[open] you were content to let me shine, that's your way.

[beatupgrass]

Who: Rocket and anyone who wanders into this hot mess
Where: Wonderland's "movie theater."
When: Various points throughout the month of March, except during events. (Catch-all)
Rating: PG-13 for Rocket's mouth, probably
Summary: Rocket doesn't always play Beat the Clock with bombs in the hedge maze or shoot things for fun... sometimes he catches up on Terran pop culture.
The Story:

ᴀ. ɢᴇɴᴇʀɪᴄ ʜᴏʀʀᴏʀ ᴍᴏᴠɪᴇ

We find Rocket seated comfortably in the first row of comfy couches, a bowl of trail mix situated beside him, which he keeps idly reaching his disconcertingly human-like hands into, as he stares at the scene unfolding before him with the look of someone wondering if the movie is going to actually get good if he looks away for a second.

"Bet he's still alive," he mutters, popping a pretzel in his mouth. Unsurprisingly, the killer gets to his feet, limping along and ready to have one last stab- hah- at the quirky killer. "Dippy broad. You're supposed to shoot his face in before you turn your back."

He ends up going through several horror movies and being continuously disappointed in all of them and their lame excuses for twists. He's probably even figured some out way before the ending, and isn't shy about proclaiming his theories, therefore ruining the suspense. He's a bro like that.


ʙ. ɢᴇɴᴇʀɪᴄ ꜱᴄɪ-ꜰɪ ᴍᴏᴠɪᴇ

If you thought watching horror movies with Rocket was annoying, then wait until you see how he gets with science fiction. Most of it is yawn-worthy to him, having lived in space. More importantly, it's horribly unrealistic. He spends most of the ones he watches flopped in one corner of the couch with his head on the armrest, rolling his eyes.

People watching with him get treated to a raccoonoid in various states of agony, running his hands over his face, muttering things like, "You can't freakin' do that, jackass. You'll burn up your d'ast engines" or "Did they hand a bunch of frickin' children laser guns? Why can't any of these people hit anything?"

But also, occasionally, he'll perk up and you get things like, "Now that's a nicely designed spacecraft. Y'all can imagine that, but you can't legitimately build it? What a waste."


ᴄ. ʙᴇᴀᴄʜᴇꜱ

It's hard to say where Rocket was when this movie began, but right now he's in the middle of the comfy floor pillows with a blanket over his head, staring with wide eyes at the screen. He may or may not be sniffling a little bit as "Wind Beneath My Wings" starts playing.

Look, the story of an unlikely friendship withstanding the test of time and people being selfish and stupid, only for one of them to die really hits home for him. And while he's too manly to admit why it gets to him so deeply, he's not too manly to admit he can be genuinely moved by the film. God, people. He has feelings too, you know.

He definitely spent the entirety of this one engrossed entirely and threatened to shoot you if you interrupted it. Look, he's been thinking about Groot a lot lately. He was bound to find some way to deal with this.

ᴅ. ᴛɪᴛᴀɴɪᴄ

You probably stumbled upon this viewing because Rocket has spent most of it yelling at the screen, ranging from things like "YOU ARROGANT DICK" to "oh my flark- YOU CAN'T GET OUT OF THAT?" and so on and so forth. It's hard to tell whether he's pissed at this movie or worked up because he actually likes the characters and wants better for them. It's Rocket. He's difficult to read.

As it draws to an emotional climax, Rocket is tugging at his ears and looking somewhere between wanting to yell or cry. Or both. "You both could've fit on that d'asted raft! What the hell, Rose?!"


ᴇ. ᴛʜᴇ ɪꜱʟᴀɴᴅ ᴏꜰ ᴅʀ. ᴍᴏʀᴇᴀᴜ

This one starts out promising. Plane crash. People duking it out for survival. Iceman from Top Gun is in it. All really great points, but as it goes on, it occurs to Rocket that maybe he should have paid a little bit closer attention to the details. At first, the strange hybrid humanoid animals and the talk of experimentation only make him tense and a little annoyed, but he manages to keep watching, if anything, out of stubbornness, growing continuously more on edge the longer it goes on. He doesn't even make it halfway, however, after a brutal scene involving bringing the Beast Folk into submission through their implants forces him to snarl and slam a hand down on the remote.

Once his fur settles, he tries to play it off. "It was boring anyway."


[OOC: ALSO AVAILABLE FOR WILDCARD OPTIONS if you'd like to force Rocket to sit through your personal favorite movie.]

Comments

[normandysbest]

"Well, kind of. It's complicated." Because, well, it is. She thinks about a proper way to start it, and just decides to summarize the whole thing, because if she's gonna go wild, she's gonna go Wild.

"First crew I was with for about a year and then our ship got attacked. Killed me. Got brought back from the dead in a number of shenanigans and picked up most of 'em again two years later. Then I was gonna get arrested because the group that revived me turned out to be terrorists, so I dropped everybody off somewhere else so they wouldn't take the fall. And since then, uh... huge bug invasion. Picked up quite a few of 'em again. Even the ones that don't have time to be on the ship are in contact." She tries to look nonchalant, but like... yeah, she knows this sounds absolutely insane. "If the first crew hadn't been shot out of the sky, we were planning on sticking together for a while, though. Shit just... happened."

