#alright bog thanks for that

[goaheadandgetinthebog]

Several videos (independently) start circulating on the internet of the Waynes info dumping.

Bruce - the role of railways in westward expansion in the 1890s

Dick - clown eggs

Jason - tb and the New England vampires of the late 19th century, with reference to vampire literature

Cass - Paris sewer system

Tim - comparison of different camera lenses from different manufacturers, with model numbers

Duke - anti homeless architecture and how to remove it

Damian - cat declawing

After all this, a new meme forms.

'You must be this autistic to get adopted by Bruce Wayne.'

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

The ''Are you trying to romance me?'' meme but with Barnaby and Howdy

i belted this out in like a half hour flat <3 bc Yes

[duskgryphon]

Hey rewrite your oc stuff

responding to this hours later because i uh. took a while to revise this lmao

Okay so! Technically not talking about any specific ocs here, but rather my personal project world. I got sent an ask about bug dragons, so I'll start there I think? After some explanation. Essentially this world is entirely removed  from the concept of Earth and humans. Different galaxy, different planet, different life. It's still in. very early stages so a lot of things are subject to change, a lot of things I'm still working on. Though this is sort of misleading; I've been working on this world, in it's vaguest sense, since late 2016/early 2017 ish. The most recent iteration started I believe around the start of 2021? But I've been giving it a lot more focus in the past couple of months. It's also turned into a partly speculative biology based project. Gaining an interest in specific subjects does that to yah I guess.

So, bug dragons. What are they? "Bug dragon" refers to a large number of species, mainly those that would be classified as athropods and annelids. They aren't technically insects, though they do, in part, replace insects here. Like the aforementioned phylums, they encompass species with and without flight and worm-like species. There are, additionally, a small number of species that make up some of the sophonts in this world. They're uh. currently unnamed, though two have designs that are mostly set in stone? The classification that distinguishes specific species of sophonts from one another is whether or not they're "true" bug dragons. True bug dragons have no capacity to transform, but the other species do. The only species with the capacity to transform are sophonts, since they're the only ones that developed a need for it.

I should also note, coming back to the fact that this is completely removed from Earth, human languages don't exist. It'll take a lot of time and effort for me to get even vague individual constructed languages down, but if anyone is interested in this I'll try to make things as clear as possible. Uh, "bug dragon" is also technically a temporary term, for the previously stated reasons, but I think it's a perfectly viable name for them from a human standpoint, so I'll probably keep referring to them that way.

id: An image depicting various bug dragon sophonts on the left, with text describing what each are on the right. The top one shows a species of winged bug dragon with a long body, six legs, and a tail ending in a stinger. The text reads; "Species of bug dragon with the ability to transform. They come to just over 7 feet." The middle one shows two characters from different species transformed. One of them is shown to stand bipedally, with four sets of arms. The text reads; "Concepts for two bug dragons, both transformed. Their transformation resembles one of the other sophonts, though they keep their insect-like appearances." The bottom one shows one character of a species of true bug dragon, she stands on four legs, with a set of arms hidden under a coat pinned at the neck. She's almost bird-like in shape, and has a tail and what resembles rabbit ears. The text reads; "Species of "true" bug dragon as shown by A'rei's concepts. They come to around 4 feet."

[tojisun]

something about best friend simon not knowing any boundaries (or, deliberately bulldozing through boundaries)—

the way he’s the one who picks you up in the airport even though you and your boyfriend already made arrangements for the pick up, but simon just says he offered to take over because your parents needed help setting things up in their lake house and that your boyfriend offered to help them.

(simon made him offer to help. it’s hidden so well behind honest concern that your boyfriend didn’t notice that simon’s been pushing him into the role until simon's calling out his goodbye's, saying he's off to pick you up now.

"oh, i can-"

"don't sweat it, mate," simon replies with a pinched smile. "i'll drive carefully, promise. bring her back, all safe and lovely.")

you didn’t even know simon’s invited to the vacation, but you gladly murmured to him your thanks, too caught up in your exhaustion to notice the little mean grin that tugged his lips up.

you clamber to his rover messily, blinking slowly, and before you can reach over to buckle your seatbelt, simon leans over and does it for you.

"could've done it myself, y'know?" you whine.

"sure you can," he grunts as he pulls himself back to his seat. "not like y'were one blown wind away from keeling over, but sure."

you roll your eyes at him playfully before biting a giggle when he scrunches his nose at you in reply.

he takes the long route back.

"want anythin' to eat?" simon asks after a while.

"don't we—" you pause, yawning. "need to hurry back?"

"not really," he replies, eyes flicking to the side mirror before he rounds a sharp curve. your body jostles, falling to the side, slipping towards the gear, and simon's hand falls to your lap to steady you.

he doesn't remove it even when the road straightens.

"okay," you finally reply, tired eyes blinking at the size of his hand on your leg. "m'kinda hungry."

he huffs a fond laugh and says he knows a place close by.

it's a local burger joint, apparently known for their fries and milkshake. simon buys you one.

"aww," you croon, grabby hands pulling the cold cup closer to you. "thank you, si."

you two eat in his rover, too lazy to actually settle in the diner.

it's greasy and messy and delicious. simon says you look filthy, before reaching over to wipe the stray milkshake on the corner of your lips. you poke your tongue out to him in reply; he says to swallow that back in before he yanks it out.

you laugh, chucking a balled-up napkin towards him before jumping out of his SUV to run to the bathroom.

(you didn't notice the throngs of messages coming in from your boyfriend nor the way simon swiped your phone from your back pocket and kept it.

he remembers your passcode—still unchanged even after all these years—and reads the messages that your boyfriend sent.

he's asking if you've landed or if you and simon are on your way back. he says he also misses you dearly, and that he can't wait to finally be with you again.

simon deletes them all.)

the two of you return when it’s well into the night, and everyone's gone to sleep. you sigh, feeling the exhaustion hitting you harder now, and amble to your room where you know your boyfriend must be waiting for you, only to stop when simon holds your arm.

"wanna sleep with me?"

"what," you begin, turning your sleepy eyes up at him. "no that's alright. my boyfriend's—"

"asleep, already. probably got ordered 'round by your pa, huh?" he smiles, his thumb swiping along the side of your forearm. "y'might wake up the poor lad if you go there so why don't you sleep in my room just for tonight?"

simon's words wash over you and you know, somehow, there's something wrong with them, with him, but your mind is bogged down by your drowsiness. you can't rationalize what's going on, so you say yes.

that's all simon needed to pull you to his room and into his bed.

you slip out of your clothes, per simon's instructions—his words all muffled as you try to stay up awake—and slip into something loose and baggy—stretched in its overuse but so comfortable on your skin.

it's simon's shirt, you'll learn tomorrow, but for now, you drop to the bed, your eyes shut close, and fall in deep sleep.

the last thing you feel is the heavy dip on the mattress behind you before a thick arm is thrown over your side, pressing into the fat of your stomach to push you back and into simon's front.

limbs lay tangled together, breaths shared, and the summer heat buzzing as skin meets skin.

-

simon doesn't get any better after that. he gets so clingy, and intrudes in your space and forces your boyfriend out.

your boyfriend complained, of course he did, but what could you do? what could you say? simon's your childhood friend so there's nothing malicious between you two. there's nothing more into it.

he gave up fighting then, fists tucked close to his sides as you kissed his jaw and told him to trust you on your words.

but—

how can he calm down? how can he not burn in anger when he sees the way simon pulls you to his lap and you readily nuzzle close. granted it's all because the two of you are watching some game on your phone and the position must be the only way to watch it comfortably, whatever, but it rubs him so wrong how familiar you and simon fall into each other.

how can he not doubt your words when he catches simon's eyes narrowed at him in quiet delight, before deliberately curling his arm around your stomach, and throws the other one on your lap, so dangerously close to your crotch.

it's even worse when the family gathers to the lake, and you and simon are chasing each other, playfighting in front of everyone. simon picks you up with ease, big hands digging into the fat of your belly or your thighs or gripping your ass like simon's so intimately familiar with your body.

how can he not hate himself a little bit when he realizes that it was always you and simon. that that's the dynamic.

-

(and if simon successfully seduces you during this vacation, well—)

-

ext

[felassan]

August 30th 2024 Developer Q&A (from the official BioWare Discord) - Complete transcript

Under a cut due to length and spoilers.

Update: This post has now been updated into a word-for-word transcript.

[Link to video recording of Q&A] | [Link to equivalent post for first Q&A (June 14th)] | [Link to video recording for first Q&A]

Update: This post has now been updated into a word-for-word transcript.

If you would like to listen to the Q&A for yourself in video format, or listen to it again, Ghil Dirthalen recorded it and has now uploaded a video of it here. This blog post is linked in the description under the video. ( ˶´ ᵕ `˶ )

Please note before proceeding that the devs advised that this Q&A may contain minor spoilers!

Corinne Busche, John Epler and Community Manager Katey were the devs that were there.

KFM: Community Manager Katey JE: John Epler CB: Corinne Busche

---

KFM: We’re gonna be joined by John and Corinne here in a sec, just waiting for them to get on. Hey John, hey Corinne, thanks for joining - hey!

JE: Hello! Thank you for having us. It's a pleasure.

CB: Hey y’all. It's so good to see so many people, I see some familiar names here. Good to see you again.

KFM: Yeah, yeah, I'm excited to, you know, bring us this second Q&A on the Discord server. Last time we were really, really happy, with the way it happened, y'know, it turned out and how everyone seemed to really enjoy it so we're back again. Thank you for submitting your questions on the ask-bioware channel. I am going to start and kick that off in just a second, but, for those of you who might be new here, I'm the Community Manager, and I'm going to let Corinne and John introduce themselves as well.

CB: Hey y'all, I'm Corinne Busche, Game Director on Dragon Age: The Veilguard. I just generally help people on the team do cool things and create this world.

JE: And I'm John Epler, the Creative Director on Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and Corinne picked probably the best way to describe what I do, too, so I'm just gonna steal that. I'm there to make sure the team can, is enabled to do their best work and I'm super excited to share all this with you.

KFM: Awesome. Yeah before we start I also wanna give a quick heads-up, you might have seen in Announcements, but there are a couple of questions in here that we have answers to that we would consider minor spoilers. I'll give a heads-up before that minor spoiler answer is given, or even the question is read, so you can go, y'know, grab some water, or y'know, go outside for a second, or just do anything, to decide if you want to listen to the answer or not. But, I promise, these spoilers are, y'know, we'll call them out before we say anything.  

CB: That is kinda the coolest part of this session, we're getting closer to launch now, so I think we can do a little bit deeper on some of the questions this time.

KFM: Yes, no this is so exciting! Okay, are you guys ready?

JE: Yes! Yes I am.

CB: Let's do it.

KFM: Let's do it.

KFM: Let's start with a fun one. Do all Evanuris hate tea? Does Ghilly-Flower exclusively drink haunted bog water?

JE: Alright. That is a fun one. Y'know, it's funny because I think Solas is the only one of the elven gods that actually really has a tremendous aversion to tea. That said, we don't really get too into what they drink, I would say though, knowing what I know about Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain, I think Elgar'nan probably drinks a combination of gas station coffee and the Thedas equivalent of an energy drink, at all times he's got a big Thermos with him. Whereas Ghilan'nain is all about the herbal concoctions that are supposed to be really good for like, your gut health, things like that - she really takes care of herself, so.

CB: John, I think you just described you, and then me. Interesting.

JE: Hurtful, Corinne, accurate but hurtful.

KFM: Okay, next one. So we know that we can hug Assan, but will we be able to hug any of our companions?

JE: So you can't hug your companions at all times. There's not an option to just walk up and give them a hug. They've got their boundaries, they've got their preferences. But there are opportunities in conversations, in dialogue, in scenes where you will, you know - a companion may ask you for a hug because they're having a rough time and you are able to give it to them.

KFM: And will there be a lot of politicking involved? And by politicking they mean quests like Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearts.

JE: Yeah, so I mean, there's not gonna be a quest quite like the Halamshiral Ball, I mean that was very specific to the Inquisitor. The Inquisitor was trying to gain favor with a bunch of different factions, they were trying to form an army. Rook's struggle and Rook's, honestly,  challenge is much more immediate and visceral. That said, it's Dragon Age. It wouldn't be Dragon Age if there weren't politics. You'll have influence on the, y'know, things that are happening, and the fate of nations, that are happening around the world, and Rook, I mean, throughout the game, across this adventure, Rook does become a fairly important figure, so it's natural that you’ll have some influence and some involvement with the affairs of the different factions and nations.

KFM: Gotcha. So this question, this next question comes from Onomatopoeia. I know this has been asked before, but they didn't see an answer for it - is there a way to toggle off nudity and sex scenes?

CB: Yeah, let me take this one. It's so funny, John, you get the fun questions and I get the thirsty nudity questions - I'm here for it. So, let me, let me answer and maybe elaborate. So, there is a toggle for on and off nudity. That is one of the settings we have. And we'll be going deeper into settings and accessibility and things like that as we get a little bit closer to launch. But let me also expand on this. So when you're in character creator, you'll actually be able to select what underclothes your Rook wears, and whether that exposes your chest or your breasts. So, by default nudity is on, chest or breast, that is up to you by your underclothing that you select, particularly as you get into, say, romance scenes, but, at any point you can toggle the setting to be non-nudity and it will override your undergarments. 

KFM: Gotcha. This question comes from DarkGoddessEris. What are the companions’ ages? That was a question that actually came up a bunch, so I'm excited for somebody to be able to answer this one.

JE: Yeah,  I can take this one. So the companions in The Veilguard range anywhere from kind of early-mid twenties with Taash at the youngest, all the way up to Emmrich who is in his early fifties. The rest of the companions tend to be in their late twenties, early thirties, again though, they're all experts in their field, they're all people who have been through a lot, so even the ones that are at the younger end of the age spectrum, their experience, they've been through a tremendous amount by this point by the time you meet them, so, yeah. So I mean, I guess, Taash is the closest to Sera at early twenties, but they’re all in kinda that age range, so.

KFM: This next question I'll pitch to Corinne. How linear is the quest experience? Are there going to be side quests that you can stumble upon and resolve within areas or are you locked into a golden path?

CB: This is such a good one. Yeah, a lot of people have been asking about this so thank you to whoever submitted it. So the content in the game is a mix of directed, kinda like story quest missions, and then explorable content. Or you might say optional content. I don't even like calling it side content because it's a lot of fun, it's really good content. So to give you an idea, a lot of the main story quests are critical path missions if we want to call it that. They're very highly crafted. They're more linear than some of the other parts of the game, because we feel that’s how we can tell the best stories, give you a very intentionally-paced experience, y'know, with lulls and climaxes, so it really hits you. But that's only part of it. You're also gonna explore, fully explore a bunch of the locations in The Veilguard, so like, let me just lay a few on you: Arlathan Forest, Hossberg Wetlands, those are probably two of the biggest ones, the Crossroads - now we've seen Crossroads before in Trespasser, but this, isn't necessarily the Crossroads as you remember it. So you'll be able to explore this, this part of the Crossroads, and as you're there, you're absolutely gonna be discovering new areas, new quests, mysteries and new challenges. So exploration in the game is absolutely about player agency in these larger, less linear levels, and it's really an important part of the overall experience and core to our design. Now, as a player - and I'm just speaking for me personally - I'm the kind of player that wants to 100% every area. I want to go find all the optional quests, all the treasures, I wanna see that big 100% completed on my map. That's gonna take you quite a bit of time. So hopefully that answers the question. It is both.

KFM: I think that's a great answer, thanks, Corinne. This next one is from a user named Benedictus: Will we ever get the Venatori gear?

CB: Yeah, I can take that one as well. Venatori gear - so like, I'm assuming what we mean is for to like, wear on Rooks or on companions. Gosh, y'all, I'm gonna be honest - we really, really tried on that one. Hopefully you've seen in the videos our cloth sim, our hair sim, I think it's quite beautiful. The Venatori gear, generally we couldn't make that work to the quality we'd expect within combat. So, no you can't get most of the Venatori gear, but I will say there is a unique Venatori-themed helmet. I, I don't want to spoil what that is exactly, but, so, you can get a helmet, it is unique, it's pretty interesting and ties into some of the events that can happen in the game but I'm just gonna leave it there.

KFM: Gotcha. So, now we're getting into our first real minor spoiler question, so - consider yourself warned, do whatever you need to do, either listen or don't for the next, like, I don't know, minute. So this question is from Kala: Will there be any romanceable NPCs outside of the companions?

JE: I'll take this one. So, no - not this time. This time the romances for Rook are strictly within the companions. We wanted to really focus on those relationships and make sure that they were as developed and as deep as we could make them. And yet honestly and part of it - the other side of it is - Harding was a great example in DA:I, that was a character that as we were building the game, it really struck us, stuck out to us, this is a character that, actually, y'know, you see a lot, you build this very specific rapport with, and the writer, Sheryl, wanted to create that light romance with Harding. None of the characters in The Veilguard really jumped out to us in that same way as, this is a character we really want to build a relationship with, for Rook, but again, y'know, really focusing down on making sure the companion romances were as deep and meaningful as we could make them.

KFM: And this question is just for fun. So we're passed a spoiler, we'll get back into other spoilers in a bit, but this one's just for fun. We have so many cute, silly bird videos on the internet - Lucanis' Ninth Dagger, by the way, says that birds are their favorite animal - if you could just snap your fingers and a bird Easter Egg would be added for Assan, what would it be?

JE: Oh, that's a good question. So actually I'm gonna cheat, because I am trying to think of bird memes, or bird videos specifically, and I'm having a hard time, but, y'know, the thing about griffons is that they're half bird and also half lion, so I'm gonna go with a cat meme, say my favorite meme, and this is one that still brings me joy years after it came out, is the video of the cat grooving to the guy playing Finnish polka on the drum. Again, years old, I've loved - that's one of my favorite videos on the internet, so y'know, if we were gonna give Assan any kind of Easter Egg it would be that one.

KFM: I love that one - 

CB: You know, don't judge me on this, you're putting me on the spot here, but, the only thing I can picture in my head - y'all remember that video a few years back where the kid unleashes the rabbit into the field and then immediately that hawk comes down and snatches it up?

JE: Yes!

CB: Don't judge me, y'all! Don't judge me. But that's where my head goes.

JE: Oh, man.

CB: Assan just getting a little treat.

JE: I love that.

KFM: I love that.

