Script for my/Aranock Queer Guardians of the Galaxy video (Patreon)

Hey all, I'm hard at work on IDENTITEAZE stuff for the next few weeks. It's getting hectic cause we're hoping to shoot in 2 weeks or so, so things are moving fast. The one thing we are waiting on is official approval from SAG, given the ongoing strike, but we are hopeful, given that we are an independent production. But we'll make announcements as I have them. But in the meantime, I have a few videos for the channel cooking. I filmed and wrote this before the strike, so we're going to finish it up, given we have some sponsor contracts. I'm excited for this one, and Aranock is currently editing this video, it should release early next month for you all here on Patreon and middle of next month for everyone else. 

Just want to say to you all before the script; Thank you all again for the support. Between moving, IDENTITEAZE, doing my channel and just... the world right now... It's been a really stressful past few weeks/months. I know I've been a bit less available than normal, and I just want to just say to all of you that it means the world to have you here. <3 Adore you all and I hope you're taking care of yourself. Anyways, hope you enjoy the script. 

Prologue

Aranock: So I know you were expecting Jessie but hey hi I’m Aranock Jessies script editor, writer, creative partner, the editor on this video, her chosen sister. Point is interspersed with Jessie’s observations and analysis I am going to be including my perspective, but don’t worry I’m not an interruption. After all I did cowrite Jessie’s video on James Gunn from last year, so we both felt it fitting for me to be a part of this piece in particular, though to be clear we influenced each others sections significantly and both deserve credit for making eachother sound so clever. More importantly I’m here to deliver a brief disclaimer that became necessary halfway through production, so before we begin,

This piece was partially written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the films being covered here wouldn't exist.

Both Jessie and I fully support both the WGA and the SAG-AFTRA strikes currently ongoing when this video is released. While we are discussing works that were recently released, and would encourage people to watch them eventually, we would ask that you refrain from doing so in any way which supports the companies and especially the streaming services who made this strike necessary.

While a full boycott has not been called for, SAG-AFTRA has asked that everyone who does media about film and tv refrain from promoting struck content during this time. Any praise Jessie and I give to these works should be seen purely as praise for the artists, writers and actors who created it and that if anything the praise is emphasizing that the writers, actors, and other artists deserve more compensation because they are who make these works possible. Do not support Disney or any studios during the strike.

Jessie: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 is a perfectly imperfect movie. When I stepped out of the theater after seeing Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, I don’t know if I could have expressed precisely what this movie made me feel… beyond telling you, it made me feel seen in a way I don’t think a Marvel movie has ever done for me before. And that’s saying something because I’m an eldritch horror monster upon which simply your gaze shall drive mad. Aka a queer person existing in modern America. But That is the point, because Guardians is a film ABOUT being seen, how we come to see ourselves, and how we must fight for that right to define ourselves. So like a queer person in America. And eldrith horror monsters. Unfashionable abyss pride everyone.

Many of the central characters of Marvel movies are symbols of ideas or personifications of systems. Captain America is an idealized version of US ideals, and his stories are about how that idealism often bumps up against the realities of the world he inhabits. The same for Thor, a child of a monarch for whom Thor must wrestle with his history within; Odin’s legacy of imperialism and what that means for himself and his brother. Even many of the Marvel movies in phases 4 and 5, with the rare exceptions of films like Black Panther 2, have started to feel more like a product of the system of the Marvel Cinematic Universe rather than film entities unto themselves, with works like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantummania feeling more like a setup for the next big event than a work of art interested in telling its own stories.

So what makes Guardians of the Galaxy so very special, so fucking special, is because it’s about the creeps. The weirdos. It’s about people who don’t belong here. People who have never been able to have control or a perfect body, who feel left out… how they are all made to feel imperfect.

And the film is about how these broken people feel this way because they are products of systems that violently attempt to define them and who they are. From Star-Lord to Mantis to Drax to Gamora to Nebula to Cosmo to Kraglin to, of course, Rocket Raccoon, each of our characters have been traumatized by systems or individuals who represent systems, traumatized by failing to be something they never could, and traumatized for the benefit of worlds that these systems attempted to force into being. These traumas alienated these characters from understanding themselves, and, despite escaping these systems, they feel like they don’t have a tie to who they are, where they came from, and who they wish to be. They have all been running away from something.

The film is also targeted directly at fighting not only the fictional systems these beautiful people came from but the real-world systems of domination and control that exist in our world…particularly criticizing America. Like, believe me; THIS FILM SAYS SOME SHIT! That surprised me; I cannot believe Marvel let him get away with it. Sure, it's not James Gunn’s DC Comics series Peacemaker, where he ends the show with the heroes fighting cops and neo-Nazis - but I repeat myself - Guardians 3 still comes as close to unequivocally calling out American policies as I think I’ve ever seen a Marvel movie do, even arguably though not definitively more so then the Black Panther films, given those movies do some level of CIA aggrandizement within them; see the fantastic FD Signifer’s videos for discussion on that.

Off in their little corner of the galaxy and the film franchise of the MCU, outside of systems both diegetic and market, the Guardians could find and define themselves for each other. The reason Guardians of the Galaxy movies and the overall work of filmmaker James Gunn continually resonate with me is empathy. It’s why I did a two and half hour video analyzing the work of James Gunn through his own experiences as a person and how all of his films are about him struggling with his own self-identification in a world that denied him that and finding empathy for himself. It’s his empathy not just for others but for ourselves by wrestling with the understanding that we are all… beautiful, imperfect beings that are made whole by being able to define ourselves through our relationships with others, with people who see the real us. And Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 feels like the perfect end to that journey… and the start of a new one; for both James Gunn as a filmmaker and our perfectly imperfect guardians.

=====TITLE SEQUENCE=====

Part 1: It was Rocket’s story all along…

Aranock: I feel a lot of personal connection to the Guardians series, and to its characters. For an example, when I had just turned 14 my mom was diagnosed with cancer. Shes all good now, has been for a long time. But the point is that effects you at that age. And so when I was 16 sitting in the theater for the first Guardians film not knowing what to expect, the opening hit me like a truck. I understood Peter here.

But older Peter is not someone I really connect with as much. Especially as Ive gotten older, but even then to some extent

Jessie: When we first meet him in the first film, he's an ignorant little man-child, constantly whining, making inappropriate jokes, and generally being full of himself. Much of this comes down to his upbringing with the Ravagers and, specifically, Yondu, who we see in the first Guardians film, is an emotionally manipulative, uncaring father figure, with the Ravagers themselves in that film reflecting him. Mostly men who thrive on competing with other Ravagers and are only there to make money and do violence, even going so far as to kidnap and traffic children, as we later learn in Guardians 2, which puts them as even too toxic for other Ravager clans. Peter never got to express who he was as a kid because he always tried to live up to Yondu’s version of who he should be. This was helped by the fact that Yondu took Peter from Earth. Peter has never had a real connection to his heritage, his home, where he came from. His only real tie to that history is a single photograph of his mom, himself, and his grampa, as well the mixtape given to him by his mom, something he constantly plays to cling to some semblance of self-identity outside of the Ravager’s culture. This is akin to what I spoke about in my recent video on Masculinity as it relates to whiteness, so check out that video for more info; but one of how in the United States, young white men are drawn to cultures of masculine dominance and control by the fact that they are cut off from their own history and culture, pressed into this idea of being white, which becomes akin to whatever the dominant culture is as whiteness is ultimately nothing with no tie to authentic heritage. Thus, many young white men are radicalized into competitive mindsets of control, domination, hierarchical thinking, and capitalism to live up to the culture they are told is their own when in reality, their true cultural history has been stolen from them, something I spoke about to greater extent in my video The “Masculinity of Trans Women.”

Some can find connection through tokens or communities elsewhere, as Peter starts to do through his mixtape.

Aranock: I listen to music all of the time. As soon as I had a device that would let me I had headphones pretty much whenever I could. It was only when I was older that I would realize the reason why that helped me was because I'm autistic. But I think I also used it in a similar way to Peter, it helped me not have to think about certain things to some degree. Little peter getting in fights because other kids were being cruel, that too was relatable to 16 year old me especially.

As said though I relate less to Peter and far more to Gamora, Nebula and Rocket. And with these films being a trilogy about Rocket according to the third film, I think its worth reappraising the first 2 films through that lens before we analyze volume 3.

What is Rockets journey and why I do connect with it?

Rocket when we first meet him is to say the least fairly negative towards society. Mocking random passers by until he gets the bounty for Peter. Not to mention

"I live for the little things like how much this is going to hurt." (Guardians 1)

But he has one connection, Groot, and he calls cops fascists. So he cant be all bad.

He also has an assigned legal name he doesnt use.

"Subtject 89p13, calls itself Rocket.”

Note the dehumanizing and incorrect use of the wrong pronouns, and how Rocket is a chosen name, one that reflects who he is not what he was assigned at birth. Yes; I am actually doing a trans reading of Rocket, you expected me to show up in a video and not do a queer reading YOU FOOLS.

Anyway Rocket has escaped 22 prisons. His life is defined by being placed in boxes that he does not belong in.

He also doesn't like having his body seen by others. Do I have to explain?

He also is performing strength and ego, a rough exterior to make sure no one fucks with him. Something he learned to do because of society, especially considering what we learn of what he was like when he was young in 3.

Hes representative of where a lot of very closeted trans people are. Angry and alone.

Rocket is also not a good person, and a bit of an ableist dick, getting Quill to steal someones prosthetic leg for no reason other than he thought it would be funny. While yes the film is framing Rocket as being a bad guy here, its also treating this like a joke in a way thats not ok. While I love the Guardians films they have an issue with making jokes of disability in ways other disabled people with more relevant lived experiences have discussed. Stealing peoples disability aids is not funny, and I saw a number of posts on tumblr when the Christmas special released where disabled people who use similar aids talked about how this exact thing has negatively affected them in real life. Do not take peoples disability aids, I promise you wouldn't find it funny if people took your body parts.

