It doesn't hurt to ask

Recently I came across a store that had gowns that reminded me a bit of the gloriously ornate works of the late, lamented Crystal Queendom. It was a sad memory, first because the store is no longer in SL, and second because I could not wear the vast majority of those glorious dresses.

I created a notecard saying how beautiful the gowns in the store are, and that I very much hoped that the designer would consider supporting busty SL avatars.

Yesterday, I got an IM in reply. The designer said she would keep my request in mind. Not a commitment, but a pleasure to receive--courteous and enough to give me hope, a thing that's hard to come by sometimes.

So, if you come across a similarly wonderful clothing store that doesn't currently support the busty SL avater, do consider sending the designer a brief, courteous message asking that he or she consider supporting prim/mesh breast users in the future. It doesn't hurt to ask.

Not what I thought it was...

When you see a link to a blog post titled "Hacking My Vagina", if you're like me the first thing you think is that it's related to Second Life.

It isn't, though. Instead, it's a description of one woman's attempt to create a more flexible user interface for a vibrator with a very primitive remote control... and when the woman has the imagination and highly impressive engineering CV of the blog's author, the results are fascinating. Check it out.

Speaking of beards...

The question of prim versus tattoo/skin beards that came up in the "Hamlet 3.0" discussion made me go back and pull out a beard (you know, that may not be the best turn of phrase) from inventory.

Prim beards are great for Victorian/steampunk. In this regard, check out the wonderful blog Century of the Beard, or the stern rebellious bearded face of John Brown on the John Steuart Curry mural Tragic Prelude (or, if you're at my lower level of art history knowledge, the Kansas album cover art)... or bearded ladies such as Annie Jones, who inspired me to try it out in Second Life:

Clearly not doable with a tattoo or skin layer!

That's not as much the fashion of beards these days--quite the opposite. Often one sees beards that are more like car pin striping but for guys' faces. It doesn't have to be that extreme to still be better done, IMHO, with a tattoo or skin layer--just not as fluffy as the style of the 19th century:

Hamlet doesn't strike me as the fluffy beard type, so I'd say tattoo/skin. (And he may drop the beard altogether, judging by his comment on the reborn NWN Hamlet makeover post!)

Renee India

I'm happy to say that I've found yet another clothing store that is new to me and that supports prim breast users: Renee India.

At Renee India you will find mesh shoes, and you will also find prim breast-friendly clothing ranging from some items I'm too timid to wear to informal outfits and dresses to some lovely formalwear. When I can, I will buy their "Retro Maxi" gown, not to mention some really pretty fuschia mesh boots.

Do check Renee India out. (I hasten to add that they should not be confused with an engineering company that is actually in India. Renee India can be found in SL Marketplace, and the inworld store is at Mayotte (47. 62. 31)).

Hamlet 3.0?

So I peeked over at New World Notes this afternoon, and found a post by Iris Ophelia, "Hamlet 3.0: Help Me Give Hamlet a Head-To-Toe Avatar Makeover!" You won't find it on NWN now--the link is to Google's cached version. I'm not sure why it was wiped from the blog proper. Iris asks for comments and suggestions, especially on the tattoo beard versus prim beard question. Since the post is no longer on the blog, I'm not sure how best to send them.

Hamlet 2.0 is of 2010 vintage, and a bit too square-jawed; I much prefer his more affable RL face... and I hope that Iris will find him a new outfit. Tom Wolfe had the "writer in dapper white suit" thing down and trademarked long ago, and Mark Twain before him. (If you're reading this, Iris--for purposes of Hamlet 3.0, definitely tattoo beard. It's the way to go for the close-shaven beards of today. Prim beards are for the Victorian/steampunk avatar. Having been a bearded lady in Second Life, I speak from at least a little experience.)

UPDATE: It's back on NWN proper; here's the link.

Serendipity-do

(It makes your hair stay in place by happy accident, right?)

While looking for info on Lolas! Tango mesh breasts, I was induced to peek at the "about" page for Bootie & Boobies, and there I found out that one of the people behind it, Elle Caerntown, is a partner in a store that I'd not heard of before, [J'adore]. (The brackets are significant. French has been the language of choice for English speakers naming fashion items and companies for quite a while, and "j'adore" shows up in a lot of store names in SL!)

[J'adore] sells prim breast-friendly dresses and lingerie, and other items such as skirts.

