On this day, one year ago, the world got to see the cute purple foxgirl Sophia for the first time. And she definitely changed the world my site, and I'm very happy to have her~ <3.

Sophia wished for world domination for her birthday (just kidding), and to help her with that, you can now have her in your world! I worked on a small AR web app for a while, which was also very hard, since there aren't a lot of resources about it online. And then I learned yesterday that there was a much easier way to do it, which also kinda works better... so now you have both options you can choose from! You can try them out here on your phone! (There's also a code to scan on your phone to easier get there if you're on PC)

I already briefly mentioned this, but when I first started out this site, I had Mizuki Akiyama as the mascot, a drawing that I made shortly before. This was only temporary though, since I wanted to have a proper OC for my site.

At that time I was already working on another story with a foxgirl (which I later scraped, though some elements of it became Stardust & Fox Ears), and initially Stardust & Fox Ears was supposed to become a visual novel (which is why it's written like this), but making a visual novel (drawing all the backgrounds and finding music and sound effects) was too exhausting for me, which is how I came with a middle groud. But while still making the visual novel, I was drawing the characters, and so I drew Sophia, which I thought I could also use then as the site mascot. Which is also what I did!

When designing her, I kinda got inspired by Patchouli's design, and I liked Patchouli's hair color so much that I used it for Sophia. Green is the complementary color of purple (since it's on the other side of the color wheel), which is why I picked that for her outfit, and it was also a bit inspired by Nene Kusanagi (my favourite character from Project Sekai). I also got inspired by the little stars on Shirakami Fubuki, which is I think also how I came up with the stars on the ears. But also because Sophia already had that star theme with the earlier stories, mostly because I find stars very fascinating.

And the idea to give her headpats also came kinda came spontaneous. I have many hover effects on this site, and I had one hover effect on Sophia where if you hovered your mouse over her, she'd change her face (which is still there). And I loved playing with that animation. And while doing that I had the idea to add the option to headpat her. So I implemented that, and I love it~ <3 (I mean, who doesn't love to give headpats~?)

I'm very thankful for having made her, and I love having her. I never knew how great it'd be to have a cute OC for yourself, and also to have other people tell me how cute she is. I mean I even received fanart of her! That's something I never expected would happen! Maybe it's normal in the online world, but for me that was very unexpected. And I'm not just talking about Art Fight, but people just randomly sending me fanart (I always very much love getting art, and I really appreciate it). I should probably draw other OCs more often though, which I'll hopefully do in the future! (Though I've already done that a few times outside of Art Fight)

I guess it's weird to think how she kinda became my online identity. But I also love having her as that (though I still see her as a different person and not my persona). It really feels like she's a child of mine (which is weird to say), and I'm really proud of her, and I hope to keep having her for years to come!

Also, while writing this, I was looking at the abandoned stories and noticed how I already had a chapter or two written for them. I don't really have a use for them anymore, and I thought it'd be a waste having them collecting digital dust, which is why I'm releasing them! You can kinda think of them as how SFE could've looked like in an alternative universe. You can check them out here if you're curious~ :3 (They're quite hilarious)