Persephone Loon

Now on Inworldz

2012-02-16T01:38:41Z

I've been involved with Second Life for almost five years now, but as time passes, it changes more and more from the place I fell in love with, in ways that are increasingly bad. I'm also no longer sure if it will remain an economically viable company, since its financial footing seems more and more shaky as more and more users flee.

And now I'm one of those users, as of today. For a variety of reasons, while I will maintain a presence in Second Life (for now), I've decided to open an account on rival service Inworldz. It simply seems prudent to no longer have all of my virtual eggs in one virtual world's basket.

I expect to set up shop in Inworldz after I become better acquainted with the place. It will take time to rebuild my product line there, but hopefully the company that runs Inworldz will be more merchant-friendly than Linden Lab has been.

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Happy rezz-day to me

2010-05-13T01:11:47Z

Three years ago I created my main Second Life avatar, Persephone Loon.

A lot of things have happened since then. The Second Life of today is fundamentally different from the one I first rezzed into, three years ago. Many of the places I loved visiting as a new resident are now gone. There are quite a few things I'd do differently, if I had the chance to redo them, knowing what I do now.

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The Ostara Hunt is on!

2010-03-27T20:59:53Z

Persephone's Grove is celebrating Ostara, the spring equinox, with a hunt! Search all the parcels of Persephone's Grove, the Merry Meet Inn & Club and Asphodel Meadows for 25 Ostara eggs full of prizes from the merchants here -- buy for 0L and get the goodies inside!

Hunt ends April 12th, so hurry over before the prizes hop away!

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Restricted search has made me buy more land

2009-09-27T02:47:30Z

I caved to the economic pressure of the new restricted Second Life search & bought some mature land to access unverified avatar customers. I'm setting up an annex location for my Paradise Blanket rental biz on the new mature land with newbie-friendly avatar items for sale there. Prior to the content policy change, that biz was a major income source for me -- it's been dead since I was forced to move to adult land. I hope this re-opening of a mature-rated location will bring in more cash. It shows in PG-rated search now.

Visit the new Paradise Blanket Paradise annex location at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Nikach/184/231/124 -- feel free to pass it on to any unverified account avatars you may know.

Off to sell some hair & clothes! (And hopefully shuttle a few avatars to my main location in Zindra . . . )

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Pomegranate punch for everyone!

2009-09-19T22:47:45Z

Persephone's Grove is now two years old!

~~ tosses confetti around ~~

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New location of Persephone's Grove

2009-07-28T10:39:23Z

I've updated the links list here with the new location of Persephone's Grove in Zindra -- http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dunstone/136/201/64 -- and I hope to see folks arriving there soon, since I've now allowed access to the public. (Even though the place isn't finished yet.)

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Persephone's Grove's original location now gone :(

2009-07-28T06:01:31Z

Had to clear everything off the original Persephone's Grove parcel in Eunhaeng, since the Lindens are supposed to reclaim it on the 28th. New locations are only partially built at present -- been very busy past two weeks clearing parcels in four separate regions.

A few stats:

Voting Station, v1.3 whispers: 15 was biggest voting day ever.
Voting Station, v1.3 whispers: 1493 total votes received to date.

Visitor Counter: 40504 total visitors since September 21, 2007. (This counter counts repeat visitors, not just uniques.)

TE Traffic Counter v1: Traffic @ Eunhaeng - <220.88107, 160.26009, 56.40093> was 10675 total visitors. (This counter counts unique visitors only.)

The original Persephone's Grove parcel was acquired on August 15, 2007. Didn't open for business until September 17th, 2007, though, since I needed time to build the place.

I think I managed to get a fair few visitors to my place, especially given that it was neither a free-sex place nor a place that had camping. Sad to see it go though, but naught I can do, given the change in Linden Lab's policies.

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Persephone's Grove is moving to Zindra

2009-07-14T04:21:57Z

After two weeks of waiting and three rounds of parcel-choosing, I finally have land in Zindra.

My new land is the entire region of Dunstone and the eastern half of the Morgaines Bluff region. Due to a quirk of the region, I can get Linden water within terraforming limits in Dunstone, which is why I wanted it. The part of Morgaines Bluff I own has both mountains and plain, so between the two regions I have mountains plus water, so there will be a nice amount of variation in the terrain.

I spent a good part of the day doing some preliminary terraforming and parcel division. The Merry Meet now has a parcel and the basic building on it and I've created Loon Lake near the southern border between Dunstone and Morgaines Bluff, creating something of a palisades there, where I plan on having a waterfall eventually.

For right now, the parcels are all ban-lined, so I can build in peace. I have to be all moved in by the 28th, so I'll be pretty busy the next two weeks porting over all my content and rebuilding on my new land.

I still hate this forced move, but at least I got a fairly decent swap for my old land, and it's all together, with no doughnut-holes cut in it by extortionists wanting L$10k or more for a 16 square meter parcel. I like being able to create lakes and streams too -- I have a set of ducks I can't wait to put out, as well as a mermaid to hide at the bottom of Loon Lake.

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Persephone's Grove SL6B exhibit now open to the public

2009-06-23T18:27:41Z

Second Life's official 6th birthday celebration is now open to the public. Go to http://slurl.com/secondlife/SL6B%20Uplink/194/88/23 to visit the exhibit for Persephone's Grove.

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Exhibit now has film!

