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

my SL Flickr Page

Me and my photography in Second Life on Flickr, go see more of me 😎 this is where I post a whole load of SL imagery I find when I'm exploring, and some of me to.

for bigger image on Flickr click > "I me mine"

~ Anan x

can’t see the prims for the mesh

One could choose to be prim and proper, or one could choose to be a complete mesh…

In two world and in two minds it’s sometimes hard to reconcile one within the other or one without. While some have chose the latter to go mesh in toto, clothes, skin and shape and who knows probably mind, though what a mesh-mind is like is something far to tangled to contemplate, while others retain the old school tie, so to speak, 100 % prim, and also quite possibly in mind too. Then there are those who mix-and-match, pick-and-choose, bits of this and bits of that and try and make them fit which is tricky as mesh and prims are rarely made to meet each other’s eye. So, a little tinkering and cheating is required to make an almost seamless join.

Primmers may choose to keep their skin and shape while choosing mostly mesh clothes, sometimes making a bit of a mesh-mash but with careful stitching can usually be made to seem organic and natural. Meanwhile meshers don’t have this dilemma and just go all-in mesh-mad even with their heads. Now there’s a tricky thing, a mesh body with a prim, or what I’d call normal, head but as long as you tone your skin just right it’s not insurmountable. Especially that still mesh heads come with few variations and you can end up looking like a hundred or a thousand others: a world of doppelgangers!

Of course some mesh clothes and bits and bobs are made to fit prim bodies and just as well as even mesh bodies are slippery things and finding the right mesh clothes to even vaguely fit is a humongously uninviting challenge.

Now, to mesh hair, which is debatable at best insofar as does it really work as well as prim hair? The jury’s out probably and no one likes their hair to be dissed. But, mesh hair works best when short and only certain long or medium styles look halfway decent with so many looking ill-fitting, clumsy, clunky and clompy, if any hair can be either of those things It does have a habit of looking like it’s been glued down with tons of hairspray, being that it doesn’t actually move. This is partly solved when mesh is mixed with some prim to give it some flexi, and a flyaway touch when moving, perhaps a more natural look and probably feel, after all we all feel, even in Second Life.

The biggest problem for mesh is we all have different computers with different computing power and mesh, as opposed to prims, needs lots, and I mean lots! Otherwise you wind up surrounded by two-dimensional coloured human shapes or even more disturbing, distorted clothing gone awry sometimes absolutely massive unable to resolve in your screen because basically they are over-scripted, and you’re under-powered. So SL can seem even more alien than it usually is with a plethora of mishapes (or meshapes) because mesh needs more than most of us SL’ers have.

This problem doesn’t happen with prims and the now largely left behind sculpties never really sat too comfortably being they weren’t actually the shape they appeared and were in-disguised, invisible massive blocks that you either kept bumping into or walking through which made you think you had some superpower, and made a mockery of walls, making them pretty much superfluous along with everything else that was supposed to be a solid object. It could look good but interacting with it was impossible. Prims are undoubtedly the most screen and computer-friendly, the sculpt too in that sense but not very interactive-friendly, with mesh being proper memory-gobblers, slow to resolve and can sometimes go hugely mental, hence, not so screen and computer-friendly. Unless you’re an evil genius with the most powerful computer in the world stealing everyone else’s computing power! Mwahahahahahahaha!

Of course, if you’re not into SL you won’t have a clue what I’m talking about and think I’m just making it all up or talking on tongues. So, just take my word for it: there’s mesh, there’s prims, and sometimes there’s sculpties and they all go together like a blind-date gone wrong, when all the two parties can’t wait to do is politely make ones excuses and leave.

ps…. prims are ‘primitives’, visual 3D object with predefined parameter used as the building blocks in SL to make basically everything lok and interact the way they do.

pps…. can’t be bothered to define anything else LOL.

