#Rael is such a short king I love him so much

[charmwasjess]

For the character ask game — Dooku 2, 5, 23! aaand Rael 2, 12, 20, 25!

I'm breaking this ask up into two posts since you were SO, so generous as to give me lots of fun things to talk about!!! :D ❤️ I'm starting with Rael, since he has absolutely become one of my favorite Jedi characters and I want to tell you why.

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

SO MANY THINGS!

I love that literally the first thing he does the very minute he’s introduced is bearhug Dooku. I love that he treats Qui-Gon like a little brother and teaches him to swim. I love that he’s the most overt, direct example of Jedi lineage and Master + Padawan relationships being a family analogue. Not that others aren’t, but the way he outright says it, no metaphors or beating around the bush: Masters LOVE their Padawans, Padawans love their Master. It’s not training, it’s raising. 

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character?

My favorite is that Rael and Dooku’s early relationship as Master and apprentice was awful. Dooku is, like, this incredibly high strung, anxious perfectionist who is still almost a teenager when he takes on Rael, and has no idea what he’s doing. Meanwhile, Rael is a problem child who knows more curse words than Dooku does, is a LOT meaner, and mouths off to him constantly because it’s funny. Who even is this stuck-up knowitall who is probably just waiting for him to fail like everyone else?

Then one really bad day, in a string of bad days, Rael pushes Dooku too far, and he just… snaps. No, no lightning or shouting. Those big brown eyes slowly fill up with tears and he hurls himself in the refresher and locks the door. Rael knows he’s crying in there; he can hear him. They’re both appalled. 

After that, their relationship becomes the genuinely loving, affectionate one we see in the books. One, because Rael knows Dooku is actually human in there. And two, because he knows how deeply he actually cares about making him into the best Jedi and how desperately invested he is in his success.

20. Which other character is the ideal best friend for this character, the amount of screentime they share doesn't matter?

Rael and Anakin, if they didn’t immediately get into a fist fight, would be amazing. Anakin loves Qui-Gon, okay, meet Qui-Gon’s cool big brother. And since Rael was the oldest kid they accepted into the Order before Anakin (came in at age 5) and has had issues integrating with the Jedi, he could give him some real big lineage brother advice.

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

I was furious about him at first. He takes the place of Qui-Gon as Dooku’s first Padawan in old canon, and “clueless baby Dooku training Qui-Gon who is almost old enough to be his peer instead of his student” dynamic used to be my bread and butter. So initially, i was pretty put off that now that role is taken by some kind of weird cowboy talking asshole?!

Now, I love it. I’m so here for it. I’ll always love the old version, but I really like this too. He and Dooku are such opposites and it just works. And I love this pattern, between Rael, Sifo-Dyas, and Yoda, of Dooku being this formal, reserved person and the people he’s the closest to are complete playful, deeply affectionate goofballs.

Rael's just a wonderful character. Loving, flawed, complicated, strangely emotionally in tune for this lineage, and he fucks.

[jxndds]

isekai/reincarnation manhwas

Beatrice

Having previously been a slave in her youth, Chloe was revealed to be an illegitimate child of the King of Elpasa, and is raised to the level of a Princess and renamed Beatrice, all in order to secure a political marriage to a toady man, as the king was unwilling to marry his legitimate daughters to him. After two years of hellish marriage, the Kingdom of Elpasa falls before the blade of the Empire's Archduke, its greatest hero. In order to survive her new enslavement Princess Beatrice re-assumes the guise of 'Chloe' as a slave of the Empire. But then, she catches the eye of that very same hero...

The Archduke wonders who is this squirrelly short-haired young woman, who is so surprisingly educated for a slave, and who is terrified of him, not knowing that he butchered the Elpasa Royal Family in front of her and enslaved her himself. What will become of them, since she proves to be one of his only sources of levity?