[beatupgrass]

He takes all that in with a confused expression on his face, and only when she stops speaking does he announce, with extreme incredulity. "You died?"

That's the part that bothers him. Not anything else. Just the death-and-rebirth thing, because as far as he knows that shit only happens in Wonderland. Because he doesn't live in a part of the MCU where this happens occasionally.

[normandysbest]

Oh. Right. There are people that like, don't know that about her. She's starting to get really casual about it, too. It's really easy to just... forget that most people don't have that happen in their lives.

"Yeah. I was out for two years. When my ship went down, I stayed back to pull out our pilot and didn't make it to the escape shuttle in time." She stops herself there, because getting into more details is certainly too personal, and absolutely not something she thinks she can handle casually chatting about. "My body crashed onto a nearby planet and a fringe group managed to find it and revived me. Cost them two billion credits, but. I guess I'm here, so they did something in a way that worked."

[beatupgrass]

Rocket feels that way about the infinity stones and maybe when he's stopped staring at her in open-mouthed surprise, he can relate to how Cap felt when he just casually threw around utilizing the power of an cosmic macguffin to end a genocidal maniac.

"Two billion-" Some of that is tragic and he can understand a need to not talk about something- god knows he's got his share. He has to bite off the instinctual urge to ask who the flark she is that some fringe planet spent two billion credits on her. Even if it's not the same exchange rate as Units, a billion anything is a lot. Nobody is worth that much money alive or dead.

But he manages to not be enough of a dick to say that, so he just says something nicer, but ultimately with the same meaning behind it. "They must've really liked you."

[normandysbest]

She can't help but snicker just a bit at his reaction, because frankly, she can't believe she was worth two billion credits and two years worth of work either. And yet, when you have rich people with money to throw around, maybe you don't have to believe in something that strongly to just get it.

"Yeah, guess so. The guy who did it says they needed me as a symbol of like, humanity's greatness or something. Right before I died, I did manage to stop a huge invasion and got promoted to being the first human Spectre, so, guess that clout was worth it for him." She's never been completely comfortable with the way that all went down, anyway. All of that stuff had nothing to do with her being human, but she also knew The Illusive Man was one big racist anyway, so here we are. "Sorry, my life's just kind of fuckin' wild, to be honest."

[beatupgrass]

To his credit, he doesn't laugh, but his incredulous expression never falters. Humanity's greatness. There's a thought- if Quill heard that, he'd never shut up about it. Maybe in her universe, humans have done more than stare up at the sky and wonder what's out there, but still.

"Sounds like it. Must be one hell of a mantle to live up to." That's better than all the things he's not saying- nicer, too. Maybe he can comprehend tact on some days. "Some people might even get a big head over something like that."

Some people. He means Quill. Definitely Quill.

[normandysbest]

"Yeah, well... yeah." It comes out more like a sigh of admission than anything else, because haha, it really just keeps getting more complicated the longer it goes on, and at this point she just feels like she's running the long con on her importance to everyone in the galaxy. "Illusive Man sure did. The guy who spent all the god damn money. He sure thinks he's the best thing since sliced bread."

God, she can't wait to break his teeth.

"But it sounds like you're thinking of someone in particular. You work with any humans?"

[beatupgrass]

"Just the one. Got an ego the size of a planet, too." Remind him he said that in a couple month's time and he's going to groan at his own foresight, too. "He calls himself Star-Lord on purpose."

Which is about the only thing anyone can say about Peter Quill to sum up his personality. It's a quick diversion- he can tell when a topic has been breached that's best left swept off the table.

[normandysbest]

She can't help but snicker a little bit, because oh my god, that sure is a title.

"Look, if I could get away with calling myself something ridiculous, I probably would, too. If you only know one human though, I'm guessing Earth doesn't know much about spaceflight in your time. Where I'm from we're part of the galactic community. Everybody knows about aliens and stuff like that."

She's not gonna say it out loud, but like. Star Lord. That's kind of cool.

[beatupgrass]

"Earth's super backwater. One colonized planet, unless you count the fact that there's a rumor that Thanos came from one of the moons out there, but even that's just hearsay, and they haven't even developed the tech to get across their own tiny quadrant, much less anywhere else. Humans turn up every now and then, but it's usually 'cause they hitched a ride on a ship that got real bored and started trying to mess with the idiots."

And that's how crop circles and alien abductions happen. Bored alien college students.

[normandysbest]

Oh jeez, that's almost embarrassing. "You know, I always kind of wondered if aliens were dicking around on Earth before humans figured out FTL travel. Whole species must've looked like a bunch of jackasses." Not that they aren't now, but that's besides the point.

"We don't make much of a better impression in the galactic community, if you want a snapshot into your future. Most of us are just grade-A assholes." Now she's wondering if her universe has genetically enhanced raccoons. Damn, she's gotta start making a list for when she gets home.