Live From Eden:Tami McCoy's Hair Styles

You almost certainly don't have any of Tami McCoy's hair, and that's a sin. Sin. Sin. Sin. While her collection is still small, the quality is undeniably there. Can someone invent the department store so that designers don't have to be shopkeepers? This hair should be in shops all over SL, as a perfect complement to graceful gowns of all descriptions.

Tami's hair is outstanding in its handling of bangs and assymetry, its classical ringlets styling and use of texture. Take it from a total hair whore, Tami, like Style 0, is one of the great unknown hairstylists of SL.

The backdrops again are Eden, where paradise is regained.



Cascade, this one in an elegant "Summer" texture.



Bliss, in a natural red.



I didn't see this one at the store, it is the assymetrical "I'm so blonde!" style: Rae. It gives you that certain look and is composed of three parts that just work in harmony. Nothing in my arsenal says "apres sex" like this one.

Presence

Last night Trecek Gynold presented himself as a potential client, he without IM tp'ed me to a free sex area and said "Let's Fuck!" I told him my rate, he tried to dicker with me, but eventually pretended to go along. I tp'ed him to one of my skyboxes, and told him that he would pay first. He said he wasn't going to pay: "Fuck First! Pay Later." I told him that the rule for everything on SL was that you paid first: cocks, clothes or girls. He told me the rules had been changed and that we were going to fuck now. I banned him immediately .

The next thing into my IM box was "mother fucker!"

And that is how Trecek Gynold ended up in my ban list. In a couple of days, you'll be able to google him and get this story. This sort of thing happens almost every day to a working girl. Almost. Every. Day. It's again part of my on going question as to why a society that nominally talks about equality has created a virtual world which is predicated on sexual harrassment, degradation of women and prostitution.

I tell this story because it is at the spine of my life on Second Life, and that spine is in one word: Presence. I search for things which create a powerful presence in my mind and body. In return I want to deliver a powerful presence to others. People have asked me about my enthusiasm for the new Eden club. It is in a simple word: presence. My taste in clothes and hair? Again, presence. My photography is world's better than what is passing for fashion photgraphy in SL, which is often glorified snapshots on a neutral background, because I take the time to create presence.

That's what Trecek wanted, to force his presence into another mind, and rape her. The mind rapist is a common species on SL, the person who tries to trick, cajole or hack the system to rup a hole in another person. Trecek found out that the positions had been reversed: he had wanted a situation where he fucked me for half an hour and then said "ha ha, that was free!" He knows, as everyone does, that there is no law enforcement on sl for contracts, and that a person who has not charged, will never get paid. He found instead that he had agreed to something that put him in my power, and that he, not I, was in the submissive position.

And he flailed at that presence that forced itself through the screen.

That is what SL virtual sex is about, presence. That there is someone on the other side, responding and doing, and reacting. That there are real feelings in play. Lives hang in the balance; marriages are made and unmade by what happens on sl. Presence is positive and negative. It is what made the flame wars on the old internet, that lust to inflict presence. Since we are visual, audible and cinematic here, one does not need flames to show presence.

Presence is a word that was existentialist, but it is also occult. A presence that is beyond the body, a spirit, is what haunts or inhabits a place. The overwhelming presence of nature is what makes a place one of the houses of the holy. The warm rising draft of air off of the heated, sexualized body, is the breath of this divine wind. That when I dream of myself now, it is often my sl, and not rl, face I see.

What we need to do on SL is realize that it is getting close to time to crash and restart the world, with a default of higher quality. For every Eden, there are dozens of clutter realms, filled with endlessly rotating "for sale!" signs, and low quality builds. For every well put together avatar, there are many playdos. For SL to be workable to the ordinary person "wanna fuck!?" cannot any longer be an acceptable opening line to a woman, escort or not. Early adopters seeking a new land will find this the price we pay, but regular people will not. There is no reason that a more present world cannot be built. Except one, that is the number of people who have speculated on charging for entrance to a more present world, and who will not want it built for free. Soon, very soon, Linden Labs will realize that their first creation is not going to be accceptable.

What would I do? I would guess that they would start a second second life. One that charges some flat rate to participate at all; no more free accounts, though a person paying could create alts at some fairly low rate, and the basic is no longer ugly playdo, but higher quality. Skins would be upped to 1024x1024 as would other textures. On the best monitor I get access to, which doesn't belong to me, but is not particularly out of reach for home users, I can see the problems with the 512x512 textures easily. Alright, I am a visual person in a visual field, but count me as the audophile demand for better iTunes equivalent (I just got the update from 7.2 to be able to buy and play DRM free double bit rate files from the iTunes store, so that is why I think of it) what I want now, more people will want soon.

That's my belief as to where virtual reality will be within one year. It can't be made to work in the current grid, because millions of real dollars are locked up. The eye sore clutter is something that people are intent on selling. The Lindens think that islands are the way to capitalize on that: have two Second Life grids, the free eyesore trailer trash strip city kitschorama SL, and the upscale. They can't cohabitate though.

Why is that? Because of people like me. You see the people with the one linden woodies and green carpeted "Sex by hieronymous bosch" orgy rooms want me too. They want me badly enough to lie and steal to rape me, because that is what Trecek Gynold wanted to do. They want it badly enough to grief people who have better. They want it badly enough to do anything but pay outside world money, because they have a relatively fixed amount of that, where as they have lots of time in world. I had this explained to me by someone who knows economics. My eyes glazed over, sorry, but there is a simple explanation.

That's my belief, that in a year, someone will offer a more present, higher default virtual world. One with say, road strips between parcels, higher default textures, better default avatars, and ways of actually preventing "wanna fuck!?" from showing up in your IM box.

Presence.

Live From Eden: Bare Rose Tokyo - Expressions By Dahlia

Two of the mainstays of my wardrobe are Bare Rose Tokyo for clothes, and the Expressions collection of shoes by Dahlia. Here is why, in my shoot Live from Eden.




Etheral New Heavan, male, paired with Material Squirrel's Dragon Mech wings. The wings are scripted with a HUD. Not show but paired with the outfit are the Black and Gold Telepoofers by Dahlia. Hair is Public Affair from Influence, the hair whore's haven.

As with many B@R outfits, the fabric has the detail you would expect from a 500L dress, only at a fraction of that price, and it comes with three outfits, not one. Result, 50L an outfit. That's Vindi quality at Gritzi prices!



Bael is the dress by B@R, the wings are Material Squirrel. Hair, again, from Influence on Naughty Island. You will want to click on this one for the full size image.





This is the Cian F/A outfit with the goes with everything Black and Gold Telepoofers from Dahlia. The badges are PanAm classic done as custom attachments. Fly me, I have more non-stops to paradise than anyone. In this 150L package you get Blue, Red, Black, Cian and Brown. The Brown looks so US Military from the 1940's that I am going to do it up retro. I paired the red with Air Canada, the Cian with Pan Am, the Black with United.



Consider the Lillies of the field... there are too damn many of us. I have Lillie, Lilly, Lillian, LillSandra, Lillit, Lillith, Lil in my friends list, and a few others. This dress? Lilin from B@R with Dahlia's Red Telepoofers. The Hair is the common freebie "Bun Fun."





The outfit is Miko, the shoes are again the Black and Golds. And the dance step is every bad girl's favorite: caramel. Hair is Style 0.



Bael, sans the shoulders from B@R, the shoes that make the outfit? Dahlia's white spikes from the Expressions collection.

A word about these amazing shoes. They come with a particle teleport effect that gives you a great entrance. And yet some how these well styled, versatile and above all impressive shoes, in two mainstyle families, remain a well kept secret on SL. Every time I make a big entrance I tell people "It's the shoes." They don't believe me - but it is true. The black and golds are versatile, the white spikes are stunning and the black spikes make any party dress. Must have, must have, must have for your wardrobe, and at 225L, worth it even if you are only going to be able to afford one set of high quality prim shoe.


More tomorrow, there was just too much material for one post.

The Big Three: Bad Girls, Elements, Arsheba

Search on "Escorts" and you will pull up a relatively simple list of names. At the top, presently, are three Bad Girls, Elements and Arsheba. Each club has taken a different road to success, and a different way of doing what it does. Each club works because it uses the defects of SL to create a particular place which makes it possible to persuade clients to part with their liden in return for the pleasures which sl affords.

Bad Girls

Bad Girls is the worst club imaginable, it is something close to hell. A very, very profitable hell. In fact, everything that makes Bad Girls an awful experience makes it a great machine for money. It is a festival of lag: they tell you to take your AOs off at the door, as well as scripted items. It's dancing is very little more than lewd gestures, and conversation is not much above "hey baby!" and "wooohoooo!" The music is irrelevant because of the constantly repeated sound "welcome to bad girls!"

