stop your cryin', hold on tonight

Let me tell you about the event, A Fighting Chance. Or, rather, let me tell you what the creator in crisis said about it:

6 weeks ago I took one of the biggest steps of my life and filed a domestic violence restraining order against the father of my child. He was removed from our home and my child and I started rebuilding our lives. Since that removal, my now-ex has harassed me repeatedly and is retaliating by trying to take my child away because I finally filed for permanent, full custody.

Unfortunately, at this time, I do not qualify for assistance from Legal Aid.

I have contacted my local bar association and found an attorney willing to take on my case at a significantly reduced cost — nearly close to pro bono. However, I still cannot afford this vital assistance. I’ve reached out to shelters, local charities, and the Domestic Violence Resource Center in the hopes of being put in touch with a lawyer willing to help me free of charge and was unsuccessful. My only choice at this point is to pay to defend my custody petition if I want to ensure my son stays safe with me.

My prospective lawyer has given me a quote of $1800-$1900 for a custody case billed out at his reduced rate, to be paid as a retainer. They do not anticipate it costing more than this and if so, once the retainer is depleted, they will work with me on a payment plan suitable to my SSDI payments. They require the retainer upfront.

My child’s father has an attorney and they have mailed me their response to the custody petition I filed. My prospective attorney will begin work on the custody case ASAP, once his retainer fee has been satisfied. Currently there is no hearing set yet, but that can change rather suddenly and without notice.

I am scared. My 12 y/o child who is autistic is also terrified.

We need help--your help.

Now, I can say the creator behind Funky Junk (and that link goes to her Marketplace, because before all this went down, she'd closed the in-world store to move to a new sim) is not only a really talented builder of skyboxen, cottages, and other structures, but is also generous beyond belief--several of her very detailed builds I've bought on Fifty Linden Friday rounds, and she could easily charge six times the cost I paid for those homes, without raising an eyebrow on anyone. She's also a genuinely kind person, and is devoted to making sure her customers are satisfied with any purchase. Which makes this all the more horrifying, and it starts out fairly horrifying.

Hence, "A Fighting Chance", the charity event. Port in, and you can give to a direct kiosk, or peruse the offerings of other creators in support of her efforts. Or, you can choose to go to her Gofundme page, where she's desperately trying to generate funds to hire a lawyer.

It is a sad fact of reality that many of these cases result in the abusers trying to seize the children from the parent, because they know that will hurt them most. And most of these cases succeed, especially if said parent was a stay-at-home one, and, when they left the main wage earner of the family, can be logistically portrayed as having no visible means of support. It's awful, it's deeply wrong, and it's sadly commonplace.

I would ask you to give what you can. And I wish her all the best. I hope she and her son get through this, safe, together, and not homeless.

all I want for Christmas

Dear Santa,

All I want for Christmas this year is this:



I will admit to you, Santa, I am sorely out of practice with things, as I have spent much of the last two years in a small cabin in the mountains, avoiding people. But I want to do better. And other people believe I can, as well, because they've recently hired me as an entertainer at a truly lovely establishment I want to see thrive. And I believe in myself enough that I am taking this leap of faith, and looking forward to rejoining the social whirl with lightness of heart and great anticipation. I've already attended two events at the mansion, and I had SO much fun. And I think owning this beautiful chair would really, really help--even if I just rezzed it out in my little cabin, it would give me practice at understanding menu systems again, and get me back into dancing. And I miss dancing, I really really do.

And it would give me a good excuse to have a practice partner...you know, just to help me learn things! And I really wouldn't mind that either...

I hope your holiday season is going well, and I promise, whether or not you agree that I've been good enough to get the chair, I'll leave out an extra gingerbread cookie just for you.

Sincerely,

Emilly

Hey, it never hurts to ask.

why don't they stay young?

So this absolutely pisses me off to no end. Let me give you a rundown of the "features" so you can fully appreciate why this is making me irate:

★ Touch menu

★ Realtime latex effect

★ Advanced lighting model

★ Adjustable transparency

★ Color Change

Let that sink in. "Adjustable transparency". Because of course, see-through latex is so necessary for the preteen camp.



Don't you agree?

The "full outfit"--again, I am emphasizing, designed for an average nine-year-old's shape--comes with these items:

★ For SMB Mesh Body only!

★ SMB Belly Top

★ Rigged Mesh

★ SMB High Skirt

★ Works with SMB Mesh Body

★ For default kidsize avies too

★ Belt can be worn/colored seperately

★ Includes mod/copy underwear

★ Two buttsize versions (9/18)

Okay, fine, it's a mesh outfit designed for a mesh body. Great. Why is this such a big deal?

Again, because it's designed for this child-size replacement mesh body:



I have no words. If you don't immediately grasp the problem, then hells, you might be their target market. Go have fun.

