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How did you figure out what you wanted to be in SL?


RorickVolsung
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I'm very new to second life, but I have found my way around a bit.

 

So far, I've found some really awesome freebies, a lot of cool prizes for diffrent games, and I even took my first trip into Linden Reals and made $32. I have a pretty large inventory for someone that has only been playing for three days.

 

So, now comes the question:

 

I don't know who I want to be, or what I want to be. I know I want to be some form of human male, but I honestly can't think of what style I would wear if given everything as a possibility.

 

How did you guys figure out who you were meant to be in second life?

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Trial and error, mostly. There are so many freebies, demos, and options for creating by oneself that I tried all kinds of avatars and looks. Eventually I settled on a few base looks (one shape, a handful of favourite skins and hairstyles) around which I create different variations. Sometimes it's just clothing that changes, sometimes I'm more (or less) human. Occasionally I wear a completely different av (furry, animal, alien or petite), but I consider those more like costumes than changes to 'me'.

The fun of it is you don't ever have to stop changing what you want to be.

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Welcome to Second Life, Rorick.

When I first joined Second Life, I automatically created an avatar that was a human version of what I thought I wanted to be in real life, and things just fell into place. As time went on though, I found it was rather fun to have a few other avatars - alternative accounts - to explore being male, and of other species.  Of course you can do this in one account; be a shape-shifter.

As this avatar, I've sometimes been a cupcake, or a cloud, or a cockatiel, or a cat (its just a coincidence most of the avs I have tried out begin with a "c" !).

Play it by ear, and you'll find who or what you're meant to be... even for just one day or one week at a time.

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I can only reiterate what the others have said. Sometimes, it's tough to create the look you want with freebie items, but it can be done. You need to explore and use the resources that are available to you.

Use the Fab Free in SL website (http://fabfree.wordpress.com/ ) especially the 30 day list. There, you can pick up a lot of very good items..including an AO, so you don't move around like a stiff... :matte-motes-sunglasses-3: And join their group. They offer lots of free items that can be very useful to a new resident.

Remember also, that there is NO WRONG way to look. You can be whatever you want to be...male, female, transgendered, furry, neko...pretty, ugly, young, old....it doesn't matter. Explore...find what you like. Then when you've done that, go find something else. Change it up. That's the fun of being inworld.

Good luck and enjoy this adventure called Second Life.

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RorickVolsung wrote:

I think I understand, then.

 

I shouldn't be looking for that one look that just "Clicks." I should be keeping my eyes open for cool things that I can add to my arsenal of awesome stuffs.

 

Thanks!

That's one way to look at it, and it worked for me. If you don't have anything definite in mind, it's a great way to find out.

"I came to SL to play at something I wasn't, and found out it was me all along"

There's a reason I have that in my profile.

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So many excellent answers! I, personally, evolved over 6 years! Of course, it's a never ending process as the technology changes, but the one thing that has never changed, is my shape. It's the same one I bought in my first year. My reasoning is that it makes me look like me. I feel weird about changing that for some reason. I had no clue what I wanted to look like when I started, but the end result was me in RL in my youth. 

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My avatar is mainly human but I have a variety of avatars and many looks for my main one too.  When I go to regions where there is a theme I dress for it.  Its not only fun but if there is roleplay going on there I think it is important not to kill the atmosphere.

To start, just be yourself.  As you explore SL and meet people you'll get a better sense of where you fit in and can then tailor your main look to that.

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What I "wanted to be" in SL was and is a journey...

 

First pass: I'd read that I could never make an alt or a new account or some guy named "Guido" would be sent out to break the legs of my pet fish... so it originally took me about 5 days to make the account trying to get a name down... Now, sitting on login mountain in 2006 next to some bridge or something - the way I read the tutorial I HAD to make my look then and there, and I presumed that like most video games, I'd be stuck with whatever I made. So I didn't move from that landing spot for a good 3 hours, and skipped some RL duties to work it. I had no idea... 3 days later I realized I could stand the name I'd picked, so I deleted SL and moved on with life - presuming I would get in trouble if I tried to make a new account.

