#still im not so far too engaged with the story in general; seems pretty predictable so far to me? maybe it'll change

[darabeatha]

nothing to smile about in my life.png

[veryvincible]

Do you think you could share some of your Tony Ty youth/relationship days hcs? hehe

Yours truly,

Tys obsessed fan

Oh boy! I have been sitting on this for a few days now, because there is, uh, a lot. Also, I adore you, and I love every Ty ask I receive.

I think this post would end up far too long if I responded the way I desire to in my heart, so I’ll keep it relatively simple (edit: it did not stay relatively simple, and also it branched out slightly into other topics. This is so very long. Be warned.)

Content warnings here for psychological/emotional abuse/domestic abuse/child abuse!

I like to think they didn’t really have a “let’s get together!” moment. I think they ended up becoming close, they were casual with each other, and it just kind of... became what it became. I think they probably ended up using labels at some point, but I don’t think there was ever an official, “Would you like to go out on a date with me?” or “Would you want to be, like, boyfriends?” moment. 

I think Tony was a generally isolated kid (obviously, he gained acquaintances like Bruce and potentially Reed as he grew older, but you know) and Ty was... probably also a generally isolated kid. Ty may have had a few other “friends” around, given what we know about him; he’s certainly charismatic. I don’t think Ty would have really developed close friendships with many people, though, given that his personality seems more rotten the closer you get to him.

We don’t see a lot of their childhood together at all, so this is almost entirely shit I’ve come up with for the sake of fic writing and general note-taking for the sake of coherency with how I write Ty, but.

One thing I tend to lean toward is the idea that Ty had kind of an awful home life. This isn’t really an, “Aw, boo, so sad, what a tragic man,” sort of thing so much as it is that... I think Ty and Tony are at their most interesting when they’re contrasting forces, and the idea of Tony (a victim of abuse who broke the cycle) becoming friends with Ty (a victim of abuse who perpetuates the cycle) at a young age, not in spite of their differences but because of them, is something I really like to think about.

We don’t actually get much of Ty’s parents in canon-- they’re kind of implied to be, like, Fine Parents. They’re contrasted with Howard Stark, who pulls the shark-eat-shark business motherfucker thing and basically causes Mr. Stone’s business to, like. Drown, or whatever. You know. The contrast there is implied, and I respect that for what it is. That being said, that’s not what interesting for me to write, and as such, I’ve chosen to tweak these little details for the sake of my more personalized (and slightly more self-indulgent) fic writing experience.

I think there’s a lot of potential in considering the differences between how they act at home as opposed to how they act with each other, too. I think Home Tony is generally apprehensive and subdued, but more uncertain and anxious than outright fearful 24/7. In IM Vol. 1, Howard was shown to be unpredictable; we got to see a lot of bad, but there were also sparkling moments wherein they seemed to be bonding as a father-son duo, and Tony would actually get to work with his father and learn from his father. I think that very well could have exacerbated the anxiety he felt, because he’s not being taught to never touch anything ever-- he’s being taught that there are very specific circumstances under which he’s able to explore as he’d like to, and those circumstances are 1) virtually impossible to accurately predict and 2) subject to change at the drop of a hat. So, Tony has been shown to be at least a little bit capable of testing the waters with what he’s allowed to do in the house and what he’s not allowed to do. That doesn’t make it any less anxiety-inducing, it just makes him a tiny, tiny bit of a more active child than one who’s constantly paralyzed.

Home Ty, to me, would be the opposite-- he is fearful 24/7, and as such, his behavior as a child is kind of... flawless, at least in the eyes of parents who think that children should be seen, not heard (and sometimes not even seen). I think both of his parents were abusive-- his father more so than his mother, but certainly both of them, if only because I think it would be yet another nice contrast between him and Tony, whose mother wasn’t perfect but certainly tried harder and felt more for Tony than Howard did. I like to think Ty was kept on a very short leash at home; boundaries were predictable, there were no “glimmering moments” he could grasp onto in order to make him feel like there was ever a chance of having normal family dynamics, and he was too afraid to really... do anything about it.

