Tabloid Paparazza

Lludmila was asked to take some wedding  photos recently. There was a large attendance for a popular couple in her group, so lag was ferocious and she crashed four times before giving up at the reception.We shouldn't always blame the lag; it could be our server. Anyway, she took over 150 photos.* Many of them look like duplicates, such as those pictured. But if you look at them closely, each one tells a different story. 

Smile, dammit! ARGH!
Pressed wrong button. Smile again, please!

Avatars are constantly shifting position. In the above photos, the couple are actually just waiting until time to teleport to the reception. Their typists may not even be there. Still, the avatars move. They look this way and that. They are caught being ... natural. Our human brains start ascribing thoughts to them. Timo looks at Galia's arse admiringly - or so it seems.

Lludmila stands quietly (somewhere - her typist has already forgotten where she was last) and watches the minimalist dance between two figures. She takes as many photos as she can in hopes of getting one really good one, but then when she goes back to look - each one has something of interest, something that expresses, if not what two other people feel, maybe what feelings are inside her own self.

Best wishes, Timo and Galia. The ceremony was delightful. I hope you enjoy the photos.

love,

lludmila and marf

*Feel free to peruse the set - although a few were removed. Not sure why. It's not as if there are space considerations on Flickr.

How I Stay Humble

Model of Elegance ... or Shaggy Yak?

There are so many avatars to choose from! I've got the stick insect ones, the plush one, the middle-aged short one, the cartoony crow. There are sliders to make my nose a teeny bit longer, more upturned and perkier, ginormous. Free hair and clothing abound. One can look glamorous, serious, or just plain silly. Every now and then, though, "glamorous" wins out. I can put on a fabulous outfit, outrageous hair, and shimmering skin and preen in front of my camera. I can teleport around the grid to visit my haunts and strut my stuff. But I don't get vain, oh no, not when I have friends.
It just takes one friend to tell me I look like "a shaggy yak in that hair" and my humility button gets a reset. I am so grateful to my friends ... eventually.
It does, however, encourage me to stick to my sandbox most of the time.

March of the Plush Avatars

Rivka, our suspiciously emaciated Mistress of Ceremonies; Jubilant; and a bit of ruthiness on the side that shows I'm still working with the old viewer.

I've been over this before about appearances in SL. Apparently, there's a research group dedicated to just this topic: the Avatar Identity Research Center. It's an interesting thought, "What does your avatar's appearance say about you?" So, I slapped on my fatvatar and tp'd over to have a listen. This was in the middle of the BlogHer Conference and I had to made a very hard decision! So much going on in SL (the same day) and so little time!
Rivka, in her introduction to Jubilant's presentation, said that SL is a sandbox for exploration of self and embodiment. I must have a multiple personality disorder then.

The Evil Speaker's Ball that no amount of Papyrus font can save from my waxing medievally wroth all over.

I had thought that the Speaker's Ball sounded like a good idea when we started. So much more polite than, "Please shut up until Jubilant has finished her presentation." There were problems with the ball when we started, which were probably due to lag (nice turn-out for the presentation coupled with a prim-fest of attachments) and some people elected to resort to just typing "click" to get in the comment cue. But when it came to the actual comment portion of the presentation, I don't think it worked at all. I was called on, but people kept talking over me. I finally gave up. Later I happened to look at my speaker's ball (that was floating over my head ... a place I was not looking because I was intent on looking at other people, the photos, reading chat ...) and saw that it was green and that I was next to speak. In space, no one can hear you scream; in SL, no one can see your brow furrow with annoyance. I was cross now, and I clicked on it to turn it off. Shortly afterwards, I was called on again and instead of saying, "Well, people talked over me when I was called on earlier and my mind has now moved on from the comment I had formulated with care to being pissed off at the speaker's ball and I don't feel like participating anymore!" I said something less fraught with the same gist of "nevermind." I wasn't sure that I hadn't turned my speaker's ball back on. It might not be showing the same for others as for me.
Conversation/chat in SL takes about four times as long as in RL (tm). The speaker's ball, when it's being used properly, doubles that again. I am used to chaotic chat (hell, I go to the Humanism meetings!) and will wade in with the best of them. I don't think the speaker's ball worked technically nor in concept.
But, on to the presentation!


