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rxttenfish · 14 days ago

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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.

#all the care guide says is 'biomass'#asks #felismiscellaneous #miravi.txt #aaravi mishra #monster prom #yeah sure this gets the main tag #enjoy some really long discussion on the aaravi merfolk au #the art is SO old please dont judge it #assuredly this plan will work Not As Well as either of the two think it will. but like. its better than most they have!#dont we all love as i tell on miranda. having the hots for exactly the kinda people she says she hates.#theres a reason shes a reverse monsterfucker. she sees a ''do not touch'' sign and immediately has GOTTA touch.#this also applies to normal aaravi. although miranda will never admit it.#the universal love of bringing home someone your parents would ABSOLUTELY not approve of.

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working-dreamer · 1 year ago

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It’s wild how shipping culture has changed so drastically over time on the internet.

In the old days people shipped characters who either had only one line of dialogue with each other, never even met, or not even from the same piece of media. It was the wild west and sure some ships were uncomfortable but people had the mindset to just block the tag and stay away from ships they didn’t enjoy.

Nowadays? It’s more like people have to clarify that their ship isn’t canon compliant, character adjacent, and story irrelevant otherwise they get a flood of comments saying “but this character isn’t like this in canon” and some people legitimately get angry if you’re not following the canon.

Like- shipping and fandom culture from what I understand it is about engaging with media in a way that caters to you. And if you don’t like a ship or show just… block the relevant tags and don’t engage in the ships? The internet isn’t supposed to cater to us- we have to cater ourselves to our internet environment. And no matter how many times people may harass others over a fandom or ship they don’t like, those ships are not gonna disappear.

The internet has just been getting worse when people have decided to place morality in their opinions by saying things like “if you enjoy the ship then you support (insert horrible thing here that’s usually completely unrelated to the ship itself)” when it used to be “eh, not my thing” and people just moved on.

And for the record this isn’t about a specific ship or anything- just an observation of how fandom has evolved (and regressed) over the years and I find it fascinating from a sociological perspective cause we still don’t know how having the internet from birth affects the development of kids and how that affects how they interact with others- isn’t that scary?

I know that’s slightly unrelated but the way people engage in media has been changing over they years and that also involves fandom and the maturity level thereof in the internet space and someone smarter than me could probably write a whole thesis paper about fandom culture and how the internet has hindered the social development of people and how that affects community specifically from a fandom lens.

Just- for your sanity younger internet children: it’s not worth harassing others over something as trivial as ‘it’s not canon that this character kisses another character.’ Just find ships you like. Block ships you don’t. And just enjoy your time doing what you like!

You can’t control the internet but you can nurture your little corner of it.

#shipping #canon ship #non canon ships #reader x character #self ship #I get so tired of seeing shipping posts and the comments or reply tweets are nothing but ‘but this isn’t canon tho!!!’#sonny when I was your age we shipped characters who never even met in canon!#even with ships I don’t like- I get exhausted seeing people get bombarded by fourteen year olds who haven’t developed critical thinking yet #every day I agree more that people under 18 shouldn’t have access to the internet #this can also apply to people who act like ‘if you dont reblog or boost this post (insert social issue here) then you’re a bad person!!’#like… no #you don’t have to apply moriality to a stinkin’ reblog button!#sure informing people is important but you don’t have to take the responsibility of the world’s issues #we’re all doing the best we can and you don’t have to prove your morality to be a good person #it’s okay to not engage with those kinds of posts if it makes you uncomfortable- that doesn’t affect your morality in any way #For example: I’m never gonna reblog gory posts showing battle zones #does that mean I support war? absolutely not!#I’m just protecting my mental health! and you need to as well #the internet is yours to make it how you want and if you want it to be an escape from the horrors of the world that’s okay #protect your happiness fam

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