A Date in Space

Ganymede Mojito - with extra sparkles. It was pink and tasted like strawberries. There's probably a metaphor in there*.

Last night, I received a message from sian asking if I wanted a quickie down at the Necronom. No, really, she did - she just didn't mean like that. Get you brain out of the gutter.

Sup, space girl

It was in the bar at Necronom VI that I first met sian. She offered to dance for me, and I pointed out in response, painfully naively, that I was straight. Quite rightly, she replied with "so?", and so our weirdly uncomfortable roleplay relationship began. sian said afterwards that she knew she could push it like that with me because I'd made it blindingly obvious that I wasn't going invite or enjoy any kind of sexual relationship with her. That wasn't what I wanted. She probably phrased it better than that. 

It's been a long time since I have roleplayed in the Necronom bar, and sian's invitation to go back there last night - on a date - was a strangely sweet blast from the past.

We stayed for about an hour, re-writing and re-working the little scene that began it all. It didn't play out exactly the same way it had before, but that's what made it interesting. We weren't there to write something groundbreaking, but the short scene we did create was full of juicy tidbits for our wider role-play story.

We aren't the only ones who have grown up since then - SL has changed, too. Our catsuits were effectively sprayed-on back then, and sian's baldness seemed logical to me because my hair used to fight with my body and stick through my shoulder and do all kinds of unlikely (and unfun) things. Last night, sian was wearing a little anime/sci-fi number that would have been a nightmare to make fit properly were it not made of mesh, and whilst Kitti's leggings were old spray-on favourites, her hair, shirt, hands, boots, necklace, eyelashes and eyes were all made out of new-fangled mesh.

sian

sian 's hips move at identical, precise angles, each step perfectly modulated. She stops, pulls her skirt down, twice, each slight movement exactly as before. "Would you like me to dance for you?"

Kitti flushed pink from the thick, smudged paint of her eyeliner down to the wide band around her throat. "N-no, thank you" she stammered. 

sian moved close, her lithe physicality as precise as her language. "I can supply companionship at all levels, from basic phatic conversation up to and including physical congress."

"Physical what?" 

sian 's tone was matter of fact. She could have been talking about accounts. "Sex." 

Kitti suddenly felt stupid, as well as uncomfortable. "Really," she said, "That's very, eh, kind. but I er." She had no idea what to say. Her discomfort was acute. She'd never had sex, and had never dreamed of having it with a woman. Or a cyborg.

Kitti

I've written quite extensively here already about the role of discomfort in role-playing, and sian possesses a seemingly innate ability to make my characters desperately uncomfortable - across the board. Her comfort-stomping-out boots crumble genre fences. I think it's about time she got a taste of her own medicine. I have fired a warning shot. Watch this space, creepy space girl. I'm coming for you. 

If you'd like to visit Necronom VI, click here - here! That link will take you to a little control-type room, and in front of you will be a map that you can click on to take you to specific places. We were in the shuttle bar.

*I googled "sexual connotations of strawberries" and wish I hadn't, although the results I got genuinely don't fit our little rp scenario at all. A humorous dead-end with that one.

It was like that when I got here

Click here! to see this full-size on Flickr

It was like that when I got here, I swear it. There were no signs of forced entry, but the CCTV camera has been spray-painted black, too, so I doubt you'll get anything off there. Why would anybody want to do that to the BaC® Conflict Management Centre™, sian's new roleplay hangout? I simply cannot imagine. I'm not paid to imagine, right? Right. Anyway.

Click here to read about BaC on sian's blog - here! or click here to go straight to the hangout - here! Or do both. I'm not here to tell you want to do.

The Red Pill

Let's see how deep the rabbit hole goes

Because I'm as mad as a hatter, I logged onto Facebook, and then Tumblr, this morning and invited questions from non-SL users about Second Life. I thought I might get a little variety in the questions, maybe get asked how something worked, or if such-and-such was true, but the four - I know, I know, I need to sit down, it's so many - responses I received were all to the tune of one question: What is Second Life, and why would you ever 'go' there?

Deep breath. 'What is Second Life' has got to be up there with the great unexplainable mysteries of life. God, the Big Bang, dark matters, why washing machines make widows of socks, why toast always lands butter-side down: we may never know the answer to these, nor may we ever come up with a completely satisfactory answer to What Second Life Is, but - take another deep breath - I am going to try and answer it nonetheless. I am going to bravely go where a thousand pink-haired rabbits have probably gone before me (we are talking about the Internet, after all). 

We're going to take the red pill. Fasten your seatbelt, Dorothy.

What is Second Life?

Second Life is a virtual world that exists somewhere within the Internet. When you download SL, what you are really doing is downloading what we call a 'viewer' - software with which to open a portal to allow you to see into, and create an avatar within, Second Life. The language of this suggests the opening of a window - literally - to view something which is already in existence just, usually, beyond your line of sight. When you log out and the window closes, the world carries on without you.