 Beware of the Villainess

I became the villainess of a novel! Do I hate it? No! I find it rather nice. A duke’s daughter = a jobless rich person. How I can miss out on a chance like this?! This is the best chance to just enjoy life. I should throw out the main plot and just live life how I want to! Not long after waking up as the villainess, I witnessed my fiancé, the novel’s male lead, the crowned prince, cheating. I saw him embrace a lady other than I and he was smiling so bright. I was brought to tears… Just kidding, I didn’t cry! My tears are worth too much to be wasted on that garbage. Instead of tears, I yelled out, “Your highness, are you trash?” The main character with a personality of a refreshing soda! The girl-crush protagonist that will completely throw out the main story! Why? Because it’s a waste for a girl to be surrounded by cheap cars. (cars = men)

 Death is the Only Ending for the Villainess

Penelope Eckart reincarnated as the adopted daughter of Duke Eckart and the villainess of a reverse harem dating sim. The problem is, she entered the game at its hardest difficulty, and no matter what she does, death awaits her at every ending! Before the "real daughter" of Duke Eckart appears, she must choose one of the male leads and reach a happy ending in order to survive. But the two brothers always pick a fight with her over every little thing, as well as a crazy crown prince, whose routes all lead to death. There's even a magician who's enamoured with the female lead, and a loyal slave knight! But somehow, the favourability meters of the male leads increase the more she crosses the line with them!

 Doctor Elise

Song Ji Hyeon is a surgeon, as well as a genius doctor appointed as the youngest lecturer at Seoul University. She carries memories of a previous life as Elise De Clorence who lived as a wicked woman. Suddenly an unexpected accident occurs and when she wakes up, she's back in her previous life?! Will Elise be able to correct her past mistakes?

 Empress of Another World

Crossing over into another world and time after a freak accident, Korean highschool girl Sabina is taken in by a duke of the Crentia kingdom— only to soon be offered up to the ugly old emperor as a concubine. When the king is killed by a mysterious assassin, Sabina must face the poisonous circle of other candidates in a battle for the royal seat. Can she attract the loyalty and affection of the men and women she needs on her side to survive?

 I Am a Child Of This House

"Pink Eyes", a young girl, has lived a life filled with battery and abuse by her mother, but she has two unexpected factors that may play a role in her life: first, she has gained memories of her previous life as Seo Young, a 23 year-old Korean woman, and second, she is a nobleman's illegitimate daughter.

One day, her prostitute mother takes her to the empire's sole Duke and claims that the girl is his child to gain alimony from him. Although he seems to not believe her, he nevertheless buys "Pink Eyes" for 20,000 gold. With that, her new life as "Estelle" starts.

But what truly awaits her? And is she really a child of this house?

 I Became The Emperor's Daughter One Day

A car accident allowed her to cross the magical world, she was reincarnated to a baby! She participated in a competition and won. Then, she was adopted by the emperor and became a princess. However, the other adopted princesses are all given with luxury treatment. But why is it that only she lives in small firewood house? She is also beaten and bullied by the other princesses? She will do whatever it takes to fight back. When she shows a brave fighting spirit, the cold-blooded emperor finally came and said to her: "This little brat, is a little interesting."

 I Became the Villain's Mother

I became the mother of 'Ainspanner', who was presumed to be the final mastermind of this novel. I was supposed to be a bad stepmother who abused him when he was a child and eventually became the first to be killed by him when he became an adult.

I was thinking of a plan to escape my tragic fate when I saw the young future villain and the naive, innocent look on his face. However...

"What an adorable child! He’s so cute I want to bite him! How could anyone abuse him?"

He was so cute that I couldn’t believe he would become a villain when he grew up. So, I decided. I will protect him. This way, he’ll save me too when he’s all grown up.

 I Choose the Emperor Ending

Obsessed with medieval fantasies, Marina develops a revolutionary VR device that can bring fictional worlds to life. Her dreams come true when she transports herself to Lasnorok, the setting of her own novel. The problem is, she can't get back out! Disguised as a runaway slave boy named Rino, she comes face-to-face with the main character she created, the ambitious Edward Allen Dihas. Can Marina help him overthrow the emperor and survive to make it out alive?

