I disagree about their ages.

I think the two that go with Jake look older, but we need to be careful not to judge them by their secondary sex characteristics; they are a different species, and life on Pandora evolved differently than life on Earth, so they probably have hugely different biochemical pathways and metabolisms.

[QUOTE=Raiden;124407]I disagree about their ages.

I think the two that go with Jake look older, but we need to be careful not to judge them by their secondary sex characteristics; they are a different species, and life on Pandora evolved differently than life on Earth, so they probably have hugely different biochemical pathways and metabolisms.[/QUOTE\

I was judging them by their faces, not the girl's breasts - she seems to be as slim as all the other Na'vi women. They also give off the sense - to me, at least - of being young. They lack the purpose that Neytiri and Tsu'Tey have, and seem younger. To me, anyway.

Secondary sex characteristics are much more than just mammary glands.

It actually has much more to do with bone structure than anything else. If you watch it again, try comparing the width of her hips to the width of another female's hips; that's usually far more telling then anything else. You can also look at facial structure and the size of certain muscles, but the bones are the best way to tell.

*amused* I'm not entirely sure how to look at the size of her pelvis without an x-ray - and I'm not sure how to compare them, given it's a movie. And just a fyi, I was fully capable of physically bearing children when I was twelve. At fourteen, I had hips wider than a forty-year-old woman - which I know because she was able to fit onto the swing in the playground, while I really couldn't. Hip-size alone doesn't really say anything.

And it might just be a subjective thing - the two struck me as being younger, even compared to the apparently 18-ish Neytiri. The girl is even still hanging around the other kids - you see her run to meet Grace, and then after Hometree falls, she's walking with Mo'at and the other children, which strikes me as being 'she's still really one of them' more than one of the adults.

Sylwanin was older than Neytiri - presumably why Tsu'tey was going to be with her and she was going to become Tsahik.
In that photo, one question - what makes you think the older one is Neytiri? Neytiri and Sylwanin were sisters.

Ashen Key - she wasn't making an assumption, she learned a lot about them before that happened.


The left image is kind of unclear, but in the right one, she actually looks like a younger version of Neytiri - this makes me think that in the left one, the one you assume to be Neytiri is actually Sylwanin and Neytiri isn't actually in that photo. Plus, she looks very like Neytiri looks several years later - if Sylwanin was the same age at the time of the photo as Neytiri's was at the time of Avatar, then this would make perfect sense, otherwise then Neytiri would not have aged at all for several years.

Nowhere does it say that Sylwanin was going to be tsahik, and nowhere does it say that she was promised to Tsu'Tey - from Tsu'Tey's rant on how Neytiri was promised to HIM, I got the sense that she'd been promised an awfully long time. I think fandom tends to assume Sylwanin would be tsahik because we've got the very, very European style of inheritance in our heads. A lot of other cultures don't have that (and even in a lot of earlier European cultures, it was a relative, not automatically the first-born or the first son), and I see no reason to assume why the Na'vi would pass things down to the first-born child.. Indeed, in light of the Ikran Clan Chief, there was nothing stopping Sylwanin (implied the elder) to being trained as the clan chief to replace her father, and another girl be trained to the tsahik.

I find it more likely that the Na'vi look towards signs and personalities when deciding who inherits what role, rather than merely first-born. Logically, Neytiri is the next tsahik because she's suited to that role. Blood-relations probably help, but if she wasn't, and neither was Sylwanin (and lets face it, in attacking the bulldozers - presumably without her father and clan chief's permission - Sylwanin was acting more like an impulsive, red-blooded young warrior than a future shaman - Neytiri, in contrast, was with Jake in saying 'don't attack' after tree of voices. If I remember correctly.), I don't see why a cousin couldn't be found. And they are a CLAN, which implies that most of them are related anyway. This is also why I think some of the younger children - including the young girl you mention - have a family resemblance. They'd be cousins, or second cousins.

