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Dillon Levenque

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Posts posted by Dillon Levenque

    Furries in SL--why all the hatred towards furries?

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    2 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

    I haven't seen too much hostility against furries; in fact, maybe the opposite.

    Probably the worst case of sheer bigotry I've seen directed against them came from . . . well, me.

    When I was very new in SL -- maybe two or three months -- the parcel next to the one which was my main hangout at that time was bought by a furry couple who placed a home there. Being something of an idiot, I decided to do the "good neighbour" thing and drop by to meet them. I walked onto their parcel and shouted some sort of greeting at them -- and found myself rocketed something like 1000 metres into the sky. This was not just an ejection -- I was blasted by something. No warning, no indication that visitors with a plate of freshly backed prim cookies weren't welcome . . . just BANG followed by WOOOSH, succeeded by AAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUGGHHHHHHHH!

    Anyway, I was furious; when I finally hit the ground I spent the next half hour yelling expletives over the hedge separating the parcels. THEN I came up with a more effective means of revenge.

    The owner of my "home" parcel was a sweetheart (a foul-mouthed 6 year old with a predilection for setting off nuclear weapons) who had given me permissions to rez and build there, so I whipped up a sign in Photoshop, mounted it on a couple of prims, and set it up right on the border between the two parcels -- where there was nothing that the offending furry could do about it. Weirdly, I have a picture of it still (that's very early "me" next to the pic).

    SF-Sign_001 - Copy.png

    To be clear, the furry who had orbited me was, as became clearer in subsequent discussions with him, a major *****: he gave me no warning that he was going to "smite me" with his vorpal blade or whatever it was that sent me flying, and he was unpleasant throughout. That said, my response, because it targeted him as a furry rather than as an obnoxious individual, (which he was) was unpleasant, inappropriate, and, in SL terms anyway, "racist." It was inexcusable, and I am still embarrassed by it. My only real excuse is that I was new to SL, and didn't understand the degree to which the platform featured very distinct cultures that had little direct analogue to my own experience in RL.

    And that, I guess, is my main point. it feels a bit wrong to refer to furry hatred as "racism," because the stakes in SL are so different: as we've been reminded, again, within the past week, RL racism is an infinitely scarier thing than banning furries from night clubs or putting up mocking signs about them. But being respectful to other cultures and perspectives is always an important thing. Furries (and Tinies, and Nekos, and vampires, and even *ugh* Goreans) are deserving of an acknowledgment of the fact that they do see themselves as distinct cultures.

    (My story has a sort of a happy ending, btw. The furry next door demanded I take down the sign. I insisted upon an apology before I did. Eventually, after a long negotiation, I got one, and the sign went down. I never spoke to him again, and all of my subsequent interactions with furries demonstrated to me that they were, pretty much always, delightful, sweet, and accepting residents.)

    Fascinating. This was what set Richard off, wasn't it?  

    Something a bit more fun

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted · Edited by Dillon Levenque

    4 hours ago, Ivanova Shostakovich said:

    1. Is there intelligent life out there in other solar systems in our galaxy? Is any of it able to live in harmony?

    Yay! Back on Page 1 I answered #1 with "Does an intelligent life form exist somewhere other than Earth? As an idea of what I mean by intelligent: a species we could communicate with, or vice versa (note this includes more than one species here on Earth)." So we both had similar questions. I somehow stumbled across science fiction at the library when I was about eleven; that stuff sticks with you. Look up in the sky and wonder if the Mule's ships are on the way....

    What's your excuse? :-)

     

     

    • Like 2

    Something a bit more fun

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    54 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

    ...thanks her lucky stars she knew Dylan had written it, and probably knows that because she generally prefers Dylan songs when he's not singing them.

    I was quoting Phil, and he commented on "survivors of that era", not youngsters like you. Go ahead and keep throwing a little shade—"she generally prefers Dylan songs when he's not singing them"—and I'll keep trying to win you over, one song at a time. Gives me something to do ;-).

    • Like 1

    Something a bit more fun

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    On 10/30/2018 at 12:15 PM, Phil Deakins said:

    I'd go further and suggest that most survivors of that era weren't, and still aren't, aware that Bob Dylan wrote it.

    I'll gladly disown any who weren't/aren't, and am happy to have had friends who introduced me to Dylan (rhymes with Dillon, btw) long before PP&M decided (like about a zillion other artists) to cover one of his songs.

    Something a bit more fun

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    4 hours ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

    I like this question because of the massive potential it gives the Law of Unintended Consequences.

    Let's say you know you're going to live to  be 110. Would you take a job in a bomb disposal unit? You could reason that your Deathday suggests you're going to be very good at it, and never get blown up... or? What if, on your first mission, you get blown into a coma and spend the next 86 years aware of your surroundings, in pain, but unable to respond. Does knowing your "deathday" do anything to reduce uncertainty in your life?

    Let's say you know you're going to live only to 18. When you enter high-school, you discover that 109 of your classmates share the same deathday. You look at the calendar and realize that will be graduation day. It doesn't take long for a "worse than Sandy Hook" theory to arise. There is nothing that can be done to save you and your friends, but there is a lot that can be done to save the school, so they move graduation forward one week to ensure that the 110 of you die in hopefully unrelated events during summer vacation.

    So, I am that bomb disposal gal, and I'm called to remove a dynamite backpack from a suicide bomber who's plan to kill her high school graduating class was foiled by a change of date. I know the bomber is going to die in a few minutes, so there's no possibility of saving her. My only goal is to maximize the quality of life (because I can do nothing about the duration) for everyone who survives the incident. I isolate the woman in a cornfield and wait for the bang. At that precise moment, 451 people die in various acts of violence around the community, committed by 16 of the high school's doomed students in attacks pre-planned to copycat what they all expected to happen on graduation day.

