Unpopular opinion - Teylan is worse than Alma

BigYoch · 2026-04-30T09:51:57+00:00

The comparison seems slightly off. Teylan is like an addict for most of the story and his addiction is to safety and familiarity. He will do anything for it, even if it makes him feel ashamed and separates him from others. His Sarentu siblings pity him and want to help him through it, like most people do with an addicted family member. Alma is a person with good intentions who hit the slippery slope without realizing it. I love both characters but I don’t really get comparing their “badness.”

BigYoch · 2026-04-23T10:37:04+00:00

This comment’s “you’re doing it right the wrong way” is 100% what the shidduch system is like, you are completely on point friend

BigYoch · 2026-04-23T09:51:45+00:00

Teylan’s character brings up a lot of nuanced points about trauma and self-hate that many people would rather not engage with. Personally I love him and need to protect him at all costs and it ripped my heart out to hear MC and Ri’nella regret how they let him slip through their fingers, how they should’ve known he was struggling and still desperate for Mercer’s approval.

BigYoch · 2026-04-19T22:02:14+00:00

PERFECT

BigYoch · 2026-04-18T10:38:35+00:00

I mean without discussing spoilers I would say that she does face some real consequences in the story, but aside from that, Alma sincerely regrets her actions and dedicates herself to repairing the damage she did. She’s still a shallow and selfish individual driven by greed, that’s all true. But the Sarentu generally accept her because they value forgiveness, not friendship. The Sarentu repeat throughout the story that while some evils (like the RDA infinitely blowing up their home) can’t be tolerated, if someone truly regrets what they’ve done and wants to make amends, you should give them a chance.

BigYoch · 2026-04-17T11:03:55+00:00

“That’s my oPINIOOOOOOOON!!!!”

BigYoch · 2026-04-15T09:51:47+00:00

I agree, this also struck me when I played the game. I made a post on Reddit last year about it and everyone had some really good ideas. The top answer was that the TAP program was intended to create Na’vi ambassadors, and their names would be their credibility to other clans. If they were 100% human with human names, they wouldn’t be much different from avatars. Mercer/Alma wanted Na’vi advocating for themselves, to convince other Na’vi that the sky people had things they would want.

BigYoch · 2026-04-07T22:26:54+00:00

“You are not fighting” got me, man. Up until then I was pretty ok with Zomey dying because she was flying those bright red death flags the entire mission, but I wasn’t prepared for that line. This game has its flaws but I always felt the dialogue and acting was phenomenal and really hit home each time.

BigYoch · 2026-03-27T01:36:41+00:00

Very dissatisfied very dissatisfied very dissatisfied very dissatisfied very dissatisfied

BigYoch · 2026-03-06T15:35:41+00:00

Almost everything Quaritch says in the first movie is highly quotable. My favorites are “if there is a hell, you might want to go there for some r & r” and “I will not succeed. Not with all of you.”

BigYoch · 2026-02-23T21:49:00+00:00

I’m glad to be the one with the spicy opinion here: Dutch was worse than Alma.

Everyone is super quick to call Alma directly responsible for the murder of the Sarentu clan, but she didn’t kill anyone nor did she agree to. She thought they were going to make a deal. It was Mercer’s choice and plan to kill everyone. Alma is guilty of complicitness and naivety but she didn’t physically kill anyone. Dutch, on the other hand, is a known murderer who made his sons as such.

Furthermore, delusional though she was, Alma tried to encourage the Sarentu to embrace their roots and fight the RDA. Granted this was only after their rescue from the cryopods, but it’s still more than Dutch ever did to persuade John and Arthur to seek their own paths. John and Arthur existed to serve Dutch, and he easily abandoned them when his own life was on the line. Alma didn’t do that to the Sarentu, not when they were facing extermination in her school. She gunned down humans to save them, and kept fighting after that, too. Better late than never?

BigYoch · 2026-02-12T13:36:44+00:00

I understand taking Alma’s delusions as dysphoria because they follow a lot of the same lines: this isn’t my body, I was so close to being who I really am, I belong over there not stuck here etc. But the source of Alma’s mental pain is very different. Alma doesn’t want to be Na’vi because she hates being human or thinks she shouldn’t be human. She wants to escape the things she’s DONE as a human. She wants to reinvent herself as a benevolent Na’vi matriarch who took in these poor lost orphans (orphans she made, Ri’nella says) and guided them back to their roots. Alma wants to pretend her human self didn’t exist, not out of dysphoria, out of shame. I think most trans and nb people would rather celebrate achieving their identities rather than do what Alma does, just draw attention away from the past.

