#i still have the transcripts of the conversations but

[shazzbaa]

(audio from portal 2!) This is how that dream conversation went right????? au where everythings the same but poor edward is from the west country,

ANYWAY LMAO HI I've been learning animation just to make this!! FOR SOME REASON!!! IT TOOK TWO WEEKS TO ANIMATE. this quote was my IMMEDIATE thought as soon as Poor Edward said "I've had to make ALL the sacrifices for this marriage!" so i just needed to bring it into being outside of my brain. tbh IM PRETTY PROUD OF IT...... anyway sweet dreams samuel!!

[video transcript] [Poor Edward, from below, gesturing with exasperation]: I've done nothing but sacrifice to get us here! And what have you sacrificed? [Cut to Samuel, feeling around him to figure out that he's in a coffin, panicking as the sides start closing in] Poor Edward: Nothing. Zero. [/end transcript]

additional notes:

thren and I both did the riot rather than burning down the orphanage, so instead of burn scars, Edward got his hands broken. He might have new skin but making a fist is still a lil lopsided,

one of the friends in our flondon group has been making an impassioned case for Edward favouring regency-era looks and I must admit ive adopted this into my belief system, so thats leaked into his outfit here. i havent been keeping sam's outfit historically accurate tho so i dont know why i think this is something i need to clarify

this animation was done in Krita, which is a free open-source program that was pretty easy to get the hang of -- Jesse J Jones and Animate with Dermot had tutorials that helped me a lot if anyone else wants to try it!

[galedekarios]

talking with my friend @voliialpha reminded me of how much content was cut from gale going from early access to the full release version of the game:

the two biggest scenes that were cut:

-the deer stew scene -the loss scene (which included another way to start the romance with him)

shorter ! conversations:

-his reaction after the fight in the abandoned temple of jergal -his reaction after you failed to save arabella / stood by to watch it happen -his reaction after talking to the paladins of tyr and agreeing to go after karlach -his reaction after edowin and the tadpole reveal -his reaction after mayrina giving ethel's wand to her or breaking it -his reaction after handing astarion over to the gur or defending him -his reaction to reaching the druid grove for the first time -his reaction to the player killing lae'zel after they feel the symptoms of ceremorphosis and comforting them -his reaction to reaching the goblin camp & looking for halsin -his reaction to killing the druids -his reaction to priestess gut & the brand & the cult of the absolute -his reaction after killing dror ragzlin and talking to the dead mind flayer -his reaction to the bugbear and the ogre couple -being able to give him the necromancy of thay book to read (not as an item to consume) -his various reaction after you dealt with ethel or made a deal with her -his reaction to the zhentarim chest -his reaction to the myconids after entering the myconid colony for the first time -his reaction to arabella dying

these were all conversations, marked with a !. some of the lines used in these conversation survived as ambient one liners ("the loot isn't for your pockets only." line for one).

i didn't realise it was this much. i was thinking about making a post with the actual transcripts of these conversation because it's just sad that they are all gone now. they gave a lot of insight into the character.

one of the few conversations that did survive are his reaction to nettie poisoning the protag, his story after saving mirkon, the story about the yawning portal after stepping in front of sazza, and his reaction to saving arabella from kagha.

[royalarchivist]

Cellbit: It's- it's good to see you man.

Roier: Elegante. Man, it's a pleasure man, it was a pleasure to- um um, to rescue you and Felps. It was.

Cellbit: I was so happy when I saw you there. It made me realize...

Roier: Oh man, me too, me too...

Cellbit: We can't waste time, you know?

Roier: Why?

Cellbit: Well, we cannot waste time, we- we never know what- what will happen next.

Roier: Oh, yes yes... Yes, maybe I die tomorrow!

Cellbit: Yes! Yes, exactly. We cannot waste time.

Roier: Maybe the Federation kidnap me tomorrow.

Cellbit: Maybe they are homophobic, you know?

Roier: Yes, may- yes! Yes, that bastards!

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

yknow what minor transient detail abt s4 is fun to me? prior to john's reveal, noel apparently assumes the KIY to be a totally unfamiliar character to them both. he pauses his story to give background info on him ("he rules the dreamlands, he's a master manipulator, etc") in a way he doesn't with other stuff. he points out yellow like "that's the bitch btw. if you were curious." which is. like he knows they were in the dreamlands. i think he knows or at least assumes they were in the pits for a while given they ran into lorick. what does he think they were doing there. just. passing through??

[felassan]

June 14th 2024 Developer Q&A (from the official BioWare Discord) - Complete transcript

Under a cut due to length.

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 second Q&A (August 30th)] | [Link to video recording for second 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 `˶ )

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

----

Katey: Hello!

John: Hello.

Katey: Beautiful, your mic sounds beautiful. How's everybody doing?

John: Excellent. I, just as a headsup, I have some folks doing some service, in the next room so, if I, if you hear background noise, that's what that is.

Katey: No worries at all. Well I hope that everybody who's been waiting in here is really excited, because I'm super excited. I'm Katey. I'm the Community Manager. If you don't already know, you can usually see my name at the top of this Discord server. But I'm joined here with some awesome guests that I'll let introduce themselves. Let's start with Corinne.

Corinne: Can you hear me okay?

John: Yep.

Katey: Yep, we can hear you beautifully.

Corinne: Great, perfect. I'm Corinne Busche, Game Director of Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

John: Awesome. I'm John Epler, Creative Director of Dragon Age: The Veilguard.

Corinne: John!

John: Hello.

Katey: And then we've also got Matt Rhodes, who may be struggling to find the unmute button which is at the bottom left.

Corinne: Our, our resident artist-poet, Matt Rhodes.

Katey: I could unmute him, actually, I don't know if I can unmute him, but if he needs help, he can message me on the side.

John: The joys of being a giant nerd is I spend a lot of time on Discord anyway, so.

Corinne: Well there you go, right?

Katey: Fair enough. Alright, well, we have a ton of questions to answer. We probably won't be able to get to all of them today. You all have sent in so many really really great answers, sorry, questions for us to answer. And if we don't get to them today, we're hoping to be able to do things like this in the future. So without further ado, I'll get started. First question's a bit of a soft ball, I feel. If you could belong to any of the main factions shown in the game, which would you choose?

Corinne: I mean, listen Katey, you say softball, but like, this is hard! I’m gonna cheat, and I’m gonna give you two. So for fashion, the Antivan Crows, all day long. Their threads, you’re gonna love it. For vibes, though, like the ones that capture my vibe, Mourn Watch. Gimme those necromancers.

John: Those are good answers. I have, I have one for fashion, and also for, just general faction I’d like to be a part of. Veil Jumpers. Who doesn’t like a nice walk in the forest, y’know? Even if that forest is filled with horrifying monsters and terrifying anomalies, but yeah.

Katey: I love that. I know that Matt has a few technical issues – oh, he’s unmuted. There we go. Or maybe not. That’s okay, I think we can move on.

John: The Fade has taken Matt.

Corinne: That’s right, that’s right.

Katey: Yes. One quick thing, if you check your settings, the cog-wheel in the bottom left, make sure that your voice, like, your audio is all good. If you’re still hearing the music, feel free to maybe, force-quit Discord and rejoin by just joining the stage directly. And mute the music before you come in. Okay. I can move on to the next question for now. I’ve seen, so this question was from Acra. I’ve seen a lot of talk about only having two companions in your party instead of three for this game. What is the reasoning behind this and will we still get the same companion conversations and banter as seen in the previous Dragon Age games?

Corinne: Ooh, this is such a good question. Thankyou, whoever submitted this one. Yeah, I’ll guess I’ll start and then I’ll turn it over to John Epler. So, first of all, as you saw in the gameplay reveal, this is a much more intimate experience. We’ve pulled the camera in. For those that aren’t aware, the reason why is we want you to feel like you actually are in this world, right? Like, you’re walking these city streets of Minrathous, you’re looking up, seeing the buildings all around you, you’re a part of this place. So it’s much more intimate, and we believe as the narrative unfolds this creates a lot more immersion. Now, how that relates to companions is in doing this, we went back and forth on it a lot, but we actually found, with this perspective, having two companions, really allows them more visibility and presence. We’ve talked about the incredible depth and focus we’ve put on fleshing out these companions, they’re very fully-realized. So here, you really get to see them more clearly, you get to see them shine. When you see Lace Harding jump into the air and unleash a volley of arrows, you can only really get that because of that more intimate view. So I love the spotlight that’s been put on them. But, I think, in addition to the banter, one of the things that people are wondering about is, okay, but what about gameplay? So again, this has come about from our testing, working with the internal team, also our lovely Council of players. We just found that when you’re playing in the combat system, when you’re planning your strategies, two really felt like the right number to manage. So keep in mind, Rook has a lot of different types of actions, Abilities, individual attacks that are more fully fleshed-out than ever before. Timing and positioning matter a lot. So this really felt like the right balance to have. The number of inputs and actions we’re asking you as a player to take, including directing your companions, is higher than ever before. And I will also say, I engage with the companions, like I actively control what they’re doing more than I ever have before in any of the other three games. But John, I’ll toss it over to you for the banter. That’s kind of like the, we got a two-for-one there.

John: Yeah, yeah.

Corinne: I think that’s a, a great question.

John: So - it’s a great question, yeah. I mean honestly, I don’t think you could actually stop the writers from writing banter. I will say for myself, it’s, it’s one of the more light but fun things to do. You get to write little stories, little arcs between different characters. And I mean, The Veilguard is no different. Banter is still absolutely core part of it. You know, we’ve got global banter, you know, the general stuff that you get in all spaces, as well as mission-specific stuff. But, yeah, it’s definitely still a big thing. I think it’s, if anything it’s the most we’ve, we’ve ever done for pairings of companions. Beyond that we’ve also made sure, and I mean I’ve been on Dragon Age for a while, and I know there’s been issues, you know, things like, okay, well I don’t wanna miss this banter. So we’ve even added stuff like some interruptible and resumable banter as well, just to make sure that, because again, it’s a core part of the experience. Everyone loves hearing these companions talk to each other, everyone loves hearing these little stories and relationships develop over the course of the game and, as mentioned before, companions are the heart of this experience and banter is a big part of that, so, you still have it, it’s, if anything, like I said, you could not stop the writers from doing it even if we tried, so.

Corinne: That’s right, that’s right. Well, John, you know, listening to you speak, one thing that comes to mind, maybe people are wondering, with two companions in the field do I get less interaction between, that, like do I get to see my companions interacting in a broader group more often.

John: Oh -

Corinne: And, the way you’ll gather them around the kitchen table, there’s just so many of those moments where they’re all interacting with each other.

John: Well, I think –

Corinne: Those are some of my favorite parts.

John: Yeah, and I think, yeah, and actually that’s a, a good call, because I think the other side of it is, we’re not talking too much about your home or anything, but, we also want to make sure that they feel like they have a relationships and a life outside of just, the times you take a certain pair of companions out on the field. So we made sure that, they have those interactions there as well.

Katey: Love that. Let’s see. Um, Matt, are we, are we all set, are we good? Yes? No? Okay. I can continue and we can come back to some of your questions. Alright. So that, I loved the answers to those. How customizable is the backstory of Rook? Will we get to determine their past in the Character Creator? And that was asked by Briar.

John: Yeah, so. Absolutely. So, one of, each, Rook has six different backgrounds that you can choose from. Each of them is tied to one of the major factions in The Veilguard and each one sets out who Rook was before they recruited, were recruited by Varric, and. Well that sets out the broad events. As you go through the game, as you’re gonna have conversations, either with members of your faction, other characters, you can define, not just what those events were, but what they meant to you, what was your motivation, what was the kind of person you are as you build up Rook, because again, we wanna make sure that roleplaying is at the heart of this experience. And taking Rook, giving them, again, giving them background to ground them in the world but then letting you decide what that means and what that says about you is also a big part of it, so. And again, there are six different factions in this game, two which, anyone who’s played Dragon Age for a while will remember. You’ve got the Grey Wardens. You’ve got the Antivan Crows. We also have, in addition to that, we have four new ones, because we’re in northern Thedas. We have the Veil Jumpers. We have the Mourn Watch. We have the Shadow Dragons, and we have the Lords of Fortune, so. Again, a lot of different options, a lot of different background, and a lot of opportunities to really define what your, who your Rook was, and who they are now, so.

Katey: Amazing. Will crafting return? If yes, has it been improved over the system in Inquisition? Asked by Some Dude.

Matt: Testing.

Katey: Oh hey Matt!

Corinne: “Some Dude”, is that, I’m gonna assume “Some Dude” is a username. Great question.

Katey: Yes.

Corinne: Welcome Matt, the lovely Matt Rhodes.

Matt: Testing, testing.

Corinne: Welcome, welcome, hello. Alright, so, will crafting return? You can absolutely improve and customize your gear, yes, that is a big part of RPG progression, so yes you can improve and customize it. I will say, though, it’s different this time around, and it does get into spoiler territory, so I, I’m gonna be a little bit cagey about it, but there might be a mysterious entity that assists you with that that’ll be an important part of the narrative.

Katey: So mysterious.

Corinne: Oooh!

Katey: Matt, I’m gonna actually go back to our first question so that you can answer, so everyone knows.

Matt: Thank you.

Katey: What faction, what faction you would choose if you could choose one for yourself?

Matt: Absolutely, oh, for me it’s definitely the Lords of Fortune. I’ve had a chance to try out a bunch of them, but I think I’ve finally settled on them. And it’s largely just because pirate-barbarian is just such a great combination of elements, so. Treasure-hunting plus beaches and palm trees and all that stuff, it’s a, it’s a really good mix, so that’s kinda my default.

Katey: I think I’m with you there, for sure. How about this one - this one was definitely asked probably amongst the most in Discord. Axolotl asks, can we kiss or romance Manfred the skeleton?

Matt: Uh, I, I would say, not that skeleton, but we’re not saying no skeletons.

Katey: I love that answer.

Corinne: This is my favorite answer so far.

Katey: Alright, so I’m gonna get back on track here. Alright. What, what were some of the development considerations that you had to take into account to ensure that this new game flows and functions with prior games, and Dragon Age Keep, if Keep is being utilized?

