Philia/Kotone Takemiya (SAO: Hollow Fragment) (Patreon)

I have no idea how much a Amusphere costs, but what I do know is that this card's for free.  

https://mega.nz/file/l9owkJLJ#WCkl4mYxnvpJYrEhiWp0UrsQlE6sDC-PsqjqEgquOk0

(Backup link just in case. Be sure to copy paste the ENTIRE link otherwise you'll get an error. Don't just click on it it doesn't work trust me.)

https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/86091166

(It may be in the HF patch by now but just in case, if you're getting a missing mod warning you can find that in the above link.) 

EDIT: Fixed straps on the main outfits. 

Before I submit my book report, I would like to apologize for  the delay. Once again, I bit off way more than I could chew which I'll get into more detail later. I'm a bit more organzied this month so hopefully I'll be able to get y'all presents out before next year. Fingers crossed!

BACKGROUND: (Who the hell the card is, where they're from, and why I made 'em.) 

Thanksgiving may be over, but the spirit of it still lives on so let's get right onto it shall we? 

This year, what I'm thankful for is Sword Art Online. I believe people referred to it as a gateway anime series and it still might be considered that. Either way, it introduced me to a whole lot of stuff that I wouldn't have stumbled upon. So, this year, I'm raising a toast to SAO: An anime so fucking SHIT it got me into taking writing seriously and made some friends along that journey. 

I remember the first time I heard of SAO was on an imageboard. Some dude carved a sword onto a desk and wrote in "WATCH SWORD ART ONLINE" and at the time, I was hardly into anime. I only seen a few episodes of Naruto and of course, Tokyo Mew Mew.  Needless to say, I had no idea what they were talking about so I thought SAO was literally just that. A website where you can upload art of swords. Online. That sounded pretty rad but I didn't look it up. 

Couple of years or so, or months maybe iunno, SAO was brought up on this imageboard. Now usually I just hung out around the video game section and I never went to the anime board. Just wasn't all that interested. Since SAO's plot revolved around a game, naturally folks began to talk about it around this board. Some dude linked an ongoing review and well, I just had to know why everyone was talking about this sword art website. 

Ostensibly, the guy was "reviewing" the show, but in practice it was more like SAO was locked up in a pillory and everyone gathered around to throw tomatoes at it. Well deserved, but I'm not going to go into it. Seriously, any SAO fan probably has the show's criticisms etched onto their hearts by now considering how an entire business was built off of dunking on the show. The horse's been pulverized into subatomic particles so it's a waste of time talking about it. 

Anyways, while the review itself was quite entertaining, it was the audience that really brought it all together. Cracking jokes, taking jabs at the show, making a bunch of edits, just a smorgasboard of shitposts. In between those though were actual legitimate criticisms and discussions as to why the story was bad. As theatrical and performative the folks may have gotten with 'em, they had legitimate points. 

At the time, when I wrote stuff I just, y'know, wrote it. I didn't think too hard about characters, plot, themes, shit like that. My idea of a story was smashing toys together while making explosion noises. "Tyrannosaurs in F-14s" sums up my thought process well. But as I was reading the thread, it kinda sparked something within me y'know? I started to think about what the hell I was writing or why it was being written like this. I was actually asking questions instead of just nodding along to a story which lead me to taking writing seriously. Fast forward to now and I'm making money off of a character maker so y'know how well that went. 

But I digress. I think midway through the ALO/GGO? review the reviewer was taking a break so some dude chimed in to say that they were doing a LP of an SAO game. At this point taking the piss out of SAO gave me life so how could I pass up on a chance to beat the shit out of it even further? 

It was the SAO PS Vita game, (Note: Vita means life.) Hollow Fragment I think? Iunno it was like a dual pack or some shit. I'm not sure if this was a release where they put the two games together or they were released as one game but along with HF, there was another campaign dubbed Infinity Moment. It quickly became clear to both the player and the peanut gallery which story was written with one hand . 

So, Infinity Moment's plot is that like, uhh...SAO all over again? Like, Kirito gets trapped in Aincrad but this time, so are his new girl-that-are-friends and of course his wife, Klein. Agil is there too because uhh...shit I don't remember. I know Kirito's cousin somehow fell into Aincrad while playing ALO and Sinon just plops out of the sky. 

Essentially it was the Aincrad arc again, but this time they have to go through all 100 floors instead of preemptively cutting it short by just icing Todd Howard. Well I guess the whole "die in the game = die in Canada" didn't apply anymore as everyone's real fucking chummy about the whole thing. Naturally this leads to dumb anime bullshit (R) and occasionally veering straight into creepy anime bullshit (TM). 

