Hazards of SL relationships

I was talking to a friend some days ago about Second Life relationships, and that made me want to write about it in here. I have friends in SL who have SL partners, some are married in SL, some are single, and some don’t date at all. I am one of those who choose not to date anyone in SL, and I have my reasons for that.

I’m married in Real Life and I’m so in love with him. Why would I want a virtual thing with someone when I have the real thing at home? ;-) I’m in SL for the fun, making friends, designing things, exploring places and learning new things, but I’m not looking for any kind of romance.

People tend to take SL relationships less seriously – after all, it’s all pixels and bytes, but behind pixels and bytes there are real people.

Maybe your Real Life partner wouldn’t be jealous if you were dating someone in SL, but maybe he would. Your partner could even say he wouldn’t be jealous, but how can you (or he) know for sure? If you were dating someone in SL, maybe your RL partner could become jealous of all the time you spend in SL because he would imagine that you are always with the person, even when you are just hanging around with your friends or exploring alone.

Actually, TIME is a really important factor: if you are giving another person more time than the time you give to your partner. If it's a friend, it’s ok. But if it was an affair, a romance of any kind, then he would be losing that time and that attention to another person.

Also there's the problem of the other person. Besides the possibility of your partner feeling jealous, if you would date someone in SL and that person would fall in love and you don't, it would be quite hard. And I read people's blogs, I know how they fall in love and how they suffer. If you are dating someone in SL just for fun, be sure not to break anyone’s heart. Sometimes in a SL relationship, one is only having fun, and the other is taking it too seriously and falling in love.

These lines from a Chris Isaak's song come to mind:

What a wicked game to play, to make me feel this way.
What a wicked thing to do, to let me dream of you.
What a wicked thing to say, you never felt this way.
What a wicked thing to do, to make me dream of you

That’s why I choose not to date in SL. And as I said to a friend, friendship is always better.

Interior design

I love to see what people can do with interior design. Some stores have been designed with so much creativity and originality, taking advantage of things that can only be accomplished in SL. In SL you don’t have to obey the laws of physics and you can also create all sorts of interesting particle effects and textures to achieve the results you have in mind.

Since fire won’t burn your clients, you can even have a fire spitting Godzilla inside a store. ;-)

This picture is from a store called FORM at {PLUNDER} Airship Outpost, Maggiore (158, 117, 602). There’s a miniature city inside the store and a huge Godzilla spitting fire over cars and buildings. Very creative! It’s fun to shop at a place that not only have interesting products but it’s entertaining as well. Cool! I don’t know who designed this, but I love it!

Depressing and decadent lifestyles

I like to say that SL offers us an unlimited number of possibilities, you can be whatever you want, be it a human, alien, animal, sexy cat-like nekos, insects, dragons... and the list goes on and on. You can create anything you want too. But even with so many positive and interesting possibilities, why the hell on earth some people choose to rather be consorts and prostitute themselves for a few cents?

Yesterday I found a blog of a “SL whore”, that it, a woman who works as a prostitute in SL. She writes very well and, as much as it is interesting to read about that decadent sub-world, it still makes me feel sad to know that this kind of decadent lifestyle has made its way into SL.

That woman claims that sex is all that SL is really about. She is so wrong! Maybe sex is all that SL is about FOR HER, because as a whore that’s what she is doing when she is online. But I must say, SL is not about that at all, it’s much more. It’s about building, making friends, shopping, designing clothes or robots or scripts or HUDs or spaceships... and selling them, it’s about RPG, it’s about education, business, networking, it’s about travelling, playing, exploring.

While there are such things as “red light districts” and orgy rooms or whatever, where women allow themselves to be used by men in exchange of a couple of dollars and they think they are making “so much money” (come on, a thousand lindens is just about 5 dollars!), the rest of the SL lives on, far away from it.

The same way SL offers all the cool possibilities I listed above (creating things, shopping, travelling, learning, making friends), it also seems the offer some dark corner for those who want to indulge in sex, and for those who are so cheap that would prefer to be used, humiliated and to endure verbal abuse, instead of just buying a few lindens to be able to purchase that “so expensive 1000 L$ skin” (really, 5 miserable dollars).

PS: I don't want to sound like a moralist or an old church lady. Anyone can do what they want and they have the right to do that, I guess. But it's people like that who encourages guys to be disrespectful with any female avatar they meet. If it wasn’t for the prostitutes and the orgy rooms, there wouldn’t be so many newbie guys who join just for the orgies, and guys who keep pushing girls (in lack of an AO that would enable them to grab them).