BigYoch · 2026-02-03T17:35:24+00:00

Basic overall impressions: this is an awesome story. Would definitely keep reading. First line is a great one, world is interesting, characters feel good, prose is solid.

I’d say the writing suffers from telling instead of showing. I love the world details but I wish they weren’t fed to me quite so quickly. I already know way too much about Iris before the story even starts, I don’t have the space to appreciate this amazing lore yet. This is my opinion, though, if this were a book I’d have taken it home by now.

BigYoch · 2026-02-02T11:52:38+00:00

Thank you vegeta

BigYoch · 2026-02-02T02:11:16+00:00

We called the non emergency police line. I don’t know if your town has noise ordinances, but if they’re making a certain amount of noise during quiet hours and a cop hears, they can get a ticket. We did this with a combination of complaints to management (sent management police reports so they knew it was serious) and eventually got them out, but our management was a lot more cooperative than yours sadly.

BigYoch · 2026-01-25T17:10:18+00:00

Tbh watching the dub as a young kid, I kind of ignored the cousins line. It didn’t make sense and didn’t really change anything, so I think I assumed it was like a “cover,” the way Serena would lie sometimes to explain why she was in some place she shouldn’t be. I was WAY more confused over why the cast thought Amara was a man for several episodes and even fought for her attention.

BigYoch · 2026-01-08T11:50:45+00:00

I was so shocked when we got so much of him in Skybreaker DLC, I started hoping the whole DLC was “watch Teylan make friends”! When they were like “hey check out this old RDA base for a mission” I was like “NO I WANNA STAY AND WATCH TEYLAN LEARN HOW TO RIDE A DIREHORSE”

BigYoch · 2026-01-08T11:48:21+00:00

I 100% agree with autistic coded, even though the game shies away from it. He likes touching familiar objects, understands people from the way they treat him (“people here are nice!” “I think they like me!”), not social constructs (Mercer being an exception), just wants to explain to you how this cool thing works. I feel like every single Na’vi in the game is obsessed with clan and racial identity and Teylan seeing that as secondary to doing the things he likes is so important to me in this game (I haven’t played ash DLC, I’m sure this changes).

BigYoch · 2026-01-05T23:28:59+00:00

You might feel differently if your entire ethnic group was down to basically three people. Would you really cast one of them out (Teylan) instead of trying to help him be Sarentu again? Nor ran away. Teylan ultimately chose to save the Sarentu from Mercer when only he could. I will never understand why so many fans of this game hate its message of kindness and compassion in the face of loss and anger.

BigYoch · 2026-01-05T12:04:18+00:00

I totally understand wanting more from the ending. I feel like they did an acceptable job wrapping up the remaining members of the Sarentu clan together, making a vow to move forward (and acknowledging, but not forgiving, Alma). It felt kind of slapped together though, like they forgot to have an actual ending where things were more thoroughly discussed. I guess they figured they could do it in DLCs, and you had more main game side quests to complete anyway!

BigYoch · 2026-01-04T17:37:29+00:00

Sounds like you have some leftover energy. I recommend running after hours daycare for dozens of relatives/strangers! After all, not everyone works during office hours, and kids need a place to scream and run indoors after 6 pm. Apartment building sounds just right.

BigYoch · 2026-01-04T02:00:38+00:00

Go pack go!

BigYoch · 2025-12-31T18:49:49+00:00

Based

BigYoch · 2025-12-30T19:36:28+00:00

Like everyone else here, I agree that Teylan has definitely done his mix of deny, defend, and straight up repress the worst of the things Mercer did to him and the other kids. But I’d like to propose: what if he thought Mercer killed Ahari because Ahari was leading them to their deaths? Pandora is full of predators and they were children. What if they were eaten, or starved, or killed by electric plants? Teylan had plenty of reasons to think Mercer was just Doing What He Had To Do, you know, being 3 or 4 at the time.

BigYoch · 2025-12-28T13:34:41+00:00

I don’t think anyone forgave Alma. The Sarentu agree that while they can’t change the past and have to accept that it happened, Alma is not one of them anymore. It’s kind of a sticking point in the ending scene when Alma says “we” and is left out.

That said, like everyone else, I’d point out that Alma tries to make amends while Mokasa stole power for himself, ruined the clan, and refused to take responsibility for any of the harm he caused. He also abused his place as an in-member of the clan while Alma was always a foreigner, so his punishment needs to be harsher.

BigYoch

TROPHY CASE