#also aaravi isnt helping you either

[rxttenfish]

i keep having recurrent ideas of drawing aaravi using her wife as a token pool floaty/surfboard/life vest/jet ski and i never have gotten around to drawing it but. eventually. one day.

its one of the great benefits to having giant marine predator wife of course. that aaravi and her can have beach days where miranda just chills and hangs out at the surface of the water and aaravi can sit her drinks on top of her and lay on top of her and cling to her side when miranda threatens to swim them out to deeper water. excellent.

[rxttenfish]

merfolk in general are just. horrible horrible polyglots. their brains are already hardwired for language and quick language acquisition that remains active all their lives, further helped by retaining a high neural plasticity for their long lives, and especially enjoy complex language and language-based play and problem solving. but they also tend to have a lot of their society arranged where there's often multiple different languages at play within the same area, and only really stops being so once you get into especially small villages that have below the merfolk norm for outside contact. every merfolk alive today knows at least two languages, but most of them know far more than that, especially because one of those two will be the common-technical language. its been standardized and wide-scale implemented across the merkingdom after their dominance, to help bridge the gap between these different languages, basically as a successful version of esperanto. but its a trade language, and is mostly used for information you might want to reach as many people as possible, such as laws or business dealings or public announcements or the like. most merfolk don't view it as and don't treat it as a language proper, and its not what they prefer to converse in if they have another choice, usually finding it pretty limiting and restrictive, which is why its called common-technical.

miranda, being a royal who is regularly in contact with many different people around the merkingdom and regularly expected to be fully able to converse with them to do her job, knows just. so many languages. i might be changing exactly how many soon, but last time i counted it was in the low teens. like its just a perfect storm of her brain being wired for swift language acquisition and having a job that requires it and a position that means shes constantly around people from all around the merkingdom. not to mention having to know english too, which isn't just not her first language, it's not even her fourth language.

meanwhile, aaravi knows english and a little bit of hindi, less because of her mother and moreso because of her nana... its not that her mother never used it with her, but she was. less focused on using it or teaching aaravi, let's say. nana mishra uses it a lot more and is more interested in teaching aaravi when she asks her, especially in the intermittent period after her mom died and nana mishra was able to come back into her life to help aaravi pick up the pieces (though not after aaravi kind of. got left on her own. for an unfortunate amount of time). its just also fallen by the wayside with aaravi's whole Everything Else and kind of having a hard time accepting her nana's help and kind of being terrified of her (of no fault of her nana's, aaravi's just. she's just really traumatized after Everything, alright. having someone try to offer her help afterwards, especially when aaravi's scared of getting singled out as half human and half monster, is just. it's not something she can bring herself to trust.)

[rxttenfish]

have yuo ever thought about what if aaravi was a merfolk? i think she would be badass.. ((not that she isnt already))

i have, actually! ironically i've even drawn her as a merfolk before, albeit. it's very, very old art... when i was still giving merfolk hair even! this puts it around 3-4 years old, though i did get minorly obsessed with this as an AU when i did.

there's really no way to translate aaravi into a merfolk without making her some variety of low royal bastard. it's technically true with her dad as-is — while it's not nearly the kind of thing that has actual power and weight behind it, he would be considered somewhere in the general realm of courtly nobility for fae (whatever that means for fae, i haven't fully figured it out myself) and this is something that does have a minor influence on aaravi herself. it's far from the only thing giving her issues with authority and especially with nobility, but it certainly doesn't help either.

in this case, aaravi would be considered a hybrid between an abyssal merfolk and a pacific-migratory merfolk. in terms of physical appearance, this is what gives her the reddish-gold coloration. effectively, she got the abyssal pigmentation for red and pink, but with a major diluting effect from the silvery-blue pacific-migratory side, with her patterns and patterning showing up from that side of her genetics. if you swapped out the red pigment for blue here, she'd look a lot closer to a pacific-migratory, and the yellow pigment shows up in both. she has a mild case of gigantism, hence the latter picture here — ironically, she'd be larger than miranda, when it should be the other way around, because miranda's growth was stunted at a young age. otherwise, most of her body shape is closer to a pacific-migratory, with a longer, narrower skull than a full abyssal, and thus is not quite as adept at bone-crushing as someone like miranda.

