LilithServil

Watched this series 5 different times with 5 different people and about to rewatch it again later! Anyone who hasn't seen it: don't let the fact that it's involved with League of Legends dissuade you, it's a self-contained story and you don't need to know anything about the game or world. If you enjoyed the visual spectacle of Spiderverse you'll probably enjoy Arcane for the fact that everything looks like a moving piece of art-- let alone the great stories it tells. 3 eps and my friend groups were hooked.

Depending on the circumstances, who exactly would show up, and how well they keep their cool under pressure... I feel like my chances of life or death would be pretty much equal tbh but still worth it.

Oooooh The Prop Shop has some heads that definitely might work! I'll have to see about having him demo one later. And nah I'm avoiding ripped stuff-- I'd rather get a proper mesh head and just tweak the face texture I made for her if need be (it's the LL UV so it should fit most typical heads. I don't mind having to fiddle hardcore with shapes to get the proportions as long as it's capable of taking it). I actually demo'd some of the Utilizator heads and most of them are actually way too cartoony or aren't rigged in a way that let me use certain sliders, so I'm starting to consider more human looking heads. The only Utilizator head that worked somewhat okay was the Normie head, but it's pretty limited in expressions even with the addon hud it has and some sliders left something to be desired. Might give it another shot though and see if I can come up with something decent as a step-up from what I have, but still looking into other heads.

Any good mesh heads that either A) already have a similar head shape to the pics below, or B) are malleable enough to squash into the right shape? My partner wants to make a cosplay av of Silco after we binged Arcane and it's a struggle finding something with less... super chiseled and realistic looking. It's also been a struggle finding something that gets the nose shape without contorting things too much. Having a demo is a 100% must to make sure it's something we can work with. For reference, we're looking for something similarly shaped to this dude. Only looking for something that can get the facial structure-- everything else I can figure out myself! (In a similar vein, what head would you guys recommend if I wanted to give my Jinx an upgrade? I usually run around with furry avs so anything human is complete alien territory. I've got a free mesh head on atm but it's super lacking in expressions, and I'm sure I could get a slightly better face shape with something less prone to warping when tweaking certain sliders.)

Which is why it's pretty scummy to offer a large expensive prize and specifically word the rules in a way to make it seem like... Oh, I don't know, people are supposed to put their outfit together with multiple items themed after Halloween, then choose the winner solely because they meshed an outfit (which btw looks very very similar to other outfits in the store even down to the colors). It gets especially dicey when you consider they were also advertising the Halloween shopping events for people to go get costume pieces at in the same vein. "Go buy L and spend L to put your costumes together (but remember, no purchase necessary according to the rules 🤪) while we pick a popular creator to win" is what it boiled down to in the end. It wouldn't have been a problem at all if the winner was more fairly picked because then everyone truly would have had a shot. Or at the very least, it would have felt that way and not been so blatant.

That's honestly really unfortunate. I don't understand the point of the chat bar collapsing into the chat button. On FS it's a single click to the chatbar and it's nice and out of the way-- in Black Dragon you have to open the chat button, drag the popup away from the center of the screen, separate nearby chat from the rest of the contact menu, then finally type. God help you if you want to minimize it after because it pops to the top left of the screen, and then if you close it instead you have to do the whole song and dance from scratch if you don't want the big blocky opaque box up the whole time. x: I guess I can just hope it gets added as an option or something. I was just hoping it was a setting I missed somewhere tbh

Super new to the Black Dragon viewer. Firestorm has been perpetually freezing on me for a solid year now and so far, Black Dragon has been smooth and even higher fps than Firestorm ever gave. The only conundrum I've run into though is the chat bar. I'm really not a fan of how the chat bar is something that has to be opened. The chat window just feels super obtrusive and in the way. Is there any way to get a static chat bar like Firestorm has? That's just kind of... at the bottom left constantly with the chat appearing as toasts? The closest I've been able to get is this but it's still super in the way. I like to have as much of my screen space visible as possible but still have the chat bar there.

