I’ve removed the ‘Stream of Consciousness’ page. Too occasional, too random, too pointless, and replaced it with a Non ‘Genuine Naturist’ Locations page, wherein we’ll report from ‘naturist/nudist’ locations in SL that have some, or too much, emphasis on sex within SL, reinforcing or blurring people’s view of what naturism actually entails.

A new writer will be appointed in due course to report from these places.

The promised changes at Sweden Naturist appear to have taken place, and what a superb job Evacaroline

has done. I think that’s her in the photo, which Harry took over there while shooting our models, ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’ on site.

Apart from looking gorgeous herself, she has left Sweden looking gorgeous too! A jacuzzi (not photographed) is new, as is the new mud wrestling area. Adam and Eve tried it out. The result? One game all, but it rather looks as though Eve has the upper hand in Harry’s photo!

From there, the trio headed over to a new, improved club area for a drink overseen by barmaid Erika Linden.

Neither felt in the mood to dance, but did spy what appears to be a greatly improved ‘lake’ area, now given more depth and interest. The sun certainly made Eve a little sleepy, so Harry captured Adam giving her a gentle massage while she soaked up a few rays of sunshine.

As Adam and Eve headed over to the swing (not new, but a cute animation), Harry ran into Hungarian girl Marta, who agreed to pose for a snap.

Having got her calling card, Harry then joined Adam and Eve at the swing to take a few more photographs.

After what seems to have been a couple of bad days in SL naturism, with the worry of Sweden’s future, and the closure of Karma’s sim, it’s good to know that Sweden, now one of SL’s longest standing naturist locations, is very much alive, well and improved. Evacaroline (here’s another pic in the sim that we think is Eva)

has made subtle, yet marvellous changes to her sim. People like things to change, yet stay the same. The geography and much of the layout is familiar, with just a few nice changes. For this, Evacaroline is to be congratulated for doing a superb job on Sweden, and we very much recommend it as an SL naturist sim worth your time. It’s very much an interactive sim, with a wide range of poseball activities. As well as dancing, cuddling, sitting around jacuzzis (the cuddle rug animations are excellent, and we’ve spent time before now photographing them), Evacaroline has never shied away from the fact that avatars have, well, needs! 🙂 and accommodated them too, in a quiet, subtle, discreet manner. While I usually differentiate between ‘genuine’ naturist locations (no poseballs required) and ‘others’, I have always included Sweden in the ‘genuine’ category, for the subtle and discreet manner in which Evacaroline handles the matter. Sweden, previously excellent, has been given a new depth, and is very much worthy of your time. A superb remake from a long-established friend of SL naturism.

Editorial (supplement)

I’m sorry to report that Karma (InstantKarma Resident) has opted to close, hopefully temporarily, the Lost Garden naturist sim citing high tier costs. I fully understand the decision.

For those who weren’t familiar with the sim, Lost Garden was ‘primitive’ in that Karma kept it all very, very simple and somehow in doing so made it very, very special, somewhere to get away from the constant shopping mall experience and relax in a very unspoilt land where the emphasis landed firmly on the social, chatty element of SL that is sometimes missing from many sims, naturist or otherwise.

I sincerely hope he will be back, but I do understand that, in times of economic hardship, we all watch the pennies carefully, and need to be grateful to those who do shell out real money to provide the playground(s) we like to spend spare time in.

I’ve looked long and hard at creating my own naturist sim as well, probably a partial recreation of my favourite RL naturist location, Vera Playa in Spain, but as with Karma I cannot justify the tier costs and do need to channel my hard-earned cash elsewhere.

Linden Labs must take some of the blame here. My understanding is that server costs continue to fall dramatically, but LL’s tier costs have never reflected this (perhaps someone can clarify this). They continue to be quite high for what is, let’s face it, a game we play occasionally or regularly and in the middle of a recession/depression, call it what you will, we’re in a bind. SL will continue to haemorrage good designers, builders, terraformers unless LL address the issue of weekly costs.

As I see it, we have a problem of sorts (SL naturists or not, as the issue affects all sims). Reducing the cost of tiers would encourage new users/players to build and develop their own places, and possibly benefit the game as a whole. Not everyone has a US/western European level of disposable income, and what’s disposable income to us is a fortune in, say, the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) economies. These are huge markets, and LL could, in theory, be laying foundations for a much ore popular game by making server costs much lower for people there (and possibly also have the benefit of making the pervading SL culture less American/European-centric, and encouraging players to build sims more in the style of their real existence. I, for one, would love the experience of walking through an Indian countryside with Indian homes, populated by Indian players in Indian styles of dress while listening to Indian music on the audio feeds as cows roam freely in the fields). We don’t all have to have a SL Ferrari parked outside an SL condominium.

In the context of SL naturism, we find ourselves reduced in choice. There are still some great, great sims out there, and maybe the upside to this is that we coalesce into a more tightly knit SL naturist community. What do you think?

Or are we reaching a point where some of us begin to form some sort of co-operative, and maybe think of pooling our resources, talents, skills into the creation of a new, group-owned naturist world in SL. I know what I can afford to spend each month, and I’d be happy to be part of a co-op that starts new, or seeks to expand an existing naturist world within SL. Might this be a way forward?

Ella. 

Another in this occasional series of me attempting to recreate RL photographs I see while scouring the web, and setting them into an SL context. This features two models regularly used by SL Naturist, ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’ 🙂 and was, like the last in this series, taken at Buffy’s Cove. Harry (see pics at the bottom of the page)

(Ella adds: Some of you may be familiar with the almost exact recreation of Buffy’s Cove, Teresa Korhonen’s Naked Dreams, part of the Eden Naturopolis series of sims. It’s lovely, and somewhere I’ve visited occasionally and which, inexplicably, has been largely ignored by this blog. In my defence, I will say that Eden is so large that it will take several posts before I have fully shown it all to you. I’ve just nipped over there, and popped off a self portrait to show a similar area as from the Buffy’s photoshoot (below) as to how it does recreate Buffy’s, which Teresa originally designed, of course. in terms of light and geography. Apologies for hijacking Harry’s post, by the way. A full report on Naked Dreams to follow ASAP)