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Kimanda — Why one Celt OC cannot work
Published: 2013-08-09 22:03:03 +0000 UTC; Views: 3886; Favourites: 61; Downloads: 24
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Description
As someone who studied the Celts and their civilization at my university, it has been more than a source of frustration to see so many Celt OCs who are meant to represent all the Celts. For me that is practically impossible to represent into one character without ignoring and leaving out huge chunks of other Celtic groups who are in themselves distinctive enough to have their own representation. They shared a similar enough culture and related languages, which is why we collectively call them “the Celts” but don’t be fooled into thinking they were identical to each other. Even at the core, the Insular and Continental Celts had significant differences between each other. And about 90% of the Celt OCs I see often have only traits of the Celts of the British Isles, which means everyone concentrates on the Insular Celts but completely ignores those on the mainland. No matter how I’ve look at it, you cannot create one Celt OC. Logically it is not doable. Sorry, I am not out to ruin your fun if you do have a Celt OC, I simply want to encourage people to take a closer look at the different Celtic groups and see how fascinating each group is on their own. They’re really fun to read about and it just makes me sad to see how people just skim over them and crush them all into one OC.Now for some of the Celtic clothing, I got them from a reference book based on what was found but with others… I had to get a bit more creative since I wasn’t able to hunt down any good description on their appearances at the time. Well I just made use of what’s pretty close to being accurate for Galatia, Celtiberia and Belgica. Also short swords are normal, long swords didn’t appear until the Vikings appeared.
Hope you enjoyed the comic and that you found it interesting!
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Comments: 106
Aaaah thank you, I'm very glad that you agree with the comic!! ^^ (gosh it's such an old comic though!)
Yes, I'd say a lot of people create aph OCs without too much afterthought. It's disheartening because sometimes you can see that the OCs have the potential to be something bigger than they are. However most people will stick to what they know and will create OCs that are blatant self-inserts or simply created to be shipped with their favourite canon countries. We then end up with flat aph OCs that have had baredly any research invested into them and dodgy relations with other countries. (Antarctica OCs are rather strange, they're difficult to pull off as properly-researched characters... also yeah, Antarctica and Romania isn't a ship I would have considered in the first place)
Gosh thank you so much for your kind words!! ;w; It means a whole lot to me! ^^
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This is very interesting information about the celtic civilization, with the will of being accurate (be blessed), presented in a pleasant way (be blessed) ! Also, I love that you put maps, it's way clearer.
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Aaaah thank you very much for your lovely comment! 
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I started studying Celtic history a couple weeks ago, as I was told by a Spanish friend I would find it very interesting due to the complexity. I´m still not done with all the reading and I still have 2 movies left to watch, so I found your work very educative. I know there´s probably a lot of infor you couldnt include, but I think it works great as a quick guide, and as a tips of do´s and do not´s for OC creators. It is very useful.
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"dark hairs"
*mind blow* how i havent even hear about that before
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Ooooh it makes me really happy to meet another person who has decided to study Celtic history! There are not nearly enough of people in the field so it always makes me happy to read that people show interest in the subject. The Celts and their history is indeed very complex, even for me they remain mysterious after spending so many years studying and reading about them. (I still learn new things about them) I'm very happy to read that you found the comic educative and useful (even though I now see one tiny error about the mention of woad, it seems to have been mentioned more than once but always in the context of the British Isles so not entirely inaccurate). But thank you so much for your comment! And I wanted to thank you for all the favs and the watch, I really appreciate them!
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I realize that this was for characters, but it's a really good history lesson
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Thank you so much, I'm glad to read that you think so!! ^^ I'm studying in the University of Glasgow, sadly I haven't been able to study the Celts since 2 years ago. I still keep an active interest in them and I continue to buy books on the subject.
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Fun to read! I like seeing an illustrated guide to the Celts like this, since a lot of source material can be quite dry. Where did you study Celts at uni, if you don't mind me asking?
