On July 6th, 2006, the very first Hetalia strip was posted to Hima’s blog. Now, 20 years later, the fanbase is still going strong, creating every beautiful fanworks showcasing out love for this series.
With 180 pages of content, Draw a Circle, That’s Hetalia! aims to showcase and and Celebrate not just Hetalia itself, but also this amazing fanbase that has grown around it. Here’s to another 20 years!
Zine download link here!
Ao3 Collection for the zine fics here!
Ao3 Collection for Director’s cuts of the fics here!
🔍is there something about them you think isn't as recognised as it should be in the fandom? (a personality trait, relationship with another character, historical time period that isn't explored much with them, etc.)
For Veneziano and Romano?
Romano + Veneziano
I think Feli and Romano should tease and rib each other like real siblings often do <3 I need more Feli sassing back at Romano and ragebaiting him <3
On a broader note, I want people to give the itabros' relationship the weight and merit it deserves. When writing about Feli or Romano, remember that the other brother doesn't just exist in the periphery. They are important to each other.
(Of course, if it's historical nationverse ig it depends on the time period. But still!)
Romano
Romano as the firstborn/eldest son of Rome!
I love to think about the ramifications of this dynamic on Romano's character. What it means to be someone's legacy- to inherit their accomplishments and build on them. To be masculine, act as the head of a family, and be a leader.
To fight constantly for approval, only to feel threatened by people who can contribute to the empire and family in ways that you could never (*cough* lil Egypt *cough*). This feeling, since childhood, that you were made for greatness, made for more, but can never reach it because you're not good enough.
Veneziano
I know a lot of people in the fandom don't like this sort of thing because it's a lil OOC, and I get it! But I love seeing a... meaner? Side to Feliciano? I don't want him to be a villain. I don't want him to be rude and awful and manipulative for the sake of it.
I want him to hold onto anger and resentment until he explodes. I want him to say things he can't take back. I want him to do bad things for the sake of his own survival or betterment because (in my eyes) all nation-tans are self-serving to an extent. I want him to tease and be sarcastic.
Bookie-butt you are putting me to WORK ,,, but for you, it’s okay 🙂↕️
Sorry for the (potentially) long post. I'll put my answers under the cut
Now onto the questions:
🌍does their personality differ in your portrayal of them in nationverse vs. human aus? if yes, how?
10000% yes. In Nationverse, he's bolder and more presumptuous. He's THE Vatican. He answers to very, very few people. What are they going to do, excommunicate him? I think because of the church's Dogmas, he'll try to respect and follow the Pope. But, at the end of the day, he only answers to the Pope (sometimes) and The Big Man Upstairs.
In a human AU, that changes completely. He doesn't have immortality or nationhood to fall back on as a safety net against scrutiny. In human AUs, I imagine he desperately wanted to become a priest from a very young age. He spent so long fantasizing about his future in the clergy, this dedication to serving and building community, that he can't fathom taking another path when it's presented to him, even if deep, deep down he wants to. This dream was his personality, his future, his everything. Without that, who is he? So he can't afford to be flagrant. Being denied his "one true calling" would be devastating.
🪞do you have any appearance hcs for them?
Salt and pepper hair, blue eyes, three moles on his forehead, and an itty bitty curl sticking out near the nape (though I'm thinking of changing his curl placement). And of course, some lovely crow's feet and frown (+ smile) lines <3.
I know we discussed our takes on the Vatican's height, but I'll restate my HC here: I like a tall Pietro. I want it to feel like he's looming over you, constantly peering over your shoulder and judging you.
🌈 your sexuality & gender hc?
Homosexual and Cisgender Male
💗if you were to choose a crackship for them, who would it be with?
In the spirit of ACTUAL crack ships, let's go with Pietro x don Matteo
It's hard to come up with an actual crack ship with another Hetalia character because it either wouldn't really BE a crack ship, or I just struggle to imagine him with anyone that isn't Veneziano. Maybe Holytalia^2 (Holytalia + Vatican/Papal States) if we want something that's purely messy.
🌌what's your favourite au you've put them in?
I don't have a lot of AUs with Pietro. I guess any sort of modern human AU with him is quite interesting to me, especially when Feliciano and Sebastiano are involved.
OH and your vampire AU, of course ❤️ it makes me go stupid feral.
