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ask-heta-dzayer · 4 days

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The Hetalia fandom got better?

(this started by Algeria but i then talked more about Hetalia furthur down) [Since the 5th of July is right around the corner, i feel like i need to say something as an African-Arab (MENA) Indigenous Algerian, who enjoys country personification fandoms critically and is seing the Hetalians defending Hetalia, because apparently the Hetalia fandom now is better than then, alright better Hetalians. Let's see abt this.

I'd like to note that there's an objective way to talk about the Algerian colonization, if anyone is interested in that, we can talk more about the battles and outcomes and the win and losses of each side, it is very much doable. But It is more important for us, today, to focus about the History of masscares against the Algerian people, that side of colonialism (oppression, crimes against humanity, genocides....) is either being ignored, misinterpreted or romanticized or diminished in order to focus on glorifying colonialism in this fandom, colonialism is even used as a normal word not incriminating the actors of such a unfair action (as harmless as you think it was in some cases, look deeper into it, it was not).

I find it shameful that you'd turn your head the other way in discomfort when i tell you that France killed millions of Algerians in the most cruel inhuman ways, how many you ask? I'd love to give you an exact number, but we don't even know, why? France doesn't wanna say, it is hiding it and sometimes it wasn't even counting, my ancestors (and my people today tbh) are just discardable cattle to them, when France left Algeria it left it with the one regret of not being able to stay, not regretting the uncountable number of massacres comitted in African lands. This is a criminal in the loose, integrated in modern society, never showing signs of changes, because today again France still own colonies he represses, and when i hear of unrest in Kanaky, don't fucking blame me for being horrified, when there has never been a system put in place in this world to abolish colonization, to protect the global south from the "civilized world", countries were too busy creating a new version of Colonialism that was less costy where they didn't need to move a finger to exploit millions of people and result in misereable lives and millions of deaths still.

you don't believe it? Our dear Palestinian brothers and sisters had been killed and tortured for months in Gaza right now, nothing is stopping this, because nothing was put in place to stop this, there's no one to protect the Palestinian people other than their god, nothing to act against this genocide, in fact the west was more concerned about trade stopping momentarily that they attacked Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world and withdrew food aid from a starving population because of their support for their Palestinian bothers and sisters.

"I get it you jusssttt hate France" actually i don't, i don't hate France at all, i've never met an Algerian in real life who did, many travel and settle in France, when french people come to Algeria they are always warmly received, i talk French fluently and consumes many french medias, i love Aph France and ship him with many people, none of this is done in a hateful way. The problem is yours if i tell you "France tortured my grandparents and exiled my great grandfather never to be seen again, tortured and killed millions of innocents-" and you say "OMG STOP HATING ON FRANCE" and you know what, this is exactly the reason French people hate Algerians so much; because we refuse to forget the crimes, thus we hate France and thus we cannot integrate. We don't, we don't hate the country or its people, we hate colonialism and what it has done to us and continue to do.

But you know what, if ignoring/cancelling the history of colonialism and oppression of a country was conditional to loving it, then yes, then u can say that i hate France, and Turkey and Morocco and the UK and Germany and Spain and the USA and the liste goes on, just write the name of your country while we're at it. and if calling out a country for crimes against humanity means being a hater then yes i'm the world biggest hater. But it's not, we are perfectly capable of distiguishing between a country and it's governement (unlike the west) and regular people and colonizers, even when those regular citizens are the one who voted for a racist party yesterday that was literally created by someone who killed and tortured Algerians.

