#world’s end club fanart

[marshmellobunny64]

I gave up on this drawing of Vanilla 😭

[peanutseagle]

Aged up Damianya in a play (as extras, Becky is probably the main character)

oh yOU BET

[candyje11yfish]

how did you get your style to be how it is

i find my art style to be very inconsistent honestly. but ill try answer!!!

i started drawing fanart like ~2/3 yrs ago? i copied artists i liked, trying to draw exactly like they did. which eventually led me to pick out what i like/dont like & take features of more artwork i liked and try incorporating that into my own drawings!!

basically, i drew a lot. like everyday. so i say keep drawing, not until u get burnt out & sick of it but imo actually drawing will help u improve the most & develop an artstyle :)

[ishtheva]

2024 ART RECAP YIPPIEE

This is the first time I’ve managed to do a proper piece every month for a year!! :D I think I managed to nail down a process for art I liked this year and I improved a bunch!

[larryismywife]

I think they're more than besties

[shrimp-and-rice]

“C’mon Pochi, ya’ slow poke!”

“I’m trying!”

Here’s the initial sketch I did! I didn’t expect to turn this doodle into a full blown drawing but here we are ig

[emitherandomfox]

Pielololoooon!! I drew Pielope from World’s End Club! ♪

I’ve played it a bit in the past but only now am I really playing through it and I think the story is really interesting so far! I really like Pielope and its design is just so cute, I had a lot of fun drawing it! I really do love the artstyle of the game too ♡

[macapoodle]

Yuki 2023

[izanagi-arts]

[theolivetree123]

◇ Yuuki's New Club ◇

Yuuki stared at the poster in their hand. They furrowed their brow as their hand stiffened, trying not to tear the paper in frustration. Their other hand grew sweaty with fear, and the tape in that hand turned damp. Grim, Ace and Deuce simply stared. This nervousness was nothing new from Yuuki.

"Come on, Henchman, just put up the sign already!" Grim yelled causing Yuuki to drop the tape.

Yuuki groaned as they clumsily picked up the tape from the ground. "Ugh, its... it's not that simple for me, Grim! I mean, gosh... in my world, people treated me like a speck of literal dust! It's not unusual for me to not want to but myself out there. Ugh, why did Crowely even allow me to make this stupid club..."

Deuce walked to Yuuki, putting a hand on their shoulder. "Yuuki, if you need us to put up these poster for you, we can. But, just so you know, I think your club will be amazing! Whether people join or not."

Ace lightly pushed Deuce away. "Ugh, don't let them off the hook, Deuce! Yuuki should be able to do this themselves. They shouldn't be relying on us to do stuff for em! Do you remember last week when we had to give an entire presentation because Yuuki was too afraid to go up in front of the class? Or maybe when-"

"Okay! Okay! I get it, Ace..." Yuuki quickly interrupted Ace and then looked at their poster.

☆「Art Club」☆

Founded by Yuuki Kamiyama, Art Club will be for people to not only make art, but research it, learn about its origins, and come to appreciate the work that goes into making a masterpiece.

If you'd like to join, please meet Yuuki in class 1-F tomorrow immediately after school ends.

Yuuki stared at the words. Who would want to join this club? Who would want to join Yuuki? They sighed. "Do you guys think anyone would want to join this club?"

Grim, Ace and Deuce paused for a moment. Then Ace spoke up. "Of course, Yuuki. There's gotta be at least one person in this school who loves art as much as you do. I'm sure of it!"

Deuce smiled. "I agree. You'll surely find people for your club here."

Grim jumped onto Yuuki's shoulder. "Yeah! C'mon Yuuki, you gotta think positive!"

Yuuki sighed again and smiled as they brushed their hair to the side. "I sure hope you guys are right." Then, Yuuki tore a piece of tape and stuck the poster to the lunchroom wall.

"Okay, let's get out of here before I change my mind..." Yuuki quickly turned away from the poster. Ace and Deuce followed.

