#i'm so excited to see what we'll read next!!

[tblsomedoodles]

Donnie's Visions (apocalypse Seer Twins comic) Part 5 (complete!)

Start - Previous

I should wait until tomorrow to post this so i can make sure i didn't miss anything. But i don't particularly want to wait. It's the last part and i just really want this to be fully complete (post and all.)

anyways, i hope you enjoyed this comic! I am very glad to get to check one thing off my to-do list.

[ophthalmotropy]

You can barely tell because I'm still, you know, posting, but the amount of time I spend here has decreased massively. Most of it was just scrolling out of restlessness and not actually wanting to post something lmao.

[vulpinesaint]

bed covered in books feeling fucking fanTASTIC

[oveliagirlhaditright]

Fandom things I'm looking forward to:

Kingdom Hearts IV and Missing Link

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Final Fantasy IX Remake

Final Fantasy Tactics Remaster or Remake (whichever it is. I've heard both things)

The fourth Madoka Magica movie, whenever that comes out (seriously. Where is it? First it was announced as the Concept movie. Then it was re-announced years later with a new name, and it's still missing)

The Percy Jackson TV show

The Infernal Devices TV show

Maybe the Twilight TV show. Maybe.

The animated Smallville continuation that Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum are working on, whenever it comes out

I was going to put Baron and Toluca on this list (that's, like, a spiritual successor to the OG "Roswell" TV show. Majandra Delfino who played Maria in the show wrote the script, and she and Brendan Fehr who played Michael star in it. They're also planning for more Roswell cameos in later episodes), but it came out and I didn't even know it? But I have no idea how to watch it, though, as I guess it only came out in theaters in Albuquerque. Here's hoping it comes out on DVD or something...

The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

The alleged Firefly reboot

The new Daredevil show

The Batman Part II

The next part in Tom Holland's Spider-Man movies

The DCU, starting with Superman Legacy in 2025

The Five Nights at Freddy's movie and Help Wanted 2

The Iron Lung movie

The TV show that it sounds like Markiplier will be working on after he's done with the Iron Lung movie

The next Bendy and the Ink Machine thing being worked on

MAYBE the Hello Neighbor sequel. I know. I KNOW! (It's really only because the second game had to end on a cliffhanger.)

Five Nights at Candy's 4

Frozen III

Disney's "Wish"

The next and final season of the Clear Card arc of Cardcaptor Sakura

The new Avatar series (the one about the third Avatar in the cycle: the Earth bender)

The live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series, perhaps

The Chosen season 4

[gregkinz]

  Tomgreg week 2023 day 1: first kiss

There are several things that coexist in Greg’s universe right now:

Greg can’t go to prison.

 It just can’t happen. Greg, bullied all through grade school and beaten up in the back parking lot several times Hirsch cannot go to jail. Greg is bad with people and worse with conflict. He’s going to get snapped in half on day one.

Greg really shouldn’t ask Tom to go to prison for him.

 Because Tom will do it. Because at basically every turn whenever Greg has asked Tom for something he’s gotten it, over and over, even when he doesn’t need it or deserve it. No one has enabled Greg’s whining as much as Tom has. Tom is there when no one else is, Tom is always there, over and over, Tom is there beside Greg.

Tom is probably the most reliable and important person in Greg’s life currently.

 Greg needs Tom around. He needs Tom for his job, for support, and for genuine human connection because Jesus Greg hasn’t made a single friend in New York City. Besides Willa, anyway, she doesn’t count because she’s too cool for Greg and can only hang out once in a while when she’s not doing something extravagant or important.

Greg can’t let Tom or anyone else know how attached he’s gotten, because caring for people the way he cares for Tom is like standing in the middle of the road yelling ‘hit me hit me!’

[theconchaverse]

the only downside to reading again physical books again, is that I don't have a TBR list.

I don't know what I want to read now, as a 21 year old woman who's been exclusively reading fanfiction for the last 6 years of her life. Like, I don't know who I am as a reading anymore, and that's kind of sad but also very exciting cause the entire world is out there, mine for the taking

[suiana]

(yandere! demon harem x gn! human reader) (reader is human)

"i think it's working! i see their shape-"

"cursed satan! our blood sweat and tears are finally paying off? we'll finally see a real human?"

"kya kya kya! I'm so excited!"

your ears ring loudly, your hands clutching the sides of your head as you let out a soft whimper. what the hell just happened?! one moment you were in your room lazing around, the next a magic ring formed below you and now you're... in hell?

is this hell? did you die?

you weren't quite sure if it was. it certainly looked dark and eerie with the current setting you wer ein Right now having skulls everywhere. but seeing the horribly demonic creatures in front of you talk in minecraft enchantment table confirmed everything you suspected.

that you were dead. probably.

"u-um... am i dead-"

"huzzah! the human has been summoned! they're so tiny!"

"oh my satan below! look at them..! they look just like an angel..."

"kya! i want to eat them! look at their confused face!"

you stare at the three demons who were surrounding you, blinking slowly before you let out a shaky sigh. were they talking about how many sins you've committed? the amount of times you jerked off to fictional characters? is that what the book in their hands were? a list of all your wrong doings?

you immediately submerged yourself in a depressive state, frowning as you begin to silently regret all your life choices up until now. damn it, you should've jerked off one last time before you died-

meanwhile, the demons were discussing what dinner they should give you.

"kya! do you think that the human will enjoy goat broth with human meat?"

"no no! allow them to eat elven tarts first! those are nice!"

"you fools, we should ask them first."

one of the demons mumble, arms crossed across his toned chest before the other two demons nod excitedly, turning towards you. their grimoire was immediately throw away, hitting a poor skull off the shelf.

oof.

anyway!

"ahem... human, allow us to introduce ourselves... we are-"

"kya! demons!"

"yes! and we're so excited to have you here!"

"worry not, you aren't dead. we just summoned you because we wanted to have a human for our experiment."

the three of them suddenly talk in english, eagerly looking down at you with wide grins. you wouldn't have been so thrown off if not for the fact that their teeth were so sharp and they looked like they were about to chop you up for their so called 'experiment'.

you gulp nervously, opening your mouth to ask them what type of experiment. but it looks like they read your mind or something.

"kya! it's a love experiment! don't worry!"

"yes! don't you worry too much cute human! we will never ever hurt you! maybe love you too much though..."

"mn, that's right. we are just conducting an experiment..."

the calmer of the three pauses mid sentence, approaching you as he suddenly bends down to your height, his demonic appearance closing in on your face. your heart races, feeling his hot breath on your skin before you feel your mind go blank at his words.

"where we see how long it takes for a human to fall for three demons. specifically three that are obsessed with said human already."

...

huh?

just... what the hell was going on?!

