Hunt Tips for Hunters, Organizers, & Shopkeepers

This rattles around in my head every time I find myself chasing one hunt or another, and it probably will be re-written in a more cohesive form someday, but here's my hopefully-rational, down to earth, no-nonsense straight talk about Hunts and Hunting....

Hunters: You can't be told often enough- you're being given a gift (or in some cases, a real bargain, at least.) Don't bitch. Some hunt gifts will be AMAZING. Others will make your eyebrow twitch as you hastily send them to the dumpster. Nobody HAS to hunt, and no one HAS to participate on the giving side either. So- if you get something you hate, send it to Recycle, and move on. A merchant's objectives in participating in hunts should be and usually are to give you a taste of their quality and style, to let you see their shop, and to increase traffic. If a merchant has included instead some shoddy object that has nothing even to do with the product or service they provide, then don't return, and don't recommend them. Simple as that.

Likewise, respecting other hunters and the hunt itself are important. So... DON'T run headlong like a lunatic 4 year old meth head on a sugar-crack high around each shop, bumping or leaping ninja-style over the heads of other hunters and customers. Please. It's tacky, rude, and makes people hate hunters in general. Fly, if you need to, but flailing like a deranged toddler helps no one, and looks pretty dumb, too. MOST hunts are not races meant to be sprinted through. Relax. Take pictures. Take landmarks. Stroll. I promise... it doesn't hurt. (The scary thing to me is, I've seen more hunters who DO act this way than those who don't.)

Merchants: The majority of merchants really are terrific, although some get pretty impatient with hunters who are rude and pushy. That's fair. Please remember when you sign up to be in a hunt, your objectives are to win new customers, woo back those who have strayed, to increase traffic, and to showcase your awesome work. If you jump on every hunt bandwagon, and toss freebie, poorly made stuff in your hunt object, you are hurting yourself more than anything.  No one will come back to a shop that gave out an unscripted black cube labeled "Elegant End Table", no matter how awesome the stuff on your walls for sale is. ESPECIALLY not if what you sell is clothing, or animations. No one is asking you to give out full perm fat packs of your top-selling product... but a no-copy, no-mod version, in on special (maybe even hunt-exclusive) color, would not be a bad idea. Put a tiny logo-tag on the item, too. Something discrete, that will help remind the hunter where he got that awesome chair. Then the hunters will not only be back, they'll remember your shop's name, and tell all their friends.

Hunts are not Merchant Vs Hunter. That's not the point. You don't need to be adversarial. Give us a challenge, sure, but there are a few merchants who are notorious for an attitude of "HaHA! You will NEVER find my amazingly hidden hunt item!" Really? I mean... all well and good to get into the spirit of the hunt and all, but... you WANT the item to be found! Otherwise, the hunters DON'T get that nifty thing you worked so hard on, and they also don't get the LM that you put in the box, and they probably leave grumbling, or they become compelled to cheat. None of those are good things.

Reality Sucks and sometimes, after months preparing for a hunt, you get pulled away and can't be around to fix broken things, or redirect botched LMs, or whatever. If the unforeseen befalls you, try to arrange for someone else to have the proper rights and permissions to handle any such problems, should they arise in your absence.

Organizers:  Try to assure that your hunt info signs contain all the critical information. First LM, any costs (huds, group memberships, passport items, etc,) the nature of your charity if you have one, and very importantly, the THEME of your hunt.

Encourage or require that merchants be appropriate in maturity level and theme! It's creepy as hell to be on an X-rated or horror-themed hunt and find oneself on a kid sim looking through the footy-pajama section for a tiny severed head! Likewise, when one is on a dark gothic hunt, one doesn't want to be strolling through a neon strip mall full of sports equipment.

Make contact information clear, so that hunters AND merchants know to whom they can turn in case of emergencies like broken links, or confusing instructions.

All of these things, on everyone's parts, will make hunts more enjoyable for all, and lead to bigger, more successful hunts!

Expeditions in Grid-Hopping

In the process if seeking inspiration for the photoshoot I've been struggling with, I've done one of my favorite things: Grid-Hopping. For the un-pixelated, that means travelling somewhat randomly around the grid, via the map-system, or others' offered links, seeking out attractions and interesting installations, curiosities, beautiful landscape, or anything else one might expect (or even more often, NOT expect) to find in the virtual world. KoinUp, (one of my very favorite social networks,) allows it's members to landmark the images they share, so that others can visit the places they discover, and I just found a whopper, discovered by one of my fellow avid grid hoppers. This is a monster epic of a grid creation, and I have no idea why it's not more well-known. Then again, maybe I get more excited about maps than most people do...

