imagine yondu adopting Nebula, given the time

No, look, imagine Yondu and Nebula just…. sitting there and Yondu listening and waiting for Nebula to talk. Nebula’s angry, sure, but she actually doesn’t say much unless she’s actively attacking or has been asked–she’s really different from Rocket that way. But Yondu does, in fact, know how to sit and listen; you can see him doing it to Rocket and you can see him doing it with Groot, all through that movie.

Imagine Yondu and Nebula, sitting and tinkering on cybernetics in a workship in comfortable silence until Nebula opens her mouth and talks, and Yondu just sits and listens, nods occasionally. Maybe asks a question now and again or a comment, but mostly just…. listens to her. Gives her his attention, without her having to kill anyone for it or fight for it. I think that would be huge for Nebula, who is so used to having to fight and fight hard for her very right to exist, let alone get any kind of positive attention from anyone at all.

(I actually headcanon that Nebula initially intended to warn Gamora about what had happened and then got to thinking about how Gamora treated her and how Gamora always had to be the best and goddammit never once do you think about me or love me you just gotta be off being better than everyone else, even now you’ve discovered morality–and, ah, worked herself into a rage as she piloted, since she took a good bit longer than Rocket and co. did. The Nebula in my head is not always great at managing her own emotional triggers once they get away from her.)

I can go either way on Nebula and Rocket's relationships with Yondu, shipping or familial. Like, because fandom is fandom and tends to relate all relationships via shipping, I happily read shipfic of stuff that I don’t necessarily actually prefer to read in a romantic/sexual context as a way of rolling around in an author’s reading of a relationship, and e.g. ladypolaris's recent Kraglin/Yondu/Rocket fic was kind of fucking amazing in a way that was totally unexpected for me and write-like-an-american has I think successfully sold Kraglin/Yondu/Nebula in the past (although I don’t think I’ve seen anyone write dyadic Yondu/Nebula or Rocket/Yondu). And while I teeeeeeeeend to prefer rolling around in interactions between Kraglin and Nebula as friends, because male/female friendships are my Jam, I’m also totally happy to roll around in Kragula.

At bottom, I figure that romances are about the relationships and dynamics between two characters, and most slashfics fall under the umbrella of romances on at least some level. I’m–flails, sex isn’t actually the most important thing to me in that respect; the important thing is the interplay between the characters and the personalities and the way they regard each other.

ngl also Yondu and Nebula interacting also casts shades on Yondu and Gamora’s interactions that deepen them even further, and I’m here for that for sure; I remember sholio wistfully requesting Gamora and Yondu talking a while back and I’m totally curious how the two of them relate to each other, especially if their main points of connection are Peter and Nebula. Gamora is different from both Yondu and Nebula in that she appears to have a strong abstract moral compass while also not necessarily being as careful about how she treats people in the specific that she’s associated with.

In some ways to me she’s much more dangerous than Nebula or Yondu because if she decides for intellectualized reasons you need killing–well, that’s it, it’s over and done with; Gamora is ruled by practicality and her own will and beliefs. (At least, as I read her!) Her relationship with Peter is I think really unusual for her in that she’s trusting him and allowing softer sides of herself to come out, and we see a lot of that in Guardians because of course Peter’s always around–but I think Yondu would twig very quickly just how ruthless Gamora can actually be, and I think that adding a positive relationship between Nebula and Yondu might make him even warier of Gamora, not necessarily more attached to her.

Which could also be a really interesting story, because I honestly and truly believe that both Gamora and Peter are good for each other and balance each other out, and I also believe that Gamora is at heart a good person (or, at least, trying to be, which is almost the same thing). She just has some blind spots about the way she’s treating and compartmentalizing people, and she tends to get caught up in her abstract, relatively rigid plans–and Peter is all about being affectionate to everyone (within reason) and reacting on the fly and dancing and enjoying yourself, which is something neither daughter of Thanos has a ton of experience with.

Adapted from a conversation with jdrewz here.