"Welcome to Bad Girls"

This is probably by design, because no club on SL knows more about pushing male buttons and getting them to spend money. Bad Girls, like Phat Cats is a club apart from all of the others. Listen closely, because the management of Bad Girls understands that hell is strictly a cash and carry firm.

"Welcome to Bad Girls"

First the lag and noise. By stripping men down to nothing but their linden balance, they remove from the equation that bane of the working girl's existence, the guy so in love with his own cock that he is sure that you will instantly be so in love with it to that you will want it creaming your every orifice within seconds of seeing him. Only the most, excuse the expression, dickheaded, can believe that they can put across their special and unique qualities in a sea of audio, chat and visible goo.

More over the managers there, as you would expect from such a place, are suspicious, rude, dishonest and threatening. When I sent the link to this article as courtesy to the two managers on duty - one should tell people when they are being written about I got back an IM telling me not to spam and dishonestly accusing me of having sent out the link to others. This from Sinful Rossini the assistant manager. But then, Bad Girls doesn't need to be polite, they don't need to be nice.

And they aren't. (I am soooo gonna be banned from Bad Girls....) But that is OK, I'd never want to go there on my own time. But then, they have a staff that hasn't learned to ask "who are you?" "what is that link?" Or how to read a profile. Just an idea.

By reducing the dancers to empty barbies, they make the equation simple. More choices only lead to anxiety. Many, many, many men come to SL, they know, or find out, that there must be better sex out there than in orgy rooms. But they are embarassed, all of the rl moralizing about prostittuion hangs with them. They need permission to do what they want to do, and to pay for it. The repeated simple come ons, the obvious and overt slutitude of Bad Girls gives them that permission. It is a giant "Girls Gone Wild" commercial.

"Welcome to Bad Girls"

The aesethtic unpleasantness of the Bad Girls experience also means that another element is removed, namely the girl who is looking to get a guy and have sex... like for free. The lag and strip down means it is much harder as a girl to stand out. Reduced free comeptition funnels all the men down into the dancers in the end, and, as mentioned, they have only one instrument to get a dancer's attention and get her out of lagarama. Pay.

"Welcome to Bad Girls"

And the key to all of this? By creating a Mardi Gras in every month spelled with a vowel, Bad Girls draws people in who need the weight of what you can't say in rl out. It is almost always packed. It is almost always making money. It knows its clients very well, and if that is what you need, to just let go, but in a mainstream kind of safe way, then Bad Girls is it. Sophmoric is the word for it.

"Welcome to Bad Girls"

In short, in their deepest nocturnal emission fantasies, ambitious club owners dream of running "the next Bad Girls." And they have about as much chance of doing that as with getting Kate Winslet to give them a free blowjob, because Bad Girls is a world aparat. You almost never see Bad Girls tag wearers anywhere but Bad Girls. For the men who want to come in, get softened up of their need to spend some linden and have "a good time," there simply is no other place.

"Welcome to Bad Girls"

It also means that girls like working bad girls. Why not? It is the easiet job of any major club. Come in, hope on the pole, drip and scream a bit, negotiate a job, do the bare minimum of flirting. Get the date, do that date, come back to the pole if you want more money.

"Welcome to Bad Girls"

The essence is simple at Bad Girls, they take the stripped down to baser reflexes of an orgy room, and turn it into a product that men are willing to pay for. It's a machine for turning one handed typing into money, and is unique on sl. They take great pains to lead you by the nose: from the repeated warnings about lag, to the animated clouds that run from the tp in point to the club. In short, the genius of Bad Girls is that it churns people who are just barely out of the lowest level of sl knowledge, and turns them into a loud, proud and profitable crowd.

A crowd with a distinct, if dull, rhythm of "howlz!" "lookin' good!" "Heya!" "Show me your B( o )( o )BIES!!!!" and of course the ever present, "Welcome to Bad Girls"

Think on what that means to be number one at the thing that is the chinese restaurant of coming to SL.

Sensual Elements


On the surface, Elements and Bad Girls look alike, their traffic numbers are similar, both feature immensely ugly dance floors, the come ons are florid: Elements grinds out "the pimpenest pimps and the hoeyest hos." Crass, dum and ugly on the inside. The lead up is very different, and the experience is very different. If Bad Girls is the club that every ambitious club owner dreams he could run, Sensual Elements is the club that he or she actually might run. Where as the Bad Girl's experience is almost unduplicable, Sensual Elements is the "same old thing" that every other club is trying to get to: a packed floor, paying customers, and a festival atmosphere. Sensual Elements people go their first, and then move out through the club eco-system.

So why are they loyal? It really is simple: it is possible to be human in Sensual Elements. It is slowish, but not clogged. It is partyish, but not blitzed to over kill. They don't warn you about lag every few lines of their notecards, they don't have warnings about getting instantly booted. Elements may look gaudy on the inside, but it is carefully made with the same efficient eye as outside is.

It is possible to go into Sensual Elements, and show off the avatar that you have spent so much time creating, and look and act fine. If Bad Girls sells itself, Sensual Elements sells the possibility of living the phat fantasy of, at least for a night, being a playah among playahs. The bad backdrop helps, rather than hinders this. Go inside of Bad Girls, and everyone is reduced to grey goo. Go inside of Elements, and everyone stands out.

This is why the inside floor is as it is. The outside is very tasteful, very well done, and very smooth. It is a marvel of design and simplicity, out of Frank Lloyd Wright and classic early 20th century Modernism.

And again, a top club, even things which seem like defects, are, in fact, part of the goal and mission. Would be club builders who build beautiful clubs, but don't create an addictive experience, will wind up wasting their time and money. Sensual Elements is very different from Bad Girls, because Bad Girls is packed with boys who need permission to jump the fence into the willow world, where as Sensual Elements is packed with people who are, or imagine themselves here in sl, to be baaaaaaad, as the old time jazz culture use to call it. By giving people a taste, and it is a taste, of that sense and essence, Sensual elements draws its clientele more deeply into it's experience.




Arsheba is almost as laggy as Bad Girls on its bad nights, and was recently pushed off the list of top places by camping farms. But Arsheba is the reverse of Bad Girls. Where Bad Girls strips the equation down to its essentials, Arsheba is the reigning queen of dancing on SL. I have trouble standing in Bad Girls long enough to write about it, Sensual Elements is someplace where, after the fourth or fifth lame come on, I'm ready to go. Arsheba? I've left 1000L tips in a girl's jar at Arsheba because of the quality of performance.

Bad Girls is about the money, Elements about the club, Arsheba is about the girls, and the tight interaction between the dancer and the patron. This is why Arsheba attracts an artier crowd. I have been to Arsheba many times, I have never gotten a lame come on there, ever. I have had men approach me while there, but always with a certain sophistication and presentation. Arsheba takes ever step to underline this difference between their product and the two larger syblings - quality djs, quality shops, better decor, touches in every place and position. By being entertaining, Arsheba makes it safe to be attractive.

This extends to the security people, managers, djs and everyone else. They are unfailingly polite, even when enforcing the rules and dealing with patrons that are being difficult.

As a result, working Arsheba as a girl is harder, it requires being more "on," more alert, creative and vibrant. Arsheba is also the club that has the most new clubs gunning for it. This for the simple reason that both Bad Girls and Elements are products of their packed crowds, where as design and dancing are tow things that can be mimicked from the beginning. If Elements is "the same old thing" that people talk about, and try and do, Arsheba, by staking itself on skill invites competition, invites people going head to head with its formula.

But it isn't easy, not to train a good staff. Arsheba's dancing is not just emotes, but a certain style and pacing, a rhythm that meshes the green of object spam with the white hot of emotes that punctuate it. Arsheba is, in a sense, SL's largest boutique club, and as such, even on its bad nights, brings in people who would not stay in any other sex or escort club. It also means that Arsheba has to work harder, since what it has is staff and style, keeping on top of this is harder. Bad Girls runs itself, and Sensual Elements runs by the numbers. Arsheba sweats to make it look effortless. And there are more than a few club owners that know that.



All three of these clubs share a ruthlessness about playing the game. The landscape of sl is strewn with would be competitors, clubs that flare and die, or which despite great look and good people, don't ever get off the ground. I've worked in a few of them, and had friends work in others. On the same night that I wrote this, I visited half a dozen clubs from the next 17 slots on the the top 20. Cooter's land had people, but that was for solo, not girls. Many others were almost empty, even some well regarded names. The net work effect is very strong, the big three, were all packed. And that is what unifies them: people come there because other people come there, always. Each club has managed to deal with sl's limitations in different ways, and provide a place that attracts a specific clientele.