Returning to the analysis, escaping the prison is the first time Rocket acts as the person propelling things. However as shown a second later that was mostly for himself

"Im not waiting around for a humie with a deathwish"

Hes also clearly dealt with a lot of mockery over what he is.

"Keep calling me vermin tough guy, you just wanna laugh at me like everyone else."

When you have been mocked and belittled a lot for a long time it makes you defensive. It messes with you.

"I didn't ask to be made, I didn't ask to be torn apart and put back together over and over and turn into some little monster."

Rockets pain over being made, thats also deeply relatable on a trans level. I didn't choose for my body to be this way, I didn't choose what puberty did to me. I didn't even know a choice was possible.

"Lets see if you can laugh after 5 or 6 good shots to the face."

And I get him here. I remember when I was 13 there was this one kid who had mocked and belittled me for a long time. And he decided to stand on my desk with dirty shoes, call me a slur again, and I just pulled it out from under him. I wanted to see him try and laugh and say that to me with his back on the ground. That type of pain causing comes from a very hurt place that is well represented in this film.

We see this frustration again briefly when the Collector calls him a pet; belittling him.

Rocket at this point also is so deeply hurt that he struggles to care about anything

"What has the galaxy ever done for you why would you want to save it?"

As well we see him give up on Gamora when shes been out in the vacuum too long. But unlike in previous moments there is a sense of sadness and care in what he says there.

And then he pleads with Quill to go back to his pod because as much as this moment is showing the change in Peter, its also showing the change in Rocket. He cares that Peter’s going to die here.

"Everybody's got dead people its no excuse to get everyone else dead along the way"

Is an interesting line in the context of where Rockets journey will go in the second film. Because hes struggling with similar demons to Drax.

"I know they're the only friends we ever had"

Rocket learning to care about others again, after the pain he went through that we will learn about later, really starts here. He is slowly opening himself up to caring again, but he does so reluctantly.

He also does a poor job trying to save Peter and Gamora; but he is trying to save them from the ravagers.

The reason he’s struggling with this is because he represents what the group is, because the guardians are losers. As in folks who've lost stuff.

"Our homes, our families, normal lives."

And thats pretty relatable when youve been through some shit.

For the first time for all of them, they are being given something, a chance

"To give a shit, to not run away."

I think its in this central conceit of the first films collective character arcs where Rocket being the center of the trilogy really lies.

He is the character who is failing the most with dealing with his trauma in healthy ways and how it pushes him away from people, and makes him shut off caring for others.

"No groot you cant you'll die. Why are you doing this."

And here we see the hard shell Rockets built around himself fully shattering, and not because of alcohol but because of genuine vulnerability.

He cant understand why Groot would sacrifice himself for someone else, hes also desperate for Groot not to leave him because hes already lost so many people. And its Groot showing him that theres more than just his need to survive.

Rocket: "I called him an idiot."

I think we all have one of those. Someone we lose and maybe our last words just arent quite right.

And after the fight, Rocket cries and he accepts comfort from Drax.

He's found people he can be at least a little vulnerable with. All of the guardians have found a family.

But progress and growth are not linear.

"What if I see something that I wanna take and it belongs to someone else"

And with that its time to talk about the hardest parts of connecting with other people when you've been traumatized. Regressing and pushing others away.

Guardians 2 opens with clearly establishing its priorities.

Its about family, the action is all in the background, the focus is on our disastrous crews child and how they all interact with them.

This film is an action scifi movie second, and a personal drama and family story first.

"Family reunion yaaay"

The purpose of this mission was Gamora getting Nebula out of the Sovereigns hands after all.

Also we will come back to the battery eating creatures and the sovereigns later.

Focusing in on Rocket here, hes stolen some of the batteries. In so doing he puts the entire crew in danger.

All because of a slight insult to his ego, because the sovereigns were condescending.

Then again in the ship because he wants to be seen as the best.

Quill and him fighting over who gets to control the ship nearly gets them all killed. Because the villain of Guardians 2 is Ego.

No not him, well kind of him, but as in the idea of ego.

"Don't call me a raccoon!" And again we see Rocket struggle with what he is. That he hates being called that.

Across the galaxy we see Rockets foil in this film Yondu, who is lonely and disconnected from those he once held as family. All because he took the wrong thing, in his case transporting Peter and the other children of ego.

"If you think I take pleasure in exiling you, you're wrong. You broke all our hearts"

When you have to cut off someone you cared about, its not a pleasant thing for anyone involved. But sometimes they make it necessary through their actions.

After this the sovereign hires Yondu to go after his own kids family.

And of course Ego, the man, insults Rockets ego, the concept.

"Triangle shaped monkey"

and it pushes him further towards pushing everyone away.

"What is your goal here, to get everybody to hate you cause its working."

Rocket at this point is lashing out because he does not know how to deal with his feelings or emotions. He is taking self destructive actions because he doesn't know how to exist in community with people.

He is so used to being in a constant state of being hunted that he feels most comfortable when he is dealing with stressful situations. Something we see in the section where he fights all the ravagers, hes in his element and thats sad.

When you’ve been in a lot of fight or flight for a long time, you kinda get used to existing in a state of emergency to the point where being out of it, you don't know how to deal with that. Am I talking about Rocket or me you decide (:| but with sadness)

Basically since moving into the place I currently live in thats what I have been confronting with myself. Its the first time I have been in a space where I really truly feel safe. There's still difficulty; I struggle to pay rent and food and my chronic illness giving me a day off would be nice and cPTSD if anything gets extra fun once you are in a safe environment. But for once I feel safe, I have supportive friends and family, including chosen members like my sister Jessie. So I relate to the feelings Rocket is struggling with here.

I don’t do the things he does but I get it, I get the impulse. And when I was much younger I did push people away like he does here. Because if you are terrified of being abandoned, if you have experienced that a lot, you can self-destructively push people away because at least then you’re in control. It's a self fulfilling prophecy, they were gonna leave you anyway, might as well have power over that.

However even if Rocket is struggling with that, he has still grown from the first film.

“Gimme your word you won’t hurt Groot and I’ll tell you where the batteries are.”

Rocket here, without hesitation, gives himself up if it means protecting Groot and

Yondu as Rockets parallel here is risking himself to try and protect the guardians.

This act costs him his crew and position. Because vulnerability in a space built on the projection of strength is not allowed. It goes against the ego aggrandizing norms of expected gender performance in spaces like this.

“Your the one what killed those men by leading them down the wrong path, because you’re weak.”

The violent masculine persona focused on ego we see Rocket, Yondu, Peter and to a smaller extent Nebula and Gamora struggling to perform and deal with is externally embodied in the antagonists Tazerface and Ego, and to a lesser extent the Sovereign and her people.

“ITS METAPHORICAL!”

Rocket mocking Tazerface reflects people mocking Rocket, both answer it with displays of strength and violence.

“I couldn’t stand to set foot on an earth where she wasn’t living”

Over on Ego the planet, Ego the physical manifestation has a conversation with Peter, where Peter expresses his anger and frustration with him and Ego dismisses Peters feelings.

“You can’t imagine what that’s like” “I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THATS LIKE”

Peter in essence as a character has been running from that pain his whole life, its why he ran from connection for so long. Because Peter and Rocket are foils. Both of them at the end of Gaurdians 1 are learning to reach out and connect with others “Take my hand” (rocket being pet)

In Guardians 2 both of them are struggling with ego, but in opposite directions.

Peter has a lot of ego but you see Rocket does not actually have a lot of ego, Rocket is struggling with a defense mechanism he has learned in order to compensate for his deep level of insecurity.

He is struggling because he performs false ego and false confidence, while internally having an incredibly low view of himself.

Don’t believe me HALF HIS LINES in the first film are defeatist and he repeatedly shows in small things that he does not think he is good enough. But he like many people pushed to perform strength in order to survive learns to perform ego.

Seriously if you don’t believe this think about how much of his story is about lying to the self, and how much we see that in his most direct mirror Yondu. Yondu even as he prods at Rocket about his issues with doing things that are self destructive, lies when asked about why he saved Peter. “He was skinny, good for thieving” “Uh huh”

Yondu also performs an outer shell of hegemonic masculinity which hides a more complex self.

And both of our messy lads here express a lot about themselves through unspeakable violence. I think its interesting how with all the control Yondu has over his arrow, he strikes his crew where they hurt him. In the heart. The first film shows him kill through the head too, but here its very specific where he targets. We also see how this violence passes through generations, as we see Groot partake in this violent revenge. We also see these 2 professional assholes bond over this violent display. *laughing shot*

But then Yondu does what both of them do best, take self destructive actions because of their need to reassert control. And he blows up the ship.

Meanwhile Tazerface’s self serious hegemonic masculinity gets laughed at by a woman.

“TAZERFACE” *gets laughed at.*

Rocket and Yondu get people in danger because of their performances of Ego.

Peter on the other hand hurts people because of his unchecked ego, which leads to entitlement. He feels entitled to Gamora and expresses it in pretty gross ways.

Peter: “THAT SHOW WOULD GET 0 RATINGS”

This scene of him yelling makes me viscerally uncomfortable.

Peter as a cis white dude from the 70s and 80s grew up on a steady diet of media that said he was the hero and the world exists for him, and that he is entitled to women.

So Peter pushes Gamora away because of his ego. Mirroring and contrasting how Rocket pushes others away.

Peter pushes away people because his ego makes him an asshole, Rocket pushes people away because he is an asshole due to his insecurity and distance from his ego.

Both are trying to live up to an ideal created by others.

Hell even on a literal level Rockets journey is far from Ego and coming to Ego is him doing better about caring for others, and Peters journey is close to Ego and having to get away from it for the betterment of those around him.

