Control Your Own Mermaid

Do you want a virtual mermaid that you can control? You can have one through Second Life and it's free.

Second Life has been around for years. It is sort of a cross between a multi-person video game and a chat room. It takes place in a virtual world made up of islands. Like real life, some of these islands are public and some are private. When you join you select an avatar (which is supposed to represent you) from a series of pre-packaged ones. You can get new clothing for your avatar or even replace it completely. After that you can wander around or teleport to specific landmarks.

To create an account in Second Life go to their web site and sign up. This will give you a link for the Second Life Viewer. Everything you do in Second Life is through this. You can walk around with your avatar or interact with special animations for things like dancing.

The first thing that you need to do to make a mermaid is to modify your avatar. Start at Freebie Island. This is full of signs showing clothes and body parts. The default avatars have permanent underwear which conflicts with the mermaid look so you will need a replacement skin. Be sure that you get the full thing and not just a demo. You have to look around and you might need to change your preferences to include "adult". You can also look around for some new hair and eyes.

Now, use your web browser to go to the Second Life Marketplace and search on "mermaid tail". You will find an overwhelming number of hits, many of them free. I'm using the term "mermaid" but there are male version also. Some of them are pretty fierce.

A note on money. Purchases are made in "Lindon Dollars". Free members have to buy these but they are pennies on the dollar. Premium members get L$300 each Tuesday which is enough for almost any tail.

Mermaids are handled three different ways in Second Life. The most common is to include an Animation Override (AO) that keeps the legs together so that they resemble a tail. The fluke is attached to one foot. There may be additional fins. Most of the mermaids done this way have a light, airy look. They can also take up a lot of room with all of these fins floating around.

The second way of handling a mermaid is to make the legs invisible using something called an "alpha channel" and to attach a tail at the waist. This can be very convincing but many of the animations looks a little strange unless they were specifically designed for mermaids. Also, sometimes your tail gets on crooked. When this happens you can fix it by removing it and putting it back on. In between you are floating since your legs are invisible. Also, if you are wearing anything like anklets, they will seem to be floating below you.

I haven't tried the third way yet. It involves removing one leg and reshaping the other into a tail. This is, of course, painless. That would resolve the problem of animations since you still have a leg and it should look better than trying to fuse two legs together.

Once you have your mermaid, what do you do with her?

If you search for locations with the term "mermaid" you will find several. These are mainly bars where you can hang out and stores where you can buy more mermaid-related things.

If you really want to get into Second Life then you can buy property and start decorating it. There are numerous mermaid beds available. You can also get poses, animations, and props such as seaweed.

All of this is great but the truth is that Second Life peaked some time ago. Most of the areas I have been through have been empty or nearly empty. The Trident Bar has a nice mermaid dance floor with enough animations for multiple mermaids to be dancing at once but out of several visits I've only found one other mermaid present. The dance with only two mermaids is impressive. It must be spectacular with all of the animations in use.

Another issue with Second Life is that a good bit of its content is adult oriented. Some of the mermaid beds include animations for mermaid sex. Many areas are devoted to casual or kinky sex and some to violent sex. I would strongly recommend that anyone below 18 stay well away from Second Life. It is also easy to underestimate the strength of on-line relationships so even adults need to be careful.