well that’s giving me some fresh Yondu and also Peter feels
Ooof. Yeah.
All of this tends to make me think that Stakar has a quasi-clerical role as well as a practical leadership role, because that is a very metaphysical threat, Stakar, and I don’t expect to hear it coming out of anyone who isn’t actually the equivalent of a Space Pope.
Or maybe I just like the idea of Space Pope Stakar.
Six of one, half dozen of the other…
Ohhhh man, I had always seen this as a form of Yondu being excommunicated, but I never quite put it together with Stakar basically being the person who made the rules (or at least we can assume he did; if he’s not the actual founder of the Ravagers, he’s obviously the person who establishes How Things Work for the Ravagers now). It’s actually WORSE than being excommunicated by the Space Pope; it’s basically Space Jesus telling you that you’re not getting saved because you, personally, don’t deserve it.
Yeah, I tend to go “Stakar wasn’t born Stakar Ogord, you pick up the name Ogord when you assume the Admiralcy” because I tend to default to assuming that Stakar himself is not actually a god of the Ravagers himself. (Although whether that’s a safe assumption with Thor and Loki and Ego and Frigga wandering around… well, that’s a separate topic.)
The idea that he and Yondu and the rest of the original Ravager crew were young(ish) together and used to be a single crew tends to suggest that, for me. If the Ravagers have been existing as a unit long enough to have developed a basic culture and a dedicated religion, but the founder/demigod/god of that religion has been around this whole time, I’d expect his non-god crew to act a lot less informal and a lot more wary of him. I also wouldn’t expect him to, for example, be rolling around with a personal crew that does not appear to be eldritch or divine in any way, apparently “stealin’ some shit” at least occasionally.
(That doesn’t mean Ravagers are born into Ravaging, either; I tend to think of Ravager religion as being a bit more like Roman state religions or subcultures with their own specific god or gods that co-exist with other religions, even within the Ravagers. That’s a pretty common way to run things in polytheistic cultures.)
Also, to be honest, having an entire religion spring up around one’s band of marauders in that way takes a hell of a long time, and I tend to imagine that Stakar didn’t exactly found all that infrastructure and culture and history all on his own. Y’know? I tend to take very little from Stakar’s comic backstory, because tbh it makes very, very little sense even internally as far as I can tell, and when you add it to the concept of Ravagers as we see them in the MCU it loses whatever coherency it might have had. So it’s easy for me to handwave it as “if you become Space Pope, you lose all clan ties you might have had and all formal family connections, and the religion becomes your surname,” because hey, why not?
(Also, y’know, I’m ex-Catholic–the point of priests not having kids was supposed to be to keep them as free of those nepotistic ties as possible, giving up those clan affiliations in an effort to create a priesthood that could function as a truly neutral arbiter. It didn’t work all that well, but that’s the idea. There have also been groups that have used name changes in a similar way historically, and that’s the reasoning in my head for the name thing.)
But yeah, basically, that’s one hell of a statement to make coming from someone who has apparently actually excommunicated you over your actions. And especially someone who is angrily reiterating that your death is going to be alone and exiled, in all eternity, while actually having the theological power to at least theoretically do it.
It’s definitely interesting to speculate on, since we know so little about it in canon. I kinda slide back and forth on my own headcanon for him. My original assumption was that Stakar founded the Ravagers – that the original Ravagers were just Stakar and his friends, and it expanded and snowballed and they all got their own ships and then they recruited new captains and suddenly he’s the head of an empire. I mean, we don’t know how long-lived these guys are; it could be that all of the ones we’ve seen from the original group (Stakar, Yondu, etc) are from people with lifespans several hundred years long. I definitely agree that using the comics backstory for these people doesn’t quite work – while I can see why people do it, due to having so little canon to go on, the MCU characters are SO different that it doesn’t usually work for me. But because we know so little about them, there’s also nothing to say that the Ravagers might not have been founded by Stakar and his friends a couple hundred years ago. (Probably not more than that; I don’t think Yondu’s that much older than the actor who plays him. But he could have at least a few decades on him.)
I also don’t actually think it’s far-fetched that someone could found an entire religion complete with its own mythology and symbolism in one (long) generation, especially if it was based on a substrate of something that was there before, e.g. look at Scientology or the Mormons or any number of cults. Like, I could see Stakar taking whatever religion he grew up with and putting his own spin on it and basically ending up as the head of his own semi-accidental cult as a way of gluing all these different people together.
That being said … my headcanon on this is super flexible. I think it’s plausible (or at least, not impossible) that Stakar is the original Ravager. But I think everything you suggest is at least equally plausible – either that he’s part of a dynasty, or that he was a scrappy Ravager kid who came up through the ranks and ended up as the latest Ogord in a long line of them. idk. I can go pretty much any direction on that. (Basically all that you said above makes a lot of sense to me; it’s just that I can just as happily go with my original interpretation as well.)
Whatever headcanon you go with, though, that doesn’t undermine the emotional impact of that scene, because it’s obviously something they both believe in.
I like that Yondu is clearly a cat person. At least three of those things look like weird mutant space cats.
#i wonder what happened to these #not all of them were on the funeral pyre maybe peter kept some #OH NO I MADE MYSELF SAD AGAIN #yondu udonta #guardians of the galaxy (via @sarah531)
WHY WOULD YOU HURT ME LIKE THIS.
Now I have to go back and look at all my photos of the death scene to see if I can work out where they all wound up.