[remi-thirsts]

𝐅𝐀𝐕 𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍?

pairing: gojo, geto, choso, and toji x fem!reader (separate) summary: celeb!au where the boys are interviewed and asked a pretty personal question ! (I took nanami out bc I don't think he would want to share your business with the world) content: kinda suggestive, established relationships, allusions to sexual themes, mentions of dacryphyilia in toji's, pet names, cursing, celebrity!au (model, singer, actor, etc) wc: 1.4k

♡ 𝐒. 𝐆𝐎𝐉𝐎

"Yes, yes! Thank you for joining us today, Gojo-san. All of your fans are excited to see you play the new lead role in this upcoming movie!" For the past hour Gojo has been answering questions many of his fans have with an interviewer who has gathered some of the most asked questions.

"Next question!" The women exclaims excitedly, when she reads the card she pauses in shock, "Um.. who put this card in there...?" Now the white haired actor was curious.

"Well, what does it say? I'm sure it can't be that bad." His cocky attitude is showing, but a huge percentage of his fans like when he's like this. It makes fantasizing him all the more creative and exciting; or so you hear.

"Uh...uh. Um-" She remembers the camera is rolling, and this is live TV. "Many fans know you have a girlfriend and a lot of them want to ask,

"What is your favorite position?"

Gojo knew his PR team would probably get on his ass for answering this question instead of moving on to a different one but he doesn't care- at all.

"This is a tough one... hm. I guess if I had to choose I'd say cowgirl. I love the way she rides," he pauses for a second before continuing with excitement, "She's hella good at it too! Every time I watch her bounce on it my eyes about roll to the back of my-"

"OKAY. Thank you, Mr. Gojo!" She interrupts, quickly turning to the camera with a very forced smile.

"There you have it! We'll be back after a brief commercial break!"

♡ 𝐒. 𝐆𝐄𝐓𝐎

Your boyfriend, Suguru, started a podcast about his music life with his band mates two years ago. Since his group already had quite a huge fan base, it was no surprise they took to their podcast with excitement.

Usually the group would talk about funny backstage stories or moments where their performances were almost ruined. Today they're doing a Q&A, the questions that are most asked will be answered first, while less popular questions will be answered later.

"Oh shit, people wanna know Suguru." He quirks an eyebrow, the raven haired male leans his mic towards his lips so the people can hear his voice.

"Know what?" A sly smirk forms on his face because he knows there could be at least a million things 'the people wanna know.'

"They wanna know what's your favorite position to have your girl in." The lead singer snickers whilst asking the question. Suguru clicks his tongue and taps on the desk a few times.

"I really like to have her legs behind her head cuz I can reach really deep that way."

"Sooo, mating press?" Their lead singer is just as nosy as their fans so of course he's gonna press on.

"Hell yeah, man." Some of them clap and others laugh at Suguru's openness.

-----

You were really busy but you decided to tune into your boyfriend's podcast after a bunch of people tagged you on twitter to go listen to today's episode.

When you hear Suguru tell all 2 million of his podcast listeners what position he likes to fuck you in, you scream into your pillow and turn into a giggling mess.

He never knows how to keep his mouth shut, and you love it.

♡ 𝐂. 𝐊𝐀𝐌𝐎

You're laying on your boyfriend's bed listening to him play his game. Choso's a big time streamer at this point. Four years ago when he started his fan base was quite small and he just enjoyed the few who would join his gaming streams. Now, Choso streams as work and he still loves it just as much as he had long ago.

"Thank you for the tip 'prettyem0b0y22'," Usually Choso reads aloud whatever message they leave with their tips but he hesitates this time.

"Uh- you don't really expect me to answer that, right? She's laying on the bed right now."

That statement immediately grabs your attention, you glance at his monitor screens, trying to get a peek at whatever his fan was asking of him.

It seems plenty of others want to know the answer to this question too because the chat starts speeding up, meaning that they're spamming.

"Guys come on, I'll turn chat off if you guys don't stop." Choso is as scary as a cute little kitten, so they just keep at it, and now you're curious too. What could possibly be that bad that he didn't want to answer it and to be fair he has answered some pretty crazy questions before.

"Indulge me Cho, what did 'prettyem0b0y22' wanna know?" His head swings so fast he could have gotten whiplash from it. His cheeks are burning pink and his brows furrow in confusion.

"I promise it wasn't anything crazy, don't worry about it." Oh, you're worrying about it alright. His strange behavior prompts you to spring up off the bed and walk your way over to his desk.

Instead of just taking a quick look at the chat, you make yourself comfortable in your boyfriend's lap. Obviously the chat goes absolutely crazy when they see you make this gesture. Choso is no doubt embarrassed but he slings an arm around your waist anyway.

"So what was the question he couldn't answer in front of me?" Prettyem0b0y22 wastes no time sending another hefty tip.

"I asked him what's his fav postion with you." When you read the whole thing aloud some giggles leave your lips.

"He likes when I ride him while facing him. For what reason? He's a titty man." Choso gasps as you expose both of you. The risks are high, anyone, literally anyone could see this clip and think something about you, but you don't care. It's your body and his, people don't have power over how you two interact with each other.

The chat explodes with all kinds of things, most are shocked emojis, while others are spamming the cherry emoji. Luckily, Choso's moderator team puts slow chat on and does a few other precautions to settle the situation.

"Baby- I- what if your family sees this? Or worse your boss?!" His concern is absolutely adorable.

"Well I guess I'd have to start a streaming channel of my own?" Everyone in his chat is totally on board with that idea. They've seen you play for Choso before and they think your commentary on games is quite funny.

"I don't want you to lose your job though." This time he whines in pure worry.

"I won't, baby. It'll be alright. Don't overthink it."

♡ 𝐓. 𝐅𝐔𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐆𝐔𝐑𝐎

Toji's got what people want to see in model catalogs and magazines. The slutty waist, the well defined but not too defined muscles, his beautiful eyes and long lashes. Toji is a picture perfect model, which is what landed him his modeling gig and even a whole career a few years later.

A journalist, who's particularly interested in his dating life more than his modeling career asks him a bunch of dating related questions.

Some have speculated that Toji was dating, but he neither confirmed nor denied those allegations. You and Toji agreed to keep your relationship on the down low, because having a bunch of strangers in your personal business was not desirable.

The journalist woman words the questions in a way of inference.

"Assuming you had a girlfriend, Fushiguro-sama. What would your favorite position in bed be?" At first Toji groans but then when he registers the question he decides he'll answer it hypothetically when in reality it is something he likes to do with you.

"Hypothetically speaking, if I had a girlfriend my favorite position with her would be missionary, because I'd want to look at her pretty face when she's cryin' on my cock." The journalist writes that down, Toji knows everything he says will be censored but the people will still be able to figure it out.

"Missionary, really? Many people online have guessed you were a doggy-style kind of guy. Based off of your twitter statement that said and I quote 'Love it when her ass is phat. Love squeezing that thing.' End quote"

Toji lets out a deep laugh before answering the woman, "Doggy-style is for people I don't care about, people I don't want to look at, my girl- if I had a girl, she wouldn't be just any fuck."

