Owlishness

I met Owly Indigo.. hrm.. I don’t remember how I met Owly. She just kind of appeared in my SL and is a great person to know. A leader of community of fun-loving and poetry-reading people, she is always there with a joke, a funky thought, an anecdote about her Owlette, and a bird. Yes, she always has a bird on hand—whether it’s for SL7B or her blog or.. well, my blog. I asked Owly to explain her Owlishness and she accommodated me quite beautifully.

The crow wished everything was black; the owl, that every thing was white. – William Blake

When Harper asked for contributions to A Passion for Virtual Fashion, she asked for a focus on persona. From the very beginning, my SL persona has been my RL self, with this playfully owlish overlay. I have always thought of Owly Indigo as my RL self and as a female snowy owl. I am comfortable with the idea that this might not make a whole lot of sense. However, I do not roleplay an owl – I rarely wear an owl avatar, I do not perch on the side of a cliff or eat rodents or fight with wolves. Instead, I think of my avatar as a snowy owl in a mostly human form, and many of my avatar adornment choices come from this notion.

This “oldie” dress by Paper Couture, called Pica, makes me feel the most snowy owlish. The floatiness of the white skirt with giant black-edged feathers and the black diamonds on the white bodice mimic and evoke the coloring of a snowy owl perfectly. I certainly don’t think it was the designer’s intention to make a snowy owl dress, but DANG it sure turned out that way!

The choices I make for the base of my human avatar – the skin and hair – are nearly always black or white. I am so white in RL that I’m blue, and I am pale in SL, too. I think of l.fauna’s palest tone as a “natural” pale that is pretty close to white, and sometimes I wear completely white or gray skins. The “Startled White” color at fri.day is the white I definitely consider “my” color – oftentimes when changing hair, I just type “startled” into inventory to find what I want.

Hanging out with me here is the female snowy owl from Animania. See how great we look together!? Birds by Animania are ubiquitous in SL, not to mention pricey and sometimes primmy, but they really are the best in terms of variety, features, and how they look and move.

And what’s with the very non-owlish antlers? They come from Illusions, where there are many many different kinds and sizes of horns and antlers. And how, exactly, do they fit with the owl theme? Well. They don’t. I just love antlers. Wearing them makes me feel happy and complete. I think nearly everyone in SL has something they wear like that – maybe it’s a piece of jewelry, a mechanical arm, a crown, a fluffy cat’s tail, a certain hairstyle, a collar, or fangs. This is one of the things I really love about SL, the ability to create a completely unique avatar from the millions of choices out there.

So what do you wear on your av that makes you … you?