#sibuyas

1. What makes nationverse?

First and foremost, let us all agree that reality and fiction, at the end of the day, exist as distinct spheres — notwithstanding that they are interconnected to a degree. Time and time again, we can verify that there are some (but not all) fiction works that borrowed elements from reality in creating the desired narrative. I will elaborate below on why I advise caution on simply throwing out the take that fiction works have influenced reality. Otherwise, I rather that you drop reading this altogether if you refuse to abide by the distinctions.

That all being said — nationverse is fiction that features anthropomorphized (or gijinkas of) nations that exist in reality as its set of characters. It is fiction that borrows from reality. I think it is safe to say that Hetalia is the prime example of nationverse.

Critically recognizing a work of fiction as nationverse does require* an understanding of what a nation is. This concept of "nation" can connote more than one meaning because multiple worldviews do, in fact, exist in rationalizing its parts and the resulting sum.

*Technically, no one is required to go through all this intellectual rigor just to enjoy a weeb franchise. It is only needed if critical analysis is the end goal, because then you will need a decent grasp of the concepts you're reading for in the fiction work. I say “decent” because, at the end of the day, it is silly to argue about something you think you know.

Over the years, I have noticed that these are common — let's call it — modes of characterization (of nation personifications) that reflect different ways of understanding the concept of nation itself:

1). As a POLITICAL STRUCTURE

For the unfamiliar, a state in political science is the centralized institution that exercises power over a population in a defined territory. In other words, government as representation of a nation; hence why one might encounter the phrase nation-state. Why separate the two terms still, even if it should be "intuitively self-evident" (devil's advocate phrasing lol) that nation = state then?

An easy example that demonstrates this is characterizing personifications as reflecting their respective governments. This is like walking a tightrope — without disciplining yourself into building a strong core, you are bound to fall and make for a poor show.

While the nation-state is rooted in a concept of national unity that has been, and continues to be, weaponized to forward capitalist interests, it is also a modern concept — and by modern I mean as recent (relative to known history) as the late 18th century. To be fair to Himaruya, he's happily vague about what those weird beings are, but even canon implies that these personifications existed before all that intellectual discoursing on nationalism started to flower.

I have always been fascinated as to the evolution of the concept of a nation (or at least the closest to the modern understanding) before all those Romantic-era ideas came about, before Benedict Anderson published his ideas on the imagined community. Nation as dialectics (between what precisely? We fill in the blanks!).

For the unfamiliar, nationalism for Anderson arose from the collective imagination of an ideal citizen, more often than not from an ethnic basis (and it does get racist a lot). It is imagined because it is ultimately a sentiment about what people have in common, and it is not always on objective reasons. For example — the idea of a Filipino citizen (I mention its development later below); heck, the idea of the Philippines. It has been referred to as the Philippine Islands since Spanish rule, but it is important to note that the natives have been referred to as indios (in general), the language they spoke (the Tagalogs, the Visayans), or the religion they practice (the Moros because post-Inquisition Spaniards do be bitter Islamophobes like that).

Speaking of communities...

2.) As a SOCIAL STRUCTURE

That is because nation can also connote a group of people of common heritage — history, culture, language. It's why you might encounter nation being used to refer to ethnolinguistic groups.

I'm revising this earlier definition I gave because this category can be further subdivided into at least 3 subgroups:

ETHNOLINGUISTIC GROUPS: While nationalism can easily be a political structure, it arises from a perceived common ethnicity — itself a social structure.

This will come off as egotistic, but I'll share my own fanlore-making as an example. I'm not comfortable using someone else's without risking misunderstandings, or even making arbitrary scenarios just to prove a point. I also want to add that nobody is obliged to follow my style, let alone like it.

I'm personally fascinated with how ethnolinguistic groups are sometimes referred to as "nations." I know of Hetalia fans who make region/city OCs. Himaruya himself made personifications of the prefectures of Japan at one point.

I'm diverging from that route not because I think it's bad or overrated. For those unfamiliar with me, I focus on making content featuring HWS Philippines. Philippine regions (the equivalent to states in the US) house more than one ethnolinguistic group. All of them have both shared and unique cultural attributes, and all of them will have different relationships with one another — none of which are necessarily on equal and equitable grounding.

I do not think that we can effectively show "everything" about a region through a single personification, and even "simplifying" the character necessitates asking what the determined "essentials" are. Why emphasize certain narratives over the other? Who gets uplifted, and who gets left behind, in the process?

I do not want to implicate that people who follow the region OC route are irredeemably problematic at all. I just like to push myself to bring something new to the table. That is to say, I want to give a shot at a different storytelling mode. And that's okay! Honestly, this fandom would know peace if we could just acknowledge it as a multiverse.

It should be worth noting that not all ethnolinguistic groups are Indigenous peoples. Here's a sample shortlist of ethnolinguistic groups in the Philippines, where I have also highlighted the IP groups in purple:

Aeta

Cebuano

llocano

Kalinga

Tagalog

Yakan

Here is a (long) definition of Indigenous peoples from RA 8371 or the Indigenous Peoples' Rights Act of 1997:

A group of people or homogenous societies identified by self-ascription and ascription by others, who have continuously lived as organized community on communally bounded and defined territory, and who have, under claims of ownership since time immemorial, occupied, possessed and utilized such territories, sharing common bonds of language, customs, traditions and other distinctive cultural traits, or who have, through resistance to political, social and cultural inroads of colonization, non-indigenous religions and cultures, became historically differentiated from the majority of Filipinos.

First, I will point out that the last bit on "majority of Filipinos" is worth scrutinizing because opening debates about who is Filipino and who is not even if they lived in the archipelago known as the Philippines for as long, if not far longer, is also opening a can of bigoted worms.

Secondly, I want to highlight that significant point on historical differentiation, because it applies to all the different ethnolinguistic groups, not just between "Filipinos" and IPs of the Philippines. That is another major motivation for why I want to make personifications for various PH ethnolinguistic groups, in place of PH regions.

Sadly, I will admit that I cannot properly draw them anytime soon. 😔 On top of the high expectations in research, I just do not have the time to commit to that at the moment.