 I don't want to be Empress [Empress? Empress!]

I don’t want to be the empress! Serena, the daughter of a noble is full of intelligence, status and appearance. But the truth is that she said that in her past life she was aware of the tragedies that could occur in the future. It will be that Serena can escape from this tragedy!

 Inso's Law

“I just want to live a normal life, why is this happening to me!”

Your average student Ham Dan, whose hobby was reading “Law of Inso” wakes up to a beautiful novel like heroine. But even in the world of fantasy novels, her role is no different. Stuck as the childhood friend of the heroine, her normal everyday life comes to an end, becoming more twisted by her strong character.

 Seduce the Villain's Father

Upon opening my eyes after a bus accident, I found myself in the fantasy world of a webnovel I enjoyed reading... the only catch is, I reincarnated 20 years before the novel begins! Reborn as Princess Yerenica of the small Lebovny kingdom, I'm determined to change the future in order to prevent the series of unfortunate events that will soon occur.

In the original story, my older sister, Tejavia, is pregnant with the future female lead, when she's suddenly kidnapped by the Belgoat Empire's emperor. But in my desperate attempts to protect her, I got kidnapped instead! And as if that wasn't bad enough, my body is ridiculously weak to magic. But... strangely enough, whenever I'm by the emperor, I feel fine!

The only way to save the emperor, who's destined to die at the hands of his own son after marrying the villainess, and save myself from being afflicted by magic... is for us to marry!

 Sincerely: I Became a Duke's Maid

I woke up one day inside the story of a novel as the maid of the disgraced Duke and side character, Alejandro Quillo Vel Laviti. Will Alejandro’s fate change with the my appearance as a new ‘extra’ character? What is the truth behind his cursed mark?

 Suddenly Became A Princess One Day [Who Made Me A Princess]

When I opened my eyes, I was a princess!

But why does it have to be a princess in this romance novel who has the fate of death from her own blood-related father!

If I want to live, I will have to stay away completely of his sight. However...

"Since when did this kind of scumbag started living in my castle?"

Not a single drop of blood nor tear to drop, that cruel and cold emperor, Claude!

Will Athanasia who has entered his eyes survive?

"I... What should I do..."

 Survive as the Hero's Wife

The protagonist has been reincarnated as Canaria, the villain of a popular cliché novel. According to the novel, she is destined to be executed by her husband! Determined to survive, her objective is simple: get a divorce! Will her plans be enough to save her life, or will unexpected circumstances arise to complicate matters even further?

 The Emperor's Companion

After making a deal with God, she is reincarnated into a new world fully ready to dedicate her life to her younger sibling. However, things aren't so simple when she attracts the attention of the Emperor. Can't a girl just look after her sibling with no man?

 The Emperor's Daughter [Daughter of the Emperor]

Ariadna Lereg Ilestri Pre Agrigent. And so my life begins with this ridiculously long name, born to royalty and the centre of attention — all because of one dangerous man; the veritably insane tyrant king, ruthless conqueror of ten empires, nightmare of all continents… and my father?! Will I be able to survive this maniac?

 The Evil Lady's Hero

Yunifer Magnolia was the best friend of the novel's heroine, Rael Cania, until her love for the male lead turned her into a villainess. Her harassment of Rael, Ishid's lover, condemned her to death at the hands of Cassian, the Crown Prince.

"So I reincarnated as... Yunifer?!"

This Yunifer wants to live, though! To stay safe, she decides to avoid all the main characters of the novel. But one drunken encounter with Ishid ruins all her plans...

"I don't do one-night stands."

"Then let's say we just started dating!"

Will Yunifer be able to correct her own twisted fate? Or will she face death once more, as foretold by the novel?

 The Golden-Haired Elementalist

I thought I was dead, but when I woke up, I was reincarnated as a nobleman's daughter?! The only thing I did in the seventeen years of my first life was studying. Now that I'm alive again, I won't live just to study! The second life of an ordinary middle school girl with a slightly strange personality, Jeanie Crowell, begins an unstoppable journey on this continent!

