Perfume.

On a virtual grid.

Smell is the last sense to be appealed to in virtual worlds. We will get touch sooner. And someone thinks they should sell perfume?

Wait. I said “think,” didn’t I?

Nevermind.

Folks, allow me to introduce you to what must be the Most Overpriced Item on Second Life Marketplace.

He calls it the Mafia Suit.

No prims. Looks to be jacket, skirt, and pants layers. The jacket layer doesn’t even cover the bellybutton. Assuming your skin has one; anyway. The model’s sure doesn’t.

And the pinstripes (or should we call them chalk lines?) don’t even meet between jacket and skirt.

For all that “throw it out when you get a real outfit for one Linden” charm, you are asked to pay $8000L.

For that price, I want custom textures and an exclusivity contract with a designer who can match textures across system layers.

Sister Women of Second Life,

I realize we are able to look any way we wish. And I realize I am unable to demand you conform to my tastes. The fact prim breasts continue to exist and are almost tasteful in some manifestations are proof alone of this. I also realize there is no reason for this fashion to not exist.

However, I am constantly stymied by the reasons for the existence of open-toed boots. If you want to wear open-toed shoes, they exist. If you want to wear boots, they exist. The hybrid form of the two fails to perform either function for which the two separate shoes were created. They make you look like you bought the wrong shoes and couldn’t return them, so you spared yourself hammer toes by cutting off the tips.

Truly, I don’t understand these creations. Even prim boobs have some degree of a point, even if it’s one most often made in magazines called Juggs or DDDelights.

Yours in bemusement,
Lysana McMillan

Whoever invented the proud father-to-be device that has the hapless moron whose SL partner chooses to act like she’s gotten knocked up broadcast his fake-father status to anyone within 19 meters is on my bad side, whoever s/he is, until the device gives the guy a serious case of couvade. Sympathetic pregnancy, that is. I want anticipatory fathers who are that engaged in the process to get big bellies. The rest of the earlier remarks I made about pregnancy symptoms would also apply, but I’d be happy with random bouts of projectile vomiting caused by an AO.

I just escaped a store with one of the dumbest all-time builds ever. The landing point for the landmark was supposed to be on the floor. However, the parcel was set to dump you under the store. Worse, if you didn’t fly, the only way out was up a ladder and onto a tiny platform, after which you had to walk across a wooden plank. And it’s not as if you wouldn’t want to go under the store. It was cute enough, with tiny red-capped gnomes and some interesting merchandise. But the rest of the store seemed to want exploring as well. Even though flying out of the basement will put the average avi through the roof before they realize anything’s happened. Why? That hole I mentioned is because of the tree in the middle of the floor.

I haven’t cussed out a store owner to myself this thoroughly in nearly two years. I’m so glad I was only there for a hunt. If I’d actually wanted to shop there, I’d have been really steamed. I find the Greenies build easier to navigate at 64m draw distance.

(PS to the ditz at Maitreya – Photographer’s body lights do NOT belong in stores.)

Just for the record, ladies, if all you’re wearing is prim-based, you WILL rez in to someone as being buck naked and hairless except for your shoe form. Just saw such a wonder at a very busy hair store and was considering a fashion police report when her pasties, crotch protector, jewelry and hair finally started coming in.

If this hasn’t been said before, I’ll be highly astonished, but I’m saying it anyway. In the areas I move in, SL behaves a LOT like a giant high school. Especially if you think of high school as depicted in 80’s movies with stars like Molly Ringwald and Christian Slater.

Starting from the upper management down, seeing SL as a high school makes its own sense. We the membership are not privy to the backroom discussions, outside pressures and decision-making processes employed by Linden Labs. We find out after the bulk of the discussion is done. Fortunately, this is where the analogy is at its weakest, as high school principals don’t have to listen to their students. LL has to and sometimes does. This doesn’t prevent people from acting like they can’t get through or see reason, but that’s a human problem.

