isolation tales

That’s one really good thing about SL: you can’t get ill, no matter what you do, it’s all bacteria and virus-free, not even the coronavirus can get you here. Of course another kind can, a computer one, but that’s not really a virus, that’s just some coding chicanery which even though can really frustrate you can’t actually make you sick.

You can even fall from a great height here and ta-daa! No cuts, bruises, no broken bones, not even death, and we all know how inconvenient death can be. Well, we don’t actually, we can guess though that it would be mighty annoying. You simply dust yourself off and walk away, or go back up and do it all over again. If only real life was like that. Nor do we have to deal with those really piss-me-off niggles as sneezing or runny noses or wracking coughs or even itches. Mind you, I think itches can be handy, as long as they can be scratched away with some judiciously and well-targeted fingertips.

So, whoever said virtual worlds were a waste of time should try it, it’s quite handy finding somewhere no one or nothing can actually hurt you. That is, as long as you don’t take it too seriously, after all, it is supposed to be escapism, a place to put distance between you and the outside world, being kind of a pixelised extension of your inner world.

What best of all though is in SL you never ever, ever have to use the toilet: ever! While at the same time not worrying about being constipated or having diarrhoea, or exploding! Surely that’s a good thing, especially the not exploding. And, finally, for us girls, no periods. Hurrah! Among other things of course. I know there’s a good side to them as well but really, some days I think nature pulled a fast one on us.

Nevertheless, I still it’s important to keep up ones vitamin C so, even in SL, you’ll sometimes find me filling my face with grapes.

© Anan Eebus

dancing queen

It’s about time I posted my first blog of 2020 here. I’ve been tardy of late and been pondering my place in SL for a while now, it having changed so much in the past few years and me having been there for so, so, so, so long, which is a long time, very long, so, so, so, so long.

Not that I still don’t enjoy it, I do, just its hold on me has loosened, lessened, not what it was. Thankfully in some ways in that once upon an SL time I was so enmeshed in it, it started spilling over in m RL which is not what it’s supposed to do as far as I’m concerned. What did leak through was mostly the worry, the angst, even some of the drama, some directed at me some just happening around me. Of course we all know and loudly proclaim in SL it should be drama-free, there’s even signs affirming that on some sims: “This is a Drama-free Zone”. A bit like “this is a Zombie-Free Zone” except without the zombies, although I’m sure some of the people I’ve met here can seem a bit brain-dead.

If you’re not careful though things can snowball, get away from you, gather unexpected momentum and before you know it: madness!

Well, fortunately for me I’ve learned through my mistakes in investing too much ‘me’, so to speak, as in my emotions and trying to spot and head-off any potential drama before it becomes drama, which can be a bit of an inworld skill in itself and not a perfect science.

I always keep myself busy though and never understand those who say, “I’m bored”. It’s strange because f you are bored then why are you even there, online, inworld, and if you are go do something else instead. Some people seem to need to be ‘entertained’ all the time, and if you look hard enough, even thuogh SL isn’t what it used to be (i.e. admittedly not as much fun or interactive) there are things to do, place to explore, amazing builds and sims to see that are just a feast for the eyes and dancing, I love dancing.

So I’ve been thinking lately about why I’m still here. One thing for sure I am loyal to my avatar, or me, which sounds strange to anyone who’s never done SL. It’s like after a while because it is like: are are you your avatar, or, is your avi you? Either way you can feel incredibly protective about her, and in my case I do, and the thought of losing her after all this time is almost unthinkable. It would be like losing a part of me, because she is in a way, my avi is me in so many ways: my beliefs, attitudes and, even though you can choose any be anyone or anything here, I have actually very closely physically modelled her on me. Not sure why although I feel most comfortable in my own skin, although my hair in RL isn’t blue, although sometimes it has been, as it has been other colours too.

I’ve never been a tree or a dragon or a zombie. I am though a vampire, and a photographer. Some things have stayed with me pretty much from the start or at least from my first year here, like the blue hair I actually had sorted by my third week. I’m still finding new things too, adventures, friends and such, though have never been into anything overly competitive.

I haven’t come to any conclusions yet except that I’m not going anywhere and staying here in SL happily as me, probably because you just never know what might happen next, and that for me, is still most exciting.

~Anan~~

A sense of grief

A sense of grief, the weird feeling I got recently as I was doing something so boring and benign as clearing some things out of my Second Life (SL) inventory. All of a sudden I felt a growing overwhelming sensation of grief, of loss, of a distance moving further away from me.

It wasn’t feeling of mortality or anything like that, just a realization of how long I’d been in SL and how much it felt like so much longer: a lifetime, or several.

I was sorting through my vampire stuff, which to anyone not in SL would sound utterly bizarre, and realised how many different vampire RP systems I’d been part of, some more than others, and how most of which are now gone, defunct. I was left with just the two active ones now, which is probably just as well, being they can take a huge amount of time and commitment.

