Kami-no-aisuru

There’s been a little discussion on a thread on SLU about how to make an Asian avatar effectively. Some people seem to be of the thought that it depends more on shape than skin, I am in the camp that thinks shape is important but without the right skin it won’t work.  Quite a few of the people posting in that thread are RL Asian’s creating Asian avatars, so I really value their tips when it comes to face shape and skin choice. I’m not Asian in real life, but I’ve tried to create an Asian avatar (specifically Japanese) in Second Life ™ because I was interested in Japanese culture and language and I thought it would be fun and allow me to wear fashions I can’t wear IRL.

The post on SLU had some very interesting tips on shape, specifically face shape and I decided that a bit of tweaking might be in order on myself. I can see a marked improvement!

On the front view, it doesn’t look much different, but you can see the chin is more rounded, less pointy, higher up and the nose is straighter.

But in the profile view you can see quite a change, mostly in the nose area. I really hate noses on the avatar mesh, there’s such weird angles that can occur and stuff. I’d rather it wasn’t quite so upturned but downturning it results in weird angles around the nose. meh. I adjusted the bridge quite a bit and made it smaller but the tip is still pretty bulbous. Overall I’m happy with it! I think the appearance is more accurately Asian now and still pretty cute ^_^  but my shape has evolved quite a bit and I’m open to tweaking a little thing here and there.

However, I wonder sometimes if people who see my avatar even realize that she’s supposed to be Asian? It’s an interesting question to me. I’ve had a really difficult time finding skins I was happy with, someday I’d like to do a big post or set of posts exploring the skins available out there that are supposedly Asian.

What’d I get out of the BBBC? A reaffermation of the idea that I’m a shite blogger and I don’t have the inspiration to write stuff every day. I love reading blogs, some people can have me rolling in the aisles just describing their recent shopping trips or what they did that day: I’m simply not that entertaining, and I can be funny but not witty enough to keep interest in day-to-day minutae. Oh swells. On to more pressing matters.

Like hair!

Oh dear lord it’s Hair Fair time again and it will be a madhouse, but fun and balance-draining! I try to take a conservative approach to these crazy events and force myself to hold off for a few days to try to let the crowds clear. I’d love to be there first too but lag irritates me so much, specifically rubberbanding… something about that just angers me so much that I’d rather turn the computer off and walk away. So I’ll try to satiate myself with pictures on blogs and stuff and the Koreshan Bake Sale and try to hold off until at least the weekend’s over.

But I got my own little preview even though I’m not a supastar blagghr because my good friend Katat0nik sent me copies of her 3 hairdos for the fair, and let me tell you these are too sweet to be missed! All music themed, but totally scripted so the headphones and music notes can be invisible if you want. Change the size, colors, go nuts! Loves! It’s been really cool over the past year to see Kat really blossom as a creator/designer and she really just keeps getting better and better.

Please do remember when you go to HF that it will be a laggy whore and to ditch all your shit… hair, shoes, AO, Mysti, Huddles and FOR FUCKS SAKE scripted shit like weapons. WTF is wrong with some people anyway? it’ll help everybody out and you best know I will be sans all my shit and duck walking, and if I see your ass and you have a bunch of crap on, chances are you’ll join my giant mute list. Play nice and buy hair and look fucking fabulous some other time! <3

Edit: details: hair Katat0nik (KatJamz - all colors), skin Genesis (Eden-ginger-bare), eyes Poetic Colors (night rain-large), undershirt Zaara (Isis-wine), t-shirt Genesis/Exodi, glasses Steinwerk

Edit again: shirt reads “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of how awesome I am” which I had on before I got Kat’s headphone hair and it ended up being so appropriate, hehe.

freestyle freestyle your style freestyle, where y’at, now d’ere y’go

Truth is lately I’ve been feeling a bit keep-to-myself-ish and a tiny bit emo, no real reason for it. Small episode of burnout I guess? I got the Sims3 which is really awesome and totally cutting into my other funtime for stuff like SL and listening to podcasts and watching tv/movies online. I’ve been keeping up with Big Brother Uk which is like an every day deal (great place for news & discussion about it). Maybe I’m just trying to do too much at once. Sometimes I just want to turn off all the various monitors (desktop laptop DS tv) and read some more of the Jane Austen compendium I’ve been working my way through.

