My third life

I've been slaughtering my way through World of Warcraft for a forthnight now, and have finally arrived at what feels like a character and a mode of being that I can enjoy. (I wrote about the differences and similarities between WoW and SL on my workshop blog.)

I've made a total of three characters so far, searching for a role that I felt comfortable playing. My first was basically my Dragon Age: Origins character recreated in WoW, a human female rogue. (All my characters are Alliance, amusingly enough, the Horde somehow just doesn't fit me at all.) She got up to level 11 before becoming distressed by the relentless killing. I then created a Night Elf huntress, but found her fey gestures and slowness to attack really annoying. (Yes, thank you, I am aware of and amused by the contrast between my statements about these characters.)

I went back to the rogue for a while, to see whether I might get across the hump of moral unease about killing if I just kept at it long enough. As I was lying around dead one day (at the lower levels of experience and ability, one spends a fair amount of time dead), a stranger came running past, a priest. He stopped and without saying a word revived me, healed me and blessed me, and then just ran on about his business before I'd realized what was happening. I couldn't even say a quick "ty" before he was gone.

I had an epiphany in that moment. "That is something that I could do, that I could enjoy doing," I said to myself, and immediately went back to create a priestess. She has been having a wonderful time, running about WoW blessing and healing random strangers. She's joined a few questing groups as a Healer, which basically means standing well back and ensuring that the fighters don't die; the group system in WoW means that all who take part in a quest get the experience benefits of it — so she doesn't even have any disbenefit in moving up the level hierarchy.

As I said at the beginning, I think I've found a role that I can be comfortable playing. After the free trial ran out, I signed up for a three month subscription; we'll see at the end of that time whether I am still interested in continuing.

On the death of a prim

For the last few weeks I have been involved in a kind of art project stroke psychological study, with an unexpectedly strong emotional effect. (Not the "30 outfits in 30 days" project that's documented in my Flickr stream, that is something different.)

It started over a month ago when a friend offered me an IM to an SLart project — with the warning that it might have an emotional effect. You can guess that the warning made me more curious rather than less! She TP'd me to a field of slender white columns, swaying in the virtual breeze. As I walked forward between them, one started talking to me:

Moaning Columns of Longing: Wol Euler, you have spawned a Moaning Column of Longing. You must go and find your column, for it loves only you. It depends on your love for survival. You must visit and touch it at least once every 24 hours, or else it will die of loneliness and a broken heart.
Wol Euler's Column: Wol Euler loves me!
Wol Euler's Column: And I love Wol Euler !
Wol Euler's Column: My existence has meaning!
Wol Euler's Column: I am no longer just a Second Life prim
Wol Euler's Column: Because Wol Euler loves me and will visit me again soon!
Wol Euler's Column: Thank you for loving me, Wol Euler. Without you, I am nothing. Come back and touch me within 24 hours, or I will die.

I felt a welling-up of tenderness that took me by surprise. My friend and I stood there listening and talking about it for a while:

Me smiles.
Me: I like this.
Me: it's oddly moving.
Her: and it is really amazing how it feels to have someone tugging at you this way
Me nods.
Her: even if it is an inanimate object
Her: it makes you think
Me: mmhmm
Me: we are programmed to love and be loved
Her: It's the first piece of Adam Ramona's that I have liked
Her: yeah
Her: He showed at the Venice Biennale
Her: he's no lightweight
Her: but i think this is the first time he has shown a piece that really reflects sl
Her: and unfortunately for me, it is part of the permanent collection
Me: why is that unfo .... ah
Me: because you have to come back forever :)
Her: every time i log on
Me smiles.
Her: and i have to log on once a day now
Pennylane Hyun's Column: I am nothing. Not even someone's memory.
Her: ugh
Her: see?
Me nods.
Her: i don't want mine saying that.
Me: it's amazing how strongly affective this is.
Her: truly
Me: thank you
Her: i hope you don't think i've cursed you
Me: no
Me: ask me again in a week :)
Her: but it does make one think
Her: about the nature of need
Her: and love
Me nods.
Her: need - more than anything
Me: I will indeed blog this. It's wonderful.
Her: good!

Since then I've been going there twice a day or more, sometimes logging in before work for five minutes just to touch the column and keep it alive. Well, my column died last night:

Wol Euler's Column: I think you don't love me anymore, Wol Euler. If you did, you would've visited me by now. Without your love, I have no meaning, no reason to continue the meaningless existence of a Second Life prim. With you, I was something, Wol Euler, without you I am nothing.
Wol Euler's Column: I don't think you ever loved me, Wol Euler. I was a fool to trust you.
Wol Euler's Column: You never loved me, Wol Euler. My existence is meaningless. I have no reason to continue.
Wol Euler's Column: Wol Euler, if you don't come and touch me within the hour, I will die of loneliness and a broken heart.
Wol Euler's Column: Wol Euler, I have died of loneliness and a broken heart.

