The Life of Yondu Udonta
（each pic reads from right to left）
the ravagers
(Spoilers for GotG 2, some daring headcanon of mine, could be completely wrong.)
Talked a bit with @forgedobsidian (thanks for helping me out once again) and came up with the thought –
Yondu had been exiled from the other clans for quite some time, before the two movies. He’s a loner when it comes to being a Ravager, not really a member of them anymore, since he broke the code.
But… his men were still with him. Yondu was exiled after he picked up Peter and started raising him, and at least a few of the Ravagers must have already been part of the crew before that, since they remember Peter when he was still simply viewed as “cargo”.
That means that some men, like Horuz, probably Tullk, Oblo, and the others who stayed loyal to Yondu until the very end, stayed with Yondu although he had been exiled.
Sure, there is the fact that Stakar probably could have exiled them, too. But he didn’t say so. He explicitly stated that it had been Yondu who had dealt in children and been exiled. He didn’t say anything about the crew. So if Yondu’s men hadn’t been exiled, they could have tried and changed clans – claimed that it had all been Yondu’s idea, the whole children-trafficking, and just turn around and walk away from Yondu, to join another Ravager-Captain.
They could have left Yondu and look for another job altogether.
Or they could have blamed Yondu for being exiled and started a mutiny long ago.
But they didn’t. At least a few men in Yondu’s crew stayed with him for no obvious reason.
So, Ravagers or not, greedy jerks or not – they stayed with Yondu because of loyalty.
There were some in that rough bunch who actually stayed on Yondu’s side not because of his arrow, his power, his strength (because even in the end, when he had been beaten, they didn’t waver) – but because of Yondu, because they were loyal to him. Loyal enough to rather die for him, in the end, other then turn coats and abandon him.
Scratch following the code, scratch following the flames – there were some who only followed the arrow. Who followed Yondu.
Does anyone else really hope Peter and Kraglin went back and gave those guys proper funerals? ;-;
I’ve been doing a bit of casual reading about real-life pirates and privateers in order to be able to write about the Ravagers more effectively! Here are two things I have learned:
- French privateer Jean Bart once tied his own son to the mast during a sea battle to “cure him of fear”
- Pirates who stole from members of their own crew were usually either marooned or shot
Peter got off really lightly growing up as a space pirate, apparently.
Headcanon that fireworks are a form of ravager communication. Purple means party over here, come join. Yellow means warning – danger ahead.
The equivalent of a wolf’s howl in the silence of space.
I read once in a fanfiction (I think?) that the colourful funeral fireworks mean “Stay away, we are mourning our dead.” I wish I could remember where I read that, because I love it.
anybody else think it was weird to have such a long focus on the murder of the crew after the mutiny especially the very long and drawn out perspective of their lifeless bodies in space
I think it was probably to make it really hit home how horrible dying in space is, so it hurts more when it happens to Yondu too. (It worked.)
Normally, we see technology and progress in science-fiction movies, but the Ravagers are guys who love muscle cars. The sensation of touch is important to them. So even though there are ways to make a spaceship that doesn’t tremble, they want to feel the trembling. They want the tactile sensation of feeling their hands on the buttons, to feel everything they’re interacting with.
James Gunn (via cannibalisticwhistler-a)
Oh no
The post I just reblogged about Stakar and Yondu’s surrogate father/son relationship echoing Yondu and Peter’s made me realize that Yondu’s “They were the only family I had” to Rocket in the cell in GotG 2 (talking about the Ravagers casting him out) is a possibly intentional echo of Peter’s “He’s the only family I have” about Yondu at the end of the first movie (speaking to Gamora, after he’s just burned all his bridges with the Ravagers as far as he knows). Two space pirates losing their space pirate families, except one was due to his fatal flaw, and the other was because of doing the right thing …
And let’s not even start on Yondu telling Peter “We’re Ravagers! We have a code!” in their first scene in GotG1. After what happened to him, it must have been even more important to him to bring up Peter “properly”, by space pirate standards. Trying to prevent Peter from suffering the same fate, and maybe on some unconscious level, trying to make Stakar proud even after Stakar won’t have anything to do with him anymore. Or at least modeling the kind of mentor relationship he had at one time with Stakar.
I really want to know more about the Ravagers. The movie hinted at so many things, but (understandably) it didn’t really have time to go into them. Is Stakar like, the overseer of all 100 ships? What’re the other points of their pirate code? Why are those particular funeral rites so important? I WANT TO KNOW THE LORE, dammit.
Also, I saw people speculate on another forum that if the Ravagers were going around freeing Kree slaves like Yondu maybe they started off as a band of anti-slavery rebels, and I really like that idea.
