When Aranea starts copying Mindfang, she acts like a Thief, too. The classes are basically just cultural ideals any individual can choose to live up to, and it’s implied that the older you get/the more you know yourself, the easier it is to blur roles or act out the roles you perform in a more adult, premeditated way.

Mindfang is a Sylph–we only know her through the writing she produces, shining light on herself and Alternia to Vriska’s (complicated) benefit. Vriska is inclined to elevate Mindfang in all the ways she perceives Mindfang as being unlike herself. Aranea’s inclined to do the same thing.

Running away from yourself is generally a bad idea, especially if its because you don’t like yourself and are trying to be someone else. That’s the problem both Aranea and Vriska run into with imitating Mindfang, and it suggests that roleplay has more to do with how an individual relates to the role model in their heads than anything particularly to do with the role model themselves.

That make any sense?