#i love endwalker

[johnnylandslide]

"Welcome home!!"

"Watch your step, Landslide- oop, there he goes..."

"This sudden burst of vitality is heartening, and I believeth his betrothed is the one to whom the credit should go."

"Certainly. The two of them are looking happier by the minute."

"Johnny, you fool! Don't just run off like that, you're still injured!"

"Yes, please give your body some more time to recover, and- Oh gods, Mistress Tataru! Are you alright?"

"It's good to be back on solid ground, my friend. Do you need a hand?"

"...Thanks, everyone, but I'm fine down here right now. Just a minute longer..."

I got most of the idea for this upon rereading this ficlet I wrote about Tataru's anxieties watching the rest of the Scions depart to close out Endwalker. I wanted to make this pose showing the moment they meet back up and live happily ever after!

[june-yo]

unlocked the last region in Endwalker today :’)

all of these were super out of my comfort zone; i’m hoping i’ll get better at these type of shots later on TT_TT

[fisherrprince]

for as much as I love and adore stories where the power of hope and friendship is a blinding wonderful light, full of happiness and ease and laughter, something hits different about the way hope, in ffxiv, looks like this

covered in blood and dirt and limping forward. It’s probably been said multiple times before but isn’t it a reassuring image to know that hope drags itself through the mud just as much as you do and keeps fighting when it can hardly stand. and amidst deepest despair, light everlasting

[fyllophobia]

[sebille]

Oh the little change in his expression

[marronbunnie]

paladin

[sasseebeee]

LET HIM YAP!!!!!!

[sunnythanalan]

I will, now and forever, absolutely love how muscular Urianger is canonically. Not an arch-typical little wisp healer in robes, but a large, muscular guy in the prettiest velvet dress.

[space-diablo]

Still Ktisis Hyperboreia.

[fatedroses]

More than just the Demon.

[worldformula]

with my chorus guiding you, forge ahead.

(quote from the thing is by ellen bass)

[green-geist]

Has your journey been good? Has it been worthwhile?

[hazoret]

this is how that one part went right

[renabe4life]

carrying our song

cradled fast within your arms

[liketheinferno2]

These aren't full ref sheets but I was trying to take some clear pictures of Hephaistos for later art reasons and then got side tracked doing all of the Pandaemonium bosses so here they are in order. Also for anyone following who doesn't play FFXIV and knows it as the catgirl game, enjoy this instead? VISUAL SPOILERS obviously.

Asphodelos

Warder of the Condemned: Erichthonios

Mythic Creation: The Hippokampos

Mythic Creation: The Phoinix

(+ familiars)

Hemitheos: Hesperos

(+ sexy fanfic redesign by Nemjiji)

To be brutally honest I never really liked either of these designs compared to every other Hemitheos we get, I think the really brutal black and red of the Phoinix is weakened by gold accents, but I still am always down for gay vampire surf rock. The Savage version kind of looks like Ultimalius as well if you've played XVI.

Abyssos

Mythic Creation: Proto-Carbuncle

Hrgrhhgrhrgrh

Hemitheos: Hegemone

^ My favourite detail on this is you can see the parasite's outlines in her robes and in her legs, then right through the eye holes on the mask to wrap around the torso. I'm convinced this version of Hegemone is functionally an ant being piloted by a cordyceps infection.

Hemitheos: Agdistis

She's very big

Perfect Imperfection: Hephaistos

I'm probably biased by Abyssos being the first raid I was there for day of release but these really are all fantastic. It's also when the story abandons all pretense of not being (at least partly) about family abuse and is loudly using the body horror and shackle motifs to talk about that. It's great. Hephaistos specifically is constantly bulging and twisting in and out of different forms like a highly unstable chimera and the more I look at these the more I notice parts that just should not be there. He's giving everything.

As for the Savage design It's a hard thing to rate as such but my favourite part is the veins that grow down from the eyeholes in his mask like bloody tears.

Thanks Abyssos I love you

Anabaseios

Mythic Creation: Kokytos

Dæmoniac Dungeon: Pandæmonium

It's really hard to communicate how huge this nasty tumor crab I zoomed out as far as physically possible in the game engine and subsequently ended up at a goofy angle staring up his nose.

Ephemeral Justice: Themis

Best boy. The double ended lance and second pair of arms are fantastic for this character.

Theos: Athena

In.. almost every final fantasy adventure you're fighting the real villain not at the very end but a little beforehand, the big iconic end boss is often more a metaphorical figure representing everything wrong with that first person's ideals. Athena cut out the middle man and became her own JENOVA.

I do like the moth angel, especially the hollow body full of dubious orbs, but with her eyes closed all the time it gives off the impression of this not even being the true body but some kind of anglerfish lure in the shape of a fairy... which might be true because this exists:

I really really love her twitchy anemone feelers and how the moth body ends up grafted to the rest of it waist down.

Anyway there's the gang I did not specifically intend for this to be design reviews I just wanted to have clear photos because when you actually see them in game there's other things to focus on. In hindsight I can appreciate more the theming of each tier and then the series as a whole, but my only (extremely obvious) observation for now is that every character Athena had a personal hold over is decorated in chains somehow and so I should have seen the Hegemone thing coming lmao. Heph and Aggy are still my favourites I don't think that's changing any time soon. I'm also noticing that Anabaseios is now just old enough for random DF parties to fuck up severely and I find that fun so I'm going to go fight the crab mansion now.

[sebille]

I think it's SO INTERESTING to hear Zenos VA talk about Zenos