Tag Archives: Mabel^^+

Tale of Two

“What you writing there b-b-boss?” asks Marty Claflin, formerly known as Pot Head.

“Oh just some ideas about our business,” replies Jay Woodhull, formerly Sheriff. The Sheriff. But his law upholding days are over for now.

“M-Mabel coming back tonight?”

“Oh, I doubt it. She has to sing at the Cult of Oo’d in Collagesity tomorrow. She told me she’d most likely be staying over there tonight to save prep time in the morning.”

“G-g-good.”

Jay puts down his pen and stares at Marty. “Why’d your studder come back? Hey, look over there… out the bay windows,” he says suddenly while pointing. “Someone’s coming.”

Marty’s heart began racing. “W-w-where?”

While Marty’s head was turned, Jay took the opportunity to knock the crap out of it with his metallic left hand. “OW!” he yelled, but with no studder. Jay’s quick remedy had worked.

“Thanks,” Marty managed after a moment of rubbing. “I think.”

“No problem, Marty.” He began writing on his notepad again. “Now about that business plan…”

—–

Meanwhile in Mabel’s duplicate (and original) Scarlet Creative Sylvia House in Collagesity, she sits on her DaD Design knitted pouf freebie and stares out the front window into the woods, trying to spot Unch, an old game. It’s good to be home, she thinks while continuing to peer and squint. Too bad I can’t stay.

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put-out-bay

“Interesting art, Mrs. Fogg. Are those Second Lyfe images?”

“Always,” Wanisa Fogg would usually reply to such a question, but presently she was crying. Profusely. Mabel’s red violin she had found earlier in the day lay central on the table. The fog always swirling around her was as thick as it had been in many a year. Grieving fog. Even after all this time.

For this was what her seafaring spouse was always looking for. Perfection, he termed it. But it never came; was never collected, crumpled and ruined, on the ocean floor, much less bobbed up on the surface in absolutely pristine shape. May 28, 2018. A magical day in Mrs. Wanisa Fogg’s life. This is when she learned the truth about her husband’s death. And also his rebirth. On Yd Isle.

“Hi! I’m a talking violin!” it said.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0209, New Island

Yd Bay revisited 02

“Hold on. What’s that over *there*?”

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Yd Bay revisited

“I have delicious sandwiches over here, Mr. Leeman. Mr. Leemon. And watermelon…” Mabel knew it was no good. If this *was* a spell, the theoretical creator of New Island itself was mired deep. He was simply immobile now. But still the resemblance to Smelly Santy couldn’t be denied. She had checked earlier in the day — just after the sun rose — and taken snapshots. She went over and compared again, “show attachment” option on.

Yup, they’re the same.

She looks over at Volkswagen Gurl’s house, gleaming white bright in the noonday sun. No sign of the chatty owner, though.

Mabel then gazes north into Yd Bay and the small isle there, about the same size as much more noted Fisher or Fishers Isle to the south, but 3 palms and the truth this time, ha, instead of 4. Linden palms 1 and 2, as she’s currently checking. Fishers Isle’s palms are mesh objects in contrast.

She decides to fly over.

Snorkling comes to mind again while she stands upon it– exploration of the sea life surrounding New Island. That’s a thicket of purple Irish Moss sticking out over there, for example. She can see this happening soon.

And then another island a little beyond. Larger, but no palms this time.

Yd Bay, and another thicket of Irish Moss within. The great chunk of cheddar that ended the life of Thadeus Fogg must have been situated just between me and that point of land, Mabel speculates, trying to recall the tragedy as described in the “New Island Gazette”, then a 20 page publication instead of the 5 it has dwindled to in present times. She wonders how the Widow Fogg is doing.

And decides to pay a call. Maybe she would know more about Leeman or Leemon. Or maybe Mid-Hazel?

Permanent bay dweller Timothy Sprawled saw it all, but he’s been unable to relay what actually happened for a long time. Decades and decades.

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centerpiece

Martian Mabel so desired to remain Queen of Collagesity on “Earth”, but she knew she had other responsibilities for now. New Island would stay an always perceived/felt aberration, to her and others, unless she came here and helped resolve the whole situation. This morning she invited closest confidant and former Mission resident Turchin McGurchin over for counsel; her right hand man in many ways. The Mission project had been aborted and Precious Snowflake’s Rainbow Sphere files moved to a safer location.

“Roger Pine Ridge represents a problem,” Mabel continues. “He’s looking for them.”

Turchin McGurchin tears off another piece of his cheese croissant and gobbles it up quickly, like someone else would do it for him if he didn’t act fast. Mission training in effect here. “Roger is useless,” he then says, mouth still full and chewing away at too big a chunk for its space. “Our joint user Baker B. had to move the whole Sunklands operation from Ink, Arkansas to Ink, Missouri because of him, but to no avail. He tried pushing him into the big sink there — no good again. He unwisely gave away a server to Sunklands Ink in Marked Tree, Arkansas and now needs it back. The Reality Module of the blog is currently inoperable. Not even Dr. I.C. Yourinsides can help.”

