AN ELUVIAN HAS TWO FACES, AFTER ALL.

FIRST OFF: this blog is not a feelgood circlejerk cracker barrel for folks who uncritically and continuously espouse colonialist + settler mentalities present in their favorite media. i'm extremely intolerant of racism, transphobia, ableism, antisemitism, etc. google is your friend; i'm not here to hold your hand and make you feel better about the role you play in the systemic oppression of people like me. if you've participated in the silencing of other minorities when they speak on their oppression in order to facilitate your own comfort, then congratulations! you're why the current global backslide into right-wing ideology is happening. as a general note, i also don't want to see whitewashed or other problematic face claims either. bigotry speaks in how we're more eager to criticize women and poc for doing the same shit that our favorite white and male characters do.

this blog is also pro-palestine. criticizing israel as a violently racist colonial ethnostate isn't antisemitism; you can still be oppressed while participating in the oppression of someone else. this is a personal issue for me, i'm north african and my home country shares a border with israel, i have family and loved ones who have suffered from israel's past and current aggressions against its neighbors. regardless, antisemitic conspiracy theories will not be tolerated.

TOKENIZATION: as a visibly Black mixed writer with a visibly Black muse, i am not here to be your token and neither is june. my ideas, my art, and my writing don't exist for the purpose of being reduced to an accessory to inflate your ego, or to make you or your character look like the good guy. if you don't give a shit about me and my ideas, that's fine! but what you're not gonna do is use myself, my muse, and my writing as a token to boost your own ego or to adjudicate your favorite white boy. tokens always get spent and i'm not gonna play accessory to performative "allies" who harass poc and never put their money where their mouth is.

BLOCKING: i block very liberally and sometimes without explanation. please don't follow me if you have no plans on writing together. if i have an issue with you, you'll know it: i'll either talk to you about it personally in a good faith effort to clear things up if we're friends, or hardblock you if it's bad enough or if i don't know you well enough to feel safe discussing it. i only softblock because of inactivity or a lack of interaction without hiatus. if we've been mutuals for months and you still haven't really interacted, it will eventually result in a hardblock.

MORALITY: this is not a "june and sylaise did nothing wrong" zone. this is a "june and sylaise were complex individuals and indigenous deities whose motivations are disregarded, robbed of nuance, and unfairly judged by a predominantly white fandom, especially when compared to humans and chantry-affiliated characters" zone. they both participated in genocidal warfare and used their authority to uphold a form of slavery rooted in classism (though it is implied by veilguard's lore that at least one of the pair likely did not own slaves.) regardless, i want to make it clear that the people they harmed are well within their right to be pissed off at them and don't owe them forgiveness.

WORLDBUILDING: i'm by no means a lore purist, but this blog has a fairly worldbuilding-heavy approach to writing, though my interest in the lore exists within specific niches (namely the elves, the dwarves, tevinter, and the blight. idk much about ferelden and orlesian politics, for instance.) because june's lore is very scattered and easy to overlook, i've made a post where you can easily find explanations! sadly, some parts of dragon age's lore reflect the bigotry and biases of the developers. while there are a lot of issues i'm not aware of, i do consider it an ethical responsibility to to try and rewrite and reframe certain things as much as possible while acknowledging (and remaining critical) of the fact that they exist in canon.

when it comes to portraying june, i take certain liberties because i have 9000+ hours in origins. i have receipts, i did the research. that said, my blog isn't a library for you to cherry pick ideas from and i would prefer that you didn't use any of my character development or meta without asking first. while i am profoundly critical of many aspects of veilguard, excessive veilguard negativity + acting like veilguard is uniquely responsible for introducing lore that was actually introduced or confirmed during inquisition may result in a hardblock.

spirits and whatever june is are both different types of energy that has attained sapience through different means. the existence, nature, and formation of spirits is rooted in emotion, consciousness, and sentiment. the existence, nature, and formation of june is anchored in motion, sound, and energy. he is capable of being influenced by emotion and sentiment, the same way spirits are capable of being influenced by motion and sound. sapient feelings/sentiments vs. sapient kinetic energy. this is why spirits that june is responsible for engendering (and spirits that those spirits are subsequently responsible for engendering) fit the ander folkloric definition of a poltergeist (a spirit that is particularly prone to movement and making noise) to a T. spirits can compromise and be placated; june can be redirected but never fully stopped.

in his "youth", june was not as sapient or aware of things the way most spirits* (specifically, most of the spirits who became the first elves) were. his only frame of reference (and very limited 'window') into the physical world was the scraps and glimmers that came down to him through the titans and the cycle of energy (chantry scholars refer to it as 'ether', the ancient elves called it "the deep light of the fade" - but it's all referring to the same thing: the raw primeval magical energy behind spells + the substance the fade is made of; it circulates through the fade, the void, and the physical world to ensure its continuous motion and development. it's kind of like the water cycle mixed with newton's laws. something something energy generally cannot be created or fully destroyed. if you view the fade as the ocean, june is similar to a stationary detritus feeder living in the depths of the hadal zone. he didn't necessarily 'feed' on thought or require it to sustain his existence the way spirits are described as doing, but glimmers of memory, sentiment, and experience inevitably found their way back to him as that raw energy went through the cycle. the process of him becoming self-aware + sapient was much, much slower than that of spirits.) june was unable to move whatsoever, much less float around within the physical world the way spirits are depicted as doing in the vg concept art.