More theories start to surface after Toji's slip up of words, and that's okay, because they don't know you and you don't know them.

divider: @/plutism

[redflagshipwriter]

Mama Bat pt3 progress Post

Part 3 Progress

Batcount: Stephanie, Dick

“Danny Fenton, parents declared him dead and claimed they buried him,” Dick said, spinning around in the batcomputer batchair. Anxious, unhappy, too much energy because there's nothing to fight here. “He has an older sister, I think she knows he's in Gotham and she's covering for him. She'll be coming to Gotham University next semester, despite having accepted a better offer from Harvard last year.” 

Steph let out a low, long whistle. “Whatever's going on at home must be bad,” she commented. “No other contacts?”

Dick pulled up a grainy class photo. “He's part of a small friend group, but neither of them have made any unusual moves. If Sam Manson or Tucker Foley get a plane ticket we'll know, but for now?” He shrugged, eyes distant. “Seems like he ran off alone. But probably for really good reasons.” He switched tabs back to the unhinged Fenton works website. He all but vibrated: wanna go, want to run, look, see.

Steph squinted for a few moments, reading. “...We’re going to go see what crimes against nature they're committing, aren't we?” She sounded resigned to it.

Dick shrugged. “It's not ideal,” he said unhappily. “The town is too small for how we normally do our night work. But face out is a big risk.” 

“Maybe we should lean on a friend?” Stephanie suggested. “Someone who has a public role that wouldn't be a problem?” 

“We’ll have to ask Mama Bat.” 

They both turned to look at Cass, who was sitting on a desk. She arched an eyebrow at them. “We ask Danny,” she said pointedly. “He knows best.” 

Stephanie made a face that said she disagreed. 

Cass huffed. “He knows,” she reiterated. He had lived there. He knew the people. “We could make a mess.” She mimed sweeping the stack of Bruce papers off the desk surface and then an expression of exaggerated batdad horror.

Stephanie untensed enough to laugh. 

Cass considered that good enough. She jumped down and patted Dick as she passed. He let out an exaggerated sigh but he powered down the computer and followed her up. “I'm excited to get to meet the little guy,” he said. The lights turned off. All three of them hit the stairs and jogged up. Dick chattered away, tweet tweet tweet. “It's so sweet that Dami latched onto him like this. When I asked what Danny would like as a welcome home gift, he told me that I was a cretin and should not corrupt the baby.” He laughed, high and joyous. It was contagious. Cass found herself laughing with him.

Stephanie squinted at the back of Dick's head as the oldest brother bounded up the stairs. “Damian… likes him?” She confirmed. 

Cass beamed. Of course he did. Danny was a good baby. He and Damian were out now walking dogs at the animal shelter while Alfie did the big weekly shop. 

Dick shrugged. “He gets to be the mentor,” he pointed out. “He’s not the Babiest Bat anymore.” 

“Danny is older than Damian,” Stephanie protested. Cass glared at her. 

“He's baby,” she said firmly. End of conversation. 

[felassan]

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

Under a cut due to length and spoilers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JE: Yes! Yes I am.

CB: Let's do it.

KFM: Let's do it.

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

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

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

JE: Hurtful, Corinne, accurate but hurtful.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

KFM: I love that one - 

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

JE: Yes!

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

JE: Oh, man.

CB: Assan just getting a little treat.

JE: I love that.

KFM: I love that.

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

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

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

KFM: Can we get some Assans in the chat?

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

KFM: Me too.

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

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

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

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

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

[text block character limit reached]

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

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

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

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

JE: Yeah.

CB: Did we lose you?

[there is silence on KFM’s line]

JE: Ope.

CB: We may have lost Katey, y’all. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

JE: Katey, have we gotcha back yet?

KFM: Am I back? Can you hear me?

JE: Yay, you’re back. 

CB: Katey, we did our best Katey.

JE: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

JE: Taken by the Fade.

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

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

KFM: Thank you.

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

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

KFM: Yeah, I think that answers the question.

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

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

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

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

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

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

KFM: I love that.

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

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

KFM: I love that.

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

JE: No worries.

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

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

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

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

JE: M-hm -

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

KFM: Yeah, definitely

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

KFM: Of course.

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

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

JE: Oh, shit, copy that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

KFM: Will we be - 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

KFM: Awesome.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JE: Happy birthday doggiesnores.

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

JE: You gotta roll with it Corinne.

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

JE: No!

KFM: Oh we can - oh, okay.

JE: You can sing.

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

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

CB: We’ll stop, we’ll stop. 

JE: Yeah, I think, yeah. 

CB: We gotta get back to the questions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

KFM: Confirmed.

CB: - there’s some pink.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JE: Yep, I can still hear you.

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

KFM: Oh, good!

CB: Yeah.

KFM: I’ll just keep talking!

CB: Great, let’s do it!

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

CB: Hey, we’ve all been there.

JE: Cursing, in our Discord, my goodness!

CB: How very human of you.

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

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

KFM: I'm back, in record time. 

JE: Welcome back! 

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

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

KFM: Oh that’s okay, no, it’s great!

CB: We hit upon a favorite topic of mine.

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

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

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

JE: Let’s finish the list!

KFM: Let’s do it.

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

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

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

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

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

JE: Yeah.

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

JE: Orlesian.

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

CB: That was really good, Katey!

KFM: I tried!

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

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

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

KFM: We did it!

JE: Yeah!

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

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

JE: Mhm.

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

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

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

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

CB: Happy Friday!

KFM: Happy Friday, and happy sandwich day!

CB: Bye bye.

JE: Thank you.

KFM: Bye.

JE: Bye.

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

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

[selineram3421]

Well I just read you newest story about y/n being Husker's younger sibling. Especially how much focus there was on Al just wanting to piss him off.

So if I might suggest: Alastor with a y/n who's Charlie's sibling/Lucifer's child. Seriously we saw him already losing it when all claimed to see a daughter figure in Charlie...Al flirting, etc. with a different child might actually kill him.

Anyway I love your work, keep it up ^-^

- 🖤

*cackles like an insane person*

Royally Pissed

Prologue

Alastor X Morningstar Reader

Warnings ⚠

⚠ reader is blonde for obvious reasons, cussing, mention of depression, angry short King ⚠

Lucifer treasured his children.

Of course he messed up at times, not every parent is perfect. Though he does regret not seeing his children all that often.

Charlie was doing something. Somewhere.

Shit, that sounds bad.

And you would come by and check up on him every so often.

While Charlie looked like him, she had her mother's height. You looked more like Litlith..but had his shortness.

Of course you were adorable!

His littlest one, born a few seconds after Charlie. Twins that came out like opposites in looks but similar in some ways.

