Looking for signs of ancient life in SL, part II

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In my first house in Alsium.

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I've been putting this one off for a while, for no discernible reason other than laziness and a temporary preoccupation with so-called real life. But I guess it's time.

I had promised that I would follow up with you all both on the subject of "looking for signs of ancient life" in SL, as well as providing a bit more detail about what I've been doing with myself during the last three months or so. Not that it really matters what I've been up to, but perhaps talking about my ongoing journey can shine a bit of light on some interesting aspects of what is taking place in certain corners of the historically-themed sims in-world.

As I have noted elsewhere, I have been spending less time than I used to in Deadwood--not because there is anything wrong with it, but just because I was in a weird place emotionally and mentally, and not enjoying it as much as I used to. Similarly I have completely dropped out of Hogwarts United, mostly because I found that I couldn't bring myself to make the kind of mental effort, and fulfill the necessary time commitment to do it well.

So where did I go?

Well, you might recall that back in May, I was exploring the ancient-themed sims. In part this was because I was just looking for something new to experience, but also because I had been inspired by the ancient environments in Heritage Key. It made me wonder, so what's available in SL? The builds in Heritage Key are beautifully done, but not consistently populated, and not really designed for role-playing. They are much more like immersive museum exhibits than a place where you form a community and interact on an ongoing basis with other interesting people. Heritage Key is about teaching, not learning; it's about visiting, not building a set of relationships; nor is it about enabling the creation of your own content--and I have come to realize that those are the elements that do the most to keep me in Second Life, rather than wandering off to places like Blue Mars (which also hasn't made the effort to accommodate Mac users, so fuck 'em).

Anyway, back in May, at the time I wrote the ancient life article part I, I found that there seemed to be a number of historical Egyptian, Roman and Greek-themed builds in Second Life, but generally speaking they were largely devoid of any humanity (at least when I visited), or were mediocre builds, or both. And when I say "mediocre," in some cases, I am being extremely generous.

Not long after I wrote the article, I stumbled across two new places, Alsium http://slurl.com/secondlife/Alsium/113/100/23/ and The City of Hydra http://slurl.com/secondlife/City%20of%20Hydra/138/218/21/, and by golly I found myself being drawn in.

When I first saw it, Alsium was literally a brand-new build. It is a representation (or perhaps an "interpretation") of an ancient Roman resort town that actually existed, but for which there is relatively little historical information or physical remains to draw upon for guidance in doing a recreation. While there are things that I would have done differently if it was my build--some improbable statuary, a superfluity of banners, and some other things like limited seating at the arena and a lack of certain public structures that most Roman towns had--it's freakin' gorgeous, and it's a fun place to explore and to play. And hey, it's not my build, not my sim, so at this point I will just shut the fuck up regarding what is or isn't there. Cuz after all, if I really wanted to have an ancient build that met all the criteria I would like for one to meet, then I need to cough up the jack and build one myself someday, right? Well maybe I just will, because the experience of being a part of the Alsium community has been very positive.

Alsium--a pretty resort town on the coast, about 35 km from Rome. This is in the suburbs, away from the town center with its arena, baths and forum. The multi-story structure with the private dock is my current domus.

And in many ways, I was pleasantly surprised at how positive the experience has been. The vast majority of Alsium's players--and characters--are gay males. I have no issues with gay folks, but you could argue that I didn't really fit in. Also, many of the guys are players who have migrated from Gorean sims (and my only previous contact with Goreans had been somewhat ridiculous...I'll have to tell you the story sometime). Initially, I was the only female player and/or character present. So in a lot of ways, on the surface, it seemed like it should not have worked for me being there. But somehow it did, in large part because of some key decisions that were made by sim owner Noah Shepherd: he gave the sim a particular time period to work with--its timeframe is during the latter part of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, roughly in the era from 170 to 175 AD, so there was an historical context; he quickly opened up an adjoining sim that offered a variety of rental properties (a bit pricey, but with huge prim limits), so that residents could do exciting and interesting things in terms of not just decorating but structurally adapting the interior spaces they rented; and he made it clear that what he wanted was not a particular type or style of roleplaying to take place--he just wanted good roleplaying.

