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Do you give your avatars backstories?


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I don't really give all my avatars individual backstories except for a few.

However, I will say that all my avatars are visitors from other dimensions who banded together and are now friends adventuring the continent Agni together.

i give three of my avatars written backstories in their profiles. One is an alien whose home is 86 light years away, another is the leader of a republic, and yet another is a constitutional monarch of a kingdom.

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I don't have it in the profile and don't really talk about it but if it came up. She is the daughter of an abusive Gator hunter slash moonshiner and a mysterious half Cherokee woman rumored to be a witch. Her only joy in childhood came from drawing and painting, something he father discouraged, but she kept at it and eventually through the encouragement of teachers, friends, and other relatives, got an opportunity to go away to the State University to study art. Hr father tried to stop her so she could help him with the gator hunting and bootlegging, but she went anyway. She soon discover however that in the city she could find more lucrative ways of making a living than by painting, and soon had dropped out of college to pursue a career as a stripper. Eventually however she began to long for a more respectable life and so is trying to transition from the life of a stripper to that of an artist.

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5 hours ago, Gopi Passiflora said:

I don't really give all my avatars individual backstories except for a few.

However, I will say that all my avatars are visitors from other dimensions who banded together and are now friends adventuring the continent Agni together.

i give three of my avatars written backstories in their profiles. One is an alien whose home is 86 light years away, another is the leader of a republic, and yet another is a constitutional monarch of a kingdom.

not everybody, many, is into RP, but is, or tries, to be who he/she is... there is no need to give a backstory. If somethin has to be known it will come up during conversations.

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"Roleplayers" regularly have profiles with a handful of place-picks miss used as extra biography space for EACH of their 17 different shape/gender/species avatars stored in their outfits folder, each of which matches a spoof chat name in the Lagtech Para-RP Chat HUD...

"Roleplayers" regularly assume everyone in "the game" called SecondLife, is a "Roleplayer" and that we have "characters" that are just some 2 dimensional cardboard cutout we made up last time we bought a new avatar...

"Roleplayers" regularly complain that we "only have one character" and that "you havn't properly filled out your profile" because "you didn't create picks for your characters backstory"...

"Roleplayers" regularly are WRONG...

"Roleplayers" regularly annoy me...


 

My backstory began on my FirstLife RezDay, it's too damn long to type in a Place-Pick.

NO. I never create backstories for my Avatars.

 

Edited by Klytyna
gramma-nazi moment!
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I agree that the only people who tend to create backstories for their avatars are role players. I have met some very nice role players who do not feel compelled to foist their game characters onto others when off the RP sims, but many do not have that level of consideration for others. I would suggest that those who create elaborate backstories for their avatars might have more meaningful interactions with others when out and about in SL were they to put aside the characters and communicate as one cartoon representation of a real person to another.

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My back story is me. 

I have some alts that are obviously not me.  They don't have any story since they exist only as long as they are online. One is a cat.  One is a guy for my curiosity.  One is a mannequin. One is a place holder.  They do not have any back story beyond their reason for creation.

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14 hours ago, Gopi Passiflora said:

I don't really give all my avatars individual backstories except for a few.

However, I will say that all my avatars are visitors from other dimensions who banded together and are now friends adventuring the continent Agni together.

i give three of my avatars written backstories in their profiles. One is an alien whose home is 86 light years away, another is the leader of a republic, and yet another is a constitutional monarch of a kingdom.

You obviously choose a form of roleplay and escapism for your own avatars, and I was interested to read your summarised back-stories.  

None of my avatars have back stories. They are all just me, apart from in appearance. I don't have a good enough memory to have a back story for even one avatar and to keep up the pretence/roleplay. 

 

 

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I'm going to reveal too much information here, but it's not going to matter because I've forgotten the passwords to the alt's account and to the email associated lol.

I'm Ellie, Ellie is the SL extension of the 1st life me. However, due to a rabbit hole I fell into during my first trip to SL,(a 2-year, addicted rabbit hole), I left for a long time (yes, broken heart). When I tried to come back as Ellie, it hurt too much, and I didn't want to let anyone close enough to hurt me again, so I decided to do my own kind of role-play. I created an alt and then created a fake 1st life. I had a whole backstory for the 1st life plotted out so I could stay on track, with enough resemblances to my real life to make it easier for me to handle conversations (I'm not very good at ad-lib). I even created morphs and photo-shopped them into real pictures and created profiles outside of SL to make her seem even more real, in case anyone decided to cyber-stalk her. I used a name that was fairly common for the geographical area she was from, to make it even harder to cyber stalk her lol (but she would come up). I figured this way, I would never ever be tempted to cam again and I would only have a limited set of pictures to share - because the gig would be up. I did this as a shield for myself and it only lasted a month or so (and all that work! lol), because I am just me and I can't keep up a story long (I'm just too damn honest). I came back to Ellie and am staying there. I decided that best way to protect myself is just to keep within the boundaries I set for myself and let people know upfront what is a No-Go. They can like it or they can leave.

