stooperman:
there are a lot of reasons why gamora has become my favorite female character in the mcu, and a lot of reasons why she’s a great character in general, but right now i’m thinking of a few in particular. often, women with these Dark Tragic Pasts™ are written to be incredibly self-loathing, internalizing trauma and abuse to the point that they regard themselves as irredeemable monsters, but not gamora. she’s remorseful of her past actions, yes, of everything she did to survive and the part she played in nebula’s abuse, but she knows exactly who the abuser is and exactly who is at fault for everything: thanos.
(and when the story explores her trauma, it’s actually focused on her, rather than some dude’s manpain. which is, like, a sidepoint to my point but it had to be said.)
furthermore, with the kind of absolute hell that she’s been through, she would be absolutely justified to not care anything for a galaxy that’s done her no favors, but she’s just the opposite. she has a large, compassionate heart and a strong sense of justice, and is honestly amazingly idealistic, considering her background. she believes in good. she sees a place for herself to contribute to it. she cares, and that caring is stronger than a honed survival skill of putting up steel walls between herself and others and keeping them up forever, even if softness still requires some learning.
i think these things in combination really contribute to her ability to grow, arguably moreso than many other characters who fall into that Dark Tragic Past™ archetype, and the throughline of her ongoing arc is really centered on her emerging personhood: from gaining her freedom to repairing her relationship with her sister and strengthening her relationships with her new family, because it isn’t just enough to have a life; you have to know how to live in it with the people around you. a+ character and character writing.
um YES.
I am constantly impressed with Gamora and with who she is and who she decided to become–all on her own! with no apparent support or help from anyone! in fact expressly against the imposed abusive desires of everyone she knew from a point in childhood! I am fascinated by her strength and her faults and her remorse and her guilt, the places where she is not perfect but insists on keeps trying. I am endlessly fascinated with Gamora.
This is actually a thing that I struggle with right now, because in a lot of ways I am almost as interested in Nebula, in the sisters’ ability and attempts to resolve their relationship, and… well, Gamora is I think a very flawed person even as she is a very strong person, and the role she played in Nebula’s abuse is I think something that happened for the same reason she survived with her sense of self intact in the first place. She compartmentalized. I think Gamora is a survivor who is uneasy with her strength; I think she is a compassionate person and a ruthless one, and I see her as someone who decided to learn how to be a Healthy And Self Actualized Good Person, deliberately, and is doing her damndest despite being not necessarily a natural at doing it.
Gamora is not used to failing. And she’s got a whole lot of fear surrounding failure, which given Nebula ain’t exactly surprising. Also unsurprisingly, her response to being afraid is to get aggressive–she’s second only to Rocket about that, and only because when Gamora lashes out she isn’t as incredibly sensitive and attuned to sore spots as he is.
I’m currently writing from Nebula’s PoV a lot, though, and Nebula, I think–in some ways, I think Nebula saw the situation much more clearly than Gamora did when they were children, and in some ways, I think the crucial thing she missed was that Gamora had compartmentalized everyone in her life after her parents died with “people of Thanos,” as distinct from “real people.” (Which is my best explanation for the way she talks about and thinks about everything she knows from that life, including her sister.) I think, honestly, that Nebula assumed Gamora was more emotionally astute than she was, that Gamora knew she was constantly choosing to survive while Nebula was ripped to pieces and did it anyway–and she’s understandably angry about that.
And on top of that, the other big PoV I am currently writing is Mantis, who… look, Gamora is not particularly kind to Mantis. I don’t mean that she intends not to be; in fact, I actually think she tries very hard, as hard as she can, to be welcoming and friendly and stand up for Mantis.
It’s just that everything Mantis is terrifies the ever-living shit out of Gamora. And Gamora hates being afraid. She’s not yet the best at handling that, either.
So the thing I’m struggling with and chewing on, and the thing that has Luphomoid’s Guide in particular a little stalled right now, is that… I’m spending all this time thinking about the two other women I love in Guardians, and their relationships all three with one another, and it’s really hard on Gamora. And as a consequence, she keeps on showing herself…. not to her best advantage, because she is struggling.
I need to work out how to feel like I’m not doing a disservice to her strengths even as I think about how Gamora handles situations in which she struggles. And I don’t quite know how to do that yet.
This is A+ meta and I’m there for it. :D
That problem with trying not to look like you’re criticizing a character when you’re writing from the POV of someone who has good reason to dislike or distrust them, or just bad past experience with them – omg do I ever feel THAT. It’s especially hard with a character like Gamora, not a “shades of gray” character but someone who is solidly on Team Good Guy but has had bad past interactions with one or two particular other characters in the cast that the fandom either rarely writes about, or usually writes about from the other viewpoint, because then it really becomes a minefield when you’re just trying to write about their canonical flaws from the viewpoint of someone who has a legit beef with them.
