Saturday, April 18, 2009

Mer-Tweets and Groups

Just today I was informed of a new social network for Second Life Mers. Having returned from a brief internet hiatus, I was quick to jump on the bandwagon and I'm glad I did. Anyone even remotely interested in the mer community on Second Life should join as well. You can find it HERE.


Secondly, I've decided to obtain a twitter microblog for my SL account! I think this could be extremely useful for SL mers to keep up with each other and will make it much easier to meet up. I will update my twitter with where I am whenever I'm in-world. I encourage more of you to make accounts and follow each other! ♥

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Video



Decided to make a little video of myself swimming around.

I...don't know how to remove the top toolbar, unfortunately. Hopefully my next video will be toolbar free!

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Party?

There is something I've really been wanting to do - have a party on my parcel of land.



A party for all kinds of avatars. Mers, of course, but also other fantasy avatars like elves and dragons, as well as furries and even random video game-related avatars. Humans would be welcome too, of course!

There's just something about the idea of all kinds of different avatars getting together to party it up and celebrate their differences that appeals to me!


When I bought my parcel in Forbidden Dream, my idea was to make an island surrounded by deep water (heck, if you look at the map, the difference in water depth for my parcel is pretty huge) where mers could explore, dance, and party the night away. But I also wanted to make it appealing to land-dwellers, so I decked out the island with waterfalls, plants, and fountains and plenty of rainbows! Hence the name Rainbow Oasis. There's plenty of poseballs for both legged and mers throughout, so I think it would be awesome to host a party here!


So finally I decided to go through with it. I'd like to announce that I'll be hosting my very first party on Friday March 6 at 5:00pm PST, here at Rainbow Oasis. The party will last basically until I pass out, haha!

I know that there is an Antiquity meeting that friday, but if you don't want to miss out on it feel free to stop by before and after it! I would love to have as many people as possible.

If you would like the official notecard invitation, feel free to send me an IM. Also feel free to invite whoever you want, no matter what kind of avatar they have. :D

Spread the news around! There's not nearly enough opportunities to mingle on SL and I want to meet as many new people -mers or not - as possible!

Fly Rant


Do you mind if I rant a teeny tiny bit?
There is one major problem I have with just about every mermaid RP sim I go to.
Flying is disabled. When I go to a mermaid or fantasy sim and flight is disabled, it makes my face much like this. ->

What is the point of being a mermaid if you're still stuck to the floor? Every self-respecting mer who wants to roleplay has a SwimGem HUD (or equivalent?) to keep them in the water. And most of us wouldn't want to be outside the water anyway!

I understand that in serious fantasy RPs we don't want to have elves and orcs flying all over the place. But from what I've seen, Fae get to be the exception to the rule. Why only fae? Why not us mers?

I know I'm the newbie and there might be more for me to learn, but...whenever I see a landmark for a "mer site" in someone's blog and I go to see it and flying is disabled in that sim, it really bothers me!

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

A change of color

After using my previous avatar for a good long while, I decided it needed a splash of color.

Rather, it needed all the colors. I'm a rainbow fanatic so the more colors the better.

The spine fins are actually from an entirely different set than the tail. The tail is yet another of Erluen's Flexi Legless tails, only this one is in pink. Aside from the base color, the main difference between the pink and blue tails is that the pink tail has much more colorful fins.

Fins that coincidentally match those of Erluen's Slimline Rainbow Guppy Tail, which I had purchased beforehand before deciding legless was the way to go. Since the legless tail had no spine fins, I just borrowed them from the Slimline and the outfit was complete!

Honestly, I can't wait to see more legless tails available out there. After going legless, it's hard to go back to normal tails. The only problem I have with legless tails is they sometimes work awkwardly with poseballs. Otherwise, I have no complaints and suspect that legless tails will become far more common in the future (and poseballs will be more compatible with them too!)

As for the hair, again - as colorful as it was I decided that anything that was truly ME had to be rainbow colored. FL friends know that I'm all about the rainbows!

