Category Archives: Heterocera

rat mobile

Mr. Matrix has found a nice piece of land in the Pond District from which to establish a base for his operations there, but he can’t decide on a house. Oh the vanity.

A weird thought then crossed his mind as he stared into the mirror. Maybe *he’s* the rat.

Anyway, he better get back to his deliveries.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0008, 0416, Pond District^

Little Heaven

Philip Strevor wasn’t available, so Mr. Matrix took his spot at the Watching Booth. He was staking out the place of a guy known as The Rabbit, but The Boss correctly assumed he was just a rat in disguise. Now to dangle the carrot, er, cheese.

Whenever she’s fit and ready.

Sure the giant carrot was pointed directly at his hideout, but The Rabbit was no longer there. Or had he not moved in yet?

Directly behind his past/future hideout lived Lucas Smart, hatch open to his own home. He’d hoped someone would find him down there all sideways before now. Vertical and horizontal had become all smushed up. And the water could be rising once more!


dramatization

Lemmings existed in the area. Here’s one sunbathing at Bowers Beach.

And here’s another at the same beach raiding a treasure chest of gold bricks and coins. Could this be why The Rabbit is in the area? Treasure, buried or exposed?

There use to be a village of tiny gummy people across the lake from the beach, but they seemed to have moved away in the last 5 years or so, probably because of the variant water levels. Their main street was aligned with the Rodentia Underground entrance seen in the distance here.

But it was not just a town (New Gummton). There was a tiny forest beside a tiny lake with a tiny pier. A whole microcosm for the miniature inhabitants to exist within. They needed no “outside”. I wonder what happened to them?

Back in Rodentia proper, the bait had been set. “Sure hope this work,” Mr. Matrix thinks, checking his daily sports scores.

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In the Pond District today:

Axis found a black and white girl slumped against a Rodentia dumpster but did not know who she was. She didn’t open her eyes.

Tealie woke Jiff up in a bad mood, who did not wish to play right this minute.

So she instead goes to visit the grave of her old friend Matthew Lodenwald. What a blow to the community when he died!

Bob Richards continues to reads scrapbooks of the war and laments how he will never see his beloved Alpha again. Oh dear, looks like Li’l Bob’s jumped out of his crib.

Uncle Doomed drinks Jack Daniels in front of the neighbor’s Blob until passing out.

Lucas Smart tries to figure out how his life went so wrong.

Chris Caveman lumbers out of the Rodentia Underground, worse off from the experience.

In the local arcade, punk band Story Room prepares to play Cruise Control with newbie Grassy Noll, snickering about whether he’ll even make it out of the first turn.

Also in the arcade, Bill (Wheeler) confers with Rocky Racco about her most recent name change and move to Iris. “Heterocera is still at the fore of my research,” she reassures the learned writer. “I haven’t forgotten about Olde Lapara Towne, Collagesity, VHC City, or any of the rest.”

“Good, Wheeler.” He scratches his nose with his free paw. “Did you know that my cousin Tealie now lives in this area?”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0008, 0414, collages 2d, Heterocera, Pond District^

link

Just like that, Mabel was back in Collagesity. It wasn’t their house that was the key, it was the *Mission*. She’d just completed a long and fascinating conversation with long time dual resident Turchin McGurchin about the nature of “Beach” and “Time”. Precious Snowflake had been working on The Rainbow Sphere all along, a final gift.

But what is The Rainbow Sphere? That’s what former town resident Roger Pine Ridge was aiming to find out.

“Gilmore, I’m going to be out of this water world and back on dry land before you know it, you hateful bastard. You’ll see.”

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don’t axe him

Gilmore the Axe Man,” utters Roger Pine Ridge after his walk from Iris. He’d reached the end of a main causeway again. “Still blocking me from leaving this cursed swamp village. No matter what direction I go, there he is.” No use talking to him directly, he realizes. The message remains the same.

“Don’t leave.” Or a variant on that: “You’re trapped.”

“At least those insufferable moths aren’t around in the middle of the day.”

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!

“I think we may have found our variant, Catvas II,” Bill (Wheeler) spoke to the fishtailed feline reading beneath her chair after the record had finished playing. “*The* Variant.”

“That’s nice. Anything to help you paint and take your mind off that chess match.”

“I’m trying to pick out Roger’s song on this harp,” offered a plucking Grassy from the opposite side of the small porch. “It’s more complicated than expected. The bridge is interesting.”

“I timed it,” said Bill. “(The bridge) starts at 3:33. The whole song is 6:66. Oh, I’m sorry! I meant 7:06.” But Bill wondered about that time slip more and more as time went on.

“‘Time,'” proclaimed Grassy simply while continuing to pluck and strum. “Don’t care too much for the flip side of ‘Beach,’ though.”

“No, not as powerful and catchy,” followed Bill quickly.

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The State of Collagesity

Baker Bloch stands before the vacated Collagesity apartment formerly occupied by Cyberpaperdoll and her then lover/boyfriend Roger Pine Ridge. As we have seen in the story so far, they’ve moved to Iris in the center of the Heterocera continent, not too awful far northeast of Collagesity actually — only about 4 sims away using a diagonal measurement, or about a kilometer and a half in distance. But now Cyberpaperdoll seems to have left Roger alone in that watery place for a more exciting and hipper man (Bandit Boy). Last we see of Pine Ridge, he’s debating whether to unburden his recent woes on fellow Iris resident Bill (Wheeler). We’ll see how that develops.

