Tree of Life discovered on Enigma Island

Mountains found at an art gallery

Newbie Bling and Scary Things

Plenty of wonderful things are out there to be discovered in the world of Second Life..

One of the most glorious is the art gallery. Second Life is full of art galleries, many featuring digitally created art, others photography or sculpture, some large galleries combining all. If you have the time and you enjoy art, it is certainly worth the time to do a search and check out the exceptional variety to be discovered. In the near future, I will be doing a piece focusing entirely on the art of Second Life.

For now, my “no longer a newbie” birthday is approaching rapidly and I want to focus on the deals to be had for newbies, and some pitfalls to avoid. So my exploration project this week has been to attempt to hit all stores and locations offering gifts and deals to newbies. New SLers start with a notecard full of landmarks, and you pick up more and more along the way, if you look. You can also use your search window and put in freebie, or newbie, and get plenty of starts there as well…

I have probably spent at least one thousand lindens buying things that could have been had for free or for just a few dollars. Silly me, I didn’t start looking for newbie deals until I was about two weeks old, and as a result I missed out on some great deals. An example is my sexy walk. Now any self-respecting, stylish avatar is going to immediately do something about the strange, hurried, hobbling walk that SL avatars come with. I ran right out to Abrahanimations and spent $200L on a sexy walk, and loved it. That is, until I spent this week exploring all the deals to be found as a newbie and got at least three versions of a sexy walk, free. Makes my expensive walk seem rather foolish, but who knew?

My hope then is that in the future, I may send some newbie in the general direction of stylish frugality by passing my hard-earned wisdom along. Yes, I know there are plenty of sites out there telling us newbies where to find this and that online, but here then is another one, repeating much of the same information in the hope that it may help out some other fresh SLifer as they navigate their way around a new world. And no, this is not going to turn into yet another SL fashion blog. We have enough of those, and that is certainly not my purpose here, though I confess to reading and even studying them at times, especially before shopping trips.

Newbie bling is to be found in lots of places. Search for what you need or what, you will likely find it. I guess the first newbie gift I ever got was from Alady, where they sell skins and shapes. I walked into the store and was automatically presented with a free Alady smile. It has since become somewhat of a trademark for me. I have also picked up a couple more, one from a store called Dollyrock, but I prefer my original Alady. Today, after seeing the new shape and skin of my friend Marlena, I thought she needed a smile, so I decided to give her one of my extras. I couldn’t, as they were all non-transferable. Undaunted, I simply searched for “free smile” and there were two immediate hits, I just took her straight back to Alady and there on the wall was the free smile, she was thrilled.

Another good freebie to look for are shapes and skins… the best freebie skin I have found is the set given out free to newbies by Sinskins. It is as good or better many I’ve seen for upward of $1000L. I wish, in my panic to buy a skin during my Safir skin disruption, I had shopped around a bit more. Although I love the skin quality of the Alesandra skin I bought, and the nips and bits are great, the make-up is just too heavy, even the “natural” option is more like a night time look. Because of the heaviness of the all makeup choices, I am just not as happy with it as I feel I should be for the $2000L I paid for it.

My friend Marlena got a much better deal, I think with her Pixel Deep skin for $1300L. Skins are to be had in all price ranges and all qualities. The more expensive a skin is doesn’t necessarily make it the best. My advice is this: shop carefully and take your time when buying a skin. Stock up on all your freebie skins first, find one you can live with for a while and take your time when making the investment in a skinset. The goal is to get one you will be comfortable in most of the time. Midnight Lotus even offers a nip and clit upgrade for only $20, which can be added to a newbie or freebie skin for a bit more detail, so you can get by on the cheap, as long as you don’t mind their little tattooed brand name on your privates.

Other freebies to be had are jewelry, shoes, clothes, and furniture of all types, houses, hot tubs, plants and plenty of textures. I even discovered a bicycle blimp today, though I could never figure out how to ride the thing. Take full advantage of all these perks, and save your money for buying the really good stuff, like thigh-high spike-heeled black boots, or land, for that matter.

And now a word about Scary things. I have always tried to maintain an open mind about people, and that has followed me into the world of SL. When a frightening-skinned creature began talking to me about a week ago, he seemed harmless enough. He was from Chile and had lots of interesting things to say about politics and the RL from his perspective. I took to calling him Scary, because he did look it, and his name was impossible for me to get. Then, Scary became scary. When he IMed me and wanted me to hang out with him, I didn’t realize what I was getting myself into. He would grief the people around us, and would somehow manage to cause very weird things to happen wherever we were at.

When I took my leave of him, he would continue to harass me with IMs even after I had told him I had another engagement. Then, his conduct became downright abusive, calling me insulting names in English and other things in Spanish that didn’t seem kind, to say the least. Finally, I removed him from my friend list. I don’t know what took me so long to do it. What I learned from this situation is sometimes if they look scary on the outside, they very well may be scary on the inside. So unless you are into that sort of thing, steer clear. Certainly, if someone makes you uncomfortable, if they grief you or the people around you, then don’t hesitate to remove that person from you friend list. There are more than enough people in SL, we don’t have to hang out with scary monsters.

