I guess we’re not noobies anymore

You can tell you’re not newbies/noobies anymore when you go back to Help Island or to Orientation Island to rollerskate all over the place, while others try to find out how to walk or edit their appearance. OK, so maybe the other test is when you can wear a Spartan sword that you got for free through your head and still smile with the smile attachment that you got a few months ago.

Roller skate jumping over noobies’ heads when they are editing their appearance, oh yes. Sitting on that parrot that taught us how to chat last November, yay! Looking hot in roller skates? Well that’s my first and best SL friend Anna in the background. Me I just do silly in rollerskates

Famous People In Second Life (that are asleep or something)

I’m a member of the Fashion Consolidated group and this gives notices from a load of fashion designers, without having to join all of their groups.  Sometimes it’s a darned annoyance, as I just get bombarded by the notices from the group, but it does have the advantage of letting you know when there is a sale on somewhere, and it increases my chances of finding a  new shop that is pretty good.  So I’m checking out the sale at Opium Skins, 25 Lindens each at one of their shops, and in amongst the crowd is the famous SL fashionista, CronoCloud Creegan.  In amongst the busy crowd I don’t get a reply to my hi Crono, and when I pop by later the shop is empty, except for Crono.  Unfortunately she was away from her keyboard, but I did steal this photo opportunity.

Amicitia: sweet shops, curious island

I’ve mentioned the place called Amicitia before, and it’s a place worth going back to. It’s this cute little island with a small mall at it’s centre, and very good shops like Tres Blah as well. Surrounding this is a residential area in a beach setting, that is pretty and peppered with the odd curiousity. Clearly some creative types live here and they’ve put a bit of their creativity and humour into the place where they live.

In the centre of the mall there are two camping spots, where people can earn money – not for sitting in a chair or doing a cleaning animation. Oh no, they have a set of stocks and a poseball that makes you lean up against the wall as if you were throwing up. As you can see me and my friend Anna found this a good opportunity to get out our ruler and man spanker. Anyway, that woman in the stocks was wearing a dress that I’ve got – don’t cramp my style, bitch!

Anna didn’t get the film reference on the sign that I’m posing by, and for those that don’t get it there was a tourist promotional sign for the town of Amity in the film Jaws that was defaced in the same way.  Indeed you will find something swimming in a bit of the water in the bay here.  Sh, sh, shhaaaarkkkkkkk!!! Also, I and Anna didn’t like the hot dogs at the Flop Dog stand as you can see from the expressions on our faces.

Yodel-ay-ah-heeeeeee!

Giggle it has to be said that both in real life and in my second life I can sometimes be a bit silly. Of course in SL one can dress up as silly as one wants. Heck if some people can walk around as a dragon avatar, I can wear a sexy hot pants version of lederhosen, GODDAMIT! Being silly is good, but then again, sometimes there’s a flipside to one’s apparent emotions. So, the transgendered thing……

I’m in my late 30’s and since early childhood I knew that I wanted to be female. I don’t really want to give a whole life history here, but safe to say that I’ve always known where I stand, but it’s a bit impossible isn’t it? I remember being really frustrated that I couldn’t be with the girls any more, when they split boys and girls for sports lessons in junior school. After lobbying my teachers and my mum, they eventually lined up for me to go to a netball lesson with the girls, and of course had the teacher all set to get the girls to mock me. The people you should trust, at least as far as this key part of myself, aren’t to be trusted. So I crawl into my little shell, take what female companionship I can get, sit on the sidelines of social life.

In childhood I was also quite severely asthmatic – quite the runt if you will. The only thing you can do when that hits you is to curl up and shut down. It’s probably better for people now, and I’ve seen a friend’s kid admitted to hospital for asthma that was certainly no worse than what I experienced as a child. The fact that I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t walk to the toilet, threw up when I drank or ate, the crushing headaches and that strangling sensation on the borderline of panic. That sort of thing could last for two weeks – it left it’s mark. I remember coming out of these periods and it would hit me with this physical and emotional elation: ravenous appetites, running, bouncing, gosh-darned manic for crying out loud.

I kind of link these two things together as being influences on my tendency to have mood swings this way and that, and they can change just like that.  It’s not so bad as it used to be, and I would say that I have mellowed generally in my 30s.  Asthma and not being the correct sex are things that one doesn’t chose, and there’s a kind of emotional rebound from that feeling of being trapped like this.

On SL it’s a fun place with lots to explore, and in a way we can be who we want to be, present the self that we would want to be in real life. Well, I don’t hide my transgendered self, I don’t hide who I am in this life. Mixing with other transgendered people in SL, and recently in real life has helped me to be proud of who I am. It’s darned difficult though in real life, and so sometimes I enter this virtual world and I get silly with it. Got to laugh, got to seek novelty, got to pull back from feeling like some sort of victim.

Clothes and such:

• the outfit is from BareRose and is called Lederrock, and it comes in a few different colours.

• the shoes are called Mary Jane Mules, and are from Shiny Things, just the best shoe shop

• the hair is from a place I hadn’t heard of until recently, and is well worth checking out. It’s called Double Pigtail Braids and is from Empyrean Emporium.

• the main poses were taken in Creative Fantasy Home and Garden, where they’ve got some log cabins in a mountain sort of setting
• that big chair I’m sat on part of the Double Choc suite and is from Del Sol Open Market

Boho Chick

One of the stylistic pleasures in SL is getting to know your inventory and knowing various shops, so that one can mix and match clothes for an outfit. I got this skirt and top at Ivalde, which is a lovely clothes shop for girls generally but also specialises in vintage styles. I got this boho style skirt and in the absence of being able to find some nice flat Mary Jane shoes, zipped off to the best shoe shop in SL, Shiny Things. You want sandals, check the details baby, that’s Shiny Things for you.

Once at Shiny Things I also remembered that they do some nice jewelry, including some nice hippy/boho stuff, and so here we have the lovely bracelet set and the Jade necklace. This hair has to be one of my favourites – The Half Up, from ETD. And where do you go to get a picture by a lovely cottage? Creative Fantasies. The times I have been back there just to admire the trees and the detailing on Julia Hathor’s buildings. Me and my friend Anna actually met her there once and she was quite sweet and approachable. Again, one of the pleasures of SL is the friendliness and the way that the big business people of SL will actually give you the time of day.

Hello hello!

Hi there! Just a first posting from my virtual self, Analise, and indeed the person behind my avatar. This blog will probably develop this way or that as it goes along, but it seems that it will have several purposes.

Firstly, this is a place to record the pretty places that I’ve been, the daft side of Second Life and those moments shared with friends. For me Second Life, which from now on I’ll call SL, is a wonderful creative world, made by the people who live in it. It’s also a place where I have made and kept friends, and it goes way beyond the chat room experience. In a chat room, even if you have some avatar that stands there and blinks, you can’t walk, fly and teleport around a huge world. You can’t go off to some chilled out place and project yourself onto an avatar that is dancing to vintage Salsa music. Typing (((HUG))) is so different to actually giving a hug to the other person’s avatar. SL hugs warm the heart – OK not like a real life hug, but that person still touches you.

I love the fashion of SL, I love to shop and browse, and I like bumping into people (often literally) and making friends in these locations. One thing this blog will definitely have is pictures of the bizarre and silly side of SL. One moment I’m re browsing around shopping, another I’m sky diving off the top of the shopping mall that I’ve just visited.

So anyway, this is My So Called Second Life. I ain’t no Claire Danes, but at least on SL I’m something more like the female that I wish I had been in this so called real life, bleuch!