The sim is called Rumsey Maps, or more accurately, the sims- plural. There are four, and they are difficult to describe. I'm parked there now, my draw-distance set to an insane 512 meters, waiting for the place to fully rez so I can post pictures... which will follow this astonished ramble. Oh look!  Here they are now! (Oh... and if you want to go there, here's the SLurl! Rumsey Maps Museum

There really should be

...a blog topper with time-sensitive material that gets auto-deleted when it's no longer relevant. To that end, I will be occasionally slashing through, eliminating bloggisms that lack any long-term content value.

SnipSnip.

Fanning Flames

I've begun work on the Primordial Muse section, and hope that it's both enlightening and entertaining. Using a blogging format to accomplish this is frustrating at best, but the little distractions of formatting distract me sufficiently at least to keep the creativity flowing nicely.  I hadn't thought in much depth about the Muse Mythos in quite a long time, but since I've been working on the sim again, it seemed only right to make another run at expressing the mythos to a wider audience. The first few parts are finished, and I've gotten farther in writing it all out than I have in the past, so that too is promising. I guess we'll see what that yields soon enough!

                        

On the music front, the urge to write is starting to really itch, and my lack of privacy toward that goal has some respite at last, too.  I've been nudged by several sources to provide a fresh biography and promo shots, and I suppose it has been nearly a year since the last promo revamp, so a brainstorming and photoshoot session should be underway in the next day or two as well. Good things. Hey look! I do more than fish and hunt and play with meeroos.  Sad to say, I haven't had time to dance in a very long time.

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With Some Degree Of Hope...

... I install Scribefire. I really would like to keep my blog a bit more current, and if I can make blogging a bit more integral to my web process, then it will be that much more likely. This is just the first attempt. I suppose you'll know soon enough whether it's a success or a crashing dismal failure!

And just look at how much the Bog has changed!


And in case I forget to mention it... (As if!)  MEEROOS! 

 
Let us not forget Steamhunt 5 is well underway, too

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Where'd She GO?!

Dannng- I went and found ANOTHER damned hobby... KoinUp. If you like Virtual pics, and you don't know about KoinUp, you are seriously missing out! I'm up to my eyeballs in it, managing groups, snappin' pics, critiquing my peers... all favorite pastimes, of course! Come check me out, but don't worry... I'll get back to the blog... Eventually.

(I think Eventually..." is going to be my personal motto. :D

Busy Bee, Me!

Alright- we've established that I play music, and I dance. (I'll have to get into the dancing subject in depth sometime....) What ELSE do I do, that makes all my friends complain that I never have any any ANY free time? I am very deeply entrenched in my SL...

I Explore! There are so many amazing and clever and funny and beautiful things to see, and do, and be a part of here! So to that end, I will, (hopefully,) be posting images and descriptions of the places and things I find in my wanderings. There are galleries, musical venues, dance clubs, exotic villages, alternate worlds, anything and everything one can imagine seems to have some niche in some corner of this virtual reality!

But I don't JUST wander around, randomly looking at things, of course.. there have to be reasons to go places, and ways of finding them. So I also....

FISH! Yep I'm a 7-Seas junkie- you betcha! And there are some incredible things to see as one explores the fishing holes of Second Life, as well as some fantastic custom content created by the clever folks who run them! So yeah. I'll post pics and links of fish, and fishing holes, too. Eventually.

I also love to HUNT! Hunting is an addiction that makes fishing seem like childsplay- if you've never participated in any of the gridwide hunts- especially if, like me, you LOVE free stuff, then you really are missing out on an entire world of entertainment and subculture!

And there is, of course, that all-time Second Life hobby of hobbies- yes, people... I Shop. I shop with a frenzy I shop as an artform. I buy things I don't need, and even can't use, simply because they are beautifully made. I am, after all, a muse, which I suppose that I STILL have not explained. Next post- promise!

I am, as you might guess from all the pics, an avid photographer, and consider myself a purist, in that (apart from graphic design of posters and promo material,) I avoid photo manipulation at all cost. The only things I do out of world to my images is crop, and occasionally color-retouch. Not to say of course, that I think there is anything wrong with photo-manipulation, but I feel, in SL as anywhere, it's a competely separate art from photography, which should focus on framing, light, and composition. (More on that later too!)

For a while, I confess, there were chickens in my life.... But henceforth let me be known as Senjata- Devourer of Chickens and Angel of Vengeance against Sion and his evil minions!

Okay- the grid beckons, and I must go, but next post- about the muses. What we are, what we do, and the myths dispelled. See you in Zindra!

Performance, Pornography, and Me.

All those lovely words... and I've blogged exactly.. ONCE. I know I suck. At least at blogging. I stand firmly on the Fifth Amendment regarding any other sort of suckage... Well, no, that's not quite true either. And this was so not meant to be a smutblog!

