Nationstates

Submitted by Shauna Skye, of Moonletters X

Hey. I think someone in your dictatorship has been fiddling with the NationStates classifications. lol

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Yes, more often than not my government is described as “Corrupt Dictatorship” but I am proud that other descriptors say my Economy is Strong or Good, Civil Rights are Good, and Freedoms, well, er … Few. My regional influence is “Powerbroker,” which is hard to believe.

Thanks for your encouragement and for getting Penny Lane rolling. Wish we could get more people to play!

Moonletters X on Vampires

Excellent post on Vampires in the movies and particularly on-target in regard to Second Life. Bravo, Shauna, I couldn’t have said it better:

“Want ur blood” would be ok for Wilbur the zombie to say, but I expect more from vampires.

Not that I’ve spent any time in any of the many vampire sims in SL, but reactions from so many people I respect all go the same direction: run once you’ve stopped laughing.

Control thing: Shauna Continues

To clarify. Nothing wrong with making your store available to writers. It’s the control aspect that’s a little amazing here. Instead of being grateful to the writers who will be giving them promotion, they want to control how it’s done. When you do it that way it no longer becomes a sincere review but an advertisement. Agree with what both you and Seren have said.

AB Blogger thing

Shauna Skye Responds

Wow. Just read that. The whole thing reeks of arrogance. A store wanting writers to fill an application to review their stuff! They should be contacting the writers and hoping *we* accept them… not vice versa.

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The more I think about it, you’re right. After all, is there a clause that if they don’t produce a certain amount of product in a given month, the obligation to scrape the bottom of their barrel just to review something is null?

But, I do like their clothes, so I’m not holding that against them.

Mad (Mod) Style

Shauna reported this on her Moonletters X blog. Harper chose wisely in highlighting Subculture as the place in SL to find your Mad Men look. Although her influence is more the Mod look of the British 60s and 70s, the whole British Invasion of music and fashion was being felt.

I reviewed Subculture four months ago if you want to see more pictures.

The prices are perfect and most of Shauna’s outfits come with shoes and accessories. Unlike the majority of designers out there, her clothes are transferable!

It’s Nation Time

Category: Scandinavian Liberal Paradise
Civil Rights: Superb    
Economy: Fair
Political Freedoms: Excellent

03-13-2012/The Most Serene Republic of Province of Paypabak is a small, devout nation, notable for its barren, inhospitable landscape. Its compassionate, intelligent population of 32 million enjoy extensive civil rights and enjoy a level of social equality free from the usual accompanying government corruption.

The large, liberal, socially-minded government devotes most of its attentions to Religion & Spirituality, with areas such as Commerce and Healthcare receiving almost no funds by comparison. The average income tax rate is 31%, but much higher for the wealthy. A powerhouse of a private sector is led by the Book Publishing, Soda Sales, and Information Technology industries.

High-income earners pay a 100% tax rate, all tariffs have been abolished, Province of Paypabak’s children are widely acknowledged as the most foul-mouthed in the region, and political parties are banned from advertising and receiving private donations. Crime is moderate, and the police force struggles against a lack of funding and a high mortality rate. Province of Paypabak’s national animal is the Bonzai PlantPet, and its currency is the Come Hither look (that has hardly ever failed).

Province of Paypabak is ranked 3rd in Penny Lane and 54,980th in the world for Largest Cheese Export Sector, scoring 0 on the Mozzarella Productivity Index.

It all began with Shauna Skye’s Moonletters X post about NationStates, an online Web game. This is not Civilization or World of Warcraft, but a Web-based game that does a lot of its work with Algorithms Unseen, that work behind the scenes once you fill out forms or decide on issues. For instance if you looked at today’s listing of my country, as of March 9, 2012, you would be appalled that “the average income tax rate is 31%, but much higher for the wealthy” (almost 100%, it says elsewhere). However, I will be interested to see what happens when the issue of eliminating the tax burden goes through. (As of March 20, it’s down to 24%.) You see, my nation has Issues and I have to deal with them. What was once a Chaotic something or other has evolved into a  Scandinavian Liberal Paradise, and who knows what will come of lowering taxes and digging up parts, but not all, of our rainforests in search of uranium will do.

Not a bad ranking considering what was being measured!

Well, what it will do is mostly make me laugh and laugh! I joined the Penny Lane Region that is home to Shauna’s Moonletters state (a Corporate Bordello) , as well as states created by Jellie and by Boots (Serendipidy Haven, whose blog I have highlighted on occasion), both of whom have created Inoffensive Centrist Democracies. I also read about what’s happened in their countries with equal amounts of smiles. What you do with the issues raised for your particular state determine what the next description of it will say. I wish I’d been keeping a log of the various descriptions and apparently these is no history saved by the gamesite, either. I do know that I started out with a very strong auto industry and that I voted on an issue that pretty much turn them to toast. My country on any given day has been ranked 2d, 3d, and 4th among my neighbors, depending on the Index being used, usually something quite out of left field.


Recent headline accompanying an Issue that the P of P gov’t had to resolve or dismiss.


BTW, you can set the number of Issues that you face under your Settings, keeping in mind that they will pile up. You have the option of dismissing them, of course, but part of the fun is seeing what happens when forced to decide between the lesser of two evils or the better of two goods. That’s part of the educational aspect of this site: the choices are never really clear cut and easy.

By no means take this game too seriously. I am very proud of what has become of the ways my naive input of a monetary unit has produced this kind of result: “A group of transport analysts have suggested that a charge of five Come Hither Looks a day for vehicular access to Province of Paypabak’s most congested inner-cities during peak hours is the only way to solve their ever-growing traffic problem.” Or “It’s so difficult convincing welfare administrators that I am actually a poor, helpless vagrant on the brink of homelessness! When you finally do, you get tangled up in all the red tape, and you’re lucky to see a dime. The government should just trust my word and fork over the Come Hither Looks I need to survive.”