2009-06-22T10:40:18Z

Voltaire has allowed me to show his short film "X-Mess Detritus" as part of my exhibit at SL6B.

~~ squees ~~

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Persephone's Grove SL6B exhibit built

2009-06-13T05:15:53Z

Spent most of today building Persephone's Grove SL6B exhibit. I received the 2048 I asked for, so I had 468 prims to play with. Last year I was prim-tight on the 1024 I had, but that's not a problem this time around.

The exhibit is similar to last year's, only bigger and better.

It's still based on the spiritual heart of Persephone's Grove, the stone pentacle ritual area. Just as last year, I have used the four directions to honor four major pantheons. East is Asian -- Buddhist mostly, but with a bit of Taoist Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan mixed in. South is Hindu, West is Celtic and faerie and North is Germanic.

The main difference this year is lots more toys -- literally. I added caber and stone tossing games and a 9-men's morris game, as well as putting out two yoga mats. There's also the Norse temple with scripted prayer candles I mentioned in my last post, as well as Tibetan prayerwheels that chant when spun.

The Greco-Roman pantheon is getting short-shrift, as is the Egyptian, but I had nice stuff already made for the other pantheons, from last year. If there is a SL7B next year, and I'm an exhibitor in it, I'll likely do a complete pantheon switch, for almost all the directions if not all. Probably Saami/shaman for northern trad or eastern, North American Indian for north or west, maybe South American Indian or Egypt for southern pantheon. More research would be needed before I could do that well, though, so it has to wait for now. I did put in a small nod to the Persephone myth, however, by having fields of flowers that can be picked next to a pomegranate tree with a fruit-gathering animation, so the Greek and Roman deities weren't totally written off . . .

As it is, the exhibit is pretty much ready to be shown now -- a few minor tweaks here and there, but it's ready for the June 23rd opening right now, as far as I'm concerned. This year's celebration is shorter -- just a week, ending on the 29th.

As part of my preparations, I created a scripted object to direct folks who click on it to this blog as well as its associated Twitter-feed. Hope it works in attracting a following here and on Twitter.

~~ crosses fingers ~~

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Persephone's Grove will be represented at SL6B

2009-06-04T20:23:43Z

Just got the email from Dusty Linden informing me that my application to have an exhibit at Second Life's 6th birthday celebration has been approved.

Not sure if I'll be getting the 2048 I requested, though -- parcel sizes and allocations haven't been determined yet. I had a 1024 last year, but was prim-tight, so I asked for the next-largest size this time arround. If I get it, I plan on adding a Norse temple to the Persephone's Grove exhibit, with scripted prayer candles for visitors to use.

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SL policy changes will force Persephone's Grove to move

2009-06-02T01:11:54Z

There has been a policy change in Second Life, with an official blog post on the Linden Lab site detailing the changes.

What does this mean for me and my businesses in Second Life? Namely, that I'll have to move them to the new adult continent now called Zindra, since my target market is kinky pagans and their friends. Given the re-definition (and emasculation) of Mature land, that's my only real option. Staying where I am on the newly-redefined Mature land will only open me and those who visit my land up to being the subject of abuse-reports, something I have no intention of dealing with. I'll be losing half or more of my current business traffic by doing this, but I'll be safe from having my account suspended and my land and inventory taken away because of ARs.

I've always kept my place relatively clean, with naughty stuff behind closed doors or only accessible by deliberately choosing to go to that area via use of a designated pay-teleport, as well as keeping things tasteful and more towards the vanilla end of the spectrum, but now Persephone's Grove will be lumped in with the XXX and snuff-porn places. Given that the new Mature land will only maybe allow some "sexy clothing" to be sold and the new word filter will force anyone using the "forbidden" terms to operate only on adult land, moving to Zindra will be the only viable means for me to continue to do business in Second Life.

Stay tuned for more information on the new location by reading here or following this blog's Twitter page. As of right now, the move looks like it will be happening towards the middle to end of June, but might occur after if the land-swap process takes a while. (Something that I expect to happen, given the number of places that will want to move to the adult continent to escape the threat of abuse-reports.)

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Twitter feed for announcements here

2009-05-17T20:33:05Z

I've started a Twitter feed for here -- Persephone Loon. Might use it to make mini-announcements or to act as a pointer to posts here -- will see how it works out in actual use later on. I'll be adding the link to the linklist here as well.

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Second Life blog -- initiation sequence engaged!

2009-05-15T02:03:11Z

I've decided to start a Second Life blog, using the name of my main avatar. As of now, I plan on using it for announcements of events held at Persephone's Grove, the Merry Meet Inn & Club and any other businesses I may have in Second Life, as well as any new products I may have created. I'd thought of having a business blog, for promotional purposes, for a while, since there are quite a few SL blogs out there and almost all are either business promotion or SL news with biz promos liberally added to the mix of articles.

I've recently celebrated my second rez-day, so with the advent of Dreamwidth it seemed a good time to start one, instead of having folks come by my other online journals, most of which have nothing to do with Second Life in the least.

I've uploaded a few icons and chosen a burgundy-and-black theme with skulls, to go along with the burgundy and black Persephone's Grove pomegranate logo icon. Since I plan for this to be a publicity blog, with only public entries, I don't currently plan on "friending"/"allowing access" to anyone and probably won't subscribe to anyone either. (Although I do reserve the right to change my mind in future, of course.)

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