A Man, A Plan, A Canal: Panama

Well Hamlet shows why he's the professional, and I am just the amateur. It is flattering to be written about so nicely by someone whose craft of writing is so good: his post is so concise at jextaposing and balancing the different viewpoints.

He calls sex an isthmus that joins two economies: fashion and land. But it is also a canal between two oceans: real life, and second life. Sex is often what brings people into this world, but not just the sex act, the sex culture. A woman can't rl, wander around in slave silks. Just isn't done outside of special occasions. Here she can, and even have a little title over her head that says "Master's fine purebred slut." A man can't go bare chested in rl, can't carry a bullwhip or spank said fine purebred slut. In sl he can.

The culture of sexuality is the large sea which one enters into after the narrow canal of the act of sex itself is passed through, and from there, into the larger ocean of making clothes, land speculation and so on. I know this has been posted before, but I will do so again:

Hi! :-)

My name is Anshe Chung. I am a female escort in SecondLife. If you explored other virtual worlds you might know me from AC1, SB or SWG. Yes, it is me *giggles* :-)

?

If you are nice and generous to me like a real gentleman or lady I can be your private entertainer. I will be delighted to make you happy in many ways performing for you, providing you company during your travels or a tender massage in your home :-)

Since my timezone is PST+9 you can usually find me between 10 am PST and 3 pm PST or very late on saturday nights.

Some services I provide:

(PG rated - 500$/h)
o Escort/Travel
o Massage
o Conversation
o Playing games
o Introduction to Chinese language and culture
o Introduction to AV positioning
o Photo shooting

(M rated - you must be adult - starting at 1000$/h)
o Exotic Massage
o Love
o Cyberian Angel
o Black Mistress
o Ghost Control

Or just tell me what you like to do :-)

?

It is fine if you are human man or woman, both is nice. If you are alien or animal I can only provide company but not intimate service. I also speak Chinese, German and some French if you feel more comfortable in one of those languages or if you like to practise your foreign language skills :-)

I do not do RL meetings or any other service outside the SL world. Also please no snapshots while we are intimate. Sorry. This is an iron rule. However I have no problem to use third party age or gender verification services if that matters to you :-)

?

I am a material girl with a money fetish - this means I get very kinky if you give me a nice gift. I don't know why. It kinda happens. Just a reaction of my body getting very hot. Maybe because I feel you show me special appreciation. So many boys want to make love and have nice words, but not so many boys really give up something they cherrish. This is why I ask for a little tip when you meet me :-)

Yours

Anshe Chung

And out on to the greater sea indeed. I don't know what Anshe came here looking for, though her passing through so many says that she was probably looking for one where money could be made, the card itself tells what she passed through, and the rest is now history, or at least news.

Intel Eye Rapes Me

Oh My God.

I don't say those words often, rl or sl. They weren't part of my teenage years list of "things to say." In sl I notice that men use omg, when rl they almost never say it. But here I am getting eye raped by Intel's monumentally ugly splace. This place is as ugly as a cheap orgy room.

And it tells me something. Every so often a get a client who isn't just newbie ugly, but who has intentionally manipulated his avatar to be grotesque, with misshappen features and head, strange colors and ears, imbalanced offset nose and eyes. He also has the ugly apparatus attached he can find, often similarly misproportioned. He will make a beeline for the best barbie in the room. Which is often me. In essence he wants to shove his ugliness in your face, and make you lap it up. He thinks of his cock as ugly and powerful, and he has turned himself into one giant cock.

That's what Intel's space says about them. It is not only ugly, but it is intel-entionally and expensively so. They blow 13 prims on chairs which are meant to simulate the kind of uncomfortable ugly chairs that one finds in hotel conventions or museum lectures. They spend prims on floor textures which are ugly, on glass portals downard which are crude. If paying for gargoyle sex is a turn on, and getting it for free a fantasy, what does making your living at it feel like? I can only guess.

Everything about this space says that intel is going to fuck a chip into my computer, whether I like it or not. It also says that the company has an image of itself as an ugly compnay. Where as Cisco protrayed itself as a bright and open campus, a kidn of 21st century little Ivy League college, intel's self image, like the Democratic Party's self image on sl, is of ugly "we don't care about image".

It comes across then, the opposite way, as a group of people who take great pride in offending other people, and forcing their power on others. Call it what it is, "eye rape." And they are right, my next computer will have an intel chip in it, or something made to be compatible with their chips, whether I like it or not. In a world where you can look like anything you want, someone blowing 13 prims on ugly chairs that people hate to sit in rl, wants to be ugly.

In the sexual psychological, the next layer beneath the man who wants to be a gargoyle and take the beauty as the basets of beasts, or the woman who wants to be takne by one, has a sense of hte boyd. Remember you brain has a map of your body, and that map mirrors, not your physical shape, but your shape in nerves. Your lips, hands and feet have huge areas for them, your legs, much smaller. The head is huge. The body must mediate between its homonculous map of itself, and its periperipheral map of itself, which are different.

But there is none of that here. What Intel's slpace (my word for "sl space") is that they don't need to be anytihg but intel, and lots of peope will show up. They don't need people skills, their hardware is so great, you are just going to take it, (word that rhymes with rich here).

(And yes that is a Dalek in the picture)

(Which reminds me. Anyone who has a stage in SL knows that you buy a script to keep people off of it. Otherwise, you get pictuers of people wearing Dalek suits at your press conference on stage. You can tell from his tag that he is no from Intel. Which merely reinforces the notion that Intel is fucking downwards. They can't even be bothered to issue their managers anti-idle orbs (free!) to prevent their tags from saying "away". Most clubs would fire a girl for going away on stage. Just so you know.)

Information Week on Sex in SL

Information Week on Sex in SL.

I was sent this link, and have read it. My reaction first was, yes, and? AOL is an empire built on the chat room, which is about sex.

The interview with a Madame, however, made me smile, the words rang so true, about how sex is mental, and how in sl, we have to be experts and creating that illusion with words and tools inside of sl. As with many madame's she charges heavily for the times she goes out, simply because it is more worth her time to get another girl working, than it is to work another man. The damsel in distress routine is effective and not effective, it gets a very particular kind of client. But this isn't a criticism: every girl out there should think about who her man is, that is the kind of man who is drawn to her. As man types go, hunting for the knight in shining armor is a fairly good idea. They tip well, they are protective, they respect limits, and they are often willing to do more than their share of the work. One of my first large tips in SL came from that sort of man, at the time I had 30L on me, and when 500L was dropped on my head, even though I wasn't much of dancer, it was almost a flood of relief that was better than any orgasm.

Another part of the interview that rings very true:

I asked her how she started doing nude photography in Second Life. "i found myself in very early Second Life, and all my friends were artists and builders and i have no talents and no skills," she said in text chat. "i don't have [PhotoShop]. i had to come up with something so i decided that sex sells and so i would sell rather tame sexual images." PhotoShop is used by the most skilled builders in Second Life to make their creations more beautiful and lifelike.

Oh yes, indeed. How is it in a society where women are supposed to be equal, that we have made a virtual world where the best entry level job is.... escort.

And then another important piece of wisdom:

Murphy said she became a domme in Second Life after having had real-life bisexual encounters when she was younger. "here in sl the bisexual thing is so much easier to fall into. by its very nature, the anonymity and the simple fact that for a couple of years guy avs [avatars] just were not very good," she said.

On sl, there are lots of guys, and few men. It is harder to make a good male avatar than good female avatar. I've seen male avatars spoiled by being infantile in their behavior, despite good looks. The problem with males on sl, is that most of the really good ones, are in-vis-i-ble. They are off building, or playing, or designing, or setting up companies. The ones who have the time to hang around, well, are very often the ones who don't worry about any errection except the one they attach.

But the bisexuality component is also interesting, I joke that lesbianism is SL's fastest growing religion. RL there are physical barriers, including the processing of scent, to bisexuality. In SL, all the signals that lead to it: lack of good men, physical attractiveness, consern and help, closeness and the need for intimacy, are heightened, and the barriers are dropped to almost nothing. Hence, far more female/female relationships turn sexual. I had a very straight friend of mine point out that on sl, the more subtle forms of touch are not there, so "hot kissing" is what the game offers for women to be physically affectionate. To my experience, the slow dance and the hot kiss are very persuasive.

Now for the question of the economy:

Reuben Steiger, founder of the Second Life business consultancy Millions of Us, made an estimate famous in the Second Life community, that sex accounts for 30% of the Second Life economy. He later said the estimate is arbitrary, absurd and altogether meaningless.


He added:


Let's face it, there's adult content in SL. Does it matter what percentage it is? I guess I'm often struck by how rarely I encounter it, but I think that sort of reinforces the point we often make to clients concerned about their brands in an environment with adult content. We simply ask whether they have offices in New York City (they do) and ask whether their customers get confused because New York is also home to adult clubs (they're not).

