my tumblr thang

Long and probably meaningless offload of Second Life thoughts … wrote this last night, posting now ‘cos it seems like a waste to delete it lol.

It’s that old thing, lol, “I won’t belong to any organization that would have me as a member …” I posted a couple of screengrabs of me in my Second Life here so if you saw those or any of my recent Flickr pics you’ll know that I chose the form of a little girl pretty much from the moment I first set foot in Second Life 2 years ago. I’m not gonna write about why I made that choice, maybe another time; I really don’t think it should be a bigger deal for anyone else than it is for me - it was a no brainer, it was me, it is me, I don’t think I’ve ever made a decision quicker in my life lol.

Anyway, I wanted to put a lot more such screengrabs up somewhere, especially since they look a whole lot better from the new MacBook - but the question was, where to do that? My main site has steadily become purely movie reviews, I don’t want to randomly add another section to it, and pics are just awkward anyway the way I have that place set up. This place I like to be completely unfocussed, literally a tumble of my thoughts that don’t belong anywhere else; so I don’t wanna have a huge stream of Second Life in the mix. I don’t want to sign up to yet another site or anything, so it came down in the end to Flickr or DeviantART.

DeviantART felt wrong (despite I’m sure some thinking the name couldn’t be more perfect LOL) - a screengrab of my avatar (made by sliding a few sliders and donning clothes usually by someone else till it felt like me - a never ending process, let me tell ya lol) in someone else’s created environment doesn’t strike me as something I made at all … in fact, if anything, it feels a lot more like a photograph. The subject is your choice: in this case, my virtual expression of myself; the background, it’s just there. But I was loathe to do that at first because, y’know, I know, Flickr is for photos. Till I found the screenshot flag. This (I’m assuming, haven’t exactly tested it) hides anything flagged as such from anyone who has their preferences set to hide them. Everybody’s (hopefully) happy. At least, nobody’s complained yet lol.

But then, of course, I wanna show off even more despite my shy inhibited demeanour lol. Over a couple of days I’ve found a handful of kid avatar groups that so far seem happy to have my pics in them - one even needed approval, that definitely felt nice when I was accepted. And since getting back into Second Life, I’ve found a lot more of the haunts for, for want of a better term, lol, “people like me” … and there are surprisingly a lot of us. There are blogs on the subject and everything.

It’s comforting, of course, validating and all that … but scary too. I feel like I’m so out of the loop in there sometimes. It’s actually a lot like being a real kid again sometimes - walking into a store or whatever and there’s a little gathering of others in the corner, and it’s somehow just as hard to walk up to them and say hi, lol. I know it’s ridiculous lol. I actually had to put a note in my profile in the end saying I’m shy ‘cos I was so worried people would hate me for not talking much. And on top of all this I don’t know if I even want a ton of SL friends … it just, I don’t know, seems like a nice idea, I guess in the end wanna be a part of something as much as every other person on the planet … like my beach, I’m just building on it bit by bit almost Field of Dreams style, like, I don’t quite know why I bought it or why I’m building it, who I want to come, but I just know that’s where it’s taking me or something lol.

Then there’s the whole “controversy” aspect that I hadn’t been aware was going on most particularly in the past year over child avatars. I mean, obviously I knew all the time that there were those who didn’t like them etc. When I was first in Second Life I got kicked out of more than a few places cos of my size - but I didn’t realise there were people who wanted them outlawed; that news reporters were even going undercover in SL trying to “catch” child avatars doing things they shouldn’t be (I won’t even comment on the sense of that, lol, but I will say, sure, in private I will share kisses and cuddles and words with Sarah - but only Sarah - in SL that aren’t exactly PG material that a real 6 year old should be doing or saying lol but … I don’t know  … I’ll leave it at that ‘cos I know the whole dynamic of that is very very weird to some lol: I’ll only say, who’s getting hurt?). There are 5th birthday celebrations in Second Life this month and there was this whole thing where kids weren’t gonna be allowed (they are now I think - but the kids are doing their own thing anyway). Who knows what else I’ve missed while I’ve been away.

It’s really weird that I just suddenly started logging on again on a whim (it was around Alice Liddell’s birthday in May, when I was doing all the Alice in Wonderland stuff, I just figured I’d pop in and see if there was a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party or something anywhere after reading in the beautiful Annotated edition - which I lost this past weekend, grr - that one of the first ever demonstrations of Virtual Reality technology was exactly that … I got distracted, found a cute costume, suddenly I was hooked again LOL) only to find this whole explosion going on lol.

Anyway I’m not sure exactly where I was going with this, lol. I just wanted to write a little something about my latest experiences in Second Life. I get understandably paranoid from time to time when I see my referral stats and someone clicking through from my flickr profile or something and I dread the thought that anyone out there is thinking I’m evil or something. Weird, sure, I’ve always been that lol I don’t mind anyone thinking it; but bad, then, you’re just not paying attention :) That’s all I wanted to say. A couple more people said hi to me in SL since starting this entry - and in both cases I managed to get slightly beyond a nervous mono-syllabic reply lol. So that makes me happy :) Gonna try and put waves and swim balls in my ocean tonight … come and have a swim some time! lol :)