if I flail enough...

How I feel about this character:
KYRA COULD HAVE BEEN AMAZING. Kyra is amazing. She’s, okay, I’ll be among the first to admit: I did not always like Kyra. I still don’t always like her, as an extension of Jack, that is. I like Kyra as a character. I can see her progression, and yes, it’s a bit done, it’s kinda predictable, it’s not where you’d think Jack would go to.

However. I have hella respect for Kyra, and by that I mean for the DIRECTOR’S CUT version of Kyra. Hell, that just improves the entire movie, so that’s hardly a surprise.

But Kyra is, she’s angry, she’s looking for answers, she’s looking for this guy that she kinda attached to, who dumped her off with a man who didn’t really wanted her, who then went on to start his own family, a family that probably wanted VERY little to do with the wild child from the Iman’s past, with her serious baggage that started way before she ever met Riddick. Riddick is home, the only thing that she thinks MIGHT still make sense, because Fry made sense too, and Fry cared, and if Fry had survived, instead of Riddick or as well as Riddick, we’d be looking at a different person, Kyra wouldn’t be this Kyra, maybe wouldn’t be Kyra at all, might be Jack or someone else all over again.

But Jack goes looking for Riddick, ‘cause she’s still just a kid inside, a kid who’s killed, and who’s run away at least once already, and she’s seen a lot of death, so she thinks she can handle it, but she can’t, and the things that happen between Pitch Black and CoR, the canon there, that’s tough-ass shit, and so she puts Jack away, ‘cause Jack can’t handle it, turns into Kyra, ‘cause she’s gotta learn a new way to deal with a new body, basically, and the things that have happened to her body, and the real threats and what’s she gonna do? And Kyra is in every way a decision not to hide. Jack was hiding, she admitted that herself. If she disguised herself as a boy, maybe she’d be safe, but when she was older that didn’t work, so Kyra is a new way to be strong.

And Kyra is smart. Not book-smart, not very taught, but she’s smart and has good enough instincts. She challenges Riddick ‘cause she’s angry, but she doesn’t get pissed when Riddick basically saves her ass, ‘cause she’s not stupid prideful, and she knows when to take orders and when to take initiative, she can fight well, she WANTS to survive, it shows over and over again, it’s just that she has a lot of anger too, and that’s anger that’s justified.

No, Kyra’s not what I’d think of Jack turning into, but I think that’s okay, and I think that Kyra’s strong, just struggling with the cards she was dealt.

All the people I ship romantically with this character
Commander Toal. But only in AUs where she lives, only with lots of work, and only because I happen to know this guy who has developed a really cool, good Toal that Kyra likes. Otherwise, no romantic ‘ships for this girl. They’d only cause her trouble, and Riddick’s this weird dad/brother mash-up, not a romantic candidate.

My non-romantic OTP for this character
Riddick and Kyra. Fry and Kyra. Riddick-Fry-Kyra. They are the family that canon didn’t allow, and Riddick’s not a close-distance type when he’s flying solo. I also love her place in Crematoria, the way she potentially works within the structure, where she might fall in the hierarchy and what her relationship with the Guv might be. I’ve also seen some stuff where her and Vaako have tons of respect for each other, and could be friends, which I think is awesome. Riddick is the pivot point in all this, though, always. He shows up, everything changes.

My unpopular opinion about this character
I neither hate her nor think that she should be with Riddick. So there’s two opposing unpopular opinions.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.
Kyra surviving CoR, or Fry surviving Pitch Black. Fry surviving would have been beneficial to Jack/Kyra’s upbringing, I think, in a lot of the best ways possible. That would have been interesting. Kyra surviving CoR would have given her time to evolve further, in Necro society, which would have been interesting and given good counterpoint to Riddick’s evolution at the same time.