RELIGION: As crazy as this will sound for those of us who have grown up under the whole "separation of Church and State" agenda, religion was but one more factor in state formation.

I have come across similar concepts from Islam and Judaism. As I have been raised Catholic, I respectfully leave the mic for Muslims & Jews to discuss those concepts. While religion can be — and has been — treated as a "common heritage" of a given group, we need to be mindful that people have been, and continue to be, othered for their religion, regardless of having a common ethnic "nationality."

The Philippines is a secular state and I wish people remembered that lmfao. At the same time, it houses a predominantly Catholic population. But I do not headcanon Piri as a practicing, let alone baptized, Catholic. *queue the boomers clutching on their pearls* I'm going to confess that I have a tenuous relationship with the Catholic faith I was baptized into and raised under, for very personal reasons (hint: growing up under passive-aggressive queerphobia).

Regardless, I do acknowledge that there are states that officially endorse certain religions. HWS Malaysia, for me, is Muslim.

For the love of all the good and beautiful creations of God/Allah/Buddha/Brahma/Bathala/etc., I am extremely allergic to dogmatic/fanatic tendencies concerning religion. Opting out of having these nation personifications reflect their realities of religious discrimination should not necessarily mean we should be closed off from having conversations on those realities at all. I just do not think they have to be the tool for that.

GENDER

This is worth addressing after seeing enough takes about how people approach gender relations and nation-building — especially when it comes to female nation personifications.

Reposting what I wrote in my SOGIESC headcanon post for Piri (please note that the quoted section contains N//S//F//W terms):

I was never a fan of hypersexual relationship dynamics between the Philippines and Spain, America, and/or Japan. In addition to the bare minimum of the fact that I simply had different perspectives, people were also free to build their own safe corners for their kinks, fetishes, NSFW delusions, whatever they want to call it. While on the topic of kinks, forced feminization was precisely that (a BL kink, if I understood correctly). Neither was I a fan of it, to be perfectly candid here. What baffled me was how Piri as canonically female was automatically an act of forced feminization, an enactment of a (BL) kink. If that really was someone's thing, then okay cool. As long as you never clashed with my circus, I literally would not care about what went on in yours. By "not care," I meant to say that I had nothing to offer that would be of any benefit to your welfare (saying this because people ironically weaponized the phrase so carelessly). Bluntly, I was taken aback by the implied belief that existing as a woman, AFAB or otherwise, automatically guaranteed that you were nothing more than an object of carnal pleasure to the opposite sex. I could see the rice grain of truth to the fandom's concerns because we still very much lived that reality up to this day of age. I hate it too! We could accept an ugly reality and condemn it. If acceptance was acknowledging that there was a real, ongoing problem instead of continuing to pretend that it did not exist, then the condemnation of that problem was the outright declaration of why we must all act to put an end to the problem. My primary concern was that the repetitive claims of female Piri as fetishistic seemed to imply not an underlying condemnation of the sexist conditions against Filipino women, but rather a tragically apathetic approval of it. As a Filipino woman myself, that scared me as much as having to live my daily commutes constantly on alert for any cishet men out to do whatever God/Allah/Buddha/Brahma/etc. had forbidden us to do to one another (funny how most of these higher beings were male). On the other hand, I would quip that the fandom was a microcosm of the gap in women's history (herstory, if you would).

AU where canon Piri is a trans FTM. Or AU where OC!Fem!Piri is his drag queen persona. Allow yourselves the freedom to get creative...

3). As a PHYSICAL STRUCTURE

And then there's country, which — yes! — is highly interchangeable with nation and state. Without any political connotations yet, a country as a general term can refer to a particular land. You can see now that we have defined three elements to a nation-state (as an arbitrary umbrella term): power, people, and place Without yet taking into account the (centralized) power element, it is thus imaginable how multiple groups of people — or cultures — can occupy the same defined place. Put another way, multiple nations can occupy the same defined country, and that's again without taking into account the state.

This is closely related to social groups, but arguably it looks more into constructed relationships with physical environments. A great example is the "living territory" concept (sorry for sharing a long example, but it is a beautiful one, too):

At the heart of collective identity as an “existential space of self-reference” (Escobar 2008, 53), territory, as we can now see, is a crucial element of the political struggles around the defense of ethnic identities and cultural rights. It represents dif­ferent but interconnected objectives: the securing of the livelihood of local communities, the maintenance of traditional and sustainable economic practices, the political projects of regional social movements, the defense of collective rights, the development of proper forms of governability, the local experience of place, and a deep sense of belonging. Thus, what is at stake when defending territory is an alternative model of society and life, a form of being that is often at odds with the values embodied by certain modern institutions and practices. This is why for local communities, Bajo Atrato constitutes not only a territory of life but also a living territory. Let me explain this in more detail. In 2005, on the verge of a crucial decision from the state regarding ownership rights over the lands that oil-palm companies had violently seized from the titled collective territories, leaders from ASCOBA and one of my mentors—a priest and local intellectual whose social commitment draws from the theology of liberation—delineated some key principles about territory and its meanings: Territory is the space appropriated for our physical, social, and cultural production. It is the physical space, the plants and the animals; it is the space we name, use, walk, and travel. It is the way villages and households are placed, the economy, our ways of living and working, the days for cultural and religious celebrations, the social relationships, our traditional authorities, and our worldview. All these actions unfold in the space and they create territoriality, which[,] in turn, helps build the territory. . . .The territory is a space to produce life and culture, it reflects our worldview. In the fields we work, in the social and family relations we keep, in the symbolic aspects of our thinking, the territory is materialized. . . . Territory is not only land because it extends far beyond the physical space granted by the law. (Valencia 2005, 15–20) I would like to emphasize three aspects of this beautiful and powerful definition. First, social practices and relationships (e.g., "ways of working," “cultural and religious celebrations,” “traditional authorities,” and “social and family relations”) are not only developed in the territory but also contribute to the creation of the territory. Second, territory and communities are mutually linked and reciprocally constituted: many practices express the attributes of particular places, and the territory itself reflects the qualities of its inhabitants (“in the fields we work, in the social and family relations we keep, in the symbolic aspects of our thinking, the territory is materialized”). Third, territory cannot be understood as abstracted from the experience of being and belonging to an Afro-Colombian or an Indigenous rural community (“it is the space we name, use, walk, and travel”). This sophisticated conceptualization underscores the way that territory participates essentially and not just contingently in the generation of a collective sense of being, how it provides a particular placement to social experiences, and, most importantly, how territory does not always precede the relations and practices that take place there but, instead, is what results from these relations and practices. In other words, the definition applies a relational approach: territory is enacted and experienced rather than provided, and it emerges as such by virtue of people’s practices, while those practices are in turn affected by the territory itself. This definition of territory does not just imply some sort of intimate interconnectedness of people and their places but also comprises the conditions through which both territory and communities come into existence.

