Achariya is one of my oldest friends on the internet. Certainly one of my best. We’ve been through all sorts of personal crap together (not crap between us, but general life happens stuff), Tolkien craziness and the endless pursuit of hats. But these days she blogs about fashion in Second Life and I… well I tried Second Life once or twice, mostly to hang out with Achariya. I still don’t quite get it. So I asked her a lot of questions and she made me understand stuff. Now we share that conversation with you:

APK: What got you onto Second Life?

Achariya: My doctoral advisor said, “Oh, you like the internets. You should play this…mmorpg thing. It’s named Second Life. There are educational places there!” And I said: Oh no. I can’t possibly because then I’ll get sucked in and never finish my dissertation. She didn’t believe me, and I’m still on chapter 1.

APK: See when I was in school they warned us about MUDs and they were right back THEN. Good to know things don’t change too much.

Achariya: Absolutely. Second Life is like MMORPGs plus no monsters or leveling plus BARBIES. Obviously it’s instant crack to one such as I, who only cared about how pretty my armor was.

APK: So, sure, it’s an RPG with no leveling and with Barbie awesomeness, but you went there for things related to education. And now you’re known for writing about fashion in SL. I mean, that’s a bit of a left, no?

Achariya: Yes. I entered for education, put on some clothes. Realized that people made amazing things that were tangentially related to fashion but really all about expression of identity… And never looked for education. Education became the “how can we make this learning opportunity dry and pedantic” … One of my doctoral advisors did it right; she had her students play in the world and recreate Macbeth with building tools.

APK: Oh, interesting

Achariya: THAT was a fun exploration — they made a metaphorical Macbeth’s castle, full of floating text and sound and interactive objects… The best way through that play ever.

APK: It sounds like it. But I want to back track a bit. You say you “Realized that people made amazing things that were tangentially related to fashion but really all about expression of identity.” How is that different from fashion outside of Second Life?

Achariya: We have things in real life that constrain self expression. (1) our physical being and (2) laws of physics.

In Second Life, neither of these things apply. That means you can be an enormous mecha, or a floating television, or (more boringly) simply a tall male if you’re a short female. Nothing really constrains the expression of your identity. And it doesn’t need a lot of operations and/or cybernetic parts.

APK: So you’re defining fashion as the entirety of the avatar not just the clothing on it?

Achariya: Yes, simply because you can mess with the avatar on so many levels. You can identify fashion in Second Life as “the latest knock off of real-life fashion”, but the designers that I tend to follow mess with the avatar in interesting ways. One made a skin that looks like a steampunk robot, for example.

APK: It is still possible, I have to say though, that Lady Gaga might disagree this is not all possible in the real world.

Achariya: It’s true. Lady Gaga does look like an avatar.

APK: It makes you wonder if Second Life is starting to influence fashion outside of itself at all, in the sense of full adaptation of appearance. We’re fascinated by it, as a culture it feels like, between plastic surgery and people doing high fashion with electronics in them and what not.

Achariya: Maybe the future truly is, like, now. Or something. Maybe we HAVE our flying cars. (They’re just in cyberspace.)

APK: So is this something you’ve always wanted to study and unpack and write about or did Second Life trigger some realization of a sort?

Achariya: Second Life got me on the artistic level. I wasn’t a fashion bloginista until I realized that I had this irrepressible urge to put an outfit on my avatar, pose for a photo, and then write something pertinent to the outfit. I don’t know where this need came from, but it was almost compulsive. The art inside of me had to get out somehow.

When I grew up, I’d sneak out of school and spend the afternoon at the campus library pouring over old editions of Vogue. Some of that probably snuck through my consciousness and just lay dormant, waiting for a bit of the right water…

APK: A reaction to the external thing forced its own creative outlet, which, of course, inspires people to do things to get written about, creating the thing you’re writing about.

Achariya: Which isn’t very different from Real Life eh? Or First Life as we term it.

APK: Not at all, no. And something common to a lot of different slices of the internet, changing genders and experimenting that way, seem to be … larger in Second Life. Because of the visual nature probably. But how does that work for you?

Achariya: Well, I approach gender as part of fashion. So if a designer hands me clothing and accessories for a boy, I think — awesome, let’s don the penis.

APK: (If I had a dollar for every time I’ve said THAT)

Achariya: So I put on my boy shape and form and then I can self-express male clothing. It’s funny, the male avatar took on a life of his own with an entirely fictional list of deeds. People tend to think of him as this bad-boy, through no fault of his own. I think it’s just how he looks…

Also, he’s a blond. Don’t ask why, I don’t know.

APK: What’s the learning curve been like, writing about all of this for public consumption? How have you changed as a writer, doing it? Noticing things differently, thinking about them, and so on.

Achariya: Hm. I write less academically, more for fashion. It’s actually weird to write for fashion every day. You begin to avoid words like “beautiful” and “lush” and “tailored” and “cute” and “pretty” — and reach for specifics. If I like a garment, I’ll try to reach into my reason why, instead of saying, “this pretty dress is pretty.” Although I do that sometimes.

Instead, I’ll say, “I like this dress because the fabric flows in an easy line from mid-thigh to ankle, floating around the avatar as if an antigrav field was at work.”

APK: Gotcha. And if people do, to backtrack a bit again, treat your avatars differently, I mean how does that even work? They’re both you, you write the same regardless, so…

Achariya: Example: When I’m in boy avatar, one of my male friends calls me Bro, offers me beer, and won’t stand within a certain distance of me. Whereas he’ll drop all that weirdness with my female avatar. I’ve begun teasing him about this, poking at him for being unable to express his latent homosexual desires. He’s simply used to me as female, however.

Another example. Women and men tend to react more strongly to my male avatar than to the female one, partly because men are so scarce in Second Life. He’s much more popular.

APK: When you say men are so scare do you mean in terms of avatars or players or both?

Achariya: Players. Lots of women tend to express themselves as male.

APK: And historically a lot of males have explored expressing themselves as females online.

Achariya: Very true. Like my husband, right now, playing a computer game as a female avatar.

APK: Sure. And I remember back when everyone first learned that Seamus in Metroid was a female character. It was somehow shocking. Those same people were then playing RPGs as male or female characters without a second thought.

Achariya: Hehe, nice reference.

APK: Hey it was an oddly defining thing when I was younger. How many kickass female characters were there in video games before that? That weren’t played up for the 8bit sexuality of it all?

Achariya: Very true! Boob physics alone should prove this.

APK: Ahh boob physics. The goal of many a young programmer. And on that note we should stop before we get into stranger territory. But thanks for this!

Achariya: You’re welcome!

Remember you can keep up with Achariya’s explorations of Second Life over at Achariya.net where she blogs almost daily.