bluedaddysgirl:
pandora-crash-landing-survivor:
bluedaddysgirl:
Na'vi anatomy meta post
For almost as long as I was in it, fandom was under the impression that Avatar and Recombinant characters have their tswin, or neural queue, attached lower than Na'vi, right above the neck, when Na'vi have it from the top of the head.
I drunk that kool-aid and defended it myself. However, further inspection proves it’s wrong.
Firstly : Metkayina very clearly have their tswin starting at the back of their skull, on a low point. It’s most evident with kids :
But we can also see it in these two, especially the bully, who has his tswin literally sticking out :
Shots of the Ta'unui completely nail the coffin :
The top of his head is braided but there is no sign of a bulge and the tswin siths under the bulk of the hair, and is gripped near the neck.
This of course takes the cake :
So it seems the tswin comes from the back of the head for them. Could the Omatikaya be different? I don’t think so.
Neytiri clearly doesn’t have the very low placement we see in other, but there is also no indication that her tswin comes from the top of her head. No bulge to accomodate this.
This shot of her after dismouting her ikran is the best view of it poking out and the attachment point is clearly bellow the back of the cranium.
Looking at Omatikaya fashion in general…
I feel like it’s pretty clear that they favour heavy braiding with shaved sides. The men in those shots have very thick braids at the base, from gathering hair all the way from the top of their heads. I think this provides extra protection for the weak base of the tswin that we know has brainy bits…
But my conclusion is that this is a fashion style!
Na'vi, recoms and avatars all have tswin origination from the back/lower back of their head and the differences aren’t great, and obfuscated by hairstyles.
The more you know.
Yeah, that has been my guess as well. Omatikaya seem to favour the hairstyle with many thin braids for the bulk of the head, or shaved sides. However they also seem to quite often have a dutch braid thing going on from the very top of their heads that gathers extra hair which is then added to the actual necessary tswin.
Bonus observation - while tiny babies have their kuru visible in some shots, toddlers not older than a year seem to be sporting a full tswin, even though the rest of their hair is much shorter - the actual length i would actually to be common at that age. My guess and my headcanon is that those braids are extensions, likely braids donated by parents or close friends and other family members as a gift and a form of blessing, added to kid’s own hair at the base of the kuru, then braided in the usual manner for protection.
That’s very lovely! I had not thought about that! What’s also interesting is that we’ve never seen hairstyle where the entire head of hair goes as low as the hair used to protect the tswin.
Now the baby omatikaya we see have thin whispy hair on which you couldn’t possibly make extensions.
So while I love the idea in general, I am also wondering if you couldn’t make a case for the hair around the base of the neck to be of a different type, always growing much longer and faster than the rest of the head, as a sort of mechanical protection?
That, or they have crazy fast hair growth all over but favour short styles for babies, especially in water I guess, where you don’t want hair getting in the way of a toddler?
Then if a baby can get to shoulder length hair very quickly, that can be used for extensions?
Would also be very interesting if they had woven kuru protectors for the time where baby is growing but there’s not enough hair to braid or to make extensions on. Are the tendrils resilient enough to stay exposed? Could have little kuru diapers lol
I have a relatively long hair and i can tell you, that, at least as far as humans are concerned, growing a length of hair that would be needed for the whole tswin sounds like 8-12 years long journey, depending on the individual. Totally achievable even with the full head of hair. However, during that time and also just to maintain it afterwards, you would need to take a real good care of it and wear it in some sort of a protective hairstyle.
What protective hairstyles are are basically any form of keeping your hair, that makes sure that it moves around as little as possible. This is, because with every movement, every gust of wind, and every toss and turn at night, your hair will get damaged. The longer the hair is, the older is the end and the more breakage it cumulates. Bad brushing technique, daily hair washing, and sun and salt bleaching can and will ruin your hair to the point that it may break at the same rate as it grows, making it seem as if your hair doesn’t grow at all.
These protective hairstyles could be anything - wearing a turban, net, or some sort of cap that keeps the hair covered, pinning hair into buns and upknots, or braiding and twisted locks (if the structure of the hair allows it).
Now why i think that this is important in the context of na'vi. Jake, Norm, and i suppose all other 1st gen avatars started with full head of hair braided, because it’s just easier to let it all grow in the tank and then braid it on the second to last checkup, just before the activation. Anything after that would however require awfully lot of care so it’s reasonable to assume that the majority of drivers ditch everything but the necessary tswin and keep the rest shorter for this reason.
EXCEPT as i said, the tswin. That hair is ALWAYS braided and never free and not doing that is not an option, so it makes sense that it is both the longest and the healthiest looking hair on literally everyone.
As for na'vi, fashion is one reason why they are seen keeping hair shorter. Age is probably another. Kids like Tuk and younger seem to stick with the shortest hair, probably because they are too impatient to sit still for a whole day on the braiding day, even though by that age they could totally sport at least mid-back long hair (point of refference - my 5y/o niece who has hers almost ass long already). Then we have Kiri for example, where this seems to be a personal prefference - whether she is kind of trying to emulate her mom’s free flowing shoulder short hair, or she simply doesn’t care, i don’t know, but she sure doesn’t make any effort to grow it long.
Neteyam at the other hand, had a decent mane already. You gotta take into account that braided hair is shorter than lose hair because of all those twists. He was 15, so if we assume that he started growing his hair out from something more Tuk-like around the age of 8-10, that would mean 5-7 years of progress. Been there, did that, it looks just like my hair did back when i was still in uni, and that was with yearly haircut removing about 5-8cm of split ends. If he was around for another 5-7 years, he could have easily grown it into full tswin length by the time he would be an actual adult.
Which matches those omatikaya braided tomahawk men perfectly. They look like young 20-40ish hunters/warriors that sport both shaved sides and chunky tswin. Now compare that to recoms who only grow the patch at the very back of their head (except for Zheng - RIP my 4 strand braid boi). Omatikaya warriors have braids easily twice if not even 3 times chunkier. Those na'vi definitely have a full length worth of hair starting all the way at the front at the fringe in that.
