Cue Matriarchy

Queen Kitti

I went back to the Arcade this morning, just for a post-mayhem poke around. For those of you who read my blog but don't use SL (hi mum!), the Arcade is a quarterly event that generates the same kind of hype as...I don't know...the Football World Cup, or the midnight release of a Harry Potter book. It is an old-school Arcade made of glass, perched on the end of a pier, and inside is an array of gacha machines offering everything from skins and hair to furniture, music boxes, and pet fish. I half expected it to look like a Primark store an hour after opening, but it seems to have finally quietened down and, in the way of SL, it was clean and quiet. It wasn't even dusty.

Although the Arcade brings out an online catalog that lets you have a look at what you can win before you even get there, part of the joy of SL, I think, is exploring places - especially those with as nicely made buildings as the Arcade. There's something nice about hopping over to the Arcade and just having a wander, even though you've probably got more than you could possibly ever want from those machines. I suppose it's like window shopping.

As I was wandering around, I started thinking about how good events like the Arcade can be. I know I've whinged about gachas before, but to a new SL user, gacha machines are a potentially great way to get good items from good designers super cheap. Rarely do gacha machines charge more than one hundred Linden dollars (SL currency) a turn, and to put that into perspective, the skin Kitti usually wears cost just under one thousand Linden dollars. The same company that makes that skin filled a machine with similar skins at the Arcade this time around and, sure enough, the price on them was one hundred Linden dollars. It's smart shopping. 

Queen Norah isn't new to SL, but she's a smart cookie.

Except if you take a look at the Arcade's catalog, you'll see most of the skin, hair and clothing items there are designed for women. Not all of them - and many of the shops who make things for the Arcade make things for male avatars in their shops - but a large percentage. If a friend told me they wanted to get into SL and they had a female avatar, I'd have no issue taking them to the Arcade to flesh themselves out, but if it had a male avatar, I would have no idea where to begin.

This would be the point in the post where I reveal an armful of statistics, but I don't have any. I wouldn't like to lie to you and pretend that I do. 

I would be surprised to learn that Second Life has a higher population of male avatars then female avatars, but I would be unsurprised to find more male users than female. And the wider truth is that we still, as a collective society,  see shopping as something women do whilst their husbands are out earning money for them to fritter away. Despite the coming of the metrosexual, we still place emphasis on the care a woman should take with her appearance and her home, and tell men that they shouldn't care how they look just as long as they have mowed the lawn. We're getting better at it, for sure, but we've still a way to go. 

We could talk here, too, about who makes the ads, and who makes the clothes and the skins and the everything else. We could question who buys them, and for whom, with what intention. We're not going to right now. 

Right now, we're going to deviate - oh, come on, you knew it was coming - : as I was thinking about this, an image sprang into my mind of a virtual world of women and, naturally, my brain connected the idea to the Anne Rice novel, The Queen of the Damned. In the novel, the mother and queen of all vampires Akasha rises from a two thousand year slumber to rid the world of evil as she sees it - of men. During her slumber, she had been placed before numerous radios and television sets, and she had come to see that the source of all strife and war was men, and so off she goes on a killing spree, leaving behind one man for every twenty or so women, if I remember, that they might repopulate. Of course, any sons born would be brought up to respect the new matriarchy and adopt the traits Akasha praises so highly in women. 

If Norah and I ever gain any real positions of power, you should run. We're coming for you.

The Arcade, along with several other similar gacha machine events open at the moment, are helping to dress a virtual nation of fearsome queens. We've got flowing hair and flowing gowns coming out of our ears, and I now have so many crowns and diadems in my inventory that I am considering creating an alt just to hold them for me. The dresses Norah and I are wearing in the pictures here are from gacha events, and so are our crowns and our jewellery and our skins. Our hair isn't, though, because we cheated - but we have several hairstyles from gachas we could have chosen to wear instead. We're dressed to go and do some serious violence in the name of peace. We're ready to fuck for our virginity.

We won't make the same mistakes that Akasha did, though. Virtual worlds, beware.

Don't Nuke Our Cyberspace, Bro!

collective hallucination

I have begun reading a book, Technobiophilia, Nature and Cyberspace by Sue Thomas, and although I haven't read very much yet, it is really interesting. Interesting enough to send me scurrying back here to take screenshots of Kitti in space-soldier gear in the multi-coloured sensation that is the bar at Hangars Liquides.