◇ Welcome to Art Club! ◇

Yuuki has made their very own club! In classroom 1-F, they hold Art Club.

Yuuki would love some new members! Would you be willing to join?

Rules:

Only NRC students can join!

Everyone can participate! Whether you're following me or not.

No NSFW!

You can make fanart, make cards, write fanfics, etc.

Tag me if you choose to make anything for this mini event!

If you choose to make a card, you can use these club card blanks from my good friend, trinket!

I made the club badges below and the classroom background above. Please credit me if you use them! I have made an Art Club badge for every single canon NRC dorm.

Dress Code:

All you have to do is wear your club shirt (a shirt with the club badge on it). That's it! Everything else is up to you.

I will be posting Yuuki's own club card, as well!

◇ Club Members ◇

Yuubeni Chōga - @bunniehunn

That's it!

If you have any questions, please ask me!

Tagging below:

@cheerleaderman @moonyasnow @ashipiko @babyghoul138 @skibidibabygirl @skriblee-ksk @oya-oya-okay @the-rini-rush @twtysevapr @taruruchi @scint1llat3 @screamintoad @bunniehunn @gimmeurmoneyagh @offorestsongs @shinysparklesapphires @beneathsakurashade @gl00myb3arz @fell-e @the-trinket-witch @boopshoops

Let me know if you don't want to be tagged!

[marshmellobunny64]

RCH-e10

[hiael]

Obey Me! Headcanons that the voices in my head created

The pact marks don't affect the MC in general, but when they are used, the color of the user's eyes tends to change to the color of sin (when Solomon sees the color of his eyes changing to the colors of his brothers, geez, jealousy boy), it happens more often than you think and in addition to the marks on the body, it's a reminder to everyone that you're connected with the lords of hell.

Human beings can speak very quickly and neither demons nor angels can keep up when this happens. Scientifically, we talk fast because of anxiety, nervousness, excitement or the communication conditions that the environment provides. Solomon and MC talking about something they thought was cool during the tea? For the others it becomes a RAP battle and all they can hear is "hum, nah, ha, hehe", the rest is indecipherable. More than once, during a presentation or debate in class, MC was told to shut the fuck up or slow down so that everyone could understand.

All material related to the history of the human world is more or less 100 to 200 years out of date in the library. Satan is slowly trying to update this, but they think that 200 years is almost nothing for humans to change, so unlike technology (which they think they created with magic) they just don't care. A new iPhone ok, now the human being landed on the moon during a bloodless war? Their lie, do you still believe what mortals say?

Humans sleep more than angels and demons, but even less than demons from the circle of laziness. MC, Solomon and Belphie (and sometimes Luke) usually sleep in some places at RAD during and between classes.

All exchange students have their own fan club. Luke's must be the quietest, everyone friendly and kind so as not to disappoint the little angel. Did you see him walking past you today, sad that he hadn't managed to buy a keyring at the RAD art fair? Bitch surprise, his fan club are still demons, the keyring will mysteriously appear on his desk in the classroom written "To Luke, a little big ray of sunshine in our lives" and the person who bought it has left the RAD, anyone know why?

Still on the subject of fan clubs, we're not talking about Solomon's. If the number of demons he has a pact with isn't enough of a warning, there are others walking around in capes and blouses as if they were cosplayers and sending letters to his house with phrases like 'roses are red, violets are blue, can we make a pact? Signed: Demon X' should be a better warning

And to end the fan clubs, MC's are trained in the art of being meticulous, a silent army that lives in the shadows - meaning they are in the devildom version of twitter. Lots of photos taken on the sly, fanart of all kinds, fanfics, merchandise and videos edits of (and when were they sheep? There are millions and millions of images circulating out there). Ever wondered why Miss Em sold so much? The MC fandom. They won't compete with anyone for their attention, the sweet human is simply appreciated the way they are (and they don't want to be on the brothers' list to "get away from the MC"). The Human Appreciation Club was not approved by the student council and they removed their devilpedia page, but that didn't erase these demons desire to idolize MCs. Live, love and laugh for MC, the way simps are.