All I can come up with is...that this:


(from MJ Trends, All Rights Reserved)

will never, EVER go with this:


(Royalty-free image)

What's the SL restriction on ageplay again?

accessorizing with a rosary tucked inside her lingerie

In all seriousness, virtual child or not, there is no way I would let any prepubescent person wear this. Yes, I realize it's the Rolling Stones logo, and children might conceivably be fans. But there?!? Maybe it's just me, but that design should be against the Linden ToS by virtue of the logo placement alone.

Of course, keep in mind this is the same store who thinks it's appropriate to clothe the elementary school set with "Dirty Girl" slogans, printed cherry panty sets (with inappropriate bralettes, to boot), the somewhat infamous "Wet Kitty" swimsuit, and do I even need to mention the reference to twerking?

Also, why does this shape exist? Why is it still everywhere? Why do easily 75% of all women on the grid want to be straddle-hipped and fish-lipped? These questions have never been answered to my satisfaction.

(Of course, if I ever got a halfway decent answer to those questions, I'd just have to ask why this everything exists next. Or why this dress was made to be compatible with Lolas Tango appliers. And frankly, those are conversations that just won't end well.)

Speaking of general bafflement, why do these power outlets exist? I mean, I admire their dedication to offering them in various colors, and yes, I understand it's an innovative way to change the angle of the outlet so that they fit more neatly against the wall for purposes of furniture distance, but...it still seems really odd.

In the meantime, recently, Neverwinter suffered a networking failure, and it took several hours for them to replace the affected systems. They were very in touch with their userbase via web page updates as well as constant Twitter contact, something I humbly and deeply appreciate as a user of their game.



This was an in-game capture of the moment the game came back online. There are so many players in one place, I couldn't even make out all the names. Which ignores the very real issue of enough players in one place, they seriously overlapped each other. It was limbs and arms poking out of random torsos and rotating in place, which was slightly amusing, but also kind of staggering. And this was not the only place in the game people returned, this was just a common gathering point for many.

But, as ever, along with a restoration of the local population, came...well, the local population:

[Zone] teamkiwi@t3amkiwi: omg party at the Tempus invoke
[Zone] G DANTE@gdante7111111: just because you have in the same data center does not mean each person in that center has the same hardware
[Zone] XcessiveArcana@xcessiveforce40: Dante was complaining on facebook as well
[Zone] Albino@AlbinoSnowWhite: The legions of the Damned is recruiting !!!!
[Zone] XXXO@xxxokiller: oh shut the fk up you albino

I don't even know what that insult means. Also, what would an albino Snow White be? Skin white as snow, but then hair white as snow, too? And pale lips?

Are they really Snow White at that point, in anything save camouflage and coloration?

[Zone] XXXO@xxxokiller: I lost my 5,000 zen ^^
[Zone] Lesryl@traxsu: They won't fix it.
[Zone] Lesryl@traxsu: This has happened before.
[Zone] lillith@themuffingirl2: maybe we should be happy its a free to play game and they work so hard to keep it up

A valid point, and one more folks in Neverwinter should embrace.

[Zone] James@trjames: Wow, look at all the people/bots invoking right now
[Zone] Bruce.Lee@dyanjp: woo hoo back up

Absolutely. That's what you're seeing in the above image, by the way--that's the main place to pray for boons from the various gods in Protectors' Enclave, the main zone of Neverwinter.

[Zone] XcessiveArcana@xcessiveforce40: every company wants cheap labor for IT
[Zone] Kat Shieldheart@jedifreeman: G DANTE - let me rephrase - I have personally seen the Neverwinter servers
[Zone] Kat Shieldheart@jedifreeman: I HAVE GAZED UPON THIS WORLD FROM THE OUTSIDE
[Zone] XXXO@xxxokiller: bruce lee *%^! just got real lmao
[Zone] G DANTE@gdante7111111: kat stop lieing

Why does she have to be lying? They're in San Francisco, unless they co-locate their server banks, which is also possible--but either way, it's not beyond the realm of possibility at all that she's seen the server banks. Options for how this might happen:

• She works in service and repair of a server company Cryptic contracts with to maintain their data.
• She works for Perfect World.
• She works for Cryptic.
• She works in the IT department that directly maintains the Neverwinter game.
• She delivers mail to engineers that work in the server banks for whatever companies Cryptic work with.
• She works in human resources and had reason to go down to talk with engineers or IT support workers.
• She has friends who works in any of these areas, and they took her on a tour of the facilities.

These aren't even the only reasons she could have seen them. It's not like the server banks are on Mars, people.

[Zone] Tarna@death69inc: hard to beleive it took that long

Not really. Keep in mind they had a widespread system failure, and Cryptic was repairing networking in sequence to make sure everything pathed correctly for retention. A great many Cryptic and Perfect World games went offline, so it wasn't just Neverwinter, either. As seen on that web link, eight games in total had issues that needed repair.

[Zone] Random Chance@Random_Chance: well, finally in...has everyone demanded that Perfect World owes them compensation for not being able to play their free game all day?