There is no scene that more heavily shows this then Yondu and Rocket on the ship.

*probably have to record this*

“I know everything about you. I know you play like your the meanest and the hardest but actually you're the most scared of all.”

“Shut up.”

“I know you steal batteries you don’t need and you push away anyone whos willing to put up with ya because just a little bit of love reminds you how big and empty that hole inside you actually is.”

“I said shut up”

“I know them scientists what made you never gave a rats ass about you.”

“I’m serious dude”
“Just like my own damn parents who sold me darling little baby into slavery. I know who you are boy, BECAUSE YOUR ME.”

What makes Rocket self destructive is a mix of self loathing, of feeling unworthy of love, and trying to perform strength instead of allowing himself to be vulnerable.

Yondu after hitting rock bottom is trying and succeeding to some degree in helping Rocket to gain self awareness so that they can help others.

Because the reality is that type of self loathing makes one selfish and interferes with being a part of family and community, in a mirror to how an overabundance of self glorification does the same thing.

Peter: “I finally found my family”

Gamora: “I thought you already did”

*from later in the film*

Ego: “We are beyond such things”

Do you get it? Peters Ego prevents him from forming healthy family relationships and connections. But the others don’t give up on him.

“We’re family, we leave no one behind.”

The Guardian movies are just more emotionally complex fast and furious

VIN DIESEL “FAMILY

Even with Rocket earlier in the film, his family instead of lashing out back at him, they express concern that hes pushing them away.

“You know it really hurt me to put that tumor in her brain”

Ego shows the most toxic form of this pushing people away. He is so averse to connection that he put cancer in his loves brain so she would die and he wouldn't be able to return to see her again.

So to save the galaxy, Rocket has to overcome his fear and self doubt, and Peter has to kill his Ego literally, and to do that he learns one last lesson from Yondu.
“You think when I make this arrow fly I use my head.”

Yondus power isnt being tough, it isnt thinking, its his heart. It was the whole time. But he was too wrapped up in that performance of strength to impart this to Peter until now. When he helped Rocket he also helped himself.

Yondu: “I’m Mary Poppins y’all”

Its through vulnerability that hes finally able to connect with family again. His vulnerability shows Rocket and Peter a way out. It doesn’t make what he did in the past ok, but it shows both of these messy boys that there is a path to change.

Later in the fight Ego smashes into Peter and breaks his mask. The character of Star Lord the embodiment of his self aggrandizement. Peter by fighting Ego is able to crack that idea of what he is, and realize a more true self. In this moment he specifically sees Yondu and Rocket.

“I don’t use my head to fly the arrow boy, I use my hbabgkasjbh;”

And peter thinks about his family. His mom, Drax, Rocket, Gamora, Yondu. And we hear the chain for the second time in the film. The first time was when Rocket pushed him away, and now hes reconnected with Rocket and the rest of that chosen family it plays again.

So Groot in a reflection of a line from earlier “Hes small, good for getting into places we couldn’t fit” places a bomb in Ego’s chest. The killing blow to this toxic Ego is the chosen families kid. And then we see just how much Rocket has changed

“Not without Quill” “Not without you”

Listen to the vulnerability in his voice here. The sincerity. Rocket is letting himself express that care externally.

“I ain’t done nothing right my whole damn life rat. You need to give me this.”

Hey these 2 messy fucking characters learning to express themselves with eachother is actually really beautiful and in this moment Rocket accepts Yondu fully into their family. And then the way Rocket says this line

“I’m sorry I can only afford to lose one friend today.”

Just ruins me. Think about how much he has shifted to be able to express that feeling so openly. To express that he loves and cares for the rest of the Guardians that much.

“You’re a god if you kill me you’ll be just like everybody else” “Whats so wrong with that?”

“I know writers who use subtlety and they’re all cowards”

Peter kills the idea of himself as this big amazing super important hero. Hes just a guy. He killed his ego, the thing in the way of him connecting with others.

Jessie: When we meet him in Guardians Vol 1, broken away from the Ravagers, he’s left them looking to find himself, even giving himself a new name to try and define himself.

We see this arc mirrored in Guardians 2, where Peter learns his father, literally named Ego, only saw Peter as an extension of himself, not Peter as a whole person. Due to his father figures, Peter has never been able to define himself for himself, but only in what the fathers in his life wanted him to be. At the end of Guardians 2, Peter kills Ego allowing him freedom and is finally able to reframe a positive view of his masculinity and self through Yondu’s sacrifice and relating himself to the role of the feminine Mary Poppins, which frames Yondu’s masculinity as a protective, strong caretaker that can incorporate and accept elements of what is typically seen as feminine. It is a comparison that casts him in the role of a female character, sure, but also subtly reframes his masculinity in a more positive direction, one which Peter can now emulate through his familial dynamic with the Guardians.

“He may have been your father boy, but he wasn’t your daddy”

Aranock: Yondu also lets go completely of his mask, and he embraces vulnerability to his core.

“I’m sorry I didn’t do none of it right I’m damn lucky your my boy”

I dont know if you have ever had a parent apologize for something about how you were raised but uh yeah this scene makes me feel a lot of things.

So does the following funeral scene. Because the Guardians films have something that an unfortunate amount of media, especially a lot of the MCU lacks. Heart and vulnerability.

Rocket contacted the ravagers and they give Yondu a real funeral.

“He didn’t let us down after all Captain” “No he did not son”

Yondus father came back. He forgave in his own way. I think the Guardians films in general are exploring where forgiveness lies. What's too far. I like that it has lines it says are too far.

Ego is one of them, and we will get to threes exploration of this later.

I like that the characters in this series are a mess, they are a human mess. Its a lot more honest because of it.

“He didn’t chase them away. Even though he yelled at em, and was always mean and he stole batteries he didn’t need.”
“Well of course not”

Something about these losers, these deeply tossed aside people, finding growth and healing in each other. It means a lot to me.

And Rocket cries with his family, and that ends Guardians 2, and leads us to Guardians 3.

Part 2: Family Members

Jessie: The best way to break down the film is through individual characters, and the most obvious place is... COSMO! SHE IS THE BEST DOG, YES SHE IS, YES SHE! How dare Sean Gunn not say that... Worst character EVER.

Well, yes, but we’ll get to Cosmo and Kraglin later; let’s start with Star-Lord. Peter Quill has spent the last two Guardians movies beginning to come into himself. Peter’s arc through both films is learning to come into his own as a leader who isn’t just out for himself but able to find a connection with others by being willing to stand up with them, not for them. He finds a role that best fits him through his connection to the other Guardians.

It's this connection that also limits him to a degree. He believes that he requires this protective role, this need to define himself through others, to be his entire self. It’s why at the start of the film, we see him drowning his sorrows in alcohol because he’s self-pitying due to his failure to save others and his loneliness without the Gamora who died in Avengers: Infinity War. He thinks he needs her to be able to be his whole self… It’s why we see throughout the film him constantly trying to push the time-flung forward Gamora from Avengers: Endgame to return to Peter's relationship with the version of Gamora that Thanos killed. [clip]

Aranock: All of the characters are struggling with the legacy of death. For Peter part of this is a feeling that everyone around him dies. "My mother, Yondu, Gamora." He is avoiding the conversation though, and he is avoiding that while he has been left by a lot of people hes also left people. These films as discussed earlier explore lying to the self, and I think part of that is his avoiding confronting deaths. His running away from Earth and his grampa is one demonstration of this, but another is how it causes him to project onto others what he has lost to avoid that reality.

Jessie: Peter is not seeing Gamora for herself, but what a version of her that no longer exists could mean to him because he feels that version of her is what he needs to center his identity around again as he did in Guardians one.

This is ultimately triggering for Gamora herself. This Gamora, due to Endgame’s time-travel shenanigans, is only recently free from having lived under Thanos's control. Like Ego for Peter, Thanos didn’t see Gamora and her sister Nebula as full people or even love them beyond their usefulness to him. He thinks he loves them, but he is willing to traumatize, torture, pit them against each other, and sacrifice them for his larger desires. Gamora and Nebula are made into objects for Thanos to assert authoritarian control and expressions of his desire to try to make the entire universe fit his image. They were just cogs in his machine. While Gamora can recognize this trauma, she has not understood who she is outside of that hyper-masculine, controlling worldview. It’s why she joins the Ravagers, as they, as reflected by the time Peter spent with them, represent a similar type of community she’s used to, but not one that lets her explore her whole self as she must always push others away and showcase strength and competition.

Sadly, Peter is ultimately emotionally doing the same as Thanos… only seeing Gamora for what another version, another woman, meant to him rather than who she is now. This is why later in the movie Mantis, through Drax, attempts to tell Peter he needs to learn to stop defining himself through others [clip]. While the scene with Drax is hilarious and brings such Star Trek Discovery Admiral Vance poop energy [poop clip from Star Trek Discovery], the reason Mantis sends Drax instead of saying it herself is that she believes that Peter will only listen to another man being vulnerable, given his hypermasculine upbringing.

Aranock: This finally culminates in at the end of the film Peter accepting that he lost someone he loved but also that this Gamora isn’t the woman who died, that she is not only not his Gamora, but that he is not entitled to her, that she is her own person, and that neither Gamora’s existed for him.

Both myself and LadyKnight, who I discussed the film with, are glad that men are going to see this message in this film about how women do not exist for you; BUT we both felt that getting there is a lot for the women in the audience.

I think its arguable that a lot of men may need to have things beaten over their head with messages like this, and recognize I am not a man, and as a woman I didn't need it in this way. So I'm not sure if it's an issue or just an element of "I get it why are you repeating it so often I got the message" which is coming more from my and LadyKnight having a specific perspective as queer women.

Also to be fair Peter is a character who started like this "I don't learn, one of my issues" so perhaps some of the repetition comes from wanting to show his flaws and that even if its difficult you can still change.