And I also find that yes, Grace was making a lot of assumptions if Sylwanin was the previous tsahik-heir - the Omaticaya haven't talked to her since the school-shooting when she's talking to Jake, and yet she says 'Tsu'Tey is the next clan chief, he is going to be mated to Neytiri' as if it is a fact she knows. Assuming that everything is going to pass to Neytiri after Sylwanin's death is a big assumption without any confirmation. Very bad form for a scientist.

And I don't understand your question re: the photographs - Neytiri looks like Neytiri, and the other girls are all clearly different girls. Like I said, I assumed that the taller girl in the photograph I put up is Sylwanin, because Cameron made a deliberate choice to show us THAT picture when Sylwanin's story was told, and Cameron doesn't strike me as the kind to do that without the choice being deliberate. I do admit that this is an assumption on my part, but Cameron is self-admittedly pedantic about details.

(as for Sylwanin's age in relation to Neytiri, I can't see her as younger. Older, most probably - twin, well, maybe. It's my own theory, and I admit that. But younger makes little sense, unless the school shooting was fairly recent - which I think it is, for a number of reasons - and Sylwanin was a very new hunter)

Can't be. The older one is wearing Neytiri's bracelet, her feather necklace, her herb holder, her loincloth and accompanying bead strands, and the same stripe patterns on her left side (trust me, I've photoshopped enough Neytiris to know exactly what type of stripes she has :P). It's definitely Neytiri in the second photo.

I take back the statement I made earlier about the second photo; I don't think that's Neytiri's sister; it's probably just another clan member she was friends with. The first picture I posted is probably the one with Sylwanin, as well as the photo Ashen posted. They're both wearing the same clothes, and (presumably) all the photos on the fridge were taken the same day (same light, same location, etc.).

That just raises further questions if true, because that would mean Neytiri has not aged at all for several years, hence why I find that highly implausible.

Also, yes, Tsu'tey never mentioned Sylwanin in canon scenes, but he did in others, and since there is no direct contradiction there, that should be accepted.

I always thought - given how the other kids haven't aged so much, and how much Neytiri looks the same - that the school shooting happened only happened a few months ago.

Why? And where did he mention her? I'm honestly baffled.

Except society in general has grossly skewed and altered the rate of maturation in humans; without this, populations of humans would mature at nearly the same age, respective of gender. I was just trying to point out that looking at someone's face isn't the greatest way to tell age.

Besides, I thought that they only undertook Iknimaya when they were older than that. Granted, they don't keep track of years, but if they judged each other by physical standards, they probably wouldn't be off by more than a couple of years.

...huh? No, we...wouldn't. Girls develop faster than boys. Girls hit their growth spurt before boys. Girls shoot up in height around the same time that boys are working out what their penises can do - which is probably related, as it's the only period in time in our species where the females are noticeably larger than the males. It's a biological trait. And different people develop at different times, and diet has a lot to do with it, too. It's not 'society' or 'culture'.

Like I said, it's just the sense they give off, too. I can't explain it more than that, but I would put them mid-teens. They seem younger than Neytiri and Tsu'Tey, and I don't think Tsu'Tey and Neytiri would go through the ritual noticeably quicker than anyone else. And 14-16-ish sounds about right to me for an adulthood ritual, particularly as the Na'vi mature fast. And Neytiri's around 18ish, so if the other two are younger, that puts them 14-16ish. Maybe 17ish.

But, you know. It's the sense I get, which clearly you disagree on. We might just have to agree to disagree, given it's very subjective.

That's why I'm assuming the photo was taken shortly before the school shooting. Two years pass, now Neytiri's two years older. That explains how there isn't much difference in her appearance.

Who's to say that sylwanin was in the pictures at all? The fact is that no one bothered to say who was who in the pic besides Grace and Ney. Besides, Sylwanin was always a sort of back character; that said, I wonder if Jim Cam had any intention to ever show her at all. *shame*:'(but here are some pics I ran across that i think Sylwanin would look like:)/Users/jennilew/Desktop/avatar/Na'vi/legacy-1.jpg/Users/jennilew/Desktop/avatar/Na'vi/Sylwanin3.png

Shoot! they didn't show up!

You need to upload the images to an online photo hosting site like photobucket, image shack, or any others.