Corinne: Ooh, that’s a good one too. So, first of all, I would, I would point everyone to, we did an interview with IGN that goes into some of the details there, so, like, if you want a deeper dive on it, check out that article. But just to summarize, we have taken a different approach on how you import your decisions this time around. It’s now actually been fully-integrated into the Character Creator, and kinda serves a dual purpose, to be honest. I, I playfully, it’s not called this in-game, but I playfully think of it as ‘Last Time On Dragon Age’.

Katey: I love that.

Corinne: Right? Now, when I talk about its dual purpose, it’s been ten years since the last Dragon Age game released, so it serves as a refresher on critical events as well as allowing you to re-make those decisions that are critical to you. The thing I love about it is, it’s very highly visual, it uses the familiar tarot card aesthetic, so it’s actually really visual and playful experience as you go through it. It is very much important to us that it’s built into the client, though. You can play this game entirely offline. No connection. You don’t have to link to your EA accounts, like that’s been a really big request. So, the refresher plus make those decisions in-client, I think we’re all pretty happy about that. I don’t wanna spoil anything by revealing what decisions you can import, like, look, y’all don’t want the spoilers, but I will say, it’s been a really interesting creative intersection for us, because on the one hand, this is a whole new adventure. You’re in northern Thedas, these locations that you’ve literally never been to before. So that affects some of what will matter and what we’re not using this time around, as far as decisions. But obviously there’s some very, very clear connections to existing characters. It’s no secret that the Inquisitor, our dear Inky, is gonna show up, so, that’s, that’s a factor.

Katey: Peachy asks, will this next game be an open-world game, or is it just contained to Tevinter?

John: Yeah, that’s a great question. So, you are in northern Thedas, but the game only begins in Minrathous, it doesn’t stay there. I’m, I think one of the most exciting things for me, honestly, and again, to Corinne’s earlier point about spoilers, I don’t wanna get into too much spoiler detail, but getting to go to, and work with the art team, work with the narrative, work with the design team to build out these locations that we’ve talked about. Places that characters have referred to as where they’ve come from, places that characters, obviously, in previous games, have hailed from, has been absolutely exciting. So, it’s, you do start in Tevinter, you do start in Minrathous, but again, that’s not the entire game by any stretch. So yeah.

Corinne: Yeah, and the first half of it is, is it an open-world game? We’ve gone back to what we believe delivers the best, most curated –

John: Mhm.

Corinne: - intense narratives. So, this is a hand-crafted experience, it’s mission-based. Now, these locations can open up. You can go back, solve mysteries, do some really great side-content. Not fetch-quests, not grind-quests, some really great side content.

John: Mhm.

Corinne: But, I wanna be clear. It’s, it’s a really curated, hand-crafted experience.

John: And just to, just to bounce off of that very quickly. The most important thing for us, to what Corinne was saying about hand-crafted, obviously we’ve talked about how, you know, narrative, story, characters, are the most, are critical to us, and this has allowed us to build these experiences in a way that emphasize that, extremely long, while still, again, tying into the story threads and the story beats, so.

Katey: Awesome. TastefulToxel wants to know - will the companions have unique specializations like Dragon Age II, or will it be the same ones we will have access to as the player in like DA: Origins, or Inquisition?

Corinne: Oh, cool. Hey TastefulToxel. Yeah, so, cool question. I think the best way for me to describe this is that, yes, our companions will have Abilities that are truly unique to them. But also, the companions do fall into the archetypes of mage, rogue, and warrior. Like, for instance, you might be surprised to hear, because she has a bow, but Bellara is, in fact, a mage, and I, I love that. So, some of the Abilities, the bulk of the Abilities of the companions are based on their own unique personality. Like, Neve is the only mage that is an Ice Mage, so you get distinct Abilities for her. But, because she’s a mage, she does have access to Abilities that all the mages share, like Time Slow. So we really like the balance there. It’s like a good mix of representing their archetype, their class, and also their distinct specialization or personality, whatever you wanna call it.

John: Yeah, actually, I would actually say the word ‘personality’ is a really great one because that’s, again, each of these characters exists, each of these characters have a history, have a story of how they became who they were, and part of that was finding that intersection between narrative and gameplay, and making sure that, again, we, we serve the needs of gameplay but also allow these characters to breathe and exist as their own people, not just in conversation, but out of conversations, as well.

Corinne: I would also say as part of that core mage kit, healing spells are there, so any of your mages, you wanna make ‘em a healer, do that.

Katey: Lunasoul Darkmoon asks, will The Veilguard have tactical combat still?

Corinne: Ooh, such a good one, such a good one. Okay. Yes! Combat gets quite tactical, like, obviously this is an evolution of the combat system, and I talked about immersion, wanting you, to put you in the world, like you’re actually living and existing in it, but it is very tactical. And, I will say, we have a robust difficulty system. The tactics are increasingly important the higher difficulty level you go. So like, look, if you’re showing up for a highly tactical experience, I would crank that difficulty level in particular. But I wanna make clear, I’m, super, I wanna make sure I’m super clear in my answer. You saw the gameplay reveal. Our pause-time tactical mode is not overhead. It stays close to Rook. It does allow you to cycle between targets, both in and out of combat, there’s a reason for that. As the game progresses, and you didn’t see this in that opening hour of the game, but it’ll display strategic information on the enemies, so like, what are their vulnerabilities, what are their elemental weaknesses, their enhancements, what are they resistant to? So your type of Abilities, learning into elemental gameplay, matters a lot. I’d also say, this is a long answer, it’s such a good question – tactical decision-making also takes the form, I would say this is front and center, of coordinating your Ability usage between Rook and your companions to create synergies, or really devastating – we call them – detonation combos. So, let me give you a couple of examples, because it can be a little hard to visualize, so hopefully this helps. So one of the tactics that I personally enjoy in my own builds, I just recently played as a Veil Ranger, I love it, it’s one of my favorites. If I’m fighting Fade-touched enemies in Arlathan, I like to use Bellara’s Galvanized Tear to pull enemies together, it’s like a gravity well. You then Slow Time with Neve and, Slow Time affects the world around you, but it does not affect you, so you clump them up, you Slow Time, and then with Rook, I come in and do, like a devastating AOE or damage over time spell or Ability, and it’s even better if it’s a lightning-based Ability, because the Fade-touched in Arlathan are vulnerable to that. So there’s so many layers of coordination and strategy and tactics. Now we did talk about the devastating, like, detonation combos, honestly, that’s probably one of my favorite features, because that’s when you’re really leaning into explicit teamwork between your companions and Rook, or, the companions together. So when I, when I build out my team and I’m going into a mission, I try to ensure that I have at least a couple of possible synergies, detonation combo synergies within my team. Might be between Harding and Neve, or it might be between Neve and me, or it might be both. So here, I would go into battle, I’d pause time, open the Ability Wheel, get information on the enemy, and the Wheel will actually tell me that there is a synergy combo, you might have seen a screenshot that says “combo available”. It will remind you of those synergies between companions. You can queue both of those Abilities up at the same time, go, close out of the pause-time menu, they’ll both execute, both Abilities will happen, then the detonation AOE happens, applies debuffs to all the enemies in a radius of it, it’s so satisfying, it’s so satisfying, I can’t wait for y’all to see it. But the interesting thing is that too is a tactical choice. I’m choosing to use my companions to do that, and that means, in that moment, I’m not using them to heal me, or to give me that defense bonus, or to knock an enemy off a ledge, so it’s about the opportunity cost. I, I could spend the rest of the session talking about this, I, apologies for being long-winded, but this is just one of my favorite parts of, of the game.

Katey: That was a great answer. Can you choose Rook’s pronouns? If yes, being, is being non-binary an option? And also, how detailed is Character Creation?

Corinne: Hell yeah you can select your pronouns! Absolutely. You can actually select both your pronouns and your gender, because those are related concepts, but they’re not actually the exact same thing, so. It’s really cool. Yeah, you can be non-binary. We have they/them, she/her, he/him. Yes, emphatic yes. How detailed is the Character Creator? Oh my goodness, y’all. Like. Very! I don’t wanna give away too much just yet, but it’s very, very deep. It has been revealed, it’s out there in a couple of articles, about the focus on hair, the focus on skin-tones that are done respectfully, full-body customization, hell yeah, we love to see it. But we’re, we’re gonna, we’re gonna come back, we’re gonna show you a lot more on Character Creator, but we wanna make sure we have the time and space to, to do that.

Katey: Will there be a Photo Mode in-game?

Corinne: So that is something we’re actively looking into. We know there’s a tonne of interest, so stay tuned on that one. But we are very much looking into it.

Matt: I can add to that, is a feature that is, that, we like, we like the idea of, and, and, it’s not just player-facing but internally, it’s a really helpful thing for us as we’re, as we’re building things out to have that so it’s, it’s, we’ll let ya know.

Corinne: Yes, yeah, absolutely. We, we are as geeked on that possibility as you all are.

Katey: A lot of people were asking about Abilities. This one is from Clemmy. Abilities, I don’t think I saw this answered yet, but are we going to be limited in how many Abilities we can pick from the Wheel?

Corinne: Ah! Yes, yes, yes. So, Ability Wheel does have a capacity. You have to choose which three Abilities you wanna bring for Rook, which three for one of your companions, and which three for another companion. And what I, what I like about this is there is, kind of, an emergent gameplay depending on who you and your companions are coming into the mission with. Now the reason for that is, it actually creates really interesting balance of strategizing, having to do that strategy about your kit, your combat kit, before the mission. And then the tactical decisions once you’re in the field in combat, deciding what to do. But, I do wanna clear one thing up, because, while there are three Ability slots for Rook, there’s so much more than that. Other actions that you can perform directly from the Wheel include, you’ll have an Ultimate Ability, associated with your class or your specialization, so there’s variance there. There’s a type of items that you’ll get that function like Abilities, they’re typically like buffs and enhancements in form of Runes. So you’ll control that for Rook and/or the team from the Wheel. You may have also seen that you can direct which targets your companions will focus on, but what you might not know is that a lot of the companion gear really synergizes with that directing your companions. When you issue those commands, that too will proc based on the gear they have equipped. Really interesting and strategic effects. They can be more Ability-like, more, like, procced effects, there’s just so much from the Wheel, that once you get in and see everything working together, becomes more and more apparent.

Katey: We have another question from TastefulToxel which is, will Fireball and Cone of Cold be back as skills, or as spells in Dragon Age: The Veilguard?

Corinne: Ohh, I love, all these combat questions, really good. So Fireball and Cone of Cold aren’t specifically back, however, their successors are. Frost Nova and Meteor. So these serve the exact same combat role and function as those other Abilities. I would also say, it gives ‘em quite the glow-up, so. Meteor in particular, like, so satisfying nuking a group of darkspawn with a well-placed Meteor, it’s really wonderful.

Katey: What accessibility features are available? I would love to know if there’s an arachnophobia mode. Will there be mod support?

Corinne: Oh my goodness, arachnophobia. I am wicked afraid of spiders too, my partner always laughs at me. I’m just terrified of them. That said, that’s one we’re going to save for a little bit closer to launch before we’ll go into full details about accessibility features. But I do wanna assure you, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this topic so you can play the game in a way that really works for you. I’m, I’m excited to share that with you when the time is right.

Katey: So this one is from a username named Cookie. How long is the time-skip from Inquisition to The Veilguard? I know we’ll probably get more info on this, but I’m so curious.

John: Yeah, so, anyone who’s paid attention to Dragon Age, and I can say as somebody who’s been on Dragon Age since Origins, timelines are always a little iffy. They change, and they morph over development as we see how long events taking. But, for The Veilguard, we were actually pretty consistent from the start. It’s been about ten years since the events of Trespasser. As you may or may not have noticed, Varric’s become a little bit of a silver fox. I know, I’ve heard, seen, I’ve seen a lot of comments on that on social media, but, yeah, ten years. Solas’ ritual is taken time to set up and you’re kinda coming in at the end of that hunt, so.

Katey: Siddy is asking the hardest-hitting question which is, is Solas still bald?

Matt: Yeah. I mean, if you’ve watched the gameplay thing, we can all confirm, yes, Solas is still bald, Solas is still Solas. We’ve, we’ve, I really, I really like how Solas has turned out this time around. I will say, here’s a comment on this specific question that’s gonna sound like a non-sequitur, but, once you get a chance to play it a little bit more, maybe you’ll see it. In Thedas, ancient elves, they go bald when they’re like millennia old, so. Solas wasn’t always bald. So if you were to end up, end up seeing what Solas looked like in the past, things might be a little different. You’ll have –

John: - Now, now that said, I’m sure some of you are wondering what happened to Solas’ wig from Tevinter Nights. I’m sure he still has it somewhere, so.

Katey: He’s just taking care of it elsewhere.

John: He’s just taking care, it’s, it’s his most important possession.

Corinne: The Pride there, huh?

Katey: I have another one for Matt. This is, will we be able to, will we be able to change companions’ appearances and outfits, or are they fixed, similar to Dragon Age II?

Matt: Yeah we, Dragon Age II was, we loved how the followers turned out in that but it was, it was sad given, given our constraints that we had to keep them with just one, one basic outfit. So we really tried to make some space for them this time around. So they’re, they still have, kind’ve iconic color palettes and things like that, but they do have a wider range of appearances that you can, that you can find for them. Some, some are just cool, but then there are some that are tied directly to their, to their narrative and just kinda what’s happening in their life.

Katey: Another one for ya, which is, will we be seeing or visiting Kal-Sharok? It’s, and, Tyrant says that they’ve been obsessed with it forever.

Matt: Yeah, me too. I, I will say, what’s, what’s been really cool, so in previous games, we’ve kind’ve alluded to this before. It was a lot of fun to hint at the locations that were off the map, the mysterious places that you weren’t gonna go, you weren’t going. And so you could just bring in some props or some characters, a piece of art, things like that, and you know, even Tevinter was only vaguely hinted at and then we would just add drips and bits and pieces, so that stuff was really fun. In The Veilguard, we’re actually getting to visit, most, like a whole lot of those locations that had only been hinted at for real, so you actually do run around Tevinter and a bunch of the other locations that we’ve revealed. But this also means, like, we’re not completely filling out the map, and so that there are actually new things that we can start hinting at, that we can start drip-feeding, and so, it’s, it’s kind’ve fun. I’d say, yeah, for what we can show of Kal-Sharok, and, and other locations, it’s just, there’s, there’s more to do.

