When is a maid not a maid?

When it’s a Mer-maid! So, after many years I have got back into the Mer-world (though not exactly looking the same as I used to back in the day). After some humming and hawing my Domina and I have added a distinctly colourful marine environment to our home region.
Some gentle persuasion from a certain Swedish individual led to our adoption of the latest Mer tails and AOs, and while my Domina is a fairly conventional Mermaid, as you might expect this maid simply became a Mer-maid!
So I am now a Latex-encased Mermaid. So far I have not encountered any adverse reactions for the Mer-community but it is a fairly secretive and unseen part of SL. Just as you should never judge a book by its cover, there is far more going on beneath the waves in Blake Sea than you might imagine looking at sea-level. For the curious, go look under the water at Fanci Deep!
I am still of the opinion that the Mermaid world is substantially underserved and under-developed in SL, but maybe I have not looked hard enough yet.
Just as a by-the-way comment I am running the Firestorm public-Beta 6.0.1 “animesh” viewer and so far it has proven stable, and considerably faster than 5.1.7, despite the current slowness of the texture delivery from the CDN.

Below are some pictures of our new underwater garden, mostly c/o Elicio Ember’s Cerridwen’s Cauldron designs:

Not quite an Octopusses Garden!

In the channel

The Latex Mermaid

Ten and rising!

This post is purely personal, so I apologise for that at the outset.
Today marks the tenth anniversary of my partnering in SL with Rachael Ezvalt. We have seen some massive changes in SL in the time we have been together and I do not regret a day of it. Our time in SL has been mostly a simple RP, essentially D/s but with a caring element. I am currently Rachael’s Latex Maid, as you will have seen in an earlier post (qv “Maid to Measure” https://ayesha001.wordpress.com/2018/10/25/maid-to-measure/ ), and that RP will most likely run through to 2019.
I have been “Dolled”, “Ponied” and “Demonessed” at various times, we spent a while as Mermaids, and briefly as Faery folk. A common feature of these forms was use of RLV, which allowed my partner to control to a greater or lesser degree my appearance, communication or mobility. Use of RLV (or RLVa, courtesy of Kitty Barnett and Firestorm) has been a common denominator throughout all these activities and all of my SL really. RLV/RLVa has many more uses than mere BDSM and I have come to value its functions over the years.

But the point of this post was simply to publically celebrate the ten happy years that I have experienced partnered with Rachael Ezvalt, and I am happy for folk reading this to know it.

Child problems?

Just recently the parcel that I am security staff for has encountered massive performance issues. We have been at our wit’s end trying to eradicate the problem and Linden lab, in the persons of Whitney and Lilian Linden have visited the parcel, on Wirtz sim, to try to pin down the root cause. So far we have been unsuccessful. However, after reading a couple of posts in the Server Thread of the SL Technology Forum….

“I have at last found a sensible reason for the recent dire performance of the Street Whores parcel, or rather the Wirtz region.

The base cause is, as we suspected all along, our super-high script load, but that sort of goes with the territory!

However the recent appearance on a neighbouring region of an “AFK sex” parcel with a large number of avatars present but AFK, has resulted in a large increase in child agents for our parcel.

LL Defines a child agent as follows:
“The number of agents who are not on this simulator, but can see it.”

For whatever reason, recent software changes in the new Server Versions rolled out have radically increased the effect that “child agents” can have on a region’s performance. Also as the simulators have been given more and more work to do as things like animesh and materials came along so script load has become more critical.

The upshot of all this has been the dreadful simulator performance over recent weeks. When restarted, it seems the some servers have been less able to cope with the load than others, hence the apparent improvements, which have all been quite short-lived.

The solution to all this is yet to be decided upon.”

“Now if your region or parcel is on Mainland, there may be up to 9 regions around you, if you include those at the corners, so there are many places where avatars “might” be able to see your region. That will result in a heavy potential child-agent load on your region’s simulator! That, I suspect is our problem.”

And so it goes. The above text was in a notecard circulated to my colleagues in the Managers’ Group for the parcel, but as you will see it is a problem that bedevils many parcels on Mainland (and not only Adult Mainland Zindra, I should point out!). It is, I assume, a consequence of changes in some aspect of the simulator code in recent times but a solution, short of a major script cull, eludes me.

ETA 00:45am GMT 8th Nov: Today’s rolling restarts were a strange affair on LeTigre, since the initial roll was replaced by the code scheduled for Magnum regions, most places getting two restarts as a result. For the moment the Wirtz sim is performing much better. We’ll see how long that lasts!
FETA 7:00pm GMT 11th Nov: So far, so good. Wirtz sim appears to be performing acceptably still. As to the reason, goodness knows!

Another DDoS…now two!

SL has suffered two particularly persistent DDoS attacks in the past week. For one reason or another I was never affected, for which I count myself very fortunate. April Linden blogged about the first one after the dust settled:
https://community.secondlife.com/blogs/blog/6-tools-and-technology/
However, there was another one today, resulting in several bouts of mass logouts. We are told that SL, or LL, is not the primary target of this but merely impacted by the attacks on the ISPs they use to operate SL.
It seems to me that DDoS attacks are becoming more prevalent in this age of internet dependency, so we must trust to the LL staff to battle these service outages as and when they are able.
There are so many issues impacting various aspects of SL at the moment that it is hard to know what is happening. With Mainland lag and general region performance significantly worsening and LL working on this new SSP continent (are those new regions being added to the already heavily loaded Mainland servers, perhaps?) our SL is not very stable or predictable at the moment.

