WELCOME!

This is the bio to http://sensitivity-and-sunflowers.tumblr.com/, or Shy!Emotionally-Sensitive!Russia from Hetalia.

The Miscellaneous and Unnecessary Headcanons Blog is Here: http://sensitivity-and-sunflowers-hc.blogspot.com/

Things on this page are formatted backwards, so please use the sidebar for navigation unless you wanna read the miscellaneous crap first!


Anyway, this blog was made because tumblr was being a brat. Please read through and enjoy!~

And to start you off on the road to understanding the complicated thing I call a muse, here's a quote:

“The first one was that no matter how intimidating or scary he might look on the outside, on the inside Ivan was like a little boy, innocent, naïve, trusting, and, even if it sounded impossible at first, defenseless, and like all little boys, he needed to be protected and loved tenderly.”

—A PrusRus fanfic I’m reading (I saw this and I was like “AFADFDFAHFDFJHDALFHJDFHLDA THIS IS MY MUSE”)

Ivan: A More In-Depth Bio

{{This is written OOC.}}

Ivan Braginsky. Vanya. Russia. Shy, quiet, more than a bit sensitive. But there is more to this seemingly feeble man than appears. 

Ivan really has changed since the fall of the Soviet Union. It took much effort, but now he has successfully become a “better” person. This, however, is not all in good light.Though he now cares for others and is significantly more complacent, this shyness has taken over. He cries often now, and can’t help but stutter. Instead of the once powerful country, Ivan is now weak and timid. 

This comes with rewards, of course. For the most part people like him more, which was really his goal all along. But this makes him an easier target. He gets into trouble more often now. But it’s all worth it to him as long as he has friends.

However.

Sweet, innocent little Ivan has a darker side.

An evil side.

A malicious side that he suppresses with every fiber of his being.

Let’s start from the beginning.

As a child, Ivan was picked on quite a bit by General Winter. He was constantly stalked and forced to tears by the lingering menace of winter. Chills went down his spine at the thought of tears freezing on his face. This omnipresent phantom of cold never left him. 

Paranoia.

Then there was another evil the tiny boy had to worry about.

Mongolia.

Being torn away from Katyusha and Natalya was one of the most traumatizing things he had ever been through. Even today he has awful nightmares about the day he was stolen from his home and put in that dark, cramped room. There he stayed for a very long time until finally, finally he was free… But even then the most he could do was clamber out into the snowy wastelands and sob. He had no strength, no energy, hunger racked his body and the strain of even crawling tortured his nearly nonexistent muscles. The only thing he had left was his ragged gown and tattered scarf.

Abandonment Issues. Hatred. Contempt.

Fast forward to 1905. 

The death of so many, and Ivan could feel each one. Each bullet fired rang in his chest, each knife thrust he could feel stab at his heart. All these years of trying so hard to make things work collapsed in front of him. His card tower had been built so perfectly, but the faulty cards that looked right at first toppled. Person after person, women and children, with every single man killed, Ivan came closer to breaking. Finally his stability broke when the Tsar’s rule came to a close.

OCD. Antidepressant after antidepressant after antidepressant.

The Soviet Union. The Cold War. The Space Race. The Arms Race. The fall of the USSR. And one day, finally, Ivan snapped.

Schizophrenia. Nervous breakdowns. Those undying voices in his head.

One day, finally, Ivan changed. He began to take antipsychotics and other medications to keep his mind under control. And then he became this.

Weak. Emotional. Kind. Sensitive.

Ivan. 

A Commentary By Ivan Braginsky

{{Trigger Warning!: Abuse, Mentions of Rape}}

As all humans do, I have my flaws. While I refuse to believe that they are my fault, I also cannot say that they make me any better. Stronger, maybe, but that argument certainly is an odd one given how I am unable to harm even a tiny insect. I wonder why. Is it due to my need for companionship that I take on this pitiful weaker form? Or have I just regressed back into this childish nothingness from all of the hardship?