Second pass: bored one day in 2009, I googled up Second Life and found a very outdated 'getting started' guide (written in 2006 I think, and last updated in 07). I read up on places I could go and things I could do... so I logged in again on that old account (no idea if I'd actually remembered the password, or got lucky with password reset). A week into wandering around using a combo of freebie 'tramp wear' and the shape I'd made in 2006... I picked up a freebie box and clicked a scripted popup that asked if I wanted to wear the contents. At the time my mantra was "try ANYTHING and be wild" so clicking to accept a random box was normal.

Suddenly I was a neko. My 'lets do something cause I'm bored' instantly changed to "oh hey, now I feel like myself, I feel at home."

Cats may be murder-animals ( http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cats_actually_kill )... but they're still a totemic animal for me despite my awareness of this with regards to the actual animal and how it bothers me. Other aspects of their nature grab at me.

Third pass: a few years later, having switched accounts after becoming a neko and discovering the article I'd read about never being allowed to make a second account was false, I'm wandering around SL in the usual host of SL clubs and thinking about spirituality (as its something I've always done a lot of) when I pop into a reggae club and get a notecard, which I promptly ignored and let sit in my notecard folder... and then I noticed that the lyrics of the roots music, that I'd enjoyed so much for their social message - kept referencing certain names and biblical sources.

Having long been a Christian who found everything about organized religion wrong, and deeply felt the churches were teaching a near opposite of New Testament scripture... I got curious.

So I read the notecard. It had an innaccurate presentation of Rasta, but made the link nonetheless between a sound I could feel was coming from the soul, and a faith based resistance to oppression... So I started reading things outside of SL, then started gathering up more and more music... and...

Well, this time SL changed my RL identity. I sort of "discovered" that I'd been a Rastafari all my life - and just hadn't known it or known what to call it. Right down to the Biblical sections they'd reference, and how they would analyze the parables around them, and to Christianity's African roots - Rasta was I. But that of course cycled back into SL and started changing how I behaved here, and how I representing my 'avatar', taking on a more African look, and more openly expressing my spirituality instead of exploring sensuality.

 

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If it ended, I'd move on.

That SL helped trigger those reflections for me was part of my journey - and it being a catalyst for finding out I had found things I had already found but not known of on that level.

 

SL -IS- very much critically important to some of its users. But for me, it is just something I very much enjoy. If you are internally ready for a self-discovery, you can find it in all manner of ways.

The lesson I would have out of that in choosing your avatar is to be open to new things, and to "go with it" when you get a feeling to try some tangent out - it could become more than you expected. With avatars, we have the tools there to experiment and make things that are very different from our norm, or those of our 'social group' - and so few do. This is a very safe place to try though, and that trying can be very revealing.

 

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RorickVolsung wrote:

How do you transfer feelings or personality to aesthetics?

That is a very good question.

.....and to follow that question up I would have to ask, how attached will your feelings and emotions be to what you might eventually create?

Pick a character you might create expressed as your avatar: Vampire, dog, school girl, demon, soccer mom, businessman, angel, hipster, slacker, Martian, cowboy, neko (endangered species btw), robot.......whatever you choose.  At some point you may find yourself begin to identify with your creation, and this is where your imagination is required.  If you chance to take your creation into some roleplay you might find that you loose yourself in your creation, for however long it lasts.  You may find that you expose to yourself new feelings or personality traits to match your aesthetics.

I don't think you transfer feelings or personality to a character quite as much as those feelings and personalities are transferred back to you in some regard.  In many instances you are always you, limited only by how much of yourself you are willing to discard for the moment.

Then again...you could just be you.  In which case we'd just have ourselves a great big fancy chat room.  I'll take characters, imagination, and a sense of adventure.

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For those who worry or are otherwise not wishing to get off on the wrong foot, get another set of feet! An alt. or alternate avatar account, is common in SL. You can explore OR see this one as just the first and make another later to fit into some other place and keep them seperate. Some cultures look down on some others, so this is maybe one reason. Some others make them basically to be free of messages, away from distracting toys and event notices so they can focus on something else. Maybe even hiding who they are to interact in ways some would wish didn't happen, and why some look for personal info and will only talk to people over voice chat to ensure REAL people are whot they are talking to. I have even seen IP check devices to check avatars IP address, if they agree, to enhance trust that they are not an alt.

