Hi Cassie! I am such a fan of your books, they mean a lot to me and I’m currently rereading TMI and Tales from Shadowhunter academy. This is only like my hmmm 7th reread probably!
Anyways, my question is does Ty “regret” what he did, like does he understand he unbelievably messed up by trying to raise Livvy? Or will we see all this unfold in TLKoF?
In Qoaad, Thule!Livvy encourages Ty to let her go and he says that’s not his Livvy, his Livvy would want to be alive. Not that this should hold him back in a way, but I think I would be sick with guilt and grief if I changed my twin sister’s soul in some Limbo like that and had to face it every single day.
Thank you so much—and seven rereads is amazing!
I don't know if "regret" is the word for Ty in this situation. He absolutely understands that trying to raise Livvy had consequences he could never have predicted or controlled, and that Livvy is now caught in a state neither of them would have chosen. He has to live with the knowledge that his grief and desperation played a part in that. But.
But I don't think he regrets loving Livvy, or wanting with every part of himself for her not to be dead. Those feelings were never wrong. Ty was a grieving fifteen-year-old who had just lost his twin, and he convinced himself that if there was something he could do, then not doing it would be the real betrayal. He wasn't thinking clearly about what a future Livvy might become or what it would mean for her; he was thinking only that death was unbearable and perhaps, somehow, reversible.
His response to Thule Livvy reflects that. He can't accept her argument because, to him, accepting it would also mean accepting that Livvy truly wanted to leave him—and he simply isn't emotionally capable of believing that yet. "My Livvy would want to be alive" is partly something he believes and partly something he needs to believe. Think of Will's response to Tessa telling him she's engaged to Jem. "My Jem?" Just like "my Livvy," it's an expression of how much that other person is a part of you, how much they aren't supposed to be a source of pain and how could that happen? Even though of course neither Livvy nor Jem is at fault, the response is still disbelief. Not my person; that couldn't happen.
I also don't think guilt always produces a predictable response. Sometimes guilt makes people cling harder, because admitting the full extent of the mistake feels like losing the person all over again. In Ty's case, that's even stronger. He doesn't just have to let Livvy go in an ordinary way. He'd have to believe what he did was wrong — even if not morally wrong, the incorrect solution — and that keeping her around is wrong. And it's hard and complex for anyone to believe that kind of thing without believing they are at fault, and the idea of being at fault here is horrific. It might blow apart his entire sense of who he is as a person and a brother and a twin. "I love my sister and so I cannot hurt her" is a very normal human way of thinking. "I love my sister but I hurt her anyway" is much more complicated.
I guess I'm saying that Ty would be sick with guilt and grief if he accepted your premise — that Livvy is stuck in limbo, that maybe she doesn't have a place in a world where almost everyone who ever loved her believes now that she's dead and gone — but he hasn't. He's accepted a Livvy that goes everywhere with him as a ghost, that is cheerful, that seems happy, and he thinks, surely better this than death? And he spends 99% of his time with people who don't know she exists; there isn't someone else to weigh in. That's what changes in TWP, when suddenly there are Kit, Dru and even Ash to observe the situation from the outside, and that's why Ty's journey with Livvy to some extent restarts there so we can follow it to its conclusion. Whatever that may be!
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