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zenwhoberi · 10 months

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Thoughts on Rocket’s origin stories? I mean the OG, the 2012/13 retcon, the Cates run and the film ofc (Telltale and SE optional)

oh man rocket’s backstories is kind of a whole mess. i probably need to gather my thoughts more but fuck it and i’m also mainly going from memory so feel free (all of you!!!) to correct me if i get stuff wrong! i wouldn’t say i’m a rocket expert and i’m mainly just going to ramble.

comics first. the og is absolutely batshit insane. ranger rocket and clowns and asylums. it’s bananas. once rocket made his Grand Return in a:c and gotg 2008 it’s also… never really referenced again right? except for his brief stint in the annihilators post 2008 run. i think it’s unique but equally i can understand why they would want to ground it more (as much as a talking raccoon can be grounded) as gotg went on. it’s also why peter’s earlier adventures have been brushed to the side, but i think it’s notable that ewing is the guy who brought both of these aspects back in a way (more on strange tales in a minute!).

the young series was yeah. idk. blackjack and rocket acting divorced i guess and the moment where rocket breaks down after realising he IS the only one of him was emotional but overall that series was really unfocused and messy and I wasn’t a fan of how rocket was written in it, even though the art was great. cates i thought did ok but it didn’t really give anything people weren’t expecting?

the more recent strange tales comic by ewing had it as if rocket had false memories (?) of his og shenanigans and the reality was much darker (in line with what cates put on page, darker, experiments etc) and was something he didn’t WANT/couldn’t remember. i guess you could call it mcu synergy but seeing as the mcu hadn’t explored any of it it’s also not quite right. more a ‘grounded’ retcon. the false memories aspect is a way to make it all fall in line even if it’s confusing. i think ewing does a good job of writing rocket and i’d like to see him take a real crack at making his multiple origins work in tandem.

overall in general though i LOVE the overarching idea that rocket was made as this experiment because it puts him in line with other, more ‘perfect’ (debatable but certainly on the surface) experiments he finds himself allied with, adam, phy. i wish these kinds of similarities was something explored more, but equally i like that it’s never expressly signified despite being so obvious once noticed.

so i actually think more came from telltale than people give it credit for. I think even so much of gotg3 came from that game. even having lylla in the lab and wanting to see the sky. very heartbreaking the first time i played it and rocket breaking down to peter over lylla was really, REALLY moving. made me tear up. there’s no way gunn wasn’t inspired by this in vol. 3. same can be said of vol. 3 i guess. made me cry and i liked that the relationship between rocket and the “scientists” that made him was given a face and explored w rocket and the high evolutionary, unlike in the cates run and the games.

eidos game i think also did a good job though some of rocket talking about his past didn’t always feel earned when those conversations would trigger at the beginning of the game. i liked that they brought in his og origins by making it stories he would tell the other experiments while he was captured. i also liked his fear of water beginning almost as a joke in the early hours of the game but developing into a significant aspect of his trauma and something that he has to overcome. that was a nice moment. beyond that making his origin story be the kree is kind of insane to me because what the hell would the kree want with a raccoon super soldier. guess we’ll never know!!

ultimately i think comic rocket is a mess right now and something needs to be done about it (get ewing on the phone for all your guardians needs x) and the adaptations all benefit from being more focused.

#thanks for asking and reading my rambling would love to hear #your thoughts on the whole mess <3 #ask #rocket #gotg #rakruined

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616phyla · 4 months

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Alright, I’ll take you up on that comics offer. What’re the best X Men comics for a newer fan who mostly reads cosmic marvel? I’ve read the Dark Phoenix saga (because not doing so is like being a film fan who hasn’t seen Citizen Cane) and really enjoyed it, but I’d probably prefer more stories with the team as a family and pertaining to personal threats in that same vein. My favorites are Storm, Rogue and Nightcrawler if it helps any.

