Pussycat Catnap

I spent my early years as the only non-white child. When you're 5 and wondering why you're sitting in handcuffs while the friends that you were with are walking off to go play somewhere else... or when your teacher steps out of the room so your classmates can jump you... I'm not joking when I note carrying a knife around as a child. My over-tuned fighting instincts were hammered into me with the fists of the same boys using a different kind of 'hitting' on my classmates. For me that was the 70s. When the 80s hit we moved 'back to California' and I suddenly figured out 'hey all these folks speaking Spanish - a lot of them look a bit like me'... and once I moved 'back to San Francisco' I found out that people could be friendly across ALL the race lines and the knife got put in a drawer and even tossed out. But the angry ball of fur, doesn't scratch anymore, but still packs a mean hiss.

I remember the first two things I went looking for when I joined SL. Inca Interracial. I'm 'mountain amazon' on one quarter of my family. Basically neighbor to the Inca people. Somehow I landed in a Gor sim. I"m mixed race, so I wanted to see if there were groups of other mixed folks. I had no idea at the time how mono-ethnic SL was because I've been in a diverse region for all but my pre-teen years. Somehow I landed in a sex-club themed around sexual assault of white women... (this is a common theme, and why I like pointing out that 24% of the DNA of African Americans comes from 'white men', almost NONE comes from white women, and almost ALL African DNA found in White Americans, comes from black women. Rape of white women by black men is so rare that statistically it doesn't actually exist. But the reverse is so common that the African American population, statistically speaking, is actually a quarter Caucasian). SL is chock full os racial stereotypes. Black stereotyping is extremely common (just visit some hip hop sims, or 'interacial sims' and look at avatars and dialog... then realize that people generally only talk like that in movies made to make them look bad... There are plenty of Native American bad stereotypes and themes as well. The number of times I see a dude with the same 'long black hair with feathers in it' is beyond counting. And that's just scratching the surface. Here's the modern SL's version of what I got when I typed 'Inca' in search back in 2009: https://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/2015/05/05/i-should-be-offended-but-im-not-amazon-adult-content-sim-in-sl/ It's a tricky space for me as a person of color who is mixed... because every single group I am descended from views me just breathing on this planet as appropriating from them... https://catnapkitty.wordpress.com/2016/01/18/changes-over-the-years-journeying-through-myself/ I'm both part of the problem Kristen refers to, and a victim of it as well - I belong to all and none of these groups at the same time.

Basically this. It's like getting that designer Guchi bag... If you know brands... you'll realize that it's supposed to be stamped with 'gucci'... If not... you just walked out of that stall thinking you got a great deal. In SL, after a while you know what different designer's products look like... and you also tend to realize that if you're in a shop that looks like the products were made by 7 different people... it's probably because they were... Also... if you get a bunch of very different stuff and it's all full perms... it's time to open up that AR window and report the person who sent you that stuff... It is possible it's legit. It is also possible you could win the lottery the next time you scratch those numbers...

In various updates between this or that mesh head or body... things sometimes get aligned a little wrongly. I think the current version number of Belleza might be because of a tiny seam that popped up in the version number right before it from an upload glitch. It was Belleza or some other product I use that had that happen... but the memory is fuzzy. If you look at the back of the neck on Belleza, for me at least if I zoom in I can find a slight misalignment. But that might also be the brand of head I use... not sure. Don't have $5000L lying around to switch head brands anyway... Here's what I look like in a neutral windlight, on myself and my alt: Lacking the shadows and other features that would make these look nicer... ps: The primary reason I don't usually have a hairbase on is to reduce avatar complexity... - My mesh head comes in several versions, depending on the number of layers. I use the 'one layer skin only' version to give me a very low complexity score... Hoping baked mesh gets rid of that issue for me...

Just so it's out there. I am actually a 'Casta / Tusán' (google is your friend) using a black AV in SL. If you met my RL self... you would probably think you were meeting a Mexican with an unusual nose and 'kinky' hair. My nose 'gives away' a quattro-racial heritage. I use a very dark skin tone on my avatar because that is what I see as beautiful. But she originally started getting darker and darker shades in 'reaction' to people complaining that my skin was 'too dark' when I was newer in SL and finally found my first 'non-pale' skin tone. I've always been that way... if somebody says "that's wrong" and I feel they're reasons are unjust or badly motivated, I do it twice as much. In the end I simply ran out of 'darker choices'... My AV choice also highly reflects on my RL community and faith. But that's a topic people have told me I've covered too many times here already... The 'nose' sidetrack in that other thread was kind of an accident... I was just looking for 'the thing about that avatar that seemed off' and went with something... and then a post or two later showed how my own gut instinct was wrong... My own RL nose gets it's own bit of attention. Anytime people try to 'peg me' to some group... they get hung up on the nose and I see that look in their eyes that is wrestling with the words 'WTF'...

A lot of skin makers take a caucasian skin into photoshop and just use the hue tool... You can find this by noting certain things like some odd greys on color transitions, or the palms and soles of feet also being dark. - The general result though, tends to not look so good. That skin is from Angel Rock, and she makes her skins specific for African tones. She's done some good Asian skins as well in the past. I do not know the quality of her lighter tones. They might suffer the same issue as many designers have, only in reverse... and end up looking like "Albino Africans": But I can't say. I think Angel Rock is so particular that she'd manage to avoid this... but it could happen. In years past... Angel Rock skns DID suffer in some windlight settings from a 'sandy look'... but she's resolved that in the current generation. It was a problem in her 'second generation' skins.

