I've been asked this question more times than I can count, usually in VRchat since I also have a 3D avatar of my character.

TL;DR- Human feet are just really gross to me and having four hands seems more useful to me.

This page is meant to be a detailed, all-encompassing explanation as to why, both because I've been meaning to write it down properly for a while, and so I can just send this to people who ask me instead of having to explain it again for the millionth time. I'll probably touch on other aspects of my character's design as well, because in order to explain why my character has hands for feet (something I usually just refer to as "handfeet" and will be doing so for the rest of the page), I need to explain my character as a whole.

So, where did this start? Where did I get the idea for handfeet from?

I remember like 6 or 7 years ago I saw this YouTube video talking about why humans have short, stubby toes.* Watching it again as a refresher while writing this, I can definitely see why it lived rent-free in the back of my brain for so long. "Toes look really weird, why don't we have cool grippy toes like monkeys?" Yeah, that's something I can definitely agree with. The TL;DR of it is that human feet are moreso designed for walking upright and running, and far better suited for that than climbing trees or whatever. And, like, that's great and all, but some monkeys manage to walk upright on handfeet just fine. I don't remember where I got this info from, this was from the inevitable autism rabbit-hole research session that followed me seeing this video, but if humans were to have handfeet like monkeys do, we'd still be able to walk and run, just less efficiently and we'd have a higher risk of injuring our feet as well. Now, I don't know about you, but I'm not exactly running 5K marathons on a regular basis. If I were offered the option to swap out my human feet for handfeet, I very gladly would accept that functionality trade-off of having grippy feet that were worse at running. By the way, I also found out during that research session that throughout the evolution process of the human foot, the big toe being opposable like a thumb was one of the last things to go, and honestly that kinda pisses me off cause an opposable digit would've gone a really long way.

I think what I'm trying to say is that I'd prefer to have something more multipurpose, something I could use both for walking and as an additional set of hands, rather than something that's really really good at walking but not much else.

All right, so now that I've established why the idea of handfeet would be appealing to me, let's move on.

Why was my character designed how he is? And again, why the handfeet?

My character was designed in 2020, when I commissioned a VRchat avatar based on some ideas I had. This model was the first time I'd actually put those ideas together, and honestly in retrospect I kinda wish I'd gotten a drawing or reference sheet made first. It's one thing when you have to ask an artist to redraw part of your commissioned art piece a different way, but it's another thing when you're having to ask a 3D modeller to do that. I really wish that I had been able to pay him more than the $50 I paid him for the commission, I didn't have a job at the time. If you're looking for someone to commission a VRchat avatar from, he goes by Static in the VRC Traders Discord server (which is a server specifically for avatar commissions), please reach out to him, I couldn't recommend him enough, that avatar came out perfect.

Anyway, lemme break down my character and its design choices.

When I made this character, it was around the time that I was going through a depressive phase in my life (moreso the tail end of it). I'm not gonna go into too much detail about it, but I had this problem where I felt lonely without a girlfriend or significant other, someone to be close to. In high school I was a desparate romantic, pining after any girl who was nice to me. Like Brock from Pokemon, but with far less confidence. Part of the reason my character has animal ears and a tail is a leftover from that phase, where I felt as if I wasn't doing a good enough job expressing my true feelings towards others, and thought if I had a wagging tail like a dog I'd have an automatic way to express it even if I wasn't good at saying it. My character's ears are specifically fox ears, since I had recently been watching The Helpful Fox Senko-San and wanted to instill a similar cozy and caring vibe to my character. (Either that or I just liked the look.) The conclusion to my depressive arc was that I realized what I was looking for wasn't romance, but companionship, and what I needed was just some close friends that truly cared about me and my well-being. I'm extremely lucky to have found a lot of friends like that since then, people who mean a lot to me. (I expect a lot of them to actually be reading this right now, and I just wanna say thank you, again). The "free hugs" print on the hoodie is also part of that, just wanting to express affection to those I care about. I've grown to really wear my heart on my sleeve when it comes to my friends. I didn't add the print with the intention of giving hugs to strangers (to be entirely honest I don't remember the exact reason), and I'm not the type of person to go around to everyone in a VRchat world instance offering hugs anyway, but I'm happy to oblige for those who ask. I don't consider my character to be a separate entity, he's just me, really.

The main idea behind my character was "If I could change my physical body however I wanted, what would I change?" Now, I'm thankfully pretty happy with how I look IRL, my character is mostly how I look IRL, I have long-ish brown hair and wear hoodies and jeans. So the real question is "what additions would I make?". The ears and tail are a representation of my emotional inner self and my growth as a person, but would most likely be nice to have in general. If you look at my reference sheet, my character also has a set of gills on his neck, for no other reason than it'd be fun to have. I've never been scuba diving before but it's very high on my bucket list, and I really like the idea of just being able to explore or relax underwater to your heart's content without having to worry about oxygen.

Okay, now that I've explained why everything else about my character is the way it is, back to the handfeet.

