Discussion post: Guardians hanging out

[sholio]

Back in old-school Avengers fandom, there used to be a lot of fic about the Avengers hanging out in the tower, having movie nights, and the like.

But what do the Guardians do for fun? All that time living in close quarters on the Milano and later the Benatar ... they must have their own version of Avengers movie nights. But they're all so different that finding something they all like to do might have been hard. What are some of their team bonding activities like? Is Peter the guy who sets up karaoke every night while Drax and Gamora just want to spar, or are they all addicted to a particular Xandarian soap opera featuring fictionalized versions of themselves*, or what?

*help, I want to write this now

Comments

[kore]

Ahaha the Guardians are so prickly ("You're not friends." "No. We're family") all I can imagine is them finding something new to do together, or trying to teach each other things from their various cultures ("I am Groot?" "No, I am Groot") and it going south. Altho the idea of them doing karaoke is awesome -- hell, we already sort of got that with the scene of them singing along to "Rubberband Man," and Baby Groot soundtracking the fight at the start of G2. (And isn't Teen Groot playing one of Peter's old videogames in that stinger?) Kind of goes along with Tony teaching Nebula that paper football game at the start of Endgame, too....Maybe something like the bit in AoU where they all try to lift Thor's hammer? (that's what she said) (I can totally see Thor trolling people by leaving the hammer in front of the refrigerator, right by the sofa in a walkway....)

tl;dr KARAOKE FIC

As the Spaceship Turns

[sholio]

Uh, so that thing I mentioned above about a Xandarian soap opera based on their lives? I went and wrote it.

--

It was Drax, of all people, who discovered it.

The rest of the team came back from a three-day supply jaunt, having left Drax and Mantis at the crashed Milano which had become a sort of base of operations on Berhert, to find the living quarters littered with snack food packaging and laundry (in other words, the usual) and both of them sacked out in front of the Milano's main screen, riveted to it.

"We have discovered a remarkably inaccurate news broadcast!" Drax declared, slapping Peter's shoulder in a bone-breakingly friendly way. "It contains tales of our adventures, told most misleadingly!"

"Oh good," Peter said. "Sounds about right." They'd only just managed to vanish from the 28-hour news cycle in Nova Corps space.

"You are very funny, Peter!" Mantis giggled in delight. "And Rocket is so cute!"

Rocket bared his fangs at her. "No, I'm not."

"Not you! Rocket on TV. Except they call her Fluffy."

"Fluffy?"

"Oh look, another installment is beginning," Drax announced. "The next person who speaks will have my ceremonial dagger in their ear." And he plopped down in front of the screen with Mantis as music swelled and a logo appeared onscreen.

In bright, cartoony letters, it said STAR-LORD AND FRIENDZ!

"Oh, my God." If it was possible for physical hearts to leap into a person's eyes, it would be happening to Peter at that moment.


*

Okay, so Xandar had apparently made a (heavily) fictionalized, ongoing serial about them.

The person who held out the longest against getting hooked was Gamora, but she was lured in by Peter's insistence that Gamora on the show was "as cool as the real one, except with bigger knives" and also "I wear very tight pants on the show, Gamora. Very tight pants."

He hadn't mentioned that Star-Lord, aka Petarr, was a woman, but Peter didn't seem to have noticed. He was riveted every time she was onscreen.

Rocket grumbled incessantly about Fluffy until the episode with her backstory made him tear up as much as the rest of them, not that he would admit it.

"I wish our lives were this exciting," Peter said wistfully as show-Gamora threw Petarr over her shoulder (the show version of her was a good foot taller than Petarr, and built like a wrestler) in the process of escaping from yet another fictional space prison. Or maybe this was the real show-Gamora's evil clone? Hard to say. All she really had to say about this episode, Gamora thought with professional detachment, was that fictional space prisons were considerably easier to break out of than the real version.

"No, you don't," she said, reaching for another ale.

"They kinda are, though," Rocket said, lounging around with one foot in the air, dismantling a gun while keep one eye on the TV.

"They somehow missed all the parts where we lay around in our underwear all day and watch TV," Peter said.

*

Mantis adored the show, watched every episode multiple times, and Gamora and Peter both suspected her of being one of the people writing further fictional stories about the fictional versions of them that tended to pop up now whenever they searched to check on their own bounties. But it was clear that she was a little bit sad that she wasn't included in the group, which was based on the team as of their intervention in the Xandar invasion. Gamora whispered in Peter's ear, and Peter went off on an Extremely Vital bounty run to Xandar ... and a few weeks later, a new character showed up on the show, a shy space princess with bug eyes and antenna who was rescued from a pirate hideout in the asteroids.

Mantis's shriek of delight could probably be heard from space. (In fact it almost certainly could, since they were currently in space, at least if space had atmosphere. Which it didn't.)

"It's me," she whispered, pointing at the TV. "It's me, it's me, it's me."

"Well, you're a vital part of the team," Peter said. He reached over to pat her head and got a contact high of pure delight.

It only dampened her enthusiasm slightly a few episodes later when Princess Manton acquired a spaceborne fainting disease and could only be cured from the ensuing coma by Petarr kissing her better.

"That is so wrong," the real Mantis declared, so close to the screen her nose was nearly touching it, stuffing handfuls of Krispy Fliez in her mouth. "Petarr is like her sister, they should not be doing that."

"You clearly did not explain our adventures to them correctly, friend Quill," Drax declared.

"Hush, Drax, I cannot hear!" Her antenna were nearly touching the screen.

Peter had long ago given up on trying to explain the concept of fiction and just let him think it was an especially terrible documentary (which, after all, it sort of was), and he was not about to explain shipping. "Yeah, guess so," he said, and reached for the Krispy Fliez bowl.

[bold_seer]

are they all addicted to a particular Xandarian soap opera featuring fictionalized versions of themselves*

I love canons that exist in fictional worlds, the relationship between them. Like Invitation to Love in Twin Peaks, in clips that we see, mirrors or foreshadows events in the series.

But since songs play such a crucial part in the movies, probably something to do with music.

[silverflight8]

Nooo you can't call it old school avengers fandom! I feel so old! It wasn't THAT long ago surely?!? (Are people not writing Avengers Tower fic anymore??)