JE: That's a great, that’s a great answer, Corinne. Fantastic.

KFM: So this next one is from a user named Ash. So Taash breathes fire, Lucanis has wings, Harding is a dwarf who has magic. A lot of our companions have some strange abilities - is this because the Veil is compromised?

JE: Oh, I'd say it's, I mean partially yeah. I mean, we've talked before about how over the course of the time since Dragon Age: Inquisition, I mean, it started at the end of Trespasser. The Veil's not in great shape. Corypheus already did a number on it, and Solas has very clearly, as you saw, in the [inaudible] preview, not been making things better in the intervening times. So, there is to some degree, y'know, I'll use Bellara as an example - Bellara's someone who's seeing these artifacts turn on, and being able to interface with them because there's all this magic that's coming back to the world through the torn Veil. Other characters though, I mean, you are recruiting people to stop the end of the world. You're recruiting extraordinary people, they're gonna have extraordinary abilities, and you know, someone like Davrin, a lot of his abilities are focused around Assan and the fact that he's got this partnership, this, almost, you know, familial bond with Assan, his griffon, so.

KFM: Can we get some Assans in the chat?

JE: I think I'm seeing a lot of Assans in the chat, so I think we're well covered there.

KFM: Me too.

KFM: Alright. This next one is for both of you, and I will say, another quick little spoiler, minor spoiler warning, depending on the way that either of you might want to answer this question. This is, of all the companions, who's the team's favorite and what companion was the most difficult to design?

JE: Ooh. I'm gonna cheat, I wrote Bellara so, I’m definitely not gonna say the companion I wrote because that would be weird, but I will say I loved the companion interactions so I'm gonna go with two of my favorite relationships that Bellara has within the team, friendships that she has within the team. So, Bellara and Lucanis start off as two characters who feel like they're from completely different worlds, their experience growing up was very different, where they lived, what they do, and over the course of the game, they kinda build this friendship over all these things that despite again - very different upbringings - they have a lot of things in common. They're both the, y'know, characters who just believe family is deeply important and that shows up in a lot of their interactions, a lot of, y’know, the way they talk to each other, they interact with each other, both within the Lighthouse but also out in the field. The other one - and this was one that came up organically as we were building the game - is Neve and Bellara and they, y'know, Bellara is a character who, y’know, despite being out in Arlathan is very big on stories, very big on - she finds - gets all the newspapers from Tevinter and she has kind’ve learnt who Neve is through that, and they build this very sisterly relationship that I love and that over the course of the game, I mean, we started out without this kind of as the intention, we started finding all these places that this can show up and it turned into, again, one of my favorite friendships that exists between the companions, so.

CB: Oh, that was such a good answer. Yeah, I think I might cheat as well, John, because, first of all, I don't want to speak on behalf of the entire team. So I'm gonna give you my two faves if that's alright. And I feel like y'all already know me on this. Every time we have a chance to talk about Taash and Emmrich I'm right there for it. I'd say they're probably my two favorites, but here's the thing y'all, here's why I love them so much. When you're out in the field like exploring, or on missions with them, their banter is so good, because they do not see eye-to-eye on necromancy, like, at all, and, it's really funny, it's really delightful, I love seeing how it evolves - so like, look - if you wanted a recommendation from me on like, banter in the field, you've got to hear Taash and Emmrich. Most difficult to design, let's touch on that really quickly. I, so, I'm gonna answer, but I don't want to say that like we put more effort into one versus another, but I would say the most challenging was probably Harding, just because you've probably seen if you saw some of the teaser footage, the pre-release trailer, we have teased some strange new powers for Harding, and when we do that we have to figure out how that layers into her combat kit, and when we onboard that, and, yeah it was an interesting challenge, it was a really fun one.

KFM: Awesome. Backing away from spoilers for a quick second, I'm going to ask this question to Corinne. With only two companions per party, as a Nightmare mode player, how can we balance not having a warrior in the team to tank? Will higher difficulty players be forced to bring Davrin or Taash for a melee instead of bringing the characters that we want?

CB: Oh super good - I was hoping this would come up, especially after we released the combat deep-dive for warrior trailer - hopefully y'all enjoyed that. So, let me start by telling you what's happening under the hood. Well, first of all, I'm not gonna bury the lede - you're not gonna have to bring a tank if you don't want to. But, let me first tell you what's happening under the hood, this is gonna be kind of high level, maybe we can go a little bit deeper when we have more time. Behind the scenes when you walk into an enemy encounter, we generally know how much pressure, or you could say intensity or aggression, we want to be putting on Rook to maintain that satisfying moment-to-moment experience. So to give you an idea of some of the levers we have for each encounter, that is the number of enemies that could be specifically focused on you versus your companions, how many enemies can be attacking at once, and even when you have multiple enemies coming at Rook, we have a ticketing system.

[text block character limit reached]

CB: And what that means is each enemy basically knows when it is allowed to attack or not. So, I tell you all that because basically when we're looking at the different types of classes and team compositions, those levers exist underneath the hood, so that we give you the most autonomy and flexibility, but also maintain that, that pressure, that engagement for you the player. So, a couple of other things on that. Now that you kinda get a sense of like what's happening under the hood, it is absolutely beneficial, but not required to have one of each class in your party. We did go into this with the goal of giving players more flexibility than perhaps we've seen in past entries. It's just a different approach. What we know is that players tend to get very attached to certain characters. If you've got your favorites, you oftentimes wanna bring them with you or if you're romancing a character, sometimes it's a feelbad to feel like you have to leave them behind because maybe they're the same class as you. So, the whole game is built and balanced around flexibility, and giving you the agency. So you can be successful, you can mix it up, but you gotta plan for it. So what, what do I mean by that? If you're not using teamwork, if you're not planning for your party composition for those synergies, it's definitely not gonna end super well. Right? Like, I've done no tank runs, but it takes some foresight in the strategy here. So I'll give you an example if you don't mind, I think I've been pretty out there that my favorite class and specialization right now - could change tomorrow - is the rogue Veil Ranger specialization. And this is very much a ranged archery-based specialization. So, I want to keep enemies at ranged, because I want to get those well-aimed critical hits, right, if those enemies are right up on top of me, I'm not gonna be able to do that. So if I don't have a tank in my party, a couple of the tools that I turn to - and I have done this, in fact, in my last playthrough I did this quite a bit - I might bring Bellara and use her Galvanic Tear, which pulls all the enemies towards like this really cool-looking gravity well and gets them off of me. I might instead use Neve's Time Slow. So the cool thing about this is it slows time for everything in the world except for you and your team, right? So I'm running away, I'm doing a Heavy Draw, getting those headshots, or making other tactical decisions. I could also turn to my rune loadout - hopefully y'all saw runes in the warrior combat deep-dive - that's an important part, especially if you're playing on Nightmare Mode, the strategic and tactical options that gives you, will allow you to overcome things like not having a tank. I think everyone may have saw the rune where you're doing a, basically an AoE freeze, and freezing everything in place. So it's kind of a long-winded answer, I'm sorry, it's complicated, but point is, is I think you're gonna have more flexibility in your build crafting and your synergies, but it's gonna depend on the strategy and composition that you feel works best for you and your own preferences. And then you did mention Nightmare, let me just finish with saying, and this is anecdotal, but in our own Nightmare playthroughs, we actually find that the most challenging aspect to plan around isn't necessarily aggro management, but making sure you have coverage on all the various elemental damage types. So, I just say this for anyone planning to go into Nightmare - plan well.

KFM: Staying on the topic of combat, it was noticed during the high-level combat videos that weapons and armor seem to be tied to different factions. Are there bonuses or something similar involved if Rook is a Grey Warden while using Grey Warden equipment? Are these removed if a Shadow Dragon Rook is using Grey Warden equipment? 

CB: Oh, interesting. You know, everyone went deep on that gameplay video, hey, I’m glad you noticed that. Yeah, so, to answer this, you're going to be working really closely with the factions in the game, right? Like the threat you’re up against is a world-ending threat so you’re going to interact with each of these factions. So that means that you’re gonna get a lot of the gear that that faction tends to use, and especially the stronger you help them become, the more gear you’ll have available from that faction. So when you see a piece of gear that has like the Veil Jumper icon on it, that signifies that it is aligned with that faction, but you can use it regardless of if that’s your faction background or not. All it means is that, you know, if I want to maybe improve it or get more gear in that vein, or that looks similar, I can see it’s from the Veil Jumpers, I’m going to go back to the Veil Jumper quartermaster, and that’s where I will find more items of that type or upgrade possibilities. But it also leans into the thematic identity. So, you know, I think in that video we were using the transmog system, but if I’m using a Veil Jumper gear like an armor, it’s gonna look like it was crafted by the Veil Jumpers, and it’s gonna lean into the mechanical themes of the Veil Jumpers as well, which, one of those themes tends to be lightning damage. Now, I will also say, and this is a little specific, but occasionally you will find gear, or even like skill nodes, that will occasionally be empowered, they’ll get stronger relative to your strength with that given faction. So like if you find a piece of gear that’s really core to your build, and it strengthens the stronger the Veil Jumpers are, like that gives you a pretty good signifier that maybe that’s a faction you wanna focus on.

CB: Katey, I don't know if you're still there.

JE: Yeah.

CB: Did we lose you?

[there is silence on KFM’s line]

JE: Ope.

CB: We may have lost Katey, y’all. 

JE: We can start, just, you know, let’s - 

CB: Yeah. Why don’t, why don’t, I do have the list of questions here so why don’t I ask the next one until Katey comes back. I hope everything’s okay on your side Katey. Alright. Next question I see, the Evoker description on the blog-post highlights ice-based magic. Does that mean we will not be able to have lightning- and fire-themed playstyles as the Evoker? No, no, absolutely not. The Evoker can lean into all of the elements, in fact, all mages can to a degree. You probably have seen the skill trees, you’re gonna pick up abilities, perks, traits, of all elemental types, and powering up those elements. So just because you’re an Evoker, doesn’t mean you’re like pigeon-holed into ice spells. What I will say is, if you’re heading towards that specialization, you’re gonna pass through the section of the skill tree where you’re more easily going to be able to naturally pick up those ice spells, right? So it might lean towards ice, but you can expand it. The name of the game is agency here.

JE: Corinne, why don’t I ask you the question so we can still kinda do a Q&A thing? CB: Yeah, that, that sounds good.

JE: Corinne, can I set the gear to look however I want without losing stats? And that is a question from YoCallMeRob.

CB: Alright, well, y’all know, fashion’s the true end game. So, we did confirm we have a full transmog system, so what I’m gonna do is spend some time going a little more in-depth for y’all, so that we’re getting new information. So yeah, if anyone’s not aware, transmog basically is, I have a piece of gear, but I apply an appearance to it that makes it look like something else that I like better so I can be fabulous. So, how this is gonna work is you’re of course gonna find gear as you adventure through the world, and you can equip that. But any piece of gear you find is also going to unlock the appearance for that gear. So you might find something that you really like, and you wanna look that way, and then you replace it, anything that you’ve already acquired, you can apply the appearance to whatever gear you want. Additionally, and this is one of my favorite parts, is, you’ll also find some appearance-only cosmetics that are specifically used just for transmog. So sometimes these are some of the fancier or more niche pieces of gear, maybe end up looking like a training dummy for instance. So you’ll get these appearance datas from opening treasure chests, exploring the world, and more frequently from vendors. So, look, if you’re in it for fashion, check out those vendor inventories because they got you. I would also say that you can transmog your casual wear, so field wear and casual wear, fully transmoggable. If you wanna be platemail while you’re hanging around the Lighthouse as a mage, more power to you. And then if I were just to give you a practical example of this, like on the Blood Dragon Armor, the pre-order bonus, those are cosmetics, those are just appearance datas, right, so they’re effectively evergreen, you can use them anytime you like without compromising your stats.

JE: I will say that I don’t think I’ve spent as much time in any other menu other than transmog, because as Corinne mentioned at the beginning of this, fashion is the true end-game, so. Katey, have we gotcha back yet?

JE: Katey, have we gotcha back yet?

KFM: Am I back? Can you hear me?

JE: Yay, you’re back. 

CB: Katey, we did our best Katey.

JE: Yeah.

CB: But I don’t think we were very impressive -

KFM: No, I think you both did a great job. It was one of those weird situations where Discord force-quit, but I could still hear everything everyone was saying. I don’t really know what that was about, but.

CB: I just assumed you didn’t like my answer.

KFM: Yeah, I rage-quit actually Corinne, it’s all your fault.

JE: Taken by the Fade.

KFM: No, thank you for taking over while I was figuring that out. There is a non-zero chance that that happens again, so just keep an eye out. 

JE: We’ll keep an eye out for it, we gotcha.

KFM: Thank you.

KFM: So I’ll just pick it up from the next question. The latest, latest - wow, I can’t even talk anymore - video series mentioned how each companion can set up or detonate specific combos. Are those always set in stone or would we get opportunities to change it up, through the skill-trees or otherwise? 

CB: Cool, cool, cool. I eat up these really specific combat questions. So first, let me give you an overview of how the primer-detonator relationship works between the classes. Like, this is very nitty-gritty y’all, if this is your jam, get your pencils out. So here’s the overview. Mages, and this whether, this is true of companions and Rook, mages apply weakened and overwhelmed debuffs, and those are two of the debuffs we call primers. Magers detonate the sundered debuff. Then if we go to rogues, rogues apply weakened and sundered debuffs, and rogues detonate overwhelmed. Warriors apply sundered and overwhelmed, and warriors detonate weakened. So you can see, kinda the interesting rock-paper-scissors relationship there. And when I talk about it as beneficial to bring one of each class? It’s just the inherent nature of that rock-paper-scissors relationship that I’m really thinking of. But, to answer your question, that is just the baseline, that is the default if you don’t modify it. Throughout the game, you will find opportunities, whether it’s from gear, skill-tree nodes, even runes, that allow you to break this paradigm. So when it comes to your companion builds, again it all comes down to the abilities you choose, what gear you’re equipping them with, how you allocate your skill points. Yeah, does that answer the question? There’s quite a bit of flexibility but there is a baseline paradigm as well.

KFM: Yeah, I think that answers the question.

KFM: Let’s see. The next one is, will we see a bit more the Lighthouse before release, as well as non-combat gameplay?

CB: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We’ll keep it brief here because we are gonna be talking more about exploration and the Lighthouse next month, so forgive me, but I’ll say stay tuned on that one.

KFM: Alright. Then, this next one I believe is a little bit of a spoiler. I know that some people have, can’t hear me still for some reason, if you can’t, tell folks to quit Discord and rejoin it, but -

CB: Okay, minor spoiler y’all, if you can’t hear Katey, this one’s a minor spoiler.

KFM: Yes. Thanks Corinne. This one is, will we be able to give gifts to our companions, either generic or plot-specific?

CB: Yeah, you sure can! I actually wanna shout-out one of our lovely designers, Dusty. This was a passion project from him. He was advocating for this. So, the cool thing about this is, it’s not like a transactional thing, like where I’m gonna go farm a bunch of like nonsensical items and just like, mechanically turn them over. Out in the world, and there in various locations, so you kinda stumble upon them, you can buy a gift that is very personal to any one of the companions, and then you go, you turn that into them, you give it to them, they have a nice acknowledgement. And then, the thing that’s just like so sweet about it, we’ve talked about how the companion rooms evolve over time, but if you go and get them one of these, like, very personalized gifts, they’ll display it in their room. Like it doesn’t go into some stats void. It’s actually on display.

KFM: I love that.

KFM: This next question, I'll pitch it to John. Some of our companions like Neve, Emmrich and Lucanis have been in past short stories and comics and there's also a passing resemblance to some of the old concept art from years ago. What is the process like for making a character at some point and then planning to bring them back as a companion, or were they always written or designed and intended to be companions?

JE: Alright, that's a great question, and it's actually one I'm gonna go a little deep on. So, as we build the game, as we start writing companions we see how they fit in the story, see how they fit together. Some characters have been around, some character concepts have been around for quite some time, others come in a little bit later in development as we realise we have a gap, you know, something in the story that we need someone, who makes sense to fill that gap, to be that character. But part of it’s also just as the writers we want to make sure that the people who are writing these companions are passionate, and they're writing a character they want to write. We don't want to just say "we need X, Y and Z. Write a companion to fill these gaps", but it'll be "hey, in this story, it really doesn't make sense that we don't have somebody, ah, doing X, is there a character we can build for that?" And so, y'know, you'll see the old concept art and a lot of those concepts, y'know, a lot of those, kinda the core of those characters remains intact, we may have changed details of them, we may have decided "okay, they were going to be X but now Y makes a little bit more sense" - Or as a writer I'm a little bit more interested in why, y’know, what, this particular concept speaks to me more. In terms of comics, short stories and such, generally speaking - and this isn't universal - but generally speaking, writers are writing these short stories in particular, it’s a volunteer, we ask the team, like, "hey, does anyone - we've got this short story anthology, who wants to write something for it?”, so writers are going to pick characters that they're passionate about and in those cases they tend to be their companions, so for example. You know, Neve’s shown, is mentioned. Neve, Emmrich, Lucanis have all shown up. Those were written by people who are passionate about those characters and we had already intended for them to be companions. Other characters, though - I mean, and Harding is an excellent example - we create a character to fill a role. In the case of Harding, she was in Inquisition largely to be there to kind of connect those exploration spaces together and give you a sense of the Inquisition’s presence, and then we saw the fan reaction, but beyond that, Sheryl really wanted to explore Harding's arc more deeply, so she got promoted to be a companion as well, so, yeah, I mean, it's an organic process, and I mean again, it comes down to, we want to make sure the people who are building these characters, ah, not just the writers but also the artists, y'know, the cinematic designers, the editors, y'know, the gameplay people, are excited to build these characters. And you know, and actually, I'm gonna go a little bit side topic on that. Bellara's a great example where we knew what Bellara wanted to be, needed to be in the story, but gameplay-wise it took a bit to kinda land on how her gameplay and her character arc and who she was melded together. Y'know, Corinne’s talked earlier about the companions and how they show up in gameplay. A really big thing for us on this project is making sure that the gameplay reflects the characters, their arc and their personality as much as possible, so. Yeah, kind’ve a long answer to say, it depends, but yeah, generally if they show up, especially in something like a short story, we’ve already intended for them to be a companion because, those are the characters that people, the writers are most passionate about, so.

KFM: I love that.

