#wal rus

Rocket (2017) The Blue River Score

This comic gave me depression. (Just kidding, I already have it.) Totally worth it though. It's a good one. And it's got Deadpool! (Which I already made a separate post for a little while back.)

doin a lil series where i go super in-depth into my Halfworld headcannons and worldbuilding. This is an extension of my Rocket backstory post where I combine elements of his cannon backstories into a logical and consistent one so go read that first.

In this first part we'll discuss the Keystone Quadrant and Halfworld's geography and maps.

This is the best image we get of Halfworld in the 1985 comics.

As you can see, Halfworld has 4 moons and many... yellow orbs? I believe these are artificial suns as there are none visible nearby. These moons do not have names but I may name them in the future.

Based on this very sea-heavy pic and my personal draws I have created this crappy map:

This is a post-rebellion map. Any older just remove any trace of humanity across the isthmus. As you can see, it's a bit polluted from the constant improper waste disposal from the lab for ~900 years.

"900 YEARS?!?!" you might ask (earth years). We know Rocket and co is part of batch 89. If we assume each batch only survives ~10 years before dying of physical trauma, distress, starvation, or execution we get around ~890-~920-ish years of the labs existence (we can assume to first few batches were the real loonies). Subject names go through the scheme of: Batch#, species class, individual#. We don't know if individual numbers go past double digits, but if they DON'T that leave the maximum total late patients/subjects from batches 1-88 at...

226,512

This is ONLY if individual numbers stay in double digits. Triple would be over 2 million. Oof. Generational trauma moment.

This has gotten off-topic so back to Halfworld ecology. Ever heard of wild worms?

They live in the wasteland areas and eat just about anything. Easily farmable and great food source for the growing civilization. This is one of the few reasons modern Halfworlders venture into the Dark Side.

I am unaware of any other Haflword- exclusive non-sentient species. However, there are likely plenty of birds, lizards, and rodents the Halfworlders were forcibly evolved from.

I am also of the firm belief that surviving lab robots are a problem for modern civilization. The robots were programmed to be entirely independent, making them probably capable of repairing/reproducing new robots with spare parts. This is why I think it'd be advantageous for them to build a wall over the crossing.

Is it possible to fully eliminate all of them? I don't think so, personally. But the government is trying.

"Government?? Tf are you talking about Al??"

Rocket's backstory kind of annoys me for a few reasons.

For one, it pretty much did exactly what I feared it would: It went the way of several other Guardians of the Galaxy properties before it and killed Lylla Otter to make Rocket's backstory more sad. To be fair, she wasn't the only one to get killed off, but it was still annoying to see. Telltale did it, the newer Guardians game did it, and now the first mainstream movie Lylla's ever appeared in so far had to fridge her too. Frankly, that's bull. Lylla could be so interesting if any piece of modern media she features in gave her a goddamn chance to be more than one of the reasons for Rocket's man-pain. The original character was a princess and part of the resistance on Halfworld for crying out loud!

Secondly, I don't like that the MCU keeps killing off characters and squashing really interesting concepts it doesn't need to. I really wanted Rocket's animal friends to survive, somehow. I knew from the tone that was very unlikely to happen, since they exclusively appear in Rocket's angst-coma flashbacks, but it still would've been nice. Plus, this movie had the golden opportunity to introduce Blackjack O'Hare and Wal Russ, two cool characters in their own right and just as important to Rocket as Lylla, and they botched it. (No, I don't consider Floor and Teef the MCU's version of Blackjack and Wal, they didn't make them nearly recognizable enough for that. Also, Floor and Teef were superfluous, flat and I felt literally nothing when they died. There, I said it.) Because among a ton of other things that could have made Rocket's backstory more than torture porn, Halfworld got axed as well. Look, I get the movie really wanted to make you cry, but Jesus Christ would it have been too much to let Rocket have something? Let him discover he's not the only one like him? That he has people who can relate to him, in a way the other Guardians can't, who understand him?

Lylla could have been that. Blackjack could have been that. Wal could have been that. All of them could have been that!

Heck, Rocket already gets to be the new leader of the Guardians at the end of the movie, why not have him lead his own team of Halfworlders and some others? That would have been awesome!

But no.

Needless fridging it is.

As always with the MCU latels.