Okay- so maybe it was. I've meant to reveal more about myself, and the life (or lives, really...) I lead on the grid, so why not dive in with both feet! When I first came into being, like so many others, I wandered lost, trying desperately simply to walk a straight line, let alone, look good standing still. I had no income, and was stuck bumming lindens from friends, and camping (god save those poor campers!) and looting money trees.... Then I discovered strip clubs. What can one say about strip clubs in SL, on the whole? Not a lot. The majority of dancers I've seen wear 8ft tall, shiny avatars, with excruciatingly pointy noses, and skin that looks like they spend all their time (when not stripping of course)alternating between a baby oil plant and a glitter factory. I mean no personal dis to any particular dancer, or female of any sort, in SL. But I digress- the "everyone looks the same" thing is a personal rant I'll go off on endlessly- LATER. I had even at that point determined I didn't want to look 8 feet tall, shiny, or pointy. How then was I ever to win a coveted dancer's tag, and begin to earn a living shakin' my strange, short, entirely UNpointy self? Simply. I filled out an application at the wildest, weirdest dance club I could find. In that application, I stipulated that while, as a relative newb, I'd be happy to hear advice on improving my appearance, I was not interested in the job if it required that I put on one of those ridiculous pre-packaged giraffe-legged shiny, pointy tan blonde stripper avis that are so very prevalent in virtually every club on the grid.

Long story not really any shorter- I got the job. I worked as a dancer at the club I will here shamelessly plug (only because they truly truly ROCK,) called simply Sinful Needs. Dancing, I came to learn, could earn one a living in several ways- Some folks actually pay good tips to SEE those shiny long lean tan glittery skins. MOST though are far more interested in what a dancer says, and how they say it. I earned a decent living as a dancer, writing elaborate and sensual emotive descriptions and actions, none of which the animations set available to me allowed me to actually do. I fared every bit as well as the tall, blonde, shiny tan gals, maybe better, because I didn't look like ANYONE but Senjata. And no one looks even a little quite like me. At Sinful Needs, I earned a living, and found what at first I hadn't realized at all was a family. I am and have always been a stray and a loner, and at this club, both as a guest, and later as an employee, I was accepted, even for that. So three cheers for the baddest assed demonic fetish club on the grid!

Time passed. I continued to evolve and to explore, and I discovered the acoustic music scene. Live, real, in your face music that is pure in it's presentation, with as little as possible separating artist from audience. I came to thrive. I performed (still do) all over the place! I got a club... (another story for another post,) I hosted some of the most incredible live acoustic music imaginable, and I have been, on most levels, accepted into that culture as a peer. I earn a very good SL living, and am even able to suppliment my First World avatar's income just a bit.

And yet.... I dance. Still. I return to Sinful Needs, four, five sometimes six times a week. Why? Well, a few reasons. Most importantly, I just plain *enjoy* it- dancing with words. And as I said, the club and those who run it are family to me, and I enjoy their company. All that said, I also do it because it's shocking. It's unacceptable. It's at least vaguely taboo, socially speaking. I hear the implication that only women with nothing better to offer would choose to "exploit" their bodies by stripping. That dancers and the clubs that present them are somehow lesser, cheaper, less worthy. I've heard musicians complain that they wouldn't be reduced to playing in strip clubs, as if it were beneath them. As one who's danced, both in RL and SL, and one who still does, I take a certain offense to that. How exactly is presenting my breasts any different from presenting my voice? And how does acknowledging that I am a sensual and sexual creature cheapen me? That's ridiculous, of course. I often invite guests at the strip club to come and hear me sing- though I admit, I don't generally invite those who come to my concerts to visit me at the strip club... primarily, because I feel the invitation would be less welcome. They are, just the same, welcome to come, dance, enjoy the DJs, and the very different music, (I generally dance to industrial & hard rock,) and me, on my pole, offering up a very different, but just as valid, form of art.

Recently, I found myself challenged to perform, musically, in the buff. I took the dare, and did indeed sing and play for a full hour wearing nothing but my guitar and my tattoos. It taught me a few things. It taught me that doing so is ENTIRELY different- I don't want people who come to my concerts to do so because they like to see my pixel-tits bared. I want them there because they love the music I offer. And it made me terribly nervous. I was afraid no one would show up. I was afraid I would be spurned or scandalized for the act. Nothing of the sort. I drew a packed house, and held the crowd for an hour with only the music. You could suggest they stayed to see me humiliate myself.. or to simply get a naughty show... but I left the stage feeling comfortable. I was surprised though at how much more afraid of that act I was than climbing on a dance pole....

So, wrapping all that up into a neatish package: I sing. I strip. Take one, or both, as you please, but I hope you won't judge me for either. If you do? That's your problem.

And thus I begin.

My name is Senjata Witt, and I am both muse, and avatar in many senses of the word. There is no time now to explain but it will come.

In that time, also will come tales, visions, and songs, legends and myths, truths, and greater Truths, and I hope a better understanding for both my reader and my self.


I awake from primal into digital, barely transiting the flesh of which I am made.