© Anan Eebus 2019

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

the rising dark (from the Vampiricalia)

 Bloodlines, Netherworld, Progeny, Vampire Mafia, Vitae, The Hunger, Eternal Conflict, Dark Embrace, Masquerade, Embraced, Immortal Legions, Empower Immortals, Night Blood………

     … they came, they went, precarious between the night and the day, the real and unreal, some still stalk while others have crumbled dust to dust and ashes to ashes, some burned brightly but briefly and others were left behind remaindered but still clinging on to dear undeath, starved of blood, bereft of souls become ghosts, phantoms, husks trapped in a never forever in defiant decay refusing to greet their already fateful fate, and as for the rest, may they rest in peace.

      Bloodlines still hangs on the dominant vampirical force in the Second Life (SL) landscapes and remains the most reliable despite not being cheap and far from affordable for everyone.  Like all games and roleplays in SL it is not what it used to be and has had to innovate to survive, nevertheless it’s still the prime-cut whatever your temptation, be it Vampire or Lycanthrope or extra-human as in a Bloodsoul, a Demon or Angel or combinations of any two: quite clever really.  It’s grid-wide and not confined to a single sim which confers it some advantages but could also, as has happened to many, just as easily be its downfall as in too big for its boots (or fangs or claws!) if not handled with the delicacy of a love bite. It’s HUDs frequently get updated and lands currently being revamped and added too which hopefully all the better for roleplay.

      Progeny is now likely the second most played vampire game inworld and continues to grow though not quite as exponentially as it did when it started, times which were rocky to say the least.  Recently progress has slowed to a statelier but near snails-pace of growth leaving many frustrated who years later are still waiting for things to happen that were promised and still haven’t materialized. It is definitely less democratic than Bloodlines and definitely more secretive and you still have to be invited to join but it is also less costly, at least at the basic level of play. Progeny can be a bit sluggish when it comes to new things even though it has lots of ideas but its sim doesn’t match Bloodlines for functionality or imagination yet and its website is still inaccessible and almost closely-guarded secret. Progeny’s almost one-hand juggling doesn’t do it any favours.

      The Hunger: first blood still lives and breathes, hanging in there, but only just. It still functions though for whatever reason interest has waned. Their website has been recently updated for the first time for ages which may mean a possible reanimation is on the cards. What future plans they have are still uncertain or at least kept under wraps, or underground! At least like Bloodlines and Progeny they do have a homeland of a kind and shop. Nevertheless, it still feels all a bit on-hold and languishing in a stasis waiting for a sunrise that may or may not come. Its main motivator was/ is battle, conflict and competition but with so few are active its relevance hangs somewhat limp . They do have a huge range of Races though to choose which could be seen as spreading things too thin and just too confusing, or, likely to hook a wider group of people. Regardless of any of this there are still vast numbers who at least own one of their HUDs. Like Bloodlines though it is still too costly for many to effectively take part, especially if you want to set up or acquire your own clan which is blood-curdlingly expensive.

      Eternal Conflict, subtitled ‘Angels and Demons’, is one on which to keep a beady eye as softly, softly, quietly, quietly behind the scenes appears to be growing in numbers and interest. In addition to those two Races it is planning to add to its canon with Vampires, Lycans and Thralls under the subtitle  ‘Afterlife’. Not exactly a new kid on the block but new enough to still be novel for anyone looking for a change from the older regimes and intriguing enough to attract shiny new converts. again though there is a cost element which is a continuing problem in SL, not everyone can fund their habits inworld so easily. It’s quite secretive and low-key and you do need to be sort of invited, as with Progeny, which means finding an active player to welcome you with open wings.

      Empower Immortals still lingers but only just and you’d be lucky if not total amazed to find any active player or clan now inworld. Mostly a world of Vampires, Lycan and Humans but does include other Races such as Fae, witches and Demons and there are similarities to Bloodlines, though not quite as close as Netherworld which it is obvious poached a lot of their ideas from it. In all fairness to Netherworld they were trying to make a more affordable version for those not with the deep pockets required for Bloodlines.  Bizarrely their products can still be bought on SL’s Marketplace so in one sense it clings on though likely its days are numbered if not already past their ‘best by’ date.