What hair is that? I think I need to go shopping. I've been looking for something like that.

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Actually you even quoted the part where I say it's a bad idea:

It was past my bedtime when I typed my previous reply. I know it reads somewhat hostile. I didn't want it to... and I knew it read badly when I typed it... but I was too tried to be able to fix it... I also see that my earlier comment was 'vaguely worded' and didn't convey my intent as well as it could have... making it very easy to be misread... I think yesterday I actually managed to almost faceplant on my keyboard...

Why does everyone, in seemingly continuously failing to read my whole message, keep writing as if believing I am recommending some idea here?

African - because not all people of African ancestry are Americans. Quite a few live in Africa, curiously enough. A decent portion of my 'social circle' lives in Ethiopia, England, and Nigeria. None of which are 'African American'.

Where did I ever even hint that I was suggesting that? It looks like you're reading meaning into my omissions. There's a big problem of a lack of demos for products - so I wanted to call attention to such. But that's the end of that, nothing more to be read in there.

Um... MP is full of items for sale for $0L. Pretty sure that is fully allowed. Are you perhaps mistakingly believing I intended people to not sell their actual product as well?

https://lovereggaemusic.com/droop-lion/

I've had Magenta eyes since 2009. In 2016 I tossed out my mesh eyes and went for some very simple prim eyes because they held up better on both LOD and complexity.

I know it's scary but sometimes... Time moves this way ------> And stuff changes. Also... why are these kinds of rants always incoherent? They always read not like an ESL writer, but like a native English speaker that dropped out of school somewhere between 3rd and 4th grade... (With an ESL writer, there's usually just grammar issues I have to unlock / find a pattern to, but the intelligent and organized point of an educated person lies within.)

People have been trying to warn folks about TMP for a LONG time... when they were still around in SL we couldn't really get away with naming them openly in the forums... but as they seem to have left... It appears the forumites have declared open season... but their shop is still there, and not everyone is here... so folks still get taken often enough. Somebody on the other end of the line has got to be withdrawing funds from that place...

American rule. It's OK over here to shoot up schools and mail bombs... but show some nipple and it's freak out time.

Basically malls. Plenty of SL resident run malls. They suffer from proximity to each other. In SL it's best to have your shop surrounded by low traffic neighbors. We all love going to shopping events, but we also love to complain about the lag. It is tolerable because it is typically a temporary event. Malls historically, back before MP... were a constant source of people's complaints about 'laggy SL'. In my opinion, merchants are best staying on MP with 0L demos... and a small 512m spot on a quiet sim, maybe even next to their home... that visually showcases their current top and newest products in a display designed to give you an 'experience' / brand-identity connection. If you ever shop at some of the very big brand names in fitmesh clothing for meh bodies that insist on doing most of their business inworld... it's painful. Laggy even when you're alone (rare), and you have to navigate past aisles of stuff you already have or chose not to buy, to get to 'that thing you remembered seeing' that isn't current anymore... Most of them do have the smarts to put the new stuff near the door... but this often just means you have to wade through 30 other people to get past them and click that vendor... So I kinda believe a small 'showcase shop' is best for both small and large merchants... Places like Belleza... where there are almost no products in the store. (But they don't really do a good display job with the ones that are there)... so you just go there for the 'brand connection' and can mostly shop on MP. Some shops, like Mayreal (the mesh head brand I use), don't even have purchase active vendors inworld. At their real world shop all you can find is pictures of the heads, demos, and a redelivery terminal. You MUST buy on MP. I think Mayreal has the right of it... And that means her store fits in a tiny parcel in an out of the way low traffic area where she can offer people wanting 'branding' a low lag experience.

The 'variant jazz' instead of real original jazz. People are always recommending jazz venues to me in SL when I tell them I'm having trouble finding places that aren't variations of rock, country, or metal. Frank's is why I don't bother. I've just assumed the other jazz is for that same demographic. That said... I'm not even a fan of any style of jazz... not my scene either way. Jazz and Blues feel like what my mother and grandmother should be listening to... not me...

On my land I have resized all the buildings to RL scale so those giant avatars can't fit through the door to come in and yell at me for being 'too-scale sized' anyway... (often they actually can get in... I don't try to block anyone out... I usually have easy close furniture for the rare person who actually IS that big... but most people can fit through a 2.3m tall door... it's just funny to 'imagine' one of them bumping at the entrance). Now... I spend 90% + of my time nude and on A or M land (actually if I add in the M land, maybe more than 90% of the time... how does 97.327% sound... or roughly around there)... - It's been a few years since I've gotten the "you are too short" routine tossed at me. Of course the longer we're in SL the more we learn how to spot potential places that would be drama for us BEFORE we visit them... so maybe I'm just managing to screen them out. But it also seems to me that today's SL has plenty of "too-scale sized" and plenty of "giant sized" avatars and most people have stopped caring about it either way. Which is a good result if true beyond just my observations.

Some people use crack. Some people use meth. I don't intend to listen to the advice of either crowd.

It's a music style that caters to an older less diverse population than even the norm of SL. That tends to be the age and diversity demographic that also keeps Fox News in business. Frank's itself has no reputation that I know of... but that music style basically dates to when my grandparent's were over there fighting in WWII up until Castro kicked the CIA and Mafia out of Cuba.