Family ties

 

I’m a vampire.

This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who regularly reads my blog or knows me inworld, even though I been very lax in not having posted anything since, oh my god, November last year! So, this will be my first blog of 2024, and it’s already June!

I’m a vampire, I’ve said that already, but, spoiler-alert, I’m only one in Second Life (SL) and not for real. Although I might be, I wouldn’t admit it though because people tend to get weird and run away if you do, or start whittling stakes. I’ve been one since soon after joining SL in February 2008. I hadn’t planned it when I entered this world, didn’t even know about it, but after a mere few months suddenly I was, almost by accident, I’d been embraced into Bloodlines.

Bloodlines, or BL for short, for those who don’t know, is an SL inworld roleplaying game that has thousands and thousands of players. Players, among other things, are defined as ‘active’, or not. I’ll explain this the best I can soon. Most players are a member of a ‘Family’, the umbrella term for clans, hordes, covens, guilds, etc. Of those who don’t have an allegiance to any family are regarded as ‘clanless’, the Bloodline’s term for it being in ‘Curse’. This can be by choice or circumstance.

I’ve worked out that there are currently 5,692 Families in the game, all pretty much being a mix of races, such as vampire, lycan, angel, demon, or a hybrid of any of these, i.e. a vampire/lycan is called a ‘vaewolf’. One other race is humans, and as with all other players are either in a ‘family’ or not. Families lead by humans are known as guilds.

5,692 is a lot, the largest family in sheer numbers to date have 78,522 members, while the smallest ones have only one. These are ranked according to the number of members who are defined as ‘active’. On saying earlier that I’d explain this, truth is I’m not entirely clear on what defines ‘active’ in Bloodlines terms, it may be those not ‘destroyed’, as in bloodless (or empty of your particular race’s vital life-source, of which we lose a little each day unless you regularly feed on others, or, you’re protected with a special amulet), or it might be how recent you’ve logged in to SL, or something else entirely. Perhaps someone can tell me.

I am the head, or leader, of my own family, or clan, called Veiled Fang. I founded it years ago after having spent a couple of years in other clans learning the ropes, finding my feet, or, my fangs, so to speak, then suddenly found I had my own clan. Out of curiosity, I did a few pointless sums on my BL family’s statistics to work out what percentage of our members are actually defined in BL-terms as ‘active’. So, out of our total 394 members, only 49 are shown as ‘active’. This is only 12.44%.

This sounds low but it’s not bad at all in comparison to many other clans. Some, especially those with huge numbers in the thousands, can have as few as anything between 1.5% and 9% active. I think though that this metric can’t be used as a reliable measure, because of those families with, say, only one or two or three members, many show all one, two or three members to be active, which is 100%, that’s hardly a fair comparison when working out how active a clan is or isn’t, or at leats its members.

Another interesting sum I did was that out of the total 5,692 Bloodlines families to date, a whopping 1,880 have only one member, that’s 32.92 % of the total number of families. If you include those families having only two, three or four members, that’s 3,831 families, equating to 67.30%. Phew!

This is what a few empty moments in the day can do to me, make my brain want to play with pointless things. Still, it gave me something to write about, even though it may not be of any interest to you at all, and may even have made your brain hurt.

© Anan Eebus

 

full to bursting

From the simple days of 2009...

 

What are we like! Inventories, we all have them, like nipples, except with those we are limited to just two, and even though we’re limited to a single inventory, there seems no limit on contents.

SL inventory’s are prone to going awry, as in, becoming full to bursting, like mine is right now. Luckily nipples don’t go awry, or at least mine haven’t yet anyway.

My inventory has just over 35,000 items in it, which to me is a HUGE number, and a HUGE number of stuff, and as I call my inventory my wardrobe, some days I’m terrified of opening it lest I get buried in an avalanche of stuff Mostly clothing, probably unsurprising, clothing of one kind of anything, mesh clothing of course, as is the thing these days, but I’ve also kept quite a few prim bits and bobs and outfits, even though I never wear them now.

I can’t seem to bring myself to abandon them, as it seems the only way to remove them is to basically bin them. Which is a shame and wasteful. In RL I’d be taking them to a clothing bank or charity shop, but here, everything pretty much has been made non-transferable so even if I wanted to give them away, I couldn’t. This I think is a huge mistake people have made over the years. Why shouldn’t we be able to pass them on? I understand perhaps not reselling them, perhaps, but simply passing them on to someone who might want them seems a more user-friendly way of dealing with unwanted clothes and other stuff.

And I do have plenty of other stuff too, as I used to do a lot of building I have loads of building materials, and furniture too, some of which admittedly I’ve never used, some used only once, some often but probably won’t use again. But, I never know, maybe I might.

