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Sep. 23rd, 2005 12:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2I've been waiting two weeks for some of the cds that I ordered. In particular, ones that I really needed to finish my "sleazy/glam rock" compilation: Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, Best of Billy Idol, Welcome to the Jungle by Guns n Roses.
They all arrived today. Turns out I'd ordered all of these cds from the same company, so they arrived in a single package. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure it was a local company, which is why I picked them when I was able to. Because, you know, my stuff would get here faster if it was shipping from Washington.
Well so much for that theory. But at least everything has finally arrived.
I've been playing Second Life a lot lately. A LOT. I mean that in terms of not really getting enough sleep. I can be very obsessive about anything I'm currently into, so I know that I'm going too far, but what the heck, I'm having fun. And since I've done little else, I have nothing better to talk about, so here's me rambling about my virtual world life again.
One of the things I've worked hard on the last two weeks is designing clothing and setting up my store, Magical Oz Designs. In that respect I feel as if I'm accomplishing something, not just wasting my time like I always felt after playing City of Heroes for several hours. I'm learning more Photoshop tricks and getting better at designing things in Photoshop, so that's cool.
Miko the Pathetically Predictable
But otherwise I'm pretty pathetic. My first character, Jalia Oz, is so named because I'd played Jalia McMarrin in Everquest as my main character, and then Jalia as a main character in Toontown, and then Jalia as my main character in City of Heroes. Partly I keep using this name on the theory that my friends from other games will recognize it, but in reality I rarely have played with them in other games. But I usually play female characters so I've stuck with Jalia as my main. So naturally, Jalia Oz in Second Life was female from the start, and I haven't tried to play her as a male in part because the name is fairly feminine. But SL is a much more socially interactive game, and I sort of want to try DJing some day (which usually means some speaking) so I decided to make another character who could be my male persona when I needed one.
Mind you, I gave this character a gender neutral name. If I'd done that with Jalia then I might have just developed a male version of her, but that's all hindsight now. The game allows such easy switching between genders that it's pretty common for people to have names that don't indicate gender. So my new "guy" character was named Mint Rainbow (a name that several have said they liked).
For a day or so Mint was your basic newbie guy, and then I bought a very cute furry mouse avatar. This was an avatar designed for a girl mouse, but I simply switched to male. People still referred to me as a girl... so I tweaked the body for broader shoulders and the like to try and make it more obvious that Mint was a guy.
Then I bought a siamese kitty avatar. I was a siamese guy for a while, but I had to make a female version too. Guy kitty Mint was cute, but girl kitty Mint was cuter. I used him/her in some of my advertising photos for Jalia's clothing and shop, and gave that as an excuse to my friends on why I was a girl half the time.
I got a cute skunk avatar. Again I made a female version. Around this time I was designing short skirts for Jalia's store, and I really liked them a lot, so I kept switching Mint to a girl so I could wear the skirts I'd designed.
Finally I got a calico kitty avatar, and this time I gave up all pretense and simply bought the girl version of said avatar. It came with much longer hair and looked incredibly cute. I made a guy version of this avatar, but then I started experimenting with different shapes, and eventually settled on a little girl shape that maximizes the avatar's cuteness factor.
So... Mint has been a girl for days on end. My friends have stopped commenting on me showing up as a girl, they seem to just expect it now. I'd also been spending all of my money on avatars, but now I'm spending some money on clothing. Girl's clothing.
I'm so pathetically predictable.
Check Out My Hello Kitty Panties!
I decided on my little girl look in the middle of the week, and I rememberd that Jalia had a very cute outfit for a little girl -- a super-cute "Little Tyke Tootie" avatar that I'd bought way back in January when I first joined the game. The outfit for this avatar is a sleeveless black dress/jumper with a white kitty on the front, with a black and white striped shirt with long sleeves underneath. This looked super cute on Mint, but I had to remove the paw and kitty forearms because the long sleeves of the dress don't texture over those attachments, just the body underneath, so it didn't look right.