The character I created was a Greco-Egyptian lady from Alexandria, the widow of a wine merchant who died of a fever while I was accompanying him on a buying trip. My premise was that I was sort of stranded in Italy, and needed to keep the business going in order to meet his obligations and settle our debts. And as time went on, with the help of his "servus" who had helped him run the business, the enterprise was becoming profitable and my character was finding that she enjoyed being a wine merchant.

Keeping the business going: the cellar of my first house in Alsium, filled with casks and amphorae.

I soon discovered that this character and her little storylines did fit in pretty well with what was going on, and that the guys all treated her with the greatest respect and consideration. Yeah, I kind of made it a point to not be around when they would get into their...well...being a bit randy, enjoying their "boys will be boys" grab-ass, slightly Fellini-esque fun and games. But there were plenty of times that we collectively had storylines going in which that I could be a contributing player.

I decided to rent one of the houses that came available, and put considerable work into researching Roman life, business, society and decorative arts. I had a wonderfully good time learning new things purely on my own, inspired by the roleplay, and then, as time went on, I found other people in the sim who were very interested in sharing information as well. Members of the growing Alsium community (which is gradually becoming more diverse) put on classes for each other, discussing matters such as food, daily life, the Roman client system, classes, and slavery.

Ah yes...slavery. A very touchy issue. But you can't represent Roman life without incorporating that element. It would be like trying to do "Spartacus" and claiming that it was just a labor dispute that got out of hand. I'll be honest, I am not terribly comfortable in dealing with the subject in rp--even though there are aspects of ancient slavery that are very different from how we understand slavery in the context of American history. I even have a hard time calling someone a slave, in the same way that I simply cannot bring myself to use the "N" word when playing a 19th century rebel widow. And I am not going to treat my servi badly. Historical authenticity be damned, there simply are things I am not willing to do. Oddly enough I have two very good friends who have decided to come in and play the servi in my household now and then. Sometimes, I may refer to them as "servus," but more often, I will say "this is my man, Serenek," or I will describe them as "members of my household."

Not everyone is so careful--but then that in itself is historically authentic: even in the ancient world, various people in different circumstances saw slavery in multiple ways and treated enslaved people differently than their contemporaries did. And in the roleplay we do, different people who play slaves are obviously exploring historical and personal issues in wildly divergent ways--I'm not entirely sure what all is going on, but I do know that in this sim (as well as the next place I am going discuss) there is an on-going effort to help the residents to distinguish between the historical form of slavery that is part of the ancient Roman story, and the largely BDSM-based style of fantasy slavery that is part of the Gorean canon.

By the way, that is one of the really interesting things that I have heard from some of the guys who came to Alsium from Gorean rp--they say a big part of what they found frustrating in Gor was the restrictive nature of Gorean canon and community life. They actually find this historical context to be more flexible. I'm still pondering the significance of that one.

Hard at work in my new house in Alsium.

So I have been having a great time being a part of this community, learning new stuff, going to the arena and cheering on the guys who have been working so very hard to master the combat system...and I have really had a great time building and decorating, rebuilding and redecorating, making textures of actual ancient mosaics, wall art, frescoes, etc....

...and not having responsibility. I just come and go, fiddle around with my "domus" and have fun.

Oh yes, and I also periodically go over to the City of Hydra. The folks there have established a grittier environment for ancient Roman rp--a representation (again, not a completely historically authentic recreation) of a generic Roman-occupied commercial port city out in the conquered territories somewhere (I think it's supposed to be on the Greek coast or something like that).

It is sort of a classical dystopia--urban, ugly, corrupt, crowded and crime-ridden. Hydra is an unplanned jumble of check-by-jowl town houses, apartments and stores that is hard to find your way around.

If I was the Roman governor of the city I think I would have simply sold the inhabitants, razed the buildings, and started over. But that's just me.

The City of Hydra.

Seriously though, I don't play here too often, not because of the stories or the build or anything like that--it's just that it seems to be mostly populated at times when I have to be at work. Nonetheless, it is interesting to see a place that is so completely different from Alsium.

Alsium is a beautiful place where the corruption, the penchant for violence, the tension between competing interests and factions is all under the surface, bubbling forth into visible form only periodically, not unlike some fictional Steven King New England resort town.

