Second Life Shameless Gossip

Please excuse my temporary absence, but real life has a way of insinuating itself. It won’t happen again, promise!

In my last post I mentioned that while hanging out with Joro she mentioned she was late for Druid class! Honestly, I’m not sure why I’ve been been drawn in lately to the world of fairies, ancient history and mythology, but I have to say I was curious to learn more about a Druid cult. (Yes, I know that Druids were quite real, so don’t fire up the email.) Normally I’m happy in my designer jeans or a Boho skirt dancing on the beach with Hans or attending a fashion sim opening gala. It just goes to show that once you open a door, you may be blasted right through it and into next Sunday.

Needless to say I tagged along to Druid class. We landed at the portal to the ice caves of Avilion Mist, one of the six medieval role play Avilion sims. When you land, turn around and click on the large framed glass that looks like Snow White’s mirror, and you will magically find yourself in the ice caves.

I had not been in the ice caves for some time (Hans and I took a little swan ride there some time ago), and I was amazed how large they are. I’m not sure if they’ve been enlarged or I just missed a lot of it last time I was there. Since she was running late, Joro took off like a shot weaving through paths and skipping over ice flows until we reached this impressive meeting place carved into the ice.

The topic of the day was role playing with herbs. The Druids act as healers when the Avilion sims have combat during their Calls to Arms. Apparently this requires quite a bit of education and ongoing classes. After all, it could be disastrous to administer chamomile when the proper remedy is lavendar! Well, the teacher and head Druid, Osiris LeShelle, very nicely let me participate even though it was obvious I had just sort of wandered in and crashed the party. I have no idea about her healing powers, but you have to admit she knows how to dress for effect. Below you can see at least two of her students, the dragons on the left, have a real appreciation for her sartorial splendor.

They have a sort of hearty, hale fellow well-met attitude over in Avilion, unlike those gorean sims where they all take themselves sooooo seriously. (Yeah, they hate me in Gor. I went on a little self-guided tour once and quickly learned those kneeling women get really pissed off when I offer them a cup of coffee. I mean, I figure if they are so tired they can’t even stand up, they can use a pick-me-up.)

I have to say that I was impressed that the cards Osiris handed out were grounded in real beliefs about the properties of herbs and not just made up for the role play. We were asked to practice healing role play, so below you see Joro and I doing just that. I’m telling her I burned my arm when I got accidentally pushed into the fire while trying to break up a brawl back at the castle. Some of those knights like their mead, and there was no AA in medieval times. She prescribes a poultice of lavendar. (Okay, I admit I have no idea if lavendar is good for burns or not.)

Much as I’ve enjoyed my little foray into this subculture of Second Life, I think it’s time for me to get back to my beach house, slip into a sarong, mix a pitcher of margaritas and turn up the reggae. I’ve enlisted the aid of Joro’s fried, Devi Moonbeam, who is both fae and a Guardian Avilion, to make guest posts from time to time to update us on the life of fairies and other medieval topics.

I mentioned the idyllic spot Napolde Vella has created at Fairy Pearls recently, so I wanted to give you a look at it. It’s a tranquil, calming atmosphere that is a pleasure to wander. Napolde sells wings and fairy wear in unobtrusive little booths to the side, and they don’t detract from the overall effect. She has some beautiful, unique styles, even a set for sea fairies. Here you see me chatting with Napolde ( in white on the left) while she is wearing one wings she created.

Here’s a closer photo of the unicorns I mentioned in a previous post. Almost needless to say, my medieval gown is yet another from the free camping chairs at DeFleur .

Joro, who has a fondness for unicorns, popped over briefly and mentioned she had to get to Druid class. DRUID CLASS???! And here I thought I was on the cutting edge by taking Photoshop in Second Life. More next post… `

We hear a lot of talk that Second Life is one of the pioneers in the next phase, the 3D Web. Web 3.0 is envisioned as an extension of Web 2.0, which has spawned vibrant growth in social interaction and community growth. The 3D Web of the future, as BusinessWeek phrases it, may be ” slicker, more realistic, more interactive and social than anything we experience today through the Web browser”. We are just now envisioning how businesses, educational institutions, non-profits and communities might interact in this future web environment.

On the other side are the naysayers who seem to think that Second Life is just a game destination filled with sex and gambling, and not part of a movement of any importance whatsoever. (Well, we all know that SL gambling is under cover these days, but not eradicated.) This, despite evidence that goes beyond subjective anecdotes, evidence that shows people spend most of their time in Second Life shopping and just socializing. For example, a Reuters survey of 657 Second Life residents in 2007 before casinos were banned from SL showed that only 13.6 percent said they “often” practice cybersex, and only 2.2 percent patronized casinos regularly.