KFM: Apart from wanting to try different classes, what are the main incentives for multiple playthroughs now that, now that stuff seems more overall universal, to be attempted all in a single playthrough. Are there choices presented freely - are there choices presented that are impactful, that wildly different outcomes will come from, while - wow, wow, wow, let me start that one again. I think it’s just, I’m reading it straight off the sheet. 

JE: No worries.

KFM: I'll start from the top. Apart from wanting to try different classes, what are the main incentives for multiple playthroughs now that stuff seems more universal, to be attempted all in a single playthrough? Are there choices that are impactful and wildly different, and different outcomes and decision paths?

JE: So, I mean, there's a few incentives, one of which, is, and I mean, the most basic is, the three classes from a gameplay perspective do play differently and, you know, I’ve, it’s funny, Corinne was talking about how her favorite is the Veil Ranger but that might change. Mine literally changes every time I play, I start a new playthrough, I develop a new favorite class, which is the class I'm currently playing. But more generally, yeah there are choices in the game, there are different outcomes, there’s content that does, that you will see or won't see based on choices you make both within the critical path of the game but also with the followers themselves so, y'know. You're not going to see everything in a single playthrough, you're not even going to see everything necessarily in a couple of playthroughs, but, y'know, you want to see how your choices have different outcomes, that's the best way to do it. 

KFM: This question is - I understand mages having very magical-looking moves, but why do rogues and warriors also have very magical-looking moves? Was making every class look like a mage a purposeful choice? 

CB: Cool, cool, cool. So it's a multi-part answer, but yes, everything we've done has been with intention towards supporting the overall player experience. So I guess the first place I'd go to answer this is from a game-tuning and balance perspective. We knew that supporting multiple damage types like physical, fire, electric etc, that was gonna be an important factor in the strategic depth of the combat system, particularly as it leans into builds and the strategies you'd use to take on various enemies. It’s not the extent of it, but it's an important part of it. So that meant that making sure the various classes in some capacity have access to some or all of these damage types. And that then means that we need to make them read visually as such on the battlefield. So the first part is about making sure you have those strategic options on the battlefield. But there is more to it than that I'd say, we also found - and I've heard this from a lot of you, that some of our magical hybrid classes have been amongst the favorites. My goodness the discourse around Knight Enchanter - 

JE: M-hm -

CB: - So this felt like a very thematic way for us to support that goal if that makes sense, the goal of game balance but also leaning into the things that seem to resonate the most. If I was to just focus on the Warriors out there for a minute though, because we just released the warrior deep dive, we've actually long had a goal within the team of making them more visually interesting and impactful. We know, and I’ve heard from a bunch of you that warrior, y'know, tends not to be peoples’ first choice, but hey, any of the warrior fans out there - big props to you, because I love them, too. So this was like our chance, really, to show what a warrior can do, to make them feel like they have a presence on the battlefield that could be as interesting as some of the other classes, but I will say, I absolutely recognize that there are those of you that like, if you're playing a melee class, you even want a pure, like, physical-based warrior aesthetic, maybe something that's a little more grounded, you can generally make a build that's more physical-focused if that’s more your taste.

KFM: In addition to playing the first three games, what comic books or novels do you recommend reading before playing The Veilguard?

JE: Oh, that's a great question. I mean, generally speaking, one of the things we wanted to make sure with The Veilguard was that players could get into the story, understand what was going on without needing to, y'know, get into the ancillary material. I love the comics, I love the novels, I love the short stories, but they are intended to be kinda side content. One of the things that we hear loud and clear is sometimes folks don't really want that to feel like I need to have read this, I need to have seen this comic, I need to have watched that show for it to make sense. That said, I’d say The Missing, the most recent comic series. is a very clear lead-up to the beginning of The Veilguard, it's setting up events, it’s kinda setting up, y'know, Varric and Harding's search for Solas, it sets up some of the characters that you'll see in the game. Tevinter Nights is another one, not - we mentioned earlier that some of the companions show up there. Beyond just the companions, there’s some thematic stuff that comes out of that as well, some things that we kinda wanted to set up when we wrote those short stories, like, giving you an idea of what the worldstate is, how things have changed over time, and then I’d say, you know, more very recently, we have the podcast, Vows & Vengeance, which is intended to give you a taste of the companions and also, again, talk about the worldstate of Thedas at this point, you know, giving you kind’ve the lead-up to weeks before the events of the Veilguard, so you do have that sense of what’s going on, who are these people, and how, you know, when I first meet them in The Veilguard, you kinda have an idea of who they are. Again, though, this is all stuff that I think enhances the experience, but it’s not required, there’s never going to be, we’re never gonna put you in a situation where a character shows up and, you know, everyone makes a big deal out of it, and you’re sitting there wondering like, who, who is this person? Because they were introduced in other media. We always wanna make sure that you understand, that the only thing that you need to have done to understand The Veilguard is play The Veilguard, so.

KFM: Awesome. Also, yes, Vows & Vengeance is so good, so definitely, you know, give it a chance. The first episode is out now. I think a lot of people in the Vows & Vengeance Discord server, Discord channel are, are really stoked about it.

KFM: This next question. Will we be able to adjust how much damage the companions do in the accessibility settings?

CB: Yeah, so our customized difficulty, and accessibility settings as well, they’re more focused on how you the player experience the game while in control of Rook. So, things like enemy health, timing, things of that nature. So not in the settings, no, but if you really wanna be that kind of player that wants to amp up your companions, like have them do a greater share of the overall damage, there’s a number of ways to accomplish this. You’ll get gear that just strictly says, your companions do more damage. And then there are some unique buffs we support like Rally Party, so you as Rook can trigger this surge in your companions’ ability. So, again, we know how diverse the motivations are within the player-base, so we wanted to make sure those tools were there for y’all.

KFM: So now we’re getting back into spoiler territory. There’s minor spoilers, but, you know, definitely, take heed, for the next couple of minutes if you don’t wanna hear them. Okay, we ready? Will we finally meet Maevaris Tevani in Tevinter?

CB: Oh my goodness, y’all. Alright, you got the spoiler warning, so when I talk about cameos and appearances, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Okay, this one’s very near and dear to my heart as a trans woman myself, I’m pretty open about that. Yeah, yeah, our dear Mae, she’s in the game, happy to confirm it, and I am, every time I see her I absolutely freak out. What I’m not gonna tell you though is what role or capacity she plays, so you’re just gonna have to wait and see. But Maevaris Tilani, she’s in.

KFM: I am living for chat right now. Like, I try not to look at it too much during these, because it’ll distract me, but I’m living for chat right now.

KFM: This next one is also a minor spoiler. Will we find out what happened to Lucanis' parents, for his grandmother to have had charge of him?

JE: Yeah, so I mean, Lucanis is an Antivan Crow. If you know anything about the Antivan Crows you know that they are, well, assassins, and assassins tend to have fairly deadly politics, and the daggers are a lot more literal than you would see somewhere like Orlais, so. That’s all I’m gonna say. You’ll find out, you’ll find out at some point for sure.

KFM: We’re doing a great job at not giving too much away.

KFM: Do we get any jealousy dialogues from any of the companions if you switch up your romance plans partway through? Are any of the romances hard-locked at any point?

JE: Yeah so, you can, I mean, once, there is an opportunity, or there is a place in a romance where you essentially commit to it being exclusive. And we really wanted to make sure that, A), we were very up front about the fact that you were committing to an exclusive romance at that point, and before that, it is portrayed as, you’re flirting, you’re kind’ve, you know, figuring out each other. So, not, there’s no jealousy dialogues, but there are - places where you commit, and we wanted to be very clear to fans. There’s also going to be a place, because I think I’m reading this right, where, there’s a point in the story where if you haven’t committed, if you haven’t said like, yeah, let’s, let’s, you know, I’m in for it, I’m up for this, let’s do this, where you no longer have that opportunity. We’re very clear about what that point is, because again, we don’t want people to be missing out on a romance, to think like, I’ve got some time, you know, I really wanna romance Neve, but, I’ve got a little, and then find out that no, in fact, you don’t have anymore time, so. 

KFM: Are class specializations locked to a particular faction, or can Rook only learn a specialization from a particular faction, like through a faction trainer?

JE: So, the specializations are a lot more thematically tied to the factions than they are a strict, you must be X faction, you must get it from this person. You know, for example, I’ll use the Veil Ranger is all themed, as Corinne said earlier, around electricity, around the use of the Veil, around the use of that kinda magic. So while they are thematically tied, there is no, you must be a Crow to be a Spellblade for example, and part of that is because, while we do like having that connection between gameplay and, you know, roleplay, we also don’t want you to feel like, well, I really wanted to be a Spellblade, but I also really want to be a Grey Warden. We don’t want those two things, sometimes we want gameplay to influence narrative, but we never want you to feel restricted by one against the other, if that makes sense.

KFM: Yeah, definitely

CB: Katey, can I go off-script really quickly?

KFM: Of course.

CB: Alright, so I saw someone post in chat, “okay, poly next time, though”. Let me just say, I cannot make promises, I cannot, but I’m with you. I’m with you. 

KFM: I love it. Anytime you wanna address anything that’s happening in chat, by all means.

JE: Oh, shit, copy that.

KFM: I mean, don’t go too crazy. Alright.

KFM: This next question is from Que Sera Sera. Will we be able to change the font size in the UI, subtitles etc?

CB: I can take that one. So, quick reminder, we are gonna do a deeper dive as we get closer to launch on accessibility settings, but let me just answer this one. Yeah, yeah you absolutely can. There are limits of course, but as a fellow person who often has to squint, I’m 42 y’all, my eyes are starting to go. I can play comfortably, I suspect most players will be able to play comfortably.

KFM: Will there be a way to save characters we make so we don't have to start from scratch each time?

CB: Heck yeah, you absolutely can. We, I mean, look, all of you playing Inquisition, you’re still sharing your OC and your characters ten years on. We know how much you love it, so yeah, yeah, absolutely. I do wanna have a, some caveats here though. So, it’s when you’re in the character creator, you can import the character appearance, it’s just gonna be the appearance data, from an existing save of yours. So when I say an existing save, just let me put a very fine point on it, that save has to be local to the machine. Remember, we’re an offline game, there’s no online character sharing built in. But for those of you that like, your OC, are very near and dear to your heart and every time you replay you like to have the same character, and you’ve spent hours and hours and hours working on it, yeah, you can import that.

JE: We saw how many of you were saving screenshots of sliders in DA:I, and that was not a great experience, as we’re well aware, so.

KFM: This next one is, are companion quests going to focus on internal factors or external personal events? Like will it be a growth in character and self-discovery, or are they firmly-rooted in their sense of self and will ask for/need help with their factions, interpersonal relationships, etc?

JE: So that’s a great, another great question. It’s a mix of both. I mean, each companion has their own personal arc over the course of the game. You know, you go on missions with them, you solve problems with them and the nature of those problems, you know, it’s, the problems are a lot, often-times very external in nature, you know, something’s happening that they need help with, but most of the time those problems are also tied to their own personal growth as a character. Again, you know, we really want to make sure that players feel invested in these characters, feel invested in their stories. And we also want to show that these characters do grow over the course of The Veilguard, this is, there aren’t characters that remain completely static from moment one to the end-game. These are characters who grow, and you help them grow. They’re still, their problems are still not going to like, they’re not sitting there saying, well, Rook, you need to do everything for me, but you are, you’re intended to be the leader of this group, but also, you can be their friend and help them with things that, their challenges, so. Yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s a mix of both, we really just, it comes down to the individual character and there is a lot of nuance in that answer I think too.

KFM: This next question from XenoGabby is a minor spoiler, so you’ve been warned once again. The question is, is Lucanis possessed?

JE: So, again, spoilers, everyone has been warned, fairly warned. So Lucanis Dellamorte is also known as The Demon of Vyrantium. And, he has spent a lot of time killing Venatori, who are mages, and who do know a lot about demons, so. Yeah, somebody decided that it might be a good idea to make that nickname stick.

KFM: And this next one, from a user named Crom, is there reactivity towards the specialization that you chose? Like some people might trust more Champions, or maybe freak, others will freak out with Death Callers or Reapers? 

CB: Yeah, what a good question, so, in general the reactivity is reserved for things that aren’t necessarily likely to change, things that can create a throughline that we can keep building and building upon, so like your faction, your lineage, your class, your choices. So that keeps a consistent narrative thread with those elements, and then we can assume that thread continues from A to B. So the answer is no, they don’t react to your specialization, but in part that’s because you can full refund, you can respec at any time, you might a Death Caller one moment and another specialization on the next encounter.

KFM: And, this next question. You mentioned encountering companions on their own missions in the world. If I keep my party mostly the same, does that mean that I miss out on their side missions, or are they unavailable to be picked up during that time? 

CB: Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, you’re, you have all the tools that you’re not gonna miss out on quests based on who’s in your party. How would I answer this - so, there are certain plot elements that can change what quests are available to you, and in some cases, some quests that you might have in your journal can actually expire based on choices and how you advance the plot. So there are ways that quest content gets cut off, or alters. But in general you have the visibility and the tools so that you won’t miss out on it. I can give you a couple of examples, that might be helpful. So when you meet companions out in the world, there’s kinda like a couple of different ways that they can show up. In a recent playthrough, I was exploring Hossberg Wetlands. It was technically for a quest that should’ve been more oriented towards Davrin, but I didn’t have him in my party, and as I got close to the objective, he showed up with Assan and helped me clear the path forward. The other way this will happen, I was out in Arlathan, actually doing, on my way to do a main story mission, and I get to the far reaches of Arlathan Forest, and I already knew that Taash wanted to help me with some of the challenges of that arc. Well, Taash is right there waiting for me, so I actually chose to instead like, ah, Taash seems impatient, I’m gonna actually jump on that story arc right now instead of what I intended to do, so. Just some examples of the way that as you’re journeying through this world, opportunities are gonna show up, but they allow you just to express more agency, you’re generally not going to miss them.

KFM: Awesome. This next one is, minor spoiler, you’ve been warned. This next question is from Tazaba. What's the difference between the Veil Jumper faction and the Veil Ranger Specialization?

CB: Yeah, okay, so, yeah we just wanted to kinda flag this as a spoiler, just because there might be assumptions about how you take on specializations in this game. So John touched on this a little bit already, but specializations really represent the training and fighting styles used by a given faction. As John mentioned, you do not have to be a Veil Jumper to choose a specialization that’s associated with the Veil Jumpers. You’ve just been around them, you’re aware of their techniques, and you wanna take that on yourself. So, in this particular case, and I get the confusion because Veil Jumper and Veil Ranger sound very similar. If I’m playing as a rogue, using the Veil Ranger specialization, all that means is I’m fighting in the style of the Veil Jumpers, like they do, with bow and arrow, typically with electric damage, that sort’ve thing. So just, to be super clear, it’s not required that you have to play a Veil Jumper in order to be a Veil Ranger.

KFM: This next question is, where is the equator in Thedas, or the planet Thedas is on, relative to places we’ve explored?

JE: That is a great question. So, I will say that, you know, it’s funny until I saw this question, it’s not something I’d ever thought a lot about, but as I started thinking about it a little bit more deeply, based on how the climate changes across Thedas, you know, obviously, to the south are the Avvar and things get a little bit more wintry, and then up north is a lot more tropical, I’d say that Thedas is a southern continent on this world, so.

KFM: Are there any main story missions that require you to use a specific companion? Kinda similar to a previous question.

CB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, there are a few, yes, again, in the warrior deep dive, I’m not gonna describe it, just in case anyone, you know, didn’t wanna have spoilers, you can see that a companion was required for that. However, that’s the exception rather than the rule. In general, we try to give players the agency to bring who they want for these moments. There are these times where a companion, either their faction or their story arc is so closely tied or intersects with the events of a main story mission that they do become required, but it’s not the standard. And then of course, in general, if you’re doing your companions’ arcs, those are the moments where they’re more than likely gonna be required.

KFM: Will we be - 

CB: It's pretty flexible, like if, if you’re worried about like, every mission I go through, like am I gonna have someone that is gonna be mandated? Generally not.

KFM: Sorry, I almost talked over you there Corinne, my bad.

KFM: This next question is, will we be able to pause cutscenes? Will there be any kind of dialogue history to look back on if we miss what was said? 

JE: So, you can pause every cutscene in the game. Obviously, life happens, you know, somebody, maybe you’re cat’s, you know, just to use an example that definitely doesn’t happen to me regularly, my cat might be throwing up in the next room and I need to find a way to get her off the carpet and on to, you know, not the carpet, so you can pause any cutscene, and conversation. There is no dialogue history at the moment unfortunately, and that’s not something, we did look into it but it’s just based on how the dialogue is structured and how it’s built in this game, that’s not something that we are going to have unfortunately. 

KFM: I saw somebody say “cat vomiting is so real”, and I agree, sometimes when I’m playing games, my dog decides to do something insane.

KFM: So, this next question is, since companions can get into relationships with each other, is there a mechanic behind which companions get together? Can a companion leave due to your world decisions, and if so, will their partners leave with them?

JE: I’m gonna answer half this question, the other half is a spoiler that we’re not gonna get into right now. Companions, there is not actually a mechanic behind the companions getting together. We never wanted it to feel like a mechanical thing, and obviously, different companions are gonna have different attractions. One of the fun things is, as you’re going through, especially if you’re not flirting with one of the companions, you can see these relationships starting to develop, and the thing that actually allows them to, you know, completely develop is, generally committing to another relationship, or, you know, not being engaging, not engaging in a romance with those companions at all. So, yeah, I mean, there’s not a mechanic, it’s just what we felt made the most sense and, I think that’s honestly one of my favorite things about the companions is, they’re all written to feel like real people with real preferences and real, you know, attractions. So beyond just romances, they also develop friendships and even rivalries with each other, because of these, them feeling like these characters that exist outside of just the game, so. 

KFM: Awesome.

KFM: This question is all about Davrin. Hildrana would love to know more about Davrin. What’s his personality like, what kind of hobbies or things does he like, and what his relationship with Assan is like?