In contrast, I think Boarding School Ty was probably a lot pushier, a lot more risk-taking, and generally just... took up more space. I think he was still pretty fearful of authority and nervous about punishment, but he was well aware of the fact that this was distinctly different from being at home and that most people at school didn’t give a flying fuck about him. It likely could have been both liberating and anxiety inducing for someone so used to being around people who found it important to control him. I think he was probably pretty manipulative at this point, but I don’t think it was at the point where you would point to him and go, “Oh, what a fucked up, toxic person!”, especially since he was, like... a little fucking dude. Like, a fucking young’un. But I think the seeds were sort of planted here, and given that he had no healthy relationships to model himself after, he worked off of the assumption that in order to have control as opposed to being controlled, he needed to 1) possess things, 2) protect them aggressively, and 3) make sure his authority wasn’t threatened.

Boarding School Tony (from what little we’ve seen of him, though we can imagine he was probably similar to pre-boarding school Tony for a while, just with more Issues now) was probably the opposite-- less willing to take up space and less willing to take risks. It’s not unimaginable to assume that he might have thought his (extremely) mild exploratory tendencies might have had something to do with the abandonment, and he very well could have adjusted accordingly; if him causing trouble for people was what pushed his parents to leave him, he would very simply not cause trouble. A lot of this is nabbed from Adult Tony tendencies, wherein pretty much everyone else is prioritized over himself and he’s practically incapable of finding himself worthy of anything at all.

It’s the classic “extrovert friend-adopts an introvert” trope, except... it’s a severely damaged child feeling gutsy enough to finally, finally take up space and find something to possess and control for his own for once... friend-adopting a severely damaged child who very likely feels like the best way to proceed in relationships is to very clearly identify boundaries, figure out what it is the other person wants from him, and try to adhere to those desires as much as he’s able.

Of course, canon portrays the relationship as a “friendly rivalry” that Ty takes much more seriously than Tony does. From what we’ve seen of Tony, though, Tony doesn’t actually want to be better than anyone. In fact, he tries his best to make it seem like the opposite. He treats everyone like they’re on the same level, he tries to simplify the concepts he’s explaining so no one feels inferior to him, and, generally, he just... isn’t much of a braggart. That isn’t to say competitive/proud people can’t be kind and gentle and want to level the playing field often, but in Tony’s case, it seems that competition is best for two things: 1) having two intelligent, capable people trying to outdo each other and, in the process, creating better and better technology for the betterment of society at large, and 2) lighthearted fun.

For Ty, it very clearly wasn’t just lighthearted fun, and I think most of their childhood rivalry would have become formulaic at a point: Tony would put a good amount of effort into their competitions, but if it seemed that Ty was lagging behind too much, Tony would simply back off and let things even out. I don’t think Ty was predictably a sore loser; in fact, I think he was unpredictable, and I think a part of Tony that had only known life to be unpredictable found some level of sick comfort in that.

For Tiberius Stone specifically, I tend to read more into the unintended consequences/implications of his character based on one-off lines that... weren’t really intended to say much. The story canon gives us isn’t incohesive, exactly! It’s a pretty good story, especially if you’re not hellbent on analyzing character motivations. There’s just a lot about Ty that doesn’t seem very stable. Obviously, he’s not a stable person, given that he, uh, freaked the fuck out and tried to take over the world. But when I say Ty doesn’t seem very stable, I mean his character doesn’t seem the most stable at a second glance; we’re given conflicting accounts about his motivations, his intentions, his past, and even what he’s trying to do in the moment. And some of these inconsistences can be found in dialogue from Ty’s own mouth.

Now, if you read into it from a point of view that’s canon-adjacent as opposed to canon-compliant (i.e., assuming there’s much more of a story there than canon offers, and canon’s “case closed!” for the timeline of Ty’s life isn’t actually a closed case), you can gauge not only some level of dysregulation, but also... a level of delusion, almost. Ty seems disconnected from reality, but it’s not like there’s one single alternate timeline of events that’s cohesive in his head. It feels like his view of the world and, most importantly, himself (and this is excluding dialogue wherein he’s explicitly lying to Tony in order to manipulate him).