Daniel Ruiz-Serna, When Forests Run Amok: War and Its Afterlives in Indigenous and Afro-Colombian Territories (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2023), 29-30.

You might call it an ecocritical approach to nation personifications. An idea I really want to play around with someday is the material conditions that cultural artifacts evoke. Just think of the origins of ingredients to local dishes, or the threads that make up traditional fabrics!

All that being said, let's revise everything accordingly, so that it is now:

1). POWER -> POLITICAL STRUCTURE

2). PEOPLE -> SOCIAL STRUCTURE

ETHNOLINGUISTIC GROUPS

RELIGION

GENDER

3). PLACE -> PHYSICAL STRUCTURE

Of course, a nation as a superstructure is more than just these 3 primary elements. As strange as this also sounds, I also want to point out that there are also plenty of fanworks that are more of the human AU line — implicitly or not, but the focus is not on the characters as a nation (CRAZY, BUT THAT’S ON MEDIA LITERACY).

Given these multiple meanings, we thus can have multiple ways of depicting anthropomorphized nations. Hence, it is ultimately a subjective approach because there is no singular, absolute truth to interpreting a nation — what more when the reality you are working with consists of a diversity of nations — all with multiple reasons for their independent existence (on a state level, admittedly, but remember that’s it’s not always about the state) in place of being one big amalgamation — that you can work within your fiction.

Put another way, we can pretend that the multiple fan interpretations are the different ways in which we try to cook up the final dish/es that is whatever anthropomorphized nation/s we are depicting, and the above elements can be likened to the spices used in flavoring the dish/es. As I wrote in an ask sent to me before, "all these fan interpretations reflect how people ratio their spices.

How that spice ratio is decided upon is thanks to numerous factors such that there is a good chance that no two recipes are exactly alike.

Yet, clearly, there is a (valid) demand for — if I can maintain the metaphor — a singular “objective” format to that recipe because…

2. Is nationverse inherently political?

I have stated before that I do agree that there is an inherent politicization with nationverse fiction, but as we have done with the term "nation," so I believe we must review "politicization." In short, it means to make something political. In general, something that is political often pertains to government affairs — aka the nation as a state.

We have set down earlier that nation is not restricted to that definition alone, but if this politicization must be inherent, then can we further break it down such that it is not always about state-level public affairs? We can, if we recall the etymology (or the origin of the word) of politics as power relations reflected in a decision-making process.

It is very easy to visualize how power relations are translated through government affairs and even over matters of territorial boundaries (think of it as conflicts regarding the place/physical element).

Meanwhile, power relations through conflicts over a common heritage (grouping people) shine through in disputes on the notion of national identity; this is also where tensions between ethnolinguistic groups arise. Below is a controversial (yet really brave of me lmao) take in suggesting that national identity formation is just racebending:

We can see how racebending fits into the picture as an exercise of (oppressive, and therefore offensive) power over certain peoples in a defined place. It is not far from the truth that states, including postcolonial nations that manifested as an opposing force against certain imperial powers (not necessarily Western, scandalous I know!), have been agents of forced assimilation for the sake of maintaining a stable political (or national) identity. Thus, we can see how racebending becomes cultural imperialism (although I personally favor calling it cultural hegemony) as a homogenization of social behavior that favors the legitimization of the state. Is it to say that national identities are fated to be monopolized constructions of culture? Personally, I would argue it need not be. It just so happens that capitalism favors such a setup, hence why we must demandez l'impossible! It does beg the question of how racebending a national identity works, which warrants reviewing what race and "national" identity mean in the first place, especially when both can be interchangeable depending on the context. Race as a classification of people on the basis of shared physical traits — as defined by, and more often than not, the white imperialist ethnographers of yore — is an outdated definition at best. Note how I did not include shared social traits because that is now broadly understood as ethnicity. Still, it does not change that both terms are highly interconnected, and neither does it, nor should it, erase the ugly reality of racism that has happened and continues to happen. It's as important to elaborate that "national identity". . . is not exclusive to being a political process. It is also an anthropological process. The question of "national identity" is not always about power dynamics, it is also about what is. Is the Filipino identity not multicultural in essence? I just have to point at our cuisine as THE primadonna examplar. Lechon! Longganisa! Tocino! We didn't grow apples so we made do with and invented buko pie! Halo-halo was literally inspired by Japanese-style shaved ice!!! Unfortunately, if we have to argue that these elements are not "truly Filipino" then I suppose my ancestors were cringe for...racebending themselves? Let's return to the question of Filipino identity, but instead of going the anthropological route, we now take the political one. The term "Filipinos" originally referred to the children of Spanish who were based in the colonial archipelago, which Filipinos of today would likely recall from Philippine social science textbooks in grade school/high school(?¿!) as the insulares. Over time, it was appropriated by the indio natives, moreso the ilustrados (native-born — because there were certainly mestizos among them — intelligentsia). Does the appropriation of "Filipino" into an autonomous national identity count as racebending? That is only if we have to assume race as an identifying marker of one's belonging to a state, when it isn't. If that is the case, however, then I do not believe that any single nation-state exists without very technically "racebending" various peoples into a uniformly shared commonality/ies, which happens to be the original (white imperialist) notion of what race is.

On the religion element, I can immediately name the prolonged tensions between the (Catholic-majority) Philippine state and Muslim communities in Mindanao, and the conflicts surrounding the Partition of India.

On gender, there is a great video essay by PhilosophyTube that tackles the intersection of gender constructs, capitalism, and nation-building.

