Top Stories of The 2010s, Part Two

By Bixyl Shuftan

This is the second of our series of some of the top stories of the 2010s. For part one, Click Here.

The Pony Community and Bronyville's Fall

Second Life is noted for it's variety of avatar types. The first ones were human and humanoid. Soon after came other kinds, neko, furry, tiny, and dragon. Since the Newser came to be, two more have come about. There are the petite avatars, which I've seen mostly pixies. And then there are the pony avatars, based off the characters of the "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" cartoons. Unlike previous "generations" of the franchise, "Friendship is Magic" gained a following among teenagers and young adults. It wasn't too long after the cartoon started airing when the cartoonish pony avatars started appearing in the virtual world, and in May 2011 came the Bronyville sim. It quickly became a thriving community. While naturally there were a few bored trolls showing up to harass the ponies, they were quickly dealt with.

Then in July came real trouble when Linden Lab took down Bronyville. It turned out that the sim's two owners were ban-evasion alts of people the Lab had banned from Second Life. For many communities, this would be the end. But once the ponies recovered from the shock, a new sim was acquired and named Bronytown. A few months later in February 2012, they had largely recovered.

Several years later, the pony sims are still around. Trotsdale and it's surrounding sims soon replaced Bronytown as the best known pony area. But there are others with their own people. As the cartoon series that inspired the fans to create the community and sims aired it's last season this year, it should be interesting to see what the Second Life ponies do.

The S.S. Galaxy's Closing

I had the fortune to visit the SS Galaxy in it's early years. This was a cruise ship built in Second Life. And what a ship it was! Three sims long, it was not just the largest ship in the virtual world, but one of the largest structures of any kind inworld. And like a cruise ship, people could rent cabins, and there were numerous parties. It would be one of the first places the Newser would report on.

Then on April 26, 2015 came shocking news to the ship's fans: the SS Galaxy would be shutting down. Why was the ship being scrapped after eight years? An investigation revealed the ship had recently suffered the worst griefing attacks in it's history over a period of several days, and the Linden they talked to told them they would be allowed exactly one rollback to fix the damage and then no more, period. Fans gathered for a few last parties. And on May 3, the place closed down, leaving only screenshots, memories, and a number of residents feeling it's leaving was the result of the Lab acting like it didn't care about longtime customers.

Finally, the Lab realized it had goofed, and on May 13 it was announced that the ship would be coming back, but under Linden ownership.  In September, the ship was once again on the Grid. While residents were happy to see it back, their enthusiasm was dampered by that it was basically a museum piece. Gone were the live events, the renting of cabins, and the crew to greet people.

The closing of the SS Galaxy would be just one of a few incidents that year that got some people wondering about Linden Lab's intentions and competence.

From Passionate Redheads to Sunbeamers

Over the years of covering the Relay for Life,  I've covered the efforts of many teams. Some have continued their efforts year after year, such as Team ACTS and the Gorean team. And some make a good showing for a short time, such as the Relay Wizards and Team Strange Journey, then fade away.

The first Relay team I got to know really well, and the one I eventually joined up, were the Passionate Redheads.  This was a team of both human and furry residents led by co-captains Sabine McGettigan and Daaneth Kivioq. Having been raising money for the Relay since 2007, it was clearing in the big leagues, raising over a million Lindens in 2010. Many of it's team members were from the Sunweaver community, including estate owner Rita Mariner. So it really was the community's team. It had some great campsite builds, such as the "Wild West" one in 2009. And there was the late Artistic Fimicloud who lost her life to cancer, whom became a symbol of the team's determination.

But in April 2011 came some horrible news. Co-captain Daaneth suffered a stroke. Shocked, the Relayers sent him numerous well-wishes and held events in his honor. Various members stepped up to raise a some Lindens of their own, such as Rita, Nydia Tungsten, and myself. And the Relay Weekend went great. What could have ended up a canceled year ended up another successful one for the team, with Daaneth being awarded the Spirit of Relay for 2011 in the "Wrap-Up" event in August.

Sadly, the stroke had lasting effects. Shortly after the 2012 Relay season started, Sabeen left the team and Daaneth both left the team and took an "indefinite break" from Second Life for personal reasons. placing Dusk Griswold and Lomgren Smalls in charge. Despite this trouble in addition to others being sidelined due to real-life troubles, the team made it to gold level, and onto the Relay Weekend.

In January 2013 came more sad news, the Passionate Redheads were disbanding. After six years and many accomplishments, the banner of the Readheads would no longer be paraded down the Relay track. The Sunweaver community was saddened, but two people stepped forward to form two teams. Sadly, the leader of one would soon leave Second Life for personal reasons. But Sunweaver leader Rita Mariner would lead the Sunbeamer team. But while the Passionate Redheads had been a proven team, with the Sunbeamers we were basically starting all over, "We are a small team." Still, we persisted with events and our campsite for the Relay Weekend, in which we reached Silver rank fundraising. But by 2014, the team was making Gold once more.

