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Description
Moving out of Eagle Crest and clockwise around the big return drawing, allow me to introduce you to Alice "Patch" Cerigotto. Patch is a masterclass gray hat hacker whose been running around having adventures in Cyberspace for as long as the internet has been around really. Born 1974 in San Rafael, California, just north of Silicon Valley, Patch was a tech geek from the start. She was the kind of kid who would take apart every TV and radio in the house that wasn't bolted down… and then unbolt the ones that were, just to see how it all worked. This translated into becoming a skilled mechanic, which was her source of revenue in high school. However, as the 90s rolled around with the advent and increasing public access to this new fangled thing called the Internet, it was programming that attracted her interest going into college. She became a wizard at dissecting lines of code just as well as she could take apart a car, and eventually she'd become enough of an expert that she could make a living taking hacking contracts. She could've just been a run of the mill programmer, but Patch was a bit of an adrenaline junky.

Her entire life, though, almost quite literally came crashing down. An accident hospitalized her for weeks, and severely damaged her nervous system. She had to have a risky brain surgery done to restore her motor functions, and while the process was long, she thankfully made a full recovery. Of course, Patch is a special kind of nutcase. Upon finally being allowed to return home to her garage, her first thought was "hmm wait, this thing in my head is technology, that means I can poke around and try to tinker with it." And so, against the wishes of any logical person, she did, and being the whiz she is, she made a breakthrough. Through her tinkering, she modified her implant into a neurological jack with which she could plug herself into the internet as a virtual world. Just sitting in her chair, she could program her entire nervous system to perceive Cyberspace as a physical place she could explore and program from within. It became a unique boon to her hacking contracts, as she could now blur the line between her hacking skills and her mechanical skills.

Of course, she didn't just use the internet for work. As the internet started to become more of a social tool by 1997, Patch hopped on the trend and found her online tribe. She was deeply passionate about her friends, and was often labeled the mom of their group. She kept friends and work separate, though, until she couldn't. By 1999, Patch was investigating a conspiracy to bring the world to its knees in the wake of Y2K, and the people behind it got to one of her friends. The only way to save the girl and the world was to sacrifice herself, plugging herself into the server the bad guys were using to overload it from the inside. The stimulus was too much for her meat body, which died in her chair in her room.

That wasn't the end of Patch, though. As a new millennium dawned, Patch found herself stuck in Cyberspace without a body to return to. Not one to sit idly by and mope, Patch became a ghost in the machine, traveling the ever expanding realms of Cyberspace over the next few decades. Fighting digital demons and matrix monsters, Patch had a long road ahead, just like humanity itself as it learns what exactly this technology can do for… or against… our species.

Design notes, I'm actually really damn proud of how Patch came out. Normally, I avoid the 90s like the plague because I was raised on all things 80s. All things to come out of the 90s are therefore cringe and dumb, including me. Patch however came out of a desire to study the history of this practically extradimensional space that so much of my life revolves around. From an anthropological perspective, the Internet is absolutely fascinating. It's become its own culture, my culture, in so many ways. We have our own customs, specific websites and apps we hang out in to fulfill social roles like physical locations, we even have our own folklore and monsters. In the grand scheme of things, it's all come about extremely fast too, and it occured to me that I had no insight on how it came to be in the first place. I didn't know about the precursors to the internet developed in college networks after World War II, or how we started switching from green text on a black screen to complex graphically designed websites. Through Patch, I've had an outlet to explore the history of this thing which is the cornerstone of our modern species from programmers to memes to creepypasta and everything in between.

Clothing wise, I had to sort through all sorts of tacky 90s fashion to compose something more unique. Once I had the clothing down, I just started slapping all sorts of 90s-ass "mobile" devices on her. Gotta love that Nintendo Power Glove looking thing. The black circles around her hat are actually meant to double as the jack ports leading into her brain. As a mortal she could literally just grab a cable and plug it in through those holes. When she wanted out, she'd just reach up and pluck it out from within Cyberspace, the movement of her avatar matching the same gesture in real life.

Her tattoo was a pain in the ass to design. The premise was simple enough: a simplified model of a DNA molecule. In practice though, it was a nightmare to break down because hey turns out DNA is complicated, who knew. Eventually though I got it down, following the most basic shapes formed by the molecular diagram of DNA, leaving out all the letters except for the "O"s of oxygen so that it still looks like a molecule instead of just lines. I think it looks neat, a nice blend of biology with something that looks more technical, just like Patch. And of course "GraC++" on the back of her shirt is a nod to my other OC, Grace, for no particular reason other than I needed something to fill the space in the composition. I've since made that her username in all the story notes I've written for Patch, so there's something to it at least.

