Pussycat Catnap

The two above me got it down. My tastes and your tastes and this other person's tastes will be very different. When you do demo a lot of things, mess with the shape dials a bit, go through laggy and non-laggy places, a scripted places and unscripted places... And try logging out and then back on with the demo on - to see if anything resets weirdly. I would also do a little clothing shopping - I understand the selection for male avatars is very limited, so make sure that what is out there for a given body fits your fashion sense... Also... only one male avatar that I know of comes with the 'male' part included, but that avatar's male part is child-small, and not adjustable with any shape dials... - So if this is important to you... demo some 'maleness' kits alongside the body to make sure of compatibility. I don't think most 'male anatomy' kits come with appliers, so you're going to have to think about you skills in matching skin tones. If there is one thing I find "unattractive" in male avatars, and I spend a LOT of time in nude venues in SL... it's when their male anatomy does not match the color of the rest of their body very well... (check this with advanced lighting on, and maybe with it off. I think most people have advanced lighting on by default now, and only turn it off when seeing if they can reduce lag... for some things this can really change what the color appears to be.)

Yeah. I like to cycle through demos several times. Sort of a "here are 3 things I thought I wanted... let's compare them all... oh wait, need to look at that first one again to be sure... what, it's expired? well, I guess here are 2 things I thought I wanted..." I think my inventory is actually almost half demos. Not that I wear them often... but I will make folders full of demos that are "look these over again later" or "these are the ones I want to buy"... and then when 'purchase day' comes, I will go through them all again quickly to remind myself... and if one of them isn't working, it just fell off the list.

Mine is actually more diverse than it used to be. I started in here saying this was my greatest frustration with SL, and it is... but that isn't an apocalyptic statement as some took it for. I wish SL was a lot more diverse than it is... but I have slowly met people from other varied backgrounds. However it is still a LOT LESS diverse than my real life. I really couldn't offer up a solution. It had to have begin with LLs, and years ago. When you sit at that new account screen and see the starting avatars, I think that's the initial bad moment - the initial red flag. If I hadn't had a reason to log in here when I first did... I wouldn't have. This is a major issue throughout tech actually - I live in perhaps the most diverse place in the world, but in my actual profession within that place is one of the least diverse industries in the USA... and it is not for lack of people like me, but for the refusal of tech companies to engage with us. I have enough hustle to have worked my way in regardless - but it leaves me in 'fight mode' most of the time. I've lived in Korea, and early in my career in tech a company tried to 'force relocate' me to Vermont (I mentioned a short trip above)... so I've been to places with a dramatically lower level of diversity than I am used to. One where the baseline was Korean, the other where it was French-American. Both made me realize I am not suited for such places.

It is amazing how much it bothered YOU that I have found SL to be racially exclusive. YOU are unable to handle being challenged on your privilege. Some handy reading: https://www.alternet.org/culture/why-white-people-freak-out-when-theyre-called-out-about-race https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/white-fragility-why-its-so-hard-to-talk-to-white-people-about-racism-twlm/ I am fully aware there are some people who like me are not white. That does not in any way invalidate what I said. Sitting here listing out all the colored people you know or know of, like tokens you're lining up to prove you're not bad... really really really does not help you. You should really try and consider that not everytime a person of color speaks about their frustrations is it an attack on you. You had absolutely NO REASON to launch yourself into the middle of my frustrations with what has bothered ME about SL. So not everytime is is an attack on you, but this time... right now... it is... but not every time, nor did it start as one this time until you placed yourself into the target spot with false victimization.

Another way to look at this is that they're fully aware SL is a cash cow for them, and have no plans on shutting it down anytime soon. Also... anything that shifts where they get revenue from away from 'land ownership' is a good thing. The less they depend on land barons to keep the lights on, the better. Much nicer if land barons are a just a smaller portion of the revenue stream.

