why not

If, for some reason, you want to know a little more about the logic or the principle behind this, here’s a couple of posts dedicated to the types that we like: the one where we talk about our favourite types of tops/bottoms and why it's so strict with us.

Our twst ships:

Our most favourite absolute alpha ships ever:

Azul/Idia

Ortho/Idia

Lilia/Idia

Jade/Idia

Floyd/Idia

Ships that we love:

Ace/Deuce

Trey/Riddle

Floyd/Riddle

Kalim/Jamil

Azul/Jamil

Rook/Vil

Sebek/Malleus

Sebek/Silver

Sebek/Idia

Lilia/Silver

Lilia/Malleus

Ships that we like:

Trey/Idia

Trey/Deuce

Ortho/Vil

Floyd/Vil

Floyd/Epel

Rook/Epel

Rook/Idia

Che’nya/Riddle

Crewel/Trein

Crewel/Deuce

Jack/Vil

Jack/Deuce

Ruggie/Jamil

Ruggie/Leona

Neige/Vil

Ace/Idia

Fukukaicho/Rollo

Gidel/Fellow

Mobs&Bosses/Fellow

All top characters from NRC/Fellow

We don’t have any Yuus/OCs related to twst.

Do not tag my art or headcanons as "x reader".

You can find full NSFW versions of my art either on my twitter or on bluesky. If you want to be notified about me posting this type of art, when I have a preview here, please make sure to check that your account settings allow you to see mature content.

I tend to say “we” instead of “I” because I want to include Katsu, who is my partner and also my best friend, as well as the author of all of our AUs + a person who gives me a lot of drawing ideas and helps me with drawings in general. We dive into stuff together and share a lot of thoughts, so I’m very used to including both of us into conversations. Katsu also helps me to run all of my social media pages, but I’m the one writing the replies and comments.

I'm very sorry if my reply can take up to a couple of months or more, especially if it's a headcanon post or something that is lengthy to write. I'm very slow at writing... But I'll get to them, I promise! You can ask me about them if you want to know whether I received those and you worry lol

I would also like you to refrain from sending me vaguely rude asks which can be considered such without any context or short asks that are hard to understand, once again, without any context. I must warn you that I'll most likely ignore them entirely.

I’ll start with his design; I feel like he is one of the best “Russian” characters in anime. Of course, he doesn’t quite represent all Russian people with the way he looks (once again, just like any other character in Hetalia), but he really does look like a regular Slavic “Vanya” – big and round, somewhat simple looking, with big nose and kind eyes, soft hair; he has this vibe of a fairytale character, a simple country guy who doesn’t quite fit in. Himaruya noted that he is “robust” and “sturdy” and while he tied it to the cold winters Russia had to endure, I’ve always thought it represents the country’s literal size and overwhelming nature pretty neatly.  

I also really like this sketch (I like the entire series of Italy checking out the softness of everyone’s boobs, to be honest lol) and I how it represents Ivan: yeah he looks soft and huggable, but he creates this sort of whiplash when you fall down expecting the ground to be soft only to be met with cement. Not unlike the way Ivan himself jumped into snow that one time…..

Also, speaking of this sketch, I never went too deep theorising about the scarring on Ivan’s neck, but I think its origin isn’t as important as the way he acts around it: it’s hidden pretty much all the time by his scarf (another great design choice btw, making him instantly recognisable), with him even stating that the scarf is a part of his body that he can’t take off. It’s a very nice touch that could either make you feel like he’s hiding his weakness/trauma/sorrows, or just him being a weird creature that has an extra limb that he uses to grab others with (his scarf). Plus, I’m just remembering that he ate the arrows pointing at him in this one strip, what was up with that? I love when he does crazy this like this lol This, and the fact that England accidentally summoned him that one time, and the fact that his cursed ass broke the Busby chair… I can’t quite tie it with anything related to irl Russia, so maybe it’s just my bias bc I love this trope to death, but this is so stupidly fun and makes so much sense somehow lol

Overall, I really love Russia’s design. He is genuinely very cute and makes me smile whenever I look at him. His uniform isn’t super accurate, but that’s never been an issue for me with any Hetalia character; it still reads as Russia perfectly… vodka and sunflowers help too, I guess. I feel like the majority of Russians are tired of the vodka trope, but somehow it never annoyed me with Ivan; maybe it’s because it’s just an accessory that isn’t even always present and tbf used very rarely; the boy can jump out of a helicopter yelling “vodkaaa” all he wants.

As for his personality, well, he isn’t quite right in the head lol But in a very interesting way: Ivan is both childlike and somewhat simpleminded, but also very obviously twisted and cruel; he has very simple desires (I wanna have fun with everyone, I wanna be somewhere warm, etc) and very scary ways of obtaining whatever he wants. He is kind of shy and it feels like he is the weird kid on the block, preferring to watch others be loud and have fun, while also being simply happy to be involved in any way, but that doesn’t mean that he is a wallflower and a sweetheart. In reality, he isn’t just weird, he is the creepy kid that others don’t want to be around because they know he is capable of doing horrible things for reasons that feel random and unreasonable sometimes.

But Ivan doesn’t really thinks of himself that way: whenever he does something cruel, it’s either because it’s justified or because he didn’t have a choice. This is also something that feels like a very real sentiment. A pretty old strip that I think about every time we revisit Hetalia is the Bloody Sunday one. I think it illustrates both the “I don’t have a choice” thing and also another very real sentiment – “I just wanted things to get better, why did it turn out this way?”

