I dunno, I get a little emotional whenever I think about the fact that Spider is older than all the Sully kids. Like, do you think he was protective of his baby siblings since day one? Do you think he felt a little sad every time one of them outgrew him? I definitely get a sense that sometimes they treat him like he’s the younger one because he’s smaller, maybe more fragile.
Neteyam calls him ‘little bro’. Do you think the first time he did, Spider called him a skxawng and reminded him who the older one was? How long did it take until he stopped correcting him? When he connected to Neteyam in the spirit tree, was that the first time he never argued over it, so happy to see his brother that he’d let him have it just this once? And maybe once upon a time they were closer, more like family, back when Neteyam didn’t look so much like his mother and Spider had enough baby fat to hide who his father was, but then Neteyam was pulled in the ‘golden child’ direction, where there was no room for a friendship with a human boy and no time for him to need comfort from a big brother, and when Spider watched Neteyam die maybe all he could think about was how he’d lost him a long time ago anyway.
When Kiri was first born, do you think a tiny little toddler version of Spider held his hand out to hers and put their hands together, giddy over the fact they had the same number of fingers? That he bothered Max and Norm for months with endless questions about where she came from and what other things made her like him? And then she was revealed to have this connection to Eywa that basically gave her magical abilities, and he thought they were actually so very different, but he adored her regardless.
Lo’ak and Spider are best friends, and they always have been. He, Lo’ak and Kiri to have a unique bond in being the ones who are different, a little weird, a little out of place. Lo’ak and Spider bond over their daddy issues. But once, what if Spider was someone who Lo’ak could seek comfort from? Someone who would hide him from the world, until eventually Lo’ak got too big to hide in Spider’s arms? So now they run away through the forest together whenever the world gets too much for one of them.
And Tuk, she’s still so little that Spider still seems big to her, but even she worries over his human fragility like he’s something that they need to look after. But I don’t know, maybe when she was even smaller, Spider was the one to lift her up to reach things she couldn’t quite get on her own, and then she’d pull him up after her, because Spider knew what it felt like to slow everyone down, and didn’t want her to feel like a burden, even if she’d grow out of it and he wouldn’t. Maybe now she still reaches to pull him up, even if she can grasp things on her own and, most of the time, he doesn’t need her help.