Katey: Awesome. MrFightmonster118 asks, will the dialogue wheel slash options be similar to Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda in the sense that it’s more tone-based?

John: Yeah, so, we have a number of different types of wheels in our game. All the dialogue wheels are based off the same principle. Anyone who’s played a Dragon Age game remembers what they look like. In Dragon Age: The Veilguard we have tone wheels which are, you know, again, roleplaying your character, picking consistent tone. We also have emotion wheels where you can pick specific emotional reactions. And choice wheels which are, I don’t have a strong emotional or tone tie here but I do want to make a choice based on what I do. Investigates obviously return as well, but. We do want players to understand as much as possible what it is they’re going to be picking, and understand, and again, choice and consequence is fun, we wanna make sure the choice is clear, even if, again, one of the best parts about consequence is making sure that’s not entirely clear, so.

Katey: How extensive are Rook’s decision trees for dialogue going to be with the companions and also with NPCs throughout the game?

John: Huge. I mean, again, it’s a Dragon Age game, we wanna make sure you have choices, we wanna make sure you can choose both your roleplaying but also choose outcomes of conversations, choose how events unfold, so, I mean, again, it’s a Dragon Age game, we wanna make sure that we also react to decisions you’ve made, so. For example, you may be talking to a follower who is an elf, and if you yourself are an elf, obviously you’re gonna have a different perspective on events than someone who’s not an elf. Sometimes that means different conversation options, sometimes that’s going to mean entirely deep dialogue trees, as well as based off decisions you’ve made throughout the game so, again, making sure that the game feels like it’s noticing what you’re doing is a huge part of how we’ve written out the dialogue wheel, or dialogue trees, in this game.

Corinne: Blueberry has a question for Corinne. It was mentioned that there will be, that we will be able to romance who we like. Does that mean that all companions are romanceable by all player characters regardless of race or gender, as it has been in the past?

Corinne: Yeah, yeah. So, we have talked about this in some of the interviews, I’ve seen a few articles about it, so I’d recommend everyone check out those articles. But let me just give you a quick overview. Each of the seven companions have full romance arcs and they are romanceable by all genders, absolutely. But something that’s really important to, to us on the team, so I wanna make sure that we clarify and just double-down on, that doesn’t mean playersexual. And if anyone’s unaware of what we mean by that, it doesn’t mean that they can form or twist their identities to who you the player are, like they, they won’t suddenly have a preference for men or women based on what you’re playing, right? Instead, they have their own fully fleshed-out identities, they are true and authentic to that. So in this game, they are all pansexual, with their own histories of romance. Sometimes you’ll hear about preferences, or things of that nature. And what I really love is, if you don’t pursue a romance with them, they’ll actually build their own romances with each other. So, in one of the interviews I talked about Lace Harding and Taash getting together. I give that example because honestly, it’s one of my favorites. I’m gonna put a question back to the community, though. I’ve heard we’re going with “Laash” for that ship-name? You tell me, like, what is that ship-name?

Katey: That one just rolls off the tongue, I feel like that works. This next question is from FallenArtesia. What are the markings on the faces of the elven Warden and Veil hopper?

Matt: So there’s a, quite a few, probably, I think, easily more than we’ve done before, tattoos from various, various cultures. We’re bringing the vallaslin back, of course. But there’s, yeah, ton of different options, especially when we’re, again, going into all these new regions. Each, each area has its own kind’ve visual language for that. But yeah, we are bringing the vallaslin back and then a couple of the characters have them, but we’ve kind’ve customized them a little bit, they’re a bit more specific to their personality.

Katey: And this is a question for all of you. What are you, what are you as a developer most proud of about the game, and what are you most excited for players to experience when it’s out?

John: Ooh, that’s a good question.

Corinne: Isn’t it?

John: Corinne, you wanna go first?

Corinne: Yeah, sure. Gosh. So I suspect for most of us, myself included, it is really gonna be the depth and authenticity of the companions, journeying along with them on their arcs, learning about their hardships, what they care about, being by their side, that, that authenticity is just so good. They all feel like my dear friends. But, I have to say, the closest runner-up for me, has to be the Character Creator, has to be. That Character Creator, the makeup options, the range of sliders. I’m a qunari fan, so even just the, the way you customize the horns and combine that with the really great-looking hair. Character Creator has to be my, my, like very close runner up.

Matt: Oh yeah. For me, I would say, as far as, what, what I can say I’m most proud of on this one, the, I can speak for the art team. We worked incredibly hard to make the story more visible than ever. Games are a visual medium, but, you know, it’s, sometimes it’s easier to do things in text format or written in a Codex somewhere or alluded to off-screen. But we really leaned in to trying to make sure that every design, prop, character, environment, the VFX we’re choosing, everything, all, all these choices, were putting the story on-screen so that you can really see it unfold. And I think, having worked on all of the Dragon Age games, I would say Veilguard represents one of the best attempts at that we’ve made yet.

John: I’m gonna cheat, because I’m going last and I get to do that when I go last, and kinda combine both Corinne’s and Matt’s answer. Honestly, the companions are, for me, the absolute highlight of, just, being able to work across all the disciplines, building characters who look and sound and behave in very specific and characterful ways. These are the deepest companion arcs we’ve ever done. Not just on Dragon Age, but at BioWare in general. Each, each companion has their own story arc, you can go through decisions you can make, they really do take center-stage, and I think, as you play through with them you see the care and love that the team has put into each and every one. I mean there’s, there’s moments in each arc that make you cry, make you angry, make you excited and, and the way that they integrate into the story as a whole is just, for me, something that’s been really fun. Finding ways to bring these characters together, finding ways to make this, this narrative, this story of, you know, you need to put together a team and stop the end of the world, it’s just been absolutely exciting and thrilling. And again, you see the team’s love in every single piece of it. As for what I’m most excited? For me, I’ve been, I mean Dragon Age has been part of my career, part of my life for literally the last decade and a half. I’ve worked on it since Origins and there’s something about The Veilguard that feels like a amazing mix of, novelty but also familiarity. It’s like coming home in a way that I think is going to be very exciting for people who are existing Dragon Age players, but there’s also so much here that’s just new and exciting for people, new players and old players alike. And going to parts of the word, seeing things we’ve never seen before, and just getting to take this amazing world, this amazing series and expand on it and build on it in ways that have just been, honestly, an absolute thrill, the best part of my career. And I’ve been in games for seventeen years now, this has been the absolute highlight for me, so. That’s what I’m excited about.

Corinne: John, that was, that was such a good answer, and I just, I just wanna “yes, and -” that. It, I so completely agree with you. There’ve been times in the companion arcs where even, knowing exactly what’s going to happen, we work on the game, with some of these decisions, I, I’ve had to set down the controller, let out a heavy sigh and go “oh my god, what am I gonna do here?” Yeah, the depth of them is wonderful. And, I do wanna say, I, I’d be, I wanna put this out there, when we talked about as a developer, what are we most proud of, can we just give a big shout-out to the dev team? I am so proud of them. This team has poured their heart and soul into this.

John: Absolutely.

Corinne: Anyone from BioWare who’s listening in, thank you so much, y’all are just the best.

John: Hear, hear.

Katey: I absolutely love that. I knew that question was going to have some of my best, some of my favorite answers, and it delivered, so thank you three. This one’s a fun one. Why does Varric have dark hair now? I feel like John mentioned this a little bit earlier, but.

John: Just for [inaudible].

Matt: He’s been, he’s been adventuring for a while now. His hair is, is more gray, but he’s been in very dark scenes so far, so. We’ll see him in some more contexts.

Katey: In this question, we actually took from Tumblr, because there were a few really good ones in our ask box. Will the Inquisitor be appearing in the flesh, or are we just choosing their major Dragon Age: Inquisition decisions?

Corinne: Alright! Yeah, yes! They will. The Inky does appear. We know how attached y’all are to the Inquisitor, I’ve seen the love for your OC. Yes, the Inquisitor shows up. Now, we, we’d already confirmed that in a few places, so, let me just say, you can also customize them, includes some of our new customization options, yeah, they’re gonna show up and they’re gonna be your Inquisitor.

John: And I think, I think beyond that, I mean, the story of Solas and the story of the Inquisitor, obviously are tied, they’re tied together as much as any story, so. It would have been strange for us not to bring them in for this one. They have, they’re gonna be a part of the story, so.

Katey: Will there be any planned DLC? Just curious, as I always love the DLCs. Oh, and transmog armor. This one came from Lavell.

Corinne: Oh, heck yeah, good question. So, right now, our focus is entirely on the quality of the game. Like, it’s so important at this stage for us to be all-in, all attention on, just, finishing this game and delivering on the quality, the promise of it. So honestly, like, that’s all I can really say about it. We’re 100% focused on this being the most complete game we can make it. I will say, kind’ve related to that though, and I just wanna underscore this, I wanna emphasize it. There’s not gonna be any microtransactions, there’s not gonna be any battle passes, you don’t have to connect online, our focus is making this the most complete singleplayer game we possibly can. Now, this was kind’ve a two-for question, I love when we do that. Will there be transmog? Hell yeah. I’m the kind’ve player that, that believes fashion is the real end-game. Yeah, there’s a transmog system, absolutely, it’s sick.

Katey: And then this next question is from Scott. I was asking if any of the characters will be explicitly asexual, or on the ace spectrum?

Corinne: So good. Such a good question. So, look, I’m just, I’m gonna be really forthcoming with y’all and a little bit vulnerable here. I’m ace, I’m a gray-ace, I don’t mind sharing that, I’m kind’ve public with it. I will say though, that none of our companions this time around are explicitly ace. When we look at the characters, their motivations, who they are, we always assess, like is, is this the right time? This time it wasn’t. But what I will say for everyone on the ace spectrum out there, I would love to represent an ace relationship sometime in the future when it feels like the most authentic fit for a companion, when we can do it best. Oh, and I do see some questions, you know, some questions, what do we mean by ace? Asexuality. We often refer to it as the ace spectrum.

Katey: Can mage Rook do blood magic? Will blood magic be a skill tree separate from regular magic?

Corinne: Okay. Um, this gets a little spoilery, so let me just say, Rook has some pretty good reasons to avoid blood magic. Rook is not gonna want to be interested in that. But I will say, the mage skill tree is packed with all kinds of spells, traits and perks to give you a ton of flexibility in your magic. Gonna go off-script just a little bit, because –

John: Oh no.

Corinne: I’ve seen, like, can you tell us about the specializations for mage? I’m not gonna tell you the deets, but there is a necromancer one, there is an elemental one, and there is one that’s actually more of like a combat mage, it’s my favorite.

Katey: Can we name the griffon? We also have a griffon emoji now in this Discord server.

John: Excellent. So, someone on your, in your party, again, spoilers, may have already named the griffon, but, don’t worry, Assan is a very good boy, so.

Corinne: All these griffon emojis are, y’all are killing me.

Katey: Yeah, I love that, griffons in the chat. Let's see. Will we have a camp/home/headquarters that we’ll be able to customize?

Matt: Well this time around, in Inquisition you had Skyhold. In this case you have a headquarters called the Lighthouse. More to be seen on that. But, it’s, it, narratively it, it serves kind’ve a different purpose but also the same purpose. As far as customization goes, there are elements of it that change over time, and some things that you can adjust. I, I don’t know how much we’re really going into that at the moment.

Katey: This one is –

Matt: But yeah, I would say, it’s like, there’s some, it, one thing I like about it is it definitely does start to feel very much like a home over time.

Katey: Sorry for almost cutting you off there Matt. We have another very hard-hitting question, if I'm, if I do say so myself.

John: I love this one.

Katey: We need to - Same. We need to know, does pasta and noodles exist in Thedas? Thank you.

Matt: Well, and I’ll take it as a chance just to geek out about worldbuilding, because, again, we’re, The Veilguard for us is a really kinda dream opportunity to go to places that we’ve only ever heard reference to, or we’ve seen hints at. And so, in going through the worldbuilding process and trying to, trying to build these places out, not just as neat things from the IP but also as, you know, if you’ve, if you've read about this stuff, if you’ve been following along, you’ve got your own version of it in your head. You’ve imagined what it might be like, you’re, and probably hoping for something spectacular. And our brains are always far better at creating this stuff than any game developer, any artist, or anyone can really do justice to, so you really have to swing for the fences to make something very satisfying and exciting. You know, is, that can be everything as big as architecture and landscape and biomes and ecosystems, but it does get into things like art and culture, costume design, and also food, and this time around we did, you know, that was one of the many things that we, that we did, looking to, just to try to catch the character and the feel of a place to make it feel believable and lived in, so. That’s my really long answer for, yeah, I’m sure, I've, at least one place does have pasta.

Katey: I loved that. This next question is from Spectre Karro. Are we getting a mabari?

John: Ooh, that’s a good question. I will say, you’re spending most of the game in the north of Thedas. Mabari are not nearly as big of a thing up there, so. In this particular instance, no, you will not get a mabari, sadly.

Katey: Honestly, I should’ve pulled this one up to where we answered the first question about the griffon, but, can we pet the griffon?

Matt: You, I’m really sorry to have to be the one to tell you – nah, I’m kidding, yes you can. But it’s not even just petting the griffon. I’ve, this isn’t a spoiler, I think you can actually, I’ve actually hugged the griffon, so, that feels like, even there, a step up. Yeah.

John: There’s lots of opportunities to interact with the griffon.

Corinne: Can we see, can we see Assan in chat if we wanna see him in the Lighthouse hanging out?

Katey: Assan in chat everybody.

Corinne: Assan in chat, alright!

Katey: I love it.

Corinne: Okay, y’all this was so important to the team too. Like, this is the team’s like, just such huge support for this feature, so props to them.

Katey: This one is from Coriander. Will we get to see any of the Character Creator before the game releases?

Corinne: Yes, yes you will. We’ve got a, you’ve probably seen, we’re laying out a roadmap for, you know, what we’re gonna show and when we’re gonna talk about, so, yes you will see it as we get a little bit closer to launch.