 The Justice of Villainous Woman

With a broken heart, Hwayoung falls headfirst into the river by accident but wakes up as infamous villainess Satiana Altisee Kaylon. Coming to terms with her new life as sole daughter of House Kaylon, Satiana is soon chosen as a candidate for the next empress! In the palace full of schemers and liars, she must become a cold-blooded villainess to win her royal seat by the crown prince - or her new family will face grave danger! Will being perfectly evil really be enough? ‘Cause even villains need love!

 The Pet of the Villainess [The Antagonist's Pet]

"My dear villainess, do whatever you want to do. Just don't see that son of a bitch."

A girl dies and is reincarnated as Sasha, the daughter of a poor noble family in a romance novel she used to read. To survive in her new life, she approaches noble ladies with her innocent appearance and cold wit. Hence, she got the nickname 'The Nobles' Pet.'

Rebecca, the villainess of the original work and the Prince's fiancee, appears in front of Sasha, who's using her talent to live the sweet life. Knowing the end of the original, Sasha tried to stay away from Rebecca, but she cannot take her eyes off her cool and collectedness! So Sasha uses her cuteness as a deadly weapon to stand between Rebecca and the womanizer Crown Prince... and... can Sasha survive and win Rebecca's favor?

 The Reason Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion

Poisoned to death by her own betrothed?! Eunha didn’t wake up in a novel’s story just to get killed off again as an unfortunate extra! To change her story she needs a cover… 6 months pretending to be the fake fiancée of the novel's male protagonist, Duke Noah Wynknight. But will this cold-hearted, angel-faced demon of a man really help her avoid another ill-fated ending?!

 The Youngest Princess

The archmage who ruled over a magic kingdom.

One day, she was reborn as the youngest daughter of the empire!

“I’ll just play along and pretend to be a baby.

...But don’t you think you guys like me a little too much?”

They won’t leave her alone.

 This Is an Obvious Fraudulent Marriage

The Sophen country had been destroyed by the empire. The sole daughter of a count family, Leylin Efran, had to find a husband to be able to inherit her family. So she wouldn't have to suffer through loveless marriage, Leylin decided to find a husband to have a one-year contract marriage with. In the middle of her quest, a young and dashing man appeared before her. Leylin was convinced this is the right man for her, but is he truly the answer to Leylin's perilous situation?

 Villainous Princess

One day I woke up in the body of Violet, the villainess character of the novel "For Shannon." Violet had a beautiful face, wealth, and was even a princess! She was a woman who had almost everything but her life was ruined when she chased after the one thing she didn't have - love. Now that I'm her, I can change her fate because I don't need love!

[davedimartino]

NEW THIS WEEK 06.01.09

I happen to believe that a significant number of excellent albums continue to be released, year after year, and that music today is as good as it ever was!

At the same time, those excellent albums aren't necessarily recognized either commercially--i.e. they rarely sell--or, for the most part, critically.

But that's OK!

I say this only because as I make a checklist of this week's 10 most noteworthy releases, I must note with some chagrin that literally half of them contain music that was recorded many years ago! Or by artists who've been around for years!

That being said, I'd like to put a positive spin on all this. The newer artists? They're all exceedingly well-groomed!

 Neil Young: Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 (1963-1972) Believe it or not, after all these years of promises and postponements, this is finally the week that first volume of Neil Young's multi-disc career retrospective hits the street! And what a package! Available as an 8 CD set or a 10-disc DVD or a 10-disc Blu-ray set--depending on how much you, the eager consumer wishes to spend--the package is a dream come true for longtime Young fans, especially those who relish a closer look at his earliest, least-documented days. Featuring recordings with his early band the Squires and a plethora of other fab stuff extending through 1972, the set is so chockfull of goodies (photos, videos, interviews, rarities, films--if you pay top dollar you get his film Journey Through The Past), buyers will simply take the set home, listen, watch, eat, drink, go to the bathroom and eventually die, partially satisfied but still--ironically--oblivious to the further promised volumes to come! As it happens, my personal fave Neil Young album is his very first one, so this release will fit my needs perfectly! See you later and please feed my dog!