"This is wild, it has nothing to do with Hetalia, we don't talk about politics here" okay, so Hetalia is about sunshine and rainbows and cute Shojo guys...who do what? play volleyball or something? Those are literally countries, inherent political beings and if you wanna go and make them perfectly apolitical and cute and silly, fine, you can go that way, but before you go, don't forget to leave colonialism behind you too, (dw we are safeguarding your humanity and morality)

why colonialism? you don't know, YOU ARE ALREADY FUCKING TALKING ABOUT IT. How? *takes a deep berath* who is Seychelles again? France's daughter or sister? How about SK? what's his links with the USA to you? Latin America? in what way are they related to Spain and Portugal? They adopted them? Swear! Mexico is so Spain's son we all know that, Brazil's Portguals! FACE family! long time no see! its always been lovely dovey whiteness there, How many kids did the UK have again? More than he could count? how fun! Spain the kingdom where the sun never sets or whatever! and its not suspicious at all where you make so many Asian countries related to China, Australia is jealous that Britain is spending most of his time with the NA? aww, it is really a compeition for their father's aproval between countries. Ofc Ofc Ukraine, Russia and Belarus are such loving siblings dynamics.

"Natives do this too!" if you're from the colonized countries and wish for me to take off your country's name, that is fine! and i respect that they choose to go that way. But one shouldn't ignore the fact (and i'm talking from my experience) that you get tempted to follow the general norms in the fandom, innocently or because you fear your hcs won't be accepted otherwise. Those general norms glorify colonisation, normalize and randomize it, what links do these countries have with the others that you are describing as fatherhood or brotherhood? colonization, it is bad enough if we're talking about a white to white history (as in the motherlands and settlers) but honestly i mostly care abt it being offensive when it concerns the indigenous people of these lands, when you are relating them to the people who came to colonize their lands (once again talking about outsiders) have you asked them? Are they fine with this? Even when there was no blood shed (rare), no oppression or exploitation(rarer) why would anyone want to be under someone who imposed themselves on them uncalled? and make this a family link between them? Ask yourself this.

"Give me back my humanity and morality, this doesn't express my real opinions! why should i be ashamed if it's just a dumb fandom!? just let people enjoy themselves unbothered" alright fine, you really don't need to you know? But why would this make you better than your father? The white man, who would rather buy some dumb useless shit than donate some money to those in need, who would rather live oblivious to where his food come from or if there is homeless people in his town and build a anti-homeless fence structure and changes any news talking about the global south and their suffering. I do not want to make a link between you and your whiter grandfather who is the cause of their misery and those dark colonial histories to start with. But truth is you are all very related, you either take responsability for it or strongly avoid it, or worse glorify their works in colonialism apoligia or positive depictions of colonialism, repressing the counter argument to keep your convinient uncosiderate comfort in the safety of your x and y blorbos. Have a blast buddy.

"The title is misleading! the Hetalia fandom did get better! i say so!" Okay, better Hetalian, let's agree that the change from APH to HWS and the lesser representation and glorification of f*scism is something we're all happy with (altho no it never really disapeared and will keep plaguing us, especially that we just ignored completely those topics instead of actively denouncing fascism and roasting it) but if you think that cancealing Fascism (modestly in a very shy way, to feel better about yourself) is where problematic historical topics stops, then the problem is bigger, it is your whole education system that is faulty (more specifically history but not only); and it becomes more and more glaringly clear nowadays tbh.

I'll give you a small example related to before (you can apply it to yourself and have your own conclusions) ; my French (-Algerians) mutuals were talking about the French history classes and how while Fascism was criticized (without holding France accountable, but painting them as heroes and not showing the victims struggles and fights) , they said Algeria was never disccused (whatever that means) except for two pages of pro-French propaganda, this is a big contrast to how history is thaught in Algeria. This is why you'll find french people, who knows not even 1% of what we know, blackmailing and harassing Algerians online for calling out the crimes of the colonization. While it does not justify it at all, it explains some of it, you can add to that the kind of illeteracy our generation has, and the refusal of the western youth to be involved with the southern youth and talk on the same level.