But with big brand businesses, universities and conferences holding real time events in Second Life, it’s exciting to watch. Just this week in the Second Life Reuters Auditorium, the interested could sit in on live interviews from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. We heard Richard Edelman, president and CEO of the world’s largest public relations firm, Martin Sorrell, CEO of the world’s second-largest advertising and marketing company, Robert Scoble, well-known tech geek blogger, Linden Labs CEO Phillip Rosedale and others. (Course, Scoble was banned from SL last year for letting his 12 year old son play in Second Life with him, but then he was banned from FaceBook at the beginning of the month too… but I digress.) Here you can see a bit of turn-around as Robert Scoble interviews Phillip Rosedale, which he sent as a live feed via qik.

A lot of real life businesses are in Second Life, but to a large degree as an effort to position themselves as on the edge, rather than due to any expectations of driving immediate sales. I for one would love to hold conferences in Second Life for my real life clients, but it’s still a bit early to use Second Life to market to consumers not already Second Life residents or to use Second Life as a replacement for WebEx. However, as the technology becomes more stable, and Second Life and similar, future applications become easier to use, it will be fascinating to watch how the Web evolves.

Not long ago people were rolling their eyes at social media sites like YouTube, FaceBook and Twitter. (Well, let’s face it, businesses are still figuring out how to interact with their customers in this new world of consumer generated content and social networking.) But like today’s Internet (and any other media format you want to name for that matter), the future Web is bound to run the gamut of human interests - and savvy entrepreneurs will find opportunities around all of them.

If you see Hans, don’t tell him about this post. You’ll soon see why.

I’m not sure what this obsession with wings is lately, but Joro IM’d me last night to join her over in Vision of Mountains to see a place I had not heard of that carries nice wings. I landed in a mystical garden, with unicorns wandering around like house dogs! We were in Fairy Pearls. Joro pulled a unicorn out of her inventory to ride, so I pulled out my AKK horse, the strawberry roan Hans gave me for Christmas 2006. It was a perfect, thoughtful gift, you see, because I had told him once I had always dreamed of riding a horse along the beach.

Now Joro is one heck of a builder, and she finds it hard to leave well enough alone. So she was soon changing her unicorn’s colors willy-nilly. Not to be outdone, I decided to change my strawberry roan to a dapple grey for the day. Well, of course I ended up messing up my horse’s eyes. So far I have not been able to get any help with returning them to normal from the creator, other than the suggestion I buy the new and better model. But Hans gave me Buttercup, and I’ll never sell her to the virtual glue factory. In all fairness it was 4 a.m. in the AKK lady’s part of the world when I talked to her. I should send her some chamomile tea. Poor girl may have insomnia.

Joro and I headed for my place so I could rez Buttercup for Joro to try to edit. (Yes, that’s the front of my place above. And yes, I know that it looks like I just came from a frat house toga party.) At 2 am. my time I gave up and went to bed. I guess I could get some dark glasses and a seeing eye dog for my poor blind horse, but I think I’ll pop over to Textures R Us or similar for eye textures before Hans finds out.

Below is Buttercup in better days.

Hmm, now that I look at this photo, I can see I can improve on the original eyes! Time for a Buttercup make-over!

Though the fairy lifestyle is new to me, I had ventured into medieval Second Life before when I visited Avilion and some other medieval sims as a human. It was right after I discovered gowns by DeFleur. Of course you can buy wonderfully detailed medieval wear there. But DeFleur also has some camping chairs that reward you with absolutely KILLER gowns, so I had to wear them someplace. (Are you beginning to see a trend in my SL?) I stopped by DeFleur today, and I saw there are now many outright freebie gowns you can pick up without camping as well as the gowns in the chairs. Here is a photo from a few months ago - this red velvet number called Autumn Red is still available in one of the DeFleur camping chairs.

I popped over to Avilion today wearing another DeFleur camping dress called Gilda. (See below.) You don’t exactly wander around Avilion in your capri pants and a tube top, after all. The hair below is Seibsa in the color Sunset from Curl Up and Dye, a great place to go for period hairstyles.

So anyway, I was heading for the little shops - not the ones in the castle, but the ones in the village. On my way there I came upon a clearing where I found a small gathering of fairies and dragons.

I had wandered awhile so I sat down for snack, and what do I find but Vegemite. Well, this is SL, so why not?