Dave Matthews Band: Big Whiskey And The GrooGrux King (RCA)  If there's a jarring disconnect in the world of the immensely successful Dave Matthews Band, it's the fact that for all their celebrity, their popularity on the concert circuit, their rise to interstellar success in the past few years, I can't for the life of me recall, you know, a single hit record! The kind you hear on the radio over and over again until you're sick of it!  It's, like, a "you've gotta see 'em live, man" phenomenon! And I can respect that, sure--but at the same time, they've got to respect that some of us want to stay at home and watch the entire Battlestar Galactica series on DVD! But you know what? This is the first record of theirs I've heard in years that actually sounds like a record record! With songs that sound different from each other! That I don't have to see them play live, man! I'd call it a step up, and something these guys have long needed to cement their status as the icons everyone seem intent on making them be! Plus it’s got a cool cover!

Taking Back Sunday: New Again (Warner Bros) Like many, I thought Taking Back Sunday were just one of those billions of "emo" bands that record labels figured "the kids" liked because they sold brisk numbers while on an indie label and thus signed and expected to--with a major label push behind 'em--sell their next album in the billions! But it never happened! So now, apparently, the band has a brand new guitarist--Matthew Fazzi is his name--and as the new album's title indicates, are starting all over again in a new direction! And while, admittedly, devoting an entire album to a dual adaptation of Stephen King's Christine and '60s sitcom My Mother The Car may not be quite what everyone expected, the resulting album cover and its brilliant use of a faded, sun-drenched barcode makes this a winner six ways to Sunday! In a manner of speaking!

Jeff Buckley: Grace Live Around The World (Columbia/Legacy) I may have been a bit too hard on Jeff Buckley in the past--mostly because I dug his dad so much--but I've got to give the man his due: He was an artist, pure and simple, and I don't know how many times I later interviewed much more prominent artists who swore by his talent and pointed to him as a major source of inspiration! Maybe I just should have taken a nap before I saw him live that time! But his many fans will finds lots to like here, in this deluxe package which features various live performances from his Grace album--on both CD and DVD--as well as a limited edition, hour-long DVD documentary entitled Amazing Grace: Jeff Buckley which tells his unwittingly tragic story very well. A beautifully put together package by an artist who'd likely be sounding even more interesting today were he still around.

311: Uplifter (Volcano/Jive)  Rumors that 311 were legally forced to change their name to 1 (311) due to harsh new area code rules imposed by A&T have now been proven untrue with this, their ninth album, incredibly! Produced by Bob Rock, of Canadian duo Rock & Hyde, the band continues to be well-loved and popular in that "cultish" sort of way, largely due to the nickname of their longtime bassist Aaron "P-Nut" Wills. Hopefully fans will not find the new album's theme--that of a revolutionary brassiere invented in Paris in the late 1800's--unsettling, but you never know!

The Who: The Who Sell Out: Deluxe Edition (Geffen/UME)  If there were but one Who album I had to choose as their all-around masterpiece, it would be this fantastic package--originally released in 1967 and now bolstered with bonus tracks galore and, more importantly, the album's much sought after mono mix, which really does sound significantly different than the better-known stereo version. Track for track this is simply the best Who album ever--Pete Townshend's songs are short, sharp melodic gems, John Entwistle's contributions via the inter-track jingles are spectacular, and the album's sole no-original, John Keen's "Armenia City In The Sky," is, as opening tracks go, a complete mind-blower! There are guitar screeches everywhere, Roger Daltrey and Keith Moon are in peak form, and the original albums's closing track "Rael" is pretty much everything we ever liked about the much more heralded Tommy. Like Eminem's new album, it's distributed by Universal!