"that's not true! we wanna interact with you guys!" forgive me for not feeling this love in a fandom about the beautiful "world" where almost everybody is white! (i mean by this European or their descendants colonies, i'm a white-skinned amazigh who has no european blood in me) ofc you can say you are only following the source material, but this post is not adressing this, it is adressing a fandom that much prefer focusing on a dead ghostly white man (not an Albino!!! GOF FORBID DIVERSITY!!! *u know who u are*) rather then creating, focusing or supporting POC characters, only is they are going along their perspectives (like making content for Seychelles with the NA bros, which i don't condemn btw, but c'mon not even Madagascar? who has an awesome cannonical interaction with her?). I know about that because i'm an Algerian who has been in Hetalia for 9 years already and desperately searched for representation of the global south and found so very few, and watched my Algerian Hetalia friends all slowly disengage and leave the fandom (along with other BIPOC friends) for the lack of support, me included (i left it thrice). I'm not talking about myself (i have the fucking right to but it's just an example here) and i ofc don't hate white characters, (if you don't believe me scroll through my likes or if u could find my old accounts contents) i enjoy all the characters and i hate none of them, but you have to admit that you don't focus on the third world (yes including existing characters!!!! focus on ASEAN for fuck sake), you are not interested? Support creators who are, this will literally not kill you.

"you can't force people to like global south countries *i can't believe i said that*" i'm really not trynna force you to do anything, i'm just saying that no, Hetalia didn't get better, because the world is not complete and no one cares enough to represent the countries that are lacking, or atleast supporting the creators who care (especially natives) i wanna cry when i see beautiful, beautiful artworks for latin Americans creators who get minimum likes, do you die everytime u give away a like or rb? why are we in a fandom about countries but we can't get assed enough to care about countries? or support our coohabitation? Once again, you are very much you father's son.

"Then what is the solution? What do we do?" not to promote for Tumblr community but @/peonyctas has opened one for POC hetalia you should very much ask to join it if you didn't already and i opened a community for Hetalia OCs positivity, you are welcome to join it, although it can contain ocs from all over the world like i said it's mostly Asians/Africans/South Americans who aren't represented so we can see more of them; there's also the option of just fucking searching the tag of Hetalia OCs or opening a map and searching for specific countries (if they were represneted or make their own representation but plz plz try to be realistic and considerate okay?), and just giving POC creators and POC characters (offcial or not) some love is a good start. I know some may dislike OCs but in Hetalia is different since they are representing something, we are literally doing what Himaruya is doing and like you are all doing tbh, trying to be as accurate and less cringe as possible, please stop hating on us and try to put yourself in our place for a second, imagine your country isn't represented (and will probably never get the chance to be) isn't it unfair to be called cringe when all u wanna be is uncluded? (cut ocs in general a slack goddamnit, ppl just wanna have fun)

Side notes: I wanted to say more , but i think this will do for now.

For people who will go like "But it's impossible to be critical of colonialism when half of the world participated in it some on lesser scales than others? what to do then? We can't be expected to learn about all colonizations" you don't have to know everything, i don't; but here's something, if you are gonna fawn about the strength of this country or it's wealth, maybe you should question its source and ethicality, don't just study a country's good sides (u don't need to represent the bad side either, just be aware of it when u write/Draw/post about it) and here's another thing (this is in general); the next time you hear about colonization or oppression in general, condemn it, wherever it comes from, that should be your first instinct. Not justifying it while you know nothing about it, you could do some research to check about it, but your aim should always be to stand for the weaker and support them.

For people saying "Hetalia is a dead fandom that's why" with 3K+ notes on posts and a new arch in the making ,with fans coming back and Hetalia trending here? Yeah, nice one, i've seen more dead than this; but maybe you are also killing it by limiting it's reach? Either by being problematic (pro-fascism , pro-colonization and imperialism etc) or not being representative and inclusive.

People from the global south/BIPOC aren't here to start with? First off, delete that, that's racist (and not true, maybe not active but they exist) , second of all, maybe you should prepare the ground for them and give them smth to work with to attract their attention ? because it's pretty nulle right now.

Note: if you are against the Algerian revolution , with colonialism in general and the Palestinian genocide (because you have no exuse it is talked about eveywhere today ) never come near me please, thank you.

wishing Hetalia actually gets better in the future . All questions are accepted; happy early 5 July , i'm hearing the celebrations.]

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