At some point, the Real or Cake trend went crazy until Luke, who started making desserts that looked like everyday things, only stopped after surprising Simeon by cutting a cell phone-shaped cake (Simeon tried to break his with his hand after that, thinking it was cake. He spent 3 weeks without a phone)

Every time MC returns from a trip to the human world, they have to bring a suitcase just with souvenirs from there. Luckily, it can be anything they find fun, like a frog-shaped coaster, a jar of M&Ms with a pinwheel on top, a whole corn cake, a tie with a motivational quote, a children's book, or a coin of a specific year. Everyone just loves the fact that MC was thinking of them and they love using the gift they received. Barbatos's favorite tea set is now a completely transparent one with gold floral details.

Children's cartoons from 1940 still show on Devildom TV and Beel watches while eating or working out.

Lucifer has a family photo inside his wallet, Mammon once tried to steal his credit card, he was so shocked that he ended up screaming, he was caught and punish. Neither of them mention the photo.

[ishtheva]

Found a bunch of old WEC art while looking through my photos, top two are from last summer, the one with Venti in is at least a year old comfort characters go brrrr

Another example of how inconsistent my art is lmao

Maybe I’ll dig up the “World’s End Club but it keeps getting more low effort” drawings

[kelliealtogether]

So I can't get enough of the fanart of Adam with a beard that @try-set-me-on-fire has been blessing us with, and I wrote a little something inspired by this art of theirs because we love a beardy, unkempt, mysterious Adam Parrish.

Adam Parrish never anticipated growing a beard would itch.

Before averting the end of the world, he always shaved before his facial hair made it past the stage of stubble. Unlike Gansey, Adam had the capacity to grow something other than a scraggly tuft on his chin, but — as evidenced by Ronan when he lowered himself to show up for classes prior to dropping out — scruff took the dignity of the Aglionby uniform down a peg. Dignity being an aspect of the school uniform he needed most, Adam lathered up every morning with dollar store shaving cream and used a dollar store razor to clear his jaw, cheeks, upper lip, and chin of the faint blond fuzz that appeared overnight. It was the last step of the perfunctory routine he’d crafted to get ready with minimal effort and time, a step that often left his face dotted with bloody bits of toilet paper, the quantity driven by how much sleep he’d stolen the night before.

That routine followed him to Harvard, moving from his tiny, antiquated bathroom in his apartment above St. Agnes to a shared dormitory bathroom, where it stuck around until Adam returned to campus after a two week leave of absence because reacclimating his soul with his body was a lot more difficult than he initially planned. 

Not to mention with Ronan back from the sweetmetal sea, and with every ley line everywhere awake, Adam wasn't exactly rushing to return to classes.

But when he did, the Adam Parrish who returned to Harvard wasn't the same Adam Parrish who had left campus one evening to scry and find his boyfriend. The Adam Parrish who returned to Cambridge for his final semester in the Ivy League aligned closer with the Adam Parrish he'd been the past summer at the Barns. An Adam Parrish who didn't have to perform, not because it didn't matter, and not because he didn't care, but because he didn't want to. He didn't have to. The past few weeks had given him some perspective on what really mattered, on the fragility of not just his own body and mind, but the whole world, and as soon as he admitted that he didn't want to stay at Harvard and that he didn't want to keep acting like a cut-rate Gansey, he reached a level he'd learned about in his first semester psychology class but never personally experienced. 

The morning he returned to campus, Adam put the picture-perfect student who looked like he belonged on brick-paved walkways and around stacks of leatherbound library books on a shelf behind his closet door. He donned flannel instead of tweed. Jeans instead of slacks. He shoved his feet in old, scuffed sneakers instead of pristinely polished secondhand brogues, and he wore an old oversized Harvard sweatshirt Blue had found him in a thrift store after he’d gotten his acceptance letter instead of plain, drab sweaters Adam bought because he thought they looked academic. 