🔍is there something about them you think isn't as recognised as it should be in the fandom? (a personality trait, relationship with another character, historical time period that isn't explored much with them, etc.)
When writing about a Pietro who does bad things or hurts the people around him, I think it's important to remember that, at his core, he wants to do good. Everything he does, everything he preaches, is done under the genuine belief that he's helping people and doing the right thing. He's not a sadist who finds enjoyment in other people's suffering, even if he has a personal bias against someone. This is very important to me.
That's not to say you should excuse or downplay his actions!!! The road to hell is paved with good intentions. There is a lot he needs to seriously atone for, regardless of whether he felt his heart was in the right place.
📚 choose one hc about this character to make canon: what would it be?
Just. Him looking like an older man. I know we love our fresh-faced anime blorbos in this fandom, but I want older-looking characters SO badly PLEASE ToT
I fear the day Vatican becomes canon,,,
💞 other than your main ship for them, what's your second favourite?
Pietro x A Pack Of Cigarettes, Amen
🏛️what's your favourite time period to put them in?
Definitely the modern/current era. I think it's interesting to see how such a traditional/old school, stubborn character navigates a rapidly modernising world.
The Renaissance is also pretty fun- you can explore a more hedonistic, openly corrupt Pietro.
👎a pet peeve you have about the portrayal of this character (in canon or fanon)?
Considering he's my OC, I can't say I have any pet peeves about how others portray him. And I can't really compare my Pietro to yours because we kinda created them together, so there aren't any major points of divergence.
💗if you were to choose a crackship for them, who would it be with?
Ough, I'm so picky with Romano ships... Also, how crack do we wanna go? If we wanna go all out, I’ll bring up the classic GruMano (Felonious Gru x Romano)
If we’re talking about hetalia crackships… it’s so hard for me to think of any 😭 I can name my favourite rare ships but they wouldn’t count.
👎a pet peeve you have about the portrayal of this character (in canon or fanon)?
Definitely Romano (and Feliciano) being kept so young for so long in canon. But for an actual Romano-specific pet peeve:
Hello! I'd be interested in hearing about #5 for N.Italy and Romano. For the Hetalia ask game.
🌌what's your favourite au you've put them in?
I know I don’t talk about AUs on this blog like I used to, but I do still yap about them in my Instagram stories and with my moots.
Romano:
By far, my favourite AU is still the RoMerica western AU @gremlins-hotel and I came up with a few years ago (“Unbound”). Out of all my AUs, it’s the most thought-out, story and character-wise. We put it on the back burner for a long time once our interests shifted, but a few months ago I picked it back up and wrote up a script and thumb-nailed a comic for a “chapter 0”. The drafts are collecting dust rn because I’m more focused on career stuff atm, but I would love to pick it back up. I can’t make promises, though!
The premise was along these lines: Feliciano and Romano, with no more family or prospects in their homeland and enticed by stories of wealth and adventure, cross the pond to begin a new life as prospectors in America. Reality sets in as misfortune follows them at every turn, but Feliciano is determined to set off further west for one last try. Communication slowly trickles to a halt, and after an extended period of silence, Romano becomes desperate to find his brother at any cost. He enlists the help of the outlaw Alfred F. Jones, and together they journey into the west, all while being tailed by a bounty hunter searching for his biggest catch. Gayness, hijinks, and drama ensue.
“Chapter 0”, or ig the introduction, was set somewhere in the middle of the story, when Ivan (the aforementioned bounty hunter) is searching for them. Chapter 1 would then start from the very beginning.
Here is one of the playlists. It's a duplicate of the original playlist I share with Grem, where the first half had songs listed in order of (current) story beats, and the rest were songs that fit The General Vibe(TM). But I thought it'd be neater to have a separate version with JUST the story sequence. It's also a perpetual WIP, especially since the story isn't 100% plotted out rn.
Feliciano + Romano (+ Seb + Rome):
Ghost AU: Following the tragic and untimely passing of their youngest brother Sebastiano, Feliciano and Romano travel the country with his ghost to investigate hauntings and possessions to learn more about the paranormal world and solve the mystery of Sebastiano’s death.
