a place of my own– nekopolis tails

I joined Second Life (SL) in February 2008, and wow, that was so long ago in a world so different from what it is now. I’m not sure what the age-limit is for SL but by US standards I might have not been old enough but as I am in the UK, I was and still am most definitely an adult here.

For the first year I didn’t have anywhere of my own to live, as such, I’d never thought about it until I saw that people did have homes of different kinds. Once I’d become a vampire I made my ‘home’ the land of whatever clan I was in, but it wasn’t ever anywhere I could call my own private space.

Then, while on my random travels I discovered a sim called Nekopolis, and while there met someone who is even to this day still on my friends list told me about a block of apartments with rooms to rent for 1L a week for 10 prims. I thought, brilliant! Until I remembered I had absolutely zero money/lindens. I’d even become part neko at the time, I had a very cool blue-shaded tail.

So, I took up a combination of camping, which was boring and didn’t do for long, and hunting out places where magic chairs or lotteries, whatever, were giving away lindens if the first letter of your first name landed just right. This got me 1L here and 1L there but it was incredibly laborious and tedious. That’s how it came about I started pole-dancing for money.

I went around the various pole-dancing clubs and places, like beaches and bars and anywhere really that had a tip jar you could freely log in to and just go for it. But then it also had to be somewhere for people otherwise I wouldn’t have earned many tips with no one there.

Now this was a lucrative occupation, at least for a while anyway, and fun, again, at least for a while. What I hadn’t realised was how exhausting it could be, and a steep learning curve though I did take to it quite well, I thought. I was earning sometimes hundreds for an hour or two’s work.

It was mad, but I worked hard for it, it’s not as easy as it looks even though some dancers just seemed to get on the pole and let the anims (pre-programmed animations) take over, like it was they weren’t there in RL. I didn’t do that, I was present all the time and interacting with any audience and happily chatted with customers, some of who were really nice and not all creeps as one might imagine in these places, and respectful too. Some places though did have so-called bouncers who ejected anyone rude. Pole-dancing doesn’t have to be seedy, even though I did do partial striptease with it down to lingerie for a while until I was brave enough to go topless, but only for the right tips and if it felt right. I never went total nude though, had to leave something to the imagination, surely.

Consequently, I was now earning plenty of L’s to get one of those single-room apartments in Nekopolis, finally, all I had to do was go there every day and keep an eye out for one to come free. Lo and behold, after a few weeks one did and I got it and moved into my first own place where at least I could rezz some seating and a pose stand, which pretty much took up all the ten prims. But that was all I needed. I loved the novelty of it and I set home there for a handy low-lag place to log in.

I stayed there for ages, more than a year, which in SL is a long time. The only reason I left was that, sadly, the sim closed down, as so many do. Such is the nature of place. It was a shame and I do miss it because apart from it being inexpensive to live here, it was just a cool place with plenty of hangouts, and shops! Who knows, if it was still there now I might also still be living there.

As for the pole-dancing, I carried on for several months, adding chair-dancing among other related things to my CV, including some perhaps less respectable skills. In time I moved on from the pole work into other stuff inworld. To this day it is still the best earning job I’ve ever had. 

 © 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