Last year offered a bumper crop of Xmas advent gifts and freebies. This year, yes, as many, but…

It feels to me that the ‘classic’ avatar is rapidly getting left behind in favour of mesh avatars, and many of the freebies on offer, or indeed full priced items all the year round, are rapidly getting left behind.

There’s a steep learning curve to SL, in terms of the controls, and I personally believe that mesh has over complicated things. Additionally, as someone who maintains a ‘classic’ avatar, I believe ‘classic’ offers a greater range of body shaping controls in order to tweak the avatar into a shape you like. I’ve tried mesh bodies, and I don’t like them. At all. I don’t like them because they generally offer a bigger booty than I’d want on my avatar, and those boobs…always too big!

It seems that the variety of shapes possible is being limited by mesh, and that’s not a good thing. We must all now conform to a much more narrow vision of what shape avatars must be. Furthermore,  there’s now several mesh body types, Maitreya, Slink, Belleza and others, vying to be ‘the one’. It reminds me of ‘advances’ in the platforms we choose to receive music. CD is better…no, Mini Disc is better…MP3 players are better, no, new vinyl is better. And we end up with a bunch of redundant equipment gathering dust on a shelf.

Apparently video went through the same separate platforms, VHS v Betamax, before VHS won despite, according to some, being an inferior format. 

And that’s where we are with mesh bodies. A few ‘giants’ of mesh now locked in a ‘war’ for supremacy, and none of them as good, as flexible, as ‘classic’ avatars.

I’m still scouring the grid for advent freebies I can utilise in a naturist context and share with you, but this year’s not turning out to be particularly rich for them.

Ella