Violet

If I were to type out every single thought I have about Mira I would be writing this for 65 years. Mostly because Mira is a special girl in my heart, so usually one brain-train leads to another. For example, it is very common in this fandom to make fun of Mira because she talks about Keith too much, even though it is a very valid and real coping mechanism. That naturally leads me to overthink why I pretty much don't see people talking about the fact that she is an abuse victim, while at the same time overanalyzing Hydron's abuse to oblivion, and also romanticising the shit out of Shun's grief - and thinking Mira's grief is funny. Which ends up with me writing a whole essay comparing Mira, Shun and Katara from Avatar the last Airbender to each other. And realising that even though Katara has "the right trauma" aka dead mother, the fandom still ends up making fun of her. 90% of the memes in this fandom are making fun of a literal child because she talks about her dead mother too much. And before I know it I am overanalysing misogyny in fandom spaces for a video essay I won't post anywhere.

So let's agree that I will make my thoughts very casual and will try to keep them short, nice and simple.

(Reminder, this is my reading of Mira. And I will dip my toes into headcanons here.)

So Mira is an abuse victim. And Keith leaving definitely gave her mental health a pretty large blow. Let's quickly start with the fact that the first scene that is not a flashback between Mira and Clay is Clay very calmly reacting to his daughter suddenly appearing home after weeks or months of her being gone. And he also calmly reacts to Mira fighting back in the argument about bakugan. Which shows me that he doesn't take her seriously. The tone of the argument shifts when Keith is mentioned, and that's when we see Mira almost immediately go from fight to fawn, right before Clay showcases his power by performing physical abuse in the form of shoving Mira on the floor and quickly shifting his tone from calm to aggressive. I am talking about this just to established that Mira grew up in a very stable and loving home that definitely didn't fuck with her mental health and is definitely not showing us that she crumbles easily when personal stuff is involved. And I also wanna point out real quick that unlike the s1 gang, the Resistance wasn't an established friend group before the events of NV. We see Mira picking up Ace from the street and we know nothing about Mira and Baron's relationship before the Resistance. Which leads me to think that Mira either didn't have anyone besides Keith before the Resistance, or whoever she was friends with was shit-

Anyway I am gonna skip whatever I think is going on in Spectra's head and why he presumably decided to become evil one day and use his Deviantart username as a real name. I am not ready to make a post THAT LONG.

In short, Mira is in pain. I am in pain watching her cling to the hope of finding her brother. I know how suffocating hope can be. And it does lead to idolising Keith, that is a stress response that is completely normal. In her mind if she finds Keith, everything can be fixed, and she WILL find him. He is not dead, not hurt, not kidnapped. He is definitely okay and fighting to help Bakugan.

(Un)fortunately, Keith is indeed not dead. So, in one moment, Mira's world falls apart. Because her brother is alive, but he is doing all those things that Mira is against. And even when she tries to get answers about it, all she gets is her brother trying to gaslight or use her.

So from Mira's PoV the person who cared about her just abandoned her out of nowhere, and he is not the person she thought he was. Also the PTSD train is actively running her over, what with not having a stable relationship with a family member. Because Keith beautifully performs the "I care for you" act before switching over to "You lose any meaning to me the moment I can't use you/you don't act like I want you to".

Hop, skip and jump over Spectra's shit redemption. The only way Mira can move on is by pretending Keith and Spectra are not the same person. Because then Keith didn't abandon her, Keith didn't hurt her. It is Spectra that is evil, Spectra doesn't care for her. Her brother wouldn't do that to her... Right? Especially since Keith never apologised, he never changed for her... he did it so he could be on the winning side. Well, of course he doesn't have to apologise, Keith did nothing wrong - Spectra did. And people like to say that the real family is the one you choose for yourself, but they don't tell you how to stop loving the one you where born in. Because sometimes you love your abusers, and you desperately want them to love you too. Mira can't stop loving her father and her brother, and I do wonder if the reason she clings so much to them is because they made her feel she was unlovable.

I wonder how long Mira can keep this up though, how long until small mannerisms of Spectra slip into Keith. How long can she be in denial about this? In some way I also like to make Keith separate himself from Spectra as well. In a way, Spectra is his mask but also a part of him. Which - I find this interpretation hilarious because it makes him even more of an asshole. "No, sir, I didn't run over that old lady. I was cosplaying Ace at the time, arrest him, not me"

Am focusing on Art fight rn.