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my bois 

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soggy birb

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oozeling

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my buddy’s dog. if I ever find the motivation I’ll shade and color the blankets

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still experimenting, playing with layers and coloring

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My hands shake a lot. I figured working with a tablet might make drawing easier for me. This is the first time I’ve used one.

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(Poster by Unknown, feel free to suggest the artist)

Lettuce thoughts about Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

There will be spoilers for the movie.

I watch Guardians of the Galaxy 2 a lot. It’s really a fantastic movie all in its own right, I’ve been a marvel fan all my life, this movie was really faithful to what I knew from the comics, but translated really well into a movie format that makes sense. There’s so much I love about it. 

The soundtrack is wonderful. Most of the songs are bands I heard occasionally growing up and never really gave a second thought to, but being older when I saw this movie and how certain scenes were framed with their songs really stands out to me. Those moments are so powerful alone but now when I hear those songs, I have so many feelings lol.

The plot is really relatable to me in a lot of very personal ways. The main plot is about Peter Quill reacquainting with his real father, Ego the living Planet. Over the course of the movie this plot explores Peter’s complexes from growing up without a real father figure, and how the experiences he got weren’t what he dreamed they’d be. Like playing catch with his dad, in place of that he got Yandu teaching him to steal. In place of having a dad present in his life, he tells his friends growing up that his dad is an actor and away working.

I was raised almost exclusively by my mother. There were things my mom simply couldn’t teach me or do for me. I’ve spent a lot of time in therapy thinking about these things and how they affect my depression. I no longer speak to her, but I have come to the conclusion that did what she could up until the point where she’d throw her hands up and leave me to figure things out on my own. I sympathize with Peter Quill a lot because I also frequently feel lost and scared because I have no examples to draw experience from. I have no role models to look up to. It’s clear to me that a lot of Peter’s improving and attempts at humor and so on comes from that. Maybe if he can make someone laugh they won’t notice how bad he’s failing. Or he’s nervous, he tells the joke to get a laugh and get some minor distraction away from his fears. To break the tension.

Peter eventually realizing at the tail end of the story that he Has had a father this whole time. It wasn’t what he expected, but it checks the boxes. And in their own way, Yandu and Peter realized they had a familial relationship, father and son. 

Later on in my life, my mother married a man who sold his house and all of his land, dropped his life to come up and take care of her and her children. I feel what he did for all of us in the 15 years he was married to my mother was damned near saintly. He never had biological children of his own and didn’t really know how to parent aside from what he learned from his parents. He worked himself to death to provide for us while my mother sat on her ass. (She was home maker in title only, she preferred to drink coffee and play games on her computer. The house fell into disrepair and while Tim worked 70 hour weeks for 15 years. He never laid a hand on any of us and loved my mother with every fiber of his being. He is a rare person. 

Anyway, I don’t think we really had a close relationship until my mom left him. She chose to tell the extended family that he beat her and never wanted to have sex with her because he was cheating. It made me realize a lot of things about my mother as a person, and made me realize how much respect I have for Tim. My mom left him about six years ago and Tim and I have decided to continue our relationship as it was. He is the father I choose. Blood only has as much meaning as you want it to. I haven’t spoken to my mother since she left. We already had a tense relationship, her lying about this saintly man to her entire extended family was the final push I needed to cut communication with her.

I’m going to wrap this up. There are some other events in the movie that I identify with, but Peter’s arc really hits home with me. Watching this movie is borderline therapeutic for me. I realize I may be a little autistic about it, but I’m making peace with that. If you watch that movie after reading this, maybe you can appreciate it in a different light.