Second Life at the age of majority

Second Life is celebrating now, until July 6th, its 18th anniversary — an event also known as SL18B. As SL reaches the age of majority, fantasy has been chosen as the theme for the party, which, following tradition, includes a set of regions that can be explored from the Welcome Area. The main party zone […]

A place where cats took over

Nekomachi Street is a sky platform in Tonarino region, in Second Life, that depicts a Japanese town inhabited by anthropomorphized cats. In the (almost fully) still scene composed there, they behave like humans: they go to restaurants, work as waiters at bars, ride bikes, deliver pizza, go to the movies and so on. They are […]

A place where you can get visually (and musically) high

Altitude (noun): the vertical elevation of an object above a surface […], the angular elevation of a celestial object […], vertical distance or extent, position at a height, […] a high level (as of quality or feeling). (Merriam-Webster, 2019, Altitude) Altitude is not only a club for alt music, but also a place for an […]

Playing the game of Alice

I have written about Enchanted Alice before (as I’m sure my eight regular readers will remember 😉 ) and I’m glad to see it’s back on the grid in Second Life – not just as a revival but as a reinvented environment. Actually, it has been there for over one month, but only now I’ve […]

Animals are us

Like some other people out there, I’ve learned – not without surprise – from Ziki Questi that Roche was closing. After one month, I checked Second Life’s map and noticed that the region remained there – meaning that the sim was rather transformed into something else instead of just disappearing. I teleported to it and […]

Going down the rabbit hole

“Cheshire Puss,” she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. “Come, it’s pleased so far,” thought Alice, and she went on, “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to walk from here?” “That depends a good deal […]

Interview with the vampires (and lycans, humans…)

To be part of a family, to belong, to build a community – this repertoire seems to describe the driving force for those who have joined Possidete Nocte, a horde in SL that gathers gay and bisexual male vampires, lycans and humans. Choosing among those forms of being, Possidete Nocte’s members apparently identify themselves according […]

An alien visits a Japanese WWII battleship

Yamato was an emblematic Japanese battleship that ended up sunk by the American forces during World War II. However, for those who grew up in the 1970s and the 1980s, she was also the spacecraft that took Captain Okita (or Captain Avatar) and Susumu Kodai (or Derek Wildstar) and their crew to their adventures in […]

The Satyr and the Centaur (or how to recreate yourself)

NOTE: This post was produced in collaboration with my friends Dafydd Rae (story, paragraphs in italic) and Tomais Ashdene (photos, as indicated). I, myself, took photos too (as indicated) and wrote the comments (not in italic). I’d like to thank both Daf and Tom for the amazing work that they have done. The Satyr crouched […]

When architecture beats gravity

“Architects spend an entire life with this unreasonable idea that you can fight against gravity.” Renzo Piano Back from my vacations, I recently had to build a new house for myself – my first mesh one – and started thinking of the ways architecture has been following in Second Life. Not that I’m a creative […]