Unfortunately, Hetalia Is Notoriously Bad When It Comes To Accurate Representations Of Political And

Hetalia Ukraine Headcanon #1: hair colour

…or new unexpected and un-asked for series, where I yap in detail about one headcanon on physical appearence, personality or history of my Ukraine interpretation at a time

This has been a thing that confused the hell out of me for ages, because her hair colour in the anime & official art exists on a spectrum from grey to white to blonde to ash blonde to yellow ??? (which may or may not be due to an art style change and had hapenned to 75% of characters at least) but REGARDLESS, I decided to put a twist on it

So, in my vision, her hair colour is best-described as «світло-русявий натуральний колір волосся»; which would, as per most suitable photos I found on the internet, loosely mean this:

So, you see; blonde, but not really blonde; depends on the lighting; the best English equivalent to «світло-русявий» my brain could think of was a borderline between «dark blonde», «light brown» and «ash-blonde», which coincidentally could all be applied to describe Ukraine’s hair in different depictions at different points

Furthermore, many Ukrainians on my experience would describe their hair as «русяве», ranging from темно-русяве for darker colours, to світло-русяве for lighter, to the point where it seems like a safe option in case your hair is not exactly dark or not 100% light and you are not sure what to reply. And even in folklore you’ll find a «руса коса до пояса»; «русява коса – дівоча краса»; or occasionally hair being compared to gold as well, i.e. «ой у полі жито, а в дівчини коса золота», translating too «there was wheat in the field, a girl had a golden braid» (more to come on her hairstyle!!)

by the way WHEAT. YET ANOTHER WAY I LIKE TO THINK OF HER HAIR COLOUR, is that it has the colour of wheat

I know you know what wheat looks like, just a moment of appreciation

And finally — Ukraine’s русявий hair colour changes slightly throughout the year! In the summer, when she gets lots of sun, it bleaches Ukraine’s hair a bit (UV light breaks down melanin in the hair blah blah blah); moreover it looks lighter in contrast to the skin tan she gets (again, we’ll get to this later); compared to winter when the tan fades and the hair would look visibly darker due to less sun exposure. And I mean like:

So, to sum up, I see Ukraine’s hair colour as „світло-русявий”, something closest to „dark blonde”, „light brown”, „ash blonde” or simply „wheat colour”, which tends to look darker in winter due to less sun exposure and lighter in the summer ;)

by the way fun fact, I’m NOT ignoring your guys’ asks; I just wanna draw something for each and do them justice, which happens to require some time (!!!)

☝🏼☝🏼☝🏼

so another anon mentioned how fanart and fanfic on russia-ukraine war should be call out more often. with all the debate on this blog about political-apolitical hetalia, let's talk about it, shall we?

personally i don't remember seeing many direct portrayals of the war in the fandom. it's few and far between and back in the first months of 2022 there were a lot of callouts for that. though it faded away as people started paying less attention to the war.

that being said, a part of the fandom still portrays russia ukraine and belarus as this happy little family and any care for how insensitive that is has been thrown out of the window. there's been few callouts for that and mostly by ukrainians. sometimes it's justified with "portraying the people, not the government". and yet ukrainians are vocally against it! so when the fandom continues to portray it that way, is it still about "the people"? or is it about the idea of a fluffy family regardless of any connection it has to reality?

honestly just wish these people would make their own non-hetalia ocs and spare me and my compatriots the indignity of having our country portrayed by a character who's all lovey-dovey with its oppressor. it's not cute, it's not a "coping mechanism", it's not "in the name of peace", and it's not even "apolitical". it's disrespectful and it directly stems from the statements used by the russian government to justify this war. so it's a good confirmation if any was needed that hetalia doesn't exist in isolation from real life events.

but i don't want to be all negative. there has been a change in how people treat ukraine as a character and it's blatantly clear by browsing the tag. "east slavic siblings" used to be most of the art with her to be found but that's far from it anymore and i don't think that's just the result curating my fandom experience. ukraine is much more of her own character now and i thank all the creators responsible for it. you make this corner of the fandom a much more bearable and comfortable place, keep up the great work.

~ (¯´★`¯)

maturing is realizing how prumano is actually peak <3

I need more content of Tolys beating the shit out of Ivan.

This has been living in my head for a while now, and I’m finally ready to announce it:

«Ukraine.1917»

– a historical Hetalia brainrot project that focuses on events around Ukraine in 1917-1921, aka the war of independance, or the ukrainian revolution – or that one time when she almost got away with it.

(Here are a few English-speaking vids that can explain what’s going on: https://youtu.be/9Gwuu7TXPwI?si=fmAfCIj-VSbxeoiQ and https://youtu.be/YVuuwQSjzvs?si=SY4JukRo9OW1uoBq )

basically – I am planning a series of mini-comics, drawings, etc. about the events of this period through Hetalia characters – bc hey, why not. We see so little of Ukraine in manga and reinventing her brings me genuine joy. 😔✋🏼.