I just think the story may have been better served if some of the time dedicated to that was shifted over to having more exploration of other characters.

Gamora and Nebula’s dynamic as sisters is one of the more interesting elements of the earlier films, and because we so rarely get to see sisters in films I really appreciate it.

When we meet Gamora and Nebula in Guardians 1 they are deeply cut off from feelings and trying to get out of the abusive traumatic situation they grew up in. When told about the prisoners wanting to kill her Gamora responds

Gamora: "Whatever nightmares the future holds, are dreams compared to whats behind me."

And I can understand this feeling. Because as much as I have dealt with both organized harassment online and hate crimes in person since coming out, compared to whats behind me, my existence now is a dream.

Nebula instead of wanting to escape wants to strike back. She is so desperate to be free she doesn't care who it hurts,

Nebula: "If you kill my father I will help you burn 1000 planets."

In the second film Nebula has a whole show of strength in order to take control and fit into the Ravager masculine environment its a unique display of how women can also perform this type of behaviour,

and probably best represents my relationship with having previously performed that and with growing to have a healthier relationship with myself later. I relate to how violence is forced onto her and how she had to fight to try and protect herself. That its not natural to her but comes from trauma.

Nebula: “Until he knows some semblance of the profound and unceasing pain I know every single day” In this continues to be the script where I am not flattering to myself. Especially when I was younger, wishing that pain back on those who harmed you is a feeling and thought that I have had. Its not one I am proud of, but it is honest.

Gamora also displays some element of this learned toughness throughout the films. We see her threatening violence if Peter ever tells anyone about her being a dancer for example. The Guardians films understand that hegemonic masculinity as a performance can be done by anyone.

Frankly these elements are most interesting in the relationship between the two of them.

In the first film we do see Gamora reach out to Nebula after she fights her, but Nebula is not ready for that type of connection.

In the second film Nebula travels halfway across the galaxy just to prove she can beat Gamora in a fight. Because Gamora and her were forced to fight every day growing up, to find who was strongest, they were raised in an environment of hierarchy through force.

After they stop, they finally talk it out.

Nebula: “You always wanted to win and I just wanted a sister.”

Nebula saving Gamora at the end shows just how much their relationship has shifted in a positive direction from the first film. She is learning she can show care, if slowly.

I love this hug between them at the end of Gaurdians 2. “You will always be my sister.” is a line that holds a special place for me. Not just because of the film but because when one of my younger siblings said that to me it meant the entire world as a trans woman. I doubt they remember saying it, but it meant a lot to me. I really appreciate this promise of care from between them, and I resonate with it.

So when we get to Guardians 3, despite Nebula feeling that this isn’t her Gamora and clearly having some distance as she is clearly grieving her sisters death…she does say

“She’s not dead she just cant remember the last couple of years”

and it makes me think of that line

*clip from gaurdians 2* “You will always be my sister.” A line that hit me in the gut at mach 5 on rewatch after seeing Volume 3. Because despite both of them in their own ways losing their sister, they will always be sisters. No matter how far apart they are, or which version of the other they get to know. That love is still there.

Which is also where my biggest problem with Gaurdians 3 comes in.

We spend so much time on Peter being…so obnoxious towards Gamora, but we don’t even get a REAL conversation between Gamora and Nebula in this film. And listen I have feelings about siblings in films because my siblings are really important to me, especially the relationship between sisters.
And yes there's a lot of great stuff going on in the subtext; that grunt at the beginning and end is great. I just feel they could have gotten a bit more in the text. That said, I love what is here. And Gamora and Nebula are not the only sibling pairs we have.

Kraglin is an interesting character that I don’t feel is given his due. He is basically Yondu’s other adopted son and I think him and Peter are mirrors to Gamora and Nebula. Yes really. Kraglin deep down is a sweet boy, but he's been through some tough things and grew up in the same difficult environment that Peter did. He also is struggling with the loss of their dad in volume 3.

In both the first and second films we see him have jealousy towards Peter because Peter is Yondu’s favourite son.(insert a line from each about “you always soft on Quill”) DO YOU SEE THE PARALLELS YET

In the second film he struggles with having betrayed Yondu “I didn’t mean to cause a mutiny. They killed all my friends.”

And hey this shot between him and Peter at the funeral. Sean Gunn does so much with his face acting right here in expressing what he is feeling. The later scene between them, a mirror of the immediately previous scene between Gamora and Nebula hug, has Kraglin and Peter connecting over gifts from Yondu. A new device for Peter to listen to music from earth, and Yondu’s arrow, given by Peter to Kraglin. And because of this Peter sits with his kid, listening to Father and Son with his funeral, and he mourns his dad. When Kraglin cheers at the Ravagers coming to him, its beautiful.

Kraglin in the third film also struggles through parallel issues to our primary characters and their past character arcs.

Kraglin at the beginning feels inadequate he stands in the shadow of his deceased father and he cannot leave up to the projection of what hes lost. He lashes out at Cosmo because he feels inadequate, and he can barely effect the fight with Adam Warlock. At the end of the film though he sees Yondu and in a parallel to Peter in Guardians 2. He learns to

"Use your heart boy"

just like his brother and he uses the arrow to help others, and he shows care for Cosmo who he pushed away earlier in the film.

He learns the lessons of Rocket and Peter in Guardians 2.

Quill is also affected by the loss of Yondu. He almost dies at the end because he drops his last gift from his dad.

The cold vacuum of space nearly killing him the same as it did Yondu, and Gamora in the first film, and I think this is purposeful. What could be more opposite to the love and warmth of family than the cold disconnect of the vacuum. And for Peter in the first film, and Yondu in the second film, and Adam in this 3rd film, each overcomes the hard shells of hegemonic masculinity to save someone else from that frigid expanse.

I also think its interesting to see the shift in Peters views on family through his siblings. Speaking with his sister Mantis, he says

"You're all the family I need."

Jessie: Mantis is someone who herself was also a product of Ego’s control, a man who only saw her through how he could use her for himself rather than as his daughter. She lacks confidence in her abilities because she’s never had a chance to prove herself outside of what Ego needed her for. Without him, she feels she can’t truly connect with anyone from her sense of self, instead defining herself by others’ needs. She tries to be a mother hen, a fixer, caring more about others' needs than her own, as that’s what she's used to with Ego, caring about him, not herself. She’s overly empathetic to the point of self-annihilation, unwilling to see herself and connect personally with others cause she feels she has nothing to give, hence why she sends Drax.  But the words she offers Drax are proof of her ability to understand not only herself but others, as everything Drax says to Peter is not just something Peter needs to hear, but Mantis needs to hear and know about herself.  The siblings, Mantis and Peter, are dealing with the issue of needing to define themselves as separate from what they get from others as they have both replaced dependence with a new one.

Aranock: Speaking of Mantis and Drax they are placed as a pair throughout the film.The two clearly enjoy the type of lighthearted teasing of family members. I do have to say its sad that Mantis bewitching a guard to be into Drax is the most explicit queerness we get in the Guardians series, but I personally blame Disney for reasons I cover more extensively in my video on Nimona, which Jessie helped with go subscribe on my channel for that. Earlier in the film Drax lies to Mantis and she expresses both how its wrong of him to lie to her and in another scene that its wrong to change the feelings of her friends. The pairs conflict is built around the importance of being honest with eachother, and it expresses itself most strongly when Mantis makes Drax forget. And then its just not addressed again. It feels like an abandoned thread or like there was a scene deleted between the two. However separate from this connected storyline their arcs are interesting.

Jessie: Drax himself often feels like he doesn’t have a place. Drax, throughout most Guardians films, can often be seen simply as the comedic relief due to his literalism. It often leads him to misunderstand situations or to feel out of place outside when he’s needed to use his strength to beat something up. And as a result, he often only sees himself as that; a destroyer—a fighter who leads others to think the same of him as well. Yet, we know from the first film that he is a fighter because he lost his family. Ronan killed his family to fit Thanos’ idea of forcing the universe to half its population, taking that identity from him. So, as a result, his way of viewing the world is often misplaced by the role of Destroyer… as we see later in the film, he is not stupid or dumb as some take him to be… but just someone whose straightforward view of the world allows him to express complex ideas to children and kids, those who don’t have the tools necessary to understand the nuance of metaphor. Kids also don’t have the emotional baggage or associations that we have in our society too. Instead, without words, Drax can explain an entire idea through emotional connection and a language no one but he and the other kids he is trying to protect understand. Drax can define himself again as the thing that Thanos, through Ronan, took from Drax in Thanos's pursuit to restructure the entire universe into how he wished it to be.

Aranock: I dont have another place for this but the guardians films use Yonic symbolism specifically with birthing Drax multiple times and I just don't know why or what it means but its there and I just need other people to be cursed with this knowledge. I could argue that it perhaps represents that violence isn’t his true self, but it is in fact his parental instincts which define him. I just, if I had a nickel for every time Drax came headfirst through a yonic symbol in these films I’d have 2 nickels which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice.

Jessie: We see in Star-Lord the apparent evolution in self-actualization he’s gone through in his time in the Marvel movies. He’s no longer the man-child, whining and making jokes, but throughout Vol 3, Peter is the mature one. Checking in on those potentially in danger [clip of him talking to the counter-Earth people], making clear that the Guardians aren’t out to hurt anyone. These are not actions Peter would have done in Vol 1… but clearly what he can do in Vol 3 because he has grown to understand himself, separate from the Ravagers. Finally, on his terms, he can come into his own through his ability to exist around people who don’t want him to be anything BUT himself.

It's worth noting that while this Peter is more mature in many ways, he is still maturing and growing. And his character arc demonstrates this.