Having found out about it, I went to visit, and discovered at the other side of the loop another store for the busty avatar: Sick Puppy. Now, I just looked up Sick Puppy on SL Marketplace, and it does have a presence there--mostly selling T-shirts with wiseguy (or whatever the female equivalent is) text on the front. What I didn't see there is what is in the in-world store, namely prim breast-friendly clothing. Not just T-shirts, but nice dresses and pretty darned impressive gowns!

Alas, as I write, I can't model the work of [J'adore] or Sick Puppy, thanks to RL issues--but you should visit the stores in world and check them out.

New Mesh Breasts from Lolas!

Lolas! (shame on me; I keep leaving out the exclamation point) have just come out with unrigged (and hence editable) mesh breasts; they are called "Tango". Initial photos look very good, though of course the proof of the pudding is how they look in-world, and reviews I've seen are quite positive.

I see that people are already working on appliers, so I hope that Tango users will have a broad choice of clothing soon. (As Hugsie points out, it may be possible to apply a clothing layer texture and then tweak manually.)

Googling turns up a goodly number of posts about them; Colleen Criss's very enthusiastic article has nude and clothed photos and links to other articles, and Hugsie has details on applying skin textures to Tango breasts.

Prim Breast Support Extra

So far I've seen a couple of shops that sell clothing and also support prim breasts--but there's an extra charge for the prim breast support. For example, if you head over to DeeTaleZ you'll find tops and outfits for sale and, nearby, a sign saying that appliers for prim breasts can be found in a room devoted to them. (When I did that myself just now, it was a bit hard to find that room; unlike all the others, it had no brightly lit sign above the doorway identifying its contents. I have to wonder why that is so.)

What do I think about this? I think it's fine.

I have my libertarian hat on, true, but most of all I have my love of the SL busty community, and I say it's a good thing on the whole.

I am forever grateful for all those clothiers who make clothes for us and include appliers in the bundle, and I wholeheartedly support them, funds permitting (as would be obvious from following my L$ balance and purchases!)... but if the choice is between a clothier either

• blowing off support for prim breast users, or
• deciding to do so, but reasoning that he or she deserves reimbursement for the added work involved, and that it doesn't make sense to charge those who don't use prim breasts for something they won't use*, and hence selling appliers separately

I choose door number two without hesitation, and I wish success to those who make that choice just as much as I wish it for those who bundle appliers, in hopes that their success will induce more to support us. (We all have our own lists of "mainstream" fashion houses from whose work we are cut off and think "if only...")

* or think they won't use...  though given those blog posts that assert prim breasts' new-found popularity, will that really be the case? If you're reading this and you aren't a prim breast user--don't you want breasts without corners? Aren't you tired of T-shirts with text distorted into illegibility or art twisted into a mockery of the artist's talent? Prim breasts aren't just for those who enjoy having breasts so big they have to use the freight entrance (not that there's anything wrong with that, at least in SL), and you aren't confined to slutwear. I hope you'll consider trying them out.

Not the Usual Suspects

So after seeing the SL Universe thread, I thought I'd go googling to see whether prim breasts really are more widely used these days. An NWN reference to Juicybomb as among readers' top choices there caused me to do something that turned out to be a better idea than I realized. I searched for "juicybomb 'prim breasts'", wondering whether Juicybomb itself had any posts on the subject... but it proved to be a good way to find the more general set of pages I was really after. What's a common feature of blogs? Links to other blogs. What are mainstream fashion blogs likely to link to? Really popular mainstream fashion blogs... like Juicybomb.

So... here's what I found (in addition to the pages I linked to in the preceding article):

• "Sunday Quickie | Layerable Prim Boob Bras? O.O" in My Words Devour Souls: bras for prim breasts that have a lingerie layer (or at least one such set; alas, the article doesn't specify) from The Sugar Garden.
• "Divine" in Not Quite Naked: blogger Eve Graymoon hesitates at first to try prim breasts as her SO suggests, but finds a jacket by Lapoint and Bastchild that works beautifully with Lolas. (UPDATE: that's a jacket not made to work with prim breasts, and to get the effect, she wore it open, not buttoned up.)
• "2nd of 12 Days in Lingerie" in The Poultry Report: Uccello Poultry proves to be a very distracting construction worker with Bad Kitty's "Allure" lingerie and Lolas.
• "String Bikini for Implant Breast, Mon Cheri" in Urban Leyends: Natsumi Kangjou shows variously-patterned string bikinis for Lolas (which may work for iBoobs and eCorp as well).

