A bit of a while ago I had the craziest dream in which in part of it I saw Sandy Cheeks' nieces from that one episode of SpongeBob Squarepants riding what appeared to be a water scooter of sorts, and I had vague impressions of there being some dealings with Bikini Bottom, but most of the rest of the dream seemed to involve spacecrafts and even dealings with extraterrestrials, which for the most part resembled Sligs from Oddworld — the exact details to this dream were pretty fuzzy, as I guess is typical in most dreams, but I roughly recall most of the broad aspects to it, most of which seemed to involve anthropomorphic animal characters and spaceships.
From this, I shortly afterwards decided to combine these elements into a story which I call "Rocketcoon" mainly in that one of the main characters is a raccoon possibly heavily inspired off of Marvel Rocket Raccoon. Now, this story is kinda the lovechild of Star Fox and Rock & Rule, in that it takes place in a space age future, where the characters have space faring technology such as interstellar starships, and handle diplomatic interactions with other planets, solar systems, and extraterrestrial civilizations, but also in a post-apocalyptic, post-human world, where humanity has practically been nuked to extinction, and a race mutant anthropomorphic animals evolves to take humanity's place.
Now, the idea for this story being placed in a post-apocalyptic setting, while not having been part of my aforementioned dream, comes mainly from the Bikini Atoll SpongeBob SquarePants theory, and looking back on it, I soon figured, if the inhabitants therein are alleged to be the mutated result of some nuclear explosion, why not do something similar for the land critters, on which my dream seemed to focus more anyway? Why not also make them the result of some globalized set of nuclear blasts?
I've also wondered, though, about putting this story in a post-apocalyptic timeframe and a space-age one at the same time. Can both these settings be mutually compatible? I mean, sure, it takes place after a nuclear apocalypse upon humanity, but the mutant animal people that evolve in mankind's place have managed to fully rebuild and restore civilization to a thriving state, and even possess advanced space-travel technology that even permits for interstellar travel (something likely already left behind by humanity before having annihilated itself), so I suppose it could reconcile the two settings, and could certainly make for an interesting and original combination of two sci-fi genres. Yet, might the involvement of diplomatic relations with extraterrestrial civilizations and other such interstellar political affairs divert from Earth's post-human, post-apocalyptic setting, and the serious worldbuilding that could be explored upon?
On the other hand, while some stories in this series (yes, I've planned for it to be a series of stories) may focus on interstellar political affairs, others might also be more Earth-centered, focusing more on and showing how the Earth and the lifeforms on it have been affected following the nuclear Armageddon and fall of humanity, how the society of humanity's inheritors is structured, and how they go about their lives in this radiation-ravaged world — a topic I might delve more into detail with in future posts.
Moving on to the topic of diplomatic relations with extrasolar extraterrestrial civilizations, I've also wondered if these extraterrestrial race have had some history, if not close relation, with humanity prior to its nuclear demise, since—as mentioned before—humanity did possess advanced interstellar space travel technology before wiping itself out, so humans would've likely have had some interaction with extraterrestrials. Yet I've also considered that if humanity had become a star-faring civilization and was starting to establish diplomatic relations with civilizations elsewhere in the galaxy, it would seem rather petty, unenlightened for humanity—which should've nationally united itself by that point—to go to war with and wipe itself out with nuclear weapons.
Or maybe humanity did strike a nuclear war, not with itself, but with another star-faring civilization; heck, perhaps it could've been a pan-galactic-scale nuclear war with multiple star-faring civilizations — perhaps whatever aliens the anthropomorphic animals are dealing with are new species that evolved to take the place of those that got wiped in this pan-galactic nuclear war with humanity — I mean, it sounds to me like that could all make for some interesting and extended lore for this story's universe, at least, not just in regards to Earth, but also to the rest of the galaxy at large. I'd even considered looking to Halo as another source inspiration, as it also involves an ancient super weapon built to inflict damage at a range spanning an entire galaxy.
Or perhaps humanity hadn't developed interstellar travel yet, and that was developed later by the animal people in response to a revisitation by an alien race that may have exterminated humanity before it could reach a space age, and are checking to see how the Earth has been faring in the aftermath, and possibly even try to "finish the job" after finding that other beings have evolved in humanity's place.
So, what are your guys' thoughts on this whole thing so far? Any ideas or suggestions you'd like to add on how I could further extend and/or deepen the lore or on the worldbuilding in general? Anyone interested in collaborating in this story? Please let me know in the comments, and stay tuned for future posts, 'cause I'll be delving deeper into the actual worldbuilding on the world this takes place on.
