I've gone crazy and have started making my exes and giving them snarky names (e.g. Rain Cloud) but I cannot recall the hair of a guy I dated in high school. I know I ran my fingers through it but I can't remember it at all. Other parts of him are quite clear- I have utterly lost his hair. Oh well, I know it was short and brown.

I have to say that I'm kind of surprised that all my friends on Xbox have avatars that more or less look like themselves. Well, Sox may be the one exception, but even she's not too far off. Not a tall male monster or anything.

ETA: (Hi Sox!)

Even Mal recognizes our friends by their (incredibly mii-looking) Xbox avs "Hey Mom, there's Michael! He's sleeping!"

Yeah I'm struck by how mii the xbox avs are. And my mii is a mii of Sox's past. though tall male monster is le tempting.

I've been in or around a couple discussions lately about 'personal avatars' vs. 'rp avatars' - ie ones that represent you (on wii, xbox, etc.) vs the characters you may play. To me, this doesn't seem so different from playing a board game in character but arguing about something else when you get up to get drinks. But it seems to skeeve others.

Any thoughts are welcome.

I don't get the source of skeeve -- is it that there's something deceptive about an RP av? Or that there's something too personal and uncanny-valley about a self-like one? I guess I can see either side, but neither one to the point of actual upset.

PS: everyone please respond prolifically, as I'm off to a very boring meeting!

PPS: My avs are mostly female and they all mustmustmust wear glasses, but other than that they're not especially me.

I only have one Mii, which I tried to get to look like me.

My Mii parades are very sad.

I have historically had difficulty gender-bending with avs (including tabletop RPG characters). My current Rock Band av is one notable exception.

I maintain that it's easier to have an avatar that doesn't look like me when I am a) not "inhabiting" the avatar but "observing" it (like Rock Band) or b) need it to do things that are more correctly done by a not-me (like if I'm playing a soldier in WWII I'll use a male avatar).

Where do the skeeved place non-human avatars? You know I'm occasionally a moth or a griffin in Second Life; is that more or less acceptable than if I were a bald black guy?

My Rock Band avatar doesn't look like me at all but that's mostly because I found the controls that change her appearance to be too confusing to mess with for very long.

I love that the wii has ranked me as an amateur at "Penguin Slide". This implies that somewhere there is a professional league of people who dress up in penguin costumes and slide on ice floes to catch fish in their mouths for the amusement of an all-penguin audience.

I don't know, Laga, I'm ranked a professional penguin slider, and that troubles me even more.

As it should.