Please be kidding.

[Zone] Shinryuu the Sleeper@finmakin: I always find it hilarious when ppl complaining about a free game... SUE them... get them to Court instead of crying here like baby's
[Zone] cardinal sin@jagrmaster: lmao sorry its still a lil funny
[Zone] cardinal sin@jagrmaster: were you here for that?
[Zone] Kat Shieldheart@jedifreeman: G DANTE - sorry that you dont believe me. Some of us are actually real people who have real jobs who get to do cool things.

Exactly. She works for the company, or for a company who works for the company, because a surprising number of folks who work for Cryptic/Neverwinter/Perfect World also play the games they run, quelle horreur. Gods forbid people who work for a game company actually ENJOY playing games.

[Zone] Lerissa Balorfist@foxfire444: Problem is it also affected games that people pay for
[Zone] XXXO@xxxokiller: people put plenty of money into this fkn game, no reason for that nonsense about free game &#$# boy
[Zone] Tarna@death69inc: lol they must care less abotu makign money or they woudl have worked hard to get it back up

They did work wicked hard to get it back up. See when they first noticed the problem on March 21st, followed by this, this, this, this--which is something they didn't have to do, but chose to do to help the feeling of disappointment for Neverwinter gamers...Pretty much their entire tweet stream from the 21st, actually, deals largely with the downtime and both reassuring and informing customers.

[Zone] Darray@theghostess: I think the CTA should be extended. But that's the only "compensation" I would expect.

And the game devs agreed with Darray, and extended the Call to Arms event to make up for the downtime.

[Zone] G DANTE@gdante7111111: i dont ask them to give me nothing its them once again walking with there tails between there legs

I don't even know what he means here. How is constant Twitter and web contact slinking off in shame when all this happened?

[Zone] Zenith@stellarstrider: They already extended it
[Zone] Kat Shieldheart@jedifreeman: Darray - it is extended by a day
[Zone] Gin@Sadler38: the CTA did get extended

Yep. And a great many people, me included, deeply appreciated them for doing that.

[Zone] Ashiok@juicebox87: quit whining and game on you sissy cupcakes.

Hee!

[Zone] Random Chance@Random_Chance: I"m guessing they had to get replacement equipment flown in from another part of the country
[Zone] Pri3stitute@ratbugasmatti: WELCOME BACK TO THE REAL WORLD!!!!

I thought so, too, but it wasn't a server failure, just a networking one.

[Zone] G DANTE@gdante7111111: trolling is not a real job

Get stuffed, Dante.

[Zone] Waeren@mystrmidnyte: no1 cares *%^!
[Zone] Gin@vincentnw: trolling = lving under a brigde to take tolls from travelers... sounds like a homeless guy or a mugger

What? Seriously, dude, what the hell does that even mean?

[Zone] Kat Shieldheart@jedifreeman: G DANTE - you are right, you should start looking for something else
[Zone] Random Chance@Random_Chance: wait...no mail explaining the outage and what they're going to give me in compensation? GET MY LAWYERS ON THE PHONE!

Please be kidding, part II.

[Zone] G DANTE@gdante7111111: kat stop trolling thats what your doing by saying what your saying right now read your responce
[Zone] Syndul The Slick@morenthar: I LOVE IT HOW PEOPLE PLAY A GAME THEY HATE. I LOVE LAMP ;)

Yeah, hard not to, to both of these.

[Zone] Kat Shieldheart@jedifreeman: G DANTE - see, there is a difference between trolling and the truth - I actually have been to the PWE Datacenter
[Zone] cardinal sin@jagrmaster: here comes the questions lol
[Zone] XXXO@xxxokiller: snuffles is that considered trolling since you are lying?

Again, why does she have to be lying? Why is there controversy over this point in the first place?

[Zone] Bagwit Halfins@theoriginalmad: well thats a fail .. no redundency system apparently
[Zone] Random Chance@Random_Chance: could be original and backup network devices were same make, with same defect

Perfectly possible, in fact.

[Zone] G DANTE@gdante7111111: soon the asian scammers are going to come
[Zone] cardinal sin@jagrmaster: lol dante
[Zone] XXXO@xxxokiller: HEY FRIENDS! SPEND MONEY
[Zone] G DANTE@gdante7111111: the asian scammers with hey friends
[Zone] Sniffles@bodizatfa: when they come you can whisper....theyre here
[Zone] wwwEGPALnet@iztoe2: Astral Diamonds 1 million for ONLY $8.99. We also have PERFECT/Greater/Rank10/Rank9 Enchantments ON SALE with 30 minute delivery guaranteed
[Zone] G DANTE@gdante7111111: see look
[Zone] Sniffles@bodizatfa: theyre here
[Zone] G DANTE@gdante7111111: there they are

Yep. And we've pretty much restored full service to the game, gold spammers and all. I think we're done here.