He gifted you a rubber duck for every birthday. One that had a tutu, one that had multiple eyes, one that had a built in music box, one that had a jester hat, one that honked like a goose, one that-

Ok, it was a lot.

But you loved his duckies! You even had bookshelves just for them!

Currently you were with him in the castle. Or more like you being in the other room while he was working on another duck.

Then he got a phone call from Charlie.

"Daughter. Daughter calling!", he said in surprise.

After talking about Heaven and a bit about the hotel, he got excited when she said for him to come see the hotel for himself.

"My daughter wants to see me~!", he sang before pointing at a duck on the floor. "Take that depression!"

"Dad?", he heard you call out, finding you opening the door. "Do you want lunch now?", you asked.

Lucifer cheered out your name and grabbed your hands before twirling you around. "Charlie called! She invited me to her hotel thingy!"

"Oh, that's nice.", you said. "I hope you have fun."

"You can come too!", he stopped the twirling. "We'll all get to hang out again!"

You smiled and agreed.

"Great! We've got to be there in an hour!", he says before letting you go to skip out of the room.

Staying put, you glance at the rubber duck filled room with slight worry.

"It wasn't this bad last time.."

.

You stood behind your father as you both waited for the doors to open.

It's been a while since you last saw Charlie, it being around a few months. Looking around you can see she cleaned up the building quite well. It was more broken down when it first appeared on the news when she pitched her idea.

I'm glad she's doing well. You thought before hearing the door.

"Charlie!", your dad said with a wide smile, holding his arms open.

"Hey Dad.", your sister waved before getting glomped with a tight hug. "Uh..it's uh, good to see you too Dad.", she said before having to push him off to breathe.

Then she noticed you, saying your name in excitement.

"I would have done more if I knew you were coming to visit too!", she said and brought you into the hotel by your hand.

"No, you don't have to worry. I'm sure what you have is enough.", you reassured as you followed her in.

From the corner of your eye, you saw two demons right next to the door. On your right there was someone in red and turned your head to see a tall deer demon. Looking to your left, you saw a woman with long white hair and an X over her eye.

"Hello..", you waved with a shy smile.

.

Alastor glared down at the King as soon as the short man barged into the hotel.

How could that be more powerful than me? He thought as his eye twitched.

Then Charlie pushed her father off and excitedly greeted someone outside, grabbing their hand to bring them in.

His eyes widened at the smaller version of Lilith.

"Hello..", they waved shyly at everyone in the room.

And then the little cat that the Princess had walked over to greet the two.

"Kiki!", the two blondes kneeled down to pet the one-eyed feline.

After walking around, Lucifer commented on the bar, so Alastor teleported closer before speaking up.

"Just some of the renovations we had done!", he pointed at the bar with his microphone staff. "Adds a bit of color! Don't you think?", he said before facing the King.

He teleported even closer to the Kind and introduced himself after the monarch questioned who he was, shaking the apple cane instead of the King's hand.

As soon as the deer demon let go, he wiped his hand on his coat.

"You are much shorter in real life.", he said pinching his fingers a bit, emphasizing how small the blonde man was.

"Who is this? Who is this?", Lucifer asked and turned to his daughter once seeing her walk over. "Is this the bellhop?", he asked her.

"Aha! No!", Alastor said before fixing his bow. "I am the host of the hotel! You might of heard of me from my radio broadcasts."

"Hm. Nope!", the King pretended to think before dusting off his sleeve. "Maybe it's why Charlie calls it the HAZBIN hotel! Ah ha ha!", he nudges his daughter with his elbow.

"Ha ha ha!", the deer tilts his head at every short laugh that left his mouth before looking at his claws with a knowing smile. "It was actually my idea."

"Ah haha! Well it's not very clever!", the blonde replied leaning forward a bit.

"Ah ha!", the Radio demon laughed loudly before leaning down to meet the King's gaze. "Fuck you.", he said very clearly, static only in the background.

"OK!", Charlie pushed the two away. "Ok! Anyway!", she said as the two looked away from each other. "Dad!", she turned to her father.

While the two were occupied, he saw the small Lilith looking Morningstar talking with the others, wearing a bright smile as they laughed.

He focused back on the conversation when the Princess said his name.

"We wouldn't have been able to pretty it up this much.", she said and the two blondes turned to face him.

"Charlie has a very unique vision!", he said with his usual smile as he walked over. "I am happy to fulfil her bizarre requests!", he places a hand on Charlie's shoulder.

"Thank you Alastor.", the blonde smiled, feeling happy.

He noticed the way Lucifer hated it, and calmly smiled.

"Quite an impressive young lady.", he said and tilted the Princess's head up a bit with his hand before moving his claws back to himself. "We're all very proud of her.", he says and places an arm around her shoulder, pushing her a little close.

Having enough, the King cleared his throat.

"Charlie! Dear.", he said before pushing between the two, getting them separated. "Why don't you introduce me to your OTHER friends!", he pointed towards the group with his end of his staff.

"Oh! Yes, of course!", Charlie said and began introducing Vaggie to her father.

Then someone got his attention with a tap on his arm.

Snapping his head towards the person, he saw the Lilith look alike move their hand back.

"Oh, I apologize. I called out to you but got no response.", they said with a bit of a frown. "I didn't mean to upset you."

"Upset?", he questioned, still wearing his smile.

"Yes, you furrowed your brows a bit when I tapped you.", the small blonde gestured with their finger.

How observant..

"No, I am not upset at all!", he gave a quick closed eyed smile. "And your name is..?"

"Oh, I'm-"

And then they were interrupted when the chandelier fell.

This was supposed to be a oneshot but then I remembered how detailed this would have to be.

~Seline, the person.

Part 1

Taglist@

@ducky-died-inside @scary-noodlesblog @c4rved-pumpk1n @stolas-thebirb @naelys-the-aster @biromanticboba @kiraisastay @pooplyface1423 @lbcreations-blog @gallantys @117s-girl @spiderlegsling @alastorsgoldie @repentant-repeller @kcsketches @lofasofabread @kotaleee @im-coolrat @superzombiewho @speckle-meow-meow @jammcookie @dilucragnvindr-my-beloved @trashbin-nie @koioli @fatherlesschild2 @mmik3yy @just-here-reading @nealeart @hudiexiaoying @crystal-multiplefandomlover @glowinggoldfish0 @tiredgamerhere @fluffy-koalala @valenfawkes @+?

ML II for Alastor🎙 | RP ChL 👑

[teaboot]

How do Canadian schools teach about indigenous Canadian history and culture? -a curious USAmerican

In my experience we learned about colonization at the same time as we learned about the formation of Canada. At first it was "European settlers came and pushed out the indigenous population", then in the higher grades we learned more about the how and the why.

