#heta meta

[doomspiral]

is gilbert scared of death. or is it more than he even deserves

I don't think he's afraid of death so much as it deeply inconveniences him and (in my lore) reminds him that he is not God's creation and therefor The Big Man Upstairs won't talk to him, so he's just stuck there wallowing alone in the darkness of his own "after"life until his body regenerates one way or another. So the existential despair could hit him but he's not afraid of it, classically. I also don't think the last sentence of the ask fits Gil, the Catholics and the Protestants both did not succeed at instilling a sense of guilt in him big enough for that, although he WOULD agree he doesn't deserve things like forgiveness from others, that's more related to just... awareness of shit he's done and his own kind of childish idea of "well if someone did that shit to me I'd be mad too" even though it doesn't stop him.

In the end I think the only thing scary about death to him would be the "being alone/separated from loved ones" part and that's if they actually die properly, because there are entire comics dedicated to Rome and Germania walking among the living in "retirement", but Templar is super duper dead and gone.

[proosh]

sorry if youve already posted about this b4 but curious 1/ is brandenburg and other german states in general still around or how did they hit the can and 2/ what do you think humans understandings of same sex marriages or personal unions between the nations were historically and how did they themselves understand those relationships. like was it okay since they're not human and its more like a conceptual innate thing and different from worldly relationships or did the nations just do what they want

hello anon! thanks for the questions, let me address them individually;

for question 1: the answer is that it entirely depends on my mood and what I'm writing. personally I tend to lean towards idea that Gil literally cannibalised them. For a different interpretation that people seemed to really enjoy, please refer to The Abyss :) (there's a prequel in the works, so look out for that!)

as for question 2: it's a bit complicated, and I think that's fun :) Canonically "personal unions" are established to be akin to marriages, but I think the nation-tans operate on the level of them being fairly outright political marriages with little to no "expected" sexual component. That doesn't diminish the very real patriarchal and heteronormative associations marriage has (which I like to play with, personally!) but it does disarm potential moral/religious Issues with same-sex unions. The nations were likely very Aware of those potential associations but it's probably mostly up to personal preference and circumstances to what degree the "marriage" is a "real" relationship or not, if that at all makes sense. But that is of course just my opinion/interpretation, and I mostly go with whatever works best for the narrative I'm dealing with at the time :)

[maibluemen]

ok while i'm working on which meta stuff i want to have on this blog, i do want to make a somewhat? detailed post on some name headcanons i have. so. some countries whose names i either tweak or change from the ones suggested by himaruya (arguably, there are no canon names. alfred is really the only one you could argue for lol)

🇷🇺 - ivan ivanovich morozov

hima doesn't give patronymics to the countries that would use them. ivanovich comes from ivan being very young and asked what his full name is, and the only male name he could think of was his own lol so he just stuck with it. and yes both sisters have teased him for this. morozov is derived from the russian word for "frost," which i find fitting; i wanted to find a non-jewish surname for him because i don't headcanon him as jewish and. of all the non-jewish countries to have a jewish surname.....well. no judgement on people who use braginsky and i doubt himaruya meant any harm or anything but yeah that's why i use a different surname for him lol

🇱🇹 - tolvydas jonas laurinaitis

shoutout to @hinotorihime who i believe was one of the first, if not the first person in the fandom to suggest tolys being a more accurate translation of トーリス (since japanese doesn’t distinguish between R/L sounds like indo-european languages do, and english doesn’t distinguish between I/Y the way lithuanian does, and tolys being an EXCEEDINGLY uncommon name, i don’t think “toris” is an unreasonable translation to have made after the game of language telephone from lithuanian->japanese-> english lol. トーリス would be directly transliterated like “to risu” for those unfamiliar with katakana. it’s worth noting that pixiv translates his character tag as “tolys”). uhh the source he gave me is a website that no longer exists and wasn't archived unfortunately, but "tolvydas" means something like "far seer" and tolys is a shortened form of it jonas is the name he added when he was finally baptized, and it's in reference to john the baptist anyway, here is an old post where she explains some name meanings!

🇪🇪 - eduard tamm

look i know eduard isn't really used in estonia but the guy simply gives off eduard vibes to me, sorry tamm, aside from being the most common surname, means "oak"

🇱🇻 - raivis bērziņš

bērziņš is, again, the most common surname and means "birch"

ed and raivis having the most common surnames in their countries i swear isn't me being lazy, i like the idea of all 3 baltics having tree names (laurinaitis referring to "laurel")

🇵🇱 - feliks mieczysław kazimierz łukasiewicz

who let the poles be catholic so. feliks has only been a name used in poland since around the 1800s? iirc, it was specifically brought over because of a fascination with french names but i might be wrong lol (and ultimately the origins of the name are latin, so variants of it are pretty old anyway). anyway. i've decided that his first name used to be mieczysław and he changed it around the time of the napoleonic wars to feliks, but kept the old name. kazimierz was chosen at his baptism and refers to st casimir, one of the many patron saints of poland (there's literally a wikipedia article dedicated to them all lol)

🐥 - gilbert maria beilschmidt

mary was just a hugely important aspect of gil's history as a knight (and the specific orders he represented also). he hasn't been catholic in centuries but he keeps maria in his legal name because that's his mom, guys

