Blog for pgtaylor

I am Brooke Hyacinth in my Second Life. I purposefully created my SL appearance as Brooke to be much taller, thinner, and younger than I am in RL. I also dressed myself through a purely aesthetic lens, with no regard to comfort, style, or reality. I chose green skin so as not to be associated with any particular RL race or ethnicity.

Probably the most empowering aspect of my virtual existence is my ability to redo, remake, and indeed re-represent myself at any moment. In other words, my virtual SL life is filled with second chances. Second chances at what I do and say, how I see other people, what I look like, where I go, and how long I stay.

I feel very connected to Brooke. I often dream about being her and some really weird connections occurred this year. For example, as Brooke, I broke my leg after an awkawrd landing. I limped along for a while and many avatars tried to help me. I used the in-world help feature and someone told me to teleport to another region where the "stop all animations" would work. I was immediately healed. A month later I broke my foot in my real life. Three months later I still have pain. Last week I found myself trapped in a region. I literally could not get out. I merged with rocks, I flew non-stop, I bumped into everything. For two days, I tried to take baby steps in between restarts and looked as though I was convulsing every time I walked. Finally, I changed some preferences and was able to free myself. The next day I found myself convulsing in real life with the norovirus. Okay, I know---not really connected, but interesting nonetheless.