JE: So Davrin is one of my favorite, I mean, I say one of my favorite characters, honestly I love all seven companions so it’s challenging for me to say which. But Davrin is stern, thoughtful and considerate though, he has a soft side for sure. You see that develop over time as he starts to warm up to the other companions. He has, you know, a kindness to him that is brought out in particular by certain companions, and also a strong sense of pride and when he develops a rivalry with some of the companions. So there’s that sense of, he knows who he wants to be, he knows who he is, and a lot of his arc is making that journey. In terms of how he relates to Assan, you know, his relationship over, evolves over time, I’m not gonna get too deep into spoilers because there are spoilers for that in his quest. The other interesting thing about, about Davrin, and this shows up, we’ve talked about this before. He’s a monster hunter. He’s not just a Warden who sees fighting monsters as, you know, just part of the job. He believes in turning this into a skill-set that he alone, you know like, he has more than anyone else. Learning how to defeat monsters, learning their weaknesses, and that does show up a lot in his character arc, so.

KFM: This next question came through our askbox on Tumblr, so shoutout the BioWare Tumblr. Rosered is asking why do elves seem to not like wearing shoes? Is there a lore reason behind it? Are they not afraid of getting frostbite or stepping in something gross?

JE: So the shoeless elves thing is in part a, it’s a, Dalish are very close to nature, they walk, go around shoeless, in large part, to become closer to nature. It’s part of their culture, it’s part of who they are. But, you know, especially, and it’s not true of every Dalish clan, the Dalish are a tremendously widely-spread and widely-varied people, so. For example, Bellara does not go around shoeless. She wears boots. She’s climbing around on ancient ruins, walking through maybe a shattered eluvian, or a place where eluvian’s shattered, it’s a great way to get your feet sliced up on the hard rocks and on the hard glass. And in general Veil Jumpers are a little bit more, where they go and what they do really requires a lot more care and a lot more protection, so. I mean you’ll notice in Bellara’s visual design but also in the visual design of the other Veil Jumpers, they’re very practically minded, they know that what they’re doing is dangerous, and, you know, and, again, not every Dalish clan goes round shoeless, so.

KFM: ZJ wants to know, do all companions have aesthetic changes when in the Lighthouse and outside of the Lighthouse?

CB: Amazing. Yeah, yeah, they absolutely do. So, just like Rook, each of the companions has what we refer to as their casual wear. This is how they look in their downtime, their more relaxed moments. It’s definitely different from how they look headed into battle. And I’ll tell you this. If Emmrich’s casual wear doesn’t send you, I just don’t know what to tell you.

KFM: I’ve got a fun one coming up. Do they companions have favorite foods, and if so, what are they?

JE: Oh I love this one, so they do. Each of them does have favorite foods. It’s funny, I’d say that Dragon Age: The Veilguard is probably the most we’ve talked about food in a context of Dragon Age, ever. But yeah, I mean, you know, some of them are a little bit more, you know, they have simpler tastes, and in large part that’s because that’s what they’re used to or what they can cook. We talked, I’m gonna actually give a little bit of a, I don’t know if I consider this a spoiler, but maybe if you’re really sensitive to spoilers you don’t wanna listen to this last part. We’ve talked about how there’s people on the team who are better cooks and people on the team who maybe don’t have necessarily the skill-set, who could burn water. So one of the things I really love is, you know, Bellara and Lucanis actually end up being, essentially, the team cooks. Bellara, you know, spending a lot of time out in nature, learning a lot about, you know, different types of cooking, is really big on experimentation, she likes to, you know, try different things. Lucanis comes from the Crows, Lucanis is very big on the finer things, so between the two of them, there’s a point in the story where they basically decide, if we don’t do this, the entire team is going to starve, so let’s just call ourselves the cook, cooks, and make sure that nobody dies of food poisoning, so.

KFM: This next one, I believe we actually might’ve even touched on this in the first Q&A, but, Trev has noticed a lack of dwarves in our promotional material concerning Rook. Inquisition had them sharing facial hair options with humans. So their question is, will dwarves return to more braided, grander beards, or will the facial hair options be shared like previously?

CB: Yeah, we did touch on this briefly, so let me go a little bit deeper. Yeah, there are some grander dwarven beards, like braids, beads woven in, it’s really lovely and really thematic. And y’all have seen our Strand hair, how great that looks, I think it looks just as great for the beards. And I do know, we’re gonna, at some point leading up to launch, we are gonna be showing some dwarf Rooks. So, let’s see if we can’t get some beard options on display there. It actually really was quite the challenge to get the physics to work with all the armor variance we have on those beards. So I’ll tell you what y’all. The team loves hearing from you. Would it be okay if I just asked in chat, could we get some love for our character art and tech anim teams because they put their heart and soul into make sure this would work for y’all. 

JE: It is, it is incredible how good the beards look, like, it just, they did, the work that they’ve done is just spectacular.

CB: Aw y'all are too kind. And then I guess just to finish up this question, we try and let you use as many options as the character creator has for any character you wanna create. So we definitely created bears in mind that are more dwarven in nature. You can use that on a qunari if you want, or you can use a more traditional human beard on a dwarf if you want, but your options are there. Aw, y’all are lovely, thank you so much.

KFM: So we didn't tag this next one as a minor spoiler. I don’t think that it is. But, definitely want to flag it anyway. Will the Solavellans have a chance at a happy ending?

JE: Corinne, I’m gonna let you do this one. 

CB: Oh my goodness, this is the question. Look! I mean, I thought y’all wanted the pain? Didn’t you tell me you wanted the pain, that tortured romance that rips your heart out? Honestly though, I just wouldn’t feel right about spoiling anything there. I’ll just say this, I’ll just say this. Trick has done a fantastic job with Solas, they always do, this is some of ther best work I think. And then I’ll also say, as, for myself as the resident shipper on the leadership team, I’m repping y’all, but that’s all I’m gonna say.

KFM: That’s definitely what I meant by, not really a spoiler, but some people might’ve thought that in the beginning.  

KFM: Okay, next question is, since you can choose to be part of the same faction for most of the companions, will that give you an advantage when trying to befriend them?

JE: So you will get some unique dialogue with the companions that are part of your own faction. The first time you meet them, they may not all know you by face, but they’ve at least heard of you, I’ve heard of who you are, maybe even heard of you leaving the faction to go help Varric to track down Solas. But that said, you know the faction, you don’t necessarily as people. So they will know you but you still have to work to earn their trust and learn, you know, get them, help them with their problems.

KFM: Next question is, will there be more connections between the Veilguard? Like will we see them hanging out together without out us?

JE: Oh, I love this one. Yeah, I mean, honestly, I think I’ve said this twice already, but my favorite thing is how much the companions feel like a, end up feeling like a found family. They’re invested in each others problems, you know they’re, invested in each others’ success and failures, and this manifests through a bunch of different ways. Scenes, banter, even interactions in the Lighthouse itself. Because one of the things that I think is important, I know Corinne also thinks is super important, these worlds, these games feel the best when they don’t feel like they’re there as a theme-park just for you, just to exist for Rook as a protagonist. These are characters that have relationships, have, you know, things going on that don’t necessarily directly involve Rook all the time. They have their own relationships, their own feelings, and we really want them to feel like their own people, and feel like they do exist outside of just the sphere of Rook. So, you know, they’ll follow, you’re the one leading this fight, but the companions don’t just exist for you.

KFM: So this next one is a real minor spoiler warning. Will the companions have interactions with Solas? I imagine the companions will comment on Rook’s decisions regarding Solas, but was wondering if the potential relationship between Solas and the companions will play any part?

JE: Oh, this is a good question. So a lot of Solas’ relationship is with Rook. Rook and Solas have a connection, they have a bond, and part of that is, and I’ve said this before, but Solas sees a lot of himself in Rook. He sees, you know, the person, you know the person he was before, the person he thinks he is, in Rook, and becomes, you know, again, we, they develop a connection. You get to flavor how it is, you can make it more antagonistic, make it friendlier, but ultimately it is a connection between the two of you. Now, that said, the companions are much a part of Rook’s story as Solas is, and sometimes those relationships can cross over, as well as, there are followers who, you know, are going to have a more complicated connection and complicated relationship with just, Solas as an entity, you know, Bellara, for example, is an elf, she’s Dalish, and this a person from her pantheon, so. There’s going to be a lot more of a, I guess, like I said, complex relationship between the two of them. Davrin is another example, someone else who is Dalish, so, you know, their views on the gods in general are going to be a little bit different. And then on the other side,you have someone like Emmrich who is very big on magic and the Fade, so they’ll have their own [inaudible] and their own thoughts. 

KFM: Before I get to this next question I do wanna say we’ve got about a fifteen minute warning, we’ve got about fifteen minutes left, so we’ll get through as many questions as we can in that time. And with that said, our next one is, and, I feel like we might have actually touched on this one earlier, but, keep me honest. Would it be possible to hide some of the combat UI, such as companion trackers and enemy HP bars, for even more immersion? 

CB: Yeah, good question. It’s actually, it’s reasonably robust what you can do with your UI. So let me give you some examples. If, normally when you hit an enemy you’ll see damage floaties come off of it. If you wanna turn those off, you can. If you want to play without, say, the minimap or the wayfinding markers, have a more organic experience, you can. I challenged myself to do a, it was really difficult to do a really difficult run where I turned off my own health bar, you can do that too. And then, I know one of them that a lot of people have been asking about is, we do have the incoming attack indicators, that just help you react. But, if you’re the kind’ve player that wants to turn those off, cut down on the noise, yeah, you can do that too, so. You know, I can’t say that we support every single option that you might have in mind, but it’s reasonably robust. 

KFM: And then, another, just small, minor spoiler, you’ve been warned yet again, is there lock-picking in the game?

CB: Oh gosh lock-picking, notorious lock-picking. Well let me answer it this way. I think the approach we took in The Veilguard is that each companion has a unique, what we’re calling, exploration ability, or abilities, that you can use to solve puzzle, access new areas and find treasure. So, like in that regard it’s not actually dissimilar to lockpicking, it’s just that it is more thematic to the companions and their unique skill-sets within The Veilguard. It’s very specialized, I guess you could say. And, look, I’ve been there when you’re playing and you feel like you have to take a rogue, otherwise you’re not gonna be open the lockpick chests. Some players like that, some players dislike it, but the option that we wanted to give to y’all is that, you know, we did say this is a spoiler right? We did, yeah. So Rook does find a certain dagger and through it a method to channel these exploration abilities of their companions, even when the companion is not in your party. So like, look, if I’m exploring Hossberg, and there’s a puzzle and I know how to solve it, like I’m not running all the way back to like a party swap-point, you can just use the dagger.

KFM: This is not a spoiler, and it is actually something we confirmed a little bit earlier in the Q&A, but it doesn’t hurt to be clear. Can we freely reallocate or refund skillpoints?

CB: Yeah, so we’ve confirmed this, I’m just gonna keep it brief, yes, absolutely. Refund all, refund last, no cost. It’s an entirely friendly refund system. Go experiment, and then let me know what you do.

KFM: Will the acts be broken down into acts or stages at all? Mainly wondering for like spoiler discussion purposes, while they’re all playing and wanting to talk to one another about it?

JE: So while we don’t officially within the game say this is this act, this is the next act, there are some pretty obvious narrative breakpoints where the context changes, or there is, you know, events that make it clear that things are now advancing into a different stage. That’s now, to be clear, that’s largely around the critical path. Other content can largely be done at any time, but even there we do unlock certain things over the course of time, because, again, it makes, it maybe doesn’t make narrative sense in the context of, say, an earlier act, but now, you know, you’re into act two, it feels a lot more meaningful and makes a lot more sense in the world. You can do a lot of content in any order, but the critical path is largely broken into acts.

KFM: Now, I think this next question might be the most important question we can answer. A user by the name of doggiesnores says, would you please tell me happy birthday? 

JE: Happy birthday doggiesnores.

CB: Aww, happy birthday doggie - I feel weird saying doggiesnores. I mean, listen -

JE: You gotta roll with it Corinne.

CB: John, Katey, do we wanna sing? Do we wanna sing?

JE: No!

KFM: Oh we can - oh, okay.

JE: You can sing.

CB: Alright. [sings] Happy birthday to you -

KFM: - [sings] to you - [stops singing] are we gonna stop now? Okay.

CB: We’ll stop, we’ll stop. 

JE: Yeah, I think, yeah. 

CB: We gotta get back to the questions.

KFM: Yeah, we do have a time limit now.

KFM: Alright, next question, alright. This is from Guapa. Okay. I wanna know the helmet situation. Back in Inquisition, there were helmets exclusive to races, and to be honest, most helmets were exclusive to humans. Will elves and humans share helmets since their head shape seems to be more similar now, and will there be qunari helmets rather than just facepaints?

CB: Love this described as “the helmet situation”. I love it. Yeah, so let me describe this to you. All the helmets can be worn by all the lineages with one big exception. The qunari still use the vitaar face paint. So each helmet has a unique look, and if you’re using the vitaar variant of that instead, that too has a unique look, so you’ll wear that facepaint instead of the helmet. And we, we felt that this was just generally a good precedent following Inquisition and, really what led us to this decision is that, when you see horn customization, and hair customization with the horns in character creator, we didn’t want to sacrifice that aspect of it in character creator. It’s just effing cool, that’s all I can say about it. So, yeah, the qunari will use vitaar. All the other helmets can be worn by all lineages. We’ve talked a lot about transmog, so of course you can transmog them, you can hide your helmet, you can hide your helmet in certain situations. So I’d say, as a “situation”, we’re pretty happy with it.

KFM: This next question is, will we be able to tint and change the color of our armours, or have they, or do they have their default colors only?

CB: Oh cool, yeah, that kinda gets to transmog in a way. Gosh, what’s the, the best way to answer this I think is that each armor piece, like gear piece you have, will have bespoke colors, but for almost every single armor piece, while you can’t dye them, we have created color-variant cosmetics and they’re very often aligned with the various factions in the world, right? So like, there’s one, for instance, that has this like, incredible, like flowing cape, I use it all the time. There’s a variant of it for each faction with different faction, with different colors and logos and things of that nature. So you can’t dye, but it really is flexible and very thematic. And then I guess, going back to the Venatori armor question we had way at the beginning, while I wouldn’t say they’re explicitly Venatori, there are some very Venatori-like color schemes in some of the armors you’ll find.

KFM: I think this might be our last minor spoiler question, so once again, you’ve been warned. AelaFireheart asks, will we be seeing other griffons from The Last Flight? 

JE: So, again, just to be clear, spoilers, but yeah, Assan has brothers and sisters, so Assan is not the only griffon that shows up in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. 

CB: Hey, I just gotta respond to something in comment, that somebody says, wait, does that mean I can’t be pink? And I’m assuming we’re talking about armors. There are some pink armors. Don’t worry -

KFM: Confirmed.

CB: - there’s some pink.

KFM: As some of the companions come from media outside of the games, were they already chosen as companions for the game and then integrated into the additional media, or were they characters outside of the game, and the team wanted to bring them in?

JE: I think this is pretty similar to a question we answered earlier, so I mean, again, it depends, but if they showed up, especially in Tevinter Nights, they were already intended to be companions at that point, so.

KFM: Are there any lineage-based surnames or is it just based on the background?

JE: So surnames in this game are entirely based on your background choice. The reason for this is we do reference your surname in dialogue, a not inconsiderable amount, and we didn’t, at a certain point it becomes unsustainable in terms of how many different variations, so. We reference it based on your surnames, sorry, your background.

KFM: Is there any chance that we will be getting any audio snippets of some of the companions and Rook’s voicelines before release?

JE: Well that’s the great news about the, Vows & Vengeance, is that, each companion will show up in one of the episodes, and you’ll be able to hear their voice in there, so. First episode yesterday, and there’s more to come.  

KFM: Remember when I said that was the last, or we had already read the last minor spoiler, I was wrong, there is one more. So, once again, you’ve been warned, minor spoiler upcoming. This question is from SammyCherryLee. Considering Varric’s timeskip, looks are a direct, Varric’s timeskip looks are a direct translation of how he looked in the comics. What thought process went into Morrigan’s new design, and what do you usually consider when bringing in old beloved characters back, but also make sure to adapt them to the years that have passed within the game?

JE: So, in every case, any time we’re bringing back a character, we want to think about, what would, what’s changed for that character in the time since you’ve last saw them, so, Varric, Morrigan, any other characters we bring back, there is this thought of, okay, it’s been, in this case, you know, almost ten years, what’s changed for these characters in that intervening time? In the case of Morrigan, she’s coming to terms with a lot of truths about both herself but also her mother, you know, you see her with Flemeth’s crown, or a variation of it, and that’s speaking to her personal journey of, what I would call, kind’ve acceptance of who she is and how she connects to Flemeth, because ultimately we want this to feel like a real world. It’s, they’re not the same person they are ten years ago, none of us are, and we don’t want characters to feel like, either ten years have passed, and hey, I’m exactly the same, because that’s stagnation for the character, and it’s just not believable or, honestly, fun, for you. And it doesn’t do justice to those characters.

KFM: Can we clarify - ooh, fuck, I think my Discord just went down again.

JE: Yep, I can still hear you.

CB: We can, we can hear you Katey, so.

KFM: Oh, good!

CB: Yeah.

KFM: I’ll just keep talking!

CB: Great, let’s do it!

KFM: I’m so sorry for the f-bomb, I didn’t know you could still hear me. 

CB: Hey, we’ve all been there.

JE: Cursing, in our Discord, my goodness!

CB: How very human of you.

KFM: Ban me, ban me. This next question is, can you clarify if Spellblade will be forced to use a dagger, or can we still use staff as a melee combat weapon?

CB: Oh, heck yeah, let’s go. You know, I was wondering if this was gonna be clear in the combat video we put out, so I’ll speak about mage, but this is generally true of all the classes. So they each have two weapon sets, if you’ve seen the character sheet. So for mage, you’re gonna have your staff slot and then you’re gonna have the orb-and-dagger slot. So, at any point, like even between weapon swings, you can swap to your class alternate weapon set by hitting down on the D-pad. So you’re not locked down into one weapon set or the other, even if you’re in a given class or specialization. Now, like what I would say is that the Spellblade specialization has a lot of extra functionality and depth that like is augmented when using the orb-and-dagger, but, like if I give you an anecdote of how I play, the staff heavy-attack armor, I take this, or, the staff heavy attack charge, I take a trait where when I’m doing damage and playing, it’s building up that heavy attack charge on my staff. Even when I’m playing as my Spellblade. So I’ll be, just going to down with orb and dagger, I’ll notice that my staff is fully-charged, I’ll swap at a convenient moment, use my heavy staff attack, blast the enemies down, I was telling y’all, like, these Nightmare players, like planning around your elemental damage types, it’s really great to have weapons of multiple elemental types, right? So I go up against something that’s resistant to fire, I’m gonna hit down and maybe swap to my necrotic weapon.