    There are endless ways to imagine unintended consequences that make knowing your deathday worse than our current predicament.

    Given a little more time, I could probably imagine a humanity that had grown up with this knowledge and put it to overwhelmingly good use, but I don't know if I have a little more time.

    ETA: Answering "how" along with "when" makes it even easier to imagine darkness on the landscape.

    I'm so gonna pitch this—it'd be a dynamite movie, might even work as a series. I know some people at Amazon....

    • Haha 1

    Something a bit more fun

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    1. Does an intelligent life form exist somewhere other than Earth? As an idea of what I mean by intelligent: a species we could communicate with, or vice versa (note this includes more than one species here on Earth).

    2. Since Garnet's already skipped this one I will as well. I usually miss implied insults anyway.

    3. You really don't have the kind of time that would take.

    • Like 3

    A Derail Thread

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    Somewhere here or in another forum far, far away the subject of Dr. Who came up. I mentioned that I had never seen an episode. Well, I'm seeing one now! Amazon Prime has 12 seasons beginning 2005. The Doctor is Christopher Eccleston. I've already decided to give it a good try, just barely into the first episode ("Rose"). Got me hooked as he is shooing Rose out the door saying, "Go have your lovely beans on toast.". I think I'll like this.

    • Like 4

    A Derail Thread

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    30 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

    How do we know which pun she means? (It could have been Sansared.) And you KNOW I’m all about bad puns. Madame Loon. ?? I only meant “we” as in any of us who pun, hope they are appreciated, and wasn’t taking direct credit. 

    Let me relieve your uncertainty. Rolig is correct; I meant hers. 

    Imagine my dismay at learning she is capable of such villainy.

    • Like 1
    • Haha 1

    A Derail Thread

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted

    Losing the Focus Department:

    Clover's post back there about sansars on the lawn was the first new post when I logged in. I continued reading from there, past all the silly sansar stuff (including a truly horrific pun by someone I'd have thought was above that sort of thing) and then into foliage colors and weather, until Iva dropped the non-sequitur about the coyote.

    I thought, "Wow, talk about a derail! What was this thread about, anyway?"

    And then I remembered where I was.

    • Haha 6

    Sad that popular places are turning into Experiences with no option to visit without accepting

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted · Edited by Dillon Levenque

    If nothing else, Gabrielle, you chose a heck of a good topic: three four pages of fascinating posts already in just fourteen hours (it expanded as I wrote). 

    I've been ambivalent with the few Experience equipped chances I've had (I haven't gotten settled enough yet with this re-entry to do a lot of exploring). I like the idea of seeing what happens and how it's done, but I just do not like other people planning my exploration. Like Lil, I would infinitely rather explore a new place on my own than take an organized tour. When I'm in  a strange (to me) place the last thing I want is to have someone telling me where to go and how to get there. Just let me do it myself. I've had some pretty cool experiences that way. Not all of them as good as getting caught in the middle of an anti-government protest in Kuala Lumpur because I insisted on using public transit (in this case the light rail system) instead of a limo or taxi. You're not having fun until you're getting tear-gassed in the train station :-).

    The same reluctance to believe someone else knows what I like/want better than I do tends to make me not a fan of the Experience idea. I don't mind 'losing control' of my avatar; I can always bail out if I don't care for it if by no other means than closing the viewer. I'd just rather move at my own pace and see it my way.

    All of the above changes if the Experience is the whole point of the experience. Elementary example: Disneyland. I loved just getting in the boat and going for the ride at The Pirates of the Caribbean. I had no desire whatever to travel that route on my own. ETA: Good grief, it took me half an hour to do this? In my defense I did get interrupted a few times. Anyway, upon going back to read what posted while I dawdled, I see Lil had already used Pirates of the Caribbean as an example (in exactly the same way I did, which is pretty funny).

    • Like 2
    • Thanks 1

    Where do you live?

    in General Discussion Forum

    Posted · Edited by Dillon Levenque

    On 2/3/2018 at 2:56 AM, Coby Foden said:

    In Finnish language we have this word "Lohikäärme" (in English Dragon), which some Finns accidentally translate into English as "Salmon snake".
    This is how it looks. :/
     

    Finnish_Salmon-snake.jpg

    I KNEW I'd seen that image somewhere but I couldn't remember where. I was looking for this post yesterday (Oct. 15) because of an article I saw on BBC Online. I didn't save the link (sorry) but as the caption shows it was about Pompeii. I believe it was an article saying they'd found evidence the eruption was a few months later than the long-believed date.

    This image certainly suggests that The Mighty Finn (a possibly mythical character) extended his travels as far as Italy (it's known he got to Hungary; they speak almost the same language).

     

    SalmonDragon.PNG

    • Like 3
    • Thanks 1

    couples friends

    in Make Friends

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Jameson2001 said:

    I am not in a LTR relationship at the moment, however, when I was we had a good time meeting other couples at popular dance sims just by bumping into them repeatedly and eventually striking up a conversation.  The other place we met other couples was in our community where we lived which was a small town.  There were other couples living in the community with us which made it easy to connect.  By the way, your activities list sounds super fun!  With the exception of shopping events?

    I agree for sure with the dance idea; dancing is the second most popular SL activity involving couples, I bet. Plus you have an excuse to shop for slow dance anims.

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