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kjpepperGods, I feel like I'm writing a final paper for a class with the amount of carrying on I've been doing and procrastination. (Got a work project due tomorrow, lol.)
But I did want to take a few minutes to ramble a bit about Second Life. Yes. Second Life. Go on, make fun of me. I'll wait.
Done? Ok.
I started an account last month when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bluewindkitsune asked me to check on something for him while he was on the road, and after watching him tool around in it while he was over here a couple weekends ago, I decided to pop open that account this week and see what it was all about, especially in light of a fun conversation I was amused enough to overhear between anzovin and Blue. Plus, I've been really bored with WoW lately - I'm on self-imposed hiatus from that until Lich King comes out.
It's been interesting in the sort of way that makes me want to look on Google (after my assignment, damn it) to see if anyone's done any sociological studies of it. There's certainly enough there for some kid's Div III project over at Hampshire anyway. We already know how people behave on the internet when there are no real consequences and you can be as anonymous as you want to be. ( 4chan, trolls, etc) But then you add this extra 3 dimensional representation on top of that... it's pretty sublimely weird.
One thing that I was reminded of while exploring was books I've read. I mean, the Street in Snow Crash is obvious, in fact, Linden Labs has stated that Stephenson's Metaverse is exactly what they were going for when designing this game. And honestly? They've done a fairly good job. I mean, that was the first thing I thought of when I logged in. But as I played more and watched how people behaved in different places and the avatars they chose, I was reminded less of Snow Crash more and more of Don't Bite the Sun by Tanith Lee. Seriously... everyone in SL? JANG. It's an entire world where death doesn't exist, you can change your appearance to be as "pretty" or as off the wall weird as you want (Seriously. I saw a ham on legs the other day. A HAM. wtf.) and you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want... it's all self directed to the point that in the first hour or so playing I was about ready to turn it off because I was kinda bored with zooming aimlessly from place to place, and I was kinda desperate for some guy with a bouncing yellow exclamation point to give me some damn direction. Which is pretty much exactly how the Jang think and feel... everything in their world is beautiful and comfortable, there's no money to worry about, no limit on their behavior, and they exist in this state of drugged up elegant ennui with everything. So they find circles of friends, and create drama for their own amusement. Which is pretty much what people on SL do. I couldn't really play this for long if I didn't already know folk on it. Then again I could have said the same about Warcraft.
The other thing that I found interesting was dealing with appearances.
I stated that you can pretty much customize your avatar to look however the hell you want. (A ham, for fuck's sake.) The game and the community within it attempts to be helpful to newbies in this regard, as there are hubs for free clothing for your avatar, and also "skins" (surface textures) and "shapes" (underlying shapes, which are usually further customizable using sliders.) There is better quality stuff out there for x amount of virtual money, but since you start out with zero and stay there until you either buy yourself some virtual money (the exchange rate's about L$250 per $1) or get a SL job, most people troll freebie places until they find something they can live with. This task is significantly easier (for women) if you want to look a) white b) skinny c) in all ways like a 20 dollar hooker. If you're one of those weirdoes like me who want to pretty much look like themselves as much as possible and don't happen to be white, skinny or a twenty dollar hooker, you're gonna have problems. Like seriously. That right there in my icon? that required a week of relentless "shopping" to find a skin that even remotely approached my actual skin tone and about five bucks of real money just for the dreds. And clothing is also a pain in the ass because while the stuff that's basically texture layers looks fine, the stuff that includes "prims" (primitive shapes added to an outfit)? As in real life, not at all built for people that decide to look like an actual person with actual curves as opposed to being "SLanorexic". Which most female avatars are, btw. Stick figures with improbable boobs, and hair that escaped from Dolly Parton's wardrobe, 75% of them, I swear. (the other 25% are anime girls.)
I tell you, this has been a week of discovering self-criticism with a vengeance, lol. I'm not body conscious at all in real life, but I chuckle to think of the hours I've spent this week evaluating the size of my avatar's ass, boobs, hip spread, belly, what have you. Hell, I've even had the odd experience of tweaking my camera angle up between my character's legs and thinking "okay, no, I'm sorry, black pussy? UR DOING IT WRONG." (No, seriously, we flat out just don't come in the same shades of pink that white girls do. I promise.) And there was some time fighting with various bits of clothing (cause SL = BEST PAPERDOLLS EVER) and nearly giving in, popping open the slider and shrinking the size of my ass/tummy to fit into whatever it was. Cause sometime art really does imitate life - how many times have I lamented that they don't make cute clothes for chubby girls? And when they do, they're more expensive?