Most notably, we can kind of gauge fluctuations in his own views of his self worth. He engages in constant competition with Tony, he refuses to come back to America after leaving until he’s more successful than Tony, and pretty much everything he does is to prove he’s better than Tony. So, he thinks he’s better than Tony, right?

Well, not really. Because so much of his life was spent with the understanding that he wasn’t better than Tony. That was the whole reason he was gone for so long. He said he’d come back once he’d beat Tony, and... he still hadn’t beaten Tony. The beginning of the narrative leads you to assume that he thinks his big victory was being richer somehow, but it was all a set-up to bait Tony into Dreamvision. He comes across like he wants to kill Tony at first, and when that doesn’t work, he wants to... keep Tony. Like a pet, almost. But he also wants Tony to... kill him?

It’s a lot. It’s messy. It’s inconsistent. And that’s kind of what’s interesting about it. It (unintentionally, probably) suggests that Ty doesn’t have consistent motivations, which is something you do see often in people who are in survival mode in environments that don’t necessarily warrant it. It suggests a psychological wound that’s easy to poke at.

Essentially, Ty just comes across as very... hurt. Which, y’know, doesn’t justify shit and doesn’t make him any better of a person, but it provides the opportunity for some interesting narratives to sprout. Figuring out all the ways that Tony could unintentionally pick at this psychological wound of his and all the ways Ty could poorly respond is neat, I think, and I feel like these kinds of narratives tend to be very... raw, I guess, is the word I’m looking for. They just kind of hit hard, especially for those who have experienced similar situations.

It’s just something that’s terribly common in abusive relationships-- any implication that the traumatized abuser is doing something wrong can be a trigger for a borderline nervous breakdown, which makes communication practically impossible and, if the victim of the abuse feels obligated to stick around or take on the role of caretaker, turns the relationship into a cycle of insecurity and misery on all fronts. That’s not to say the abuser and the victim are suffering equally or are equally justified/valid, but it is a kind of relationship dynamic that can be incredibly cathartic to both write and read, and it’s also just... I don’t know. It just, as the kids say, hits different.

So, rewinding about four paragraphs there (whoops, this is getting long), I think most of my feelings about youth/relationship days Ty/Tony kind of center around this concept of two suffering people handling their trauma in totally opposite ways. I think it’s especially interesting to look at it from the point of view of them as younger adults (or teenagers, or children) who aren’t so set in their ways quite yet. You see these redemptive qualities and you see these children and these teenagers who are so, so ready to be helped and saved and cared for, but with the knowledge that they just... don’t get that. Not for a long time, at least.

It can feel fatalistic from a narrative standpoint, and... I mean, it kind of is. There are very few circumstances under which I could see Ty getting a redemption arc of any kind, and that’s kind of what makes a younger Ty so tragic. Everything he does is born of insecurity and anger, and everything Tony does is born of insecurity and love.

I think (for a short period of time, at least), they molded each other. Ty’s anger and competitiveness only solidified Tony’s inferiority complex and Tony’s inability to really, genuinely stand up against Ty in a way that would make any lasting meaningful changes only cemented the idea in Ty’s head that this was an acceptable way to be.

Now that that’s out of the way, here are some more simple and concise headcanons, because you asked for them and I’m sorry this became so terribly long and broke off in so many different directions:

- I think Tony and Ty bickered a lot as they got older. I don’t think Tony was totally incapable of standing up for himself, but I do think Tony probably had a tendency to call Ty out in the moment, and when Ty became too agitated and too unreasonable, Tony just left it alone and let it settle. 

- I think Ty can play house extremely well. He probably remembers all of Tony’s favorite foods, favorite songs, favorite fabrics, favorite... I don’t know what other favorite things you could have, but you get my point. I don’t think he always used this information, but I think it would be incredibly important for him to know how to make someone feel loved, even if he didn’t always employ these methods (and in some cases, may have actively withheld certain kindnesses as acts of pettiness). I think it was also incredibly important for him to know Tony’s dislikes, for... obvious reasons.