Pictures, pictures...

I’m feeling too narcissistic again today so I have to put some pictures of myself here. I got this sculptie scarf from Maitreya as a gift (because I’m at their announcement group) and I liked it so much I had to wear it right away and I had to come up with something that would go with it.



I decided to dig into my inventory and I found a beautiful green top I didn’t know I have. It’s called inger green top by Neferia Abel and I have no idea where I bought it from. It could have been from Ivalde, but I don’t remember. I didn’t even know I had this, and it’s so gorgeous!



I like the little smile I have in these pictures, subtle and cute.

This moth eaten cardigan is from Frustrated Inc, and I saw it at the SL Fashion SOS blog and I liked it so much I had to buy one. I had never seen moth eaten clothes in SL, it’s a great detail and the texture is wonderful, really beautiful.

I tinted my earrings to match the top, put on these Last Call dark jeans and belt from a different outfit, and my lovely sculptie boots (from Maitreya), and I love the result. I’m so pleased with this outfit. The scarf looks wonderful, it’s so realistic.

In this picture you can see the richness of texture detail of the scarf and cardigan.

Now I just wish I had a printer that could reproduce these items to RL so that I could wear this outfit myself! Except that in RL I wouldn’t be wearing these boots right now (it’s summer and 23 Celsius degrees outside).

Auto-emote and Miranda.smart HUD

Because of a recent RL accident, I can’t use the mouse with my right hand, but I can still type! :-) Though at a slower speed than normally and using mostly the left hand, and one or two fingers of my right hand. I don’t write about RL here, so if you want to hear what happened ask me inworld.

SL crashed often this morning so since I can’t go there and visit the place I wanted to see, I decided to write here instead. I started writing this yesterday after purchasing and testing the Miranda.smart HUD. I have seen in the net some few texts comparing these two HUDS, but they haven’t mentioned a few things one should know in order to make an informed decision on which one to buy. So I will write shortly about pros and cons, and at the end of this article you will find links with more information on the HUDS and also SLurls to the places where you can purchase them. Please follow those links for more information on each HUD’s features and pictures.

Auto-emote and Miranda.smart HUD are both HUDs that allow your avatar to express emotions. You can either choose the emotion you want to display, or you can turn on the automatic option, which makes emotion displays accordingly to certain sentences or keywords you write in your chat line.

Auto-emote was designed by Outy Banjo and costs 300 lindens. It has a set of facial expressions (angry, happy, kiss, etc..). It works wonderfully.

In this picture auto-emote is making my av laugh:

Miranda.smart HUD has more than only facial expressions, it has also avatar animations and screen effects. It costs only 100 lindens. But although it is cheaper and has more options, it has some problems that Auto-emote doesn’t have. Miranda’s facial expressions stop working easily, and though the sounds still work (kissing, laughter, etc), the avatar stops making the facial expressions. This is very annoying and the only way to make it work again is to quit SL and login again. I tried to detach the hud and attach it again but it doesn’t help.

Here’s a Miranda’s avatar effect: sending a kiss with hearts

Miranda’s screen effects are wonderful for taking photos, though. But you better FIRST pick up the angle for the photo (I mean Alt+click) and only then you choose a screen effect. This is because after you have selected a screen effect (for instance, fog), if you Alt+click your avatar to choose an angle/zoom for the pic, it won’t work. Maybe the screen effect is a sort of layer between your avatar and the screen (?), anyways, it stops you from Alt-clicking your av. Otherwise, the effects are great.

Some of Miranda’s avatar animations don’t work right if you are using an animation overrider. I use Wet Ikon Franimation Overrider with standing and walking animations. To see correctly the miranda’s animations, I have to detach my Wet Ikon first. I have to test Miranda and ZHAO AO hud to see if the same happens, but I bet the same would happen.

I’m using both Auto-emote and Miranda.smart HUD at the same time. If you ask me which one you should get, I would say: either buy both of them, or if it’s only facial animations you want, get then only Auto-emote (otherwise you would get disappointed when miranda’s expressions stop working). Although auto-emote is more expensive and it only has facial expressions (no sounds and no screen effects), it works really well.

You can get them inworld from here:

• Miranda.smartHUD: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Hairspray/68/67/96
• Auto-emote: O Scripting, http://slurl.com/secondlife/Brownlee/249/48/108

More info on Miranda.smartHUD:

• a review at StyleDisorder
• YouTube - mirada.smartHUD v2.2 demo for secondlife

More info on Auto-emote:

• at SL exchange
• Cheyenne Palisades' review of auto-emote