| The Illustrated True Story Of What Happened On Second Life, Part-1 |
[May. 12th, 2008|09:03 am] |
This entry was conceived after X, my former significant other (SO) hacked my Deviant Art site to put up a fabricated confession of what I was doing on Second Life. This had been used to poison everyone I knew on SL against me to such an extent that there wasn’t much point in trying to refute it. Indeed, all that could be done even to explain it was to expose more of the reality that existed between myself and X. And there was nothing at all about that which anyone could or should have had any sympathy for.
Yes, my relationship with X had been a truly hideous thing, but I thought it a shame that this real world hideousness should taint the Second Life characters. For both they and their story had been quite beautiful.
Thus I conceived this entry, not to justify anything, but just to give those on the internet who had seen the fabricated story a chance to get a glimpse of what the characters and players involved had really been like. And also to share what, to me at least, seemed like a beautifully, if somewhat tragic, story that deserved to be set down in words, rather than being allowed to just pass and be forgotten, as tends to happen with most stories that enfold on Second Life. (SL)
I also wanted a chance to share the images, because I think they demonstrate something of the creative and artistic environment one lives in while playing SL. Actually, they don’t hardly scratch the surface of what is possible there.
SL can seem a trip into Wonderland, where you may meet many people who are, to say the least, a little odd by real world standards, yet fascinatingly beautiful in the context of the game.
So, here it is, for your entertainment and bemusement - the true story of one person’s trip down a modern day rabbit hole – paralleled by the disintegration of an equally surreal real world relationship.
Let me first explain that the person behind the screen is not an experienced role player. I was engaged to a person who in this journal is referred to as X, for anonymity’s sake. And X was a passionate role player. In fact, I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that role playing was pretty much X’s whole life.
X took role playing seriously to an extent that X would probably be best described as an Otherkin – someone who literally attempts to channel the spirits of Anime and Video Game characters and become their reincarnations in the real world. Not just for gaming purposes, but to literally take on the personality of a character and expect people in the real world to accept and react to them as that character.
Now, you might say that sounds crazy and wonder why anyone in their right mind would want to be in a relationship with such a person. And you’d be quite right to wonder that. Only someone who had a comparable tendency to be out of touch with reality would have the slightest interest in such a person. And I make no pretense that there is anything that should be regarded as “normal” or “rational” about my own thought processes or outlook on life.
My own particular form of madness, which at one point seemed to dovetail perfectly with X’s uniqueness, stems from the fact that I was raised on the romantic spiritual ideology of the ‘70’s, and also that I absorbed certain impractical ideas about devotion, compassion, self-sacrifice and redemption from the metaphysical religion I was raised in. Most people grow out of that stuff when they reach maturity. I never did. I attempted to apply religious idealism in real life. And that, I would discover, is just as crazy as the way X lived.
And thus it seemed, for a time at least, that X and I were a perfect match. Any abuse I suffered do to the selfishness or peculiar immorality of whatever character X was channeling at the moment was passed off by myself as an imperfection which my love would surely heal, if I had the faith and stamina to survive it, and if I never stopped believing that deep down, beneath all the strangeness and abuse there was a good person worthy of redemption.
Actually, upon writing that, it seems like I’ve lived my whole life down the rabbit hole, and the Second Life story I am about to share could be considered a rabbit hole within a rabbit hole.
At the time when this adventure began, X and I had been living out are peculiar delusions of love for 13 years – most of that time being separated by long distances and staying in touch via phone calls, letters and the internet. We would visit each other from time to time, particularly in the earlier years of our relationship. But as we aged, we both endured failing health which made traveling impractical, and I also acquired more responsibilities as my folks aged to a point where they needed a live in caretaker, and I wouldn’t have been able to leave, even if I’d felt well enough to do so.
As a consequence, X began to feel neglected. This resulted in X becoming jealous of any fun I could be seen having on the internet in any of the various fandoms I participated in. Why was I having so much fun in Furry Fandom when I should have been involved in X’s role playing, learning to be the perfect love interest for whatever character X was channeling at the moment, X wanted to know.
Well, believe it or not, this was not a new situation in our relationship. I had never been able to role play in text environments. I was willing to accept and deal with X playing these characters in our real world interactions. But I was never able to get in on the main text based scenarios. I would simply hear about what happened in them, as they were pretty much all X wanted to talk about, aside from the toy and record collecting interests we shared.