(miranda should likewise probably be considered partially hybridized herself... but honestly no part of the abyssal population should be considered "full abyssal" anymore either. miranda is pretty close to what a full abyssal should be like, due to various gene treatments involved in her conception, and due to the reigning king being considered just abyssal enough to count, despite the outcrossing in his background — but these are the strains of a population that's wedged itself deeper and deeper into fatal inbreeding and the attempts to both fix that as well as desperately not being willing to let it go. miranda's family tree is a wreathe, to put it lightly.)

in terms of what this means socially: pacific-migratory merfolk are the most common type of merfolk in the capital city and the surrounding area, but they're also pretty widespread in general, being the majority population in things like the great nomadic families and their communities. the organized whale hunts come from these, and they're still the most common merfolk to see involved with them, both serving a spiritual function and managing the whale populations, while also providing whale meat for the rest of the population. they're considered in the realm of middle royals by default within the kingdom, though not all in these communities are, and i see aaravi's mom as having come from one of these groups, not being a middle royal nor a part of that group herself, but in an esteemed position as a whale-hunter.

aaravi's dad, then, would have to come from one of the low royals — not considered part of the royal family itself and thus not a part of the ruling line, but part of the periphery of that, the other Big-Fucking-Deal families surrounding and supporting that rule, those who are inside of the royal courts and those who both marry into the royal family and who get the non-inheriting royal family members when they undoubtedly have to do something else besides wait in the wings. whether or not he was an inheriting member of his family line or not... well, i don't know! it'd matter a lot more if he was, and aaravi's existence would be even more strictly punished if it came out, but there's really no way for her to exist at all without it being something that would cause major issues in the line of inheritance and disgrace for the family lines involved.

royals don't like bastards. i've mentioned this before, but it still rings true. as much as they like to sleep around and reap the rewards of their position and what it allows them to get away with, the family lines themselves originate from miivt'ia groups that only allowed other merfolk to join them if they were born into them, and long-term agreements in the form of "marriages" between them and other groups were used to form political agreements between those groups and ensure those agreements were being held, while also guaranteeing that some members of their family line were being allowed to join another's, thus enabling them to move up. having kids outside of this system starts to pull it into question: should aaravi be considered a part of this family line? what about the fact that she was raised outside of it, by someone else, and thus doesn't meet criteria for an effective member? does this weaken or call into question current agreements between those who have married into this line and the family lines they come from? has the royal in question behaved improperly, by weakening this family line and the responsibilities they should be held to?

royals do not like answering any of these questions. not only does it provide a major weakness for themselves and their own position to be called into question and potentially face consequences for opening their family line up to such doubts, but now the family line itself is in jeopardy, as other royals tangentially or even uninvolved with the creation of a bastard can use it as leverage to further their own goals and agendas. the discovery of a bastard can easily prove to be the last straw in making a complicated web of political maneuvering fail and a family line to be destroyed, so royals are quite invested in making sure no bastards in their line come to exist, destroying any bastards they do find before anyone else can discover them, and discovering the bastards of other families to use as leverage against them.

unfortunately, royals do sleep around a lot. they're merfolk. monogamy isn't really a thing they tend to do, and they're already biased towards multiple partners in a short period of time and a low barrier to having sex at all to encourage community-building and to remove tensions. they're also royals, so they're seldom at want for a lack of partners either, and royals having sex in ways that doesn't weaken their family line isn't really discouraged beyond cases of obligate birth control. it's why miranda being considered a virgin matters — she doesn't have kids and she's never been involved in one of these political "marriages". it doesn't matter if she's had sex before, it's even encouraged due to the political implications of her "performing well", so long as these two criteria are met. as much as it pains the royals, bastards are a lot more common than any of them insist.

so! about that destroying!

when i say royals are determined to destroy any of their bastards they find, i mean that involves killing them as quickly and as quietly as possible. this nearly always means also killing the non-royal communities they were born into, as group parenting occurs not only within the miivt'ia but the miivt'ia adjacent to them, and anyone who might have ever known about the bastard and their birth. information about a dead bastard is nearly as valuable as the bastard themselves, and so royals want a clean slate, to ensure absolutely nothing gets out that this ever happened.