Thus sustained, I continued to explore and I was pleased to find Indonesian gamelan instruments on the other side of the clearing. I actually took a real life lesson or two on some of these musical instruments when I lived in Bali, but I guarantee you that I play the set at my Second Life beach house much better. Below is a photo of friends and I playing gamelan at Hans’ and my place about a year ago.

When I made mention (without breaking character) of how wonderful it was to find a gamelan orchestra in Avilion, a passing, nosey gentleman I was not addressing looked completely aghast and very heatedly informed me that not one of them was a gamelan instrument, rather all of them were “elven” instruments. I told him I would be sure to inform the Balinese and Javanese gamelan composers, musicians and dancers of my acquaintance of this fact. After all, who are they? They only spend their very real lives playing, dancing to and caring for such instruments, often in service to their gods.

Here is a photo of gamelan in Avilion.

Role play is great - each to their own in SL. But don’t steal sacred items from someone’s real culture and pretend you invented them. In Bali (and some other islands) each gamelan instrument is believed to be imbued with a spirit. So should someone in Second Life comment upon an “exotic” item, such as a gamelan instrument, perhaps the Second Life role player could work the instrument’s heritage into the story - the elves brought it across the ocean on a magic cloud from the Spice Islands (Indonesia) - or whatever. Or just don’t comment at all. Whatever floats your boat. But blatantly and loudly denying someone else’s history is much worse than offensive. It’s just wrong. The Balinese believe in karma, and they believe in the spirits of their instruments. So think twice before denying an important aspect of a culture’s identity. Or the universe may bite you in the butt.

You haven’t heard from us for awhile because I’ve been sick, Veronica’s been at a business conference, and Shameless… well, god knows where Shameless has been. Shameless really needs to learn some responsibility.

Needless to say, I rose from my sick bed (ok, so it was just a cold!) long enough to make some serious headway in the Last Call and ETD sales. As I was trying on my booty, my buddy Joro Aya IM’d. It seems she’s transformed herself from a samurai to a fairy. (I gotta tell you, it’s hard to keep up with that girl!) Her profile makes a distinction among fairies, pixies and nymphae, but I’m personally clueless about the difference. Here she is at Seven’s Selections wearing Material Squirrel wings, Seven’s Selections antennae and hair she made herself. See the little micro-pixie to the right? More on her later.

Anyway, we got talking about wings, and I mentioned how I love Jen Shikami’s creations over at Seven’s Selections. Now I’m usually not much of a wing person myself (I hate cutting holes for them in my couture gowns), but these wings are works of art. I had a great deal of fun at Halloween with the bat wings, which come in several colors, and my personal favorite, scripted wings that change color every so many seconds. The included HUD enables you to change wing size, speed, transparency and god knows what else.

Here you can see the medium red bat wings. I’m wearing them with Simone’s Salem gown and Cake’s Lush hairstyle.

And here you can see the large black wings. They are so large the tips ran into the photo studio, so I shot this outside at my place.

But I digress. Joro and I headed over to Seven’s Selections. I didn’t even bother to change out of the Last Call gown (Alexandra in black) and the ETD hair (Anisa in platinum) I had on. Obviously I hadn’t got too far along trying on my haul from either the Last Call or ETD sales, as I was still in the “A’s”.

At Seven’s Selections we ran into the designer, the ever amiable Jen Shikami, who remembered talking to me about the bat wings way back around Halloween. Here I’m talking with Jen while I’m wearing her Twiggy wings. The pack includes several colors, and Jen laid a pack of antennae on me for free. The great thing is that she has demos for all her wings, so you can try them out like skin or hair before you buy.

She gave me an updated version of the bat wings, and told me to be sure to hit the button to the bottom right of the fairy wings for some free wings. These come complete with the wing HUD and are quite fabulous. I popped back over to the shop today so I could show you the free fairy wings here with the little button to the side. Along with the freebie wings, the outfit I’m wearing is Yelena from Last Call and the hair is Willis III from ETD. Lord, what sales! Studded bracelet is by Digit Darkes and the platinum bracelet is by Simply Spoiled.

Well, I found I was starting to really get into the fairy thing, and I think I shocked Joro by joining the club, buying a micro-pixie avatar from Seven’s Selections. Here you see Joro (left) and I over at Evie’s Closet in Avilion. Joro took me there to show me some photos of Evie’s dresses paired with Seven’s Selections wings.

