Anonymous – for Miso

I have a girl crush on a friend. Miso Susanowa is passionate and brilliant, with more than a dash of tenderness. These photos are inspired by her ferocious beauty.

Click ‘em bigger.

I am anonymous.

I Got This

I’m not a shy person, but I’m a private one. I don’t like to air my laundry in public. I’m not one to gossip in local chat or post long, angry, pointed blog posts without pointing at anyone by name. I prefer to deal with issues directly and in private. And I prefer to walk away from dead horses. (After just a couple of kicks, just to make sure they’re good and dead.)

One lesson that I’ve learned in Second Life is that no one has your back. You must set your own boundaries, and protect yourself as best you can. I’m pretty good at that.

Seems to me that the best way to protect your back is to face things head on.

If you have questions or concerns about my integrity, my values, my words or my actions, I hope you will do us both the favor of coming to me with those questions.

Makes it easier to watch my back.

Originality

I’m not sure who said, “There’s nothing new under the sun,” and I can’t be assed to look it up right now, but I’ve been giving lots of thought lately to originality and what it means to an artist. Can art, in any form, truly be the pure work of its creator, completely uninfluenced by any other’s work?

My mom, pre-head-injury perhaps, would have said YES without reservation. As a working artist her entire life, she often argued that artists can only view the world through their singular lenses, and even if they tried to exactly duplicate the work of another, their own vision and voice would show through. Her own art was unique and could only be called 100% original, despite her constant study of and instruction by other artists.

I guess it could be argued that technique can be shared and influenced, but the application of that technique will be unique to each artist who uses it.

This would be true of all forms of the arts, including writing.

I never did find a job that would pay me big bucks to stay home and care for my family as we go through this sucky time, so I have created my own job. I’m working as a freelance writer, along with Talia Fournier. We make a good team, and she’s a damn good writer.

The writing isn’t exciting (yet) and it’s not very creative. Sure, I’m writing original content, but the topics are usually mindless and often repetitive. The time I spend working on my own personal, creative writing has dropped to zilch. Well, maybe not zilch, I do still manage to post tons at Twitter, and when Crap Mariner/Laurence Simon posted the topic of his latest 100 Word Stories Challenge, I managed to string together enough words to enter. You can see the latest entries here.  I guess short blurbs of creativity are better than no blurbs at all.

Maybe I should take up poetry. It looks easy enough.

One thing I’ve learned while jumping headfirst into this endeavor is that many works that appear to be original works of art often are… not. Taking credit for writing that is not your own is called plagiarism. In the world of content creation and ghost writing, many authors hire a writer to create their articles for them, and then post them under their own byline as if they were the original author. I’m shocked by the number of writers that do this, and the wide scale of topics that are not written by the writer listed as the author. Since the article was commissioned and paid for, it does then belong to the person who bought it, and they can post it as their work completely legally. And since I get paid to do this, I’m certainly not going to be a hypocrite and say that this is all wrong.

But it gives me a secret sense of smugness to see them take credit for work they didn’t create, and it makes me wonder about all of their work- whether any of it was ever really penned by their own hand. Is there ever anything original under the sun?

I know there is, because I create it myself.

Stand Up

As a teacher and a mother, I have a vested interested in ending the horrible effects of bullying. In both real life and InWorldz, I’m wearing pink today in support of International Stand Up Against Bullying Day. My real world pink is a conservative buttondown. My inworld pink gets to be a bit more fun.

Talia Fournier of Paparazzi made the “Bullies Can Kiss My Ass” Tshirt, it’s free at her shop, or ping her inworld for a copy.

I hope you’ll Stand Up too.

Skin: Pulse, Hair: Deviant (modded to tint pink), Wings: Keira Alzael, Shorts: Sassy, Socks: Dancer Glimmer sent them over and I forgot to check the creator (thanks Dancer!)