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

 

how long is time

 

Wow, four months into the year and I haven’t posted a thing here, I am getting lazy, or maybe priorities being what they are mean these days my RL most definitely takes precedence.

When I have been on SL, and I still manage to log in at least once a day, even if only briefly, I’ve been mostly exploring, still hungry to discover the new, the old, the unusual, the surprising. Still, the weirdest thing these days is how quiet it feels. I don’t know how many active players there are now compared to when I was way more involved here, say before 4 years ago, since when I for one have certainly scaled way back, mostly because RL is way more busy and important, and of course obviously I’m older, priorities change.

Another reason I chose to shuffle off much of my responsibilities here is because they were beginning to cause me serious anxiety, so much so the only solutions were to, in a word, downsize, or leave. Well, I wasn’t going to leave having invested so much emotionally and time-wise into me in SL so that left me with taking my foot of the SL pedal car.

Generally, it feels so much better, psychologically for certain, my mental well-being has improved a lot since I have. But then, I had reached a breaking point having taken on far more than little old me could basically cope with. I pride myself on being able to multitask and being able to deal with most situations but back then I was totally losing the plot having falling into one responsibility after another because simply I didn’t want to let anyone down.

So, before I completely lost my fragmented mind I decided enough was enough. Nevertheless, I still miss those days when there was always something happening, when there felt like there was more of a community, especially in my vampire clan. Yes, if you didn’t already know from reading my previous blogs, I am a vampire, among other things. Those were amazing times and at least I took loads of photos back then, and still do, so have lots of memories to look back on.

Gosh, all this makes me sound and feel soooooooooooo old. I’m not by the way.

But all in all my RL is pretty happy, all things considered, so I don’t feel the same need or pull to always run away into SL, which sometimes is what I used to do. I’m not sure what use sharing any of this is but maybe it helps me. I mean, I have no idea even how many read my blog or even know it’s here.

Well, apologies again to anyone who cares that it’s taken four months to get around to posting what is effectively my first writing here of 2023. Crazy, isn’t it.

~Anan Eebus ©2023

 

Happy New Year 2023

 

fallen for autumn

 

I’m coming out of the cupboard because autumn is here, my favourite time of the year, definitely my favourite season.

I can’t say I am missing those baking hot days of summer, being of vampire skin, i.e. burns easily, I for one am pleased we’ve lost more than a few degrees as autumn, or Fall, depending on your preference, seeps into our days and our bones. Yes, it’s chilly, yes it’s a bit damp, yes it’s a bit more breezy and yes, possibly a bit more rain but not actually worse than summer rain as when we had it just made for flooding. So I welcome autumn with open arms as I always do.

And SL is all over autumn too, well, mostly. Or perhaps just where I visit as if you’re in the southern hemisphere then I know it’s not autumn for you but the beginnings of spring. Isn’t that just weird, you think, being on the same planet and yet here we are having not just different seasons but polar opposite ones. But I guess that’s what the poles are there for, to be poles apart. So now, as in RL I seek out Autumn in SL where also the colours are just so vivid and alive, even though technically they symbolize a slowing down, even death, as leaves change colour and drop to the ground to dry shrivel and decay, or get squirrelled, or wormed, away by worms underground, as that’s what worms do. Although I have to see if that’s also true in SL: do worms sneak leaves underground?

In fact, is there even an underground in any real sense in SL? We talk all the time about the ‘sea’ or the gap between sims where nothing exists, the Void Ocean, as it’s called, but rarely do we think about what’s under our feet. A bit like RL really, few ever wonder about what they’re walking on and what goes on down there which is just as much or even probably far more than what goes on above ground. An entire world out of sight and out of mind.

Anyway, here are some photos of my SL autumn travels. I hope to post more over the season, at least before winter gets a fingerhold.

~x Anan 

 

 

 

to sit or not to sit

 

Oh my word! I haven’t posted anything for ages, I just noticed. Much apologies to the very few readers I actually have, I’ve been busy, and with heatwaves on top of work, studies, health, other stuff I just completely didn’t realise what time had gone by. So, here is one about sitting. I do like sitting.

I spend a lot of time sitting inworld. In fact, I have loads of sitting selfies here, there and everywhere I go in SL, as some of my postings here already show. One could say I might be preoccupied, or obsessed, with sitting, but I’m not, honestly. It’s an occupation in itself though in SL, or a hobby, or an addiction; oh look, a seat, sit!

I’ve noticed it’s a habit of mine to try out as many different choices of sitting as possible. As someone’s gone to the trouble of providing sitting opportunities it would be churlish not to at least try them out. Even though it takes no effort at all to stand in SL, it always makes sense to me to sit, as I would likely do in RL, especially if I’m going to be somewhere any length of time. It’s kind of rude not to, I am a guest in these places/sims after all. It would be like going to someone’s house and not taking off your coat.

So many people log in and just stand around, often pointlessly, often never even moving, just standing letting the AO, animation overrider, do the work, even when there are maybe dozens of perching places.

I also do meditation inworld, usually sitting on mats or cushions, and sometimes I’ll do some yoga with my specially-designed yoga mat or on one provided where I happen to be. Despite it being virtual yoga, it can also be surprisingly relaxing; weird, I know.

SL is a funny old world, not just because of the weird and wonderful things you come across in it, but also how people behave. It can be fascinating for people-watching, or avi-watching, even watching those standing around doing nothing, sometimes.

One of the weirdest funny old world things I come across inworld is toilets. Despite being seats, I’m never tempted to sit on them and do wonder why anyone even bothers including them in their builds or designs. If anything is redundant in SL, it’s a toilet, it’s got to be pretty much the most redundant thing in SL compared to how much it’s needed in RL.

Well, that’s a strange place to end a blog on, toilets. Perhaps I’ll have something more interesting to write about next time, but I can’t promise anything being that I’m not massively active there at the moment, RL being what it is. Chat again soon and hope you enjoyed this little read, despite the toilet-talk.  

© Anan Eebus ~x