MissSweetViolet

1. 5 years in November. 2. Way to many probably, on average about 40. 3. A lot. I've spent hours getting shapes, skins and associated layers just where I want them. Then there's hanging out in the communities I'm part of, parcel decorating, dressing my avatar and hunting/shopping for new things. 4. I prefer to mostly keep it anonymous, I will talk about some aspects of my life, and I think I've may have mentioned my real first name once or twice in the past to people I trusted, but nothing that would be identifying. 5. There are are lot of things that could go on this list, but I think the worst would be something that could hurt someone in real life, [stalking, harassment, information disclosing]. At the end of the day I can log out of SL, but something that can cross over to harm someone in real life is a lot harder to escape from.

Facelights with colored lighted are great for fantasy looks, but they definitely need to been done right. If I'm lighting the whole room, something is wrong lol. x.x. Otherwise I pretty much agree no need to use a facelight unless doing photos and even then, I'll likely fiddle with the personal lighting settings in quick preferences first.

I miss this so much, I organized by folders in my outfits section fairly often [and am lucky to still have a few I can use], but I became unable to create new ones a few months back.

I find that SL has helped see more of what I like fashion and décor wise, simply by being exposed to more styles then in RL, so I now look for those styles when shopping IRL.

Here's mine currently, but I plan to completely redo him when able, since I really do not like his current look, my male stuff on his account is still sparse since I only made my alt account male about a month ago [It got next to no use as a female account because well, I just use my main for female because why log a second account when all my stuff is on my main one. XD, so it was like, well I got next to nothing in inventory on that account anyway so let's just make it a malt.]

Ah, that's great to know, thank you!

I was wondering what is up with the moon still being so dim!? I love doing a 24 hour day cycle, but my night skies look so horrid when using a true night sky. The moon is so dim compared to the lighting and refection. This is such a shame because the daytime skies look amazing, why don't the nights? I really dislike using a daytime sky for a moon, especially since it ruins my soundscape since the script uses the sun/moon position to select the sounds, so I've put up with the dim moon, but why isn't this fixed? Image added is the moon about my roof, done my best to lighten the moon in gimp, and turned the moon brightness up as high as it can go, elevation of the moon is 31.56, bringing it higher doesn't make it any brighter then this pic.

Things I like about SL are; 1; I'm able to be/look however I want, whenever I want for the most part. 2; Enjoying the fun communities I've found to hangout in. 3. Having the social outlet it gives me at a point in my life where I don't have many IRL. 4; The creativity. 5; That SL has so much longevity. 6; A more mature group of players. As a gamer when I am on online games, I often get told I'm too old by others (I'm only 37 btw), but on a platform like SL I feel like I don't get judged by my age. 7; Enjoying all fun locals, museums and classes. 8; A relatively safe environment to explore. As for LL, I don't have as much experience interacting with them, but for good things I have noticed, most of the staff seem to be friendly and helpful. They are constantly doing work try and improve SL, I may or may not always agree with what's being done, but at least they try, and that says a lot in my book. Not to mention they put up with a lot I'm sure.

I think the only time I ever bothered to check a ban list was when an avatar had been repeatedly harassing me at a place I would frequently visit, and after contacting one of the owners, I had checked to see if he'd been banned to know if he could come back and harass me (he had been), otherwise I don't ever give checking that a thought.

This happens all the time with my house at home when tp'ing back and forth, usually a right click on it fixes it for me, or another tp back and forth.

As someone who knew someone IRL who was sexually assaulted after ignoring said signs, I can't disagree more with this, those signs are important! No, most people don't mean harm, but the fact of the matter is, you often can know what someone's true intention is or not, believe me it is far better to be safe then sorry! As for SL, it's a bit different. You can't be physically harmed in SL, so it's easier to take risks and see someone's true intention. In real life, the consequences are VERY VERY real. I'll give people far more leeway in SL because of this, probably more then I should give sometimes.

If I recall correctly the partly that cheap because they lack the features of more well known brands. You can't use any EvoX or appliers on them, that's for sure, and the refinement of mesh isn't quite up to name brands, but for the price they are decent. Plus, I would assume they are trying to be generous.

I know of one store that rubbed me the wrong way doing this with their weekly credit being abused. The thing was, was it wasn't even that I didn't understand the position they were in with it, and although I tried to point out that removing it wouldn't stop cheaters, but would just punish customers, it fell on deaf ears. I didn't even care about the credit, I had been in the group before it even became a thing, and was there after it ended (till I released I wasn't using the products as much as I use to and needed a group slot, anyway). But it still wasn't fair to the innocent customers. The ones who cheat learn nothing, if they did, they likely wouldn't have cheated to begin with. It was the attitude much like this, that they said their credit was being abused like crazy, but the majority of their customers they knew weren't to blame, and they weren't blaming them. To me that was like a well "which is it?! You can't say you getting crazy amounts of abuse on your system from tons of people in group, then turn around and say you understand most of your customers are innocent, those two contradict each other (and I often wish I had the thought to point that out). But much like the above, they had a very "you tone" that made many members feel attacked. I know of at least one shop who may have violated that, they just kept dropping the gift card amount till it barely covered half the price of an item, and I never ended up using it cause I couldn't afford to pick up the extra 600L at that time. Though to be fair, I did not check their main store, so I can only go by their booth. Back to topic, I do love it when the gift at an event represents what I store can do, nearly all the stores I still shop at that I discovered during an event had event or store gifts were stores who gave out something that showed what they could do as a brand.

