I can't stop drawing Clan Excelsior portraits, but I had so much fun writing these characters; they each have such strong and diverse personalities and dynamics with each other that, like my Neopets cast, it's fun to just come up with new ways for them to interact and show different sides of themselves. My FFTA2 cast was really one of the first times in my writing that my character development was personality-driven--before then, most of the characters I wrote didn't really have much to them and basically just existed to fill a role, not be interesting in their own right (a lot of characters in Skydwellers had this problem, especially in earlier editions).

Plus, I've been re-reading those old FFTA2 fics and enjoying them despite their age. I've been dealing with a lot lately and those fics are a good happy place. Nothing like a bit of lighthearted fantasy brimming with quirky characters to take you away from your stress for a bit.

Qrrog Squallhammer was the first person to join Clan Excelsior after its initial three members; his recruitment involved piracy, being eaten by a sea serpent, and one of the wildest "how I met my spouse" stories ever. But it all worked out in the end.

 Last week on Fossil Friday, Ruby Pines was teaching us how to draw Dimetrodon, and as she was blocking out the shapes, she drew in what she called "footy pebbles" for the feet. MaggieJo then commented that she wanted to see a Fruity Pebbles-colored Dimetrodon. So I just had to.

Dimetrodon are often traditionally posed in a squat crouch, but there have been fossil trackways found of what appear to be Dimetrodon footprints that show two things: no tail-dragging marks and a narrow gauge between prints. Both these pieces of evidence strongly suggest that Dimetrodon walked in an upright position, so that's how I like to depict it.

(As much as I like the idea of Dimetrodon having whiskers, a paper came out last year describing scaly body impressions that appear to have come from Dimetrodon, so it seems that sphenacodontids had scales instead of bare skin/fur like later synapsids. These guys were just a little too early for whiskers, it seems.)

 I feel bad for any kid who has a Team Rocket member for a parent, though.

 More FFTA2 OC sketching! (I know, the proportions are kind of off. I draw these late at night when I'm winding down and I'm like "yeah this looks fine" and then in the morning I'm like "no no it's all wrong" but I don't feel like going to the bother of fixing it because it's just a sketch, and here I am overexplaining everything again when I should be eating breakfast.)

Anyway. This is Tara O'Donovan Squallhammer, the main character and first-person narrator of all the fics. She started off as an overstressed, exhausted college student from modern-day Earth, who was beginning to question what she was doing with her life when she found a Grimoire in a used bookstore and it transported her to Ivalice. At first, her adventures followed a path similar to Luso Clemens, with the Grimoire recording her escapades so it could return her home when its pages were filled.

However, as Tara grew accustomed to Ivalice, made friends for the first time in her life, and realized that her job as her clan's White Mage was way more fulfilling than being on the fast track to the rat race, she began to dread returning to Earth. Finally she made the decision to destroy her Grimoire, ensuring she could stay in Ivalice permanently (or so she thought, but that's a story for a later fic). 

 It's been a while since I drew the members of Clan Excelsior and I was having so much fun that I just had to do more!

Saskia is another of the founding members of the clan and its leader (because I wanted to break from the FFTA tradition of the main character arbitrarily being the clan leader). She's a taciturn, aloof, pragmatic viera markswoman who is a terror on the battlefield with her stealth, speed, and arsenal of arrows tipped with quick-acting poison. However, she is also a loyal and caring ally who is pretty much the mom friend of the clan.

She and Coele have a sisterly bond, as Coele was the first person to befriend her when Saskia was living in hiding in the woods. Saskia used to belong to a wealthy, prestigious, and totally corrupt clan who framed her for a crime when Saskia tried to expose them, so the viera escaped far to the south and became a forest hermit for over a decade--until she met Coele and started to come out of her shell. During the first fic, Clan Excelsior has an unexpected run-in with Saskia's former clan and they become tangled up in another of the clan's nefarious schemes--which actually turns out to be the perfect opportunity to bring them to justice, clear Saskia's name, and score a new airship.

Why is this woman giving you the TM for Self-Destruct at the worst possible time?! Lady, do you want to be saved or not?!

 I was sitting around and doodling last night, and I ended up drawing one of the characters from a series of Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift fanfics I wrote during and after college. I loved the original Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and played it to death*, so when they released a sequel, I was over the moon. When I learned that the world of FFTA2 is actually the same as that of Final Fantasy XII, it drove me to research the overall lore of Ivalice and I ended up incorporating a sizeable amount of FFXII stuff into the fics (not the least because Basch fon Ronsenburg is best pony and that's why he makes a lot of cameos), so they're sorta a little bit FFXII fics too? But I haven't bothered to keep up on any new Ivalice-related stuff so you won't see any of that in the fics. It's complicated arrrgggh.