cyfishy | Entries tagged with boyself

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When Miles Montgolfier made it her mission to de-noobify my appearance, one of the things that she insisted on correcting was the way I walked. Before then, I'd been stumbling around with the standard issue dorky-looking walk that avatars come with when they enter Second Life. I didn't see anything wrong with it, but then I didn't see anything wrong with avatar hair, either. Miles dissuaded me from both notions by tossing me a few hundred Linden Dollars to buy my first prim hair from Deviant Kitties and then taking me to a shop that had a free Animation Override and insisting that I put it on.

Suddenly, my gawky stumble became a sexy saunter and my hair flowed behind me as I moved. Second Life became a more glamourous place.

When I first shifted to boyshape, the sexy saunter didn't really work as well so I reverted to the dorkwalk until I could find a better option. By then, spending money on enhancing my appearance came naturally to me, so when I asked

caliburnsusanto for advice, he pointed me to a HUD that sat discreetly in the corner of the screen and gave me a manly sort of stride.

For a while, changing genders (as I still do) caused me to change Animation Overrides to the point that I tucked a copy of the sexywalk freebie in the folder for my girlshape so it was easily gotten to. Once in a while, I'd forget, at least until I took a few steps and realized which AO I had on. Then one day, I decided to leave the manly stride in place while in girlshape and decided it didn't look so bad. (Certainly not as bad as leaving the sexywalk in place when in boyshape, at least to my eyes.)

So I think I'll keep it. It seems that even in girlshape these days, I end up retaining a number of my more 'masculine' aspects, such as the indie rock glasses, the clothes and even the hairstyles. I suppose I'm the butch to Beginning's femme when we're in 'rezbian' mode. Plus, it makes shifting back and forth much less of a hassle, which is always helpful.

My third rezday was last Saturday and while I wasn't able to make it inworld until late in the day, I did have a lovely time once I made it in.

( Cut for length and photography )

Beginning has been spending enough time inworld on her own (at my insistence) that she's considering starting a blog of her own to detail her adventures. I'll let everybody here know the moment she does.

Current Mood: content
Current Music: Nick Drake, "Introduction"

I can't seem to stay a girl for long these days. I did shift back to try on a new dress I'd picked up via a FashCon announcement, but that only lasted a day or two before

faerie_h was ~~sadistic enough~~ kind enough to point me to the Bare Rose shopping site. Bare Rose, as I have lamented before, is my major SL shopping addiction, because the clothes there are amazingly high in quality and insanely low in price. I grabbed a charmingly rumpled outfit called Albert and fiddled with all the combinations before settling on the red version.

And then, naturally, I called up Beginning and we went out on a date.

She dug through her inventory to come up with an outfit that she felt content with (muttering about how she really needs to do a proper sort of all the clothes she's acquired, since she went crazy with the freebie ganking in her early days) and we decided to try a different jazz club for a change. I hit search, picked one that looked interesting, but discovered that they apparently had a slightly stricter dress code than we were accustomed to. Not that we were dressed all that sloppily, and we certainly aren't lacking for formalwear in our respective inventories, but neither of us felt like changing in the street, so we decided to return at some other time.

We wandered elsewhere and finally decided that what we really wanted was somewhere quiet where we could sit together and just be. And since

caliburnsusanto wasn't about, we decided to borrow his island.

Seems Caliburn has gone and rearranged things since our previous Isla Susanto photo session, so weren't able to find the campfire spot where we'd cuddled before. But we did find the gazebo and sat there together.

My screenshots are unable to do proper justice to the beauty of the space there, so I only snapped this one picture:

( It's not that large, but I'm cutting it anyway... )

I think the thing I like about it the most is that it managed to capture one little moment when Beginning is looking at me, an odd quirk of the 'follow the mouse' gaze (which I shan't belabor, lest I unravel the seams of this peculiar tapestry.)

I am pondering the insane notion of spending 24 continuous hours in Second Life and, of course, blogging the hell out of what I find in the process. I will probably have to do it without Beginning accompanying me, so perhaps that is the reason we are gorging ourselves on each other's company while we can. I plan to let everyone know the day if I wind up doing this and am open to any suggestions as to what I might be able to do in the wee smalls of the virtual morning.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Duran Duran, "Want You More"

My immediate neighbor built a rather large building directly next to my little plot. I felt a little hemmed in with a brick wall right next to me. I was seriously looking at buying a new place, but I've decided for now that a sort of privacy fence with a snow texture suits me just as well. Looking at a wall of snow doesn't feel as claustrophobic to me as looking at a wall of brick. And, ya know, two prims and a library texture are free, whereas a whole new plot of land wouldn't be cheap, especially in this market.
posted by CyFishy Traveler on Livigno using a blogHUD : [permalink]

Fresh from formal night at Grizzy's Cafe, Beginning and I spend a little quality time in her apartment on the lounger she just won last night from a raffle ball.
posted by CyFishy Traveler on Quantum Fields using a blogHUD : [permalink]

So, in an effort to get a feel for Life For The Newbie, I created an additional account about a month ago. I've run her through the paces of getting oriented, hit the freebie bins to get her outfitted and attended a number of newbie classes to find out what sort of questions were being asked and how well they were being answered.