Update on Broken Skin

My first post on this blog was in regard to my skin drama. I have an addendum to that little saga…. One day, while camping on a dance pad, going through my inventory, (as I do regularly) I happened to take a look in my trash. Being somewhat nonchalant about the cleanliness of my inventory stash, it had not been emptied, ever. So, I had a looksee through the items before I pulled the lever, so to speak. There, much to my surprise and joy, it was: a copy of the skin given to me by Safir! I was ecstatic. I pulled it lovingly out of the trash, dusted it off, and it was as good as new. The newbie angel fought the newbie demon and won the battle after all! So, I can now grace this blog with a shot of me in my lovely Safir skin. Look for the pic soon…

Me recently dancing in a nice new skin....

First day in SL, with two dear friends

Time to Go on a Long Explore...

As in RL, there comes a moment when you realize that your focus has become muddled, your direction, inaccurate. Strangely enough, I'm finding that to be true in SL. I am now about 19 or 20 days old, so perhaps this is just my transition from Second childhood to Second adulthood.

My goal for this whole adventure was to approach everything in SLife without fear; with daring, creativity and an intense quest for expansion of conciousness. I find that my progress in these areas has languished and has begun to get mired in much of the same junk that pollutes my RL journey.

I know what I want from SLife, now I must rethink my approach. I need to explore and find some inspiration. There is more here to be had that what we have all settled for IRL. What an unforgivable waste it would be, to take this fascinating reality and turn it into some brightly colored, digitized reflection of the first world, where we are teetering on the edge of destruction.

So, in response to all these thoughts, I am going on a long explore.

So far, I have swooped and tped from place to place in the world of SL...but I haven't explored very much beyond what I did in my first few days... It is time to refocus, to get back to that initial curiosity and seek out the real treasures this world holds.

So friends, I am temporarily putting away my expensive shoes, designer perfume, prim skirts and breast revealing tops, and putting on some patchouli, my fav jeans, a tee and my Birks.

I'm going down into the belly of the fish for a while...Then, I'm gonna climb a few mountains.

I'll keep y'all posted on what I find...just check back here every few days... and if you really need to chat, I might IM you back. Otherwise, friends, I will see ya in a couple of weeks...gonna see what else I can find out there....

Until next time, then....

Are you Skinsperienced?

Skins, shapes, inventory, textures....

It's enough to make a poor girl escape the perfect virtuality of Second Life and go hide in her RL closet.

Thought I was clever enough that I could escape the newbie pitfalls, to fake my way straight past the newbie screwups.

But the newbie demon got me... I had a major disaster.

Let's go back a few days. Me, in my tweaked out but still freebie looking skin, camping in a casino chair, reading about this and that aspect of SL detailia while earning a few bucks...

Looked over and saw a most stunning creature sitting two seats down. Blonde, finely featured, slim, perfectly formed and dressed... Ahhh... my poor newbie heart broke, it was so overcome by admiration and envy. I had decided that I was buying prim hair that day, and was feeling adventurous, so I IMed her , smiled, and asked her where she'd found her perfect, blonde layers...

Sweetness and light IMed back shyly and smilingly... a precious and generous lady from Netherlands... Her english was a little rough, which gave me time to hid my newbie awkwardness with the SL interface...

I told her she was beautiful...

She gave me a skin...

The most beautiful skin.. It was smooth, highlighted, athletic, painted with an artist's brush... I was beside myself with happiness..

Safir, you are a goddess ... Thank-you. Your skin changed my SLife.

We stopped "champing" as she called it, and went on a shopping rampage... SL Joy for Girls... What fun! She bought a gorgeous ivory blonde updo and I got my Vanessa set, with two shades of red... singing "I feel pretty, oh so pretty..." I finally had prim hair and on top af that a fantastic lovely skin.. SLife was good.

Flash forward four days

It is late... I'm still wondering about a comment from a friend who wondered why the nips on my Safir skin weren't visible.. It is true, they didn't have a lot of color...I was given a tattoo of dark pink nipples.

I decided to get creative and put the lovely pink nipples on my lovely skin.

Sleepy, careless, even though the tattoo took away the colour and texture of my torso, I clicked save...not save as....but SAVE... And in that brief instant, MY TRAGEDY occurred.

My skin, once so fine, smooth and pale nippled, was now wearing a hideous pale pink t-shirt of ugliness, planted defiantly with two dark pink nips. I wept.

Frantically searched... nothing in inventory; no copies, no backups, not one other really decent skin... The thought of putting that ugly tweaked out newbie freebie skin made me want to fall on my sword.

My friend Cam IMed me, and I made my confession... It was bad. He was so sweet and helpful, but it was becoming clear that I had made a permanent blunder. Rather than go back to the newbie skin, which I finally agreed to let him see me in, he and I agreed that the best course of action was to spend all my time in long turtlenecked tops with gloves. Just keep the broken torso hidden until a new decent skin could be aquired. I began creating the ensembles and turning them out into my inventory....

It turned out that friends in SL came to the rescue and I was able to upgrade to a lovely new first rate and rather expensive skin. Thank you friend, you know who you are. My faith in virtual humanity bolstered , I celebrated.

I think I will box up my turtleneck/glove combos and present them to any lady who appears to have broken her skin. Not everyone is as blessed with generous friends as I am. So I will pass the generosity along, whenever I can...

Skins are a complicated business, but they are absolute necessity and the basis of a female in SL. And I am still a newbie, but I'm learning. Till next time then....