As I was packing all the bits and pieces, HUDs, associated regalia and weapons of the now deleted systems into single boxes to rationalized them and reduce my ever-bulging inventory I felt this sense of grief. I couldn’t face getting rid of them completely yet, even though they no longer worked (crazy, I know). 

I found myself remembering the people I’d met through them, the adventures, inn-jokes, laughs and tears and suchlike, and how all that’s gone as are most of the people, having left not just the RP system but inworld SL entirely.

I recalled the process of learning each one, meeting sometimes new people, new vampires and other weird supernaturals, each system often so different from the other, each with their own quirks and sims and worlds and objectives. I have probably tried pretty much every single vampire RP system going in SL at one time or another and still play two. 

But it isn’t so much the vampire thing that made me feel this waves of sadness, it was that the act of sorting through signaled some kind of precipice, as I remembered people who had not just left SL entirely leaving behind their memories, but those who actually died, as in really died, in real life and how now for many of them their avatars still exist in SL. Although not in body but there in friends lists, clan lists, their profiles frozen forever in inworld time.

This is the grief I felt. Unlike most of the time in RL grief is shared and released and come to terms with, here in SL it can’t be in the same way and can’t be done with anyone outside of SL who’s never played, never been, or not even heard of. 

There are lots of us for whom being here is very personal and not shared with anyone within their immediate real life circle, and because of that there’s nowhere for this grief to go. Most people who’ve never experienced SL think we are a bit nuts anyway wondering why we waste our time here.

So it eats away inside and sometimes wells-up as it did with me recently. It’s very real, this grief, its deep, embedded and sometimes catches me unawares, all the deaths, losses, experiences, adventures which were just as real as anything in RL, but real in a different way: the relationships, friendships, the bonds, just as real because we did so not just as comic avatars but as real people. 

© Anan Eebus 2019

the darker side of death

so many lives
lived and died
so many deaths
lived and died
sleep another sleep

weep another weep
wake from the deep

with relief

or regret

to find

you're still here.

© Anan Eebus

when death comes to play

welcome to the darkness

the eternal forever

when dark

and light

make love

together

 

around the corner

dark liaisons

heaven forbid

out of breath

strange bedfellows

when death comes to play

© Anan Eebus 2019

the inbetween between

As of today I have been in Second Life (SL) for, would you believe, 11 years and 6 months, a total of 4,202 days. OMG! Surely that is madness. I’ve actually been here since the 8^th February 2008.

Quite honestly it’s too hard to get my head around when I think of the time that’s past and what I’ve done in both SL and RL, my real life, my first life. I sometimes wonder if I’m sane or not, but rather than answer it and drive myself even crazier most probably going around in circles I’ll put it in a small jar in the back of an old cupboard, inside an even older wardrobe in a shadowy corner of a room I rarely go in at the end of a corridor I even more rarely dare to walk down behind the kind of door one meets and think, woah! No way am I going to open that!

As SL time is so different to RL time, something which those who have never used SL would fully understand, it doesn’t at all feel like I’ve been there that long but at the same time I’ve done so much there I’m surprised I’ve fitted all the experiences and changes and ups and downs in the time I have.

Most of my time in SL has been spent as a vampire, which is one of the few consistent things I taken with me throughout this journey, along with my blue hair which strangely I’ve had from the very start, and my shape and size and essential appearance which has changed very little and in some cases like my height not at all.  I’ve obviously updated myself as things got more clever and available inworld, like my skin though that has also, despite tiny changes, stayed the same.  I think I was lucky I finding myself and who I wanted to be inworld very quickly, without weeks of joining in fact. Some people seem to take months and even years going through constant morphing and changing with many giving up sooner than later.

Because of this I’ve enjoyed myself there extracurricularly as myself without having to spend all of my time, apart from like I say occasional tweaks, making who I am. I basically decided I wanted to be as close as possible to me, happy in my own skin, more than I am in RL.

Through my years there I only now see looking back how much has changed, some monumental, some very challenging, some for the better for sure some most definitely for the worse, but one thing that hasn’t changed is the market-economy culture. Although you can quite happily live in SL without spending a penny, and I don’t mean needing a wee, as there are loads of free stuff in everything, skins, body parts (sounds gruesome!), clothes, avatars of all ilk, furniture, trinkets, toys, vehicles, building materials and even roleplaying materials and stuff, you name it it’s there and as much for free as there is at a price. It still remains though that a lot of the best things and some games require money and unless you can pay from an RL account into your SL account you have to think of ways of making money inworld which can be anything between fun to frustrating to near-impossible. Hence, shopping is big inworld and it takes practice, cunning and experience to sometimes tease out the best freebies.

Soon it will be 4,203 days and I will be one day older, not just inworld but here too, as me, the real me, older and probably a bit weirder.

© Anan Eebus