The easiest thing to do is to liken SL to a game - preferably, an MMO like World of Warcraft, except with more possibilities when it comes to character creation and customisation. Whilst this analogy works to explain how SL exists in the first place, it doesn't take into account that SL has no predefined objectives, no scoring system, no health or experience bars. In WoW, you can create characters that all exist in the same world, from the same lore, and all learn and level-up based on the same markers for advancement. In SL, not only do you not 'level-up', but the people you are meeting and interacting with may be pulling ideas and information from entirely different worlds and lores from you. The basis for the creation of their characters might be wildly different from yours, and you cannot even rely on the idea that the person before you comes from the same society as you in the real world, because that person could be from a country on the other side of the world from you. 

It's impossible not to draw similarities between SL and The Matrix. A whole virtual simulated world, a replica of the real world, which you reach by plugging yourself into a computer. If you die in the Matrix, you die in the real world - not the case with SL, but then that's because you cannot really die in SL. If someone upsets you in the virtual world, however, it's not so easy to let that emotion go when you go back to the real world. Whether you like it or not, just as your mind travels into the Matrix, so your mind travels with you into SL. And as Morpheus says and as I have repeated here ad nauseam, 'the mind makes it real'.

It's not all nearly as scary as I have made it sound there. Most of the characters I have come across have been 'normal' humans, so to speak, and because of time differences, and because of the social circles I have fallen in with, most of the people I meet are British or American. Those contexts are not, exactly, worlds apart. The only people I have come close to offending with my foreign-lore-ways were the Tolkien elves, and they turned out to be more laid back than I had been warned they would be. Usually, if you say please and thank you, and know how to take turns in a conversation, you'll be just fine.

In fact, SL seems to thrive on a kind of honesty not found, at least in my social circles, in real life. Anonymity can be a great bolster to confidence, but people in SL are often very forthright and open about things as personal as mental health, and sex. Sometimes, they can be a little too forthright, and as such, a lot of 'drama' takes place. Drama is a major issue for SL, and it's something that has been known to drive people away from engaging with the virtual world. 

Because of the drama, and because there is no specific law (that I am aware of) for SL, SL is populated with vigilantes. On forums, personal blogs, and social media networks such as Plurk, vigilantes launch attacks, rightly or wrongly, against those they deem to be wrongdoers, accusing them of everything from copyright infringement to child pornography. Charity fundraisers that didn't give the money they raised to charity, people that think it's O.K. to sell clothes featuring swastikas or dressed inspired by the Columbine school shooting, insensitive remarks about rape - it's all happened in SL, and it's all been pointed out and dealt with by vigilantes. In terms of social and individual empowerment, it's fantastic; but, with any good vigilante film, there's always the fear that people see and accuse first, and ask questions later. Butchering one person doesn't change a general attitude.  

In terms of physicality, SL looks like...well...a whole lot of different things. There is no one aesthetic, and no rhyme or reason to how the virtual world is arranged. If you owned the land and the building skills, you could place Australia beside, say, Sweden, and have one foot in each replica-country, except SL is usually more diverse than that. Instead of building two countries next to each other, more often than not I find I could have one foot in a boxing ring a la Fight Club, and the other in a meadow which is home to a race of fairies with mermaid fins. 

Because there are so many individual creators and designers, the lands (sims) you can walk through can change as often and as quickly as the English weather. Since there is no are-you-any-good-at-this test, the quality of the builds can vary dramatically, too, and they will only exist as long as you keep paying for the land you are renting from Linden Labs. If you stop paying, you lose your right to build there. If you choose to rent land through a middle man, and someone offers you a better deal, you can move your building to another virtually-physical location. In that way, you can never wholly be sure that the place you are trying to visit is still going to be there. I tried to teleport (main method of transportation, after walking) to the World's End Garden earlier (see what that looks like here - here!), and instead ended up on a sim full of everyday-looking houses and great big palm trees.

Why Second Life? What is the point?
Second Life means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, and what drives them to the virtual world in the first place is not necessarily what keeps them there. There's no way I can account for everyone's motives, but here are some thoughts.

SL is, potentially, a fantastic platform for design, creation, and money-making. Designing avatars and building houses in SL has the same appeal as designing avatars and building houses does on programmes such as the Sims. In SL, however, whilst you can get a limited about of clothes and items for free, things cost money, and land to build on costs money, and so many people turn to creating and selling their owns items or clothing in order to make SL pay for itself. For creatives, it's a great way to make a bit of pocket money, and also another forum for you to spread your artwork. I know of more than one real life artist who uses SL to sell artwork in various forms and to build up another fan-base. SL also offers access, thusly, to a wide range of other creatives with which you can bounce ideas and collaborate. That's exciting, no?

Some people with anxiety and/or depression also find solace in the virtual world. Being able to hide behind a different face can be a confidence booster, and it allows greater control over who you interact with, and when - especially since there are a thousand legitimate and familiar excuses you can employ to soften the I-don't-want-to-speak-to-you blow. There is one person I call friend who uses SL to get out and socialise because he is a full-time carer and cannot leave his house for personal time very often. 