In the end, he returned to wearing all the clothes he’d initially left behind at the Barns when he’d driven away in August because they didn’t match who he’d wanted to become at Harvard. 

He’d really been such a fool not all that long ago. 

Without cuffed sleeves and cuffed hems, he became almost unrecognizable. Unimpressive. Unremarkable. The dorm proctor stopped him and asked him who had signed him in as a guest before realizing she was talking to Adam. Professors did a double take when he stopped by during office hours to turn in make-up assignments. Classmates who always asked him to study with them hardly looked his way. Just a change in wardrobe alone — from classic to comfort — stripped away so much of the false front he’d put up for months, enough that the Crying Club didn't notice him waiting for them when he asked them to meet him in Thayer's basement so he could provide an explanation and attempt an apology.

Then Adam’s already-perfunctory morning routine became impossibly more perfunctory when, first, he ran out of the styling paste he used to wrangle his self-cut hair into something presentable, and then — a few days later — ran out of shaving cream. 

Unless he looked closely at himself in the mirror — steam swiped away to make a lopsided circle large enough for his shower-pinked face — Adam couldn’t tell he hadn’t shaven. In the thin, sickly gray of the bathroom, he had to tilt his head one way and lift his chin before the coarse, fair hair on his jaw caught a little bit of light. Straight on, he looked the same as he always had: feather boned, gaunt cheeked, thin lipped, wary eyed. 

Except those wary eyes had recently lost their dark circles. 

That first morning, Adam told himself he’d stop by a drugstore and pick up more shaving cream, but he didn’t. And he didn’t the next day. And he didn’t the next day either. By the fourth morning, he finally began looking slightly scruffy. Or maybe slightly rugged. Nothing like Ronan — who grew a five o’clock shadow by noon — but when Adam ran his hand across his jaw, rough hairs scraped his palm, and he didn’t have to move his head a certain way to see the stubble on his face. A distinct coating of fair hair covered most of the bottom half of his face, a subtle shadow Adam didn’t totally hate, and if he left it alone, he’d save himself five to ten minutes every morning. 

So he left it alone. 

But then it started itching. 

“The fuck is that sound?” Ronan asked during one of their nightly phone calls. 

While Adam sat on his bed in his Harvard dorm, Ronan sat in a hotel room somewhere in the Great Smoky Mountains, priming to track down a dreamer he’d been encountering in dreamspace the past few days. In an effort to help, Adam had flipped some tarot cards onto his comforter, and while figuring out their meaning, he’d started absently scratching his jaw right by where he held his phone to his right ear. 

“What?” Adam replied, hearing Ronan’s question but not picking up its meaning, too absorbed in figuring out how Temperance fit into any kind of reading involving Ronan. 

“That sound,” Ronan said. “It’s like I’m in a damn cabin in the woods and the monster of the week’s trying to get through the door.” 

Adam furrowed his eyebrows, still focused on the wispy figure pouring smoke-like water from one cup into another. “The monster of the…” Slowly, Ronan’s words sank in and Adam stilled his fingertips on his face before dropping his hand into his lap. “Oh.” 

“Oh?”

“I was scratching my face.” 

“Why? Do they have fleas at Harvard? Bed bugs? Magical mosquitos?” 

“No,” Adam said flatly. “I ran out of shaving cream and haven’t shaved in a few days and my — beard? I guess it’s a beard. My beard itches.” 

Silence stretched across the phone line for so long Adam checked to make sure the call hadn’t disconnected because Ronan’s phone died, but the time still ticked upward on the screen of his phone. He’d simply rendered Ronan speechless for a few moments because he hadn’t picked up a razor in a week. 

“You have a beard,” Ronan said when he finally got his wits back about him. 

“It’s not really a—” 

“Don’t tell me it’s like that little soul patch thing Dick tries to grow everytime he has ideas about being manly.” 

