Your avatar's form: is it 'you', or is it just like clothing?

My avatar shape has a cool story to it, kinda, ok its kinda lame.

Anyway when i was a newbie I was taken to Lash to buy her one mens style she had at the time. It looked completely retarded on my avatar so I IMed lash and asked her for the shape of the guy on the box, plus he was really cute and I want to make out with him. Hehe.

So my avatars appearance doesnt really reflect my RL apperance phsyically. So I guess i see it more like cloths.

Plus I have a bunch of weird avatars i wear like my bag lady and Lady Barnes, smurfette etc etc

I initially started out as my real life self. Unfortunately I realized pretty quickly that I was avoiding other people in what was a rather social game. I suppose I felt too much like myself, which is boring compared to all the dragon/mech/supermodel/blingtastic/animal avatars out there! I've also experienced some crazy drama in MMORPGs before, which has crippled my trust in the civility of people on line.

Likening myself to an explorer in SL I thought about my sweet little rats and their curious and exploratory nature. (You have no idea how hard it is to track down an escaped rat who thinks the best thing in the world is to lead you on a chase under and around the couch while just barely evading your reach with each lunge )

As a rat in SL I'm hoping to loosen up a bit and be able to enjoy my second life! I've kept some RL things that make me feel comfortable too. I'm not as short as my avatar, but I am rather short in RL. I enjoy being a full figured girl, even if I sometimes feel like the only one! I've even taken photos of the RL pants I always wear and converted them to SL pants.
I might run and hide sometimes, but at least I'll keep crawling out to explore again.

Erm, so yes my avatar is a kind of extension of myself, but I also see it as a tool to interact with other. I don't mind switching tools to fit in, but I'd prefer to be "myself."

Hmm! How would we know the odor of Bush when we were accosted by it? I bet the SS doesn't like people coming up to smell the president. Then again, with his ranch back in Texas, maybe he just smells like horse.

I love this poll because of the responses it has generated!

I don't think of my avatar as "me" but she's certainly not just like clothing to me. Maybe more like a beloved pet who also functions as a puppet. I have a hard time feeling like she's really herself when I make changes to her appearance, so they're always very temporary. The funny thing is, my friends seem to like it when I change her back to the way she's "supposed" to look too. It feels as weird to me for my avatar to wear a different shape than it would for my cat to walk around with a dog suit on. I guess I feel like my avatar is something with her own identity and I am truly amused when people react to her as if she actually is me and tell me I'm beautiful. I don't have a picture up in my profile, so very few of the people who say that to me know what I really look like.

<walks up to the president and sniffs>
Mmm, strawberries! >D


My avatar is a self creation, like most of the artistically gifted out there in SL land. I kind of relate to native Americans and the idea of an animal guide, so my avatar is an extension of that relationship, an anthromorphic cougar. I'll change clothes, change height (for laughs mostly. Also for the, "OMG you're chibi! ^.^" effect from girls. Girls dig chibis. > ), and change sex (if I've got to stare at an avatar for a long period of time, I'd rather stare at a curvacious female. Plus it makes for a good joke here and there too), but I'm always an anthromorphic cougar. So for me, my avatar is more a representation of who I am than simple clothing.

That's my assumption.

I learned long ago that my avatar is so me, it's pitiful. I can't play a guy, for instance - just can't do it. I always make the avatars to look as much like me as possible, in whatever game. In SL, my avatar is like me, only younger, prettier, and no doubt taller.

I don't have a problem playing animals, though. I was Strawbearry the bear in TSO, and did just fine "being" her, and in SL I can be my squirrel tiny or my koala tiny Cristiano gave me, with no difficulty at all, as long as I'm wearing a skirt, so you know I'm female! Though when I am a Tiny I tend to get more and more bizarre until I'm acting like I'm losing my tiny little mind, and have to change back to sensible human.

I enjoy the free avatars I've collected, too (most of them) and enjoy role-playing in them.

For my regular self, I have made different make-up to go with different outfits - that's about as different as I ever get.

AND - oh dear I keep remembering things - I made a Weird and Terrible little avatar once, who wore a boa and carried a cigarette holder, and I loved her, but lost most of her somehow. Problem was, she was sassy, and people tended to distrust her some, or at any rate, not treat her as nicely as they usually treat me. Photo attached. Well, I would attach a photo, but the option doesn't seem to be here.

coco

P,.S. Okay, will someone please explain to me what is the deal with attachments? It won't let me add them and it won't say why, but when I click on this thing on the left of the user CP that says "Attachments" it takes me to a page with a list of them. I'm gathering that I have used them all up! But this seems brand new to me.