But as my picture shows, the reality is that while "area" is small, the concentration of sex is large. NEva Naughty sells sex beds, and has an orgy room. Phat's is a hook up place, the best on SL, and advertises itself as "romantic and sexy". No escorts please. Money island is camping.

If you go through the list, camping and sex dominate. And often the two go hand in hand, where sex camping is the order of the day. If you think about it, an orgy room is just camping where you don't have to pay.

So the question of how much of sl's economy is sex is "a great deal", since many other products, such as skins, furniture and so on, are meant to be part of sex. Also, if we look at individual homes, these are not tagged as "mature" even though couples have virtual sex in their virtual homes.

My last tangential reaction is that if he really wanted to get into the world of sex in sl, he should have looked more deeply at the part that was missing. He talked about the madame, and the sexual adventurer, but a great deal of sl sex, like rl, is about long term couples. People buying houses, and one part of that house is a sex bed, but it is only part of their creating a life together. Beyond SL sex as an activity, and beyond sl sex as economy, there is sl sex in the role of social and personal glue. A trip to Phats and a few dances, plus some reading of profiles, would have told him that finding sex partners is a large part of their reason for being on sl.

In this he missed, I think a key point. The most important part of sex on sl, is that sl is a very sexualized place. The standard for avatars is sexy, the reason many people came to sl is to explore not only the sex acts that interest them, but the sexual culture that interests them. He mentions slave owning, but glosses over the importance of BDSM culture to sl.

It is the sexual culture of sl that is more fundamental than all of the pose balls, and all of the dance halls. This crops up in the article when he touches on the quesiton of whether companies should have a presence in SL - is it too sexualized?

The answer here is no, in fact, rather the reverse. The people who are going to remake avatars, set up corporate image, and in general be the liasons between sl and companies coming in, are going to have cut their teeth in the skin trade, or by making things for the sex. Animations, skins, avatars, builds - you name it, the place to "earn while you learn" is the sex trade. Without the skin trade in sl, there would be no corps of quality builders.

It is a good article, but it doesn't get to the heart of the question, and that question is whether the rl culture which is predicated on sexual frustration and titillation, can survive meeting a culture whose basis is sexual display, and instead of presenting mainstream conformity to the world, rather much the reverse. Just count the number of "mainstream" style clothiers on sl that have their take on Gorean silks....

A friend starts a blog

Chien Yoshikawa used to be a dancer. As you can see from her financial site, she's destined for much bigger things.

Eden Club Review

Graphic language from one of the quotes pushes this over to Raise the Red Lantern.

Go anywhere

While you are doing anyone.

Cute.

Best Practices in Education

While many people, probably most people, don't approve of my SL profession, it must be said that I am in the business that requires more....hmmm... hands on teaching .... than any other in SL. I must train girls to look good, not just good, hot. I must train clients how to "interface" with the trade... is that still a current buzzword? Many times a client will come to a girl and not know how things work, like his own attachment. I am at the Best Practices in Education event in Outreach.

I'm sitting in one presentation where the, she sounds like she is a graduate student, is talking about a scavenger hunt. Her in world name is Catherine Soderstrom, and she is being very sensible and patient.

Her class was a scavenger hunt, and it is a reasonable exercise, because much of SL is a giant scavenger hunt. The question is always whether it is worth trying to search for a free object that does what you want, pay for it, or do it yourself from the beginning. Consider, if you will, the occuption of escort. You have to find things for your look, find places to meet clients, find clients, find a place to take them, or make it yourself.

The present said something very simple, but also very true right now: the orientation process doesn't stop with orientation island. She doesn't know the half of it. I would be willing to lay a very good wager that she didn't wake up this morning with "So you like to fuck?" in her message box. I would be willing to wager that a naked newbie with a cheap cock attached isn't going to wander into her class room and shout "I want to FUCK!" several times, and will have to have it patiently explained that, no dear, the whole of SL isn't one giant orgy room. She won't have someone come up to her, and when she refuses to "suck my dick now," be called a crazy bitch.

The escort is the first responder to the incoming wave of people, many of whom are looking for something that mere pornography can't provide. Educating these poeple in that hardest of SL lessons, namely, this isn't World of Whorecraft, is not pleasant.

As a result, she, like me, spends a good deal of time telling people about the mechanics of sl, what a HUD is for example. I won't tell you how long I was in SL before I knew what it stood for. And a good deal of time asking for feedback. My profession does too.

Her orientation also had several steps requiring students talk to people. This too is very smart, because SL is a game of people, not a game of things. Most of what you need to be better off today than yesterday, you can find from people. You don't need a job, I say over and over again, you need a life. And a life starts with friends.

The upper and lower worlds aren't so much different, however, the element of pressure is.

%}-------

The other reality of my profession is strange one. That is, a society that is the product of centuries of slow stumbling progress towards humanism and liberalism, has formed, as its virtual doppelganger, an illiberal society. A society which preaches tolerance and equality, has "escort" as the entry level position for women in Second Life. A society which is proud of its democracy, and yet rushes into live in a virtual dictatorship with a cult of personality.

I am including myself in this. After all, the difference between crack and sl, is that I would never whore myself for crack. Clearly the most important education we need to do, is to ask ourselves why this is the case, why, when given the chance to build the egalitarian society of any kind, we spend a great deal of time create inequality, and simulating reality rather badly.

No that doesn't work for me. What about you?

After Proky casually accused me of wanting to abuse children in a private email, I think it best I pull the link from the blog roll.

The river of joy.

On Raise the Red Lantern: "The river of joy."

Vindi's Freebies

Yes, these are freebie clothes from arch fabric master Vindi Vindaloo.

The hair, is not freebie, but are various sets from Naughty Designs, specifically Influence, which, along with Style Zero is my favorite hair maker. They set me back a good bit, but I am very happy with all of them.

Some Pictures From a Shoot

Some pictures of a girl I worked on. We didn't spend a great deal, but the results, I think, are worth it. This shows off what you can do for very little. Other than the Heart of the Ocean, from Purple Rose, and DE Design's Eclipse for the pants outfit, what you see here is all quite inexpensive. The shape is a modification of a common free shape, the skin is one of Platinum's 1L wonders. The hair is Gurl6's Indecent, 1L a color pack. The dress is a combination of items from Phat Cat's and Avillion Grove. The poses are all from various free and 1L packs, with the exception of one that is out of AO#2 from Abraminations.

For those of you who are wondering, the girl is a model, and not an escort or dancer.

Second Thoughtless

I link to his blog, not because I like it, but because I don't. His tone is nasty, his thinking is sloppy and he's generally one of the most stupid reads anywhere.

Here we go, darlings Second Thoughtless has blogerrhea again:

So let's call this phenomenon, and the people who practice it, by the proper term: it's pedophilia, which means an unnatural sexual attraction for children. Let's call it by its right term, so we don't get confused about it.

Dear, you are very, very, very, very, very confused. So let's start from the top. There is the legal dividing line between allowable sex and not allowable sex. That is 18 on SL, which makes it one of the most restrictive jurisdictions, most states allow at 16 or 17. Some as young as 13. You confuse the legal age of consent, with the sickness. That's very confused to begin with, because according to you, many states have legalized unnatural sexual attraction for children.

Another confusion is your clear contempt for BDSM. Dear, if it weren't for BDSMers, you wouldn't have skin and clothes probably, and thousands of other slers wouldn't. Without the need for extreme expression, you'd all be running around looking like a child dumped you out of a can.

I can fully understand why authorities are fearful of age play between even consenting adults, because the track record is that such consenting adults often play together, and then form a ring to hunt real children. It isn't the age play between adults that is problematical, I've been humped by a centaur on SL, so let's expand the realm of the possible here, it is the corrosive series of relationships that come out of it. As for "unnatural sexual attraction" first, nature has children as sexual beings. Children can have orgasms. Children engage in sex play all the time. If sexual attraction in children is unnatural, no child would survive, because a mother's love for her child is erotic, consuming and sexual.

No, the reality of sexual urges towards children, like the fear in the military of male homo-erotic bonding, is not that it is unnatural, but that it is all too natural. In the case of children, though not homosexuality, which is in the realm of consenting adults and healthy erotic love, if a line is not errected, many people will wander across from acceptable into not acceptable. From bonding which is good and necessary for child rearing, and into bonding which prematurely fixates one young person on sexual attraction before they have finished maturing as people enough. Children are sexual beings, adults are sexual beings, and the two most dance around that sexuality in order for adults to raise children. If it were truly "unnatural" we would not have as many problems with it.

