Phoenixes DO NOT PERCH

Written 5 May, 2008

Phoenixes DO NOT Perch!

Yesterday Sweetie and I decided to visit a couple of places before setting down to work on Whimsy Kaboom (no SLURL for Kaboom yet, as we've not yet settled on terrain, so just head west from Whimsy.

Somewhere along the line I suggested we visit Grendel’s Children; this was because when I asked my brother Mordecai where we might find an appropriate flying steampunk structure, he suggested we look at Grendel’s entrance area.

It was only for a quick look, but two hours and 80 avatars later, we were still there.

Sweetie—not surprisingly for someone of her artistic temperament—was showing signs of being bored. Sometimes she crosses places off her list before they ever really rez. Rezzing can be slow for her. Slow computer.

But when we saw the box people, she was enraptured. And irritated, because one of the boxes had made a group called Boxes ‘R Us, a name she knew she deserved and wished she had thought up.

Because Sweetie, as my faithful readers will remember, is quite often a box. (She reminds me to remind you that she is a beautiful ornate Asian box with black laquer bump-mapped finish and custom hover text. Usually her hover text reads something like "I have corners; therefore, I am.)

We found ourselves surrounded by a dozen or so box people, some still partly human, as they tried on their box avatars.

“My question is,” I asked of the boxes, “Are you guys empty, and if not, with what are you filled?” They ignored me, and before long they had dispersed. Maybe it was an inappropriate question to ask a box.

About that time a book flew past.

Not when one says a book flies past, the assumption is it has been flung. And if it has been flung, it stands to reason that someone, somewhere, is a flinger.

But there were no flingers about, just a flying book, pages fluttering as it moved about.

And when it landed, the book closed and was just… a book.

We found the sign for the box avatar, which was free, and I found another, the sign for the book avie, at just 50L. And then I saw a sign for a grandfather clock avatar, and the buying spree began.

Grendel’s children has every type of non-human avatar possible. A PARTIAL list would include, in addition to the aforementioned boxes, clocks, and books: quadrupedal dragons, bipedal dragons, human-dragon hybrids, human-everything-else hybrids, pre-human hominids, mechanical men, dirigibles, gargoyles, sand worms, werewolves, sphinxes, centaurs, demons, imps, angels, gods and goddesses, elementals, fairy lawyers, trees, rocks, sea creatures, dinosaurs, reptiles, amphibians, insects, and arachnids of every type, dozens of mammals ranging from moles to tigers, and more than a dozen species of real and mythological birds, nearly 1000 avatars in sizes varying from tiny to huge and sold in a humongous store that covers a full sim of a four-sim estate.

It was the bird display that gave this blog post its title.

Sweetie and I were methodically moving along the walls, discussing and buying dozens of avies (most $50L or under). When we reached the birds and she saw a picture of a glowing white flaming phoenix rising splendidly from its ashes, nothing would do but she have it.

We had been picking up all sorts of accessories and freebies along the way, and when I saw a bird perch, I said in all innocence, “Hon, there’s a perch. Only $2L.”

If avatars could swell up, Sweetie would have swelled. Maybe avies CAN swell, for I quite clearly remember her doing so.

“Phoenixes,” she announced proudly, “DO NOT PERCH!”