It’s also why we see moments where it’s clear that, despite his desire to return to a past relationship with Gamora that can never exist cause she’s a different person, we see hints that Peter is more emotionally attached to Nebula, as she is to him. They’ve suffered under the same father figures who tried to define and control them. They have been through immense traumas together that they can understand and fully see [elevator clip of Nebula understanding Peter’s story].

Nebula herself has also, throughout the film, shown growth. This differs from the Nebula of the first or even second film, who only saw relationships regarding who could beat the other person. She has constantly been put into us versus them mindset by Thanos, even with her sister, so she continually pushes people away because of the indoctrination of Thanos’s system in her mind. He also constantly told her that her body wasn’t enough; she must be better, stronger. Augment herself. Making Nebula’s body becomes a source of trauma and pain because her father always saw it as wanting.

Yet, after her arc till now, even through Endgame, she’s been able to see where she came from and, instead of working in competition with others, begin to work alongside them. She’s a Guardian, part of the team, and willing to put herself on the line for others without question. She even calls Rocket “family,” something she would never have done before.

As a result of her insecurity stemming from Thanos’ always viewing her as wanting, Nebula still feels a constant need to put herself above others, too, as Mantis says [MANTIS YELLIGN you see fault in others to make yourself feel ok clip]. Nebula constantly feels she has to prove she can do it all herself. Her profound insecurity results in her needing others to be less than her. She still has an antagonistic mindset ingrained in her, pushing away characters like Drax and calling him stupid.

Aranock: The Guardians are a family, one they choose repeatedly. And at the beginning of the film the heart of that family is attacked. When Adam Warlock hits the guardians its at home when they are most vulnerable, and I think its interesting that this supposed masculine ideal slams into Rocket right as hes looking at his body which he clearly struggles with. The violence inflicted on him is interlinked with his difficult relationship to his body. A body that he doesnt have full control over because of the medical system of this society.

For people outside of the system, our bodies represent an affront to its existence. In the case of Nebula she weaponizes her disability against systems. For both her and eventually Rocket these altered parts of their bodies go from things they hate to something they incorporate into themselves in positive ways. For Nebula it becomes a tool by which she helps and protects her family. She reclaims things which represented oppression in order to fight oppression.

Rockets first word is hurts, his body existing causes pain. So does Nebulas.

As a chronically ill person I too am in constant pain. Have been since I was a little kid. First time I knew what not pain felt like that I can solidly remember was being on very strong painkillers in high school after a severe injury. Its part of why I relate to Nebula. The complexities of the relationship with ones own body that these characters reflects my own complex relationship to my body as a disabled trans woman.

At the beginning of the film the Guardians are all fighting in disconnected ways. They are all struggling with their own issues. And those issues come from systems and trauma caused by them.

Jessie: Thus, we can see at the start that Guardians are all products of their systems who can find themselves through their relationships with the other guardians. Their fellow Guardians are not part of the systems trying to slot them into a role but are there for each other. They have built their community, not wanting others to live up to some ideal but to exist for themselves. As a result, each of them has started to mature and grow into their own through being able to live outside the system; symbolized by their living on Knowhere, a literal community built out of the head of a dead Eternal, which we learned in the movie Eternals are quite literally space gods willing to genocide entire plants so they can control others and keep the galaxy going as they see fit. The Guardians and Knowhere have repurposed this dead authoritarian god’s skull to create their society, breaking the rules of even gravity itself to build their community inside its skull. Even with that growth, the Guardians are still imperfect, working out some of their insecurities stemming from their traumas living under systems that tried to define who they are. It’s a nuance only James Gunn could bring to these characters, understanding that they have all changed and grown, yet aren’t entirely complete in their journeys… until this film.

Part 3: Perfect Little Boxes

Jessie: The High Evolutionary is a perfect villain for the final guardian's film. In many ways, he represents an amalgamation of all the systems the Guardians have fought their entire lives. He only sees those he pretends to be a father figure for as functions for himself, like Ego, and has Thanos's authoritarian and parental cruelty. Yet even more so, he is also a man who wants to press the world into his fascistic ideal.

Aranock: I love that Peter is at this point just tired of dealing with guys like the high evolutionary. While he is imperfect and still in a process of growth and change, he finds men who are consumed by ego, as he once was, tiring, especially when those men use their mix of insecurity and ego to justify trying to control the galaxy.

Jessie: And his goal is expressly fascistic, with him attempting to use and manipulate eugenics research to create a supposed perfect being, a perfect society. He plans to build a machine that can force animals on an evolutionary tract to be his perfect, ideal lifeform in moments, believing all other lifeforms, such as the animals he experiments on, are lesser beings.

Much of the discourse surrounding Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 became about the cruelty towards animals in the film and how the movie deserved to have an R rating because of how horrifically the cruel torture by the High Evolutionary was, with most people simply chalking up the depiction to Gunn’s tendency to be a provocateur with his content, even saying that the visuals were too much and should have been cut.

[CLIP OF DAN MURREL SAYING THAT IN HIS REVIEW]

And indeed, those sensitive to this type of imagery should be warned if it may trigger them before watching the film. But I’d argue that this depiction of harm towards animals is incredibly intentional, with Gunn using us as viewers' empathy towards these animals to break down an ingrained bias in us as human beings. Anthropocentrism is the human belief that we as humans are separate and superior to nature and that human life has intrinsic value above all other forms of life. At the same time, all other entities, like animals, are resources that may be exploited for humanity. This belief creates a belief in an ingrained assumption of hierarchies, of which humans are on top. Many trace the root of such hierarchical ideas to things like the Christian version of the Old Testament and specifically Genesis, where the Christian God instructed humans to subdue nature and control it, even with Adam deciding the names for animals in the Garden of Eden instead of the animals getting to name themselves. It's this ingrained idea that there is a naturally ingrained assumption of human hierarchy. One of the heroes at the end of the film even expresses this viewpoint, referring to the animals Rocket saves as lesser life forms [clip]... We even see a recontextualization of the first fight in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 and the Abilisks, who are, in fact, peaceful creatures who only fight when they are threatened while getting food. This showcases that this view of a hierarchy over nature is not just one of the villains but has been made invisible as a natural way of viewing human relationships with nature.

Aranock: This gets to one of my few issues with the film, I didn’t immediately register it while watching other than just a little dissonance, but LadyKnightTheBrave pointed out to me. In a film so about why everyone deserves a second chance and why all creatures deserve positive treatment…WE SPEND A LOT OF TIME WATCHING OUR HEROES BRUTALLY MURDER CREATURES SIMILAR TO ROCKET.
I mean he is smooshing these guys into roadkill.

This is an element of Gunn’s films I don’t find as much issue with as other people do where they will for a couple of scenes run on action video game logic, regardless of the themes. To explain what I mean by action videogame logic; we often in games will kill 1000s of minions and then be given some sort of “moral” choice about whether to kill the big bad guy because they, usually a man, are the only people given real moral consideration.

Its not an element I enjoy.

But while it was maybe ignorable in the earlier films in this series, here it begins directly contradicting the central messages. Even as it argues against hierarchical categorization of people and creatures, it treats violence against these creatures as exempt from moral consideration. I really do not think this would have been hard to fix by having them only fighting people who given the opportunity to stop following fascism, choose it anyway. They even fight guys like this in this sequence and some of those guys do surrender, but the “hellspawn” are not given that consideration. As such this element unfortunately undermines in a small way the overall message of collapsing this hierarchy.

Jessie: Many systems of power are also built upon a system of hierarchies. According to Social Dominance Theory pioneered by Jim Sidanis and Felicia Pratto,

“Regardless of a society’s form of government… human societies tend to organize as group-based social hierarchies in which at least one group enjoys greater social status and power than other groups.”

While this viewpoint is not inherently fascistic, this idea maps neatly onto fascistic ideals of attempting to legitimize and justify hierarchies through appeals to nature, arguing that nature imposes a hierarchy. According to How Facism Works by Jason Stanely,

“Fascists argue that natural hierarchies of worth in fact exist and that their existence undermines the obligation for equal consideration…. Fascist ideology, then, takes advantage of a human tendency to organize society hierarchically, and a fascist politician represents the myths that legitimize their hierarchies as immutable facts. Their principle justification of hierarchy is nature itself. For the fascist, the principle of equality is a denial of natural law, which sets certain traditions, those of the most powerful, over others. The natural law allegedly places men over women, and members of the chosen nation of the fascists over other groupings.”

Many fascists appeal to nature in their speeches, such as Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy, in his speech made in 1861…

“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea [of equality]; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.”

This idea of a natural superior race mirrors the High Evolutionary viewpoint. The High Evolutionary believes that he can force an evolutionary path with his lesser races and breed them to a specific endpoint that he views as perfect [clip]. This idea of a superior race that could be bread gained full force in Nazi Germany. Many think that Hitler thought Germans were automatically the superior race… but that’s not true. Hitler and the Nazis believed and created racist pseudoscience to uphold the belief that certain traits were inherently better, centralized in an Aryan bloodline, that had been diluted by Aryans breeding with lesser races like the Jews or Black people. And so the horrors of the holocaust were the Nazis attempting to kill “lesser races” so that the German people could breed to create an ubermensch and perfect Third Reich society. We see this utopian ideal expressed by the High Evolutionary to Rocket… how he dreamed of a utopia, but one defined by his idea of eugenics perfection.

Yet, all this assumption is based on a false eugenicist idea that there is a natural superior endpoint to evolution rather than what evolution actually is… life reacting and growing to live within the environment it finds itself in. Growing into itself, not competing with nature as Darwin suggested with the survival of the fittest.