Katey: And then we’ve got this question which is, will we be able to play as a qunari, dwarf, elf, or human?

Corinne: Hell yeah, hell yeah you will. All four, and all four have that full-body customization. I already talked a little bit about, I mean listen, I’ve always loved the qunari. I will say in Dragon Age: Inquisition it was hard to get a good-looking qunari hairstyle, so yes you can play as them, you can customize them, the horn options are rad, the hair options are rad. And also, I guess related to this, your lineage gives you a lot of really unique dialogue options, so that’s a really lovely aspect of choosing your lineage as well.

John: Yeah, I would, so to actually just to bounce off that, to an earlier question about backgrounds, each lineage, there, depending on the lineage you choose and the background you choose there are some specifics call-outs to, for example, if it’s the Mourn Watch, the Mourn Watch being a faction from Nevarra of mages, you play as a dwarf, obviously your experience in that faction is going to be different than, say, a human or an elf, so. There are also specific call-outs tailored to those combinations and, with again, giving, the intention of giving each lineage their own little flavor as to how they're, they fit into that faction as a whole.

Katey: Okay, John, I’ve got a question from someone named Joe for you. Where is Barkspawn and is he okay?

John: That’s a Great question. Barkspawn is safely gnawing on a bone next to a fireplace somewhere in Ferelden, don’t worry, he’s fine. You may question, ask yourself, but John, it’s been so long, in which I say, mabari live exactly as long as they need to.

Corinne: Getting into the deep-cut questions now.

John: Deep-cut questions, yeah.

Katey: Yeah. We are really speedin’ through these. Let’s see. Will Rook have a set of default name?

John: Yeah so, Rook’s last name is defined based on their faction, again, we wanted to tie that into your backstory, but also, there’s a, that’s a name generator that can give you a selection of first names. Obviously if you want to make your own first name, that’s definitely something we support as well. If you’re somebody who maybe has a little bit more difficulty coming up with a name, so for example you name every single character “Bob” because that’s the only name you can think of, we also give that opportunity for that generation, so.

Katey: I definitely always have trouble coming up with what I wanna name my characters, so that’s great. This next question is, when will the voice acting cast be announced?

John: So, we worked with a lot of very talented actors on this one. I am super excited to talk about the voice acting cast. We’ll be talking a bit more over the summer, we’re not quite ready to announce names yet.

Katey: And I think we have a similar answer to this next question, which was, will there be a Collector’s Edition? When can I pre-order?

John: Yeah, same answer, we have, we’ll talk more about the different editions of the game soon.

Katey: Are there any special musical guests writing the sound-track? Will tavern songs return.

Corinne: Oh my goodness, yeah. There are tavern songs. And huge credit to the audio team and performance teams because they’re pretty great. There’s one in a little tavern in Minrathous called The Swan, and the song you hear there might just, it might be, it’s up there, it might just be my favorite of the tavern songs.

Katey: Let’s see, are there any – ope, I have just asked that one. What are the required PC specs?

John: Much like the other two, we will have more information on required PC specs soon.

Katey: Saph from the Discord server noticed that two, Dragon Age II’s main theme from the soundtrack brought back much of the iconic thematic material of Origins’ main theme, but I heard less of it in Inquisition’s. Can we expect The Veilguard’s main theme to recall more or less of that original thematic material than Inquisition?

John: So we’re not, we’re not quite ready to talk about music yet in specifics, but in broad strokes I can say the process for us is always the same. Working with the composer, working, figuring out themes, figuring out what kinds of elements we want to keep, tying specific elements to, maybe specific characters. It’s a really in-depth process and a really collaborative process. We have some fantastic audio people on our team that have done an amazing work, amazing job, working with composers, and, with the team as a whole to make sure that, again, we said earlier about cohesiveness. Making sure that the music feels like a cohesive part of the experience.

Katey: And this one, I see is also for John, but I think anyone can answer this. When writing the overall story of this game, what themes did you want to have as the prominent focus?

John: I mean again, it’s interesting, so it’s interesting, because when we were writing these games, and this has been true on every Dragon Age I’ve been part of, what you start with and where you end up aren’t always necessarily the same. Sometimes you start writing out a theme, you realize actually it’s more interesting if we attack from this angle, or maybe if we twist it a little bit. I will say for Dragon Age: The Veilguard, from the beginning one of the biggest themes has been regret. How regret’s shaped peoples’ lives, how people deal with their regrets, how people maybe move past their regrets and, each of the characters, you know, the stories as a whole, have elements of this tied throughout. We really wanted to have that thematic, that cohesiveness to the game’s story and the game’s writing so.

Katey: And I know that, you know, we’ve, we've kind’ve already answered this a few times, but can we play as dwarves and does the world react to your race and backstory? Probably be good to just directly answer that one.

John: Yes you can play as a dwarf. Yes the world does react to your race and backstory. And, again, you’ll have unique dialogues or unique conversation options based on that, on that backstory and as well as that race.

Corinne: I’ll give you a little nugget here, because I saw it scrolling through real quickly. Do you have beards, like. So when I think about can I play as dwarves I think about, do we have glorious fantastic beards? Hell yeah, we do.

John: Yeah, I can say, as somebody who plays a lot of games with character creator, the beards on, I don’t know what magic the character art team did for the beards, but they feel like a beard should feel like, it’s great. They look awesome.

Corinne: Just saw somebody say “it’s beard time”, I love it. It’s beard time!

Katey: Will our heroes and companions leave us if we go against their wishes?

Corinne: Oh my good – do y’all just love pain? Do you want us to make you cry? If you go against their wishes, if you make decisions they don’t like, I will tell you, you can piss them off, you can, they might not agree with you and they, they will take some time away. That said, this is the biggest threat to Thedas we’ve ever seen, so they’re, they are always gonna be willing to show up to defend Thedas but, yeah, you can piss them off and they’ll leave for a minute. As it relates to them showing up to defend Thedas, well yeah, they will, unless…

John: No spoilers Corinne!

Corinne: Aughhh, I’ll leave it there, I’ll leave it there.

John: No spoilers.

Corinne: Okay, alright, alright. But they want it!

John: Yep.

Matt: Don’t try to stop me, Smee!

Katey: This one’s a fun one about some inspirations for the game. Dracanmo would like to know if any songs, books, movies or anything have had inspired any of the writing for the characters?

John: I mean, honestly, the thing about art is, art is always a synthesis of your own experiences both in the real world but also the art you consume, the art you pay attention to. I don’t think that any characters have what I would describe as, this character was a direct reference or direct inspiration but, I mean, yeah, they’re all inspired by the things that we do, the things, both, again, in the real world, and also in the media we consume. And you’re gonna see elements of characters that, yeah, the things that we’ve enjoyed, the things that’ve shaped us, show up in these characters. I think, for me, it’s, it comes down to, and I, I, writing is a deeply, can be a deeply personal experience, so even if you don’t intend for it to be the case, things, parts of you are going to show up in your character, I think that’s true for all the characters in The Veilguard. And, you know, sometimes it’s, exploring, exploring the, y’know, things that, about yourself that you may like or may not like, and it’s also about exploring things about characters that you like or don’t like, so. That’s kinda my long-winded way of saying yes, it’s impossible to not have that happen when you’re creating art. But I wouldn’t say that there’s one where you can say, oh this is this character, this is this character.

Katey: What was the thinking process behind making Harding a companion this time around? Was she always going to be one or did it evolve into one because she was such a lovable character?

John: Ohh, yeah. So Harding, I mean. When we released Inquisition, it was impossible not to see the love that people had for our murderous girl next door dwarf. She’s always been a fan favorite obviously, but I think beyond that, it’s something that there, that Harding’s writer wanted to explore. There was more of a story to tell there, more perspective, and beyond that, Harding obviously has a strong connection to Solas, and to the, to Varric, and to the events of the past ten years, so. I wouldn’t say it’s always been, but I’d say Harding’s probably one of the first ones we settled on as like, yes, this is a character we want and the writer had a story that they wanted to tell with her, so, it just made sense.

Matt: You know, I think actually, to piggyback on that, that’s something I hadn’t really even thought about that much, but, and it’s not a huge part of her character, but, she tends to be one of the people that have the most insight into he was.

John: Yeah, that’s exactly it, that’s exactly, and yeah, that’s a great way of looking at it too. It also provides you with a little bit of that, that perspective. For players who’ve been around, you know, who played with previous Dragon Age games, but also for new ones, who was Solas? What kind of character was, was he?

Matt: Yeah.

John: Yeah, it’s a great, it’s a great, using characters to provide windows onto the world is honestly one of my favorite things.

Matt: And, and when I say was, I just mean, in Inquisition.

John: Yes, that’s, that’s exactly it, yes. Thank you for correcting that.

Matt: Yeah.

Katey: And what approach are you taking to quest and world design in The Veilguard?

John: I think for us it just comes down to relevance and narrative heft. We want to make sure that each quest provides either a perspective on the world or perspective on the characters, or feels immediately and obviously relevant to what you’re, what you’re doing here. You’re here to save the world and, again, at the end of the day, one of the things that we heard, we heard loud and clear, was some feedback about how relevant, or in this, in our case, not relevant, previous quests have felt, so for Veilguard, we really wanted to make sure that these quests felt like something that you, somebody faced with the end of the world would believe was necessary and important. So, again, there’s quests of all sorts and sizes, but all of them share that same feeling of, this is the kind of thing that The Veilguard would do. This is the kind’ve thing that my hero would do, especially faced with the end of the world.

Corinne: Yeah, that’s, that’s really good John. That’s so right. I would just, again, double-down on how hand-crafted all the quests are, and whether, whether you’re doing, like, the main story, or you’re journeying with your companions, or you’re out exploring and you encounter a mystery. Everything’s handcrafted, intentional. We spent a lot of time listening to what y’all said, and of course everyone has slightly different tastes, but, you know, you’re not gonna be gathering shards in the Hinterlands. Everything is built with intention, and, you know, a dev there lovingly handcrafting the experience.

Katey: Are there any locations in the game that can only be accessed by making specific story choices?

John: So I don’t wanna get too much into spoilers here because this does start getting into spoiler detail, but I will say that locations can fundamentally change based on decisions you make. Some of the parts of the world that you go to, you can have, the decision, the choices you make have an impact on how these spaces exist and develop, so, yeah, and again, don’t wanna too many into, into story spoilers, but, your decisions do impact how the world shows up.

Katey: And will we be able to control our companions in combat through tactical mode, or if the PC, or player character, gets KO’d, like in previous games?

Corinne: Right, so. If Rook gets KO’d, your player character gets knocked out, this time around it is time to re-load your save, or better yet, the companions have really interesting progression, you can spec them out to be able to revive you, but that’s, that’s if you’ve invested in their own progression and what they can do. And that said, I, I mentioned this earlier but I, I personally spend more time in the nature of this combat system when everything comes together, interacting and directing the companions than I have in any of the other games, so, like, like that, that interactivity between them, once you play it you’ll see how, just engaged the team is.

Katey: A user named It’s Sarah said, my real most important Dragon Age question is, will Solas still occasionally or dramatically speak in iambic pentameter?

John: You know, I was, I actually spent a little bit of time trying to figure out if I wanted to answer this question in iambic pentameter and then I very quickly gave up. Massive kudos to Patrick who, who always writes Solas so well. Again, Solas is a returning character, it’s the same Solas you know and love, or hate, depending on who you are. Same writer, so, I think, this has been, the answer is, well of, yeah, it’s Solas.

Katey: Will our decision of who in particular was left behind in the Fade be important?

John: So, while that decision does not show up, that – sorry, let me, restart. Not for The Veilguard. That decision doesn’t show up here. Now, that said, that doesn’t mean that’s that’s not a decision that will ever be important in the future, so. Again, not for this one, though.

Matt: I’m glad to hear you say that, John, because one of my favorite stories was Bob getting stuck in the web in reboot and it just feels like -

John: That’s a, that’s a deep cut!

Corinne: Very, that’s a deep cut.

John: Holy smokes.

Corinne: My goodness.

John: The sound of my childhood.

Katey: Will we have mounts again? If so, any hints to what types we’ll have?

Matt: So no, no, mounts, excuse me. Mounts were, they were, they addressed a need in Inquisition that we don’t have in Veilguard, and you’ll see why, when you get to play.

Katey: LightningStar asks, how is the side quest design? Will they be mostly story-based, or will there be a lot of radiant quests or resources or Power, like in Inquisition?

John: We talked about it a little bit earlier, but, no, they are all hand-crafted and story-focused. Again, narrative, the companions, not just the companions but the characters in the world as a whole are so much at the core of The Veilguard that, anything other than hand-crafted quests just felt like it would be a disservice to the game we were building.

Corinne: Yeah. And maybe, we can clarify as well, because, like Power was such a divisive mechanic in Inquisition. There’s no mechanic like that that blocks your progression until you fill a bar, right, like that’s just not a thing in this. You have the autonomy to engage in these, these quests as you like. There’s no, like, y'know, grind-out gates before you can progress.

John: That’s right, yeah. Again, we wanna make sure that, again, that doing this content feels as natural and part of the logical flow of the story as possible.

Katey: So, it looks like we only have time for three more questions, so I’m going to get through those. With this next one, is from someone named Jason. Will there be a similar system to the War Table missions?

Corinne: Ooh, interesting. So, we haven’t talked much about the player’s base, the Lighthouse. And we’re gonna save that for a beat, but what I will say is that the Lighthouse, your headquarters so to speak, it has its own unique purposes and functions this time. So that’s an area that we’ll, we’ll leave for you when we talk more about the Lighthouse, and then when you have a chance to hop in, you’ll be able to see what those unique purposes and functions are.

Katey: If there is dual-wield for warriors, will it rely on dexterity or strength?

Corinne: Ah, okay, yeah, yeah. So we did wanna bring dual-wielding back. It is part of the rogue kit this time. So warriors are really focused on mighty two-handed weapons, can’t wait til you see, when you swing and connect with those weapons, there’s, there’s a real heft to it. And then of course sword and shield, so. We’re leaving the dual-wielding to the rogues, but you, you can see just, the amount of hits you can get in in rapid succession dual-wielding as a rogue is really satisfying.