Laughing dryly, Adam gave up on interpreting Temperance and laid back on his bed, rubbing his hand over his cheek to ease the itch instead of scratching as he replied, “It’s not like that. But it’s not a beard beard. I said it’s only been a few days.” 

“Send me a picture.” 

“I’m not sending a picture.” 

“Because it’s coming in uneven. I bet you look mangy.” 

“I do not look mangy.” 

“I bet you do. That’s why you won’t send me a picture.” 

“I do not look mangy,” Adam repeated. “Jesus, Ronan. If I send you one, will you quit saying that?” 

“I make no promises, Parrish.” 

A half hour later, after they finished their call, Adam did take a photo of himself. Mostly because when he sent a rare selfie to Ronan, Ronan sent one back, even if it was only one side of his face or a close up of an eye. And because it was for Ronan, Adam put a little effort into the photo, shifting his head on his navy pillowcase until he found a good angle and smiled a little when he hit the shutter button. He looked at the photo briefly before he sent it to Ronan, and it surprised him that his facial hair wasn’t growing unevenly at all. One spot near his left ear was a little thinner than everywhere else, but his facial hair was an otherwise perfectly even layer half a shade lighter than the hair on his head.

Yet this did not stop Ronan from sending Adam a picture of a mangy dog instead of a selfie, followed by a single-worded message moments later. 

Shave. 

Usually, Adam left contrariness to Ronan, who had perfected the art of antagonism a long, long time ago. But something about the single-word reply irked Adam. It came across as a directive, an order, even though Ronan would never mean it that way, and it tightened Adam’s jaw, making it ache as well as itch. He closed out of the message and willfully ignored it the rest of the night and into the following morning, when he found himself in Walgreens to pick up a new tube of toothpaste. 

On his way through the store to the register, Adam didn’t avoid the shaving aisle and instead paused in front of the cans of shaving cream for a long minute. He stared down the red, white, and blue cans of Barbasol, and leered at the far fancier cream-and-navy Aveeno Therapeutic Shave Gel. 

Shave. 

It seemed like only yesterday they’d made up in the sweetmetal sea, where the two of them had intertwined and recounted their rights and wrongs, made their admissions and their apologies. And Adam wasn’t mad at Ronan. A year or two ago, he would have been, and receiving a photo of a scabby, patchy-haired dog would have sent them straight into a fight. Now, Adam well understood it was Ronan being Ronan, which meant he was being a dick despite the fact he loved Adam. So Adam wasn’t mad, but he was a little peeved. 

Just peeved enough to be petty. 

He turned away from the myriad shaving creams and shaving balms and aftershaves and headed to the front of the store to buy his single tube of toothpaste. Then he walked back to campus, let himself into his dorm, and — wastefully — threw away the last of his razors. 

The next few weeks, neither of them brought up the beard thing. Once, Ronan asked if Adam got shaving cream and Adam indirectly answered that he’d gone to the drugstore. However Ronan interpreted that was up to him, but he didn’t ask about it again, leaving Adam to assume he’d interpreted the response as a positive toward Team Shave. They exchanged photos but no selfies, simply snapshots of tangled roots obstructing a ley line or reawakened Rockefeller beetles crossing Harvard Square in a tidy single-file. And when they talked, Adam did everything he could to keep his hands away from his face, even going so far as sitting on his hands after putting Ronan on speaker. 

Finally, in the fourth week of not shaving, the itching waned, and when Adam looked in the mirror, the hair on his face had definitively turned into a beard. Thick, blond hair covered his jawline and chin and it crept toward his cheeks and down his neck. A full mustache crossed his upper lip, and the space between his bottom lip and chin had filled in almost completely without bare spots beneath the corners of his lips he’d seen on other men. All together, it served to make him look far older than nineteen. Wiser. A little mysterious. Rough and rugged and a little unkempt — something he’d never been before — like he’d been put through the wringer. 

In a lot of ways, he had. 

And the worst — but probably easiest and most bearable — wringer was yet to come, because as spring break loomed ever closer, Ronan reminded Adam of the plans they’d made long before Adam had returned to Cambridge. “You’re still coming to the Barns, right?” 

