meowzilla93

[meowzilla93]

we cant hug in person but weve hugged a million times in my head ; u ;!!!!!

[meowzilla93]

if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to live in the midwest, this is it. 

[meowzilla93]

Open for Commission

[meowzilla93]

my silly little jester costume for the play I’m in is so fire you all wish you were me

[meowzilla93]

let's hear it for the nonbinary folks who:

don't present androgynously

use "binary" pronouns in any capacity

identify partially with a binary gender

have a "gendered" name

don't experience body dysmorphia

don't experience gender dysphoria

DO experience gender dysphoria/body dysmorphia but aren't sure what gender or body would suit them

just experience body/gender apathy instead

can't be open about their gender identity yet

you're all absolutely valid.

don't ever feel like you're "not nonbinary enough" because you absolutely are! 💖

[meowzilla93]

Baxter getting loved by (and giving love to) MCs across dimensions for his birthday! I picked August to "help out" this time, who's @meowzilla93's bean~

[meowzilla93]

commission for @meowzilla93

[meowzilla93]

Secret Santa Foxter art + a silly gif for @meowzilla93 🦊🐈‍⬛💖

As always happy birthday to our monochrome man woooo

[meowzilla93]

commission for @meowzilla93

[meowzilla93]

did i tell u guys i got into an argument on twitter bc i said foxes are dogs and someone tried to bring up their actual fuckin. classification or whatever and i just said “foxes are dogs cause they are fluffye” and they kept arguing with me. the entire time i was like “you will not survive the immigration to tumblr you are lucky we are not there right now”

[meowzilla93]

commission for @meowzilla93

[meowzilla93]

commission for @meowzilla93

[meowzilla93]

My sweeeeeet baby! I am so excited to debut this on my stream!!

designed @meowzilla93's pngtuber avatar! always a pleasure to collaborate with them ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡!!

[meowzilla93]

Building off this post by @karissaeb

What an incredible catch. I've only played through the ending once so far and I think I was so busy taking everything in that I didn't notice, but wow. Spite using his own voice to tell Solas to fuck off. "You hurt Rook. You lie."

How does Spite see Solas? In lines with other characters who refer to Solas as Pride, Solas says that he prefers Wisdom. I talk a bit here about Spite vs Determination and even use Pride vs Wisdom as an example, but...we can all agree this point that Solas isn't wise, right? Clever, sure. Wise? A wise man would know when to call it quits. When yearning for the past becomes too detrimental to the future to be worth doing. When Solas calls him "Determination" and Spite corrects him, it serves several purposes.

1) Spite tells Rook that there are three kinds of people: Family, enemies, and contracts. Solas is an enemy. Friends or family are allowed to call him Determination if they feel so inclined (Rowan, Isabella) but Solas is not in this category, as Karissa mentions, and Spite wants (spitefully!) to let him know that.

2) It reminds Solas that what happens to you shapes you. The way you respond to those events shapes you. Determination? Pah. Spite is something sharper, something more vindicating, something angrier. Wisdom? Pah. Pride is manipulation towards your own goals instead of guidance. Pride is insistence in your own views with disregard to all others. Solas is changed and warped by trauma. Spite's correction is a reminder and a demand. Acknowledge what changed me, and what changed you.

And the delivery of this line! It's not sharp and abrupt, not curt like you'd expect of someone who doesn't want anything to do with this guy. "Spite," he says, and I almost felt like I could hear him smile and turn up his nose there, like he was flashing his teeth. He sounds pleased with his own identity and threatening all at once, the way Lucanis sounds when he says "The Crows send their regards."

And when Solas offers his help, that mask slips. Now those bared teeth sound gritted. Now there is an echo of something dark underneath his voice, and it's his voice.

This is the only time in the whole game that other people get to hear Spite's voice, aside from the time in Rook's mind prison and Emmrich's unique ability.

Referencing yet another of my posts, Spite speaks in slow chunks of sentences because he has to force his way to the surface of their body. He has to wrest control of Lucanis's mouth from him, and even after they reconcile and his speech improves a bit, it's clearly a struggle.