Katey: And the last question that we’re able to get to today, is, what have been some of the challenges and advantages of working on a single, on a single game for so many years? How did you sustain the work in yourselves and the process?

John: That is a fantastic question. I will say for myself, I’ve often joked, and I don’t know how much of a joke it actually is, that when this game is out and I suddenly don’t have to keep all these pieces of game and lore and story and everything straight in my head, I’m suddenly gonna be able to speak Latin or something because there’s gonna be a ton of brainpower freed up. But for me it’s just, you know, it's, the thing that keeps me sustained is just knowing the game that we’re building is the right one. Knowing that the beats are coming together, and knowing just how much people care about this franchise, care about these games, and how excited people are going to be when they get to see the fantastic work that the team has, has been doing. And that really is, I can say, I’ve been on this project since the start, and even today, I see things on a daily basis, I’m like holy – smokes, sorry, I almost swore, I can’t believe what the team is doing, I can’t believe the, how good this looks, I can’t believe. Because it’s a huge game. There’s pieces that I, I don’t see every piece of the game every day so, I get pleasantly surprised on a daily basis and that, I will say, you know, confession, sometimes if I’m having a particularly long day, I’ll spend about an hour late at night just watching cutscenes coming in, watching the work coming together and just, sitting back and being like, holy smokes, I cannot wait for someone who hasn’t seen this every day for so long as I have to experience this and just be blown away by the work, so.

Corinne: It's, it’s been very real, hasn’t it? And, and I will just say, speaking on behalf of the dev team, everyone’s working so hard, they’re putting so much passion, so much of themselves into it. Like this is a franchise they truly love, and seeing your support, cheering us on, it’s just meant a lot to them, so, let me just say thank you to all of you.

Katey: And I wanna say thank you to you three for taking the time to do this. I know that it matters a lot to the community to be able to, you know, get some time with you guys and, you know, make sure that some of their dying questions are, are answered, so thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to do this. For anyone who’s still listening I promise that I’m that I’m working on a way for these questions to be immortalized somewhere. Stay tuned for that so that you don’t have to worry about this, just, you know, disappearing into the ether. So, stay tuned, thank you all for your time. Anything else we wanna say before we jump off?

Matt: Thanks everyone.

John: Thank you. Yeah, I’m super excited to show more of this and, yeah, this is gonna be, hopefully this is the first of many of these opportunities to talk to you all directly. Again, it’s been a while, and getting to talk about this game has been absolutely exciting. I know for myself, as well for the rest of the team, so thank you all.

Corinne: Just thank you, it’s, the Dragon Age community, how much it means to you, how much it means to us, it’s just wonderful to see you all so invested and excited to come here and talk to us. Thank you again, truly.

Katey: We'll hopefully do something like this again soon. Okay, cool, have a great day everybody! Talk soon!

John: Bye y’all!

Matt: Bye.

[source: The dev BioWare Discord Q&A on June 14th]

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.

[ham1lton]

‘cause i’m that bitch.

pairing: charles leclerc x fashionista!reader.

warnings: nothing! just reader being a bad bitch.

faceclaim: rihanna.

summary: charles keeps trying to tell everyone he’s in a relationship with you, the it girl of the fashion world. yet, no one believes him. he’s very keen on changing that.

— part two of my 500 followers celebration ♡ —

liked by vogue, zendaya and 3,822,728 others.

yourcompanyname: our boss y/n l/n at the cfda gala last night where she was awarded the fashion icon award. pictures of her arriving to, during and after the event.

view all comments

ynswife: ‘do my tits bother you? they're COVERED… in swarovski crystals girl!’

-> user1: oh she ate this look up so bad.

user7: i remember when she was still interning for vogue and now she’s one of the biggest makeup and clothing moguls in the world 🥺

-> yourcompanyname: thanks for being with us since the beginning!! check your dms for a surprise! 🙈

user5: that’s my favourite fashion designer!

user6: did y’all see the post-award interview? she was giggling saying she was going to celebrate with someone after getting the award…. i wonder who it was.

-> user9: probably just her best friend. they’re really close and she helps her get ready for events like this.

𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃

𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT.

— phone conversation between CHARLES LECLERC and Y/N L/N.

CHARLES LECLERC: they don’t believe it! they don’t believe i’m dating you!

Y/N L/N: they’re probably joking babe-

LECLERC: they called me a french twink! i’m not even french!

L/N: i know babe.

LECLERC: we need to ramp it up. can i wear one of your designs? maybe they’ll understand when i’m dressed in your fashion.

L/N: i have the perfect outfits for you. i’ll send them tomorrow!

𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃

liked by yourusername, landonorris and 1,383,937 others.

gqmens: charles leclerc is our new cover boy, dressed in yourcompanyname’s menswear from head to toe.

view all comments

landonorris: can you get me some clothes 😩

-> user6: BUY EM 🤨

user2: idc if he’s a stalker, he’s sooooo fine i’m sorry.

-> dumbass1: he can stalk me deadass. go all joe goldberg on me 😍😩

user89: he’s really trying to make us believe that he’s dating her…. we’re not that gullible dumbass!

𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃

liked by yourcompanyname, vogue and 1,728,727 others.

y/nsfanpage: last night y/n was seen at the movie premiere of ‘material girl’, the second film that she’s produced under her production company!

view all comments

user3: queen!! don’t know what looks better, her or the movie!

user8: some vroom vroom guy is saying he’s dating her….

-> user9: imagine 😭

user7: he’s even buying clothes to pretend he’s sponsored by her that’s crazy 😭😭😭😭

-> user5: she needs a restraining order i’m so serious.

user6: she looks so good!! 😍

𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT

— phone conversation between CHARLES LECLERC and Y/N L/N.

LECLERC: we need to pull out the big guns.

L/N: if you’re sure…

LECLERC: i just want people to understand and believe i’m dating you. i don’t want people to believe i’m a weird stalker.

L/N: oh babe, i’m so sorry. you know what? i’ll take the day off tomorrow, we can go out and spend all day doing what you’d like to do.

LECLERC: all i want to do is be with you.

𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃

liked by ynswifey, charlieeupdates and 2,628,982 others.

ham1ltonshaderoom: after initial disbelief from the internet, business mogul and it girl y/n l/n has been spotted cosying up with formula one driver charles leclerc in an art gallery in paris. how are we feeling about this new couple ham1ltons?

view all comments

user7: HE STOLE MY WIFE!!!!!! BOOOO

user6: i apologise mr leclerc i was unfamiliar with your game.

-> user7: don’t ever doubt the game of a peculiar white dude.

user78: she looks so good even blurry.

user67: that outfit is crazy he looks like a mime.

-> user23: he’s never beating the french allegations.

user12: first pic is actually so cute!!

user34: i still think it’s photoshopped.

𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃𓂃

taglist: @lemon-lav @firelily-mimi @formulaal @sya-skies @namgification @raevyng @ajvaix @demvnsriot @blupblupfish @ravisinghs-wife @f1kenzzz @d3kstar @wildflowermarns @ironmaiden1313 @evie-119 @decafmickey @nichmeddar @casperlikej @cuteskz @charlesleclercsonlywife @booksandflowrs @mxdi0 @alexmarie29 @iloveyou3000morgan @fate-posts @luckyladycreator2 @23victoria (don’t see yourself or wanna be removed? send an ask!)

— don’t wanna miss an update? join my taglist!

[youreverydayfangirl]

BAD BLOOD

pairing: max verstappen x singer reader

summary: the one where a private phone call gets leaked, no one gets the full picture and people are quick to judge

warning: online hate, mentions of cheating

a/n: after two months its finally here for you guys

face claim: sabrina carpenter (just had to because shes gorgeous)

f1 masterlist

main masterilst

series masterlist

yourusername has posted

liked by alexandrasaintmleux, francisca.cgomes and 1, 485, 921 others

yourusername SUPRISE!!! I struggled to keep this secret but now i can announce it. the bad blood mv is out now with some very familiar faces

tagged: oliviarodrigo

alexandrasaintmleux AHHHH MY BEAUTIFUL BEST FRIEND

-> yourusername SAYSS YOUUUU

francisca.cgomes I STILL CANT BELIEVE I WAS IN A MUSIC VIDEO

-> yourusername ANYTHING FOR YOU QUEEN

oliviarodrigo is this what we call a slay?

-> yourusername you know it sweet thing

chappellroan IM OBSESSED WITH YOU

liked by creator

milliebobbibrown ICONIC MV

liked by creator

leahsavajeffries I WAS IN THIS

-> yourusername YEAH YOU WERE

user1 MOST ICONIC MV OF ALL TIME

user2 LADIES AND GENTLEMAN, HER

user3 anyone find it weird that exbsf wasn't in it

-> user4 I WAS THINKING THE SAME THING LIKE WHAT

-> user5 go touch grass people grow and change and no ones seen them together for like months now

y/ngossip

liked by exbsf and 31, 859 others

y/ngossip SPOTTED! yourusername and landonorris in what looks like a very heated public exchange, could this be the end?

user1 tagging them is so messy 😭

-> user2 RIGHT

user3 NOT MY PARENTS

user4 whatever happened IK its y/ns fault

user5 not exbsf liking this 👀

-> user6 RIGHT

user7 idk what anyone says exbsf liking this speaks SIDES

-> user8 right cause she wouldn't like it if y/n hadn't done anything wrong

-> user9 this is such a bold accusation to make

user10 exbsf TELL US YOUR SECRETS

user11 THEY WERE TOGETHER FOR FIVE YEARS OMG 😭

--------------------------------------

THE PHONE CALL

a few months prior - during a conversation

Ex Bsf: Can you just support me for once instead of making it about you

Y/n: Support you? You cheated on Jacob how can I support you Ex Bsf

Ex Bsf: By being my friend instead of being all high and mighty

Y/n: I'm sorry Ex bsf but its true and I don't know if I can support you with this

Ex Bsf: What would you say if it was you who cheated on Lando

Y/n: Hypothetically, I say I cheated on Lando and be upfront with him

Ex Bsf: So have you cheated on Lando

Y/n: Of course not, I love him so much and he means to much to me, I don't ever wanna lose him

Ex Bsf: If you did ever, your gonna own up to it right

Y/n: Yeah of course I have to, but this isn't about me

Ex Bsf: Well you kinda did make it about you

Y/n: No I didn't, You asked me about it Ex Bsf

--------------------------------------

yourusername has posted

Liked by alexandrasaintmleux, francisca.cgomes and 11, 274, 964 others

yourusername and that marks the end of the wonderland tour! i can't believe everything that has happened over these past couple of months and i am so grateful for all the support i received from you guys over the past couple of months. stay tuned guys and ill see you at the grammys 👀

alexandrasaintmleux obsessed with you omggg

francisca.cgomes grammys this year are going to pop off

user1 SHES STUNNING STOP

user2 NEW MUSICC???

user3 girl we saw the article....

-> user4 what article????

-> user3 she cheated on lando

-> user5 WHAT

-> user6 source???

-> user7 theirs legit a voice recording of her and exbsf

-------------------------

Y/N L/N AND LANDO NORRIS SPLIT

Yes. You heard us right.

Fan favourite f1 couple, superstar WAG Y/n L/n and Lando Norris have reportedly split after L/n cheated on him. A leaked phone call between L/n and a third party has been leaked.

AUDIO RECORDING HERE

Transcript

Y/n: I cheated on Lando

Ex Bsf: You cheated on Lando

Y/n: Of course, I love him so much and he means to much to me, I don't ever wanna lose him

Ex Bsf: Your gonna own up to it right

Y/n: Yeah of course I have to

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

----------------------------

yourusername has posted

liked by alexandrasaintmleux, francisca.cgomes and 1, 293, 950 others

yourusername 3 GRAMMYS!!!!!!!!! I CAN'T BELIEVE IT! TYSM GUYS FOR ALL OF THE SUPPORT AND FOR TAKING WONDERLAND AND TURNING IT INTO SOMETHING ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL, WORDS CANNOT EXPRESS HOW AMAZED AND GRATEFUL I AM..........

alexandrasaintmleux WELL DESERVED

liked by creator

francisca.cgomes YAYAYAYAY OMMGGGGGG

liked by creator

user1 i used to have so much respect for you

user2 i can't believe u cheated so dissapointing

user3 your setting such a bad example for you younger fans...

user4 CANCEL Y/N

-> user5 yep #cancely/n #y/nisoverparty

-> user6 #y/nisoverparty

-> user7 #y/nisoverparty

-> user8 #y/nisoverparty

-> user9 #y/nisoverparty

-> user10 #y/nisoverparty

user11 🐍🐍🐍

user12 #y/nisoverparty

user13 🐍🐍🐍

user14 Ex/bsf deserves better

-> user15 her and lando should get together tbh

--------------------------------

Hi guys, i'm really sorry i am going to start posting more often but things have just been really busy as im starting grade 12 work which is insanely dissicult and family drama has been going on and i've been working on writing a book which is pretty exciting

anyways i will try to post more often - maybe once everyweekend or second weekend

------------------------

taglist:

@lyannesworld

@pippyth3hippy

@scorpiomindfuck

@syddddddddddddd

@paigem00

@toldyouitwasamelodrama

@lilsiz

@chelle1306

@sired4urmama

@stinkyjax

@kiyomisan

@hotgirlslikemax

@itsjustkhaos

@sid-is-gr8

@mastermindbaby

@akkklys

@reidsworld

@tall-tanned-tattoo

@mrsmaybank24

@m1892

@taliya8346282844eliviahdgdajs

@midnights-lily

@skynel09

[wundrousarts]

That one blurry snippet makes me wonder if other Nevermoorian celebrities might be mentioned/name dropped in the book… I wonder if any famous people might have a house in the Silver District.

thinking about nevermoor pop culture again. i need to know what the music scenes are like. do they have artist beef

[echotunes]

Do you like writing? Are you an MCYT fan? Do you sometimes struggle with getting that one character's dialogue to sound just right?

Well, I have a solution:

Echo's MCYT writing cheat sheet doc!

Featuring notes on 80+ CCs ranging from Hermitcraft, Empires SMP, and the Life Series to QSMP, this Google doc has now been in the works for nearly two years (since November 2021!), currently comprises 18k+ words, and still receives tweaks and updates pretty much every day.

