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.

 The presence of warp panels in the Silph Co. office building strikes me as strange. It's a really confusing and inconvenient way to get around. Hmmm, it's almost like the building was designed to be a challenging video game environment instead of a functional workplace. :)

 This one is based on a true story!

On my very first playthrough of Pokémon Blue (no comment on how long ago that was), I got to Silph Co. and got the Card Key, and couldn't for the life of me figure out how to use it to open the doors. I tried pressing A to one side of the doors (where one would expect a lock to be), using the Card Key straight from the inventory, and consulting the Nintendo Player's Guide which just had very vague wording like "Now that you have the Card Key, you can open all those doors! Okay so anyway..." I must have struggled for about half an hour. (This was back in the day before reliable online walkthroughs, to say nothing of YouTube playthrough videos.)

Finally, in desperation, I went to my mom (who is not the least bit interested in video games) and asked her to just try something, anything. I handed her the Game Boy, she just started pressing random buttons, and in a matter of moments figured out that you're supposed to press A while standing in front of the locked doors.

Sometimes all it takes is a fresh pair of eyes. Thanks, Mom!

 I do love me some irony.

 Throwback to when limited programming space meant that sometimes signs in the overworld had very vague wording.