- As I said before, I think Ty had a tendency to become terribly dysregulated; I think he was more than capable of both premeditated manipulation and unintentional manipulation. I think he very likely could have fallen into a spiral of thoughts that could make it pretty clear just how easily his self worth and his view of Tony’s worth fluctuated. 

- Tony’s just... a stronger person than Ty. That’s a given. That’s been proven. And I think a lot of Tony’s willingness to put up with Ty would have come from this idea that he was more resilient and Ty was more fragile and volatile, so if Ty needed to take shit out on him every so often, that was fair enough.

- Another factor that may have played into Tony’s tolerance of Ty’s behavior in their youth (which, again, wasn’t nearly as awful as what Ty did as a grown ass man, given how Tony responded to Ty post-Dreamvision and how he pretty much immediately broke things off-- though, I very much enjoy the concept of Tony making some effort to make amends and Ty failing to meet him in the middle yet again) could have been the fact that it feels like Ty probably didn’t have a lot of other friends at all, especially not close friends. I think Tony would very much carry the weight of this “Maybe I’m the only person in the world who loves him” mindset. He values human life quite a bit, and I believe that even on a less intimate scale, if Tony tried to view the situation through the perspective of an outsider, he would still feel terribly, terribly saddened by the very human tragedy of being forced to take more than you can reasonably handle and becoming difficult to redeem as a result of this-- not because there’s no good left in you, but because you’re so frightened by the idea of even touching the trauma that you can’t force yourself to acknowledge you have a problem to begin with.

- I don’t think Ty feels the same comfort and warmth from physical contact that most people do, not because of anything innate (i.e. a natural preference), but because the only physical contact he received for a long, long time was, uh... Awful! That being said, I think he enjoys physical contact on the basis of being the center of attention, and he probably initiated physical contact quite a bit. I think Tony’s very big on physical contact, and Ty would very much play into Tony’s preferences here, too. Just to make himself seem like a better, more attentive boyf.

- This one is less tragic-- I think Ty and Tony get pretentious together! While I adore in-canon comparisons between Tony and the rest of high society, I also think a long-forgotten part of Tony’s character in fanon is the fact that he really does fit in with a more yacht-having crowd just as much as he fits in with your average Joes. He was raised by them and with them, after all, and his education was shaped by this. Of course he doesn’t love a lot of the culture around it, but with regards to the more harmless aspects of being a privileged kid in the environment he was in (the experiences one might have that aren’t inherently negative, that is, like having certain extracurriculars or being exposed to certain educational content), I think Ty and Tony really mesh here. Tony’s sense of humor with Ty would be totally different from his sense of humor with someone like Steve, which would also be totally different from his sense of humor with someone like Rumiko. Tony’s incredibly well-rounded, and I think he could match Ty’s Classics-loving, borderline classical theater kid tendencies very well.

- This one is 100% headcanon, based on virtually nothing other than, like, one comic panel... that isn’t even awesome evidence. It’s just a personal hc. I think Ty’s gay. Like, obviously, he’s gay for Tony, w/e. But I think Ty’s gay as in, Ty is exclusively attracted to men. The only women he ever had eyes for (or showed interest in) were the women that Tony had shown interest in/dated first, implying that there’s more of a possessive/competitive aspect than anything really... genuine. Of course, that doesn’t mean he can’t be bi, pan, or anything else (or straight, obviously, but this whole post is about him and a guy he likes to fuck, so that doesn’t really fit into the theme, here), but I prefer to write him as someone who’s only really interested in men (Tony specifically), and I prefer to write Tony as a bisexual man with a preference for women. This wasn’t really intended to be a big contrast between them; I had the headcanon for Tony already set in stone (haha), and for a long while I wrote Ty as a bi man, but recently I’ve kind of shifted things around to better accommodate my feelings about these characters.

- I love, love, love tattooed Ty. Get this man a quote in Latin on the base of his neck. Get this man some symbolic tattoos. Let this man be a poet who simultaneously wants to appear profound for appearances and wants to have these symbols on his body just because he likes them, and he likes to look at them, and they feel reflective of who he is. I have very specific Ty tattoo thoughts that I do not remember at all, but this is the gist of it.

