Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen.

When I entered Harry's Bar, the social center of the Palace Mansion, my friend River immediately whispered a warning to me, “Watch out! Nightmare is trying to steal our avatars.” I quickly noticed that everyone in the room had taken the form of the generic smiley face rather than their own custom-designed avatars. Except Nightmare. He looked exactly like River should: a disheveled cartoon character with bug eyes and spiky red hair, except the username hanging around his neck said “Nightmare” rather than “River.” For a second I felt disoriented, then annoyed. I quickly switched off my own primary avatar, a small gray owl, so I could automatically default to the generic smiley, just as everyone else had done to protect themselves. Unfortunately, it was too late. Nightmare had already captured my owl image and turned himself into it. I added my aggravation to everyone else's. We told Nightmare that this was unacceptable behavior. People took their avatars very seriously. They should not be snatched, no less worn, without permission. But our objections had no impact on him. Adding insult to injury, he duplicated my owl, littering copies of it all around the room, which I promptly erased using the “clean” command. Later that night, I found more lifeless clones of my owl hanging on the walls in the Armory. I indeed felt that something important had been taken cavalierly from me – that my visual manifestation, my identity, had been violated.