It's not often these days that I have the opportunity to do an incredible amount of exploring in our humble universe. On occasion, I do pop from world to world, in search of a unique new experience, and every so often I'm incredibly intrigued by the things I find. When I took up volunteering as an interviewer for the newsletter, I hadn't anticipated that it would lead to discovering uniquely fascinating environments in a whole new way.
When Maki contacted me and threw the name “Renee.” my way, and included the name of a world, “Yooper,” I felt a little twinge of excitement internally. As it turns out, my intuition was right: Yooper is cool and is maintained by an equally cool gal named Renee – and she just so happens to be the focus of this “Meet Our Citizens” article.
Renee. is a citizen who's been using Active Worlds on and off for ten years, and first discovered it in the most random of ways: she was googling “Castles” which happened to bring up a site related to the former Castles world. She was curious enough, and ended up inside the universe. In true, newbie fashion that we can all relate to, she happened to be rather confused by all of it:
“I didn't know what I had done, there were horses running around talking :)”
Once the confusion began to pass, she started to get more comfortable and acquainted with her surroundings. Like many of us, she's taken some time off of Active Worlds over the past few years and aside from tending to her family, Renee. also has a knack for genealogy and exploring cemeteries – an insightful piece of information to arm yourself with before exploring Yooper (in fact there's also a cemetery in her world – a small nod to her interests). But somewhere along the line she developed an interest in creating her own world:
“Spoof won [this world] at Bingo and gave it to me. Its been 3 years now.”
Renee. named the world “Yooper,” started out with a P-10, and quickly upgraded it to a P-30. I was a little confused about the naming behind the world, but she provided some insight on that, as well:
“Yoopers is what we from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan are called.”
At first she started by building a castle (back to the roots), but soon after scrapped that for another idea:
“I didn't like it. So I thought, 'build what you know' and this is what I know. Yooper is shaped like the state of Michigan.”
What she's put together has resulted in her own interpretation of the state, warped sense of humor and all. In fact the humor becomes apparent immediately: the entry point of the world happens to be a city dump. And while Renee. isn't an object modeler herself, she's got an impressive collection of custom signage and items, varying from spoofs of popular fast food establishments and airlines, staged shot-gun wedding and chapel, simulation of a populated lower Michigan city, and everything in between (my favorite happened to be the camp trolls hiding on the south side of the peninsula's bridge).
An integral part of her world happens to be all the avatars, movement, and sounds she's integrated into the environment. She's even developed personalities for the different characters present in the world. Apparently, Elvis will be making his debut on a local Yooper stage later this month (she claims he lives in Yooper... but I still have my doubts).
All in all, Renee. was a gracious host, and an intriguing personality to hang around with while touring Yooper. Her passion for Active Worlds is apparent in the environment, as a consistent story and theme are woven throughout the world. She's not sure where Active Worlds is headed, but has tried various other environments such as Second Life, and never really found them quite the same:
“I have been to Second Life, but it's nothing like AW.”
That left us with one last question: If there was one thing she'd like to say to everyone reading, what would it be?
“Well I would like them to visit Yooper when Elvis comes to entertain.”
Can you tell where her passions lie?
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Know someone who would make an interesting interviewee? (Including you!)
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