- I think Ty handles the “normal” adventurous stuff, but he’s far more of a, uh... I don’t know, a pussy? than Tony is. Tony deals with actual threats; Ty deals with fake, stupid threats. Ty is the guy who rids the dorms of cockroaches when Tony’s too afraid to and Tony is the guy who handles home invasions.

- I think the vast majority of Ty’s abuse is emotional/psychological, not only because this is what comes most naturally to him and it’s easy for him to fall into these manipulative tendencies without necessarily thinking about it, but also because physical abuse would cross a line for him in his head that would be very difficult to ignore. I think, if you take into consideration how volatile he seems, his flip-flopping back and forth between how he feels about both himself and Tony could become more exaggerated and more severe, possibly leading to an irreversible breakdown of his psyche. I think there could very well be an, “Oh, I’ve become my father” moment if that were to happen, which is exactly why it doesn’t happen. Ty’s too wrapped up in this idea that, so long as he doesn’t cross that line, everything he does can still be justified. Which is garbage.

- Tiberius did not like Sunset Bain. Sunset Bain did not like Tiberius. 

There’s a lot more that comes to mind, but this is already upwards of 30 paragraphs, and I, uh. Do not want to make this longer than it already is! So, do with that what you will.

Again, obligatory note here that this is canon-adjacent and canon-inspired, but not an analysis of canon material in the sense that I’m attempting to pick apart what the intents of the writers were. What canon provides is much more straightforward. These are headcanons, this is for funsies, and a lot of less important background details have been tweaked for the sake of the narratives that I, as a fanfic writer, would like to write and see written.

Thank you so much for the ask! This was legitimately so nice to write. I rarely ever get to spam about this, which is very likely why there’s just so much text every time I receive an ask like this, but. Again, it was very nice and I’m very grateful for you, anon.

[roxannepolice]