In Hydra, the unpleasant realities of life are pretty much all out there to be seen and savored, if that is how you like to spend your vacations. It reminds me a lot of New Jersey.

I will say that one thing that has kind of turned me off on Hydra (which by the way, should not be confused with a "Hydra" that apparently exists on a Gorean sim), is that they make a point in describing themselves as offering "Excellent, immersive Roman roleplay -- only the Best."

*coughs*

OK. I've met some really good people there. And yes, I've experienced some very good rp in Hydra. But I have also experienced some very good rp in Alsium.

A place like Alsium admittedly has a number of folks who exhibit a wide variety of rp styles and levels of experience. Some people are just starting out and some of what people do could be described as "RP lite." But you know, I find that Alsium's residents generally try to accommodate one another and adjust to make it work. That's about all you can ask for. In fact, I think you can make a pretty good argument that the variety of styles and skills and levels of experience is actually a strength.

Look, I think it's good to aspire to providing a quality experience. But when you give yourself labels like "only the Best" (as Hydra does on their landmark card), I find it just a tad off-putting, especially when there are so many interpretations of what constitutes "good rp," let alone what might be considered "the best."

Still, it's an interesting build and I encourage you to go look at it.

So that's the bottom line. In the end, I did manage to find some entertaining, engaging places for ancient rp in SL. There's even informal, self directed learning going on in these places. There's some great people to interact with. And I think, most interestingly, you might find yourself reconsidering how you look at certain groups of people, as your assumptions about the members of various communities are challenged.

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Hogwarts United: well organized immersion

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Newly hired assistant librarian Diogenes Penthesileia Kuhr and Head Librarian Siorai Timeless in the library at Hogwarts castle.

Mind you, my heart will always belong to Deadwood, but I do like to go exploring. And do you remember how I was telling you about being intrigued by the application and orientation system being used at Hogwarts United, a Harry Potter-themed immersion rp environment? And I told you how I had gone through the process, applying to be a staff member, and I would let you know how it turned out?

Well, boys and girls, I got hired!

I am an assistant librarian working in the school library, with a special emphasis on looking after the restricted and "dangerous" collections, although I also have been called on to take the front reference desk and help students with their research needs. This was my first week and it's been a blast, as well as an interesting and enlightening experience.

I have been switching back and forth between Deadwood and Hogwarts, and so far it's worked out pretty well. I'm pretty much just wearing my formal Victorian ensemble, but without the over-skirt and bustle, so the changeover doesn't involve a lot of extra effort to switch wardrobes. Fortunately, wizards and witches being sort of eccentric folks to start with, this look seems to fit in pretty well. But I'll say a bit more about costuming later on.

First, back to the admission process. You may recall that I had to do a lengthy written application that included a well developed backstory (retired Auror with PTSD, looking for something useful to do). Then I went to an Out of Character (OOC) interview with one of the admissions people (a charming young lady who mostly focused on asking questions designed to determine if I had a clue about the canon or not). After that I went to an OOC orientation class with a group of other new folks, and we got a good review of how things work in this community.

Then I had to wait for my face-to-face interview.

After a few days I heard from Deputy Headmisstress Anastasja Barbasz, who set up and conducted the meeting in her lovely office in the castle. The interview was done in character, and was a fascinating melding of roleplaying and a serious examination of me, the candidate. With us both in character, Deputy Headmisstress Barbasz was fun to interact with: I assume part of the exercise here was to make sure that (A.) I can actually roleplay effectively, and (B.) I'm not some kind of mega tap-dancing douche. But I genuinely enjoyed it.

I seemed to have managed to convince Ms. Barbasz about the mega tap-dancing douche issue, because lo and behold, a week or so later (Headmaster was on vacation and so the process was a bit slower than it most likely usually is) I was informed I had been hired and was told to report to the Head Librarian.

This brought me into contact with Head Librarian Siorai Timeless, who was just an absolute delight as she got me squared away on how the library functions, and what would be expected of me. In this process, there were a couple of surprises, the most interesting of which was being informed that I would be working the front desk and helping the students. This shows that these folks had a lot of faith in me, thinking that I am in any way of a temperament or otherwise appropriately suited to work with impressionable young people. Either that, or there is a serious flaw in their interview system that let me slip through.