We have now demonstrated that our given elements of a nation can be politicized. Note that I write "can be" because we still have to determine that it is an inherent quality — something that, when removed, the object it is attached to is no longer recognizable because it cannot be without that quality.

So...can we have a nation in the absence of power relations?

3. But what is power?

Funny because that scene is a neat example of the formal definition of power as:

"The production, in and through social relations, of effects that shape the capacities of actors to determine their circumstances and fate." (source)

Which is a more technical description of the ability to influence others. I will simplify that power answers two questions: (1) Who are you to me? and (2) Why should I do as I am told by you?

It should be easy to visualize how power is exercised with our three main elements.

1): POLITICAL STRUCTURE: Theories on the social contract that dictates the cycle of service between the governor/s and the governed. The version by Jean-Jacques Rousseau summarizes it as when people (the governed) give up some individual freedoms (aka rights) in exchange for protection & other benefits from an entity (the governor). Both the service and the subservience are done for an assumed common good. ex. Medieval peasants contributing portions of their harvests to the lord, in exchange for the lord guaranteeing a solid defense of the community from invading forces.

2). SOCIAL STRUCTURE:

ETHNOLINGUISTIC GROUPS: Through Benedict Anderson’s definition of nations as “imagined communities,” one persuades others understood to be fellow community members (by way of some recognized, or invented mayhaps, commonality) into acting as is defined (by whoever or whatever) to be appropriate for the community. ex. Different ethnolinguistic groups appropriating the label Filipino to refer to the shared struggle against the oppression of colonization.

RELIGION: Doctrines and traditions that rationalize our relationships with whatever higher power/s that be. ex. I must attend mass as a baptized Catholic to consistently renew my faith by commemorating how Christ sacrificed himself to save us from sin — as preserved in Scripture that serves as the textual heart of that very faith.

GENDER: That cursed gender binary dictating who can do what. ex. My single-sex Catholic school banning cross-dressing because...need I say more?

3). PHYSICAL STRUCTURE: Power can be diffused horizontally; village neighbors may coordinate in cultivating, collecting, and distributing the available resources within the shared land/s. The environment can also make or break opportunity/risk, and this more often than not becomes a point of exploitation. ex. State-sponsored deforestation that drives out indigenous communities.

Given the (simplified) information we have, it is be safe to say that the concept of a nation/state/country/etc. is inherently political. If we can agree that, indeed, inherent politicization is an objective fact about nations…

4. How do we identify facts about nations in a fiction about (anthropomorphized) nations?

I understand why people will argue that impact easily trumps intent. Admittedly, I’m inclined to doubt after seeing how slippery assumptions of the impacts of actions that occur in the realm of reality can become excuses for marginalization. This is outside the scope of the topic at hand, but to help illustrate, an example I can give is the time when a drag queen got branded a criminal for performing while dressed as Jesus Christ. (The boomers went apeshit in condemning it as a sin, as if Christ himself would not dance with these queer kids.)

There are certainly folks who use fiction to actively endorse harmful beliefs & actions, or proactively marginalize some and not others because of harmful prejudices. I, for one, cannot tolerate to even sit with people who go there. I've ceased supporting artists due to their conduct/morals that I cannot stand with, no matter how good and appealing their works are, because I refuse to let them profit off my enjoyment of it and let them wash their hands clean of accountability.

Nonetheless, I want to stick to the topic at hand that is media literacy. Remember, after all, that we are, at the end of the day, probing something that is in the realm of fiction. As I have written before:

Fiction, all the more historical fiction, can take from reality, but only in so far as certain elements from reality are relevant to the desired narrative to communicate. The same goes for Hetalia, and all sorts of nationverse works, as fiction that borrows from the reality of nation-states, and that absolutely depends on what framework/s the creators in question rely on to begin with.

Is it thus guaranteed that nationverse fiction will always represent the (internal or external) power relations of the nation/s it anthropomorphized? It must be the case if that is precisely the intended narrative of the creator/s.

The truth is that you cannot gauge the inherent politicization in a nationverse work without objectively identifying its literary elements (characters, dialogue, plot, setting, etc.). Those literary elements are the evidence to why you arrived at whatever conclusion you are making. Even with human AUs, some narratives are not always about the politics.

The other truth is that there is no "one-size-fits-all" framework in discussing inherent politicization in nationverse because there are an uncountable (unless someone actually does the math-crunching lol) number of ways of interpreting nationverse as there are many ways of how cultures interpret the world at large, and how there are a diversity of nations, each with their own realities such that no two nations are exactly alike. Anyone can pull off a Death of the Author and establish their interpretations as consumers (or “bypassers” by way of purely relying on other people's interpretations and not your own intellectual capacities) of a nationverse work, even though the creators genuinely intended otherwise.

My professors in the history department never tire of telling us this: even the practice of history is not immune to subjectivity, and that is on the framework you choose in analyzing event/s (lest you admit you're only b*llshitting your way through). In the field of history, that produces what is called historiography.

In the field of literary analysis — because, after all, the medium in which Hetalia is produced as a manga is a legitimate work of literature — literary theories are commonly utilized, but not exclusively; other schools of thought have been used (ex. postmodernism, Marxism).

Having a framework matters because you are not the very creator speaking of your own work — you are speaking of another person’s work. You are giving your interpretation/s of another fan’s interpretation/s of a Japanese mangaka’s interpretation/s of certain anthropomorphized nations, none of which are immune to biases. It is lowkey funny to me how the fandom sometimes projects high expectations like tiger moms on Himaruya who is just a guy™.

And that is just your single voice speaking. What of the creator themselves? This is not to argue that we should be neutral in our objectivity (neutrality benefits oppressive structures, so be mindful of what/whom your objectivity serves) than so much as we should be confidently precise about what it is that we are commenting or even criticizing against. It is also not to say that giving arbitrary examples is bad per se. To be candid, some of the examples I have seen are worst-case scenarios that, while not impossible, are not necessarily frequent either. There have been bad takes, but in terms of the worst possible take/s that can happen, they are rare by nature. The odds are even lower when you take into account the uncountable number of possibilities of nationverse interpretations. I am also speaking as someone unlearning catastrophizing, because that does nothing good to my mental health.

