I’m having trouble writing this chapter with the idea that Rey’s parents were bad people. The problem is that I would have to heavily rely on the idea that her father has PTSD from Exegol. But obviously we don’t know that he was a clone experiment at this point in the novel, so there isn’t anything except spite towards Palpatine there that could explain why they don’t give up her location in the flashback. Thing is, that’s coming just after another flashback which demonstrates how inherently selfish people they are, so I don’t think spite is a good enough reason. They clearly only care about their own lives.

If anybody has any ideas to fix this, I’d definitely tinker with it some more. But I had other ideas regarding good parents that I’d like to try in the meantime (like that perhaps they actually paid Unkar to watch her, and that they only purchased drinks to cope with losing her).

I do believe her parents being good people has its fair share of issues. Not only does it really mess with Rey’s arc where she wants to prove herself because of her “abandonment”, but it’s also kinda stupid that her parents give her to Plutt of all people. I suppose the whole “proving herself” side of things could just swap from it being because of abandonment to being a Palpatine, but idk.

Sorry for the rant.