Since then, the Sunbeamers have continued to do well year after year. The "small team" became "the little team that could," and a force in the Relay. But we haven't forgotten our roots. Every year in the campsite, one can find a small pink fox statue in honor of Fimi.


Mesh

On August 23, 2011, came a new way of building things in Second Life: Mesh.  One complaint Second Life was getting in the late 2000s was that it lacked the detail of many popular online games at the time. So in 2010, Linden Lab announced it was working on a Mesh import project.

Reactions were somewhat varied. Some were anxious to see what they could do with the option, or at least curious. Others were skeptical, or fearful that the Lab would end up blocking viewers that couldn't see it. Another concern was security vs safety vs convenience, that mesh would make it much easier for the unscrupulous to import and sell material others had copyrighted, and that Linden Lab's security precautions would end up blocking some builders or making it too big a hassle for them to continue.

After it was enabled, there were some early adopters. While at least some called it the most important development in Second Life that year, others expressed skepticism, among them myself. I and others felt there were too few mesh-enabled viewers being used in the first several months for mesh to have that great of an impact. There were other problems as well. While touted as a way to make objects that would be more efficient to process, the truth was it took skill to do this as a mesh objects "prim equivalency" could easily surpass the same item made with prims and end up causing more lag. And then there was that for the first time in Second Life, people had to worry about their clothes fitting. Many people dreaded having to shop for clothes in real life as they had the hardest time trying to find clothes that would fit, and now the issue had come to Second Life. 

Still, skillfully made mesh objects and avatars looked better with smoother movement, one example being that mesh furry avatars have smoother speaking movements. And with mesh people could accomplish some things they couldn't before, such as the creation of impossibly tall avatars.

The use and adoption of mesh has been a long slow process. Linden Lab for instance would offer mesh starting avatars a few years later in 2014. But unlike earlier starter avatars, they couldn't be modified to be slightly taller or shorter or slightly different facial features, or able to wear another set of clothes. So in 2015, they were replaced with another set of starter mesh avatars, though some people commented they looked less like what one could expect in Second Life and more like "The Sims." These comments would continue with the added Fantasy and Sci-fi inspired starting avatars in 2016.

Over time, mesh would see improvements. In 2014, Fitted Mesh allowed for better fitting clothes, though while a step forward wasn't a perfect solution. In 2018 came Animesh, which offered the promise of much more detailed NPCs/bots inworld. 2019 would see the arrival of 'Bakes on Mesh,' which offered the promise of less complexity for detailed avatars.

Today, while mesh has won over much of Second Life, perhaps the majority, there are still some whom have little or anything to do with it. It's made dressing more complicated, and while Fitted Mesh has helped, there's still the problem of mesh outfits not quite fitting one's avatar. All the updates eventually mean some third-party viewers that seldom get updated soon become less and less useful as more and more glitches appear due to more avatars using material made possible by recent updates. It's also been brought up has Mesh been a good thing for Second Life's content creator community. While anyone can still learn to build and script, the arrival of mesh meant creators had to learn more to make a product the masses would buy, perhaps to the point that someone with the skills to make fine mesh clothes would make more money using similar skills outside the virtual world's community. In the end though, the demand for mesh products has ensured it's become an established part of the virtual world.

As Second Life enters the 2020s, the story of Mesh is still being written.

For part three of the series, Click Here.

Bixyl Shuftan

Remembering Artistic Fimicloud

By Bixyl Shuftan

Cancer is a deadly disease. According to Wikipedia, almost nine million people a year around the world die from it. Striking down men and women, rich and poor, men and women, young and old, it takes away many individuals in the prime of their lives, leaving behind saddened family and friends. In Second Life, while avatars do not get cancer, the people behind them do. For the Relay for Life in Second Life, it's mission is to raise funds for research for cures and treatments has brought thousands to take part, from it's most active participants to those just stopping by to make a small donation. Sadly, along the way some of the Relayers have passed on. Catt Gable, Shady Fox, Alliez Mysterio and others would not survive their personal fight with the illness.

For the Sunweaver community and the Passionate Redheads RFL team in their early days, among their numbers was Artistic Fimicloud. In Second Life, she was known for her pink fox avatar. In real life she was Stephanie Koslow, an artist who did a number of pictures. Sadly, she also suffered from cancer, a struggle that had gone on for years. On May 26, 2008, the woman behind the little pink fox passed away at age 49, a sad day for both the Sunweaver community and it's team, and for the Relay.  Some days later, there was a memorial service in the Colorado sim. One artwork of her made since showed Stephanie's spirit rising from her body as her pink vixen avatar. "I Relay for Fimi" became a title seen on a number of the Redheads and others. Fimi's treehouse continues to remain up at the Sunweaver Estates at Sunweaver Bay (179/155/33).