“But we’ll need her later.” Mable pauses, looks over at Annie’s nudes displayed in Swanson’s Art Gallery next door to her right. Turchin follows her stare. “We’ll have to cut them out of the picture.”

“Which one?” the grizzly old man ponders. “You mean Annie’s pictures as a whole? You mean the *bits*?”

Mabel reconsiders. “Yes,” she finally speaks.

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0009, 0116, New Island

Collagesity these days

Business was down at the Bodega Market in SoSo Mall, thanks mainly to all the attached, empty apartments due to tighter prim restrictions on Wheeler Wilson’s land in Collagesity (1024 square meters, down from Baker Blinker’s 1536). New manager Cyborg Kathy (Kathy Crowder to her family) usually closes up shop at 4 these days, but that’s okay. It gave her an excuse to go back to night school and finish her degree in Prison Reform from local institute Sam Parr State College, original president Karoz Blogger’s final gift to the area. Just over the hill and hang a right. Or was it a left?

But in other parts of Collagesity, things have picked up. In The North, we now have a new church where formerly sat Knight’s Castle, which hadn’t been worked on in a while. Karoz Blogger’s old and long hope of making TILE the official religion of town hasn’t really panned out, so we needed to fill a spiritual void now that he is gone. The Cult of Oo’d might just be the ticket, but we’ll see. We’ve already visited the interior in a recent post (“feathered”), peering through the eyes of two time challenged Rabbits. I’m eagerly looking forward to see what else develops from it. I know Mabel is itching to do her best Montana impression for the congregation soon. And a free bag of popcorn to the first 5 parishioners who arrive on Sunday. Or was it Wednesday?

Whoa Baker Bloch! You have both guns *and* drugs on you. Do you think you could sneak by trained door sniffer Wendy O’Riley that easily? I didn’t think so, ha ha. He’s only doing more akking for a blog post.

And then Mabel has a new home (!). It’s not nearly as large as the similarly styled house she so loved in Heartsdale, but in time I know she’ll grow to appreciate it almost as much. Now whether current hubby Buurb will be there to enjoy it with her remains a question to be asked. Turchin McGurchin, understanding Buurb like he does, fears the worse. But even if this happens, I feel Mabel has a strong support group in Collagesity. Turch is up at the Mission next door, and Woody Woodmanson is right behind her in his perpetually snow topped house. She has superior neighbors. And then Pitch Darkly, Baker Bloch, and the rest are right around as well. She’ll be fine. I should add that the house is set up at about the exact same place she lived back in January through March of last year, before her move to Heartsdale with Buurb. She’s coming home, in essence. Back to the border of her beloved woods.

Then, and to Mabel’s complete excitement (she’s inspired!), the Red Umbrella gallery featuring baker b.’s collage series of Sam Parr, Embarras and Stonethrow has returned to Collagesity, taking the place of the TILE Temple on the northern edge of town.

Last and perhaps not least, the TILE Labyrinth remains, having been moved to the basement of Fal Mouth Moon from the now derezzed temple. Baker Bloch warns Mabel that this basement is the main way to her house, but she’s okay with the idea. She plans to walk the labyrinth as much possible, which would certainly be an improvement from before when it was rarely used.

The Rainbow Sphere on the 2nd floor of the Mission is gone, a temporary apparition. But the related files on Precious Snowflake’s hard drive remained in the Heartsdale-to-Collagesity transition, and Mabel as well as Turch keep studying and learning. Another kind of school, in effect. TILE has not died but merely transformed.

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thankfully

Axis certainly gets around. Here’s he’s on an island in the northeast part of Heterocera (Eggar sim). It’s hot down here at the beach, and he pulls off his duster coat and carefully lays it by the shoreline. He must get back to the art store soon. Too bad he can’t wear those paint splattered paints they sell for free within…. merely a mesh figure he is. But perhaps they’ll fit burgeoning artist Annie to the T.

Or Bill.

Or Mabel.

One way to find out…

—–

“Aren’t they just the dreamiest, Turch?! Now when Baker Bloch reopens the Red Umbrella we’ll be back in business. Buurb should be here soon.”

“Sure,” reassures Turch, because he knows Mabel can’t take another loss like her brother Little. But probably she won’t have to. Most likely, yes.

—–

“I can’t do this Precious; put your wings back on. I have to find Mabel.”

“I… understand.”

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0008, 0502, Heartsdale+, Heterocera, Rubi

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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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0008, 0409, Iris, Rubi

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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topmost 02

Mabel’s primary goal today remained the mission, however, and speaking with Precious Snowflake who she knows is the same as Baker Blinker. On her way, she stops to take a good look at that tanker. “Yes, this might do very well for subject matter,” she says.

She walks into the fire within but remains unharmed.

Onward to the mission…

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Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0008, 0314, Heartsdale+