The fantastic, or the hyper normal?

Something I've been thinking about a bit over time. Sorry if this ends up kinda essay-ish. Please do feel free to chew on it a bit.

Within Second Life, we're set up to do amazing things. each one of us can fly. We can teleport (when SL lets us). We can form ourselves into any shape, unbound from the constraints of our real-life flesh. In SL, we and explore amazing worlds: the dark spires of Svarga, the mid-century science fiction of Planet Mongo, or the world of the Tunnel of Light -- to name just a few.

In my own second life, well... those in the undying thread have read about my weekends long enough. I cram a lot into them. My day-to-day can be full of the fantastic, so much so that I might even view those things as mundane.

Also within my second life, I live in the world of an average -- if there is such a thing as average in our world -- kid. I go to an elementary school and do, well, elementary school things. I help my aunts with their stores, and hang out at the dock in Livingtree to do some fishing from time to time. I have a nice little house in the suburbs (and, actually, two of those nowadays).

Over the weekend there was a real-world space shuttle launch, and a couple folks on the Forum Cartel list wanted to watch it. I fired up the media stream and tossed it on a big-ish prim in the backyard in Shermerville, and they teleported over. I also called over a couple friends, including shouting "c'mon over" a friend or two within the same set of suburban sims. We sat and watched the launch, ate some grilled burgers off the backyard grille, and enjoyed a cola from the ol' ice chest. It was a pretty traditional block party.



Last night, while a number of us (me, my sister Robin, my brother Pygar, and my Aunty Carrie) were at that property, we heard the ringing of a doorbell. Setting aside that I've not scripted in a doorbell at that house (yet), my brother answered it to find a door-to-door saleslady on our stoop. Well, she wasn't actually selling anything. Just goofing around with a "Judge Judy" soundboard and fashioning a conversation.



Aside from being quite funny, and more than a little surreal, I was struck with how "normal" this seemed. A little suburban house, and its housemates being disrupted by a door-to-door sales person. Heck, all of this is almost "hyper real" to me. It's almost like the suburbia you hear of from earlier centuries, an almost saccharine version tinged with nostalgia or longing. Or is it? In the real world, salespeople don't use soundboards, and block party members don't teleport in and out. Heck, after the time with the door to door salesperson, we all went to Alien Isles in the Unknowable region and dances around while making music with planets.

So what is your world? Is it the mundane or the fantastic? Is it a bit of both? Do you choose it, or does it just work out that way? What are your thoughts?

Question. Do you own and live in the house by yourself? If so that seems unusual to me. Sort of like Burt and Ernie on Sesame Street. To me they always seemed like kids, but they were also living on their own without any parents so I could be wrong and maybe they were really adults. (It's hard to say with muppets)

Yes and no. In Shermerville, yes. In Hundertwasser, not entirely. I have an SL family, but my parents are now rarely on. They had one of those big SL drama breakups.

Aww Poor Mari- it's always the kids that suffer in these things.

Other than ocassionally sprouting wings, a tail and horns - oh yeah and caprine feet from time to time, I mostly live a normal life albeit a rather glamorous one in that I do get to wear some lovely clothes and have been known to garden in a ballgown. I live in a castle though am seldom there - kinda have a job in an artistic sense because I build for my stores. Yup- pretty mundane really.

I am always a kid in SL and do much the same as Mari. Last night my elementry class went on a field trip to a few fantastic places such as The Cloud Chateau, The Light Tunnel and Black Swan. I live with my SL parents on a island and have a few siblings. During the week I stay at the dorms at school. So I think that part of me is involved in a somewhat normal life in SL.

I also am involved with NCI (New Citizens Inc) and Oxbridge University (a landing point for new people) I still remain a child while doing both these things, afterall I am a child in SL

I do from time to time take breaks from SL just to recharge or simply do RL things and dont go to SL. But I look at SL as being a part of me so I will always return, refreshed and ready to go

Till I became a kid in SL, almost from day one, I was kinda lost... felt like something was missing. Im much happier bein a kid in SL

It really depends on the other folk in the vicinity at the time: I've seen some pretty surreal things happen but folks seem to be just as quick to react as though they're being griefed as join in. Of course there are always smart alecs who like to switch from one crazy av to another, the "I've-got-an-inventony-and-I'm-gonna-use-it" nonsense but I don't think that's the kind of thing the OP is asking about.

I once got myself stuck in Nancy Blake's Pub in the West of Ireland not long after I started Second Life. It was one of those days when the server was down and nobody could teleport and there was only one other av there, a guy by the name of Cezanne Barbossa, who was thankfully quite an entertainment in himself. We spent the few hours of our enforced visit getting drunk and trying out a bit of amateur Riverdance stuff on the danceballs. I was still enough of a newbie to see those drinking animations as a hilarious novelty and the whole experience reminded me what it is like to be rained in at an Irish pub in RL - a genuinely surreal experience I've enjoyed many times.

