For the guys who are gals in SL. respond if you want.

Been reading blog posts lately and saw this response by anony-mouse on a post on Kit Meredith's blog. I know why I play a female avatar, I'm transgendered in RL. But there's folks who don't identify as transgendered who also play female avs. Some do it for business I think, some do it to "explore"and some I think are transgendered but might not have heard of the term or even realize that's what they are.

This post is for all of you born males playing female to respond to, anonymously if you want. It's not really intended for those who do identify as transgendered though you can respond too. I'd like to know how you feel about playing a female av, why you think you do it, how you interact with other avs, anything you want to talk about. If you don't feel comfortable talking about that, tell me what clothes you like, where you shop, that sort of thing.

I'll kind of get things started:

I'm CronoCloud Creeggan, born male, play a female av. I'm transgendered in RL. I would like to do what we call "transition" but such things are very money intensive and I don't have those kind of resources. I've done what some might call "crossdressing" in RL for around 30 years. I like the things that the people who are called "femmes" tend to like. I have an amateur's interest in fashion and makeup. I'm also a very much a geek. :-) I'm not involved in any kind of romantic relationship in SL or RL, in fact I freely admit to having never been on a date in RL. And yes, I'm a virgin. (I know, I know I'm 40 and a virgin) But that's all issues and drama. I don't identify as lesbian in RL, though I did at one time spend much time hanging out in transgender friendly lesbian IRC channels. If I was to transition though, I would identify as lesbian. Lesbian male to female transfolk are actually rather common. As we say, gender identity, and gender object choice (who you want to love and have romantic relationships with) are two different things.

I'm honest in SL about being a born male, it says so in my profile. I decided early on to do that because I joined SL using my "male" nick to participate in a vodcast related chat. The persons in the community related to the vodcast knew me as male. But after I had seen fashionable pretty avatars in SL I wanted one too, so I switched, and decided to admit to why I had done so in my profile. There's a bit of a trend in the transgender to community to try to encourage less secrecy and more openness.

I've not had much trouble in SL in regards to my openness, though it has surprised people and some people I have encountered have openly said they don't get the "why" of it. But that's okay because I don't know why either, it's just the way I am. Now it's your turn, I look forward to reading the responses. If you don't want to respond on the blog, you're welcome to e-mail me, there's a link to my e-mail address at the bottom of the page.

Welcome Fashion Planet readers

I finally got around requesting being added to the Fashion Planet feed and I see that my posts are showing up there. So, welcome and thanks for reading to all the new readers And thank you Tao Takashi for adding me and creating and hosting such a useful tool.

A Pirate in Penzance

After seeing that Pirates of the Caledonian video I just had to find myself a great pirate costume. Which I did at my costume go-to store, Reasonable Desires. And when the Caledon Penzance sim was built, I had to sneak in before the official opening and take a picture of myself as a Pirate in Penzance. Yar!



IMHO, this is the best sexy pirate costume in SL. It has a thigh dagger, it has a belt, it has an eyepatch, it has skulls and crossbones, it has a BIG HAT, and it's reasonably priced, like all of Reasonable Desires stuffage is. And of course, I look good in it, which is all that matters me hearties! Yar! Raise the mizzen sail, load the cannons and prepare for Piratical shenanigans! TaP skin and ETD Maaliyah hair....as usual.

Talia Talamasca's "Schwarzes Kleid und Minuette Avatar"

Taliah Talamasca dropped this deliciously "dead" skin, shape (the Minuette avatar)and clothing ensemble (Schwarzes Kleid), at around Halloween. She knew I like black. Which is true, I like black, I REALLY like black, and now, I also like being "death"ly beautiful:



It's just so corpsey and gothy and fluttery and feathery and BLACK! It comes with those pretty little victorian style shoes and that lovely hair. The skin itself is quite pretty, or at least I think so, and looked great not only on the included shape but on my own usual one. When I put this one I simply had the desire to find some poor desolate sim and sing laments to lost loves. That, and then find Furiae Blackthorne of the Fashion Victim blog and go kill things with her, just for fun.