There were also some matching black and white striped tights/leggings for the outfit, but I didn't wear those because I didn't want to have to remove my kitty paw feet and calves as well. But this meant that under my dress I had nothing else on. Not that my avatar has visible nipples or genitals or anything, but still, if you're going to wear clothing, then you should have something on under your skirt, yes?
Most of the underwear you find in the game is for adults, of the sexy lingerie variety. I decided that what I really needed was something in a kid's style that matched the dress. I spent an hour or so working in Photoshop and testing the results in the game, until I finally had what I wanted: black girl's panties with white lace trim and a white Hello Kitty on the front. Since I hadn't been able to find anything like this in the game, it's probably a good thing to add to my store.
Not half an hour later I was talking to some new friends I'd just met, and one woman said that my little kitty avatar was adorable (which it is!). She said that she's a huge Hello Kitty fan, and did I know where she might find a Hello Kitty avatar, or some Hello Kitty clothing?
Well, what does a guy playing a little kitty girl say in that situation? I said, "Ah... I'm wearing Hello Kitty underwear right now."
"No way!" she said, and laughed. Then she asked, "Um... could you show them to me?"
And so, while the guy that was present "looked away" (at least that's what he said he was doing), I removed my skirt and allowed her to inspect my new Hello Kitty undies. The situations you find yourself in in a game like this....
At about this point my other friend Gemini sent me a tell, and when I replied I mentioned that I was having a discussion with someone about my underwear. She laughed at this, and then I had to explain what I was doing. ^_^;
Anyway my new friend liked my underwear a lot, so I logged Jalia in and sent her a pair of her very own. She was very happy about this, and I was so inspired that I got back into Photoshop and designed several more... two pink, two blue, and another black pair of panties, each with a different Hello Kitty on the front. The second pair of black ones have a Hello Goth Kitty. ^_^ I also remembered that one of my tee shirts that I designed months ago has a Hello Kitty theme -- Hello Kitty 40,000 (a warhammer parody). "In the grim future of Hello Kitty there is only war!" I sent all of this to my new friend for free, and it made her day! She's definitely a Hello Kitty addict.
Nice Butt You Have There...
I also bought a "kitty animation override" item that replaces your normal walk, stand, fly, and sit animations with kitty-centric versions. It actually puts you on all fours and has you crawl around instead of walking. It's a cute idea, but the execution is a little off. Also, when you're just standing there (on all fours) your butt is sticking up in the air rather provacatively, especially for a girl. As my friend Gemini put it, "You'd better hope no boy kitties come along and see you like that!"
As I've experienced before, women friends who know I'm a guy playing a girl can tease you rather unmercifully. The next day we were at a new location talking to some guy we'd just met, and when Gem asked him what he was doing, he said, "I'm just looking for something to get into."
"Oh, my!" Gem said, then giggled and added, "Better not show him your butt in the air pose, Mint!"
:P
Would You Like To Become A Mommy?
Since I had settled (for the moment) on a little girl kitty look, I spent some time searching for girl's clothing in the game. I did searches on keywords like child, girl, boy, kid, baby. Some interesting things came up:
1. There is a "Baby Pride" group in SL, a support group formed to help fight descrimination against babies. Well, against people who roleplay babies, apparently. I just like the idea of there being descrimination against actual babies, and the babies form their own support group. You never know, it could happen!
2. There was a group for Daddies and Little Girls. Just the name of the group told me more than I ever wanted to know.
3. There are at least two shops in Second Life that cater to expectant parents/mothers. YOu can buy all manner of baby furniture, toys, blankets, wallpaper, etc so that you can decorate your baby's room at home. There are services offered to give you a realistically pregnant tummy -- avatar alterations for several stages of pregnancy. One of the places had four stages, reccomended for one week each. So, a one-month pregnancy. That sounds just about right to me -- I can't imagine anyone wanting to roleplay being pregnant for an actual nine months.
