"Spider Meets Payakan", My New Illustration😊

ADDING MORE TO THIS

Norm even gives Spider parents who aren't really his parents. He successfully crafts a plausible origin story for Julian by pinning his lineage on a dead man with the right looks and no one to contradict it.

The two even have the same shade of blonde hair!

There had always been whispers and rumors passed around in the mess halls that one of the scientists had gotten a pretty techie pregnant, a fun little tryst gone wrong. The rumor had never been confirmed. No proof, no details, just the kind of idle gossip people clung to when the days stretched for too long and boredom struck.

That scientist was said to be Phillip Shaw. Norm remembered him. Popular, golden-haired, silver-tongued, a total manwhore who slept around a lot, brilliant in the lab, but reckless on the field, and drove Grace crazy with his inability to take the dangers seriously because he thought he was God's gift to Pandora. He’d gotten mauled by a thanator while collecting spore samples. Phillip's body was never recovered, just his shredded pack splattered with blood and a few scraps of torn equipment.

Perfect.

All evidence of Paz Socorro is scrubbed. In her place: a woman who'd been a low-level techie, a casualty of the war. The perfect dead mother for a story about a little orphaned child. Tragic. Sad. Simple.

Julian Shaw. Son of Phillip Shaw and Amelia Perkins. Both dead. Orphaned. Adopted by his “uncle” Norm out of loyalty to an old colleague and acquaintance.

It was neat. Tragic. Believable. And no one would question it.

Norm leaned back, hands trembling slightly. Not from fear — from the weight of what he’d just done.

He was erasing the truth.

No, no, no...he was protecting a child from it.

“You're not the son of a demon. You're not a mistake,” he whispered, glancing toward the sleeping bundle across the room. “You're Julian Shaw now. That’s who you are.”

And that was who he would be… until the moons fell, or Eywa herself decided otherwise.

My thoughts were inspired by @detective-twinkachu's au where Norm and Max hide Spider's lineage.

I love the idea of an AU where Norm finds baby Spider and immediately realizes this child will never know peace if anyone learns who his real father is. So, like Eddard Stark, he makes a painful decision: He erases every trace of Quaritch’s connection to the boy and keeps it secret. He gives the child a new name (seriously, Miles? Way to make it obvious, Paz), forges documents, and creates a solid cover story in case anyone asks questions. He can’t bring himself to tell anyone, not even his closest friends, the truth. Quaritch has made too many enemies and caused too much destruction for anyone to overlook the boy’s lineage. There's already been enough tragedy. And this child, little Julian, is the first human ever born on Pandora.

Norm even steals the only photo of Paz and hides it away where no one will ever find it. He hates lying. Hates secrets. But Hell’s Gate is built on them, and children should never have to suffer for their parents’ mistakes. So he decides: he’ll raise Julian as his nephew. He’ll raise him to be kind, brave, and good. Maybe, just maybe, when Julian turns nineteen, he’ll sit him down and explain everything. Or maybe he won’t. Maybe Julian should never know. Norm will carry this secret to his grave… unless Eywa herself decides to produce a blowhorn and inform the entire planet. No. He'll hold this secret.

On the desk beside Julian's forged documents was a faded photo of Paz Socorro. Pregnant. Glowing. Laughing. Holding her growing belly as she smiled for the camera. Norm’s throat closed up. Guilt and anger were warring in his chest like a storm. What would Trudy say about all this?

“I’m sorry, Socorro,” he whispered. “You were… a good mother. You didn’t deserve to fall in love with a monster, you didn't deserve to die for his craziness, you didn't deserve any of this. But your baby boy? He deserves better. He deserves everything. I'm sorry...I'm so sorry."

He picked up the photo, stared at it, then opened up his desk drawer and hid it beneath layers of unimportant documents. Hidden in plain sight until he could find a tiny box and bury the picture so deep that maybe Eywa herself will forget about it. This was for the best.

Then, he burned everything else.

I don't know if the sun in Pandora works the same way on human skin (I'm going to assume it does!) But in my hc Tsireya and Spider are friends, since she doesn't know anything about humans, she gets terrified when she sees the back of Spider.

more drawings of the friendship of spider and tsireya :3

First look at the Ash Village, home of the Mangkwan Clan

And we now have a name for Varangs beast: it’s a flying Nightwraith that the production team jokingly calls Ashley!

I am currently bouncing off the walls thinking about Spider forging his own path and creating his own family of misfits and outcasts, both Na'vi and human.

