AS WITH ALL THE ART IN MY GALLERY I DID NOT DRAW THIS - THIS WAS DRAWN BY Fallen-beast!

So, this is one of my all time favorite commissions. I'm trying to contain myself so I don't write a million word long essay here but folks- it's hard. This is nothing less than absolutely amazing. :') For those unfamiliar with Final Fantasy VII (which is probably a lot of you since the game's so old now), Red XIII, the character on the far left, is one of the main characters in the story. Throughout the game, anytime anyone asks about or mentions Red's father, he either refuses to speak about him, or, eventually when he opens up, he tells you that his father was a coward who abandoned his family and town, and ran away rather than fight their enemies to protect the village.
During Red's big arc, you find out that Red was made to believe a lie for his whole life- his father was not a coward, and had not run away. Instead, he alone had stood to defend their home against the invading Gi tribe, and he was struck over and over with spears and arrows dipped in petrification poison. His body turned to stone even as he was still fighting them off. Red is shown his father's petrified body, and as he talks to his mentor- a human man he lovingly calls 'Grandfather'- and says that he is proud to be Seto (his father's name)'s son, and wants to be worthy of calling himself his son, tears start falling from Seto's eyes.

SO ANYWAY. All that story aside. For THIS piece, I asked to have Red XIII, Seto, and my Twitterlu together. :) There's literally not a single thing about this piece that I don't love. Red looks absolutely stunning- I love how his bad eye is the one we can see, and the glow on it is just gorgeous. <3 And his anatomy is honestly perfect. The lighting and shading on him - and everything in this picture- is stupendous.

Seto looks even better than I ever could have imagined him. He looks big, and powerful- just as he's said to be. The expression frozen on his face is one that is so easy to believe he'd have had in those final moments, before the petrification took effect. And I really like the claw marks in the stone around his paws.

And Lu of course looks stunning. She looks so concerned, as well she would be at this scene. I really love her flame tail here, and her pose. <3

I just can't say how much I love this without going crazy. :') Seeing this scene with my character in it, and drawn SO expertly, is worth more to me than words could ever say. <3 This game, and Red XIII in particular are such an important part of my life. Something I've always thought about, and enjoyed. :) The game is also one of my closest connections to my mother- she'd play it all the time when I was a kid, before she passed away. She renamed the characters after me and my siblings- my real name is Samantha, and she'd always rename Aerith for me. But after running through some of the other characters she'd run out of names, so when she came to Red XIII, she'd rename him to Twitterlu, which was her nickname for me. :') That's a lot of why he's always been so special to me.

Wanna see the scene from Final Fantasy VII that inspired this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihCEkJywsRY&pbjreload=10 (the graphics haven't aged well- but give the game a break, it's almost 22 years old ;p )

Please be sure to support the artist as well as check out the original here: https://www.deviantart.com/fallen-b.....aled-781551042