(no subject)

[yuuago]

People saying that Hetalia is a small fandom make me feel absolutely insane. Tell me you’ve never been in an actually small fandom without telling me. Something with over 100 Ao3 uploads in the past week and tons of new fanart on tumblr every single day is by no means small.

Thing is, it’s decently-sized, but it’s heavily fragmented. A lot of people silo off into circles related to characters/pairings that they like, and sometimes there’s not much interaction with people who like completely different character groups - and this can make it all feel a lot smaller than it actually is. You get into a less-common character, you pal around with the people who like that one, and it starts to feel kind of claustrophobic and slow. You encounter a lot of the same people whether you like it or not, and the only fanwork about such-and-such secondary/tertiary character that you see is the stuff you and the people you know make. But there's stuff going on that you'll never know about.

Do I have any idea what the FRUK and AmeCan fans are up to? No! Do I care? Also no!

As a point of comparison, some small fandoms I’ve been in: English side of Nirvana in Fire fandom, 1900 Ao3 works. SSSS, 2100 Ao3 works. Vatican Miracle Examiner, 153 works. aRTD, 141 on Ao3 and I’ve written 25% of them. Etc. Hetalia, at over 50k Ao3 uploads and (as I mentioned) over 100 in the past week, is downright chonky in comparison.

Sure, it's not like the glory days of the LJ, when I had to take the comm off my flist because I couldn't keep up, not to mention the huge amount of activity on the kink meme (and the anon meme...), but... damn, dude. No, this fandom is not small.

Comments

[merit]

I suppose if their only other fandom was the MCU or similar... Hetalia could be considered small. Probably not peak activity I guess?

[yuuago]

Hmmm yeah, I guess if one is comparing it to MCU. Or like... whatever the top one is right now, minecraft youtubers or whatever it is.
But still!! xD

[seerofrage]

As someone who's not in the fandom, it's always seemed pretty big, to me, haha. :'D

Maybe it's smaller, these days, compared to what they remember? Or maybe they are just stuck in their own little circle, haha, but wow, that's kinda wild. :'D

[yuuago]

Could be smaller in comparison to memories! Or people coming in from bigger fandoms (MCU? ...BNHA?) and having weird points of comparison. Orrrr being stuck in certain niches.

Maybe it's all of the above. xD

[slashmarks]

Hm. I agree there are a lot of fanworks posted, but my experience is that the vast overwhelming majority of them are setting AUs, and as someone who has no interest in Hetalia setting AUs ever, I rarely have anything new to read. (I'm sure stuff is occasionally posted to AO3 but the firehose of stuff I have no interest in makes it hard to pick out at the percentage that exists.) So I guess that may be a part of it? Especially if people who used to be a part of journal Hetalia fandom when it was popular on LJ are complaining, since iirc that was mostly history people based.

[yuuago]

The people I see complaining about it being a "small fandom" are mostly younger people who do enjoy AUs, haaa.

I'm with you though - I never have anything to read, really. Hell, I won't even read nationverse fic if it uses the human names. So, I'm stuck cooking my own food most of the time. Which is frustrating, buuuuut doesn't mean that this's a small fandom, just means I'm picky. ;)

[hokuton_punch]

*laughs in Marathon*

It's easy to get a skewed idea of a fandom's size, I guess, but - 50k fics! How is that small??

[yuuago]

No kidding! xD

Weellll I guess I can see how one might get the impression if they're only checking their fave's tags - if I narrow it down to just the pairings I like, yeah, it'll seem kind of sleepy. But that doesn't mean there ain't a whole world of stuff going on outside my little rarepair circle!

[minutia_r]

Wow, I'm surprised that NiF (even just the English side) has fewer works on AO3 than SSSS! It certainly seems like a bigger fandom overall (even just the English side). I guess SSSS is just more fic-intensive and/or AO3-centric? I guess, thinking about it, I do tend to see more gifsets, memes, and meta/analysis for NiF than fic or fanart.

[yuuago]

Yeah, I was pretty surprised too!

It could be that SSSS is more fic-centric. Plus, the SSSS world gives a lot of opportunities to explore outside the main cast, OCs, worldbuilding, etc; NiF doesn't have that in the same way (aside from having a cool extended cast.)

Another possibility is that NiF is one of those canons that's challenging to write fic for because it's so satisfying in itself. There are of course definitely places to explore, canon-divergent possibilities and so on, but personally, one of the reasons I've had a difficult time getting prose ideas for it is because I'm so fulfilled with the canon as it is.

[ireneultramarine]

Just who has been saying Hetalia is a small fandom???

I know people joke about Hetalia being a "senior living home" because most Hetalia fans are now on the older side (per internet definition of old) but it's not small. Works and events are out there, it's just hard to find many that suit my taste.

[yuuago]

Just who has been saying Hetalia is a small fandom???

A bunch of chuckleheads, clearly.

Most of the ones I've seen saying it's small are on the young side. Maybe they're comparing it to Mega Huge currently-active stuff.

[herdofturtles]

Most people in this fandom live in their own sandboxes and I think that's fine. I like that it feels small even when it isn't. Not overcrowded, and not empty.