Speaking of interpretations, here are some more of my previous responses relating to that:

I thought Himaruya has always been ambiguous about the personified nation-states' relationships with governments, whether it be their own or of others? Even on occasions that he does show positive interaction with virtually NPC-like government staff or allude to certain head honchos while magically wiping off the eyes, I don't think these choices as a reflection of his (head)canon is the only reason, let alone the only way to read those depiction. I know the joke opens with "for legal reasons," but there's a rice grain of truth to it after all. To describe it as the norm of Hetalia (at least) is like saying Hetalia is propaganda. It's not even a "can be propaganda" anymore because we're assuming there must be an agenda the personified nation-states perceived and therefore endorse their governments for, which explains the supposed good working relationship they maintain, as depicted by Hima. The additional challenge I want to raise is this: How can we even gauge what makes a good relationship between personified nation-states and governments? Is a "good relationship" bare minimum, no-strings-attached, employee-style obedience, or fully cooperative because both parties vibe like besties for endorsing the same principles/goals/etc.? What makes it a close tie? Why is it so important to factor in how not all nation-states enjoy the privilege of defying the rule of law like the depicted lucky ones?

Even without having to elaborate on the political context to multiculturalism as myth, it all boils back down to — if I can recycle my food metaphor here — who's been adding too much government spice and serving their takes to people who don't even like the resulting taste to begin with. And even determining that is a case-by-case basis.

5. Is it always bad to bring politics into nationverse fiction?

Don't get me wrong, I have seen bad politics brought into Hetalia, but there are just so many different forms of bad politics (if this was an introduction essay in an anthology, those forms would get their own chapters). Admittedly, I do not appreciate how some well-intentioned discourses on that matter have homogenized political struggles and colonial histories.

I have also, unfortunately, seen politics handled badly. This is where I will urge fans to exercise caution with the intended message they want to communicate to their intended audience.

I cannot think of a more apt example than colonizer/colonized ships. Personally, I do not give a sh*t. Other people’s lore does not have to be my lore, and my lore does not have to be other people’s lore. It feels good to be able to connect with other fans, but hey, we’re doing it to have a good time, not to force people to like us. There are takes of that shipping dynamic that are not my cup of tea, I just do not care to pick the cup up, to begin with.

It is also not to say that nobody can challenge the idea of a subjective national anthropomorphism. I do, however, sense that subjectivity in personifying nations might be a question of ethics that is ineffectively presented as a literary analysis that lost focus in pushing to cover such a wide scope.

“Every anthro-nation media is political” and “not all anthro-nation media are equal in their politics, implicit or explicit” are statements that can co-exist. It’s why, say, I might like X’s take on Piri but maybe not Y’s take — moreso when I can discern enough aspects that make it concerningly propaganda-like. If inherent politicization is like a default baseline, we can only gauge how much someone has individually added to that arbitrary political “bar.” Even then, canon Hetalia at least hasn’t shown signs of endorsing any certain ideology. Some fans have, however, done so, especially with harmful ideologies. What, then, makes it possible for some fans to project these harmful ideologies? Is it just cruel fate due to the nature of personifying nation-states? Or maybe it’s on individual free will to be openly and unapologetically bigoted? And even with the benefit of the doubt, is it not ultimately an issue of bad media literacy?

Even the topic of ethics consists of a handful of theories that cannot be properly examined through reading through a strictly historical, political, or even literary lens alone. While we can more easily agree on some moral judgments, the same cannot be said for praxis — and that is just concerning the practice of ethics in the realm of reality, what more for the interpretation of ethics in fiction? I thus once more reiterate: This is why my inside joke with fandom friends is how Hetalia is the ultimate test of media literacy.

While it is upsetting that there have been real manifestations of individuals projecting their politics in the private sphere onto the (nationverse) fictions they disseminate in public online spaces, I still stand by the belief that the idea of interrogating someone’s moral compass through the fiction they either create or consume cannot — and should not — be absolutized. Not only does it legitimize the far-right conservatism fueling the variety of moral panics throughout history that evolved into outright dehumanization, but it also chains people to their creative works as if they are only as (morally) good as their works are (morally) good.

Which, honestly, is not a radically good take.

And speaking of scrutinizing if it takes a bad person to make art about something bad...

6. Are people bad for not taking political realities into account in their nationverse fiction?

I do not believe that establishing some distance from the "statist" lens is necessarily a denial of the political realities.

Some people might prefer not to start careless claims because they know they are not equipped to talk about something. (Because why would Philippine youth be mandated to study the history of, say, Japan? Even if they can read it in their spare time, it is ridiculous to assume people's material conditions and capacities.)

Others treat the fact about Hetalia as fiction as nothing but escapism from reality, so they would rather that politics (if not history, even as I personally find it silly to argue that they are mutually exclusive) remain absolutely off-the-table in their fandom lives. Sometimes, that escapism comes off as """fujoshifying""" sensitive events. I may not vibe with even the dead dove type of content that goes there, but I will acknowledge that it is not made for me. As long as the creator knows how to filter their intended message for their intended audience, I believe that is how one differentiates dead dove from tragedy porn.

Outside the scope of fandom, I do find confronting apathy disheartening at best, and frustrating at worst. If people want to have that talk, I rather take off my fandom jester hat for it first. I can try, but there is no guarantee that I can persuade them to see otherwise. If there were a manual that explained how to talk to people not to support extremist beliefs, no matter their race, creed, age, gender, etc. with a 100% guaranteed success rate, I'd read it. I wish such a manual existed!

But we are still talking about Hetalia, and in all my years of following Hetalia, I have never seen fans so vocally insistent that the "correct way" to do Hetalia characterizations is to not separate them from the state, when the arguably worst takes are precisely because people have absolutized that approach — that we cannot portray these dirt children as anything but the state.

