arschbiene:

apollon-hyakinthios:

rantingfangirl:

Look, so, I know that no one really asked for my opinion on this, but I’m going to say it anyway. 

I will admit, that even though I dislike his style and characterization, I am a bit jealous of George DeValier. I’m jealous because he’s been on permanent hiatus for years now, and was when I joined the fandom in the sixth grade, yet he still gets more attention than what my multi-chapter gets after I work on it for months.

And I guarantee you that DeValier worked just as hard as I do on his works, and I can’t- and won’t- force anyone to read my stuff. And reading @basement-prussia and @lluviadinoche s’ posts made me realize that, yeah, I am a bit angry about the fact that he’s idolized, but that isn’t the point.

The point is, we can’t deny the fact that DeValier brought a shit-ton of activity to the fandom. I’m not saying that anyone has said that he hasn’t, I just haven’t seen it mentioned yet. Scroll down through his tag, and you’ll see so much art and edits based off of his work. Even now, I’m seeing fanfiction where the author says that the fic was inspired by his work. And that’s great! 

Hell, it took me three tries to get through the first quarter of the fic, but even that had me thinking, “Hey! I could totally do this!” 

So, yeah. Am I over the fact that his work has cast a big shadow over other writers in the fandom? Absolutely. Do I cringe whenever I see one of those “when will DeValier return from the war” memes (y’all have fun, it’s just not for me)? Yes. But this guy has contributed a lot to the fandom, mostly unintentionally, and is still contributing to this day, so I think that we should be at least a little grateful for that. 

this is a good take on it, very nuanced, & i think that’s appropriate since this is a kind of nuanced issue. yes, it’s annoying that his work has cast such a shadow over all the newer works, but at the same time, he didn’t ask to be popular, and can we really fault him for being popular any more than we can fault any other author for the same?

imo, the responsibility for the issue lies with the fandom. guys, again, if you want new authors to get recognition, you have to pitch in! dont just talk about it and self-promo your own works, check out others’ writing as well, and comment, and share it. 

I am in the Not a Fan boat but I just wanted to say this…Absolutely no one should feel overshadowed by DeValier, they are not even RELEVANT anymore so it BLOWS my mind this conversation is even happening with how absolutely and utterly outdated they are. They were writing HUGELY popular pairings in cheesy romance drama angst stories at the HEIGHT of the hetalia fandom when the majority of us were young and dumb kids with no tastes. They were writing at a time when the hetalia fandom was extremely centralized in just a few locations, where literally you knew almost everyone and everything happening and everything being drawn and written all at the same time. DeValier pandered a lot, Networked a lot, and simply had the luck of being in the right place, at the right time during an entirely different fandom culture and fandom space. Even if things are harder now, they’re not impossible. Unfortunately, we’ve lost that Hive sort of fandom culture because of tumblr’s independent blog format and the fact that fandom has shifted away from comment/fanfic culture, but like Apollon-hyakinthios is saying, it’s a team effort. You gotta give love to get love sometimes.