The real zone in which SL and high school are hard to tell apart is in the social interaction space. Rampant hormones, drama, gossip games, and cliques abound. The irony about the last is that SL is so large, there must be easily a dozen groups who think they own the place and can’t have more than a small piece of it. Think about how often designers that have existed for a few years only get noticed by someone who thinks they are one of the glitterati and then treated like the next big thing when said designer’s been paying their bills with SL since 2006. This also is due to the “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” effect. I think some designers have the keen eye of a naked mole rat at high noon. But said designers sometimes own their own sim and write it off as a business expense on their taxes.

We also have our freaks and weirdos. However, we can’t agree on a universal basis who qualifies for this with the exception of content thieves and pedophiles (and some exist who would defend the thieves). I flirted with the idea of a Second Life parallel to the science fiction fandom hierarchy flow chart, but I realized it’d be a maze of twisty little arrows, all alike. In the elven circles I move in, there’s anti-vampire sentiment. I’ve seen a furry SL member get haughty in a JIRA about how “anthrocentric” the avatar creation process is. Then there is the cavalcade of options presented to the folks at What the Fug?.

The hormones thing? Yeah, in spades with a large dose of fail on the side. Since the overwhelming majority of us are adults running around in what we think of as sexy avs, the desire to boink the av or avs of our choice is going to come up with variations high school only fails to possess because it’s populated with minors. However, that can often be only a matter of degree. The people whose inworld marriages only last two weeks, and they wind up having several of them in the course of a year. The random longtime relationship that could possibly withstand the death of Second Life. Pregnancy being 100% voluntary inworld keeps the parallels from being too close to reality, for which we are all most grateful. The women who use pregnancy as a means of getting attention are quite enough, thanks.

Is it possible for there to be a Big Av On Grid whose name doesn’t end in Linden? Most of us couldn’t name more than five Lindens without including Torley, Philip and M. And since they all count as administration, that’s hardly the same thing. There are the builds many of us get to in the course of time, such as Svarga and the Greenies’ Rezzable sims, but naming the people behind them isn’t easy and they have no real influence on most people’s daily inworld lives. This is where the fact the high school is so large really comes into play. You can’t be famous when there are a large percentage of people in your target market who don’t speak your language. And inworld, there is no shared media experience like television or film to drive anyone to ubiquity of awareness.

SL is, in the end, a hell of a lot of microcultures rubbing up against each other. Changing your group is as easy as dropping out of one space and going to another. Or creating an alt. This is why it feels like high school. In reality, past the small circle of close friends each of us tends to cultivate, what impact does what someone else’s close circle have unless you’re thrown together by circumstance?

The pregnancy and childbirth industries in Second Life keep coming up as a topic on this blog. But considering the depth to which this particular function of First Life matters, it isn’t surprising. I try not to pick on it, though. I am returning to it because of three words on a sign I saw while doing the Scarlet Letter Hunt: Gorean Baby Center.

Yes, my loyal reader, there are Goreans who put themselves through pregnancy and childbirth. Let’s keep in mind that in SL, pregnancy is a 100% conscious choice that must be maintained with real thought or else it fades into your inventory like last month’s clothes. What I want to know is if the folks who do this have thought their bright idea through completely.

The crux of the matter is this: do Gorean babies stay prim babies, or do they end up RPed by an adult as they get past the toddler stage? Think that one over slowly. Child avs in a space devoted to a culture whose primary visible purpose is the reification of slavery and sexual gratification. Whatever other trappings may exist, that is the core of it.

I have no idea how Norman discussed child-raising on Gor. I don’t care to look it up, either. It doesn’t matter to the biggest issue I have with it all. The presence of child avs in a mature-to-adult sim devoted to explicit sexual conduct is the surest ticket to getting your access rights suspended I can think of. Do they even realize this? They can’t claim that the kid isn’t exposed to it. It’s Gor. It’s the cultural norm. In First Life, kids find out their parents have sex. In Gorean realms, all else being equal, the kid’s exposure to the notion might be seeing Daddy whipping Mommy while she’s tied to a hitching post before taking her from behind.

