#because bellanda did NOT trust anyone else ever being there

[rxttenfish]

in the midst of a bad psychotic episode, so i took a break to draw some general Coping sketches. hence why these are even messier than usual.

going to talk about some things that might be considered "spoilers" or otherwise relevant in caecilian, so if you care about that kind of thing, it's under a read more.

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miranda having schizophrenia (or, a more general sort of psychotic disorder, as merfolk have their own neurology and culture that isn't fully comparable to human cultures) is one of those few cases where i made a decision based entirely off of me wanting to project my issues onto her, rather than a more specific justification in-canon or in my own worldbuilding and lore as i've built it up. it is still relevant and important, and certainly has an important role to play in why miranda and bellanda's entire... Thing is what it is, and i can certainly give canon examples of why i think it would fit, but it is primarily for my own peace of mind. sometimes there's just no other way to talk about and process what's going on in your own mind, and i find a solace in it, so it stays.

miranda had an early onset of psychosis, and most of her memories include periodic psychotic episodes and constant symptoms of a psychotic disorder, although she can't remember much of her younger years. she's very well aware of this about herself, as is bellanda, since bellanda's been her go-to carer for all of her life.

this has been a necessity, because miranda doesn't tell anyone about it for a reason, and during the peak of every episode she will end up isolating with bellanda, who is equally as dedicated to ensuring no one else learns this information. it can be harder, or it can be easier, depending. miranda would like to isolate the entire duration of every episode, but, well, they just don't have the timing for that. she knows it's hard on bellanda, but, again, they don't have much of a choice and miranda needs someone to help look after her.

it's hard on miranda too. her most common delusion is that of persecution, with severe paranoia resulting in nonsocial behavior and a deep fear to be around people. she's mostly afraid of someone being not who they say they are and trying to hurt her — either in simply having ulterior motives or secretly hating her, or in more complex beliefs regarding creatures from merfolk myth, which inhabit the bodies of merfolk and steal their likenesses to do evil. this often combines badly with her self hate, with her second most common delusion being that her own body has been contaminated by something else, and is inside her, and potentially willing her to do things out of her control. she can't always distinguish this delusion from her own feelings of guilt or loss of self autonomy that the merkingdom cultivates in her, which makes it even harder to deal with.

she will often grow much more accusatory and agitated as it starts to get worse, reacting fearfully and trying to get away or isolate herself from anyone else around her. she will view their actions more negatively, or seemingly connect their actions at random, favoring more and more outlandish explanations. her habit of talking a lot gets either a lot worse, speaking in run-on sentences that meander around and around without getting to the point, acting as a verbal string of thought, or she will entirely calm up and refuse to talk at all, actively trying to resist the urge to speak when it occurs. her ability to speak intelligibly starts to erode, and she will panic more and more as it happens, especially because she knows the pattern and knows that this means she'll have to isolate with bellanda for a while until it gets less bad.

miranda will often turn to self harm. her history within the merkingdom, the way that she was brought up, the way that she's treated, have all taught her that she deserves to be punished for misbehavior and to help keep her in line and make her learn, and thus she's formed a complicated sort of assurance in regards to pain. if she's hurting, then she must be getting corrected. she deserves to be corrected. if she's corrected, then she can finally be good, and she wants to be good. pain is the only way to get rid of the bad stuff in the world, as it has to be cut out. if she hurts herself, then that's getting rid of the bad stuff in her. she deserves to hurt. she's been bad, and bad people deserve to feel pain and deserve to hurt, especially because that's what makes them good again. she wants to be fixed. she wants to be good again.

for merfolk, chewing on things is often reassuring and comforting. merfolk mouths are large pits of sensory information, and it's a comforting and important way to explore the world for them. they also need to regularly chew on bones or other hard objects and feel a need to do so, partially for the nutrients, but also to exercise their jaw muscles and keep them strong and well-maintained.

unfortunately, this means one of the key markers for a pathologically stressed merfolk is that they begin chewing and biting themselves, seeking to self-soothe without having a more appropriate avenue to do so. miranda has very severe self-chewing habits, and regularly feels the urge and need to do so whenever even minorly stressed, mostly favoring biting her arms, hands, or tip of her tail.

that said, she doesn't have any scars from it. she doesn't have any scars anywhere, actually. she doesn't have the permission to have scars.

by the time we get to the beginning of caecilian, aaravi has helped sit miranda through a few episodes, although she's been lucky that they weren't more severe. usually, it's just making sure miranda isn't left alone and watching her to make sure she doesn't hurt herself, which is the scary part. mostly she just tries to walk miranda through the basic steps of taking care of herself and sitting there with her, finding something else for the both of them to focus on so that miranda can drift through okay. this is how aaravi's gotten miranda to watch most of the movies she has.

she would play games and use that to try and help miranda focus, but it kind of scares her too much, that she doesn't think she could focus. not really in the sense that she thinks miranda might be dangerous, there's very little doubt in aaravi when it happens that miranda's just scared out of her mind and barely even knows where she is, but just... a more general scared. a fear of miranda's fear. a fear of the fact that she has to just lock her and miranda inside and can't tell anyone about it. a fear of what it even means, that she keeps listening to miranda cry at night and bellanda's just as worried as miranda that someone else might see. that she got threatened by bellanda, the first time it happened, to never, ever tell anyone else about this, not now, not ever. and that bellanda was far more scared than aaravi in that moment.