Visual Aids provided by Jubilant in lieu of Death by PowerPoint.

Ya gotta love someone who thinks that women should be round and curvy, and that's Jubilant for you! She made herself her ideal in feminine beauty, the way she cannot be in RL (tm). But she found that SL did not take the larger (or, for that matter, shorter) sizes into account when the mesh and animations were originally designed. Textures stretch the designs beyond recognition; animations embed the arms into the chest and abdomen; and the larger the bits of you get, the pointier they become. The resident designers continued in that vein, making prim additions that just plain don't fit (See top right picture in above photo). Multi-prim objects can be resized, but the seller has to make them modifiable and copiable to do this, and that activity is not for the faint-hearted. I do it all the time with prim hair now.

More Visual Aids ... why do these figures look normal to me?

The stigma associated with fat seems to have carried over from RL into SL. Although not subject to outright harassment (such as being denied entrance to a club), Jubilant has been asked why she is the size she is and it has been suggested she diet (which in SL I would take as a joke - I occasionally tell overly-thin avs they "should eat cookies"). She has found herself attracted to other avs who look different than the ideal she created for herself. What's going on here? So why is she this voluptuous? What keeps her curvy despite the annoyances of comments, clothes that don't look right or just plain don't fit, and an apparent subconscious attraction to something outside her ideal?
Well, someone needs to look normal, don't they? You need some large people, short people, minority people, and bald people (although I think most men go bald because men's hair sucks in SL ... except a couple of heads of hair at this presentation - I almost clicked on my speaker's ball just to ask two of the guys where they got their hair!) walking around amongst the overly muscled chests or gravity-defying breasts that make up most of SL so that the real people behind them can feel their RL bodies validated. Someone's got to do it, and Jubilant has stepped up to the plate. My fatvatar smiles.
Would staying in my Kathy av, with her slender waist and big hair-that-everyone-is-mad-about, increase my self-loathing? Hard to see how I could loathe my RL body (tm) any more than I do now. At the BlogHer conference we met an avatar that was based on a body that the typist wanted, and seeing it regularly helped motivate her to lose, so far, over 100 pounds. How she manages to do that, while sitting in front of the time-sucker that SL is, escapes me. I mean, I haven't gotten any shorter walking around as Lludmila. But I find Kathy lovely - I fell in love with her. I did my best coming up with something that looked different from the SL norm with Lludmila, and I worked hard to make whatsername the cutest fat girl imaginable, but Kathy's is the face on my desktop. I think you look for someone different from you when you fall in love. And you can't get much more different than me than Kathy. You just can't help who you fall in love with.

My Three Avatars (dada dadaaaaa, dada dadaaaaaa ...) demonstrating scale: Kandice/Mandy/Tammy (the fatvatar), Kathy (the bombshell), and Lludmila (short, 4'8", and middle-aged).

I'm Easily Annoyed

Kathy gothed



Mandy/Debbie/Tammy/Kandace/Whatever

I've made many avatars and tinkered with them in the almost two years I've been in Second Life. And I've picked up some freebie shapes. The problem with the shapes you get is that a) the breasts are too large and don't seem to be subject to Newtonian Law and b) the legs and arms are too skinny. You want to force-feed them cookies.
I set out to make an avatar that would look more normal, normal in the sense of not being from the cover of a sword and sorcery fantasy paperback, anyway. So I made Kathy. Not quite the Kathy you see at the top. She had more color in her and ... the hair from the avatar below her. Looking at her reminded me of a good friend from Lexington and, keeping with my obsession with the letter K, I named her Kathy. Kathy, the girl next door. Then I read about this freebie hair (along with a dozen or so other freebies) and slapped it on her. The tan didn't look so good anymore. I pulled out some goth skins I normally have no use for but hadn't deleted. A lip ring to top it all off ... and I fell in love. Something about the hair. More about lovin' the hair later.

