backwards forwards

 

I am back! Although I’ve not been away, not as such, just haven’t got around to posting anything here for ever-so-so-so-so long, and that’s a long time.

Nor have I been away from Second Life either, logging in almost daily, but you know how RL can be: all-consuming. SL used to be all-consuming, years ago, when I let it become so which turned out to be such a bad idea. A bad idea because eventually it started leaking into my real life, into my daily waking thoughts, into my dreams, feeding me worry after worry. 

Basically, I took too much on, which, with hindsight, was a truly crazy and totally defeated the whole reason for joining SL in the first place, as a relief from the stresses and strains of the real world, a place where I could just hang out, chill, mooch, and do whatever else took my fancy, especially things I probably wouldn’t dare too for real. I will leave that to your imagination as to what those are.

But that’s all done and dusted and water under the bridge and all that. I managed over time to free myself of those responsibilities which had become no better than shackles. Every now and then since some people have tried to drag me back there but luckily I’ve learned my lesson, once bitten, twice, or even thrice, shy.

Nowadays I spend lots of time exploring, I even recently did a photo project called “Window Shopping”, which basically was photos of me by different window displays, which I wrote about in a earlier blog a while back. It was actually quite tricky because even though there are some good one, such things aren’t that common in SL. Many shops have no outsides, or they are just anonymous buildings with all the creative effort going on inside and with little except for the name on the outside. Nevertheless, I did manage to find a few and sometime I might revisit the project, see if I can find new and even better ones.
Currently my exploration interests are of a kind I haven’t done for years and tend towards things of an ‘adult’ nature. 

In my early days here, and by the way, I have been in SL over 17 years (phew!), I’d been tempted to such places but over time got a bit bored of them. Now, things have changed a bit, more than a bit actually. The interactivity has become more imaginative, and sophisticated, if that’s not too over-the-top word for them, and the people I meet generally more interesting. Well, regarding the latter , mostly interesting, some are still kinda vacuous and lacking. 

But I’ve been meeting some really fascinating people and enjoyed their company in lots of interesting and unexpected ways. I have long found it hard to resist my deeper nature, or maybe my darker nature, and SL gives me a chance to express that part of me. So, why not go for it! All in the name of pleasure and more pleasure, and more pleasure, and more…….

© Anan Eebus 

 

 

Happy Christmas from me and Santa baby

 

tricks of treats #10- Hallowmas

 

Hallowmas
where the past
catches up with you,
flaunting
and taunting
haunting your every step
scratching at the truth
tooth and claw
until your skin is raw
oozing from each pore
feeding on your flaws
reading every twitch and tell
and using them against you,

pulling out your roots
tearing at your seams
shredding your defences
poisoning your streams,

feel it brush
against your thoughts,
feel it creep
into your sores,
feel it pouring
acid in your wounds,
too late to be saved
from the things you crave,
careful with that dream
in case no one hears you scream,
can you recall a past
that you hoped would last?

© E. Calder

tricks of treats #9

 

© E. Calder

tricks of treats #8

 

© E. Calder

tricks of treats #7

 

© E. Calder

tricks of treats #6

 © E. Calder

tricks of treats #5

 

© E. Calder

tricks of treats #4

 

© E. Calder

tricks of treats #3

© E. Calder

tricks of treats #2

 

© E. Calder

tricks of treats #1

 

© E. Calder

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