But Cyberpaperdoll and Roger are not the only ones to leave Collagesity recently. Rocky Racco’s duplicate dwelling place, also attached to the SoSo Mall, has essentially been cleaned out, save a picture of David Bowie and a meditation pillow. Where is the furry wordsmith, curious readers may ask? It could be that he went back to Olde Lapara Towne, perhaps staying with cousins Sport and Racket up in the mountains above that virtual burg, or maybe assuming his old job at the town’s hotel where we first picked up with his story. But at any rate, he’s gone from Collagesity, perhaps never to return.

And also the 2 apartments in the Kidd Tower, formerly occupied by Mr. Babyface and Greg Ogden, are now unfurnished and currently unavailable to rent. My guess for these two is that they simply transitioned over to Middletown on the Jeogeot continent when Billy Jean Kidd created a doppleganger tower there in “Collagesity 2017 Later”, or novel 6 of our Collagesity series. *That* became more the real Kidd Tower, since The Kidd lived inside it and not the one in Collagesity. Again: best guess. Like the rest — but especially Rocky Racco, I believe — they will be missed. Doesn’t mean that they can’t return of course, but they’ll be missed in the meantime. And this is another structure attached to the SoSo Mall.

So just utilizing these pieces of information alone, it might seem that Collagesity is in a bit of trouble, especially since this is the first time we’ve really talked about my town in any depth in the present work, which is now halfway completed. But actually I believe this isn’t the case. To explain my reasonings for this determination, let’s start with the recent land ownership changes for Our Second Lyfe premium members as copied from the company blog.

As of March 14, 2018, pricing for each mainland tier allotment has been reduced by 10%. Additionally, Premium subscribers now receive 1024m² of bonus land allotment, doubled from the previous 512m².

Baker Bloch formerly owned 8704 square meters of land in Collagesity, maxing out his 40 dollar tier allowance. But now with the bump up of bonus land allotment from 512 to 1024, coupled with the 10% price reduction on tier, he can now own 9216 square meters of land at *35* dollars a month. And that’s exactly what I’ve chosen to have him do and be responsible for. Now let’s turn to the other town owner Baker Blinker, or, I should now say, *former* owner. For just after the price changes were announced, I decided that Wheeler Wilson should take over Baker Blinker’s land, since she has assumed the lion’s share of female roles in the blog, including Mabel — that’s the most important new addition in my eyes. And Baker Blinker herself, as a core avatar, hasn’t played a major factor in Collagesity novels since “Collagesity 2016 Later”, which is *5 1/2* Collagesity novels back as of this writing. True, she does play Karl in the present novel (congrats B. Blinker again!), but that doesn’t offset Wheeler’s Annie/Mabel/Bill power trio in my estimation. It was simply time to do this. But while Baker Blinker owned 1536 square meters to Baker Bloch’s 8704, her successor Wheeler only owns 1024 meters, which means she pays *0* dollars in tier each month under the new rules (as opposed to Baker Blinker’s 8 dollars a month tier payment for the 1536). Overall, I’m saving 13 dollars a month for the exact same amount of land (combined, in each case: 10,240). Doesn’t sound like a lot, but it really is long term. And justification enough from that alone to continue Collagesity into the forseeable future. The novels are still going strong — why not?

But the recombination of lands also gave Baker Bloch a considerably larger amount of free prims to work with — 504 as of this writing. The drawback is that Wheeler has very few prims left over from her 1024, even with the empty or near empty apartments surrounding SoSo Mall we talked about earlier. Again, it may not sound like much of a change, but it actually is. Baker Bloch has more power to enact his overall vision within Collagesity now, and with a more consolidated land base. Mabel (Wheeler) will continue to argue for the movement of her prim heavy Heartsdale Victorian style house to Collagesity. But Baker, I feel, has other plans…


The 2 owners of Collagesity staring at each other across a shared property line.

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next

“A move!” Magus Ellen exclaims upon teleporting into Iris and seeing his opponent’s Knight to King’s Bishop 4. “She’s just moving to move, but that’s okay.” He takes a thick lick. “This should be another easy one for me. Time for a castle.”

—–

“Holey moley Pencil. What is *that*?”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0008, 0316, Iris^^==, New Island^

meeting 02

After the meeting, Bill realized she had only a limited time left to save the Heterocera continent as a whole, perhaps Our Second Lyfe itself. She paused to take a look at the moth temple through vintage binoculars on the pier outside the Mermaid Lounge just exited.

How to paint this thing and capture the true essence? she ponders again. 3-n-1. Mabel, Annie, herself. All painters trying to capture essences. All linked together, of course, in their failure to accomplish the deed so far. She thinks this, deep down, through her core avatar. Wheeler.

Unnoticed so far, a somewhat drunk Roger Pine Ridge observes Bill from the side of the lounge. Cyberpaperdoll has abandoned me here in this *swamp*, he reflects bitterly. I must talk to *someone* about it.

He debates whether to approach her. Decisions have always been hard for him.

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meeting

Bill (Wheeler) always dreaded going to see The Boss. It was a scary walk through the Red Curtain Hallway, for one. And at the end: The Venus Door. What could Philip want from me today?

—-

Both look at the pile of money stacked up on the marble table. “As you can see, life’s been good lately, Bill. But you’ve been neglecting me.”

“Now tell me all about this chess game you’ve been playing.”

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