The Saturday morning

There is a real avatar named S0phie Sautereau in the virtual world called Second Life. Her profile picture, picks, and groups are all still the same as she left them back in April of 2011 and they will never be updated. They will never change, and unless someone has a mind or a legal obligation at Linden Lab, they will remain there for as long as Second life is online and chooses not to delete them from their servers.

S0phie Sautereau is an avatar and the person who created and operated that avatar is no longer among the living in this world.

From the Profile of S0phie Sautereau Second Life

“And a rainy day often starts like “It’s a fuzzy bunny slipper kind of day...” just posing it on a couch slurping coffee together, hearing a frequent wad of gum get destroyed between the molars. Yep and the next thing you know, Paris is raided by the Pretty Pink Pony Posse consisting of Muppet slipper-wearin Jack Daniels-chuggin hiccup-laughin tear-streamin sometimes-cross-dressin fly-swattin “retahds” with nothing better to do than become the company we’d even trade real life family for. Betcha Al Gore rides one of these when Tipper ain’t lookin somewhere in here. That’ll be the next mission: Find out the avi name of AL GORE in Second Life!”

Beatrice had no idea what she was in for when she first logged into the grid back in early 2002, but what she did find in the Forum whores was a group of like-minded individuals who reveled in their time spent with one another. A day didn’t go by that she didn’t hear the familiar ding of an IM from S0phie and if she hadn’t seen or heard from either Ruz or Slater they would always check in that night in Forum.

It came to be that all of them had tired of the small pay and Laggy performance of being a Beta Tester in most of the virtual worlds that they had told one another about and created accounts for. Launching a buggy client and getting booted for attempting the simplest of avatar physics only to spend countless hours reporting it in Jira became way too boring for the now God status members of Forum, like Ruz, Slater, S0phie and now Beatrice. One by one they decided to create accounts in more established virtual worlds like Second Life and on one Saturday morning they all met up at Aire Xaris’s homestead in the upstairs of her Gallery on Amante.

Ruz was the first to rez on the couch in front of a scripted Fireplace Aire had purchased on SLX (Second Life Marketplace. It was about 8 am in Boston which prompted Aire to ask Ruz if he had stayed up all night, seeing how he was in Seatle and it was 5 am there. He mumbled something indiscernible over game chat and changed his avi’s outfit to reflect more suitable Saturday morning attire which included a pair of Animal muppet slippers, a steaming cup of coffee and a Helmut.

Beatrice immediately updated Aire’s wardrobe to reflect that of Ruz’s attire and added a hairstyle known as Ghetto fab Curlers. It wasn’t long before Slater and Sophie had logged in and where rezzing onto the object called don’t F’ing sit here couch in the upstairs of Aire Xaris’s Gull gallery on Amante, Second Life.

“What’s the plan?” Sophie rezzed her segway that she got as a Freebie item on one of her Midnight madness tours and Slater shouted in general chat “Wait for me, don’t go anywhere yet.” Slater was AFK, obviously looking through his Inventory for his Bunny Slippers and PJ’s.

Ruz was doing his best to try and push Slater’s avatar out of the second story window of Aire’s Gallery while Randy, (the real person behind the avatar Ruz), was IM’ing Bea to make the window in her gallery phantom so that Slater would drop out.

It was a game they all played with one another, whenever one was stupid enough to pull a “Noob maneuver” like go AFK, (away from keyboard), in front of the other Forum whores, another of them would invariably and really now, without much fanfare, either push, bury or kick their avatar, so that when the respective person returned to the keyboard, their Avi was either not within view or was otherwise in an embarrassing situation. It was their way of showing virtual affection for one another.

Slater came back on to find his avatar at the bottom of Aire’s Guppy Pond, two stories, (about 3o meters on the Grid), down from where he left him. “You guys Suck” Slater chuckled over the Conference call that Sophie was smart enough to initiate so that they wouldn’t keep losing voice from sim to sim in what all had agreed would be a Saturday morning teleporting/ Sim Hopping adventure.

Ruz had laid out the first of their plans by proposing that they would hit up the Events guide in SL. Slater noted that there was a DJ friend of his that was hosting a Hoedown at Black horse country and that was all it took for Ruz to change into a wearable Pink pony that resembled a plushy horse head on a rideable stick.

Beatrice, Sophie, and Slater accepted Ruz’s inventory offer of the object named “my Wittle Pink Pony”, strapped on the wearable and teleported to Black Horse country on the Grid, Second Life.

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To some gamers, there is nothing more serious than Role Play.

to others, it's a ridiculous form of behavior made possible only by the thin, or rather perceived veil, of online anonymity and is to be made fun of and scoffed at, each and every time it is encountered. To Ruz, Sophie, Slater, and Aire, it was something else entirely on this morning and they set about to test just about every Role Play themed sim that was listed on the trending Events board for that Saturday morning.

Ruz was the first to rez in Black Horse Country, wearing nothing more than a white Bra, plushy pink pony around his waist and a pair of Animal muppet Slippers. he had swapped out his Helmut for a more appropriate Cowboy hat and immediately touched the Dance ball to join in with the other avatars that were dancing a line dance in sync.

Beatrice rezzed next and quickly followed suit, as did Slater and Sophie and all four independently snapped as many in-game pics as they could before the sim owner booted and banned the lot of them from the sim.

The other avatars were actually engaged in a square dance competition and didn’t quite get the queerly dressed foursome that crashed their little country Soiree. A barrage of angry IM’s ensued and it wasn’t long before all four were gone from the sim, but not before a multitude of epic in-game snapshots were collected and traded between all four of them. Beatrice actually took the time to take one of the snapshots into Gimp and applied it as a T-shirt template that she uploaded onto Aire and it wasn’t long before all of them were wearing it.

Somewhere on top of the Eifel Tower in Virtual Paris, where all four were now wearing tutus and Viking horns with attached yellow braids, Sophie chimed in on Conference voice and kept breaking up with what everyone could tell was the type of guttural laughter that would easily result in a stomach and headache lasting for hours, if not a day or two after the fun had ended.

She mentioned that it was now Lunchtime and that they should all meet up later around 11 SLT (Standard Linden Time) in a place she had found earlier which boasted, among other things, a mustache carousel and a sim wide Hot Air Balloon Tour.

Beatrice logged out of Sl holding her aching stomach, still raw from all the morning’s laughter with the feeling that she had probably just experienced one of the most fun Saturday mornings she had ever had in her whole life. She was still sighing and giggling at the thought of her avatar riding a Segway in bunny slippers and a helmet at the premier Couture fashion Event she and her three segway riding compadres had been booted from when she decided right there and then that she would create some type of HUD that would trace their exact teleport route so that anyone could log in and enjoy some of the same experiences. It was then that Bea realized her virtual experience was something of a deep bonding moment that would cement the relationships between four people that had never actually met in Real Life.