Spite is not a weak spirit, but speech through a mouth with two souls at the helm is difficult. You know how you become stronger when overcome with rage or panic? Perhaps it was easier because the Veil is thin here, with all the magic bullshit happening, but I can't help thinking it's a combination of the two. Solas has offered to rip Spite away from Lucanis, who I maintain that Spite loves, and he's hurt Spite's favorite person. Rook, who opens doors for him, who accompanied him steadfastly to Lucanis's mental inner sanctum. Rook, the only person to listen to him, to offer him a rope that would lead to his freedom. Rook, who is one of the very few people Spite can claim a relationship of any kind with.

Why should he trust Solas with Lucanis when Solas hurt Rook? When Lucanis and Spite where there when Solas sealed Rook away? When Rook vanished before their eyes? Can you imagine the thick, palpable, choking fury that would've overcome him, hearing that audacious offer?

This to me is the most blatant and tangible way Spite has shown his love throughout the game. The raw emotion in this single action is so, so potent. Fuck you, you lie. Know that all this love, and all the righteous anger that accompanies it, is mine.

[meowzilla93]

The real tragedy of the Dellamortes is how inevitable Illario's betrayal was.

Caterina's refusal to really see either of her grandsons for who they are sets all three of them on this path. Lucanis's mother was Caterina's favourite, she was probably the person Caterina had in mind to succeed her. That loss, the loss of so much of Caterina's legacy had to have been devastating. She'd built so much and it was all torn away in a single conflict. All she has left in the wake of it is two young boys and this tenacity that will not allow her to give up on what she's built.

So she puts it all on Lucanis. The son of her favourite (bonus angst if he looks like his mother). She's unable to see this sweet boy who loves wyverns and just had his life ripped apart for who he is. She just see's her legacy. The daughter she lost. She puts it all into him, he's pushed into the role of favourite.

Lucanis responds to this by shoving down the parts of himself she doesn't want to see- his gentle heart, his love of wyverns, the little boy who needs to be loved. If he's good enough, strong enough, the perfect crow, the perfect granson- then and only then will she love him, will he be safe.

And then you have Illario! There isn't as much to go on in the text about his family or what he was like as a boy but there's a few things we can pretty confidently infer. Like Lucanis, Illario violently loses everything he has at a very young age. All he has left are the other two Dellamorte's.

But he isn't the child of Caterina's favourite. She isn't automatically putting all of her legacy on his shoulders the way she does Lucanis. He still gets the training, and what we do see in the wigmaker job and the wake and even in the codex entires in the game is that Illario does become a comptent and capable crow. He has a level of skill that I suspect is broadly expected of house Dellamorte, he was trained by the first talon herself. But the Illario we meet as an adult has this laissez-faire affect and presents himself as a seducer and a bit of a peakcock. He also very overtly refers to himself as Dellamorte-the-lesser and at the end of the wigmaker job when they're discussing the title of first talon you can feel the resentment below the surface.

For Illario it's not about the power and the prestige that comes from the title of first talon. It's not even about having the title itself. It's about FINALLY earning Caterina's love and respect. Things he undoubtly never felt as a boy.

How could he? When he's a child the only two people he has left in the world have this special bond that he never gets to be a part of. His only caretaker has a clear favourite and she shows it. He's lived his whole life in Lucanis's shadow, and a shadow that Lucanis never wanted to cast! Which if anything just adds insult to injury for Illario.

Lucanis has everything Illario wants and he doesn't even want it.

I imagine as a boy Illario tries SO HARD to win her love, her favour, he'll do anything to feel like he's loved and wanted and valued. And when after YEARS it doesn't work even though Lucanis clearly doesn't want the role he's been forced into? Illario gets resentful, he gets angry, he starts acting up. He becomes the suave peacock, the grandson who fucks up sometimes- probably not because he's bad at being a crow but because at least Caterina's ire is attention. It's a scrap of love.

Illario and Lucanis love each other. They're brothers. Illario resents Lucanis for being loved and favoured. Lucanis wants nothing more than to give it all to Illario. Illario doesn't want that he wants Caterina to love him on his own merit. At the same time (pre-inner demons) Lucanis will never actually give the title up because it means he's loved, he's valued, he matters.

The title of first talon has been synonymous with emotional safety and love for these two for their entire lives, and it's twisted them up so badly.

The real irony of it all is that this whole time Illario is so much more like the person Caterina wants Lucanis to be. Her heir, the Dellamorte best suited to be the next first talon has been right there infront of her all along, but she's so caught up in grief and legacy she misses it. She never really see's either of her grandsons for who they are.

