Scylla Rhiadra

This is true enough. No one is entitled to her work. What is a little disturbing about this, though, is that there was almost no notice that Slink was closing down, which meant that there must be many out there who didn't get the opportunity to get updates or items that they couldn't have known would soon be disappearing for good. And her Black Friday sale, which encouraged people who had no reason to think that the entire line was about to become deprecated to spend more might be read as an opportunistic move to cash in as much as possible at the expense of her loyal customers. And that's not unimportant. Physique and Hourglass had very little support from creators as is; you can expect that no one will rig for them now. But at least there is a wealth of older content available for them. That's not true of the two new bodies, Cinnamon and Chai. Virtually the only garments available for either were from Slink. That has all disappeared now, and there sure won't be anyone filling the gap now that the bodies are gone. Basically, anyone who dropped the substantial sum these bodies cost, even on sale, before the closing are now saddled with essentially useless items. Likely there aren't many who find themselves in this situation. But if it is true that Siddean has the right to simply drop out of sight, leaving her customers high and dry, it is also true that there is an ethical issue at stake here: if she knew she was going to be exiting, she should at the very least have warned those to whom she was selling soon-to-be useless content. I don't know her situation: possibly she had no choice. But the reaction of her customers is more than mere "entitlement": the way this went down gives them every right to be annoyed at the least.

This may be the single most bizarre picture I've ever seen here. I have no idea what's happening! It's quite wonderful!

I'm with Colleen on this, @Alec Kaestner! Your alt has great taste! Dare we ask what it is?

The Discord? You're a braver woman than I. I've seen two sets of teasers now, mostly thumb nails showing details. But there look to be two new heads, one a man's and one a woman's, and they are updating all 7 existing heads for free. According to the CSR who seems to know most about this in the group chat, there will be HD bits and pieces, but the mapping isn't changing and older skins will still work (I'm not quite sure how they're managing that). No information about the things that a lot of existing users want fixed, animations, eyes, and neck fit, but I assume that something has been done about at least the last one of those, if not the other two. There is, it is implied, a provisional release date, but the CSR won't publish it because they don't want to create a furor if it gets missed.

This is a very adorable composition! And nice use of the window!

Goodness! Welcome back!

I can't wait to see!

And speaking of Gyazo videos, here's a quickie experiment to see what kinds of effects one might be able to produce using animations with light projectors.

This was a bit like a comic routine from The IT Crowd.

Well, I had the not unusual problem of a building not appearing this morning -- a relog fixed it. But here's a new one for me, which might be the viewer rather than the platform: in Black Dragon, the BOM alpha layers for my outfit were not working. I detached and re-attached, and they still did literally nothing. Eventually I changed outfits, and then went back to the one that was giving me trouble, and it did work the second time. But I've never seen this before.

Thank you, Nando! 🙂

This is a detail from a new one in my ballet shots. I've given it the oil treatment for Flickr, but for a change I thought I'd post the more straight-forward version here. (Fuller version, done in "oils," here.)

This would have been my guess, actually. But I am not terribly up-to-date on my celebrities.

The free version of Gyazo allows you to capture 7 seconds of video, which you can download as MP4 or a GIF. But there are a ton of other apps out there, many of them free. 7 seconds however is close to the maximum size loadable here for a reasonable sized GIF. And thank you for the kind words!

Not bad for someone who hasn't danced ballet since she was about 10, eh? 😏

I've been doing so many ballet shots recently, that it occurred to me I should actually purchase some dances for it. Apologies for the frame rate: I had to load this as a GIF.

This is so wonderfully baroque!

Well, look at you, you handsome chunk o' . . . monkey.

I don't really understand "brand loyalty." A brand is, essentially, a marketing concept, or at best a collection of things made by a single producer, usually impersonal and corporate, and I don't feel loyalty to things. I feel loyalty to people. So I wouldn't say that I've ever felt any "loyalty" to Slink as a brand. I like its look, and, pre-BOM, the HUD was one of the best around, so I stuck with it as my main body for as long as it was reasonable to do so. When it became difficult to wear new clothes because it wasn't rigged for Physique anymore, I bought a Maitreya, not because it's a better body (it isn't) but because it's well-supported and relatively easy to use. (It also has the Petite add-on, which I like.) Slink is a brand, but Siddean is a person. I don't think "loyalty" would describe my feelings about her, but I admired her achievements and in my dealings with her, as well as second-hand, she made it clear that she was a really nice person. But that's not the same as being loyal to Slink. The distinction between brand and creator is maybe even more important with reference to Genus. I wear a Genus head, and I have every intention of continuing to wear a Genus head for so long as it is viable to do so. That's not out of loyalty, but rather purely because I've achieved (after LONG work) a look I like with it. I own, and have tried to work with no less than four different modern LeLutka heads: they are objectively superior to Genus -- but I can't make them look the way I want them to. So, no. I remain a Genus user. So sticking with Genus is, for me, purely about my own needs, not about the "brand." It's also not really about the trials and tribulations of the creator of the heads either, but I do think some might exhibit a bit more tolerance and understanding with regard to her. First there was a long nuisance DMCA that literally knocked the head off the market for months. That likely had some pretty significant spin-off effects, perhaps financial in nature, in RL. Then, as I understand it, there was a pregnancy and a new child. And then -- Covid, and the war in Ukraine. I'd say there are some pretty significant mitigating factors here. Judging SL merchants in the same way we judge RL corporations -- Amazon, or GE, or whatever -- is kind of silly. Most of these "companies" are single craftspeople producing everything themselves, for a relatively marginal profit. If Jeff Bezos breaks his foot, or gets pregnant, there is a fleet of people to step in and keep things running. If something untoward happens in the RL of a Second Life creator, there isn't going to be that sort of cushion. Unless there is real evidence of fraudulent intentions, I think it would be good to cut SL creators, who are really the independent "artisans" of the digital world, a bit of slack.

I said I was sorry! Twice! 😞

This is another shot made to appear within a pic, featuring @Saskia Rieko's lovely back.

Well, it's interesting. I just did a quick count of the number of posts on that subject, excluding yours above, and the two most recent by Kali and Garnet. There were a total of 34 posts, made by 15 different people. I was, unsurprisingly, the top contributor, with 11 posts. Every one of these, except the first, was in response to something someone else said. The second top contributor was . . . you. With 9 posts. 8 of my 11 posts were in response to . . . you. Peeve: People who can't count, and have conveniently selective memories.

I refuse to return to the FC Hangout until they've swept away all the cobwebs you left hanging from the ceiling.

Thanks so much, Nando! And yes, Degas is definitely the inspiration for this batch of pics!