Let’s go back further in time…before I joined InWorldz, I joined Second Life. 🙂 (I apologize, but I only have a few early pictures, and they suck.)
I’d heard about it a few places around. On the web, on TV…not on CSI, like many people did. I was watching a show on people with disabilities of some kind, and they talked about a woman who couldn’t communicate “normally” but found a great advantage to online communication and even made her av with the same tics she had in RL. So it was always in the back of my mind, and one day (I don’t know why), I thought I’d look into it.
I didn’t just sign up. I googled it. I found information about it first, like from blogs. I quickly found that the SL wiki was crap (and still is) and that there’s not much on SL on the web. So anyway, it was free, and I figured it wouldn’t hurt, so I signed up.
I used the name Relm because it was the name of my D&D character many eons ago…I didn’t even play long. I didn’t want to use my real name or any of my usual online names, and Relm was a good fallback. I knew enough not to use a crappy username name, anyway. Foxdale seemed like a good fit. I already had a sense of her as an elf long before she became one. I guess this is because the D&D character was half-elf. Oh, and yes, Relm is from Final Fantasy VI.
I made a painful mistake on sign-up, though. I chose the worst starter av they offered: Gamer Girl. I signed in to find this hideous…thing…on my screen. I instantly went into Edit Appearance to try and fix it and failed. I couldn’t change her face because a lot of it was the skin. My efforts to change her hair confused me. Why did it not change? What was that white thing on the back of her neck? It was a while before I learned that one has system hair and prim hair.
Of course, I wore boxes. I was in Edit Appearance a whole lot, and I couldn’t stand that there was nowhere private to change clothes. I also dragged and dropped a lot because I didn’t know you could right-click, although I’d learned soon enough to enable right-click (I’m on a Mac).
I ran around a bunch of places, flying all over the main grid. My first night out, there were TP problems. I kept finding myself at the same dumping ground. Also, I think I kept trying to go somewhere new and ending up TPing back to the same place. I should point out that it was a long time before I realized there was a Search button. I’m not kidding. My early explorations were hell. However, I think I saw a Linden!
I got a good walk from a neko av. I spent a ton of time hanging around Help People Island. I didn’t ask questions; I just listened. My first friend was a girl who said something that’s stayed with me: she said that she’d been in SL a year and was still learning new things all the time. It’s true!
The first main things I bought were from Curious Kitties. I went with this neko/Japanese thing. I remember being extremely frustrated about all the attention I was getting from men. I was stuck, though. I couldn’t bring myself to make an ugly av, so how could I avoid it? I fretted for some time. I finally thought I’d try being a tiny.
Raglan Shire is a really nice sim, and I found a decent tiny av. I also quickly learned about the problems the tiny community faces. There was a campaign on at the time to defend their way of “life” (or more accurately, of av morphing). A lot of regular-sized people are “racist” against tinies, in part because of what they’ve done to their mesh. Of course, it’s really because some people are a little weirded out by people who wear those kinds of avs and talk like that, just like people have issues with adults playing children. The tiny community also has to deal with LL, which was trying to quietly put a stop to them by no longer allowing any more tiny content development. It’s a whole side of SL many of us don’t see!
However, I didn’t wind up doing the tiny thing, either. Instead, I rented land and put a house on it. And I was a month old! It took me a while to find a good house, good plants, a good pool, etc. It took a while to terraform for the pool. I broke my house a few times, enough that in the end, I gave up trying to fix it. Land and buildings may not be the best idea for someone new, but I guess I did OK for all that. I still have that land, too.
Once I’d gotten my home in OK shape, I found I had nothing to do. I’d spent ages searching stores for the right furniture and flowers, and suddenly, I’d hit a wall. So I decided to see what RP options were available. It had come time to actually talk to people! Yeah…
I tried Avilion and couldn’t figure it out. A lot of people sitting around a campfire and not talking, and nothing else seemed to be going on apart from a ballroom. I couldn’t understand the elf rules, either. It was listed as an allowed fantasy race, but there was a notecard that said you couldn’t be an elf until you’d been to elf class. Elf class?
I found Artstonia, of course. Artstonia could be its own entry, but I also don’t know if I want this to turn into a “my experiences in Arts” blog. Suffice it to say, I stuck around.
Since that time, I’ve improved (IMHO) my av. I opened a food store. I made four alts. I opened a jewelry store. I discovered the joys of wasting time on the SL forums (where I’ve learned a lot!). I rent land all over the darned place (I still don’t have a paid account), including a homestead for my breedables. I’ve also pumped a lot of freaking money into SL over time, but it’s been worth it.
And now I have blogs no one will ever read. Where will I be in another year? Still in SL? With more stores? Better stores? More blogs? Or will I get a life? Only time will tell.
Relm's Ramblings 