I never talked about this AU publicly, but it has a special place in my heart. Essentially, Feli and Romano are the only ones who can see Sebastiano’s ghost, and Sebastiano cannot remember how he died, no matter how hard he tries. So the brothers believe that if they learn more about the supernatural world, how ghosts operate, etc. They can find a way to make Sebastiano remember what happened. Romolo/Romano Sr. Is alive in this AU, but does not know about, nor can he see Seb (the pain of outliving your youngest child. Yeowch.)
I imagine it would’ve been a “monster of the week” type of story, with an overarching plot focused on solving Sebastiano’s death and exploring the family’s grief. The first, introductory chapter was set in the Pinacoteca di Brera, an art gallery in Milano, where employees have been mysteriously disappearing. The brothers, suspecting that something paranormal is at play, visit the museum to investigate.
I’m someone who loves family dynamics and themes of grief and loss. Not just death, but losing relationships, your sense of self, your purpose, identity, etc., etc. This AU was my way of exploring these ideas, which is why it has a special place in my heart.
Feliciano:
A more recent, light-hearted, AU is my… Art Forgery Scheme AU (??): Feliciano paints art forgeries and blackmails Ludwig, an art historian and collector, into joining the scheme. It kind of snowballs from there as more and more characters force their way into their plot and things spiral out of control. It’s not a super serious criminal AU; I want it to be slightly ridiculous and far-fetched. Norway is the lead investigator, of course.
I also have an old EngIta pirate AU, but this post is already way too long lol lmao
hetalia character asks because i haven't done one of these in so long! send a character (or a few), and a number/emoji! feel free to rb and play along :)
🌍does their personality differ in your portrayal of them in nationverse vs. human aus? if yes, how?
🪞do you have any appearance hcs for them?
🌈 your sexuality & gender hc?
💗if you were to choose a crackship for them, who would it be with?
🌌what's your favourite au you've put them in?
🔍is there something about them you think isn't as recognised as it should be in the fandom? (a personality trait, relationship with another character, historical time period that isn't explored much with them, etc.)
📚 choose one hc about this character to make canon: what would it be?
💞 other than your main ship for them, what's your second favourite?
🏛️what's your favourite time period to put them in?
👎a pet peeve you have about the portrayal of this character (in canon or fanon)?
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.
I swear- there is a panel out there with Romano working and Germany and Prussia observing him and commenting on how hard working he is but he's not wearing any shoes so Germany and Prussia decide to gift him some new shoes😭👞✨
I've been trying to find this panel again but with no luck😔
I knew exactly what comic you were talking about; it's from the 2011 Christmas special. It's one of my favourite canon Romano moments! Here it is:
Unfortunately though, they don't gift him new shoes :(
The Italian national song is really out here giving: naaah hehe, I say let it die! Let it die! Let it die! Let it shrivel up and- come on! Who's with me? Huh?🤪
I just learned that Italy and Poland both mention each other in their national anthems oml😭🇮🇹❤️🇵🇱
Idk why but I suddenly got the urge to sit down and listen to different countries national anthems, then I noticed that poland mentions Italy in their song, and Italy mentions Poland😔
Apologies for the super late answer!
Yes! It's very sweet <3 I'm a huge fan of Feli and Feliks being close, whether platonic or something more. I like to call their duo Feli²
From what I understand, the Polish anthem references Italy because the author, Józef Wybicki, who helped found the Polish Legion in the Cisalpine Republic, was staying in Reggio Emilia with the legion and penned the song for them. Hence, the "From Italy to Poland" lyric:
March! March, Dabrowski!
March from Italy to Poland!
Under your command
We shall reach our land.
In turn, the Italian anthem references Poland to acknowledge their shared struggle for independence and nationhood, especially in the face of a common enemy- Austria.
Comparing how we're referenced in their anthem vs. how we reference them, I think the Italian stanza is quite brutal in comparison:
Already the Austrian eagle
has lost its plumes.
The blood of Italy,
The Polish blood,
It drank, with the Cossacks,
But it burned its heart.
Sorry for the slightly awkward translation, I tried
Essentially, what this means is that Austria (and Russia, "the cossacks") drank Italian and Polish blood (which it spilled through violence and repression) only for that blood to burn them. Hell yeah
Anyways. I know there's a plaque in Reggio Emilia that commemorates the creation of the Polish anthem. It's not too far, so if I ever visit, I'd love to see it!