Not as much as I was hoping for, so I will try some other searches. More news as it happens.

UPDATE: I tried "fashion 'prim breasts'". A lot of links to the blog we all know and love turned up (Hi, Maggie!), but I did find things new to me, like this gem, Lavish Inside: SL styles for prim and standard breast beauties. Each post features a pair of similar outfits, one for prim breast users, and one for non-users.

Also from that search:

• "Miss Virtual World" in Rage Log - A Second Life Fashion & Travel Blog: From the post, Mimara (who doesn't have on prim breasts in the photos shown) on the prim breast issue: "Prim breasts. They're controversial. It's odd that people in SL seem to accept furries, vampires and men built like action figures but shun, or even scorn prim boobs. With the right look they can be fantastic."
• "[QE] Designs and Bewbapalooza" in Virtual Fashion Feed: "In case anyone has not noticed, Second Life boobs/bewbs/implants are pretty popular at the moment [October 19, 2012] and it's no secret I am excited about it! I've been an implant lover/wearer for 2 years now and it's as important to me first for the obvious reasons, I am a female and I am an ample female IRL..."
• "If You Dare" in Octavia Dorchester's blog: "So, I just wanted to take a minute to talk about my boobs. Prim breasts are all the rage, and I can see why. They are fab." Ms. Dorchester delights in her prim breasts, and the pleasure she takes in them is contagious. I do hope that she's found more of the sources of prim breast-friendly clothing that are out there. The blog post, is, I suspect, early in her prim breast experience, as she only mentions one clothing store, Milk.

More Signs of Growth

I'm not keeping up--and that's a good thing.

It's an indicator of a growing market, and that is a good thing, almost by definition.

As someone who's getting behind, I'm about to mention things you may already know about. You may well think to yourself "Goodness, Melissa, it's about time, get with the program!" but, just in case, I will make a point of mentioning them.

First, there's a nice interview over at Tekila Vella's blog Tekila Unplugged, "Today's SL Breasts". I can't say I agree with Ms. Vella on some things, notably her singling out Mused, Lolas, and Ecorp as today's "main contenders" in the prim breast world, but then I'm no maven, just a prim breast user. The only ones who might know are the prim breast makers themselves, Linden Lab if they had the urge to monitor what prim breasts people have attached at any given time--and I'm guessing they have other priorities :)--and, perhaps less accurately, clothiers who cater to prim breasts.

All that said, the interview, with Tayla Arado, lets Ms. Arado give her opinions of the aforementioned triumvirate (triumfeminarate?), what she'd like to see in prim breast-friendly fashions, and why women should take consider prim breasts.

Speaking of Tayla Arado, Ms. Vella kindly links to Ms. Arado's blog, Modern Lady: Fashion for Breasts. I must mention that much of the imagery on Modern Lady is very much NSFW. That said, it shows some fashions that I have not seen elsewhere, and any new (to me, if nobody else!) source of information is good. Check it out... somewhere safe.

Must-read from New World Notes: Animated Mesh Heads

I don't use Second Life facial expressions much. They remind me of the scene on ST:TNG in which Data tries to smile. (Darn; can't find the clip.)

Perhaps that will change someday, though. You should head right over to New World Notes and read "Animated Mesh Heads May Be the Expressive Face of Tomorrow's SL Avatar", and above all, watch the videos! Shirousagi Noel of Snow Rabbit has done some amazing work.

To be sure, there's the problem of customization--will people choose a face that is theirs, the result of slider tweaking to one's satisfaction, or one that is beautifully expressive but, modulo skin tones and hair and eye color, looks just like all the other beautifully expressive faces? Fix that problem, and Second Life will be that much more immersive.

RIP Thom Dowd

Thom Dowd, who did a great deal to promote and perform early music in Second Life, has lost his battle with cancer. Please keep his family in your thoughts and prayers.

Moving towards the mainstream?

I was wandering around on SLUniverse, and found a thread that surprised me greatly: "Where Did You Get Those Boobs?"

The original poster was curious about them, but here's what caught my eye:

I'd been out of SL for about two months, and rarely reading any fashion blogs or feeds, but while I was gone something very strange happened.

Everyone got boobs.