I actually suspect that when it all comes to light, even though she's furious with him, Caterina finally starts to see what she's been overlooking in Illario all along. And Lucanis who's started to heal... well I think she's starting to see him too, and the truth of who he is is something she'll struggle to face.

When the day finally comes that Lucanis tells her he doesn't want the job, when him and Illario both accept that their lives have meaning outside of Caterina's opinion of them, is the day that the Dellamorte's can maybe start to really see each other.

[meowzilla93]

Navigating a Fade manifestation of Lucanis' PTSD as the underwater prison he was held and tortured in, to help him start dismantling his fears, begin healing and also accepting Spite, to help them both stop fighting for control, is certainly not on the list of things I expected from this game, but I'm so in love with it.

Even before that, you just know that Lucanis is not alright. He can't possibly be. He doesn't talk about it much, but who would be after the experiences he's had? And there are signs all over the place. I mean, he keeps hiding in the closed space of the pantry like a feral cat under a couch, and likely not just because of Spite, for example. But he keeps it all in, just like he keeps Spite in. Or out, even, in this case. But you also know that he can't go on like that forever.

And now, Lucanis has finally hit the wall. Thankfully, Spite knows what to do. So, he briefly takes the steering wheel. "Help us." ("He'll listen! He always listens to you!" I feel totally normal about knowing this, thanks, Spite.)

Just... the doors of Lucanis' mental prison opening for Rook by themselves as they gently talk down each manifestation of Lucanis' fears and doubts as a metaphor for Lucanis letting Rook in and letting himself be vulnerable with them is just 👌 Delightful. We don't break a single lock. He opens himself up to us.

And it doesn't magically solve all his problems and restore his mental health, of course, but it's a promising start. I like how the game acknowledges this. Rook is there for him, easing some of the worst thoughts, lending him perspective that he lacks because his mental downwards spiral is so thoroughly suffocating at that point. They're helping him start somewhere. Of course, helping Lucanis reach an understanding with Spite, thus helping him end the constant and surely stressful and exhausting battle over his own body there and then, showing him that Rook accepts and cares about him the way he is, so he can start accepting himself that way, goes a long way. It doesn't fix everything, but it's an important breakthrough.

The way Lucanis looks at Rook afterwards, when Teia asks them if they're alright? Also great. 👌

Though I think Rook should be able to hold Lucanis for at least like 300 hours afterwards, because that's approximately the amount of time I need to cry about it - the whole thing, Lucanis' dynamic with Rook, and Spite's trust for Rook and his willingness to play nice despite having been ignored and pushed away for so long.

Actually, poor Spite doesn't get enough credit for all that. He really goes, "Fuck, if he's not going let me in or go to Rook for help, I'm going to pull them into the deepest crevices of his psyche, so they can see the mess for themselves," and improves the situation for himself, Lucanis, and his budding relationship. Good job, Spite!

[meowzilla93]

I love how soft the Rookanis relationship is and how so much of their relationship is about caring for each other. A lot of the early Rook 'flirts' are less actual flirting and more them expressing concern about Lucanis's well being. Rook doesn't want to leave Lucanis alone because of Spite, Rook is happy that Lucanis survived, etc. Rook cares well before the relationship starts and that becomes the core of their romance.

Lucanis is the same way even if it takes longer to show because of his own personal issues (though not entirely, if you are playing as Rook De Riva, when Rook talks about disappointing the Crows, Lucanis comforts and encourages them). Lucanis tries to flirt, be like his cousin, but that isn't what he is comfortable with and it falls apart. It takes Lucanis starting to work through his issues and being his authentic self for the relationship to actually start and authentic Lucanis wants to take care of people (as established with his grocery shopping and cooking).

The whole pastry scene shows that. It is small but it is him being real and wanting to do something just for Rook. Additionally, while Rook could play off the fade prison stuff with jokes and stoicism, the scene really does lean towards Rook being vulnerable and Lucanis getting to take care of them, to support the person who has done so much to support him. Even Lucanis's other romantic lines about killing all the blighted creatures, fighting the gods, etc. is all about him wishing to keep Rook safe.

Their relationship is all supporting and caring for the other one. It is soft and gentle and works so well for the pair who have been through so much.