"I have had several assurances that readers are having fun! So I was not wrong."

"Even more flattered!"

Snort.

"Though I think we lost some people with the serious Tyrian fixing talk. I've been walking a tightrope of avoiding explaining things to you that you already know, and explaining things that readers don't know, and I think I fell way more on the side of not explaining things to you that you already know. Plus I'm naturally not very inclined towards explaining things, in general."

"I don't mind if you want to explain more than I strictly need to know. It is if nothing else interesting to see how, ah, 'players' see our world."

"All right. I'll take you at your word, then." She considers. "Tyria is a world with five major sapient races: humans, charr, norn, sylvari, and asura. You should all know what humans are like. Charr are... horned cat people. They and humans often don't make nice because they have some history of killing each other. Norn are like humans but significantly bigger, more cold resistant, and also extremely independent warrior viking people. Sylvari are plant people that come from a giant tree, and they only recently woke up. As was recently learned by Our Hero, they were made by one of the evil Elder Dragons, but until recently have escaped being forced to serve his will. Asura are little, um." She makes a face. "Screw it, look at a screenshot here, because fuck if I know how to explain that. Little... mouse people? They are all a bunch of nerds. All of them. Huge nerds. Very brilliant huge nerds, but also kind of rude. If your starting place is 'Feanorian' you are honestly not far off."

She pauses. "There, that was a good exposition dump. I think I'll give it a bit before I do the one for Dragons just to give people some time to digest that."

James sporfles at 'horned cat people' and continues to laugh throughout the rest of the explanation.

Giggle.

"I added pictures," she adds, for James's benefit. "You can't see them because you're on the wrong side of reality, but they're there."

"I thought something like that must have been going on," he says archly.

"I gave up on subtlety when I got to the asura. Because how do I even... explain them. How do I do that."

"I never had to, I wouldn't know."

"Explaining things! It's hard! Especially when it's as complicated as Tyria is. There's a lot of stuff going on in your complicated world."

"I expect to people not born there it could get quite overwhelming."

"Little bit, yeah. Also hard trying to figure out how to fit someone in the world. It's a little... 'How do I do that. Where would there be room.'"

"...fit? I am pretty sure there's some space."

"Physical space, yeah, definitely. But think of it like an author—I'm not worried about physical space, I'm worried about narrative space. And there isn't a ton of that in Tyria, all of the narrative is being chewed on by dragons."

"Ah. Well, there is the space I am currently occupying."

"Yes, I noticed," she says, dryly. "But I am not out to replace you, that would not help me fulfill my matchmaking mission at all."

"...matchmaking mission."

"You reacted really cutely to the story of your alt's sorta-girlfriend, and then you were dejected that you didn't have a version of her running around in your world. So the part of my brain devoted to matchmaking characters is like, 'Aha! I can solve this problem,' except actually the problem has turned out to be kind of hard." She crosses her arms, and tries very hard not to pout. She fails at this, and is definitely pouting at least a little bit. "It's not a huge deal, or anything, if I can't make it work it's fine. I'd rather have it make sense than try to stuff it into a place it doesn't belong. But it would be cute. And usually my genres of writing are, 'miscellaneous heroics' and 'adorable fluffy romance,' and so we're missing one."

"Well, I was not exactly setting out to be cute, but I am glad it worked anyway."

Yep she's definitely pouting some more.

"This isn't a big deal and might not even happen. It's just—a thing I'm considering, because I am pathologically incapable of not considering many things at once. Though, actually, it might be smart to make it so that you're, hm, free and clear to run around with authors that are not me, once I'm done saving your world?"

"Well, you could set a different version of me up. If there are other Tyrias."

"Well, yes, but auuuuugh! Think of the shipping!"

"The... shipping?"

"Oh, uh. Another word for 'matchmaking,' basically, but more in line with my culture. Matchmaking is more serious than shipping, shipping is sort of like... 'This would be cute, but I'm not very serious about it.'"