KFM: I'm back, in record time. 

JE: Welcome back! 

KFM: Okay, did we get to the next one, or was that just the Spellblade question?

CB: Oh that was, sorry I was geeking out too much Katey.

KFM: Oh that’s okay, no, it’s great!

CB: We hit upon a favorite topic of mine.

KFM: That’s okay. Do we think we have time for one more, or do we think it’s time to wrap up?

JE: I can go a little late, we’ve got, I think we can do a couple more, for sure.

KFM: Okay, we do only have three left, so.

JE: Let’s finish the list!

KFM: Let’s do it.

KFM: Alright, next question. Since it was mentioned that playing as an elf in the Veil Jumpers will see you more of a, see you as more of a Dalish elf, and a City elf if you play as a Shadow Dragon, what kind of elf would you be in the other factions?

JE: So this is actually a really interesting question for me because I think one of the things I’d say is, while City Elf versus Dalish Elf is a lot more of a useful distinction in, you know, Ferelden, Orlais, we’re in northern Thedas, things are different up here. And a great example is Rivain. Dalish settlements, you know, they have Dalish settlements within cities, integrated into the cities, because, again, they don’t have that same bias, that same distinction. So it’s not really a City Elf versus Dalish Elf thing in a lot of those cases. It’s a lot more about, how you play into the faction, you know, and, in some cases it matters more that you’re an elf, in other cases it doesn’t actually matter to the people of that faction, they’re just looking for someone who could do the work. A great example, and I’ll just, very, very light spoilers, Mourn Watch is a great example where, they just care that you are capable of, you know, executing the duties that you’re given, so.

KFM: This next question, we’ve definitely confirmed a few times today already, but I’m sure there’s been a couple of people who cycled in and out. Will, when will we be releasing detailed information on the full list of accessibility features in the game?

JE: So yeah, so I mean, we mentioned, we’re not quite ready to talk about them, but we will be diving into them before launch. We wanna make sure as many people as possible can enjoy and play the game, so.

CB: Yeah, I think we’re doing a feature, some kind of blogpost on that, but, that’ll be a good format where we can be a little bit more in-depth.

JE: Yeah.

KFM: Alright, and the final question that I have on my list. It’s about localization. WoodenSmith says, I’d like to hear more about how localization works. What sorts of things have to be changed or adjusted so they make sense in different regions? Do localization teams have to be super careful when they translate to make sure they’re not accidentally revealing more than was intended in other versions? I’ve also always been very curious about accents in other versions. For example, do the, I’m gonna butcher this, do the Orl - Orlesian -

JE: Orlesian.

KFM: Orlesian, thank you, John. Character voice -

CB: That was really good, Katey!

KFM: I tried!

JE: Yeah, you tried, you got most of the way there, yeah!

KFM: For example, do the Orlesian character voice actors speak in a French accent in the Japanese version, or dwarf characters speak with an American accent in the French version?

JE: So I’m going to talk broadly about localization, and I’ll get a little bit into the accent question. So, localization is a thing that we’re doing constantly. We’re almost working with the teams, we have regular syncs with them, and a lot of that is because localization is not just, a lot of people think of it like, yeah, you’re just translating. Well, you’re not, you’re, you know, you’re, again, there’s different things to understand about different languages, they have different rules around grammar and, I will say, I think every writer has at least one story where they wrote, kind’ve, a fun double-entendre into a conversation, and then they got a ping from some of the localization teams saying, hey, can you very thoroughly explain what you meant there? And that’s what I like to describe as being hoist on your own petard because, sometimes, you’re like, oh I said this, it was really ribald, and now I don’t want to talk to this person who is very seriously and very concernedly, looking, it’s just like, ‘can you please tell us what that means?’ But yeah, I mean, in general, it’s an art-form of its own. You know, different sayings translate differently into different languages, different metaphors translate differently to different languages, and we always wanna make sure that other people, you know, people are playing this game in every language have an experience that feels authentic and meaningful, and doesn’t feel like it’s just kind’ve, you know, phoned in, we just, we just ran it through Google Translate or something, so. Again, localization is a huge part of what we do, the localization team we have is amazing, they do fantastic work, I love working with them. As far as accents, yeah, we do try to keep some consistency, it’s not always going to be a one to one, but we do try to say like, okay, so, this character, this group of characters needs to sound similar, and they’ll find an accent that works with the language that they’re trying, because, again, different accents work differently with different languages, and we wanna make sure that there’s that consistency, so, yeah.

KFM: We did it!

JE: Yeah!

KFM: That’s all of our questions that we’re able to get to you today. Wanna just say a quick thanks again to the community for submitting all of these really questions, it was a lot of fun going through them and, you know, making sure that we were able to give you some new stuff this time around. Yeah, anything you guys wanna say before we hop off?

CB: Yeah, can I just say, look, we love here, being here answering questions for you but the support, the interest you all show, it really fuels us in the team.

JE: Mhm.

CB: You all are a big part of us being able to make this game what it is, and I really hope we do you proud, so just, sincere thank you to everyone. 

JE: Yeah, just, I just wanna echo that. I’ve been on this project for a while, and it’s been a lot of, not getting to talk about it, and quietly saying I don’t know, are we making more new Dragon Age? So being able to actually have these conversations and give you the details that you want without spoiling the game, it’s, it’s a lot of fun. This is genuinely the funnest part of my week, so thank you everyone.

KFM: Awesome, well thank you both so much for your time, Corinne and John. And, yeah, we have recorded the audio for this, so we’re going to turn that into a transcription, and put that in the Q&A archive channel, which lives underneath ask-bioware. That will be coming, you know, in the next couple of days to a week or so, you know, we’ll, we’ll be working away at it as soon as possible, so just let, let me know if you have any questions.

JE: Awesome. Thank you so much everyone, have a good Friday, good weekend, and I’m gonna go eat a sandwich, so.

CB: Happy Friday!

KFM: Happy Friday, and happy sandwich day!

CB: Bye bye.

JE: Thank you.

KFM: Bye.

JE: Bye.

[source: the official BioWare Discord server, August 30th dev Q&A]

Update: If you would like to listen to the Q&A for yourself in video format, or listen to it again, Ghil Dirthalen recorded it and has now uploaded a video of it here.

[geraskierfanficprompts]

Prompt 109

Geralt is a witcher. Cats tend to distance themselves from witchers. Sometimes Geralt wonders what cats are like. So one day he asks. "Cats are lovely. Beautiful little sweethearts." The old woman who owns the inn says to him. "Cats are annoying varmints, always yowling in the middle of the night when they're in heat, they SCREAM their little heads off, can't catch a wink of sleep with them around!" A man passing by him in the market complains, with the anger of someone who has clearly thought about this a lot. "My cat isn't the biggest fan of being touched, but she's a good girl. Catches the mice." "They're evil little hellions, nothing compared to dogs. Don't even like their owners." "I'd like 'em a whole lot more if my way of living wasn't being a fisherman. They climb in at night and steal my best catches." "They're adorable!" "My cat is the cuddliest sweetest snuggliest little kitty to ever live, I think. Nobody will ever love me as much as he loves me." "My friend has a kitten! She already knows to chase the feathers we wave in front of her! I hope she still plays when she grows up." Opinions are varied in the town, but the majority seem to love them. He wants to know what they're like, not if they are liked. He sits down with a friendlier townie one afternoon and asks in detail what cats are like. What's great about them, what's bad about them, what do they like, what do they hate, what can they do, what have they done? The more she describes cats, however, the more Geralt can't help but be reminded of Jaskier. "They're playful. They love making noise and chasing things."

"Geralt, please, can't I play my lute? It's been fourteen whole minutes of SILENCE! Let me play a song!" "Why do you stay?" "Maybe I just like following you, Geralt. It's nice only having to pay for half of everything, after all."

"They're moody little things. Cats will want to cuddle you one second, and be left alone the next, and if you can't read their mind, they'll give you an annoyed little pouty face, as if you were meant to know better!"

"Geralt, do you mind if I...?" "If you what?" "Sit here?" "...My lap?" "That is where I'm sitting, yes. May I?" "...Mm." "Great thanks!~" "Geralt, you pissing idiot! I can't believe you! Don't touch me! Don't even look at me! How could you do something so so so SO stupid!?" "This is my job, Jaskier." "And apparently sewing up your arm is mine!" "I can take care of it." "Oh, I'm meant to just trust the man who went off and got mauled by a werewolf, then?"

"They enjoy a good sleep. Cats nap more than my old man, if you can believe it. They love comfort and luxury."

"Geralt, can't we stay at an inn? It's been so long." "Can we rest? Just for a bit? Pleaaaase? I want a nap. Don't I deserve it?" "Geralt, not to be ungrateful, but I think sleeping on the dirt would be better than this inn. Don't tell me you're making us sleep here. There's probably snakes nesting in the pillows."

"But at the same time, they love the grittiest bits of the outdoors. Chasing rabbits through tunnels, climbing trees after a songbird- My childhood cat used to dive in the swamp to catch frogs."

"Geralt, taking a shortcut through the bog is the easiest way to get to the competition in time! Now hurry along! Either I cross the bog alone, or you come with me!" "Geralt, I went looking for potion ingredients while you were skinning the deer!" "Geralt, are you going to cut the damn thing's head off or what? Wait, darling, are you alright? Are you hurt? Let me do it-"

"They sometimes bring you dead critters because they want to feed you. It's oddly very endearing."

"Geralt, I bought you some honey buns!" "I found some lovely cakes, do you want one, Geralt? You haven't eaten at all today." "I- I killed it. It was coming straight for you and I panicked. Am I bleeding? I can't quite tell because of the adrenaline, so am I bleeding or not, Gerelt? Can you tell me? Are YOU bleeding? Did I get it in time?" "I got so many tips last time I played, Geralt, you can get a bigger meal."

"They get themselves into trouble a lot, though. Places they shouldn't be, things they shouldn't touch, things they shouldn't eat."

"Geralt, I didn't mean to cause all of this. I'm sorry." "It's nothing, Jaskier. I'm just glad you're unharmed." "...Um... Geralt? Can you let go of my wrists now?" "Don't. Touch. Anything. The plant's spines are poisonous." "Jaskier, spit it out! SPIT IT OUT! I told you to stop fucking eating things in Yennefer's place" "Then why was it colored like a nice candy?"

"When they're scared or angry, they can make a right mess out of you. Don't let their cuteness fool you, they can do some damage."

"What else was I supposed to do, Geralt?" "Not punch him!" "He said you were a monster!" "I am!" "Do you want me to punch YOU?" "Geralt, I lost my dagger. It was in one of the bandits we chased away." "Geralt, will you teach me how to use a sword? Nothing fancy, just how to kill something."

"But above all, they're loyal, and loving. Ever so lovely. They'd die for you, if you treated them nice enough." "Thank you for telling me. I.. Have to go." Geralt stammers out, racing away to the inn he left Jaskier in. "Oh, hello, Geralt. Did you find a contact?" And Geralt yanks him close, and hugs him. He should try kissing him one of these days. Either way, Geralt won't mourn for the cat he can never have, for he has a Jaskier, and it's close enough.

[moonstruckme]

I am literally obsessed with doctor!Remus. You've opened my heart to something new hahah. If it's alright, could you maybe do Doctor!Remus calming the reader down from a panic attack? Maybe they got to overworked and just had one. It happens to me sometimes

Thanks lovely <3

cw: panic attack

doctor!Remus x fem!reader ♡ 979 words

The embarrassing part is that it comes on when you’re supposed to be having fun. Bogged down by work for weeks now, you’d thought you could meet up for coffee with friends and get through some paperwork while they chatted, but you should have known better. James Potter leaves no man behind, and you keep being pulled away from your work by his relentless geniality. One second James is talking to you about he and Lily’s debate over what color to repaint their kitchen, the next an invisible hand closes over your windpipe. 

“I’ve got to—I’ll be right back.” You stand as composedly as you can, beelining for the coffee shop’s restroom. You can hear your heartbeat like the pounding drum of doomsday. You can feel it in your teeth. You rattle the restroom door, but it’s locked, and you press your back to the wall, gasping around the nausea and panic clogging in your throat. You try to remember what you’re supposed to do. There are things you can do, things that are supposed to help, but nothing can help. Nothing can save you from this.

“Hey, let’s sit down,” a calm voice says. Remus. You let him push your shoulders down the wall, legs folding into your chest. “There we go. You’re okay.” 

“I can’t—I don’t—”

“Shh, I know. Focus on…focus on the end of the hall. How many chairs are there?”

You turn your head, trying to count the chairs you can see stacked in the corner. They’re hard to distinguish, and you keep losing track. You’re going to be sick.

Slender fingers sneak down to your wrist, feeling your pulse. “Breathe, dove.” 

Your head spins, an acute ache forming in your chest. “I—I can’t.” 

“Yes, you can.” You feel his touch on the back of your neck, lifting your hair. He presses something cold and wet in its place. “Like me, alright?” 

He inhales deeply. You do your best to follow. 

“Good,” he says on the exhale. “Good job, sweetheart. You’re doing so well. Keep focusing on the chairs.” 

“I can’t count them,” you tell him desperately. 

“That’s alright. Then just breathe for now, if that’s easier.” 

He picks up the wrist he’s been holding, setting your palm to his chest. You feel his ribs expand, and try to puff yours to mirror him. A dribble of water slips from the back of your neck to your collar, down your shirt. The door to the restroom opens, the occupant hustling away when they notice you on the floor. Remus ignores them, so you do too. The inhales are the hardest. He’s breathing in for longer now that he feels you can handle more. The ache in your chest is easing, but still tender. 

“You’re going to be alright,” he promises, voice low and soothing. “You always are, remember?” 

You shake your head, tears blurring your vision.

“You are. It’ll pass, honey.” 

You try to believe him.

“Want to try counting the chairs again? I’ll do it with you this time.” 

You don’t really, but you want what Remus wants, so you look up. 

“Okay, let’s start with that small stack. How many?”

You take a second, but this one is easier than the larger stack you’d tried before. “Six.” 

“Good.” His lips drop to the top of your head, the kiss so quick it’s barely there. “Now the one next to it.” 

You have to start over once, but Remus is patient, thumb soothing over your wrist while you work. “Um, seventeen. I think.”

“I got seventeen too,” he reassures you. “You’re doing so well, dove. One more, okay?” 

You nod. It’s getting easier. You count quietly in your head. “Fifteen, right?” 

“Right.” Remus kisses between your brows, mindless of the sweat you can feel sticking the baby hairs to your face. He adjusts his grip on your wrist, silent while he re-checks your pulse. “Feeling better, lovely girl?”

“Yeah,” you breathe, the familiar shakiness of the comedown taking you. You shiver, and Remus removes the cold thing from your neck. It’s a water bottle, dripping with condensation. “Thanks for coming after me.” 

“Of course,” he murmurs, brows stitching together now the danger has passed. “I knew coffee was a bad idea after the week you’ve had. I should have told you to get decaf.” 

You sigh, leaning forward until your forehead hits his shoulder. “I thought I needed the energy.”

“You’ve been overworking yourself, dove. Time to start taking more breaks.” 

After what you’ve just gone through, you can’t even argue. “Okay.” You squeeze your eyes closed. You know, logically, that you have a tendency to get teary after attacks, but that doesn’t make your fragile emotions feel any less real. You’d come here to be around your friends, and you’d ended up needing to do breathing exercises on the floor outside the bathroom. “I’m sorry.” 

Remus is used to the aftermath too. He rubs heavy circles into your back, kissing the shell of your ear. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for. These things happen, and all we can do is whatever we can to keep it from happening again, but no part of it is your fault or embarrassing. Understand?” 

He’s speaking to you softly, remonstrance gentled, but he waits until you nod against his shoulder to go on.

“Good. Ready to go home?” 

You raise your head to look at him. “Shouldn’t we stay for a bit?” 

Remus gives you a small smile, clasping your trembling hands between his. “I think you’re going to want a nap in a minute here, sweetheart. They’re our friends, they’ll understand.” 

You laugh a little, and it rings of shaky nervousness. “I guess you’re right.” 

He stands, encouraging you up with him by your joined hands. “I’m always right, dove. The sooner you figure that out, the easier things will be for both of us.”

[sykokilljoyy]

secrets - wroetoshaw imagine

request: none! however it does kind of link to a few :p words: 1538 warnings: little bit embarrassing i can't lie. implied smut, allusions to sex, but generally just a lot of second hand embarrassment.

tl;dr: harry and y/n have been seeing each other for a while, but the secret's out when harry accidentally exposes some very intimate truths

“Come on, Harry,” Simon laughed, glee written all over his features. He holds onto JJ for support, who chuckled beside him.

“Boys, this is awful!” Harry‘s cheeks were burning, laughing along in front of the camera, which was setup haphazardly on the astro-turf football pitch.

“You said you would do it!” Ethan yelled playfully, holding his friend to his word, “At least give us odds.”

“Fine. Odds of 1-10,” Harry sighed.

It was just a stupid forfeit. He’d accidentally hit the goalpost and due to the rules of the Sidemen Sunday, he would have to do the next 3 penalties with his shirt off. It was the middle of January, so the bite of cold was nipping at his neck already, intruding through his layers of clothing.

“Bet,” Ethan giggled from behind the camera.

“Alright, boys,” Simon called, “3…2…1…”

“Six.”

“Six.”

“Fuck!” Harry cursed, a pit of nervousness pooling in his stomach.

The boisterous whoops and laughs from his friends helped to spur him on a little, but he had never been very confident in front of the camera, let alone topless in the middle of winter, outside the safety confines of his flat. A little part of him was beyond thankful that you were here, tucked behind the camera to help with filming. None of the boys knew, but Harry and yourself had been seeing each other in secret.

It started with just hanging out after filming every so often, grabbing lunch or rides home, just enjoying getting to know each other as a little more than acquaintances. This, however, turned quickly into a couple dates, which fell into long nights and messy mornings, legs tangled in his bed and hands reaching to wherever they could. Not that either of you were ashamed of the other, but there was a certain thrill of keeping it all under the covers that neither were fast to get rid of.

“Come on, Bog,” Ethan hollered. This triggered a wave of ceremonious chants, something along the lines of ‘get your tits out’ from his friends.