Thomas cites John Perry Barlow's 2006 book, From Counterculture to Cyberculture, as discussing how 'the notion of the disembodiment of cyberspace got mixed up with mysticism and LSD for a while',  and goes on to say that the term 'cyberspace' itself has long been out of fashion, except with the military, 'where it represents a potential combat area'. In 2011, the US Department of Defense issued a document entitled a Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace, the purpose of which, as I understand it, was to encourage a full use of cyberspace for offensive and defensive purposes. In the foreword (these documents have forewords?!), Barack Obama wrote 'the digital world is no longer a lawless frontier' - but does not go on to say what the virtual world now is.

Thomas goes on to say that the internet, the World Wide Web, cyberspace, the whole lot, has deep roots in nature: 'the bramble of interwined ideas, links, documents, and images create an otherness as thick as a jungle'.

And that's it - that's what I'm getting at, getting into. In a few short pages of this book, a wonderfully terrible and frightening and empowering image of cyberspace, of the virtual world, as being something strange and dangerous and other has materialised. And it is complicated by Thomas' definition of cyberspace as being something that exists only in the mind - so this strange dangerous otherness becomes something we carry around in our heads.

Are you still with me? Maybe this is a bit self-indulgent, but hang in there.

There's a series of episodes of South Park in which the boys have to try to convince the military not to nuke the world's imagination after the imagination has been taken hostage by terrorists. The imagination becomes a battleground, and, in true South Park style the military do, of course, nuke it, and Santa has to save the day. I'm not sure that Santa is going to come and save us if our cyberspace gets nuked.

And doesn't it seem all-too-organic that cyberspace would be associated with LSD and hippydom, since it is a potential space of threat to the US Government? The opposition is almost funny.

What it seems to boil down to is vagueness. We don't yet know, truly, the limits of cyberspace. There are so many dark and shady places online, and in them lurk things most of us couldn't even dream up on an LSD trip. But the worst thing is that it, as a space, is organised. There are groups and hierarchies and networks along which pass all kinds of information in all kinds of formats. Very recently, people have met in cyberspace to organise, and then to conduct, riots and revolutions on grand scales. Is it any wonder that cyberspace and indeed the internet can be viewed as a threat?

Amongst the general public, understanding of how it all works can get mixed up and confused very easily, and misapprehension and not understanding something at all are wonderfully fertile grounds for fear.

Where do we, as inhabitants of the virtual world of Second Life - a 'collective hallucination' that has begun to have more tangible, more visible, roots, if anything in cyberspace does - fit into all of this? How much power do we have to shape cyberspace, considering that the space exists inside everyone who is aware of its existence to whatever degree and it is unlikely that we know nearly enough of these people to begin to make a dent? Whilst we might all be connected in cyberspace, we are most definitely not all listening to each other. Second Life is bigger than any one of us, and it is only a small part of cyberspace in the first place.

Already, it's starting to sound messy. I'm going to stop.

But isn't it interesting?

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?!

Sucker Punch

As the more canny among you might have noticed, I have changed my blog name to match up with my Second Life username. I'm not really sure why I ever decided it might to clever for those two names to be different anyway, but now they match up, so...identity mystery solved. Wytchwood is revealed!

Moving on. Swiftly.

I know I have written before - and at quite considerable length - about roleplaying in SL, but when I agreed to write another short scenario with Sian Pearl this week, I realised that there were a whole host of things I had not even begun to touch on.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.

Sian and I agreed a couple of days in advance that we were going to rp together. Such isn't always the case, and sometimes, I think, I prefer it not to be. Since Sian usually leads our sessions, she suggested that I try this time, and let me tell you, I have not been that nervous for a long time. I wasn't that nervous about my university audition! I wasn't given unlimited scope, however - Sian wanted to use a specific costume she had put together, which created the character of, and I quote, 'a cyberpunk hacker girl'. Short dress, full-sleeve tattoos, headphones around the neck. Slightly Rooney Mara-esque, I suppose, but Sian wasn't going for that. I'm just aware of the link as I have been bombarded with links to various pieces from the soundtrack to Girl with the Dragon Tattoo because my friends know I like (read looooooove!) Trent Reznor. So off I went and pieced together a little cyberpunk storyline based around a situation I thought I might be able to force onto this hacker-chick. 

