The next seven

Having had some very validatin’ feedback on my two previous Calling Card posts, here’s the third. I’m finding riffling through the oldest cards to be great fun, in terms of memory and perspective; I recommend it to all.

Calling cards seem to come in bunches; after Veronica Quackenbush, there are four people that I don’t really recall, although according to my notes I met one of them at a weapon shop, and one came to a rather risible “skybox security seminar” that I held once, the most notable feature of which was a replicating grid attack that happened during it (providing a good excuse for hardly anyone showing up). The other two, I have no idea.

Then there are three people that I definitely do remember.

The second Seminal Event of my newbiehood, following the art opening I talked about last time, happened when I was flying randomly around the mainland, and seeing a single dot on the minimap went over to see who it was. It turned out to be a woman in a Playboy-style bunny suit, building some barstools and spiral staircases for a club. Her name was LadyLutha Harlow, and she was helpful and friendly; she told me that my AV (I was pretty much always a boy at the time, still) was really too short for most SL things (I think I was about 5′ 9″ as a boy then). She showed me some cutting and twisting tricks involved in making one-prim bar stools (this was long before we had sculpties!), and spiral staircases. She showed me (purely Platonically, mind you) my very first Paradise Blanket, which completely blew my mind.

(If you’ve never seen a Paradise Blanket, you should. It looks like a nice picnic blanket, complete with basket, that you and a friend sit on. But then you get a menu, and on command the blanket will transport you high in the sky and rez an entire room or landscape around you, chosen from a potentially quite enormous list. You can then get up and walk around and stuff, and when you’re done picnicing you sit again, choose from the menu again, and the surroundings vanish and you return to the ground. It’s quite astonishing! Especially if you’re like a week-old newborn.)

I think that serendipitous visit with LadyLutha was also the first time I had a sim go down around me. We got the “this region will be shutting down in five minutes” messages, and laughed and decided to stay around and watch the world end. I think she was also the first person that I gave one of my little sparkling fairy companions to (I really ought to revisit that script sometime and fix it up in light of actually knowing what I’m doing now!), because she admired it when I brought it out to show off.

LadyLutha also gave me a landmark to the club that she was building, and that leads to the next Calling Card in the list: Sugga. That’s her in the picture there. :)

Sugga was an aspiring dancer at the club, and I met her (and two or three others that I think are going to appear in the list a little later) when I followed LadyLutha’s LM. The club wasn’t actually open yet, but people were moving around setting things up, and dancers were auditioning and figuring out the dancing devices and tipjars and stuff, and people were dancing and having fun.

Sugga was one of the shyer dancers as I recall, and it’s funny that she’s the one that shows up first in my Calling Cards. But we talked alot and went exploring a bit together. I went back to the club several times, and it became my second-favorite hangout after Gypsy’s. I remember partying there as a girl, with rave-sticks and particle storms and stuff, and everyone being amused by and approving of my gender ambiguity. I’ve been so lucky in my SL career! :)

We were all newborns then (the oldbies were a sort of mythical race of deities, occasionally glimpsed from afar). Sugga pretty much always wore the skin pictured here. I forget the name of it, but it’s apparently now (whether it was then, I don’t know) a popular freebie, maybe even full-perm, and whenever I see it on someone with even vaguely the same face I’m reminded of Sugga.

At about the same time that I vanished from SL for a week (have I ever told that story here?) Sugga also went off into RL, not to return. We’ve exchanged a few emails since, but she is mostly just a fond friendly memory.

And the last Calling Card for this entry, right after Sugga’s, is one of my very bestest friends ever, Zha. Zha and I go ‘way back; our typists shared an office back in the Triassic when we were both summer students or something, and both Zha and her typist (along with other people that we haven’t gotten to yet) were wonderfully supportive during and after the eventful week that I vaguely alluded to above. And way back when, we were SL newbies together (can’t find a picture of her in that freebie pointy-hat hair, darn!).

She’s technically sharp, solidly realistic, and much much better at avoiding the temptations of SL and Internet drama than (for example) I am. It has also been said that she has more of a fashion sense. :) And the lucky thing even has a day job that to some extent involves SL. (Although it was hard work, not luck, that got her there.)

So those are some more of my Calling Cards, and my friends, and my history. Aren’t they great? :)