Feels Like Somebody Took The Words I Wanted To Say But Didn‘t Know How To Phrase And Made This Post - Blog Posts

GUYS. THIS. IT MAY LOOK LONG, BUT PLEASE. READ. THIS.

hi, so im kind of wondering what is your thoughts with hetalia especially the fact that it hasnt age well and specifically what do you think of the way hetalia Ukraine's character is handled

oh that's a great question, thank you! oh i sure have a lot of things to say but it'll be difficult to make it concise and readable

early hetalia certainly has aged like milk, the idea of making axis powers the main characters Did Not Spark Joy. it seems that himaruya made an effort to distance hetalia from that since then, there was this whole rebranding from "axis powers hetalia" to "hetalia world stars" and the comics no longer touch on ww2 but rather modern day, sometimes history, some fun facts, and sometimes have no basis whatsoever. it's hard to judge the intentions behind that. sure it has ironed some of the problems but general inaccuracy and disrespectful portrayal of countries remains an issue. and personally i just find himaruya's writing bad and unfunny.

and now for ukraine. oh dear.

to start off easy, a short note on her appearance - as a ukrainian, it's a bit weird to see her blonde and blue eyed? the beauty standard here for centuries has been "black hair brown eyes" and it's seen in folk songs, poems and novels. and yet it's not just hetalia that does that. it's not a mistake really, i'm just weirded out, especially after how western far-right and far-left has been explaining support for ukraine as "because ukrainians are blonde and blue-eyed".

but onto her most prominent visual trait, let's talk about boobs. in hetalia collezione from 2021 (i think?), on ukraine's character profile himaruya has written that he was inspired by naked female protesters upon creating her.

the "naked protesters" are femen, a radical feminist activist group famous for topless protests. it's a group of like, 15 people. they were last prominent in 2013. i think most ukrainians barely even remember them. it's fucking wild to me that he based an entire country personification off of that. it is, however, quite telling of him that himaruya saw feminist protesters and only saw potential for cheap jokes about boobs.

i chose a good screenshot, it shows some other problems as well - "crybaby", "poor" and "she loves russia chan". i'll save the latter for last. let's focus on her being a crybaby and poor. "but actually very strong!", himaruya says, except i can't recall any examples in canon where ukraine has been shown as strong. instead her whole personality and appearance reeks of 2000s perception of eastern europe, influenced by both western and russian chauvinism to show them as inferior. ukrainian women have been stereotyped like hetalia ukraine - poor, huge tits, weak in a "traditionally feminine" way, whores. it was disgusting back then, it's even more disgusting that in 20 years himaruya didn't bother to revisit that at all.

politically speaking, these jokes, about ukraine being poor and weak and dependent on russia, while have some basis in the reality of 1990-2000s ukraine, are very insensitive to the causes of these issues and just feel like punching down.

and now, "she's loves russia chan". lol. lmao even. in 2021 no less. it has been another consistent trait of hers, as shown on the screenshot above that she just wants to get along with her "siblings" russia and belarus. to talk to russia "like i used to". there's this sense that they somehow grew distant, and all of them regret it, but it's never shown what happened.

what it really reminds me of is the russian narrative "big bad evil politicians (and/or big bad evil west) want to divide our brotherly nations, the people just want to live in peace but have no say in it" and shit like that. it's not the case. what happened is the russian state trying to tie ukraine in its sphere of influence, using economic blackmail to influence its political decisions, and then punishing ukraine with occupation of crimea and parts of donetsk and luhansk regions for choosing eu over russia. even before that, but especially after 2014, the amount of chauvinism russian media and russian people has shown has been enormous. i grew up in an environment dominated by russian media showing how ukrainians were nothing more but dumber, poorer rural russians. since 2014 they also started calling us nazis, child eaters, ukrainian identity - fake and made up by austro-hungarian empire, ukrainian lands - gifts of lenin, and so on. i will stress again - not just russian media. but russian people. even the supposed "liberal opposition".

but yeah sure, we're brotherly nations. nothing but love between ukraine and russia. ironically, the last appearance of ukraine in hetalia comics as of now is a comic from late 2021 about how much ukraine loves russia. since then it seems himaruya has been too much of a coward to draw her again. thank fuck, really.

and fandom is no fucking better by the way. whenever i go into hws ukraine tag it's still half full of fanart of "soviet siblings" (the fucking audacity to use that name too), showcasing that "brotherly love" between ukraine and two aggressor states towards it.

but y'know, a lot of people in this fandom will claim that it's apolitical, that these are just characters. so, a few questions:

if it's apolitical, why does hetalia cover political events, like brexit?

is a country not a political entity? is a nation not a political entity?

is the genre of satire not political?

if these are just characters, why call them country names? why not just make them your human ocs? why tie their lives to historical and political events?

it just doesn't make sense to me. "it's not political" is an incredibly flimsy excuse. everything that has to do with portrayal of countries and cultures is inherently political. and if you want to be a decent person, there's a responsibility to portray these nations and cultures respectfully: do your research, talk to people from these countries, otherwise you're building with no foundation. it's not even hetalia-specific advice, this applies to writing any character from countries different to your own.

this was. very long. can't think of how to shorten it nor i really want to, i tried to answer this as fully as i could.

there's not much point in explaining all that to people who after 2 (10) years still don't get what the problem is. i expect this post only to get attention from people who already agree with it, and mostly ukrainians. but eh, maybe a miracle will happen and someone from outside my bubble would read it.