertSphere of tumblr get so smart and all? so many of you understand gilbert and just overall historical hetalia so well and i want to post my takes on his character but i'm an uneducated hick so i feel like anything i say's just wrong on every level. and everyone's gonna throw hammers at me. i just checked out iron kingdom from my library and i'm hoping it'll help me understand him and the history better. i used to consider myself a history buff and a pretty avid reader yet compared to everyone on here i feel borderline illiterate. there's so much i just don't know and have never even heard of. i absolutely love history and historical hetalia especially but i don't know where to even start with it :(
oh dearest anon, I am taking you gently by the hands. the "hivemind" of Pru fans here are not any smarter than anyone else, and you are not dumber than anyone else. we like to play with barbies here, and we like to read a lot so we can play with our barbies in interesting ways. there is no Wrong way to play with barbies, as long as you're approaching it in good faith. everything is a learning opportunity, and we are all in some kind of learning process, and we like to take that learning process and use it in interpretative ways - everyone has their own process, and their own interpretation. my interpretation differs from other people in our loose circle of colleagues, and theirs are different from mine, and that's great! we very much operate on a sense of "yes, and," in our encouragement of each other, as opposed to saying that something is Wrong. (there are of course things that are discouraged, like deliberate/bad faith misinterpretation or the promotion of potentially tasteless or harmful ideas, but in my opinion there is always room for discussion and development). that you are Interested In Learning means that you're already part of the process! what I recommend is finding the Thing that makes your brain go brrrrr and digging into that line of inquiry, and then using what you learn to inform your interpretation; playing with barbies is first and foremost about Having Fun, not strictly literal academic historical repetition of information :)
Not everyone in the "Gilbert Hivemind" (this is a joke term for the most part, to be clear) is also part of the Nu Historical Hetalia subfandom, and frankly not everyone in the Historical Hetalia fandom is good at the critical analysis aspect of reading all the books and journals we love so dearly. Please don't be intimidated by a bunch of geeks who read all the time I PROMISE no one here is a real authority on anything.
That said! If you want to Do Historical Fiction, definitely take the Tolkien approach. Like Proosh said, it will be so much better to follow your interests and research the things you already like, and then use that to your advantage. Just because there's like 5 people circle jerking over tanks and big guns doesn't mean YOU have to in order to be taken seriously by fellow fans. All you really need is a general overview of an area's history and geography, which you can get from wikipedia, and then you're free to go hog wild studying the culinary practices of a single town in the 18th century or the contributions to online gaming done by a group from such and such county in whatever nation you choose. So on and so forth.
And if you're ever really off the mark, then you're wrong and you grow from that. Oh well. The sooner you make peace with the idea of Being Wrong About Something and not taking it personally or connecting it to your self worth, the better time you'll have playing dollies with us. And if someone does try to skin you alive for an honest mistake or the result of not knowing a topic as deeply as they do, just block them. there is no reason to get into any kind of serious arguments with other Hetalia fans on the internet.
All of the above is extremely true as someone who is a more casual hetalia fan, I get along well with the more historical part of the gilbert sphere despite that being less of my focus so I won't add in any more reassurances, I haven't had any problems and I'm sure you won't either.
I just want to focus my advice on if you're curious and ready to dive in but the prospect of digesting a huge 800 page book, retaining all that information no matter how tiny the detail down to names, places, dates and then applying it confidently to creative work with no mistakes feels overwhelming and daunting.
The reason why it feels impossible is that it is impossible.
You're not gonna be able to read the iron kingdom cover to cover and then come away fully armed with a 100% success in committing it all to memory and an encyclopedic understanding of the entire 700+ years it covers.
It's not realistic, so let's just do away with that immediately. Throw that out. FREE yourself of your pressure. At best you will read this cover to cover and just get a general 50-70% of the content gist that will degrade with time. Even more realistically, you'll probably read like 40 pages, grow mentally exhausted, go to the table of contents or the index, look up things you're kinda curious about, read a few paragraphs that you like and then this book gathers dust on your shelf but you shit out like one or two amazing creative pieces that hit the mark without getting too indepth, AND THAT'S FINE.
THAT'S NORMAL. It's not always so realistic to continuously read books that are hundreds of pages long and I frankly do not feel that a lot of people even in the gilbert fandom have even accomplished it. We all know a lot about A LITTLE. All of us have our Niches that we are autisticly overly informed in. I don't think there's a single gilbert fan that can be quizzed on 900 years of history and answer in depth. Just not realistic. Just not possible. We all have things that we should probably now more about, probably intend to research more into and just haven't yet.
What you need to do is the following if it so pleases you to do so:
Pick a SINGLE era, event, etc a SINGLE moment of time that you find extremely interesting and that you have MOTIVATION to study for
Don't immediately go for the 500 page book, that is too big of a barrier of entry. Start with Wikipedia, start with a google, start with reading small contained passages.
