Meeow.

Feeling in a rather catty mood, I acted on impulse and bought a set of Twitchy Kitty Ears and a Twitchy Tail from the strangely-named }(O.o){ Fa's Shop (of doom) in Mew. (I had to substitute braces for the '>' and '<' in the name because they played havoc with the HTML formatting of this post). I think the animations add a lot to the effect. Now when I go out catting around, I can do it in style!

Mermaid's Dream

I attended a sailboat race at the Starbord's Yacht Club in Hollywood, and after watching the races, I was hooked. I just had to get a Flying Tako, which is said to be one of the best sailboats in SL. At L$250, it was a bargan. They were for sale (I resisted the urge to spell that "sail" there you'll be glad to hear) at the dock, so I splurged and bought one.

With some advice from a bystander, I was soon in control. I used to have a 14' Sunfish-class sailboat in RL years ago, and though my experience wasn't all that vast, it helped understand how the boat was reacting. The Flying Tako really does sail much like a small RL sailboat about the same size. And if you go into Mouselook, you get the sounds of the water lapping against the hull. It comes with two HUD attachments that simplify control of the boat and picturing the direction of the wind and the set of the sail, although you can use Chat commands for control as well.

You can set the color of the hull by command as well. I decided to go one better and add a wood-plank texture on the deck and a design on the sail.

Since I'm a part-time mermaid, I decided to name the boat Mermaid's Dream. A bit of searching in Google Images found me a perfect picture -- named, appropriately, "Mermaid's Dream". Some searching found me a template for the sail, which I imported into Photoshop and used as a base onto which I overlaid a half-transparent version of the image picture. You need one image for the left side, and the reverse of the image for the right side.

All this was after quite a bit of fiddling around to get everything to work right, but the result was well worth it: a distinctive and fine-looking boat (if I do say so myself).


There are several yacht clubs in SL and some good waters to sail in. The Hollywood area recently combined with Nantucket to give a total of 24 connected sailing and island sims. Mowry and Caddo have a couple of other yachting clubs and shops.

I don't feel ready to enter any of the races yet, but it may only be a matter of time and practice. Now if I can just find my hull wax...

Does a mermaid really need a sailboat?

Sitting on the World's Largest Poseball

at Mowry Bay

The Perils of Mare

The other day, my RL counterpart decided to take me out on a photoshoot; the theme being melodrama bondage. Specifically, me bound hand and foot on the railroad tracks. So we found a remote section of track, wrapped me up, and laid me out tetween the rails using a poseball I had dropped a homemade animation into.

But while the Boss was dithering around, fooling with shooting angles, lighting and the like, I was actually run over by a train! It pushed me halfway to the next sim before I fell out of the way and had to be carried back.

I ask you, is that any way to treat a girl?

Hanging Out With the Finny Set

I put a bit of effort into finding the right mermaid outfit. There are only a few shops that cater to merfolk: Merwings in Silver Lake and Emerald Evers' Shop By the Sea being the most notable that I have found. Nora Wayne's Mermaid Hangout has a huge tank with fish and a number of poseballs for you to swim in, as well as merfolk product vendors.

I wanted something that looked fairly realistic, if that term can be applied to something like a mermaid. But I didn't like the shape of the tail fins on most of the selections. The one that I liked was the "Mer Luminous - Fleshy" at Merwings, which I bought, along with an AO and a shell top to keep a PG rating.


It's amazing what you can find on the bottom. Although there are vast expanses of empty seabed, there are a few places with underwater landscaping. And there is the occasional surprise, such as houses I've come across sitting on the bottom in several places. You have to wonder...


The animations that came with the Franimation AO that I got were all right, but I decided to design my own, thinking that I might be able to do a better job. I wanted a slow as well as a fast swim, and a heads-down diving anim instead of just dropping tail-first when you hit the PAGE DOWN button. With the dive anim, you can jump up out of the water and then dive right back in to surprise the sailors on that boat you snuck up on.

I found out that the positions of the shins and feet are critical when making a mermaid animation, at least with the tail I have. If your ankles are too close together or too far apart, the tail skirt and "boots" don't match up correctly. Even the animations I purchased have some matching problems that way. I need to experiment to see if the "boots" can't be eliminated somehow and the "skirt" made longer. I assume there is a reason it's designed the way it is.

I'm still in the process of refining the animations. I'd like to make a fairly complete set, including a variety of sitting poses and maybe a couple of different swimming styles. When I get it like I want it, I'll put it up for sale. So if you're a homo piscipeni, keep tuned to this blog.

How to begin?

It's been over a month since I was "born" into Second Life, the offshot of an avatar who wanted to explore the wild and fantastic sides of Second Life, but who also wanted to keep a "clean" public image in the process. Rather silly, and a bit cowardly, if you ask me. Still, I owe my existence to that hypocracy, so I won't complain. If my Primary wants to blow US$9.95 to bring me to life, I'm all for it.

I was given the name "Mare" because of my fascination with becoming a mermaid: Mare being Latin for "sea". By the way, the correct pronouncation is "MAH-ray", like "Mary" with a softer "a" sound. Not "Mair", please. Any resemblence to a female horse is purely coincidental, and a bit resented by yours truely.

Besides being a merperson, I also have outfits as an angel (both light and dark). I recently bought a set of scripted wings at Material Squirrel Wings. They flap, droop and stiffen, and have Excite compatabilidy (although I wouldn't know what to do with that, of course...). I'm a little disappointed that they don't extend fully, but I imagine there are technical limitations preventing that. I also have a lot of freebie fairy butterfly wings for when the fae mood takes me.

Besides enjoying assuming the aspects of the finned and winged creatures of fantasy, I have to confess that I also am drawn to the Darker Side at times. I'm talking about ropes, chains, cages, and frightening spiky devices. This isn't something that my Primary here or in RL wants to admit publicly. So you may find me occasionally hanging around, as it were, in places like Heaven & Hell (the biggest dungeon complex I know of in SL). I'll be in cuffs, maybe a bit of letther, and not much else (that narrows it down LOL).

So on with the blog. I have a month's worth of things to talk about, so the forcast is for a flurry of posts over the next few days, followed by scattered rantings and periods of quiet neglect. Stay tuned for the fun.