Finally I rezzed a Mack truck on the terrace outside and offered him a lift home.

I tried something like Marianne's saleswoman once, getting togged up in my best suit and tie to go selling insurance in a gay cruising sim. Nobody seemed to get the joke, which I found genuinely strange. No one even found it in the least bit kinky, which shocked me even more. I changed tack and tried selling bibles from the "First Church of Jesus Christ Recidivist", inviting the guys to join me at good old-fashioned prayer meeting.

Not one but two of them threatened to have me banned.

Ephraim Kappler shakes his head ruefully.

Or maybe it's "Your Humorless World, Your Humorless Imagination".....

Yep. Would seem that way for a lot of folk.

My second life has become more...normal I think...as in "more like my day to day real life"...I meet up with my partner each evening, we work, we hang out...go out for *dates*, and then snuggle up to sleep..

and thats GOOD to me

Considering my idea of a home is a bricked in underground pond below a giant cookie jar with a magically disappearing concrete slab as an enterance... Gotta say, my existence here is pretty fantastic. =^-^=

But, I do have the regular stuff. Pictures on the walls, wood/brick/concrete construction, a TV, bean bags. I do live alone regardless of the age/appearance I take on. Each character I take on has a backstory that involves existing in that basement in some way. (^_^)

Most of the places I go have a certain surreality and whimsy to them, and, it's just the way I like it. =^-^=

I definitely think that for most it's trying something that would otherwise be considered "normal" but something that they can't have the RL. Someone that wants to be a kid but isn't can be so, someone that wants to own a castle but can't, can do so. Someone who wished they lived in Edo-period Japan can.

There are some definitely way outside the box fantastic things out there, for sure - underwater parties, all the neko, and other fantasy stuff.

One of the things that constantly fascinates me is that they are all at home and accepted in SL.

What *I* don't understand are the people that come into SL and set themselves up in an identical fashion to what they have in RL. I just don't see the point.... I am prepared to be educated, though.

Hmmm....

What is normal anyway. In the context of SL....nothing is really mundane for me because visually I find it so intriguing. Nor is it a fantasy, in that I don't profess to be any other creature in SL other then human......and at that, I am myself because I find it difficult to be otherwise. Fantasy is labor intensive for me....I'm a writer....I can write fantasy....but to 'act' it is just not my cup of tea.

The real fantasy is the control.....the immediate gratification in nearly everything we do in SL from teleporting to changing clothes. It's just soooo much simpler....which is indeed a fantasy in contrast to RL.

As for that launch....hehehe.....I just walked out my front door to watch it...night launches are really something to see.

Other than the fact that my BF is a llama? And that I hang out with every creature known to mankind and others not even imaginable? And that occassionally I have a home that floats in the sky? Completely normal for the most part.

I don't know, Mari...

Like you, on the one hand I'd describe my SL as "normal". I hang around my house and my garden and the waterfront. Sail a little. Talk to my residents, visit my friends or have them visit me. Go to Oxbridge and hang out with Toy and the other professors and answer newbies' questions. Go to parties, or shopping.

I don't do nearly as much wild and crazy stuff as you do on your weekends. But sometimes the odd whim strikes me, and I'll go roaming around as a dragon, or a tiger or something. Or I'll put on a nice conservative outfit and then go looking for the seediest, most disreputable parts of town to see what happens (usually something highly amusing). Or I'll just go exploring in Search or on foot, and discover something new and beautiful, or new and shocking.

I especially like it when something truly outrageous happens. Then, no matter what I'm feeling on the inside, I try to put on a calm, blase' face. "My, my. An invasion of nine foot orange Arturians." This is great fun, especially when the Arcturians, or whatever, goof along with you.

Someone like Crazod would go nuts, bored to death with my SLife. I love seeing his endless assortment of avatars.

I like normal, mostly...but it's much more fun if you know that, just maybe, a dash of strange will appear on your doorstep, or around the next corner.

Kalderi reminded me, Sunday I dressed as a Geisha (in SL) to sit in RL and watch The Last Emperor with my RL husband and son- [husband just shakes head at me playing barbie dolls when he isn't complaining about me spending too much time on my Stupid Life (tm)].

I think I accidentally landed in the (real) future, in a way. Someday I can very much see a quaint sort of happy land as Caledon coming about in places, where technology is so advanced that it sort of becomes what *we* want it to be...

Besides, how does one tell the mundane from the fantastic?

Every day, in every way, every moment is a miracle.

Essentially my SL is normal. I am a young female adult humanoid avatar, I don't morph into other shapes, I just change clothes or tie my hair back sometimes.