Contents of each CC's section on the doc (which are in alphabetical order!) include:

Commonly used words/phrases - adjectives and adverbs! Exclamations! Filler phrases and words! and other turns of phrase that make their speech distinct from others

Sentence structure - including transcriptions of example sentences that help get an idea of how exactly someone tends to say (and stumble over) their words!

Interaction with others - do they use nicknames? Which ones? What little phrases do they tend to say in conversation?

Typing - how do they type in Minecraft chat? What emoticons do they use? Do they send one long message, or several short ones? Should it be all lowercase? Do they use apostrophes? and more, with example screenshots!

In-game movement - how do they move their cubito? Do they shuffle around on the spot while talking, or stand still to look someone in the face? How expressive are they? Do they shift for emphasis, or nod? etc!

and other random characterisation notes - any fun facts about their character that you might want to keep in mind while writing!

There's also some bonus content outside of the specific character sections - links to general writing resources, recaps and summaries and quotes from the series the CCs on the doc have been involved in, as well as notes, conversation transcripts and clips I've compiled for some specific character dynamics!

(Important disclaimer: This isn't a 100% comprehensive guide - I'm just one person, and this is entirely comprised of notes I take while watching, so it's never going to be perfect or fully accurate. It also varies a lot on its level of detail for each CC, because I watch some people more than others, and in the case of QSMP there's language barriers involved, too.)

But I do think it can be pretty helpful. So if you're struggling, maybe consider giving this doc a try - you might find something useful inside! <3

[fallstaticexit]

Prev / Next / Beginning

TW: Conversion "Therapy" Mention / Homophobia

AN: Sorry this one took a while! - longer than I'd like away!. Coming back from a mini vaca and getting back into work and routine is a nightmare, also my delicate sleep schedule is ruineddd. Anywho, we should be back in business now! :) now, DJ play Good Luck, Babe by Chappell Roan!

Transcript under the cut

Geoffrey: Great job, bud! Tree is looking great!

Malcolm: It’s because I’m a decorator like mommy.

Jonathan: Mom, are you leaving? We’re supposed to decorate the tree too.

Nancy: Save a few ornaments for me to put on there, darling. Mommy has to step out for a couple hours.

Geoffrey: Johnny’s right, you know. Decorating it is apart of the deal.

Nancy: Can’t you spare me an hour or two?

Geoffrey: Remember what I said about being there?

Nancy: That’s not fair. I’ve been doing better, haven’t I? I left work early, which I’m hardly ever able to do and we found the tree together. I haven’t seen Vanessa in 16 years, Geoffrey. This is important to me.

Geoffrey: Yeah, well, this is pretty important to them.

Nancy: Please don’t make me feel guilty about this.

Geoffrey: It’s just you and Vanessa, right?

Nancy: [frowns] Yes, of course. I’ll be back, ok?

-

Vanessa: I’m glad you came.

Nancy: I wouldn’t have miss this for the world.

Vanessa: You look so beautiful tonight.

Nancy: [blushes] So do you. You’ve always have.

Vanessa: [smiles] I wasn’t sure on your choice of champagne, so I hope you don’t mind we have mine. I guess it’s one of the many things we’ll have to learn about each other.

Nancy: This is perfect. I’m sure I’ll love anything you like.

Nancy Narrates: [I found myself unable to eat. Instead, I got my fill of her. I studied her, consumed the sight of her with greedy, curious eyes]

Nancy Narrates: [It thrilled and frightened me the way she took me in too, as if she was trying to recall all those precious details that may have gotten lost in time. Seeing all the ways I could have changed and stayed the same]

Nancy Narrates: [One thing was for certain: my heart still raced the moment our fingers found one another, just like when we were girls. It was a delicate and familiar touch that I could feel from inside, and it was almost as if no time had passed at all]

Vanessa: [softly] Nancy, Nancy, Nancy, the woman you’ve become. I’ve thought of you, over time, what kind of woman you grew up to be.

Nancy: Is it what you expected?

Vanessa: Successful? Powerful? Stunning? Yes, I like to think so.

Nancy: I’ve thought of you too.

Vanessa: Yeah?

Nancy: I thought about what you did, after high school. Who you became. If you fell in love. If you thought about me too. Feels good, knowing you did.

Vanessa: I think holding on to the version of you I remembered kept me sane, after all this time. Do you mind if I smoke? Helps my nerves.

Nancy: As long as I can bum one.

Vanessa: Hey, do you remember our first cigarette together?

Nancy: How could I forget?

Vanessa: Share a light with me. For old times’ sake?

Vanessa: So, care to share all those burning questions you said you had for me?

Nancy: Now I feel like I’m being put on the spot.

Vanessa: Oh, come on. Don’t go shy on me now. How’s this? I’ll ask a question, then you, and so on.

Nancy: Alright. Shoot.

Vanessa: Do you still talk in your sleep?

Nancy: I- what!? I did not talk in my sleep!

Vanessa: Oh, yes you did. Full sentences too. You monologued even.

Nancy: Fuck off, I did NOT talk in my sleep! How would you know anyway? You were practically narcoleptic. I’d be up for hours after you fell asleep.

Vanessa: [murmurs] Still talks in her sleep- in denial about it. Ok. Got it. Your turn.

Nancy: I’ll ask a REAL question this time.

Vanessa: [smirks] That was a real question. I came all this way just to know but ok, ask away.

Nancy: Well, speaking of ‘all this way’. Where do you live?

Vanessa: Here and there. I don’t like to sit in one spot for too long; I get restless. Bored. I’ve spent the last 6 months in Tomorang. Beautiful people. Lovely culture. That’s actually where I heard your name mentioned for the first time. You’ve got quite the reputation over there. You’ve been up to no good, I hear.

Nancy: Christ...long story. Please don’t ask. Are you thinking of moving here?

Vanessa: Ah, ah. It’s my turn. Let’s see...ah! Who’s idea was it to make Geoffrey ‘Mr. Landgraab’. That’s probably the funniest shit I’ve ever heard.

Nancy: My parents, of course. They didn’t want to erase the family name and since they no longer have a son to continue their legacy- well. You get it. Speaking of marriage, are you married?

Vanessa: No, I’m not married.

Nancy: Well. Are you...seeing anyone?

Vanessa: [smirks] No.

Nancy: Children?

Vanessa: No children either. Those counts as a question, by the way.

Nancy: Oops. Ok, ok, you can ask two then. It’s only fair.

Vanessa: I guess I’ll ask a ‘real question’ then. Are you happy like this?

Nancy: [pauses] Like...what?

Vanessa: Married. Married to him. Does it make you happy?

Nancy: [shifts] I care for him very much. He’s the father of my children. He’s a good man and he’s good to me. Why are you asking me this-

Vanessa: Do you still like women?

Nancy: Do you?!

Vanessa: You have to answer my question first-

Nancy: Did you get my voicemail? November 2nd, 1993. I called you and I left you a voicemail. Did you hear it?

Vanessa: Nancy-

Nancy: Why didn’t you call me back? What—what happened to you, Vanessa? Where did you go? Where have you been!? Why, after all this time, am I just now seeing you?

Vanessa: It’s not really the easiest thing to talk about, but I know I owe you closure. [exhales] After I was pulled out of school, my father had me admitted. I received treatments to ‘fix’ me. Every time I fucked up and pissed off my father, he’d pack me up and ship me off until I came back normal and obedient.

Vanessa: There were days I thought I couldn’t keep going on like that, but then I heard your voicemail, and it... scared me. It made me angry. It broke my heart, but most importantly, it woke me up. I finally found the strength to escape my father and live my own truth. It cost me everything—my family disowned me. I relinquished my fortune, but in return, I’m free. I’m free, and I can live the life I deserve. I just... I wish I could have called, but life didn’t work out that way.

Nancy: It should have because I did call you, Vanessa.

Vanessa: I know.

Nancy: [weakly] I said that I loved you..

Vanessa: I know, I know...things were different for me back then.

Nancy: Things are different now! I’m married. I’m a mother!

Vanessa: I know, Nancy. I didn’t come here to break up a happy home.

Nancy: Why did you come here?

Vanessa: Can’t a girl miss her best friend?

Vanessa: Listen. I’ve thought a lot about how I would fit into your life if I ever got to see you again, if this was something you would want at all. That time we shared in our youth was the happiest I’ve ever been. I missed that feeling. I’ve missed you. I’m in a place to explore a friendship with you again, if you want it. If not, then I’ll accept that.

Nancy: I do want this. I want you here. I just...I can’t...

Vanessa: I know. It could be simple. Easy. I miss you, Nancy.

Nancy: [sighs] I miss you too. I’ve missed you so much.

[zorionbbq]

party chat #56: nanba's transformation

(transcript both in alt text and below)

[image description: five-page comic of a "party chat" conversation from yakuza 7.

beneath the scaffolding of a construction site, nanba holds a bottle of tea and asks "hey, you think i've changed at all since we met?"

the rest of the party, standing or crouching on the side of the path, turn to look at him.

"hm? have you?" ichiban tilts his head, hand on chin, and lets saeko pick from his chip bag. "i dunno, lemme think..."

adachi leaps to his feet, splashing his can of beer and surprising saeko. "got it!"

adachi snaps his fingers with a triumphant smile. "you changed how you part your hair!"

"huh?" nanba reaches toward the back of his own head. "nope, it's still the same..." adachi sheds a single tear.

hand raised high, saeko announces "right! your prescription changed!" ichiban taps a canned coffee on his palm in an "i get it!" motion. "what, are you trying to be funny now!? and that's wrong, too!" nanba retorts.

"okay!" han looks serious. "you changed the frames on your glasses!"

"you started wearing contacts instead of glasses!" zhao finger-guns with a grin.

"will you quit it with the glasses thing!?" nanba snaps at an unfazed, juicebox-sipping han. "and does it look like i'm wearing contacts!?" he gestures at himself. zhao smugly bites an onigiri, still squatting on the ground.

adachi frowns around a pocky. "huh? then what's changed?"

"never mind... sheesh." nanba turns his back on the group.

a view of the vending machine and soccer field across the way. "i just thought maybe i'd grown a bit cheerier since i met you guys."

"that's all." nanba doesn't see the party staring in shocked silence.

saeko, han, and zhao exchange fond looks.

nanba chugs his tea as ichiban approaches.

ichiban bumps his drink hand against nanba's.

"well, we already knew that, man." ichiban grins so wide his eyes shut.

"yeah, you smile a lot more than you did before, nan-chan." saeko concurs, offering him her chip bag.

nanba looks up, eyes wide. "ichiban... you guys..."

a hand lands on nanba's shoulder.

arm slung over his friend's back, ichiban cheerfully assures "and i noticed that you got some new lenses on your glasses, too." nanba's face falls.

the party loses it. saeko collapses on adachi, both doubled over in laughter, zhao cackles as his glasses fall off, and han clutches his head in despair.

"i didn't change anything about my glasses!" nanba roars. on the ground, a plastic bag of leftover snacks reads "#56 nanba's transformation".

end image description]

[daimonios]

from No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New Gilded Age by Dr. Jane F. McAlevey, pp. 37-38

image ID/transcription under cut:

For example: A group of workers has identified “Sally” as the most influential rank-and-file person on their shift and in their work area. The organizer has successfully gotten Sally, in a one-on-one conversation, to explain that she is overwhelmed and frustrated by how much her employer automatically takes from her paycheck each month to pick up the cost of an expensive family health-care plan. But she still hesitates when asked if she is willing to “join up with her coworkers to form a union by signing this membership card.” Sally knows that signing the card is a big decision. In the United States, employers routinely fire workers for taking such actions, or punish them in other ways. A good organizer understands this, and at this point will say something like, “So, Sally, I want to be clear about what I am hearing. You are good with the boss continuing to charge you $440.00 per month, deducted from your paycheck, just to keep your kids healthy and you healthy enough to show up for work, for the rest of your life?”

The best organizers in the CIO tradition call the moment that follows “the long uncomfortable silence,” because the organizer is trained to say nothing until the worker responds—and that can take several long minutes of dead silence between two people sitting face-to-face. The organizer respects that silence and waits it out, because the decision Sally is being asked to make is huge, and must be treated that way. Sally is not being lied to, she is not being promised anything, she is not being manipulated, and she is being advised that the employer will take swift and direct action against her and her coworkers. She is having a discussion about going on strike. This is worker agency. An axiom of organizers is that every good organizing conversation makes everyone at least a little uncomfortable. And it’s a conversation that must be had. All other actions come from this one.

[royalarchivist]

Phil briefly talks about QSMP, the admin situation, Quackity, the new team, and the harassment both Quackity and the admins have been receiving.

Please listen to the clip and read the transcript in its entirety. Keep in mind that things can easily be taken out of context (even this clip, though I did try to include everything he said).

If you'd like to see the full unedited conversation, Phil started talking about last week's interactions with YD and Bad ~1h 57m into today's VOD, which led into this conversation about QSMP.

[ Complete Transcript ↓ ]

—

Phil: Yeah, she's great. Another- another reason why QSMP is just like... fuckin' incredible. That was like, not even ever going to happen without QSMP. Like, obviously it's had its problems, it's go– it's had its problems. Those problems are being rectified. All the people that were wrong'uns have been fired [Laughs] And Quackity's put a new team together. So like, I'm so happy that I'm like– that Q is doing everything he can right now to make it like, right.

But I am still just sad that Chayanne and Tallulah are just asleep, that is just making me real sad. So I've been like, logging on whenever I can to just like, hang out and stuff and just, you know, be around. But I am- I am just sad boy now. [Laughs] I've like– throwing all those penguins into the- the Spawn area was like, my limit. And the like, laughing with YD and Bad kind of cheered me up a bit.

But yeah, I'm sure most of you can agree. It's like, once- once you've been making content on a server a certain way, it's- it's been like, 6 - 8 months of like, the same like type of content I've been making on that server. It's been very lore-heavy, it's been very Egg hanging out with the Eggs and just chilling. Like, not even like doing anything crazy. We would just hang out. But yeah, I'm sure everyone's in the same boat. Like, we all just like, miss that, you know?