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Thank you! I'm happy to read that you enjoyed the comic! True, the source material can be heavy so it is a good challenge to see if it can be converted into a more visual format. (comics are still a weakness of mine, they take a long time to do) Oh, I studied the Celts in the University of Glasgow in the course Celtic Civilization. Sadly my main course forced me to stop taking the course and I honestly miss it.
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I've looked that course up on the Glasgow website--looks pretty amazing! I'm planning to go to St Andrews and you can't study Celtic civ there as a course, but I hope to take the early British Isles modules that cover history from that period.
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It really is, I enjoyed the course immensely!
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There are quite a few modules of that nature at St Andrews because it's one of the professors' specialty. What course are you doing right now?
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So sorry for not replying to you for so long, university got unexpectedly very busy and then I was busy studying for exams, trying to survive them and then packing. As a result, your message got buried under other messages and I completely forgot to reply. I'm studying Zoology, I am on my last year. (unfortunately, it isn't what I thought it would be and I find myself regretting to have ever taken Zoology)
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No worries, hope your exams went well. 
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I seriously hope so too, they were pretty tough but I won't know for sure if I passed until next month. 
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Tha mi duilich, chan eil Gàidhlig agam.
Ack sorry, the first sentence was my rudimentary attempt at writing Scots-Gaelic. I speak Irish since the beginning though, so the weird part is that I can sort of understand Scots-Gaelic in the written form. But you start speaking it and I am lost, the sounds are too different for me to keep up. 
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Nice Gaelic! 
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Thank you! 
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Wow, that is so cool! Where did you live that you learned English and German for school, if you don't mind me asking? Did you grow up in a part of Ireland where you really only used English in school?
I am not a native speaker of Gaelic! My only native language is English, although I speak Spanish pretty well from school. I took an evening language class in Scots Gaelic this past year (since I moved to Scotland from the USA). I have always dreamed about learning a Celtic language, although I used to think about Irish rather than Scots Gaelic because my ancestors are Irish (and my Scottish ancestors didn't have the Gaelic). My Gaelic teacher is a native speaker from Harris, and she grew up with English at first being only a school language.
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I've lived in many places, that's the issue. XD I was born in Ireland but I was raised in Ireland, Poland, Germany and Belgium. (and now studying in Scotland and going back to Belgium and Switzerland during the holidays) So I've been in many schools, I don't want to overwhelm you with the details. But as a result, Irish and French are the languages I spoke at home while English and German were confined to school. I remember one of the few exceptions, I went to an Irish-speaking school in Ireland. I spoke Irish fluently but not a drop of English and the children kind of isolated me because we had to speak Irish in class but during breaks everyone slipped into English because that was their mother tongue.
Oh that sounds really amazing! And it's really great that you've dedicatd yourself to learning a new language! Especially Celtic languages, too many people gripe about how useless they are. (even though they aren't!) Actually if you can get the hang of Scots-Gaelic, it is really easy to learn Irish as these two languages share so many similarities. My father told me that on Skye they have Scots-Gaelic lessons designed specially for Irish-speakers, so it seems doable.
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What an interesting history you've got there! I think it would be neat to piggyback onto learning Irish someday. I've got a long way to go with Gaelic first, though...
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Ah thank you!
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Being a native speaker of Irish, I think you're already a lot better poised to learn Welsh than most people, even if it is P-Celtic.
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Perhaps, who knows?
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Woah, that's a lot mor complicated than I realized. I haven't ever really studied the celts so this was news to me.
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It definitely is! I was equally surprised just how much I could learn about the Celts and yet still be left with a dozen more questions after I managed to answer one. But it is that complexity that made me fall in love with the Celts and made me decide to spread knowledge about them out so that more people would understand how fascinating they are. Thank you for the comment!