I read about some people who fattened their avatars for a social experiment like the one we did with Grizzy. In fact, some normally fat avs went thin for the Grizzy experiment. Their biggest problem was just like in RL, trying to find clothes that fit. And clothes that had textures that didn't get all stretched out yucky. I decided that I needed a fatvatar and then promptly forgot about it.

Kathy was getting attention. She was getting attention that Lludmila never got. Kathy pulled. This was thrilling (who isn't happy to get attention?), annoying (why her, why not Keisha or Keiko or ... ?), and finally it was worrying (I'm married). I decided it was definitely time for the fatvatar. I cannot adequately express the ambivalent feelings I have about this. I envied Kathy and her "powers." And I was aggrieved on behalf of my other avs. I'd put time into them as well. I collected skins and evaluated them for which av looked best in which. I accumulated hair with a vengeance to find the best. There's lots of nice hair out there, even for free. I even kept demos of hair I thought worthy of purchase when enough Lindens were available with notes that read, "Buy when you have $179!" Slapping this freebie hair (From Bishwear, by the way - and they don't have anything else as good because I have looked and looked) on has made all the difference in the world. My husband tells me that men look at the hair first and then the eyes. "What about the boobs?" I asked. He looked thoughtful and then told me that they were probably about fourth on the list.

The fatvatar, like Kathy, was started from scratch. She had to be under six feet - I just don't understand the giant avs. Now that I have a 22" monitor, everyone's butt looks big, so she might be a bit narrower than necessary. But she does have a belly and arms and legs with meat on them. And then there is the round face with the extra flab under the chin. To make her cuter, I made her eyes larger. I tried all sorts of hair, but Kathy's old hair looks terrific. There was some very girly skin in my inventory, with huge pink lips and I decided that "pink" about said it all for this gal.

Next came the clothes, and the stuff I read was right. Prim clothing bits can be prettily easily resized and I was able to do that for her. Mesh clothing is something else. I thought the tunic and leggings look would be good on her, but too many of the patterns (texture on mesh) get stretched out of shape. I don't even want to get into what happened to her booty. It got shifted. That's all you need to know. Hearkening back to my youth, I guessed that the babydoll style would suit her and I was right. Black is a good one as well. If you're wearin' black, you've covered a multitude of sins. I might just have to use this info in RL! In the photo above, my fatvatar is wearing an outfit that is very similar to the one that got me sent to the office for indecent exposure in high school, another one of life's proudest moments.

I only had to post photos of her on Flickr before I got a positive response ... from someone else with a chubby av. But who gets the real attention? The pale one with the big, messy black wig. It is almost to larf. It is so predictable. You have the same person doing the talking, the walking, the dancing - but you slim her down and put poofy big hair on her and suddenly she's attractive.
There is a really nice bonus to this and it is that there is a real person who looks like Kathy gothed and she's just as nice as she is beautiful. It wasn't until much later that I realized Kathy gothed looked just like Christine. Christine, by the way, is available and lives in the northeast US. The eponymous Kathy, my dear friend from childhood, is also available and lives in the south. Anyone interested, please contact me.

Me, I am happily taken.

By the way, my fatvatar obviously needs a name. I am open to nice suggestions.

Great Social Experiment, Part the Deux

Karrot in her "military" look for the Humanism discussion. On my monitor at home, by the way, Karrot (and, in fact, everyone) is chunkier. She looks like she needs to eat some cookies in these photos.