Available along with lots of other victorian pretties at her store, Wardrobe Trunk.

A picture I wasn't originally planning on posting.

In this blog post by Kit Meredith. She mentions finding her perfect haircolour, and I noticed that she resembled my Boss Sabrina a bit in the last picture. She then replied that she was inspired by me to a certain extent and that she might be essentially be a "grandchild red-headed shameless hussy". I then remembered this picture, that I wasn't planning on ever posting:



I had been playing with the new TaP vivants in at their launch in August, and I had just purchased some HCT hair to see what it looked like on me, and I was playing with my thin lips version of my shape to see how the TaP lips looked on it, and THAT happened. The blue eyes didn't help either. It not only resembles the last picture in Kit Meredith's post, but also resembles the pictures in this post by Boss Sabrina on Linden Lifestyles. Now admittedly Sabrina is wearing TaP Deux and not Gala in that post, but the resemblance is there.

Now normally I don't wear HCT (or Gala) for that reason, and though I have a thin lips version of my shape (which certain skins look better on) I wear the fuller lipped version and I wear green eyes and not blue. But yeah, she's obvioulsy my biggest style inspiration along with Salome, and frankly who wouldn't want to BE Sabrina or Salome and be one of the best dressed and tressed av's on the grid, not to mention one of the best fashion writers around. I'd love to have half her or Salome's wit, style and panache. Helping out at Linden Lifestyles is probably my dream gig in SL.

Kit Meredith is no slouch on smarts either and is one of my new favourite bloggers. Besides, the more smart red-headed shameless hussy's on the grid, the better.

Ageplay, Fashionista Style

After reading varioups posts and articles about ageplay in SL on various blogs and whatnot I decided I needed to admit something:

I'm an ageplayer.....but perhaps not in the way one might normally think.I'm 40 in RL, how old does my avatar look?



Tete a Pied Vivant Red lips 1 skin, ETD Carolyn hair in Mahogany, Eyes by Miriel Enfield, dressy Nuclear Boutique

That image is one of the best ones I've ever taken of my av I think. It's just simply beautiful. Even if with that classic understated elegance makeup my av does not look 40. She's 25 at best.

Or what about this "teen queen sexy schoolgirl" look a la Britney:



Tete a Pied Vivant Sultry 3, Armidi Bombshell hair in Sangria, Sister Penitence School Uniform from Luminosity, Go Hellions!

See what I mean? Even if an av is not a child there's still a lot of ageplaying going on without many folks consciously realizing it. Sure I dress my avatar in mostly classic tailored clothing, retro-wear and casual basics, but she still doesn't look as old as me. And I'm not for certain I want her to look 40 anyway, because she lets me be pretty (and sometimes sexy) in a way I can't in RL,though having the option to look older would be nice.

Pricing

Might as well state it up front:

I think some designers wares are overpriced. I think some are overpriced for the quality and I think even some high quality designers are overpriced. Usually it's in the range of 25 to 30 percent but I've seen some that I believe are overpriced by about 50 to 60 percent.

Now admittedly most of the "overpriced designers" do have some lower priced wares, but I've always wondered if they've read the Lindens own data on in-world purchases, the gist of which is this: most purchases in SL are of goods priced L$200 or below. The number of pople willing to by tiems priced at L$500, L$1000, or more is actually relatively small. Which may be why the Japanese designers are keeping their prices lower, making up for the lower prices in selling mass quantities of goods. L$20000 is the same amount of money whether earned form selling 100 items at L$200 or 40 items at L$500

Perhaps experimentation is in order, but I think the Japanese designers have the right idea, quality goods at lower "don't have to think about it much" prices. I personally try to have a budget in SL that I stick to in regards to Lindex purchases which isn't very high. If I had steady income from SL I'd spend more. But for me the L$200 price point is a marker betwee "just click and get it" and "spend some time thinking about if I really need or if there's something I need more"

I understand designers have rents, fees and design time to consider which is why this is a touch ysubject. Again, some experimentation might be a good thing, to see what works. I know some designers have budget lines and deluxe lines kind of like how Old Navy and the GaP are the budget and higher priced stores within their overall company.

