Shamelessly Grabbing the 10th Anniversary Gifts at TLC and the Freebies at Engine Room

So I shamelessly when to TLC (The Liaison Collaborative), one of the oldest events on the grid only for the 10th anniversary gifts -- I heard they were good.

I didn't buy a single thing there, partly because I'm on severe austerity but nothing really stood out (the way this green stove at Engine Room stood out from Cabalpier at Engine Room)

 

I put this up on it (this company is related to Cabalpier) but it is a limited edition sadly and gone now.

[LINKRAVE] Art - Dataholes N01

The gifts at Engine Room were ok but go and look 

I didn't photograph them. D-Lab had a metal bridge; there were some hats from tentacio and a few others that were ok; nothing that memorable. 

There was this Eclectica- pedestal - darkest which I wasn't wild about but I did get Eclectica's - Steampunk Globe lamps which were quite wonderful, shrunk a little here. Good lamps are so hard to find.

I'm a good customer of a lot of the house/furniture/decor merchants so I figure they won't begrudge me taking only a gift and not buying anything -- and there's no requirement.

Some merchants can't be arsed to provide a gift, and you know who you are. Shame on you when other merchants did.

Busy merchants often default to very lame gifts at these things, and I can't blame them given their time and energy constraints, but still, as we now know from the Bonniebots scrape, some of them are making major bank compared to us poor folks, so I'm not going to be guilt-tripped into buying at an event -- especially as the notion that something new at an event is discounted and therefore you have to "hurry" to buy it is largely not true. In fact, few things are discounted and you can get it some other day. In fact, wait long enough, some of the things you know you will see soon enough at a Weekend Sale so why bother to pay a bunch? And that is another reason that merchants likely won't put out gifts -- not only are they tired, they know their window to make anything like the value of their creation is going to close in 2-4 weeks, then they'll have to firesale the item for 60L on Happy Weekend or for 50L Friday.

The only thing I half considered buying but it was too expensive was this from Harshlands -- but the instrument isn't scripted and it looks like it might be headed for future weekend sale status.

Merchants that make the following types of gifts always earn my scorn: nose piercings, earrings, balloons, cages of any kind (for birds, candles, whatever), tattoos, picture frames.

I mean, when was the last time you went hunting for those fabulous earrings you got for free at Kustom9? Not.

So if someone bothers to make a nice gift, and what is more, something that goes with the thing for sale -- which incentivizes you to buy it -- good for them.

Like this nice table by Dirty Rat that goes with his library Chesterfield -- that goes with his library which I already got for a build I'm trying to finish, even though you have to use it in the sky, it has no backing, it's basically a backdrop. The chair was also too expensive. It didn't have a lot of anims altho it did give you a book which is nice. I already have chairs that do that. In fact, I have little incentive ever to buy a single other thing in SL given my bloated inventory of 245,000.

Another thing that busy creators will do when they feel they have to lay on a gift is use an old gatcha. In this case, the Bearded Guy put in a gatcha rare! Yay! That's legit, because now you have a mod/copy version of what was no-copy (I had this rare in fact, now I could sell it.)

This is Serenity Style's gift that goes with her adult shower -- a towel rack. I normally could use a thing like this but it's against my religion to buy anything that has any sort of chirpy saying on it like LIVE LAUGH LOVE. Nope, not for us.  Also another example of this awful SL propensity to put strings of lights on something that doesn't really need it and it's not Christmas, guys. Still, someone might want this and maybe you could remove the lights.

This was also a gift at a Cosmopolitan event which I already got but you can forgive a creator for recycling gifts especially as not everyone gets them in time. This is from Konoha.

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I almost gave this a pass as it hadn't fully rezzed (from Insurrektion) and I thought it looked suspiciously like balloons -- bah! But in fact, it is a nice set of embroidery hoops, which I'm always happen to have for decor, there aren't that many in SL.  I have the ones from random.matter, from Sorgo's gatcha (it's too bad he seems gone from SL) and assorted other creators but there are few.

That's all that stood out for me. I don't look at clothes much.

Oh, there were a few others I didn't photograph; Naturi had some pots I think, I will unbox them and see if they are worth keeping.

Oh, I actually went all the way to Planet 29 which is usually not all that, to look at this hair from Zao. And a warning bell went off in my head of a friend who said "Be sure to get the demo first". Because indeed, it looked too boyish and wasn't long enough for my taste.

The Dragon Horns from Spookie were innovative but I wouldn't wear them.

PPS

I should mention this darling animesh raptor from Dawn Kingdoms at TLC. He's great, 40 prims, however.

The Quills & Curiosities "Recalibrator" (a violent nasty wrench) which says "Throw on Click" in fact isn't clickable.

The Raven Bell "Asymmetric Cloak" looks promising.

 

Comments

[Scholar-gentleman]

Burcu S. Bakioğlu, a scholar, writes about "Prokofy's conspiracy theories linking [Woodbury University] to a higher communist regime." The latter, Bakioğlu writes writes, "played with these perceptions creatively, spectacularly, and subversively."

"Negotiating governance in virtual worlds: grief play, hacktivism, and LeakOps in Second Life" by Burcu S. Bakioğlu https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13614568.2012.746742

[Frieda]

You ought to show more respect for Mark McCahill. He invented the Internet. What did you invent?

[Prokofy Neva]

Mark McCahill invented a precursor of the Internet we know as the World Wide Web today -- it was called Gopher. I used Gopher in the early days. I'm not even sure he entirely invented it.

My reports on Woodbury University are journalistic blog posts, not conspiracy theories. PS What was the good professor doing at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum?

I've invented lots of things. Go inworld and see.