So I’ve been somewhat of a bad girl and haven’t posted here for almost two months. I was a bit busy during the holiday season and was away on vacation and since I’ve returned I’ve been slowly catching up with all my work. I’m definitely going to be posting here more often now. I just wanted to start 2013 off with a photo here that I connected with. When I think of my avatar, I usually imagine her in this form. Perhaps because this is how she started off and how I dressed her for the first 6 months of her life continuously. When you think of your avatar, how do you picture yourself? Do you change your look often?
Usually at the start of every year people make resolutions of all the things they will work on or accomplish in the coming year. I normally do the same, but this year I decided to just let things flow and see where life takes me. I’m kind of looking forward to all the adventures. Did you make any resolutions?
For a quick Arabic lesson and my style credits for this picture, you can click over to my blog, Marhaba!
In the photo: Strawberry Singh
Location: Second Life
Agnes Sharple
Botgirl Questi
Bumblebee (Wendz Tempest)
Canary Beck
Carissa Arthurine Somerset
Eva Marie
Fuschia Nightfire
George Coghill
Ironyca Lee
Jeremy Owen Turner
Joseph DeLappe
Kathleen Cool
Katie Vizenor
Krista Hoefle
Kristine Schomaker
Lizzie Gudkov
Aero Bigboots
RMarie Beedit
Marmaduke Arado
Isabella Medici
Nadya Tolokonnikova
Nathan Shafer
Pixel Reanimator
Ravanel Griffon
Scarlett Luv
Strawberry Singh
Tabitha Raincloud
Toni Tyldesley
Trilby Minotaur
Vanessa Blaylock
Xue Faith
Yordie Sands
Beautiful image Berry! Glorious details! haha, and it’s not Zaara! I thought it would be. Once upon a time, a long time ago, in a virtual world far, far away, and before I had my nice Alienware PC with the turbo nVidia card, and had to limp around virtual space with my struggling Mac and decent, but not turbo enough, graphics card, I bought a lot of that amazing detail jewelry from Zaara — haha — I couldn’t move! I learned a lot about ARC that day! (actually now that I do have so much better graphics I should dig that stuff up from the depths of my inventory, it’d probably make some lovely pix)
Even though you’ve “been away” you haven’t really been away — you shot our lovely iRez Holiday card and since then several of your fantastic pix have appeared in our home page “Theme Slide Show,” so your presence has been significant even as you were sort of away.
Anyway, WELCOME BACK! And thank you so much for sharing all this beautiful work with us!
It’s funny “who” your “base avatar” is… Yordie just told me today that I’d once worn an avatar that looked kind of like Jane McGonigal. I think I know the look she means: I’d actually worn the noob avatar “Girl Next Door” ponytail hair for years, even though one of my very best friends is hair designer Carina Larsen from Amacci – she’s done hair for a number of our performances – I always worried that I was insulting her by wearing noob hair (haha, sometimes I’d go into a coffee shop or someplace and strangers would start throwing hairs at me, I guess because they pitied the poor noob in the crappy ponytail – I actually came to love that hair for it’s simplicity and innocence and genericness and noobfulness…
Anyway, after my “resurrection” (long story) I decided to finally let the GND ponytail go and wear new, much more volume embracing Carina hair, and that was also right about the time that we did the “Average” performance derived from the numbers that you and Vaki generated… so I think that’s probably the Jane McGonigal-esque avatar Yordie’s thinking of. And Trill’s said for over a year now that no matter what avatar I wear she thinks THAT is the “real” me. And the truth is I kind of think that deep down too. So after Yordie said that today I was all set to go off and resurrect the “Jane McGonigal avatar” and maybe make it look a bit more like her.
The thing is, no matter how many times I change my display name, I don’t think you can, or I don’t think I can, change my avatar too much. I feel like it has to have enough consistency or persistence to have a presence, to BE someone. That’s actually my take on the Nymwars too, I think the Vic Gundotra demand that to use his precious service you have to surrender your taxpayer ID is just invasive corporate bullshit, but I also think, just for myself, that true anonymity isn’t present enough, I love the pseudonymity of the avatar, because it is, to me, very empowered, but by also being deeply present, and persistent over time, a “person” that can develop an identity, reputation, and credibility.
So, even though Yordie and Trill and *I* might all be pleased to see me walking around in the “Jane McGonigal avatar,” I feel like she’s on the other side of a chasm that I can’t cross, or don’t want to cross badly enough. I changed my avatar around Dec ’11 and wore that avatar pretty much unchanged for a little over a year. Now I’ve changed it again, and I think this is the way I have to experience 2013. As for 2014? Who knows. Perhaps Jane will resurface. But it can’t be “coming home to the real me,” as that’d undercut and render transitory or fake the me of today.
OH i’m all about “being” someone in SL. I think being someone is part of the attraction of SL. The image I have of you in my mind is Jane McGonigal!