The phrase "survival of the fittest" paints a mental image of what Mann characterizes as "the tooth and claw of bloody nature" — as though every organism in a particular area is perpetually fighting for the ability to survive. In this context, "fitness" can be misinterpreted as an ideal evolutionary goal. "But Evolution acts to produce function, not perfection," says [Princeton biological anthropologist Alan] Mann. -io9

The High Evolutionary views Rocket as a number and a function... he is a tool to create his perfect race... and the High Evolutionary sees Rocket as less than based on his determination of what is superior. Rocket is smarter than the Evolutionary, able to figure out how to get the High Evolutionary’s evolution machine to work...

And the High Evolutionary cannot understand how this was possible for Rocket to do [clip]. It’s because, to him, Rocket cannot possess any superior traits… he’s a lab raccoon to test on. Yet Rocket… has evolved not through testing… he is not naturally smarter… but capable of more innovative, creative thought because he is in connection with others. He gains a found family with fellow lab animals… and through that, he can create and generate new ideas… grow and think beyond the limits of the High Evolutionary’s imagination. He has the concept of true innovation, but the High Evolutionary believes that that is due to Rocket’s brain… in reality, it's due to Rocket’s ability to connect and bounce off others. To grow from them and DEFINE himself… He and the other lab animals choose their names… they escape the High Evolutionary’s functions by defining themselves, despite their torture by him.

This reads to me as very queer and trans. It’s not to say Rocket is an explicitly trans and queer character. Still, it showcases why trans and queer narrative often resonates in stories made within and about fighting back against fascistic societies. Queer people find found families; trans people define and name themselves. Yet we only have to find our families and define ourselves because our community forces us to try to fit a role that we do not. I am only transgender because I live in a society that would tell me I had to be a man in the first place. I am only seen as queer, as strange as the word implies because society views me as queer. Many LGBTQ people have to find a family that sees us for who I am because our society today would not let our biological family sometimes see us for ourselves but instead as who were are supposed to be to serve capitalism or a fascistic state.

And I say capitalism because Guardians explicitly calls out Capitalism. After all, we visit the company, Org Corp. Here at Org Corp, we meet, in Nebula’s words, corporate shills, led by the amazing Nathan Fillion, who constantly is shown to belittle a man who works for him just cause he is trying to have a conversation. [clip] It shows how corporate mindsets continually set people against each other, just like Thanos did to Nebula and Gamora. We even see how this capitalist mindset functions to service fascism through the anxiety of work and competition in Adam Warlock, who at one point of the movie KILLS another worker for the High Evolutionary, who is on his same team because he has anxiety about being able to survive, an anxiety stoked in him by the High Evolutionary. And we learn that the High Evolutionary is the company's CEO, which he uses to fund his fascistic goals, showing how capitalism and fascism are tied together.

Aranock: "Your egos have run wild." When discussing volume 2 I said I would come back to discussing the sovereigns. Well Volume 3 directly confirms that the Sovereigns were another manifestation of ego. We see this most strongly in the Sovereign leaders most precious son, Adam Warlock.

Jessie: Speaking of Adam Warlock, many people complained that he was a superfluous character to this story in Guardians 3, often citing his tie to the infinity stones as the reason he’s not an important character anymore, given the MCU moved past the stones. It’s a very utilitarian unnuanced way of viewing the story presented.  I argue that he is a necessary part of understanding how fascism works because he is what all of our characters COULD have become had they instead decided to fulfill the role they are forced into for a system. He is built to reflect the Evolutionary idea of perfection, much like a Nazi’s ubermenchian look. He’s a blond hair literal golden boy.  Yet, we also learn Adam was a product pushed out by the High Evolutionary too early, and he’s emotionally stunted. In many ways, he’s like Star-Lord in Vol 1, a man-child unable to come to terms with the harm he causes, but unlike Quill, he just does his job harming others. He presents a necessary counterpoint to our heroes and where they have grown from.

It’s even more pointed that Warlock is the character used to showcase this. In the comics, Adam Warlock was also tied to being perfect by an evil group of eugenic scientists called the Enclave… but then goes on to be viewed as a Messiah figure. He learns that in the future, he has an evil self-named Magus, a leader of an evil intergalactic church who uses his messiah complex to control others. Using Adam as a character in this story in the place he’s in hints at how fascist societies can continually recreate new authoritarians, even if old ones are defeated.

Aranock: It also connects fascism with christian imagery, reflecting how christian religions often get used by fascists particularly in american contexts. The far right making appeals to Nature is built on an appeal to God, in their eyes the world and the people on it were made by God and God made these hierarchies so therefore they should be upheld and protected. This is a particularly common element amongst antitrans individuals. “God made man and woman to be this specific way, and any deviation is an AFFRONT to God I mean nature” we also see it in a lot christian sexism; “God made women to create babies for men.”

Returning to what was discussed earlier with naturalism and hierarchies, a lot of this approach to the world is built on a christian conceptualization of their religious texts.

Jessie: Gunn still uses Christ imagery for Warlock in this film; many shots and moments are reference points to Jesus and God; he is stabbed much like Jesus was on the cross, and he, in a way, dies and returns later to save people and two shots reflect the Pieta and the Creation of Man, with Warlock in the divine position. This directly refutes things like Zack Snyder’s usage of Superman as a Christ figure. Not only is Gunn’s framing of Warlock as Christ more subtle than Snyder’s on-the-nose imagery, Snyder never really evolved the idea of Superman as Christ throughout his films. In Snyder’s Batman v Superman movies, Snyder, intentionally or not, constantly reinforces the idea that Superman is worthy of being a savior because he is genetically superior to humans. He is stronger, better, faster, and thus deserving of being on top… hierarchical thinking that dovetails with fascism. And to be clear this is not me calling Snyder a fascist, but his art does lean into aesthetics through his adoration of shallow symbology which thus can be easily coopted for fascism which is all about simple aesthetics of power. I personally don’t think Snyder thinks that deeply about any of his imagery. He just goes with what looks “cool” which again is what leads to fascism being able to coopt it because they can inject any reading they want into when something doesn’t have deeper meaning. Citing power and hierarchies as the things they often relate to.

Aranock:  Not to mention that Superman is, in many ways, a Jewish analog character made by Jewish writers. There’s an excellent video called the golem and the Jewish superhero by Jacob Geller which you should watch for more on this topic.

Thus Snyder was taking a Jewish symbol and applying Christianity over top of it much like the villains of the Guardians of the Galaxy films wish to do to the universe. To place their world views and their idea of perfection over top of other cultures, erasing them. On top of this while we were making this video James Gunn cast James Corenswet a Jewish actor to play Superman. In the sources document there’ll be a link to Jay Michaelson’s article for Rolling Stone explaining why that matters.

Touching back on the MCU, as many Jewish people have talked about, Captain America is a golem. Created by Jewish writers and in text being a superhero created by a Jewish doctor to protect Jewish people during World War 2. The MCU plasters over this as is done with a lot of Jewish characters in the comics.

Jessie: Warlock, however, being tied to a Christ figure, goes back to showcase how religion, and primarily how Catholicism, is often used to justify hierarchical thinking, going back to the anthropocentrism we discussed earlier. You’ll often see Christianity in the United States used to justify anti-gay, anti-trans, antisemitic, and more rhetoric as well as attempts to control women’s and other minorities' bodies… all in service of the religious system, saying GOD wanted you this way… Well, here, the artifice of that rhetoric is revealed. Warlock is depicted as Christ, but he was made by a man willing to use him to support fascist ends. The High Evolutionary even says that “there is no god; THATS WHY I STEPPED IN,” furthering this parallel.

But even Adam can escape this system through empathy. He is able first to feel empathy for having killed a man but only through how it affects his animal companion [clip]. By connecting with the competition, Adam starts to be able to find the ability to empathize with other beings. As well acts of empathy towards him, both by Gamora and later Groot show him there is a better way; he even saves Peter in the film's climax, in a shot that places Adam in the Creation of Man pose, recontextualizing him as someone who can save others rather than destroy once he escapes the High Evolutionary’s control.

And the critique of America does not end there. OH GOD, IT DOES NOT! Cause we eventually visit what the High Evolutionary’s perfect utopian world is… and it’s called Counter-Earth. And what we learn is… that the High Evolutionary went to Earth… looked around, and said… I like what you’re doing here, and USED EARTH AS HIS BASIS FOR HIS FASCIST SOCIETY. And not only that… he used red-lined 1950s American suburbia as his template for a fascist utopia.

From the first segregated public housing projects of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, to the 1949 Housing Act that encouraged white movement to the suburbs, to unconstitutional racial zoning ordinances enacted by city governments… the current state of the American city is the direct result of unconstitutional, state-sanctioned racial discrimination.  The truth is that segregation in every metropolitan area was imposed by racially explicit federal, state and local policy, without which private actions of prejudice or discrimination would not have been very effective. And if we understand that our segregation is a governmentally sponsored system, which of course we’d call de jure segregation, only then can we begin to remedy it. Because if it happened by individual choice, it’s hard to imagine how to remedy it. If it happened by government action, then we should be able to develop equally effective government actions to reverse it. - Richard Rothstein

The High Evolutionary looked at how racial hierarchy and enforcement were done in the US suburban neighborhoods in the 1940s and directly tied this to his fascist ideals of the perfect function state he wished to make. And this is EXACTLY what the Nazis did. In the 1930s, a Nazi lawyer named Heinrich Krieger came to the US and liked what he saw the US doing regarding its race relationships so much that he felt they could support the Nazi’s fascist goals.

[There is a] the transcript of a June 5, 1934, conference of leading German lawyers gathered to exchange ideas about how best to operationalize a racist regime. The record reflects how the most extreme among them, who relied on Krieger’s synoptic scholarship, were especially drawn to American legal codes based on white supremacy. The main conceptual idea was Freisler’s. Race, he argued, is a political construction. In both America and Germany, the importance and meaning of race for the most part had been determined less by scientific realities or social conventions than by political decisions enshrined in law.

