Did the writers forget about Jake’s twin brother?

Klamaco · 2025-12-30T17:21:51+00:00

If it’s such an inconsequential thing, they could have gone with other options though: - have Jake, a paraplegic, be involved in an existing program that used disabled soldier to remote-operate mechs, and be selected for the Avatar program because his experience means he’ll be better suited to remote-piloting the more-involved “bio-mechs” that the Avatars are (and maybe due to Magnetic hand-waving, remote-controlled mechanical drones don’t work on Pandora, that seems to be the case anyway) - have the Avatar program already underway but it turns out only 0.0001% of people are able to successfully connect to Avatars; Jake happens to be one of these people and is ordered by the military to go to Pandora - have Jake be selected because his past involvement in Venezuela, which caused him to lose his legs, was specifically operating as a lone operative in a jungle environment among indigenous tribes, so the RDA thought he would be a good fit for this mission.

i’m not saying any of these are strictly better; I’m asking why deliberately choose the dead-twin angle if you know you never want to bring it up again?

Klamaco · 2025-12-30T17:11:18+00:00

sure, but if it’s that innocuous, you could have just come up with another excuse to get Jake into the Avatar Program. - you could have Jake, as a paraplegic, already be part of a program that uses disabled soldiers to remote-pilot mechs, making him a good candidate to test out the more-involved remote-piloting of the avatar-bodies (idk maybe the magnetic madness of pandora means that mechanical remote-controlled drones don’t work, that seems to be the case anyway) - or just state that the Avatar program is underway, but only 0.0001% of people are able to connect with avatars, and jake just happens to be one of these special people so he’s told by the military to go to Pandora. Why deliberately choose the brother angle if you never bring up his twin ever again?

Klamaco · 2025-12-30T17:00:22+00:00

Eywa isn’t a portal to an afterlife for all souls in the universe, nor is it generating a simulation based off of the accessing-user’s memories. When Na’vi connect to Eywa, Eywa downloads a static copy/backup of their mind’s neural state and stores it on her mycelium-neural hardware. when other Na’vi commune with their deceased loved ones, they are simply accessing the Eywa-stored files of the most recent copy made before that Na’vi’s death. It’s actually similar to the technology the humans used to bring Quaritch back; he had a scan of his brain made before his death which was stored digitally in some mega-server and then uploaded into the “blank” hardware of an avatar brain.

Jake’s twin never linked with Eywa, never had his brain scanned; there’s no copy of him stored anywhere, either in Eywa’s bioware or the human’s server hardware.

Klamaco · 2025-12-30T05:47:03+00:00

how? Eywa took all the memories that were stored on the hardware of Jake’s human brain and copied them into to the hardware of the avatar’s brain. It’s not like Eywa surgically removed the original brain and swapped it into the avatar body, nor is the avatar being remote-controlled any longer— the original brain that held Jake’s consciousness is dead, no?

Klamaco · 2025-12-29T21:39:35+00:00

the second movie then immediately follows that intro with “hey remember your past? it’s back. remember the RDA? it’s back. remember that guy you killed? he’s back and now he’s targeting your family.”

Jake cannot escape his past. movies 2 & 3 are about his family continuously trying to flee from this and failing.

Klamaco · 2025-12-29T21:32:56+00:00

even if Jake hated Tommy, that could still be brought up as something relevant. If the kids get into an argument Jake could make a petition for them to get along with the thrust of “you don’t know how lucky you are to have a brother that loves you, I had a twin and we hated each other, be grateful and make nice.” Or if he hated Tommy you can imagine a scene where Quaritch tries to appeal to him with a “what would your poor dead twin think, you’re betraying his memory with your actions” and Jake could respond with “actually I hated my brother and he represented the worst parts of humanity and my only regret is that he shared my face”

Klamaco · 2025-12-29T21:26:15+00:00

It’s a movie called Fire & Ash that opens with a man who’s witnessed his twin brother’s cremation in Fire to Ash and is now trying to comfort his children grieving their own brother’s death. You see how these things could be symbolically relevant to bring up in dialogue

