Edelweissko - A Mountain Flower Amidst The Steppes

ABSOLUTELY. FCKING. TRUE.

Out of all the European countries in Hetalia, I feel like Ukraine was done dirty. I haven't been able to read the comics much, so I'm going off of the anime here. But wow does the anime do her so dirty. Not just because they used her to fulfill the whole "big-boobed anime girl trope", but because Ukraine is actually a very strong country, and I feel like they portray her as weak and pathetic. It just bothers me.

Now, I don't mind a female character with a bigger chest. By all means, draw and animate characters with different body types. I'm all for it. But the way they ogle her chest and add sound effects is just too much for me. I get that it's anime, but still.

Granted, we could go on and on about other characters not being portrayed well, but I will never get over how they disrespect Miss Ukraine. The girl deserves so much better.

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OH. MY. 😈😈😈 I LOVE THIS. I LOVE HER. WONDERFUL.

by the waaaaaaay, if anyone‘s wondering what the hell is UPR, what‘s the deal with Ukraine in the period, etc, etc – under the cut are a few okay-ish English-speaking youtube video essays on the topic 😈😈😈 it‘s a whole drama, I swear it‘s worth it. One of them topics I‘m Very Normal about

Can I request Ukraine? Idk if you draw historical setting, but 1917-1919 (Ukrainian People’s Republic) would be cool🥰

MAMMA MIA. I'M SO SORRY FOR THE 10 DAYS RESPONSE 😭😭 but anyways,,

honestly idk much about ukraine's history,, but i did look up the outfit for this one so i hope this is accurate enough! ^^

Sometimes I see this misunderstanding and I'd like to clarify it. When Ukrainian say "russian drones/shahed drones/iranian drones," we don't mean this kind of drones:

We mean THIS kind of drones that can carry a warhead and are essentially used as missiles:

While they're not as large, destructive and difficult to intercept as, say, ballistic missiles, they can still cause significant damage. Russia launches them at us every night, but most are successfully shot down.

Source:

If only I had a nickel every time I came across Brandenburg described as a sandbox…

…which is due much of the land being flat and covered with marsh and sand back at the time. So makes sense.

As you may or may not have noticed drawing silly chibis brings me joy lately. Also yes I have no clue what colour his eyes should be. Sometimes I feel like dark brown, sometimes like blueish-grey and sometimes it is the colour of sand. Yes. I will decide one day. Maybe.

Final round of my Brandenburg doodles using using  ヒラ’s old Brandenburg OC design because its my friend’s favorite. 

Rewatching hetalia did this to me. So here we are.

Hetalia! Ukraine

This might be tricky to understand unless you grew up in Ukraine; but as we know, she is often depicted in hetalia holding a giant pitchfork. So around when the anime was made, there was a (marginal) politician in Ukraine, in charge of the radical party, Oleh Lyashko (Олег Ляшко), known for his striking appearance with a pitchfork during campaigns; (the dude behind her)

SO AS A UKIE I HAD TO DRAW THIS RAWRJKDSWCHRDSKJD

(The stuff she is saying comes from an insult phrase Lyashko often said as well about his rivals, «скотиняки» [skotyniáky], translating to something like «stupid animals»)

ukraine is incompatible with russian national myth that enjoys the exclusive claim to the history of rus and the city of kyiv. so it's about history then, you may think. well, no, in truth it has nothing to do with history. what happened in the early medieval past is completely irrelevant. the existence of ukraine today, with her culture, language, identity and the city of kyiv as her capital, neatly situated in the heartland of ukrainian classicism, populated with visual and conceptual ukrainian archetypes, is what incompatible with russian national myth. the real history of kyiv is largely irrelevant to how both ukrainians and russians see it, but if for us, it's just our capital, for russians, real or not real, it's where conceptually their state began, where orthodoxy came from, where writing came from. all roads lead to rome, first, second or third, but before that, they lead to kyiv. and yet it is occupied by a different ethnicity. how come? it prevents them from exploiting this land for the legitimisation of the russian empire as they constructed it

they have tried to accommodate it. in the empire, ukrainians did not exist. everyone knew we did. yet we didn't. we were russians with an asterisk leading to the bottom of the page where you could read *little so we could be distinguished on the census from the russians we already were. our language did not exist, and it was banned dozens of times precisely for not existing. ukraine, which was not a real place, was the most integral russian land, full of exotic cossack artifacts, southern landscapes and dark-haired native women, who, peculiarly, even pronounced the vowels differently

soviet union was the time when russians learned to say that ukrainians were a different people, but not to think it. "an unbreakable union of free republics, the great rus' has sealed forever". ukraine had to be contained, by historiographic concepts of three intrinsically connected eastern slavic peoples through ancient russian state, culture and language, that came to change imperial doctrine of the triune nation; by our modern borders to which the borders of our identity receded shortly after 1926 census, to cut some edges and undo the results of widespread settlerism across eurasia for which russians used us in the time when we did not exist; by russification for which, unlike the empire, soviet union had actual capabilities