The amalgamation of the audience's beef with SAO came in the form of Strea, a big tiddy purple hair amnesiac. One of the very first things she does is immediately shove Kirito into her vast tracts of land. And it just gets better from there yaaayyy. I mean there's a somewhat interesting sublot revolving around her being like an AI or some shit, but by that point everyone's goodwill was burned away so no one gave a fuck. 

Initially, Sinon was seen as the only good thing about the game so far and was regarded as the savior of the LP due to outright refusing to get tangled up in the dumb harem bullshit. Alas, nothing can escape from the grasp of the Black Hole Swordsman and so she too, soon fell. The title went from "Let's Play: SAO" to "Let's Riff: SAO" and stayed that way until a new savior arrived: Philia. 

Philia is the OC Donut Steel for the Hollow Fragment campaign and as you can see she's this ginger. Everyone was dismissive of her at first due to how every other girl was written so no one had any hopes for her. However, unlike Infinity Moment's writers, HF's writers was actually using two hands. Kinda like how in Fire Emblem: Fates where Team A was all in for the fanservice while Team B wanted to focus on the story. Team "Plot" vs Team Plot essentially. 

Which the two OCs represented very well. 99% of what Strea (IM) did was try to get into Kirito's pants while Philia (HF) introduced some interesting plot hooks n' story concepts. Plus bringing back n' expanding on plot elements that were just kinda dropped in the original story.  Also having a personality beyond being horny. 

So, the whole deal about HF is that Kirito, I guess while in Aincrad, tripped into a glitched out version of it. Dead people are just waltzing around, people who did survive and got out of the game are somehow there and still think the game is ongoing. Unlike IM where the first floor  gives you some trash mobs to fight, the first enemy in HF is one of the final bosses so yeah this Aincrad is quite fucking kooky. 

Speaking of which, minutes after getting into Nega-Aincrad, some hooded fellow tries to stab Kirito. Obviously it doesn't work out but the two manage to hash things out peacefully. Turns out the chick either thought he was out to get her, or that everyone on this side of Aincrad is fucking nuts and trying to kill everyone so she thought it would be better to swing first. She's not so innocent herself though as her status states that she's a murderer too. Of course, she denies it but Kirito's feeling pre-tty sus about that. However, due to the fact that she's the only person not trying to kill him (yet) and this Aincrad is way harder than usual, he has no choice but to team up with her if he wants to get outta there alive. 

Not gonna go into more detail, but generally the plot was pretty intriguing and people were digging it. Kinda like "Tails Get Trolled" where initially everyone reads it to shit on it,  but then it starts getting good and people enjoy it unironically. It was funny how we all flipped flopped in between spewing vitriol and bashing the game during the IM segments to discussing where the plot's going and generally taking it seriously. 

In a way, Philia represented everything good about SAO and vice versa for Strea. Despite how much shit we talked about it, I don't think we would've been nearly as passionate in our rants against it if there wasn't anything good about it. The fact that it had a strong core concept and had some real good plot elements, only to toss it out way for stupid shenanigans made the story a whole lot more frustrating to watch. Naturally this lead to a lot of discussion on how to improve it and a fuckton of fanfics soon followed. Never wrote any meself but I ain't gonna lie and say SAO doesn't have any strong points whatsoever. 

The interesting points about the story made the playthrough bearable through the dumpster fire sections. Sure it was a slog to get through, but we knew we just had to dig past that shit to get to the gold. (i.e. Whenever the HF segments happen.) Had it not been for HF, I think everyone, including the player, would've abandoned the game. 

Anyways, after the playthrough ended, the dude announced they were going to a playthrough of a different anime series and unlike SAO where they expected garbage and got exactly that, they found a treasure trove. And that's how I found about another very popular anime series that I somehow managed to to ignore til' then, but that's a story for another time.

I honestly don't remember anything I personally liked about Philia so who knows, maybe I only liked her out of peer pressure. Well that was I what I assumed until years after said playthrough, I stumbled onto an image of her. Not sure where or how, but once I saw her, I had a sudden realization: I may or may not have cribbed several design elements for my own OCs. 

