Hi Cassie!! Sorry to bother you but I feel like Ty would be more likely to have panic attacks than Dru. I have evaluated the situation and Ty seems to have more trauma and anxiety than her. Adding onto that I’m hoping Kit and Ash don’t have too similar powers. I feel like Kit should be more powerful as Ash only as Ash didn’t get much powers especially since the king didn’t have the black volume the whole time he had Ash. I also think Kit she be more powerful than Magnus for reasons.
I've gotten a lot of emails about how Ty should be the one who has panic attacks, not Dru. Usually the idea is that he should have panic attacks because he has 'more trauma and anxiety' than Dru, specifically because of Livvy's death and Ty being "more close" to her.
The thing is, that isn't how characters work because it isn't how people work. “Amount of trauma” is not an objective measurable thing, and not everyone responds the same ways even to the same things happening to them.
Of course Ty and Dru have both experienced trauma. But it is not as if there is a certain "level of trauma", like "level 6" beyond which everyone has panic attacks, and Ty is a trauma 7 while Dru is only a trauma 5. None of that is how people work or panic disorders work or really how anything works. The question is a lot about, I think, an anxiety that somehow because Dru has panic attacks this means the narrative will consider Ty to have no trauma at all and be dandy about everything, and I can only say that that's not the case.
One thing I rarely see acknowledged in these letters is that Ty is not grieving Livvy currently. Everyone else in his family is, but he lives with her, she talks to him all the time, she's entirely present in his life. Yes, she is a ghost, but people can get by on a lot less than Ty has with Livvy. I think it's worth noting that what Ty is currently experiencing re: Livvy is not grief but denial.
At the end of the day, there are all sorts of ways of responding to trauma and grief. The acknowledgement that someone has been through trauma is not something they have to earn, nor are panic attacks a thing given to one character at the expense of another who has somehow deserved them more. What is important about how characters respond to loss and trauma is that it be consistent with the character and their growth, and that's something that can't be evaluated before a book is read. :)
As for Kit having the most powers of anyone, well, we will see. It's not really how power works in the Shadowhunter world. We don't spend a lot of time thinking about whether Clary or Magnus is more powerful because what they can do is so different, and what Kit and Ash can do is also very different. Also in evaluating who gets what power level I would say it's important to consider whether they will be friends or deadly enemies – which is something we don't yet know!