One of the most prominent traits of Ivan, and also the biggest elephant in the room, is the fact that he really wants unity with others and to live under the same roof like a big happy family, but unfortunately, he clearly doesn’t recognise that not everyone, that he himself picked as his happy family, is as excited to live with him, to share with him and to see him as a friend. And yeah, that kind of tracks…

His relationship with his sisters, while not being as nuanced as the real relationship between the countries, still has this core of nostalgia, yearning for something that Ivan sees as “simpler times” and frustration because both his older and younger sisters aren’t behaving how he wants them to behave. “Why can’t it be the way it used to?” is a thought that is can be shared by people from all over the political spectrum, including those who aren’t political at all.

Ultimately, Ivan is having a very hard time accepting that he can’t quite control the way others see him and whether they want to be his allies, friends and brethren or not. I feel like this is one of the most true to life sides of his, and it’s been present in different capacity throughout the history. Of course, this kind of ambition has been present in pretty much all the “big” countries of past and present, but this ominous and possessive “we’re friends though, aren’t we?” vibe feels very specific and unique to him.

He is very petty, very vindictive and gets jealous easily, stalking his “ex-friends” and hoping for their downfall, waiting for them to come back to him, begging to be accepted. The idea of “betrayal” is also a very painful spot on Russia’s mind, so to speak.

A quick note: like I’ve already stated, I’m not originally from Russia. Even though I moved here when I was a teenager, I was born in a republic in central Asia that used to be a part of USSR. I basically witnessed it reinventing its own identity as an independent country, and things were hard and honestly it was a very messy process, resulting in the said country becoming one of the biggest modern examples of a totalitarian regime. When I was a kid, many people moved to Russia, feeling that things at home were going worse and believing that it would give them a better future. The feeling of Russia being “the big brother who would take care of you” was strong, and it would be a lie if I said that I didn’t get much better opportunities in life here. So when I talk about the idea of “unity”, Soviet nostalgia and the fact that Ivan wishes for people to still be living under the same roof, this is also something that I keep in mind: while he mostly does it out of loneliness and desire to have a lot of people around him, I feel like he still has this idea that it’s also beneficial to those he lets “under his wing”. And it’s not always off or has even been true in the past; so even though this is an example of Ivan being unable to read the room, it’s also isn’t an entirely 100% malicious thing in terms of a character. Politicians have greedy ambitions – Ivan isn’t; his faults lie elsewhere.

Also despite all his scary and twisted nature, the innocent and simple “core” is still there – he does look like someone who would sit on a pechka during a cold wintery night, have fun celebrating pagan holidays that he still enjoys despite being Christian, sing silly songs and do other “wholesome” stuff.

I think the contrast between his two character songs shows it very neatly: the one about pechka is very cute and lighthearted (despite having some “creepy cute” lyrics), the one about winter is genuinely depressing and makes your blood run cold. Горе не море – выпьешь до дна, my ass.

I know that Ivan is also a misunderstood kid who grew up in hardship and spent his young days in freezing cold and poverty, so there is this sympathetic angle with him that adds nuance, which is also kind of true; the fact that both the Golden Horde and Teutonic Knights were mentioned + the fact that General Winter protected Ivan are cool. It was kind of exciting to see the battle of Lake Peipus (is this how it’s called in English?? It sounds cooler in Russian…) depicted in Hetalia; this is one of the only things I remembered from school… the fact that it was Prussia (in his Teutonic era) who goofed and fell through the ice made the strip extra wonderful to us lol

Mentioning it in this post gives me a good reason to use this sketch!! Isn’t it cute??

On a very personal note, it ended up being very difficult to talk about Russia-the-character for me. I love him a lot, and I am very biased mostly because he fits a lot of tropes we really enjoy in media. Even without the context of us being from Russia, he probably would’ve been one of our favourites, he has too many delightful traits that we, as someone who really enjoys dark themes and fucked up assholes, absolutely adore. Everything that I described: the fact that he’s petty, vindictive, jealous, unreasonable and creepy to the point of defying the laws of physics and common sense makes him a top-notch character to us. A cute, round-faced and big-boned kid who used to get picked on, and who still has a little bit of this childlike mentality, but now is overbearingly wicked and dangerous – this is exactly the type of character we’d love in any show or anime/manga. This is why we love Ivan with Gilbert so much – this is the perfect ship to showcase those traits of his, to play with the idea of the bullied one becoming the bully to a scary degree.

If we’re talking about him representing the country of Russia, it’s kind of unfortunate to say that there are a lot of traits that feel way too real at times. Not in a “wow this is The Empire of Evil” kind of way, because such empire doesn’t exist (and Ivan himself isn’t even evil, just scary and kind of crazy), but in a “wow that thing was spot on, wild how it’s still relevant to this day”. I guess history teaches us nothing, which makes it easier for writers to catch repeating leitmotifs lol

But also, there are so many random but very specific things?? The fact that he loves medovik, the fact that he censors Prussia’s letters, the fact that his boss (Peter the Great) tasked him with cutting off beards of his boyars; there are so many aspects that are way too carefully researched to-

Oh god…  

Both jokes and depressing comments aside, I genuinely think Himaruya did an amazing job with him. I hope I answered your question and it wasn’t too boring to read all that.