  Chickenfoot: Chickenfoot (Redline) Those who scoff at the notion of the "wisdom of the masses" best think again--as a quick glance at this album's page on Amazon reveals a very significant fact! Other customers also looking for "Chickenfoot" products additionally recommend Cardinal Industries Double Fifteen Color Dot Dominoes In A Collectors Tin (just $19.99!) and, more to the point, Blah…Blah…Blah..Love Songs by rockers Scum Of The Earth! Is this what Ex-Van Halen dudes Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony had in mind when they joined forces with guitarist Joe Satriani and drummer Chad Smith? Heck, I don't know! Do you? Their best album yet!

Various Artists: Last Days Of The Fillmore DVD (Rhino)  A welcome return to the marketplace of a film that captured the closing era of San Francisco's Fillmore in 1971--and not a bad document at that! Featuring many of the artists near and dear to concert promoter Bill Graham (whose appearances throughout are worth more than one chuckle), the film boasts Santana, the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, among others, and as anthropological documents go, this is priceless! While no one here is absolutely at their peak--though Santana comes close--the look and feel of the long-receding Summer Of Love is still there, between the lines! For that matter, so were the lines! Boy, life was simple then!

  Eels: Hombre Loco: 12 Songs Of Desire (Vagrant) Between first taking the artistic pseudonym of "E" and fearlessly taking on that always fashionable Unabomber look, Mark Oliver Everett has spent much of his colorful career writing commercially zesty tunes often at odds with bad things that have happened in his life! Luckily, with a brand new album titled "Crazy Man" and bandmates named Koool G. Murder and Knuckles, all is clearly looking up for Mr. Everett!  Heck--maybe one day he'll write a song about desiring a new electric shaver! Here's hoping!

 Rancid: Let The Dominoes Fall (Hellcat/Epitath) Those who have long thought punkers Rancid to be tired and repetitive retreads of an era that has long passed them by will be stunned at the new militancy on display here--particularly in the band's take-no-prisoners attitude regarding the often fascistic rules governing the games of checkers, dominoes, and, ominously, hopscotch!

[helloworlddemo1122-yahoopar-blog]

The Guardians of the Galaxy Promise a Bigger, Bolder and Baby Groot-ier 'Vol. 2'

Twenty-five miles outside Atlanta, down a nondescript rural road and past a security checkpoint where proper credentials, I assure you, are absolutely required, a spaceship has landed. The arches and flooring that make up the ship are pristinely white, like some sort of cosmic Apple store, and yellow-orange light glows from all directions, as if the whole thing had been dropped inside a lava lamp. Its passengers include a space outlaw wearing a shirt with a candy bar logo emblazoned on it, a blue-ish, tattooed alien meathead, a woman with green skin and another woman in skintight green spandex with antennae sprouting from her head, and Kurt Russell.

Russell affably welcomes three-fifths of the so-called Guardians of the Galaxy aboard his ship, a wide grin spreading across his scruffy face. The alien with the antennae, Mantis, looks on skeptically, however, as Peter Quill, Gamora and Drax survey the ship in wonder. Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain" swells as Russell pats Quill on the back. And if you don't love me now / You will never love me again / I can still hear you saying / You would never break the chain...

"Chris, keep looking at your dad, even if it feels too long!" a deafening voice booms over the music. This voice of God belongs to director James Gunn, whose spiky head is hunched over a monitor, a microphone hovering near his mouth as he watches the scene unfold.

It's late in April and production is currently more than halfway complete on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 at Pinewood Studios, which Marvel has established as its home base for the foreseeable future. Today, one behemoth soundstage has been transformed into the spaceship to film scene 113. Production moves on to shoot a close-up of Mantis (played by newcomer Pom Klementieff) as she announces in a loopy, slow drawl, "We are here." The orange lava turns blue. "They're taking a trip on Kurt Russell's spaceship. His freaky, creepy, '60s, pop-art spaceship," Gunn tells a group of reporters, ET included, on set. That's all Gunn will say about this scene, though he and his cast are happy to speak to how the next volume in their operatic space adventure will push the furthest edges of the Marvel universe.

