michifugu

Finally, I’m feeling more in the mood to write again! So now I’ll continue the challenge, and this time it’s about the continuation of my previous entries—where I talked about my first exposure to gay content. If you read those, you might be wondering: if my experience with BL wasn’t that great, how did I end up becoming a massive fujoshi anyway?

Well, this series is the culprit—LOL.


Yeah, my journey into fujoshihood basically started with Hetalia. I’m sure everyone and their mom knows about this series and its huge relevance in fujoshi history. First, let me explain how I stumbled upon it. I first heard about Hetalia back when I noticed a lot of otaku on Facebook using Hetalia characters as profile pictures. Some even had entire albums just for posting Hetalia fanart. It was everywhere, and naturally, I got curious.

At first, I found the concept kind of weird. Apparently, the characters were all personified countries? (Back then, I didn’t even know what gijinka meant.) But I was intrigued, so I gave it a shot.

When I watched it, I found it funny. The story wasn’t anything amazing, but the characters were really entertaining. They weren’t particularly deep or well-written—each of them only had one or two traits—but that actually worked in its favor. Because of that simplicity, fans were able to create all sorts of derivative content around them. It was basically the Touhou for Women.

Plus, the fact that the characters were gijinka of countries gave them a unique “lore” or background. Fans could interpret their personalities and relationships based on real-world history, which added another layer of fun.

That’s part of why the Hetalia characters appealed to so many people, especially fujoshi. Like I said, it’s basically a more commercialized version of Touhou.

Now, the reason Hetalia turned me into a fujoshi? It’s because I loved Russia and Prussia. Both of them had big fanbases and tons of yaoi fanart. But what really pulled me in was seeing fanart of Germany x Prussia. That was a total eye-opener for me—like, “Wait, YAOI can be good?!” And that was it. I fell down the rabbit hole. I started seeking out more Hetalia yaoi fanart, especially for Prussia x Germany and Russia x America. Hetalia became my gateway into the English-speaking fandom too, I joined so many communities because of it.

I remember making a LiveJournal account just to follow a bunch of Hetalia blogs, reading fanfics on FanFiction.net, joining forums, and eventually moving to Tumblr since that’s where the Hetalia fandom was most active.

Hetalia also introduced me to the world of Japanese doujinshi scene and culture. I even followed scanlator groups on LJ just to get those sweet, sweet releases—LMAO.

Despite its flaws, Hetalia played a huge role in my fandom life, and I’m actually grateful for being part of that fandom. I met so many nice people, especially fellow women in fan spaces. At that time, most otaku communities I joined were overwhelmingly male, so Hetalia’s large female fanbase made me feel much more comfortable—even if there was constant ship war drama, LOL.

It also sparked my interest in history and military stuff. I even got into World War history because of it (yes, I went through a Sovietboo and Wehraboo phase—but just for the aesthetics and military equipment, not the ideologies—I was an edgy teen, okay LOL). That probably contributed to my love for anime and manga with military elements, like Strike Witches, Girls und Panzer, Kancolle, etc basically the reason I was huge miliota (military otaku) back then.

Anyway, Hetalia definitely played a big role in my fujoshi journey. Around that time, I also started reading a lot of BL doujin, manga, and got deep into BL ships in various shounen/fujobait anime LOL. Even after I moved on from Hetalia, my fujo heart lived on through fandoms like KHR, Kuroko no Basket, Magi, Evangelion, and more. I stayed a fujoshi for years until I eventually rekindled my love for yuri during college.

I still proudly call myself a fujoshi and continue to follow BL and the fujoshi scene (especially the Japanese one) even if I don’t talk about it much these days. I guess I’ve become more of a passive fujoshi as I’ve gotten older. Maybe it’s because I haven’t found a yaoi OTP that hits me like crack lately... or maybe I’ve just mellowed out with age.

Anyway, that’s all for now! I have no idea what I’ll write for the next challenge, LOL.