Okay scratch that, one of my OCs is straight up Philia but more punk looking. Hell one of them's an even worse blatant rip off of Argo. Hey, nothing wrong with picking diamonds out of the rough ah? Plus orange short hair + blue outfit's a pretty fucking strong combo. e.g: Sypha Belnades. Admittedly one of the reasons why I decided to make her because I had to know just how much I ripped off of her design and uh, yeah. If I ever release a drawing, don't be surprised if you see a Philia knock off. :v 

So yeah, after the playthrough I started to hang out at the anime board a whole lot more often and ended up making some buds there. I got well integrated into the community as a whole thanks to the dumpster fire. So to any of you fuckers reading this, ey' I finally got around doing that fanart after all! Only took forty years.  Here's to the only consistently good character of the entire playthrough! 

And on that note, onto the actual character herself! 

DESIGN BREAKDOWN: ((breakdown breakdown!) Talking about how I made the card and any possible issues with it.) 

On the theme of giving thanks, I would like to give a huge thank you to any of the creators I end up cribbing outfits n' overlays from because goddamn is it tough. Initially I had assumed Philia was going to be real easy to make. I mean, I had a hair piece that I only had to modify a wee bit and I could just use the wonderful outfits done by Alvarna so this was going to be a cinch. Considering how late this is, yeah...it's like the stairs. I've been warned about it many times but it keeps happening.

So originally I was planning on using the Io hair as the base for Philia. Honestly I could've just used that and it would've looked okay. That's how nearly perfect it was. Considering it takes a few days for the hair n' face alone, this would've shaved off a whole lot of time. So I uh, kinda slacked off. That is my b. Anyways, once I started working in earnest, I realized a bit too late that the shading on the hair did not play well with the others. And by not well, I mean it had no shading whatsoever in the dark so it stuck out like a sore thumb. 

Cue spending a few days more trying to manually adjust it's shadows, to the point of considering trying to mod the thing myself. However since I have absolutely 0 experience in KK modding and even if I were to succeed, it would've only affected my machine, it was a waste of time. Had to make her hair from scratch and that hair is fucking deceptive in it's simplicity. (That's the overarching theme of this whole card really.) It's got all these spikes n' shit that weren't easy to make and I had to cut a bunch of hair to do so. Then I had to deal with all the gaps that left behind and had to cover it up somehow. 

It doesn't end there folks as the main outfit (Slide 1) was a major pain in the keister as well. Again, simple looking, but upon closer inspection had a fuckton of tiny ass details that were once again, a bitch to implement. The pauldron accessories weren't ovalish enough to be used as her steel bra thing so I decided to make do with soup bowls. Hey, as long as it works right? 

Her gloves are asymmetrical which is nice n' all, but guess how many glove options are like that? It was frustrating seeing the gloves I needed but unable to use because I couldn't only use one of them so I had to jury rig something. End result ain't pretty but goddammit this was all I had to work with. 

The crown jewel of this clusterfuck is easily her hoodie n' cloak. (S2) Y'see, those things are a mite tricky to implement properly as no matter how well you try to position them, they're gonna clip horribly some way some how. However, thanks to the new Genshin Impact mods, I finally found a hoodie that wouldn't clip like crazy as it's bound to the body or something. Yay! Unfortunately, this thing has as many polygons as Sega Saturn Lara Croft's tits. There was also no UV overlay for this thing so needless to say, I couldn't add all that much  detail. Trust me, I don't like how it looks either, the way the white line just cuts off abruptly n' whatnot. But this was seriously the best I could've done. I would be more than happy to be proven wrong though because man it's bothering me. 

Just adding one tiny ass pixel made the hoodie look like it had shark teeth. Reducing the opacity of said pixel made the hood all fuzzy looking. I tried a whole bunch of shit to make it work somehow but in the end, I had to relent and let it go. Hey at least it doesn't clip eh? 

I decided to skimp out on the details for the cloak due to similar reasons which is a shame because the design of it looks real nice. Give the original a look see some time. This thing clips too but not as much as usual I'd say.

Mucho gracias to ぷったね ( https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/85779274 ) for their Philia. (S8)  I used their socks and that side cape thing for my own. I only had to polish up the socks a bit but the side cape ended up being more of a base/inspiration as I couldn't use that due to it being attached to the pants slot and I was already using that. Might've gone a little too far with the details, but y'know as they say, it's the thought that counts. And since this was ostensibly a gift/thank you to my fellow shitlords from the playthrough, well what kind of message am I sending by churning out something sloppily slapped together?

By this point, the end of the month was approaching so I ended up skimping on some things. Such as her belt buckles not looking accurate at all and her boots only vaguely resembling the original. The lines of her top aren't perfectly aligned either. Could've it been better? Probably. I think Alvarna wouldn't have much trouble doing it. Ah well, anyways I'm using AccSync again so she should have a full head of hair when you take the hoodie off. If she doesn't, woops. Lemme know so that I could fix that. (Man AccSync's great.)