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Hey. I just wanted to say great job! I love it when people do actual research and put some hard work into creating characters, especially for Hetalia. Part of the reason I love Hetalia is that you can use history to create a somewhat rounded character. (and it makes history so fun) It gets rather disappointing to see characters that don't have any idea what they're representing. And even if I wasn't a Hetalian, I loved learning about the origins and groups of Celts! Thanks!
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Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed the comic!! That's the main reason why I joined Hetalia, I have gained a lot of knowledge of history and geography since joining. I love researching and then converting the knowledge to Hetalia and present it as such to others. I went to learn the Celts on a university level and it has helped me develop my Celtic OCs more but as well as that I have become completely fascinated with the Celts. I love using Hetalia as a visual medium to make learning easier, I bumped my history and geography grades in school from 70% to 95% like that. Thanks to the historical Hetalia works, my interest in history was awakened. Thus I am rather disappointed in the newer Hetalia fans who only concentrate on yaoi pairings and pairing their flat and barely-researched OCs with the canon characters. Ah but I simply learn to avoid them, I have more than enough things to keep me occupied all the time. Even today, for a short Hetalia fanfic I am currently writing, I went hunting for the name of Loch Ness and now I finally understand the name and what legend lies behind the name. I'm happy that you enjoyed learning about Celts from this comic!
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(( Now, if only can someone explain the same thing about this with Native America because there are so many tribes with their own distinct customs and languages, etc. it shouldn't really be personified into just one character ))
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Yeah, I've argued often enough with other people over how "Native!America" physically can't exist due to there being no political or cultural cohesion at all. The Native American tribes would have never regarded each other as united and living on one land, so how can Native America exist? It's just a lazy attempt to create a mother for America and inventing a "tragic" story of Native America dying or being killed. There's enough real tragedies in history, no need to invent the death of an imaginary entity to make things interesting. It would be really fascinating if someone tried taking the Native American tribes and personifying them as accurately as possible, showing what became of them over the years.
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Yes, oh God yes, you hit all the points and took it straight home, my friend. Native American tribes did not think of themselves as being a whole nationalized entity, they lived separately and co-existed in different sub cultures, that's not the same as being a whole nation or political entity. Even if Britain and France probably used to think that they were all the same, being uneducated and just learning of the Natives, that doesn't hold up in today's standards. If anything, they would be portrayed and personified as different, separate tribes if one had to.
And I fully agree that the when people do have a Native America oc, her usual and only purpose is to create backstory angst for America and sometimes Canada, using her as a surrogate mother ( despite that America and Canada CLEARLY represent the INTERGRATED EUROPEAN COLONISTS and had no blood ties or intimate relations to Natives beyond teaching them how to grow crops and use different tools, etc. ) And seeing as how the U.S. citizens treated the Natives later on when they got a hold of their independence, and how Canadians don't really seem to have any significant regard to them either present day ( but not racist either ) the whole thing about being their birth mother or even raising them before the settlers came....it's not only non sensible when you think about it, but it really does have unfortunate implications, and just seems rather inappropriate. Their pretty much saying they killed off their own mother while knowing she was their mother and just disregarded it, not caring, and only regretted it horribly when it was over with and the population of Natives diminished. It would really astound me if there were personified tribes instead, that would make much more sense and make the history much more clear. ))
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Ah, finally I find someone who also agrees with me on this! I've tried quite some time to argue that America and Canada are the result of the European settlers. I honestly don't understand why people make these two at first Native American tribes, I personally believe they woudn't exist if the Europeans had never gone to North America. It just feels awkward when you consider America and Canada were so hostile towards the Native Americans (or First Nations as the Canadians call them?) so I always was uneasy seeing depictions of chibi America and Canada as originally Native Americans when you know what they did to those tribes later on. Canada might have been less violent as America was but the general feeling is that neither should have started out as a Native American, much less a Native American tribe. It just makes the whole thing about the fate of their "birth mother" very awkward and very... contrived? So yeah, I really don't like the concept of Native America as one character who is a "mother" to America and Canada.