SKIM WHAT YOU FIND BORING. It DOESN'T MATTER. SKIM. Anything boring, DON'T READ. If you make this a job, you WILL NEVER ever FIND JOY in it. SKIM. Religious nonsense not your thing? FUCK IT. economic lecture killing you? YOU DON'T SEE IT. Read only what you care about.
Open a google doc and start an active study Outline. Link sources, highlight dates, names, anything you think is important. When you have a headcanon about it, leave yourself a little comment about that headcanon so you in the future can connect it directly to the source that sparked it.
Creating an outline helps you be an active reader and put a bit more thought into it. Here is an example of one of my own WIP outlines if you need a more concrete example of how you can use an outline to guide your research
If it's not fun, don't read!! If it's stressful for you in that moment of titme, Don't research!! You are 1000000% allowed to have fun just vibing and doing unattached work, you are allowed to stop it and pick it up at any time!
Avoid sensitive topics if you are unwilling to do the research for it, be humble in your learning and know when a topic is out of your depth and you may not be ready to write or draw it. Like doom said, have the courage to be wrong and the humility to be corrected. 99% of the time, people won't bother you if you aren't touching sensitive topics with no knowledge.
I will end this saying: I regret all thee times I was too anxious and pressured by this feeling of "I MUST KNOW EVERYTHING!!" to engage in fandom in an involved way. I used to post art with no caption because I was tired of defending myself for every drawing. In the end the only person that can free you to do what you find fun is you, so I hope OP can find peace of mind to engage in the fandom in a way that is satisfying and stress free for them without feeling pressured in any direction.
how are so many people in the. well. i guess GilbertSphere of tumblr get so smart and all? so many of you understand gilbert and just overall historical hetalia so well and i want to post my takes on his character but i'm an uneducated hick so i feel like anything i say's just wrong on every level. and everyone's gonna throw hammers at me. i just checked out iron kingdom from my library and i'm hoping it'll help me understand him and the history better. i used to consider myself a history buff and a pretty avid reader yet compared to everyone on here i feel borderline illiterate. there's so much i just don't know and have never even heard of. i absolutely love history and historical hetalia especially but i don't know where to even start with it :(
oh dearest anon, I am taking you gently by the hands. the "hivemind" of Pru fans here are not any smarter than anyone else, and you are not dumber than anyone else. we like to play with barbies here, and we like to read a lot so we can play with our barbies in interesting ways. there is no Wrong way to play with barbies, as long as you're approaching it in good faith. everything is a learning opportunity, and we are all in some kind of learning process, and we like to take that learning process and use it in interpretative ways - everyone has their own process, and their own interpretation. my interpretation differs from other people in our loose circle of colleagues, and theirs are different from mine, and that's great! we very much operate on a sense of "yes, and," in our encouragement of each other, as opposed to saying that something is Wrong. (there are of course things that are discouraged, like deliberate/bad faith misinterpretation or the promotion of potentially tasteless or harmful ideas, but in my opinion there is always room for discussion and development). that you are Interested In Learning means that you're already part of the process! what I recommend is finding the Thing that makes your brain go brrrrr and digging into that line of inquiry, and then using what you learn to inform your interpretation; playing with barbies is first and foremost about Having Fun, not strictly literal academic historical repetition of information :)
Not everyone in the "Gilbert Hivemind" (this is a joke term for the most part, to be clear) is also part of the Nu Historical Hetalia subfandom, and frankly not everyone in the Historical Hetalia fandom is good at the critical analysis aspect of reading all the books and journals we love so dearly. Please don't be intimidated by a bunch of geeks who read all the time I PROMISE no one here is a real authority on anything.
That said! If you want to Do Historical Fiction, definitely take the Tolkien approach. Like Proosh said, it will be so much better to follow your interests and research the things you already like, and then use that to your advantage. Just because there's like 5 people circle jerking over tanks and big guns doesn't mean YOU have to in order to be taken seriously by fellow fans. All you really need is a general overview of an area's history and geography, which you can get from wikipedia, and then you're free to go hog wild studying the culinary practices of a single town in the 18th century or the contributions to online gaming done by a group from such and such county in whatever nation you choose. So on and so forth.
And if you're ever really off the mark, then you're wrong and you grow from that. Oh well. The sooner you make peace with the idea of Being Wrong About Something and not taking it personally or connecting it to your self worth, the better time you'll have playing dollies with us. And if someone does try to skin you alive for an honest mistake or the result of not knowing a topic as deeply as they do, just block them. there is no reason to get into any kind of serious arguments with other Hetalia fans on the internet.
Imagine that little ass giggling and smiling at birds after brutally slaughtering a village, because he knows he'll get honey and milk for it. That's literally Gil as Teutonic Knight in a nutshell for me.
one of the funnier ruspru dynamics that exists in my head is that ivan is actively turned off by gil's breeding kink and it WILL ruin the whole night when gil demands to have a baby put in him