N. 🇮🇹 - felice luca veneziano

veneziano and romano being surnames (meaning "venetian" and "roman" respectively) i decided to just...assign the italy bros their uh. titles? as surnames. apparently siblings having separate surnames isn't unheard of for the nations lol, anyway. i thought it would be more fitting as i also headcanon that there's at least 20 italies (corresponding with each modern-day region though the actual history gets a bit messier, like my tuscany oc is more properly my florence oc.....that's another post, tho) and vene and romano represent. well. veneto (but originally venice) and lazio (but originally the city of rome...though i have yet to decide when he started representing rome because he's not an Ancient....anyway.....) felice being the italian variant of "felix" luca is a baptismal name referring to st luke, who is a patron of (amongst other things) artists

S. 🇮🇹 - lovino francesco romano

heh so lovino is in the category of not really a real name but i like it and have never really felt drawn to another name instead francesco refers to st francis of assisi who is hugely popular. well, in general. and is a patron of italy. i need to workshop some more headcanons about romano and religion because of....reasons lol, but this is definitely a name he took on relatively recently.

[morgenlich]

this distribution is objectively hilarious

[queen-scribbles]

CRAZY THEORY TIME!

I'm wondering if Heta was trained by Jicoln Cadera.

I come with screenshots from a couple different playthroughs of SoV/Ruhnuk and plain old curiosity.

It would explain Shae can't find a clan affiliation or anything familiar in her fighting style beyond "Mandalorian vibes". Heta's family and original clan were killed for standing with the Caderas when Jicoln refused the call to fight with the Sith.

("A Mandalorian never forgets")

He saw her potential and taught her how to fight. He's 100% an extremely skilled and deadly warrior("the best"), the Bounty Hunter learns that first hand. :))) And with him being a traitor/exile, and Clan Cadera being shunned, it would explain why the fighting style isn't recognizable. I dunno what would be the impetus for her going her own way; maybe they had a disagreement, maybe Jicoln pulled an "I've taught you all I know" and kinda pushed her back out.

I don't have anything super concrete to back me up, I just think it would be extremely interesting, especially if you still have Torian around. 👀👀 (His father training the woman who's attacking the way of life Torian's dedicated himself to his entire life because of the "shame" of being his father's son? Narratively EXQUISITE, poetic cinema, pass the popcorn)

That would definitely be a reason for her to want revenge against the "establishment" of Mandalore's authority if she thinks Shae's just doing the same thing in joining the Alliance as Artus did when he became Mandalore the Vindicated and took the clans to aid the Sith. That could also explain why she didn't make any sort of move against Shae until the point. And I haven't reconciled the motive for taking it and then burning it, but part of that's on the tonal shift of how Heta treats it between SoV and Ruhnuk. Maybe it'll get explained in the next chunk of the story.

[hetagrammy]

Forever thinking about how much Erzsebet's shit got rocked when she hit puberty and started presenting as a woman. Like you've been raised as a boy your whole life, then all of a sudden someone is saying "No, that's not right." And then you still have these things you want to do like hunting and wrestling and riding but you're told that the things you love to do are now inappropriate. You're not considered as capable anymore for no other reason except for your gender presentation changing. You're suddenly being sexualized by the world around you, and even your childhood frenemy, who is having a pretty hard time with this adjustment as well, is treating you differently in this way. So you try to settle in, and you do embrace femininity in ways that make you happy. You get to be the big sister, you wear your pretty dresses and ribbons, you work at being more gentle. But there is always a part of you that doesn't fit that mold quite right, little quirks you still have and interests you still long for, that society quickly picks up on and judges. And even if you're content in your femininity, you will always be haunted by how it was thrust upon you rather than fully chosen.

[ask-the-hws-immigrants]

Uuu can we know about your love life? Or family trees?

Romantic relationships can be found here

//Headcanons about how nation kids/families work under the cut

So nations can be born three ways

Two nations have a kid together

A nation and a human have a kid together

A pair of (well, not really) lucky humans have one by chance

These nations are either independent nations, successor states, or colonies

Successor states are usually blood related to another nation, called successor states because they will inherit a portion of their parent nation's land. This can mean the parent nation will either diminish in power enough to allow for a new nation to emerge on their land, or they die and the child takes over that land

Colonies are not usually blood-related to their parent nation, typically being born of humans who live on the land they represent. They usually don't know these human parents, and are raised by the nation ruling them and exerting influence over them. They're not to be confused with vassals/wards, who already existed prior to being conquered and made into colonies by another nation

Lovino, Tolys, and Molly are all successor states, while Alfred is a colony. While the other three have blood parents, Alfred and Matthew share human parents, but regard Arthur as their father. This is why Molly occasionally refers to them as her nephews despite not being related by blood, because otherwise they do consider each other family.

[doomspiral]

How do you think lietpru show their love for each other in modern day? Does their difficult past with each other still come up and how?

My endgame is LietPru get married in the mid-to-late 00's and unlock new ways to be disgusting and obnoxious about it because I'm fascinated by horrible German and Lithuanian pet names and diminutives, and also because I love the idea of travel blogger/columnist Gilbert being a problem and Tolys, reveling in his own independence (read: workaholism), gets a kick out of telling people well that isn't his problem is it?

They are a "schnookums" couple. I'm not sorry and neither are they.

As far as their difficult past goes, I think that MOSTLY is a problem between them for the ~40 years they spend in forced proximity during the soviet era. There is the opportunity for nightmares on both sides and since I view both of them as dealing with levels of psychosis, given enough stress or triggers they might forget the past few hundred years, if you want them to.