calm down my heart...don't beat so fast, don't be afraid, just once in a lifetime

(A brief bit of proscenium-breaking, re earlier RP. Bear with me.)



This is Aki Shichiroji's "Nebari" skin/shape/outfit mix, out of the box. Untouched. Hair, eyes, shape, skin--that's entirely hand-painted, by the way; Aki may be the only start-to-finish, brushstroke-to-scanned-in digital--hand-painter of skins on the grid--this pretty much is Chiana from Farscape.

Don't believe me? Here, Chiana, for reference:



Chiana, played by Gigi Edgley. You can see Aki's done a marvelous job remaking her for the grid.

Now, then. Why we're here. When I got this av, while I liked the Chiana look, if I was going to spend any amount of time in it, I needed to soften the edges. This is what I came up with:



Now, I swear to you, this was completely off the cuff. Just what 'felt right', so to speak. Adjust a few sliders, soften the planes of the face, I didn't substantially change the nose, just altered the lip mesh shape a tad...I didn't do a lot, and I stopped when I hit here, fairly satisfied with the result.

How'ver, there's a known Nebari nemesis in Farscape. Her name? Varla (played by Skye Wansley):



Considering it's literally been years since I saw this particular episode of Farscape? It's kind of creepy how accurate the quick little mod I did of Aki's shape comes, to this character. Very nearly surreal, in fact.

Anyway. Various and sundry of other note.

Is my grid elitism showing if I ask why do people still voluntarily choose to look noobish on the grid long after their noob years? I speak, of course, of Rivula's brief wandering terror, sacsnow Jacobus.

Why am I publically identifying her? Well, for one, I walked in on her naked in my home. And for two, she wouldn't answer a polite IM. And for three, she then wandered into other private homes in Rivula, while I watched.

And for four? She looks like this:



Note: I am not singling out some genuine noob for savagery, here. She's been on the grid for nine months. She's also a member of not one, not two, but four public nudity groups.

So why, for the love of little green apples, is she rude, is she still breaking in to peoples' homes, and moreover, STILL IN A BASE SKIN?!?

That's not even prim hair. There's no excuse for this.



In other news of the week, we finally got rid of that annoying patch of flicker on the ceiling at the store. Yay. And today's tribute to Walt Disney went amazingly well:



I don't know if I've spoken about Tribute Island before this; if I haven't, I should have. Because Nikk Huet, one of the main organizing forces behind the Island, is entirely too self-effacing for words, let me effuse for him: Tribute Island is an amazing idea. Just start to finish.



I'm going to have to go back and do another run at the Island, for pictures--this was part of a set where I was running full HUD/browser visibility, for other reasons. So ignore the small one and click for the larger one, it's dark, but more impressive.

For anyone who doesn't know, this is a tribute to Arlington National Cemetary in Arlington, Virginia, well within driving distance of Washington, D.C. I haven't actually walked this one from the ground--this was intended to be an overflight capture, just to see how HUD-capture photography was going to look--so it may be at a tribute to those lost in wars-in-toto.

But I have to say, overflying this, dressed for the event that paid tribute to all lost in world conflicts from WWII through Viet Nam, this stopped me. Sight of this, literally, stopped me in flight, put my heart in my throat. Arlington does that, too, sometimes even in picture form--because there are so many of those small white markers, so very many...and knowing it represents the merest portion of humanity lost to the horrors of unresolvable difference...war between realms, between nations, between concepts of good, bad, restriction, allowance, religion, rights...and now we have a portion of Arlington on the grid, and it has the same impact.

All of Tribute Island is like this. Tribute Island is for all residents of the grid, to share, to learn, to experience who we are, whom we honor, whom we hold dear. From public personalities to the deeply personal, fandom to family, anything is allowable (following their build guidelines). Because in the end, it's about what we hold up, that will teach future generations--this we lost. This we once had. Know this. Feel this.

It's a powerful message, and one we desperately need, right now. Even virtually, reconnection to the common soul which links us all--that vast mythpool of concurrent experience we all dip into as a culture, as a society, as a planet--we can learn great and humbling things from each other, on Tribute Island.

Look it up sometime, go there. Learn more. Help out if you can. Remember the value of remembrance and loss. You won't be sorry you did.