From time to time, we get disk horses about how "the fandom has learned nothing after 10+ years," but the second someone wants to diverge from relying on the narrative of the state as the primary basis of their Hetalia characterizations, they still get as much harsh condemnation as the occasional N*zi/Zi*nist weirdo that sprouts up. Suddenly, people are "not allowed" to depict the nation-state as anything but the state. It's almost as if people are allergic to any unapologetically leftist depictions  — where the personifications represent the ordinary people (however that means) — and that grinds my gears more than anything. Neither do I want to promote that fandom should be activism, because Hetalia, and any nationverse work, is, at the end of the day, not the medium for that job. But I gotta be for real, we are also robbing our leftist hearts of having leftist fun, because I don’t think disk horsing will be enough to keep the rightwing weirdos out.

I understand that nationalism is a weapon of the bourgeoisie, such that it becomes a tool to oppress rather than liberate. If you cannot separate Hetalia characters from their governments and the ruling class that makes it up, okay. That’s YOUR headcanon. Respect the fact that not everyone shares that headcanon, let alone is obliged to follow it.

Don't get me wrong because there are certainly fanon takes that I do not vibe with and feel are dubiously promoting inhumane ideologies. My issue is in the reactionary double standards that sometimes jump out in discussing nation-state personifications as a state. If I may be candidly blunt, it feeds a vicious cycle that is only creating a ridiculously toxic space. So, I wrote this long, discourse post nobody asked for to (hopefully) put an end to it, and perhaps serve as a jumpstart to a sorely lacking and much-needed, genuine, open discussion on how we consume and analyze nationverse fiction that does not have to boil down into petty fighting.

She had an IndoPhil story titled Trust Me? and it was inspired by a fanmade BruPhil AMV wherein Indonesia was manipulating Philippines into believing that he was married to Indonesia and not Brunei. Trust Me? kept that concept of a manipulative Indonesia; the key difference being that Indonesia’s motivation for it (in Desa’s story) was the mix of hurt over Philippines “losing his precolonial memories” — based on popularized misconceptions of early Philippine history — of and how that was “aggravated” by his Westernization™, made worse under the United States (350+ years in the convent getting ratio'd by 50 years in Hollywood is hilarious ngl).

That was a lot to unpack, but before we even get there:

Indonesia and Philippines were having a tender moment when HWS America (as in the Hetalia personification that is Alfred F. Jones) walks in calling out "MY LITTLE BROWN BROTHER!"

Indonesia entered his Joker arc because he recalled how HWS America dumped the Philippines in a human zoo at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. There was an explicit panel of Philippines in Igorot* dress and a painfully forlorn bearing.

What "triggered" Indonesia was when, after the flashback, Piri goes up to Indonesia and asks him if he's a Bolshevist 🥺 (the idea was PH being brainwashed by Red Scare propaganda). Cue kabedon moment from Indonesia, and basically a yandere walk down "memory lane."

I did not have it in me to finish reading that comic...

*Igorot is an outdated umbrella term for the upland indigenous peoples of Northern Luzon

Aside from the clearly intended shock value of that depiction, I was taken aback by the painful lack of objectivity on her part when it came to the reading of history. To be fair on Desa, she never specialized in history studies, so it was only courteous that we could not expect her to have as developed of a critical reading as trained academics of history. Unfortunately, that was precisely why I disagreed with the popular notion of Desa as both a great researcher and a great storyteller of her research — all the more when Maaf was just the mangafication of certain Wikipedia articles.

To be fair as well on Wikipedia, it was, at best, a satisfactory jumpstart into more in-depth reading, and we could give it the benefit of the doubt that revisions had since been made to at least some of the articles that Desa relied on while making Maaf (more than 10 years is more than enough time for change). Nevertheless, the articles themselves did not teach users how to scrutinize the sources — most especially the biases of the sources’ author/s — utilized in building up the information.

That mattered because much of the retrospect narratives about the St. Louis Fair had a tendency of raising awareness through the newspaper articles that covered the exhibition at the time. These chronicled the impressions of the visiting authors, who likely (and I say likely because we would have to more exhaustively discern their personal politics one by one) were biased in favor of the “benevolent assimilation” of the Philippines — and the sights that they beheld only validated it further. They did not, however, explain why these Philippine indigenous peoples were brought in in the first place — information that could have further cemented Desa's reputation had she truly spent the efforts, even while understandably juggling other commitments as we all do. Instead, she only perpetuated the habit of sacrificing the veracity of equally important, finer details to the bigger picture in order to sensationalize righteous fury against colonialism.

The 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair was also formally known as the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, giving away its purpose as a commemoration. More appropriately, it was the centennial anniversary (technically delayed by a year though) of the acquisition of French Louisiana, expanding the territorial bounds of the United States. Additionally, the point of a world’s fair was to showcase the achievements of a nation, and one could also think of it as the sale of a fever dream — what more for a fast-growing, fledgling power the likes of the United States, itself a former colony? On another note, the St. Louis World’s Fair was not the only one of its kind so no, the US is not that original lmao.

One could thus see how the inclusion of a dedicated exhibit to the newly acquired colony that was the Philippines neatly fit into the themes of a world's fair centralized on the US. It was all the more a paramount topic of debate, with prominent Americans the likes of Mark Twain (here are selected excerpts, but I highly recommend reading the entirety of his To the Person Sitting in the Darkness) publishing anti-US imperialism opinions, even after the endgame of the Philippine-American War essentially favored the pro-imperialists. While dissent from the American side at the time remains poorly studied AND THAT'S ON OVERRULE BY BIAS, we at least have a glimpse, if mostly obscure still, of its existence.

If we can assume that it must have indeed been a prominent discourse in America, loud enough to get the White House furrowing its brows, then it's plausible to understand how it was of utmost importance that the the Philippine exhibit was to be carefully — because, in a way, America had to sell itself as the "lesser evil" vs notable "rivals" — curated while still ultimately corroborating assimilation of the Philippines. Thus, enter Truman Hunt, the man who oversaw "the Igorot Village" of the St. Louis Fair, having won the hearts of the native Igorots for a powerful reason:

Section from Claire Prentice, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island: Headhunters, Luna Park, and the Man Who Pulled Off the Spectacle of the Century, New York, NY: Amazon Publishing, 2014.