"It's a different type of pressure that we're under now. Before the pressure was, 'No one knows you. What's it going to be like to be the first Marvel movie that fails?'" Chris Pratt, who plays Peter Quill, admits during a break from shooting. Pratt is tanner in person, his floppy hair a lighter shade of blond and tight, gray shirt accenting his muscles. He laughs that good-natured Chris Pratt laugh as he recalls, "I can't even tell you how many times I answered that question. I was like, 'Oh, god! This is not looking good!'"

That pressure, at least, has lifted. As Pratt puts it, "People really liked it!" which undersells exactly how much people liked it. Guardians of the Galaxy was liked by critics to the tune of a 91 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and the movie-going public made it the third-highest grossing film of 2014. (And Marvel's third highest-grossing film ever, after Avengers and Iron Man 3.)

"I think the pressure we're feeling now is, How do we do the same thing in terms of wowing an audience?" Pratt, who has only become a bigger movie star himself due to the success of Jurassic World, explains. "Getting people to come in thinking they know what they want but leave having got what they want, but it wasn't what they wanted to begin with."

That message is clear and Gunn echoes it wholly. "I think there's a trap a lot of sequels fall in, where they say, 'OK, we had that beat where there was a dance-off, so what is our dance-off in this movie? And we had that 'We are Groot' moment, so what is our 'We are Groot' moment?'" he says, his forehead setting. "I'm like, 'Screw all of that! This is its own thing.'"

Which doesn't mean that Vol. 2 is throwing out what audiences loved about the first movie. The entire rag tag team, from Pratt, Zoe Saldana and Bradley Cooper's voice as Rocket, down to Glenn Close's Nova Prime Irani Rael, will return. Instead, the movie is doubling down on everything that worked and wagering that good will to take even bigger risks.

"I think this is perhaps even more unique and more daring than the first film," Marvel Studios president, Kevin Feige, boldly proclaimed earlier in the day, seated in the studio's "war room," a conference room decked out in concept art for the film. "In terms of there's maybe an easy way and a hard way, but the hard way maybe could be more interesting."

The easy way might have included re-growing fan-favorite Groot, the sentient tree voiced by Vin Diesel, back to his adult size before the events of Vol. 2. And Gunn discloses that he "totally, one hundred percent" almost did that, before asking himself, Why not Baby Groot?

"He can kick some a**. He's also an idiot. He's a baby! He's not very smart," Gunn teases of a "very different" Groot. "He's a unique little fella. And he's pretty great in the movie, even though he's not even there! We got the guy on a stick and people are laughing." (Though Baby Groot was not filming during our visit, prop master Russell Bobbitt held court by a protective case from which he pulled out the 10-inch Baby Groot figure used on set. As Bobbitt passed around Baby Groot to a chorus of cooing, he said even the crew members "just die" when he brings Groot out. All of which is to brag: yes, I have held the real Baby Groot.)

Gunn can't help but laugh. "All the time Chris is like, 'Godd**mit. He's going to steal the f**king movie!'"

Marvel Studios

Then there is the extensive roster of new characters joining the Guardians, characters who might just be stranger and more alien than even the talking tree and gun-wielding raccoon -- like Klementieff's Mantis, an actual alien. The Mantis found within the pages of Marvel comics has often been painted Gamora green and is a master martial artist who can communicate with plants and has special empathic abilities. The latter, it seems, may be the only part that holds true for Gunn's adaptation, as his Mantis is also able to manipulate and change others' emotions.

"You're going to think that I'm crazy, but I haven't read the comic books," Klementieff says sheepishly, revealing Gunn instructed her not to. On set, wires protrude from the actress's forehead where her antennae will later be CGI'd in and special effects markers dot her face. "I knew James' version was so different from the pictures and drawings that I saw, that, you know, it would kind of f**k up the [result]...I didn't want the character to be, like, sexual and usually they're always like that. I think we are creating something different."

"I can tell you that Pom is somebody who will be on your radar for the rest of your life after this," Pratt predicts, though neither he nor Klementieff is willing to give away details about how their characters interact. "Like Dave was born to play Drax, I feel like Pom was totally born to play Mantis."