[royalreef]

(( When Miranda first started coming to Spooky High, she wasn’t the same as the Miranda you might see today. All of the original ROs would be aware of this, and even most of them probably were freshmen right alongside her back then, but with the passage of time, most students haven’t seen Miri like that, even if they have heard stories about it.

The simple fact of the matter is that when Miranda first arrived, she was... Way more mean and cruel. She was tense and strict, practically obsessed with punishing even other students and teachers when they faltered even slightly, standoffish and closed off from everyone else. Very much a stickler for the rules too, though this applies to the Merkingdom’s rules and not necessity the school’s, all whether or not someone falls under their dominion.

In short, freshman Miranda was an asshole.

However... That’s all due to her being fresh out of the Merkingdom. There wasn’t really a cultural stepping stone for her before that - sure, she was taught English and basic guidelines on how to behave around landfolk and how to walk and move when gravity’s suddenly a thing that exists, but those are all technical skills at best, and they were done via the Merkingdom and approved by the Merkingdom. Her freshman year was the first time she was ever really set loose upon the land and expected to hold herself together.

When Miranda was such a stickler for rules and startlingly harsh to everyone, that was still her running on Merkingdom rules. Which involve her never letting her guard down, assuming everyone is out to kill her or worse, unable to trust anyone other than Bellanda, and incredibly used to the Merkingdom watching everything she did when she wasn’t locked up in a known safe room. A good rule for her back then was that she was wound up like a spring with all her repressed emotions and terrified. She was dealing with culture shock, suddenly presented with a place that she could actually have a looser leash while there, and so much trauma was still fresh in her mind that not being an asshole, that she might be able to actually talk to someone like they weren’t either a lesser to be crushed below her or a fellow authority figure to either brutalize or be brutalized by, just never occurred to her.

And yeah, she did think the Merkingdom was watching her! They’d kept a close eye on her all her life, and in the kingdom proper, there was no escaping that to speak of. If you’re in public, the kingdom is keeping an eye on you, and for Miranda, that meant what she did was being directly relayed back to the King, and if she started to even look disappointing, then she could be seriously hurt. Sure, even on land she’s still being monitored and the kingdom has their methods of surveillance, but much more falls through the cracks in comparison, and it’s just harder when merfolk aren’t really made to be land-bound for long periods of time.

But you know no one ever told that to Miranda. She had to figure that out on her own, and it was... rough.

However... As you can guess, those walls didn’t last forever, and Miranda did make it over that learning curve! To someone else, it would’ve looked really quick, only maybe six or so months after Miranda started coming, but that’s just how she was publicly showing it. A thing about Miranda is that she tries to hide her emotional cracks, and she’ll often have to do something or another for days at a time, so her taking even a week off to go have a breakdown wouldn’t be noticed by the staff nor the students. 

It was overwhelming!! All her life Miranda had been chronically starved of affection and attention, and outside of literally one of her sisters, she had no basis for warmth or understanding her need to actually be loved and liked. Time and time again she had to repress it, had to hide it, had to do literally anything other than acknowledge that she was just a single mermaid who needed social interactions ( which is bad enough, but with just how hyper social merfolk actually are, it’s a particular kind of hell all to itself ) - and suddenly!! Here were landfolk who just freely did it, right in front of her, with no repercussions to be seen or known!! 

I absolutely imagine that once, Scott got really excited in his usual doggy way, and forgot that Miranda would have a fit over being touched, and he actually picked her up and hugged her... And Miranda just went limp. Her mind just stopped working, because it felt amazing and wonderful and like a dehydrated person finally being able to taste water for the first time, and she just. Didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t even tell Scott off afterwards, she just ran off and stayed home for a week, consumed with terror that the Merkingdom had seen and she was about to be disposed of as an unsatisfactory heir. But... After a week with no family-sent assassins, no guards to drag her from her bed, not even a scolding letter from the palace, she just... awkwardly shuffled back to Spooky High. And realized that not even anyone else at school would mention it.

After that point, Miranda very quickly picked up on the fact that... Oh yeah, she can just be hugged here! And no one will blink an eye! She can start to relax on her mannerisms. She can let stuff slide, and no one will hurt her for it. For once in her life, Miranda had a real, sincere place that’s the closest she’s ever gotten to being out of the Merkingdom’s control, and it felt amazing. 

Miranda is very much a character who has been chronically starved for affection and attention. It’s part of why she’s so eager to seek it out, why now she’ll sit in other people’s laps and kiss them as a platonic thing. It’s part of why she’s so flirty and why she demands to be touched and held and just loved all the time. It’s a large part of why she’s so easy to ship with, why she wants to be in relationships with people.

Because it’s a need that’s gone almost entirely unmet until she arrived at Spooky High, and she’s trying to make up for YEARS of nothing.