When I say 'off I went and pieced together...', what I really mean is that I went off and panicked like Hell for two days that I hadn't got the faintest idea about cyberpunk or hacking, or what might be an interesting storyline to make out of the two. I was also petrified that I would mess up my opening or miss something out that was crucial or, quite simply, be so deathly boring that Sian would never want to speak to me again. I am, I suppose, a rather shy writer. I have a love-hate relationship with the idea of people reading what I write, particularly in the fast-paced format of SL roleplay.

I believe I have written before about the notion of paragraph rp - where the participants write great long paragraphs, presumably into a Word document or something, then copy and paste them into SL - and whilst I appreciate the style, it is not for me. The beauty of SL is its ability for live responsiveness, and I enjoy the turn-taking and the ability to do exactly that - respond! - to what is playing out before me. That doesn't mean that sometimes my turn will not comprise of five or six lines, but I prefer to be concise and energetic. Paragraph rp, in my eyes, is for forums. 

I put together my costume - which, I confess, was just too funny. I made sure that Sian wasn't around whilst I was doing it, and then, once done, I messaged a mutual friend to ask her to come over and tell me if she thought I looked bitchy enough. She said yes. All systems are go. 

Go go mega-bitch?

When I logged into SL and teleported to Sian's house on Thursday morning - the agreed time -, I was confronted with a scene that did not quite look how I'd imagined it would. Sian had turned a room of her house into a space for us to rp. Without asking me, it would seem, she knew roughly what it was I would want, and how rubbish I am at finding appropriate sims. That, or she has some interesting photoshoot for her own blog in mind and just wanted another excuse to use her set.

It - and Sian - were not, however, what I had expected.

I walked into the room to find it clean and shiny - as I had hoped - but also harbouring a kind of giant test tube, in which stood not the cyberpunk hacker girl I had pieced together a plot for, but a hi-tech, half-naked cyborg woman with eyes fierce enough to leave Tyra Banks stunned. Suddenly, everything that had made Kitti look like a bitch before meant absolutely nothing. I realised that I was going to have to tailor my story to fit this new character, this new setting. I don't consider myself to be the most creative of people - I am better at building on other people's initial ideas - and so it was a challenge for me to do this, and one I took to with relish.

Sian, I think, assumed in the momentary silence that I was panicking. We laughed about this later. Impatience is a virtue, huh? One I am intimately familiar with.

How sinister-looking is that tube?!

That is one of the most wonderful, and the most annoying, things about SL rp - the ability for that change. You have to have a degree of flexibility because you don't necessarily know what the other person will bring to the table. This proved to be exciting in this particular rp with Sian. I provided the framework, the setting up of the circumstances, and she filled in the details, bringing to life an interesting character for whom you couldn't help feeling sorry, and yet simultaneously be afraid of. It gave a new lease of life to the character I had placed on to Kitti for this scenario, undermining her oh-so-sure sense of self and creating an interesting power-play between the two women.

And then she punched me.

Okay, so Sian Pearl, the virtually-physical avatar, did not punch Kitti Wytchwood. If she had, there'd have definitely have been screenshots, because that would be incredible. She punched her using the '/me' function - but that didn't make it hurt any less. Sian is considerably taller than the rather petite Kitti, and Sian as 'P', the character she used for this rp, is enhanced and mechanised and strong in a way that could - and eventually did - make virtual-mince meat of the all-too-human and squishy Kitti.

The capability for violence in SL is something that intrigues me. It is used in many scenarios, as I'm sure you can imagine, but it felt like the right conclusion for this one, as neither Sian or Kitti were going to give up intellectually. It was interesting, too, to see how the roles reversed and how, in the end, it was Sian/P that was the human one. Kitti just wanted to save her own neck.

I should perhaps add that Sian then effectively gave Kitti electroshock treatment in that test tube. No, that is not an innuendo. So if you're messaging Kitti in-world, I wouldn't expect her to be very coherent for the next few days. I have no doubt that if we opened the top of her virtual head, we could have some virtual scrambled eggs for breakfast.

This has been a long post, and I confess that I'm not one hundred percent sure what you have learned from it. I'd apologise but, quite simply, no.

If you would like to see Sian Pearl's (infinitely better) screenshot of the event, please click here. I tried to take some mid-rp, too, but they didn't really come out. All of the images used here were taken post-rp.