I have some problems in the group chat because it goes by so quickly and I space out so often I don’t keep up very well and I’m awul about not saying hello & goodbye, I wonder if some people aren’t annoyed with me sometimes. I’m pretty awful at communications across the board, I don’t mean anything against anyone in particular. Then again I might just be whinging out of insecurity. Maybe a few weeks and everything will balance out ok.

I did a custom job the other day, recolored my Sakura tree into white for a shopping center, for the Touche’ main shop and mall… so whenever that remodel is done I’ll go get some pictures of it.

My cat’s doing a lot better, for anyone who was reading my plurks about him. He had an infection and the vet put him on antibiotics but they’re done now and he was given a clean bill of health. I had to switch his food to some non-allergy kind and he’s not liking that too much but his coat is so soft now and his eyes are all bright and shiny, so I think it’s working well for him. \o/  She thinks he needs dental surgery but its very expensive and I have no job so…  yeah.  We’ll see.

OK I don’t really have an answer for day 4’s question so I’ll just rattle on about building stuff ok?

Couple lines of thought have converged in my head recently, one that I’m planning to rebuild my store but have yet to come up with a real plan or idea for how I want it to look. Two that I visited the Cioccolata sim and wandered around there for their hunt and spend most of my time admiring the design. I’m having problems coming up with a single area that has accomplished as well as they have the kind of whimsy and imagination while also being extremely computer-friendly and without being too cloying.

Great imagination they’ve used with a stort of loose toys n trees theme-as constructed of a set of vintage wood blocks, buildings that are robot heads and giant acorns, wind-up birds, dolls, etc. Adorable! yet everything is primwork, very quality primwork, but you’d be hard pressed to find many sculpts in the actual store builds. And almost everything has the same texture, with tinting used to full effect. This makes everything load so quickly! It’s also interesting to me that in this modern age when we think anything that hasn’t got baked in highlights and shadows looks “a bit too 2006″ that place looks very new and fresh using just one texture and a few shades of tint. I also love that by using a muted kind of earthtones palette, they kept it from being too juvenile or sugary, if they’d used pastels or something I fear it would have been just too much. In short I have great admiration for their imagination and their skills.

What does this have to do with my remodel? Just because I don’t have an idea yet but I know some of the properties I’d like it to have, because of my visit to Cioccolata. I want cuteness that fits with my kind of cartoony, surrealist creations, I want innovation and imagination, I don’t want it to be anything typical, and I want something that will not only be economical on prim use but also texture use and still look interesting and fresh. Quite a challenge.

You’ve been given a sim of your very own to use for free for one year. However, there are 3 rules. It cannot be residential, it cannot be commercial, and it has to be open to the public. What do you do with it?

I suppose with those restrictions I’d end up making it a sort of art-space, maybe change it all 4 times through the year, to match the seasons, art/sculptures on display, interactive stuff, garden spaces, gathering spaces. Something more imaginative than your usual boards-on-walls SLart gallery, something more like Chakryn Forest or Hotel Dare. Immersive, a place to explore and see and experience-alone or with others. Springtime might be a celebration of new life and nature, with a huge garden/forest, surrealist, a bit Alice-in-Wonderland. Giant flowers, trees, a cloudscape level with a celebration of rain. Summer might be all under water, featuring myths of mermaids and monsters, volcanic heat vents, teeming fish, coral reefs. Fall would need a horror element as a nod to Halloween-though all the scenarios I can think of are so cliche (nightmare city, urban slasher, quaint Victorian menace, sinister cornfields and farmhouse basements, disturbing circus sideshow, gothic/vampire royalty in oh so black castles, post apoc zombie/mutant wasteland). Winter would have to be iced over, frozen lakes, snow fairies, frost giants.

