#although.... maybe.....

regret to inform everyone i have accidentally developed some very unfortunate lore

i am aware of how this sounds. please continue reading anyway

strip away the tongue-in-cheek fairy tale sarcasm of the original movie, replace it with a dark, gory, victorian-gothic/industrial fallout vibe where humanity has completely ruined pandora and here is what happens:

1. quaritch as the monster in the woods (the devil)

born a native, ten-foot-tall na'vi giant, living in reclusion deep within the forest grove no one dares enter. humanity has hunted and demonized him for so long he’s convinced himself he is the monster. filled with self-hatred, he embraces the title because he believes he's inherently unlovable. he terrifies the human hunters with a single predatory hiss just to keep his grove safe and quiet

2. spider as the feral kid (the fool)

a 15-year-old, wild-child human orphan who escaped black-market trafficking. he runs through the trees like a monkey and wears blue forest-paint to look like the giant who saved him. quaritch tries to snarl and scare him away, but spider's trauma sees a father figure in the monster and attaches himself to him with a terrifying efficiency. quaritch insists he doesn't like children while actively adopting one but his paternal instincts won't let him be cruel to a kid and so they end up bickering constantly like real father and son

3. king's bounty (the emperor & the chariot)

lord farquaad is parker selfridge. of course he is. annoying corporate ceo prick operating from a sterile concrete fortress and paying the forest giant to execute a contract: retrieve the "prize" from the burning, volcanic spires

to survive the toxic ash-lands, quaritch is given a mechanical, heavy exo-suit massive enough to fit a na'vi. to jake, looking out from his tower, this machine looks like a state-of-the-art "knight in shining armor." when quaritch speaks, the suit filters his voice into a robotic baritone, hiding his real vocal cords

4. jake as the tragic prince(ss) (the moon)

jake is a beautiful, elegant human prince with a dark secret. the second the sun drops under the horizon, his true na'vi biology wakes up. he turns into an eight-foot blue creature of the wild. because humanity brainwashed him to think the na'vi are hideous demons, jake despises himself. he has spent his whole life waiting for a human knight to give him a true love's kiss and "cure" his twilight curse

when quaritch shatters the tower door, jake is instantly smitten by the raw power of his savior. but when they make it out of the spires, jake demands his knight open the hatch. the seals hiss, the helmet unlatches and out steps a blue giant looking like a beaten dog, terrified of the horror he knows is coming

and jake violently rejects him. because quaritch is the reflection of his own self-loathing, of the exact same "freak" hiding inside him

5. return of the wild (the tower)

they spend an exhausting week trekking back, pretending to hate each other, but slowly something else takes over. jake watches how fiercely quaritch protects spider and some instinct deep inside him answers. before he realizes it, he's fussing over scraped knees, cooking meals and untangling spider's hair, making sure he sleeps warm through the night. they're acting like a family and refusing to admit it

the standard "misunderstanding" night happens. quaritch eavesdrops and hears jake weeping to spider about how hideous this "monster body" is and quaritch's self-hatred triggers, because he thinks jake is talking about him. heartbroken, he alerts selfridge to haul the prince away and forces spider to leave the grove and get away from him

but spider is unwilling to lose his newfound parents. he tracks down toruk, the great last shadow, goes back to quaritch and drops the bate ("he wasn't talking about you, you idiot! why don't you ask him yourself?") and quaritch has to jump from the sky and tame the apex predator purely out of a desperate need to save jake

he crashes the wedding. the glass ceiling shatters and selfridge is brutally chewed on and spat out by the great banshee. quaritch stands on the neck of toruk in all his glory, with spider riding shotgun

the twilight hits. jake’s human clothes tear as his body expands into his true form. he covers his face in agonizing shame, waiting for quaritch to call him a monster. instead, quaritch is completely mesmerized. he has never seen anything so breathtakingly perfect. they are finally on the same level, two spirits of the wild. quaritch steps toward him, cups jake's jaw, and kisses him right there, incinerating jake's self-hatred forever while spider is cheering with toruk in the background

they fly back into the ancient forest, back to the beautiful na'vi marui built into the giant tree-roots, where spider finally gets his family back, and quaritch spends the rest of his life cherishing the people who saved him from the dark