New Brother

Mordecai and His Creation, a Flyable Dragonfly

Written 6 February, 2007

New Brother

Since my early days in Second Life, I’ve been friends with Mordecai Scaggs. He has never failed to be courteous, charming, and genuinely interested in my well-being without ever, ever being forward. And he is, of course, in thrall to my also-very-good friend Melissa Yeuxdoux. He’s the real deal.

When I confided in Mordecai that I was enamored of Sweetie but reluctant to approach her, he gently set the stage with her. “Love in Second Life takes many forms,” he said to her in a tone ridded with hidden meaning. It mystified her at the time, but after we were born as a couple, she understood what he had been saying.

Whenever I’ve had difficulties in SL—and I’ve had my share—Mordecai has been there. And not only in IMs, either. He has been quick to invite me to his place or to teleport to mine so he can give me a warm, brotherly hug. It’s quite comfortable to get a hug when you’re in distress, and even more comfortable when you know there is no sexual intent.

When Mordecai read my blog “Sweetie’s Seducer,” he was beside himself. He teleported me to him and offered to tear the limbs from Martin’s avatar. It was sweet, but of course I told him that would be inappropriate. Amusing, but inappropriate. He was a great comfort that day.

When Mordecai logged on after reading my blogs about Saturday’s breakup with Sweetie, I was sitting on a meditation mat 120 meters in the air atop the memorial tower I had built to Sweetie, saying mantras and waiting for her to appear on the grid so I could offer myself to her. He came right over and promptly fell all the way to the ground.

When he didn’t fly right back up, I looked down and saw him sprawled on the sand, lying on his face. He wasn’t rising.

I flew right down and asked if he was okay. I’d never seen an avatar fall without jumping right back up, and I was more than a little worried.

But he was only stuck in a sitting pose.

Soon Mordecai was as good as new. We sat on Sweetie's reflecting fountain, talking first in chat and then via Skype about our respective loves, pleasures, and pains. It was soothing to talk with a kindred spirit and soon I was, if not feeling quite myself, at least not weeping.

Thanks, M. I couldn’t have gotten through it without you.

-----

For some time, Mordecai has been big brother to Sorcha, a charming young lady who is as enamored of her sweetie as Mordecai and I are of ours.

Right now, alas, Sorcha is ensconced on Mordecai’s land in her Airstream trailer, as she broke up with her sweetie, K. My heart goes out to her.

I in no way wanted to dilute the special relationship Mordecai and Sorcha have, but it was clear that Mordecai was acting in the same capacity with me—and truth to tell, I needed a big brother to whom to turn when the days grew dark.

To my delight, Mordecai said yes.

I now have family in Second Life!

Thanks, Mordecai! And thanks, Sorcha, for sharing!

Thank Goodness for Friends

Written 5 February, 2007

Thank Goodness for Friends

Due to the nature of my recent posts, friends have been checking in with me.

Thank goodness for friends.

I'm fine, everybody. Just taking it one step at a time.

I'm good.

Sweetie's good.

We're good.

We're golden.

Sweetie's Odyssey

BreathofGod Onmura

Written 4 February, 2007

Sweetie's Odyssey

So like OMG, Chey and I were flying, over 15,000,000 meters and rising, and then somehow we got separated.

I think it was me that drifted, for suddenly I wasn't hearing Chey's Hawaiian music, but some sort of polka tune.

And then I lost God Speed. I'm still looking for it.

I could have gotten by on Plaid from the Mystitool, but just then a new version came in and it wouldn't attach to the HUD at that altitude. And I had already taken the old one off.

That's when I began falling.

Do you know how long it takes to fall to earth from 15,000,000 meters?

Days.

I fell for days.

-----

I, BreathofG8d, saw a piece of meat fall by.

BreathofG8d rarely sees pieces of meat at that altitude.

And BreathofG8d was hungry.

So I flew after it and caught it.

The piece of meat had a name.

Sweetie, it was called.

Sweetie interested me.

There are other pieces of meat for BreathofG8d to eat.

-----

A nice lady dragon rescued me at 500,000 meters.

Her name was BreathofG8d. She grabbed me out of the air with her great claws and put me on her back and flew me back to the surface. Even at her great speed, it took nearly an hour.

BreathofG8d was a dragon of tremendous size and great age, wise as only dragons can be, and possessed with a wondrous dignity. She begged my indulgence.

"I'll take you home," she said, "but I'm starving," she said, "and that piece of meat on the hoverbike is far too tempting to pass up. I must eat first."

