Research is Important, Hetalia Fans.

Submitted by snowchronicle:

Ok, Ok. I don’t remember the link of that image, so deal with it. I rembember only the fact of that image is from dA and the creator is mexican. And all the countries represented here.

So… Let’s begin with the countries.

1st row:

Alaska (WTF?), Antigua and Barbadua (whitewashed), Argentina, Barbados (whitewashed), Bahamas (whitewashed), Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile

I…I don’t see why these areas are next to one another. Is there any order to this? It starts off with a state-tan, and it has canon nation-tans in it, but it’s full of whitewashed OCs from no particular area of the world.

2nd row:

Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica (whitewashed), Ecuador, El Salvador, USA, Grenada (whitewashed), Guatemala, Guyana (whitewashed)

I’m starting to think there is more whitewashing in this single image than there is in our entire whitewashing tag.

3rd row:

Haiti (wait, is not whitewashed, how strange o_o), Honduras, Jamaica (same thing of Haiti o_O),

I guess that the OC creator has some knowledge of Haiti and Jamaica. That’s an improvement, but the bandages on Haiti makes me feel like she (the Haiti OC) is just as bad as the other OCs in our Haiti tag.

North Mexico, South Mexico, Nicarauga, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic (same of Haiti and Jamaica O_O)

Well, the people in the Dominican Republic are traditionally lighter than the people in Haiti, so while I appreciate the darker skin tone, logically (and historically) it shouldn’t be the exact same shade as Haiti.

Speaking of skin tones, while some of the darker-haired OCs are kind of “implied skin tones” or “implied diversity,” their skin tones are the same as America’s and Canada’s, which shouldn’t be the case at all.

Considering the art here, I’m assuming the OC creator doesn’t have much access to different shades, but as with the Dominican Republic, a lot of the OCs here should have a different skin tone.

Actually, looking back at Cuba, the OC creator does seem to be able to mix the markers in order to give a variance in skin tone, so there really is no excuse.

4th row:

St. Kitts and Nevis (whitewashed), St. Vincent and the Grenadines (whitewashed), St. Lucia (whitewashed), Suriname (whitewashed), Trinidad and Tobago (whitewased), North Venezuela, South Venezuela (the sense of that division for me is unknow), (now are all overseas territories of someone. .-.) Anguilla (whitewashed), Dutch Antilles (i don’t rembember the official name…) (whitewashed)

5th row:

Aruba (whitewashed), Bermuda (whitewashed), Guadeloupe (whitewashed + wrong flag  in the background), French Guyana (whitewashed? + wrong flag in the background), Greenland (a.k.a a fem!denmark? so, whitewashed), Cayman Islands (whitewashed + bad concept), Clipperton Island (a french unhabitaded island. something like the canada eyelash for new prussia???), a random unhabitaded island who belongs at the US, South Geogia and the South Sandwich Islands, Falkland Islands (1, i see her somewere in this blog)

6th row

Falkland Islands (2, actually are these who…), British Virgin Islands (whitewashed), American Virgin Islands (whitewashed), Martinique (whitewashed), Montserrat (whitewashed + a redhead? you are fu*king kidding me?), Puerto Rico, Saint Bartholèmy (whitewashed + wrong flag in the background), Saint Martin (whitewashed + wrong flag in the background), Saint Pierre and Miquelon (wrong flag in the background).

So, is there a sense of some sort of order in this? While a good amount of these OCs are territories or colonies or some sort of area that does not have full autonomy, and those areas ARE mostly located in the latter half of the picture, we have to remember that Alaska is still the first OC listed here. So…there really doesn’t seem to be an order at all.

Actually, not all of these are of the girl who draw this, but… I think, the big part of OCs are hers. And… I think, she doesn’t do some reseach. And I don’t found any information about them. Now, someone shot me, because i do all bad. //shot

(about the tags…. fix them if i don’t add some of that.)

No, what you’ve done is fine. Don’t feel so bad about yourself.

But this OC creator, on the other hand, she needs to improve. For the OCs that aren’t hers, she isn’t COMPLETELY to blame. Of course, she could have said to her friends, “Hey, your OC is whitewashed, you should probably do something about that,” but considering the fact that she herself seems to whitewash OCs, that is very unlikely.

Overall, I have to stress again the importance of quality over quantity. She has illustrated and created many OCs, yes, but at what cost? Most of these OCs are whitewashed, poorly-researched, and the little indicators we have of personality or backstory currently (such as Haiti’s bandages) show that full profiles of these OCs would be extremely offensive, indeed.

So, before you jump up and say, “Well, I’m going to make nation-tans of EVERYTHING!”  be sure that you are committed to doing the proper research for those OCs.

Edit: ohmygoditsamber added:

For that post of the quantity over quality OCs, [this post] other than the whitewasing, it seems like the creator wanted to personify every nation and territory in north/central/south America and the Caribbean. Which would be fine if they hadn’t lumped them all together in one giant picture and he actually done some research

Exactly. That’s wording it much better than I did. Yes, you can personify modern-day regions, but only if you actually do an equal and thorough amount of research into all of the nation-tans and areas.

Otherwise, you just look like this girl did.