I'm finally happy with my avatar, btw. She's in the ballpark, if not an exact match. She's still thinner and leggier than I'd like, but she looks real. Which, as I continued to run around SL with Blue and his gang and by myself, is in very short supply. And I have yet to run into a single person that, well, looks like me. I've seen four other "black women" this week. All tall and sticklike, except for one, who was clearly played by someone with some serious Hottentot Venus problems and a leopard print fetish. *wince*
I kinda had the same feeling playing Warcraft. My favorite toon to play, appearancewise, was Pimienta, my dwarf priest. She was pleasingly chubby, and other than being, well, short, she looked like me - the dark skin tone for dwarf females is really quite pretty with their facial structure. Did I see anyone that looked like her/me running around Azeroth besides myself? Hell no. Seriously, of the two races out of the ten that even had a realistic dark skin tone available, I saw barely anyone using it ever. And if I weren't dead tired and with miles of work to do still, I could make a comment on the Horde races, specifically the orcs, trolls and tauren... how they're considered "ugly/antagonist races" and yet their histories and designs are pretty much lifted from brown-people cultures ("I know, we'll make this race based on native/aboriginal culture.... BUT WE'LL MAKE THEM COWS." wtf.), and how there was this big hoopla when the Burning Crusade came out because the Horde were finally getting a "pretty" race with the pale, green eyed, willowy Blood Elves. Hell, this whole thing could have made an interesting![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ibarw post, if I were a little quicker about writing it and if I had a few more brain cells to devote to it. Bah, maybe I'll submit it anyway.
Anycrap. SL=damn fascinating in its own weird little way.
Back to work with me.
But I did want to take a few minutes to ramble a bit about Second Life. Yes. Second Life. Go on, make fun of me. I'll wait.
Done? Ok.
I started an account last month when
bluewindkitsune asked me to check on something for him while he was on the road, and after watching him tool around in it while he was over here a couple weekends ago, I decided to pop open that account this week and see what it was all about, especially in light of a fun conversation I was amused enough to overhear between anzovin and Blue. Plus, I've been really bored with WoW lately - I'm on self-imposed hiatus from that until Lich King comes out.It's been interesting in the sort of way that makes me want to look on Google (after my assignment, damn it) to see if anyone's done any sociological studies of it. There's certainly enough there for some kid's Div III project over at Hampshire anyway. We already know how people behave on the internet when there are no real consequences and you can be as anonymous as you want to be. ( 4chan, trolls, etc) But then you add this extra 3 dimensional representation on top of that... it's pretty sublimely weird.
One thing that I was reminded of while exploring was books I've read. I mean, the Street in Snow Crash is obvious, in fact, Linden Labs has stated that Stephenson's Metaverse is exactly what they were going for when designing this game. And honestly? They've done a fairly good job. I mean, that was the first thing I thought of when I logged in. But as I played more and watched how people behaved in different places and the avatars they chose, I was reminded less of Snow Crash more and more of Don't Bite the Sun by Tanith Lee. Seriously... everyone in SL? JANG. It's an entire world where death doesn't exist, you can change your appearance to be as "pretty" or as off the wall weird as you want (Seriously. I saw a ham on legs the other day. A HAM. wtf.) and you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want... it's all self directed to the point that in the first hour or so playing I was about ready to turn it off because I was kinda bored with zooming aimlessly from place to place, and I was kinda desperate for some guy with a bouncing yellow exclamation point to give me some damn direction. Which is pretty much exactly how the Jang think and feel... everything in their world is beautiful and comfortable, there's no money to worry about, no limit on their behavior, and they exist in this state of drugged up elegant ennui with everything. So they find circles of friends, and create drama for their own amusement. Which is pretty much what people on SL do. I couldn't really play this for long if I didn't already know folk on it. Then again I could have said the same about Warcraft.
The other thing that I found interesting was dealing with appearances.