That's a bit of s gross generalization. But also remember the question here "what is your biggest disappointment". Not rationalizing the situation... but 'how do you feel about it'. And as much as I love SL, this is my biggest issue with it: that it is so mon-ethnic and that so few people seem to be freaked out about that. I freak out anytime I find myself in an environment that lacking in diversity - regardless of who is the empowered or represented majority therein. IMO, people SHOULD be freaked out in 2017 when a place is, or even appears to be, exclusive to a narrow demographic. Regardless of why or who. That's also basic whitesplaining away my experience there. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Whitesplain There's a heck of a lot more to this than just a whole lot of white avatars. "Caucasian" is as "ethnic" as any other group. We could all come in here in green avatars but have the vast number of cultural references bet drawn from Sri Lanka's Sinhala people, and by your logic it would not "Sinhalese" because the avatars are green. But in this case, both are the situation. This place is more "ethnic" than anything I have ever encountered other than perhaps when I was living in Korea and had awkward friendships with people that were part of a "Korean Purity" group - we'd all be nice one moment and in the next I'd be getting a lecture about how my bone structure was proof I was not fully 'human'... I'd tell them "do you people even hear yourselves" but it was pointless because they lacked any other point of reference outside of their own circle. It's here in both the avatars and the 'Ethnocentric' nature of the place. If it was just the avatars... it would only be jarring in the way 'Anime' tends to be: cartoons of one (or more) ethnicities predominately framed in the culture of Japan. but what do I know... I'm just a colored. I can't possibly understand my own experience of something until a white person explains it to me.

The lack of diversity, and the company's unwillingness to do anything to encourage a wider userbase. SL is the most mono-ethnic place I have ever encountered outside of a short trip to Vermont a few decades ago. SL may even be more 'ethnic white' than Vermont (which was over 90% Caucasian) was when I went there. It is jarring to be in a space so lacking in perspectives. And to actually see how little they notice this is disheartening. In my RL the whites I encounter and even enjoy as friends seem to thrive with and enjoy global variety - but SL implies they would not even notice if the rest of us were erased. That is both disheartening and scary.

Twitter came back for me right after that post.

Yes I'm noticing I can't even load twitter right now.

Likewise. Note that map coords are all failing: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Dance Island/131/206/27 Pick any destination and try to get it to load in the map. Status however claims everything is fine: https://status.secondlifegrid.net/

There's no such thing as sex in SL. There's porn sure - look at my flickr gallery. I have never had sex in SL. I will say that with a straight face even after you go look at my gallery because what you will see there is a set of cartoon characters some people put into poses to make some hardcore art... But it's not real. It's just a video game cartoon. Now if somebody puts their cartoon onto something that hands off control of that cartoon to others there actually is a word for that: stupid. - Unless you meant to do it... which can be fun... Might still be stupid. I do a lot of stupid things in SL. I suspect I'm not alone in that regard. Some of it is actually fun. And yes, there is some stuff I flat out will not let my little cartoon do in SL, because the concept of what it represents freaks out real me. It still isn't real... but it also still freaks me out... Just like those poses on furniture I designed to trigger a rather different emotional response... not in that cartoon... but in us real people watching it. And yes... in moments when I really want to AFK somewhere and don't want anybody messing with my avatar, I don't sit on a sexbed... nor any other form of couple furniture... well, I might sit on a sexbed if it's made for only one avatar to be able to use it at a time. Because that's just funny to do.