As for the latter, I would not be surprised if that was the case. I used to be such a great country, a feared one, a force to be reckoned with! Today, however, the focus is off of me, and it has migrated to China and India. Ever since I lost the Cold War, my reputation has been taken down a few steps on the ladder. I cannot blame people. When you lose a war, your status goes from terrible to disgusting. Pitiable. So now that I may finally be seen as just another country, I guess I have let myself be happy. For the first time in ages, I have finally, finally, allowed myself freedom from the prison of my torturous mind.

And I guess I did so by giving myself a shot at the childhood I never had.

My life has most definitely not been easy. I grew up in a frozen wasteland, and for the first years of my life, wintry tundra was all I knew. This, of course, was not too awful. I still had my beloved sisters with me. Our house was quite small and tattered, but Katyusha was always being optimistic. I remember at one point she said, “It is not small and raggedy! It is simply quaint and cozy!” Of course I was only a toddler when she said that, so I was clueless as to what it meant, but I took it on as sort of a mantra. And though I have not used it in ages, not since shortly after I was released from Mongolia, saying it even now gives me a sense of comfort. In a sense, it is much like my scarf. No matter how attached I am to my scarf, the mantra will always be more meaningful to me. Simply because it is not physical. I may lose my scarf, and that would be devastating, but no matter what my darling sister’s voice will always linger.

And then there was my dear little sister, Natalya. I was the apple of her eye, and she was not hesitant to show it. She was always following me around with that dinky little knife she found. I can remember multiple occasions where I had to switch sides of the bed I shared with my sisters so I could keep away from her. It never really mattered anyway, we would all wake up in a bungled heap the next morning no matter what we did, but for the sake of my feeble sense of security I always made Katyusha sleep in the middle.

Speaking of this, bedtime was always quite eventful. Though it was supposed to be the most restful chunk of the day, without fail it was hectic every night. Natalya refused to take baths, I refused to sleep in the middle, which lead to Natalya throwing a fit… I feel bad for what my sister had to go through to even get us in the bed. Once we were settled, Katyusha would sing a song or tell a story, and eventually we would all fall asleep.

Now as humiliating as it is, for the sake of the story I have to tell you that I did not stop wetting the bed until I was six. (However I did relapse when I was taken by Mongolia.) It did not happen every night, especially as I reached childhood, but it certainly was a very stressful thing for my sisters and me. You see, I was very prone to nightmares as a child. I still am today. But when I was little I would get so scared that… Well, to put it bluntly, I would have an accident. While Katyusha assured me that it was normal for a child my age and that she was not angry with me, I was very still humiliated about the whole thing. Of course, it was not long before a makeshift rubber sheet was put on the bed and it stopped happening altogether.

And then, that fateful day came. I remember it as if it just happened ten minutes ago, in vivid detail.

I was seven years old when Mongolia came. It was late in the afternoon, and Katyusha and Natalya were taking a nap while I was tending to the fire. In came the black haired man, kicking the door open with a tremendous force comparable only to a charging bull. He snatched me by my collar, put a gloved hand over my mouth, and dragged me away without a word. I screamed like there was no tomorrow, having been afraid of this happening. I was terrified and helpless, screaming at the top of my lungs as a wailed, begging for someone,anyone to come and save me. But no one did. I felt a hard crack on my head and a sharp pain before the whole world spun, and eventually went black.

The next thing I remember is waking up in a damp, cold cell. Rats skittered across the floor as maggots crawled over the corpses of deceased human prisoners. The vile stench of death and stale urine reeked in the very air I breathed, and it made me retch dryly. Chills seeped through my bones and shivers racked my young, frail body. I had no clue where I was. I had no idea what to do. All I knew was that I was starving, parched, and that I was completely alone and helpless in this cell.

And that I was going to die.

Eventually, Mongolia did come in, and he did unspeakable things to me. I will not go into detail, but to put it lightly he did not just abuse me.

He tortured me.