For example, how carts full of men with rifles would ride around shooting Buffalo, then leaving the meat on the ground to rot, because "a dead Buffalo is a dead indian", which was so fanatical it almost wiped out wild Buffalo entirely

Also how Canadian settlers were lured in with beautiful hand-painted advertisements for cheap, beautiful, fertile land that was unpopulated and perfect, if only you'd sail over with your entire family and a pocket full of seeds- only to be met with scared, confused, and angry lawful inhabitants already run out of ten other places, and frigid winters, and rocky, forested, undeveloped dirt.

also, smallpox blankets, where "gifts" of blankets infected with smallpox were intentionally given out

And treaty violations- Either ignoring written agreements entirely, or buying them out at insanely low prices and lying about the value, or trading for farming equipment that they couldn't use because they weren't farmers.

Then in the first world war, where they told indigenous peoples here that they'd be granted Canadian citizenship if they enlisted

To Residential schools, which was straight up stealing kids for slavery, indoctrination, and medical experiments

But we also covered the building of the Canadian Railway in which Chinese immigrants were lowered into ravines with dynamite to blow out paths through the mountain for pennies on the dollar

And the Alberta Sterilization Act, where it was lawful and routine procedure to sterilize women of colour and neurodivergent people without their awareness or consent after giving birth or undergoing unrelated surgeries

But I'm rambling.

We kind of learned Aboriginal history at the same time as everything else? Like. This is when Canada was made, and this is how it was done. Now we'll read a book about someone who lived through it, and we'll write a book report. And now a documentary, and now a paper about the documentary. Onto the next unit.

And starting I think in grade 10 our English track was split between English and Aboriginals English, where you could choose to do the standard curriculum or do the same basic knowledge stuff with a focus on Aboriginal perspectives and literature. (I did that one, we read Three Day's Road and Diary Of A Part-Time Indian, and a few other titles I don't remember.)

There was also a lunch room for the Aboriginal Culture Studies where Aboriginal kids could hang out at lunch time if they wanted, full of art and projects and stuff. They'd play music or videos sometimes, that was cool

And one elective I took (not mandatory cirriculum) was a Kwakiutl course for basic Kwakwakaʼwakw language. Greetings, counting to a hundred, learning the modified alphabet, animals, etc. Still comes in handy sometimes at large gatherings cause they usually start with a land recognition thanking whoever's land we're on, with a few thanks and welcomes in their language.

And like- when I was in the US it was so weird, cause here we have Totem poles and longhouses and murals all over and yall... don't? Like there is a very distinct lack of Aboriginal art in your public spaces, at least in the areas I've been

My ex-stepfather, who was American, brought his son out once, and he was so excited to "see real indians" and was legitimately shocked to learn that there weren't many teepees to be found on the northwest coast, and was even *more* shocked when we told him that you have Aboriginal people back home too, bud. Your Aboriginal people are also named "Mike" snd "Vicky" and work as assistant manager at best buy.

If you'd ask me, I'd say that the primary difference is that USAmerica (from what I've seen, and ALSO in entirely too much of Canada) treats our European and Aboriginal conflicts as history, something that's tragic but over, like the extinction of the mammoths, instead of like. An ongoing thing involving people who are alive and numerous and right fucking here

But at the end of the day, I'm white, and there are plenty of actual Aboriginal people who are speaking out and saying much more meaningful things than I can

So I'm just gonna pass on a quote from my Stepmum, who's Cree, that's stuck with me since she said it:

"You see how they treat Mexicans in America? That's how they treat us here. Indians are the Mexicans of Canada."

[totalswag]

nonsense — DREW STARKEY

authors note i've wanted to write a singer!reader drew fic for the longest time. i've read some singer!reader fics lately and it gave me some inspiration to write my own. i hope you guys enjoy reading. this was also requested by an anon not long ago, so if you’re reading this enjoy 🩵. the song choice is nonsense and just think to when sabrina is performing this song at coachella.

summary performing at coachella for the first time with friends and your lovely boyfriend supporting you in the crowd.

warnings none!

Coachella.

This is your first Coachella where you are performing. You will be playing live in front of millions of people. This is the last weekend for the festival.

Tens of thousands of people travel from all over the world to attend Coachella. The festival features sculptures, art installations, and other open events in addition to music.

When your manager called you about being invited to perform you couldn't believe your ears. Now, here you are about to step on stage.

Standing in a circle backstage with your crew, discussing everything you've prepared for over the last few days and having fun out there. This is what you always do before a show.

Second weekend of the festival.

Walking on stage seems like a surreal experience for you. Looking around, you can sense the intensity of the enormous crowd in front of you.

The weather was lovely, with the sun still shining and the breeze brushing over your skin. 

"Hello Coachella, my name is Y/F/N, what's yours?" You smile into the microphone while waving away.

You began by introducing the crowd to yourself, your backup dancers, your music, if everyone is having a great time, etc.

Interacting with your fans is one of your favorite parts of singing on stage. You value your interactions with them since you like conversing. When you read comments on your shows, they usually mention how fascinating you are.

After singing a few songs from the set list, you took a little breather and spoke to the crowd saying a joke, making them laugh.

You begin the next song by sipping from an old-fashioned soda bottle while seated in a chair. As you take a seat, you glimpse your boyfriend, Drew, along with a couple of your friends and security. 

You two make eye contact. Butterflies fill your stomach. You offer him a small wave, and he smiles and turns around, presumably blushing.

Fans up close captured the brief interaction with their phones out. We'll see it on social media later today.

Drew and you began dating in the midst of season three of Outer Banks. The first outing was Pougelandia, and fans began to speculate about your relationship because it came out of nowhere.

To be honest, Madelyn Cline and you were close friends before she began filming season one of Outer Banks. She’s the one who introduced you to Drew.

"The last song I'll be playing for you guys is nonsense, so if you know the lyrics, sing along," you cheer, lifting your free hand in the air, moving it around with excitement.

"Is it possible we get my amazing dancers out here," you turn around, pretending you have no idea where they went, "guys come out here, we could perform some sort of choreography, you know" as you gaze at your dance crew coming out the set.

Nonsense is about Drew.

It is one of your favorite songs that you have written. When you first released it, many were unsure who it was about until photos of Drew and you emerged.

Think I only want one number in phone

I might change your contact to "don't leave me alone"

You said you like my eyes and you like to make 'em role

Treat me like a queen, now you got me feelin' thrown, oh

You dance with your dancing crew, who are behind you and moving in sync. The choreography is muscle memory for you guys because you've been performing this song for a few years now.

But I can't help myself when you get close to me

Baby, my tongue goes numb, sounds like "bleh bleh bleh"

I don't want no one else (no no) baby, I'm into deep

Here's a little song I wrote (a song I wrote) its about you and me

When you sing the last line of the pre-chorus, you gesture to Drew in the audience, who moves his head side to side while listening to you sing and blushes when you point to him. You giggle into the microphone.

Fans started cheering louder as they watched you motioning to your lover in the audience.