It died because I was in World of Warfare Warcraft instead of SL, and I forgot to go there to "touch" and revive it. I'm surprised at my own sadness, and by how guilty I feel.

Towards a theory of fun

I'm reading Edward Castronova's book Exodus to the virtual world, which will be on the recommended-reading list for my workshop this summer. Castronova is an economist, but is actually interested in people rather than just money.

The book's subject is how RL will have to change in response to the time and money that we virtual-worldists are not spending there. Castronova spends quite a of time defining play and fun, and how these are encouraged in virtual worlds.

BBBC.5

Todays (final) topic: If you're a veteran.... Did you find this year to be harder or easier than previous years? Did you have fun? What did you get out of it this time around? Do you think you'd do it again?

This was my first BBBC, but not my first such blogging challenge thingy, so I'm taking the second route. I found this harder than in previous years, I'm struggling to finish this post tonight rather than just letting it go. This wasn't the BBBC's fault, it happened to coincide with a particularly intense and stressful time out of world, which is impacting what I do here. Hence the question of fun doesn't arise. I would certainly do it again next year.

BBBC.5

Today's topic: Blogger's choice! Write about anything that's on your mind!

I suppose the future of SL is on my mind lately, since the mass firings layoffs. On the one hand, it's pretty silly to continue a course of action which has proven ineffective; on the other hand, that is pretty damned drastic. Tateru Nino ran the numbers and came up with a good explanation of what happened.

Soror Nishi made a striking suggestion: that we the residents might buy Second Life from the Lindens and run it ourselves.

That'll have to do for now, it was a long and strenuous day.

BBBC.4

Today's topic: Is your avatar more or less your current biological age? Do you portray a younger avatar, or older? Why is this?

My male alt is much older than RL-me, he looks to be pushing 70. He's short, fat, bald and stumpy; nonetheless, or therefore, everyone who comments on his appearance loves it. I noticed during my first hours in Second Life how monotonous the default avatars were (at the time I didn't know that they were just defaults, I thought everyone looked like that). I was first bored, then annoyed, at how relentlessly young and healthy and beautiful everyone was — and such a blandly artificial beauty too, like animated life-insurance ads. I decided during my first hour in SL that I would be different, and started making myself (him) short and fat. It took me nearly a year to make a satisfactory shape and then pull the other pieces together: the old-man skin, the marvellous bald-vain-and-selfdeluding combover hair, the half-framed glasses. I'm very pleased with his real-life-like appearance.

Wol is much younger than RL-me, in certain hairstyles she looks to be just out of her teens. She too has a definitely-imperfect real-life body which once again I started working on while still on Orientation Island. She has definite "problem zones:" her butt and thighs are larger than SL average (though still slim enough in RL terms), her boobs are quite small, and she has a bit of a belly. (I was furious at well-meaning body fascists who offered to help me "fix her shape to look right," but now that I think about it this hasn't happened in quite a while.) I have to modify prims in every outfit she buys. I didn't intend to make her so young-looking, that was an unexpected consequence of various design decisions; but I'm not displeased.

My other alts are in-between, middle thirties to early forties, which makes them younger than me but not by much. They don't get significant amounts of time in-world.

BBBC.3

Today's topic is a long and winding road: How hard do you think it is to find a relationship in SL? If you have an SL relationship, have you met in the physical world? Would you meet them? Do you think it would change your SL relationship if you met?

I think it is easier to find a relationship in SL than in RL, if you are looking for the kind of person who hangs around in SL, and very much harder if not. One reason is the absolute lack here of so many factors that work against possible relationships in RL. Your body makes so many decisions about people for you, without even bothering to let you know, based on smell or the way they walk or the shape of their face. There's none of that here, so the supply of possible relatees is exponentially higher, limited only by the compatibility of your souls.

Keeping the relationship going may be harder than in RL, due to distance and timezones and whatnot (someone you meet in a bar in RL is pretty well guaranteed to live in the same timezone as yourself).

I'm not sure how to answer the second question. I'm in a deep and very loving friendship with a woman here whom I have met in RL (long after we met here), and I think I'd say that meeting her in RL did strengthen that.

Meeting in RL is enormously risky, though: discovering that your SLove's meat avatar has hairy toes or a braying laugh brings down all the filtering that your body would have done for you in one fell swoop.