While the cholera epidemic that occurred at the onset of the American Colonial Period was arguably the worst in the history of cholera epidemic management in the Philippines, I want to make it very, very clear that it was not the first and only wave that hit the archipelago. There had been a handful in the prior century alone — all of such magnitudes that it embedded a deep collective trauma; farmers refused to harvest their crops for fear of infection, tragically enabling famines and contributing starvation & nutrition deficiencies on top of a viral & swift killer (the experience of severe, rapid dehydration is such that one can fall dead within hours of infection).

Given such an imaginably harrowing experience (and it was an awfully painful topic to study as someone who got infected with and survived COVID-19 and has family working as frontliners), how could the natives turn away a stranger with such miraculous powers? Who knows how they comprehended it (e.g. a benevolent sign from heaven they must accept) because, unfortunately, we have yet to discuss preserved accounts on that matter, if any at all.

What is known, however, is that there were Igorots who were not just enamored by the "opportunity of a lifetime," but the selected lucky candidates clearly expressed their consent to participate:

More sections from Prentice, The Lost Tribe of Coney Island.

I will quickly add that, unfortunately, a few members of the Igorot delegation died from illness in making the trip, and Hunt aged like milk over the years (fell into the trap of capitalism in pushing for more subsequent exhibit trips, to the point that less care was extended to the Igorots and he was ultimately arrested for embezzlement). Given that our scope remains to be the 1904 St. Louis Fair, any signs of abuse inflicted upon the Igorots during their stay based on preserved photographs is simply not clear. To assume that they were in a pitiable state would be to enforce a presentist reading that might betray not just their memories & experiences but also their right to self-determination.

EDIT (01/02/24): A good example to demonstrate what I mean in analyzing photographs, here's an article on the author's personal, genealogical research into the Igorots — specifically, the Suyoc — who were at the St. Louis Fair.

It truly is ironic that a Filipino is making these points as if to defend the United States as a whole (no I am not, and if you think I do, lumayas ka). I agree that white people gawking over the peoples of the Philippines with such fascination that borders fetishism warrants all the eye-rolls. At the same time — and it is even more ironic that I am pointing this out as a lowland, Christianized Tagalog based in the metro (not just any urbanized part of the country) — there is a character of patronizing these indigenous communities in the unspoken assumption that their participation is the fault of their ignorance. Pay attention, once more, to the demographics that constituted the Philippine exhibit in the 1904 St. Louis Fair — what kind of "Filipinos" were included and who were left out? There were also Negritos*, Visayans, and Muslims from Mindanao (historically referred to as Moros) in the same event, yet we hardly hear about their experiences. Perhaps it might have to do with how they were considered "more civilized" than these upland groups.

*OUTDATED term (and please blame the Spanish for it); these are the Aeta.

I understand Desa's reservations against US imperialism and sympathies for communities marginalized by Western colonization. I just hope that I was able to clarify as best as I could why I was so taken aback in how she depicted the Hetalia personification of my country the way she did. I agree that, as far as I ever got to interact with her, she is generally very polite and kind. That's why I gave her the benefit of the doubt when she approached me in DM to apologize for how her narrative choice was offensive. As someone who despised red tape in academia, I tried to talk to her about how there were valid reasons as to why the American Colonial Period was considered a mixed blessing, even by PH historians.

Instead, she pulled a complete 180.

She said that — to a Filipino who condemned imperialism (no matter who started it), who also happened to study history as a profession, and was also a Hetalia fan who wants to explore Hetalia narratives differently from what was popularized. Half of the reason was because some fandom takes left a bad taste, like eating a dish with ingredients that even Gordon Ramsay would tell you shouldn’t go together; the other half was because I saw things differently and wanted to express it because why not?

I want to say it's not necessary to bring up something from a private conversation, but I will anyway to reiterate that my issue is not that she isn't nice. Bluntly, however, the way she said those words so formally did creep me out, but ultimately, my issue lies in how her biases have led her into making off-putting takes from time to time. I will not say more, but Trust Me? was not the only Twitter comic by Desa that got bombastic side-eyes.

And if only because Sukarno got dragged in, I felt compelled to briefly debunk that as well: even he initially viewed the United States in a very positive light: “The United States occupies a very distinguished part, a very distinguished place, in the hearts of the Indonesian people.” That was uttered in 1961, and it took a very specific historical context to instigate a complete shift by 1964:

Sections from Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade & the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World, New York: PublicAffairs, 2021, 121-123.

EDIT (01/02/24): Note that Desa was citing Sukarno's later sentiments in the late 1960s as her reason for characterizing Indonesia as such in her comic. However, the setting of the story was the late 1920s (Indonesia's visit was based on Tan Malaka's abscondence to the Philippines). I'd dare say the anachronism was not due to oversight but a deliberate choice in using a certain fictional character — namely HWS Indonesia — as propaganda for Desa's anti-Americanism.

It's definitely depressing to think about all the "lost" history & culture that thrived before the arrival of white colonizers. It's why I'm surprised that, for a fiction work, she didn't project all that anger onto Spain instead — it had to specifically be the United States. Was it because they basically cockblocked Philippine independence, even though Spain practically sold the Philippines to the US? The implication that Spain should be permitted to wash its hands clean of all accountability was an awkward message to convey.

I understand that nothing could be 100% accurate (I'm actually quoting Desa defending herself on that matter) in fiction, but the level of projection coming from a certain non-Filipino reading Philippine history was so silly. And again, how did it all justify the explicit depiction of HWS Philippines as an indigenous man in a human zoo? (END OF EDIT)

As my professors will also never tire of saying: you can disagree with a historian’s interpretations but you can never disagree with the evidence in themselves. You don’t have to morally agree either, and I can guarantee you that many Filipinos do not. I, myself, resented the endgame of the particular war that brought that period about in the first place. How dare, then, she said it was “not her place” to defend US imperialism, while granting herself the freedom to express her country’s feelings on the matter?

Oh, it’s all just fiction? I do not condone the subsequent treatment she received, but why then couldn’t she stop trying to “educate” NLID shippers? I do not know how both sides talked to one another, only that what caught me eye was: Why does everyone else have to respect her fiction while she gets to disrespect others’ fictions for not aligning with hers?