Which is where the issue lies. 99.9% of people think of a costume contest and think of something like you'd see irl, at a convention or something-- something that gets peoples' attention and makes them go wow, that's so cool looking. Not something plain and minimal. It doesn't help when contest rules say creativity, originality (SPECIFICALLY mentioning it shouldn't be "all one-piece"), and festivity were the 3 main judging criteria. This is just me personally speaking, but I wouldn't quality a single dress with no other contributing factors a contest winner with that criteria. There were some pretty interesting looking avatars on the official Flickr that made me feel discouraged because I couldn't accessorize on the same level with my own avatar... And then something even less dressed up ends up being the contest winner. Once again, just a personal viewpoint, but I feel like that either needs to be made clear or maybe not offer a single prize if the winner is going to be a popular designer with a single piece of clothing when most people were assuming the point of the contest was to put effort into dressing up with a lot of items.

Ahh thank you! I might stick to player-run competitions after seeing what happened here, but I definitely want to enter some sort of contest at some point. :'D

SL needs a better tutorial, for one. An ACTUAL tutorial, one that someone could access at any time and not just one that's thrust on them from the get-go that they might be too overwhelmed with everything else to take in fully. Someone who skips through the opening tutorial area to get to the customizing part may then struggle trying to remember all of the controls they skipped past. Better starter avatars and easing people into customizing right away would be great. Get them familiar with how things work. Appliers, BOM, and Mesh are big parts on SL now; it'd be great if there were mini tutorials to get people familiar with the terms. Completely get rid of "Wear" and only allow people to Add items. Wear vs Add is a huge problem to new people. I say this as someone who recently got two friends to join, both used to MMOs like FFXIV, so I figured SL's overwhelming interface wouldn't be a problem... It was. God, it was. Out of both friends, one stayed. She still took a solid week to start Adding things and not Wearing them, and that was with me on with her for hours to kind of coach her and help her put together a look (providing her with L and making a unique skin for her) so she didn't feel like as much of a fish out of water. The other who didn't stay could never get a handle on the controls. He can multitask in an MMO and keep track of a million systems but SL. The camera was the biggest hurdle. He kept flying by accident and not knowing how to stop. He kept sitting on 3D grass because of the hitbox instead of sitting on a picnic table and then not understanding how to get back up. He kept using Wear instead of Add, kept getting lost in the inventory, didn't understand having to unbox items so kept wearing a box on his hand or head, etc. I also made him some custom stuff to get him started but he ended up quitting in a couple weeks after putting his own L on and realizing he didn't really know what to do in the world and didn't really "get" it. He also didn't understand why his computer which can run modern games at ultra quality 60 fps struggled with SL. I 100% do not expect anyone I do introduce to stick around past the initial login just because of all the factors at play. It's simultaneously overwhelming and underwhelming to people at the same time, it seems: Some systems feel way too complicated for a new person and others feel backwards compared to what everyone's used to. People also aren't as social on SL as on other sites/worlds/etc-- take something like VRChat which has a similar goal of exploring a virtual world and meeting people. You're more likely to have an interesting experience going into a crowded room as a new player in VRChat vs SL, because in one people are openly communicating and screwing around, and in the other people are much more standoffish and have a certain air about them most of the time. I know I can personally count on one hand the amount of people I've interacted with on SL who aren't friends I've introduced within the last few months. A lot of people tend to talk in IMs now or feel kind of "cliquey" if you don't know where to go. A lot of places will outright eject new players/people wearing the newbie avatars (which is understandable, I get wanting to avoid griefers) which severely limits the social experience and discourages new players from sticking around if their goal is to meet others. This turned into a bit of a muddled mess of personal experiences, but it's still all things that add up in the end.

Honestly I'm pretty disappointed seeing the winner. This is coming from someone who DIDN'T enter (time constraints) but really wanted to. I was discouraged from the get-go viewing the official Flickr and seeing 99.9% hyper-accessorized human avatars (typically very femme avatars as well) in halloween costumes, figuring I wouldn't really have a chance either way entering with something non-human I couldn't accessorize as well. I still wanted to enter though; I made my own skin and everything, put together what clothes my av could wear. This would have been my entry. I'm glad I didn't actually get a chance to enter now seeing as how the winner was a long-standing clothes designer who made a dress-- a single clothing item, mind you-- with the entire rest of the avatar being "basic" in terms of not having a halloween theme whatsoever. Even the dress theme to me, personally, doesn't really scream halloween? It has skeletons on it, yeah, but I don't get a halloween vibe from gold skeletons on antique chairs surrounded by grey... Here were the rules, btw. I screened them to a friend on Discord when I was still considering entering the contest. Idk it's just disappointing tbh. There's nothing saying designers shouldn't be able to enter (I'm a skin maker after all) but something feels super off about someone making a single one-piece item, winning 25kL and then selling said item for even more L too. Kind of a big slap in the face to everyone who actively went out spending L putting their costume together from individual pieces or using certain accessories in creative ways, doesn't it? Why bother putting something big together when the winner is just going to be a single clothing piece from a designer?

