Xmascellany #9

 Hello again, more being pixel me on the hunt for the lost snowflake, and it can't be just any snowflake as they're all different, no two the same, and I'm searching for the lost snowflake. I'm determined and will not surrender until I find it, I'll look everywhere if I have too, I'll even look nowhere too as you never know where a lost snowflake could be, it could be nowhere after all as possible as it could be anywhere, so here are some pictures I picked up along the way to share with you.

~x

 

(wandering in The Dickens Project)

Xmascellany #8

 I said there was more Xmascellany to come and there is! Much more, my snowtrip through SL continues undaunted by white-outs or avalanche. Enjoy. ~x

 

 

 

 

(wanderings from Lost Unicorn and The Dickens Project)

Xmascellany #7

Welcome back to my Xmascellany, enjoy more footprints in the snow as I aimlessly wander through Second Life, away from the madness of lockdowns and social-distancing, I suppose you could call this, virtual-distancing.

~x

(from the land of Lost Unicorn)

Xmascellany #6

Look! 

More Xmascellany random rambles 'round  and 'round a Second Life Christmas. I love the way the sun hugs the horizon through this part of the year as though knowing it's far too cold, despite it being a huge balls of boiling, molten too hot to touch chaotic particles accelerating and crashing and smashing into each other time and time again, the beauty and terror of creation and destruction before our very eyes and yet it's so easy to forget how fragile it is. I marvel at how it manages to exist with such inner turmoil, always on the edge of not being at all. Wow, it does my head in!

(from the land of the Lost Unicorn)

Xmascellany #5

 Yay! 😁 More Xmascellany from my Second Life ramblings leaving my footprints in the snow here, there and everywhere. If you want to get away from any lockdown or Covid blues you might find not just getting out and about in the real world but also being a nomad in SL for a while, no facemasks required, no distancing, no queues for toilet rolls. Come with me and enjoy a little wander all the way through advent and count snowflakes.

x~~

 

(in the land of the Lost Unicorn)

Xmascellany #4

Episode 4 in my Xmascellany traipsing through the advent winter of Second Life, hope you're enjoying joining me as there's way more to come, make sure to bring a blanket.

x~

(Holiday Isle and the North Pole, or one of the many anyway)

 

Xmascellany #3

To welcome December I bring you the third episode in my Xmascellany photographical adventures through a Second Life Christmas. Enjoy and there's more to come in the coming weeks all the way until Christmas day.

~x

 

(adventures in Belvedere, Christmas Lane & Clutterfly)

Xmascellany #2

A new episode of my Xmascellany photographic journeys around a Second Life wintry festive advent Yuletime, welcome back! I always make sure to be suitably seasonally and warmly dressed. I suppose I see this as a bit of an antidote to the coronavirus lockdowns here, there and everywhere, everywhere that is except in SL which makes it the perfect place to hide a while without having to wear a facemask.

~x

  

(baja norte set 2)

Xmascellany #1

It’s not even December and I’ve already been journeying far and wide seeking out Christmas lands all over SL, leaving my footprints in the snow, chipping the icicles, dancing with penguins, teasing polar bears, cuddling reindeers and trying to take a peek in Santa’s sack.

From now until Christmas Day I’m going to share my advent’ures in Christmas through photos and this is the first stocking offering from my “Xmascellany”. There’s no plan, no theme, no objective other than to just find cool (literally wintry!) places to be and things to occupy my butterfly mind, and though butterflies usually hibernate through the winter my mind hasn’t and remains as actively randometrically-challenged as ever.

~x

 (Baja Norte set 1)

under my skin

SL, Second Life, provides the perfect getaway staycation from CL, Covid Life, though some people seem to have let it seep in here too. Not me though, and anyway, vampires, which I am, don’t get Covid. Of course, I suppose some of us vamps might have rabies, so we’re not so squeaky clean, although, I am very particular about my fangs being well-brushed and razor sharp. I like a good clean puncture wound, none of your shredding and tearing by me.

I just realised I been here over 12 years. 12 years! Actually nearly 13 now. That makes me quite elderly in SL terms, here before mesh, even before sculpties, when it was just a totally prim-world and we didn’t look quite as lifelike as we can look now. I still have my original avi too secreted away in my inventory, which is basically not much different from me now, although now I hope I am much upgraded. I know it might seem really boring to some to just remain pretty much the same even though I’ve experimented too on and off, not to mention my mermaid form. I’ve messed around with being a tree and a panther, to name just two non-human shapes, but I always come back to me. What does that say about me? That I’m boring? Or perhaps I’m lucky that from early on I been comfortable in my own ‘skin’. 

 

Maybe that’s had something to do with my longevity here, why I’ve made it this far and this long and still in one piece, relatively anyway. Emotionally it’s been a roller-coaster up until recent years as if you’re not careful SL can have a habit of getting under your skin and not always being the escape from real turmoils you thought.

I’ve definitely outlasted many of my peers who’ve either left or dumped their original avi for a new one. Also those who drop in once in an SL moon, as in rarely. Sometimes I’ll log in to find a message from some long lost name on my friends list from years ago, and presumably I must still be on theirs. They are like ghost messages really, as though they’ve been left on the answerphone from another time and hadn’t been erased. They all mostly always say a similar thing, like, “are you still playing here?”, or, “just thought I’d join SL again”, and even when I reply rarely do I ever hear from them again.

You need to be a bit schizophrenic to be here, to add another you to the many you’s out in RL. Like for me, I’m a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a student, a volunteer, a model, a photographer, a waitress and probably more, so my SL avi becomes just another facet, one always with blue hair, but one totally down to me and not at the whim of others or society.

© Anan Eebus

 

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