This tie to the racist history of America does lead me to my one major critique of the Guardians film. Cause while Chukwudi Iwuji is FANTASTIC as the High Evolutionary, and the character does mention “it was nearly perfect except for the bigotry,” it still reads as somewhat uncomfortable to have cast a Black man in the role of a fascist who explicitly wishes to recreate American racial hierarchies and who does eugenics to try and create his ideal society… I highly recommend Princess Weeks video on racially sensitive casting for more discussions on that. I will say that this is no knock on Iwuji, and it's undoubtedly understandable that Gunn would want to give an actor he enjoyed working with during his time on Peacemaker a role in this movie. Iwuji killed it, but this is a discussion worth having and analyzing, especially considering the Guardians series only has Black-appearing people in villainous or antagonistic roles.

But moving on, while this is the most direct tie to how American legal frameworks connect to discussions of heiracharchal systems, often centered around race, in the film, it is not the only one. A subtler one is how the whole reason that the Guardians need to go after the High Evolutionary in the first place… is because the High Evolutionary put inside Rocket an inability for him to be given medical care… his health care is taken away from him. The Guardians have to break into a healthcare company to save him. It’s an indictment, subtly, of how the American healthcare system too continually denies coverage to those who are less able to afford it, which is often those who have been racialized or marginalized in our society.

So, going back… Gunn’s depiction of animal cruelty is supposed to confront us with the instinct harm that fascists like the High Evolutionary enact on those who view as lessers, but also engage us AS viewers with how we can fall into that trap of viewing animals as lesser beings… but how it’s our EMPATHY that can lead us through that. Depicting animal cruelty is necessary for making us as the audience EMOTIONALY feel and break down our assumptions of lesser or more deserving beings. Gunn does this with animals, but it’s also a symbolic breaking down of how much of society bases itself on assumptions of implicit hierarchy, often calling to nature as a justification for such hierarchies: The idea that men are stronger than women, for example,, therefore, women need to be protected and subservient to those who protect them. White people have systemic power over Black people, often made invisible to white people who don’t see the ramifications of the systems they benefit from. The idea is that being “trans” is a “perversion” of your body given to your by nature or GOD, a hierarchical, patriarchal figure, and being cis and straight is “normal”.

[Clip of Micheal Knowles being a genocidal freak saying that on his channel “be normal”]

By seeing every life as full of people, by caring about them and letting them be their full selves and not trying to press them into a system that thinks in the forms of hierarchies… That is how you fight back against fascism. And it is worth noting that we see all of our main characters go through hell for each other; they all get hurt, and empathy saves them. For example, look at Adam and Peter at the end of the film.

Because Guardians 3 is about these characters not going out to fight a system, To fight fascism, but to save a friend when a golden fascist boy comes crashing into their town and tries to rip their friend… Rocket, away from them to once again be depersoned and thrust into the same system that wanted to use him, traumatized him, and then tried to toss him aside, the system of the High Evolutionary. But by the nature of trying to support and care for their friend… it inherently clashes with fascism and showcases how it must all be torn down.

And through this journey, the Guardians can finally come to terms with their insecurities and how they don’t have to exist for a system but for each other… by caring for each other. Drax learns he can reframe himself as a father. Mantis learns that she can empathize with others herself, rather than through others, by talking to the Abilisks. Peter discovers that he can be a leader without having the Gamora he used to love there, and thus can also see Gamora for herself, allowing Gamora to finally feel like a part of a family rather than someone being used for her abilities. Nebula can trust that others can get things done and not see herself as needing to do all the work.

Yet it’s Rocket, in the end, who we learn has always been the center of the story… Through his friends, he survives and can control the High Evolutionary… and tell him teh truth. [YOU NEVER WANTED PERFECTION; YOU JUST HATED THE WORLD THE WAY IT IS]. Rocket can see the High Evolutionary's mistakes. He never wanted perfection; he was just scared of the world… a fascist is never satisfied because fascism fuels itself on endless hate and destruction. It always needs an in-group and an out-group to make hierarchies of power… to have something feel wanting. The High Evolutionary continually commits trauma after trauma, genocide after genocide, even of his society because he just cannot accept that perfection is not possible because there is no perfection… there is only a beautiful endless, imperfect self.

The worlds that the High Evolutionary builds are still imperfect. People are still fearful and bigoted towards others at times. They hurt each other… yes they also have kindness and empathy [images of all that]. And the Guardians showcase how they corrupt his system by being outsiders and weirdos. Even Drax does not know how to sit on a couch “the way you’re supposed to.” This is a very queer relationship with the world.

“To queer use is to make use audible, to listen to use, to bring to the front what ordinarily recedes into the background. Queer use is when you use something for a purpose that is very different from that which is originally intended… An opening created for convenience can have a queer potential: it can mean lessening control of what or who can pass through.  When things are used by those for whom they were not intended, the effect can be queer…. Queer use: when we aim to shatter what has provided a container.”

In a way, the Guardians themselves become this queer usage. They break the containers they were put into, and Drax sitting on the couch represents this. He sits in it how he wishes to use it, different from how it was intended. Fascism focuses on usefulness and how people can function for the great machine, the greater whole. The Nazis often said, “work will set you free” outside their concentration camps of death. Work and death are ultimately synonymous. Labor was all for the state, and whether you were the Nazi Aryan ideal subsuming yourself into the whole, or you were seen as a subhuman racialized Jew, Sinti, Romana, queer, disabled, or mentally ill, you were worked to death for the machine. Thus… queerness, queer use, using something outside of what it is intended for, both in the objects like a couch, but in our lives living for ourselves, not a machine, is directly antifascist. Fascism focuses on "use." How you, as a worker, can be useful for the state, the machine, right down to how you live your life. Queerness is about using your life outside what it was intended. Queer use is to use something for ourselves, even our lives. Queerness is antifascist. The Guardians corrupt the High Evolutionaries system by just being themselves… being people who live for themselves and exist in his world despite his rules.

And Rocket… reveals this, yet… most importantly, it wasn’t his desire to kill the Evolutionary that fueled him… it was not revenge.

Aranock: Past Gamora acts as an important demonstration of how drastically different the guardians are at this point in their life compared to Volume 1. Particularly during the Orgocorp section. Its an interesting way of returning a character without undercutting the loss that is felt, or feeling cheap.  The contrast between her stoicism and Nebula tearing up over Rockets history shows this. When she says

"I'm family" "and so's he"

It demonstrates that The Guardians have become a really tight knit family over time.

But he most obvious way this contrast is used to show the characters change is Gamora at the ending being the voice of we need to go we can't save them, and Rocket saying "I'm done running."

If we are being honest about the structure of the trilogy, it is about Peter letting go of his ego and the position of protagonist, and eventually returning to the place and emotions he has run from for the longest time. He goes from being Starlord, to the guy that mows his grampas lawn. It is also about Rocket ceasing to run away from his past and trauma and taking back a sense of self and identity and ego, to overcome his false ego, the projection of confidence he fakes because he is deeply insecure, and gain true confidance. They’re journeys and end points are foils of each other. So I would argue that it is a trilogy about both of them, that they are the deuteragonists, that it's a story about all of the Guardians, but particularly Rocket and Peter.

Rocket in the first film is someone who would seek vengeance. But now we see him taking on the leadership role Peter held in in the first film. And he uses it to save everyone, not to seek out harm on those who oppressed him, and doing violence only because the oppressors made it necessary.

Jessie: This is a nuance most filmmakers, primarily through the perspective of GUnns, often miss. Many assume that those who suffer trauma from systems just seek revenge against said system. Whose only goal is to destroy it… it can go even further with stories that believe those harmed will form new lines of hierarchies and thus attempt to just replace one fascist system with another. For example, robot revolutions like the ones shown in Terminator are not about AI taking over. The filmmaker often expresses anxiety that those viewed as lessers will want to take over and dominate them. This is an anxiety that often many cisgender straight white dudes have when they write stories… cause they have anxiety and fear, whether conscious of it or not, that because they hold a dominant place in society, everyone else around wishes to do the same to them. That everyone thinks the same as they do. Its because many of them have benefited from lines of privilege throughout our society that makes things invisible to them; they wish to just fit into the community because it is most comfortable for them, for the most part, even when they also suffer in the system by being made cogs for a capitalist machine. So many stories like Terminator stories or recently in Star Trek Picard Season 3, which I spoke about when it came to that series villains, are often about showcasing an underclass rebelling and doing so out of trauma and wishing to take over themselves.

Gunn understands what often drives those who suffer from systems. Empathy. Cause Rocket didn’t want to defeat the High Evolutionary. What he wanted first and foremost… was to save his fellow raccoons and other animals. His defeat of the High Evolutionary was only incidental… he tried to save his fellow lifeforms… not lesser life forms, but life forms. In doing so… he found out that he is indeed a raccoon, something he has denied his whole life… because he was cut off from it. Like how Quill is cut off from his Earth culture, Rocket is cut from his past… and by finally having this moment of empathy… he finds himself; who he is, who he was, and ultimately… who he will become; the actual leader of the Guardians of the galaxy. For one moment, all three in glorious cohesion in Rocket’s soul… that is what beat fascism… finding yourself for yourself; across time and identity.

Aranock: Which connects heavily with what I discuss in my film Queer Relativity about identity across time and the queerness of that.

REWATCH THIS THEN RIGHT ABOUT IT AND THEN CONNECT IT TO OUR CHARACTERS HERE

Gurren Lagann and Getting It

Rockets chosen name as we learn here is actually a symbol of freedom, of a desire for those he loves to fly in the great beyond free of the cages of their oppressive creator. What could be more trans than that.

Much later when his friend is shot, her last word is "sky" solidifying this meaning so deeply.

When he sees Lyla again they are in a deeply open sunny place.

Lyla: "We were right the sky is beautiful and it is forever."

Rockets entire life has until this point been cages and boxes and having to break free of them. Hes escaped 23 prisons after all.