"No prob," I said.

Dragons have interesting lives. She showed me her dragon's hoard of gold and jewels and her brood of baby dragonlets. One of the larger ones was stalking me, but she knocked it ass over elbows with her great wing and it went off yelping and blowing little puffs of smoke.

She showed me the Isle of Wyrms and many other fantastic sights. I had to sit in a stupid tower for hours while some well-meaning but clueless gnubie doofus in a high-prim suit of armor fought her over my honor. Or, rather, he thought he was fighting. BreathofG&d just lay on her side and pushed him away when he and his horse came too close and shot flames at him, being careful to miss him without it looking like she was deliberately missing him. Finally, he went away, my honor unavenged.

I felt way safer with BOG than I would have with a gnubie gnight, anyway, for whenever I held down the ALT key I could see he was equipped with more than a sword, if you know what I mean.

BOG is absolutely beautiful, with shiny silver scales and purple and white feathers, and I told her so and asked her if she would allow me to tweak her appearance. She most graciously said yes and I made her even more fabulous.

We searched and searched for Pele, but couldn't seem to find it. I was missing my beautiful and sensual Cheyenne so much; I'm afraid I wasn't very good company for BreathofG8d. I was thinking about Cheyenne's thighs.

We traveled through many lands and crossed many seas and had many adventures. We had to deal with sirens and cyclopses and I don't know what all else. I was on the verge of giving up, but BOG wouldn't let me.

"Let me just refresh myself," she said, "and we'll continue."

"How do dragons refresh themselves?" I asked.

"We seek heat," she said, and with me on her back she gave a great leap and carried me away, her great wings flapping, carrying me so fast my hair flew out behind me.

Which it rather does anyway, as I tweaked the flexi settings to lessen gravity.

We were soon over Dreamland, so I figured we were headed for some Second Life Club Med, where we would lie in the sun and I would get my nails polished and she, her scales, if the beauticians weren't frightened away.

Sure enough, I was soon seeing palm trees.

It was night, and the moon was new, and I had been seeing nothing but stars for hours-- but suddenly, on the horizon, I could see a dim red glow.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Heat," she said. "Renewal."

Was it possible I was seeing a volcano?

It was.

And not just some crummy SL volcano with static lava either, but a volcano with a pool of beautiful, splashable, wadeable lava.

Pele.

I was home.

Reconciliation

Waiting for Reconciliation

Written 4 February, 2007

Reconciliation

I don't fall in love often or easily. It had been a long time since I last did.

I appreciate the power of the computer for making connections that can lead to real life relationships, and in the past I flirted with just that, but, truth to tell, I thought it sad and more than a little pathetic.

And then I went on the grid.

I wasn't looking for love in Second Life, or, for that matter, in my first. I'd grown comfortable being alone.

But love found me.

I don't mean I found someone to have sex with in Second Life.

I mean I fell in love.

Hard.

Fast.

Desperately.

I've been overwhelmed by the intensity of my emotions.

I'm not frightened by love, and I'm not reluctant to commit, but my emotions have been so intense they frightened me.

Love.

Jealousy (a new emotion for me).

Panic.

I was so frightened by my emotions, in fact, that on Friday night I told my lover I thought it best we part company.

I didn't want it to end. I only wanted to lessen the inevitable heartache.

The end of the relationship was hardly looming, but I was nonetheless in dread of its inevitable end.

It's important to honor the boundaries of others in our SL relationships, and especially their wishes about the boundary between their first lives and their second. My lover made her boundaries known early on. I understand and can keep to boundaries. I've respected hers, and the resultant frustration and longing have spilled over more than once into this blog.

What has made it particularly difficult for me is the subtext.

Oh, yes, there's always subtext.

Since my lover is single and in hopes of having a long-term real-life relationship, I needed to know if the boundaries she placed on our relationship were about me in particular, or about her anxieties about a Second Life relationship progressing into her first life, or simply fear of being in a relationship at all. I wasn't sure-- and, after talking with her all night until the real life sun came up, I still wasn't sure. It seemed to be all of those things and none of those things. It was mixed-up, mumbled-up, shook-up world of reasons. And yes, part of it was about her particular concerns about being in a relationship with a real-life me.

And so I pulled the plug.

There were no angry words or recriminations. I just told her I had to protect myself against future pain. We couldn't continue.

She was shocked--but then, so was I.

But she knew why I was doing it.