Since her passing, every year there has been an event of some kind in her honor. The following year there was a candlelight vigil, of which Ishtarkiss took a number of pictures of, as well as a "Blowout" event featuring art and screenshots. Beginning in 2010 (more pictures by Ishtarkiss), there have been memorial dances in Fimi's honor. This year was no exception, with the Happy Vixen and Club Cutlass running events on the week of her passing nine years before.

The Happy Vixen's event was at Tuesday May 23 6PM, with DJ Tantari at the booth. Several people wore pink outfits or pink avatars in Fimi's honor. Tantari had made a "Pink Fox" track just for these events, "The search for a cure goes on in her memory. Never give up! Never give in!" The track was a combination of fox-themed and other tunes, but ended with a somewhat sad song, "Goodbye" by Ulrich Schnauss. "After every journey, one has to say goodbye," Tantari concluded the track.

Club Cutlass would hold the larger of the two events on Friday May 26, the ninth anniversary of Fimi's departure. The event was also at 6PM. Sabine McGettigan, the longtime leader of the Passionate Redheads team, was among those at the tribute. Also there was Sunbeamer team captain Rita Mariner, Dusk Griswold, and Shockwave Yareach whom also knew Fimi. Once again, many showed up in pink avatars, pink outfits, or both. On the wall was a picture of Fimi, and on the floor one of the pink fox statuettes that represent her.

In the nine years since Fimi left us, much has changed with both the Relay and the community and team she was part of. Some have left, and others who never had the chance to know her, including myself, have come in. The Passionate Redheads team would fold and become a part of Relay history as a top-ranking team to the end, it's members of the Sunweaver community forming a new team: the Sunbeamers.

People continue to suffer and die from cancer. And there have been a few conspiracy theorists whom wonder if there is some kind of plot behind the scenes by the powerful of Capitalist and Communist and Islamist lands to keep a cure from ever being found, or that a cure has been found but the medical community is so fearful of quackery it will not accept anything more than strictly conventional medicine. But most of us realize the struggle to cure cancer is a more difficult one than getting to the moon. With that, we knew where to go and it was a matter of building a big enough rocket with the means to get a team there safely and back. Finding a cure for cancer has proven more difficult as it's not just one but a multitude of diseases with a multitude of causes. But every fundraising event, every dollar donated, whether to the Relay for Life or a number of other reputable charities such as the Susan G. Komen Foundation, brings us closer to a day when a cure for the last form of cancer has been found.

In the meantime, in and out of Second Life, people will continue to help, with time, money, and in my case a pen.

"We shall remember,"

Source: IshtarKiss Flickr page 

Bixyl Shuftan

Commentary: Once Upon a Cure

By Becky "Sha" Shamen

At a recent meeting of the Sunbeamers Club, Rita Mariner announced the theme of the 2016 RFL will be "Once Upon A Cure". For this writer, the theme is perfect, for reasons that follow.

I am a member of two SL groups, dedicated to helping find a cure for cancer. In "Sunbeamers" the goal is to gather donations, for use in cancer research. In the "Second Rife" group, the goal is to inform the public of alternatives to conventional treatment.

EVERYTHING that exists, in the world of form, was first an image in a thinking mind. Like it or not, any pictures we keep in our minds will draw that thing into our envinronment, as if by magic. This magic becomes super powerfull, when the same image is in the minds of many. Now, follow me in your imagination.

RFL teams are challenged to come up with fairy tale elements, that promote the curing of cancer. Our group, as it's centerpiece, could have a magnificent, steampunk machine, with lots of moving dials, gears and other parts. In front of the machine, we see a small platform. When clicked on, the platform puts you in a pose, bathes you with rainbow light and puts an object in your inventory, called "rainbow torus."  When it's worn, it makes a spinning rainbow, around your av, as shown in the above picture. In theory, this spinning rainbow is a protective ring that keeps cancer out. Here's the good part; there is no mental image for the word NOT, so it doesn't matter if our fairy tale machine really works. What our machine really does is churn out a stream of people that are presenting a symbolic IMAGE of [rainbow/cure]. Even those not wearing them will learn the symbol. With a positive image, over the rainbow,pot of gold sort of thing, planted in the minds of thousands, we now have a super powered force, that will hasten the true cure to enter our world. We are turning a fairy tale into real life science.

When the cure is manefest, it is simple and inexpensive. They'll even make apps for your phones and computers. Nobody will want the expensive surgeries and toxic chemicals. I now return your imaginations to you. These ideas may or not not be those of the newspaper and it's sponsors. It's all just my opinion of what would be a fun and useful adventure in Second Life.

Sha

Editor's Note: The article has been edited from the original.