It’s not really Second Life, but it is another virtual world platform in a sense. I would invite more of my Plurk and Tumblr SLers to join us by starting your own nation at NationStates, then requesting to transfer into Penny Lane from the East Pacific default.

The Indulgence Not Taken

I’ve been writing more about SL than ever before. My first life has taken such a turn that I devote a lot less time inworld than ever before. I have been pondering this matter a lot lately. Let me share some this with you.

About four months ago give or take a week or three, I began relying on my alt avatar, Pay Writer, to follow up on games in SL. It made sense at the time that she has a very short friend list and could spend time uninterrupted playtesting games. This is when I was still writing for Moonletters.com and you can see some of the reviews in my Index. Paypabak Writer has a very long list of friends who already get short shrift when she’s inworld, focused mostly on wife Lisa and exploring SL for her blogging. Those games, for the most part, have drifted … the most recent, the Game That Must Not Be Named,* having completely dropped off the SL map. LOGOS, despite being rather indecipherable to me in terms of strategy, was nonetheless fun and a very fascinating use of SL technology. DiceL was also a very interesting adaptation of a collectible card game, as was Combat Cards, which actually features Paypabak as a character on one of the Splintered Rock cards.

No strain here. When I felt the pull of one of these games, I would log in and the odds were fair, not great, that I could find someone with whom to play.



More recently, as documented in my Tumblr accounts, I elected to roll with Pay as a Roller Derby gal, it fitted her personality. (I’ll return to that statement in just a sec.) The big catch is that she can no longer just scratch this itch when she felt like it. As a member of a team, she needs to show up for practices, not on her own whim. As much as I enjoy the challenge of Roller Derby in SL, I am going to retire Pay’s number and hang up her skates as far as competitions go. If the Angels of No Mercy will have her at occasional practices that would be glorious. To depend on her for actual jams?

That word “depend” is important. It has something to do with integrity. Do avatars in the game world of Second Life have integrity? The ones with whom I associate do. The concept opens a great big can of worms, doesn’t it? In a game, I am free to do whatever I want within the parameters of the game and character class. I can shoot the hostage and face the consequences. In SL, the hostage is a person, and carrying this metaphor forward, I am just as much a hostage to that person as he or she is to me. Got drama? No thanks, but to avoid drama, I need to show some integrity.

Let’s fly up to the 500-meter overview. Looking at the reflection in my monitor, I see a writer, an author of avatars. I share the license to create that every resident of SL can claim.  I am pretty much limited to creating avatars, not being much of a builder and not patient enough to do code, even though in first life I used to work with code. I enjoy dressing them up and providing them a modicum of personality. Yes, it starts with a dash of the author’s personality in there, but I have discovered that they begin to take on a life of their own once they’ve made contact with other avatars. I respect the social matrix that arises among avatars in SL. Why not? It’s a pretty amazing thing, actually. It has affected my first life. I can’t prove it but I bet the chemistry of my brain has been altered substantially by these interactions. (Can we all say titty sprinkles?)

I’ve written about this in Moonletters.com

The greatest lesson I’ve learned from SL is something the late Rheta Shan left in her profile still resonates through my combined lives: Reality is not about truth or physics. It’s about crafting a story so persuasive it will be taken at face value. To be persuasive involves integrity, courage, honesty, creativity, and passion. Rheta had that effect on so many people! And we all are woven together by our stories in SL. These stories are wonderful, varied and compelling…

As much as I love the fun of the SLRDA and all the wonderful new friends I have made, I need to get a grip on my various selves and do a time management analysis and an inventory on What Matters Most. This resolution of storylines between my alts has happened before and Paypabak Writer always wins. She is more embedded in a much larger, complex, rich and absolutely amazing matrix of avatar friends. Lisa has been willing to cross into the Land of Pay Writer but I don’t think the Author part can handle it. Plus, if Pay Writer starts taking up more of what has already become limited SL time, I am neglecting responsibilities to Judy, to Sassy and Vanni, and to my Moonletters friends to mention just a few of the consequences.

Pay Writer is my game avatar, relegated to short excursions in which Paypa cannot or dare not indulge. She’s my Lara Croft, available for adventures but not to make sustainable connections. I am really sorry to Pay’s friends in the SLRDA, particularly the Angels, Maiden Darknness, and MizD, but she cannot come out to play in the capacity on which you all depend. She can hang out, cheer, and maybe add a body to a practice, but don’t depend on her for meaningful bouts.

The temptation this time has been overwhelming, much more so than the siren calls of Firefly sims and Splintered Rock of the past and even of the present because I am aware of the wonderful things that continue to go on in those places. Roller Derby in SL is REALLY amazing fun, not just as a sport within the game but because of the wonderful avatars who make it more than a game within the game.

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*For the record, Time Battles.

Goooood Karma!

I am totally biased about Moonletters.com. I love editor Shauna to bits and she gave me a place to get my writing chops honed. She did the same for a number of excellent writers (Jellie Arrowmint, Feral Mossrider, Lacewing Mesmerizer, Serendipidy Haven) as well as pointed others out (Emerald’s Eyes). Right before she kicked us all off her staff, she started posting the musings of Karma Avedon, whom I instantly admired. I truly felt that of all the blogs focused on Second Life, Moonletters boasted the best staff of writers on the Web. That is an amazing legacy!

But enough about the past! Karma has had to do like the rest of us poor castaways, put together her own blog. It’s a goody! She’s beautiful, wears great outfits, and has a fine eye for unusual sims. It would all go for naught, however, if she wasn’t a gifted writer. Read for yourself!