Yeah. And since I exclusively use Belleza Freya (no other body comes even close in quality for the bosom and the waist to hips 'smoothness')... This drives me nuts. I'm now basically an SL nudist. But that didn't happen on purpose. Lack of selection drove me 'back' to how I was in SL when I first started. When I first got into SL, everything basically felts like a white-supremacist-rally... No options anywhere for people of... well... 90% of the human species... So I went nude, on a low quality skin, and ended up being a neko with semi-fur and spots because it let me be 'something' that didn't look like it came from the pages of a beauty contest for "Housewives of the Klan" (it's not content FOR whites that bothers me, but the LACK of content for anyone else - that comes across as 'exclusionary and hateful' because there is no rational explanation for a lack of diversity in 2009. when I got here, other than bigotry). That got better, and my journey expanded. I was slow to mesh bodies. But when I got there, I compared them all. Look back far enough in my blog and there is a review panning early Belleza as low quality... I tried other options, found even more flaws with them - I am picky, anatomy matters to me. Including in how a body moves. When my boobs bounce, my ribcage should NOT move with them... when breasts get fuller, they get fuller below, they don't stick out at a down angle with a hollow space underneath... when my butt moves, my [frontal special place] should NOT move even more, or frankly at all... - stuff like that matters... So Belleza had to hit it's V3 before I gave it a good review, and once I did I was all over it... The basic Freya body shape... sucks. I'm sorry, but I don't like it. It's a funky pear shape. And yet Freya is what I use everyday... because I found that Freya RESPONDED to the shape dials like no other body out there... I turned that pear into a smooth hourglass. - not the jagged and bumpy or extreme hourglass of a product by a like name... but an actual smooth formed body. Granted the jagged look also occurs on real people who are lacking a good BMI so their bones stick out... but that's not what I wanted. I wanted voluptuous, not 'fashion model chosen by a guy with a fake french accent who calls everybody girlfriend'. - Freya gave me that. It was fixable. Then I went clothes shopping... And I was a nudist by the end of the day, though it took me a few more months to "come out" to my SL community as 'returning to my SL roots'... The lack of selection drives me nuts... and it is all their own fault.

Belleza took too long to do an update in the year that Maitreye came out - and so lost a LOT of customers in that year. They also locked down approval of new merchants for that entire year... and so lost a LOT of merchants... Everytime Belleza puts out an update everyone sees how vastly superior it is compared to other choices... but then they go silent and don't talk to the community. I'm not even sure if the Belleza team are SL users or just outsiders selling to us. They are never 'around' at events and social gatherings and so on (the same can be said of Maitreya - it's owner I don't think uses SL at all). Now with Bento... Maitreya is again being given a year to be first... and Belleza isn't putting anything out... and people are drifting away, despite the inferior quality of the competition - that competition has more features...

Only ever turn this stuff off when I end up in some place that is super laggy. I'm getting 1 fps. turning this on can get me to 3 fps... still horrible, but I can find a chair to sit in... But if I can get to even 8 fps... advanced lighting goes back on... so it takes a LOT of lag for me to "go there".

I have one spot of land in a nudist community. But most of my land is on mainland and not generally themed (I have a Bay City parcel, and that region has a very light theme, but it's an unused parcel that I might be getting rid of...) I got the spot on the nudist community because I wanted some space where the way I like to dress my avatar would be seen as the norm. They don't have as much community activity as I would like... but they have some. And it's actually clothing optional so a lot of people there are clothed and I guess.. got their spots hoping to voyeur people like me... There are good reasons to go with a themed community. If the rules are enforced the neighbor's builds won't be an eyesore - but they might still be super laggy. If the community is active you can get 'social' built in. And if things go wrong and the management is good, you have an active party to complain to and get things fixed. - But sometimes these communities can be frustrating... The biggest nudist community in SL doesn't allow me, because my avatar has a tail (neko). One of the most popular hangouts for nudists in SL, I find generally unwelcoming - probably because of my tail and that I wear things to make my avatar sensual (they're often on classic avatars with old skins and either poor anatomy, or they go in for 'intentionally unattractive'). - If you fit in about 95% with a given community, that remaining 5% stands out a LOT more... than if you're just around a bunch of random people. (In RL this is why I avoid San Francisco and favor the 'East Bay' or Peninsula - we're all liberal leftists... but the S.F. folks have gotten too 'gentrified' and 'elitist' whereas in the other parts of my region 'folks is folks'... Less predictable, but that also means less expectations to be held to.)