I can't begin to tell you how miserable we were. We had wept throughout the night, and we wept all through the morning. Even as I terraformed a neighbor's property and kept up light-hearted commentary with my lover via e-mail, the tears were streaming down my face and hers.

And then my lover talked with Pam Havercamp.

Pam is my friend in Second Life, and, for years, my first.

Pam gave me wonderful advice.

"Baby steps," she said.

It put things in perspective for me.

-----

I missed my lover by mere seconds. She logged out as I was typing an IM that read, "I'm yours, I'm yours, I'm yours."

And so I built a 110-meter tall tower that spelled out her name, stuck a primmy gazebo on top, and sat for hours on a meditation mat. I sat there patiently while she slept. until she logged on. And we made up.

-----

My self-protective instincts are good. By default they are switched to on, but yesterday I turned them off. I gave my heart to my lover, forever and always, without condition What will be will be.

Last Flight With Sweetie

Written 3 February, 2007

Last Flight With Sweetie

I told her.

I told my Sweetie we needed pressure suits.

"We'll blow out from the altitude!" I cried.

"No we won't. Our hearts will soar free."

And so we cranked our MystiTools up to Plaid mode (and she supplemented her speed with God Speed), and we flew.

Up.

Up, past our first record of one million meters.

Up, past our second record of five million meters.

Up we flew, up, up, past ten million meters.

Past fifteen million meters.

And that's where I lost her.

I lost my Sweetie at fifteen million meters.

At about 9000 miles above the surface of Second Life, our avatars distorted beyond belief, and with our souls singing with joy, I lost my Sweetie.

I lost her forever.

I'll never say that happened at fifteen million meters. I'll only say that I came back. She didn't.

I should be heartbroken. I was for a while. But I know at my deepest levels that Sweetie is soaring, soaring, going ever higher, breaking all records, her heart flying free, touching the sky.

And me, well, I was right. That flight wrecked me. What's left of me is going through the motions. My heart is somewhere up there at fifteen million meters.

My Sweetie.

Goodbye.

Future Shock

Written 2 February, 2007

Future Shock

It’s hard to believe that five first life years have passed since I first logged into Second Life on 24 October, 2006. A lot has happened in that time.

In the real world, of course. Politics are as crazy as always. George W. is nearing the end of his third term. It was more disastrous than his first two terms combined, but at least we got the troops home when he needed them to quell the rioting that followed His (by law now we are required to capitalize all pronouns that refer to Him) repeal of the Bill of Rights. And let’s have a moment of silence for those who perished in coastal cities around the world when the polar ice caps melted. And is that the sound of the last living tree being felled in the Amazon rain forest? But hey, gas stocks are at record high prices!

Advances in computer technology promised to make the Second Life experience more seamless, but dramatic increases in the SL population have offset the advantages provided by the new terracore Pentium processor and mice with optical Heads Up displays. At last count, there were 12 billion registered Second Lifers, more than there are people on the planet! At this moment, 124 million are in-world and the server garden at Linden Lab consumes more electricity than Rhode Island.

We weren’t surprised when Ansche Chung bought Massachusetts and chopped it into 512-square-meter rental properties, but it caught us with our pants down, when, after collecting all our tier payments, she defaulted on her own tier payment to Linden Lab and Dreamland went down. One moment it was there, the next gone forever, taking our non-copyable objects with it.

I had to sell my copy of Mask #1 from 1949 (the first horror comic), and I have to hustle every month to pull together the tier payment (Who needs heat? It doesn’t get that cold here, anyway), but I bought four contiguous private islands and raised a great mountain and lit the spark, forming a new Pele with an even better erupt mode which spews ash all the way to the mainland when the volcano goddess is upset. And at 300 meters, Sweetie and I still have the House of 1000 Pleasures, which was, fortunately, copyable, and we've replaced all of our pose balls except the illusive Devotion.

And Sweetie and I? We’re still together in Second Life. In First Life, she’s just across the hall with her laptop—on SL, of course, cuddled up with Cheyenne at the House of 1000 P on the Amazing 4-Prim Changeable Bed, which looks exactly like our real-life bed. Tomorrow morning I will feed her crepes and strawberries.