It is also, alternatively, a place in which to hide - just as people hide from real life in books, games, and TV shows - , a place where the thing you are running from doesn't have to exist for a while. There's a danger there, in that a lot of expectation is made of what the virtual world is capable of, and sometimes it is all too easy to hide within its virtual boundaries and not to deal with the issues that originally drove us there. Alternatively, it offers a sanctuary in which to gather strength and support until you are ready to confront the real world. SL can't give you any answers that the real world can't, but perhaps the performance of life, the framing of it - and the performance and framing of yourself - can help lead you to the answers we can only get from ourselves.

Other people use SL as a place for self-experimentation, whether that be on a shall-I-dye-my-hair-purple level, or a am-I-into-BDSM-sex level. This ties (ha ha) into roleplay, but goes beyond just sexual roleplay - SL presents another medium in which to roleplay, listing itself beside the tabletop and forums. People in SL take RP very seriously, and the creation of collaborative stories like this is a wonderful thing in my opinion.

As I have written about here (- here!), there is no obligation to be the person you are in real life in your Second Life. If you want to log on and act like a chauvinist, off you go (it happens more than you might imagine). You can use your avatar to pretend to be confident, to pretend to be a rogue - to pretend to be whatever you like. As I've suggested, you don't even have to be human. You could be an animal, real or mythological, or a car, or an aeroplane, or a robot. The limits are the building skills of the virtual community.

The point, truly, is that Second Life has no point other than the point you give it, and many people stop engaging with Second Life when their original motive finds some real-life conclusion. If you get passed the difficult interface and utterly unintuitive avatar customisation, as well as the idiots that line up to flash their fake penises at newbies, there are some fantastic things to see in Second Life. Virtual coastlines, beautiful dream-worlds, spaceships, dragons, diners plucked straight out of the 1950s; if you can think of it, it probably exists, and if not, you can create it for yourself. 

Of course, there are an awful lot of fake penises kicking around, too.

Does that even begin to answer either question? There seems to be so much to say, but I think that is enough for now. I'm late for a very important date.

Miscellany

it's dark in here

Sitting in my unsorted screenshots folder is a small collection of random pictures I have snapped for various reasons that, by themselves, don't have enough weight to have their own blog post. I like to let them mount up in the corner, then post them all together in a swirl of dust. So here goes.

Chipped nail varnish

I am as big a fan as anybody of the SLink add-on hands, and the grid seems now to be awash with people making virtual nail varnish. At the Cosmetic Fair, I found this advert for chipped nail varnish. I'm not exactly a fashionista, but I'm aware that chipped nail varnish is 'a thing', if you like, in the real world, and so I suppose it wasn't going to take too long to make an appearance in the virtual world. I didn't buy the chipped nail effect, so I can't tell you first hand (lol) how good it is, but it looks pretty cool from the pictures. Nail varnish is something I own quite a lot of in real life, and this love hasn't been lost between realms. 

It's also worth mentioning that these varnishes, and the other make-up on sell by this vendor at the Cosmetic Fair, was all modelled by men. I didn't notice anything else at the Cosmetic Fair using male models, and I thought it was pretty cool. At no point did I think 'this must only be aimed at men, then', and I started wondering whether the appearance of more male models would open up the forum, and allow men to look at female models and still consider the product for themselves as I did. 

Unfortunately, I'm an idiot and I didn't note down the name of the shop selling these. If you have it, pop it in the comments? Thank you.

Moving on.

Apple for teacher?

Another fair: I snapped the above picture at the Enchantment Fair. The Enchantment Fair is offering fairytale themed items, and the first three months' are about Snow White. The first stand I came across when arriving at the fair was this one, selling necklaces featuring this wonderfully made poisoned apple, amongst other things. I just thought it was all kinds of wonderful. It was made by aisling, and I really, really want to buy it.

Do not adjust your screen

Yup, that's right - I found toothbrushes. Toothbrushes that sing to you. I have no idea where I was when I found these, except that it was at yet another fair that was selling a lot of things aimed at children. I'm not sure how legal these are, since they use what look like straight-lifted Disney pictures and no, I didn't buy one, but they did make me laugh. Dental hygiene is clearly very important to beings whose teeth are fake and who cannot eat, drink, or get gum disease or bad breath. I'm filing this one with the toilets and the washing machines that originally informed my original essay and the opinion that our avatars are nostalgic for a world we want to escape (which is an intellectual Chinese finger-trap).

Let's not linger here, we're not dentists:

Fighter pilot Vespers

I found a wonderful picture of this little space rocket on Flickr (which I am struggling to find again - sorry!) and, realising that I'm becoming a little bit of a hermit, decided I would go and explore the sim it was in. Norah Vespers came with me, which always makes any trip twice as fun. We found the pictured rocket and, of course, Norah hopped in it. Dressed as modern space-girls as we were, we made the rocket seem dated, retro, rustic, and I like the idea that we became a portrait of nostalgia on several layers.

