laura_seabrook | Multiple multiple alts!

Recently I found that I was starting to do more than just making webcomics in Second Life.

Hmmm, that's not exactly true - I have (when I've had the time ) attended Gimp Girl meetings, and also Pagan gatherings in world, as Elsie Broek. It was a lot easier that attempting to find travel to in Actual Life. Otherwise, my main activity in Second Life had been using Elsie, Laurel and three other alts to make web comics. This activity in general tends not to encourage a lot of interaction with others in that world. Rather, I would scout the locations; buy/build props; and pose the avatars (in appropriate costumes and poses) for the images.

But that's changed lately. Elsie seems to have gained a boyfriend, and Laurel (who I use as the main AV to organise the webcomics stuff) a good friend who is also participating in the webcomics, by posing as additional characters, and helping to build props and sets. And in both cases Second Life has become much more interesting and fun. I'm not saying I don't like this (I DO!!!), just that, it's sometimes confusing. I guess too that I need at times to ground myself. SL is easy and (at times fun), but just like Live Journal or Facebook, it's virtual, not real, isn't it (though I guess too, so is a telephone conversation)? And then I got thrown by a bit of syncronicity. I read two things on the same day that seemed to tally with each other.

The first was volume two of Promethea - a comic by Alan Moore about a fictional heroine who is literally fictional and mythic, who manifests in the comics reality when needed. Here's a page from that volume:

...whereas the second thing was the "what has gone before to Stephen Donaldson's Against All things Ending. This is a book in the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Anyway the back story for the saga is that Thomas Covenant is someone who in our reality has serious health problems and isolated from his local community, is transported to "The Land" where suddenly he regains his health and is surrounded by interesting and supportive people. But Covenant does believe this and thinks that it's all a dream or delusion (hence his original cognomen of "Unbeliever").. Because of that he initially does terrible things (like rape an innocent young woman). But, as time goes on his attitudes to "The Land" change, and in the first series when he finally returns to his own world, "[h]e knows now that the reality or unreality of The Land is less important than his love for it; and that this insight gives him the strength to face his life... ...without fear or bitterness".

Reading both of those, things seemed to click into place.

I guess I was worried about losing my own balance. I know through my own reasearch for Queerstuff, that people tend to get addicted to things when that thing seems to give them easy access to some or all of four things: pleasure; relief; confidence, and connection. The ones who don't, get these from more than one source, so individually those sources are less vital and important. And as much as Second Life is still fun for me, I didn't want to get addicted to it.

Whereas, the above two ideas put that in a new slant. Maybe the thing about the virtual is that it's somewhere in between the mind and the physical. I mean, all virtual stuff exists somewhere, even if it's in binary on a server run by Linden Labs. But the lure of virtual worlds is that unlike matter, things are quicker and easier (and generally cheaper) to do in such environments. So what happens in SL is real, if only as an experience with which I can interact. And of course the second point - the love and interest is more important that how "real" it is.

I have been much more relaxed and happier in the physical world, since Elsie got a boyfriend and Laurel got a playmate. It's all play, and that helps me cope better with this world, and get on with the stuff I need to do.