But yah rey as a character is just so frustrating you know? Cause like, yeah sure she could be complex with a powerful arc where shes forced to come to terms with the fact she wasted years of her life on self-imposed delusions in a cathartic way, or she could be a flat piece of marketing cardboard which Disney is banking on vagina+superpowers=profit without having to go through that persnicty character flaw overcoming or the like. Because like you said, hearing shes a nobody (which ngl, her assuming she was a somebody wasn’t really ever supported in tfa, just that her family was coming back and she desperately wanted them to) is apparently the worst thing but it changes absolutely nothing, not her approach, not her demeanor , if vaguely sad is the absolute worse a character is gonna experience in a goddamn space opera then yeah, full offense ill take the l on Mary sue discourse but her character will definitely be a boring ass wash. We all make fun of whiny new hope Luke but him being a kinda nuisance to both the audience and those around him is what made is transformation into full blown Jedi knight so powerful. With Rey so far what weve got is badass perfect cinnamon roll finally get her due as such, which is clearly working for some people, but I fail to see how that isn’t spectacularly tone deaf to make a protag in this genre such. Operas about drama, not patting you on the back. Rey (assuming she remains as is) would’ve been fine as a protag s the only piece of Star Wars media we ever got was a new hope. But rn she a chosen one architype (and I know that bunch of ppl are gonna go but the series ‘but shes not the chosen one, Anakin still is, the new series isn’t trying to make her one!’ but lets not beat around the burning bush, if u got a character that walks on water and the reason why is because god said so, ur dealing with a chosen one trope and if a character is star wars is made ultrapowerful in lore breaking ways because force said so? Yeah were dealing with a chosen one.) when we had both the deconstruction and the reconstruction done. Shes a straight hero when the success of the ot rest on hitting the formula near perfect the first time. What exactly is Rey, the individual character, bringing to the table? What makes her story supposedly so important the a perfectly good ending had to be made invalid to tell it? A bunch of ppl will say heroines’ journey! But if that’s the case I gotta say, wheres all the feminine shit? Im serious, if the heroines journey is reintegrating the feminine and realizing ‘oh shit mom had a point’ there where is both the feminine skills/coping mechanism and the mom? I mean I saw some ppl arguing for leia in a ‘reys Persephone!’ meta (she isn’t, you can make a much better case for ben himself as Persephone to be quite frank, yall are focusing so much on the trees ((girl gets abducted by guy)) that u forgot the forest existed, the actually story ((girl winds up queen on the underworld, well gee whiz which character just took control of that after leaving the world of living and a grieving divine mother behind, it’s a mystery apparently) behind, it’s a mystery apparently) ((but seriously though even if we hope for dark rey does anyone assume its gonna be taking control of a dark/dead coded org at least partially at this point, do you, do you really??). but given the fact she had what, one line of screen dialogue that’s breaking ur arm with that stretch. As far as skills go I guess you could make an argument for scavenging, but if that’s the case dlf did a shit job of conveying that as female-coded. Everything about rey in tfa seems deliberately androgynous, and yeah, she had her hair let down/mascara moment, but that’s tied to her ‘failure’ on the supremacy thus something nw.SPEAKIGN OF FAILURES ON THE SUPERAMCY AND LACK THERE OF. I find it kind funny that bunch of reylo bnfs (you know who they are) are all ‘hur dur fanboys/antis are dumb and don’t get story structure.’ And then going, ‘why are yall asking how/assuming rey fucked up in throne room/climax of her story in the second portion/darkest point of her character arc? Why do you hate women/ur own ovaries so much?’ because it like walking into a prefurnished house and being told by the relator ‘HERES THE LIVING ROOM’ and having no damn couch. It’s a living room, I expect a couch here. And in a movie where it’s the low point of a character arc and they drag puppet yoda out to tell me the movie is about failure, I expect a damn failure in whats clearly the climax of the characters arc for this movie. As it stands now there are three possibilities imo. 1st, rey had no failure, she is the pure badass maid o light ppl want and every inch the boring cardboard she is accused of by fanbros, remains static, and is relegated to an also ran to benlo taking the most compelling character trophy this trilogy in 10 yrs2nd possibility and the one im hoping for, failure speech wasn’t just thematic explanation but also foreshadowing, rey fucks up big and dramatic in a way that makes her manage to stand out as unique with both her contemporaries and her predecessors(last part, if its ever to much lemme know pls im sorry i just gotta get it out) 3rd and most likely possibility, rey isn’t the main character, benlo is and that’s why his failure both moral in the throne room and logistic on criat take center stage for the last third or so of the movie. Rey is merely a pov character to tell the dramatic villain protag story they wanted and have their very marketable unproblematic Disney heroine cake too.

Ok, so this discourse kinda died down by now, but thanks to that it’s possible to maybe have a calmer look at it I’m totally not trying to justify my late response.

Anyway, the good result is that quite recently my brother, who’s not overly taken with Rey - or the sequels in general, for that matter - said something which really stuck with me as a possible crux of the problem: 

She’s neither comical nor tragical. Just bland. 

This neither comical nor tragical really struck me. And the more I though about it, the more it was appearing to me that this qualm really applies to the sequels as a whole. The thing is that DLF are essentially telling a straightforward story that they’re trying to make captivatingly convoluted. And not just make, but keep this appearance over four years. And this is... a narrative teeth crasher. Like, when you’re honest about the endgame (in the context of the most structural meanings of comedy and tragedy), you can maintain a decorum, though you can also play with it, of course, whereas when you don’t want to be honest about the endgame, you end up mixing the styles somewhat messily. You can’t break or discuss with the rules without acknowledging them, so to speak. Because the originals were honest about the happy/hopeful endgame (the first episode is title A New Hope ffs), they could allow themselves deeply tragic moments like Larses’ deaths, Han getting frozen, destruction of Alderaan, etc. Because the prequels were open about being a tragedy, they could allow themselves lighthearted comic relief for the sake of lighthearted comic relief. 

The sequels... badly want us to consider the possibility of FO winning and Ben dying unredeemed while simultaneously insisting we root for those things not happening, while appearing conscious we’re definitely not buying the former and the latter only somewhat. And it’s tiresome. Dishonest. And indeed, bland. If the story is a tragedy it will be a bloodcurdlingly real one, if it’s a comedy it will be a borderline grotesque one. 