Hi! If you're new to X-Men I do recommend starting with Giant Size X-Men #1 and then reading Claremont's run from Uncanny X-Men #94 onwards (it goes until #279 but read as much as you want). This has Nightcrawler and Storm as main characters from the start and Rogue is introduced into it at #170! It has really good relationship drama and character dynamics <3 If you did like Dark Phoenix Saga you'd enjoy the rest probably.

Also you can read New Mutants (1983) and X-Factor (1986) when they start up if you're interested in those characters.

More recently Storm has been really well written in X-Men Red (2022)! Pretty cosmic too.

#asks #rakruined

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adamwarlock · 1 year

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It sucks they waited until after Thanos was gone to introduce Adam but I'm interested in where they go with this version, especially since his creation is gonna kinda parallel Rocket's in the movie. Honestly I don't know which I'm anticipating more: Rocket realizing his actions led to another lifeform being created for the sole purpose of hunting him and his friends down, or Adam finding out the Sovereign/High Evolutionary created him because a raccoon stole batteries.

Yeah I'm really curious to see what they'll do with Adam in relation to Rocket, it does seem like there's gonna be some interplay there with the High Evolutionary being involved in creating them both, and you could definitely draw a clear parallel between them being forced to face the horrors of life and struggling to find meaning in it. "I didn't ask to get made" and all that. I'd guess they're probably combining Halfworld and Counter-Earth too since they both involve animal/humanoid hybrids & genetic experimentation etc... I might actually lose my mind if Man-Beast shows up but I'm not holding out hope for that lol.

I actually hadn't even thought about how it's literally all because Rocket stole the batteries lmaooo you're so right!! I'll stay bitter forever over how badly the mcu fumbled Thanos & Adam but I'm def looking forward to seeing how Vol3 is gonna play out. 🤔

#rakruined

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catholic-character-tournament · 11 months

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Okay, I do have to say GotG 3 has a lot more religious coding than the reference to Creation of Adam. Not saying it’s strictly Catholic or anything, just pointing out that there’s a lot of stuff about creationism, god and faith in that movie.

Ok you got a point. There are themes about creation/eugenics and trying to play god vs nature and how nature isn't less than. But. Is that enough to try to claim the movie has specifically Christian themes? I still think no. I see more Frankenstein-y themes with the whole artificially made vs nature, lose of innocence, revenge, being a little monster, and (unlike the monster) being saved because he found his a new family.

i think a story needs to have a character that's religious AND/OR the writer is religious + religious themes, references, and imagery for a story to be "religious." That's why Death Note isn't Christian but Lord of The Rings is. I think.

#asks #rakruined #gotg vol 3

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bathmob · 9 months

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My gotg OC is half baked at best but he's a blue space utahraptor alien dude inspired by Diego Brando and Dinobot BeastWars

THAT FUCKS WHAT… LOVE THAT IDEAA

#RAPTOR ALIEN WHAAAAA #asks #rakruined

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rael-rider · 1 year

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WTF was Gunn smoking when he considered that plot line? Literally NOTHING about Annihilus works as Rocket's creator. Why would he even bother making cybernetic experiments when he has incredible powers and an entire army? Even ignoring the Annihilation implications, this sounds utterly asinine.

Gunn does stuff where I can totally vibe with it and I appreciate that even tho he changed a lot from the GotG comics in his movies that he got some stuff from the DnA era right and he knows shitty Guardian content when he sees it *cough* bendishumphries *cough*.

But then stuff like this, like what?

And yeah Annihilus is just a crazy bug guy from the negative zone that wants to be left alone with his cosmic control rod and gets extremely paranoid of every living thing in his vicinity. He's like bug Gollum with an immense fear of death.

Annihilus should be for the F4 or Nova, and if they make Annihilation, which is the story that made Annihilus a credible threat, then it should have Rich as the protag.

#wondy answers #rakruined

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mrwolfhare · 7 months

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I was unable to upload a drawtober pic yesterday, so... here's a gif of Rocket spinning in a chair to make up for it.

