I was encouraged to post this by a friend of mine (thanks
@Alivaril) so, I'll leave this here before I go have a lie down:
On Rhea
I designed Rhea from the very start to be a foil to Addy, in a separate way to how Jax-Ur was designed to be a foil to Addy. Where Jax-Ur and Addy largely differ is in personality and political opinion; Addy thinks humanity's greatest strength is their capacity for adaptation and creativity, and that stifling that through a rule imposed by her (or other shards, for that matter) would functionally nullify that. Jax-Ur, broadly speaking, thinks the opposite, viewing counter culture as toxic and parasitic, and desiring a unified (and stratified) power through which the machine of empires can get rolling.
Where Addy and Rhea diverge is, instead, in how they handle trauma.
The finale actually included a now-cut portion (due to it being... kind of inconsistent with how Addy can process other people's emotions, and also because it was
way too tell-the-reader-what-they-should-be-taking-away-from-this) which had Addy acknowledging the similarities between Rhea's trauma and her own, and pointing out how Rhea's biggest fear isn't for herself, or of Addy, or for her son or her nation or anything like that—it's that
everything she did would be in vain. That no matter the extent to which she went, everything she did, every atrocity she facilitated, every war she started and every hatred she's seeded would be for
nothing. Because... before this version of Rhea, there was one who ruled Daxam, and as much as she was also not a good person (I've repeatedly indicated in this story that robotics are more than advanced and cheap enough to fundamentally remove any incentive to use slaves, yet Daxamites still do) she was not... this. She was not a raging lunatic, she was not a woman overcome by fear and hate and all the rest.
Both Addy and Rhea changed from who they were to who they are now, in a sense, from a death: for Addy, it was Taylor's death, and for Rhea, it was the death of Daxam. There are other mirroring aspects, such as both of them being 'monarchy' in the abstract, both of them being the last of their kind, and so on.
Where they diverge has always been in the details, in how they manage the
fallout of that tragedy.
To be blunt, the reason why Addy is different from Rhea is that, for her, the worst thing to happen has already happened. Her worst fears have come and gone, and Addy was powerless to do
anything when they did. Addy has, in fact, a significant amount of trauma from being unable to stop Taylor's death, and you'll notice she struggles a lot with inactivity, which is an extension of that very same trauma.
But ultimately, it did happen. Taylor is dead, and all that's left is Addy.
And from that tragedy, Addy could learn there was a life to still live
after the fact. There was still a life to live after Taylor's death, there was still something
there for her. There was still happiness, hope, joy, new things to explore and new people to grow close to. There was also grief, and bitterness, yes, but... ultimately, she could learn that things move on, and while you are forever changed from tragedy, you can still heal from it all the same.
Rhea is a rejection of that idea, full force. In part because Daxam is still around, at least abstractly, or the
idea of Daxam, if nothing else. She refuses to let go of it, or let it be anything but what Daxam was before, which means she refuses to let her people be the refugees and exiles they are. I touched on this with Sonn-kal's part in the first interlude: nobody has been... really allowed to process Daxam's demise, because Rhea is of the opinion there
was no demise, or if there was, they were reborn from it. Daxam can be nothing but what Daxam used to be: an interstellar slave state which exists as a rejection of Krypton's attempt to modernize and become more progressive after their imperial era (an era everyone but the Daxamites look back on with various shades of horror, disgust, or shame).
And in her rejection, Rhea inflicts the same tragedy of her people onto others. There was a very intentional decision I made to have the Daxamites be
refugees. Because that's what they are. It's just that they refuse to consider themselves as such (because no Daxamite could fall so low), and... they are refugees who are producing endless amounts of more refugees, perpetuating a cycle, creating trauma and terror and all the things the cogs of an empire do. All because Rhea cannot accept the idea that Daxam, as a state, is gone, and that she has to move on and start dealing with the ashes thereof.
This is, in part, because I've written Rhea to have been, y'know, the kind of person to grow up in a slave-owning imperialist monarchy and rule over it. You don't... really get to be a good person in that situation, but the fact remains.
Addy, ultimately, learned to accept her grief and move on. She has moved to break the cycle of abuse perpetuated by her kind, something that was inflicted on her, much the same. She refuses to start it over again, she refuses to be what the worst parts of her history has, at times, made her into, and she has accepted many of the caveats that come with that.
Imagine for a moment if Addy could not let go of Taylor, if there was some scrap of her still remaining, and Addy had no positive reinforcement, no Kara, nothing. She was just alone, on this odd Earth with absurd physics, with this tiniest scrap of Taylor's mind left. Not enough to repair her,
never enough to repair her, but enough to poison her with hope. She might have learned to come to terms with the fact that the version of Taylor she knew was gone, but... I don't think she would have, in much the same way that Rhea cannot accept anything short of Daxam at its prime.
Imagine the atrocities Addy would casually commit to get Taylor back, even for the chance.
That is the cost of refusing to accept and move on from your trauma. That is the cost of carrying your grief with you. That is the cost of never quite resolving the fact that bad things happen and you need to learn to deal with it, rather than cling to
what was once before. It's... not easy, and I'm speaking from experience, it never is. But it's possible, and it's the way through which you can approach a healthier mindset when it comes to dealing with trauma and grief.
It's all, ultimately, that you can really do, too.
Because... can't you see it? Rhea's thing about never letting go of old Daxam, of being terrified that it would all be for nothing anyway? It would've never gone away. The things she's done to try to recapture Daxam's prime are things which have set her empire against an entire universe. Even had she succeeded here... there would always be a new threat, and while that's great to keep a fascist war machine running and spitting out recruits, it's not good for actually
coming to terms with the things that have happened to them. They would never let it go,
never.
I would like to make a separation here between a pining for a place you have been exiled from and what I'm speaking of, here. Yes, obviously, I am not saying groups which have been forced from their homelands should just get over it, but what I'm saying is that coping with loss, which is what the thrust of this entire conflict has been about, needs to actually
resolve the issues. It needs to be something you come to terms with, or else it will haunt you until your death. Generational trauma will still stalk you, as far as I can tell, but... you can't let it swallow you in the way Rhea has, and Rhea's situation is also quite different from these same groups who were forced from their native homelands. It's a complex discussion that I'm careful in managing, is what I'm trying to say.
Addy made peace with her demons. If, tomorrow, a single scrap of Taylor's mind was found in Addy's outflow trash bin, she would probably save it and cultivate it, but... she wouldn't try to make it into Taylor again. She would let it be what it was, let it exist as... yes, Taylor, but fundamentally changed by the rigours of trauma.
That is what I think is healthy, when it comes to coping with loss, exile, and grief.
And Rhea? She would have never accepted anything short of Daxam at its height.
It's okay to feel grief, to feel loss, and to feel all the things that come with exile and loss. It's how you handle it, and how you frame it, that matters most of all.
