Neytiri and Sylwanin - twins?
 

I was reading through a PDF of the Pandorapedia from the blu-ray, I came across the section on Na'vi families. I mentioned that the Na'vi women tend to have between one and ten children, often widely spaced apart.

Now, I do know that the implication is that Sylwanin is older, but in the photograph that Jake is holding when asking about the school (which makes it seem a deliberate prop-choice)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...waninphoto.jpg

the girl between Grace and Neytiri looks roughly the same age as Neytiri. My own private theory is that Neytiri and Sylwanin are fraternal twins (which in turn makes an interesting mirror with Jake and Tommy, with Neytiri being the next-shaman while Sylwanin was the really out-there, physical warrior), but I was wondering what other people's thoughts were.

Seems like Sylwanin was younger... going by these pictures:

http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/9...dsylwanin1.png http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/7...dsylwanin2.png

They don't look like twins there.

Sylwanin can't be that young if she was old enough to be a hunter by the time she died - not with Neytiri being in late adolescence in the movie. I figured those girls were other girls in the clan.

That's the thing; I don't believe Neytiri was 18 in the film. People all over here say she is, but the fact is that she doesn't look 18. She looks somewhere around 26, and Jake looks 30. The script was changed a lot during the filming process.

Perhaps sylwanin was about 17-18 when those pictures were taken. I dunno. But in both pictures, she looks like the same girl. Even in the picture you gave, she's wearing the same clothes she is in the first picture I posted.

EDIT: THEN AGAIN... Sylwanin is standing on the ground next to the stairs, while Neytiri is standing about three or 4 steps up from Sylwanin. Thus, maybe she just looks younger than Neytiri there because she's standing at a lower elevation.

Neytiri looks 18 to me? I see a lot of girls who are 18 and look older, younger. She ACTS like late adolescence, too. And I can't see the girls in the three pictures being the same - they have different faces. And the bottom one you posted, the girl is clearly a child compared to Neytiri, who looks the same as she does in the movie.

And yeah, I'd go with looking younger because she's standing on the ground in that - Neytiri also seems to have a wider face, and not be as slender. You're right about the same clothes. But I wouldn't say that the girl in the right-hand picture, hugging Neytiri, is the same one.

Well in that case, I don't think we can really say which picture has Sylwanin in it if they're all different.

Although I do think the first picture I posted and the one you posted are of the same girl, since they're both wearing the same necklace, top, and loincloth.

*grins* I know. As I said, I was guessing it was Sylwanin because of Jake holding the picture when her backstory is revealed. Given how finnicky Cameron is about his shots, I thought it was deliberate it was THAT picture, and not just another one more of the school, or of the lots of the kids.

And yeah, looking at them again, I'd agree they are the same girl. But Neytiri goes through the movie looking older or younger depending on her expression - one point, she looks as old as Mo'at just in her expression, another, when she's laughing at the fanlizards, she looks so much younger. So, hard to say older or younger (one pic suggests one, the other the other) which is also why I was guessing twins. Looking your age is tricky anyway, but I can see them being fraternal twins.

Omg you're right! Didn't think about that. Now I'm all confused..

Sorry, but I was always under the impression that she was older than Neytiri, not younger or same age. I figured that because she was the one chosen to be with Tsu'tey and when Sylwanin was killed Neytiri was next in line.

Also she was the one that went out with the other hunters and set fire to a dozer while Neytiri was still in the school, because Sylwanin came to the school for protection and Neytiri saw her shot.

I would think that being older she would be the one being chosen to go with Tsu'tey, attacking the dozer.

Maybe I'm wrong in all of this, I don't remember where I heard that she and Tsu'tey were planned to be married or whatever (Maybe back on AF somewhere) but that was what I had thought.

That's what I always thought too. I can't back this statement up at all, but I'm inclined to believe she's in the photo in the original post and is not the younger-looking girl standing with Neytiri.

The biggest problem I have with those photos is that Neytiri looks exactly the same as she does in the rest of the film. The photo view angle and perspective morphs her appearance a bit, but there's no doubt that she looks almost exactly the same. As for Sylwanin, I agree with Fighter-of-Wars that she is implied to be older since she was already a hunter while Neytiri was still attending school.

But it's not like "attending Grace's school" was a hinderance to Na'vi life skills they had to learn. It's like going to highschool while also learning to drive; the two are unrelated.

Ashen pointed out that Neytiri does indeed look young and old throughout the film. Certain shots make her look certain ways. In Sylwanin's case, we've only got two pictures of a Na'vi girl that are both taken with Neytiri. We're assuming it's Sylwanin, but even the SE and CE don't reveal that it's her. We just get an oral backstory from Grace; that's it.

We don't even know if Tsu'tey was supposed to pair with Sylwanin; that's a presumed story that has been mentioned over and over by us and us alone that we all (including myself) believe it's true, when it's just as theoretical as the day it was first suggested. This is why I'm anticipating the prequel novel so much.

Neytiri is about 16 here o.O :shoop::awesome::xD:

Read a little in the script, there is nothing concrete but a little light on the situation.

TSU’TEY
(subtitled)
Neytiri was promised to me! Everything is
changing. Everything is being destroyed!

CLOSE ON PICTURES -- Grace posing at the school with various
grinning children. There is one of her with two lanky girls,
a younger Neytiri and an older girl who looks much like her.

I always took the fact that Neytiri looks so much like her movie!self here that the shooting didn't happen that long ago. And from the way Grace said, so authortively, that Neytiri was the next shaman, and that she was engaged to Tsu'Tey, I assumed that that Neytiri was ALWAYS going to be the next shaman - otherwise, Grace was making a lot of assumptions about a clan dynamic when the clan isn't talk to her anymore.