It's been an interesting journey. It really does cement my belief that having someone around who can show you the ropes is one of the main things that can keep people from wandering off in frustration.

I didn't want to reveal her name too soon, because I didn't want people to treat her any differently. At most, she told people she was my friend and that I was helping her. I did leak the news to a select few in IM, because I'm terrible at keeping my own secrets.

And now, in this blog post, I reveal them to you.

( Don't click if you'd rather not know . . . )

Current Mood: curious

So it's Halloween in Second Life. (Some might argue that every day is Halloween in Second Life.) Marcus Prospero (

adjectivemarcus) was kind enough to point people in the

second_lifers community (in this entry) to some amazing, free and full perm costumes that he had. So, last night, I used the SLURL and popped on over.

( Cut for large pictures and much geekish flailing . . . )

So it being Halloween and all, I decided to make a costume for SL. Of course, it seems a bit odd to make a costume in an environment where one can change appearance at will, but I had a little little idea, and just enough texturing, building and scripting skills to pull it off. (Along with a cheap suit from China and my Blaze tuxedo shoes.)

( The result . . . )

Happy Halloween, everybody!

A little before I started this blog, I came across the

second_lifers community and found out about places like Kadarin Hall and Grizzy's Cafe. I was there when

kateamdahl was first asking for ideas for a place she wanted to build where people could have fun in a more intellectually stimulating fashion than Second Life usually provides.

The result was The Diversionarium, and I'm a bit embarrassed to say that it wasn't until recently that I finally gave it a visit, having been such an enthusiastic supporter of the idea from the early stages. But, I finally made it and the landmark now sits in the "Hangouts" folder in my inventory.

My first few visits were solo experiences, as there were no scheduled events, but there are still ways to keep oneself amused even alone. Quoste (a guess-the-word game that involves notable quotations) can be fun in a group, but can also be played by oneself. They also have games like Chess and Reversi for duos, and Mystery Build for larger groups (more on that later.)

I went another night when the lovely

nox_pinion was hostessing. We had a long chat about ideas for a sort of newbie tips website I've been thinking about creating so people entering Second Life for the first time would be a little more prepared. We were joined by featherfoot Fadoodle (

azureavian) and she in turn invited a few more friends (whose names and LJs, if any, I have lost track of.) I played a game of Reversi with Nox (I won, but probably because Nox was too distracted by hostessing duties to pay full attention to the game) and then we decided to convene upstairs and ended up playing a few rounds of Mystery Build.

I really enjoyed Mystery Build, because it is one of those things you can really only do easily in Second Life. The closest RL equivalent would be Pictionary, but instead of drawing, you have to build a representation of the word out of prims. The slightly frustrating thing is that the scripted object that runs the game decides if someone has guessed correctly, and close guesses don't always count. I had to create "a bowl of cereal" and someone guessed "cereal bowl" very early on, but the script didn't parse it as a successful guess, but did accept just "cereal". Of course, by that point I'd not only made the bowl, I'd made the box and was tilting it over the bowl and adding little bits of cereal streaming from the top. Anybody who wants practice their building skills, my goodness, it's a great way to do it.

On another visit to the Diversionarium, I ran into another LJ denizen,

argent_bury, inworld for the first time. I'd been wandering in boyshape at the time and she was a bit surprised to see me thus. I showed her one of the few male outfits I have--the Blaze tuxedo that I still treasure--and she changed into her little black dress to match.

( click for pic . . . )

I got a notice that DJ Lysander was doing his thing at QTLabs, and I decided to wander over there for a bit.

I have a little more time to work with than I did, so I may be spending a little more time inworld. Just have to be careful that I don't get too absorbed in it at the cost of those pesky RL obligations.

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: Beautiful, "Cake in the Rain"

I know some people get a bit cranky when people drag RL into SL, but I have to go into a bit of backstory to explain things.

I was previously in a group in RL that met regularly to set goals and discuss them. It was incredibly simple and yet quite powerful--each meeting (the meetings varied from weekly to monthly, depending on our schedules) we would get goals to be completed by the next meeting. And then at the next meeting we would talk about how we did, cheer our victories, soothe our defeats and discuss our long-term plans.

The group eventually disbanded amicably and I made an attempt to start a new one along the same lines, to no avail.

So I decided to start one in Second Life.