“Yeah,” Adam told him. It wouldn’t be like last summer, when the Lynch family farm had been paradise for Adam and Ronan. Mór Ó Corra and the New Fenian would probably be there if Ronan didn’t force them out of the place for a few days — for entirely selfish reasons, Adam hoped he would — but Adam would never turn down the chance to go back to the Barns. To go home, though that location constantly changed depending on where Ronan was any given day. “My last midterm is Thursday and I’ll ride down Friday.”

“You’re taking the bike instead of the shitbox? Are you gonna return the favor?” 

“I’m planning on it.” 

Adam could hear the devil of Ronan’s smirk when he said, “Good.” 

Midterms raced by despite long nights, long papers, and long exams, and Adam cleanly survived them. He even thought about leaving for the Barns on Thursday night until he remembered his journey back from Virginia on his dreamt motorcycle. Exhaustion on that ride had done him no favors despite having a lot to think about, and he’d rather get to the Barns in one piece than be scraped off the road somewhere in New Jersey. Catching up on sleep could wait until the Barns though, and Friday he woke with the sun so his wheels hit the road before rush hour, his new facial hair adding some padding and warmth beneath his helmet that hadn’t been there before. 

Nine hours later, when he turned up the Barns’ rutted driveway, Adam knew he’d find Ronan waiting for him on the farmhouse’s front porch. Probably leaning against the same pillar he’d leaned against the night of his birthday when Adam joined him outside and they’d kissed for the second time. Thoughts of that night, of getting his hands on Ronan again, of kissing him again carried Adam down the driveway, and when the woods opened up into the rolling fields of the farm, the first thing Adam saw was Ronan, a dark silhouette against the whitewashed house, leaning against the exact same pillar. 

Only the BMW occupied the gravel parking area in front of the house — Mór Ó Corra and the New Fenian presumably made to temporarily flee — and as Adam nuzzled his motorcycle next to Ronan’s recovered car, Ronan started his slow descent from the porch. 

The reckoning came as Adam slowly unbuckled the strap beneath his chin and lifted his helmet from his head, and he hadn’t fully freed himself of it when the crunch of gravel beneath Ronan’s boots stopped and Ronan said, “You shitbag. You said you got shaving cream.” 

“I said,” Adam started, pulling his helmet all the way off and setting it on the motorcycle’s seat before he looked at Ronan, “that I went to Walgreens.” 

Ten feet away, Ronan stood with his arms crossed over the front of his black zip-up hoodie, his pale blue eyes narrowed to slits as he looked at Adam. He looked no more indignant than normal with his lips pressed together in a thin line and the fingers of both hands curled into the sleeves of his sweatshirt, but for a long minute, he just looked, and Adam looked back. He wanted to close that ten feet between them — badly — and throw his arms around Ronan, get him close again, but Adam had lobbed the ball over the net by not picking up a razor in six weeks. It was Ronan’s turn to volley. 

And volley Ronan did. 

Throwing his arms down at his sides, he stalked across the gravel left between them and instead of pulling Adam into a hug, he took hold of Adam’s cheeks. “What the fuck, Parrish?” he growled, thumbs beginning to brush over Adam’s beard, from his cheeks down to his jaw, over and over again. 

For the first time in his life, Adam understood why cats and dogs liked being pet. All the tension from nine hours on a bike melted from his muscles as Ronan’s thumbs skimmed across his beard, and Adam almost closed his eyes and sighed. He didn’t, because he wanted to watch Ronan as his gaze traveled over Adam’s face, assessing his sideburns and mustache and neck line. Finally, Adam replied, “I thought it’d be funny. You pissed me off. With shave.” 

“You asshole,” Ronan said, thumbs stopping but still holding onto Adam’s face. “I didn’t mean it.” 

“I know.” Adam had always known. Things weren’t like that between them, except for when Ronan wanted them to be. “Do you like it?” 