But yeah, returning to Rey, I guess as the main character she’s a lens which focuses the above problems. A very bitter tragedy of what her parents did t her prevents her from being comfortably comical whereas whoohooos I like thats and prancing like a husky on red bull over idols and visions because it’s for children so it must be hopeful prevents her from being intriguingly tragical. So I guess the intentioned effect was tragicomism but, from pov of an engaged casual fan that is my bro, it’s neither. 

As far as Rey’s heroine’s journey lacking some of the usual elements, I blame it on Disney being... a bit too ambitious, maybe. I think they tried to make a heroine’s journey that isn’t ostentaciously seeped in traditional feminine/masculine traits, maintains the structure without what could be called accidentals. On the one hand, I would point out that hero’s journey has pretty much desexualised itself over time, we are rather accustomed to “shero’s” journeys, but on the other... maybe Disney set out on a too novel a territory and may crack their teeth on it, alongside trying to out-Vader Vader at redemption. To elucidate, “toxic femininity” in which a heroine is supposed to find herself in the beginning of her journey, in Rey’s case is uprooted from any of our usual concepts of feminine-masculine social roles (it’s space, duh). My interpretation is that Rey’s version of toxic femininity kind of exists in contrast with Kylo Ben’s version of toxic masculinity - and since the apparent focus of the story is the attitude towards the past/parent figures, toxic femininity would mean her clutching onto the past. Which is why I predict that some act of IX will find Rey inebriated with apparent success in masculine world, meaning she’ll be the one rejecting the old gods this time - and I would point out that panel in Poe comic where she shows herself more sceptical towards idolisation of past don’t mind me, I’m just expressingmy trash dreams for a proper sith lady Rey.

Then again, Rian Johnson said she already found perfect balance between Luke’s clinginess and Kylo’s rejection of the past, so... idk, maybe I’m giving DLF too much credit again.

As for the Persephone thing, I guess the rub is that this reylo reading focuses less on the traditional reading of the myth (where Demeter is the actual main character and Kore is a Princess Peach MacGuffin) and more of an interpretation of it as one of the eldest (at least in Europe) versions of story depicting a transition of a girl into a woman, making Persephone more of a protagonist. 

Like, y’know, this Persephone (D. G. Rosetti, source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proserpine_(Rossetti_painting))

I’m no expert, but myths can lose their original meanings because of power relations (anyone still remember about Dionysus, the god associated with excessive drinking, going through a very Christ-like death and resurrection?) and I think it’s possible that this is the case with the story of Persephone becoming a pre-scientific explanation of seasons changing over the year. So teah, that’s how I always understood the Persephone theme regarding Rey.

But yes, I must agree that I’m confused about Disney’s handling of the mother figure, which... Look, SW became a legend of a modern myth because of how epically Lucas handled the hero dealing with his very explicit father. So yes, I don’t understand what exactly is their game with Rey Nobody from Nowhere in this regard. It’s one thing that they had a cool idea with giving her no lineage, another that parent figures are an essential element of archetypal journeys and from symbolic viewpoint the case of a female character the biological relationship is even more crucial than in male’s. And I swear to all the ewoks and porgs in the galaxy, I do hope Disney’s idea of Rey healing the mother/daughter divide isn’t through her healing the divide between Leia and Ben. Again, this isn’t the idealistic sphere. Just... no. 

Anyway, I still maintain hope (this whole meta blog is built on hope) that Rey will indeed turn out to have a proper personal mistake which will make her stand out in the saga. I do have to admit, though, that I find your last theory very likely. I mean, even when I read all the reylo metas going oh, Rey is going to have such an exciting arc in IX, she has so much to deal with though of course it’s not going to compromise her morally, it will be sooo exciting, I just... f*ck’s sake, what you’re describing isn’t a dramatic character only a dramatised role model. It’s great if that’s your thing, but don’t claim it is space opera-worthy, in operas people drown themselves because of cursed sailors, kill over a break up, decapitate over a bad dream and get dragged to hell over a dinner, not persuade their fallen lovers to change their ways, let alone patienly wait for them the understand the error of their ways (and if they do it’s doomed to end in someone dying).