I am a 'newgen' fan of Hetalia (about 6 months) but the way some of the newgen fandom acts is just terrible. The fandom is so overly sensitive to literally everything. No one has to agree with me on these points, I just wanted to write it out so other people can see my view.
1) Misusing the term 'proship'
Most fans will use this term to refer to ships like UsUk. Now, I don't like UsUk, and I agree that the ship is a little bit weird, but it is in no way a proship. They are not biologically related and they hardly refer to each other as brothers when they are adults. They don't even really treat each other like family as adults. A real 'proship' would be something like Itacest, where they actually are related. But some Hetalia fans are trying to force their own moral compass onto other people. Just because you think that UsUk is bad and immoral doesn't mean that everyone else has to agree with you. If you think it's a proship, fine. But that doesn't mean you should argue with other fans about it. Just block a person if they ship something you don't like, or have an opinion you don't like. There shouldn't be any harassment or bullying just because someone has an opinion. If someone doesn't agree with me on this, you can block me if you want. I understand because not everyone has to agree with me.
2) Getting overoffended over jokes
Yes, some jokes in both the anime and manga were in extremely poor taste. I won't argue with that. But if you feel the need to make a post complaining about the offensive jokes, then you're in the wrong fandom. Hetalia has always been controversial and offensive to an extent. And the fact that people still complain about it is just crazy. Complain about it to your friends. Not to the entire internet. Or don't complain about it at all. You shouldn't be in a fandom that is notoriously controversial if you're going to get upset at small things like this. And the anime is literally called Hetalia: Axis Powers, did they think it was about world peace or something?
3) Getting offended by someone portraying history accurately
I have literally seen people get offended at people portraying Germany or Prussia etc as a Nazi. They canonically were Nazis. They were canonically Wehrmacht officers. Fans have literally harassed other people and told them to leave the fandom for portraying the characters like that. I don't even know how this is serious. The series majorly takes place during World War II, why would these characters not be Nazis? Maybe they don't agree with everything, like all the ideals, but still in Germany, basically everyone was brainwashed into believing in Nazi beliefs, at least to an extent. Maybe Germany and Prussia didn't believe in it fully, but they would have been influenced at least a little bit. Also, both Germany and Prussia wear an iron cross, which is a Nazi symbol, do people forget that? There are also swastikas shown in the manga. It seems like people are just trying to erase the fact they were literally bad people with bad beliefs. Yes, they have changed, but you can't just ignore this fact.
4) People are wat too influenced by the fandom instead of the actual source content
This goes a long with all of my points before. Do people even watch the anime or read the manga? Why are people getting so offended by things that have been obvious since the beginning? A lot of the fandom tries to ignore some of the 'offensive' stuff, which makes some people forget that the series isn't all happiness and rainbows. It's not perfect. There are bad parts to it. It's ok to like and enjoy a fandom that is a little bit offensive.
Fans will literally get mad at you if you don't ship only GerIta, FrUk, and/or AmePan. They always have something to complain about and are rude to people because of their ships. I ship basically everything that is legal. But people are so passive aggressive when you say that. I've seen videos of people making edits of rarepairs they like and people will comment 'I don't ship this, but it's cute'... You don't need to comment that you don't ship it. It sounds backhanded. Just say you like the edit and move on. People are also so aggressive toward RusAme shippers. A popular ship. It's okay if you don't like it, but why are you complaining about it in the comments of a sweet edit? Just ignore or block. This applies to characters too. I'll make a video saying I like a character and I'll get comments saying 'I am (character)'s number one hater'.. Okay? I don't care. Keep that to yourself. You don't have to like the characters I like, but why are you commenting it like you're better than me because you don't like them? I will never understand this. People could make beautiful fanart of a ship they like and people will hate in the comments, especially UsUk. I don't like UsUk, but some of the fanart is actually amazing. Why can't people appreciate that?
I'm not sure if all of this is clear or not, but this is just how I feel about the fandom now. I actually hate interacting with people in the fandom because so so so many people act like this... No one has to agree with me because I wouldn't force my opinions onto someone else if they don't like it.
Anyway thanks to anyone who actually read this 😇☝