It might turn out into a chronologically consistent comics, in which case it will be published here and in my tg channel. Or ot may not, lol idk I‘m just having fun

These are just some initial concept-sketches of mainly Ukraine 1917 to 1919, but also Poland and Germany as u can see

Please feel free to ask me anything on this!

Happy Valentine's day

lazy af Ukraine character sheet, I love her sm you can’t imagine

also first art of 2025 yay?

Nah being fr i think that the fandom seeing independance days as birthdays for very many nations is straight up insulting and a very very american idea. It's the same kind of thinking that gives to those "omg i am older than the countey of serbia" memes.

Like okkkkaaayyy, maybe it makes sence in USA to conceptualise yourself as the folkpeople becoming 'Muricans rather than a brittish colony on the independance day, but in Europe and Asia and Africa these people, a continous line of an ethnicity, the idea of " deutch" or "latgalīši" or "the people who live in the carpathian basin" existed before becoming a conquered imperial land. I get it why for America (or Canada, Australia, etc) this works, but it is not the way things are elsewhere. It is americanocentric.

Its very offputting and invalidates history in such an insidious way. In the case of the baltics +Belarus + especially at this time Ukraine, to celebrate their 1991 independance days as birthdays is playing into russian propaganda that our histories only begin then, and that everything before it is unorganised and primitive, that russians gave us cultures etc etc etc (you can look it up, im not going to dwelve into long detail here). It is an insult to centuries of past, centuries of culture, national identity (be it under diffrent names- Wallachia, Ruthenia, Livonia, so on), and our sovereignity.

I'm not saying we dont celebrate independance days, like we even have two of them (both from russians); they should be memorated. Im not saying hetaliafandom cant have events and weeks n stuff put on these dates. But not as birthdays, I beg. And I do get the headcanons and interpretations, but I ask you to see why it alienates and makes uncomfortable the people *from* these places.

In the case of Lithuania you can choose february 14 1009 when it was first mentioned with the name, or july 6 1253 when the first king was crowned. For Latvia you could use the date of 1204 when the first city of Riege(Rīga) was established by german crusaders, but i dont use a birthday, since there is no concrete date in the 11th century when Latgale was first described by name (up to a hubdred years earlier, so i usually put him besides Lithuania...) For Ukaine you can use the establishing of the Kyivan Rus, for Belarus aswell the first named instances of Ruthenia, so on and so on. There are many important days these characters could assume in the place of a human birthday, and I hope you understand none would use the earliest independances.. There is aswell nothing wrong with them not having set birthdays or ages - like damn, it gets complex and nuanced! They can just hold memorations like everyone else in the country does, with plausible deniability were they there or not. You people are constantly creative with this fandom, this cant possibly be a problem.

There is old and known history to these characters' countries, what to talk about all others whove declared independances from china, russia, england, france, austro-hungary... You do not have to default to the youngest independance dates. I beg you to do better, for your own sake- if i see one more "happy birthday Lithuania" on the 11th made by americans im gonna tear their heads off 🥹💓

I‘ve been thinking about 1р Ukraine‘s human name (again) – and yes, I know I was screaming that I like „Mariia Chernenko“ for her, but that was before I knew Chernenko was just randomly added by a translator; besides, I was influenced by another character called Marichka/Mariia at the time and I kind of drifted away from that idea 🫠

And now I feel it kinda doesn‘t fit her and is kinda generic; not in a bad sense, rather that it is a name rather popular all throughout the world…not specific to her

So I‘ve been thinking — there is a nameform that half the names Hima suggested for her (Iryna, Kateryna) + some other common Ukrainian names (Marina, Daryna, Oryna, Karyna, you get me) can be shortened to — And its Ryna/Rina (Рина); short and simple

🤔🤔🤔

Sounds like a compromise. What do y’all think does it fit her?

just realised the nickname I’ve used for my blog (edelweissjpg, edelweissko, whatever i don‘t remember) for the last couple of months could be seen as a reference to a ship I HAD NO IDEA PEOPLE CALL SWISSAUS OR AUSSWISS, EDELWEISS, SKJSKSJ I DON’T even ship it (maybe?? idk??) I just like the lil mountain flower; it’s just funny. lowkey wanna draw them now

Thinking of who I ship Austria with; Hungary, but it’s a super disfunctional marriage; Prussia, but short-term (think Deutsches Bund) that escalated quickly and failed miserably, after which Austria ended up with Hungary partly out of spite. And as for Prussia and Hungary, well he’s too gay and 1. At first it was the entire celibacy in the teutonic order thing 2. When that technically ended, he was hella confused about what he feels about her, or rather what he thought he was supposed to feel, but really, was it that he wanted Hungary or to piss off Austria? Yeah. 3. Ended up as a bromance. Seriously. This love triangle shit goes crazy

I gotta read more about swissaus possibilities just because I’m intrigued