There were of course babies that you could adopt (ie buy), and poses for holding the baby -- one pose was for holding twins. The babies wet themselves, burp, etc. These people can be very through in their design work.
And of course, once you've similated being pregnant for a month, then simulated giving birth, I guess you can pretend to take care of your baby until you're finally bored. But why stop there? Why not find someone to roleplay your baby for you? There are tiny avatars in the game, including baby avatars. Mind you, my first question is, why in the world would anyone want to roleplay a baby? But after all there is a person for every kink you can think of, and we have the Baby Pride group, which we assume after they're done sitting around their little baby board room making important decisions, they go home and take a nap or are breast fed or have their diapers changed, or whatever. (Sorry, I just can't get this picture out of my head of a bunch of little babies sitting around a conference table having serious discussions about baby descrimination. Can't you just picture their baby lawyer making his or her case in a court room?)
Or you can just have someone play a kid, which doesn't require a tiny avatar. So your kid grows five years or so overnight. Hey, the pregnancy was only one month wasn't it? Things happen fast in a virtual world!
4. I found a shop that functions as an adoption agency in Second Life. Kids can go there to be adopted, would-be parents can go there to find a kid to adopt. I considered for a brief moment adopting my little kitty girl self out, just to see what would happen, but really I doubt I could match my weird online playing hours with anyone else, and anyway I'm too independant to allow someone else to be my parents and tell me what they want me to do.
One thing I learned on my search is that, while there are some amazing designers out there making great looking clothing in SL, none of them are doing children's clothing. The children's clothing that I found was mostly not very inspiring -- or perhaps it was inspiring, because I'm inspired to concentrate more on designing clothing for children now. I can do better than what I've found so far.
Perhaps the most amusing thing that happened to me on this search was at one of the baby/expectant mother stores. There was a freebie box at the front of the store -- it contained a maternity outfit, naturally. I really have no use for something like that, but I'm such a packrat that when I see "free" I usually grab whatever it is and decide if I want or need it later. So that's what I did.
Only a couple of seconds later I get a message from the store owner: "Hello dear, are you interested in becoming a mommy?"
Ack! The freebie box was a trap! It told her my name and that I was at her store, taking her free maternity outfit. Well naturally, who's going to do that except someone who plans to become pregnant?
So I had to think quickly about how to answer her. "I'm only thinking about it at the moment," I said. This was technincally true -- I was thinking about it -- but only in general terms of other people doing this sort of thing. I wasn't actually thinking of simulating my own pregnancy. ^_^;
She said okay, if I had any questions just send her a message. Lol. She sponsors a "Pregnant Mommy" group that allows all the expectant mothers in SL to talk to each other. Oh yeah, I'm sure I'd fit right in.
But you know, I thought about it. Since I'm running around the game as a girl half the time, what would it take for me to actually role play an expectant mother? Mind you, I'm not really that thrilled with kids in real life -- not sure I'd ever want to be a father, so roleplaying a parent in a game, let alone a mother giving birth, I just don't see how that would ever appeal to me. But on the other hand, in the right circumstances any kind of roleplaying could be fun. So to get there, I would need a partner in a quote-unquote "serious" relationship (and since I'm not looking for romance in the game, that's unlikely). He (or she) would have to know that I'm really a guy but obviously still want me to roleplay the girl (or one of the two girls) in a relationship. We would need to get married -- I don't want to have a child out of wedlock, even virtually, lol. And they would really want me to bear a child, because as I said I don't really think I'd be that interested in doing it myself. But given all of that, who knows, I could probably be talked into it.
Which makes me wonder, if you're in a virtual lesbian relationship and you want to have kids, do you go through the process of deciding who the father is going to be (and maybe roleplay that encounter if you want), or do you just assume immaculate conception? Or maybe your partner just morphs into a guy for one night's encounter, I suppose there's nothing to prevent that either. ^_^
And if you're two guys and want to have a kid, do you just adopt, or does one of you become a woman for a while, or do you decide to become a pregnant male?
