Hey, there. Been a while. I'm still here, though. What've I been up to? Oh, nothing much... going to concerts, mostly. I love live music in SL, especially when it's really live and not just karaoke. A little sailing, when the sim crossings allow -- there've been more problems with that than usual, lately. And oh, I'm now a member of an intergalactic police force. I'm a Green Lantern.
Now, there are two kinds of Green Lantern (GL) in Second Life (SL). Years ago, when SL was still young, a group of people dedicated to targeting and reporting griefers took to "patrolling" SL as an organized team, the Green Lantern Corps. A noble intention, but they've kind of got a reputation for being a little full of themselves, no matter the good they do, or try to. But then there are people who simply like to dress up in green and have fun with rings. I'm one of those.
Oh, I'd try to put down/report a griefer if I found one, though honestly in all my years in SL I might have run across as many as ten, total, who were more than just enthusiastic noobs who didn't realize they were causing problems. But going out of my way to track them and report them doesn't strike me as FUN, and fun is one of my biggest reasons for being in SL. Now, going somewhere and playing make-believe is FUN. It was fun when I was a little kid. I loved that. Didn't you? Grownups tend to forget that playing dress-up and make-believe is fun. We pull it out of our closets for a Halloween party, and some (the few, the proud, the nerdy) will get into a role playing game, but really, don't you remember pinning a towel to your shoulders and suddenly becoming Batman? I do.
I do, and I've missed it. I never REALIZED I missed it, until I found SL and stumbled into "immersive roleplay" there. Then, I played make-believe a lot. A LOT. And then I got burned, and burned out, and got rather away from it. Part of that, I think, is that there's a seriousness to a lot of roleplay in SL that turns me off. It's a lot of win/lose gaming in many places. It's "learn the meter" and "stay in the lines", and I know that you can't have any sort of organized roleplay without rules, but when it becomes more about the rules than about play, then the wonder that makes that towel into Batman's cape starts to fade away.
I let it fade, I fear, because it seemed like everyone I met was either more into the "grimly dedicated" school of roleplay ("Our meter is the best!" "Only RL Doms and subs can really understand BDSM!" "That's not what a Fae is supposed to look/act/talk like!" "You have to dress this way to play properly!") than I was, or not into roleplay at all. And while I actually like coloring inside the lines, nothing much ruins the fun for me more than having someone sitting over my shoulder watching to make SURE I do. But about a month ago, a friend asked me if I'd seen a movie.
When Green Lantern, the movie, came out, I'd been really excited to see it. As a kid, GL was always my favorite hero. I was never going to have the fanaticism to become Batman, it was a little late for me to be born as a superhuman alien, and while I might get struck by lightning I was aware even as a child that it'd probably not make me anything but dead. But I could imagine getting a magic ring that would do whatever I wanted it to. I mean, the other stuff was impossible, but the ring thing only seemed really, really unlikely. That meant it MIGHT happen, right? But then the reviews came out, and they all said the movie wasn't all that good, and Thor was out at the same time with really good reviews, and really we only had time to see one movie just then, so it was Thor (a character I'd never been a fan of as a kid, but oh well) instead of Green Lantern.
But my friend got it on video recently and said, hey, this is good! So I did too, and damn, they were right! What were those reviewers thinking? Clearly, they had never spent days as children reading and re-reading and re-re-re-reading a Green Lantern comic, imagining themselves flying through space, making giant glowing fists appear in the air with only a thought. But I had. It brought all that wonder home to me in a way that I'd almost forgotten existed. And then I got to thinking about the main outlet for wish fulfillment in my mundane adult life, and I pulled up Second Life and searched for Green Lantern. I found out there are a LOT of people in SL who shared my GL fantasy, and are living it out. Lots of people, lots of groups, and even one that gives out free power rings twice a month. Well, DAMN, I'm gonna get me one of THEM, I decided, and joined.
Just like when I was seven and sent a pile of boxtops off for a Spy Belt, I waited in growing anticipation. About a week later, the ring showed up, and boy oh boy, it was a LOT better than the Spy Belt. I spent a day or so figuring out how it worked (don't you hate trying to read a manual in SL, with a little, slow-scrolling text window next to your avatar?), and then I felt ready. The ring came with lots of extras including a bunch of different GL costumes, so I could take my choice about what look to have, but I chose "none of the above," and went about making my own up. What's a superhero's uniform for, but to show off how great you look, in a skintight way? So dug into my inventory for various latex and leather bits, put them together with the green/black/white color theme in mind, and then made up a GL badge using the textures helpfully packaged with the ring, et voila! I'm a Fae Green Lantern!
There are superhero sims, ranging from "let's pretend" to "tie me down" in theme, and I've yet to go into one that I didn't meet up with another GL. We're all OVER the place! I've made up a whole big backstory for how a Fae gets to be a comic book hero, and so far it's just been casual, the most casual roleplay I've seen since I first stumbled into SL roleplay, back in the fine old heyday of the original Aglarond sim. It's fun. It's play.
I like it.
If anyone else out there wants to play, just give a whistle to GL Creag an na Sioga of Sector 58, and we'll see what happens! Hooray for make-believe!
The Fae GL Oath:
"In brightest day,
In blackest night,
No evil shall escape my --
OOH! SHINY!"