On the same sim, we found these:

Got milk?

 Police golf cart milk float Robin Reliant things. Yup, wouldn't you be just petrified if one of those was coming after you? With our fit space-girl bodies, we could almost definitely out-run those things were we to get into trouble - which, of course, we never ever do.

And finally, a werewolf tried to scratch me. No, really, it happened!

see dialogue top left

Except that, because of the way SL almost pedantically upholds social maxims (namely, thou shalt not do anything to anybody else unless they give you expressed permission), he had to ask me if he could cut me up with his claws first, and I of course said no. I have no idea where this guy saw me to even attempt to attack me, but attack me he did. I was in the comfort of my own skybox when I saw the notification, and that seemed to make the offer simultaneously more funny and more scary. I've written a little bit about Bloodlines here, which I shall lazily paste a link to rather than explain again - here. Personally, I think he might have been more successful had he forced the action on me using the /me function, but I'm also kind of glad he didn't do that, for obvious reasons. Polite werewolves are definitely a thing now, especially since Anne Rice is writing their life stories. Being English, and a lover of Anne Rice, I appreciate politeness ;).

Yes, Kitti is wearing cat ears in that last picture, but is that really the oddest thing in this post?!

Totally Invisible

Browsing the SL marketplace today, for nothing in particular, I came across an advert for a HUD that makes you invisible. "Totally invisible", it claims, even hiding your name tag which, ordinarily, hovers over your head. Thinking I knew the answer, I sheepishly asked the members of a group I am part of if they knew about this and what it was for - and was surprised. "For combat sims," came the response, "So you can cheat". I confess, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I was relieved. "Ah, okay," I replied, making my relief evident "I thought it was going to be more sinister than that."

The same person then said, "Or for roleplay. Say you're naked and tied up and someone is raping you and you can't even see them." I had expected the answer to be seedy, but that exact use had not occurred to me. It does make some sense, though; amongst other things, I imagine women are getting pretty fed up with the ridiculous and ridiculously-proportioned prim cocks that these wannabe rapists are probably sporting, and so invisibility is probably the better option. 

Am I hiding, invisible in this shot? Hint: be serious now.

I'm ashamed to say, too, that my first response to this was actually that if you wanted to be invisible in roleplay, all you'd have to type is "Kitti Wytchwood is invisible"...but don't worry, I didn't type that in the group chat. I think I actually said that my roleplays don't tend to go down that way, which is true. I usually end up getting punched by those who are perfectly visible. The point is: that such exists, and is used in this way, doesn't surprise me in the least which is, I suppose, rather sad.

I don't even know where to begin unpacking this one. I wondered if this "total invisibility" thing wasn't a rather lofty claim, but the item in question has had six customer reviews, all of which are rather glowing. So, whatever they used it for, it must have worked. 

The same shop also has some kind of application/HUD/thing that supposedly allows you to send messages anonymously within SL, and/or to change your name to whatever you like to then send messages. No lofty claims this time - apparently, the messages are still traceable, thank the internet gods - but this is still rather unsettling, and I wonder if I would feel such confidence in that reassurance that the messages can be traced if my mother hadn't spent a couple of years being an internet pirate (Hi Mum!). Do those whose family members haven't been involved in the high seas of the interwebs know that such things can be traced? I'm not sure.

Seems to me that there's a question of consent here. And also, of common sense. And that whole general idea that if you're ashamed to attach your name to what you're saying, you probably shouldn't be saying it, and all of that. It's stood me in pretty good stead, but then I'm not the kind of person who has got "show tagged photos of me" turned off on Facebook because I'm afraid my mate Paul is gonna upload pictures of me flashing my tits at nuns when I got drunk in Manchester that time (If I got drunk and flashed some nuns and he took a photo, I'd say he's probably got every right to upload it to the Facebook. And I'd be hurt if he didn't tag me in it).

Dead Woman Walking

Last week, I managed to get myself involved in a roleplay scene that required me to play a role I have never really played before: the bad guy. More often than not, my characters are either down-and-outs who are forced to do distasteful and hideously unpleasant things for the greater good, or mercenaries-with-a-conscience that are forced to do really distasteful and traumatically unpleasant things for what they hope is the greater good. Whilst that might seem to be a pretty narrow field, it is, actually, inexhaustible, and I enjoy the infinite possibilities for variety that come with it.

But there I was, being a baddie. And looking like a complete bitch. Sian and I put our roleplay outfits together, well, together, and it was under her influence that Kitti ended up looking like the secretary from a science fiction film noir.

Space Noir

I am not a fan of planned roleplay (in fact, it makes me want to run away very very quickly), but having a character and knowing what it is that they want is endlessly helpful. That want doesn't, necessarily, have to be something that can happen immediately, nor does it have to be something terribly specific. This was actually one of the only times for me in SL roleplay where what my character wanted was very specific: to retrieve the errant agent P, and re-format her. This was made more complicated by the presence of Norah, a friend of the runaway who, let me tell you now, packs a punch.