They most certainly would not have trouble doing her ALO outfit (S3) because goddamn that fucking harness thingy, what the fuck is that even. Y'know that saying about assumptions making an ass out of ye? Boy am I the biggest ass right now because I just assumed Alvarna's outfit only needed a recolor and that was it. Ne-ope, turns out despite having the same face, Sinon and Philia are in fact, different people with different outfits. Suffice to say it was not a simple recolor job. 

This one definitely took a hit in the details department as I was running short on time and patience. First major hurdle was trying to overlay her clothes on top of each without them wigging out. Tried using render queue to do that, did jack shit. Somehow I managed to make it work but I'm telling you now, expect some major JANK. Especially since unlike her main outfit, I didn't have the concept art for this one so I just had to make some guesses based off the in game models n' CG. 

After that whole shit, I slapped everything else together. Thankfully I was able to modify her top using Alvarna's work  and the collar alongside the wings is purely there's.  Everything else was all me which you'll be able to easily tell by their relative lack in quality :v . Could've used that overly plugin to give her tan skin and a different iris, but again I didn't want to end up in that scenario where every other outfit is missing their overlay. Plus I was getting real tired and just wanted this out. 

Her swimsuits (S4+5) were based off the gacha game I guess? Iunno. All I know about SAO is from shitposts, the abridged series, and the many essays written to dunk on it. Y'all most certainly know better about it than I do so lemme know. I'm actually curious because she's got a number of alts for someone who I assumed was relatively unknown n' unpopular. Did she get those because she was popular or was it  that since everyone else got one,  she did as well? Well anyways, I usually try to make club outfits different but considering the amount of work I've put into this, I gave myself a pass this time around. 

Her casual outfit (S7) is based off of her GGO incarnation and I don't know what platform that's for, but either it's very new or it's super obscure as I couldn't even find CGs for that. So I had to make do with the 3D model which may result in some color issues. Might not be all that accurate but it's all I had to work off dude. Is she supposed to be blonde in GGO? 

Anyways, the armor plating was borrowed off of an Alice card and for once, I recycled something I made. Her pants are just Roll's but now blue. Didn't spend too much time on this one as I was gassing out plus I wasn't confident with the reference material I had so I just did my best to get the general idea across. Rather than go into detail only to find out, woops due to lighting or some other shit, I got it totally wrong and now I have to toss out everything.

Her sleeping over outfit (S6) is what she looks like in real life which I borrowed heavily from ぷったね 's. I only adjust her top n' bra, everything else is all there's. Not sure if her hair is too dark or not dark enough for this one.  That should about cover everything. Again if something looks real fucky, lemme know and I'll see what I can do. 

Once again, severe miscalculation and going overboard on the details caused yet another delay. I understand y'all are getting real tired of hearing this but I do mean it when I say sorry. I'll try to do better next time. Hopefully this was worth the wait. Thank you for your patience.

Welp, this theme test run while kinda floundered towards the end, was pretty fun. Maybe I'll do it again some other time but for now, it's off to work. Got a lot of catching up to do and I'm not taking any chances. 

Years ago, if you tried to tell me SAO was good I would've launched into an impassioned rant about how wrong you were and I'd spew out my points at such high speed it'd make Kureiji Ollie blush. (Hololive Indonesian tomboy zombie vtuber. You'd have a hard time believing that though as she mostly uses English and talks like a valley girl. She sounds super American that she might as well be part of Holo EN Gen 2. Do check her out if you got the time!) 

My friend didn't care one bit for the show either, but they knew how much I hated it so they'd intentionally bring it up and praise it just because they thought it was hilarious watching me get worked up over it. And like, NGL, ranting about terrible garbage was, and still is, super fun so I happily obliged. 

Nowadays tho, I've mellowed out a whole lot. My stance is as long as it's legal, no one's got the right to stop you from having fun. So if you do like it, good on ya! Having fun is great so enjoy yourself. I hope I did the character justice. That said, I am not going to do SAO stuff ever again. This really was just belated fanart of a playthrough long since taken down and scrubbed from Youtube so unless the dude does another one, I ain't doing shit for this series.

I doubt it, but if you're somehow reading this...yo buddy, still alive? Never got to say it to ya, but you were a real inspiration for my writing style and I couldn't tell ya how deep of an impact you've made on me. So thanks, friend. See you again.