I appreciate your earnestness! I appreciate your thoughtfulness!
No, you are not dense, the point I attempted to make at 3b simply unspooled further and faster than I intended.
What I should have said is that there are many popular interpretations of antiquity and myth that maintain a very narrow and nearly exclusively white vision of who have made meaningful contributions. These interpretations are as popular with ordinary people as they are with academia and white supremacist organizations (like Identity Evropa). With the consistent recapitulation of these narrow interpretations, marginalized people find themselves excluded from the discourse and cannot see themselves in antiquity and myth and are made distinctly uncomfortable in the spaces in which they are enjoyed. When people of color and queer people and disabled people and people of transgender experience are excluded from the discourse about the Past, they are also excluded from the story of the Past. Then the cycle perpetuates itself.
Maybe that makes more sense, maybe it really doesn't, but I am grateful that you were listening at all. I am also grateful to the Mino team for creating a story with room enough that we even got here.
Thank you.
. . . and I too mourn a meaningful arc for Rey. And for Finn.