#I'm just so raw from everything. been looking at those poor people found in mass graves all week. and then this gets sent to me

[astromechs]

I read through your breakdown of comic related ideas that could have been used in Gamora's post Endgame arc and they were really good! All the details you hit on were smart and logical. I most loved how you pointed out that Gamora's arc/story didn't end at the hands of Thanos in the comics and it didn't have to end that way in the films either.

I think the main thing that keeps me from having vol 3 be at the top of my faves list with 1&2 is that every writing move for Gamora after IW turned out to be more in favor of making sure what Thanos did stood out than it was about making sure Gamora's own arc stood out. Her being a guardian wasn't a cute little subplot in a larger story. It was the story. Her relationships and things she accomplished weren't fun little bonuses, they were huge gains after years of serving Thanos and only having his vision for her life count towards her identity. Taking these away from her first through her murder and then through the time travel wasn't a small roadblock. It was no different than taking the history of Iron Man building his suit, or the significance of Captain America's shield. In vol 1 Rocket talked about how they all had dead people and the poignancy was that even though they all had those tragedies in the past, once they found eachother they got to move forward. Gamora's death turned her into another tragedy in the past and also another poor dead lady at the hands of an abuser power hungry God like Meredith and Lylla. Worse though is that we never got to explore what that tragedy really meant to Gamora either through redirecting back onto her life through a funeral or by having her past self get to reflect on it and work through those feelings. It was obvious in Endgame that 2014 Gamora had a lot to process between being in the future, finding out she was killed and realizing she had a family. She wasn't unaffected or emotionless about everything. Even if she decided to make different choices all of this was something major to mentally work out. We never got to see her go through much of the process and as such it kind of made Gamora less of an active participant in the aftermath of a story very much linked to her. It also impacted an important relationship for Nebula too which was the most central relationship between women in the story.

My other problem is that they stayed cleverly away from humanizing her death. It was like how in real life when people want to water down a heinous crime they will say tragic event or unfortunate incident instead of murder, mass shooting, assault etc. But the reason you need to use the actual words is because it gives a raw look at what happened. It makes it real. It's why using a victims name is so important too. It brings back the humanity. Peter is the only one who sort of touched on the reality of what happened and what Gamora meant to the entire existence of the team. That's not enough though. If they were going to do what they did there should have been more ownership of it.

I did love how they handled the arc between Peter and Gamora and in many ways it was a creative and moving take on a love story and finding your way back to someone. I don't want to ignore this or overlook the good. It's just that there was so much more to Gamora's story and it feels like they put a band-aid on the wound rather than cleaning it out and really examining the damage so there could be more thorough healing on Gamora's end.

i'm right there with you, and that's why gamora's arc in vol 3 left something to be desired, for me; the writing tried to both sweep the death under the rug and also sometimes acknowledge it, and then not exploring this gamora's experience about it in much depth. i wish the film had done this, because ultimately some of the issues i had with it would've been improved. it's like you said — gamora's overall story being overshadowed for the benefit of thanos, and then not much ground there being made up for.

all things considered, though, even with the issues i have regarding how gamora as a character specifically was handled, i really like how the arc was handled between gamora and peter in vol 3. it was really poignant and beautiful, and had a lot of hope for them finding their way back to each other after that tragedy. it ended exactly where it needed to, canonically — and i'm excited to take it from here and explore it in some of my own future writing.

(and thank you so much! 💙)

[legionofpotatoes]

worst genre of award-baiting short film: saccharine slice of life vignetting the rich inner world of an idiosyncratic yet likable person, suddenly and violently interrupted by their apartment blowing up from a missile. cut to black, infographic about how war is super bad, actually