And yeah, I know in the script it says that Sylwanin looks like an older her....but the girl in the picture doesn't look like an older her. Lanky, yes, but not older.

As for the hunter thing, the two Na'vi going along with Jake to get their banshees really don't look that old - maybe 14, maybe 16ish. It's not like Grace's school would be like how we would go to school, probably a more casual thing a few times a week, if that.

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.

Okay... talking with Ash and following this thread has massively shifted my assumptions and preconceptions concerning Neytiri and Sylwanin, and I'm still reeling a little from the vertigo. But I think I've thought it through enough to weigh in and organize my thoughts about the competing interpretations.

Before I do that, I want to point out that figuring out someone's age just by looking is an extremely subjective thing and can be swayed by crazy numbers of years by context, preconceptions, facial expressions, behavior, etc. Even if you're still young and changing, it's very hard to judge someone's precise age once they've hit puberty. I have a wealth of examples from my personal life, having a sister who is eight-and-a-half years younger than me. Back when I was in high school, when I took her out in public, people would either assume we were sisters... or they would assume I was her mother, and this was highly correlated with where we were (I.e. in certain venues, people always, always thought I was her mother). I would've been 16-18 at the time; my sister would've been 8-10. Now she just turned 14, and we've recently been mistaken for twins... it was a lot of fun explaining that, no, I'm actually almost a decade older than her. And no, my sister isn't freakishly tall or womanly for her age... her friends look pretty similar. And I'm not freakishly youthful-looking either... I'm frequently mistaken for being late twenties in certain contexts. Back when I was 13, I took a test-prep class where everyone thought I was 18 for weeks, because that's how old everyone else was.

And now I'm going to weigh in on the Neytiri/Sylwanin age question in the next post, as it might get long...

(reserved)

On that note, maybe you should read this, or at least look at the abstract:

Public Health Implications of Altered Puberty Timing -- Golub et al. 121 (3): S218 -- Pediatrics

I was using "society" because I didn't want to go into all the details about what's causing it. It's a real issue, and its affecting a lot of teens/children in developed nations, especially the U.S.

All I was saying was that since the Na'vi haven't been exposed to anything that could cause this, they would comparable to humans before the advent of food/medical/etc. products that caused it.

Oh, trust me, I well know that our (Western, first world, not sure why you needed to add the 'especially the us' bit) current rate of puberty is odd. Girls developing earlier* and the infertile period that girls have after getting their first period is shrinking (probably due to iron levels in our food - ironically enough intended to help, given amenia is such a chronic problem with women).

(*generally, anyway - girls throughout history have been known to give birth at twelve, so it's not all modern doom and gloom.)

BUT I fail to see why that would mean that the pattern of girls developing before boys, of girls consistently being BIGGER than boys at the onset of puberty in both genders, is anything to do with our style of food production. It seems to be a consisent thing, and one that makes biological sense - as I said, girls are bigger than boys at the same time that boys are suddenly being hit by a sex drive. Being bigger, the girls could - if needed - have a much better chance of fighting off a boy of their own age who got too aggressive, thus not risking getting pregnant too young, which could lead to death and/or mean a much harder life for her children, which doesn't help them survive. For our species to reverse our sexual dimorphism, there has to be a cause, and I really don't think that it's additives. Additives are triggering girls' bodies earlier, yes, but not changing the pattern.

(all of which is getting a bit off-topic, anyway.)

And yep, Sothis, I know it's all very subjective - I've been accused of being my five-year-younger sister's mother, too. Like I said, I thought the two getting their banshees were younger than Neytiri because a) they were getting their banshees, b) they seemed younger to me and c) the girl is still with the kids, as if she's still part of the kid-pack, not the young-hunters. I've made a bunch of icons of her, all through the movie, which I still have to upload, and I know it's all subjective, but her face is VERY young.

But, you know, subjective!

Grace hadn't had any contact with the Omatikaya since then.

Exactly. Technically, even Neytiri isn't explicitly stated as being in the picture either.

...Yes, I know. That's why I assume the pictures were taken shortly before the school shooting. Then the shooting happened, and then she was ousted from the Omaticaya for around two years. She returns after two years, and Neytiri's appearance hasn't changed much. Makes chronological sense.

I do agree with you on the sequence - that's my logic, too - but just wondering, where are you getting the two years from? Wondering if I missed something, because I always put it at less than a year ago - maybe eight Earth months or so. Gives Trudy time to meet the kids before things bust up, which from the Pandorapeda interview with her (which...I do actually loathe and despise, but it is useful for some things) she did. And also, it keeps the tension between the clan and Hell's Gate up. But! yeah, wondering if I missed somewhere where it says two years or so.

I'm honestly just guessing.

*laughs* Fair enough! But that's what I like about this, really - we can all have our own takes on it.

I know that Grace describes in the CE: "Neytiri's sister Silwanin stopped coming to the school, she was angry about the clear cutting. Then one day she and a couple of other young hunters came running in all painted up...they had set a bulldozer on fire..."
Hunters, not warriors. It was implied also that she may have been younger when Grace and Jake argue that Selfridge doesn't want to have blood of children on his hands in a tone that given the new scenes that Silwanin and the warriors would be considered 'children' in human terms.
No age implied but if the pictures are to be taken for pictures of them, then it had to be taken before she stopped coming to the school. Grace 'put 10 years into the school', so that photo could have been taken several years before.

The Avatar wiki lists Sylwanin as being older than Neytiri.