ETA Friday 2nd…make that three…or should that be four…this could be a series and it cannot be LL’s fault really, but SL will suffer as folk give up and wander off.

FETA Friday 2nd at 9:30pm GMT: And at last it’s my turn in the barrel! Yet another mass outage. I am beginning to think that LL and their partners really should be on this by now.
Addendum at midnight GMT: I did get online after about 20 minutes but a quick look at the online numbers shows SL was about 15% light in terms of online numbers. Now whether that means that a proportion of users still could not log in or simply 10% or so of SL just decided to find their entertainment in RL for tonight we shall never know, I suspect.

Maid to measure?

A little while ago I negotiated with my partner Rachael to perform a Maid’s duties for a short spell. The end result is what you see below. I confess to finding this outfit, achieving complete latex encasement, at the same time restricting and quite liberating. Liberating insofar as I have no expectation of being released from it any time soon. I have not seriously visited this side of my personality for quite a while and I was taken aback at the reaction…both mine and that of many others.

While I am content to admit to a kinky and submissive side to my personality, it surprised me to find that I reached my “sub-space” quite so readily, but now there I have no desire to leave it, at least presently. That decision will be my partner Rachael’s as my Domina.

Rachael’s Maid 2018

Rachael’s Maid, 2018 close-up

The reaction of others that have encountered me in this form has been somewhat surprising in that nearly all have been complimentary and even a tad envious of my restriction and latex encasement. I have a variety of outfits that I am required or allowed to wear and a range of domestic chores that I must perform almost daily, comprising ironing, dusting (as shown), sweeping and scrubbing. They are all well-scripted and animated attachments and allow me to perform my duties to my Domina’s satisfaction. The domestic chores equipment is all accessible by my partner and Domina through the #RLV folder of my collar. The level of personal restriction varies and is entirely the choice of my partner and Domina, for which I am perfectly content to endure as required.

I HAD thought I’d left this behind me, but I now find I have definitely not done so!
The outfit is from KaS (Corset Dress), NGW (Aphrodite Hood and Mittens), DHB (Ballet Boots), Hugo’s Design Mesh (Neck Corset/Collar), Marine Kelley’s MdlM applier catsuit and a Maid’s Bonnet I found on the Marketplace. Oh Yes, the domestic chores equipment is by Daisy Creations, who also supply my Maid AO. The hair is from No_Match with some modification by me. Some of the other bits are not visible, primarily a Happy Undead collar (sadly no longer available), (FireFlower Peanut 9rev2 scripted).

Annnnndd… free!

Right
Out of my Maid duty for a while thank goodness. Not out of latex yet though…by choice this time! Also I’ve had time to evaluate some of the DHB toys I mentioned.

Firstly that Armbinder. Now not everyone likes them so it is not for many, maybe not you, but for me it is the best I have tried for a mesh body. The various styles of straps are good and the fit, being rigged, is spot on. Customisation of the colour scheme is quite easy once you are used to the DHB system, which I admit takes a bit of getting used to. So does the nomenclature and scripting, even allowing for language awkwardness. But it works and works well.

The Hood is a somewhat different matter. The Bento hood needs some alteration to your head-shape and that is not particularly good, in my opinion. The unrigged “Customised Hood” is actually better for me in that it needed no shape alteration and while the fit needs you to remove your ears if you edit it a little narrower, that is easy on the Catwa Master HUD. With a bit of tweaking I have achieved a very satisfactory fit. It acts much like a posture collar (logical for a non-rigged item) and the blindfold function is via a HUD, which while it could be better scripted is restrictive but not overly so. Suits a fetish bunny like me! (NB: I have removed the stiff-necked animation from one iteration of the Hood and while it briefly shows a script error on locking and on login, that soon vanishes. This is a customization that you do entirely at your own risk, needless to say).
In conjunction with the Meow Fetish hood (which is actually a Catwa head skin) and the skin gloss turned up fully, the Hood looks fine.  My #RLV folders are now burgeoning. It’s worth mentioning that if you are reasonably adept at editing linked parts or selecting faces in edit, you can do a lot with DHB gear.
I have already edited my Hood to hide the red band, but that is a personal modification. I’ll include a photo when I get around to it, worn with some of Erik Hugo’s latest mesh and DHB Ballet Boots. Watch this space (if that’s your kink!).

Edit: OK as promised some pictures:

Armbinder, just with shoulder straps shown

Arminder with all straps shown

Close up of Customised Hood, with RR gag

View using the HUD

Overview, no HUD

Maid updated

Nothing massive, but I had NOT expected the huge increase in the DHB range! The Maid now has some rather nice lockable ballet boots, these are as good as I’ve seen in SL so far and while they owe a nod to Salid Sewell’s KaS brand for their style, they are not copies! One thing I have not seen before is a scripted hesitation in the walk, especially going up or down slopes and steps. If you have ever tried to walk in ballet boots you will know just how hard that is and striding out as one does in most AO walks in SL is just not realistic, so this is a bonus. By the way it is not a silly walking animation and it does not conflict with the Maid AO.

I found a nice moddable Maid cap/headdress on Marketplace for 50L$ and together with Narya’s upadated NGW mittens, the Maid looks quite good, I think.

Those using Maitreya’s Lara body and a Catwa head may find DHB’s mesh latex Hood good, though I am in no position to test it as yet! There is also a good-looking but rather expensive armbinder for Lara, if you are feeling flush!