Enquiring minds want to know!
They all arrived today. Turns out I'd ordered all of these cds from the same company, so they arrived in a single package. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure it was a local company, which is why I picked them when I was able to. Because, you know, my stuff would get here faster if it was shipping from Washington.
Well so much for that theory. But at least everything has finally arrived.
I've been playing Second Life a lot lately. A LOT. I mean that in terms of not really getting enough sleep. I can be very obsessive about anything I'm currently into, so I know that I'm going too far, but what the heck, I'm having fun. And since I've done little else, I have nothing better to talk about, so here's me rambling about my virtual world life again.
One of the things I've worked hard on the last two weeks is designing clothing and setting up my store, Magical Oz Designs. In that respect I feel as if I'm accomplishing something, not just wasting my time like I always felt after playing City of Heroes for several hours. I'm learning more Photoshop tricks and getting better at designing things in Photoshop, so that's cool.
Miko the Pathetically Predictable
But otherwise I'm pretty pathetic. My first character, Jalia Oz, is so named because I'd played Jalia McMarrin in Everquest as my main character, and then Jalia as a main character in Toontown, and then Jalia as my main character in City of Heroes. Partly I keep using this name on the theory that my friends from other games will recognize it, but in reality I rarely have played with them in other games. But I usually play female characters so I've stuck with Jalia as my main. So naturally, Jalia Oz in Second Life was female from the start, and I haven't tried to play her as a male in part because the name is fairly feminine. But SL is a much more socially interactive game, and I sort of want to try DJing some day (which usually means some speaking) so I decided to make another character who could be my male persona when I needed one.
Mind you, I gave this character a gender neutral name. If I'd done that with Jalia then I might have just developed a male version of her, but that's all hindsight now. The game allows such easy switching between genders that it's pretty common for people to have names that don't indicate gender. So my new "guy" character was named Mint Rainbow (a name that several have said they liked).
For a day or so Mint was your basic newbie guy, and then I bought a very cute furry mouse avatar. This was an avatar designed for a girl mouse, but I simply switched to male. People still referred to me as a girl... so I tweaked the body for broader shoulders and the like to try and make it more obvious that Mint was a guy.
Then I bought a siamese kitty avatar. I was a siamese guy for a while, but I had to make a female version too. Guy kitty Mint was cute, but girl kitty Mint was cuter. I used him/her in some of my advertising photos for Jalia's clothing and shop, and gave that as an excuse to my friends on why I was a girl half the time.
I got a cute skunk avatar. Again I made a female version. Around this time I was designing short skirts for Jalia's store, and I really liked them a lot, so I kept switching Mint to a girl so I could wear the skirts I'd designed.
Finally I got a calico kitty avatar, and this time I gave up all pretense and simply bought the girl version of said avatar. It came with much longer hair and looked incredibly cute. I made a guy version of this avatar, but then I started experimenting with different shapes, and eventually settled on a little girl shape that maximizes the avatar's cuteness factor.
So... Mint has been a girl for days on end. My friends have stopped commenting on me showing up as a girl, they seem to just expect it now. I'd also been spending all of my money on avatars, but now I'm spending some money on clothing. Girl's clothing.
I'm so pathetically predictable.
Check Out My Hello Kitty Panties!
I decided on my little girl look in the middle of the week, and I rememberd that Jalia had a very cute outfit for a little girl -- a super-cute "Little Tyke Tootie" avatar that I'd bought way back in January when I first joined the game. The outfit for this avatar is a sleeveless black dress/jumper with a white kitty on the front, with a black and white striped shirt with long sleeves underneath. This looked super cute on Mint, but I had to remove the paw and kitty forearms because the long sleeves of the dress don't texture over those attachments, just the body underneath, so it didn't look right.