bastards still do occur, of course, and they can even fly under the radar, but the issue then starts to form in the communities they're a part of, and the non-royal part of their inheritance. this salted-earth approach to the finding of any bastard at all puts them in direct danger as well, not least of all because if they knew, they could be considered to be either helping the bastard and working against the royal and the throne at large. although your average merfolk is a lot less... enthusiastic about the royals than the royals themselves would have you believe, this is still the kind of thing that puts them at risk, and thus the kind of thing they very seldom view positively either. they're just as much at risk of entirely shunning any bastard that they find and cutting all contact, pretending they do not exist and never existed, or just outright revealing their existence to the royal in question, in a bid to try and save themselves and limit damage.

it's not a great position to be in! aaravi could have flown under the radar as a grouper-hybrid instead, as grouper merfolk are the closest other species to abyssals and share most of the physical traits of them, that red-gold-pink coloration would absolutely betray her as an abyssal hybrid instead. i never designed salil, but i imagine he would have even more noticeable "tells" as well (though i also never fully worked out what salil's existence would mean in this AU).

hence, while aaravi could get away with repeatedly obscuring and "dyeing" the color of her scales, salil would need more than that, and from the moment they were born, there was no way their mom didn't know exactly what happened and exactly what was at risk. in this AU, i can only imagine she began to isolate even harder than she did as a human and a slayer, being even more insistent that absolutely no one should see either of them without limiting as much contact as possible, and that she's the only one of them who is allowed to meet and talk to other merfolk. while this wouldn't be enough to kill a merfolk from loneliness, it WOULD still have a major impact on their health and very nearly kill them, so aaravi's mom dying of an illness likewise checks out.

it depends from there — ironically i imagine the two siblings going their separate ways from a disagreement in what they should do. aaravi would be more of the type to insist that they can only trust each other and only look after each other, that salil cannot be allowed to be seen by other merfolk without everything falling apart, and wanting to stay together with him in a similar, isolated manner. salil would be more likely to insist on separating, so that if one of them is found out, it'll be harder to find the other, and having safety in being able to each obscure themselves, likely finding the way both his mother and aaravi treated him to be uniquely isolating and punishing and, perhaps, wanting to try his luck elsewhere than to continue to be treated as untouchable. aaravi wouldn't be able to do much to stop salil from leaving, if he feels like she's not listening to him and deciding to go his own way regardless, and she would have to do something to ensure she's not left completely alone in the world, a death sentence for a merfolk.

where her interactions with miranda start varies from this point... aaravi probably would similarly join a group of merfolk living outside of the law, obscuring her identity and her history and her bastard status as much as possible, and it's not unlikely that said community of merfolk might be mercenaries or similar, as she would have fairly applicable talents and they would be more willing to look the other way or not ask questions. miranda does have more dealings with mercenary groups within the merkingdom than she will EVER talk about, and it's possible that they start to interact from here, though again, it varies and i'm less solid on this.

miranda's position in turn, if or when she figures out aaravi's an abyssal hybrid and thus can only be a royal bastard, would be... well. like i said. royals keep making bastards for a reason. being able to bond with anyone outside of the bounds of their title would be tempting enough for anyone, and especially enough to not consider or not care very much about the position that they're putting the other party in. royals also just tend to like "that which they aren't allowed to have", the same as anyone. and miranda, as much as she is normally and as much as she would be in this AU, really would just have a Thing for bastards. they're just her type and they just hit her brain in exactly the right way to make her obsess, and she wouldn't be able to deny that she finds them deeply attractive. she would never admit this, not even to herself, but yeah, the moment this comes out she would start getting the hots for aaravi really bad.

and, honestly, they could likely use this to their advantage? like i said, other royals DO have an investment in finding the royals of other lineages and using them in political maneuvering, and it's pretty hard to get any better than the Crown Princess Herself discovering the bastard of a lesser low royal and deciding to keep her around. it would likewise provide a safer position for aaravi, because, again, Crown Princess Herself, and who is going to challenge her rulings or how she wants to toss around her power? especially since miranda is considered special for multiple reasons inside her title, reasons which aaravi could very much use to her advantage on top of being half abyssal herself.

as for where the rest of this goes, who knows! i never fully developed this AU, and although i do still continually return to it, it's never solidified in my mind as one thing or the other.