Instead of remaining caught between two worlds that refuse to fully claim him, Spider chooses to carve out his own space—his own home—among outcasts who, like him, never fit into the structures of either the RDA or the Na’vi. These outsiders were either set aside or left.

Imagine this blue-striped human quietly slipping away one night, leaving behind Hell’s Gate and the Omatikaya with nothing but a pack slung over his shoulder and a determined heart. He treks deep into the wilds of Pandora, following instincts honed from a past life, seeking others like him—those abandoned, cast aside, or seeking something greater than survival under someone else’s thumb.

At first, it’s only three of them—Spider, an ex-RDA scientist who defected, and a Na’vi warrior shunned by their clan for challenging tradition. Together, they build a home high in the mountains, tucked between floating cliffs and waterfalls where neither the RDA nor any hostile clan can reach them easily. They hunt, they craft, they survive—and then they grow.

More come. A lone Na’vi mother with her child, fleeing persecution. A human engineer who sabotaged RDA equipment before running into the wilds. A pair of Na’vi twins whose father was an avatar and whose clan cast them out for it. Orphans. Runaways. The lost and forgotten.

Spider becomes their leader, not because he craves power, but because he understands their pain better than anyone. Together, they thrive and live free, far from the chaos of their past. They build something beautiful—a village woven into the mountains, suspended on bridges of vine and wood, with glowing bioluminescent lanterns lighting the bridges and paths at night. Their home hums with laughter, music, and the quiet, unshakable bond of a family built by choice rather than blood.

And when Spider finds orphaned human children—abandoned by war, unwanted by both sides—he takes them in. He raises them as his own, refusing to let another child endure the loneliness and rejection he once did.

By the time anyone realizes what he’s done, his little village is no longer little. It is a thriving community of hundreds, a sanctuary for those without a place. The RDA cannot touch them. The Na’vi clans leave them be. Some fear them, some scoff at them. Others—those who have known suffering and loneliness—seek them out, hoping to start anew. Eywa graces them all with her many blessings, and for the first time, Spider finally has a place to call home. And when the day comes that war reaches their doorstep, Spider stands at the front with his newfound family, no longer a boy without a home but a leader, a protector, a brother to those who were once lost like him.

Just some reflections on Tiri idk—

It’s tragic how Neytiri doesn’t actually have any way of expressing her trauma or PTSD. The few times she tries to bring up her thoughts and concerns and inner pain, in her own way, Jake either takes offense to it or tries consoling her, when it’s not what she needs. What she needs is to be heard, to process what happened and to be given validity for what she feels. She doesn’t get any of it, so Spider inadvertently becomes her tool for that; an outlet.

Neytiri needs Spider, because he is the only person she can express her trauma through without being dismissed or sounding crazy (in her own mind at least). He becomes a way for her to, more or less safely, express distrust and anger at humans, not for what they are, but for what they’ve done and the destruction they caused, as well as fear that it might happen again, which is a normal reaction to a deeply traumatic event.

What people miss when they feverishly defend Neytiri tho, is that this isn’t a healthy coping mechanism. Spider is a living, breathing individual and a child. He and Neytiri don’t stand on equal ground, and he doesn’t owe being the vessel for her emotions. The things he says in upset, or in that argument scene in high ground, might sound like Spider isn’t getting the bigger picture yet, but how can he, when both he and Neytiri have been blindsided by people who have the education to explain to them the complexity of their emotions and the scars left behind certain experiences?

Tiri is a victim of horrible events, and more so, of emotional neglect, but she also seems to have placed herself and Spider into a relationship where her anger and trauma is projected and managed directly through him. It seems to alleviate some of her anger, temporarily, but doesn’t actually remove it. She just keeps suffering, hence she’s not in the right for this.

(Image source — @/cappedseries)

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Anyway, might delete later if I’m wrong idk.

It's craaaazy how opinions on Spider vary so much depending on what site you're on

I can't believe I sat there for HOURS on that YouTube live stream in hopes of seeing the Avatar Fire and Ash trailer. No, I didn't want to see the Lilo and Stitch trailer. I wanted to see my queen Varang!

Spider, struggling with his spirituality and faith in Eywa as a human boy born on Pandora, a planet he cannot neurally connect to:

Varang:

We’ve all seen the concept and fanart surrounding Varang. Leader of the ash people. So I took some artistic license and made her younger sister: Vitani.

Surely someone would oppose her at some point. Why not a relative? Her headpiece is made from the red frilled scales of their Komodo dragon-like creatures they ride on their volcanic terrain. What are your theories for the ash clan na’vi? Drop a reply or ask! Let’s get excited again!!! 🔥🪨🌋

Tap for quality bc tumblr..