But one of the key things I learned from Sio is that if there is no actual notecard or flip-style"book" available from the library's shelves covering the topic that a student is studying, then I would get to roleplay finding them the book. AND if I so chose, I could make up some plausible title and related details about the imaginary volume.

WOOHOO! This was real fun as I chattered away at the students about books I invented such as "The Idiot's Guide to Quidditch," "Treasures of Transfiguration." and "Great Duels I Witnessed: or How in Baal's name did he do that?" I got a bit carried away on the dueling book, explaining in detail about how it had been written by a man named McKromsky who had been Europe's best known referee of magical duels in the last century. However, being as he was pretty thoroughly drunk at almost every wizards' duel he ever refereed, there were holes in his memory and a lot of what was in the book was simply shit that he had made up. I did however, tell the students that it was really fun to read. At first I just rp'd giving the kids a book to sign out, but then I found an old freebie volume with a reading anim in the inventory, so I started giving them that.

After a few days of this kind of book duty and just observing and reacting, I began to initiate a few minor situations, and soon had some pretty full blown rp conversations of a philosophical and dramatic nature going. I had a lot of fun with some students (including my old friends from Deadwood, Tallulah and Guru) and several of the staff, including Professor Diesel (one of the charms instructors) and Nyx Carnell, the arithmancy and transfiguration professor. Nyx was a really good sport, putting up with my rambling and pontificating long after he should have gone to bed, and he is, like many of the folks in this environment, really damn good at the art of rp.

One of the most interesting interactions I had was with the guy in charge, Headmaster Nikolaidis. Now, be honest: when you think headmaster of a wizard school, you think some old Goodgulf Grayteeth character, right? A benevolent, grandfatherly old sod with twinkling eyes, a beard the size of Honduras, and shuffling around in a grubby old bathrobe with stars glued to it, right?

This ain't that kind of headmaster.

He's younger than me, slim and all dressed in leather, sporting a neatly trimmed goatee, and dude! ...about as benevolent and jolly as Genghis Khan. This man is serious, hard as nails, and ready for any shit that might come down the pike. He had combat blades strapped to his legs and an attitude that was...well....let me put it this way: when I offered that I had heard that he had something of a sense of humor (not sure where I got THAT from) he stared at me for a minute and then said flatly that he "was not aware of having anything like that."

Damn. If Dio wasn't a tough ol' kakootza herself, I think she'd have crawled under a rock and waited for dark to fall so she could escape unnoticed.

But don't get me wrong -- I thought this was really appealing and engaging. You have to keep in mind that this version of Hogwarts is set about 10 years after the last of the Harry Potter books ends. It is a new world, and still certainly dangerous. I have heard from several people, including the headmaster, that there have been bad things happening, people getting attacked, and that many of the students--being the children of the deatheater generation--have some pretty intolerant tendencies going. It really struck me that this was a headmaster who would NOT put up with any nonsense or folderol, and who would kick asses and take names if he had to.

And yet, at the same time, he told me his main goal was to encourage "the students to learn from one another."

Fucking fascinating...

Canon is there, it is respected--but it is just a starting point. What is being done here feels like "Potter: The Next Generation." Hell, I seem to be oldest person in the goddam castle, at least so far as I can tell (though I am still meeting folks). Most of the staff are in their 20's and 30's. Look at the picture of Sio, the head Librarian: she's a very attractive young lady, dressed in a sleek but practical pants suit, nicely coiffed and with cool glasses. Lots of the other folks are a bit more traditional in gowns and pointy hats, but damn...it's not your granddaddy's Hogwarts. The castle itself has the elements you would expect--great hall, towers, moving staircase, cloisters, dungeon like classrooms--but it also has a clean and slightly modernized feel to it. It's not all dark and cluttered, which in reality is probably a function of keeping prims under control, but mentally, it's easy to think that it's all an aspect of this "new Hogwarts" way of doing things. You can also imagine it is perhaps the result of the general clean-up and repairs that had to be done after the big battle that happens in the last book and which undoubtedly did a good deal of damage to the castle.