Did I ever get over being an adult in a child's avatar? I guess so. I spent a lot of time in my sandbox (it's not really "my" sandbox, but other people hardly ever go there), but I also went to all the functions I normally go to: the Bookstacks Quiz, Bookmooch Social (did I mention I'm a librarian?), the Info International Reference Desk, InfoGroupies parties. I felt more comfortable around people I knew, even though they were not participating in the experiment (unlike Grizzy who felt like she was the only one dressed for Hallowe'en). I could be more myself and people would understand.Lonely little Karrot in her sandbox ... with debris other people have left behind.

I also went out and stalked the Wild Freebie, thanks to FabFree. [And now it all comes back to me how I probably wound up with those bondage pose balls.] I was a little more nervous about hanging out with adults, but nothing untoward happened. I had an nice chat with another Great White Hunter (or perhaps she was blue) about my avatar. I couldn't remember where exactly I'd gotten it, but it was a freebie. Most people are aware of the controversy about child avatars, but I never ran into any negativity about my wearing it (other than my one friend who was creeped out). No one accused me of being a pervert or asked me to leave, but how much abuse could I expect out of only one week? A number of people thought I was cute, some of them were surprising. I really didn't expect a comment from the head of our Humanism group. I had made a special effort to dress for the theme (Humanism and the Military), going so far as to make a little label with my avatar's nomme de guerre on it (see top photo).


Karrot at the BookMooch discussion, in her "I Want to Make Cookies" outfit. Sal, on the right, is going through her week as Intellectual Dude. Hee!


Karrot at a Librarian's Pool Party. I had to watch the dance for a while to make sure it was "child appropriate" - unlike the "caramel" dance I would have no compunctions about performing. I made the "fabulous" inner tube, by the way. I might have had modesty in mind. I didn't have a child's bathing suit and just removed the prim skirt from an outfit. I thought it needed something more to be more "beachy." Karrot loved the waterslide in the background ... but so would Lludmila.



Karrot at the Bookstacks Quiz, watching Chromatophore morph into a Steampunk Chimpanzee.

Karrot at the Science Friday broadcast. Karrot loves Ira Flatow.

Long about Saturday when I realized there would be four more days of the experiment, I nearly melted down. I felt so constricted by what I anticipated would be the scrutiny of others and I wanted to bust out ... um, on several levels. I really like the avatar's look. I think she's cute and sweet, but I think I'd rather be a dwarf. [I like dwarfs. Michael Dunn was a favorite of mine. I was crushed by his untimely death and remember exactly where I was when I heard about it.] I want to be an adult with the option of adult things to do. I enjoy being an adult who has the options to be childish. Where's that waterslide?

In memoriam: Michael Dunn









Three more days ... Two ... My book group met the night of the Last Day, so I missed almost everyone else's experiences. I'll have to read the transcript. What little I heard didn't surprise me. People felt awkward in their different avatars. I don't usually, but I think I went out of my way to choose something that would make me feel awkward, or, at least, that would be the greatest challenge. I can't imagine what avatar I could put on that would be more challenging ... unless perhaps it is the meat puppet. Yeah, definitely the meat puppet. I'd have to go for gross.

That Great Social Experiment

Karrot

No, not Second Life, Grizzy's annual "Walk a Mile in Someone Else's Avatar's Shoes" fest. Okay, so she calls it the Race/Gender Experiment. It was so interesting last year, she decided to do it again.

I went through all sorts of contortions over what to do with my avatar this year. Tall, bald black dude? Used it last year. Black woman? Do that all the time. Man? Ditto. How about a tall white woman with huge breasts? I actually built one of those, but then decided I wasn't taking this seriously.

There was a discussion on Furries, Tinies, and Neko (anthro-kitties) I attended and considered experiencing the "fursecution" they talked about. Apparently, humanoid avatars think Furries and Neko are sex-crazed. Tinies, they just seem to think, get under foot and suck bandwidth with all their prims (not much more than the average hair-do, I should think). In the end, I couldn't find a furry avatar that was 1.) cheap enough or b.) aesthetically satisfying. Then I had what I thought was the brilliant idea of a child avatar.