So began the SL search for rainbow hair.

It's alot harder than you'd think! Finally I came across this ponytail at Goth1c0.

The star tattoo on the my chest is actually from a Rainbow Brite costume I got at Adored. It seemed to fit with the theme!

Other than changes to my avatar, I don't really have much else to talk about. FL has taken priority for the past few weeks.

I've been really looking for a change of scenery in SL. A sim where you can engage in active mer RP as your SL self. In my quest for mer interaction, I either happen upon other mers by coincidence, go to mer dances, or find myself joining large-scale fantasy RP sims with strict rules and combat meters and character applications.

The latter sounded appealing at first, but I realize that I don't want to RP some made-up character on SecondLife. I want to live my SecondLife as a mermaid. Being a mer was my whole reason for joining. But I want to form ongoing friendships with other mers. I want to make my own mer story without having to 'act' as a 'character'.

Furries on SL don't have this kind of problem. They live their alternate lives quite well with plenty of interaction, from what I understand. Why don't we mers have that? I know there are lots of us out there!

Monday, February 9, 2009

The Surly Mermaid Pirate Bar Monday Night Dance

So tonight I went to my first mer dance at the Surly Mermaid Pirate Bar!

Things started out slow at first, but soon enough the mers had taken over the joint, dancing to our hearts' content. Only one pirate decided to show up all night, which was kindof a disappointment, but also good that we mers got to have some special mer time. From what I understand, it's hard to get a group of mers together sometimes.

With the distinct lack of pirates around, we decided to move the party out of the ship and onto the underwater dance floor.


Where we started to drink Pirate Rum.....



...And then we moved on to Jack Daniels. And then the Pink Elephants started showing up.



We were having so much drunk mer fun that a pirate named Shadow joined us in drunken underwater bliss. Managed to get drunk, hold his breath, and do a little jig at the same time. Quite a talented pirate, that one. I might have to keep an eye out for him in the future. ;)

After the party died down and I sobered up, I went home and got comfortable with a good book before going to bed.

Tala

Greetings friends and welcome to my blog.

I suppose I'll start out with this - I'm new to Second Life. I was "born" on January 29th, 2009.

I joined because, let's face it, there aren't many places, even on the internet, where you can have the opportunity to be a mermaid.


Going into Second Life I already knew what I wanted. I had some friends there that were involved in the furry community and roleplaying, and I had seen other mermaid blogs in various areas of the internet.

I knew that I wanted a mermaid avatar. I knew that I wanted a parcel of land with lots of water. I knew that I wanted to interact with other mers and make friends and participate in a little roleplaying.

IRL, I'm generally not the kind of person to get immersed in a virtual world, and I've always had mental images of SecondLife fans being socially crippled losers. I know it's horrible, but as I signed up for SecondLife with the default gaming girl avatar and went right away to Siren's Mermaid Mall, a thought in the back of my mind whispered "oh god you're actually doing it."

But now I have my mermaid avatar, and my parcel of land at Serenity Unleashed, and I couldn't be happier.

I started out by trying several different tails, but the one that I ended up sticking with was Erluen's Flexi LEGLESS Tail from Merwings! It came completely with its own Animation Override (AO), and while it's not nearly as fancy as some of the other tails I tried, the fact that you can't see the legs makes it all the more worth it. I see other tails that are beautiful and fancy, but have a nice bulge where the feet should be.

The hair was an instant favorite of mine the moment I saw it. It's 3 Star Design's Blue Opal Hair, and it comes in two versions - long and super short. I of course opted for the long version. The hair is beautiful, colorful, and wildly flows in the wind/current, and comes adorned with pearls and seashells.

The addition of purple skin came later. I chose ND/MD Miranda Purple Mermaid Skin. It goes well with the purple/blue color scheme I already had going and it's just the right shade - not too light and not too dark.

Once I had experimented with different things, I decided I was happy with these results. Now that I had just the right avatar, it was time to figure out how to make my home just as appealing and "mermaidish".