How to navigate the Hetalia fandom - where tf are we?

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by goldenstarmagic

by goldenstarmagic

Okay, long title there. Many of y'all will already be familiar with the fandom in general while some of y'all are new to this and and probably came after the new season, which is currently airing. So here's a comprehensive guide (I guess idk lol) to the fandom bc I didn't know what to write anymore.

Now first, where will you find new fans to interact with?

Tumblr probably is the first that comes to mind, they're relatively chill and there's no racism nowadays, though it does have a pretty wild history......some of the old stuff on there legit scares me ngl. A good thing I've seen on there would be the info on the Hetalia lore, there's a lot of explaination blogs (annotated-hetalia is a personal recommendation) and a few merch buying guides as well! (which is good bc the czechia plush just came out and they're cheap and i love her-) there's also the typical stuff though, art blogs, fic blogs, meme blogs, yadda yadda. Nobody really cares for the ships you ship, there's a few people who like to keep dragging on the fruk/usuk discourse.....but not many people care.

Twitter: Hima's chosen platform wouldn't be that bad right? Haha, actually no. English hetatwt is shite, I don't normally agree with Hetafacts tbh but her opinion on this one is a pass from me. I speedran getting cancelled by hetatwt on a dummy acc and damn, it took me a only a day. And it was discourse over Alice in Wonderland themed merch being sinophobic lmaoo- they really went blaming hima for the shit Funimation does too. Heck, America's VA blocked half of them, power move, ty Eric Vale. Basically don't go there if you enjoy hetalia and actually have gratitude to the author. The Latin American and Japanese fandoms are p chill on there though, I only stuck around bc the JP art and Spanish memes (learning extra languages during quarantine really helps tbh)

Also, lot of ship discourse. If you ship usuk, consider yourself cancelled. Spamano and RusPrus too.

Insta: idk I haven't been there (I have an insta but my mom checks it) but the memes are bomb. art is amazing. there's n*zis tho, anti-semitism is big so be careful. Also pedos. weird.

Amino: mostly minors, can be toxic and sometimes political too, but overall pretty okay. The gc features are nice, and it's spread worldwide, so biased geopolitical opinions go brrr.

There's also YouTube channels who make Hetalia content, and if you're based in East Asia, there's Bilibili for Chinese speakers and Niconico for Japanese speakers. There's also pixiv which has some pretty good doujinshi and fanart. (Like no seriously the cuter found family doujins are so good)

Deviantart is dead unless we're talking about fangames, then it's alive and kicking.