First came the complete destruction of all self-worth I had. He told me I was worthless. Weak. That I was a fool for thinking that I could ever be a country. Of course, at my young age, I believed him. What else could I have done? He was so much older and so much stronger than me, the only thing I could even consider doing was believe every word he said.

As I mentioned earlier, my bedwetting habit relapsed when I was taken over by him. Well, he was not happy with it at all. He forced me to clean up the mess and only went harder on me on the nights it happened, which only grew more and more frequent as the level of distress escalated.

Then there was the slow transition into physical abuse. He whipped me, bound me, hit me; one time he even went as far as to smash my head into the stone wall of my cell. He would dip my feet in ice until they turned purple, he would tug on my arms until my joints became dislocated. It was terrible. I begged him to stop, but nothing worked. He always just kept on going.

And then, the sexual aspect of it. This what is the most scarring for me, and ultimately the most painful for me to talk about. Mongolia forced me to do things no one should ever have to do. Sometimes he would pound into me with hatred and fury, not caring in the least about how I screamed for him to stop. Other times he would force me to play out his fantasies. I do not remember what they were exactly, and thank god for that, but I vaguely remember wearing a chain around my neck at one point. Occasionally, he would force me to just ride him if he was tired from battle, and if I failed to satisfy him there would always be hell to pay.

Slowly, he began to mix emotional torment into it all. “Every time you scream,” he said, “I will cut off one of your sister’s body parts!” Once again, I believed him. So I tried my hardest to keep my mouth shut, but without fail the pain always eventually became too much to handle for my fragile body.  I would scream, causing a smirk to grace those horrid lips of his, and I would beg him for hours to spare my sisters. “You can do anything you want to me and I won’t even fight back!” I would offer, and sometimes I even offered to “please him.” It was degrading. But in my mind, as long as I protected my sisters, it was worth it.

Finally, after years of endless suffering and pain, I was finally set free. I wandered out into the snow, hoping to run back to my own home, but I couldn’t. I was too weak. As soon as I was tossed out, abandoned in the blizzard, my knees gave out. I collapsed into the snow. I sobbed and wailed for hours on end, the tears freezing onto my face. My hands turned blue and I could no longer feel my feet or legs. I was completely helpless.

It took two days to find shelter, which happened to be at a human’s house. Seeing my tortured frame, she immediately took pity on me and began to sob. The woman had long, dark hair and a kind face, a genuine motherly expression glowing on her tired face. She held me in her arms and I immediately recoiled from her touch, still untrusting of other people. After about a day, though, I stopped flinching when she came near me. Her husband was a bulky man, and very tall, so it took me a bit longer to warm up to him, but eventually I did. My night terrors, and consequent bedwetting habit, continued, but to my surprise the woman never got angry. She never even scolded me. It was at this house that the embarrassing habit came to a halt for good. I was nine years old.

So for about a week this family of two fed me, provided me with shelter and clothes, and comforted me when I needed it (which was quite often). Eventually they coaxed me into telling them about my sisters and how I originally lived in Russia. They understood and sent a letter to Katyusha that I was safe. They gave the address of their home, and continued to take care of me in the few months that it took for Katyusha and Natalya to get there.

When they did, all three of us were ecstatic. The moment I saw my two sisters walk up to the porch of the small cottage, I burst into tears. Finally, I was going to see my sisters again! For about five minutes I just hugged the two of them and cried out of sheer relief and joy to see my sisters again. I was glad that most of my wounds had healed, if Katyusha had seen me like I was the day I escaped she would have started bawling for a whole different reason the day we were reunited.

Of course it was bittersweet to leave the couple who had taken care of me, but honestly, I was just glad to be with my sisters again. We began the long voyage back home, and by the time I reached our tiny little home, it felt like a palace to me. Because it wasn’t small and raggedy, it was just quaint and cozy. And that was exactly how I liked it.

So I guess that explains why I’m so childish today. Simply put, I am taking back what was stolen from me. Making up for what I lost all those years ago. Allowing myself to be happy.

Allowing myself to be free.

—-