Send me ships for Yondu and I’ll tell you what I think!@sarlatova
// OK OK I’m gonna answer this one real quick before work because I’ve also got asks from @xnebula and @doesntneedyou, which is really just testament to how much I talk about Yondu x Nebula because everyone and their dog knows how much I love this ship.
Basically, this is one of those pairings that I don’t think is very big in the fandom because it’s not obvious until you start getting really deep into the characters. In vol. 2 Yondu and Nebula have a sexy little moment while they’re on the ship together, and that’s that.
But! If you look at them beneath the surface, there’s a pretty solid foundation for a relationship there.
They come from similar backgrounds. Nebula was raised as an assassin by Thanos-- regularly tortured and abused to twist her into a ruthless killing machine. Yondu was sold by his parents into being a Kree battle slave-- where he spent the next 20 years of his life subject to nothing but violence and cruelty until Stakar Ogord freed him.
Now, there’s some contrast between them too, which @xnebula made me pick up on-- they’ve got this great duality of order vs. chaos. She’s a cyborg, a perfectionist, and she was raised in an environment where she had no personal freedom whatsoever. Even now that she’s free, she’s stuck on the same track-- she’s so chained to her hatred for Thanos that it’s all she’s got to define her.
Yondu’s the chaotic side of that. The Ravagers have complete freedom-- so much so that Gunn’s described them as a pack of wild dogs (an image which I think sums them up perfectly, and you’ll see me use it a lot in my descriptions of them). They have absolutely no defining motive except to survive-- so they wander around the galaxy as scoundrels, thieves, and murderers, making enemies wherever they go because they’ve really got nothing better to do.
And that’s very appealing to Nebula. She doesn’t want to stay chained to her hate for Thanos. And then along comes Yondu-- someone older and more experienced, who’s gone through the same thing she’s now going through-- who could have spent the rest of his life on a war path against the Kree-- but instead he’s learned to move on and find himself a niche in the galaxy.
More than that, he’s managed to find himself a family-- which we all know Nebula desperately wants.
So the dynamic between them is going to be harsh, because they’re broken people. But that stark honesty between them is part of what makes it so attractive-- other people don’t know how to deal with their sharp edges, but with each other they can be themselves. They can beat on each other and scream and hurt, and at the end of the day, neither of them takes it personally** because they know just how fucked up it is inside their own heads.
There’s a solace for them in each other, too. Because, as I’ve mentioned, Yondu’s been through a lot of what Nebula’s going through now, and he can act as something of a guide to help her get past it. She desperately needs to not be alone, but in order to get that, she needs someone who can tolerate her sharp edges. Yondu’s not only unfazed by them, he’s attracted to them-- and in his own not-so-nice way, he’s willing to help her work through them.
**As an aside: I still find it very interesting the Nebula very deliberately DIDN’T kill Yondu when it would have been much easier for her to do just that, and he obviously didn’t hold a grudge when they ended up working together later.