The approach that is taken by the players is admirable. There are classes that the students attend, uniforms are worn, and points given and taken from the various houses. Intrigue and rivalries abound. The teachers have to make syllabi, recommend books, and present lectures and demonstrations. The students are given homework, and come into the library complaining about it. The school administration clearly has planned out what they need and what they can manage from a practical standpoint, and when they had all their staff slots filled, they sent out an announcement saying that no more new staff would be hired until next term.

This is really well thought out and people have made a commitment that is impressive.

Is this for everyone?

No, of course not. It is rather demanding of time and energy. I imagine a lot of people burn out pretty quickly. Casual guests cannot wander in and ramble about the castle (though they can in the adjoining Hogsmeade village). And it takes awhile to get into this. I think of myself as a pretty experienced and adaptable roleplayer, but when I first got in, I felt constrained to quietly go about my assigned tasks and at most, give or respond to polite greetings. I observed and listened, and people pretty much left me alone until I was ready to begin getting to know them a bit and engaging them a little. It all felt very very real in terms of how people adjust to new situations.

My guess is that you need to be one of those in-between personalities. If you're really shy, you might get into this and go for weeks or months without talking to anyone very much. Or if you're a rampaging psychotic attention whore, you're probably going to bump up against the wall of the existing community culture, and burst into a mass of flaming farts, after which you'll go back to your usual haunts and whine about how insular and "cliquish" those people in Hogwarts are.

But hey, that's life on the grid, right? Me, I'm going to keep at this and see where it goes. Like I said, I love exploring, but sometimes, you really can't learn much by just visiting a culture for an hour or two, and then hope to come away saying you understand it. When it is this complex, you have to live in it and try to be a part of it. And so far, I am really enjoying living in this environment, and I am grateful to the Hogwarts United folks for opportunity to try to be a small part of it and understand their rp community a little better.

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The experiment of roleplaying in SL

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I regularly read Prokofy Neva's blog Second Thoughts (in fact, far more often than I ever look at the official Linden stuff). Many people frequently find Prokofy's long-winded commentaries to be infuriating or impenetrable (I will freely confess that about 54% of the time I don't even understand what the conversation is about), but Prokofy's writing almost invariably sparks intense debate and discussion, and by golly it sure as hell makes you think, even if your conclusion is to violently disagree with the blog's author. If Prokofy didn't exist, I suspect the SL blogosphere would have had to create him in some form. And periodically, I think what Prokofy puts out there can carry a certain degree of profundity, such as his most recent post "Second Life is a Crystal Ball" in which he expresses the idea that SL can be seen as an "emergent behavior panopticon." Prokofy observes:

"There are a thousand things you could be studying in Second Life, whether it is how disputes are resolved, how protest emerges and dissipates, how corporations manage people online, how people communicate and adjust their goals and compromise -- and lots of other separate tributaries of things like prototyping a car engine or a medical procedure, and they're all happening in SL -- yet largely unstudied."

This got me to thinking about what I have been observing and reflecting upon in recent months: the various different directions that the various SL roleplaying communities have been taking while playing out as experiments in creative cooperative recreation. Each rp environment is an experimental playground of the imagination, and as the people who are utilizing them experience problems and see new potential, they either make that environment evolve in response to the difficulties and perceived possibilities, or some of them move on and and create new communities and environments that try out new guidelines and forms of organization.

And right now, let me say, there is no perfect, one-size-fits-all rp environment. One style or system is not better than another. I am not a social Darwinist who thinks that rp communities are steadily evolving towards a single ultimate and ideal form, while the other versions are left behind to die off as some kind of inferior evolutionary dead-end dinosaur kind of thing. I firmly believe that the development of different forms of rp communities with different social structures is a good and healthy process, which accommodates the wide variety of people who are taking up this form of virtual recreation.

We are all different in terms of experience, how we learn, how we play, how we interact with other humans, and what we need to get out of that interaction. Consequently, it makes sense for a wide variety of roleplaying experiments to develop in-world, building upon and growing out of one another, and just because a new type of organization comes along, or an existing community develops in a different direction from what it had taken before, does not mean any of the various experiments are less legitimate, less fun for certain people, or deserve to go extinct.

Mind you I am very happy in Deadwood and am intrigued with how it has evolved since its inception (which is to a good extent different from how it functioned in its early months). But I am also intrigued with how other communities are evolving and what kinds of systems and structures they are establishing. For example, I recently decided to look into a community that is based upon the world of Harry Potter, not only because it sounded like a fun and interesting rp environment, but because its community leadership has set up a highly structured system for bringing in new players and fostering an enjoyable rp experience.

This is very different from so many rp communities which have a relatively loose induction system, that bascially comes down to "hey, read these rules, join this group, put on the right stuff, and please don't act like too big of dick." So I was very very curious about this "Hogwarts United" group. They start with not only giving you rules and guidelines to read, they also ask you to fill out an application (compete with well-thought out backstory), attend orientation class, and go through an interview. And THEN, if you are intent upon playing an adult and want to go to work for the Ministry of Magic or the Hogwarts School, you have to fill out another application to the folks who are in charge of those entities.

So far I have filled out the application (a process I really enjoyed being as so much of it was about developing a backstory, a process that I find to be really fun). I attended the class, which was a pleasant and efficiently-run (and not overly long) review of rules and guidelines with an opportunity to ask questions. And I had my interview with a charming and friendly admissions rep. This was more like a conversation than an interview, and again I found it to not be particularly onerous or intimidating, and the interviewer, Katerina, was very nice about listening to me ramble and answering my questions about this and that. I felt pretty good about it, not only because she approved on my ideas for what I wanted to do with my character, but because it felt like this process will ultimately be helpful in my transitioning into the community.

I'm still waiting to hear about my application to the school (to work as a special archivist dealing with the "restricted" collections), but hopefully, the Headmaster won't decide that it's too out-of-the-box or that I am too huge of a goober to pull it off. I'll keep you guys posted on how it turns out.

Anyhow, the whole thing has me curious to see what the community will be like and how it functions. I have never been a part of quite such a highly structured rp environment,and while I am sure it is not ideal for everyone, I could see how it could produce some interesting results, both in severely limiting access by potential griefers and in facilitating the introduction of new players into the environment. I suspect the next step in the evolution of rp communities may be something that combines elements of this highly structured approach with elements of the some of the looser systems.

Like Aldo says, "SL is a big social pressure cooker and you never know how the soup is going turn out, but at least it gets done pretty quick."

So what do you all think about what kinds of rp communities and environments best suit who you are, and what kinds of experiments might develop next?

~~~

Dialects and "accents" in SL -- or, who was that monster I saw you with last night?

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I finally got around to looking at the Girl Genius comic for the first time (in fact, I managed to piss away the better part of a weekend reading all the way through the online version of the stories, which first began appearing in hardcopy form in 2001). And this got me back to considering the different ways we express ourselves in our typed chat in-world.

The issue of people "speaking" (ie, typing ) in some form of dialect or "accent" in SL has been kicked around quite a lot in recent months and seems to have been a catalyst for a certain amount of angst and anger in certain communities. I have been thinking about this a good bit, especially after Miss Eugenia Burton commented on some elements of the conversation on her blog, Complicated Conundrum and mentioned that yours truly goes around the grid, frequently using an approximation of a rather thick 19th century rural Texan dialect without running into any obvious hostility or irritation because of how I "talk." Eugenia holds up the example of my experience as a contrast to that of other folks in sl who use an "accent" and feel that they are getting a substantial degree of negative reactions for their use of non-conventional spelling and speech patterns. Not unreasonably, she asks why.

At the time she wrote this piece, I had commented that I thought the question deserved some pondering, in part because I felt like I must be missing something. To some extent I felt this way because in the last couple years I have spent less and less time in the sims where the debate was growing, and also because I really didn't know very much about the group of players who seem to find themselves at the center the discussion in a great many cases. These are the sl residents who take on the appearance and speech patterns of "jagermonsters," fictional soldier-creatures that feature prominently in the stories of the Girl Genius comic by Phil and Kaja Foglio.

In the comic -- and when recreated by players in SL -- these creatures speak a heavily accented form of English that is represented through a distinctive arrangement of spelling and word choice that is meant to suggest a Germanic/Balkan background for these characters. It tends to look like something along the lines of, "Dollink! Dot is vun goot-lookink hat hyu got dere!

And yes it can be somewhat hard to follow sometimes. But does it really foster as much of a negative reaction as people think it does? And does it actually rub people the wrong way to greater extent than the happy horseshit dialect I tend to inflict on others in-world?

In some ways, I would think what I do would be more likely to piss people off. My dialect is not merely a construction of dropping g's, using o' rather than "of," and employing the ever popular "y'all." It also draws on colorful and profuse period profanity, good ol' working-class frontier vulgarity, and speech patterns, spelling and vocabulary that is drawn from sources such as Mark Twain, period newspapers, and historic diaries. The way I talk can not only be confusing, it can be downirght offensive to Victorian sensibilities. And it doesn't help that I am a woefully wretched typist to boot. I am told by some of our rl German-speaking residents in Deadwood that my chat makes their translators emit blue sparks and smoke after a while.

Yet I don't think I have ever really caught a ration of shit about what I am typing as Dio (other than within the context of rp, where it is not uncommon for some greenhorn lady fresh off the stage to get all offended by my coarse talk...but that's all in fun...um...I think).

Well it may be a bit of apples and oranges, being as in places like Deadwood, everyone expects some expression of persona through typed chat. I'm not that different from other people there. And I don't go to parties and dances in Caledon or the other steampunk sims any more, so consequently, I am not in contact with a non-frontier rp society at large in any big way. I gather, however, that many of the "jagerkin" spend a lot of time participating in the general social life of the Victorian and steampunk sims on a very regular basis. So that very well may be a large part of why they can end up ruffling some feathers, while there aren't negative emails or blog posts (that I am aware of, anyway) talking about that dreadful Kuhr woman and how hearing her speak is like being subjected to the sound of nails on a chalkboard accompanied by fumes from a portapotty at a outdoor rock concert that the honey-wagon boys forgot to pick up until a week later. I'm just not around enough to irritate the fuck out of people for the most part.

So is part of it about that "being hard to follow" thing? There may be something to that. In Deadwood we had a grizzled old character named Crakajack whose typist went to almost mind-numbing lengths in creating long segments of chat that were truly spectacular examples of "genuine frontier gibberish." It was funny and brilliant and entirely appropriate, and holy Mother of God, I wish I had saved some transcripts of it. At the same time, I seemed to be the only person who had the least goddam idea of what he was saying (and yeah, it took some effort to read it over a couple of times and figure it out). I don't think Crakajack ever got the kinds of interaction or reactions he hoped for, and finally his typist killed the character off (he got shot over a gambling debt back on China Row).

So there is a balance we have to seek between giving free reign to our creativity and actually being able to communicate with others effectively. I do at times find my myself adjusting my dialect for the situation: if I know I am talking with a non-native speaker of English who is probably using a translator, I'll pick simpler vocabulary and type it out more fully so there is a better chance of the translation making some sense. Likewise, I will tone down the colorful and earthy stuff in certain circles, just because the idea of getting the message across often takes precedence over the authentic feel of the language. So maybe we need to be willing to make compromises if the goal is communication.

That said, once I actually got into Girl Genius, I came to get a sense of why people are so committed to taking on the persona of a jagermonster, including the occasionally impenetrable chat.

These guys are a hoot and a half: funny, sarcastic, tough, brave, enthusiastically violent, and uglier than a Fox News marketing meeting. They wear a wacky mix of pre-1900 European military-style uniforms, and most ordinary folks are scared shitless of them. They provide a regular comedic element to the Girl Genius storylines, and at the same time they often function as a kind of Greek chorus, commenting on the action and main characters as the classic outsiders, who periodically make observations of substantial profundity.

So, of course, lots of people want to be jagermonsters: I so totally get it now that I have read the comic (which by the way, I thoroughly freakin' enjoyed). The jagers are characters that appeal to certain kinds of people who feel a connection there -- the sense of humor, the sense of being outsiders, of being different from the rest of society (and so perhaps appreciating the very unique different-ness of the jager way of looking and talking). The more I have pondered on this, I don't think it really is about rp as much as it is about selecting an avatar and a way of speaking and comporting oneself -- the persona -- that we feel best represents the uniqueness of who we are, even in a virtual context. People clearly are putting on the jager look and doing jaeger-speak not so much in the interest of telling stories or creating specific scenarios -- they simply are choosing to move through the world in a form that they have found comfortable and fun..

Hell, Dio is pretty much her typist, other than Mrs. Kuhr is a little younger, a little tougher, a little more fun to listen to, and a better shot. We do tend to take on personas that amuse us, that are perhaps the slightly more polished or intensified versions of what we think we are (or wish we could be), and it is understandable that when we have a less-than-enthusiastic reaction to our choices of avie and persona and speech patterns, we will feel it is, in essence, a rejection of ourselves in some way. Ultimately it probably is only about not being easily understood, but it feels to us like something more.

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How do you make roleplaying work in Second Life? ...and why bother?

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There's been a good bit of discussion lately about RP and what works and what doesn't in different communities within SL, including some very rational sharing of thoughts on two blogs I follow pretty regularly, Hibernia on the Skids and Backpacking Burro. Much of the recent back and forth has been set in motion by a kerfuffle in the steampunk sims that appears to have settled down for the most part.

Here's the latest commentary about it on Hotspur's blog

It seems to have gotten pretty intense there. But you know, every place gets its share of drama -- after all, self inflicted angst is one of the ways we as humans entertain ourselves. And, I think, in the virtual context, both manufactured and naturally occurring conflicts of a minor and relatively unimportant nature provide us with a distraction from the Truly Awful Shit that is out there lurking in our real lives.

I think the key question here is how do we best nurture and manage the "manufactured" conflict that is often at the heart of much RP? In essence how do we create positive conflict for our entertainment and edification?

Here on Headburro's blog, I direct your attention to a general discussion of some of these larger issues with RP:

Not everyone likes RP or even agrees on what it is or how it is best carried out. And that's just jim-fuckin-dandy with me. The expression of diverse viewpoints is a great participatory sport.

But obviously, looking at it from my own wacky perspective, RP does have a potentially positive place in life for many of us. And I think SL can be a useful tool for augmenting and enhancing the RP playground of the imagination, as we individually and collectively create or recreate worlds and realities different from our own and tell stories within those contexts. RP is in many ways a viable, enjoyable and structured means by which we can inflict drama upon ourselves in a controlled way, so that we can have that distraction from real life's TAS, and sometimes connect with other folks in some real fun ways. Sometimes those other players we connect with are of a like mind to our own, and sometimes they are coming from a wildly different perspective than our own, but goddammit, that's part of the wonder and beauty of it.

That said, I do note from the on-going discussions that there does seem to be a tendency to have a tidier form of rp in the sims that have a very focused theme -- Gorean realms , or historical sims like Versailles and Deadwood, or certain science fiction environments -- where you have things like rules, and guidelines and clear expectations of what is going to happen and how it is going to play out.

And please notice that I say "tidier" not "better."

I think there is a great deal to be said for a a more flexible form of rp experimentation, such as what you typically have going on in some of the steampunk sims. Yeah, it ain't always tidy, it ain't always pretty, but goddamn it sure is interesting and you never know what the hell people are going to throw into that history/fantasy/sci fi/militant tiny mashup, which is sure as shit exciting.

But it's not for everyone.

Just like going back to a relatively literal recreation of the historical Black Hills in the 1870s ain't for everyone.

But then as I have often said, it's a big goddam grid. And if it can't accommodate everyone someplace, then the folks who ain't being accommodated have the ability to get off their asses and create their own lil' playground of the imagination and try to draw in like-minded -- at least compatibly minded -- fellow players.

Still, there is much to be said for the idea expressed by some of the commentators on O'Toole's blog that it might be useful and interesting --at the very least entertaining -- to find a neutral space and bring together people who have different views on RP. Then we could see if we can step out of character and kick around ways we might facilitate a collective form of RP that could serve as an alternative to the complete balkanization of the larger RP communities, until we only end up with each one of us rp'ng with one other guy (who is most likely your own alt anyway).

I'd be interested in being a part of that discussion.

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