Quantity is not the same thing as quality. There's a McDonalds in every town. Often dozens of them. But fine dining it is not. Here is a photo gallery of how bad those breasts deform: [link removed for adult content] I don't show every value there. The break happens much sooner than the values I do show (30, 50, 75, 100)

I suggest the original poster read this: https://boingboing.net/2017/09/25/gamer-culture-is-so-toxic-that.html

Join the Belleza group in world and ask. There is a google doc that people share. -Belleza- Mesh Creators Group secondlife:///app/group/716bedc0-18e1-5cd7-dc85-46989a17d637/about https://my.secondlife.com/groups/716bedc0-18e1-5cd7-dc85-46989a17d637 Of shops... I think the best place to go these days is Addams. And all their merchant vendor images appear to be shot using Belleza. Their 'customer service rep' is also the 'customer service rep' for Belleza. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Addams Land/120/115/145 Beyond that, I actually buy a lot of full perms kits. Many of the full perms kits cost about the same as a 'no-Mod fatpack' from other sellers... Underground - this is a team, and each maker has a different shop on MP... so just search 'Underground' under merchant name and look through all the results. Some of them are these folks, some are not. FLECHA ( https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/52128 ) KRY.moda ( https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/139505 ) CREATIVE STUDIO ( https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/116256 ) Pricey but newer stuff is really good. coolbigbird ( https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/132175 ). Meli Imako ( https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/67299 ) her newer stuff all support Belleza, and her prices are super low. LenkaCanvas ( https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/141267 ) niah larsson ( https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/22144/ ) Neve by coldLogic ( http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Neve/129/130/24 ) - These was the top clothing brand in SL before fitmesh. They were super slow to support fitmesh and so fell into nearly unknown status. They were then super slow to support Belleza, and originally only did Belleza with boobs set to 'perky'... they're now doing more... their style is top notch and usually 'business to business casual'... making them stand out for not being about 'club, beach, and kink'.

The nasty rumor is that Maitreya pays people to not support other brands. It is a rumor. I mention it in order to get it off the table. I have never seen any proof of it. A more plausible reason is that Maitreya might give preference to people who go exclusive when it comes to approving handing out the developer kit. This is also a nasty and yet also unproven notion. It WAS true of TMP. But that is TMP, and TMP has earned a bad reputation as a result. The most likely reason stems from the time delay between Belleza 2.0 and 3.0 a few years back. It took Belleza a little longer than a full year to get that update out. And for that whole duration they chose to stop approving new developer kits. The 2.0 version was before Maitreya came out. Maitreya came out in a very sloppy 1.0... but still better than Belleza 2.0 Maitreya had a series of quick updates until it hit 3.0 if I recall right. Belleza 3.0 came out and was vastly better than anything else on the market... but the damage was already done. - It just so happens that the same year that Belleza stopped approving new developers was the very same year clothing makers noticed their sales drop through the floor and EVERYONE started shopping almost exclusively at the then brand new shop; Blueberry... because Blueberry was supporting fitmesh. - So in the very year that clothing makers started banging on the doors of every fitmesh body begging for support kits... Belleza slammed the door shut and went into isolated-development-mode. Meanwhile Slink and Maitreya handed out kits of bad quality clunky mesh bodies... on the promise that upgrades would come. By their now current versions they are still pretty bad meshes (very deformed breast and hip areas if you go outside a narrow range of shape dials, and poor avatar physics)... but they have good feature sets, like bento hands. Belleza went from being the number 1 body, to crashing down very fast. And it was a self-inflicted wound. That said... I exclusively use Belleza Freya. It is so vastly superior to other bodies, that the hassle is worth it. When I was wearing clothing, I found enough support for it. Not everything I want / wanted... but enough. The situation is what it is... But the body is worth it.

Maybe related, maybe not: If I stand on one side of a sim border... and say... put an orb 10m from the edge of the sim that works for an 11m radius... and someone not approved of by my orb stands on the parcel that is just over the sim border... they will get spammed by my orb. (I found this out because I did just this back in 2009 and thought the "-p" flag on my orb would limit it to parcel, so got sloppy measuring the radius. A year later, a different neighbor elsewhere did it back to me for the exact same accidental reason. Fortunately in both cases we had cool heads on all sides and quickly fixed things.) The interesting thing here is that the cross sim spamming is not limited to the 1m overlap (or whatever the overlap is)... and seems to be kind of 'weirdly sized' if I remember it right.