I’d managed to get by with this handicap for over a decade, but now it was getting to a point where X was losing all tolerance for the situation. In X’s mind, Furry Fandom was preventing me from learning to role play, and in turn, starving X for the attention it was my responsibility to provide. And since X was a well-established SA goon (Internet troll) it was no trick for X to make trolling and destroying my projects in Furry Fandom a new hobby.
It got to the point where placating X meant I had to learn to hate Furries, which essentially meant hating myself. And, being steeped in the idealism of the 70’s, hating and exhibiting prejudice towards any group of people was out of the question for me. In other words, X was stretching the fibers of are already uncouth relationship to the breaking point. I had to do something to get X’s mind off of feeling neglected. I had to make some kind of serious attempt to learn to role play.
Thus, when my friends in The Furry Community suggested I should try Second Life, I saw the potential in this virtual environment to be able to see settings and characters, rather than having to read paragraph after paragraph of descriptions that my mind was not capable of decoding. If I could role play in Second Life and get X to move the center of action there, it might just save our relationship.
Also, being a Furry writer, the prospect of bringing my characters to life in a virtual environment held considerable appeal for me. That would make the effort to learn the game more than just a chore I was doing to placate X.
And so I embarked on my adventure to find out if Second Life was all it was cracked up to be.
First I studied the rules and descriptions of the game. It was a rather odd virtual RPG with no fixed story or setting. It was supposed to be like life, made up as you went along. But it could be any kind of life you wanted, drawn from any aspect of fantasy or real world culture that was important to you.
You were supposed to play a character that was in some sense yourself, and yet not yourself - the kind of person or being you would have been if you’d had any say in the matter. Or, another way it was put, to create a body that your spirit would be completely comfortable in, and then project your consciousness into it.
Well, having been raised on metaphysical religions and stories, that was right up my alley. But I didn’t take that seriously at first. I’d never considered myself all that interesting, and therefore didn’t think I would enjoy playing anything that was an expression of myself. To be honest, I’ve always thought myself rather ugly and undesirable. If this game were to reveal any aspect of me that was beautiful, it would come as just as much a shock to me as anyone else.
Anyway, I was far more interested in playing characters from my stories. And it just seemed natural to start out this experiment with my main protagonist, whose name is Perry Rhoades, an anthro-spaniel. If I could create an avatar of that character and successfully play it, I’d be on my way to having the skills I needed to keep X happy.
Unfortunately, Second Life doesn’t offer anything even remotely resembling an anthro-spaniel avatar at start up. In fact, the only Furry start up avatar was a ring-tailed raccoon.
Entering the virtual world I was pretty clueless about everything. Though I did ace the orientation rather well. Whereupon I was given the key to Second Life. That is a key that allows you to exit the orientation area and enter the main world.
The orientation was pretty much like playing any ordinary video game. I just moved my avatar around, following instructions as they popped up. I’d played many such video games. And there was no time limit involved. So it was all rather relaxed starting out.
Upon entering the main world I hoped this relaxed pace would continue as I explored the virtual world in search of a way to change my avatar’s appearance to that of my character. But beyond that point I was slow to pick things up. The viewer was exceedingly complicated to manipulate. And even if I did eventually learn how to use the “Build” function, I still had no artistic skills with which to build objects. So altering my avatar on my own was a lost cause. And I was pretty sure I was going to have to eventually pay someone to make the avatar I needed.
But, time passed, and I didn’t meet anyone. I didn’t know where to find other Furries in Second Life, nor whom to approach for help. Plus, my real world shyness problems had followed me into Second life. I was scared to start up conversations, fearful of making a spectacle of myself, or of being accused of trespassing as I wandered around the mainland. As much as I knew I needed to make contacts, if I even thought someone was going to approach me, I tended to run away.
I eventually got used to seeing the ringtailed raccoon as myself. It was a cute avatar that complimented my personality well enough. Which would have been fine if I wanted to play myself. But, if playing myself was no fun in the real world, why would I want to do it in a virtual world?
I wanted to play Perry. I wanted to assume his confidence and charm. But as time wore on I began to question if it was possible to do that.
It occurred to me that becoming a cute ring-tailed raccoon hadn’t done much to alter my personality. I wasn’t role playing at all. It was just the same old me reincarnated in another form. Why should that change if I had an avatar that looked like Perry? After all, you don’t act in Second Life. You don’t work from a script. You talk to people and react to them, just like in real life. And what good would it be for me to be in Perry’s body acting like myself?