This leaves aside those sad cases, not that I am saying they should be allowed to run loose, but they are ill, not at fault, of adults whose brains are wired to see the child body as the appropriate sexual object. Children must be protected from them, in the same way society must be protected against people who carry infectious diseases, but they aren't "unnatural" either, but varients from the process of evolution. They are spin offs of the natural process of attraction and fixation, ones which have gone wrong in a particularly horrible way. They keep occuring because the paths of development cannot get rid of them within the reach of evolution. But like people born without moral sense, or with horrible deformities, they are not morally culplable for their condition, but, instead, they are a public health problem, to be kept away from children and away from circumstances where they might be able to inflict their condition on others.

"Responsible" is a word that it loaded, it implies that the choice is in the range of cognitive play and volition. So people who like teenagers aren't pedophiles, even if the law calls all minors children in its infinite capacity to mislabel. And the attraction isn't unnatural, but all too human and all too natural. And the people afflicted with it are not "responsible" for their affliction, even if they are responsible for whether they do anything on the impulse.

Very confused boy. Very stupid. Very, very, very angry clearly. He needs a good blow job, his writing would be dramatically improved, I think, if he were doing it one handed.

In fact sl is very confused. There are many flat chested narrow hipped girls out there who aren't clearly over the age of 18 rl. Many playdos start out looking distinctly like they just walked out of sophmore study hall in high school. Some of the free bodies lying around sl, aren't clearly over the age of 18. The rule, if this were about pedophilia, would be that avatars need to be clearly post-pubescent, but it isn't. Which means the rule is really about the confused blend of immoralizing and sublimated eroticism which both sexualizes adolescents, for example about half the female singers out there, and legally forbids it. Look at my own before picture farther down the page. I don't think I looked clearly above the age of 18.

After all, if we were to ban sexual imagery of people not clearly over 18, they would have to raid every major art museum in the word that has a cherub, and they would have to shut down the pop music industry.

There, I hope that clears up confusion. But it probably won't.

On the iPod is Dvorak's Cello Concerto, followed by Elgar's Cello Concerto.

Thongspeed and Novalis Live Journal

A political person and wannabe sl escort. Hmmm, she needs lessons. But then, I'm an sl escort and was a political wannabe, so maybe we can swap. (Hat tip to 2nd Sex fan Novalis Rau, and thanks for the syndication.)

Raise the Red Lantern: The Second Sex of Second Sex

On a common fantasy and its poetic reality that must be matched. In through the out door as it were. Not work safe.

How a Date Goes

In real life they call prostitution "the life," or did at the time the only good books on the subject were written. In second life it is often referred to as "the trade," or "the skin trade," but is ubiquitous that it often doesn't have a name. To a great extent, dancing, escorting and related businesses are simply "the economy." Take out land speculation and sex is the most important service that SL sells.

Sex has four phases, courtship, arousal, fulfillment and bonding. These four phases exist in a date as well, merely their forms are distended from the usual, and altered to suit the needs of the transaction. The differences apply to each phase, and a client can almost be defined by which phase he is paying to alter.

Today, I'm going to write a bit about courtship, because courtship is the keystone, and in fact, escorts spend at least two hours in courtship for every hour of actual paid sex they have. More often.

Courtship is the phase of getting to know the other person, to seek out their likes and dislikes, to find their hopes and loves, their fantasies. How they move, how they can give satisfaction, and how they seek it. Courtship involves bonding, but until the erotic enters, until there is an erotic act, even if it involves no touching, bonding has not occurred. Love in theory does not survive lack of eros in fact. However eros is a flexible little boy, and wedges himself into very strange spaces.

In escorting, courtship involves meeting, arousal, establishing that this is a commercial transaction, setting the terms, finding a place, and of course the exchange of money. Nicholas Cage intoned that the first rule of gun running is not to get shot with your own merchandise. The first rule of escorting is that you get paid first for services. Anything you give for free, the client, even if he is a loaded investor, will take as free sample. Courtship in a for free relationship involves the same process: each person is trying to get the other one hot enough to abandon something. You can mix and match the genders here, throw in a third partner, and it is the same process, because it is going in both directions.

However, in real life, since women have the most to lose, because of the risks, they are also the ones that spend more effort on making an exchange. It has often been said that all women are whores, merely how she is paid is different. There is some basic truth to this, but there is a basic lie as well, and that is that it is the other way around, all whores are trading money for the risks of sex.

Now you might be silly and say that since there are no risks on sl, that all women should be willing to have sex for free. These people have never had to give a zombie facial. These people have also never had a parent round a corner while doing a client on sl, and come with in one heart stopping cmd-H of seeing their little girl playing an avatar blowing a playdo colored guy with an apparatus the width of a coke can. Oh yes dears (I'm having an Anthony Burgess moment here, with "O yes my brother's I was cured" from A Clockwork Orange), there are risks to escorting on SL. It may be that I am an Interactive Adult Entertainment Consultant, but that's still not going to be a line that appears on my resume when applying to the Metropolitan Museum of Art any time soon. Which is sad, because Lillie is my only true work of art.

I must digress, a zombie, in sl parlance, is anyone who is not doing anything. Campers are called zombies if they just sit there away. A zombie facial is when the escort does all the work while the client lies there, often it is a blow job. The only time the client reacts is when he comes rl, and starts typing about effluvia all over you. The desire to see semen all over a woman is so strong that there are products all over sl to simulate it.

There is another risk, and that is the cost of being an escort. I have, I think, 40K of sex apparatus. I loan a great deal of it out to younger escorts, but to have the top quality from Lobo, SexxxDrive and Sexgen will set you back at least 20K. That's just the bed dears. I am carrying over 3K worth of xcite. My skins ran me over 10K. My wardrobe is extensive. My body was free, but that is because it is unique to me. In short, there is financial risk as well. A man who wants to play me for free without offering anything back, is like the man who wants to take a VGA table back to his house and play against top players on IOUs.

Another risk is the risk of the stalker. If you escort, get used to having random pornographic IMs sent to you, and get used to the man who won't pay and won't give up trying endlessly to convince you to have free sex. Also there is the virtual assurance that most men who want very abbreviated courtship, are bad in bed. This too is a risk, because time is precious, and taking up time watching someone egotistically get themselves off on your submission to their cock is degrading and insulting. They know it, that's why they do it.

These risks are small compared to pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease, except the first one. There are many escorts here whose rl's would come to a screeching halt if their employers, loved ones and others knew about their sl activities. This risk, the loss of a life, means that things like simply paying for linden are out of the question. I know one girl who turned to escorting because her husband cut off her gambling money. It was the only way to play the slots here she could find.

This is why the number of actual girls actually willing to go to orgy rooms is much smaller than the number of guys. For the guy, it is another form of porn film. For the girl, it is putting her identity at risk.

Courtship for us involves the process of meeting, arousing and negotiating.

Meeting is one reason that escorting is different. Very few girls take out personals on SL. There are very few ads with pictures of nipples by girls who want free sex. There are some, but few compared to the many who are hoping for money for sex. Escorts have to be sluts for meeting people, because the number of men who are willing to directly pay for sex is small compared to the number of women willing to have sex for money on sl. I wish I knew enough economics to throw around supply and demand, but I think economists would be wrong here. This is because not having to pay anything for sex is what the man wants. "I'm so much of a sex god, I don't have to love her, and I don't have to pay her, and she will still get all wet for me anyway." In short, he wants a disposable cum receptacle. Now here is the catch, men who are this kind of jerk, are exactly the kind of man who need to pay for it. Getting them to give up on not having to pay, trust me, is a lot easier than getting them to give up on treating a woman as disposable. There are other markets than the one that deals in money, in my business we live at the convergence of them.

This is why many places ban or strongly discourage escorts and escorting. Partially because many novice escorts are, shall we say, crass about it. I've seen girls walk on to a dance floor and just announce they are looking for men to pay them for sex. This, is not effective in almost all cases, and it certainly ruins the mood for other people.

The two most common ways to meet for mid tier escorts, are ads and pole dancing.

The ad is a simple affair, you list what you do, and the costs, and men take notecards. You get a message when your notecard is taken, and you then search -> people -> name click find, and say "Hello" (again the punctuation problem comes up, hello without the period is correct)

This conversation gets you or loses you the ad customer. Delay too long, he goes with someone else, misplay your hand, he goes to someone else. If you want to know fear and trepidation, this one moment of it for the escort. However, it is also not long, within a few exchanges you know if he is willing. The key question is what he wants. I've had clients request a particular hair style, a particular sex act, a particular location, a particular position. Others don't know what they want, and courtship consists of convincing them that you can provide the guidance into the unknown

This is because courtship is also a process of self discovery. You find out what arouses you about this person, and what you are willing to give up to be with them. People come to sl to discover themselves, and to discover what the name is for the vague longings they have. You might think in our pornified society that everyone would know. But static pictures of someone else, are not enough. Motion is emotion.