SL is on a “make sure content matches the sim ratings tag” kick. How is having children running around a sim that ought to be tagged Adult going to look as they check to make sure private sims are rated appropriately?

I wish I could just have fun with this topic. I have giggled to myself and others about “baby’s first silks” and camisk onesies. I’ve had internal theorization parties about child-rearing in a male-dominated society and what the age of consent would be in Gor. But the real problem is the child av risk. The people who want to become The Breeders of Gor can’t possibly realize what they’re letting their precious realms in for. Being privately owned means nothing.

The concept of reality inworld keeps cropping up. Whether it’s photorealistic skins, “normal-height” avatars, or rituals such as pregnancy and child-rearing, attempts to clone the physical realm into SL are frequent. Some are even enforced at times, such as one club I went to whose rules stated you were at risk of ejection if your av was too large.

I’ve spoken my piece on the height and pregnancy issues before. The photorealistic skins are actually a good sign SL is developing graphically. Some of them are dead gorgeous, too. But I admit I often favor ones that are detailed without being picture-perfect. But that’s something of a tangent.

The one thing that is real inworld is that we bring ourselves in with us. Unless you are so good at mental compartmentalizing that you are capable of creating an entirely separate personality inworld, you are being who you are, no matter what. Maybe you’re acting or roleplaying, but as a former actress and tabletop gamer, you’re drawing from yourself in both situations. It is that reality as well as how people forget that which causes drama.

I find more and more that I prefer the company of those who recognize that there is no clear line between their second and first lives. They respect the fact there are people behind the av. They don’t play games within the game unless it’s clearly an RPG. And best of all, they don’t play games with themselves. The people who think it’s all a game and nobody should take it seriously probably don’t take their first lives seriously, either.

So, first, be real with yourself. Then respect others. That is the realism we need inworld most of all. The rest is self-expression and art.

No bones about it, I have sex inworld. I won’t say how often or with whom, and even if you look up my profile, the picks will not tell you as much as you think they will. What I will say is that I favor skin designers that remember to pay attention to smaller anatomical details in a way I appreciate. I also shop for furniture with dating in mind.

I’ve been flirting with the idea of picking up the Kama Sutra HUD from Akaesha Designs for some time now. It’s not cheap; even their discount on XstreetSL is $3750L. It’d be a luxury item considering I have two useful locations all to myself equipped with decent furniture, some of which is from Akaesha already. But the flexibility it’d provide would be fun to play with sometimes.

What’s goaded me to write are some of the comments people have left behind about the HUD. I speak of the people who would prefer they issue a monogamous couple version and leave out the animations said couples won’t need. It’s kind of petty of me, probably, but I found that complaint annoying on several levels. First, it operates from the assumption that editing the scripts to get all the non-hetero (trust me, all the whiners were straight) and multi-partner animations removed would be easy. What I have seen of commentary on the HUD tells me this is not the case. I also know just enough about scripting and programming to realize that feature removal can be harder than feature enhancement. It also smacks of a desire to forget the rest of the world exists. Sorry, Joe and Jane Q Virtual, but there are kinky and slutty people inworld. Even your precious “long-term monogamous couple” HUD could be used by us, as we don’t always party in groups. Hell, I personally have yet to do more than two-person sex. I envy those who’ve figured out how to go beyond that inworld without conflicting typing or voice work.

The “don’t make me have to deal with the resources” argument the monogamous HUD-owners want is nearly understandable, but frankly, if they can’t enjoy cybering without a complex device, they ought to respect the makers’ privilege of making it for the largest possible market. They spent days’ worth of time getting that to work, and increasing development time to make a monogamous version would make the item hideously expensive instead of merely high. Speaking as someone who has had outrageously hot sex while dancing fully clothed inworld, they really don’t need a gadget to do it right. Unless they can’t write. At which point, why are they on SL again?