There were also some matching black and white striped tights/leggings for the outfit, but I didn't wear those because I didn't want to have to remove my kitty paw feet and calves as well. But this meant that under my dress I had nothing else on. Not that my avatar has visible nipples or genitals or anything, but still, if you're going to wear clothing, then you should have something on under your skirt, yes?
Most of the underwear you find in the game is for adults, of the sexy lingerie variety. I decided that what I really needed was something in a kid's style that matched the dress. I spent an hour or so working in Photoshop and testing the results in the game, until I finally had what I wanted: black girl's panties with white lace trim and a white Hello Kitty on the front. Since I hadn't been able to find anything like this in the game, it's probably a good thing to add to my store.
Not half an hour later I was talking to some new friends I'd just met, and one woman said that my little kitty avatar was adorable (which it is!). She said that she's a huge Hello Kitty fan, and did I know where she might find a Hello Kitty avatar, or some Hello Kitty clothing?
Well, what does a guy playing a little kitty girl say in that situation? I said, "Ah... I'm wearing Hello Kitty underwear right now."
"No way!" she said, and laughed. Then she asked, "Um... could you show them to me?"
And so, while the guy that was present "looked away" (at least that's what he said he was doing), I removed my skirt and allowed her to inspect my new Hello Kitty undies. The situations you find yourself in in a game like this....
At about this point my other friend Gemini sent me a tell, and when I replied I mentioned that I was having a discussion with someone about my underwear. She laughed at this, and then I had to explain what I was doing. ^_^;
Anyway my new friend liked my underwear a lot, so I logged Jalia in and sent her a pair of her very own. She was very happy about this, and I was so inspired that I got back into Photoshop and designed several more... two pink, two blue, and another black pair of panties, each with a different Hello Kitty on the front. The second pair of black ones have a Hello Goth Kitty. ^_^ I also remembered that one of my tee shirts that I designed months ago has a Hello Kitty theme -- Hello Kitty 40,000 (a warhammer parody). "In the grim future of Hello Kitty there is only war!" I sent all of this to my new friend for free, and it made her day! She's definitely a Hello Kitty addict.
Nice Butt You Have There...
I also bought a "kitty animation override" item that replaces your normal walk, stand, fly, and sit animations with kitty-centric versions. It actually puts you on all fours and has you crawl around instead of walking. It's a cute idea, but the execution is a little off. Also, when you're just standing there (on all fours) your butt is sticking up in the air rather provacatively, especially for a girl. As my friend Gemini put it, "You'd better hope no boy kitties come along and see you like that!"
As I've experienced before, women friends who know I'm a guy playing a girl can tease you rather unmercifully. The next day we were at a new location talking to some guy we'd just met, and when Gem asked him what he was doing, he said, "I'm just looking for something to get into."
"Oh, my!" Gem said, then giggled and added, "Better not show him your butt in the air pose, Mint!"
:P
Would You Like To Become A Mommy?
Since I had settled (for the moment) on a little girl kitty look, I spent some time searching for girl's clothing in the game. I did searches on keywords like child, girl, boy, kid, baby. Some interesting things came up:
1. There is a "Baby Pride" group in SL, a support group formed to help fight descrimination against babies. Well, against people who roleplay babies, apparently. I just like the idea of there being descrimination against actual babies, and the babies form their own support group. You never know, it could happen!
2. There was a group for Daddies and Little Girls. Just the name of the group told me more than I ever wanted to know.
3. There are at least two shops in Second Life that cater to expectant parents/mothers. YOu can buy all manner of baby furniture, toys, blankets, wallpaper, etc so that you can decorate your baby's room at home. There are services offered to give you a realistically pregnant tummy -- avatar alterations for several stages of pregnancy. One of the places had four stages, reccomended for one week each. So, a one-month pregnancy. That sounds just about right to me -- I can't imagine anyone wanting to roleplay being pregnant for an actual nine months.
There were of course babies that you could adopt (ie buy), and poses for holding the baby -- one pose was for holding twins. The babies wet themselves, burp, etc. These people can be very through in their design work.