What do you NOT want is a good starting place as well. G, M and A areas are basics to consider. A, meaning Adult, seems obvious at first and you think naughty bits on display, but the issues of a virtual world and freedom of speach come into play. Some areas are depicting crimes in real life, things that one may find disturbing.

Also the technical environment factors may be there, as well as location norms. Personally,  I would wear lower lag gear sometimes, like low prim hair and no clothing attachments all SL avatar body painted look stuff. Maybe even take hair off and  a helmet only. This was because I was at racing sims, you want all the efforts of your GPU to go to the car and moving quickly. Frames per second are important. But I change it, lower lag always seems better but is restrictive and has less detail many times, though not as bad as some may think.

Culture, technical limits, the fact YOU see your avatar the most (OK, unless you hit the M key when chat text box is not active, then it is 'mouselook' first peson BUT you can turn on your avatar in the preferences using cntrl key +p and check the box and click OK) influence the decision. Environment is also effected by your graphics, some may really like some features but it is to slow for them to run them all the time. Materials are an example, a maker that does detailed materails may not have a full selection of what you want BUT you love watching them and settle for something close to what you want. This is becoming less of an issue though, and there is always the wanted forums right here to help find creators, that will mostly charge a fee, to make custom items to complete a look or set of gear.

Either way, exploring with an alt may work if you worry about getting off on the wrong foot, but looking into blogs and subculture sims that interest you will show the norms. I bet you did this partially anyway, but worth mentioning for anyone not knowledgable that subculture is partially based on real life here, but also has SL based differences and the market and environment constraints.

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It's might to take a long time to find you. I got started because my sister begged me to join. We would stay up for hours in the night messing with inventory and having fun. We both got hooked. One day she said she going to be a demon and I being opposite of her said Ill be an angel since I am innocent. (not). Since then it kind of stuck. She passed recently and here I am Still and angel. Its like she became me, an angel always with me....

Really its going to take you a while to learn who you are and just when you think you got it all figured out... It will change. That's the fun part of sl. Its always evolving. 

Wish you luck on you sl path. Its going to be rocky but hardly ever dull. At least it hasn't for me.

 

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It's like someone posted. Do you create an avatar to reflect who you are....or does something just spring forth and in essence becomes it's own entity? It's a question I find a little scary and I'm sure different for each individual. In my case the character is not only separate from myself.....but at times it can be controlling....I may just be crazy but sometimes I find myself arguing with the "character". Once my character told me to mind my own business, that what he did inworld was his business and I the Op was only there as technical support for him the character....you know....he might just be right.

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Sassy Romano wrote:


RorickVolsung wrote:

How did you guys figure out who you were meant to be in second life?

Dunno!  It just happened.  I started out fun and lively, now i'm just bitter and twisted.  (wait, I might have always been twisted).

(Welcome to SL!)

I think a better word, is kinky. You were always a very kinky girl.

 

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After being in SL several years now, I rarely play human.  There's so many opportunities to be anything you want here from mythical creatures, anime characters, animals, etc. and so many opportunities to roleplay that you don't have to be stuck being human.  However, for some it's fun to dress up your avatar and roleplay as human in family rp, etc.

As the others have said it's just trial and error but I think it's when you get stuck on one particular thing that you get bored and quit the game all together.

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I have always been human and always the same overall look right from day one; a guy with long-ish rather scruffy ginger hair and beard. I'm sadly not ginger in RL (more like mousey-brown and grey) but if I could be, I would in a heartbeat.  My avatar has been upgraded over the years but my overall look remains basically the same.

I actually cannot bear to change the look of my main avatar; if I want to make something different, I make an alt.

Here's me in my first week, in 2008:

080812 Hanja.png

 

2011:

shadows_002p.jpg

 

and now:

130819_004p.jpg

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