ichthyosaur

This game is giving me a really weird experience, because it’s like… the story is meh until it is not. I’m mostly having a normal time, until I very abruptly am not.

The first round was during the Zeswa clan storyline, when you get into the Lodge. For those who haven’t played or haven’t gotten this far yet, while exploring the Upper Plains and talking with the Zeswa, you learn that the RDA has been poaching animals, hunting and trapping them en masse to ship them or their body parts back to Earth to sell for big bucks, because the people back on Earth will pay massive amounts of money to be able to show off anything Pandoran - often taking whole carcasses, but sometimes just stripping the pieces they can sell and leave the rest to rot. There’s a log from an interrogation wherein they captured a Zeswa and tortured them to try and get them to reveal the location of the graveyard of the zakru, the enormous animals the Zeswa live in symbiosis with, so they can steal the bones and tusks. And when you get into the Lodge, the center of Harding’s poaching operation, there are stuffed animals and animal parts on display as trophies.

I cannot express properly the rage that filled my chest and my throat when I saw that. The outlying camps, with their slaughtered fa’li and aywinzaw in piles, were bad enough. But the Lodge itself, the heads and bodies and bones put on display, animals that were not killed for food or population culls but simply because they could - my throat fills with fire even thinking back on it now. This is not Eywa’s way. This is deeply, deeply wrong.

All right. That’s fine. That’s fine. I can be normal about this. This is a deeper anger than I have gotten out of most media, but it’s fine.

And then there was the second round, during the Kame’tire clan storyline. And let me just say, hoo boy the story very suddenly picks up during the Kame’tire section. There is a segment where you find the place where you and other Sarentu children were held and processed before you were taken to the school the game initially picks up in, where you see what was left behind - cages and shackles the Sarentu were held in, Sarentu toys and clothes and ornaments that were stripped from the children, disinfectant and stark communal showers that were used to strip even their clan’s scent from them. The place is abandoned and empty and hollow, and I… I had to actually take a step back and take a break from it for a minute partway through because I was getting overwhelmed and starting to want to cry, even despite being on call with friends and having them chattering about something unrelated and cheerful in my ear. I felt trapped and frightened and horrified and haunted by memories. And I - look. I am a person that feels a lot with regards to fictional media. I have often said that my emotions are too big for my little body, and fiction is my safe place to feel at 100% capacity where it doesn’t actually have consequences. I am familiar with the emotional impacts fiction can have on me, and they can be big.

I had to actually stop and take a step back and walk away for a couple of minutes and get a snack and engage in an unrelated conversation for a bit to remind myself this was fiction and wasn’t actually happening. I have never had to do that.

And when I escaped that horrible, horrible place and escaped the yavä’ - I came across a Na’vi camp almost immediately and it was horribly jarring, seeing all these people just… living their lives. Talking amongst themselves. Sitting by the fire, sharing food and stories and music. I had to walk back out of the camp and call my ikran just to stroke her head and, in my head at least, hug her and comfort myself for a bit before I could go back in.

And then, after a bit to recover - normal game experience again. Normal level of investment. Normal level of emotional impact.

So… I still don’t think I am Sarentu (or Na’vi of any kind), although the specificity of what hit me that hard makes me pause to wonder for a moment, but hoo boy my alterhumanity related to this world is definitely impacting my emotional experience of this game periodically and it is a wild ride. I am not Na’vi, but being of Eywa, I can live in a Na’vi’s footprints completely enough, at least temporarily, to Know what it is to live this life and walk this path.

That’s the odd thing, about having a hearthome which is so integrally connected that the interconnection is part of the hearthome feelings - I am not Na’vi, but also I know what it is to be Na’vi. I am not ikran, but also I know what it is to be ikran. I am not - you get the idea. I am not, but also I kind of am.

What is it to be Na’vi?

It is connection - with Na’vi, with animals, with plants, with the world. A hundred threads, no, a thousand, between a thousand creatures, Like stars that spread across the night sky, Divided yet together, parts of one thing. It is to know that you belong, No matter what happens, no matter where you go.

It is survival, in a world beautiful and cruel. Pandora gives us all we need to live, But also gives these things to all her children. Sometimes you are the gift to another creature. The Great Mother does not do favors for one child more than another. Her children survive by their own strength and intelligence. As we live in Eywa, so we die in Eywa. To remove her teeth and claws would be to destroy her.

It is to live together with all creatures. To bond and to See, To commune with Eywa and with the world. Never take more than you need. Respect all creatures as your siblings.

It is grace and strength, running and leaping, Blue skin, eight fingers, Ears and tail in order to speak, Bioluminescence to glow like the world, Kuru to See it.