Feral Furry Theater Returns to Sunweaver Space

By Bixyl Shuftan

In the past, one of the weekly events in the Sunweaver community was the showing of movies by Shockwave Yareach at the Feral Furry Theater. Originally a screen on a skybox with a few chairs, it was later made into a place that resembled a real-life movie theater, thanks to Felina Fermi. But over a year ago, a viewer update "broke" this and presumably other movie screens. So the theater was closed.

But on Sunday January 6, Shockwave had an announcement in Sunweaver chat, "As it is now a new year, it's time for the return of an old tradition.... We *now have movies again!*" The Feral Theater was now open again. Dropping over, I asked him if the theater was truly back in business. "Yes indeed!" he answered, "New servers, new streaming solution, took a while to solve."

"What's the max number that can see?" Shockwave went on, "I have NO idea. 100M to the backbone.  Dual 3Ghz server. I can probably host a *lot.* So now we have movies again! And Spry.com can kiss my left one!" The wolf growled, "They cancelled me when they saw I had videos on board. Didn't bother to see they were 1/4 size, etc. So I have a new host. It's deliberate.  Can't pump the raw data here -- nobody would have the bandwidth.  So it's transcoded to 300kbps video, 96kbps audio. Fine for SL ... of course, everyone still has to have their media turned on in the viewers."

"I should update the movie posters out there," commented Felina Fermi, who was there. Someone else asked, "So Life Of Brian for Easter again?" "Yep!" Shockwave grinned, "Gotta get those traditions going again!" It was observed Rita Mariner wasn't there yet. Shockwave responded, "I've messaged Rita's phone to tell her." Of the theater entrance, someone had rezzed a number of chairs in front of the concession stand. Shockwave joked that was just one of the problems, " I know the popcorn is stale.  The theater's been closed over a year."

The movie shown was a recent release that was not a particularly big box-office draw. Shockwave commented he originally thought it would be mediocre, but he liked it.

The videogames in the front lobby no longer work, at least for my viewer. But the theater does have points of interest besides the main event. The projection room is accessible, and has a good amount of detail. The bathrooms however were always occupied. Of the seating in the theater, people have the choice of sitting in theater seats to watch the movie, or mats for couples.

The Feral Furry Theater will have events every Sunday at 6 PM SL time, baring complications. Upon hearing of the theater's opening, the Sunweaver venue that had been doing Sunday evening events, the Happy Vixen, rescheduled to 3 to 6 PM SL time.

Sunweaver Space (243,192,451)

Bixyl Shuftan

The "Mystery Science Theater 3000" Theater

By Bixyl Shuftan

One of my favorite places that I wrote about in my first year of reporting about Second Life was the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" Theater. Over a decade later, the place is still standing. It's gone through some changes, and a change of owners, but it's still showing movies so bad, the real fun is either watching Joel, Tom, and Crow poke fun at or "riff" them, or doing some of the riffing themselves.

For those who don't know, "Mystery Science Theater 3000" was a comedy show on television in which the "plot" is of a man, sent out into space by a mad scientist and made to watch B-rated movies as part of an experiment to see just how terrible movies have to be and see in how much of a quantity before watchers go insane. But their subject keeps his sanity by poking fun at the flicks, or "riffing," alongside robots that he built, the two shown most in the movie being Tom Servo and Crow. The show ran on the Comedy Central channel from 1991 to 1997, and the Sci-Fi Channel from 1997 to 1999. After it's cancellation, the show continued in reruns for years, and eventually in Second Life. More recently, there has been interest in reviving the show for a run on Netflix.

The theater was originally at BlaksleeWorld and owned by Squeebee Wakawaka. But it was moved to This Island Earth, the sim not the movie, and has apparently been there since. When the Newser looked at the place again in 2014, it looked more like a conventional movie theater than the "Satellite of Love." But it's current look is closer to the original, only it's broken in three pieces with the action in the front section.  Besides the theater is a freebie stand with a number of items up for grabs. These include t-shirts, gestures, and a "free steaming pile of sampo." What "sampo" is, I have no idea. The back end of the ship has a store.

The theater room has seating for a number of people. You can see the movies only if your media button is pressed *and* you touch the screen. Otherwise you see a picture of a cheesy black and white sci-fi movie with the caption "People of Earth, Click here." Among the people in the audience was Peril Klaxon, the new owner of MST3K.

Peril told me the theater plays movies every day, "If one isn't playing, you can pick one and start it yourself." As to how she ended up in charge, "I've more or less ended up with the place by accident.... I hung out here enough to be one of the Mads, the regular hosts....and then the original owner sort of disappeared, and didn't want to deal with updating the screen we used back then. The old screen used Quicktime, and when SL nixed Quicktime, it broke the old screen. I just happened to be the only one of the remaining hosts that new enough about scripting to build a new screen. (grin)" This was about two years ago.

