#honestly. yeah aaravi is the jealous type.

[rxttenfish]

honestly as much as i joke and compare miranda to the severely abused rescue parrot or basically a pet tiger you keep in your house, theres also the counterpart to this that goes, aaravi is basically her service dog.

as in, like, it connects back to merfolk socialization and them constantly having someone who they consider basically a part of themselves always around and being dependent on having other people there to react or behave appropriately. and miranda getting denied that as instead her family lineage was supposed to act as this instead and failed her in being a good replacement in MULTIPLE ways, so now she's basically just... entirely unable to behave normally or healthily from a merfolk lens. she is aggressive and violent, she is quick to lash out, she constantly feels insecure and terrified, she doesn't even conceive of herself as a person and views herself in terms of an object that exists for other people's use of her, she is basically incapable of taking care of herself, she regularly tries to hurt and kill herself with varying degrees of intention.

and the merfolk solution would be to introduce a caretaker into this relationship dynamic, whether through grafting miranda into an existing caretaker group or by adding a caretaker into her existing deep social group. which isn't an option, because that has DEEPLY political implications and implying herself as being flawed or the crown as flawed by proxy would either get her outright killed or even further abused. it's just not an option for her and why she keeps getting worse, because there is no help that can come from within this system.

and aaravi in turn, acts as a member of that social group, who miranda can look to and depend upon. firstly, to judge appropriate emotional response, because she acts much worse on her own, and having aaravi there means when miranda starts getting upset she can look to aaravi and see how she's acting and to know if she should intensify or if she needs to go to aaravi and seek comfort. but also just in the sense that miranda's ideas of what is healthy or safe have been destroyed and she does kind of need someone there to make sure she is taking care of herself and not hurting herself at any given moment. she needs someone to make her feel secure and safe and someone who she can rely on, and that need is very key to who she is as a merfolk and the nature of the trauma in question, and aaravi does fulfill the need of a caretaker.