My avatar is a point that shows where my presence in the world is. A round, shiny point.

I find that I do the same thing. I bought a baby avatar, because they were too cute to pass up with all their little sounds and stuff, but I still retextured my diaper to be pink with cherries. If I wear my Tick avatar, I still put my geeky horned-rimmed glasses on. There always has to be a little bit rockabilly, a little bit Vegas, a little bit swanky, which is just me.

Your guess is likely correct.

I was wondering this, in direct regard to the requirement of human form that is imposed in some sims.

Yet comparable requirements may be rampant across Second Life by all sorts, for all reasons. I don't know; I don't get out much.




Role play.


At one extreme, it brings to mind the 'Fear of Girls' video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7521044027821122670&q=fear+of+girls

Any thought of 'discrimination' in their roleplay environment would certainly be considered facile. Well, unless perhaps you are Doug in the video, but that's another subject.



On the other hand, someone once wrote "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."

We constantly play our own roles: our 'selves'. Some strive very hard to be true to who they are.

To allow someone else to dictate, to control the form of your 'self' beyond a mere game - that is the very definition of subjugation. A deeply personal choice to make, depending upon how you define yourself in the first place.



Well, enough said. I'm going to press the 'SUBMIT Reply' button now.

100% agree. Sable is an extension of me as far as I'm concerned - and to change her shape or name would detract from that sense of identity. Apart from some very minor tweaking for times I've worn skirts I've not changed my shape since the day I touched down in the Welcome Area.

Mine looks just like me, it is as close to my RL physical appearence as I could make it, and I believe it is an extension of myself, because I'm quite retarded.

I have, as I've seen termed somewhere in these forums, Multiple Body Disorder. In my inventory are gazillions of folders containing different shapes, outfits, whole avatars. I love fooling with new looks and forms; customizing avatars is a terrible, terrible addiction.

However, my basic, original avatar -- a short, brown-eyed human brunette in all-black with a bob hairstyle -- remains preserved as the one true representation of "me". My many anthro avatars often take on the same bob hairstyle and brown eye color...but no matter how often I shapeshift, I find I always return to this original human form.

So I guess in my case, I fall in both camps!

My avatar is sort of an optimized personality extension of "me" proper. He looks like me, more or less (I hired someone to make a 3d rendition of me 2 years ago, and haven't modified it much since except to trim some fat off), but he has various accroutements and attachments that simply wouldn't fly in RL (no pun intended).

For instance, I don't have a helicopter hat in RL, although I DO have a Fedora. Both in SL and RL, my hat has become a bit of a personal symbol that people identify with me.

I don't have a steampunk robot arm in RL.

I don't have tintable glasses in RL. Also, generally speaking, I don't wear jeans and a herringbone jacket; instead, I'm usually t-shirt and cargo pants.

And yet, this assemblage of pixels is "me" in how I represent myself. My avatar has evolved considerably over time, from being a top-hat, suit-wearing guy with dark shades and a cane to a geeky t-shirt dude to my half-professor look now.

nevertheless, he's me, and I'm him. Roleplaying is too abstract for me.

LF

I have a "me" avatar that's made to look like the RL me. Not surprisingly I feel the most me-ish in it. I also have a female avatar that I use when working on clothing textures and skins and I also wear it around a lot. When using that one I don't feel any personal connection to the avatar. It's just the car I'm driving. I also have a little tree guy I pull out now and then. When I wear that one I feel more like a roleplayer, but mostly because the avatar suggests some obvious schtick and I usually milk it for laughs

My main av is "me". I worked on her for a few weeks, tweaking here and there... she is very close to my RL height (I think she's just a little taller than me when she's barefoot - a lot taller when wearing shoes), so I didn't go for the amazon look on purpose . I'd say she is "me" with physical improvements .

I do have other avs - furries, goth skinned one, giant snail.. but I always come back to "me."

I think I saw part of Coco's Weird and Terrible av, at least the parts of her Coco could find - she was awesome

Let's see...my standard form is a blonde bimbo that dresses kind of trashy. Then I have my skeleton avatar that I love. I should log in and go roller skating with it. That's fun.
I have a furry and a couple of tinies. I am sometimes one of those cool fire dragons. I forget the name of them.


And can't forget my killer tomato av.

Usually I am the blonde bimbo and skeleton.

Ditto.

My avatar is just a representation of me in Second Life, it's not me, it's just something I use to talk through and I decorate cause I like things to look good.

