I'm So Proud Of You For Coming So Far! SAS Has Been One Of My Favorite Fanfics And I'm Happy I Played

I'm so proud of you for coming so far! SAS has been one of my favorite fanfics and I'm happy I played a part in encouraging and inspiring you! I can't wait to read the rest of it 💙💙💙

Hello, internet lovies! 🐞💙 I can’t believe I get to celebrate this! Silent As Shadows has reached 10k hits! This calls for celebratory chibis of these sweet summer children! Spider’s look is inspired by earlier chapters when he was learning how to communicate with Rey’ka (aka Rey’akina) and writing it all down.

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I can’t be more humbled that this story became more than a passing fancy. 🥹

I posted the first chapter on August 29th of last year with no expectations or confidence in my writing/storytelling abilities and am stunned to see how far it has come. The support from the AO3 community has been incredible and Tumblr opened a lot of doors to other opportunities and meeting other writers I’ve only fangirled about! 🤣

From comments from @cyren-myadd first appearing to fan art by @anxiousdreamcore (which has been my PC’s background ever since!) to writing prompts from @lilt78 to unexpectedly meeting people from AO3 here on Tumblr (your names are safe with me but I hope you know who you are! 🤫) to regular reblogs of SAS and other works by @nilnether and others…

Ahh, I could exhaust my character limit thanking people for the inspiration they give!

My silly little story of Spider and a deaf Na’vi OC going through the trials of RDA imprisonment in the missing time of Spider with the recoms is more than I ever imagined. I genuinely believe it would not have made it this far without all the helpful criticisms, comments, and kudos. Thank you for making me feel apart of the Avatar fandom in a most unexpected way!

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Hi I Love Blood Is Thicker Than Water.❤️❤️❤️

Do you have any other Spider and Quaritch Fanfic Planned?

I'm glad you enjoyed it 💙

Yes, I do have another multi-chapter Spider and Quaritch fanfic planned that would act as a sequel to my one shot, "Don't Ask Questions You Already Know The Answer To," but I'm not ready to start it yet. I need a break after BITTW, plus my personal life is very busy rn. In the meantime, I'm gonna get around to answering the awesome writing prompts folks have sent me with some one-shots!

Even though I haven't started writing it yet and probably won't for a long while, I wrote up a little description of it just for fun :) lmk what you think!

"Along Came Spider"

Quaritch spent his whole life knowing exactly what he believed in: a better future for humanity, no matter the cost— even if that cost was murder. He never doubted himself, never questioned his mission. His loyalty never wavered.

And then along came Spider.

Now, Quaritch has thrown away everything he ever believed in for the sake of his son. The RDA brands him a traitor for disobeying orders, while the Na’vi outcast Spider for saving his life. With no plan and no allies, they’re forced to flee to a strange, harsh land inhabited by a clan that’s even stranger and harsher. Taken prisoner by this tribe of heretical warriors, the only thing they can depend on is each other. But even with all the bridges they burned, the past still haunts them. Quaritch nurses his hunger for revenge against Jake, while Spider dreams of forgiveness from his friends. Surviving their new captors and their unhealed wounds will either drive the father and son further apart, or bring them closer than ever before— if they survive at all.

Avatar Theory Time: What if Eywa's "plan" for humanity is similar to the Swarm from Love Death & Robots? 🤔

So I was watching Love Death & Robots the other day (great sci-fi show, highly recommend!) and the episode, "Swarm," got me thinking about what Eywa will do in the future of the franchise. Also, I put "plan" in quotes because it's still unclear what Eywa's capacity is to understand and react to the world around her. Regardless of if Eywa is a rational, intelligent being that can plan ahead or is more like a non-sentient super-organism just reacting to stimuli in its environment, my theory about what Eywa will do in the future remains the same.

To give an overview, "Swarm" is about a pair of human scientists who go to investigate a diverse insect-like alien colony they refer to as the Swarm. The female scientist genuinely wants to learn about the Swarm, but the male scientist sees potential in exploiting the Swarm to create an army of alien slaves. Eventually, he talks the female scientist into helping him, arguing that the aliens aren't sentient so it wouldn't really be cruel to enslave them. Little do they know, the Swarm does possess a hidden hivemind-like intelligence. This intelligence senses the threat they pose and reacts by gruesomely assimilating the female scientist into its hivemind, which gives it access to her memories and lets it better understand the threat humanity poses to it. The Swarm tells the surviving male scientist that it will use them to breed its own "humans" to protect itself from humanity, revealing that some of the insectoid members of the Swarm are actually descendants of once-intelligent races that tried to exploit the Swarm, but ended up being absorbed into it just like the female scientist.

In light of some of the leaked info we've found, I think Eywa and the actions she will take to protect herself from humanity might be similar (though more benevolent) to the Swarm.