You continue to move around stage all throughout the song.

You go around the center of the stage as your backup dancers finish their final few dances. One of your backup dancers grabs a chair for you to sit in.

At the end of nonsense you always come up with rhymes. Started doing this after the first performance and can't stop doing it.

Told him he makes me weak to my knees

Everything about him just so dreamy

By the way he's name Drew Starkey

When you say your boyfriend's name, the crowd cheers. You saw his response as he mouthed the words "I love you," dropped his jaw, and put his hands over his heart.

"Coachella, you've been amazing to me these past two weekends. Thank you so much. Can we please give a huge around of applause for our amazing dancers, come on out guys!" Excitement in your voice when you call your dance crew out on stage.

Once you guys made it off stage, you guys began cheering with a bunch of energy. Everyone gave each other hugs.

"Water is calling my name right now" you groan with urgency.

Approaching your manager, holding a cold water bottle for you- thanking her a few times as you open the bottle. You were about jugging down the water when you heard Drew's voice approaching.

"Hi baby," you squeal, dragging the y in baby, and rush into Drew's arms, wrapping your arms around his neck. Being in his arms sends relief in your body.

He smells so good.

He chuckles, "You did so well out there, so proud of you," and delicately places you on your feet.

"Thank you," blushing to the point where your cheeks were red. "Did you enjoy the outro of nonsense?" You inquire with curiosity, despite the fact that you already know his response.

He softly grins that makes your heart flutter, "Mhm yeah I did" kissing the top of your head, wrapping his right arm around your shoulder, pulling you closer to him.

"Why don't we get something to eat?" "How's that sound, baby?" Drew asks, his arm still around you.

Your ears and eyes light up from his request, “obviously yes.”

Before leaving you heard the voices of friends turning the corner. The rest of your friends, as well as Drew's cast members who are also your friends, returned to stage, thrilled to see you.

It was so good to see them.

Drew and you returned to the van to change, drove to the Airbnb to relax before returning to watch other artists perform after the sun had set with your friends.

my taglist!

✰ if you would like to be added to my taglist and be notified whenever i post please let me know in the comments or in my ask box. if there's a line across your name that means i couldn't find your account.

@diqldrunks @chenslucy @winterrrnight @rosezza @solanathascientst @runningfrom2am

[simjaexy]

𝙏𝙚𝙖𝙘𝙝 𝙈𝙚 𝙀𝙣𝙜𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙝 | 𝙋.𝙎.

Pairing ⇀ Bf! Park Sunghoon x Fem! Reader

Synopsis ⇀ English was not Sunghoon first language so it was understandable that he didn’t like it. So instead, you teach Sunghoon English, and when he gets it right, he gets a kiss.

Genre ⇀ Fluff

Notes ⇀ Sunghoon english is cute and it makes me upset that he doesn’t realize how good he’s doing.

Masterlist here

Sunghoon sat at the desk, his brow furrowed in concentration as he stared at the pages of the English textbook.

Despite his best efforts, the words seemed to blur together, making it difficult for him to grasp their meanings. He sighed in frustration, running a hand through his hair.

Just then, you walked into the room, carrying a tray with two cups of steaming coffee.

You placed the tray on the table and took a seat next to him, offering a warm smile, "Ready for another lesson?"

Sunghoon looked up, his expression softening at the sight of you, "Yeah, but it's so hard. I don't know if I'll ever get the hang of it."

You chuckled softly, patting his hand reassuringly, "Don't worry, Sunghoon. We'll take it one step at a time. Remember, practice makes perfect."

Sunghoon nodded, his determination renewed by your encouragement. You suddenly got an idea.

“How about if you get a right, you can get a kiss?” You said. Sunghoon looked up from the textbook, intrigued.

“If I get it right I get a kiss?” He muttered. You nodded. He grinned.

“Okay.”

You opened the textbook to the page you had marked earlier, pointing to a simple sentence, "Let's start with this one. Can you read it out loud for me?"

He took a deep breath and began to read, his voice hesitant but steady, "The cat... is... on the... table."

You clapped your hands in delight. "Great job! Now, let's try to understand what it means, 'The cat is on the table.' Can you picture that in your mind?"

Sunghoon closed his eyes for a moment, then nodded, "Yes, I can see it. The cat is sitting on the table."

"Exactly!" You beamed at him, you then gave him a peck. He smiled shyly and looked down.

"Now, let's try another one. 'The dog is under the chair.' Can you read that for me?"

Sunghoon repeated the sentence, his pronunciation improving with each word. You could see the spark of understanding in his eyes as he visualized the scene, "The dog is under the chair."

"Perfect! You're doing amazing, Sunghoon." You praised him, noticing the way his confidence was growing with each successful attempt, you then gave him another peck. This time he was ready, but you backed away causing him to pout.

"Let's keep going. How about this one: 'The book is next to the lamp.'"

As Sunghoon read the sentence, you could see the determination in his eyes. He was truly giving it his all, and it warmed your heart to see his progress, "The book is next to the lamp."

"Yes! You're getting it!" You cheered, feeling a sense of pride in his achievements. As you pecked his lips you noticed he was still pouting.

“Why do you only give me a peck?” He muttered. You giggle.

"Now, let's try something a bit more challenging. If you do good I’ll give you a full kiss. 'The boy is playing with his friends in the park.'"

Sunghoon took a moment to gather his thoughts before reading the sentence out loud.

His voice was more confident now, and he even managed to add a bit of expression to his words, "The boy is playing with his friends in the park."

You clapped your hands together, unable to contain your excitement, "Sunghoon, that was fantastic! You're improving so much!"

He smiled shyly, his cheeks tinged with a hint of pink, "Thanks to you. You're a great teacher."

You felt a flutter in your chest at his words, your heart swelling with affection, "And you're a great student. I'm so proud of you, Sunghoon."

You leaned towards him and kissed him softly, he sighed into the kiss and cupped your cheek.

As the lesson continued with longer kisses, the room was filled with laughter and lighthearted conversation.

By the end of the session, Sunghoon's confidence had soared, and he was able to read and understand several sentences with ease.

You closed the textbook, feeling a sense of accomplishment, "You did amazing today, Sunghoon. I'm so proud of you."

He looked at you with a grateful smile, his eyes shining with appreciation, "I couldn't have done it without you. Thank you for being so patient with me."

You reached out and squeezed his hand, your heart filled with warmth, "It's my pleasure, Sunghoon. Anytime you need help, I'll be here for you."

You suddenly felt a soft press on your lips, Sunghoons lips slowly moving against yours. You flutter your eyes shut, enjoying the moment.

He broke the kiss off with a grin, “Which is better, my lips or my english?”

You scoffed and pushed him away, “Let’s just continue.”

He let out a cute genuine laugh. One of your favorite ones. You hid your smile with your hand.

As you both sat there enjoying your moments you knew Sunghoon will know English in no time, all thanks to you.

