to build on your recent ask, and just to pick your brain a little (gross metaphor, I know), when you said:
"To me, the coins could never have been permanent, otherwise there's very little reason to have them exist. After all, if the parents can't be freed and/or come back, why not just kill them? It'd effect the story the same way... unless they come back."
I wonder, in your experience and education in literature, do you think it is feasible/would be an effective avenue of storytelling for the writers to use the (theoretical) inability to free the coined elves as a plot device to teach Rayla about moving on, and that she can't save everyone? she is portrayed as a very determined--and sometimes obsessive--character, and I can recall the writers bringing up her strong devotion to freeing the elves as something that should be questioned (though I do believe this will involve her allowing herself to let Callum/the others help). But, nevertheless, what are your thoughts?
The thing about Rayla is that her determination, and her wanting to save everyone isn't a Flaw, per se. If anything, it's the best thing about her, and the story points that out time and time again (1x03 with the boys, 1x05 with Bait, 1x09 with Zym, 2x07 with the dragon, 3x05 with Nyx): "You have true courage, and a big heart" / "It's because Rayla is a hero. Rayla's brave. She saves people. She does what's right [....] That's what makes her a hero. That's what makes her Rayla."
It's just not only a virtue, as like real people, most of TDP's cast's best qualities are also their worst ones, depending on the circumstance. Callum can also be obsessive with magic, after all (1x04, 2x01, 2x04, 4x02) but that doesn't mean him being a mage isn't his path, or not a Good path for him, particularly when it comes to primal magic. But his persistent, perpetually pushing nature also means he can be impulsive and bite off more than he can chew, unknowingly getting in over his head before it's too late. (Whereas Rayla tends to have a better cognition of her bad odds, but just less concern over them.) If Callum's 'bad path' is being a dark mage, Rayla's 'bad path' is being a loner assassin who takes everything on alone, y'know? Those paths are both from the same places, but there are always more options than the roles they've had enforced on them or have taken up because it feels like they don't have any other choice in war, even if they have/had good intentions regardless.
This also comes back to like, Rayla's relationship with letting go vs holding on. If anything, Rayla has a laser focus on moving on - "We have to keep moving" (1x09) / "Fine, one extra day. One" (2x01) / "Rayla, you're pushing us to move too fast" (3x02) / "I'm fine, Callum, like I already told you [...] We walk away and this never happened" (3x04) - that operates to her detriment, because it's usually when she's ignoring her own pain to prioritize the mission, or putting the mission above most things (other than the boys). If she doesn't linger on her pain/mistakes, she can pretend more easily that it doesn't exist (not "I don't want to talk right now" but "There's nothing to talk about," if you will). Illusions and erasure and all that - very Moonshadow
C: So, uh, yesterday must've been a hard day for you.
R: Not really.
We see this even when she comes back in S4 and her attempts to "get things back the way they were" and even her almost complete prioritization of how Callum feels, and very little regard to how she feels (outside of being nervous to see him, which 4x05 quickly reveals is the least of how she's been emotionally damaged).
And this, of course, is because Rayla is very bad, actually, at letting things go. She holds on mistakes, she repeats the same patterns of herself and others who loved but hurt her, and that's why all her self deprecation talk is very similar across the seasons
I messed up. I know I did. (1x02) / You should cut yourself a break. Everyone messes up sometimes, or in my case, all the times. [...] Right up until moment when it really matters. That's when I just, poof, mess it up... And the next thing I know, I've failed. / I dropped it. This is all my fault. I let you both down. I let the world down. (1x09) / I need my friend to trust me, and he doesn't. And I think it's my fault. (2x02 / But every time I tried, I would mess it up, and the next time it was harder, and-- (2x03) / I failed them. It was my fault we were discovered. (3x03) / It's me, and it's all my fault. I failed them. I let them all down. They were right to reject me. I'm not good enough and I never will be. (3x04) / Oh no, I messed up again! [...] This is all my fault. I left him alone. I shouldn't have-- (4x06)
Rayla is someone who is selfless to the point she doesn't know how/when to be selfish, which causes her to be selfish in ways that are extremely detrimental to herself and to the other people around her. In a lot of ways, her inability to move on is an inability to let go of her negative self perception of herself: she fears that failure for her is inevitable ("I'm sure it would've flopped when it was my turn"), she's so terrified of being alone yet continually isolates herself because that seems safer, and because of these negative perceptions, she unfairly punishes herself. For her own mistakes, and for others.
Harrow: I recognize that I may pay the price for our mistakes. / I won't hide in the body of another while someone else pays the price for my decisions. (1x02)
Rayla: It will just get tighter and tighter until I lose my hand. But I'm ready to pay that price. (1x06) / But if I die, I'll just be paying the price they should've paid a long time ago. (3x08)
Callum: But you didn't run. They have it all wrong.
Rayla: Does it matter? (3x03)
Claudia: We're not going to the dungeons, Soren! We didn't do anything wrong. (3x02)
So Rayla wanting to prioritize something over the mission that's not for the good of someone else (Callum, the dragon, Nyx, etc) but for something that she personally wants is a massive departure for her and gives her all sorts of room to grow. However, it remains to be seen if Rayla will view it like that. I could see her see saving her parents as a form of 'redemption' - even though she didn't fail them like, at all, but again: it's Rayla we're talking about. Turning it into a duty would be very on brand. "This is a journey for redemption" and all that, even if like... she doesn't Need to redeem herself.
There's layers there then, of her being 'selfish' (wanting something for herself, it being her family) and of being too 'selfless' again, semi similar to her choice to leave in TTM. Because Rayla's inability to let go is unable to be separated from the way she continually punishes/loathes herself; that's what she can't put down, the mistakes and failures she feels responsible for that she'll destroy herself to try and correct, to ensure she pays the price so that no one else has to. That's why she's obsessive about Viren (protection, punishment, self-martyrdom) and prepared to stay behind at the Storm Spire.
Her choices to save and protect Zym are a little different. She, like the princes, wants to make up for her parents' mistakes, yes, but it goes deeper than that - she truly believes that this is right and has the power to change the world for the better, to break the cycle rather than perpetuate it. To make a difference, not as a trauma response, but in the vein of healing.
TLDR; to summarize, I think Rayla's parents, particularly Runaan, have a great capacity to help her unlearn the harmful patterns they've passed down, whether because she's grown beyond them and can help her parents do the same, or in seeing their behaviour and correcting hers, or in having them realize how they messed her up, and saving her right back.
None of this really touches on how TDP's hero side is staunchly big on protecting the value of the individual, and their right to exist/thrive without prejudice/expectation, by laying yourself down (as opposed to offering up others' lives), but I think that's absolutely a component as well. TDP's hopepunk theme - Breaking the cycle, working towards harm reduction, reconciling rather than reinforcing binaries - are all in favour of saying "you can't save everyone, but you should still always Try" (hi Ezran in 3x04) and I don't think they'd toss that out, either. In a world with magic, they could've taken the concept of the Moon Nexus and Rayla wanting to see them again for the same end (which, in TTM, Rayla doesn't think she can save her parents per se - she just wants to know if they're actually dead or not), but uh. They didn't so yeah, particularly because Runaan living means all sorts of messy feelings for Callum and happy gay reunion elves, them living absolutely holds the most merit for the narrative, tbh