Whipped up a new skin for the spooky season.

1. Staying home and spending it with friends and family! Ideally I'd love to go out, but since I'm especially at-risk to getting sick (genetics stuff) I'll just stay in until it's not as dangerous out and about in contact with other people for me. 2. I love halloween! It's the day after my birthday, actually. I love the whole aesthetic of Fall, the traditional halloween colors, seeing all of the decor, etc. I'll never not celebrate it. ^^ 3. A more recent tradition is horror movie month with my partners; my bf and I especially have been binging movie series like Scream, Halloween, etc. with other misc horrors mixed in. 4. It's really hard to pick a favorite. I love the unique and themed candy that crops up every year (yay something more than just generic chocolate bars!), I love seeing the creativity in costumes, I love seeing everyone getting into the halloween spirit and putting up decorations, carving pumpkins, and so on. I'd say I honestly enjoy halloween more than Christmas thematically, though both hold a special place in my heart from all the good childhood memories. 5. The only thing I really dislike tbh is when people take decorating way too far and go with something gory or graphic. While it doesn't bother me personally, I've seen some super gross halloween displays before that could actually scar children (such as hanging bodies, fake body parts and tons of blood scattered everywhere with entrails around, partly opened body bags with viscera inside etc). That kind of thing is a big nope for me-- it's supposed to be fun and spooky, not traumatic. That kind of stuff is totally fine in private spaces or adult haunted houses but on the front lawn where little kids can see? Really? I even put together a halloween themed alt skin for one of my avatars! I was thinking about entering the SL costume contest at some point. :'D

What are these options? Why are they greyed out, and is there a way to keep people from actively using them? I've looked all over Preferences and there's no option to either turn these functions on or off. Can friends just teleport/cam to me wherever? I wouldn't want someone showing up while I'm butt-naked working on avatar mods lol, so I'd definitely like to know how these work exactly if anyone else knows.

Not so much a conversation, but oof. This just happened recently. Was at an event in a Moderate region with some friends and my partner decided to demo a chair. He was on the chair for a couple minutes trying diff poses and then some naked chick suddenly sat on it and started IMMEDIATELY flipping through the adult set of animations. 😕 Made him feel super uncomfortable and when he stood up from the chair in shock, some big mostly-naked macho muscle man immediately took his place and they kept flipping through nsfw animations in front of my group. Felt really... Icky. What's wrong with some people, I s2g. Like, just wait your turn? It's not that hard, why sit with someone you don't even know and start flipping through raunchy anims? Just... ugh. 😒

Tbh the worst offenders to me are when I get IMs by entitled dinguses telling me to remake a hand-painted skin I spent a couple hours of leisure time on for a completely different uv (LL uv, I primarily use regalia). They're both super, super different and I personally really dislike working with the LLuv. Like, if people ask it's totally fine, I'll just turn them down politely, but it hurts sometimes to put on generic polite customer service attitude when someone essentially goes I want it NOW! or threatens "not to buy it" if I don't. Like... Good for you? The ad states what it's for, so good luck getting it otherwise lol. Outside of that, I got badmouthed behind my back via discord-- to my boyfriend no less-- for sitting on a cuddle rug at our favorite hangout spot together. Why? Because the badmouther in question thought I was "possessive" and "manipulative" and was trying to convince my boyfriend of that supposed fact... For sitting on a cuddle rug. Because apparently, I always joined my bf on the cuddle furniture there "without asking"... I was on voice with him the whole time and he's the one who asked me if I wanted to. 🙃 Friendship with that individual didn't last long after that. People can be wild.

Like, to an extent I get this general line of thinking, but at the same time it's not that black and white, at least in my opinion. I personally have stuff in my profile saying I'm shy and such because... Well, I am. I deal with social anxiety especially in crowds so I make certain traits like that known from the get-go, it just makes me feel more comfortable tbh more than anything to have it out there. I also have a couple lines about my rl partners as I'm not physically partnered on sl-- I feel it's a lot simpler (and preferable to me) to just have it in my profile instead of only being able to partner one of two people. As for the "I'm a shapeshifter" thing, I take it that means the person changes avatars/names a lot? I also have it in my profile that I do both occasionally but I don't rp publicly so even with a new name/look I'm not a different person/not going to behave differently whether I'm in a female avatar, one of my few male avs, or a feral creature. ^^; That's just my own take on it though. Profiles are only a small snippet of who the person is anyway, I feel like I suck hardcore at writing any kind of bio for myself and I'm sure others feel the same way and prefer to actually socialize in-world. It just feels like it's a requirement as some people are put off by blank profiles.