[rxttenfish]

ironically i don’t actually like miranda ships that have her with anyone who’s too passive or eager to please. that just feels like a recipe for disaster for me, because even though miranda very sincerely tries very hard to make people happy and to accommodate for them, she’s also... well, miranda. she has her own very specific ideas on what is wrong and what should be done to help, and anyone who will lay down and let miranda do whatever she wants without ever raising a fuss or calling her out will quickly discover how miranda can and will trample over boundaries that she wasnt told about.

its kind of weird to talk about i suppose, because its not a dynamic that comes up in ships all that often, but in experience from my own relationships, sometimes you need someone who won’t take your shit! sometimes you need someone who’s a little combative! and i don’t necessarily mean arguments or fights in the traditional sense either, but rather a kind of boldness and a lack of fear that comes with someone who isnt afraid of you or the possibility of having a fight.

and likewise there’s another extreme to this, where someone is too upfront and aggressive about confronting miranda about her issues, because she’s just... she’s in the kind of situation associated with a very particular headspace and a way of looking at the world, and all of which involve her being told that there are people who will disagree upon these things with her, and that she should immediately shut their arguments down and refuse to budge and dig her claws in deeper and deeper. trying to push someone who’s in that kind of high control group situation too hard often only ends up forcing them deeper in, confirming how hostile and terrifying the outside world is and that it can’t be trusted, that only the high control group can be trusted.

so there has to be a middle ground between total passivity and outright rejection, and it’s the very specific space of being challenged in a way that feels safe and even secure. someone who will not walk all over you, but will not let you walk all over them either, who will question things that should be questioned but will not shove an answer in.

it’s why i don’t really like shipping miranda with any of the PCs — their primary, defining character trait is a willingness to do whatever and say whatever it is to get the object of their affections, and while i certainly imagine miranda loves to have people fight over her and her affections, i can’t see it working out long term in the slightest. there are two people in every relationship, after all, and thus both of them have to be considered as their own independent entities with their own emotional and mental worlds and needs. all too often in ships people will either treat the PCs as non-entities or miranda as a non-entity, and it just doesn’t work out for me, imo. if i wanted to just focus on one or the other, i would just focus on one or the other

all of this being why miravi actually works so much better for me, although certainly there are other ships that reach the same end. aaravi’s definitely the kind of person to immediately show how displeased she is whenever something happens that she doesn’t want or when someone is trying to make her do something that she doesn’t want to do, and these dual traits of being combative and very vocal about it immediately mean that miranda can’t say that she wasn’t aware or that she missed some cue. 

likewise, aaravi makes her wants and needs very quickly known and won’t let someone else force her away from them, so there is an alternative path that becomes very clear, and forces miranda into a point of negotiation to figure out something that can work between the both of them. meanwhile, aaravi, in being more standoffish, has the greater attitude of other people can do whatever so long as it doesn’t get in her way, which helps prevent the issue i was talking about in forcibly taking miranda’s hand and leading her to something, and how this often has the opposite of the intended effect. aaravi, in being a bit more of a token “lone wolf” type who wants to demonstrate how much she doesn’t need other people (even despite evidence to the contrary), actually helps miranda in trusting her further and seeing her as an equal since aaravi is neither trying to gain her approval and love, thus treating her as a superior, nor trying to push her around to make the “correct” decisions and be the “correct” type of person, thus treating her as an inferior. 

she’s just... aaravi, and will quarrel and push back if miranda tries to overstep, but won’t expect anything from her in turn. even if this is ultimately because of some pessimistic view on aaravi’s side and an assumption that the world is solely out to get her, it does work out in miranda’s case, sort of leading me back to my whole point of mutually compatible damage. it’s easier for each of them to intuit what the other needs and what is too far after these initial boundaries have been set, because they have an easier time seeing where the other is coming from after they actually start talking. in a weird way, they’re both already familiar and aware of the tropes that the other is playing off of, as aaravi in playing a token video game protagonist role, is already aware of the trope of the princess with the evil family, and miranda in playing a fairytale princess role, is already familiar with the knight or hero who was pushed into this role and uncertain of their own humanity or goodness. its an extra little layer of understanding where each one is coming from, without necessarily needing to elevate or suppress the other’s position.

TL;DR: i don’t like a lot of miranda ships because elevating her and treating her as a superior is just as dehumanizing as debasing and treating her as an inferior, and the best miranda ships, in my mind, strike a balance between the two characters where they treat each other as equals