Oh... while you were posting, I edited my post and added a bit about mesh heads. Don't buy ANY of this stuff without a demo. It's pricey stuff... and once you commit you'll get a little 'locked in' to someone's system. Sit with any given demo for a good hour, and mess with your shape, try walking, running, dancing, etc... with things like 'avatar physics' on to see how the breasts move (some of the bodies look amazingly nice, until you turn on physics and see your ribs moving with your boobs, or see your genitals bouncing instead of your butt...)

Shape makers and others, using the names of the bodies they support, have overwhelmed marketplace search making it rather hard to find the actual bodies. - On the pre-purchase side of the body that can be frustrating... but once you do buy a body you will appreciate this situation making it easier to find supporting goods for the body you go for. You can "start" a mesh body search here: http://meshbodyaddicts.com/ Not everything is reviewed there (it's missing Fusion and mbody for example), but most things are. So... You will need: A mesh body A skin that has an applier for that body or an Omega applier. Check to see if your existing preferred skin has "appliers" already. A 'relay kit' from Omega to use an Omega applier with your chosen body (Omega is supported by almost every human-body in SL except for TMP and maybe some I don't know of). A shape - you can use your existing shape, and just adjust it once you have body on until you like what you get. Some bodies look radically different and will need a lot of tweaking (including my preferred body, Belleza Freya: it looks pear shaped by default, but if you tweak the shape enough it becomes an amazing "smooth" hourglass). Other bodies are very close to the default SL body. Do note that some bodies only look good within a very small narrow range of shape dials (Maitreya for example, has deformed breasts below 40 or above about 55 - and it's the most popular body despite this. Belleza can go from about 30 to 100, SelinA can go from just a nudge over 0 to 100). All major mesh bodies include hands and feet. Fusion makes you buy the pieces individually because it is a modular "build your body from the parts" systems. No major brand includes a head. At least one if not more 'small brands' do... this is general NOT desired as it gets in the way of individuality. http://meshbodyaddicts.com/ - You can also look for heads here. But they are missing the only head I would actually recommend: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/MAYREAL-Bento-Mesh-Head-Nadia/11023066 (I mentioned this months ago, so I'm not sure why Mayreal is still not even listed - but it is the only mesh head that is not extremely stylized. As such your existing shape will be easy to "fix" for it (most about making the jaw a little bigger), and it's one of the cheaper ones available as well.)

The new update has a feature just for that purpose if I recall correctly. So here is the "one second version" I clicked one button in the HUD. With some thought, I could do this in more detail. This was just the quickie "proof of concept" to show that Mayreal is addressing the exact issue the original poster desires to see addressed. My own face looks horrible this way... but... that's not the point. I was able to do it. The 'E' button over there is for eyes, and the 'A' runs through animation sequences for your choice of mood, or save your own custom built set of animations. I'm still figuring it out - this update just dropped on us. There was no notecard help for it, it's all explained, for each tab, in a long form message you get if you click the '?' mark. Also note how difference my face looks, from the face in the ad for this head. It responds pretty well to shape dials. And my face does NOT look good with the lips like that... Here's another one. This time I used my shape set to lip corners 100: Not much different. But The HUD is in 'A' tab now, and see the "Lip Corners Live" thing - that is described as: "Button - lip corners live – extra lip corners animation for more expressive lips;" I suspect that if I applied the original poster's skin to this head, it would look even more extreme than the original image in this thread - since that look was done on the default avatar using I suspect, a stylized skin. I'd check to see if that skin maker is still around: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/stores/3009 - zoe llewelyn made that skin if my search skills are right, and she last logged in to SL today... So contact and beg.

I find Mayreal is the best head for replicating the look of the old system mesh but with more refinement: https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/MAYREAL-Bento-Mesh-Head-Nadia/11023066 For bodies... pretty much the whole point is to not replicate the look of the system body because it is that bad... so demos. But the best quality body is Belleza: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Belleza/126/128/25 For tails... I use "-BM- Fuzzy Bento Tail (w/ Solarian replacement) V1.1" https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/BM-Fluffy-Bento-Tail-w-Solarian-replacement/11601025 - And that is going to be better than any pre-mesh thing you can find. For ears I use: =^ HARO ^= Animated Neko Ears https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Animated-Neko-Ears/8697005