I set up an Event for an initial meeting on Sunday afternoon and detailed what I was planning to do. I had no clue if anybody else would be interested or not, but I figured there was no harm done in trying. At worst, I'd lose L$100 setting up a Group and not getting at least one other person to join.

Well, I ended up with four other people, which is actually the optimum size for me. (I'd made a note that I'd be limiting the Group to ten people at most.) Everybody seems quite enthusiastic and I feel we're all on a similar wavelength. I'm really looking forward to how this progresses.

So, while I was in exile from Second Life last week, I heard on the radio (yes, it was a news item) that gambling had been banned from Second Life.

( CyFishy's Thoughts on Ya- er, I mean, Gambling . . . )

We shall see. For me, I'll only worry if they start banning art galleries, gardens and dance clubs, so maybe it just depends on what you get out of it . . .

I uploaded a new icon, this time with my boyface. I changed the picture on my SL profile so My Life As A Girl wouldn't be as instantly obvious to the casual observer. We'll see if that changes the way people take me.

Current Mood: wowzers!
Current Music: Paul Melançon, "Another Day"

I will be in exile from SL for the next week or so. My fleshy self is going out of town and will have limited internet access for the duration. I might post here if time and dial-up allows for it, but I won't be making it inworld.

I'll be speaking a bit more about my adventures in boyshape soon, I hope.

Mastering the skills needed to ascend from mere observer to creator in Second Life can take some doing. Like everybody else, when I started out I couldn't do much more with building and scripting than rezzing a plywood box and making it say "Hello Avatar!"

A little Googling pointed me toward many wonderful online tutorials, particularly Natalia Zelmanov's blog, which I continue to use as a resource. (She's added a few tutorials on sculpties, which I've been trying to follow, but Wings 3D isn't playing well with my computer right now, alas.)

Lately, though, I've also been taking classes inworld. They're amazingly easy to find--just go to the Events listings, select the Education category and all the casino ads magically go away and you're given a list of places to go and things to learn. I found a class on how to build neko ears and a tail, and I ended up wearing the results for weeks afterward. I took a class in animation, so I was able to learn exactly how to use that Avimator program that came with my copy of the Second Life book. And I ended up taking a four day course called "LSL Boot Camp", which was a very intensive set of classes on scripting. I'm still digesting everything I learned from that one.

I also wanna give a shout-out to

kherber who taught a fun class on furniture building, though I learned that from the

second_lifers community, rather than the Events calendar.

I've gotten a little more used to my appearance in Second Life, and then I went and put on a completely new one. While I wasn't able to make it to

grizzygriswold's discussion of race and gender (she asked that people try on an avatar of a different race or gender than their usual one and talk about how people reacted to it) I was still intrigued enough by the notion to try on a male body for a while.

So went into Edit Appearance mode, did a Save As on my shape, pressed the Male radio button and ta-da--insta-gothboy! With girly slit still between legs. Hm. I decided to pull the male version of the CyberGoth skin out of the Library and try that on for size. It worked for what I needed, since I was only doing it as a lark at this point. I did a little slider tweaking on the shape, then threw on some freebie hair I'd gotten somewhere earlier. While it wasn't perfect, it, again, served for a mere experiment. I donned the Blaze tux I'd bought earlier and went out into the world.

Nobody actually noticed, it seemed. Miles knew, but only because we were, once again, in the same room in RL and able to shoulder-surf. We went to a beach party that DJ Lysander was spinning at, and none of the usuals made the slightest remark on it. Then again, my boyself and my girlself are both pale and skinny, so it's possible people didn't even see a difference!

Seeing 'myself' as male was a curious sensation. I did gain a measure of insight into those certain men who apparently play female avatars in the shapes of their personal fantasies. When I looked at my boyself my thoughts were something along the lines of "Damn, I'd hit that!"

But there was also a sense of detachment that went with it. Part of it may simply be that I'm not 'used' to being in that shape. I also had a bit of that when my female face was changed in ways I wasn't comfortable with.

Note the number of caveats I put on my remark about the motivations of men who play women--my point is most definitely not that all men do this, just that some, possibly, do. I also know of RL men who play SL women as a way of expressing aspects of themselves that cannot be easily explored in that thing we call reality, particularly when their biology does not match what they feel their gender to be. It's also possible that the reason for my detachment is that I don't have as deep-seated a need to 'be male' as other people might.

My perceptions of this may change if I'm ever addressed and interacted with as a male, which hasn't really happened yet.

I've organized some folders for my two different bodies and I think I'll be jumping back and forth between them for a bit. I do need a decent AO with a male walk--my sexywalk AO just doesn't work for my boyshape, but I can't hack it to change walks. I've picked up a few more freebies to wear, but I'd still like to find a decent male skin that has the impossibly bleached pallor that I'm accustomed to. Some things, it seems, I just can't bear to change.