Now the wonderful thing about Jen Shikami - besides the fact that everything she sells is soooo underpriced - is that she’s all about the scripts, so not only are her wings scripted, but every bit of this micro-pixie avatar is color scripted. I can change the color of the skin, the skirt, the top, the boots, the gloves, the lips, the hair… well, you get the idea. I can even change to six different hair styles using a script!

I IM’d Jen with a few questions (which were all very clearly answered on the notecard had I bothered to read it - duh!) She answered me immediately and also sent me over pixie accessories! These are a whole slew of freebies she positioned to work with her micro-pixie avatar. And oh, by the way, since all her wings are copiable and sizable, you can use any of her wings with the micro-pixie avatar!

Here I am with a couple of my fave accessories.

Oh, want to know Hans’ reaction when he saw I had joined the fae? “Cool! I’m dating Tinkerbell!”

The Blue Note has always been very special to Hans and me (the BF is a bit miffed I haven’t been mentioning him by name), so I was moved to RL tears when I received a notice it was closing January 1. Naydee McGettigan put her soul, time and money into making The Blue Note a friendly, romantic destination that was all about the music. The Blue Note has always meant class. I think I may even have fallen in love with Hans there; see my inworld profile for a little story about that.

So despite our busy holidays, Hans and I knew we had to get to the Blue Note before it closed. I had no idea where to find the perfect dress for the occasion of all the beautiful gowns from all the talented designers in SL. But as soon as I received the notice from Simone of her Christmas Glam gown, I knew I had found it. On Friday I ran over to Simone’s to pick up the gown, and I was so relieved she had not yet put it back into mothballs for the season.

Yesterday (Saturday), I was out doing some RL post-Christmas shopping with friends, arriving home past the time Hans (in Europe) is usually asleep. So I was surprised to find him still awake and ready to go to the Blue Note for the holiday bash.

I quickly changed into my dress, which I have to say I love more than any gown I have bought in quite some time! The silk! The detailed embroidery! The delicate red fur tickling my shoulders! (Of course it’s fake fur, ’cause I don’t wear real.) Fortunately, I had just had my hair done at Sirena in the new Juliette style. Hans was quite dashing in his tux, of course. (Well, that boy can be dashing in a pair of overalls.)

It took some doing to get into the sim, but we both eventually made it, and we were soon dancing in each others’ arms, warm and happy despite the ice beneath our feet. As you can see from the photos, the holiday party was held out on the ice rink. And yet our joy was bittersweet, because we thought it would be the last time we would be together at The Blue Note. Naydee was lying atop the piano, but she was not DJing. The DJ ended a song and made an announcement. What’s this? The DJ requesting support to help keep The Blue Note open? I IM’d Naydee who told me The Blue Note was not closing after all!

I dug through my notices and found one from the day before saying the community had rallied around to offer support. One benefactor in particular had paid tier for a year! Naydee’s RL is changing, so she will not have as much time to devote to The Blue Note. Of course we all know it’s also a financial challenge keeping a club afloat when it’s not being supported by exotic dancers and such. So now Naydee is looking within the community for those who might want to take some of the burden of labor from her shoulders - greeters, hostesses, security - anyone who can help with the myriad tasks of running a club. This is a labor of love, and I’m sure the community will step up.

I’m so relieved that Hans and I will still be able to go ice skating and dancing at our favorite club come January. I’m not at The Blue Note that much, but it would be such a loss to SL were it to close. I take its rebirth as a good omen for the New Year.

At the end of our evening, happy with the good news, we were also happy to return home to our favorite place in SL - the hammock on our little island.

I had been planning to write a long dissertation this week about the future impact of the 3D Web on business. This is in no small part due to the fact that Sapphire has been nagging me relentlessly to start doing my part as the business correspondent. Of course, Sapphire and Shameless both always fall asleep whenever I discuss business. They’re such light weights!

But it’s two days before Christmas, and business will have to wait. I am filled with the holiday spirit, and I’m off to buy party supplies and gifts! Happy Holidays everyone! And, hey, Sapphire, your mother wears army boots!

As a follow-up to our report on the real life plans of Thomas Divisadero and Ariana Petrova, our research dept. has found a photo from a few weeks ago when our own Sapphire Jetaime (left) and Ariana Petrova were caught dancing at a Second Life club where Ariana was DJing. Sapphire is wearing a flip-up flexi leather trench coat by dp Fashions.

A reliable source has informed Second Life Shameless Gossip that enigmatic DJ Ariana Petrova and SL rocker Thomas Divisadero are planning to meet for real. Apparently the popular Second Life jet set couple will ring in the New Year together - and not in Second Life.

Shhhhh! You didn’t hear it here!