shifting masks
Aug. 16th, 2005 02:19 amI just counted: on Second Life, I have sixteen distinct, different avatars in my inventory. Two are ones I got handed. The rest are all my work. Some are half-finished sketches; some are in the 'depreciated' directory because they're not so good. About half of them are ones I really call "done". There's a few more, but they're slight edits, or archived old versions.
I don't build there; I don't socialize much there; I don't make clothes; I don't sell stuff. I play with code a little, but mostly... I make things to be.
I don't know why, quite. Back on Furrymuck I just never quite trusted people who shifted a lot. Maybe because most of them weren't very interesting, regardless of what shape they were in.
When![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bluewyrm and I were talking, before all the Residents silliness happened, she suggested it might be cool to make a Peganthyrus avatar. I'm done with that mask, I explained; lots of history behind it I needed to get away from. But several of the avatars I have share important characteristics with that mask: blackness, spikiness, and wings. That same feel keeps coming back. I'm just used to being a dark, dangerous thing.
And some of my other avatars are exaggeratedly harmless. Shortish, cute, prone to wearing a turning windup key.
I'll stick to one look for most of a day, when it's done. If that.
I am not any one particular thing, there. I'm one particular thing less, in general, in virtual worlds - on Puzzlebox I mostly play Sosael/etc, who has four codified forms, and several that come and go on the edges, and a tendency to fragment into a swarm of insects. And when I'm a more solidified character, they're still one of five logins I have there. (I haven't been around PB lately; telnetting to my web host to use tinyfugue is terribly awkward and roundabout.)
Do I change masks because I'm looking for a new way to see myself? What am I hoping to see in the shattered mirror of this assortment of femmy, inhuman things? What's missing from them all that keeps me making new things to be on SL? or am I just using SL as a visual medium, and doing what I do all the time in 2D: draw something different every time?
Aside from worries about hormonal backsliding, which're about to be calmed 'cause I got the other check from that freelance stuff, I like what I see when I look in a real mirror.
I don't build there; I don't socialize much there; I don't make clothes; I don't sell stuff. I play with code a little, but mostly... I make things to be.
I don't know why, quite. Back on Furrymuck I just never quite trusted people who shifted a lot. Maybe because most of them weren't very interesting, regardless of what shape they were in.
When
bluewyrm and I were talking, before all the Residents silliness happened, she suggested it might be cool to make a Peganthyrus avatar. I'm done with that mask, I explained; lots of history behind it I needed to get away from. But several of the avatars I have share important characteristics with that mask: blackness, spikiness, and wings. That same feel keeps coming back. I'm just used to being a dark, dangerous thing.And some of my other avatars are exaggeratedly harmless. Shortish, cute, prone to wearing a turning windup key.
I'll stick to one look for most of a day, when it's done. If that.
I am not any one particular thing, there. I'm one particular thing less, in general, in virtual worlds - on Puzzlebox I mostly play Sosael/etc, who has four codified forms, and several that come and go on the edges, and a tendency to fragment into a swarm of insects. And when I'm a more solidified character, they're still one of five logins I have there. (I haven't been around PB lately; telnetting to my web host to use tinyfugue is terribly awkward and roundabout.)
Do I change masks because I'm looking for a new way to see myself? What am I hoping to see in the shattered mirror of this assortment of femmy, inhuman things? What's missing from them all that keeps me making new things to be on SL? or am I just using SL as a visual medium, and doing what I do all the time in 2D: draw something different every time?
Aside from worries about hormonal backsliding, which're about to be calmed 'cause I got the other check from that freelance stuff, I like what I see when I look in a real mirror.