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I've been researching Ireland's history for months to create my oc, but I had one problem and that was finding the history of the Celts. Ever since I've stumbled upon your work I wanted to cry from joy after spending two months of searching for the Celts history, I truly hope it's okay that I can use your information on the Celts, because I couldn't find anything about the Celts anywhere else and it's pretty frustrating at some points..
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Oh I don't mind at all if you use the information on the Celts from me, I try my best to offer accurate information. (well I will always take my knowledge from books that I can trust) I can understand how frustrating it is to search for information on the Celts and then often come across inaccurate information. I've also been researching Ireland's history but I've been really interested in Celtic history in general. So I have no problems at all, you can use the information I provide on the Celts. If you ever have a specific question on the Celts, I am happy to look it up and help you out with it.
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Thank you! I prefer books as well but the library here in my town only has history about my state. Every time I would look up the Celts who settled in Ireland, I couldn't find a thing that could help me learn more about the Celts. I'm glad I was able to find you or I would have ended up with a major headache from searching for hours on end.
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You're welcome! Ah yeah, finding books on the Celts is not easy and often enough a lot of these books aren't even the most accurate... you're stuck on a fine line of finding books and making sure they're accurate as well. Heh, I've had my share of headaches though often enough I got them from overloading my mind with information.
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My Scotland's color scheme? I actually just noticed his clothes look similar to yours...I actually see him in blue all the time and it kind of just sticks with him, I tried other colors but I can't help put him in blue and the same goes for his hair color, his eyes are more of a blue-ish green color instead of a bright green. But I actually have a headcanon where as since it snows in Scotland, he usually wears a light blue through winter and spring, before changing into a darker blue through the summer and fall.
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Yeah, the light blue does make our two Scotlands resemble a lot. But it is true, blue seems to be the colour that fits Scotland the best. Dark green looks also nice on him but I feel blue is a better match. Funny actually, the eyes of my Scotland are also blue-green! But I think I lean more on the green while yours seems more half-half. Light blue is really the colours my Scotland has during the Iron Age, moving into the medieval period I was thinking of giving him darker clothing. Kind of like light blue darkening as Scotland becomes more aware of the violence of the world. (also darker clothing is better for camouflaging and many fights await Scotland during the medieval period.)
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I think the reason why blue suits him best is because of his red hair. I sometimes find Scotland with blue eyes or with green so I decided to put them together, it's almost like a sea foam green while Ireland has a sea foam blue. Yes, darker colors seem to be more popular in the medieval period especially when they want to blend in.
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That and there's also his flag, I think both these things contribute to the colour blue fitting Scotland very well. Hmm, I've seen actually more green-eyed Scotlands than blue-eyed, though I have seen a handful of Scotland OCs with blue eyes. Originally my Scotland did have green eyes but I added more blue to represent his hills and lochs. I gave my Ireland lightish green eyes to express his Celtic heritage, the vivid greens of the landscapes in Ireland (goes well with the nickname Emerald Isle too) and his general energetic attitude.
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When I started to create my Ireland OC, she had dark hair with blue eyes but then I added more green to her eyes and made her hair a dark orange with the natural highlights. It's just like with Scotland's flag, the colors of their flags seem to work better with them then with other colors.
I was wondering if we can do a collab? I always wanted to draw my Ireland with another Ireland OC that is the opposite gender, seeing as I don't see a lot of male Ireland OCs.
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(sorry for taking so long to respond, I started university with a rather intensive week-long fieldwork so I am quite exhausted) My Ireland originally started out with blue eyes and dark brown hair. Since then he has undergone quite a change, it surprises me when I look back on the older version of him. But that's the interesting part, even if some people rant at the green-eyed and ginger-haired Ireland OCs due to their "genetic inaccuracy" (because Hetalia is so much into genetics...), you can intergrate the Irish flag into the character. (the white of the flag relates to the pale skin of course) Scotland is a bit easier since you can present the blue in his eyes and have the white refer to his pale skin. The amount of times you can realistically intergrate the colours of a flag into the representation of said country is rather rare.