#rocket raccoon #spin me right round baby right round #Not sure where this is from #He's wearing blue #so from Vol.2 #but cant remember this scene in the movie #was this maybe from the I am Groot short series?#Hold on lemme check #nope #not seeing it in there #was this like cut footage?#only other thing I can think of is test footage for light on fur #could maybe be for the GotG Disney ride #rakruined saved the day everyone #is from Infinity War #call off the search

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ponett · 14 days

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Do you have any advice for people making OCs/sonas? Yours are really well rounded and unique and I'd greatly appreciate the insight of someone who got a passion project off the ground!

So this is a very broad topic, and it varies a lot based on your own creative goals, what kind of characters you're creating, and where you want to use them. Creating an OC to be used in furry pinups is a little different than creating one for a dramatic story. But I'll try to give some general advice on how I do things for the types of characters and stories I tend to work with

Heads up: this will be kinda long lol

The germ of an idea

For me, I'll generally be inspired to create a character starting with a small number of core traits. These could be anything. A color scheme, a body type, a job, a hobby, a personality archetype, an outfit, a visual motif, a functional role in a story I'm working on, a noteworthy facial feature, a weapon, a relationship of some sort to an existing character, a single scene or joke I want to use them for. For furries and fantasy characters, species is usually one of the first things I'll have an idea for, which tends to get the ball rolling fairly easily since we have all sorts of cultural associations with different animals and fantasy creatures.

Any standout character trait like this that you find compelling can serve as that initial spark. The inspiration can come from anywhere, but it's often just a matter of knowing yourself and your own tastes. What do you like? What are the people in your life like? What really speaks to you in a character? What's an existing fictional character that you'd like to rewrite and take in a different direction? What's an aspect of yourself that you would like to see represented more often in fiction? It doesn't have to be something super deep or fleshed out right from the start, though. You can start with something as simple as "I want a black cat character" or "I want a character who dresses like an arcade carpet" or "I want a character who looks scary but is actually nice." Whatever it is, it's something that differentiates the new character from the ones I already have, because otherwise I'd just be using them.

Contrast

From there, you can start brainstorming other traits that might go with those core traits. Some of those may be traits that naturally complement each other. Continuing with the black cat example, maybe you wanna play into the common cultural perception of black cats and say that this character brings bad luck, or is associated with witchcraft. However, I often like to give characters contrasting or even seemingly contradictory traits, which can help elevate a character beyond a stock archetype. Real people tend to be a walking ball of contradictions, after all.

I've talked a lot about how I did this with the main cast of SLARPG. Melody is a fox, traditionally a crafty and untrustworthy predator, but she's extremely introverted and gentle. Allison is a bunny, but instead of being a meek and cuddly little prey animal she's an outgoing fighter who loves a challenge, and she has a muscular build. I think this kind of thing gives characters some fun flavor, and can be really effective for both comedy and drama. For an example from something I didn't write, take Senshi from Dungeon Meshi. He's a dwarf, and he embodies certain stereotypical aspects of dwarves - he's a short, buff man with a big bushy beard, he lives underground, he's stubborn and doesn't like elven magic - but he also goes against some of them. Instead of being an expert on mining and blacksmithing, Senshi is a culinary expert who has a deep appreciation for the natural ecosystem of the dungeon. He's a weirdo among dwarves for not caring about the wellbeing of his axe and for using his super awesome shield primarily as a giant wok. And that's what makes Senshi fun and interesting.

So going back to our example, instead of going with the stereotype, we could make a black cat character who has comically good luck, or who's superstitious and afraid of witchcraft, or who's an extremely rational person who always believes in science over superstition. Or maybe you roll with the bad luck angle, but instead make the black cat be the victim of their own bad luck in some interesting way. Maybe this black cat has terrible luck with love and can't hold down a relationship. Maybe this black cat is an aspiring speedrunner who consistently gets the absolute worst RNG possible in every video game due to their own bad luck. Maybe this black cat has accrued a horrendous gambling debt after a long losing streak and has loan sharks coming after them.