Sighing in defeat, Harry shook his jacket off hastily, presuming that if he just gets it over and done with, it’ll be less mortifying. Cheers continued until he was down to his last layer, only himself noting the memory of you wearing this exact t-shirt in his flat the night before, he tried not to think of the fact it still smelt like you.

As his lifted the shirt above his head, the blush dusted upon his freckled shoulders very visible, silence fell on the group. Now, it really wasn’t often that this hyper group of men were dead silent, but after seeing the litter of hickeys cascading down Harry’s chest, sensual scratches marking the skin of his back – a pin could drop and it would sound like something nuclear.

Behind the camera, you blushed deeply, pulling the hem of your hoodie to your nose to hide it. Your eyes followed the lines of the scratches on his back, the memories of the night before still more than fresh in your mind. Averting your gaze to the floor, you could feel your cheeks on fire. Luckily, your friends were all too distracted to notice.

“What?” Harry was immediately self-conscious at the unexpected reaction, pulling his shirt to his chest to cover himself. It was only when he caught a glimpse of something crimson, that it clicked.

“Oh fuck!”

Ethan was the first to laugh, a cackle that broke the shocked tension, the dam of silence bursting open as all of his friends jump to embarrass him.

It was a perfect overreaction, realistically it was only a couple hickeys and such, but as Harry had been historically private about his love life to his friends, this was an ideal opportunity to grill the youngest Sideman.

“Are you dating a vampire or something?” Josh joked first, earning a robust reaction from the group. Followed by waves of playful digs at the already embarrassed blonde boy, who was sheepishly pulling his shirt back over his chest.

“Who knew Harry was getting laid so much?” JJ was flabbergasted, playing up to the camera for a reaction.

“Seems like a very satisfied customer,” Simon chuckled, ruffling Harry’s hair – much to his discomfort, he pouted like a kid.

“Ask her yourself, isn’t that right, Y/N?” Josh chuckled.

He had only meant it as a joke. He had no idea of your relationship, only meaning to embarrass the boy further, as he knew Harry found you attractive.

However, when the pair of you froze like deer in headlights, your throat dry as you try and stutter a whimsical response, panicked eyes darting to each other for support, Josh’s eyes blew wide like dinner plates.

“Oh fuck, was it actually you?” All eyes were on you now, your heart pulsating loudly in your chest, waves of embarrassment hitting you. There was a reason you stayed behind the camera, the pressure of attention being directly on you made you crumble.

Harry knew that, so he spoke loudly to drag eyes back to him, now fully-clothed, “Yeah, uh, we’ve been seeing each other for a while now.”

“I knew it!” Tobi called, turning to Simon with a victorious grin on his face.

“Fuck!” Simon cursed, “I said it was bullshit.”

“How did you know?” Harry asked Tobi, blush still tainting his cheeks.

“Harry, you practically can’t keep your eyes off her when you think no one’s watching,” this made you flustered, avoiding Harry’s dazed eyes.

“Fuck sake,” JJ interrupted, everyone turning to him as he fiddled with the camera, “Does that mean we can’t use any of this footage now?”

Chuckles rose from the group, but ultimately it was down to you and Harry to make that decision. His gaze found you, blue eyes laced with affection and a tiny bit of an apology for the embarrassment. Now that the cat was out the bag, he couldn’t care who knew. Of course, there was a terrifying reality of the fans reaction, but you’d been shipped so many times it seemed redundant by now.

“No, it’s okay, I don’t mind,” You smiled nervously, Harry looking at the football on the ground to hide his boyish grin, kicking it around a little at his feet.

Before everyone hopped back into recording the Sidemen Sunday, returning to their football forfeits, he made his way to you, whilst his friends were distracted retrieving the footballs that were kicked haphazardly across the pitch.

“You okay?” He asked softly, his cold hand ghosting over yours. The pair of you were used to keeping things out of the public eye, subtle glances, fleeting touches, whispers shared whilst no one was looking.

“I’m nervous,” You replied gently, feeling tense under his watchful eye.

“Don’t be,” His head dropped to kiss your cheek carefully, letting his lips linger on your icy skin, a safe way to reassure you that he was there.

It was only small; a gentle expression scratching the surface of his affectionate ways, but your heart skittered at the feeling of his hand playing with yours and his warm lips pressing against you. The strong scent of his cologne hit you at the closeness, the heat radiating from him in the bitter January air. You were still riding the coat tails of a silly schoolgirl crush as he pulled away, the exhilaration of being able to touch him outside the privacy of closed doors spurring you on.

Reaching up, you touched his cheek savouringly, leaning up onto your tip-toes and pressing a kiss to his lips. His hand slipped under your jacket and onto your clothed waist, pulling you towards him only lightly, smiling into the kiss once he felt the corners of your lips curl. Pulling apart, he hid his flustered blush by placing a kiss to your hairline.

“Do you want to get dinner after this?” You enquired hopefully, playing with the strings of his hoodie.

“Only if I can get a couple more of these,” Harry whistled playfully, pulling the collar of his jumper down to reveal the tender, crimson love bites.

“Harry!” You buried your face in his hoodie, embarrassment heating your cheeks promptly, his chest stuttering as he chuckles at your flustered reaction.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” He giggled, and you peeled yourself from his embrace, glancing over to see the rest of the group getting ready to film again.

“I’ll take you somewhere real nice, to make up for it.”

“I’m gonna hold you to that, Mr,” You punched his bicep lightly, pushing him away, back towards the camera setup, “Now, go film. I’ll be here when you’re done.”

He nodded, pressing a quick final kiss to your cheek before jogging away sheepishly, batting away the childish calls and digs from his friends.

You watched him happily, smiling at the way he carried himself, the light in his eyes as he joked and battled with his friends, an extra pep in his step as the secretive weight off his shoulders were lifted. He was finally able to care for you in public, to touch you, hold you, tuck the hair behind your ear and kiss you gently without worrying who would find out, and you the same.

It would be hard, when the video releases, and the audience would see the announcement, but you weren’t worried. As long as he was with you, you wouldn’t be scared.

However, you weren’t sure you’ll ever live down the hickeys.

[dynamic-swap-au-archive]

I'd like to offer gorillaz fans (and Potential gorillaz fans) another resource that I've spent over a year creating and perfecting.

The Gorillaz !

This playlist is, to the best of my ability, Every Single piece of gorillaz content that can be found on youtube in story order.

all of the music videos, all of the indents, all of the interviews, animations, radio shows, news specials, podcasts, audio books, tiktoks, Everything.

on top of that ! I made the decision to include select fan content! because Frankly the gorillaz fandom is unimaginably talented and creative. this includes Fully animating several music videos that were cancelled, but given to us in animatic form, original animations, animatics, and storyboards, fan visualizers and recreations of live visuals, even voice fan dubs for written material like the interviews and novels.

and more than that, with the (incredible) fan content that was available I've Also been able to flesh out the stories of each phase! a decision I made due to the plastic beach, the third album, never getting to finish the story officially (leading to the band breaking up and coming back 7 years later).

I'm so proud of what I've been able to do with it ! and even happier to share the picture I've been able to make as a whole :>

below the cut I'm going to include several other playlists that are based on this one, but made to be more digestible and less intimidating for newcomers ! as well as many other resources to fill in the gaps that this playlist can't ! (namely the written material)

thank you ! and I hope I can share something I love with all of you !

First is the simplest ! all of the music videos in order ! (plus a Few indents, because I can't help myself): [Link]

this obviously means that you lose out on quite a bit of context, as much of who the characters are as People and their relationships together are in the extra material (especially the shorts and interviews). BUT

this is the most Accessible, and also really convenient if you just want to vibe to the music. if you're not sure if you want to commit this kind of time to a cartoon band, consider checking this out! you may find yourself interested enough to learn more, or you may just have a good time and feel satisfied with what you've seen ! either way I'd be honored to have helped :>

Second, the Midpoint between these two extremes !: Phase 1-3 [Link] Phase 4-7 [Link]

these Include extra material like the shorts and animation, but Cuts Out some of the longer content like the podcasts and interviews! you can still get a pretty good idea about what happens in the story of each phase watching this, but it's not bogged down by videos that are hours long.

it'll give you a clearer picture of what's going on, include fun side content, while being less intimidating than the Full playlist. this is what I use to show my friends gorillaz !

alright, so you've got just the music videos and just the short stuff, now lets try just the Long stuff. all of the interviews, radio shows, podcasts, Etc: [Link]

maybe you've used my last playlists and now you'd like to listen to some of those long form videos you missed out on. maybe you just want to listen to these characters talk because it's Nice. either way, it's all here :> (I know, because I had to upload some of them myself)

Pirate Radio: [Link]

it's all here with One technical exception. pirate radio was the serial radio show for plastic beach/phase 3, that gave us insight into murdoc's frame of mind as a character. it Also used copywriten music. the reuploads on youtube cut the music out (likely because they wouldn't be available otherwise), while this google drive has the full unedited audio files if anyone would be interested!

this one may seem redundant, but I promise it isn't. All of the gorillaz albums in order: [Link]

this playlist (for the most part) doesn't Have any visuals, it's Only the music.

likewise, all of the music in the previous playlists are only those songs that Have visuals (official or fan made), which means not all of gorillaz's music is present! which is exactly what this is for :>

you have every album in order, filling in the gaps of what's been missed, As Well As special albums that are Associated with gorillaz, and gorillaz' guest appearances in other people's music !

now we're out of my playlists and into other resources :>

Lobotomy Pop: [Link]

this is a website that's worked for years to preserve and organize Every Single written interview gorillaz has ever done ! it's an invaluable resource and really just very cool.

it also categorizes several other things ! such as listing out all of the personal playlists the gorillaz members have put out over the years, or every profile that's ever been written for the characters ! it's very much so worth checking out as a fan.

Gorillaz Art Archive: [Link]

exactly what is says on the tin ! this is a google drive that's attempting to archive Every Single piece of official gorillaz art that was released from phase 1 in 2001, to phase 5 in 2018. it is Massive and it's such a joy to have access to

The Kong Files: [Link]

if you were wondering why the art archive stopped at 2018, this would be why ! the kong files has much the same goal, but instead picking up at phase 6 and continuing on Theoretically forever ! or at least it's kept up with all of phase 7

that said ! the kong files is attempting to document Everything relating to those phases. so all of the social media, all of the music videos, all of the written text, Everything !

I wouldn't try to Only use this for watching phase 6 and 7, but it's an Excellent resource for everything that could fall between the cracks

Rise of the Ogre on Archive dot Com: [Link]

rise of the ogre was an official novel released at the end of demon days (the second album/phase 2), that covered the entire history of the band up until that point! their backstories, how they met each other, what they'd gotten up to in the 10 years they'd known each other, and the shocking event that happened at the very end of the phase and the band's reaction to it. all leading in to plastic beach, (arguably) the Most story heavy phase of them all.

as I understand it, this novel has been out of print for a very long time and is quite expensive to buy second hand. so ! it's been scanned and uploaded here to the archive! there's actually several more scans available in the gorillaz art archive, but this is the most recent (having been uploaded just earlier this year).

Dawn of the Ogre: [Link]

dawn of the ogre is the fanmade sequel to rise of the ogre, attempting to fill in the gaps of what happened at the end of phase 3, the 7 year gap, and up to the (then) newest point of canon.

this is, of course, unofficial. so this is essentially fancy fanfiction. But it's extremely well done fanfiction that happens to be novel length, attempting to emulate the style of the original novel, and is fully illustrated. along with being available completely for free!

I'd definitely give it a shot, if you're the type of person who's already read rise of the ogre

the gorillaz wiki !: [Link]

I have no clue what the fandom thinks about it, but it was absolutely invaluable both in making my playlist, and becoming a fan at all. with all the work I've done my hope is that people won't need to go digging for themselves, but the Option is certainly always nice !

I'd Especially like to highlight this page [Link] which has transcriptions for all of the pirate radio show episodes !

I feel like there's a lot to find here :>

and of course, my own dynamic swap au archive! [Link]

if you've fallen in love with gorillaz and are desperate for more to sink your teeth into, then I couldn't recommend this enough !

keep in mind that these resources will continue updating ! as new music is created and new fan content is made! I'm keeping my eyes out on a fan project for a fully animated mv right now that I'm sure will make it to my playlists one day :>

[myoddessy]

hellooo congrats on 2k!! not sure how to phrase this request but some 🍰 please for harry/w2s. maybe about being seen in the backgrounds of his videos/features on other videos sometimes? or the things he mentions about you on camera if thats not too much trouble! congrats again! and if head cannons are easier thats great too

thank you so much! im a bit rusty when it comes to blurbs so i hope this is okay 💞

it was no secret that harry had found his forever in you, anyone who was anyone could see the shift in his smile or the glint in his eye when you caught his eye. be it a fleeting look of shyness on your instagram story or tiktok, a short clip of your face popping into the background of a video, or even a flash of your face in a pop-up add as he scrolled through social media.

it was as if the boldness and unabashed bravery of wroetoshaw melted away for a split second, and the world saw harry for who he truly was; a boy in love.

now, with a love that open and observed, privacy was a luxury you rarely found yourself in possession of. whether someone tweeted that you were on a date down a quiet city street, or the detectives of your fanbases debunked every picture, comment, and clip about either if you until you were certain they knew more about your relationship than you did. and as grateful as you were that there was such a wide reception of love for you and harry, the lack of secrecy lead to you cowering away from video cameos so that any moments you did managed to share stayed between you and you only.

that being said, you couldn't honestly say you hadn't fallen down a rabbit hole of your w2s and sidemen pop-ups before.

your favourite was during the sidemen become parents for 24 hours challenge, when harry was in a murderous state and little baby nathaniel would not stop screaming, ethan caught a glimpse of you walking down shop street and yelled for you just in time for harry to release the child from a chokehold.

with a confused smile and hands stuffed in the pockets of your northface puffer, you walked towards them, unaware to the cameras panning in on the softened eyes and uncontrollable smile of your boyfriend.

"well, lads. you alright?" you asked, voice trailing off to a higher pitch when you saw the screaming doll dangling from harry's grip, his hand wrapped loosely around its ankle.

"doing just fine, birthed a beautiful baby boy. bog couldn't be happier." ethan joked, hand clapping down on the younger man's shoulder. "he won't shut up." harry said, blowing out an exhausted sigh. "help us, please." you sucked in a harsh breath, toying with them. "dunno if i shouldn't, wouldn't that be breaking challenge rules?"

"i will literally pay you." harry shook the baby's leg in your face, emphasising his pain.

"just do the washing up for the rest of the week and we're sorted."

"deal."

"hand me over the child then."

ethan's focus bounced between you and harry like he was watching this unfold in wimbledon, unsure of who to look at throughout the exchange, before settling with staring at the camera, blinking slowly as harry handed you nathaniel. you bounced the doll in your arms, shushing him and swaying slowly, your hand running up and down his back as if it were real and second nature.

would never say it, nor did he think he even could, but a sense of urgency washed over him in that moment. like he wouldn't breathe until he saw it again, except real, with your child—his child. with a shake of his head, the thought dispelled before his cheeks got too red, but anyone could see the far-off look in his eye, and he worried that anyone who looked too close would see the reflection of domesticity behind it.

in the span of a minute, you'd gotten nathaniel to calm down, and with a laugh of good luck and a happy wave, you left before any other sidemen could approach and see them getting outside assistance.

over the years, the clip had been reposted, edited, referenced by the world as the love they yearned to see in their partner's eyes, and you loved every second of it. now, with two diamonds weighing your left hand down and a bump in your stomach, you sat before the camera once more, this time with purpose. this time to confirm to everyone that the dream harry held in his eyes three years ago was finally upon him.

his forever was set in stone.

[scorpioriesling]

Heyy, I just saw your Prompt Request Masterlist. As I scrolled down there I haven't seen one with Cassian yet.

I wondered if you'd like to write a Cassian X reader with 35 + 37 + 41 ? Pretty please?💕💕

Thank you so much for all the lovely content, can't wait to read more from you✨

Sing To Me

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *

Pairing: Cassian x Siren!Reader

Warning(s): mentions of blood / war

Summary: Your escape turns out to be more than you ever could've imagined. Leaving behind your old habitat didn't necissarily mean leaving old habits; what will happen when you put them to the test in order to save a gorgeous bat-in-need?

SR's Note: I'm so excited for this ask -- and you have to follow my tangent here, alright. I know this concept is a little funky maybe, but I hope you enjoy it and how it ends! I had a blast writing it for you. This uses prompts #35, #37, and #41 from my masterlist! xoxo Tags: @cynthiesjmxazrielslover

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *

Love was never easy. You knew that, in your long life of 478 years. You'd come to accept that over time, you may never fully experience life the way you'd dreamed you would -- you were destined, doomed to the worst fate in Prythian. A fate not many would ever understand.

Until you'd met him.

Another bitterly cold day under the water in the bog, the near pitch-blackness of it impossible to see through to the naked fae eye.

Good thing you weren't fae.

The other sirens swam about, but the heat of their bodies didn't provide any comfort as chatter of the looming war chilled your blood to the core. The others spoke as though this was a mere form of entertainment -- but not you. You found it hard to relate to others of your kind, ever longing to look like the beautiful mermaids and water wraiths that dwelled in the glittering waters of the courts. But, you were bound to this bottomless, dirty, dark pit for eternity.

When the war had finally begun, you knew it was a chance to escape. This, you decided, would be your way out.

You'd followed the stream, tail whipping violently through the murky waters for what felt like days on end. You didn't stop, even if it meant taking a slower pace at times. You left your belongings, only sparing the necessary healing items you may need.

If you were swimming into battle, you'd surely find those in handy.

After ages upon ages, the water began to thin, the dark, muddiness of it fading away as chrystalline waters beckoned for promise ahead. Even halfway between the dank water and the clear blue of the ocean, you'd found it hard to adjust your eyes to the blinding light from above. You were more adapted to the cloudy skies of the bog whenever you felt corageous enough to break the surface of your home lagoon, but this... this was so clear and vast that it took effort to adjust to the change.

When all of the filth had subsided, you noticed a few dark tendrils floating alongside you. They shone beautifully in the light, the sun reflecting upon them, framing each hilight and contour. Your hair. It was beautiful, the muck washing away with each movement of your head.

Gods, it'd been ages since you'd seen a mirror. The broken glass you'd kept didn't work too well in those murky waters.

