Scylla Rhiadra

It never occurred to me to delete scripts! I already use separate body copies for each outfit (a holdover from pre-BOM days), so this would actually be pretty easy to do! Thanks Ceka! ❤️

I do use the Maitreya Petite add-on a lot. It's pretty well-supported, and it looks generally pretty good (although a bit perkier than I'd prefer), but it's a pain in the . . . well, not the butt exactly, to load when it's part of an outfit, because it frequently loads before the main body, which means it doesn't auto-hide the larger breasts. So, you end up detaching and re-attaching it. I wish there were a way to turn off auto-hide, as there used to be in the old Slink bodies.

For me, it would also depend on finding the right kind of dress that is also rigged for it. And that seems, frankly, unlikely. /me sighs

Fixed.

The tops I would wear it with would be mostly square cut, I think. What I'd be looking for is a bit of . . . overflow, if you know what I mean. But just a bit. If you don't get that effect, I'm not sure I see the point for myself.

The only social media accounts I have are for SL: Facebook (which I barely use), Twitter (which is under Laskya's name), and Discord. It's actually useful: it gives me a window into the world of social media without having to commit my RL identity to any of them. It's much easier to ignore Facebook when I have no RL friends or family there.

That is what I noticed as well: it doesn't actually replicate the natural curve that a breast takes in that sort of garment?

And yet it's been a fashionable look. The Robert Cruikshank cartoon I posted above is from 1817: it's a caricature, but it is also a statement on a real fashion trend in the late Georgian era. YOU on the other hand would be right at home as a flapper. Or in the 60s. You could be Twiggy! She was only 5'6"! ETA: Actually . . . why don't you have any nice flapper outfits? Could it be time for . . . some shopping?????

Yeah. Not so much that even, as the "This will kill you, disassemble you, and then reassemble a simulacrum of you that isn't actually you at all somewhere else" thing that gets me. As I understand it, contemporary experiments in teleportation (there have been some!) don't even reassemble the original with the same atoms: they produce a duplicate of the original at the new site. I feel about it much as I feel about the transhumanist "dream" of storing one's mind in a computer. Even assuming that one could transfer all the data from my mind into a hard drive somewhere, what makes you think that it would transfer my consciousness, the "me" that is aware of myself? Thought experiment: suppose they transferred multiple copies of your mind onto multiple hard drives. Which would be "you"? All of them, simultaneously? Or none of them? Such copies might have their own consciousness: they might even believe they were were "me." But they wouldn't be.

Yeah. It's a pretty specialized look -- not "perky" so much as "I really need to get a better fitting bra." 😄

Well . . . does it come with a vacuum cleaner attachment?

Thanks @Rowan Amore! Not my look, really, but as I said, I can see it maybe coming in handy for Georgian/Regency era gowns?

Pix please! I'm curious! I don't have a lot of use myself for the push-up look, or prominent decolletage . . . and my boobs are on the smaller side, so the effect wouldn't be as pronounced, I suspect. But I can see it maybe being useful for period outfits.

This is interesting. Are there particular reasons why the furry community might be especially interested in and/or excited by this feature? Are they generally more engaged in Vtubing?

/me runs off to find you

I hope I am "wary" rather than "cynical." I think that if this is done well, it might be a net positive. If it isn't, it's just going to be another metric that doesn't make SL look good next to things like VRChat, and will actually have a net negative impact. I also don't, personally, still see a whole lot of use for this for most SL residents. It seems pretty niche to me, still. Personally, I'd rather have an in-viewer poser (a la Black Dragon) -- but I recognize that the needs of SL photographers are also pretty niche. It will be interesting to see if this brings in a new type of user. I am, again, a little wary about how that might impact on SL's overall culture, but at the worst it would likely lead to the kind of fragmentation / disconnection that currently exists between those who favour voice, and those who hate it.

The other day I ran across a garment -- I think from Just Because? -- that offered as a body choice something called "Maitreya Natural Lift." I'd never heard of it before, but that sounds like a "juicy boobs" type mod? I've seen it nowhere else, however.

It's gone now, is it not?

I very much doubt it, at least for most day-to-day purposes. Dance is very big in SL, but most people don't treat it as a mode of self-expression. It's something fun to watch while you're at a club listening to music, flirting, or connecting. This isn't going to change that. And there are a lot of dance animations out there that are better than I am in RL. 😏

So, thinking about this, in my resolutely ignorant and non-geeky way . . . One obvious answer to one of the issues you raise here is the proper integration of voice-to-text software into the viewers. They should do that anyway, and it's sort of bizarre (to me) that we have voice morphers, and not such a fundamental and well-established technology incorporated directly into the platform. As for the disadvantage that this might place those who have mobility issues and the like . . . one very imperfect and partial way to address that is through the implementation of what you might call "dynamic AOs," that react to particular text inputs using dedicated shorter animations. A bit like "gestures," but much better and more sophisticated. So, suppose I input the phrase "You see . . ." into chat, either through voice-to-text (or just voice), or by typing it. The dynamic AO might respond by playing an animation that raises a hand, with one finger pointing up. Or something like that. It would, at the very least, be responsive to what we are saying, and it would break up the monotony of AOs that simply cycle through the usual group of non-responsive animations. ("I think I'm in love with you," she said. And his avatar bent over to brush off his pants.) ETA: I forgot to say . . . the larger issue here is discrimination. And that's going to be a problem. There is already a pretty marked divide between those who use voice a lot, and those who hate it -- and both sides can often be seen discriminating against the other. I've known people on voice to simply ignore text chat directed at them. And I've known texters absolutely refuse to turn voice on, out of principle almost. So, yeah. We're going to need to learn to be more sensitive and understanding of different approaches, and acknowledge that sometimes these aren't even deliberate choices. ETA Again: And we need voice-to-text to be capable of translating OTHER people's voices into text, for the hearing impaired. A taller order, but the tech exists now.

Part of the larger issue here, I think, is that the SL avatar has a pretty simple bone structure that doesn't handle complicated or unusual poses very well. I see icky deformation of the shoulders in all of the 3 bodies I use. That said . . . for photographs that involve any degree of nudity, or even slightly raised arms, I tend to use Legacy Perky. I have lots of issues with Legacy, but . . . it's just a better looking body naked, and it poses better.

There is some truth to this. The very fact that we're having this conversation demonstrates it. Objectively speaking, there is zero danger of Maitreya dropping off the edge of a cliff in the near future. It's just too dominant. But there's also no question whatsoever that I've seen a marked increase of people, on Twitter, on blogs, on Flickr, and in-world, either deprecating Maitreya or predicting its demise. Nothing that is said is going to make that happen overnight. But . . . I've also started to see more outfits that don't come with a Maitreya version. It's small . . . but that would have been unthinkable a year ago.

. . . makes perfect. And this is pretty close. What a lovely portrait!

I tend to push it down a bit. But that can create it's own issues, as one's butt also flattens and spreads a little. The real problem, that I've yet to solve, is how to fix it when I'm sitting on something soft, like a sofa. (I'm working on it!) In any case, whatever you did, it this looks gorgeous!

Really excellent points, Maddy. Well caught.