I’d love to have a whole sim to control, the ground painting, terraforming, the skies, earth & ocean completly under my control.

Describe what your perfect Second Life day would be like.

There would be shopping, oh yes. Something pricey like some Bax Coen boots or finally getting my dream skybox. Shopping spree likely funded by amazingly handsome/talented/generous someone I just met this perfect day who wants to know all about me and give me stuff and go dancing. Who may or may not have elf ears on or be dandified.

Some huge blogger or set of bloggers would have written about my store and a legion of cool stylish and nice avatars swarm in and buy at least one of everything. I get word I won some kind of Linden contest wherein I have a whole sim given to me. My Tiny Empires gets the Trader notice and for once he’s generous and I end up with enough gold to buy so many acres! And right after Trader Festival comes and that old fortuneteller finally gives me my fuckin’ key!

Mr. Tall Dark and Mysterious wants to take me dancing and the day closes with a sweet slow dance on a balcony overlooking an amazing garden/forest/beach.

OR

I spend time quietly building stuff, keeping to myself, no crashes, no glitches, all sculpts loading very fast, all textures linging up so closely and so quickly. I can zip through my inventory and find everything I need immediately without having to search for it or look through things, I just go automatically to the best thing for the job. Because of the no-difficulties I build something so amazing in 1/4 the time I usually do and I know that it will be my best creation yet and people will really like it.

So in the interests of actually putting some content in here I’ve signed up for Ali’s Big Bad Blogger Challenge again. First off, I do not consider myself a blogger, I do not write often enough for any kind of title to be given to the mutterings I make online. So the current question “How long have you been a blogger? How has it enriched your life?” I don’t feel really applies to me, because I’m not a blogger and I don’t write often enough for it to be particularly enriching.  Cathartic sometimes, maybe. Mostly an exercise in second-guessing myself, and wearing out my backspace key. Can’t write that, too pathetic, never be believable.

Anyway, in the interest of having a topic, I thought I’d talk about this NoH8 campaign going on. SL seems to have latched onto this vehemently, having their pictures made, and thats cool. I won’t be doing it though. I am rabidly in opposition to Proposition 8, I am a total supporter of gay marriage, gay adoption, and the GLBTv/Ts/Bi communities as a whole. However I just don’t see what taking a few hundred/thousand pictures either of real people or virtual people is going to do to help. Only use I can see is awareness/ad campaigns, and I believe awareness is already at a saturation point. I feel like this the same way I felt when people had the “take your wig off/go bald” day for cancer awareness in SL, I just don’t see the point. People probably going to argue with me and thats ok, it’s just my opinion. I’d like to see all the people who truly believe in marriage for gays/lesbians and people who oppose Prop 8 to give a dollar to the opposition campaigns or give a dollar to pro-gay causes, as I think that would be a more tangible way to support. I hope that anyone reading this who disagrees will keep in mind that I do support gay causes and am willing to stand up and throw my support in through votes, physical help or monetary donations, but I don’t think a snapshot of my pixel person is going to help anyone.

EDIT: Yeah it’s totally possible to support the cause through money or protest or voting and still do the NoH8 picture, of course. I’m just saying my opinion and my reason for not doing it.

in lieu of a post with words and stuff have a pretty picture (pretty being a subjective thing)

Got a bit of a Mod, mid 60’s thing going on. One of the reasons I liked this makeup is that my Mom totally wore that shade of lipstick back in the whenever.