It's way easier then it sounds at first. It just means the skin is Bakes on Mesh, so it will be on a system layer, instead of a hud (which would be a applier). The chest/neck/face layer from that description sounds like it's designed to blend in with other store's body skins. It's basically like Persephone said above, but really you just need to be aware of two main things; 1: System/Bakes on Mesh (BoM), BoM is often used for the newer skins, but old systems skins are basically the same thing, they just need to be demoed to make sure they work with your setup (especially if you plan to use EvoX, as the head part with be a different layout), they both work on the system layer. 2: Applier Huds, and object that when worn lets you click a button to apply the skin on to the body, some people still love using these, but you'll probably find it easier to match tones and without seams using BoM. One thing to note is that head and body skins even older body skins (and as long they fit your body, always demo) can often be used together pretty well with a neck blender as long as they are close in skin tone, some shops have them out for free. If they still have them out, Velour and Not Found use to have free neck blends out.

Your not alone! I am American and don't understand our stupid tipping culture. While I get that many only work off tips, and I do tip knowing that, it would much better if the whole system was done away with and people payed an actual paycheck like it should be. I never have understood why it should fall on the consumer to pay a waiter/waitress/etc for something they should rightfully get a paycheck for. As for SL, I think it's bit different, I usually try to tip something, even if it's only 10L, but whether I do or not largely depends on if I have money for linden or not, which varies month to month, since real life has to come first.

When I first started on SL, my answer would have been no. However since getting a gaming laptop, it's now almost always on, I only shut it off temporally if I start to notice a performance difference, which doesn't happen often.

My apologies then, I nearly failed English, so I just assumed it was then same topic. [note that I'm entirely serious and not being sarcastic here, since tone is hard to tell in text form]

The OP stated they have been here a long time, so they aren't new. ------------------------ Unrelated to any of the above, and directed at everyone as a whole. Everyone was taking about SL being called a game or not. I have to say as a gamer, I could totally see how someone would be let down if they viewed it that way, fortunately, I didn't, and wouldn't want to, to me it's more of a 3d social/virtual platform. The thing your probably going to do on first starting it is talk to someone (unless you know to look around for other stuff, which a new user may or may not), without all of the player made content, which makes Second Life so wonderful, it would essentially, be a 3d social media site, so I would never really view it as a game. That being said, I their are many gamers who probably would, but they do themselves a disservice to think that way.

It's actually not that hard or time consuming at all. One popular freebie group in SL posts freebies daily and they aren't cheap looking and many are from what would be considered high end designers, all in one place, no huge time investment needed. There a a free mesh head that has been out for sometime that is full featured and looks great, and a body that fits Maitreya clothing can be found a midnight madness board no time/money needed you just click and get in when it locks, it's even rolls over, so it will keep all the names till it locks. In my opinion, it's easier then ever to look great for little effort, definitely more then when I came in to SL in 2018. Although I will say for male avatars it's still pretty slim, honestly it's harder to find male avatar stuff in general compared to female, since more content is focused on women.

Thank you very much!

Tried out Blake today on my male alt, the body does seem a bit easier to shape then Jamie, the head though, couldn't seem to get a look I liked; First just the stuff from the Blake folder; Then I replaced the head with Lel Logan, head skin from Clef De Peau, custom shape, body skin from Velour [Eros Lite], Eyes are still Blake (they actually did some pretty nice eyes with both avatars), hair is Raven Bell Ren, and Clothing in the bottom two pics from the outlet at Gabriel (with a frick ton of alpha'ing from LBD and Blimey, it took forever to finely to get rid of the rear!) I noticed one odd thing while doing this, and don't know if it's the skin or the body, or a combo of the two, but there are these odd lines with the Eros skin; I also saw that while a Lel head fit nicely on Jamie, it does not on Blake, these are with the Moth and Moon body plus head skin same tone [cause their the only matching body/head skin I had, my male doesn't have a ton of skins yet, lol];

Fishy how this view has suddenly made a reappearance......hmm.

I decided to play around with a look for Jamie, here's what got, first, just using stuff from the Jamie folder; Then below I swapped out the head for Lel Kaya and added hair from Lamb. Dress from S@bbia, which still really clips on the back of the arms, though unseen in the photo, I think you would need a custom alpha for that dress. Eyes and slides still from the Jamie folder, as is the body skin in tone 1.

Kalhene actually had a non curvy body that was great, called Anya, as well as a trans one Alexa, then they combined the two some time later in to Analexa, they could wear Maitreya clothing even, and well, swimwear and lingerie even worked most of the time! I actually loved it and was a huge supporter, always telling people about it.......Then Erika came in, all the updates halted, I even asked the creator if the updates would ever come to the Analexa, I was reassured they would, only they never did. As far as I can tell they don't even offer the body anymore. That was actually the push that took me over to Maitreya about a year and a half ago, never looked back, and haven't regretted it. I found that I actually had more features that were awesome on Maitreya, I didn't even have to edit my shape, so it all ended up working out. I do often wonder how popular Analexa might have been right now had Kalhene kept it, it was even cheaper then Maitreya by a few hundred linden. 2400 if I remember right, it could have been a nice option for slimmer market.

It could since they leave right away, like other said, that it use to be an event/store. I could also be since it was a rental, that maybe it is people who use to live there in the past and had home set to it returning. This happens frequently in the Linden home my sister and I use, neither of us have linked it anywhere in in our profile, so I just assume it's someone who came back. They are pretty much just as you said, people who come in then quickly leave. Not seen this ever happen on our mainland parcel, though I did have a guy randomly drop into our yard and try to hit on me once. XD