On Sunday night I attended my first fashion show. It was showcasing sports wear which isn’t really my style, but I hadn’t been to one before so I thought I’d check it out. There was a very mixed crowd, as you can see from the picture:
The guy behind me looked quite scary…hehe. Unfortunately I got there too late to see most of the show, which featured a lot of UK football strips, but it seemed well put together.
This was in the Dublin sim, one of my favourite places because of the friendly people…although it’s popularity sometimes makes the lag unbearable. But if you want somewhere fun to go, search for Dublin and check out the Blarney Stone pub…there’s nearly always something happening there and I spent one of the best nights of my second life dancing away to one of their DJs (I wish I could remember her name! I think it was Cher something…)
Anyway…this brings me onto the subject of tonight’s adventures. I can’t decide if I want to get involved in a roleplay sim or not. I love the idea of being intricately entwined with a passionate community and creating elaborate storylines for myself; and most of the fantasy themed places look incredible (see Avallon Mist for example). But I just don’t know if I can let myself go enough to really get into character. I wandered around several sims including Second Earth (which is pretty strict on dress code…you have to wear medieval clothes and a vistor’s name tag at all times. Everyone calls you “maid” and will randomly spring into action at a cry of “Orcs! To the battlements!”) and Toxian City (which I just couldn’t get a feel for…although the bleak landscape of brooding buildings was impressive). Everywhere I went, I couldn’t help feeling out of place. I just didn’t feel comfortable. The people in these places take everything a little too seriously; and this can become a breeding ground for the ridiculous. Take this little incident I witnessed in City of Lost Angels, a dark roleplay, combat and sex community:
Now what you’re looking at is the result of a heated debate between a group of demons (I think they were demons!). From what I gathered before I got embarrassed by my own blatent eavesdropping and tped away, the unfortunate demon pinned to the floor with it’s multiple arms and legs waving in the air (the one that looks like a spider) had had some kind of restricting collar placed on it by a fellow demon. Now this is all part of the roleplaying fun, right? Or so it should be, except that the scene became quite uncomfortable when the inflicted demon begged several times to be released, only to be struck down (I don’t know if they were stuck to the floor, I suppose they could have tped away…), all watched by the group of demons. This too, all sounds as if it was part of the roleplay. But I didn’t get a sense of that. I felt that the real person behind that demon avatar was actually becoming destressed. Now I don’t know much about the City of Lost Angels community. I don’t know squat about that particular group of demons. I may have just spouted a load of ignorant crap that should be deleted immediately. What I do know is that whatever the situation was, it put me off exploring any more roleplay sims (for a little while anyway!) I just don’t want to take a fantasy environment that seriously…and I suppose that’s why I feel I wouldn’t fit into communities like this. But if we were all the same, the world (virtual or otherwise) would be a very boring place, right?
On a side note…City of Lost Angels wasn’t all weird cliques turning on eachother. This considerably brightened my experience:
The woman in white (the one bending over) danced into the middle of the demon scene, swigging from a beer can and careering into anyone who got in her way…priceless! She obviously couldn’t take roleplay seriously either.