PS, yes, this was totally dishonest and along the lines of what was done to me, which is a big part of why I couldn't keep it up - I felt too guilty when I was interacting with good, decent people. 

Edited by EllieAnne Silverfall
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2 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Well there's your problem. You should feel only guilty enough. Excess guilt does nothing for you.

I'm not sure I understand. Perhaps I should have said "I felt guilty" and left it at that? I think the reason I said "I felt too guilt"y instead of "I felt guilty" is because I recognize how commonplace it is to be less than honest in SL. Perhaps with "just enough guilt" a person might not change, but too much guilt may prompt change (as in my case, to alleviate the internal guilt/condemnation). 

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Not to be too philosophical about it, but the world might be a little better off with a tad of extra guilt.  It might make us think twice before making yet another boneheaded decision. (No specific political statement intended ..... )  

Meanwhile, I too have no back story unless you count my RL, which is an ugly rumor being spread by my alt.

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39 minutes ago, EllieAnne Silverfall said:

I'm not sure I understand.

That happens a lot when I comment.

Although you went through a hell of a lot of work to put up a smokescreen for your RL self, it seems you ultimately did nothing with it. And, for that reason, I think your guilt may have been excessive. Not every story I tell here, or in RL, is 100% true. That's not always the result of planning and I'm often not aware of it. We all define ourselves by the stories we tell. So long as those around me are happy with the storytelling, I'm not going to feel guilty. And part of who I am is a desire to make people happy with the stories I tell. Self deception is deception, and it's not always wrong. It's sometimes how we get through life.

;-).

 

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10 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Not to be too philosophical about it, but the world might be a little better off with a tad of extra guilt.  It might make us think twice before making yet another boneheaded decision. (No specific political statement intended ..... )  

Meanwhile, I too have no back story unless you count my RL, which is an ugly rumor being spread by my alt.

On balance, it does seem to be that there's insufficient guilt to go around, so I'm in agreement with you there. It's hard to know how much guilt is too much, but there really can be too much. I look through Dad to Mark Twain for balance in this regard.

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I always have difficulty being someone I'm not.  Moira is very definitely me, though I think of her as having a more idealized life inworld than I actually have.  My other two don't have a backstory per se, and nothing in their profile or picks to indicate one, though in my mind I think of them differently, with different stories than Moira.  However, both at their core, are aspects of me, based on RL experiences (or 'might haves' if situations had taken different paths).  So when I login with either of other two, it's mainly a reflection of the mindset I'm interested in putting myself into at that time.  It's not really anything made apparent in interactions inworld (expect for the 2nd of the two, who is a 4-year old, which is pretty obvious!). The 4 year old talks very well - none of the 'baby' talk seen with some younger child avatars - but I do try to capture the innocence and wide-eyed wonder with the world that young children have. 

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2 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

That happens a lot when I comment.

Although you went through a hell of a lot of work to put up a smokescreen for your RL self, it seems you ultimately did nothing with it. And, for that reason, I think your guilt may have been excessive. Not every story I tell here, or in RL, is 100% true. That's not always the result of planning and I'm often not aware of it. We all define ourselves by the stories we tell. So long as those around me are happy with the storytelling, I'm not going to feel guilty. And part of who I am is a desire to make people happy with the stories I tell. Self deception is deception, and it's not always wrong. It's sometimes how we get through life.

;-).

 

Indeed, it was a lot of wasted effort, but not necessarily wasted time. Sometimes we have to do things to determine that it's not what we like. I tried it, it didn't work for me, I ended it. I'm not going to try to say I am 100% honest 100% of the time, but I tend toward honesty vs white lies and definitely try to avoid the big fat lies (other than my previously mentioned experiment). Lately, if there is something  don't want to tell or talk about, I just say so. 

That being said, I don't seem to care as much these days about whether or not someone is giving me the "real" story or a made up one (1st or 2nd) because I'll probably never meet them and unless we become very, very close friends in 1st life too, I'll never know the truth anyway. If I were, for example, using SL as a dating platform, I would care more about "the truth", but I'm not. 

Even inside of backstories that are role-play, made up, or whatever,  there will always, in my opinion, be aspects of the real. How can you create if it doesn't come within?

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