Personality || History
☆PERSONALITY☆
FREEDOM, LIBERTY, and JUSTICE are the three most important things to America. But he is, in a nutshell, an immature loudmouth. He likes to eat burgers (amongst everything else he can get his hands on), play baseball, and stick his nose into other countries’ business. He’s pretty happy-go-lucky, overly confident, and has a gigantic hero complex (he will truly and honestly want to save you with every fiber of his being, he just may not...go about it in the most reasonable way possible). His reason for doing the things he does usually is, “Because I’m the hero, that’s why!” Otherwise, there’s not much logic behind his decisions. In canon, he doesn’t know where any countries are on a map because he only has maps of America.
He's spontaneous and rebellious, tends to get in debt super easily, but when he puts his mind to things he can actually be a very beneficial ally. He can plan strategies, provide help to other nations, and maybe even lend things to those in need. Granted, he has his selfish, "my way or the highway" moments a little too often for anyone's liking. What he says goes, no matter how ridiculous, and he'll take no objections! He's pretty tactless, but this could be blamed on his not wanting to read the atmosphere rather than that he can't due to his young idealism, but saying that he can't is much easier because, idealistically, everything should be displayed as it is without the necessity of having to pick apart the details to find the true meaning (the exception appears to be when he's around Lithuania, who's really the only country that generally likes him for who he is).
America is also competitive. If one country figures out how to do something, America wants the information, too; and he wants to make it better than the original. Take Russia for example-they started going into space and being smart, thus America began a space program and enforced higher education nationwide; this began the Space Race of 1952. One can imagine the excitement he felt in 1969 when he landed on the moon first. Yup. Spike in ego levels. Except, for Amat, he doesn't know he did that yet.
He believes in aliens, and likes to watch/read horror even though it scares him shitless. He does this claiming that heroes shouldn't be scared of movies, but low and behold the young hero is scared out of his wits by Hollywood's latest thriller. He'll pretend not to be, but he'll go home and curl up in bed, maybe even pull someone into bed with him to make sure nothing happens while he falls asleep (if said person falls asleep before him, he will throw a fit). He especially likes Japanese horrors, and likes to invite friends (namely Japan) to his house to watch horror movies (it cuts the scariness of the movie in half). Hint at ghosts being around and he'll flip out, clinging to and crying on the nearest person.
Nostalgic and once-in-a-blue-moon sappy, he's got a problem with getting rid of things that remind him of something else. It's more so of a problem when it comes to things that remind him of England, as their past is rocky and, to put it simply, tragic in its short-lived way. He's community-oriented, and just wants everyone to be united and peaceful, thus requiring him to take on the self-proclaimed hero role of the world. Granted, he takes jabs at England any chance he gets, his relations with Russia are pregnant with tension, and the rest of world is pretty, "GTFO AMERICA" except for Lithuania. So it goes.
America, as innocently sincere as he can be, more often than not as an ulterior motive behind what he does. It's used mostly on Japan who can't stand up for himself, so when America knocks at his door making sad faces and not-asking-but-asking Japan to do something, the minute Japan says yes America lands a boat-load of responsibilities that he definitely did not sign up for. He's very good at getting other people to do things for him, despite the general worldwide dislike of him. He won't pay them back for it (not in a timely manner, at least), yet this young country ends up getting his way time after time anyway.
Innovative to the point of maddening creativity, he always finds a way to make something work somehow, and he's not one to give up. If anything, if he fails the first time he'll just do it ten times better the second time, and not admit that he failed in the first place! He's full of good intentions, works hard to spread them around to others he views are in need of his aid, and doesn't often realize that what he thinks is right is necessarily what actually is right. America is fairly intelligent, no genius by far, but isn't ridiculously stupid. He's paranoid, gets that way very easily, and it's difficult to convince him otherwise. If he believes with every fiber of his red, white and blue being that communists are going to knock down his door and raid his home, then it's practically useless to try to assuage his self-induced nightmare.
☆HISTORY☆
America was found by both England and France, but England colonized America first and became very much a daddy/older brother figure to little bitty America. America loved his daddy/brother, and was always upset to see him return to his home country across the Atlantic Ocean. America had always lived on his own in the wilderness, and it was no different when England left him all alone with his animal friends (who were far from the likes of England's unicorns and other mythical creatures).
England visited often when America was a child, but during the 17th century didn't return to America all too often if at all (salutary neglect time!). When he finally did, he discovered that America had grown up all by himself, had a mind of his own, individual ideals, and, to put icing on the things-gone-wrong cake, was a few inches taller. Thus, England became strict on teenage-America who rebelled with teenage zeal. Just to spite his big brother, America switched from tea to coffee (headcanon says that this was the Boston Tea Party). They fought like this for quite a while until America declared his independence from England in 1776. Then the Revolutionary War happened.
In 1783, America won with France's help and England lost. Woo hoo. Let's get this Treaty of Paris signed and move on.
After this and after the Articles of Confederation failed, the Constitution was written, the Bill of Rights was added, the Civil War between the Union and the Confederacy that tore the nation apart until the surrender of Appomattox happened, Lincoln being assassinated, slavery ending, amendments to the Constitution being made, states being added, political parties changing, America became the country it is now. America is always shoving fast food (namely burgers) down his throat, sticks his nose into other countries' problems, comes in late during wars, and has befriended an alien named Tony and a whale from the coast of Japan.
America gets along well with Japan and England nowadays, and has been through some, er, tough times (to say the least) with Russia. For a while Lithuania did some outsourcing and America allowed him to work for him, but after the stock market crash of 1942 Lithuania was returned to the occupancy of Russia. Lithuania is one of the few countries America can relax around as Lithuania actually likes him. And then we have Cuba. Don't talk about Cuba.
Texas is represented by America's glasses and his cowlick represents Nantucket. America also has a brother, who was deemed "boring" when they were children, who is known as Canada. Canada is often mistook as America, France being the only one to tell them apart at first glance.
The history is taken from his eronum application, so any references to things past 1975 (salkia_island-verse) are only applicable to his eronum version. Which doesn't exist anymore.
I might write more detailed plus Salkia-specific versions of his these later, but for now I'll let 'em stand as they are.