Eventually I found this gallery that had images of various Furry avatars. I looked through them to see if there was one that seemed to draw something out of me besides myself. And as I did so, it gradually occurred to me that I was trying to do things backwards. If I wasn’t any kind of actor capable of assuming a role of a character very unlike myself, perhaps I should be playing a character that I identified with more strongly – one that was pretty much me to start with, and therefore wouldn’t require any acting.
Thus, after a year of wandering around the virtual world without accomplishing anything or making a single contact, I retired Perry from the game. As you can see, the whole thing had left him weary and unfulfilled.
Having determined that the character I most identified with was Kacey, I started the game over with a female avatar, still stuck with being a ringtail, but the female ringtail was cuter, and it felt more comfortable.
After getting back to the mainland, I began trying to get serious about my role play training. I needed to get a squirrel appearance for the avatar to look like Kacey. But after a year of failing to learn how to get a dog avatar for Perry I figured I’d most likely be playing Kacey Raccoon for a while, whether I liked it or not.
I let the spirit of Kacey rise from my subconscious and take over, just has she does when she plays her part in the scenes she appears in in my novels. Then I sat back and watched as she rummaged through the startup clothes SL had provided, mixing and matching pieces of clothing until she came up with an outfit she felt comfortable in.
Note that privacy in the virtual world was hard to come by for a homeless newbie. Kacey had to go under water when she wanted to change clothes.
Kacey made her home on Orientation Island and would sit on the fence watching other avatars try out new gadgets and gestures, wondering where the heck they were getting them. But, unlike Perry, Kacey did not feel so prone to run away when someone wanted to talk to her. In fact, she was amazed at how friendly everyone was all of a sudden. And it wasn’t long before some friendly fur had given her a landmark to the Rocket City Fur Meet sim.
At Rocket City Kacey did her best to get used to talking to other furs. She didn’t know what to expect of them. She was just happy to finally be among her own kind. Though she was far from a social chatter box. And if things got at all awkward she would run away. It was, after all, totally in character for her to be overwhelmingly shy. But at least she wasn’t shy to the point of dysfunctionality like Perry had been. Which, in the context of my characters, was all wrong.
The Perry in my series displays no shyness at all. He’s a very confident and fearless character. It seemed strange to me to reflect why I couldn’t play him the way I was playing Kacey. I play them both fine when writing the novel series. But Second Life was not the same environment as the Theater Of The Mind where Spectral Shadows is played out.
Even when playing fantasy characters, SL demands more honesty about one’s self than real life. It has a way of showing a writer which characters reflect the true self of their creator, and which are pure concoctions of fantasy.
Thus I learned that Perry is a pure concoction of fantasy, and wearing him on my outside would be a total lie that I’d feel very dishonest and insecure about. That’s why he ran away all the time. He was scared to death someone would see his façade wasn’t real. And that probably has a lot to do with why I’m so terribly shy in real life. I’m scared to death someone with see the façade nature gave me totally belies the true me inside.
The Rocket City sofa had an animation that made Kacey fidget shyly in a way that was accurate for the character. She liked to just sit there and wait to see if anyone would talk to her. If they did she would chat with them as best she could. If not she felt invisible, like part of the background. That helped her feel at ease.
Eventually Kacey became aware that her newbie avatar made her an object of suspicion to the Rocket City furs. It was quite common for trolls, goons and griefers to create new accounts just to attack Furry sims. That she seemed unusually quiet didn’t help either.
That awareness that she was an object of suspicion, even as wallpaper, was obstructive to her sense of ease. So she became eager to assume her proper geek squirrel appearance and headed for the Rocket City Dealers Room.
Kacey wandered through the dealers room, finding vending machine after vending machine filled with the most beautiful Furry avatars imaginable. She had not known there were so many possibilities. Yet, her need was specific. And none of the pink squirrels she found suited her. Then it happened.
Upon seeing the Kani Bunnies Kacey lost all interest in being a squirrel. “That’s me,” she said. “I would feel totally at one with myself in that avatar.”
At this point things became confused. I realized that this was not my Spectral Shadows Kacey I was sharing this game with. She wasn’t a squirrel at all. She was a different character I’d never encountered before – some aspect of my inner self I’d never had occasion to explore, yet was alive inside me and aching for expression.