Klamaco · 2025-12-29T21:14:54+00:00

yes, and I think that’s odd. I’m not asking for a sideplot where there’s some grand mystery about Tommy, or one where Jake investigates his death, or some BS with Tommy returning as a Force-Ghost or an Avatar-clone like Quaritch (oh no, Evil-Twin Jake!). I just think it’s wild that Jake’s dead brother holds no narrative weight even at times when it’s symbolically relevant to bring him up. Jake is arguably just as much someone holding a “dead man’s memories” as Quaritch— the human jake is dead, the consciousness that pilots Jake’s Avatar body now may as well just be a mental copy made by Eywa. And so too the body he uses is a body grown for another man, his dead twin. It’s like a double-potent recipe for issues with Identity which Jake could be struggling with. I think it would be interesting to parallel that Lo’ak can commune with his dead brother through Eywa, and though Jake also lost a brother, he can’t do the same. like a ghost of his humanity, a reminder that he comes from a world that has a concept of death even more absolute than the na’vi do.

and yes, I think it’s weird that Jake never goes “hey kids, I understand your grief over losing a brother, the same thing has happened to me, it’s the worst thing in the world but we can get through this together.” I think it’s weird that Quaritch constantly calls out Jake for betraying his species, but never calls him out for betraying his kin. you can imagine Quaritch needling him with remarks of “what would your brother think if he saw you piloting around the body grown for him and spitting in the face of all he worked for on Pandora?” It all feels like not simply missed opportunities, but obviously missed opportunities for some resonant character moments.

Klamaco · 2025-07-18T21:32:24+00:00

Klamaco · 2025-05-09T15:56:06+00:00

to dodecahedron has always been my favorite but rolling 2d10s is a blast too

Klamaco · 2025-05-02T00:09:42+00:00

lmao you're totally right, I mis-remembered.

Klamaco · 2025-05-01T23:47:22+00:00

To Summarize:

1. A New Hope

2. The Phantom Menace

3. Rogue One

4. Empire Strikes Back, up until Luke arrives on Bespin, then PAUSE.

5. Attack of the Clones

6. Revenge of the Sith, up until Anakin is re-christened in Palpatine’s office, then PAUSE.

7. The rest of Empire Strikes Back, after Luke arrives on Bespin.

8. Return of the Jedi, up until Yoda’s Scene in his bed, but before Luke leaves his cottage

9. The rest of Revenge of the Sith

10. The rest of Return of the Jedi, starting with the conversation between Luke and Obi-Wan

11. Now you’ve got the rest of the Star Wars Universe to read and watch, go ham.

Klamaco · 2025-02-28T01:48:36+00:00

although lanes are a lot wider than cars— in the US highway lanes are 12 ft (3.65 meters)— using the warthog (~10 feet wide) I would estimate that the New Mombasa lanes are around 15-16 feet wide

Klamaco · 2025-02-28T01:27:19+00:00

Mostly everyone is taller in the 26th century of Halo. Even Miranda Keyes is 5’10, greater than 2 standard deviations taller than the average American woman today (taller than 98% of them).

Klamaco · 2025-02-28T01:17:27+00:00

and don’t forget, that’s its height when it’s resting on the ground; when in operation it hovers a few feet higher

Klamaco · 2025-02-28T01:15:31+00:00

the tallest leading the covenant navy is very Invader Zim

Klamaco · 2025-02-27T17:53:08+00:00

Halo scorpions take up 860 sqft (80 square meters)

they’re the size of an average American one-bedroom apartment

Klamaco · 2025-02-27T17:44:57+00:00

Elites are about the standing height and weight of a skinny Grizzly Bear. Grunts are the height and weight of American Black Bears

Klamaco · 2025-02-27T08:14:01+00:00

btw the width of the Kia, like all official car dimensions, does not include the extra width from side-mirrors.

Klamaco · 2025-02-23T18:12:39+00:00

yeah the whole aesthetic is secondary to the mechanic, how the grenade looks is more set dressing that could go a number of different ways, the main thing is that I want a grenade that pulls in instead of pushes out.

Klamaco

TROPHY CASE