Description
Moving out of Eagle Crest and clockwise around the big return drawing, allow me to introduce you to Alice "Patch" Cerigotto. Patch is a masterclass gray hat hacker whose been running around having adventures in Cyberspace for as long as the internet has been around really. Born 1974 in San Rafael, California, just north of Silicon Valley, Patch was a tech geek from the start. She was the kind of kid who would take apart every TV and radio in the house that wasn't bolted down… and then unbolt the ones that were, just to see how it all worked. This translated into becoming a skilled mechanic, which was her source of revenue in high school. However, as the 90s rolled around with the advent and increasing public access to this new fangled thing called the Internet, it was programming that attracted her interest going into college. She became a wizard at dissecting lines of code just as well as she could take apart a car, and eventually she'd become enough of an expert that she could make a living taking hacking contracts. She could've just been a run of the mill programmer, but Patch was a bit of an adrenaline junky.

Her entire life, though, almost quite literally came crashing down. An accident hospitalized her for weeks, and severely damaged her nervous system. She had to have a risky brain surgery done to restore her motor functions, and while the process was long, she thankfully made a full recovery. Of course, Patch is a special kind of nutcase. Upon finally being allowed to return home to her garage, her first thought was "hmm wait, this thing in my head is technology, that means I can poke around and try to tinker with it." And so, against the wishes of any logical person, she did, and being the whiz she is, she made a breakthrough. Through her tinkering, she modified her implant into a neurological jack with which she could plug herself into the internet as a virtual world. Just sitting in her chair, she could program her entire nervous system to perceive Cyberspace as a physical place she could explore and program from within. It became a unique boon to her hacking contracts, as she could now blur the line between her hacking skills and her mechanical skills.

Of course, she didn't just use the internet for work. As the internet started to become more of a social tool by 1997, Patch hopped on the trend and found her online tribe. She was deeply passionate about her friends, and was often labeled the mom of their group. She kept friends and work separate, though, until she couldn't. By 1999, Patch was investigating a conspiracy to bring the world to its knees in the wake of Y2K, and the people behind it got to one of her friends. The only way to save the girl and the world was to sacrifice herself, plugging herself into the server the bad guys were using to overload it from the inside. The stimulus was too much for her meat body, which died in her chair in her room.

That wasn't the end of Patch, though. As a new millennium dawned, Patch found herself stuck in Cyberspace without a body to return to. Not one to sit idly by and mope, Patch became a ghost in the machine, traveling the ever expanding realms of Cyberspace over the next few decades. Fighting digital demons and matrix monsters, Patch had a long road ahead, just like humanity itself as it learns what exactly this technology can do for… or against… our species.

Design notes, I'm actually really damn proud of how Patch came out. Normally, I avoid the 90s like the plague because I was raised on all things 80s. All things to come out of the 90s are therefore cringe and dumb, including me. Patch however came out of a desire to study the history of this practically extradimensional space that so much of my life revolves around. From an anthropological perspective, the Internet is absolutely fascinating. It's become its own culture, my culture, in so many ways. We have our own customs, specific websites and apps we hang out in to fulfill social roles like physical locations, we even have our own folklore and monsters. In the grand scheme of things, it's all come about extremely fast too, and it occured to me that I had no insight on how it came to be in the first place. I didn't know about the precursors to the internet developed in college networks after World War II, or how we started switching from green text on a black screen to complex graphically designed websites. Through Patch, I've had an outlet to explore the history of this thing which is the cornerstone of our modern species from programmers to memes to creepypasta and everything in between.

Clothing wise, I had to sort through all sorts of tacky 90s fashion to compose something more unique. Once I had the clothing down, I just started slapping all sorts of 90s-ass "mobile" devices on her. Gotta love that Nintendo Power Glove looking thing. The black circles around her hat are actually meant to double as the jack ports leading into her brain. As a mortal she could literally just grab a cable and plug it in through those holes. When she wanted out, she'd just reach up and pluck it out from within Cyberspace, the movement of her avatar matching the same gesture in real life.

Her tattoo was a pain in the ass to design. The premise was simple enough: a simplified model of a DNA molecule. In practice though, it was a nightmare to break down because hey turns out DNA is complicated, who knew. Eventually though I got it down, following the most basic shapes formed by the molecular diagram of DNA, leaving out all the letters except for the "O"s of oxygen so that it still looks like a molecule instead of just lines. I think it looks neat, a nice blend of biology with something that looks more technical, just like Patch. And of course "GraC++" on the back of her shirt is a nod to my other OC, Grace, for no particular reason other than I needed something to fill the space in the composition. I've since made that her username in all the story notes I've written for Patch, so there's something to it at least.