Knowing not else what to do in this situation, I bought Kacey the avatar of her choosing, and from that point on Second Life was as spontaneous and beyond my control as real life. Perhaps even more so. And I would have very little, if any control over what Kacey said or did.
Was this role playing? Had I finally learned how to get totally into a character like X could? X will be so pleased, I thought. Though in retrospect I realize this was not role playing at all. Role playing is taking on a character that is written to have specific attributes. What I was doing was something of a much more personal nature. I was tapping my own inner spirit and giving it a kind of expression that would never be possible in the real world. I had freed my inner self and turned it loose in the virtual world to be who it would have chosen to be – just what the rules of the game had said I should do.
With the thought in mind that I would now be playing the game as it was meant to be played, rather than experimenting with using it for some alternate purpose, I instantly felt more comfortable with the situation. But I would soon learn that that confidence was false, as just about everyone I’d meet, with rare exceptions, were using Second Life for alternate purposes, and disrespecting those who were actually attempting to experience a second life.
Happily, Kacey tried on her new avatar. She was so happy not to have been stuck with one of those squirrel avatars, or the character I had attempted to give her. Well, the Kacey I created for Spectral Shadows is a pretty unhappy character. I can see where a suddenly freed inner spirit would feel held down by it.
But who was this bunny? What type of character would she have? It was all as much of a mystery to me as anyone else in the game.
I also pondered on what I should be taking down in notes for possible inspiration from this adventure to be used in upcoming episodes of Spectral Shadows. It would have been easy to do this if Kacey had consented to being a squirrel. Now I needed to add something to the concept. But then I thought, if the geek squirrel in my book was playing a virtual game like this, of course she wouldn’t want to play as herself. She’d want to play as an animal type she felt envious of. And since bunnies tend to be popular, why wouldn’t an overweight geek squirrel play a beautiful bunny?
That theory certainly seemed to be verified by the majority of avatars I encountered in SL. It was a world populated almost exclusively by exquisitely beautiful people. It was extremely rare to find anyone who wanted to bring their physical or social imperfections into the game with them.
So I went with this idea of a squirrel playing a bunny. At least for the time being. I ended up not using that idea when I wrote the story, as it seemed more logical that the squirrel would want a human avatar. But I digress.
Kacey put on her outfit and felt totally secure in her appearance for the first time. She now had full confidence in her cuteness and couldn’t wait to show herself off, thinking others were sure to take joy in her presence. A very rare feeling for someone of Kacey’s shyness.
Having shed the newbie ringtail, Kasey was now a unique and attractive SL avatar. It made all the difference in the world to the attention she got. Suddenly everyone she met was falling all over themselves to help her get started on her second life.
They gave her lots of landmarks to places that offered free clothes and guidance for newbies. One such place was called The Shelter.
Kacey loved The Shelter. She loved everyone there who was kind to her. She felt herself a part of that place. And she thought herself as dear to the people there as they were to her.
She loved to be there to dance and chat with her friends. She was comfortable, and almost secure enough to be unhindered by her shyness.
Not everyone there was kind to her though. There was this one fellow in a human avatar who ventured to romance her, steal her Second Life virginity, along with what at the time seemed a considerable amount of Linden Dollars, only to turn around and dump her most cruelly, after which he tried to torture her with mind games.
“I warned you before we started,” he said. “I told you I’m a scoundrel, and I’ll hurt you.”
In retrospect it’s very strange that I did not see the resemblance between this fellow and X. For X had said almost the very same thing to me at the start of our relationship. And just like Kacey, I had disbelieved it. Kacey was obviously born of that same part of my soul that was idealistic in the belief that she could redeem such people – that part which X had deftly taken advantage of for 13 years.
Yet Kacey survived that well, probably because she had the option to mute the guy and never hear from him again, or because there was always someone close by, waiting to take over and prop her up whenever her world crashed.
Of those she loved best were Kat and Namov. Kat, who owned The Shelter, was looked on by Kacey as a mother figure. Kacey wanted to emulate Kat. She wanted to share everything she learned about SL with the newbies and make herself an asset to Kat’s establishment.
Namov introduced Kacey to The Heron Project, the organization in SL that was designed to assist the handicapped. She wanted to make herself useful there as well. And she became friendly with the people in charge, attending their events and watching for any opportunity to make herself useful. At one point she even ventured to offer herself as their mascot.
