#why does mercer get to be the director? he doesnt seem to DO anything. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

tripleskxawng · 11 days ago

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as someone who was briefly a woman of color in stem (im now a man of color in a pink collar job #thriving) i often wonderrrr if the avatar was empowering to alma in the workplace. when i was a stem fem my superiors didn't take me seriously when i met with them in person, and their treatment of me noticeably shifted when i started meeting with them through zoom during covid and was no longer physically a foot below them and when my asian features were somewhat obscured by a shitty webcam. also i have an anecdote from a friend whose racist family member was IN LOVE with netytiri until he realized she was portrayed by a black woman. when he realized she was zoe saldana under the blue cgi he reacted like he'd been catfished.

in a meta sense i think white guys see black woman characters very differently through the lens of a na'vi or avatar body and i wonder if that might extend in-universe.

obviously spending all her time in the avatar was an unhealthy way of coping with identity issues but i wonder if those identity issues had anything to do with how she was treated in the RDA as a black woman. plus we don't know how tall alma is because this is a video game but i think she's extremely 5 foot coded and regardless physically towering over men who metaphorically look down on you i think would probably be an ego boost.

i'd like to believe Human racism and sexism aren't as big of a problem by 2154 but if they werent ingrained into the fabric of the culture i think they wouldnt be doing any of that shit to pandora in the first place like i have no evidence but i imagine an antiracist culture probably would not genocide and colonize a species of indigenous-coded blue alien people. also the way mercer talks about the humanities reeks of scott yenorism

#i find it really odd that alma ends up in a position of Mothering (not that shes good at it) when shes the CO-FOUNDER of this program.#why does mercer get to be the director? he doesnt seem to DO anything.#but in companies like that white men coast on mediocrity #obviously by the time she's with the resistance shes fallen back on the mothering role i think because it makes her feel less guilty #but i wonder if in her earlier days at the rda she was less emotional and more ruthless #not that she isnt still ruthless she just hides it in a way that i dont think is totally deliberate #i think people are way kinder to grace than to alma which makes sense grace didnt ummm kidnap anyone or slaughter a bloodline #but at the same time i think grace's school was just as much a tool of colonization and assimilation that existed to further her research #not necessarily to enrich the children attending #and ironically i do wonder if she gets off the hook from people who would otherwise be critical because she's a white woman #NOT DEFENDING HER IM JUST THE COMPLICATED FEELINGS HAVER #obviously she was ruthless in action but i mean in personality #like i wonder if she was once more cutthroat and assertive #i definitely think she's a fawn rather than a fight/flight/freeze #but i think she had fight in her once #to clarify when i use the word empowerment i mean it in a way that isn't necessarily like. dignified empowerment #the type of empowerment you have to give yourself up for #through which you lose yourself. you might even say its umm... alienating :)

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