What is it about roleplays involving Sian during which I get punched?! This isn't on. Back in the old days, when I first started doing roleplay via MSN Messenger, my first writing partner used to smack me over the head with a crowbar every time he wanted to change the locale. This did not amuse me.

Last week's roleplay scenario was interesting not only because I was a baddie, but because that baddie character I was playing could easily be an extension of the character I have previously roleplayed with Sian in the past. Little fresh-faced Kitti was offered a job by Sian in the very first roleplay we wrote together, and though the terms of that position were never formally laid out, it was abundantly clear that it would be in the sex industry. What became clear from this roleplay was that the world I had thrust my poor little down-and-out into was one that had expectations of her pretty face and young body, and for somebody like Kitti who had nowhere else to go, it was difficult not the see the security such an institution might provide. Are you repulsed yet? If not, I'm writing it incorrectly.

Those boots were so made for stamping on hopes and dreams...:P

 So this new, harder Kitti, made cruel by those harsh crescent moons of make-up and that brash red lipstick (not to mention the ponytail - that's gotta hurt when you take the band out!), is now on the other side of the sex industry system. To avoid joining the ranks of the pleasure dolls, she has joined those who look after them and keep them in line. And that is a wonderfully dark playground of possibilities and opportunities and complexities that I am rather excited to play out, and which give more depth and scope to my character than just labelling her a "baddie". Hopefully, I'll be able to deliver a few (emotional) punches myself before this story is exhausted. If not...I've got a really, really big gun to wave around. That should do the trick.

The scariest thing about being the villain of this piece is that I am, for the moment at least, the only one. Our roleplay scene took place at Hangars Liquides, home of the Crimson Merchants who had taken the errant agent in and made of her a friend. Now they've found out what went down in the Rainbow Bar (and if you want to know, too, I'll provide a link to Sian's posting of our log at the end of this post), they've declared that Kitti is a "dead woman walking". This is hilarious, of course, but still...scary. Sooner or later, I am going to end up in a room surrounded by people pointing guns at me, and I'm going to have to do some very quick talking to get my way out of that one. Hopefully, though, I've put a good word in about the choice of venue for this little showdown, so I'll at least get to meet them on my own terms. 

Fingers crossed, anyway.

If I get punched again, however, I might just rage-quit :P.

Click here - here! - to read a neatened up version of our roleplay chat log, as posted by Sian Pearl on her blog.

Vampire Hunter

That I fell in with the sci-fi/cyberpunk roleplaying crowd within Second Life was a complete accident. I am something of an amateur writer, and have been roleplaying on forums and via IMs on MSN Messenger (R.I.P) and Skype for years, but my genre of choice always was - and still is - fantasy. I cannot get enough of fantasy fiction, though I've sung that song before (here!), and don't really think I need to sing it again.

But I've been thinking. There is plenty of space within SL for an avatar to be involved in rps of all kinds of genres, and there is plenty of Kitti to go around - by which I mean, I don't think I've be compromising a whole lot if I got involved in something other than trying to free sex-bots in the back streets of Hangars Liquides...(I do love Hangars Liquides!)

So why am I not out there, living the fantasy (second) life? Sinking my fangs into somebody's neck, or trying to liberate some fellow elves from the Doctrine of Saint Tolkien? I do have a reservation.

I'm not interesting in the SL Vampire Bloodlines game. I don't want to go chasing avatars and drinking virtual blood and all of that. What that seems to leave, in my limited experience and research, is a lot of sims that adhere to an old, medieval kind of fantasy style, or sims like the City of Lost Angels that are more up-to-date, but operate on a HUD system with character types and levels and power ups, essentially creating a game to run alongside the writing.

With Teeth

But I don't want a game alongside the writing. I just want the writing. I'm not really fussed about time period or anything like that, and I have some pointy ears as well as some pointy teeth. I like wearing both at once (exhibit A). What I don't want is a world full of rules. I like to make the rules myself.

Does anybody have any advice or any suggestions? Are there any fantasy critters out there that want to write with me? I have to admit, my internet connection isn't so wonderful right now but I sure am willing!

[Side note: I've been updating Kitti's flickr with a lot of images that aren't making their way onto my blog. If you want to see them, please click on the Flickr button on the right-hand side. Thank you :)]

Steel Buns

Today, I threw together this outfit based on a prize Sian Pearl has created for the hunt her shop is taking part in, and I skipped off merrily to investigate sci-fi themed sims in which I could snap some vaguely interesting photos. I ended up - against my initial, better, judgement - in an aforementioned notorious space brothel bar, but managed to find a relatively quiet, relatively plain, spot in which to take what I hoped would be a decent shot. 

I had not been there five minutes when the IM came through: "Come join me", it read, "I'm in a dark alley."

"Why are you in a dark alley," I replied, "When there are all these lovely electric lights to bask beneath?" God only knows how he found me in such a large sim when, according to my mini-map, he was nowhere anywhere near me. 