And of course, once you've similated being pregnant for a month, then simulated giving birth, I guess you can pretend to take care of your baby until you're finally bored. But why stop there? Why not find someone to roleplay your baby for you? There are tiny avatars in the game, including baby avatars. Mind you, my first question is, why in the world would anyone want to roleplay a baby? But after all there is a person for every kink you can think of, and we have the Baby Pride group, which we assume after they're done sitting around their little baby board room making important decisions, they go home and take a nap or are breast fed or have their diapers changed, or whatever. (Sorry, I just can't get this picture out of my head of a bunch of little babies sitting around a conference table having serious discussions about baby descrimination. Can't you just picture their baby lawyer making his or her case in a court room?)
Or you can just have someone play a kid, which doesn't require a tiny avatar. So your kid grows five years or so overnight. Hey, the pregnancy was only one month wasn't it? Things happen fast in a virtual world!
4. I found a shop that functions as an adoption agency in Second Life. Kids can go there to be adopted, would-be parents can go there to find a kid to adopt. I considered for a brief moment adopting my little kitty girl self out, just to see what would happen, but really I doubt I could match my weird online playing hours with anyone else, and anyway I'm too independant to allow someone else to be my parents and tell me what they want me to do.
One thing I learned on my search is that, while there are some amazing designers out there making great looking clothing in SL, none of them are doing children's clothing. The children's clothing that I found was mostly not very inspiring -- or perhaps it was inspiring, because I'm inspired to concentrate more on designing clothing for children now. I can do better than what I've found so far.
Perhaps the most amusing thing that happened to me on this search was at one of the baby/expectant mother stores. There was a freebie box at the front of the store -- it contained a maternity outfit, naturally. I really have no use for something like that, but I'm such a packrat that when I see "free" I usually grab whatever it is and decide if I want or need it later. So that's what I did.
Only a couple of seconds later I get a message from the store owner: "Hello dear, are you interested in becoming a mommy?"
Ack! The freebie box was a trap! It told her my name and that I was at her store, taking her free maternity outfit. Well naturally, who's going to do that except someone who plans to become pregnant?
So I had to think quickly about how to answer her. "I'm only thinking about it at the moment," I said. This was technincally true -- I was thinking about it -- but only in general terms of other people doing this sort of thing. I wasn't actually thinking of simulating my own pregnancy. ^_^;
She said okay, if I had any questions just send her a message. Lol. She sponsors a "Pregnant Mommy" group that allows all the expectant mothers in SL to talk to each other. Oh yeah, I'm sure I'd fit right in.
But you know, I thought about it. Since I'm running around the game as a girl half the time, what would it take for me to actually role play an expectant mother? Mind you, I'm not really that thrilled with kids in real life -- not sure I'd ever want to be a father, so roleplaying a parent in a game, let alone a mother giving birth, I just don't see how that would ever appeal to me. But on the other hand, in the right circumstances any kind of roleplaying could be fun. So to get there, I would need a partner in a quote-unquote "serious" relationship (and since I'm not looking for romance in the game, that's unlikely). He (or she) would have to know that I'm really a guy but obviously still want me to roleplay the girl (or one of the two girls) in a relationship. We would need to get married -- I don't want to have a child out of wedlock, even virtually, lol. And they would really want me to bear a child, because as I said I don't really think I'd be that interested in doing it myself. But given all of that, who knows, I could probably be talked into it.
Which makes me wonder, if you're in a virtual lesbian relationship and you want to have kids, do you go through the process of deciding who the father is going to be (and maybe roleplay that encounter if you want), or do you just assume immaculate conception? Or maybe your partner just morphs into a guy for one night's encounter, I suppose there's nothing to prevent that either. ^_^
And if you're two guys and want to have a kid, do you just adopt, or does one of you become a woman for a while, or do you decide to become a pregnant male?
Enquiring minds want to know!