Now, there's an oppressed minority! I read a lot about the brou-haha over sexual age play and the defenses that the child avis put up. I'm occasionally sexually harassed in SL, but that hardly bothers me. What can they do to me? If I don't want to read/hear it, I can mute them. If they bump into me, I can leave instantly and they are unable to follow. I can also report them. And it's more fun to dodge them and pretend I have no idea what they're talking about. If I am an adult inside a little cartoon child, it should be no big deal.

So I went kid avatar and clothing shopping. And wasn't that an eye-opener! If anyone else attempts this, I recommend sunglasses. The bright primary colors were about to kill me. What, no pastels? Anything you can imagine for your children or grandchildren in real life is available in pixelform. And they have playground equipment to keep your child avatar busy while you shop.

I also solicited some info from Marianne McCann who has a child avatar and I'd read some of her comments on Flickr and visited her exhibit, "Why a Kid?" in SL last year. I was trying to understand why someone would want to portray a child. Marianne is very articulate and positive. With regarding the joys of being a kid she says, "being able to experience a better childhood than you may have had IRL. Getting a chance to relive youth. Being able to have the things denied you as a RL child, whether it be a toy, a pony, or even simply a loving family. With those who go to inworld schools, it can not only be a place to explore their role, but also heal bad school time experiences."

This should sound like fun, but as someone who still buys toys for herself (real ones, plush ones, puppets, etc.) and plays with them (er, okay, some of it might possibly be for work), what was the difference between the adult Lludmila and the child Karrot on a carousel?

She was also pretty frank about the problems with the image child avatars have, that people assume they are into age sex play and either harass the child avatars verbally or "physically" by bumping into them, make advances toward them (ew! ew!), or sim and business owners will ban them from their property. Pretty harsh toward someone who may just want some happy childlike experiences.

I'm afraid the negative aspects of being a child avatar were foremost in my mind. Frankly, once in the avatar and out in "public" I felt creepy. I avoided adults. There were other children (not many) but I was too shy to talk to them. Good grief! This is my childhood all over again! Who wants that? I often think that when people wish they were younger. I worked hard to get to this point in adulthood and I'm not willing to give it up.

I tried an area I had inadvertantly visited as my adult avatar and found far too many adults there, several with sex-oriented labels. And more kept coming. They were also suspiciously quiet, which means they were operating in Instant Message, to keep their conversations private. Even creepier!

Then one of them asked me if I was a demanding eight year old. I responded that my mommy had told me not to talk to strangers. "Even if they can give you what you want?" Hmm, definitely not them. I left, feeling very very very icky. This was a feeling totally new to me. I don't ever recall having any kind of interaction in real life with an adult, or even an older child, that made me feel that way. Of course, my judgment is colored by the experience of adulthood, which is, almost by definition, sexual.

I wasn't the only one creeped out by the new me. A great SL friend took one look at me and said to put him in the "totally creeped out column." Another friend added, "You know the saying: The internet, where men are men, women are men, and children are FBI." Other avatars (mostly female) have just thought I was adorable. "I just wanna hug you," said one, "now go brush your teeth and get into bed." Now, there's a healthy reaction!

Thursday night Grizzy's group got together to venture out and visit some public venues to see how others reacted to their new avatars. Others had chosen a different sex (than their usual SL sex - and let's not get our panties in a bunch over the use of the word; "gender" is for language majors), different shape (fatter or thinner), burkhas, new skin color (black, white, blue), and even a wheelchair. We are spending the whole week like this. Our first stop was the Ahern Welcome Area, a PG oasis for newbies ... and griefers. I don't know when I've been so appalled. And I use the "f" word in real life. Okay, not in the Children's Room, but, you know, casually, around the house, when the spaghetti boils over or the cat tears a ruddy great hole in my ear. No, wait - that's the "s" word. Never mind.

Every conceivable use of graphic language was flying by, both in chat and voice. I found a quiet area behind some ferns and watched other people.

