Please ignore if you’re not GOTG/GOTG2 fandom folk, or don’t if you’re interested in ranty stuff.
Re: Stakar rescues Yondu - but why do fandom keep envisioning Yondu as a kid when this happens?
Why, when writing fics that focus on Stakar saving Yondu from slavery, do people forget he was -at least- twenty years old at the point where he was freed? He’d be an adult, or at the youngest a teenager on the cusp of adulthood (if centaurians age differently then I havent seen it anywhere a la canon).
Yeah, I get that it’s nice to envision Stakar saving Kid!Yondu from a lifetime of slavery, but I’d really, really like to see how Stakar would handle dragging a spitting, screaming, institutionalized Yondu out of everything he’s ever known and having to fight him to teach him that there’s a greater purpose in life than being someones attack dog.
See, before he knew what freedom was, Yondu strikes me as the kind of guy that would be GOOD at being an attack dog - he’s a skilled fighter, and the kree thought it’d be worth the investment to ‘upgrade’ him for combat purposes.
I’m not saying he enjoyed being beaten and downtrodden and used, but I would expect that in a life where he had little to hold onto, the pride that he was able to kill, and do it efficiently and en masse would be one of the few things he could take pride in.
Take that away and how would he feel about that? He was saved...but not to be a fighter anymore? Is he fighting for someone else? He had to have some level of obedience to his former masters or he’d be dead or a programmed vegetable. Having autonomy for the first time when he’s been forbidden from making his own choices...that’s confusing as all hell. I get that it’s tempting to firmly park him in the ‘childlike wonder’ department when writing about rehab, but it’s rarely so pretty or neat.
Damn. Now I’m gonna have to write something.
Also, while I’m at it - I have a HC rolling around upstairs that reflects on Yondu as a captain - what if, when he became a captain of his own crew, he gathered those that were on their last warnings from the other ravager captains? What if Yondu’s crew consisted of those that were about to be, or had just been cast out of their respective clans and Yondu had taken them on to give them one last chance...
...one last chance that Stakar had once given to him?
It would explain a little of why the majority of his crew appear to be outright assholes, the occasional dumb-ass, and the few blindly/gratefully loyal.
I dunno, it just fits right, in my head, that Yondu would do this for the ravagers. They were his only family, the only things he really valued and at one point who he thought really valued him. When that went to shit it’s clear to see that he’s just carrying on the only way he knows how. It’s not as if he had an extensive education to fall back on.
Anyways, rant done and dusted. May rant again another time.