My virtual life started in 2008. It was due to a program called “Facts on Saturday” here in Norway. Just that Saturday I watched it, the program was documentary about people who lived a virtual life, for example, the documentary followed an American woman who left her marriage because she had found the great love in virtual life. I remember I thought, «How is it possible to be so stupid? I have to try that! »
When I started my virtual life, when I became a living in the metaverse, I knew I had to be true to what I consider as my call in life: To tell stories with special focus on the folk material. And to be a mere citizen of a 3D world was not enough of me, I had to be an active citizen, I had to create. First I started making poses and tried to understand the magic of taking pictures. Somehow, I still tried to tell stories, but my competence in taking pictures is and was very limited, and I really did not have the patience to understand photoshop; sometimes I have been lucky, usually not.
After a certain time in the pixel life, you become yourself, you feel like you need home, where you can undress ^^ and invite friends. I did not want to rent, I wanted to buy, to own my land. So I bought a full region, a sim from LL. The making of a home was not my main purpose, the making of a folktale was. I wanted people to walk into a Norwegian folktale and create their own story. Now, I was not a creator, I was not a builder, I can rezz a prim and that is all – so I hired builders, among them Soror Nishi, to make the image of the folktale, my role was a kind of storyteller, or maybe rather a curator. The first companion opened in December 2009, and had an amazingly numbers of visitors.
The interest of a place is shortlived, soon there is an another place to visit and experience.
I closed it for visitors to have it rebuild. This time I hired the incredible hobbit Andrek Lowell, to create the landscape of the story. The sim reopened in December 2010 – not as much visited this time as first time. Then I gave up, it became too expensive to own a full sim.
Since then I was lucky to participate in different art projects with other creative members of the metaverse. I learned a lot, I wrote…. And then it stopped. The last years, the only thing that has kept me coming back, to log in every morning has been the virtual animals.
I’ve had my dedication to virtual animals over the regular, I would say. I started with bunnies created by Ozimals and continued with the fantasy creatures called Meeroos. A virtual animal or AI animal is an animal that can reproduce itself and often there are some structures related to this, whether you want to breed a particular gen or mutate or create an elite. In many ways, virtual animal breeding has similarities to real life, except that it goes much faster in the virtual world and the animal, in prinsiple never dies. But you have to make sure to feed the animal otherwise you will lose it. I did this in 2009 to 2012.
In 2014, I went back to Ozimals. Which did not happen in silence at all, when one of the creators / owners contacted me:
Aeron Constantine: thanks for the Ozimals support onomatopoetikon, I have to know — what does your name mean? heh
onomatopoetikon (mimesis.monday): Oh sorry did not see this, means sound of words like: grrr, iik etc. Old customer found her way back.
Aeron Constantine: /me grins, I remember you
Aeron Constantine: well… one of you
Aeron Constantine: well welcome back to Ozimals, glad to have your support after all these years
Aeron Constantine: (This is Malk
onomatopoetikon (mimesis.monday): thank you, yes. Lovely to be back and figure things out.
Aeron Constantine: /me smiles, a few changes a long the way – nothing terribly crazy I don’t think
Aeron Constantine: lots of fun new things though
onomatopoetikon (mimesis.monday): Wonderful
Aeron Constantine: let me know if you need any help getting reacquainted
Aeron Constantine: if you haven’t seen it yet, we do have a helpful trait list on the wiki now
onomatopoetikon (mimesis.monday): thank you, so far all fine, the basic is the same.
onomatopoetikon (mimesis.monday): yes, I have looked at it
Aeron Constantine: http://wiki.ozimals.com/index.php?title=Trait_Timeline
Aeron Constantine: oh great 🙂
onomatopoetikon (mimesis.monday): Thank you
Aeron Constantine: np!
Aeron Constantine: have a great day, sorry to interrupt but welcome back :3
onomatopoetikon (mimesis.monday): No interuption and thank you the same
Aeron Constantine: of course, were there any bunnies you’ve lost or have gone back to Oz that you can’t live without? 🙂
onomatopoetikon (mimesis.monday): Well, now I would like to see what I can breed, and luckily I found one mini rex chocolate I though would be hard to get.
onomatopoetikon (mimesis.monday): found on the market
Aeron Constantine: it’s getting harder and harder to locate older original furs
onomatopoetikon (mimesis.monday): Yes, I would think so.
Aeron Constantine: we’ve retired A LOT
onomatopoetikon (mimesis.monday): I saw on the list
Aeron Constantine: check out Mini Rex Too Chocolate
Aeron Constantine: we recreated from scratch 3 of the original breeds for a LE
onomatopoetikon (mimesis.monday): I have not seen that
onomatopoetikon (mimesis.monday): oh how lovely
Aeron Constantine: want to be surprised or a link to a photo? Heh
onomatopoetikon (mimesis.monday): yes, would love to see a photo
Aeron Constantine: https://www.flickr.com/search/groups/?w=1184616%40N20&m=pool&q=Mini%20Rex%20Too%20Chocolate
Aeron Constantine: have 3 :3
onomatopoetikon (mimesis.monday): thank you
Aeron Constantine: no problem
onomatopoetikon (mimesis.monday): beautiful
Then suddenly, 14 days ago, Ozimals disappeared. And now there is no reason to log in anymore. Maybe it is for the best.