Panfandom Meta

"I Need to Talk About Nico Robin or I Will Lose My Goddamn Mind" by tyrantisterror

In high school, one of the parts of my life where my suicidal ideation was at its strongest, I was told on a couple of occasions by people that they admired how confident I was in my sense of self, and how honest and genuine I seemed to be. It was baffling every time, because I lived in my brain, where I knew for a fact I had no confidence whatsoever and hid as many of my feelings as possible. What they saw as confidence was just… apathy, a disinterest in how people reacted to the mask I’d composed of the few feelings and thoughts I felt were shallow enough to express without fear. I got exceptionally good at hiding the toxic mess of self-hatred I had festering inside my brain.

I truly believe there is no greater suffering that can be inflicted on a person than this kind of self-destructive despair, because once it takes root in you, it never leaves. It is an enemy you will grapple with your entire life, never fully relenting no matter how hard you struggle against it. It never, ever fucking leaves, and anyone who actually gets to know you will know this in time, and you’ll always wonder when they’ll get sick of dealing with it and abandon you like you deserve to be abandoned.

I bring all this personal shit up because Nico Robin’s story is about suicidal ideation, about self-loathing, about despair. And, in the nature of melodrama, of emotional truth, it takes what it feels like to hate yourself to this extreme and makes it literal. Suicidal ideation makes you feel like the World hates you, like your existence is a crime. For Nico Robin, that is literally true - the World Government wants her dead, and her existence is literally a crime in its eyes.

This is just one meta, but it's one that I liked enough I want to highlight it with a quote from the introduction section. I've never watched or read One Piece, but maybe one day I should... even with how excruciatingly long it is. It's hard for me to come by an honest, earnest character manifesto in this day and age, and this is a good one.

Side recommendation: Tyrantisterror also wrote some meta pointing out that Mina Murray is effectively the true protagonist of Dracula on their website back in 2017, four years before Dracula Daily created a big burst of Dracula (1897 novel) fandom popping out meta and re-assessing the characters' original depictions vs their flanderization by adaptations and pop culture. There's other interesting articles by them on Horror Flora (largely focusing on fantasy, horror, and kaiju media), but the Mina one is perhaps my favorite.