Just like in the LD&R episode, humans came to Pandora to exploit its resources, and were surprised when Eywa reacted to their presence with her "immune response." Eywa only triggered her immune response after she absorbed Grace's consciousness/memories and Jake warned her that humans would do to Pandora what they did to Earth, giving her a better understanding of the danger humanity posed and the necessity of fighting back against them. This is similar to how the Swarm gained a better understanding of humanity after absorbing the female scientist into its hivemind.

Now to get into some of the speculative territory: by now, most of us have seen the leaks about Spider gaining the miraculous ability to breathe the Pandoran atmosphere despite the fact that humans are in no way adapted to breathe in that environment. This concept felt completely far-fetched for the Avatar universe when I first heard it, however, it came from a real script accidentally shown in the Avatar BTS footage, confirming that its a concept they currently are or previously were considering in the Avatar universe. Ever since I first heard about it, I've been turning it over and over in my mind wondering how and why this would happen to Spider, especially since it there is no precedence for something like that being possible in the Avatar universe.

Watching "Swarm" made me wonder if adapting Spider's body to survive on Pandora is part of some greater "plan" to protect Pandora from humanity. With how technologically advanced the humans are, it's clear that Eywa's immune response won't cut it anymore, and she'll need to do something more drastic if she's going to keep Pandora safe. In LD&R, the Swarm protected itself from multiple intelligent races that wanted to exploit it by assimilating them into its colony. The races that were assimilated ended up evolving from their original forms to be better suited for life in the colony, which included losing their intelligence and becoming mindless drones just like the colony's natives. I think Eywa might do something similar to the humans that come to Pandora (or only to the friendly humans), assimilating them into her biosphere where she'd have sway over them just how she has sway over the Na'vi and discourages them from harming the environment. Sort of a "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" situation. The main difference being that the Swarm is doing this aggressively whereas Eywa seems like a more benevolent entity.

To be clear, I am NOT a believer in the Eywa-is-evil-and-controls-the-Na'vi-by-forcing-them-to-stay-in-the-stone-age theory. I see it more like a symbiotic relationship, where the Na'vi have free will and choose not to harm the environment because Eywa connects to them and provides them with everything they need. If humans were given everything they needed, it would remove the incentive for exploiting the environment for resources, and they would be able to coexist with Eywa like the Na'vi do.

All this would ultimately result in an ending with a positive message where some of the humans stay on Pandora and can live there without being dependent upon technology to survive, and the rest of the humans return to Earth and do some Wall-E type stuff to reverse the pollution damage and make the planet livable. And if the Earth humans ever get too greedy and want to exploit Pandora again, the Pandoran humans are there to act as diplomats or soldiers to protect Pandora from exploitation. The fact that they are human themselves means they can react to any human threats with more intelligence than simply throwing wild animals at them until the problem goes away.

TLDR: Eywa has a long-term plan to protect Pandora from the human invasion by assimilating friendly humans into her biosphere, similar to how the Swarm protected itself against humanity by breeding its own "human" soldiers.

What do you guys think of this idea? Am I onto something or am I just slowly going crazy waiting for Avatar 3 lol? Do you have any other theories for the long-term fate of humanity in the Avatar franchise? And why the heck is Spider going to be able to breathe the poisonous atmosphere???

Spider will encounter the mindreading torture machine again in Avatar 3

I've seen this BTS photo before, but I only recently realized the neuroscanner is in the background. Spider's hairstyle and stripe pattern are definitely not from A2, so that means he's gonna end up back at Bridgehead again at some point in A3, though I don't know if he'll be tortured again. I think he probably won't be tortured again since it's already been established he can resist the machine so it would be a waste of time to use it on him again. However, I don't think they would show it unless they're going to use it so unfortunately SOMEBODY'S gonna get it :(

There's also a stand-in for a Na'vi behind him, but there's no way of telling who it is without the CGI. It might be an adult based on the height of the head-pole thing. Since Spider looks upset and the Na'vi is putting a hand on his shoulder, forcing him to keep moving, I wonder if it's Quaritch. Quaritch handled Spider similarly when they raided the villages, so I wouldn't be surprised. The only other adult character I could see handling Spider like that would be Jake since the gesture feels paternal, but idk what the odds are of Jake walking around free in Bridgehead, so my money's on Quaritch.

So the vibes I'm getting from this BTS photo is that Spider is going to end up back at Bridgehead with Quaritch and someone is going to be tortured.

Poor kid can't catch a break 😭

I was trying to share something cool I just learned about Avatar with my boyfriend and he says THIS cause he knows Spider is my favorite 😭😭😭

(The image is one of James Cameron's very old concept art for Avatar. Apparently in a recent interview he said we may see this jellyfish-like creature in a future movie and that's what I was explaining to my bf)

My bf is just joking cause he likes to tease me, but there are ppl out there who genuinely do want to see Spider meet a horrible death in Avatar 3. I seriously cannot wait to laugh at them when Spider gets to live and becomes a really cool character like JC has promised!