nebula: in need of world's okayest dadding?

Man, I was just thinking this morning that I wish we had gotten more Yondu and Nebula interaction. Because a) the way he totally forgives her immediately without a beat is just, wow, but also more importantly b)…

 

Nebula does the same thing that Rocket does re pretending she doesn’t have actual feelings, just pissiness. She’s just more inclined to project physical threat than use emotional weapons and verbal needling than Rocket, I suspect partly because she’s actually even less emotionally intuitive than he is, and partly because her position as Thanos’ daughter and, I suspect, his blunter weapon gave her a lot of reputation along those lines to lean on.

 

But she spends that entire movie pretending she wants to kill Gamora more than anything, as well as the first one. She couches every request to be released in terms of tactical intelligence, irritation, and disgust at the lack of efficiency, not affection. Yet when you look at her actual actions given the intel she has to work with, literally everything she actually does with the exception of coming after Gamora to win is something that serves to protect the team as much as she can. For example, she has no way of knowing the Ravagers probably weren’t going to kill Rocket, Groot released her very late in the conversation and she almost certainly saw an opportunity to seize control and nabbed it. 

 

When Rocket is almost murdered again by Taserface, Nebula steps in again and makes sure he’s kept alive at least until he can be surrendered for the bounty. There’s no evidence that Nebula has any reason to care about Rocket, so as far as I can tell she’s only looking after him for Gamora’s sake. She is angry about the constant fighting, and she’s the person who angrily says that the Guardians must not care about each other since they bicker so much. Nebula has some strong feelings about friendship and camraderie and protection despite also having, as far as we can tell from canon, basically zero experience having any of her own except in the context of growing up with Gamora. 

 

Who doesn’t appear to believe that Nebula is redeemable in any way, by the way, judging by the way she treats Nebula and her planned place to deposit her in prison–something I read as sentiment on one level, in that she doesn’t want Nebula dead and will go to some lengths to keep that from happening, but on the other hand something that says she doesn’t trust Nebula as a person to be capable of anything but genocide. Gamora has nothing to say to Nebula that isn’t an insult, and yet Nebula continues, doggedly, to do everything in her power to keep Gamora’s team safe while she focuses on that goal of winning.

 

(You can compare and contrast that with Yondu’s relationship with Stakar, by the way, because that’s also pretty much how Stakar treats Yondu–you did the bad thing, I cast you out because you did, and I don’t believe you are ever trustworthy again–despite Yondu wanting desperately to atone and make things right and, I think, never having been heard out properly to begin with. But that is a rant for another day.) 

 

Bring that over to Yondu. He clearly has very good insight into people who mask their affection and their desire to connect with violence, threats, and attacks; after all, as he says to Rocket, you’re me. He has an extremely good reason to be angry and mistrustful of Nebula, but in fact he sizes her up about as quickly as he sizes up Rocket and the next time he sees her he grins, settles in, and exchanges a quick joke as if they’re old friends.

 

I firmly believe that if Yondu had lived, at some point he would probably have tried to mentor Nebula in the same way that he tried to mentor Rocket about fixing that, and that he liked Nebula for who and what she was and what she was trying to do. I think he recognized the ways Nebula is trying despite a hell of a shitty childhood, and I think he saw himself in her. And I just–I think that would have been good for all of them. I think there’s something really healing in the idea of Yondu sort of adult-parenting Nebula and Rocket into how emotions actually work and how they can keep themselves safe without unsolicited attacks or threats to test the waters, especially a Yondu who is still learning himself as he goes along, but who has exactly the right kind of experience to tell them what they’re doing and why.