It's not completely coincidental that Pratt should mention Dave Bautista, the former WWE wrester-turned-actor, as Feige hinted that Drax develops a special bond with Mantis over the course of the movie. "At the very core of Drax, he's really just heartbroken," Bautista, taking a break in full Drax makeup with an Under Armor hoodie casually draped around him, reiterates. "There's a real innocence about Drax and I think Mantis has that as well. There's just a very child-like innocence with both characters."

Mantis' introduction comes hand-in-hand with Kurt Russell's, playing Peter Quill's father. The character was teased in the first movie as "something very ancient we've never seen here before" and, in comic lore, Quill's father is the Spartoi alien J'son. Ahead of the press day, Gunn had announced that he was diverging from the source material and that Quill's biological father would not be J'son. Yet in the war room, artwork for a spaceship was labeled as "J'son's Ship" and a planet in another was branded J'son, giving the impression that J'son might not be a person in the movie, but a location. On set, Russell sat in a chair with J'son sewn into the back.

So, what does Gunn have to say for it? "I say the same thing. There is no J'son in the MCU," he coyly protests. "He isn't J'son. He isn't named J'son in the movie. That's just flat out the case. But here's the thing. We'll probably all know who the father is by the time this movie comes out, because the movie really isn't about that."

Three short months later, Gunn was ready to let that mystery go. J'son being a planet and not a person might have been a better clue than anyone could have guessed at the time, as Gunn revealed at Comic-Con that Russell plays Ego the Living Planet. (Gunn also admitted to taking extra precautions to keep us in the dark, writing on Facebook, "When our online press day happened on set, Kurt Russell sat in a chair that read 'J'son,' and all of our script pages and artwork featuring him used the same name.") With that knowledge in place, the movie will deal with Quill being pulled between his biological father (yes, a living planet) and his adopted father, the Ravager, Yondu (Michael Rooker).

"You get to find out who he hopes his father is and who he wishes his father is, and you get to find out whether or not that is the reality," Pratt weighs in. Revealing any further details would surely enter spoiler territory, so Pratt turns the conversation to what he can safely confirm: Kurt Russell is very cool.

"There are actors that I loved growing up, there’s a handful of them, and he is absolutely right at the top of that list and has not once done anything to disappoint the inner child in me," Pratt, who was later spotted laughing with Russell at craft services, gushes. "We're really kindred spirits, I think. Me and Anna [Faris] and Kurt and Goldie [Hawn], I feel like we are the same in some parallel universe. Anna's oftentimes been compared to Goldie Hawn. I guess some people have made that comparison with me and Kurt, kind of like a blue-collar type of dude. He loves to hunt and be outdoors and he's-- I don’t know. I just really, really love him." Pratt chuckles and leans in. "I'm in love with Kurt Russell!"

Perhaps it is the only all-out proclamation of love heard on the Guardians of the Galaxy set, but quite frankly, the thesis of the movie seems to be all about it. With Marvel continuing to test the limits of superhero fatigue -- 2017 marks the first year the studio will release three movies, with Spider-Man: Homecoming in July and Thor: Ragnarok in November -- the Guardians team is focused on making a movie that is as personal as it is action packed.

"For as fun as it is, for outrageous as it is, with characters named Taserface and with Baby Groot killing people and throwing them around, it is very, very emotional and not cynical in the least. It is very, very truthful and sort of unabashedly so, in its emotions," Feige reveals, leaning back in his chair. "It's a very special combination. That's sort of the crux of this whole movie."

Saldana puts it another way. "[Other movies] are all about jokes and punch lines and lubricated muscles and good shots and bigger muscles and other sequels and great f**king hairdos that never come undone," she laments. "And nobody cries. Nobody bleeds. Nobody feels a tremendous loss or void. And these guys are aching all the time. They're just trying to not be so f**ked up. Every day, they're trying to do one less bad thing. And they're trying, because they are a**holes by nature."