      Believe it or not that well-known online and real-world vampire game of Masquerade can still be found inworld. At best though it is merely in remnant form, though being the even more highly-secretive almost mason-like world it is one can never really be sure. Inworld it has no tools, weapons, HUDs, none of the bells and whistles found in the others, and is entirely confined to roleplay, character-development and suspension of belief.

      Vitae was for a time a brave attempt at establishing something new in the SL vampire community and while it lasted, which was actually several, was fairly successful and in many ways worked far better than all the others. It was certainly simpler and definitely cheaper, hence affordable to many and not over-complicated but had plenty of toys one could indulge and interact with.  Before its untimely death it did start to offer everything for free in an attempt to rescue its decline and encourage participation but in the end was defeated by the powers greater than itself, apathy and indifference.  It even had a sim for roleplay but its creator had a meltdown from being the sole doer of everything, which is no mean feat and basically impossible for any one person, even a vampire, to sustain the demands of these things.

      Vampire Mafia, Embraced and Night Blood and countless others which at the moment I can’t remember are buried beyond all hope of exhumation. Vampire Mafia was also a near copy-cat of Bloodlines, in fact started by disgruntled BL vamps, which probably in part lead to its downfall despite having its own impressive roleplay sim as well as being grid-wide. Embraced was based on a combat-model of roleplay, the KROS system known as ‘Kindred’, like The Hunger in a sense but distinct and had a clever range of tools, toys and fangs. It too faded away eventually, probably diminishing returns of revenue and interest as at first was quite costly but towards the end did what Vitae did and virtually give stuff away, but not even that saved it. As for Night Blood, this was designed by a band of unapologetic and disgruntled Hunger-players as essentially Vampire versus Lycan but barely bothered the competition before crumbling in a heap of in-fighting and bitterness.

      Vampires, what are they like!

      Then there was Dark Embrace, one of SL’s best-kept secrets for a while which of course meant it didn’t last but while it did functioned as probably the friendliest of vampire games, which sounds a bit strange for Vampires but worked regardless. It’s a simple vampire-only HUD-based system but different from any other and whose ethos was to keep it simple and affordable and most of all fun. It still exists, not in the form of a shop, or vendors or a dedicated sim but in me, being probably the sole-player of it now still wearing and fulfilling its objectives.  Lucky for me I had all of its bits and pieces bequeathed to me by the creator on leaving SL, though sadly not the scripts to change anything. It still works though and perhaps is closer to the true nature of vampire, loner, rogue, truly hiding in shadows but very much up close and personal to unwary necks.

      So there aren’t many now though there is no shortage or vampire-themed sims and lands some post-apocalyptic,  some based on literature such as Dracula, or Television á la Buffy, Vampire Diaries, Supernatural, or movies such as Twilight (cough!) or Underworld and some focused on some kind of mythology like the inworld lands of Transylvania, Nocturne or Convergence. None of these are grid-wide though but instead provide a kind of immersive roleplay through their sim-specific HUDs and combat systems. Needless to say SL is littered with various vampire clan lands so watch your step, and where you land, your fate could be just a bite away.

      So many roads of bones littered with unrest, abandon and corpses, regardless it’ll all come to an end in the end, eternal life be damned as it is anyway, one day proving immortality to be a just another contradiction, misinterpretation, an exercise in wishful thinking, an altered state in which only the sorely deluded are convinced they’ve evaded the epistemological silver bullet or stake that was there all along plain as a new moon night.

 © Anan Eebus

Note:  if anyone remembers any other SL grid-wide vampire roleplay systems  that I haven’t mentioned here get in touch and tell me as I know there have been more, leave a message, email, IM inworld, whatever. Thanks for reading.

https://slbloodlines.com/
https://www.progeny-vampire.com/
http://thehungerfirstblood.com 
https://ad.eternal-conflict.com/
https://immortals.empowermagick.com/
https://secondlife.com/destinations/roleplay/vampire#