So this is enough to day on courtship, I'm going to talk about working the pole next time, which is the institution in an escort's life which is the most fraught with drama and upset. Cat fights among escorts, almost always, revolve around the conditions of working the pole at a club.

Work Safe

I have been asked by several people if this blog is "work safe". It depends on the workplace, however, on this blog there will be no nude pictures or outright pornography. I am going to start a second blog for the "not work safe content" including things like round ups of sex beds and other equipment. I will link from here to there. I will however mention words which may be caught in work place filters, and touching on the personal experience of sex in ways which might be felt as erotic by readers.

For the not worksafe material, there will be Raise the Red Lantern.

Cisco Demo

Out here in rl, communication is hard. It isn't easy SL either. Right now I am attending a press conference in sl where Cisco is showing off how their new phone system will find people wherever they are, and "interoperate," I think that means work together, with different systems.

There is a great deal of geek being spoken. But what I am here to look at is the way a large corporation makes its presence felt in Second Life. The future of SL, one way or another, is that corporations will pay for much of the environment, getting attention in return for it, and then they will leverage that attention into sales of products. SL is not working as an economy of small shopkeepers. Too many people want entertainment to be free, and that means not really free.

The press conference itself was a product, I haven't seen enough of them to know whether this was good or bad in its folksie tone that mimicked a few guys showing their projects off. There was a good deal of ironic self-deprecating humor, and a rather simple demo of their system. The focus of the products is on "mobility" which they define as making the network ominpresent for customers, suppliers, employees and anyone else who is part of the fabric of a corporation or institution. It certainly seems like a step forward in creating a fine and indissoluable mesh of a workplace team.

The building that Cisco has contracted for is designed to look like a campus, of the relaxing kind, presenting the impression of being a friendly place to work, more like a concert venue than anything else. The builder is Banana Stein, whose style is simplicity, with a few very focused highly detailed focal points.

But what is going on here is an attempt at people networking and entertainment, and from that perspective, I think that the key lack is that this is an attempt to render, an extremely good one, an experience in the real world which is limited by factors of cost. This is something that actually touches on some rl experience I have. Conferences, displays, exhibitions, are limited by the costs of putting them together, wood, steel, assembly times. The look that we associate with them is the best look you can build, show and take apart quickly.

Sl has different limitations, and as a result the same look does not make full use of the facilities which are here. While very well done and the product of a great deal of skill, what we got was not entertaining, and as teh minstrel of the mish said "Here we are now, entertain us."

On walking in, the first thing that was missing was that while the building is first rate the greeters looked like they were one visit to freebies warehouse from orientation island. The second was sl content to go with the rl content. We could have, and many did, watch the stream elsewhere.

What should have been done? I know that Cisco has spent well on getting the CEO's icon. This is a very smart move. However, they needed to redo the avatars, as well, for their other people. These would not have to be realistic or "as life," but they could have, with a small amount of time, have been up to usual standard, and wearing better company gear.

The second is a larger stroke, the simplest thing to do would have been to make an sl gadget that does something similar to what they rl gadget does. The simplest would have been a media textured cellphone looking device which would set stream to cisco's stream, and return it to the previous stream. Or perhaps a more complex device that would capture the IMs that come in on your chat and save somehow so they don't evaporate.

But something which said "sl".

Age Verification

There has been a great deal of internal turmoil over "Age Verification." Like most things from on high, it is being rammed through, for reasons which were not explained, out of interests that are not stated, and presented dishonestly. Where it leads, I don't know. I know as someone who is responsible for a land owning group, that it is not "voluntary." But what it means is not clear. Law enforcement, in SL, is spotty at best. If you grief newbs, rich people or Linden Labs, expect instant and harsh punishment. Everyone else, eh, wearing a victim tag.

Since age verification will be enforced the same way everything else is, it is not about "age verification," but instead about something else. What that something else is, is not clear. Many people have expressed the belief that this is about Aristotle and Integrity and government influence. I think it is simpler, this is zoning, and it is about large corporations being able to dictate the content of sims. If Disney buys so much as a kiosk in a sim, suddenly the entire sim is whatever Disney decides to complain about. And what the Mouse wants, the Mouse gets.

In short, this is a way of Linden Labs adding a new item to our term of service: "You may not tick off rich people and rich corporations at the risk of getting your traffic hosed down."

Because the reality is that for large numbers of businesses and areas, the way they get traffic is by paying newbies to camp, or to orgy. Without these people, no traffic.

So after asking around a great deal, it seems clear to me that we don't know what this will do, other than drive many people to islands, which is good for Linden Labs because they sell islands, and to drive many non paying players into a much smaller area of SL. Which will mean other things. Will age verify protect anyone? No, not one minor will be protected by it, because minors that are in harms way not when they see pictures they can get free of the internet, but when they are in areas that are not sexual and some nice adult strikes up a friendly conversation with them.

As with many things, I'm going to get cynical and say that this is about making it easier for Linden Labs to make money, and dump more of the costs of management of SL on to other people, while pretending something else. I'm against it because it is clearly that: dumping risk and work on small people like me, for a service which I am, directly or indirectly, paying for. But I am also fully aware that nothing can be done about it.

This is the sort of thing that happens in corrupt little banana republics, and Second Life is very much a corrupt little banana republic, minus the ability to export bananas.

But then, that is why we are here. The cost of having the ability to toss society's restrictive social conventions, and not have to worry about government because it is all in someone else's hands, means that ultimately, we have no civic rights, nor do we own anything, it is all rented from El Presidente and his goons.

That's just the way it is. If this were an open source democratic and participatory space, we'd be having other problems.

How to get hot fast and cheap

As amends for not linking earlier here is Natalia's free guide which does newbie places and Free Dove.

Now, last post I left you naked and editing your body and skin. Now throw on any old cloths and follow along.

Driver's License

In the real world you need a driver's license, on SL, you need a tool to let you fly above 250M, and hover above 125M. It used to be everyone got "the feather", now however, the right thing to do is Mystical Cookie this gives you a full tool, with radar, TP recapture, and flight enabler. Put this in your AO and HUD Folder.

Free Formal Wear

I think that over time more and more clubs are going to offer a free "look" to newbies. Phat Cats and Avillion Grove, in my mind the top two formal dance halls on SL, have started along this road. At this point, visit Phat Cats for the hair, tux, shoes and gown. More on the gown later. Then do the same for Avillion Grove. Phat's has a great formal prim hair, and the shoes are good. The Grove gowns are wonderful, but no modify.

Which brings me to the subject of the plum peril, aka Phat Cat's free gown. Nice design, atrociously loud color. But help is on the way! You can edit the Phat Cat's gown, or at least you could when I got one. Blue, works well, I had that on a previous post. Red is also nice. How to do this? Really simple. Click on "Edit Appearance", and the on shirt, and change the color, and skirt and change the color. Save all. Then wear the prim short skirt, right click on it, select edit.

Now click the more button, and then the texture's tab over to the right. Change the color of that too. Now do this with the other prim - long or short, and the shoes, both left and right. Presets are easiest, that's the colors on buttons, but you can also pick a color, right down the six numbers, three for color, three for intensity of that color, and type those in manually. No reason not to get multiple copies and make them all different colors. There, plum peril problem from phats phixed.

Animation Overdrive

An AO is one of those things that once you have one, you will wonder how you lived without it. I have one from Abraminations, and I loaded it with three extra animations to get the effect I wanted. Total cost 1200L. Worth it if you can make that by giving zombie facials. But what about the beginner? Well back and Free Dove I told you to take the pink ring.

First, don't wear it. Instead, attach it to someplace other than the spine, chest or pelvis, because these are all big places to attach clothing. I use the upper legs, and my nose. It will rez on your body, right click on the little metallic square on the screen, and select "edit." Now move it until it is either invisible or looks good to you.

Now detatch it. It will appear in inventory, and, someplace where you can rez objects like a sandbox, drop it on the ground by draging out of inv and dropping. Now right click and select "open."

Now click on the notecard that says "*Default Animations". This is where the action is. If you have already loaded up on free animations, skip ahead and get ready to edit. If you haven't it is now time to introduce you to the junkyards of SL, the place where 1L will get oyu large unsorted boxes of stuff. You are looking for animations and dances. Just search Freebies but start with Yandi's junkyard.

Now after you have done that, detatch the AO, and right click on it and select "Open". The game is that you are going to have to put animations into the object, and then edit a notecard to tell the AO which animations to play. The first thing to do is to click on "*Default Animations" and click edit. In here is the list you will want to fill over time. The key ones to change now are walk, the stand poses and the landing pose from falling, to get ride of that annoying "umpff, ufff, uwuff" animation.