"They're are the hands that made us. and then they're are the hands that guide the hands."

I think these lines represent how the love and care of others help to shape and form us. How we make ourselves through our connections with others.

Also if your hero moment is a character declaring a true name in defiance of a fascist saying their deadname then the character is Trans. Just look at the Matrix “Die Mr. Anderson” “My name is Neo”

Trans masc icon Rocket Raccoon modeling positive masculinity by finding himself and forming positive community and chosen family.

The family we see in Volume 3, and especially by the end of the film, have grown through creating a community of vulnerability. A space in which everyone can show pain and love and happiness and care.

Earlier in the film theres a parallel shot between Peter Quill arriving on the planet and offering a cloth to a woman in pain, and the offering of a cloth to Rocket much earlier in the film.

Small kindnesses between very different beings. It shows what type of family the Guardians grew into being, but it also demonstrates that we can find that type of love and care even if we are no longer innocent and naive. If we have been through hell.

That we can save ourselves and eachother together. This hug between all of them when Rocket wakes up. The way Nebula cries when Rocket is ok. Listen I'm a sucker for found family whos love and care for each other is treated as just as valuable as any other form of family.

And this sense of family allows them to fight as an unbeatable team against the fascists through much of the film. They move together as a unit.

After they succeed in saving everyone, everyone embraces. Even Adam has learned to care about others and show that vulnerability.

We end the film where it started but truly changed. A hopeful beautiful song by one of my favourite artists playing. A very queer song in its own right as a lot of Florence's work is. A new society forming, one which will be a space that all the Guardians never had. A safe place to grow up. A home out of knowhere. The dark days are over.

Jessie: And this is what all the Guardians do… they find themselves. And it was through their rejection of the systems that bound them… and through a family that let them see themselves through love. I adore how much this movie just has characters express how much they love each other cause they understand each other fully now… Even Kraiglin FINALLY sees Cosmo as a GOOD DOG SHE IS! YES, SHE IS! Ok, not the worst character anymore. In the movie's final moments, we hear Groot say something other than I am Groot for the first time, which is about love. But it is not because he said anything different. It’s because not only can the characters understand him to cause they know him, but we, as the audience, now fully see and understand the characters… we finally can understand Groot. And maybe… a bit of ourselves.

=================================

“A history of use is a history of things becoming natural… The normative ordinary is av violence suggesting a natural order in lieu of a most unnatural system of control…the glitch is something that extends beyond the most literal technical mechanicals: it helps us celebrate failure as a generative force.“

==============================

Part 4: I know I have to go

Jessie: As I said goodbye to this loveable group of outsiders, I realized that each of them had come into their own in ways that no other characters have in the MCU; and that stems so much from what James Gunn, as a filmmaker, has brought of himself to his work; empathy. I made a video about Gunn about a year ago, talking about that exact fact… about Gunn’s history with his own need to find himself in a system that told him to be something else. How he was a toxic man, using edgy humor that pushed others away from him, and how his marriage dissolved as a result. How he wrestled with alcohol and depression…  Yet he grew and accepted accountability for those actions… and how they set him on a journey of moving forward.

I feel like I've kinda danced around telling the truest story I can for many years of my life. I've been a little distracted by trying to be shocking or edgy or cool or whatever, and by letting go of that and telling the truest story I can - even if it's about aliens and talking raccoons - it works.

How the Guardians movies themselves were about that journey.

“I felt like Guardians forced me into a  much deeper way of thinking about, you know, my relationship to people I suppose. I was a very nasty guy on Twitter. It was a lot of f**king edgy, in your face, dirty stuff. I suddenly was working for Marvel and Disney, and that didn't seem like something I could do anymore. I thought that that would be a hindrance in my life. But the truth was it was a big, huge opening for me. I realized a lot of that stuff is a way that I push away people. When I was forced into being this - motioning to his chest - I felt more fully myself.”

Yet, how he saw himself in Rocket the most as a character.

“It's pretty clear that Rocket still feels alone … that's why end on [Rocket’s] face is that I think that he's learned to be more of a family member to everyone.”

And how he worked through many of his masculinity issues like Rocket, through his work by forming a family on the set of the Guardians films… You can see in the movies how Gunn has grown as a filmmaker and person in his ability to empathize and see others. Guardians Vol 1 was full of sexist jokes directed at women [clip]. Yet, in Vol 3, that humor that plays into hierarchical thinking has mostly gone. The one joke in the film that could have easily played with hierarchical assumptions and masculine bravado occurs when Mantis manipulates one of the corporate shills to be in love with Drax. This moment could have easily played into homophobia, with Drax being angry or upset at being hit on by a man. Yet, Batista, bringing his exceptional talent of being vulnerable, plays it more adorably and sweetly embarrassed in a way that reveals more about Drax than it is about pushing away homosexual emotions. Even further, as mentioned before, Gunn used to be an edgy provocateur, making terrible jokes just to get a strong reaction, any reaction, from his audience, without intention. Here, however, he showcases animal cruelty not simply to elicit any response without purpose that ultimately just fosters anger and reinforces hierarchical assumptions implicit in said jokes but to use the strong reaction to build empathy rather than antagonism. It showcases Gunn’s growing ability as a filmmaker to empathize both inwards and outwards in a way he was not able to do before, all through the family he found through making his art.

Even more so, Gunn recognizes that art is a team effort, not one that is about him as the hierarchical leader, but one that requires creative effort and love from everyone involved.

[GUNN IN AN INTERVIEW TALKING ABOUT HOW FILMMAKING IS DONE BY NUMEROUS CREATORS, NOT JUST HIM -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7BhzVRRZDU, CAUSE GUNN ISN’T GEORGE LUCAS AND REJECTS AUTEUR THEORY]

Gunn downplays the idea of a great man, a great leader, great artist… and instead discusses how while his ideas are what directs the movie's intention, it is not his creativity or skill or ideas alone that make the final product. It’s a family working together to make something greater than they could ever make that part. That family allows Gunn to be empathetic and be received empathetically.

Yet that family, like Rocket, was torn away from him in a moment by a system. In 2018, Mike Cernovich, a far-right troll, led a successful smear campaign against Gunn, surfacing Gunn’s horrific tweets from his time before joining the Guardians films. This led to Gunn being temporarily fired from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which he had been set to direct. Yet, Chernovich and the alt-right groups that wished to attack Gunn wished to essentialize him as one thing; say he would always be that toxic edgy dude, his worst self, the product of the system… not the man who had grown since them. Just like the High Evolutionary only saw Rocket as who he wanted to think of himself as, so did the internet try to essentialize Gunn… Yet Gunn was saved by his family.

“Here I was at the lowest of the low, when it looked as if my career was completely over and these people who had been by my side as workmates came to my defense in a way that you do not see happening when other people are canceled.”

Like Rocket… his family got him the job back… and he could tell his story. Cause it is his story. Rocket Racoon is James Gunn, and the story was always his.

Yet… at the end of the story… it was time to move on. At the end of Guardians 3, all of the Guardians begin to realize that they need to seek more of their selves… who they are becoming next. Rocket had learned who he was to be by connecting with his lost past taken away from him… but Quill hadn’t done that yet. He needed to return home to Earth to communicate with his past. Mantis needed to leave this family so she could find herself separate from those to whom she was always trying to give herself. And Nebula needed to stay to take care of kids, and Drax needed to be a parent… They had new journeys to go on. But they always had their family… because their family, no matter where they go… will always see them.

Similarly, James Gunn is off on a new adventure… he is done with Guardians films. He is now making DC movies, a new story to tell, a new identity to discover…

Aranock: At the beginning we said Guardians is the story of Rocket. What his journey is, it’s learning that you are worthy of being loved, always have been spaceman.png.

If I am being honest, finding that for myself is thanks to a lot of people, and Jessie is very much one of them. She won’t know about this line until I play the edit for her(unless she peaked at the script which hey Jessie no spoilers)

Depending on when people met me and how much time they have spent with me they either come to the conclusion that I am an extremely confident/egotistical person, or that I am a deeply self loathing person who needs to learn to have confidence and self love. No inbetweens. And its because I too, even though I try not to anymore, tend toward performing confidence as a defense mechanism because I heavily struggle with seeing value in myself. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF SATAN do not leave a bunch of comments based on this bit, I am sharing it not for garnering sympathy from strangers on the internet you don’t know me just because you watch art I make, I am sharing in order to talk about how to deal with that, and what has helped me. Learning to love yourself when you have spent a lot of your life learning to put yourself down is difficult. It takes active choices to change how you approach situations and it means taking ownership of who you are. Transition and embracing who and what I am has helped with that tremendously. It is hard to love yourself when you are not really yourself. So Rocket loving what he is, incorporating it into himself, becoming Rocket Raccoon. Not denying the part of himself that he was told was shameful and lesser. That’s where I think the transness lies. I would say finding my identity was less a thing of finding something new, so much as reconnecting with a part of myself I denied for so long because of an oppressive system. Rockets care for the other racoons, for his outsider chosen family, for the universe and all the beings in it, its how he shows he’s truly come to love himself. Because learning to love yourself is helped by loving others. And its ok if thats a struggle, or if its ups and downs. Because as the films explore, growth and healing is never linear. How can it be?

I always hated the idea that you are not worthy of love until you can love yourself. How are you supposed to love yourself if you’ve never seen an example. How can one know a thing if all you have ever seen is its shadow. I say to learn to love oneself one must also learn to love the galaxy, because we are stardust all entangled on itself.

Jessie: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 is a movie about being imperfect. It is a movie about accepting your imperfection, accepting the imperfections of those around you, and realizing that what makes you imperfect… makes you the perfect person for those around you.

Aranock: A good story needs an ending. You have to know when its time to go, and for me Guardians 3 does that beautifully.

I know I have to go