Death scene includes:
-random Cthulhu, probably hidden behind the thing like a four-eyed bulldog in this gif
-the adorable glass frog
–at least ten other little toys and gewgaws (not shown) on the console, at least one of which appears to be a little plush voodoo-doll-style head of Yondu himself, plus something that vaguely looks like a second purple-haired troll doll thing that is not a troll doll and also what I recognize as a red tentacle finger puppet, and, adorably, a tiny plush monster creature with three teeth
-notably most of the humanoid action figure things I can see are specifically green skinned; not sure if that means Yondu likes skrulls or what there
Does not include that I was able to see: the black kitty thing, the weird four eyed bulldog thing (I misclassified that as a kittything but stand by my decision to say that weird green Yoda is in the Cat class of critters), the shiny reddish thing
I personally like to believe that the bobblyhead bulldog lives in Kraglin’s quarters, and that while alive Yondu occasionally menaced people with TENTACLE FINGERS when he was being an asshole.
at least one of which appears to be a little plush voodoo-doll-style head of Yondu himself
That little toy drives me mad because I’m sure that a) it’s not actually a Yondu, although it looks like one (though the idea of Yondu commissioning a plushie of himself makes me lol) and b) I’ve seen it in a toy store somewhere? I think?? But what it actually is I have NO IDEA. What are you, funny almost-Yondu thing?
Oooh, and also it shows up with one of the sleeping Ravagers:
A little thing I noticed recently while watching GOTG2: Tullk actually puts himself between Yondu and Taserface when the mutiny starts, and is the first to order the other side to drop their weapons.
…obviously none of his efforts to protect Yondu worked in the end, but still, he tried :(
Especially since Yondu is fully capable of handling a whole troupe alone with his arrow, as we have seen from the first movie and from the “Come a little bit closer”-scene. It’s most likely Tullk taking into consideration that Taserface knows full well about the arrow’s abilities and there won’t be an initial surprise hindering him from shooting Yondu while the other utters the first whistle.
Since both Taserface and Tullk know about the arrow, it’s very likely that Tullk is deliberately stepping in the line of fire not only to take a possible shot, but it’s likely he’s doing so in order to give Yondu that little window he needs to send the arrow flying.
Basically Tullk is ready to die protecting Yondu, but also ready to die while giving Yondu an opportunity to strike back.
Tullk is an amazing, loyal and steadfast fellow and he didn’t deserve any of the shit he got in the end.
(Sarah i seem to be hijacking your posts a lot, I hope you don’t mind, I can’t stop rambling.)
No no, hijack away! I love it when people post their thoughts on gifsets! :)
You know…thinking about it, it’s almost strange how it’s so glossed over in the movie that Yondu has so many loyal crewmembers willing to die for him. Tullk and co could’ve most likely wriggled out of being condemned to horrible deaths in space if they’d made an effort to denounce Yondu and join in with tormenting him, but they didn’t. What’s that all about? Love? Honour? (Both things Yondu namechecks later…) It’s so sad to think about. I’m glad fandom gives them (especially Tullk, he seems to be rightfully quite popular) the attention they deserve and didn’t really get in the movie.
(It sort of bugs me that James Gunn wrote that analysis of the Contraxia scene and talked about how Yondu ‘hasn’t got one true friend.’ What about all the ones who died for him? Bah, humbug.)
Okay but don’t think about Kraglin taking a ship on a meandering journey through the black, picking up the bodies of the loyal crewmen who were spaced (the bodies of his friends) and making sure each and every one of them has proper Ravager death rites. Don’t think about that.
Hey sweetie I know you’re on holiday and all but fuk u
Especially don’t think about how he’s sending Yondu the most loyal crew to have in the afterlife to sail their ships in the Aetherafter
Gonna have a hell of a time sailing without his First though. The position is left open in the ghostly ranks until Kraglin rejoins them.
What’s the one thing better than pirates? SPACE PIRATES!
The Ravager Mixtape:
Spoilin’ For A Fight – ACDC You Are A Pirate – Alestorm Bugger Off – Fiddler’s Green Necessary Evil – Motionless in White Keelhauled – Alestorm Let’s Steal Everything – World/Inferno Friendship Society Get Lucky – Halestorm Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked – Cage the Elephant Professional Pirate – Tim Curry Centuries – Fall Out Boy Rose Tattoo – Dropkick Murphys What’s Left Of The Flag – Flogging Molly
OMFG Yondu is so, so done with this, you can literally see him giving up at one point. It’s not worth it, they ain’t gonna learn their numbers, he isn’t gonna try, just going to silently endure it.
(I’m glad at least someone was able to teach Peter how to do math at some point, because a big part of the crew obviously can’t do it.)
I just noticed that one of the Ravagers in GOTG2 who defends Yondu on Contraxia is Scottish. I bet when he signed on to the Ravagers he didn’t even have to prove himself. Like Yondu just asked why he thought he belonged with the crew and the guys went “Well, aye, back in Glasgow…” and Yondu just cut him off. “Ya from Glasgow? Yer in son.”
So if I didn’t count wrong, then Stakar’s team as we know it from GotG 2 consists of six people: Stakar, Aleta, Mainframe, Martinex, Charlie-27 and Krrugarr.
And while doing some research for my fanfictions, I realized that, while the Ravager Captains act independent from each other, each with their own crew (which, apparently, all have a different color – Stakar is some kind of dark blue, Aleta black, Yondu is red), they all share the flame badge.
And there are seven tips on the badge. Exactly seven tongues of flames, one in the middle, three on each side.
That makes seven flames for seven Captains.
I dunno, but I really like to headcanon this: The flames represent Stakar’s original team, the core of the Ravagers. The badge was made when Yondu was still part of the team.
He is flame number seven.
And even with Yondu out of the team, after breaking the code – Stakar never changed the design.
And Yondu had one more very good reason to keep the badge, even though he was no longer an official Ravager.
Because it reminded him of his old team, the people he had lost by breaking the code.
