The story behind Trace
2026年01月25日
Before anything else, I would like to wish everyone a happy new year! I haven't done this in a while
In this article, I feel like talking about Trace. Yes, a little bit behind the scenes about how I brought this character to life to express a part of my personality and online presence.
To begin with, I changed my fursona's name MANY times. I haven't come up with a name that reperesented me for quite a while. It went from Kevin to Riley to… I don't even remember all of them anymore. See? They were all generic names that didn't represented me, that I didn't identify with. When I was in college in 2022, I watched Chesapeake Shores, an American/Canadian romantic television series, and there was a character named Trace, and I thought, “Hmm, I like the sound of that”. Not only that, I really liked the character, he was a jack of all trades (which inspires me), he was confident without being arrogant, charismatic, and he was emotionally deep, mainly because of the trauma of the accident involving his bandmate. After using my real name pretty much everywhere, I changed my gamertag to “VaporwaveFox” (because, well, I really like the Vaporwave music genre/visual aesthetic and my favorite animal is the fox) as a transition period for my online identity. To this day, there are still people who call me "Vapor" or “VaporFox”.
The design of the character, like its name, was very bare bones at the beginning. I started with a mostly orange fox with black some black markings (two straight stripes on his wrists and two upward-pointing arrows on his back). Inspired by the dutch angel dragon fursuiter Telephone, Trace originally had black eyes with white pupils, but I removed this feature from the design after a while because I thought it didn't fit very well. For a long time, Trace was just a regular fox, without much personality or presence. Later, while exploring VRChat avatars, I really liked Archie V22 model and I decided to borrow some features into my character (blue eyes, brown details on the arms, legs, and ears), while keeping some parts of the original design. Now, about those arrows pointing upwards and forwards, some suspected that it was a reference or advertisement for the Citroën car brand, but no lol it was nothing like that (although I really like some Citroën models). It was just an aesthetic detail that made the character more dynamic and visually appealing, and since he is almost always wearing clothes in the drawings, it is not a visible detail most of the time. But after some time, I assigned a simple yet very important meaning to them. These two arrows are a reminder for me to always move forward. It's not about moving forward at all times, even when things slow down, even when I stop to catch my breath or carry something heavy, the direction doesn't change. It's just about not turning back. I think I gave my fursona a philosophy that fits incredibly well.
When I first came up with Trace, the idea was for him to be a parkour professional. At the time, I was really into Mirror’s Edge, a game set in an authoritarian world where Faith Connors uses parkour to get around, complete missions, and fight for freedom and free speech. Funny enough, that last part never really went away, only the parkour did. Parkour was also the last sport I genuinely enjoyed practicing, aside from biking. The feeling of freedom, exploration and adventure it gave me was amazing, and that energy naturally became part of Trace early on.
But among all these things, Trace has become a way for me to express my authenticity without having to worry about the usual social pressure or fear of becoming a target. Not all of my opinions will be everyone's taste, and I would rather express them without constantly worrying about what others think or being associated with my real-life identity, this was the best way I could think of.
Today, Trace is a fun-loving fox with blue eyes, brown accent details, and black markings. He enjoys hanging out,having meaningful conversations with kind people, and exploring new places. Honestly, he’s just a reflection of the parts of me that feel the most comfortable when I don’t have to put on a filter.