Look, here's the thing that makes talking about the Force in SW so frustrating and why there is never going to be a consensus: People think there are some bedrock, hard rules of the Force that have been established in clear defined terms and they cannot be changed.
What we actually know, for sure, about how the force works is pretty vague and sketchy because the force is both based on and deliberately described as this esoteric, numinous concept. It's supposed to be like trying to describe Nirvana or Enlightenment. It's like being asked to define "justice" or "evil" or "love". These things (metaphysically, anyway) exist and you can talk about these things and you can decide to point to some things that are definitely not it, but you can't write them up in defined terms that account for all instances and even if you could those defined terms wouldn't be applicable to everyone because they're subjective. The force is a sort of meta concept that has been made into a sort of law of physics in the SW universe, but by it's very nature, you can't actually say what it directly is.
That's why whenever it's talked about, it's talked about in these mystic ways. It's an energy, but it also has a will. You control it, but it controls you. It's all around, everywhere, around you, through you, within you. It's life and it's death and it's everything inbetween.
But people don't think that. They think if you get a certain amount of training, well then, obviously you will be will reliably and ably always be able to do use it in the way you were trained to do so. People think it's a physical tool, a calculator, where if you put in a certain equation then the same answer will come out, regardless of anything else. And more than that, they think they've mastered this tool and understand it's inner workings.
The audience does not understand the force. Not you, not me, not anyone, because the force is meant to be ineffable. It's not meant to be understood. Only felt and intuitioned and connected with.
And if you really want to talk about it in definite terms, it's important to understand that it's also a storytelling mechanic. It's based on real life esoteric asian religious beliefs like Wu Wei and Tao, but even if those things exist on some level in real life, the force does not. As such, it being a storytelling device by nature means that the nature of hte force changes with it's writer. It can honestly be anything, which is why it's midiclorians in the PT and light and dark in the OT and Life and Death in the NT. It depends on what the writer wants it to be. This is obstensively true of all narrative elements, but especially true of elements that are intentionally ineffable like the Force.
So in regards to things like Rey turning the tables on Kylo Ren, if you really aren't satisfied with that scene, that's your take and you can have it. However, it's simply wrong to frame the reason for it as it violating how the force is meant to work. True, Rey learning how to use the force while being attacked by it is the first time we see a force user learn how to use the force under such conditions, unlike Luke who had to be instructed for his learning. However, nothing says that it's impossible for someone to learn the force this way, and you can clearly see the narrative structure of how the scene plays out:
Kylo Ren takes off his helmet for the first time, visually showing him letting down his guard because he doesn't perceive a tied up Rey as a threat. He takes his time and toys with her mind. Rey is adament in resisting, pushing back against him however she can, which she is successful in doing so as Kylo Ren cannot get to the information he wants. So he pushes harder, still not seeing her as a threat, but Rey begins to push back and she intuitively starts to feel the cracks. The same way he picked at her insecurities, she can now feel his, and she knows that he wants to and cannot be as strong as Darth Vader. She eventually wins out, which makes sense as Kylo Ren has a far more fragile psyche than she is. We know this because we saw before how he lost his shit whenever something didn't go his way, and it just happened again. Rey put up a greater challenge than he expected and once she got a dig at him in (only one, compared to the numerous digs he got on her), he backed off, showing that for all his bravado and potential force power, he is simply not stable enough to take her on a mental level, atleast not if he's not gonna take her seriously.
Whether you like it or not, the narrative structure of how the scene plays out is sound. Rey sees, learns, and fights. Kylo lets his guard down, gets an unexpected mental blow from it, is shaken and backs off. The force works in terms of emotion and mental framework, which is how it plays out here. We, as the audience, therefore learn more about Kylo Ren's character and the status of Rey. And if you really want to criticize this scene, it's reasonable to do so by construing how it could have told the story it was trying to tell more effectively.
However, most criticism seems to boil down to "The force isn't working how I know it's supposed to" which is a criticism that simply cannot work because no one actually knows how the force works because it's a storytelling device, not a real observable phenomenon you can scientifically observe.
