dead zone

Where do all the avatars go when they’re no longer are here?

I know, I know! Into the dead zone (cue the dramatic music!)

Second Life (SL) is littered with so many phantoms, or what I call fleeters, those who were there once and now not but have left their ghost in names, accounts and avatars which exist and don’t exist at the same time in a limbo. Once upon a time they’d run away to join the circus and then run away from that, the circus being SL, never to be seen again and yet their tantalising breadcrumbs are still to be found going stale.

Second life is becoming a graveyard of empty lives, of echoes, traces, corpses pretty much, the dead existing in name and statistics only on friends lists, on prims, in profiles: are they undead, in a coma, in hibernation, abducted by aliens, avi-napped?!

I know, I know! They’ve moved into Second Unlife, a holding pattern, a waiting room, stasis, perhaps an anteroom to a Second AfterLife. After all, some of them might come back one day though the longer they dn’t the less likely they will, while some most definitely won’t being that they shuffled their mortal coil in the real world leaving no clues as to what should happen to their SL-self, or Slelf, should they have pre-deceased their avatar. These are the spookiest, you know they’re gone and yet. Perhaps this is just like real death in real life (RL) where even though the person is gone they are still here in their photos, their old possessions, image, the things they’ve done, and in the minds and hearts of those closest to them.

SL is perhaps one of the largest graveyards in the virtual world, but without any actual graves, just a few with real names with most being merely facades, macabre playgrounds, impressions.

Fleeters are the lost boys and girls inhabiting a dead zone, a land of echoes, a shadowland consigned to forever do so, suspended on the cusp of a black hole not escaping and yet not vanishing utterly inside to be crushed to nothing.

All these names with no one to claim them, that’s what I’d call an existential crisis.

© 2019 Anan Eebus

shade of shade (from the Vampiricalia)

         Sadness overwhelms me as time and time again I find a world littered in shades.  Those who are dead inside bled to a husk by avaricious vampires with no self-control. 

         The careless, the greedy, the arrogant indulge their thirst without a care nor thought for the needs of other vampires, others of their kind and even kin.  In biology a predator never depletes its food source to the point of extinction but manages it through cunning and rationing, and yet these parasites, or shade-makers, exploit it to the last drop of blood. Parasite is probably a poor analogy as even they don’t aim to kill their host, the one upon which they depend for their very survival. That way lays madness and ultimately oblivion even for a parasite.

         A true vampires relationship with humans is one of symbiosis; a sympathetic, although slightly skewed, understanding that they are needed, for better or worse, and that to wipe them out one by one turning them into shades is self-defeating and merely exposes their own weak nature. We can and do sometimes feed upon each other but without fresh input, as in fresh human blood, it eventually becomes tainted, the same old blood recirculating grows old and rotten and ultimately no better than a waste product rather than food. Basically no better than eating ourselves out of house and home and becoming cannibals.

         These shade-makers are blood-suckers at best, not worthy of the Vampire mantel and the more shades, dry, empty walking husks little better than zombies, the harder it becomes to feed or find food at all.  Immortality has its down-sides, not least the temptation to self-destruct by rampaging at the expense of others and sod the consequences.  A vampire’s environment is no different than the human one, we inhabit the same space and time, and as such it is not a limitless resource to be exploited without consequence for our actions.

         It is true that ones primal instincts are much closer to the surface in a vampire and a lot of effort has to be made to keep them in check. I suppose this isn’t that different from when we were ourselves mortal, or quicks. Also, vampires aren’t by nature good in the conventional sense, we are the undead after all, though I prefer to regard myself as of the breathless. I find the term undead tends to freak people out at parties when they ask you what you do. I suppose it is an argument as to who is worse at the end of the day; mortals or immortals, being we both are riddled with flaws and bouts of complete stupidity.

         A vampires emotions are heightened to almost savage levels; seeing, hearing, feeling much more intensely and deep, the pains and the pleasures sometimes getting mixed and mashed up in the very same breathless breath.  We need constant vigilance as with such huge power comes huge responsibility. See, more down-sides, but no one ever said it was going to be all blood and orgies, though that happens too sometimes.  That drive to bite, sink the teeth, feed, sate ones appetite over and over, to endure the thrill of it all again and again but greed never ended well, and usually in gluttony which leads to stagnancy and ultimately decay, literally dust to dust or worse, starving forever with nothing left on which to feed begging for the stake but too weak to lift one.

          So we make bloodsouls; humans we watch over and to which we provide protection, knowledge and the tools with which to also protect themselves and in return they offer their blood in a sustainable way, by which I mean we allow them to replenish themselves and never drain them to becoming a shade. There’s no coming back from being shaded. This doesn’t protect other non-bloodsoul mortals of course and as such the world of vampire is destined to be a constant struggle between the shade-giver and the self-possesed path of the shade-maker.
        (from my Vampiricalia…..)
         © Anan Eebus

SL’urring my words

me then....

          I’ve haunted the virtual corridors of Second Life for so long now, I just realized how many years I’d been here and most of it as a one of the undead!
          Though I suppose I’d better make this clearer, undead as in a vampire, but then I thought, well, being a vampire is itself like living in a limbo, an alternative space between the world of the living and of the dead, as in properly dead, and in a way SL is that too.  A place in between two worlds where we schizophrenically live out parts of our existence: between RL, real life, and VL, virtual life. Even though SL is itself the virtual life we aren’t completely virtual being real lives behind the screens and we come and go so not completely one nor the other, and I’ve been doing this for nearly 10 years now I just noticed, just two month shy of it in fact.
          I entered this weird and crazy place in 2008 and found at first it was almost impossible to stop my computer crashing after only brief periods in here.  So after a couple of months I managed to upgrade my computer and voila! I was in proper, for as long a time each time as I wanted. And I’m still here living the life of a supernatural vampire and of recent now become a werewolf half-blood too.  I am busy!   On top of this I also enjoy a swim and transform into my mermaid-self whenever I do as fins are so much better for cutting through the water, even in SL.
          This whole time I’m managed to maintain, sometimes by the skin of my fangs, my status as a vital vampire and since immersed myself further into more walks of vampire lore which has become inextricable to who I am here.  I even bite in RL but that’s another story and possibly one of a more adult nature.
          I’ve also established myself as a photographer and artist here and have set-up a group called unveiled for promoting my works and galleries when I have had them, which at the moment I don’t being I don’t have anywhere for one, nor the money to do it.  The money has always been a bane for me in SL, never had enough and the things I’ve done to earn it, again perhaps a story for another time and when the children have gone to bed.
          So many changes have happened in that time and still keep happening and I never fail to have yet another strange or weirder than weird experience, or meet someone strange and weird, or both!  But despite it all I’m still here and even maintain a Tiny Empires HUD, which won’t mean anything to anyone who doesn’t know about SL, but for those that do I am looking for a new clan/ allegiance in TE so get in touch if you like.
          Anyway, I just wanted to catch up a bit with myself here as I’ve been realizing just for how long I’ve been in a place where time runs at a total different pace than RL, it feels like I’ve had several lifetimes here and yet I’ve always been only the same me, the same avatar, the same Anan Eebus, and yes my hair has been blue from day one. 
          I also am aware when I did first join I was probably under the legal age limit for it but only just, and probably only in US terms anyway so that doesn’t count for me cos I’m UK.
          Of course I know to any no SL’ers we may all seem a little weird and sad but believe me, we do have RL lives, we just enrich them with a touch of the virtual and in this case Second Life.  I will share some of my stories this year from my experiences there (maybe including the adult ones!) and any new ones I have.

 

.... me now

© Anan Eebus (3^rd January 2018)