So... just gotta wait around. Just gotta wait. Wait for things to get better. Trust in Big Q.

But yeah, moments- moments like the other day, Chat, where me, Bad, and YD were just hanging out just like kind of... you know, it just kind of like... What's the word I'm looking for? Like, drills home how important the QSMP is and can be for connecting people. Not just now, but in the future. And like, that- I feel like that is something that's definitely worth protecting, or something that's worth like, seeing happen in the future with other people. Not even thinking about like, if I'm gonna be interacting with anyone like, thinking about like other people interacting with other people in the future. It's fucking- It's so cool.

Like, imagine seeing like, brand new streamers that you might've not have heard of interacting with people that you know right now. Not necessarily me or people that I know, but like– like, the connections that we've all made.

Dude, Me and Kristin went to fuckin' Switzer-France to hang out with these people! [Laughs] Cellbit and Lore traveled from fucking Brazil to Switzer-France to hang out! The- these connections are like, mental. Just never would have happened without the server, and that's definitely something worth protecting. And like, ensuring it is done the correct way in the future.

That means a lot to us Chat, it does– [Briefly responds to Chat] It means a lot to us and like, obviously the admins being well-taken care of is like, at the fore-front.

And Quackity speaks very highly of this new team. He's like- he's chatted to us like, in calls and stuff. He's been keeping us up to date on everything that's been going on behind the scenes, everything that he can tell us anyways. And like, he is very happy with this new team. He pretty much said that they are like, very passionate about the project, and we can like, trust that he trusts them to do a very good job. So...

Yeah, I'm excited but like, we just have to kind of like, wait. Like, there's a lot being changed around, there's a lot of plans. But the good thing to know is that the people that caused harm have been removed. And now the people that are like, in charge are like, very passionate about the project and just want to see everyone happy and succeed and be taken care of. But these things take time. So we just have to hang about, we have to wait.

[Responding to someone asking about what happened with QSMP and the Admin situation] I'm not going to go into too much detail, you can find out exactly what has gone on, and it's not as simple as black and white. It's- there's a lot of gray areas in there, and it's like very complicated, so you can go look it up yourself, but ultimately, all you need to know is that the initial admin team, the like, head people at the top that Quackity put in charge like ages ago when the server first started were making decisions that were like, not good for the health and also the well-being of the actors, and like, admins and like, the staff. So like, some staff were fine, other staff had a shit fucking time, and it was unfair and terrible and went unnoticed for a while, and then it all came out and Quackity's been like, fixing it since.

Most recently, he stepped down from the team because of like, how serious shit was getting. Like, people online have been fucking awful. And it's very dangerous at the minute for like the ex- like, members of the team, and also him. It's like- it's terrible.

So it's very heated, very– it's– again— and it's not as simple as just like "This- this is– this is right, this is wrong." It's like- it's very- there's a lot of muddled areas, and it's not as easy as just saying "This is exactly what happened." I'm summarizing. I'm literally just summarizing. But all you need to know right now, the latest update is that the team that are in charge are very passionate about the projects and are like, much, much better and will take care of the new people and the admins and all the actors and stuff a lot better than the last fucking team because the initial problem was that Quackity kind of like, took a bit more of a step back and he wasn't like, overseeing every single thing that was going on behind the scenes, but now he's had to- he's had to take a step back, he's been forced to take a step back, but he's left it in the hands of a team that he truly trusts this time. Like, he's actually fully-vetted.

So HOPEFULLY– again: there's more things that need to be done behind the scenes, and I'm not an official spokesperson, I'm just a person playing on the fucking server that my friend has made, and I'm very happy to support him, and I trust that he will do and continue to do the right thing.

But yeah. Not as simple as just [Snaps fingers] "This is this." It's like– there's so much fucking like, middle ground and shit that's gone on. And that's all I'm gonna say on it! 'Cuz otherwise it's just gonna go on and on and on, and people are gonna be like, "What do you know?" and be like "I don't know shit!" And the stuff that I do know, I probably can't talk about right now. There's like, certain things that like, can't be said, for legal reasons and stuff.

[iamfitzwilliamdarcy]

anyway, i'm sure this has been discussed ad nauseam at this point but I'll say it again -- the show gives us two scenes of zuko expressing very legitimate worries about facing a father-figure after messing up

The Book 3 opener, with Mai on the boat, where Zuko worries about seeing his father after 3 years and how he's changed/his home has changed

Zuko anxious about facing Iroh again and discusses this with Katara

The conversations go like this:

Mai: Aren't you cold? Zuko: I've got a lot on my mind. It's been so long, over three years since I was home. I wonder what's changed. I wonder how I've changed. Mai: [Yawns.] I just asked if you were cold, I didn't ask for your whole life story. [Zuko frowns at her sarcastic response. Mai giggles and holds his face in her hands.] Stop worrying.

(in interest of fairness, I will include that the transcript i got from atla wiki says this: The two kiss. Mai exits, and Zuko stays there with an expression of relief on his face. We return to the ship where Team Avatar is on -- however, the show just actually shows a close up of his eyes)

and

Cut back to Zuko, who becomes worried and ashamed before walking toward the tent. Cut to Zuko from behind as he approaches the tent before stopping. Close-up of Zuko. Side-view as he sits down. Katara walks up to him. Katara Are you okay? Zuko [Frontal view.] No, I'm not okay. My uncle hates me, I know it. [Katara sits down next to him.] He loved and supported me in every way he could, and I still turned against him. How can I even face him? Katara [Close-up side-view of Zuko.] Zuko, you're sorry for what you did, right? Zuko: More sorry than I've been about anything in my entire life. Katara: Then he'll forgive you. He will.

I just think there's a very clear contrast here of dismissive vs supportive. I get what the writers were trying to do- Mai even smiles a little when she makes her joke-- but it just doesn't land for me because I think Zuko's concerns are valid and ought to be treated seriously here-- who wouldn't be worried after 3 years away???? And And Zuko doesn't even disclose his real worries to Mai (he does to Azula though!-- about seeing his dad without having actually recaptured the Avatar! which I think is interesting)

And he's very upfront with Katara in the later scene, which is a very pivotal one for him-- his courage to make amends and apologize to one of the most important people in his life. And Katara doesn't try to lighten the mood or tell him to stop worrying -- she treats his concerns as valid and walks him through it-- he's sorry, so Iroh will forgive him (it probably helps that she has also forgiven him for what he did in Ba Sing Se, she knows what that means)

[takumiraine]

Once Upon A Time Chapter 2

<prev> <next>

So Danny? 100% has PTSD. I do have a vague plan for this. And most of the next chap written. The Fentons may or may not be terrible parents. You’ll have to wait and see. I do have plans to break everyone’s hearts at least once. Anyways. This is considered my like…. Audience test before Ao3. Things may change. As a reminder all I know about dc is from fandom and wiki and everything I remember about dp is prob poorly remembered.

—

Once upon a time, there had been a young boy who was happy. Once upon a time, there was a young boy who had dreams and a future. Once upon a time, there was a boy who had been alive in every sense of the word. Once upon a time, everything shattered. Once upon a time, there was a man who was filled with anger. Once upon a time, there was a man just as alive as he was dead. Once upon a time, there was a man who was haunted and hunted.

As the stabbed kid shuffled off, leaving Jason baffled, he grabbed the guy who he had slammed into the wall. His head was bleeding but his breathing was steady and Jason huffed. He knew he definitely cracked the guy’s skull, but he had survived worse.

“O, what do we know on this guy?” He asked the woman in his ear. Oracle’s answer would determine whether he took the guy in to the ER or let him roll the dice of fate.

“Rap sheet about a mile long. Pretty basic stuff. Armed robbery, possession with intent, B&Es, assault and battery, the usual.”

Jason shrugged then and dropped the guy against the wall. Rolling the dice it was. He turned away, looking towards where the kid disappeared around the corner “and what about the guy he was mugging?”

“That’s where it gets weird.” Oracle’s typing was coming through loud and clear. “It’s hard to get a clear picture of him. He has some sort of distortion on the feed. Everything else comes out clear but…. He’s a mess of pixels. Voice too. Scrambled. It’ll take time.”

“Think he’s a meta?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me, considering he got knifed and just…. Walked off with it. Wonder what his issue with B is though.”

“Couldn’t tell you. Think it might be time to update my armor if I’m being lumped in with people B and the bird brains have pissed off.” Jason took an evidence kit out of his pocket and swiped at the blood on his chest. Old habits and all. “Got a sample of the kid’s blood though.”

“Good thinking. Wonder if he’s in any databases. I’ve got a cleaned up picture now. Enough that it’s pinging in GU’s database. Dan Nightingale, Mechanical engineering major. It says he’s 19, it’s his freshman year and he’s in like every remedial class he can take, high school transcripts are mediocre at best. No other information about him really. Rogue in the making that one.” Oracle reported. Jason groaned, grapneling up to the rooftops to follow where the kid went off to.

“Someone should keep an eye on him. Ugh. This’ll be a conversation for B and the birds won’t it? Kid won’t like having a bunch of birds following him.” Jason flicked through the different visual modes on his visor, finding…. Cold moving through one of the apartment buildings. It was human shaped, but where he expected to find heat…. “Weird…. You seeing this?”

“Very weird,” Barbara agreed, tapping into his visor’s feed. “And hey, you could just…. Not tell him. You wanted a Lit degree right? Go to class, befriend him. Do some recon.” Jason knew Babs always walked the fine line between what Bruce needed to know about the rest of them and what she had to keep secret to keep helping them. He didn’t envy her position. Jason still wanted Bruce to hurt sometimes. Not as much as he used to, something about the sins of the father and all that. He just wanted Bruce to be aware that everything he had ever hoped for his boy to be was… out of both of their reaches forever.

“That sounds annoying.” He was 23. He didn’t have any interest in taking on a degree on top of his full time crime fighting and criminal empire running jobs.

“Yeah, but what other choice do you have? It’s go back to school, tell B, or wait for him to become a rogue.”

“I hate you sometimes.” He muttered, unsure of what made him suddenly so interested in that angry guy.

“Feeling’s mutual Hood,” She replied with what was definitely a fond tone. He grimaced.

—-

In the apartment, Danny was less than thrilled. That was his favorite shirt! Now not only was it covered in blood, it had a huge hole in it. His core still thrummed with the urge to fight, but he tamped it down. Slowly, as he pulled the knife out, he sealed the wound with a layer of ice, pulling his shirt off and throwing it into the bathroom sink. The knife was dropped into the kitchen sink. His keys and phone in his bedroom on the battered nightstand next to the bed.

He returned to the bathroom and turned the water on cold. He let it spray full blast before working on scrubbing the blood from his shirt. He looked up to eye himself critically in the mirror before noticing the waistband of his jeans were saturated with blood too. Damn it. He kicked off his shoes and pulled his pants off, throwing them into the now overfilled sink. The bathtub would probably be a better choice. Turning off the sink and turning on the tub Danny picked up the sopping clothes and dropped them with a wet thump into the basin of the tub. Carefully he lowered himself onto the floor, wincing at the way pain clawed through him.

He would need to actually eat food to heal from this at any reasonable speed. He thought of the two dollars he had, then the emergency stash of….he racked his brain to remember how much of the emergency cash he was left with once he got to Gotham…right. Twenty bucks…. That was all he had in the wall.

He missed the days when Sam would just throw money at him whenever his parents forgot to do things like pay rent or put food in the fridge.

As if agreeing his stomach rumbled loudly, demanding actual food to sate the expense of energy healing his injury would take. He thought about calling Sam. Seeing if she could arrange a prepaid card for him. He knew she would in a heartbeat.

Even cut off from family money she seemed to be doing better than he was. Wracking his brain, Danny thought she was working in Bludhaven as some sort of personal assistant. He wasn’t sure if it was the exhaustion that came from sustaining a human body on nothing but ecto or if he had been too distracted in the moment to pay proper attention, but he couldn’t remember if that was right. Getting the blood out of his clothes he wiped at the remaining blood on his body, getting most of it off. He grabbed the clothes and turned off the water.

Slowly, Danny pushed himself to his feet. He had survived worse, multiple times. But pain never seemed to stop being painful. It lanced through his side and he almost fell back to his knees with the way it stole his breath and doubled him over. He wished he could go back to the Zone and just… wait it out. But in order to do that without drawing attention he’d need a portal. The only ones he knew of were either destroyed or…. Compromised.

Maybe he should call Vlad. Danny shook that thought away almost immediately as he realized how silly it was. Vlad spent most of his teen years antagonizing him. Besides the GIW had probably gotten to Vlad too. If he wasn’t captured he would likely be compromised. Memories of Amity Park flooded in before Danny could stop them. Of asking for help. Over and over. Of the GIW storming in and locking everything down. Of Danny frantically telling his parents, only for their eyes to dart to the kitchen before they could stop it. Of the sound of energy. The smell of his flesh burning. Of pain.

Danny forced himself to take a breath. He focused on the wet clothes in his hands. On the tiles beneath his feet. Of the too harsh fluorescents in the bathroom that buzzed. The sounds of the people above him arguing over bills and needing better jobs.

Slowly he banished the memories back where they belonged. He’d… figure it out. He had to. Somehow. For now, sleep. Danny hung up the wet clothes over the shower bar, made sure there was a towel on the floor and shuffled into the bedroom. Double checking that his alarm was set, even though his class wasn’t until early afternoon, he didn’t want to miss it, he slid into his bed and pulled the pile of blankets up over him.

Almost instantly, he was out.

—-

“B,” Jason said in lieu of a proper greeting as he stepped into the Batcave, hood tucked under his arm.

“Jason,” Bruce looked up and turned the surprised expression into something more fond. “To what do I owe the visit?”

Jason leaned against the rock. Foot braced against the wall. “I know semester’s already started, but something came up. How hard would it be to start at GU?”

Bruce stared at him for a long moment and Jason knew it was his way of trying to figure out what buttons to press. Then he tilted his head and turned back to the computer screen. “Not too hard. It is early yet. Anything I should know?”

“Babs was lonely.” It was an out and out lie, but it seemed to soften things in Bruce further, reminding him of the two children that failed him within months of each other.