"Come and join me," this male avatar wrote to me again. "Do you want to play?"
"No," I replied. "Sorry. I'm sure you'll find somebody who does!"

Considering the reputation of this notorious space brothel bar which labels itself a place for "rape, forced sex, alien sex, and bdsm", these IMs were very unforceful and not as presumptuous as some I have received on much nicer, happier sims. But doesn't get away from the fact that what we are talking about, here, is the proposition of a rape fantasy. The proposition of forced sex and, I'm sure, some kind of sexual enjoyment of the scenario in the real world by this person. That he propositioned me is not the issue - I was in a place where people go to do that kind of thing, and he followed the etiquette perfectly by asking me rather than attempting to force the fantasy upon me. No; the problem here is my response.

What did I do when asked if I would allow my avatar to be potentially forced into all kinds of strange and definitely uncomfortable-looking sex positions and acts? I apologised. I didn't just say "no, thank you" and move on. I apologised, and felt the need to offer him a bizarre kind of compliment.

Why did I do that?!

I got the photos that I wanted at Insilico, not the unnamed notorious space brothel bar. They weren't what I originally wanted, but I got to be a little bit more creative in my self-portraiture, I guess.

Gaaaah.

Steel Bun(ny Ear)s

Click the image to enlarge, or click here to see it on flickr.

How to Ask for It

Loud enough?

Our clothes are asking for it. Loudly. They actually demanded it. They pointed at our half-naked bodies, gestured obscenely at our chests, thrust forward our groins, practically pushed us onto your prim cocks. They shouted: WE WANT YOU TO HAVE SEX WITH US - RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We dare you

I think not.

As ever with this blog, I have written about this topic before. Here and here (sort of) and here and here. But here I am with another slightly different angle to dissect the topic and try to get the best look at what is really going on, here. 

Sian Pearl is a parthenoid (this is best explained by her blog). She has a very specific aesthetic, well-cultivated and, okay, whilst it isn't always to my taste, it is well thought-out and considered and carefully pieced together. But recently, her developed sense of self has taken a bit of a knock, and she has been considering dropping her image in favour of jeans and jumpers. Well...that's fine, if it's what she wants - only, it isn't what she wants. What Sian wants is...okay, I imagine, a little bit of a wow factor. She wants to be attractive, I'm sure. But she also wants to be taken seriously. And questioned. And interacted with - not just prepositioned. And, if you will forgive me for being crude, not just turned into a fetish object and/or masturbated over. That such happens is not beyond Sian's comprehension. She has known this since day one. But the onslaught has reached such a point that she feels uncomfortable. And that just...isn't on.

What's to be done?

As I have said...Sian knows that by dressing this way, she is allowing a handful of people to view her as a fetish object. To use her flickr stream as self-pleasuring material. If I was more popular on flickr, I might be concerned that some of Kitti's latest pictures might be used in the same way. There is an understanding that dressing this way attracts such attention. But does that mean Sian shouldn't dress this way? Does that mean that I continue to dress as I do, the same fate awaits me?  Don't we have any control whatsoever over how we are viewed beyond our attire, and what the image we make can be used for?

There is a fine line between curiosity and voyeurism...

To what extent does the way we choose to dress act as a statement of intent? Without question, there are people, both in Second Life and the real world, that dress a certain way to suggest a certain desire, and that is not always a sexy desire.  We dress smartly in an office to be taken seriously. We go to comedy shows in our jeans to show that we're ready not to be taken too seriously. There are a thousand examples.

But how do we negotiate that? How do we work that out? It must, surely, get confusing for people contending with these issues. But that does not make it okay to presume. It does not make it okay to take images that aren't yours and use them for purposes other than what was intended - especially not without permission.

How do you work out what someone's intention is? I'll get to that in a second.

Here is a statement of my intent. Don't get it? Click here.

What this shouldn't lead to is a sense of fear. We shouldn't be afraid of each other. We shouldn't be afraid of each other's intentions and guessing them wrong. But that comes, I think, with a little intelligence, and some respect.

Respect really is the bottom line here. Having respect for others - enough, at the least, to ask somebody what their intentions are if you are unsure. In many roleplay situations in SL, roleplayers are asked to check via the private IM system before they do...well, anything!...with another avatar. It takes a heartbeat to check with someone if it's okay to attempt to engage their avatar in conversation, to start a confrontation, or to solicit them for sex. And, I imagine, most avatars are capable of answering you pretty succinctly. And if you're still unsure? Steer clear. Don't do it. And this is the same for outside of rp situations.

It comes back to that age-old battleground of "She Asked For It". Only, she didn't. We all know this - or, at least, we all should. There is only one way to ask for it. And I'm going to tell you How It's Done.

Are you ready? Are you going to write this down?

You open your mouth, and you bloody well ask for it. What your clothes are "saying" has absolutely nothing to do with it. I reiterate - I ask for it with my own mouth, not my attire.