[multifandomfanfic]

In which Jenson and Y/N start dating during the 2024 season, and fans quickly catch on.

A/N: Enjoy everyone! Had fun making this! Also, I realize Jenson Button currently works for Williams, but apparently more people (by a little) associate him with McLaren... that doesn't really mean anything in this context but it made me make the reader work for McLaren. ANYWAYS. Ignore the time skipping. And I also didn't want to jinx anything for this season, so this doesn't go past Silverstone. Enjoy!

f1

liked by yourusername, maxverstappen1, honda, and 2,193,008 others

f1: Y/N Y/L/N is confirmed to leave Red Bull Racing at the end of the 2023 season.

The world-renowned engineer and test driver has been with Red Bull for seven seasons, being promoted to the Technical Director role for the 2021 season. Under her control, the team won three constructors and driver's championships.

redbullracing: Thank you for your many years of service, Y/N--we'll miss you!

yourusername: ❤️💛💙

susie_wolff: Off to bigger and better things! We're so proud of you!

landonorris: can you tell us all your secrets now?

yourusername: nice try but no <3 landonorris: ugh maybe zac can convince you yourusername: 🤫

user727: uh. what?

fanaccount01: what is going on? there were no rumors no nothing!

user668: People nowadays have no loyalty. Y/N spent seven years at Red Bull and now she feels as if she can leave? Where is the loyalty? What happened to sticking with your first job/team until you retire?Red Bull has done everything to prop her up--she can't just leave out of nowhere.

fanaccount02: why shouldn't she leave if she wants to? user154: it's red bull we've all seen how they've treated their drivers, whose to say they don't treat their engineers the same way?

f1

liked by yourusername, mclaren, pierregasly, and 2,203,487 others

f1: Y/N Y/L/N is confirmed to join McLaren and assume their Technical Director role at the start of the 2024 season.

The MIT- and Zurich-educated engineer has worked in F1 since 2016. She is the first female Technical Director and the youngest one in Formula One's history.

landonorris: can you tell us your secrets now?

yourusername: now that i'm contractually obligated to? sure 🥰 landonorris: nobody likes a smartass y/n yourusername: @oscarpiastri does oscarpiastri: i do

maxverstappen1: please come back 🙏

user837: omg max 😭😭

mclaren: 🧡🧡🧡

yourusername: excited to be a part of team papaya!

jensonbutton: I'm so happy you decided to join McLaren--you will not regret it!

yourusername: I trust you! 💕 fanaccount03: uhhhh jenson don't you work for williams user938: not to read into this too much but the two hearts emoji y/n? 🤔

fanaccount04: we love seeing a queen in action

yourusername posted to their story

mclaren

liked by landonorris, yourusername, ben_radcliffe, jensonbutton, and 215,655 others

mclaren: HUGE POINTS HAUL! 👊 A great drive from Lando and Oscar to deliver Down Under! 🤩 Look's like Y/N's skills have made quite the difference! 💡

zbrownceo: Best decision I ever made was hiring you, Y/N!

oscarpiastri: don't you have a wife and son mate zbrownceo: Would you like your contract to be renewed, Oscar? comment liked by yourusername

charli_xcx: leave some genius for the rest of us y/n jesus

yourusername: sorry i won't try as hard next time mclaren: no y/n please keep trying 🙏

landonorris: So lucky to have you, Y/N!

jensonbutton: Amazing job, team!

fanaccount05: So we agree we're all voting Y/N as driver of the day next time?

user710: yes fanaccount06: yes oscarpiastri: yes

yourusername

liked by jensonbutton, f1, sabrinacarpenter, colesprouse, and 524,389 others

yourusername: ɐᴉʅɐɹʇsnɐ ƃuᴉɥʇʎɹǝʌǝ ɹoⅎ sʞuɐ��ʇ ✌️

maxverstappen1: Have you always been such an amazing photographer?

yourusername: flattery will not bring me back to red bull max 🥰 maxverstappen1: Please? yourusername: no 🫶

danielricciardo: i thought you said you needed a tourguide..?

yourusername: i had @valtteribottas do it. using the grid's resident australian was easier than hiring one. danielricciardo: he's not even really austrialian mate?? yourusername: harsh valterribottas: way harsh

jensonbutton: Those kangaroos really loved you

yourusername: me or the food i had in my pocket? jensonbutton: Both?

fanaccount07: Marry me, Y/N? 🥺💍

yourusername: give me a couple months and i'll get back to you on that fanaccount07: excuse me huh???

user819: please more bts pics of lando and oscar pleaseee 🙏

yourusername: i'll try my best 🫡

yourusername posted to their story

yourusername

liked by jensonbutton, postmalone, williamsracing, and 619,283 others

yourusername: goodbye lando no-wins 👋🧡

landonorris: couldn't have done it without you!

comment liked by yourusername

landonorris: what's my nickname now?

yourusername: lando one-win landonorris: could we do something with a little more creativity? yourusername: lando no-rizz? landonorris: i like the first one better

mclaren: We could not have done it without you, Y/N! 💪🏆

yourusername: It's an honor to work with you guys this season! I'm so proud of the team.

jensonbutton: Have I told you you're the best technical director in F1 yet today?

yourusername: no 🥰 comment liked by jensonbutton yourusername: this is how you do flattery right, @maxverstappen1. take notes maxverstappen1: 😑 fanaccount08: omg stop you guys are too obvious

user293: she is so unserious i love it

fanaccount09: hello again jenson we see you

yourusername posted to their story

jensonbutton posted to their story

yourusername

liked by pierregasly, mclaren, williamsracing, oscarpiastri, and 783,023 others

yourusername: whoopsies

landonorris: "whoopsies"?? y/n, it's not like it was ever a well-kept secret

yourusername: ok lando no-rizz landonorris: ...i want a new technical director yourusername: @zakbrownceo landonorris: NO PLEASE

lilymhe: you guys are too cute

yourusername: awww thank you lily! 🫶

jensonbutton: I love you ❤️

yourusername: love you too <3

fanaccount10: all the signs pointed to it and yet i was still in denial 😭

user474: they're literally perfect for each other what?

fanaccount11: ACTUALLY they're my new favorite f1 couple fr user987: please please please last 🙏

fanaccount12: jenson and y/n adopt me challenge

jensonbutton added to their story

[harunayuuka2060]

Twst Unveil Event Part 5

Leona: Congrats. Ruggie sent me the video of your first match.

Leona: You really beat the shit out of that crocodile.

Yuurin: Thank you, Leona-senpai.

Leona: Was falling off the cliff necessary, though? *in a bit worried tone*

Yuurin: ...

Yuurin: I'll be more careful.

Leona: Tch. Like you would listen.

Leona: Anyway, who's going to be your next opponent?

Yuurin: Floyd Leech.