It's Firestorm.

So then we technically have LL saying "it's okay to gamble, you're just not allowed to potentially make any of your money back/a profit off of it", no? "Q: Will popular games like 7seas be impacted by this policy change? A: No, because the purchase of bait to go “fishing” is a purchase being made of a known item, and also the fish you catch while playing the game are non-transferable."

Right, and that's why I don't understand why it's acceptable to have what's essentially a gacha system renamed (7seas) be an acceptable thing with no transfer permissions. Part of the appeal IS being able to resell what you don't want so you're not stuck with junk items or duplicates. Leaving the gambling and taking away the way to possibly make your profit back is even worse than gacha.

I kinda really don't like how item permissions are being lumped into it. Saying certain things are fine "as long as it's no transfer" is really weird-- what about it being transfer is bad exactly? Why are no transfer items okay but no copy transfer items are not?

So weird that you're just... not allowed to get any free/bonus items unrelated to what you're actually purchasing then.

I mean?? Not really? As it is right now if I want the rare I just buy it outright. Besides, in my proposed system the "rares" wouldn't be included in the bonuses anyway, they'd be their own buyable thing for more. Because some people like the gacha system? I actually really like the ability to get random trinkets in a mystery box/blind bag kind of style. I just figure that if you include a random item with the item you WANT for the cost of x2 the original price of the specific gacha's spin, then that's the best of both worlds without any kind of issue. It's not gambling and forcing people to keep buying the same item for a chance at getting what they want since they can just outright BUY what they want. They just get a nice no copy/transfer version along with it for the trading/novelty factor of it. This is unfortunately a possibility, but it's already possible for people to rig gacha machines to have an insanely small chance for rares already, hence the problem. I'd say in this situation that specific instance you mentioned would be reportable as it IS falling back into the gambling issue. So then... just report the sellers who do that specific thing and move on.

I was thinking about a way gacha creators could still keep their items and the same general system without it being a gambling issue and I've come up with the following. What about a "buy one get (a random one) free" system? This would mean gacha creators would have to split up their products into different buyables, but let's take this hypothetical situation. A gacha seller previously had a gacha containing small animal decor. Before the gacha ban, you could take the chance at getting 5 different mice, 5 different hamsters, 5 different gerbils, or a rare guinea pig for 25L per spin. Post-gacha ban, they divide their items into separate boards to purchase from each containing the exact items you can purchase DIRECTLY with proper copy/mod/no trans perms. So for example, you want the white mouse? You can now buy it directly for 100L and get another random (non rare) that's no copy/transfer along with it. Essentially paying twice the price of the previous spin to get 2 items; one what you wanted DIRECTLY to eliminate the gambling chance and one as a bonus item. To handle rare items (like the hypothetical guinea pig), I feel like they'd have to either be priced highly as standalone items with no bonus item included, or artificially limited in some way-- maybe only letting people buy them at special events? It'd be up to the seller to choose whichever method they'd rather go for. This proposed system eliminates needing to gamble for EXACTLY what you want, but still giving people a random mystery bonus for those who do enjoy that-- plus still letting people trade or resell their bonuses like you can with current gachas. Otherwise the only other routes are selling the items individually with NO bonuses, selling fatpacks of the gacha items, or retiring them entirely. As someone who really likes the surprise of getting something random, I wanted to try to find a good middle ground. Thoughts? Is it still considered "gambling" even though you could buy the item you want outright asap?

... Just look the item you want up on the MP and buy it there instead? And if it's not there, just... y'know, wait for someone else to inevitably get it and put it up for sale? If someone can't control their "I WANT IT NOW" mentality then there's a deeper issue than gachas bad. Most gachas I've seen are like... 75L at most. Basically no high-end item is going to be that much of a steal unless it's a giveaway/flash sale/event/promo, and you're paying for a CHANCE to get an expensive item at that price. If you don't want to try for a chance at getting an item worth 500L for 75... then just... buy it from a reseller for 500...?