Avatar means basically just that, using a form to communicate through, though it is not you. A person who communicates the word of a god(ess) is considered an avatar.

The god wouldn't say that that person is me, just that I use that person to talk to the other people.

You imply disparity where none exists.

For me the avatar represents an extension of my personality in 3D space. In that respect, it is me. This is not roleplay: I am not playing the role of someone else. I use the avatar as an advance communication device that serves as my extension.

Its visuals represent who I am in personality, its behavior is a (mostly) accurate description of my reactions and behavior outside of the computer terminal. When you use 3D enviroments for almost a decade, these kind of things just come to you so naturaly that you do not even have to think about it.

I never remove the cat ears and tail. I never change my eyes from the purple cat eyes. These are not accessories - these are an essencial part of my avatar and that pretty much symbolise "who I am". I chose the catgirl design in the begining because I felt it refers to my personality in the most accurate way, and it looks like I was right. (or so, most people agree)

I change my cloths alot, sometimes the hairstyle, but I almost always try to keep up with a theme that refers to my personality - just like one would do in RL. When I change my cloths, its usually monochrome cloths, with the exception of some casual color. The hair is always black.

So i'd say for me the vote would be "yes" - the avatar is me.

For me the avatar is a character, as I hold SL to be an RPG..clothes change, characters change.

I for one wouldn't walk around a classical japanese build in leather bondage gear or an adult sim as a child.

Nooobody believes me! Eeeiiaaahh!

Why am I here... please don't ask...
But you should try my new stinking freaking frosty milk shake... made with real icecream.

I suppose there are some that were hoping I'd reply to this thread, I'm not going into why. For the most part, I'm on par with what CS just described. And for those interested, a little history (appologies for being long-winded in advance, skip it if yer not one for history lessons ):

For four years I was a pure white feline furry in a community called "Furcadia". It isn't very well known from what I gather. I actually had issues from time to time feeling completely natural in a full anthropomorphic form, but over the years I eventuall came to be completely comfortable with it. On the other hand, there was a "dream" I once visited in Furcadia that had human avatars, it felt even more wrong than the occassional problem I had with being a full furry in the first year.

Eventually I came to SL, and, still feeling only natural in form as a fur, I grabbed a fur av from Luskwood at the earliest possible oppurtunity, which, at the time, I chose their wolf avatar. Why didn't I choose the cat? I'm still fuzzy on that one... probably a combination between not really liking the version of the cat avatar they had back then, and wanting to try something new to see if it felt more "natural". Though in time, I came to realize that feline was definently the best representation.

Only a month later, it dawned on me that since I disliked the normal human form as a representation of me, and a furry feline didn't always feel "right", maybe I needed something in between. And it was about then that I started to use my neko avatar. Several months later, I had built the avatar (shape, clothing, skin textures, animations, everything) myself to a very specific ideal form I had in mind. And now what I have is a form that I hand-made from the ground up that is totally, and completely, a 100% representation of who I am. "Who I am" is not read, "what I look like in real life".

Admittedly, I have one other form that I consider "me" (but to a lesser degree than the form I described above). It basically a direct reconstruction of the avatar I had when I was in Furcadia. And its based off the Luskwood lion white avatar, which I took the time to make much more domestic-looking (so now it looks halfway between their "big cat" and "domestic cat" avatars). I guess the reason for having this avatar is that sometimes I get a little "home sick" from what I used to be in Furcadia, even if it was not really a perfect representation of me back then.

That's the end of the history lesson. As for why I would bother to admit that my avatar form is so important to me? There's only one thing that would make me bold enough to tell all about what avatar forms mean to me (aside from seeing that the majority of SL residents *do* identify with their avatar, or at least those in this thread): friends. Alot of my friends that know me now, and care for me, will kinda become impatient if I'm wearing my full furry avatar until I switch back to my normal avatar. Though in some rare cases, mainly from friends that knew me before SL, they'll be antsy until I switch to my furry cat avatar . They don't feel that they are looking at "me" until I'm in my normal form, that I'm in some sort of costume. The ones that know me personally, know my personality, know *who I am*, all agree that my usual form is what best represents me in SL. In a digital world that is a social environment and not a game, that counts for alot.

Again, appologies for going on and on, but, I suppose there will be at least one or two people out there that will appreciate that info (I hope).

Mew,
- Ani

Attachments are disabled except for in a few sections.

Katt is the shell for the real life me. I would be devastated if I lost her shape. And I feel very uncomfortable referring to her as "her" and "Katt." I feel like that guy in Seinfeld. Jimmy likes you too.