Rebuilding the whole place wasn't an easy task for Peril, "...it was bits and pieces.   The screen was the most work, but I redid the whole build about a a year ago, that took about a month. Of course, it's never done, I'm still adding stuff now and then (grin). And I've rebuilt the screen at least three times, as I learned things. All because I couldn't give up the social aspects you get from watching the show with other people. (smile).

So what are her favorite movies to poke fun of? "I prefer the episodes with giant monsters or luchadors.(grin). ...We usually get 6-8 people here for event nights.  It's been growing a bit since I started putting notices int he SL event listings.  And since Archie put his stargate link next door. (grin) Oddly enough, our most popular events are Tuesdays and Thursdays.   We did weekend events for awhile, but they were usually empty."

And which movies were the most fun to poke fun at? "They love the ones that are particularly cheesy.   Bad Sci Fi movies, in particular. Everybody loves 'Space Mutiny.' And we like to talk about ;MANOS;, as it's probably the most famous MST3K episode....but that one  actually can be pretty dull. The other big ones are Hercules and Gamera movies."


"The reason I've managed to hang out here for ten years and not get sick of it, even though we have hundreds of episodes available, is because the people who hang out here are great. MST people are my people, so rather than having to find friends, they all just turn up here and introduce themselves. (smile)."

So if you want to laugh at a turkey, head to the MST3K Theater.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/This%20Island%20Earth/194/143/22

Bixyl Shuftan

Felina’s Movie Theater

By Grease Coakes

Last year I reported on Shock’s movie night which is now a staple of the Sunweavers. Every evening at 6pm SL time, Shock plays a movie or two at http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sunweaver%20Space/253/175/451 one of the hangouts of the Sunweavers. Recently, I heard of something new. There's a new movie theater for the Sunweavers by Feilna Fermi.

By grabbing a random LM sent by Rita Mariner through the Sunweavers group, I found Feilna’s theater. Shockwave Yareach and Rita Mariner were there when I warped in. Once in, I saw the front of a movie theater you might see in real life. When I walked in, I saw multiple theaters showing movie posters like in real life for example "Thor" and a "Lord of the Rings" movie.

Many other furry hangouts like the Ark and Anthroxtacy also have their own movie night but Felina's Theater http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sunweaver%20Isle/213/115/23 is another movie theater showing the same movie at the same time. Felina Fermi has been a Sunweaver living on Rita’s sim for a couple years before she added her own movie theater.


Shock’s movie hangout is just a grass square in midair with some furniture. Felina’s land on the other hand is a small theater with multiple movies. Using million media, Felina’s VCR was showing a large assortment of movies that you can choose from. First ask Felina Fermi to allow you access to the XL and Millions media video devices. It only takes a moment for her to add your name. Then using a text-driven menu you can pick out for hundreds of movies ranging from the "X-Men" movies to John Hughes’ "Breakfast Club," and more. Felina’s friend Earthy creates the stream for her XL movies. If you look through the movie list and you don’t see the movie you’re looking for click the store option and you may be able to find it.

On the night I wrote this article, Shock played "Hardware Wars," a spoof of "Star Wars" which had cheesy effects, and then "Kung Fu Panda" 1 and 2.

Another neat feature of Felina’s land is that her home is right there. I checked out her house and it was amazing. A lot of décor like pictures and kitchen assortments along a reproduction of her real-life home. Among the things I happened to see was her music keyboard along with her posters of video games art. Another thing I noticed there was 4 or 5 cats meowing like crazy in her back room with the video game art and her keyboard. It was interesting to hear random meows while I wrote this article. Good thing about the SL cats is they don’t knock over your coffee to mess up your computer.


So for her it’s like having a movie theater at home. Felina isn’t just a one trick cat though. In real-life she has a music keyboard and she also composes musical remixes of video game music tracks. I got her Skype information she gave me a lot of her music files. Later on I’ll try them out and see how they fit with my live DJ mixes. She mentioned a couple times that she heard a song in her dreams in real life and she was able to create the song like that on her music keyboard. She recommended I try her final fantasy remixes that she created I might just do that.

Felina’s movie theater was certainly a welcome addition to the sunweavers group and family. Just
in case Shock’s movie land was filled up or maybe you wanted the movie theater feel Felina’s movie
theater might do the trick. Also ask her about access to her movie library if you want to check out a movie by yourself or with a friend. Just don’t mind the cats next door.

Grease Coakes