If I plan to fly, I put on my jetpack, safety suit and crash helmet. If I go underwater for any length of time I put on my scuba outfit. Within my home sim and the adjoining ones, I normally get about on foot. Of course, if I want to go further afield, to events, I have no option but to teleport. My home, the Egotherapy Centre is sort of real-world, rather like a typical mock-Tudor British pub that has been put to a new a new use.

But I do have a sky platform with a chillout club beneath it, all held up by an anti-gravity system (It does have a cold fusion generator to provide the necessary power). Cold fusion is a reality in SL. Accept that and almost everything else can be explained!

So, I try to keep myself real, but I love to be in the midst of surreality, in an Alice in Wonderland kind of way. For instance, I happen to own the world's largest paintbrush. I've had it for a long time and it's usually on display in the gallery under my lawn. At one time I had it on a touring exhition in sandboxes. It even had its own visitor centre.

Hmmm….fantastic or hyper normal? I really can’t tell anymore My current home is quite plausible (normal) in RL but pretty much fantastical in the sense of place and time, excepting the well that grants eternal youth. I’m currently gearing up to demolishing it and building another home, only slightly less plausible but equally out of place and time. Myself, my looks vary more than normal in SL but apart from the physical representation I think I’m pretty much recognizable—I believe I have a “normal” me. As for what I do, that’s where I enjoy the whole range of fantastic to hyper normal. I do some of the same things I do in RL, like geocaching, talking and socializing with others, learning new skills, admiring art or travelling. I also build highly improbably things, fly, sail and drive unusual vehicles, encounter dragons, demons, talking teddy bears and Victorian gentlefolk. I also can eat cake with impunity. That’s pretty fantastic in itself.

I forgot a couple of truly entertaining incidents with that resourceful fox, Seagel Neville:

The first was where, ignorant jerk that I am, I couldn't get his brilliant sliding door script to lock. Plug:

/15/2d/150602/1.html

Anyway this little fox in a lab coat rezzes with a clipboard and explains I just need to left-click and hold until the door whispers 'locked' or unlocked' as the case may be. He then proceeded to run at the door and bounce off it just to demonstrate that it was locked. I seized up laughing and fell off my chair watching that.

You really had to be there to see his little legs scuttle in mid-air.

On another occasion, he came over to my place and helped me translate the titles on a long stream of Hibari Misora songs I uploaded to my parcel. We danced on the rooftop for nigh on two hours as he hammered out translations of the titles with me. Hilarious and all the more enjoyable because I suspect he enjoyed the music more than he would let on.

I hardly ever do anything really unusual in SL. I mean, sure, I might be changing species midway through a conversation to illustrate a point, then teleporting fifty miles into an inverted trumpet to help someone who's having a problem with the flying wing "jet glider" I sell. Missed the railing because the guy invited me while he was facing the wrong way, plummeted half a mile before I could unfurl my glowing rainbow wings. Taking a detour on the way back up to check out a floating garden that looks like something from an album cover...

Nah, it's just the same-old same-old.

If I really take a hard look at my SL, it's nowhere near as fantastical as I would have thought. I spent ten years in RL being a science and SF/Fantasy illiustrator (with modest success - no big name or anything) and I do come up with grandiloquent ideas of things I'd like to do -whether it's creating an utterly alien environment or exploring such with a few like minded souls.

But as it happens, I come home competely drained every day from dealing with pushy people and I use SL as a kind of unwinding spa. I guess I'm not really looking for too much adventure.

My idea of a good time is to just enjoy the vast landscapes or to spend companionable silence - as in a month ago or so when Ghosty told the Cartel people about a cool art / weather exhibit floating above the NMC campus. I was feeling a little less reclusive that day and showed up to find Ghosty and Marianne already there. Immy showed up shortly afterward. Like I say we sat in companionable silence, not needing to fill the void with meaningless chatter - just enjoyed the exhibit. I'm very comfortable with those kind of quiet expereinces. Maybe I'm getting old and that's reflected in my SL.

Like Lindal though, I too enjoy when the rare unexpected craziness happens, and it always does at just the right time to keep me from getting jaded.

I just wanted to say I am enjoying this thread so much! When I have been going along in my day to day Second Life I haven't noticed the contrast between normal and fantastical. It becomes much more entertaining when you read others experiences.

I do a lot of normal things in Second Life. I sit and snuggle with my loved ones. I go out dancing. I sail. The fantastical aspects come when you look a bit beneath the surface. The cozy home I snuggle in is a cave with a garden above all floating in the sky. I can dance in a variety of venues from a disco club to dancing on a planet floating in space. My loved ones are extremely varied: average looking humans, people of other times, futuristic people, a wide variaty of animorphs, dragons, fae, demons, angels and occasionally even an object or two.

It is funny to think that eventually you get used to the fantastical and carry on doing normal things in the midst of it. This whole thread has totally amused me.