they could never leave us alone. and all that came with no respect, but with the sense of entitlement to everything we possess. there has never been a moment, since at least the 18th century, when russians looked at ukraine and saw anything other than a glorified province, an exotic appendage, an amusement park full of stock characters who perform their small-town culture "for" or "in spite of" russians, but never to themselves. it is so ingrained into their ideology, that it is almost uncanny to meet a russian who consistently uses "ukrainian" instead of a slur. to mention any sense of equality would be laughable

but even that is not enough. a provincialised, firmly colonised in the past and the present ukraine is not a solution to russian nationalism, it's a palliative. because the fantasy of ukraine being a safe russia's subaltern will always be overpowered by the reality of ukraine being fundamentally different. they can't make us russian. even when they succeed, they fail. they have to exterminate us. the times when russians were truly honest about us being foreign to them, calling us, maybe in awe, maybe in fear, "cherkassy", that is circassians, are long behind us, but maybe recoverable in the new context of russian colonisation of caucasus and new solidarities it created

i want to believe that this is the last russo-ukrainian war, but while we are fighting, i implore people to remember about one article, published by a russian state-owned news agency on april 3, 2022, "what russia should do with ukraine", one of the most lucid statement of the russian ideology. to you, of course, to us, it's a daily experience. it tells in no uncertain terms that ukrainians are nazis not because they exhibit nazi ideology, but because they are ukrainian. it calls for complete destruction of ukraine, the name "ukraine" itself, because the existence of it "inevitably leads to nazism". it says that ukrainians, who must become russian, must also experience war "to atone their historical guilt". even in their wildest genocide dreams, they still can't help but realise that we are not actually russian. they're not stupid, as soothing as this thought can be, they know what they're doing very well. and yet they can't see the main and only flaw

and i want to add, that none of it was inevitable. it only seems inevitable if you believe that russian imperialism is natural and not manufactured, something people bleat about as the pinnacle of russophobia, unable to simply say that it's stupid. russia could have not been an empire, russia could have changed, russia still can change. will it? the answer is as irrelevant as the real history russia cannibalised to become the monstrosity it is today and destroy my life. no matter. i know what ukraine should do with russia. defeat it, for the sake of ourselves and all before us who could not

Unfortunately, hetalia is notoriously bad when it comes to accurate representations of political and historical relations between nations. Russia is the most obvious example with both the show and a distinct portion of the fandom being too uneasy with the idea of portraying the absolute hatred most if not all Eastern European nations feel towards Russia. Actually, the main reason hetalia is so widely hated by most people who happen upon it is because it tries to downplay these conflicts to try and make the show completely unpolitical, so instead of correctly portraying the baltics or Ukraine for example at least heavily disliking Russia, they try to make it into this massive joke where Russia is this scary (but of course ultimately harmless which is even more gross) goliath of a man while the baltics are these snivelling cowards who fear Russia but don't hate him (because of course not)

And I'm sure a lot of Russians have issues with how they're portrayed too, but it's not nearly as heinous. The best way to portray a character in hetalia is to try and actually look into the history and culture of this nation. Hell, tumblr is a huge platform, I'm sure if people wanted to accurately portray a nation, they could just go and ask someone from that country for their opinion, and if even that is too hard, they could at least make the character completely blank and flat so they don't end up offending the people of that nation.

I can totally see why having a character that's supposed to represent my country in a fun and digestible way be this stupid, snivelling coward who has absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Honestly, how is that supposed to reflect on actual Estonians who didn't elect that as a representative of their history and culture. This show was literally banned in South Korea because of how their country was portrayed in it. Heck, I've had my issues with how my own country is portrayed, and I've always said that much. Ukraine's portrayal is actually just a war crime in my opinion.

So, yeah, it's not exactly surprising that hetalia gets a bunch of hate.

Also, I know I'm probably not the best person to make a comment on this as I am actually a hetalia account, and I've actually had problems with this before where I have incorrectly based my information on a country through hetalia. It's just so shitty because most of the people who are guilty of this literally just don't know how to accurately portray these nations because of the harmful stereotypes hetalia has enforced. Nowadays, I try to reach out to people from the nations I post about to ask about my content before posting it. I avoid tagging nations that I know are often portrayed badly in this show.

Yes, hetalia is supposed to be harmless fun, but it's only that way for the countries that Himaruya thinks deserve it.

Anyway, sorry for the rant.

I had to take a few days to digest this ask. It's a long one, for sure! It's good to know some Hetalians are critical of the source material and understand why many people are upset with the show.

I will reiterate that the blog I reblogged and criticised deserved it. I understand they have been called out before for inaccurate portrayal that borders on ignorance at best.

I am aware that me reblogging a smaller blog is not great. Then again, @ask-computer-nerd-estonia has unforgivably crossed the line.

Estonia and Russia are not friendly countries. Russia has occupied our lands, tried to kill our people and threatens our existence regularly.

To say, even in character role-play, that these countries are friends is a gross misrepresentation of actual facts and history. Doing it days away from the anniversary of one of the worst days in Estonia's recent history and tagging it in a way Estonians will see it (by using the words "estonia" and "eesti" in tags)? Well, absolutely tasteless.

Diplomat Alfred F. Jones at a UN meeting.