Skin-Genesis: Eden/Ginger Tone/Porcelain makeup
Hair-ETD, Chalisa II in Ebony
Eyes-Poetic Colors in Night Rain
Dress-Whippet & Buck, Bardot Tartan Tube Dress in Bordeaux  (W&B seems to have amazing skill with textures, I’ve got a couple of things from there to try the store out and they’re both amazing, really high quality but simple, kind of a preppy or upscale casual look-also I assume its a couple alts running it? Would love to know whose
Jacket- MichaMi, Noomi jacket in black
Shoes-Maitreya group gift pumps in magenta
Earrings-JE Republic Summer gift Etoile earrings in pink (last summer, who knows whether they’re available)

Been kinda busy with  my shop and stuff in SL, moved into a bigger shop that was kind of a big investment I guess, if I hadn’t gotten my tax refund I couldn’t possibly have afforded it, not without feeling quite guilty. Trying to grow my business, I wish I had some kind of crystal ball that would tell me what people would actually buy. I’ve been getting traffic but people mostly don’t spend, then something weird clicks and I see like 6 a day, I make something I think is cool and different and it falls to the virtal turf like a lead balloon.  I just don’t know sometimes.

So I haven’t felt much like writing, or taking pictures, or doing inventory, some days I don’t really want to build stuff but then I start anyway and get into it. I’ve had a couple of commissions and am dedicated to getting those finished.

I feel like a lot of the communication I post here has been kind of negative, I really don’t want to be the girl who gripes all the time and is always angsty. I honestly hope people don’t already have that opinion of me, though I also don’t want to be the girl who needs assurance all the time, lol. Maybe it’s actually because I”ve been building a lot that I’m somewhat unsatistfied with what I’ve been able to accomplish, when I look at some things I make I’m proud and some things all I see are flaws. I also tend to get kind of jealous of some of the talent I see around, and I have a way of channeling that in a negative direction rather than using it to push myself to achieve more and learn more. Theres a couple exciting opportunities coming up and I need to focus and take full advantage of them and turn those feelings around.

O hay look, you got here on Honesty Night. Please don’t think less of me for my black moods, sometime shortly I hope to get back into taking pretty pictures and writing and stuff.

This is a pity post because I really don’t have that much to talk about at the moment. I just find this stuff with lists pretty funny, from the original list of a few months back to this latest list. The idea of “I’m gonna make a list!” when a group of people has (in your opinion) libeled you seems like very Middle School type behavior, and provides a good opportunity for the crowd to point and laugh. The flip side of that coin is this Worlds Top Bloggers (of SL) which to me, is akin to the same group of Middle School girls making lists of Girls Who Are Cool or Boys Who Are Dreamy, then making sure said list is leaked into their clique so that 1/2 can feel entitled, the other half can feel burned. I don’t think my analogy is expressing this as well as I could, but I don’t see any purpose of such a list besides drawing attention to yourself, causing controversy, and blog hits (blog hits + google ads + traffic to my store + ? = profit). It is an entirely self-serving enterprise designed to further their goals while riding a wave of the usual SL Fashion/Blogger style dramz. Kind of the same old song-n-dance by this point and taking your drama-makin’ cues from old tired been-there-done-that drama and merely flipping the script isn’t going to cut it in my book.

So my view therefore is : boo. Boo on weaksauce drama, boo on sheeplike bloggers who fell into this stupid trap, boo on poorly laid plans.

Been thinking today about my old office-mate. This girl knew how to have a meltdown! Shrieks, crying, threats of suicide by way of the old “my life is over anyway” argument, paranoia, martyrdom. Everytime there was a change around the office, anytime she did something stupid like dropping her wallet, locking her keys in her car or even a car wreck (she had 4 in the time I knew her, one per year on average-lost her wallet at least a dozen times). Her life is over, the world’s out to get her, people are trying to get her fired, she’s going to the poorhouse, she’d be better off dead. But of course these conflicts all resolved themselves, somehow she’d find another vehicle, she lived in the same residence the whole time, hardly on the streets, etc. Just a lot of smoke, not a lot of fire. But I think during times like these that her life, that freakshow, THAT was entertainment! Go Big or Go Home.  Bring me a meltdown I can get excited about.

This makes me sound mean I guess but it’s all a lot of blather anyway and to tell the truth I alternated from feeling pity to amusement to loathing for this girl, sometimes all equally mixed. Ultimately for her obvious antisocial behavior and somewhat psychotic tendencies, she still has a job there and I don’t, so I can’t feel too badly for being a bit uncharitable in my memory of her.