I don't know if they are prim, or mesh, or part of clothing, it's really hard to tell but a lot of feeds, blogs, and particularly avatars in world have them.

The original poster was honestly curious, and the responses mostly straightforward. A post of

Behind every set of prim "ta-tas" there is a over sexed [sic] male at the keyboard. That is my theory and I'm sticking too [sic] it.

got responses from people who either cited themselves as counterexamples or simply disagreed. Many pointed out the superior shape of prim/mesh breasts compared with those of the stock avatar.

The whole thread is well worth reading; they get into mesh avatar questions and some of the issues that are familiar to any prim breast user.

I will see if I can find out which feeds and blogs the original poster was referring to. If there are portions of the SL busty community I'm not familiar with, then there are more of us than I thought, and that's a reason to celebrate. That and the relative lack of snark and mockery gives me hope.

Layers

I'm behind on multiple attachments, I must admit. If you look in the Knowledge Base, you'll see an article about the feature from February 2011. I started taking advantage of it a few months later. I am happy with the results:

• No more having to wrangle necklaces into spine-relative positioning!
• I can be a well-endowed fairy with jewelry! (yay!)
• I can layer textures!

At the moment, I seem to use the last one the most. I set down the details here to fix them in my mind and just in case there's someone who hasn't taken advantage of the ability.

The thing to notice is an additional option in the menu for items in your inventory. There's not just "Wear" now; there's also "Add".

"Wear" works as always. If you "wear" something, it replaces whatever was already there.

If you "Add" something, it goes on in addition to what is already there, so that is how to get multiple attachments.

For clothing textures, order is important. The last "add"-ed item is on top. An example: I wanted to wear Bad Kitty's gorgeous burgundy cheongsam, but it's quite short! What to wear with it? Stockings, of course. For a while I had a habit of wearing Rufeena's "Temptation", but by themselves they're still rather revealing. So, add some other translucent stockings:

Perhaps a better picture is from an extremely bright English sim--it makes the effect easier to see.

Of course, there are other uses: freckles and makeup can coexist separately from the skin.

P.S. Thanks to the Emerald developers. Had they not implemented a multiple attachment feature, idiosyncratic as it was, I suspect we'd never have seen it in an LL client.

Steam for Linux starts to pay off...

From MarketWatch, the following, which I'll let Blogger preserve the text size etc. from the copy/paste for once because it's good news!

NVIDIA Delivers Massive Performance Boost to Linux Gaming

New GeForce Drivers Optimized for Linux Double Frame Rates, Reduce Game Loading Times

From the article:

The result of almost a year of development by NVIDIA, Valve and other game developers, the new GeForce R310 drivers are designed to give GeForce customers the best possible Linux-based PC gaming experience -- and showcase the enormous potential of the world's biggest open-source operating system.
Available for download at www.geforce.com, the new R310 drivers were also thoroughly tested with Steam for Linux, the extension of Valve's phenomenally popular Steam gaming platform that officially opened to gamers starting today.

Thank you, Valve, and to everyone involved. I am looking around for the drivers; the geforce.com site drivers page isn't being very helpful at the moment. More news as it happens.

"Help me get my feet back on the ground..."

So now in the post-invisiprim shoe world, you put on the "shoe" which often seems to be there mostly to distort your feet appropriately for the shoe, attach prims that show most of the real appearance of the shoe, and then wear an alpha layer that hides part of or all of your foot (and maybe your ankle as well). The results are beautiful...

...and, if you look too closely or from a low POV, they wreck verisimilitude, because you'll see yourself hovering above the ground. At least I do.

Am I doing something wrong, or forgetting something? Please let me know in comments!

Must-read from Thin and Curvy

"Just Who Makes These Rules, Anyway?" discusses the "rules" that should supposedly guide one in making or choosing tops for busty women, e.g.

• no patterns
• no lace
• no ruffles
• no high necklines
• no low necklines
• etc.

and suggests that you choose clothing instead based on what makes you feel good about your body.

In the process Brittany, the blog's author, says something I wholeheartedly agree with: "Taken to its logical extreme, what ['fashion experts'] are really suggesting is that our breasts are so shocking, and so mutant, and so inherently, overtly sexual, that we need to draw as little attention to them, and to ourselves, as humanly possible." Goodness knows that is consistent with the experiences of the SL busty community.

I am yet again grateful for the creative people who make prim breasts and clothing for them, and I hope that they will continue to ignore those "rules".