Here is one for girls I've assembled with all free ones. For guys, one of your key moves, is to change "Walk" to one of the power walks out there, there are three floating around my inventory, each a bit different.

:: [ Walking (also Striding) ] ::
Walk: Sexy Slow
:: [ Running ] ::

:: [ CrouchWalking ] ::

:: [ Flying (also FlyingSlow) ] ::
Midair
:: [ Turning Left ] ::

:: [ Turning Right ] ::

:: [ Jumping ] ::

:: [ Hovering Up ] ::

:: [ Crouching ] ::
Walk: Sneak Slow
:: [ Fly Down ] ::
liberty
:: [ Standing 1 ] ::
iloveyou
:: [ Standing 2 ] ::
bowarmback
:: [ Standing 3 ] ::
Lookingat hands
:: [ Standing 4 ] ::
Show hands
:: [ Standing 5 ] ::

:: [ Hovering ] ::
up-up-and-away
:: [ Sitting ] ::
Sit eating looped
:: [ PreJumping ] ::

:: [ Falling ] ::
Champion!
:: [ Soft Landing/Landing ] ::
handstand-backflip



:: [ Standing Up (That anim you play after you fall when you stand up and brush yourself off) ] ::
Kata3
:: [ FlyingSlow ] ::

:: [ Sitting on Ground ] ::
unisexsit00
:: [ Floating (Hovering underwater) ] ::

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Now save the notecard, drag the animations into the square from opening the AO, waiting after each animation to make sure it is loaded. Then, close that window. Now right click on the AO, and select take. Wear it. Now in the chat window, type in /ao reset. This tells the AO to read the notecard.

There, you don't waddle any more, and you can buy single animations and load them.

Now we've done tools, some formal wear, an AO. What's next? What else do you need? Well, actually, you need a life. A second life. You aren't really hot, until people say you are hot.

How could I not add Natalia on my first blog roll? Ditsy Lillie. Her new store is opening, and we should all be there.

The Small Picture

I wrote a long rant this morning, and came to a big bit of self-realization. I am no good at writing about the big picture. What came out was a blender full of melange á something of quotes from people who know more than I do, and personal anecdotes.

So. Small picture for me. Yes, I know that Second Life is third world country with a huge disparity of wealth, a corrupt government and a criminal economy.

And that's why I'm here, so I shouldn't whinge about it.

Why Write About Second Sex

On the iPod: Beethoven slow movements from the sonatas and symphonies, right now 7th symphony second movement. The dance.

So far my fingers have been working the buttons of second life sex: clothing, toys and some thoughts on the sex pollution of orgy rooms. But this isn't why people do what they do here, and why it is important.

The most important reasons for second sex are not involved in the toys, but in the nature of second reality, and its reflection of inner space. You won't be on Second Life long when you will come to understand how important BDSM is to the culture. Not just the activities of BDSM, but the culture of BDSM - master/slave relationships, dominance and submission, display of the body at tension, extremity of expression, gothic atmosphere, victoriana. It may seem strange that a world that allows people to fly at supersonic speed, should have a huge steam-punk community, and even larger gothic and neo-Victorian vampire and BDSM communities.

This is a reflection of the deeper truth about sexual fluidity in Second Life. While Paglia talkes about sexual personna, this is dead wrong. We don't have that on SL. Instead sexual energy is the energy that pours over everything. Everything is highly charged with the erotic, or its inverse, the sub-genius of crude rape. The desire to wave your cock in someone's face. In SL there is a deep and unrelenting tension between this wave of crude and the impulse to draw it within and transmute it into creation. This collision, between the lowest and rawest form of masculine energy and the most aspirational aspect of goddess energy is sex on sl. It is the vast sexual intercourse that goes on 24 hours a day, and it is the metaphor for almost everything. A camper is a crude cock shoved into a slot that dribbles a bit of favor on him or her.

If you want to know what is going on in SL, it is that, the worst of the masculine being absorbed by the best of the feminine. This is why women come to SL and are liberated as muses, designers and graceful creatures. Even escorts become sensual goddesses reflecting the nature of touch as the binder of human relationship. Men come to SL, and the are either invisible servants of the demiurge - building, breaking and going forward - or they are very visible and seeking merely a moment of release. The latter are common, as the former are rare.

If you want to know why I write about sex on sl, it is because there really is no other topic. Even this blog is part of that, an attempt to draw unformed up, into, and within, this our second life.

Beethoven's ancient aires and dances speak to us now, it is the dance of palm to palm, swaying and turning to rising and falling steps, with lush skirts and tight men's hose, amidst the swirl of torches. Yes we live in the next century, but the volcanic need for a usable past is washed over by an ocean of cascading passion, and the steam and vapors are our world of clouds and rain.

How to get hot fast and cheap

You are now going to grab a box of unsorted freebies from Free Linden Land, there is one for men, and one for women. These are a very hit or miss affair, but Caramel, the skin, is very popular for its look around the eyes. You should go back to trying on shapes, and then put skin over them. The clothing and lingere and eye boxes are also worthwhile.

I'm now going to talk about the most gregarious camping pod I know of in SL, and a major bargain for girls. Guys, remember lesson one? It applies here, these are only girl's skins. Platinum. I have my ups and my downs with their main skins. I've seen them used very effectively, but they need stronger jaws than the models they use. The also look better at a distance than many high priced skins because of their smoothness. On the other hand, they don't work close up as well as skins in their price range should.

The Platinum store is one of the most appealling on SL, because it is open, bright and airy, and there is no arguing that Platinum's coffee shop is packed, a good place to meet people, and bubbling with actual conversation. After seeing thousands of ghastly quiet camping pods, this is a welcome relief. If you need a few stray linden then camp.

The freebie skins are around back, you must walk out of the main store, around the back, and then towards the huge crowd. Before you get there there are a series of vendors with some very nice, 1L skins. Paris, Tara, Mara, Charlotte - are all quite nice. There isn't a bad one here.

If you are under 30 days, your next stop is for the free skin sets at Tete a Pied - that is "head to foot" or TAP. Right at the front door, to the left and a bit above eye level, is a pair of signs. Touch these for a box of free skins.

Now get back to a public sand box, or some other place you can drop boxes. "Rez objects" in our local dialect. In your inventory, under the recent items tab, there will be a folder labelled "objects". In there, you will see some boxes from things you bought or touched for. You are going to do a little dance for each one. The first step of the dance is to drag the box from your inventory on to the ground. Wait for a slithering shaking noise. If you don't hear it, or if after you hear it you get a dialog box telling you that you can't create objects, then you need to go someplace else where you can.

Now, with the box on the ground, right click on it. You will get a pie menu. If it has an optionthat says "open" then chose that. You will get a dialog box with a list of items. Click "copy to inventory". If there was no open option, choose "edit". Click "more" and then you will get a series of tabs. One will say "content". Select the top level folder there, drag to your inventory.

Now you should have at least 2 shapes, and as many as 30 skins to start selecting from. Go through them one at a time. Try on all the shapes you have. Pic one whose face appeals to you.

Remember to right click on the empty box and "delete" and then "empty trash" in your inventory window.

Now it is really time to fiddle.

Meet, you

There are some other places to visit, there are some other things to get, but you've reached the point where you should be able to start building a real look around a shape and a skin. This process also takes time, and you will end up fiddling for a while. It's the nature of SL.

Right click self, for mac users cmd click works, and select appearance.

Click on the tab labelled "Shape", and here I have that quandry where the student in me wants to write "Shape." But the tab isn't labelled "Shape." but "Shape" instead. Some shapes are not modifiable, which is a nuissance. If not, you have to skip over this part.

Find someplace you can strip naked.

First thing, click legs, find feet size, set to 0. Almost all prim shoes are designed around having a foot size of 0.

Second thing is to click on "Body" work with your height.

Now you are ready to start doing the process of customizing this avatar body. You need to click on "Torso" next. The key slider is "Torso Length", because everything is figured off of that.

Here is where you will do something important, "Save as outfit". This body and skin combination is going to be a base, and it will be in every outfit you make. The first thing is to get your shape/skin combination working, and then have one in every outfit you own, so that you always look like you.

So save outfit and check shape and skin. Don't worry about anything else.

Now go back to editing, do your face, then work your way down your body. Write down these numbers in a text file, save as after each couple of steps, so that you can back track.

For girls you are going to want to save this version, and save a second one for skirts. There is a bug that makes skirts look much larger, how much depends on the skirt. For some, it is not a great deal, for others, quite a bit. So each skirt you wear you are going to have to slenderize your hips versus your nude/pants look.

One of the most important things about outfits is that if you open inventory, click on a folder with an outfit in it, they will be in the "Clothing" folder by default, and drop it on your avatar, it will detatch all, remove all clothes and put on whatever is in the folder.