Prim, sculpt and mesh, all making a trawl through my inventory quite a challenge. Fortunately I have over the years had the foresight to at least to some degree order things into folders and sub-folders, and even in some cases rename items, though this hasn’t been the case with everything. Some stuff is simply listed alphabetically, a list growing ever-longer, stretching into an infinite nowhere.

Perhaps 35,000 isn’t so huge to some people but to me I am constantly frustrated at myself for my inability to part with stuff I’ve spent years accumulating. But I have too, cos it is driving me bonkers. I want to rationalize, downsize, though not my height as I’m already quite small, in RL and SL. Not of the SL version of what they call ‘Petites’, as in tiny avatars more the size of fairies in the bottom of your garden kind of size, just small as in human and avatar terms.

I keep having clear-outs, spring cleans, even when it isn’t spring, but then I find I’ve acquired yet more stuff, mostly I should say, freebies, or winning stuff, lucky chairs, or incredibly cheap being that I’ve not much in the way of lindens, and rely on meagre sales of my artwork, which is most definitely meagre.

I’m due another wardrobe blitz and will get around to it, eventually, perhaps this will prompt me to do so. Or maybe it might not.

 .... to the full to bursting days of 2023

© Anan Eebus 

 

 

live and let bite

 

Well, it’s a new year here in Second Life and I enter it with two exhibitions going on at two different art galleries and I’m hoping to be hanging some new works at both very soon. Welcome also to my first blog here of 2022.

I used to have a little hideaway but wasn’t any longer able to afford it, even though it was really cheap, almost peppercorn, it was still tricky, so am once again effectively homeless in that I’ve nowhere I can call my own. This doesn’t really bother me though, it’s been a while since I was a nomad, of a sorts, and I quite like it, plus I don’t have to work about that weekly bill for rent. I did like my little skybox but needs must and change happens: one just has to go with it, such matters economic are still a hard reality, even in SL.

I’m still a vampire, and a few others things too, artist, photographer, mermaid, model, explorer, pole-dancer, and I’m still head of my own vampire clan, veiled Fang, which once upon a life was quite active yo-yoing in numbers depending on the whims of vampires who have just as many whims as non-vamps.  I set up Veiled Fang years ago after having spent a lot of time growing in other clans the length and breadth of SL and we’ve done okay, although now not exactly dormant as resting in peace for now as most of its members, I’m pleased to say, seem quite content with, especially as the majority are no longer active either on SL or in vampire roleplaying terms but have chosen to remain in Veiled, something I’m also heartened about and happy they have.

I probably suffered a bit of burn-out a few years back when pretty much hyperactively running the clan. I felt enormous pressure to keep up with other clan and what they do, and more importantly in what was expected of me by those in the clan as the leader or head. Not many realise what a huge responsibility it is to do so, and even fewer would take such a role themselves even though they complain when something isn’t being done to their satisfaction. Of course the buck always stopped with me as I had and took overall responsibility of all clan affairs and its member, that is until I realised, hey, everyone is their own person, or vampire, and as such are responsible for themselves, even if they are in my clan, I can’t hold them to account. This is SL after all where fun comes first and aggravation, last, or not at all.

I used to spend so much time worrying about people, fielding complaints from some people miffed about this vampire did that or that vampire did the other and instead of talking to them and them taking it on the nose they come to me and it was usually, pretty much always, so blah-blah trivial. Eventually, having gone through what I’d call a year or two baptism of fire- yes a very long baptism indeed- I had a lightbulb moment: this shouldn’t be this stress, so I stepped back slowly one step at a time to the point where the clan now no longer even has land, or a home, or Sanctuary as we used to call it. We are now just a clan bonded by blood, not by property, not by hassle, not by commerce, not by anything other than simply being, which I believe is something that should come naturally to a vampire, simply being.

I’m a much happier SL’er these days even though SL itself and even the vampire games I play have changed a lot through the years, and how others in SL perceive them. I’m much happier because I rediscovered its core: fun. It’s easy to just walk away from people being annoying or pushy or petty or basically just stupid. There are many stupid people in SL as there are in RL and because it sometimes harder to get away from all the stupid people in RL then it’s good to know that when I log into SL I am totally free of it to be a fun-loving cuddly avi-vamp that I am, and don’t stress over losing a little blood to me, be flattered, after all, one, you won’t even know it, two, it might even tickle, and three, I’m very choosey about who I suck.

© Anan Eebus

 

pixel pixies

 

Yet another of my favourite shops in SL has closed, land abandoned, sims dissolved. It follows the fate of so many I’ve been fond of over the way too many years I’ve been here, all consigned to the primyards to be disassembled, composted, and one hopes at least eventually to be repurposed as something else and not just rotting away in some sl’andfill.

