Many fascinating creatures were observed while exploring these sims. One of the inhabitants of the mountains, Tanith Xiuhcoatl, was found watching over the lands. She is an orphan dragon, according to her own elaborations, young and naive (for a dragon) but quite intelligent. When asked, Tanith elaborated; she visited other sims but felt that role play sims allowed experimenting with a wide variety of characters and levels of empowerment. And, it does not come as a surprise that the empowerment of her real life persona is important to her. Other players have multiple characters depending on the importance of their role play compared to other activities in Second Life. XD for instance has three characters with very different personae. She elaborates, “While this one [character Ocean] is brand new, both the others are extremely em-
powered. In my experience women have a broad spectrum of characters, in fact the creativity of people amazes me.” XD admits, “I just love role play, and it is not even about winning a fight or anything, most of my characters have little combat experience. For me, it’s the fun, the losing yourself in another world for a bit.” She concludes, “I am limited to what I can do in RL. This is my sanity!” The women interviewed seemed to be breaking the old mold and using their imagination and creativity to become unique characters with rich role play lives. Also, the three sims visited are not the usual fairy tale places either. Each one has offers a different viewpoint on magical and enchanted worlds. Why not explore one or two and indulge in a fascinating world.
62 | MANIERA | mymaniera.com
JULY/AUGUST 2013