New World Notes

Since Avatars Can Be Perfect, "Flawed" Hair Seems Stylish

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of virtual world and MMO fashion

Women have been dyeing their hair for a very long time, and for almost all of that time it was key to maintain the illusion that it was your natural colour. Touching up the natural roots as they grew out was crucial, because admitting to being a bottle-blond was a styling sin. Yet in Second Life, it's impossible to miss the trend of showing roots in avatar hair textures, which has picked up a lot in the past couple years. Now many of the most popular brands prominently feature rooted styles. Although some people don't get it, I think this trend makes perfect sense. Here's why:

Badass SL Avatar Inspired by Hellboy Movies is Badass

Ms. Munchflower Zaius just showed me this badassariffic Hellboy avatar she created in Second Life on a lark, a tribute to Guillermo de Toro's movie adaptation of the character. She was stirred to send it to me after I posted that Clockwork Orange avatar tribute, and I'm glad she did, because Kubrick aside, I personally like Clockwork less than Hellboy. Ms. Zaius made the shape, skin, clothes, contacts, and hair, and got Hellboy's belt and gun from the SL Marketplace.

And no, it's not for sale, because who wants Guillermo del Toro pissed off at you? However, you can buy Munchflower's many other amazing avatars and fashions fully of her creation: Click here to check them out, and click here for a direct teleport to her store in SL, in her sim Nomine.

Iris Rants: Don't Let Fear of SL Content Theft Cause Paranoia Over Alternate Designer Identities!

Iris Ophelia's ongoing review of virtual world and MMO fashion

Recently a group of experienced SL designers got together to start a new menswear-focused superbrand, Entente,  opening this month. Of course, they've become a hot topic as a result, both because of their teaser images (which are gorgeous) and their choice to release under alts rather than their main accounts. Of course they aren't the first designers to reinvent themselves through anonymity or to see controversy as a result-- fri.day and Paper Couture are two other well-known examples (who were all eventually outed). For some this is innocent curiosity and speculation, but for others there is a sense of entitlement to knowing the "real" names behind these brands.

There are many good reasons to want to know who someone is, but the underlying motive is probably fear over content theft, which sometimes gives way to paranoia and makes us forget what makes SL identity valuable in the first place. Though this is a very real threat, identities are not information that designers owe their clientele, and here's why:

Have Furries Fairly Fled Second Life for Furry Forums?

One day recently, software engineer Tess Chu was walking through a hotel, when she stumbled into a furry con. This was a fortune-filled encounter, for while she's now a Senior Software Engineer and Analyst at Kabam, the leading Facebook strategy game developer, her previous life was at Second Life, as a Studio Director at Linden Lab. So on finding out she was an ex-Linden, the phalanx of furries were fairly friendly. For as everyone knows, furries have been among the more active subcultures in Second Life. (Though probably not as large as often assumed: A community leader estimated it to be under 20,000 during SL's 2006 hype wave.)

In any case, after Tess told them she was an ex-Linden, the furries in the hotel told her a fairly different tale:

Linden CEO: Last Names for SL Avatars Returning January 2012 With Extra Features

Daniel Voyager has a good scoop: Last names for Second Life avatars are returning to SL, CEO Rod Humble says via his web profile, with a rollout planned for January 2012, and "extra features". Since the company abandoned first/last naming conventions for a frankly confusing single word username system, SLers have been actively campaigning for last names to return. Now, says Humble, "We are trying to figure out how to do it in a way which would be excellent rather than just OK. We want it intuitive with extra features... Identity is very important so as we touch it we need to make sure we are adding something great." Not only is identity important, it's a feature that will probably make Second Life appealing to new users accustomed to other MMOs and virtual worlds where fanciful names are still common.

What Would Your SL Avatar Look Like Off the Grid? (UPDATED)

Senban Babii has a fun challenge: Visualize what your avatar would look like if it existed in the real world. That's Ms. Babii's avatar above left, and her RL analog above right. (I'm not clear if the RL version is Senban herself in real life, but it's a pretty cool execution either way.) If you do take up Senban's challenge, do please put a link to your SL/RL avatar photos in Comments.

UPDATE, 11/26: Original real life photo derived from "THE SHIBARI SCHOOL #2 - MINA 4211" (possibly NSFW) copyright "Cortez77_fr" -- click here to see his Flickr stream, a cool photographic collection of zombies, superheroes, and other geek goodness.

Popular Request for Last Names in SL Finally Under Review

There's been a user campaign on Linden Lab's JIRA bug tracking software to bring last name options back to SL, and after running since July and garnering 1855 votes (making it one of the top requests), Linden Lab has finally responded to the request. Ambivalently: "It's clear there is a lot of interest in SVC-7125," writes ProductTeam Linden. "The intent [with the new system] was for users to specify their last name using the Display Names feature found in users' profiles, which most Viewers now support." However, they added, "Know that we hear you and value your passion and that we are currently reviewing some of the decisions that were made with the username /Display Names implementation."

So that's a definite maybe. My prediction: Linden Lab will keep the existing username system but add the last name option as a, well, optional feature. (Which only the existing hardcore userbase will use.)

Hat tip: Rocky Constantine.

Interesting Thread on SL & Gender in Reddit's Transgender Community

If you're on Reddit you may want to jump into this interesting thread in Reddit's /transgender community, inspired by an NWN guest post from Vax Sirnah, who described SL's appeal for someone like him, who is gender dysphoric. "That is, I'm not comfortable with the gender I was born with... Second Life is a haven for me. I can look at the screen and actually see a part of me that I always knew existed, but could never point at." The conversation continues here.

Speaking of Reddit, don't forget it also has a /secondlife community and a thread where you can introduce yourself.

How's Your SL Avatar Evolving? Share It on Flickr!

Harper Beresford has launched a nifty and fascinating project: She's challenging SLers to share the evolution of their SL avatar on this Flickr stream, "Your SL Evolution” . This is a great idea for many reasons, for as Harper explains, "we get to see the evolution of people’s personal styles... how they remained the same in aesthetic and viewpoint... [and] the evolution of SL as well..." Just as interesting, it's a very visual way to consider what's essential in someone's expression of themselves as an avatar, and what can be changed along the way. This thumbnail here is how Harper Beresford herself has changed through the years, but I only excerpted some of her iterations: Click here to see them all.

Meet KK Jewell: Second Life Architecture Advocate, Real Life Helmut Newton Model

Kirsten Kiser posing for Helmut Newton; her avatar KK Jewell in SL

Often in Second Life, you'll meet someone who is roleplaying as a glamorous model, and sometimes, it turns they actually are that already. This is the case with KK Jewell (Kirsten Kiser IRL), a longtime SLer who I've known for years as leading promoter of Second Life as an architecture platform, via her site arcspace, which is one of the oldest and most visited websites for architecture. Kirsten once casually mentioned to me that she's also friends with artist David Hockney (which is why his iPhone paintings are in her SL house), so I shouldn't have been surprised when I visited Harper Beresford's great blog a few months ago, and discovered that she was also a model for legendary photographer Helmut Newton. (Link possibly NSFW, as much of Helmut Newton's decadently sexy photography often is.)

"Vogue called me to ask if they could photograph at our house," Kirsten breezily explained to me when I e-mailed her about the photos. "They photographed there and, since I was around, I started talking to Helmut. I was going to architecture school at that time so I was sitting at my drafting table all day." Soon enough, she wound up on the other side of Newton's camera. (She was already friends with Newtown and his wife, June.)

As for how she wound up in arcspace and Second Life, that had more to do with what she was doing at the drafting table: