i haven’t been taking the time to post all of my 365’s but today’s i would like to dedicate to something that i feel is becoming a bit of confusion in my second life, and i want to set the record straight, and hopefully give some information on something that many of you might not have any experience with.
when i joined second life, i thought it was a community for furries, like furcadia, because the people who showed second life to me were furries, and we stuck to the furry areas. obviously my base avatar was human, but i thought that furries were the majority. once i started exploring on my own and realized this was not the case, i started to assemble avatars based on my more humanoid role playing game characters from p4rgaming.com. nimil, torch, and 5880, as well as just fiddling around with an avatar that slightly resembled myself but not.
for me, second life became a place where i could visualize people i had written about for years.
in real life, i’ve always been the weird one, the “freak”. the little goth kid, and the weird girl with the weird fashion sense. this obviously traveled with me into second life, but beyond that, i was given the option to augment and change my physical form at will.
this is what made me a shape shifter.
every day i log into second life and i am given unlimited options of what i want to look like that day. most days i dress my mood. shitty day? dead girl or demon chick, happy day? silly cartoony furry avatar. or what ever my close friends are dressing as, i can match them or at least wear something complementive to their appearance.
this is why i stay in second life.
contrary to what some may believe, this is not some major lifestyle or sub culture to me. anyone can be a shape shifter. if you enjoy changing your head every day from one mesh head to another, you are a shape shifter. if some days your skin is african american, and the next day you are a pale white girl, you are a shape shifter. its that simple. that’s all there is to it. there’s no test, no membership card. you just have to enjoy your world and like to change how you look from day to day. even if you just slap on a neko tail once in a while for fun, you are a shape shifter.
of course i am sure there are some people out there that claim this as their true identity, that they do not identify as human in the real world, and instead consider themselves a shapeshifter, but that is not what i am doing. in the real world i am painfully aware that i am nothing more than a human being with one hell of an imagination. however in second life, where my options are limited only by my cash flow, i am happy to have the ability to be all the things.
how can you, dear reader, be a shape shifter? attach a tail, buy a furry avatar, try some skins that aren’t your normal tone, wear colourful hair, wear horns or non-human ears. your options are limited only by your personal imagination (and your $L). if it makes you happy, then enjoy it. don’t let venue rules, “social norms”, or the people around you scare you away from experimenting. i am completely opposed to people telling others that they cannot branch out beyond their humanoid avatars because they are usually human. you are an avatar, be what ever it is that you feel like being! in this world we are all magic. do not squash other’s dabbling in all that second life offers.