These are all just hypothetical examples, of course. I don't exclusively make characters with ironic contradictions like this. The idea is just to build on those core traits you started with in interesting ways, and that's one of my favorite ways to do so. But honestly, a lot of the time execution is more important than the sheer originality of an idea, and sometimes really putting your all into playing a trope you love straight is the right move.

Specificity

Regardless of what direction I take a character in past that initial seed of an idea, the key ingredient tends to be specificity. To give them specific details beyond the most stock possible version of that core idea you started with.

This is something I internalized from Tim Schafer, via a blog post in the behind-the-scenes backer material for Broken Age. Sadly I'm not sure if that stuff is still available, but I did save this particular post about creating characters since it really helped me, so I'll directly quote a chunk of that post here:

No two characters would approach a problem or react to events in the same way. At least, not if you’ve designed the characters well. If you’ve left them too vague or superficial, if they are merely functional elements in your story instead of individuals, then they might react in the same way. And that’s a problem. So to avoid that, I’m going to talk about one the most important parts of character development: specificity. Making sure your character is a specific individual, not a stereotype. A unique character, different from anyone else in the world. It doesn’t mean that they have to have wacky gimmicks, eyepatches and crazy accents. It just means they have to be specific. For example, let's create a new character. Let's say your story has a scene where your main character gets in trouble in school. So you’re probably going to need a school teacher. Imagine a school teacher for a bit. Do you see her in a little red schoolhouse? Maybe a bun in her hair? An apple on her desk? Thick black glasses? Let’s put a ruler in her hand for good measure. Done! We have our teacher character. She’s ready to be in the scene where our hero goes to school and the teacher sends her to the principal’s office for passing notes. Right? I mean, this character doesn’t have too many lines, so why develop her character any more? The problem is that this teacher is a very shallow stereotype of a teacher. She has no specific attributes that make her memorable. She’s the teacher you would get in a set of free clip art. She might not have many lines, but if all your supporting characters are this way, your story will be more bland than it should be. Even if this teacher is only onscreen for a minute, she should be unique and different from any other teacher in the world. Luckily, it's not actually that hard to make her so. You just have to ask some very basic, specific questions.

Tim goes on to explain how simple exercises like filling out character sheets with basic questions about your character (there are a million of these online) can help push a character beyond a stock archetype, even if it's a minor supporting character. Questions about where they're from, their likes and dislikes, their beliefs, their goals in life, that sort of thing. For minor characters especially, a lot of these details may never actually come up in a story, but just asking even a few of these questions and giving them specific answers helps you see them less like an archetype and more like a real person in your head. Maybe you never bring up your character's backstory or their favorite sport or what kind of music they listen to, but just having a specific answer for questions like that might help color the way you depict that character in subtle ways. It makes it feel like they aren't defined by just that one core trait you started with, and helps make the characters and world feel more alive, like there's stuff going on with them beyond the bounds of the story or the drawing.

It's a careful balancing act, though. It's easy for a character to feel like they're a collection of too many unrelated gimmicks and quirks. Again, like Tim said, these specifics don't have to make for the craziest, most original character ever, there just has to be something there.

Let's go back to SLARPG as an example, where I combined broad character archetypes I liked with more specific personal elements that I felt like I wasn't seeing enough in the fiction I liked. Melody is riffing on the common idea of the reserved healer character in the RPG or MMO party and the shy girl archetype, but she's the main hero instead of a supporting player in another person's story, and she's also a fat bisexual trans woman who draws a lot of little details from my own life. Her interests, her relationships, her opinions on things, her personal hangups and dreams, these all set Melody apart from other fantasy healer characters and define her as Melody Amaranth. Specificity!