There are two catches. The first is that things like AOs and tools are also detatched, the second is that making an outfit makes a copy of everything. This means that no copy items will be moved into the folder with the outfit name. This, when you have no copy items, is a nuissance, because then they will be hiding in the folder with the outfit.

So the guide to good outfit making is to follow some simple rules. Start from the right body/skin combination. For men and for women in pants, your default, and for skirts, from your slender hips version, or if you prefer, a version with wider love handles. Name the outfit well, put an "*" in front of your defaults so they are at the top for future outfit building. Make sure that you only put in objects which are copiable, or you don't want in any other outfit.


The things you will use all the time, like your AO and tool, should be in a separate top level folder, whose name starts with an asterix. So go to inventory, create->folder. Then right click on "New Folder" and rename it to "*AO/HUD" so that you can put tools in it, and rapidly wear them again. The process of changing clothes will be be, then, to drag and drop the outfit on you, and then wear the HUD/AO combination you from your AO/HUD folder.

The Skin Game

While your shape is your wire frame, your skin is really what people will see as your face. The single most important things to do are to get your mouth and your eyes right, and settle the nose, cheeks and chin around them. A mouth that is too wide or too puffy will ruin even expensive skins.

Start with getting the eyes right, then adjust the corners of your mount under the middle of your eyes. Then adjust the thickness of the lips until they are proportionate. Then work the nose and chin so that the nose so that the length of nose is roughly the length from the bottom of the nose to the chin.

Go through several rounds of this, because this is going to be "you" to most people. It is worth getting it right, and even taking some pictures. Some day if I am bored, IM and ask me to do my Hillary Clinton look alike face.

Stepping Out

I'm going to leave aside the problem of populating an AO for the moment, because it gets me off of the subject of where to go to get your basic kit of things.

For both boys and girls, formal wear is a big deal on SL. So my next post is on getting free formal wear, some more free and cheap prim hair, and some very cheap accessories to start tying all of this together.

How to get hot fast and cheap

This is what I looked like when I was spawned, I use the term "spat out," on the left, and what I look like now on the right. Looking at my avatar the first day I broke down and cried for half an hour. You could not have made worse choices for a start than I did. The next bad surprise was when I started to try and move the avatar, I waddled like I had a full diaper.

Yes, yes Lillie, you are saying, but you think nothing of dropping 5K in a day on clothes. However, look closely, the now still has both a free skin, a version of a free body, and free eyes. I may be wearing Style 0's wonderful Eleanor, and DE Design's Mirror Queen, but underneath is a girl you could pull out of free boxes and fiddle your way to. I have two high priced skins, one for close face work and the other for the, ummmm, "bits". But much of the time I'm wearing something that is there for the taking. And, you know, it's hard for me to walk around without getting propositioned.

So how to do it? Here we go. Someday there will be more "Jill in a box" like at Calla but for now, girls, and especially boys, need to go on an adventure. It's not so bad, by the time you are done, you will know SL much better, and many of these stores will be your mainstays for some time to come.

Here is how it works. An avatar is made up of pieces, including some for things that you usually would not think of as pieces, like your face and your skin. The pieces need to be assembled in a particular order to get a good look. The first piece is a "shape," which is your basic wire frame, the form over which everything else goes. However, what people will see is your "skin" because so many of our clues, especially in the one eye world of sl, are from shading and color. Later we will put this all together, but for today, it is just about grabbing things. Lunch on freebies, then sort. After that you add an Animation Override or "AO", and prim hair. This plus some better clothes will be all you need to join sl, and not be "playdo".

Blessed by Free Dove

Your first step is to get "Blessed by Free Dove." This is the gateway to looking human. First step away from the teleport area. Free Dove is crowded, and there are people dropping in all the time. The two most important tables are to your left and your right as you enter. There are skins and shapes and a female AO on the right, and for girls a selection of free clothes that you will want to grab all of. But left first.

Rez.

No, really, rez for a while.

I'm sorry, did I mention rezing? Well it depends on time of day, computer connection and graphics.

Oh and while you are waiting, you have opened up preferences, in the "Edit" menu, and turned your graphics rendering down to 64M or 32M, yes? No? In preferences, there is a tab labelled "graphics". Click on that. Now there is a box with "render distance". Set that to 32 or 64, because there's nothing scenic about your route today. But you will be more scenic at the end.

On that right hand table, s you face into Free Dove, you'll know because there are large friendly "No weapons" and "No nudity" signs visible. It should tell you something, that something is may of the boys come here, and their first instinct is to run around with a cock hanging out, or carry around an sword or gun that doesn't do anything. I know, enough of them wander up to me and start a conversation with "You're hot!" Thanks dear, I get paid upwards of 3K for an hour of sex, I think I could have guessed that. These people require some house breaking before they get to the rest of SL. Hence the friendly signs at Free Dove.

Anyway, back to the table on your right. Things in here are either bought for 0L, that means right click and buy for 0L, or touched. If you don't see a buy menu, try touch. Somethings have a linden cost. You don't need any of them.

There are boxes on the table with pictures of bodies. In here are basic body and skin types. Why they don't just give you these choices on the island, I don't know. It's their world, we just pay rent on it.

Boys you are going to get your first lesson in SL, namely, it is better to be a girl for fashion. You have two choices, the large face which is almost directly in front of you as the knight of the round table body, and the white box on the other side of the table with a man in a swimsuit. You then have to walk around the table to see another box, which has two not very good skins from Opium.

For girls, there is more, go through and gram the white box with pink letters, the pink ring, which has a serviceable female AO, the purple boxes and the white boxes with women on them. That's enough to get you started here. Since you are here, pillage the clothes boxes on your left. You can keep grazing your way around the corner to your left and on the table straight ahead.

Both boys and girls will want to take a left hand turn, and then turn right. Keep going, there is a tree with purple leaves out the window, if you don't see that you've missed a turn someplace or need glasses even more than my avatar does. (Is there script call that will reset preferences? I want a set of scripted glasses.....)

Keep going until you reach hair on the left, and forma wear and gowns on the right. Boys, you need Vindi Vindaloo's white tux, shoes, underwear. Four boxes in all on your right. Boys and girls, get all of the sets of free prim hair to your left. For boys it is up a bit.

Girls you can get the proton pony tail pack, which is adorably cute, and the White Lies Collection, in addition to Calla's nice, if a bit junior promy, freebie collection for women. Also nice to have here, is the Eolande accessories because it has a pose stand. This will come in handy later.

Boys, you are basically done here, girls, keep grazing your way up the tables. I'm particularly fond of the grey blox way near the end of the tables on the right which has a reasonably good prim sandal from Dellycious.

Time to grow up

You have in inventory enough to look much better right now. Many avatars look distinctly teenage, so it is also time to grow up as well. What you need to do now is go to a public sandbox, so you can unpack the first round of your booty, and you will actually have one when it comes to that.

Boys, your body choices are simple. Make one, toss on an Opium skin, but if you are younger than 30 days, this is strictly temporary. Girls, you have too many choices. It is going to take you a while to go through them. Again, don't think this is your final look, just enough to get you out of the newbie status.

Now put on a "bald" hairpiece. I'm about to try and explain one of the most counter-intuitive concepts in SL fashion. Basically, we are all from the baroque era. Back in the 18th century, in Europe, where bathing was only just in fashion, people shaved their hair, and wore elaborate wigs. So when you see pictures of all those baroque beauties with hair piled high, realize that many of them were shaved bald underneath. One reason that country girls started to go into fashion, was that they still had all their hair.

Except for special circumstances, like big concerts and a few very specific hair styles, you won't be wearing newbie hair again, instead, you will be wearing a prim hair wig, attached to the skull. It won't be a "hair" piece in your inventory, but a cube "object," like any other kind. It will come off if you "detatch all." Sometimes a bad teleport will leave your hair style in your crotch. I know some men like "a nice full bush," but that is ridiculous. From now on, it is almost always a fashion mistake in your life, to be wearing anything but prim hair.

Right, ditsy Lillie. "Prim" stands for "primitive," which is a graphics primitive. The basic unit of drawing and accounting for land, and building, in SL. Prim hair is made up of primitives like a house, or vehicle is. Prim skirts, or prim collars, or prim cuffs, like prim hair, all attach some place.

So you are going to wear a "bald" piece, I think the Calla box has one. Then, and only then, can you fit hair on. Some of it is going to look awful, because the prim hair is sized, and it might not be the right size for your head. This can be fixed later. For now just find one that works.

Next post, free linden land, Platinum, TAP and coupon shopping.

But this is enough for this installment, I need to get to the floor at Sexcino and then work on Yedo.

More later dears.