Interviews with a Vampire - More Bloodlines Rants

I have really had it with Bloodlines. Not only do they interrupt the regular play of Second Life - no matter if I'm at Orientation Island helping new folks or at a ballroom doing a foxtrot with a random boy toy - but they are pompous and blithely ignorant about it.

Today, I was invited to be bitten by a woman named Karin. I asked her how she felt being part of a group that was rapidly becoming the most hated group in SL. She was shocked to hear such a thing. She was further surprised to learn that the nickname her ilk had inspired was "spampire." I followed her back to Warwick Village and conducted interviews with some of the people hanging around. The king of the village, a fellow named Mgcjohn (I assume that means Magic John, which puts me in mind of a self-cleaning toilet) and his sidekick, named Wild, seemed completely unaware that Bloodlines was an irritant to regular gameplay. The more I asked of Mgcjohn, the more incoherant his answers became. Wild, on the other hand, got irritated with my continued questions. At one point, he asked, "What's with all the questions?", to which I replied, "It's how I learn things."

During the interviews, I came up with an idea that I think is well worth pursuing. Since not a single Bloodliner I've interviewed has a problem with playing their game in every sim they can get their pale asses into, I asked Mgcjohn and Wild if they would mind, say, fifty furries wearing particles showed up in Warwick (which is beautiful and stark, by the way). They both agreed that visitors would be welcome; I countered by saying that such a clan would not be there to visit. They'd be there to flash particles, dance, play music and ask the vampires to join their clan.

Neither vampire seemed too awfully wild about that idea.

And, for me personally, I think fifty particle-wearing music-playing furries (or the like) in Warwick would look horrible and compromise the integrity of the sim. But fair's fair, right?

A third vampire I interviewed later said that SL is all about RP anyway and I should chill out. I disagreed, pointing out that when I have been RPing as a domme, I don't show up at the Universal Church of Christ. And when I'm feeling all Neko and wearing ripped hose and torn blouses, I don't tend to turn up at Avilion Ballroom. And when I'm shooting zombies and decked up with guns and combat gear, I don't turn up in, oh I don't know, a vampire sim.

So, I went on, if I can be that respectful of everyone, what's wrong with Bloodliners that they can't?

As with every Bloodliner I've had the fortune - or misfortune - to encounter, he didn't have a really good answer either. He bandied about some rationalizations - the training is bad, I could wear garlic, I could just say 'no' to being bitten, etc. - but nothing he said suggested that he could understand that RPers should confine their game to their specific sims.

I would not wish to put too much importance into any facet of SL - it's there for a laugh, after all - but I'm seriously considering spearheading some sort of virtual movement against Bloodlines, an organization that is known for simply sucking.

Dear Members of BLOODLINE

Dear members of BLOODLINE:

Like a virtual version of HIV, you have entered and spread through Second Life. Like HIV, you contanimate and offer nothing in return. Like HIV, much of your behaviour can be linked to assholes. Like HIV, life is better without you.

When I show up at a ballroom, I don't want to see a dropdown menu asking if you can bite me. When I go shopping, I don't want to see a dropdown menu asking if you can bite me. If I'm at a coffee shop with mates, I don't want to see a dropdown menu asking if you can bite me. You get the idea, yeh?

And when I get a dropdown and you ask me if you can bite me and I say, "Sure! Can I shit in your mouth?", don't cop an attitude. It's you invading my space and interrupting my time that inspired my retort. I am just as short if someone would ask me for my shoes or ask if they can put a tattoo on me for their own benefit (and, in effect, you do, as the only thing a victim can get is a crappy looking pair of holes to wear on one's neck).

Whatever you get from going around "on the hunt", as you lamely put it, I suspect it's only marginally more than what your victims get. You "own" 500 souls? Whoopie mother fucking doo, mate.

And if you accuse me of "being young", as Whatevah Antfarm did, and your boyfriend decides to orbit me when I refuse to be bitten, as Wandering Antfarm did, you transcend stupid and go directly to retarded. You get reported, fucktards. Now you'll have something else to tally up that's meaningless.

In short, please, please, for the love of God, fuck yourselves.

Best,

Madelyn

Viewer to a Kill

So I was driving the other day and split a newbie in two. I felt bad, of course. I had just bought those tires, and now I had to get all that newbie blood off of the grooves for fear my car would start acting like a newbie: running into walls, jerking back and forth, overusing gestures and asking women, "were u from?"

I haven't read much about this from any other SL'er, but the new viewer is making me want to strangle some puppies. Thanks to the latest batch of improvements, which includes generally outpacing what my computer can keep up with (and automatically readjusting my settings to "piss poor", I believe it is) and having people materialize as a cloud of vaper (a wiiiiiiiiiild improvement over the greyness of strangers, eh?) for 1 second to about 5 minutes, I now crash more frequently than John McCain over Vietnam. This has curbed my shopping sprees severely - I have only bought one new dress in a fortnight, which is a personal record - as well as taking a great deal of the fun out of my traditional activity of plonking a random word in the search engine and exploring to my heart's content. Even transporting can give me that frozen-moment-in-time feeling just as the Second Life Crash Notice arrives in the middle of my screen.

The other day, though, I was happily united/reunited/introduced to the one and only Olivia Hotshot. Olivia and I met, of all places, on flickr and had been bandying about some chuckles and observations for a few months, it seems. Finally, we met in-world and she was even more frustratingly lovely and kind in virtual person as she is in her flickr photo account. Still, I did have to take a break at one point, as I crashed in the middle of a balloon ride. How embarrassing is that? It's like crapping oneself on a date with a handsome rogue of good breeding. "Sorry, be right back..."

When I get irritated by such things, I tend to seek out newbies and - well, not pick on them, exactly - but pass on my irritation to them. In most cases, honestly, I do like to chat up new folks to SL because they are, for the most part, the nicest people. They haven't learned to be right bitches and bastards yet. But those aren't the ones I seek out. I seek out the ones who read about hot sex on SL from CNN or the BBC and show up with their muppet faces and wooden cock attachments looking to rub one off in time to watch the news. They are easy enough to spot (see Cock, Big Wooden, Attachment Of), so I sort of get in their sights and then mercilessly rip them to pieces. Usually, this takes the form of correcting their grammar, but sometimes, I simply deride them with cruel and intense laughter. Of course the best way to make these morons get stuck in the mud of their own logic, is to chide them with, "Do I want to fuck you? Are you serious? Would *YOU* fuck you? Not likely. So why would anyone else want to?"

Yeh, I'm not the nicest person at times...