But it doesn't always have to be super deep, especially if you just want some characters to draw for fun and aren't planning on writing a story with them. Take my fursona. I've always loved dogs, so I made my fursona a dog. I chose a Samoyed in particular because I think Samoyeds are the cutest, and I hadn't seen hardly any anthro Samoyed OCs at the time. I leaned into the breed's signature fluffiness to help my fursona stand out from other canine OCs. She has simple identifying traits like being fat like me, wearing glasses like mine, and having a hairstyle kinda like mine (when I tied my hair up in a bun, at least). And there you go. Fursona achieved. She's not a wildly high concept character, but she doesn't need to be

Anyway I realize that this is mostly about the writing aspect, so here's a few quick bullet points about designing a character's appearance:

Face and body type variety are good, but personally I would say lack of body type variety is worse than same face syndrome

Knowing some stuff about shape language is good, but you don't have to be completely beholden to the "circles are friendly, squares are sturdy, triangles are scary" shit. I'm generally more interested in using repeated shaping in different parts of a character's design as sort of a shape motif. Melody's body, hair, and tail are all made of round, swooping shapes, for example. (This is more applicable if you're designing cartoonier characters as opposed to realistic humans, obviously.)

Knowing some basics of color theory is also good. I like using complementary and contiguous color schemes on characters and generally try not to use too many distinct colors on one design. Black and white and grey and various browns are good as neutral colors to balance out the colors of the rainbow, and gold can be a nice accent color

A small handful of identifying accessories can be fun, but don't rely on those to make a design stand out. Ideally your character should still be identifiable even when not wearing their default outfit, or even in silhouette

Aaaaaand I'm gonna call it a wrap there! This is a huge topic, so hopefully this helps with at least some of the basics! At the end of the day, though, don't beat yourself up if you can't sit down and force yourself to come up with the most crazy awesome OC ever. Just have fun and be yourself!

#rakruined #ask #slarpg asks

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tobiasdrake · 7 months

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Got an Ask about V3 that I'm going to throw under a Read More for spoiler reasons.

Yes, keeping Kaede as the protagonist would require a lot of changes to the basic structure of what V3 even is. As the protagonist, Shuichi is tailor-made to embody the story, structure, and themes of the overarching V3 narrative. So if someone really likes V3's story, it naturally follows that you would really like V3.

Me, I'm a person who's lukewarm on V3's story. It's dissertations on truth and lies don't do much for me. The game has so much to say on the subject, but not a lot of it sounds meaningful to my ears. "Fiction can have a profound emotional impact and resonance on us but should not be allowed to consume our lives." Yeah, no shit, what else you got?

I also don't think this theme is well-suited to a Danganronpa entry. "Wouldn't it be better to NOT reveal the truth?" is a weird question to ask in a game where failure to reveal the truth would result in everyone being murdered. Once you put "Everyone will be murdered" on the table, the answer to that question swiftly becomes, "Uh, no, it would not be better, fuck you very much." This is an inappropriate theme for such a black-and-white premise.

But the inappropriate theme makes sense because, at the end of the day, this game is a burnout. It's not supposed to fit the premise well because this game isn't here to tell a good story. It's Kodaka freaking out, flipping the table, torching the franchise, and storming out the door. The ultimate villain is the Danganronpa franchise itself, and the ultimate triumph is to stop making these games and let the brand die.

I would prefer to have had a game where that did not happen, even if that meant it was made by a different creator. I think letting Kodaka leave does not have to go hand-in-hand with making a game that condemns the very notion of solving mysteries as a vile and rancid practice, then demands an end to Danganronpa forever.

So "The game would have to be extremely different for Kaede to live" is not a dealbreaker for my desire for Kaede to have lived. Quite the contrary, it complements it.

#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #revisiting drv3 #@rakruined

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chaifootsteps · 4 months

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A good example of a "creator's pet" being a good character is Rocket Raccoon in the GotG movies. James Gunn has been very open about identifying with the character and clearly put a lot of love into his arc, especially in volume 3, but he's not treated like most creator's pets. For starters, he never completely swallows up the narrative, unlike Stolas, and doesn't take over the protagonist role even in vol 3. Even with his extremely tragic backstory, he's not just a woobie or forgiven for everything he does, but instead has to work toward becoming a better person throughout the trilogy. He's allowed to fuck up and be in the wrong, but also demonstrates his growth from these failures and his love for others, and as a result he has one of the best character arcs in the whole MCU.