EDIT (01/20/24): Just to clarify further on that point — over a decade ago, she went ham in the comment section of someone's (APH) America x (fem!OC) Indonesia. That ship is not in my lore either simply because I follow a totally different route. To cut to the chase, she took that fanart very personally and infodumped on US war crimes that involved Indonesia.

I know Tan Malaka started the whole North Indonesia agenda, but come on, neither was it Desa's place to just treat HWS Philippines the way she did. An Indonesian schooling other Indonesians on ID history is not surprising, but an Indonesian schooling a Filipino on PH history? I'd be humbled if they had the credentials. She didn't and, unless she enrolled herself in a graduate program, she still doesn't.

By all technicalities, she can’t ship IDPH because the Philippine government was (unfortunately and grossly) complicit in the chain of events that led to the 1965-66 genocides in Indonesia. Yet, she does despite of that fact. We thus circle back to Trust Me? and how that was a manifestation of her stubborn refusal to acknowledge any nuances by projecting HWS Indonesia as a self-proclaimed savior of HWS Philippines from the beguile of US neocolonialism.

I empathize with her anger. I'm sorry that the US government by extent enabled what her family went through. I agree that it's not her place to defend them; in fact, she shouldn't. But when even the so-called "highest of Malay nations*" is worth her neutrality, how can she expect me to forgive her?

*That is literally what the Philippines is to her; I know this because she explicitly said so to me in DM. DO NOT ASK FOR RECEIPTS, I am not comfortable revealing that particular conversation.

I cannot — in fact, NO ONE SHOULD — afford to be neutral about Duterte or Marcos, etc., and for her to be so flippant about her privilege (by way of ethnicity/citizenship/cultural upbringing) to be neutral** about Philippine politics, while simultaneously NAGGING ON EVERYBODY TO RESPECT INDONESIAN POLITICS, is annoying at best and plain selfish at worst.

**Also explicitly said to me in DM. Again, DO NOT ASK FOR RECEIPTS.

(END OF EDIT)

I’m not Indonesian but I do not have it in me to politely accuse a native Indonesian of allowing their personal biases to misread their own history. As a Filipino, however, while I'm not surprised by the reductionist chronicling of the histories & cultures of the Philippines, I am at a loss for words over the continuing idolization for Desa & Maaf, when she was not the best and most reliable narrator, especially given her negligence in representing indigenous peoples through her comics.

I mean, guys, I'm not saying this as if the Trust Me? comic was the first and only instance when this was literally Maaf canon that sat comfortably in the internet for over a decade, and continues to be appraised as THE BIBLE OF HISTORICAL HETALIA.

EDIT (01/20/24 — originally added via a reblog): I cannot believe this needs to be said because this is the consequence of when Hetalia fans take their fiction too literally because creators have made careless takes.

There were SEAtalians joking about how the Yolngu are a dead people.

I repeat.

THERE WERE SEATALIANS JOKING ABOUT HOW THE YOLNGU ARE A DEAD PEOPLE.

(END OF EDIT)

So as 2023 comes to a close we enter 2024, I'd like to conclude this post with the following points:

At best, Wikipedia is a satisfactory jumping point, but please believe me when I say no historian will respect you for (over-)relying on Wikipedia. And given that anyone with a decent device & internet signal can access Wikipedia, Desa is just not a GOAT in historical research.

At worst, idolizing Maaf patronizes the work of historians. It doesn't help that PH historians have been targets of harassment because of dis-/misinformation campaigns. I bring this up because it's already bad enough to have to confront that reality outside of fandom spaces on a regular basis in standing our ground for more just historical truths. I hope that folks understand why that's a particularly sensitive struggle for me, and why receiving such comments like the one I shared above deeply hurt. She was not apologetic about that — and every time she would post about apologizing for the moments she has offended others, or when others compliment her for being so open-minded, I cannot help but feel bitter.

Other BIPOC — yes, not just other SEAsians and that's on literally drawing nations other than SEA — have spoken up on the matter. If you can talk about how you learned so much from Desa, you can also learn as much from other perspectives. I hope that in raising all of this, more SEAtalians understand that we risk othering non-SEA BIPOC.

The idolization of Maaf (and the creator in question) is personally far more off-putting than the problematic points of Maaf or any comic she has ever made, because I think she caved to peer pressure instead of learning to wield her fiction more sensitively without being too reliant of the opinions of those she has pleased. Not even Hidekaz Himaruya writes his nationverse characters like that — the one time I’ll admit that canon trumps fanon.

I’m not stopping people from liking Maaf or Desa anyway. I just cannot help but take issue with how the SEAtalia fandom feels less of a safe & inclusive community than it is a cult centered on one person — almost as if her fiction is unquestionable canon and anyone who disagrees gets the boot. Once again, I do not condone the subsequent treatment she received in retaliation, but frankly that's just not what I'm addressing here.

I'm also not saying it's wrong to give words of reassurance and validation to people you admire, only that some of you need to understand you're forcing a parasocial relationship with your idols. It may feel good to you, but please be mindful of the unwarranted pressure it imposes.

Yes, it’s true that there remains a strong obsession for white skin in the Philippines. I even internalized it growing up. It took a LONG TIME for me to unpack it, but ask yourselves if you think that dark-skinned people — whether they be black or other brown folks like Latin Americans, Pacific Islands, South Asians, other SEAsians, EVEN THE OCCASIONAL EASIAN WITH A NICE, NATURAL TAN (I’ve spotted folks like that while touring Osaka) — are ugly and need fixing. If you wouldn’t, then why are you still beating yourself up for a beauty trend initiated by capitalists who do not care about you?

Yes, it’s true that the successful marketing of white skin as the ideal cannot be mutually exclusive from the deeply-embedded colonial mentality. Ironically, it’s also lowkey misleading if only because there was an existing notion since precolonial times (see: the Visayan Binukot). I do want to add a couple of nuances to the Binukot reference: (1) Comprehending that people living in shaded seclusion prevents their skin from darkening, and thereby making it an essential part of the process in preserving the ideal beauty, is NOT the same as going white so as to integrate oneself into the white race; (2) What counted as fair skin back then is unlikely to be the exact same as we understand it in contemporary times (a very light beige & the warm undertone is clear vs porcelain white with a pink undertone popularized by P*nd’s ads).