Feral is/was? in Homestuck fandom, so I almost feel like she was trying to write Saki and Meirin as moirails. (Like maybe in a prior draft of the story they were fantrolls or something.) But outside of the context of troll worldbuilding, the thing they have going on is not cute, it's bizarre.
Theirs is not even the only weirdly-intense character dynamic like that--but like you said, Aubrey actually gets called out for their codependent streak, because it's unfairly imposing emotional labor on poor Alto. Meanwhile their (explicit!) obsession with and willingness to die for father-figure Altair doesn't develop much besides being a reason to make Alto feel upset and disillusioned with them.
I also like how in the only canon character relationship that isn't weirdly codependent like that (Arietta/Altair), it's rammed up your nose throughout Act 1 of her backstory how Arietta is so precocious and such a genius for her particularly young age. IIRC, it's not specified how old Altair is compared to her, but it's still strongly vibing with older guy/younger girl. And maybe I would not find it worthy of note if it weren't for all the other weird shit in the game. "Adult-intelligent loli" is a bog-standard anime trope, after all--completely played straight in a game that's obsessed with subverting problematic tropes.
I feel as if if you made a Venn diagram of Meirin/Saki, Aubrey/Altair(?), and Arietta/Altair, Feral's id would lie in the middle part. (I mean, Alto being an abuse survivor power fantasy is also clearly an id thing for Feral, but she's very open about that much, and trying to impress very hard upon you that her id is woke.)
And God, Feral's whole thing about sex workers is so weird too. Legal brothels which you're of age to go to at age 16 and it's not weird and there's no shady implications! The only reason Teagan would be upset about her brother being a sex worker is because she's so sexphobic to begin with!
Re: wank containment area
Theirs is not even the only weirdly-intense character dynamic like that--but like you said, Aubrey actually gets called out for their codependent streak, because it's unfairly imposing emotional labor on poor Alto. Meanwhile their (explicit!) obsession with and willingness to die for father-figure Altair doesn't develop much besides being a reason to make Alto feel upset and disillusioned with them.
I also like how in the only canon character relationship that isn't weirdly codependent like that (Arietta/Altair), it's rammed up your nose throughout Act 1 of her backstory how Arietta is so precocious and such a genius for her particularly young age. IIRC, it's not specified how old Altair is compared to her, but it's still strongly vibing with older guy/younger girl. And maybe I would not find it worthy of note if it weren't for all the other weird shit in the game. "Adult-intelligent loli" is a bog-standard anime trope, after all--completely played straight in a game that's obsessed with subverting problematic tropes.
I feel as if if you made a Venn diagram of Meirin/Saki, Aubrey/Altair(?), and Arietta/Altair, Feral's id would lie in the middle part. (I mean, Alto being an abuse survivor power fantasy is also clearly an id thing for Feral, but she's very open about that much, and trying to impress very hard upon you that her id is woke.)
And God, Feral's whole thing about sex workers is so weird too. Legal brothels which you're of age to go to at age 16 and it's not weird and there's no shady implications! The only reason Teagan would be upset about her brother being a sex worker is because she's so sexphobic to begin with!