Love Rocket so much. He's come so far and his late tree husband would be proud of him.

#rakruined #actual blog post #viv stuff

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emptymanuscript · 2 years

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Angry Mighty are much better.

James didn’t even know how he had gotten on top of the pile of teeth. His knife high as he shoved the man down, teeth bared in a snarl.

“Do it!” Rakruin shouted at him. “Strike out my heart and I will rise again to return the death. Feast on my flesh and grow strong that we will struggle in hate for eternity, death upon death, until we are strong and terrible to keep our old oaths. We’ll fight and thrash and fuck until we tumble the whole universe down like it should have been.”

The call surged up Zephyr’s throat like a gust of wind from over the sea, catching the still air and bringing it to life that had been missing, limp in the doldrums for days, years, lifetimes. “Bonelfoermos. Stop.”

James turned his head back to Zephyr, whose face seemed alight, like a beacon drawing him back from his rage.

“Coward,” Rakruin sneered. He grabbed James’ hand with both his own, and jerked it toward himself, plunging the knife home in his own chest in a spray of blood.

James froze, staring bug eyed at the murder stroke.

1,805 words, bringing it up to 2,435 so far today :)

#writing #creative writing #writeblr #watch me work #word count #Rakruin #James #bonelfoermos #Zephyr #thulebelore #spoilers

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zenwhoberi · 10 months

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I really hope in a future comic (can be either a gotg run or a Rocket solo) they acknowledge the whole love triangle between Rocket, Lylla and Blackjack. We know Blackjack got divorced (implied to be due to trying to kill Rocket), but we haven't really seen Lylla in the present much at all. I'm hopeful vol 3 will spark a return for her without fridging her for synergy...

I really just wanna get the whole trio's thoughts on the matter and some closure, or at least a status quo. There are a lot of issues for them to unpack beyond romance and I think it'd be interesting to see how that whole situation shakes out. I especially want to see how Rocket's views on love and relationships have changed over time, from the Young solo to the Ewing solo to present.

IDK, I know the Halfworlder romance hasn't been much of a thing since the 70's, but I think there's real potential for a compelling story. And for the love of god, don't leave Wal out.

i can’t say i’m interested in the romance side of things at all really (animal divorce is so incredibly funny to me) but that being said i agree that something needs to be sorted out!!!

we’ve talked about rocket’s backstory before being an enormous mess. i’d be down for a rocket solo that’s really an ensemble of rocket and the halfworlders figuring out what happened to them and why and see throughout how it has affected them. what’s real, what’s not. it would be a good opportunity to clean up the mess somewhat while also giving rocket another solo opportunity. young’s series i wasn’t a fan of, ewing’s I liked ok enough but what i’m really craving is a rocket solo that plays who he is and what he is totally straight. for some reason writers manage that in the mainline series but when it comes to his solos there is always kind of…. a Bit going on? (that’s definitely not the word i’m looking for but it’s 1am here so if i think of the exact word that’s on the tip of my tongue in the morning I’ll edit this lmao).

it would also be an opportunity to shed light on lylla, blackjack, wal-rus. a modern update. it could definitely be really compelling with the right creative team. and i agree lylla would be the one i’m most concerned about if past synergy is anything to go by :/

so yeah i think even if i disagree on the romance aspect of it we both ultimately want the same thing in terms of the half-worlders making a comeback and being given a bit of depth, and what that would mean for rocket. obviously, with cates’ death of rocket plotline and also strange tales rocket’s backstory is obviously something that’s being played up as having a huge effect on him. i’m genuinely quite surprised none of this became a thing after rocket’s backstory being back in the spotlight from like 2014, again in 2019 and then alongside blackjack making a return in 2020. it’s kind of overdue

#ask #rakruined #thank you for asking!!!! gotg has so many openings for comics but instead we get 2023 lmfaooo

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