Even outside of the evolution thing, human feet just look... weird. And kinda gross. I obviously don't like looking at mine, pretty much the only time I'm not wearing socks over them is when I'm in the shower, but I'm not exactly a fan of looking at others' feet either. There's people out there who like feet, who find them appealing and even attractive, and I'm not really gonna judge them over it cause we all have our weird tastes, but I just don't get it. I've read articles that explain the scientific reasons as to why, and there's a variety of theories, but the one I usually see is that the brain's stimulation centers for feet is right next to the one for genitals, which can lead to overlap between the two. Which leads me to think that me being asexual is part of why I don't see that same appeal. Also, toes. Fuck toes, that's the worst part. I understand that they actually are useful for helping you keep your balance, if you lose even just one you basically have to re-learn how to walk, but that doesn't make them any less gross, even outside of being the vestigial reminder that ancient humans used to have handfeet.

So, if I've got this perfect self, my character, that has everything I want it to have, why would it have anything I don't like? I sure as hell don't like human feet, why not something else? So then I'm thinking what else would I want, and that years-old handfeet rabbit hole shows up in my brain again.

There's one last part to explain, which is the fact that they're robotic. I tried to add a bit of realism to my character with that. There's no way in hell I'd ever be able to have organic handfeet, but what about robotic ones? Besides, I'm a sci-fi nerd, having some cool cybernetics on my character sounds sick. I actually have this rule for myself where if I were to get cybernetics, they'd need to allow me to do something I couldn't before. I'm not just gonna chop off my arm and replace it with a robotic one just for the fun of it. But chopping off my feet and replacing them with handfeet is different. Plus, prosthetics provides some handy BS wiggle room. Oh, organic ones would be more prone to breakage? I'd just have the prosthetics be made of a stronger material. On my reference sheet I made the prosthetics above-knee (above-knee referring to where my natural leg would end and the prosthetics would begin), but I later decided to just stick to below-knee. I don't even remember why I went with above-knee, I think it was that I thought I'd have better range of motion that way, but whenever I get around to having a newer reference sheet made I'll go back to below-knee.

So why do I seem so uncomfortable talking about handfeet?

In terms of all the different autism special interests I have, handfeet is definitely the weirdest one. I'm really sorry. :P

While my friends tend to be understanding of the reasonings why my character has handfeet, and some of them even agree with me that it'd be a nice thing to have, the general populace reaction has been more... mixed. Half the time when someone in VRchat sees my avatar's handfeet, they'll say something like "eww, gross, why would you do that?". First off, because I fucking wanted to, dammit. But I do wish that people were generally more accepting of it. It doesn't help that a lot of the time they just won't notice at first, because why would there be anything out of the ordinary down where one's feet are? Sometimes I'll joke about it, I'll say "hey, nice shoes" or something like that to get them to look at my handfeet and hear their reaction, but it still does kinda suck that people tend to really question it and question me for it.

I think the problem is that, even when people are supportive of handfeet, they point it out. They single it out and focus on it. Like, I think handfeet are neat and useful, but how would you feel if people focused on a specific thing about you?

The irony of being self-concious over a part of my avatar's body that I specifically chose is not lost on me, by the way.

In a perfect world, my character's handfeet and even me actually having handfeet IRL would be completely mundane and ordinary, it wouldn't be seen as odd or worth questioning over. I kinda don't like when people make a big deal out of it. Yes, please do focus on the handfeet and not the gills on my neck or the "free hugs" print on my hoodie, the handfeet is definitely the most sus thing about me. I honestly even kinda hate that I have to refer to them as handfeet to differentiate from regular human feet. Maybe they're just my feet.

I think the reason I've just kept the handfeet on my character and not removed it or anything is because my self-confidence isn't great and I'm fully aware I need to work on improving it. I wonder how much less awkward I'd feel about the handfeet were I more confident about it. Maybe they're the unplanned representation of my self-confidence and my desire to not dislike myself or be disappointed in myself or judge myself. Maybe it's a reason for me to stand up for myself and stop bullying myself every time someone says they don't agree with my stupid obsession. Or maybe it's just something I thought would be cool to have.

Conclusion

Part of the reason I made this Neocities site was to work on improving my self-confidence when expressing myself online. This whole page is actually the very first piece of writing I'll be publishing on the site. It feels weird putting my feelings out publicly, but I still felt like I should have an explanation available on my site so I didn't have a bunch of people asking. I've had friends tell me that I don't owe anyone an explanation, and maybe I don't. But I still wanted to provide one.

One day, this'll be far less of me trying to defend myself for a weird thing I like, and more of just a deep dive into my character's creation. Which is what I really meant this to be.

Anyway, there's my explanation as to why my character is how he is. :)

* As an aside, this video was slightly difficult to find again, since while it was originally made by a Discovery Channel subsidiary called "D News", they later rebranded to "Seeker". If it wasn't for the main Discovery YouTube channel having a playlist of some of their favorite D News videos (the video I was looking for wasn't in that playlist but it led me to the correct channel), it would've taken me much longer to find this.

If my real-life self were to meet my character in-person. There's a lot of things I wonder about my character, mostly what it'd be like to be him. That's what all the text in the background is, it's me asking a lot of questions, some of them a bit weirder than others. You can hover over the image to read all of that, if for some reason you want to do that.