“Hm.” Bruce was silent at his computer for a long moment. Convinced that was the end of the conversation, Jason tightened his grip on the helmet he had tucked under his arm. “Either way. It is a good choice. Literature?”

The comment and question rankled Jason, the thing from the pit scratching at his carefully contained emotions. Pushing for any crack. Bruce was trying he reminded himself. Too little too late, but trying.

“Yeah. Going in in the morning.”

“Should I call ahead?”

“No. I can handle it. If not I have no business being there.”

“You will do fine.” The ‘you are a Wayne’ was left unspoken.

Jason snorted. “Right. Good talk.”

“Are you staying the night?” An olive branch. Jason wanted to burn it. He tempered the impulse to a spark.

“I have my own place.”

“Your room is still yours when you want it.”

“Yeah. The room of the worst Robin in history. Pass.” Jason turned and walked stiffly back up the steps. Hearing the soft growl of Batman behind him. The start of an argument.

He considered it a victory that he didn’t run into any of his siblings or Alfred on the way out.

[fairuzfan]

During an appearance at Vassar College in early February, controversial New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner was asked about the ongoing evictions of Palestinian families from homes in East Jerusalem which Israel occupied in 1967. Israeli courts have ruled that Jewish settlers could take over some Palestinian homes on the grounds that Jews held title to the properties before Israel was established in 1948.

Bronner was concerned, but not only about Palestinians being made homeless in Israel’s relentless drive to Judaize their city; he was also worried about properties in his West Jerusalem neighborhood, including the building he lives in, partially owned by The New York Times, that was the home of Palestinians made refugees in 1948. Facts about The New York Times’ acquisition of this property are revealed for the first time in this article.

“One of the things that is most worrying not just the Left but a lot of people in Israel about this decision is if the courts in Israel are going to start recognizing property ownership from before the State [of Israel was founded],” Bronner said according to a transcript made by independent reporter Philip Weiss who maintains the blog Mondoweiss.net.

Bronner added, “I think the Palestinians are going to have a fairly big case. I for example live in West Jerusalem. My entire neighborhood was Palestinian before 1948.”

The New York Times-owned property Bronner occupies in the prestigious Qatamon neighborhood, was once the home of Hasan Karmi, a distinguished BBC Arabic Service broadcaster and scholar (1905-2007). Karmi was forced to flee with his family in 1948 as Zionist militias occupied western Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods. His was one of an estimated 10,000 Palestinian homes in West Jerusalem that Jews took over that year.

The New York Times bought the property in 1984 in a transaction overseen by columnist Thomas Friedman who was then just beginning his four-year term as Jerusalem bureau chief.

Hasan Karmi’s daughter, Ghada, a physician and well-known author who lives in the United Kingdom, discovered that The New York Times was in – or rather on top of – her childhood home in 2005, when she was working temporarily in Ramallah. One day Karmi received a call from Steven Erlanger, then The New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief, who had just read her 2002 memoir In Search of Fatima.

Karmi recalled in a 15 May 2008 interview on Democracy Now! that Erlanger told her, “I have read your marvelous memoir, and, do you know, I think I’m living above your old house … From the description in your book it must be the same place” (“Conversation with Palestinian Writer and Doctor Ghada Karmi”).

At Erlanger’s invitation, Karmi visited, but did not find the elegant one-story stone house her family had moved into in 1938, that was typical of the homes middle- and upper-class Arabs began to build in Jerusalem suburbs like Qatamon, Talbiya, Baqa, Romema or Lifta toward the end of the 19th century. The original house was still there, but at some point after 1948 two upper stories had been built.

Erlanger, responding to questions posed by The Electronic Intifada via email, described the residence as “built over the Karmi family house – on its air rights, if you like. The [New York Times] is not in [the Karmi] house.” Erlanger described the building as having an “unbroken” facade but that it consisted of “two residences, two ownerships, two heating systems,” and a separate entrance for the upper levels reached via an external staircase on the side.

Questions The Electronic Intifada sent to Thomas Friedman about the purchase of the property were answered by David E. McCraw, Vice President and Assistant General Counsel for the newspaper, who wrote that the original Karmi house itself “was never owned even partly by The Times. The Times purchased in the 1980s a portion of the building that had been constructed above it in the late 1970s.” The purchase was made from “a Canadian family that had bought them from the original builders of the apartment.”

McCraw acknowledged in a follow-up conversation that as a general principle of property law, the “air rights” of a property – the right to build on top of it or use (and access) the space above it – belong to the owner of the ground.

Exiled from Qatamon

Ghada Karmi standing by the front door of her childhood home in Jerusalem’s Qatamon neighborhood in 2005. (Steven Erlanger)

Hasan Karmi hailed originally from Tulkarem, in what is now the northern West Bank. In 1938, he moved his family to Jerusalem to take up a job in the education department of the British-run Palestine Mandate government. Ghada – born around November 1939 (the exact date is unknown because her birth certificate along with all the family’s records, photographs, furniture, personal possessions and an extensive library were lost with the house) – has vivid memories of a happy childhood in what was a well-to-do mixed neighborhood of Arab Christians and Muslims, foreigners and a few Jewish families. The neighbors with whom her parents socialized and with whose children the young Ghada and her siblings played included the Tubbeh, Jouzeh, Wahbeh and Khayyat families. There was also a Jewish family called Kramer, whose father belonged to the Haganah, the Zionist militia that became the Israeli army after May 1948.

Karmi describes the house at length in her memoir – but she told The Electronic Intifada her fondest memories were of the tree-filled garden where she spent much time playing with her brother and sister and the family dog Rex. The lemon and olive trees she remembers are still there, Erlanger noted to The Electronic Intifada.

In the mid-1940s, the lively Qatamon social life gave way to terror as the dark clouds of what would come to be known as the Nakba approached. Violence broke out all over Jerusalem after the UN’s devastating recommendation to partition Palestine without giving its people any say in the matter. Spontaneous riots by Arabs were followed by organized violence from Zionist groups and mutual retaliatory attacks that claimed lives from both communities. This climate provided the pretext for the Haganah’s premeditated campaign to seize Jerusalem.

Poorly armed and disorganized Arab irregulars, who had nevertheless succeeded in disrupting Zionist supply convoys to Jerusalem, proved no match for highly-trained and well-armed Zionist militias which, on the orders of David Ben-Gurion, began a well-planned campaign to conquer the western parts of the city. The occupation of western Jerusalem and some 40 villages in its vicinity was executed as part of the Haganah’s “Plan Dalet.” These events are well documented in books including Benny Morris’ The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem, 1947-1949 (1987), Walid Khalidi’s (ed.) All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 (1992), Salim Tamari’s (ed.) Jerusalem 1948: The Arab Neighborhoods and their Fate in the War (1999) and Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006).

Zionist militias used frequent bombings of Arab civilians to terrorize residents into fleeing. These attacks were amplified by posters and warnings broadcast over loudspeakers that those choosing to remain behind would share the fate of those killed in atrocities.

Karmi wrote that one night in November 1947, their neighbor Kramer came to see her father and said, “I have come to tell you at some risk to myself to take your family and leave Jerusalem as soon as possible …. Please believe me, it is not safe here.” Many Qatamon families left after the Zionist bombing of the nearby Semiramis Hotel, which killed 26 civilians including the Spanish consul-general, on the night of 4-5 January 1948.

The Karmis however held on, and Ghada records in her memoir her mother steadfastly saying, “The Jews are not going to drive me out of my house … Others may go if they like, but we’re not giving in.”

Toward the end of April, bombardment by Zionist militias against virtually undefended Arab areas became so heavy, and the terror generated by the Deir Yassin massacre earlier that month so intense, that the Karmis relented and departed by taxi for Damascus, via Amman, with nothing but a few clothes. Their intention was to bring the children to safety at their maternal grandparents’ house while the adults would return home to Jerusalem. A few days after reaching Damascus the elder Karmis tried to return to Jerusalem but were unable to do so. So began the family’s exile that continues to this day.

As Arabs left their homes, Jews were moved in by the Haganah. “While the cleansing of Qatamon went on,” Itzhak Levy, the head of Haganah intelligence in Jerusalem recalled, “pillage and robbery began. Soldiers and citizens took part in it. They broke into the houses and took from them furniture, clothing, electric equipment and food” (quoted in Pappe, p.99). Meron Benvenisti, an Israeli scholar and former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, wrote in his book Sacred Landscape of personally witnessing the “looting of Arab homes in Qatamon” as a boy. Palestinians also lost art work, financial instruments and – like the Karmis – irreplaceable family records, as the fabric of a society and a way of life were destroyed.

Jerusalem return denied

The Karmis’ story is a variation of what happened to tens of thousands of Jerusalem-area Palestinians during the Nakba, in which approximately 750,000 Palestinians were expelled or fled from their homes all over the country and never allowed to return. (In my book One Country I describe the departure under similar circumstances of my mother’s family from Lifta-Romema.)

As of 1997, there were 84,000 living West Jerusalem refugees (23,000 born before 1948), according to Tamari. Half lived in the West Bank, many just miles from their original homes, but thousands of others were spread across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip.

Arab property is well-documented through administrative and UN records, but tracing the fate of an individual house or proving title is extremely difficult if not impossible for Palestinians scattered, exiled and forbidden from returning home. Some, who have foreign passports that allowed them to make brief visits, have attempted to locate their family properties. In recent years a small Israeli group called Zochrot (Remembering) has even joined in – taking some displaced Palestinians back to their original villages and homes, whose traces Israel often made deliberate efforts to conceal or destroy. But such activities are not welcomed by most Israeli Jews still in denial about their state’s genesis.

Ghada Karmi recalls an earlier attempt to revisit her family home in 1998. The residents were unwelcoming and would not give her the phone number of the landlord, though a plaque outside bore the name “Ben-Porat.”

The owner of the original, lower-level house at the time The New York Times bought the upper levels was Yoram Ben-Porat, an economics professor who became president of the Hebrew University and was killed with his wife and young son in a road accident in October 1992. According to Erlanger, the house remained with heirs from the Ben-Porat family who rented it out until it was sold in 2005 to an Israeli couple who did some remodeling. It is unknown when the Ben-Porats acquired the house or if they were the ones who had the upper levels built.

During Karmi’s 2005 visit, Erlanger invited her to see his part of the house and introduced her to the Israeli tenants in the lower level who gave her free access while Erlanger took photographs. For Karmi, revisiting the house was disconcerting. She described to The Electronic Intifada its occupants as “Ashkenazi Jewish Israelis, liberals, nice people who wanted to be nice.” She felt like asking them, “how can you live here knowing this is an Arab house, knowing this was once owned by Arabs, what goes through your mind?” But, she explained, “in the way people have of not wanting to upset people who appear to be nice, I didn’t say anything.”

The New York Times

In the early years after their original residents left, many of the former Arab neighborhoods were run down. But in the 1970s, wealthier Israeli Jews began to gentrify them and acquiring an old Arab house became a status symbol. Today, Israeli real estate agencies list even small apartments in Qatamon for hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, and house prices can run into the millions. In Jerusalem, such homes have become popular especially with wealthy American Jews, according to Pappe. The New York Times did not disclose what it paid for the Qatamon property.

It was a curious decision for The New York Times to have purchased part of what must obviously have been property with – at the very least – a political, moral and legal cloud over its title. Asked whether The New York Times or Friedman had made any effort to learn the history of the property, the newspaper responded, “Neither The Times nor Mr. Friedman knew who owned the original ground floor prior to 1948.”

As Friedman prepared to make the move to Jerusalem from Beirut where he was covering the Lebanon war in the early 1980s, The Times hired an Israeli real estate agent to help him locate a home. According to McCraw, Friedman’s wife Ann went ahead to Jerusalem and looked at properties “and she, working with the agent, made the selection for The Times.” During the process Friedman visited Jerusalem and looked at properties as well, a fact he mentions in his book From Beirut to Jerusalem. By the time the property was selected, Friedman had moved permanently to Jerusalem and oversaw the closing.

The choice of the Qatamon property – over several modern apartments that the real estate agent also showed – makes The New York Times a protagonist and interested party in one of the most difficult aspects of the Palestine conflict: the property and refugee rights of Palestinians that Israel has adamantly denied. It also raises interesting questions about what such choices have on news coverage – with which the newspaper itself has had to grapple.

In 2002, an Electronic Intifada article partly attributed the pervasive underreporting of Israeli violence against Palestinians to “a structural geographic bias” – the fact that “most US news organizations who have reporters on the ground base them in Tel Aviv or west Jerusalem, very far from the places where Palestinians are being killed and bombarded on a daily basis” ( Michael Brown and Ali Abunimah, “Killings of dozens once again called ‘period of calm’ by US media, 20 September 2002).

In 2005, The New York Times’ then Public Editor Daniel Okrent echoed this criticism, writing:

“The Times, like virtually every American news organization, maintains its bureau in West Jerusalem. Its reporters and their families shop in the same markets, walk the same streets and sit in the same cafes that have long been at risk of terrorist attack. Some advocates of the Palestinian cause call this ‘structural geographic bias.’” (“The Hottest Button: How The Times Covers Israel and Palestine,” 24 April 2005).

Okrent recommended that in order to broaden the view of the newspaper’s reporters, it should locate a correspondent in Ramallah or Gaza – where she or he would share the daily experiences, concerns and risks of Palestinians. This advice went unheeded, just as Executive Editor Bill Keller recently publicly rejected the advice of the current public editor that current Jerusalem Bureau Chief Ethan Bronner should be reassigned because of the conflict of interest created by Bronner’s son’s voluntary enlistment in the Israeli army.

Thus, in a sense, Bronner’s structural and personal identification with Israel has become complete: when the younger Bronner joins army attacks in Gaza, fires tear gas canisters or live bullets at nonviolent demonstrators trying to save their land from confiscation in West Bank villages, or conducts night arrest raids in Ramallah or Nablus – as he may well be ordered to do – his father will root for him, worry about him, perhaps hope that his enemies will fall in place of his son, as any Israeli parent would. And on weekends, the elder Bronner will await his soldier-son’s homecoming to a property whose true heirs live every day, like millions of Palestinians, with the unacknowledged trauma, and enduring injustice of dispossession and exile.