I stated that you can pretty much customize your avatar to look however the hell you want. (A ham, for fuck's sake.) The game and the community within it attempts to be helpful to newbies in this regard, as there are hubs for free clothing for your avatar, and also "skins" (surface textures) and "shapes" (underlying shapes, which are usually further customizable using sliders.) There is better quality stuff out there for x amount of virtual money, but since you start out with zero and stay there until you either buy yourself some virtual money (the exchange rate's about L$250 per $1) or get a SL job, most people troll freebie places until they find something they can live with. This task is significantly easier (for women) if you want to look a) white b) skinny c) in all ways like a 20 dollar hooker. If you're one of those weirdoes like me who want to pretty much look like themselves as much as possible and don't happen to be white, skinny or a twenty dollar hooker, you're gonna have problems. Like seriously. That right there in my icon? that required a week of relentless "shopping" to find a skin that even remotely approached my actual skin tone and about five bucks of real money just for the dreds. And clothing is also a pain in the ass because while the stuff that's basically texture layers looks fine, the stuff that includes "prims" (primitive shapes added to an outfit)? As in real life, not at all built for people that decide to look like an actual person with actual curves as opposed to being "SLanorexic". Which most female avatars are, btw. Stick figures with improbable boobs, and hair that escaped from Dolly Parton's wardrobe, 75% of them, I swear. (the other 25% are anime girls.)
I tell you, this has been a week of discovering self-criticism with a vengeance, lol. I'm not body conscious at all in real life, but I chuckle to think of the hours I've spent this week evaluating the size of my avatar's ass, boobs, hip spread, belly, what have you. Hell, I've even had the odd experience of tweaking my camera angle up between my character's legs and thinking "okay, no, I'm sorry, black pussy? UR DOING IT WRONG." (No, seriously, we flat out just don't come in the same shades of pink that white girls do. I promise.) And there was some time fighting with various bits of clothing (cause SL = BEST PAPERDOLLS EVER) and nearly giving in, popping open the slider and shrinking the size of my ass/tummy to fit into whatever it was. Cause sometime art really does imitate life - how many times have I lamented that they don't make cute clothes for chubby girls? And when they do, they're more expensive?
I'm finally happy with my avatar, btw. She's in the ballpark, if not an exact match. She's still thinner and leggier than I'd like, but she looks real. Which, as I continued to run around SL with Blue and his gang and by myself, is in very short supply. And I have yet to run into a single person that, well, looks like me. I've seen four other "black women" this week. All tall and sticklike, except for one, who was clearly played by someone with some serious Hottentot Venus problems and a leopard print fetish. *wince*
I kinda had the same feeling playing Warcraft. My favorite toon to play, appearancewise, was Pimienta, my dwarf priest. She was pleasingly chubby, and other than being, well, short, she looked like me - the dark skin tone for dwarf females is really quite pretty with their facial structure. Did I see anyone that looked like her/me running around Azeroth besides myself? Hell no. Seriously, of the two races out of the ten that even had a realistic dark skin tone available, I saw barely anyone using it ever. And if I weren't dead tired and with miles of work to do still, I could make a comment on the Horde races, specifically the orcs, trolls and tauren... how they're considered "ugly/antagonist races" and yet their histories and designs are pretty much lifted from brown-people cultures ("I know, we'll make this race based on native/aboriginal culture.... BUT WE'LL MAKE THEM COWS." wtf.), and how there was this big hoopla when the Burning Crusade came out because the Horde were finally getting a "pretty" race with the pale, green eyed, willowy Blood Elves. Hell, this whole thing could have made an interesting
ibarw post, if I were a little quicker about writing it and if I had a few more brain cells to devote to it. Bah, maybe I'll submit it anyway. Anycrap. SL=damn fascinating in its own weird little way.
Back to work with me.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-08-11 01:38 pm (UTC)Re: WoW
Date: 2008-08-11 03:45 pm (UTC)Alliance side I played a very dark-skinned character for three years. When came across someone else dark skinned I'd take a screen cap. Over the course of three years I think I have five screencaps.
I love Horde races, but can't stand PoC/Horde cultures so I play there in small doses or in remote areas. Taurens rankle the most, with Trolls not far behind. And please don't get me started on brown orcs.
no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 02:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-15 02:27 pm (UTC)