Then there’s my friends list, my avatar’s and my Bloodlines online profile. All those I’d bitten and all those who’d bitten me, all those still in my clan’s bloodline, of a sorts, where are they now?

As with these, alongside my list of friends, so few are even here anymore, more gone than not, less are active than not, some most likely not logged on for years even if they could remember their passwords, or their names. Their avatars exist now only as ghosts: there and not there, so transparent they can’t be seen at all and yet there they are still lounging in my lists.

That’s life, even Second Life, time and people move on, change, die, my friends list reading more like a memorial to lives past than present, rows upon rows of gravestones overgrown with lichen and ivy, missing presumed. Occasionally one will suddenly appear after years, an IM (instant message), usually sent when I’m offline to be found like a message in a bottle washed up on my shore to be uncorked and read, quite often beginning, “I don’t know if you remember me, but,….”, or a more succinct “I’m back!”, sometimes leaving me scraping my brain as to who they are. I usually remember though, weirdly I’ve always remembered more detail than I would’ve thought, on how we first met, or something particularly notable we did, even if it was only the once. So strange how all we pixel pixies leave an echo however brief the acquaintance may have been, a different kind of byte caught in these memory banks.

I sometimes look through my list and think, I should purge this a bit, tidy up, as I do every now and then with my bulging inventory, which by the way keeps bulging no matter how often I sieve it. It’s actually a shame more of this stuff we accumulate isn’t set as ‘trans’, as in with transfer permissions, because it would be brilliant to be able to do the preloved thing and instead of throwing things away, pass them on. As for my friends list, I’m reluctant delete those names long gone or forgotten or those I haven’t heard from in years, they are people after all. At the end of the day they aren’t just pixel pixies but real people beyond their screens even if they aren’t inworld, so to speak, anymore. 

In a way I’m a carrier of part of their story, even if it’s a part they’ve long left behind.

© Anan Eebus

 

the explorer in me

 I’ve become an eternal explorer these days. It’s mostly what I do when online SL.

In the beginning when I first came into this world I did nothing but explore, and then shopping became another habit, then I got busy with other stuff over the years until now, I’ve rediscovered this art form. I do believe it is an art, from choosing to what I do when I go anywhere, and not to be put off by the fact that so many places, sims, are most of the time empty. I am not deterred, in fact I’m spurred on to make the most- after all, fewer people much less lag, especially these days as some people over-mesh themselves (although I can’t speak, I tend to carry probably more scripts than I should, usually in HUDs).

There are some amazing creations when you take the time to look, and for me the real art comes in choosing sort of randomly, sometimes I may go by a recommendation, but mostly I’m opening the world map, findings a square that looks interesting for whatever reason, and teleporting to take a peek. Sometimes it’s the name that intrigues me, or amuses me, making me think, that’s got to be worth a gander. Other times it’s the way it looks on the map, something catching the eye. Lastly I may just go somewhere cos it’s on the edge and way out in the virtual sea all on its lonesome.

I wish I could collect XPs or something useful for exploring across the entire SL but as far as I can find there isn’t anything like that really, not anything that covers its entirety.

The other day I landed in a sim, an island out on its own, explored, as I do, then found my next destination only to then receive a PM from the sim owner just asking if I knew if before she was the owner it was a club or something like, because of so many people just dropping in briefly. I said I didn’t know, and I didn’t, I had merely picked it randomly and never been there before in any of its previous incarnations.

It got me thinking, wouldn’t it be good it all sims, properties, plots, whatever, came with the equivalent of property deeds, like you get in RL, which contain some history about the property, boundaries, any major changes, when it first came into being, previous occupants sometimes, previous uses, just for historical interest. I think this because the history of life in SL is mostly overlooked and because of that a missed opportunity, to not archive the history of how people use space, interact with it, including I some cases their lives. All we have are blogs like mine and there aren’t many, most are ad hoc and they don’t relate to one another really.

I think land deeds in some form with such details about previous use, etc, and passed from owner to owner or renter to renter would be a fascinating resource and all find its way into a larger archive. Of course I’m not sure how it could be done, I just think of these things, and if they did exist then that sim-owner who PM’d me would have the very information, history she was searching for.

I’ve kept loads of files and stuff on my activity here and only recently realised what a valuable anthropologically-rich database it could be seen to be. Ok, maybe I’m overstating it, but I am fascinated by people’s pasts as much as their present. Well, anyway, there I go thinking again, letting my ideas run amok.

~~Anan Eebus