Looking down, you decided you were quite alluring. The black pearls that stretched over your shoulders, covering most of your breasts only accentuated your moon-white skin. The feathery, ink-black tail that powerfully bobbed behind you... you understood now, why sirens were the ones that could call to any male and get an answer, not mermaids.

The water was glinting with sunlight, but as you kept swimming, you noticed odd shapes floating within. First, a trunk floated by. Then, a few red fruits bobbed along as you continued on your way, gripping your black fishnet bag tightly.

You finally understood the reasoning for the odd objects as you continued your trek.

Pieces of splintered wood cascaded around you, one piece pricking your finger when you reached out to grasp it. Ouch. But more than that, the water was rather... disturbed, ahead. Splashing from the surface indicated as much, and with every stride closer, you could hear roaring, voices, screams-

Splash!

All of a sudden, an anchor was being lowered just in front of you. The heavy iron had your eyes wide as it sank to the ocean floor, and peering up at the surface, you saw more than just the sunlight casting glow after glow throughout the water.

More items began breaking the surface, sinking heavily all around you. First, a bed. Then, random broken bits of china that looked as sharp as the wood. No touching.

A body.

Two.

Blood everywhere.

Your pupils dilated, the scent of blood filling your nose as male after male drifted along, blood pouring from them in delicious crimson waves. The sight was mouth-watering, the lurch in your stomach almost too much as you realize you hadn't feasted in days-

No. That wasn't why you'd come. You came to help, to change your ways -- eating those you'd hoped would accept you wouldn't do you any good. Though they were already dead...

You violently shook your head, longing to clear your mind from the insatiable, hungry, ravenous plaguing thoughts. Loud echoing sounded from above, almost lous enough to hurt your ears. You winced, drawing closer and closer to the surface.

Sploosh!

You rear back, your hands flailing wildly to avoid the sinking ship before you. The flags pulled in water with their wake, threatening to tangle you up and drown you had you not swam away. The wood of the ship's architecture cracked, sinking under it's own weight slowly. You would make out the gold lettering on the side as it fell.

N.

ES.

T.

A.

Hmm.

You swam above it, watching as the Nesta fell slowly, the large explosions above the water pinching your eardrums. You closed your eyes hard, bracing for the shock, waiting to break the surface-

Your eyes flew wide as you gasped for air, your lungs filling with smoke. The scent, the air, all of it; you choked, couching and wheezing as you treaded to keep upright. When you finally cleared your lungs, you looked around, really looked. So many ships, so many warriors on them, so many-

Bang!

Another explosion sent a ship up in flames, and you crossed your arms before your face to sheild from the blinding light. Screams all around, so much pain...

"Cassian!"

You heard the screaming before you saw him. A bird, a bat -- he fell from the sky, large wings crumpling and broken as he headed for the water. You knew this was it. You had to go, you had to go now.

You couldn't swim fast enough and watched as his body cascaded into the water before you. Too far. He was too far. You swam faster, coming to the surface to look for him. Surely, he'd fallen near here? You couldn't miss an enormous pair of wings, but... no matter where you looked, you only saw broken bodies and shattered wood. No him, anywhere.

You dorve underneath the surface once more to continue swimming, but that's when you spotted it -- those mangled, shredded wings drifting delicately in the water. You frantically swam to him, reaching to grab him, help him, but he fell out of reach.

He was sinking.

There was no way you'd get him back to his ship, you couldn't even leave the water; and he was too heavy.

You wrapped your arms beneath his shoulders, wrapping tight before kicking your tail with all your might in an attempt to bring you both back to the surface. It worked, a little. You slowly made your way up, his wings as fragile as a jellyfish tentacles. You made sure not to touch them.

When you finally broke the surface once more, you gasped, hauling him over a flat piece of wood and turning his face to yours. Gods, he was glorious. Your hand searched for his heart, a pulse to reassure you he wasn't dead -- you found nothing.

Panic set in, and you racked your brain for what to do in a situation like this one. You weren't used to healing or helping the fae -- usually, you would simply lure them in and have them for dinner.

Healing. That's what you needed to do.

A tidal wave almost pushed him off the wood, but you clung to him in an attempt to keep him grounded upon it. Thinking quickly, you shoved the mass, steady enough to keep him afloat but quickly to avoid being seen, avoid any more destruction. Land, you'd thought. He needed a stable place to rest, for you to work -- the shoreline.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *

"Cauldron damned, you better be worth saving."

You grumbled as you hauled him ashore, as far out of the water that you could reach without completely exiting it. It took massive, exhausting effort to get him here, but the deserted coast would be perfect for your attempt to revive him.

You slung your bag off your shoulder, the action slashing wet sand onto his cheek. You grimaced, reaching out to brush the wet sediment off. Your fingers lingered only for a moment as you stared, his handsomely carved features stunning you.

Heal him.

Right.

As you began digging in your bag, a strangled cough sounded beside you. Your eyes fixated on him as his chest heaved, a more sound cough echoing in his throat. He kept going, coughing, gasping, reaching for air-

Then he slowly opened his eyes. The milky chocolate brown orbs roamed wildly, first taking in the sky, then double-taking when he saw you.

"H....Holy SHIT!" He shouted, frantically pushing up onto his elbows and staggering backward. You flinched, a little afraid something like this would happen. His chest heaved wildly, his wings attempting to flare but only resulting in a pained groan and a hand on his ribs.

"It... it isn't good to move around in your condition," You offer, gently placing a hand on his shoulder. His eyes tracked the movement, growing wider and wider at the touch.

"What are you... who are you?" He asks, his hand still bracing his side.

"I'm... here to help you," you say, and his face contorts in pain.

"What?"

"Lie back down." You say, pushing lightly on his shoulder. To your surprise, he doesn't argue, but simply lies on his back, groaning with the movement. You move close again, leaning over him to get a good look.

"I... I think I can help, with your wings," you say. His nostrils flare as pain crashes through him again and again.

"Why." He asks lowly. Your brows knit.

"Why... why what?" You ask, reaching for the seaweed salve you'd brought. You extemd a hand to apply it, and he jerks backward, his steely glare holding yours.

"Why are you helping me." He grits out. "Why are you?"

"Y/N, is my name." You say, and he looks you up and down, at the tail curling into the water behind you.

"And you're... a, what? Healer? Mermaid?" He quizzes.

You sigh heavily. "Something like that."

He sits straighter, his gaze softening only slightly. "How do I know you're not working for Hybern?"

You knit your brows again. "High Who?"

He reads your expression, the corner of his lips tilting upwards. "Nevermind," he says, scootching closer. "You said, you have something to make it," he winces in pain again. "Better?"

You nod, showing him your balm. "Yes I do," you say. He sighs, contemplating his choice. Finally, shaking his head, he extends his wing to you slightly.

You press your fingers to his wing, near the tip of it and run them along the spine gently. Turns out, his wings are not feathery -- they're quite leathery. Strong.

He groans in pain again, and you gulp as you scoot closer, your hip touching his in the sand.

"What is your name?" You ask politely. He glances to you, and you suck in a breath. Gorgeous.

"Cassian," he answers, and you trail your fingers lower, brushing the weeds closer to the base of his wings. He continues to flinch in pain, and you try your best to distract him.

"From?"

"The Night Court." You nod solemnly.

"I've heard of it. The Cursebreaker; the High Lady, she dwells there." He nods, chuckling a bit.

"She sure does."

It's quiet for only a moment as you reach for the wing on the other side, not quite finding it with your fingers.

"And you?" He asks. His eyes meet yours, and you realize how close you'd become to his lips. So... decadent, practically begging to be chewed-

"Where do you dwell?" He asks. You shake your head lightly, repositioning to sit on his leg to better reach the other wing.

"I'm from... a few places." You settle on, and he shakes his head slowly.

"So mysterious. A pretty, dark-tailed lady comes to my rescue, and won't even tell me where she's from?" You blush, his kind words to foreign to your ears. He thought you were pretty.

"Well.. uh, why thank you." You blubber. He chuckles, his straight white teeth gleaming in the setting sun. Your pupils begin to dilate.

"What would help you relax?" You ask, adjusting your position but only slipping right onto his lap. His large hands grasp your exposed waist, steadying you but not your racing heart. And... mind.

"Well, my best friend's mother used to sing to me when I was young and in need of comfort," he suggests. "Always calmed me down."

Sing. Gods, this was going horribly.

"I... can't sing." You lied. His hands held firm as you continued to work the balm across his wing, and you couldn't help but feel flustered.

"Oh, neither could Rhys' mom," he huffed a laugh. "I promise I won't judge, even if it really is bad," he shrugs, his deep eyes peering into yours.

You gulped. Maybe, if you sang with no ill-intent, you wouldn't seduce him? He wouldn't fall into your gift-given trap, as all the other males did?

"Well, singing you shall have then, Cassian." You cleared your throat, and he looked up at you with a small smile. You began your song, singing with more love and affection than hunger and desire. You could only hope he would respond well.

You hadn't realized your eyes drifted closed until the end of your tune, and you opened them slowly to look to your new companion.

"That. Was. Beautiful." His arms wrapped around your waist, his hands pulling you closer to him. You squeaked, gripping his shoulder for stability.

"No, I-"

"Y/N," he said, his voice more gravelly and low than before. "You absolutely can sing. You're a good singer." He smiled lazily. Great. Your attempt to give him the benefit of the doubt didn't work.

"Thank you," you responded, scooping the last of the salve from the tin to spread over his wings. When you went to rub it on, he moved it out of reach. Your brows knit, and you looked at him to see a playful smirk on his face.

You reached again, only for him to move back at the last second. You scowled softly, turning your attention to his face once more.

"Cassian." You warned, and he chuckled brightly at you.

"You gotta... be quicker... than me," he drawled, his hands rubbing up and down the exposed skin on your waist. You lunged for his wing, almost getting it before he reared back again.

"Cassian!" You reprimanded. "Do you want me to heal you or not?" You said sternly. He only howled, laughing and smiling happily while looking up at you.

"Ahh, Y/N," he sighed. "You're cute when you're angry."

You rolled your eyes, but the blush in your cheeks told a different story. His fingers trailed up, brushing against the skin of your shoulders as he looked longingly, lustfully at you.

"You know... actually, we would make a really cute couple," he chuckled again, and you shook your head at his nonsense as you attempted to move from his lap. His rather... hardening, lap.

This was not good.

"Cassian, come on, let's get you into the shade so you can sleep this off, okay?" You said kindly. His fingers traced along your jawline, brushing a piece of damp hair behind your ear.

"I will... if you admit you're a good singer." He smiles cheekily.

You groan. "Ughhh, Cassian, please, will you just shut up and-"

"Kiss me already." He whispers, his gaze fully entranced on you. His pulse was prevalent, his neck vein throbbing as he leaned closer. He looked so damn delicious, you could almost take a bite-

You gently caress his face, pressing his lips to yours. Your insides knot, the hungry feeling rising as he moves his lips against yours. You almost break when his tongue slides against your bottom lip, but keep it together enough to pull away. His pupils are almost as blown wide as yours.

"Y/N-" he groans.

"We need to get you to the shade," you insist.

"I wanna kiss you again," he whines. A small smile plays on your lips at his words.

"Soon," you say, kissing his temple.

As soon as you sleep this spell off, anyway.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:

[izzabela]

Seeking Peace [pt.2] - Bi Han, Tomas x fem!reader

in which you go back go bi han after his reflection and redemption

a/n: i think i'll make this an optional pt.2 for the people who liked how the first story ended. this will be fun to write for though- thanks for the request @livingdeadgirly !!!

a/n: I'm in pain thinking of hurting my pookie... but if i must....

ship[s]: tomas x reader, bi han x reader (mk1)

warnings: angst for sure, reader is incapable of conceiving, fluffy end, no (y/n) bs, AND ITS LONG

Ever since Bi Han's appearance at the Shirai Ryu compound, his confession, and his promise, you couldn't help but think about the years that passed, and everything that's changed between you, Bi Han, and Tomas.

As Bi Han had been reaching his absolution, you, Tomas, and Kuai Liang would pay visits to the temple-compound of the Lin Kuei. At first, you stayed away from him, not wanting to let your heart be broken again. But with every visit to his home, every little conversation, gift offering, or some other version of an olive branch, you found yourself opening up to him again.

You'd like to think this started after the sixth visit of Bi Han to the compound. Kuai Liang and Tomas were out on a mission, and Harumi was busy teaching the initiates about katana-wielding. It left you and Bi Han alone in a weird silence. In the entertainment room, green tea steams from intricate ceramic cups in front of you, and the rice cakes you offered remain untouched.

"You look well," Bi Han states, "How are you and my brother? I hear from Madame Bo you are hoping for heirs."

You sigh, playing with your fingers as you open up in rare vulnerability.

"If I am being honest, it hasn't been going well. We had gotten news from the doctor that my body is not capable of conceiving..."

It's quiet, but you feel good being able to talk about your problems. You felt bad for not being able to give Tomas a family of his own, even though he said it was alright. Regardless, it didn't stop the dark thoughts and depressive feelings that rose from your heart and mind. Beating and bogging you down for not being able to provide, not being able to do your part.

Tomas didn't blame you, not one bit. He knows that creating a child is a two person job, and it's the man who determines almost everything about the child. He even asked the doctors to have his sperm counted to see if it was enough to have a child. Surprisingly, Tomas was just fine, it was simply your body not bodying.

"You know Tomas does not blame you," Bi Han stated. "A man who blames his wife for something like this is no man, and Tomas would never do such a thing."

You nodded, agreeing and wiping a single tear that fell from your eye.

"I'm not sure why I'm crying," you laugh weakly, "You're the fourth person to tell me it's not my fault, yet I cannot believe it."

This was out of Bi Han's control. Motherhood, pre-conception, pregnancy, and post-pregnancy, was something he did not know in full depth. He wouldn't dare give you false hope, nor say the wrong thing, especially with a topic as heavy as this.

You rest your hands on the table, finally calming down from the sadness that gripped you for a bit. Bi Han takes this opportunity to hold your hand, resting it over yours and squeezing it tightly.

"Whatever you need darl- uh, my friend. I will listen, offer my presence, anything you need. You can lean on me."

======================

Another memory arose from the depths of your mind. This time, it was when you realized Tomas no longer had your heart.

A couple of months after you and Bi Han were left alone in the compound, you and Tomas decided to pay a visit to the Lin Kuei's temple-compound, which you could now travel freely to. In this particular visit, though, you saw Bi Han in a new light- and there was no way in stopping how brightly it shone in your heart.

You and Tomas were greeted warmly by the assassins, as well as some of the medics and healers. A couple of familiar faces also show up, Madame Bo and Lord Liu Kang, who show you around the new and improved temple.

Various technological advances were achieves with Bi Han's ambition. A mixture of tradition and modernity grace yours and Tomas's gaze, watching how the Lin Kuei train in traditional weapons and firearms. You look up and see Bi Han, overlooking the courtyard where the initiates train.

His air felt... different when you saw him commanding his clan. He looked confident, happy-ish, and proud, the semblance of the man you married before back. At the same time, though, you felt sick. You, who had confidently stated he would never be able to win you back, felt your resolve crumble. It hurt you even more when you realized that, as much as Tomas loved you, you did not love him the same way.

You loved his comfort, not his character. You loved his help, not his heart.

Heartbreakingly, you loved his presence- not his whole self.

You remember the fight you and Tomas had the night after your visit.

"So, after all these years, I never really had you, did I?"

"Dear, please," you beg, "I didn't expect myself to be like this either!"

He sighed and sat at the corner of your shared beds, "I gave you my comfort, offered you my support, held you when you allowed it! Did it mean nothing to you?! Did any of this mean anything o you?!"

You shook your head, "Tomas, listen! You misunderstand me, my dear. Your love has given me a revival I never thought I could achieve. Your love and support made me whole again... but..."

He looked at you, finally understanding what you were about to say, "You never loved me, only my presence."

You sighed, "I didn't want to be alone, and selfishly took you as my own in fear of it. I only realize now of my feelings and actions."

You watched Tomas sit down with his hands burying his face, and his shoulders begin to shake. You couldn't blame him, though, because the woman he loved so much would be leaving.

"Will I truly be alone? Just like how mother and sister left... now you... will I ever be able to have someone by my side?"

You rushed to his side and hugged him, "I believe you will find someone who loves you for you. Someone who will value your entire self, and the love that you embody."

He took you in his arms and you both hugged for the last time, inhaling his scent, tracing your fingers over his hands, muscles, and everything else on him. Your foreheads touch and Tomas cups your cheek, you nuzzling into it and stare into his eyes.

"Please, dear, do not forget me," he pleaded, "Do not forget what I gave to you..."

"How could I?" you told him, "You lifted me up, and I only wish you find someone who will do the same."

You planted a kiss on his forehead, and slip the ring off your finger to hand to him. He accepted it and watched you leave in the night.

=====================

When you appeared at the gates of the Lin Kuei base, an assassin on guard alerted Bi Han on your presence and state of being. You were shivering, one hand gripping onto a light fur pelt and the other holding onto a duffle bag. You stood by the fire post that was at the entrance, falling sleep due to the warmth.

You woke up in a bed, surrounded by warm comforters and heavy furs. Your clothes were all laid out, folded neatly, and you heard the door open, revealing Madame Bo. You smiled softly and waved to her, to which she reciprocated and came closer, food and water on a tray. You accepted it graciously, eating it as she watches you.

"You know, darling," she began, "There wasn't a day that went by without Bi Han thinking about you. He truly wanted you by his side when he got through his promises."

So he, too, didn't forget about me... you thought.

Bi Han entered your room in a rush, having slammed the door open. Madame Bo smirked playfully and walked out, waving her hand at you and passing Bi Han, patting his back on the way out.

"Are you, feeling alright?" he asks wearily, "You were out cold by the fire at the entrance. I took you in myself. I hope you didn't find it disturbing."

You shook your head, "I'm fine, dea- er, uh, Bi Han."

He took a deep breath, catching your slip up and poor recovery. He took the opportunity to come close, way past your personal bubble, and sit right next to you on the bed.

"You came back," he said exasperated, "I thought you said you-."

You remember putting a finger over his mouth, shushing him and using your other hand to hold his face. It's slightly cold, but you find it rather warm.

"Time healed my wounds a little quicker than predicted."

