The thing that intrigues me so much about Tyler, that relates to me so much and that I love watching about him, is that he is the opposite of the golden boy, the one the parents love the least. He's the why him not me sibling, the one that is just different.
And listen, Tyler loves himself. He's not a lost hero brooding in the wilderness. But fuck if he's not exactly found either.
Like, throughout ADF he does some pretty horrible things - almpat all of them do - and he just goes on, without taking the time to obsorb it, because it's just so fast-paced and there's not even any time to. But in the time where Jay is on the run and he and Ma are on the run separately, there has been more time to sit down and think, at the very least right before bed.
I mean, what has he been telling himself? Damn, I shot Joyce...
Like it's not like he doesn't care, right. And he pf all people isn't gonna get all depressed over that. The thing about Tyler is that he must have been justifying to himself the stuff that he did. I was protecting Dale, I was protecting Ma, I was protecting Jay.
Even though Dale dies and Sharon leaves him, and he himself kicks Jay out, even though all of his family, the one he's been trying to protect his whole life rejects him symbolically (except maybe Dale and Pa), he'll do anything for every single one of them, and he'll justify it for them in his head.
And there's a certain mental journey that he needs to go through, to realise "you commit the crime, you do the time" (to realise that what he did was a legit crime and actually a terrible thing to do, not just on a legal standpoint). But also to realise that, fuck his pastlife and fuck his ghosts and demons, and fuck the voice at the back of his mind because none of athat even matters anymore! He needs to rose above who he was before and even the people around him before, and change that unhealthy mindset, that relationship he has with the idea of other people.
In his fugitive ending, I think that'll be harder, because he's actively avoiding the law, and then there's just the endless monochrome torture of jail would just be awaiting him. But I think that's interesting, because when I think of his jail ending, I think of thr unfair labour conditions, the monotony, and then just execution. And when I think of his fugitive ending, I think of the monochrome life where he's lost, doesn't know where he belongs what he should do with himself, and then what eventually comes for him? Death, of course.
The fugitive and jail endings aren't all that different. They both embody the same lost-soul sort of trope that ADF is just not going to bother helping Tyler with. And with the ending where he's just killed, honestly I don't even know why that exists. Maybe to show what happens when Tyler goes too far.
Anyway, as usual the answer seems to be something like therapy, just actually creating self-confidence, and then healthy relationships, thriving in the world eventually. Because Tyler's relationships in ADF were like... semi-toxic-ish. They weren't the best for either party. It might be possible for Tyler to eventually achieve this, it might not, but ADF left us off at a spot where that's the characters' destinies for all of eternity. (Untill they die.) Like, it legit seems like Tyler won't be able to initiate that getting help on his own, and he'll toil away forever and then just... die, and what for? Like he'll just live his life in relative agony, similar to the other characters' endings actually, other than Jay and Zoe.
Just another way ADF has failed us...
(Anyway bye, peeps, I gotta get some sleep.)