It wasn’t an easy road for me and Sweetie, but we managed to surmount the obstacles and conquer our fears. We were both a little embarrassed when we first met, for we had been so very intimate with one another, and yet were in one sense strangers. Neither of us looked exactly like our avatars, but we soon enough found the same level of intimacy with our real bodies. Before long, our round trip flights between New York and Atlanta helped significantly in pulling Delta out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. And eventually, when Sweetie’s work took her there, we both moved to California, where we bought a 1930s Craftsman-style cottage in Santa Barbara into which we’ve incorporated Asian design elements and textures from Sweetie’s Second Life collection. A real life copy of her reflecting pool sits in the garden, and her memorial for the women of Afghanistan is nearing completion in Griffith Park. Life with Sweetie is perfect.

-----

You know, it’s once in a lifetime

And it won’t come again

It’s here and it’s gone

Like the Magnolia wind


-- Guy Clark, Magnolia Wind

-----

Thank goodness we didn’t let it slip away.

But Wait!

First Land in Huntsman. Notice I've Made it Into a Park

Huntsman is Butt-Ugly

P20 Skybox Over Huntsman

P20 Skybox, Retexturized and De-Ramped

Walking Ramp, Walking Away

(I had meant to post this before my series on the volcano warming, but I had an oopsie moment).

Written 23 January, 2007

But Wait!

Wait! Wait! I forgot something!

I forgot to tell you about what I’ve done with my First Land!

-----

It’s a madhouse on the mainland. There are no covenants—not at the places I’ve checked, anyway—and confusion and ugly construction abound.

It didn’t take five minutes for my next door neighbor Aardvark-almost-spelled-backwards to raise his land a good 10 meters, leaving me with four options: 1) raise my land to match his, passing the problem on to the neighbor on my other side; 2) live with an ugly cliff; 3) waste precious prims (only 117 on 512 sq m!) to disguise the cliff; or 4) get rid of the ugly cliff by making the land into a steep hillside.

Grrr.

So, how did I resolve this?

By making the land into a hillside park and hanging a skybox.

Film at eleven.

-----

I learned about small apartments by visiting my friend Kal Mannock. His place was not unattractive, but he had a ridiculously low prim allowance (30) and it was hard to keep perspective while inside it because of its small size.

I shopped for skyboxes that would provide the most possible space while fitting on 512 land. I found several.

The first was the Kokopelli house.

Kokopelli

The Kokopelli made a lot of sense. It weighed in at about 55-70 prims, depending on whether the teleporter, kitchen cabinetry, Kokopelli ornaments, and tintable windows were installed.

It had two levels and a flat roof which served as a patio.

It had a built-in landing ramp.

It could be easily set up as two apartments, or even three.

It was copyable.

And it came with Rez-Faux, which made it easy to set up.

All of this meant that I could hang it on my First land and rent it—maybe to two or even three different people.

There was only one problem.

It was butt-ugly.

Sweetie pointedly told me this when I took her to show it to her. She immediately began plans to retexturize it.

I’ll have to admit, it looked like a starter home for Rob and Laura Petrie on the old Dick Van Dyke Show. It was made of pale blue 60s-looking bricks, with a bay window design that would have been considered avant-garde in 1962. And the carpet! OMG! Ug-ly!

But the Kokopelli house resides, still in ugly blue, in my inventory, for I discovered that KumiKorp now makes a 512 skybox.

The Dragon Skybar is a KumiKorp P20 skybox, 20x20 meters, with only 18 prims. It’s a big roomy box that looks and feels like loft space—and so does the new P512.

The P512

The P512, weighing in at only about 20 prims, featured large touch-operated lockable industrial-sized hidden doors that made for easy landings, a loft with voice-operated ramp, a carpet with changeable textures, a dance machine, and a mist machine. And it was really big! Way cool!

I picked up a couple, hung them on my first land, and furnished them (sparsely) with a four-prim color-changing bed with single and couples sleep poses ( I sleep on the same bed myself), a couch and chair, and a carpet and table. In one of the skyboxes, I placed a Wurlitzer jukebox and a DVD player and made a big flat-screen tv so the renter would, for a premium, have control of the media on the land.

I even used three prims to put a little park—a bench and a tree—on the hillside.

My rental property was perfect.

Slumlord Thinking

I figured I could allow 30 prims unfurnished to each of the two renters, or 20 prims if they took it furnished. I would ask $150L/week for the skybox without media control, and $225L/week for the unit with.

That would add up to $19500L, or about $73 US per year, provided the units remained full. They would generate enough income to pay the annual premium for paid membership in Second Life—and the $400L/week allotment would be gravy.

I would make $73/year from my premium Second Life account.

If the units stayed full, that is.

Still, my rental property was perfect.

Enter Sweetie

Thank goodness for Sweetie.