Thank you to Sian Pearl for posing with me.

Thoroughly Kicked

Back in May, I wrote a piece entitled 'Kicking the (Chrome) Bucket', talking about the cyberpunk scene in SL in relation to an article by Svetlana Boym on nostalgia. The cyberpunk aesthetic and the idea of a nostalgia for an obsolete vision of the future are both ideas that I am very interested in, and since I wrote that original post, I have acquainted myself with a very popular example of both: 'Blade Runner'.

'Blade Runner' is not the inspiration for today's post, however. When I logged into SL this morning and found a present from my good friend Sian, some science-fiction themed hair by Paper Heart, it was Effie Trinket of 'The Hunger Games' that popped into my mind. May the odds be ever in your favour!

So I popped some food pills, took a couple of screenshots, and sat down to think about the reflective nostalgic that I am. And how much of a pretender at it I am - the (outdated) vision of the future Kitti is modelling here is not even one that belongs to my generation, and her get-up certainly does not reflect a future I would desire. That future is soooo yesterday. Instead, Kitti looks like the love-child of 'Blade Runner' and 'Hairspray', which doesn't say an awful lot for poor Effie Trinket. 

This chrome bucket is thoroughly kicked.

Kit 49 - Part Four

My real life trip to Southern California is coming to a close. This time tomorrow, I'll already have been on the plane for an hour, provided I managed to navigate LAX alone successfully. It's not LAX that haunts my dreams, however. I've never flown alone before.

Anyway: I give you part four. I had a lot of fun putting the outfits together for this one and trying to work out what looked cool and what just looked like poor Kitti had fallen into a charity shop basket. Don't get me wrong - the fallen into a charity shop basket look isn't bad, it's just not what I was going for here. And it was quite interesting trying to make Kitti look like several different people without once changing her shape and/or bone structure (I'm still not really brave enough to mess with that!).

View on flickr - here.

Though I've enjoyed making all of these installments so far, I think I'm perhaps losing some of the sense of play that I started with. I felt a bit repetitive, since many of the shots I have used so far have been taken in the same place, and that place isn't all that big. For part five, I have taken some shots across a couple of sims, and I'm trying to find a way to put them together seamlessly. I'm planning a longer strip, too, perhaps more akin to the style of part one. We'll see what I end up with, I guess. 

I'm not much of a comic-book reader. I am familiar with the general style, of course, and I have read quite a few manga books now (namely, Hellsing and Death Note and some of Black Butler), but I'm really just playing with the images I have and what I'm capable of doing in Paint Shop Pro, which is my photo manipulation tool of choice.

But more on that soon, hopefully!

Kit 49: part one / part two / part three on flickr.

Kit 49 - Part Three

Hello from sunny SoCal! As promised, here is another installment, if you like, of my comic experiment Kit 49. Woo! The shot I gave you in my previous post on good faith is not from this part, but from part five - so I've got a couple more installments heading your way. Hurray for being organised!

More posts (not comic related) are on the way.

Kit 49 - Part Three

To view it full size, please click here. Thank you for Sion Pearl for being patient enough to pose for me - and for not adding too much to my ginger anxiety by questioning Kitti's adoption of blonde hair for this character (:P).

Kit 49: Part One / Part Two

Kit 49 - Part Two

A plain old cat

Since I enjoyed creating my previous comic/montage 'Kit 49', and got quite a bit of positive feedback, I decided that I'd made another. It's not as long nor as detailed as the other, but there we go.

Kit 49 - Part 2

It is best viewed large which, sadly, Blogger is not the best at facilitating. Please click here - here! - to view the image on my flickr (in the largest size, ha ha. You can then click where it says 'Kitti Wytchwood' to return to my flickr stream, if you so wish).

Thank you for reading!

Kit 49

This is just a quick post because I wanted to share with you an image I've spent far too long this evening, in the wake of my final exam, creating. 

After my recent post, Kicking the (Chrome) Bucket, I have been keeping an eye out as I surf the web for cyberpunk images, and, after coming across a pretty fantastic Hong Kong-esque cyberpunk comic-style drawing, I decided that I wanted to give it a-go myself. You can consider this a creative response akin to the Neo Cassandra post if it makes you feel better, but, in all honesty, I just wanted to 'create art', in all its pretentious glory.

Kit 49

All of the screenshots used were taken by me, with Kitti as my model, of course. I am quite pleased with the results! I could have done with a few more images, maybe, and a little more...action. But I think there is a fairly strong aesthetic, and it's my first one, so...be kind!

Click here to see the image, full size on my flickr: FULL SIZE or FULL SIZE WITH TEXT (which I'm not so sure about).