Oh how wonderful, she thought. SL was so much more than a game. It was an opportunity to be of real assistance to real people. Not only could she live in ways that her creator never could, but she could have a real life that touched other lives. No one will ever understand how she longed for that.
Another place Kacey found to hang out was The Chibi And Spoon Anime Bar. There she found she could do something else that her creator was denied. She could cosplay.
Kacey journeyed to the Japanese quarter of SL. The Japanese were quick to embrace her, dress her in kimonos and invite her to ceremonies.
And when she returned to The Shelter, she had blossomed even more into her unique identity.
Now having her trademark hair, Kacey felt complete oneness with SL. She felt herself a living part of it. And she roamed freely about, shopping becoming one of her greatest joys, as she loved to return to The Shelter each evening with a new outfit that she hoped would wow the patrons.
But the more she was out and about, or freely making a spectacle of herself, the more she encountered people who wanted to date her, have sex with her, both in world and out.
This took Kacey by surprise. She had not been spending much time in the Furry sector of SL yet. Most of the avatars she was meeting were human. She had not expected human avatars to regard her as anything but a cartoon animal – amusing, pretty eye candy, a nice friend. She had even styled the proportions of her body somewhat modestly, as attracting sexual interest had been the last thing on her mind. And, of course, real world contact of any kind was out of the question, as she did not exist in the real world. At least, not in any physical sense that anyone could see or touch.
Kacey now found it necessary to work on her real world profile. She stated every unattractive attribute that had ever exiled her creator to loneliness, hoping to discourage anyone looking for real world dates. Still, people kept IMing her, asking, “Age/Sex/Location?”
To Kacey’s dismay, she found herself increasingly surrounded by people who used SL for a dating service. And when she explained that she was a character, rather than an advert for a real person, they would get indignant and accuse her of not playing the game right. Whereupon she would direct them to the rules of the game which clearly stated she was not required to provide any real world info about herself that she didn’t want to.
To Kacey’s even greater dismay, she found that Namov was also looking on SL as a dating service. Fortunately he didn’t look on her as a prospect, but still she worried about him getting hurt, as she could not convince him that falling in love with avatars and expecting to feel the same about the players was more often than not a prescription for disaster.
However, in that one instance, Namov proved Kacey wrong. He did find a love in SL to marry in RL as well. Unfortunately, Kacey would not live to attend the virtual end of that wedding.
Further complications set in when nice people, viewing Kacey’s real world profile, felt instant sympathy for her player and wanted to chat about my problems, out of character. I soon realized that this was unavoidable. These people were too sincere to be fed any fiction about me. I had to drop all pretense at RP and let Kacey introduce her friends to the person behind the screen.
Fortunately, this didn’t compromise Kacey as badly as I feared it would. Everyone seemed to understand there was 1st life and 2nd life. But Second Life was not set up in such a way that a character could have any problems, beyond the need to acquire friends and Linden Dollars. Those who were naturally sympathetic needed to know about the troubles of the person behind the screen. Even if those problems were what the player had come to SL to escape.
I eventually decided that it was pointless trying to keep my SL Kacey connected to my Spectral Shadows Kacey. The SL Kasey had thrown off that connection as soon as she’d chosen her avatar. So my SL Kacey was without fine-tuned character details. Yet she had gone on fine without them because she was essentially my inner-self. So I decided I would go all the way with that notion. Kacey’s character details would be my real life details. That way it wouldn’t matter if people understood she was a fantasy character or not.
Proceeding in this manner, I thought my venture into SL quite successful. It wasn’t the lesson in role playing I expected, but in terms of socially interacting with others, I was tearing down walls that had imprisoned me all my life right and left. I’d thrown my true inner self out there for public judgment. And as far as I could see my character was loved to an extent I could never dare hope to be loved in the real world.
The patrons at The Shelter would often cheer when Kacey would make her entrance. At the time I thought this was because they loved her. Though some would claim otherwise later. Some would claim that they never saw her as anything more than a big joke. But, be that as it may, at the time I had no reason to think she was unappreciated. She thought the fun her friends seemed to be having with her was completely sincere. So she felt free to goof around and indulge in all manner of silliness for the entertainment and good feelings of her friends.
Continue To Part-2 |
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