Ginny

We know the reason now, and the reasons behind the vagueness, the typist behind the Ginny Talamasca avatar has died.

Post on Last Call blog

Starley post

From reading Starley's post, it seems that the decision to close was a quick "we want to help our friend, what can we do, let's all close down to keep any business stuff off of Ginny's partner's plate at this time" And it's not like anyone can really pre-plan for this kind of sudden tragedy. I was hoping that my guess about the reasons for the closing was accurate (that the Four had merely taken a trip to visit willow), because I didn't want this sort of thing to be true. And I didn't trust to rumor.

I didn't know Ginny well, we maybe chatted a couple of times. I own some Dazzle/Last Call stuff. the Marisa wrap dress is STILL one of my favorite SL dresses. I was surprised and awed to find out that Ginny didn't use one of those drawing pads, but used her finger on the laptop trackpad. If I remember correctly, Ginny designed jewellery in RL, I wish I could have seen some of it.

My condolences to Ginny's friends and family. There's not much I can do, except apologize to a certain extent for the previous post. But I can wear my Ginny stuff in her memory.

UPDATED: The Quad sims, aka Ginny, Starley, Elika, Canimal.

UPDATED: They're baaaaaack. With this enigmatic phrase: "it was something we simply had to do." Again, IMHO, it wasn't. Except for new content, the businesses run themselves for the most part. Need to take a break, fine, but there's no need to shut down the entire sim for a short break. And frankly RL businesses couldn't get away with shutting down without some good reason stated publicly.


Original Post:

The quad sims are closed, no reason given, no hints on how long, nothing except for a "respect our decision" Well I can respect their decision to do so while still being of the mindset to say.....It's a dumb decision.

Yes, that's right, it's dumb, and not necessary at all.

Suppose I was a designer, and I needed to take a break for some RL reason, why with automated payments for sims and the like I wouldn't have to shut down at all. Just say, hey, going on vacation no customer service for two weeks. I wouldn't even have to do that if I did one thing that designers in SL do not do enough of:

Delegate.

Who needs to shut down if one has trusted managers/assistants that can handle customer requests. In particular, doesn't Dazzle have "design associates" now?

As an example, I could give my bosses at Linden Lifestyles, one of whom is still on hiatus.(Come back, Sabrina!) During their hiatus, did they shut down their sims? Nope, Did they shut down their businesses? Nope. I could log into SL and be in a fully in business Chez Petite in Calla, in two shakes of a lambs tail.

And if the shutdown is for a branding/image/store rebuild, then why shut down totally at all. Invite your customers to kibbitz and perhaps lend advice during the build ie. "No Ginny, don't drop the Dazzle branding, yes I know how you want to change the image built you've built up brand equity and people are still going to call your store Dazzle anyway."

And one final thing, when you shut down, you're giving free money to your competitors. Remember Ginny's hiatus when she shut down Dazzle? Remember all those new designers that showed up and got blogged? It would have been harder for those people to break into the SL fashion market if Ginny had still been putting out hordes of stuffage. Her absence created opportunity.

Now, I doubt that all four of the Quad sim folks are having RL issues at the same time. Odds are they're going to do some kind of joint "Ginny, Starley, Elika, Cani 2.0" thing, god forbid. IMHO personal opinion it was a bad idea to move those four busy (and often laggy) sims right next to each other anyway It could be possible that one is having RL issues an dthe others are closed in solidarity. That would be nice for a few hours or a day, but perhaps not very business savvy for days on end.