I've never done a collab before but sure, I wouldn't mind giving it a try! Although which kind of collab would you like to do, one does the lineart and the other the colouring or we both draw and colour our own Ireland OCs and put them together on a picture? I wouldn't have imagined male Ireland OCs to be so rare, just there are 75% more female Irelands.
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(It's alright!) That is how mine had first started out, but over time it just changed to what the colors look like now. Actaually mine had looked a lot like fem!Portugal but I had never seen a picture of her, so I shrugged it off before changing the colors and the hair, and it's not easy for some countries since some are multicolored like Seychelles's flag.
I've never done a collab with anyone before either, but I was thinking it would be cool! We could also draw each other's OCs in our styles, like you can draw your OC and mine together, I did this with my friend once with her Idris OC and she had made a picture of Ireland and Idris in her artstyle while I made one of our OCs in my artstyle.
I've only seen two or three male Ireland OCs, I kind of understand since I tend to watch a lot of documentaries and they always called Ireland a "her".
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(gaah university is being very busy right now, getting dark circles under my eyes) I find it rather fascinating when you see how much OCs can change over the years, some you get the design right instantly and others you practically have to drag through years of redesigning and tweaking until you feel that you have captured them in the design. Yeah, it would be rather difficult to integrate Seychelles' flag into her design... she could wear multicoloured clothings but other than that it wouldn't be able to manifest on her skin, hair or eyes realistically.
Oh, that's called an art trade actually! Isn't it? So you would like me to draw my Ireland and your Ireland and you will draw your Ireland and mine. A collab is when two artists work on one picture together, which is a bit difficult in my case.
But most countries are referred to as a "she" in reality. England, America, France, Germany... etc. Most real national personifications of countries have been mostly females, with males scattered here and there. I can only think of Scotland who doesn't seem to have a female national personification at all, he has a male one. So honestly I'm not surprised that Ireland is always called a "she" but I am not inclined to see Ireland as a female. In reality patriotic people did always make countries out to be women so that it wouldn't be awkward to say "I am fighting for my land", "I'm in love with my land" or "for the motherland!". It's just easier for men going to war to claim they're fighting this war for a female figure of their land rather than a male figure.
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(I'm going to try and not going into a mother hen mode and tell you to get a lot of rest) I keep changing things with my Ireland, her hair was dark but it's slowly has gotten to a lighter color, I did have freckles but I kept forgetting to add them... Now her shirt has turned from white to a light green but the outfit isn't changing, but the colors will since it was originally white, then tan, and now it's grey.
I'm still new to these things since I had been away from Devianart for so long! Yes that was what I meant, I think it would be fun!
I'm glad a lot of them are males and not just females, but it's kind of getting out of hand since there is only 7 female characters and a lot of them are getting hate for no good reason, Hungary doesn't seem to get a lot of hate compared to Seychelles. I don't understand this whole thing on disliking the female characters...
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(been trying to rest more but I have a dumb essay and a dumb experiment weighing down on me, university is really tiring *sighs*) I think it's actually nice to see your OC evolve... I've looked at my OCs and some have really done a lot of evolving since I created them. I even found a new way to draw freckles, which makes me really happy as well because I was really bothered by my old method of drawing them.
Well I naturally would love to do an art trade with you! I really like your art style, so I think this would be fun. I hope I can clear up some space, I first need to get the requests and art trades I already have done. I think Himaruya just struggled a long time to become better at drawing females, which is why there are so little female characters in Hetalia. But it is really tragic the hate they get, especially Seychelles. Their only crime seems to be that they exist and could potentially be paired up with some of the male characters. That's how I've seen so many rabid fangirls rant about, I recently saw one saying "Belgium is such a slut, she has that evil smirk and just wants to destroy Spamano". Thankfully I've been doing a good job of avoiding people like that, I don't want to be associated with that type of fan.
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