As you got comfortable with Bi Han again, you were afraid Tomas, Kuai Liang, Harumi, and the Shirai Ryu would paint a target over your back, but you were wrong to think so low of them. Tomas's heart was (and still is) bigger than that, more mature, and it was in the form of a letter he sent stating how he would always love you, even after all of this.

You remember the closing line of the letter as well- You taught me to love, and I'll never forget it.

=====================

At this point, many years had passed since the betrayal, even more since you left Tomas and the Shirai Ryu. Amazingly, the relationship between the clans and brothers improved greatly. The clans worked together to protect Earthrealm, traded information and goods to each other frequently, and even fought in joint missions together.

Bi Han and his brother's healing also went swimmingly. Bi Han remained a little aloof with his brothers, unsure of how they still loved and trusted him after the pain he caused, but over time grew accustomed to their warmth. He was still stubborn, and a bit prideful, but he accepted his brother's criticisms, comments, and most importantly, love. Of course, Bi Han still being Bi Han, it would take eons for him to say "I love you" back to his brothers, but he would say other stuff in its place.

"I cherish you both", or "I understand", even a "thank you, brothers," was said with such softness and tenderness, it still shook the other boys. Even so, they took it with open arms.

Currently, you lay with Bi Han in your shared master room, sleeping peacefully in his arms. Wrapped in his embrace, the slight chill his body had felt warmer than any fire could provide. Your peaceful dreaming was interrupted by the wails of a child, crying in a wooden cradle directly across from the feet of the bed.

You get up to tend to the child, but Bi Han beats you to it, planting a kiss on your head and lulling you back to sleep.

You still couldn't believe you were able to conceive, finally having a child and starting a family you dreamed of since, well, forever. Nonetheless, a healthy baby girl. Seems the doctor back in Japan gave you poor results.

You hear Bi Han humming a children's song, rocking your daughter back and forth in order for you to be able to get more sleep. You watch with tired eyes as Bi Han lightly kisses her head, gently putting her back down in the crib.

You remember telling the news to Tomas and Kuai Liang, and them being so happy for you and Bi Han in creating a family. They visited you with gifts ranging from diapers, to swaddles, even unisex jammies for your baby girl. They respected your distance when you asked for a month before visitation, and as soon as it was up, they were at the door of the Lin Kuei's home, bringing even more gifts.

Tomas had also moved on, dating one of Harumi's friends. From both the letters and visitations, you saw how she loved him, and how he loved her- this time, with the full intention of giving everything to each other. Sometimes, you'd get letters from Kuai Liang with a couple of picture of Tomas and his new lover. The same smile he gave you was back in full force, beaming with pride in all of the pictures his lover was present.

Honestly, sleep was out the window for you, so you get up and join your husband's side and watch over your daughter together. He feels you, wrapping his arms around your shoulder as you wrap your arm around his side.

"Please rest, darling," he pleas, "I have this covered."

You yawn, "It's too late now. Besides, your family is coming over today and I want to get ready a little bit earlier."

Kuai Liang, Harumi, Tomas, and his lover would be coming over to see their niece and discuss clan-related issues. You both take the opportunity of your child's slumber to bathe and get dressed, getting ahead of the game before your daughter woke up.

Just as you finished putting your dress on, your daughter woke again with cries, to which you head back to the crib and take your daughter out, rocking and cooing at her to calm down. As you calm her down, you grab a baby toy and walk to the dining area, shaking the little toy to keep her distracted.

You're lost in the laughs of your baby to not see that Bi Han's entire family is at the table too, way earlier than scheduled. They're talking amongst themselves before turning to you, and Harumi immediately screeches for her niece.

"Oh, look at my darling little baby! Oh, how I've missed you," she praises and coos, gently touching your daughter's puffy cheeks. You laugh and hand Harumi your daughter, joining your husband's side. It seems Bi Han and Kuai Liang were a little too enraptured in their conversation, and you lock eyes with Tomas's, his gaze leaving his sister-in-law's.

He mouths to you, You look happy, my friend. Peaceful even.

You nod and smile, As do you, Tomas. As do you.

=====================

guys i literally love Tomas, i can't believe i had to write him in pain.

thank you once again for the request @livingdeadgirly !!! i def took some creative liberties on this, but the initial request is there.

should i write about kuai liang next? or perhaps someone from the earthrealm players team (as johnny puts it)? i have a fic idea using either a laufey or zeph song, i just can't figure out which character

comment to give me some ideas, and i'll see yall in the next fic!

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

EEPY

[buzzyb33]

OMD pls pls pls i beg u babes ur hc r sooooo good a dad Simon minter would be a great hc in my opinion anyway love youuu

Prompt: head cannons of Simon minter with a wife and two kids- twins!

Warnings: swearing, pregnancy,

Finding out you were pregnant in the late January 2016 wasn’t too nice, you and Simon hadn’t really discussed family, you just knew he wasn’t opposed to the idea.

Building up the courage was pushing time, so going at it and getting him as he edits a second channel video.

“Si? Can I talk to you?” I say and sit on his beanbag.

“Hm? Yeah, course.”

He pulls his headphones off and looks at me, noting the unsure look on my face.

“I’m- pregnant.” I say finally.

He smiles at me then let’s it fall.

“Is- that a good thing?” I smile back.

“I- was hoping so..” he grins and pulls me into a tight hug.

“It’s a great thing n/n- I know we haven’t really spoke about it but- it’s a wonderful thing..”

From then on he came to every scan and happily told the boys that I was pregnant, JJ was dumbfounded that his best friend was married and now expecting.

Halfway through the pregnancy you got very interesting cravings, Simon still loved everything you did.

When your waters broke you were 8 and a half weeks pregnant Simon was with you At every moment, squeezing your hand and soothing you through it all.

He grimaced slightly but stayed there.

When the nurse let you hold your baby boy it was all worth it, Simon held your baby girl, the joy on his face was unmatched.

The next day Simon announced on Twitter that he’ll be having a break from his channels and only present in main sidemen videos.

A month later, Y/n happily agreed to let the boys come over to see the twins (which had been named Aaron and Aria).

JJ, Josh and Freya came round first to see the twins which JJ was instructed by me how to hold them.

He smiled a cooed at Aria while Josh held Aaron and Freya hurried him so she could hold him.

“Y/n, I got you a little bag, for you.”

She hands me a bag and I smile.

“Thank you Freya.”

I adjust my position and Simon talks to Josh and JJ, him holding Aria and me holding Aaron as Freya coos at him.

The next to come see them was Tobi, Harry and vikk though it was clear Harry did not trust himself to hold them.

By this point, I was almost fully healed, my stomach had went back to normal but I was still recovering a bit.

I sat next to Harry as Tobi asked him if he wants to hold Aaron.

“Nah- boys, I’m fine I just- wanted to make sure si and Y/n was alright? Yeah- you know.”

He spewed out with rosy cheeks.

“Harry, let me show you how to hold him, it’s alright.”

I smile and he hesitates as Tobi gently hands me Aaron.

I fix his arms and let him hold the baby boy, his eyes light up but his lips twitch, still not trusted in himself.

“Relax, Bog.”

Simon laughs.

Vikk is completely mesmerised by Aria as she squeezes his index finger.

“Awe, Simon..”

I let a smile play on my lips as Harry holds him.

As the other boys come round over the months the babies start smiling more.

Simon wore the baby carriers on his chest, Christmas 2018 was their first Christmas and Simon was so good, he loved them and gave them all equal attention, I worked in law which I didn’t mind doing from home as they needed the attention.

Simon was more than happy when his daughters first words were ‘DaDa.’ He was so happy.

“Y/n! Come here! Quick! Sh- Ari just said DADA -say it again honey..”

He sat there until she said it again.

He was ecstatic.

As they got older, Aaron showed his love for basketball while Aria did football.

Simon tried to hide his excitement that one of his kids had an interest in football.

When they were three he signed Aria up for under 5 girls football and Aaron for soft ball (as he was too young for basketball)

He went to every game with me and occasionally dragged one of his friends along.

Simon was always caught having at least one of them hanging off his limbs.

When they were four and developing their own opinions, Simon was in for a treat for how much his son spoke.

One day when he was recording a more sidemen video- standing up- Aaron sauntered into the room.

“Well no- that’s not how you play the game JJ, are you-“ Simon scoffed in an irritated tone before being cut off by his door opening.

“Daddy-“ his voice trailed off.

“One sec boys, yeah Aaron?”

“Can I sit in here with you? Ari said that- the dogs don’t like me.” He said as he rubbed his eyes.

“Mate- yeah okay.”

Simon bends down and puts his son on his beanbag with his iPad.

“Did you just call your son ‘mate’?” Ethan laughs.

Another time was when all four of us went to the park and me and Simon just sat together, in peaceful noise as other kids giggled and screamed around us.

I smiled at him and really took in the moment, he was a great father, we had good money and good kids to raise, we were gonna mould these kids into who they were.

During the sidemen penalty shots Aria went up and smiled proudly- she had dark brown hair like her mother and her Fathers dark blue eyes.

“Hi daddy!” She called as she got the ball into position.

“Hi honey!” He grinned back as he got ready to save the goal.

“Simon! Don’t be a bitch! Save her shot!” JJ called as Simon laughed and agreed.

For a five year old- she packed a shot- scoring as Simon went the other way.

He frowned at the fact he missed it and Aria grinned.

“Bye daddy!” She said and ran off to the sides.

“Bye honey!” He called back.

During times of dates and your and simons… alone time, Josh and Freya or Vikk and Ellie to babysit- maybe Callux but he always got help.

Simon absolutely adored his kids, his wife and overall, the way his life had turned out.

When Faith found out she was pregnant in February of 2022 Simon immediately dumped every single baby detail and fact he knew on Ethan just so he was at least a little bit prepared for fatherhood.

As of times like now, the twins are six and thriving in their sporty lives and Aaron was socially, not so much Aria as she was a lot more introverted (maybe a bit more clever) than her brother.

(Simon also info dumped on Randy when Laura was pregnant with harper)

Out of all of his friends, Aria loves Callux the most and Aaron loves JJ the most, Aria doesn’t leave his side, frankly she cried the last time he had to leave.

Aaron also likes Ethan a lot as he says funny (stupid) things that makes him laugh.

At 6 years old the two seem to have a very bright future which just causes simons heart to quadruple in size.

A/n: I’ll be honest, I had not much idea about soft things so..

Request me some stuff though!! I did mostly enjoy writing this and there will be a grey FIC out on Wednesday!

If you want you ask me to add to this specific story.

REQUEST ME SOMETHING 🙏🏽

[breadandblankets]

CivE Duke - inspired by this post by mysterycitrus

This was one of Duke's favorite parts of his job. Not that one, the other one, the civilian one.

"Duke Thomas," his mother had told him when he got his engineer's seal crimp in the mail. "Is every bit Gotham's hero as much as The Signal is."

Every other week it seemed he donned his steel toed boots, hard hat, and high vis and went to look at the bones of some old building.

Most days were sat at his desk in a nice comfy high rise in Old Gotham, eyes glued to the searing white of some ancient as-builts on his screen. (As-builts, especially in Gotham, were more of a suggestion than a rule, his team had started calling them "Maybe-builts" and it fit more than he'd like.)

Gotham, in Duke's experience, had good bones for the most part. Even caked in years and years of grime, asbestos, and mob snitches, there was beauty in pulling away the facade to look at all that union-made bessemer steel.

Today on the chopping block was a Park Row mid-rise, slated for either refurbishment or demolition, all depending on Duke's word.

It wasn't anything even close to the rush of saving a life, but there is a light feeling he gets, knowing that some old structure can be reused.

Duke knows its a little silly to get sad when something old is beyond saving, especially when he signs over it's death.

"It's like a forest fire," his dad had told him once, after he watched his first controlled demolition. "You gotta burn out the dead things so new things can live."

This building though, Duke has a good feeling about it. Or at least that is what he tells his trainee, Ines, while he scans the building with his X-ray vision.

Ines Borja is a bright kid fresh from the hell that is Gotham U's CivE program, she's not a Gotham native but while living here she fell in love with the city (and it's cost of living). According to her, New York isn't much worse, Gotham's just weirder.

Weird is, unfortunately, Duke's bread and butter. They pick through delapidated rooms with crumbling sheet rock with mostly intact concrete encased steel. He spots some areas with crumbling concrete that he points out to Ines, who dutifully takes photos.

"Those are areas we'll need to test for water penetration and corrosion," Duke explains.

He's explaining other testing that will need to be done, radar of the foundation, metallurgical testing, etc, when they hear yelling outside.

For a moment Duke ignores it, but the hard walls carry echos of what's being said.

"I'm not going to ask again, your money asshole!"

The flat thud of a notebook hitting the ground is the last thing Ines hears as Duke takes off like a shot.

His site walk boots are heavy, much much heavier than his Signal boots. They're for protection and insulation from the hard concrete he has to stand on all day. They're so not meant for running, he thinks as he barrels out of the survey site and around the corner.

There are two figures in the alley when he stomps into the scene, slipping his hard hat off. The mugger is on the younger end, thats about all the analysis Duke gets to do before he sees the gun.

It's nice sometimes, Duke things, as he spins like a discus thrower, to fight normal city problems. He's liable to get bogged down in big world ending shit that sometimes its just nice to save a mugging victim.

The reinforced plastic leaves his fingers in a rush, aimed straight and true, slamming into the gun in the mugger's right hand.

Both the mugger and muggee have a moment of shock before Duke slams into the first guy like a freight train, knocking him out of the confrontation and onto the ground.

"I'd advise you sit down for a moment," Duke says to the would-be mugger, flatly. He turns to the shaking older man.

"Sir are you alright," he asks politely.

"I am now," the older man, well dressed but not wealthy in the way that Duke knows people in the town are. "Thank you very much."

"Alright then," Duke says calmly, he fishes in his pockets for one of the many business cards he always keeps on himself. It's for a therapist, and a good one in Duke's opinion. A profession in too short supply in Gotham. "Might be best if you get on with your day, I'll stay with this young gentleman here."

The older man is clearly a true Gothamite, because he doesn't protest, just moves along. Probably not even the most traumatic thing the guy's witnessed in the last year.

Duke turns to young man on the ground, who hasn't moved a muscle from where Duke put him just a second ago.

"Hey man I don't want any trouble."

Ines chooses this moment to catch up, her skin flushed and she's panting, She is still carrying all the gear with her, which no doubt slowed her down.

"Bit late for that yeah?" Duke questions with a raise of his brow, he motions with his chin in the direction of the gun. It's a couple yards off, resting comfortably with his hard hat. "What's your name?"

"David sir, i-its not even loaded, just to scare people a bit," all comes out in a rush, the young man, David, is clearly terrified.

"Hey, I know, it's hard out here," Duke placates. Out of one of the seemingly endless pockets on his work pants he pulls out his wallet. Out comes two more cards and a couple of bills. "Listen, here's fifty bucks, go get yourself something to eat."

"I-"

"Hold on, I'm not done," Duke says. "This is the information for Leslie's clinic down the street, she can help you with a lot, or just point you towards someone who can. If you need anything else this is the Wayne Ent outreach office, the director there is Elaine, tell her Duke sent you."

"You- you're not going to call the cops?" David asks, bewildered.

"And have them do what? You're robbing a man for twenty dollars with a gun that has no bullets," Duke observes. "You clearly don't need jail time you need a hand."

As if to illustrate his point, Duke reaches out to help him up. David hesitates for a split second, before accepting the offered hand.

"Seriously thought," Duke continues. "Leslie and m-Elaine helped me though some of the worst times of my life okay, reach out to them, they can help, you're not in this alone."

David looked like he was about to cry.

"Thank you man, just thank you."

"Just looking out for my fellow man," Duke replies. "Now get going I got work."

David laughs a little at that before shuffling awkwardly by Ines. Duke turns to look at her.

"You are like, officially the coolest boss I've ever had," she tells him seriously.

"No way, didn't your last boss bow hunt wild boar?"

"Yeah but that's jack all compared to my Apparently incredibly based current boss."

Duke chuckles: "You don't even know about my teenage years."

"What, you were doing child anti-cop anarco-communist action?"

"More or less."

"Based as fuck," she says, amazed.

Duke just shrugs.

"My mom always said: never accept the world as it is, make it better. And so I do, so i will."

Duke turns a little, to look back at the mid-rise that will have new life breathed into it sooner or later.

So I will.

[illuminatedferret]

Happy followers! If you don't mind, my prompt is the word "cute!"

Phew! Alright, it's been a few days, but I have a fill for you! Thank you! And this is the last of the ficlet prompts, so thanks again to everyone who sent one in! I hope y'all liked the ficlets you received.

Xie Lian wasn’t much a fan of the heavens truth be told. He was happy to reside elsewhere and only ever visit.

Still, when he had to go, he preferred short visits, getting in and out without being bogged down by the plethora of meetings and requests he knew the other Heavenly Officials wanted to make of him. Sometimes he cared more about this than others, and thus acted accordingly.

“Your Highness, you’ve taken up a new spiritual weapon, I see.”

Xie Lian halted in his tracks, turning to face the man who’d had the balls to address him.

“General Pei,” he greeted the martial god. “Yes, E-ming wanted to come with me, so San Lang and I decided to swap spiritual weapons for the day.”

In his arms, E-ming vibrated with displeasure, unhappy with the interruption and the pause in pets Xie Lian had been giving it. Its eye narrowed threateningly at Pei Ming. Spectating from a healthy distance, many Heavenly Officials shivered and backed away.

“No, no, E-ming, you said you would be good today,” Xie Lian lightly scolded the blade. His words were firm, but his hand resumed idly petting the blade, so the overall appearance he gave was of someone who didn’t really care about what he was saying, much to the discomfort of the observing officials. “No attacking the officials. We’ll be done here and back to San Lang in no time, alright?”

Pei Ming, amused as always, laughed. The rest of the officials took his words for what they were and scattered, not a single one sticking around to ask for his time. Wonderful! At this rate, perhaps he’d be able to catch Hua Cheng before he left the Gambler’s Den.

However, there was still one left, wearing a humorous expression as he watched E-ming.

“What are you doing, General Pei?” Xie Lian asked. He wasn’t sure he wanted the answer, but the man was so clearly examining E-ming that he had no real choice.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just checking.”

“Checking? For what?”

“If it still grows when you pet it.”

“...”

Xie Lian stared at the man with an empty face, saying nothing. A long moment passed, and Pei Ming’s brows were just starting to twitch, before Xie Lian looked down at E-ming and said, “him you can fight.”