Two Nekos do Second Life -1: Insilico

I recently was in Insilico in Second Life to make a profile picture for Merit. Insilico is a role play place set in a cyberpunk world. For those who do not know what cyberpunk is: it is the world of blade runner.  It is  near future world where advanced technology has become part of human life, but society slowly falls apart. The individual becomes dominant and community suffers. Governments change from providing central services to all, to becoming repressive and undemocratic. On the face of it society still pays lip-service to democracy and equality, but in reality wealth and power determines everything. Central to cyberpunk is the notion that government tasks are being provided by mega corporations. They provide shelter, social services, security, health services, but only to their own employees. Their community is the community of the company and not of society of nationality. Ironically this world does not know discrimination on basis of race, gender, sexual behavior, religion or culture. The only thing that counts is whether one is a employee or not.

While this sounds like a bad world, it is also a world of opportunity. Enterprising individuals can carve out a destiny for themselves and there is still the possibility that the degrading of society can be reversed. Usually cyberpunk world assumes that space exploration has progressed and often planets like Mars have been colonized and often also the larger moons of various solar planets. Intergalactic space travel has not yet been achieved, but space travel in the solar system is well developed and expanding.

This then is the world where Insilico is based. It represent a large megapolis that is reminiscent of the city in Blade Runner, and the cities in Deus Ex, for those who are familiar with these games.  Insilico is truly a beautiful example of what one can do in Second Life and especially with the introduction of mesh the place has achieved a remarkable outlook.

Here are some pictures from Insilico.

This is my avatar Merit. I had her dressed up in a kind of cyberpunk look. This is a Hexatile look from Elixir.

A street at Insilico. Through blade runner the combination of these dark, empty streets combined with the bright  signs have become a kind of trademark. The contrast between the shiny colors and the dark grey streets dominated by towering dark mega buildings create an estranged feeling. It is like this single light bulb in an otherwise dark room. Typical Cyberpunk are the many signs with symbols that  convey no meaning. It is like the Asian text on the signs. People can not read them, they convey no meaning for them.
In Cyberpunk communications have improved, but at the same time it has not.

A bar somewhere in Insilico. Well I needed a closeup from Merit.

Typical Cyberpunk.. A robot looking like an insect is the barman at the Blue Ant bar. Don't you love that.

Somewhere in Insilico is the 7 Seas restaurant.

The inside of the restaurant is made to look like it is underwater. Look at the fishies. I am going to eat you little fishies!

In front of the entrance of the Seven Seas restaurant there are these two blue dragons circles around a large bubble.

Cyberpunk exist of mixing the old with the new, nature with technology. Maybe you remember the artificial snake  from bladerunner? Here is a statue of en elephant. The benches are located underneath a blue ultra modern looking device. No idea what it was for.

The Buddha Bowl is Noodle Bar in Insilico. The mesh stool degraded, but just imagine they are floating. In blade runner there is noodle bar scene. And thus the noodle bar has become a stock item in the cyberpunk world. The dragon like display in the back was beautiful.

Noodle bar close up.

Buddha Bowl Noodle bar.

Atomix Comic a shop for all tastes.. at least as far as the sign above the entrance seems to be saying. An interior shot with a mesh dude standing guard.

Street scenes in Insilico. The makers did their best to capture the mood of a cyberpunk city. Darkness all around, but always offset by sudden bright signs. Perhaps you recall that in Blade Runner there rain seems to fall making the street even more drearier.

At this point I had bought myself some cool cyberpunk glasses.

Even darker and therefore even brighter. A cyberpunk place is actually also a good environment for vampires.


Well uh, a lot of pictures. I hope you liked them. I even got more, but I put them on my website at: www.meritcoba.net.

Two Nekos do Urupe: Amsterdam

Hi,

Welcome to my two nekos do Urupe: Amsterdam.
I have a blog on wordpress but I am getting a bit annoyed with it because I can not display wide shots unless I pay another 75 dollars. Yes! I say another 75 for I already paid like 90 dollars for a premium account, but this did not include a theme that allows for wide shots. +
Blogger however does, without extra money.
I will therefore add blogger to show my wide shots.. Over time I hope to add more of my post I made on Wordpress.

Now Amsterdam.. that is that city I was born.. and we(= my avatars) went into SL when we found it existed. And exist it does.. I mean not in a small way, but actually there is a rather big place in Second Life that looks in a certain way as Real Life Amsterdam does. Although without the myriads of tourists plodding around and without, for some reason, the bars and the coffee shops pandering soft drugs. Yeah.. that is Amsterdam for you, yet it is not. There are coffee-shops there but it is not like every inhabitant is intoxicated.
I recall my friends and me had this moment in which we smoked pot and stuff like that. It started one day with someone bringing us a cake made with grass and a year or so later it stopped. Just like that.
Smoking lingered long after that. I mean one of those friends, he smoked until his late thirties, until one of his lungs collapsed and his doctor said: if keep this going...
If you were to say that one drugs lead to another.. it would be hard to proof. For nobody of the eight people involved ever touched any kind of drugs after that one year. It was this wild moment and it was over a year later. In fact.. studying at the university and doing soft drugs is not a good mix. I suspect most of us were to serious for that.

Now the picture above shows the dam. That would be the central square of Amsterdam in a way. I guess most inhabitants my beg to differ. I mean the Leidseplein is more of  a center for people who want to go out and have a drink. And the museumplein would be more of a culture place. And yet the munt, not really a square, would be more of a place to watch a movies. The dam however holds the most dominating landmarks that illustrate the dutch mindset: a church, a big shopping mall, monument for world war II, a palace which isn't actually a palace but rather a symbolic palace and also the gathering place for the ruling elite untill it became a democracy. And not far off: the stock exchange. For the three pillars of the dutch are: commerce, religion and a vague authority.

This is a picture that more or less show the damrak that is a broad street running from the central station(way  to the rear of the picture) towards the dam.(behind us in the picture). The building with the flag on it (the dutch flag: red-white-blue) is the former stock exchange. I am not sure what it is for used for now. You can have coffee in front of it as it has a kind of bar. It also seems to have some kind of stock exchange function, but what it is I do not know.
In the front of the picture are the typical trams.. the one you see is somewhat old, as nowadays they have a yellow basic look and somewhat more modern.

Ok I am sorry but I like the versions of the above place. Those show the typical dutch canals, called grachten. I think it's a nice example of how a gracht might look like in Amsterdam. However the grachten seldom ended in a way like this in the way you see here. Usually they either continue on into another gracht. A building that is located at the end of a gracht I have seldom seen.

Ok... not the greatest shot to end.. but still.. I captures Amsterdam. Perhaps the street  is to wide.:P