Leona: Oh really? *clicks his tongue*

Leona: I heard they get to choose the place?

Yuurin: Yes.

Leona: ...

Leona: I'm hanging up now.

Yuurin: Will you be calling Ruggie-senpai and Jack after this?

Leona: ...

Leona: No. *ends the call*

Yuurin: ...

*Meanwhile*

Leona: Oi, Ruggie!

Ruggie: Geez, Leona! What now?!

Leona: You better show Yuurin's fight to me on real-time or I'm gonna turn your ass to sand!

Ruggie: Okay, okay! I just got too excited so I forgot to video call you!

Jack: ...

Jack: I thought you did it on purpose because you didn't want to be bothered?

Ruggie: ...

Leona: Ruggie.

Ruggie: He was just joking!

Ruggie: Back me up here, Jack!

Philomela: Introducing our contenders for the second match: Yuurin and Floyd Leech!

Floyd: Yaaaaay~!

Yuurin: ...

Silver: Everyone seems excited for this second match.

Rook: Oui. That is no surprise.

Rook: After all, Monsieur Malfeasant has considered everything for this. *chuckles*

Floyd: Ne~ Damselfish~.

Yuurin: ?

Floyd: I won't underestimate you like Crocodile did~.

Yuurin: ...

Yuurin: I know that, senpai.

Floyd: Hehe~ I'll enjoy fighting with you~.

Floyd: Please do your best~.

Yuurin: ...

Philomela: I'm sending you now to your designated location!

Philomela: Good luck! *laughs*

*In an underwater cavern*

Epel: Wha— Why?!

Malleus: This is going to be challenging for Yuurin.

Jade: Indeed. *chuckles* Floyd chose the right place.

Jack and Ruggie: ...

Ruggie: Hey, Philomela. Can Yuurin see effectively in the dark?

Philomela: *laughs* Of course not! He's not nocturnal!

Jack and Ruggie: !!!

Jack: Then Yuurin is in a great disadvantage!

Philomela: The greater the challenge, the more excitement we'll get!

Epel: Wow... You don't care about Yuurin's safety, do you?

Sebek: She is his mentor. She knows what she's doing.

Yuurin: ...

Floyd: *who has concealed himself by hiding behind a rock* *smirks while he slowly approaches from behind*

Yuurin: ...

Floyd: Heh~ *kicks Yuurin into the water*

Yuurin: !!!

Yuurin: *finds herself being submerged in it, with Floyd pushing her to the bottom*

Floyd: HEHE~!

Epel, Malleus, Sebek, Jack, and Ruggie: !!!

Epel: He's drowning him!

Jade: *smirks*

Sebek: Dammit, human! Why are you allowing him to push you around?!

Philomela: *amused smile*

Floyd: We're at the rock bottom now, Damselfish~.

Yuurin: *who couldn't read his lips because of the darkness*

Yuurin: *feels the rocky surface underneath her feet*

Yuurin: *grabs his arms, maneuvers herself so that he's positioned over her shoulder, and then forcefully slams him down onto the rock*

Floyd: Oof—

Yuurin: *quickly swims back up to create distance*

Epel: Yes! Go, Yuurin!

Jack: Floyd-senpai is after him!

Floyd: Don't escape from me, Damselfish~. *has caught up to her*

Floyd: *goes behind her and starts to perform a Full Nelson Hold; even coiling his tail around her waist*

Floyd: Damselfish~ How are you feeling now~? *squeezing her tight*

Malleus: Is Leech attempting to deprive him of oxygen?

Jade: Yes. We're fully aware that Yuurin can stay underwater for 30 minutes.

Jade: However, will it be the same if he's being squeezed tight like that? *smirks*

Epel, Jack, Ruggie, and Sebek: ...

Philomela: Impressive tactic, yes. Anyone would have to tap out in that situation.

Philomela: Though, are you seeing Yuurin struggle for air?

Jade: Huh?

Yuurin: ...

Yuurin: *starts blowing bubbles*

Floyd: That's right, Damselfish~. Let all your air out~.

Yuurin: *starts to bend her body upward*

Floyd: Eh?

Yuurin: *while continuously blowing bubbles*

Floyd: Eh? EH?

Floyd: *not realizing that he fails to maintain the hold as he finds her actions amusing*

Jade: Oh no. This is bad.

Floyd: Hehehe~! This if fun, Damselfish—

Yuurin: *has sneaked behind him while he was distracted; wrapping her arms around his torso* *then starts squeezing him "tight"*

Floyd: AHHH!!!!

Jade: ...

Philomela: *loudly laughs* Ah, yes! Return the favor, Yuurin!

Epel: D-Does that really hurt?

Malleus: Lilia mentioned to me once that Yuurin can break a steel in half with his bare hands.

Jack: Huh?

Sebek: ...

Sebek: *remembers the handcuffs*

Sebek: Yes... That's right...

Philomela: Yes! YES!!! SQUEEZE HIM TIGHTER, YUURIN!

Floyd: *ends up fainting underwater and Yuurin has to bring him to the surface with her*

Yuurin: ...

Yuurin: Floyd-senpai.

Philomela: He's out cold, Yuurin! Let him be! *laughs*

Yuurin: I see.

Yuurin: ...

Yuurin: *lightly smacks his face to confirm*

Jade: ...

Jade: Well, that was an entertaining match.

Ruggie: ...

Ruggie: Yeah...

Leona: ...

Leona: I'm going there right now.

Ruggie: Huh? What? *completely forgot about him*

Ruggie: Leona—

*Leona has ended the video call.*

Ruggie: Ah, shit. We're screwed.

Jack: He was watching the whole time?

Ruggie: Yeah. Remember he asked to watch it in real-time?

Ruggie: He was silent the entire time so I thought he dozed off...

Jack: ...

Floyd: *once he regained consciousness*

Floyd: I can't believe you would use my own move against me~ Hehehe~.

Floyd: I should've taken you more seriously~. Sorry about that, damselfish~.

Yuurin: ...

Yuurin: You managed to leave bruises on my body.

Floyd: Where?

Yuurin: *shows him the side of her waist*

Floyd: Eh~ That's the only injury you've got~?

Yuurin: Yes.

Floyd: Hehe~ That's fine~. You'll be treated anyway~.

Yuurin: No. I won't be treated until all of the matches are over.

Floyd: Oh... So you're going to carry that injury then?

Yuurin: *nods*

Floyd: Aww... Okay. Let me give you hug to make you feel better~.

Yuurin: No, thank you.

Floyd: But you hugged me earlier~.

Yuurin: That wasn't to comfort you.

Floyd: Hehe~ Fair enough~.

Silver: Yuurin is really strong.

Rook: Oui! *chuckles* I can't wait for my turn to fight Monsieur Tranquille!

Silver: ...

Silver: It's my turn next.

Silver: I will give my best.

Rook: I know you will, Monsieur Sleepyhead!