Kicking the (Chrome) Bucket

Revising for my only written exam of the year, I came across an article by Svetlana Boym entitled Nostalgia and Its Discontents. I remember reading it the first time and finding it not only informative, but enjoyable - which is rare for theatre and performance articles, let me tell you - so I set about quite happily reading it again. My exam is for my Theatre of New Europe module - New Europe being the struggle for a new European identity after the trauma of the Second World War (an attempt to move away from the fact that, as a continent, we managed to slaughter three whole generations of people). About halfway through my re-reading, I found that I had unlined this quote: 

Yet the nostalgia that I explore here is not always for the ancien regime, stable superpower or fallen empire, but also for the unrealized dreams of the past and visions of the future that have become obsolete.

Boym is referring here to the hopes of a newly-'liberated' East Germany, but, perhaps influenced by my recent excursions as a latex-clad Cassandra in the midst of space-Troy, I realised that Boym could quite easily have been talking about science fiction and the genre of cyberpunk. Second Life seems to have a fairly popular cyberpunk scene or, at least, to cultivate cyberpunk themes into their more general science fiction sims. It allows for the performance of the nostalgia of a future that was outdated before it even arrived.

As technology advances and our cars remain steadfast to the ground, we are realising that the future we dreamed we would be in by now hasn't happened yet, and probably never will. We wanted chrome and latex and flying cars and some kind of electric-magic that would allow us to communicate instantly with anybody across the global telepathically. Instead we got Facebook and Twitter; our cars are firmly rooted to the ground, and I'm pretty sure a new Primark, selling only cotton and denim, just opened in town.

Dissatisifed, then, we are nostalgic for the time when we believed in that future and this, I feel, is the crux of the cyberpunk genre. The aesthetic of cyberpunk is drawn from the grit and grunge of bygone eras; the spacemen that lurk in the shadows of the dystopian cities are clad in the spacesuits of Barbarella and paint their faces with the Bowie lightning bolt, because that is how we felt they would look twenty years ago.

They connect to the system, Matrix-style, by a series of wires. They have USB ports in their foreheads. They back-up their files to floppy disk. They store their spy-documents on microfilm. Never mind that we now in 2012 - the real future - have wi-fi and sharing platforms and Wikileaks. We liked those ideas, and, in that past-time, the flying-car future was still possible. The dream had not yet kicked the (chrome?) bucket.

Our technophobia, however, does not allow us to glorify the technology we desire too much. Our fear has been immortalised by films such as The Matrix (1999) and Terminator (1984), to name but two examples. It is not the fault of technology, however, but the corruption of those who use it, and so, invariably, we create images of slick, USB port-equipped, latex-clad, plastic-surgery-beauties with blonde hair, popping food pills in clean, chrome castles in the sky - but they're baddies. The goodies are miles below, tunnelled beneath the ground where they wave floppy disks around and have dirty, sweaty, needy sex. If they have hair, it's dark in colour, and their clothes show off as much skin as possible, perhaps reflecting another layer of nostalgia for a time when we revelled in the body and its physical, palpable beauty, rather than intangible computer coding and the invisible internet. And this is perserved in the presentation of the cyberpunk in Second Life.

An attempt at a cyberpunk aesthetic. Best viewed on flickr - click here.

This notion is depicted perfectly in William Gibson's The Gernsback Continuum - of which they made a short tv film in 1993. A photographer is commissioned to take photos of 'yesterday's tomorrow' which, in the examples he is shown, is bound up in the aesthetic of the American Dream - yet another highly-romanticised topic. Once he starts photographing, however, he is haunted by what his friend calls 'semiotic ghosts' from the 'mass consciousness' - the ghosts of the now-obsolete future and aesthetic that he is attempting to photograph.

The Starship Diner

What I find most interesting, and most amusing, about Gibson's piece is the idea that television will rid the photographer of these 'semiotic ghosts'. That's right - television. One of the landmarks of technological development. I like the idea that can be extrapolated from that - that the future didn't turn out the way we planned because we didn't go out and make it happen. We stayed home and watched TV instead.

It is interesting to note, too, the similarities between The Matrix and Second Life. Second Life allows us to plug our minds into a body in the virtual world which acts as a kind of residual self-image - or allows us to play up an attribute from our personality, or a personality we long to possess.  When we unplug, the character in the virtual world dies, vanishing from the system. As those who log into the virtual world, we are those tunnel-dwelling naked grubs, going for a joy-ride in the dangerous realm of the dystopian digital world.

But because Second Life isn't real, it not only facilitates the performance of nostalgia, but positively encourages it. It becomes a haven for what Boym refers to as reflective nostalgics - nostalgics who recognise the impossibility of the world they are nostalgic for and, despite their romanticism and their longing, avoid a 'homecoming' as much as possible - because they can recreate their flawed world without having to deal with the consequences such a world would invariably bring in real life.

In reality, Second Life allows for the performance of the nostalgia of pretty much everything. If you wish to live your life as a Tolkien-esque elf, nostalgic for a medieval period long since passed, you can do so. But this is simply looking into the past, and in the realm of the cyberpunk, we can look not only nostalgically at the past, but also at the future that the present made obsolete.

Maybe I will write more on this later - that is, if I don't get distracted by the television first.