Sweetie approved of the new skybox. She immediately began tweaking the one I had shown her, changing its floors and outside walls from maple paneling to a dark brown on which I could determine no texture whatsoever.

“I even saved you a couple of prims,” she said proudly.

“How?” I asked, with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

She had taken out the ramp.

The voice-operated ramp. The really nice feature voice-operated script-equipped ramp. The how-the-hell-does-a-gnubie-without-flying assistance-get-up-to-the-ramp-without-it really nice feature voice-operated script-equipped ramp.

I’ve not managed to get it working correctly since. No matter to which prim I link it, it tends to walk off into space whenever it’s operated. And I still can see no detail whatsoever in the texture Sweetie applied to the floors and outside walls.

I’m sure Sweetie can. But I can’t. I just see a big dark brown uni-colored blob hanging in the sky.

Sweetie overhauled my little park, too. She built an enclosure of irregularly-shaped rocks, and I linked them and then put in a group of linked trees.

And I one-prim rezzed it all. (Or, rather, I two-prim rezzed it, because all of the objects wouldn’t link as one unit. So I made them into two groups and rezzed each group as a single prim.

Meaning that I used the DAPSI, a device that will maintain linked objects as a single prim; it does this by setting the objects as temporary and then re-rezzing them as new temporary objects whenever SL recalled them.

I had removed one of the P512 skyboxes (no, not the one Sweetie had retexturized; the other one) so there would be enough available prims to build the park.

The rezzed park looked great. But when tried to rehang the second skybox, it wouldn’t rez.

There were insufficient prims.

It wouldn’t rez because—or so SL said—it would exceed the land’s prim count.

Meaning, I guess, that the one-prim park was somehow counting as more than one prim.

So I erased the one-prim rezzer (and with it went Sweetie’s wall and all the trees) and rematerialized the skybox.

Or tried to.

There were now plenty of free prims, but SL announced that the skybox hadn’t rezzed. I could see nothing, and I couldn’t capture an object in Edit, but there seemed to be a huge invisible house sitting crossways across my land, infringing on two of my neighbors.

I IMed friends asking WTF and found out it was an SL bug.

And so I left my first land with my original park destroyed, the replacement park inoperable, a damaged skybox hanging in the sky, and its replacement lost, invisible, and preventing access to my First land.

And it had all been so perfect before.

-----

Rethinking

But I’m glad it happened. Sweetie did me a favor because I re-evaluated my plans and decided they were mean-spirited. I mean, who would want to live with only 30 prims?

The new skybox was autoreturned that evening. Hooray!

I went back to the land and reconstructed my little 3-prim park. I had taken a copy of Sweetie’s rock wall, but I didn’t want to cause problems for the renter with problematic one-prim rezzes.

And took out the lower skybox and all its furnishings, then flew up to the skybox Sweetie had tweaked. I took it out and, using the same location and rotation numbers, hung a replacement unit I had just purchased. The house went to position perfectly, meaning the furniture and audiovisual equipment were placed just right.

Now the land was perfect again.

Thank goodness for Sweetie, for now I would not be trying to maximize profit and in the process making life difficult for two renters.

Now there wouldn’t be two renters, one with access to radio and movie controls, and one without.

Now there wouldn’t be two renters, each trying to wisely use an insanely low budget prim.

Now there wouldn’t be two renters living side by side, having to listen to each others’ private lives in chat.

Now there would be a single renter living high in the sky out of chat range with everyone else, with the ability to select his or her own radio and television URLs, and with a comfortable 75-prim budget.

My First Land would (assuming occupancy) be making $225 Lindens per week instead of $375, but I would be providing a high-quality enjoyable environment for someone. I was no longer a slumlord.

My First Land is perfect.

And I have my Sweetie to thank for that.

But please don’t tell her. I’d rather her think my innate sense of fairless prevailed.

And just maybe it did.

Sweetie's Seducer IV: Catharsis!

Written 30 January, 2007

Catharsis!

Catharsis!

You know, writing this blog is better for my psychological well-being than therapy! I’m almost feeling better again.

More About This Blog

Written 30 January, 2007

More About This Blog

When I created this blog, I set out to write about my experiences in my Second Life.

All of my experiences. And my reactions to them.

To my readers who might not want to read about my black times, I can only say just skip over those entries. There will be fun around the next corner.

And to my readers who know exactly what I’m talking about because they’re been there or are there now, thanks for your support.

And to Martin, I say SHAME ON YOU! SHAME!