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[Ashen Key]

Originally Posted by Human No More

Except it turned out Jake and Grace were both right

*bemused* Right on what? I don't think Grace's dismissal of Jake and the other Marines as idiots, just because they are Marines, is at all a good thing. It's a straight out personality flaw - unless you have a PH.d, you don't get her respect. Unless, maybe, you are Trudy, in which case in my only personal canon, they've had a long way to go before Grace treats her with anything like respect. She's arrogant and doesn't even treat her work-colleagues with respect. That dismissal, and inability to play nice with others, really can't of helped her cause in anyway - if she keeps people away, then she can't really share what she knows, and spread the idea that the Na'vi are people. Which makes it all too easy for them to be seen as not. Which in turn makes it easier for Quaritch to pull a move like he did with Hometree and only have one pilot baulk.

Likewise, Jake really has no room to throw stones. The idea that the US military forces spend all their time fighting for freedom...well, I don't hold with that NOW, and I highly doubt in a dystopian future, everything was like WWII. He's being blindly idealistic (and ODDLY so, given his latter comments about how "you make them your enemy, so you're justified in taking what you want"), and throwing stones at people whom he doesn't even know. He doesn't know why the other Marines are working for the RDA. He doesn't know if they are supporting children back on Earth, or trying to get OUT of a cycle of poverty, or if they are actually like HIM, and basically have no where else to go. He has no idea. He's just assuming. Which, again, it's a flaw. And one that makes me both want to thawp him for, and have fun with as a writer, because he's flawed.

Originally Posted by Human No More

I also really don't think Neytiri tricked Jake into that, she may have misunderstood human attitudes a bit but I also think that she would have known Jake would have known just from making tsaheylu

I...still think she was a little underhand *g* She's the one teaching him how to be Na'vi, after all, and she NEVER said straight up 'this is for life'. As far as consent goes, she didn't really make it all clear WHAT she was after and what the consequences would be. Which is a liiiittle underhand on her part, but fascinating as far as characters and their choices go.