sim'ptomatic

 

Wow, has it really been a whole month since I last wrote anything here? How time flies in Second Life, the place where time feels either frozen in time or moving at a totally different speed to RL time, slower or faster though I'm not completely sure.

Distances here are also tricky to comprehend despite the big map claiming to show the our entire inworld world, and when you think that distance and time are kind of interrelated, definitely interdependent then it can prove even more discombobulating. As you know, metres are used here, something you will know for sure if you've done any building or landscaping, but depending on the size of your screen it can still feel disorientating. Perhaps what most people are familiar with in size is the reliable and unchangeable 'sim', so I was thinking, maybe we could use that as a measure of distance. So a sim would be the largest and use variants for smaller measures within it, a simlet could be half a sim, a simling could be a quarter, a simcron could be an eighth of sim and a simtic could be a single step. So you could then work out distances between places here as like 12 sims away, or 42 sims and one simlet.

Is that all sounding a bit daft? Probably, and I can't imagine it would take off as a workable idea anyway, even I'm starting to have my doubts. It's good to puzzle though, even if it does turn your mind inside out.

I suppose with teleporting being almost pretty much instantaneous it doesn't matter how far away somewhere is in time. But still, SL time is like an anomaly, neither the time it is nor the time it isn't and the time you're there definitely doesn't correlate with RL time. But does it need too?  I think I am getting a little lost in my own rambling here, but I've been grappling this kind of existential dilemma in SL for ages now. Don't even ask me to measure it in SL time though, I'm already confused enough.

I think though that is why I can find SL so disorienting, the fact that you're everywhere at once but still in a sense travel to get anywhere, albeit almost instantaneously via teleporting. There's a whole philosophy going on here that I'm determined to get to grips with, maybe. Not making any promises as this clearly isn't a promising start in trying to coalesce my thoughts into anything close to coherent. Maybe that's what happens when you're also a vampire, and a mermaid, and have some wolf in you, and probably a bit of angel too, a mosh-pit and clash of supernatural sanities wondering who goes first. Or I could just be having one of those strange days when my brain does weird things to catch me off-guard.

 © Anan Eebus

be fangful

 

Seems it’s been a while since my last confession, but, in my defence I am a vampire and not known for contrition nor actually confessing. Well, not in the sense where it’s supposed to come with some remorse. I mean, why would I, a vampire, feel remorseful after half-draining someone of their blood? I always leave them alive, if not a teeny bit disorientated for a while.

That’s the nature of vampires, after all we aren’t supposed to have souls, which is why they say we have no reflection, suggesting that our reflection is like a manifestation of our souls and without a soul you can’t have a reflection in mirrors, or widows, or water or highly-polished brass or silver or whatever. Basically, it would make it a nightmare putting on one’s own makeup or doing one’s own hair. The way around it of course is to get someone else to do it, not always easy when you all live in shadows and so many are too busy biting people and enjoying afterlife to the full. Yes, there is such a thing as an afterlife, see, I’m living, sort of breathing and albeit undead, proof. The breathing we do is mostly for show, we don’t actually need to breathe, being vampires and all, which is really useful for swimming.

Oh, and by the way, all that nonsense about reflections, it’s just that, nonsense. We have one that’s just as visible as yours, but we do have a trick up our sleeve. We can make it vanish when we need too. It’s a party-trick really and all the better for sneaking up on people. The soul isn’t in our reflections anyway, nor is the reflection our soul. It’s in our shadow. That’s one of the reasons why daylight is anathema to many vampires. I say many meaning not all, because some of us are elders and have worked out how to be daywalkers. Sneaky, huh! No, of course I’m not going to tell you how we do it, what do you take me for? If you knew you’d only do something silly like try and come up with a plan to prevent it. Where’s the fun in that for me?

I can do all the things, pretty much, that you can do, and more. More, because becoming a vampire opens you up and taps into parts of you that may be dormant or lain hidden for centuries, abilities and such. It does also heighten everything for us, like strength, speed and such things, but also emotions and temperament, all of which become more deeply felt and as such we spend years learning to control and live with it. Like the obvious, our hunger. It’s crazy and never-sated completely but we teach ourselves not to get too greedy and accidentally kill off our food supply, i.e. you.

There’s more to us than meets the fang, and don’t believe all the stories which are exactly what they are stories, myths, fairy tales. But, remember, some of them are true so beware, beware, there’s bound to be a vampire out there somewhere and you are likely to pass them on the street or sit at the next table in a café and never ever know. We are cunning you see.

© Anan Eebus

 

 

 

Inworldz.. dust to dust

          Another world bites the dust it.
          It seems after so long a time now another virtual world has collapsed in on itself as Inworldz falls down the virtual rabbit hole of pixels under the weight of a single click of ‘DELETE’. 
          Inworldz (IW) was made ages ago in some ways in sort of response to Second Life (SL) in part aimed at those disillusioned with SL as many had become at the time. Some left the inworld world entirely while others migrated to other worlds such as IW while others, and this was me partly, joined and lived for a time anyway happily in both.  That is until I realised how much time was needed to keep up not just inworld account but in two entirely separate worlds and somehow balance this with my real one, what I call the realme-world. 
          Despite this for a while I did seem to manage it, still spending more time in SL but also like a bit of an antidote to SL’s drama which has gotten bad at the time for me I managed hours in the day for IW.  So I established a me there too with the same name, Anan Eebus.  I even imported my body settings and looked almost identical.  Why wouldn’t I, as for me it was the only other-me I knew and in SL I did sort of model my inworld me on my RL (real life) me. I called it and still do, being comfortable in my own skin, especially as in these worlds you can basically choose any skin you like.  Weird I know.  I do hope you’re not getting lost in all these me’s I keep weaving into the blog here, just remember they are all me at the end of the day. 
          So I set up a whole other virtual life in IW for years in my avi, or avatar there, establishing regular places I’d go, like for dancing or for coffee and chat with fellow inworlders, or inmates, as sometimes it did all feel a bit insane and like an asylum, as did SL.  In truth there was very little difference between them except SL was a bit ahead of it in technology and because it was the thrill of the new, had far less psychodrama. I even set up mu unveiled Art Gallery and started having exhibitions and took part in build contests through which I did win some money, or I’z, or IW money, the equivalent of linden currency in SL. 
          But after many years IW has finally died, this month in fact, closed forever and all in it lost beneath the virtual sea that reclaimed it to its icy depths.  I wish I’d known sooner as because I had been logging in less in recent years I wasn’t there for the last few weeks or day so wasn’t able to save anything.  That is if there was even anyway I could have, but I would certainly have taken a few last photos of the old place before its imminent demise. 
          Anyway, luckily I do still have some photos but anything else I had there is gone forever, so fragile and ephemeral are such worlds, places, lives, gone in a click! It had over the years suffered a huge decline in active participants and I suppose cost or apathy or whatever got the better of it.  I somehow wish I could have made a little 3D model of myself though as a souvenir, which sounds weird I know, but you have to be a little weird to live in these worlds. 
          But I’m still here, in SL that is, happy enough and certainly as busy as I need to be but luckily not letting rule my life as I once did.

the last photo I took of me in IW

 © Anan Eebus (27th August 2018)