“Yeah,” Ronan replied, nodding as a slow smile crept across his lips. “Yeah, I think I do.” 

“It’s not mangy.” 

Ronan laughed loud enough it echoed off the farmhouse and startled Chainsaw — perched on the porch railing — into flight, and as she soared circles overhead, Adam and Ronan wrapped their arms around one another and pulled each other close. 

“No, it’s not mangy, Parrish,” Ronan said, and just before he put his lips to Adams, he added, “It’s a damn nice beard.” 

[shrimp-and-rice]

the creatures r bonding

[soraka-in-warhammer40k]

I'm always fascinated when someone at the club rants about "how they just invented T'au to cash on them anime weebs", completly oblivious to the time and culture of their creation. So T'au came out first in 2001, and were obviously conceptualized some years prior, which puts them into the late 90s in their original design. This is slowly hitting "the majority of the populance has no relevant internet access whatsoever" levels of "barbaric analog ages".

So imagine where GW sits in the late 90s - its a small studio somewhere in England barely coming to touch with the first elements of the internet, with the most dominant medium being television which... is not really about "exotic" shows from the other end of the world? Those get ported over when they have proven to be a hit in their own country mostly.

And without the internet as we know it today, the anime community just... did not exist. You have to understand that the whole concept of online anime culture centred around piracy, fansubs, fanart, and the creation of the term "weeabo" was a mid-to-late 00s thing, and it took almost another decade before "weeb" was somewhat reclaimed and no longer an online-slur.

There was a whole generation that grew up with (often horribly localized) japanese shows on TV (Pokemon, Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon) which came over with some delay to their release in Japan. By the time this generation came to congregate into online spaces and form any sort of fan-identity and culture, the T'au and their battlesuits had already been a design over a decade old.

"But wait isn't Gundam from the 70s"? Yes, that is totally correct. However, this is the one glaring mistake people make: you cannot compare modern day media content circulation around the globe to the analog ages. Those of us who remember these barbaric analog times know how it was: you just did not know stuff existed. If it was not in the newspaper or on the telly, it might as well not exist unless you knew a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy.

Sure, the Internet was slowly becoming a thing that found widespread use, but it would still take a while - not to mention the technical limitations. No streaming episodes. You start the download (if you can find someone who hosted the file of a series you had to know even existed first) somewhere around lunch, to hopefully get something to watch in the afternoon. Oh and also that blocked the household's phone-line and if the download cancelled for whatever reason then it was back to square one. Under such conditions, the online community we know today could simply not exist, as the alternative was importing stuff from the other end of the world for quite the money, or hoping a really shoddy localized VCR-tape ended up at your Blockbuster-equivalent.

Of course there was anime before that time, even those regarded absolute classics in the west, but those mostly achieved that rank over here in retrospective. When in the late 00s people wanted to watch stuff and had the ability to do so they shared what was considered "the classics" first (shared to the best of their ability with one episode cut into 5 parts on youtube with sometimes very questionable subtitles).

So even if we assume there was someone at GW in the 90s who was a total "proto-weeb" and Gudam-fan, there was literally no reason to "make knock-off Gundams" because the miniscule western wargaming audience SIMPLY DID NOT KNOW THE STUFF.

You can't make a marketing ploy to reference something your average consumers have never heard off. If anything, the creation of the T'au as a robotic-centred faction was inevitable: they needed a design that could hold their own in the setting, but Necrons hogged the full-robot niche, Imperials were weird cyborgs, Orks the "madman-scrap-tech", and Nids the "biotech". The only thing left here was "not full robot but also very clean and efficient" - and just like that, the Battlesuits and Drones were born.

It was only in later years when the Internet had come into full swing where they decided to go full-suit with releases such as the Riptide, but if we talk about the OG design of T'au and the first decade? Nothing to do with anime or "fishing for weebs". The fish would not be coming to that spot for almost a decade, and it would take a bit more before their numbers were plentyful enough to make it worth casting a line out.