Keeping in mind that it would look bad for a child to walk up to an adult and start a conversation, I decided just to watch ... and turn off the sound. I kept up mostly with the group IM, which tuned out the obnoxious stuff. The people there didn't turn a hair at seeing us. Anything went, and if our titties weren't hanging out, we weren't even noticed.

I did see someone asking about where to get clothes. They were literally Born Yesterday. When no one else there responded, I clicked on them and sent an Instant Message with the info that I had. I recommended going to the Info International Reference Desk where someone could better direct them on how to earn money, etc. "She" apparently was hoping to earn some cash for sex. Good luck to her. Too much of it for free, I'm afraid. But I told her how to use the Search function to find places by subject. And she wanted better breasts. Come to think of it, I think she was in the right place to find this stuff out, not that the librarians would have a problem with answering her questions.

I was careful to stay out of sight during this, because of the avatar. It's fine to say you're supposed to act as you normally would, but I cannot, because of the nature of the avatar. I'm chafing at not being able to wade in with my usual sexual innuendo. And to discuss where you could get laid in SL with an adult avatar seems also beyond the pale. On the other hand, I didn't want to leave a newbie out an vulnerable like that: "Hello! Hello! I don't know what I'm doing! Someone please grief me!"

We opted to leave early because the place was so obnoxious. I must lead a sheltered existence in SL that I hadn't run into anything like this before. My own "home," the Isabel InfoHub, while annoying, is quieter and practically Disneyesque in its restraint. I hadn't felt that way about it before; I avoid the place like the plague usually. It seems a haven by comparison.

Our next stop was the Blarney Stone, an Irish pub. Little Karrot was so strung out by her experience that she needed a double Shirley Temple. She had to make do with a Kool-Aid, straight. [In my childhood I had gone to a restaurant with my parents and their friends and when the drink orders were taken I actually asked for a Shirley Temple, "and make it a double" just to amuse them. I'd much rather have had a coke. But that's me all over: go for the joke.] There was another child avatar there (aside from Rosmairta, who is in the group), but I had no idea what to say to her! I checked her profile and was reduced to asking her how old she was. I recall age and grade level were important to us when we were young. Although she sat down next to me, she said nothing. And that made me a little nervous, but again this is colored by my adult consciousness.

Our third stop was Yadni's, which was strangely empty of newbies and griefers. There was just one avatar in search of a toaster. He claimed it was an emergency. Sometimes you just have to love SL.

All in all, I think my child avatar has affected me more than people I've interacted with. I feel an obligation to not incite other avatars into making sexual advances (by trying to strike up a conversation). I don't want to get too involved with other child avatars because I'm not going to be in this body much longer. Besides, I loathe babytalk. Not that I don't use babytalk, mind you. Worse than that, I use it in real life with my cats both talking to them and then answering myself. When I talk to children in my work capacity, I speak to them as short adults. I soften my voice, but I don't talk down to them. Most of the ones that talk to me speak in what appear to be non-sequiturs, but not babytalk.

Okay, maybe they say, "Where's fwoggy?" I respond with, "Mr. Toad? He went home [aka: dropped dead]. We have tadpoles now. Did you see the tadpoles?" "I see one. I have a cat." "That's nice. I have two cats." "My uncle's in jail." Pause. "How interesting." You learn so much about kids' families, especially in the puppet theatre. Kids are like little tape recorders, witness this exclamation from a very small child: Very small annoyed child in puppet theatre: Gah-dam oo, immah haahse! [Goddam you, in my house!]. Well, if they aren't going to mince words, why should I?

I will be so glad to get out of this body, put on another inch and a half, some knockers, and go find someone to flirt with me (although they apparently have to tell me that's what they're doing, which explains a lot about my dating problems in my pre-married existence). Being a kid? It's not for everyone.

Poster at the entrance to Second Life Children where "kid" avatars can meet under safe conditions and give each other support.