Mynerva Summer of Love Skin
I’ve been sitting on this skin feature for about a week now. Yes I said “feature” and not “review”. I’ve been struggling with that term lately. If I take pretty pictures and tell you how much I love a product is that a review? It’s probably semantics, but at any rate I love this skin and I wanted to feature it and the exclusive makeups being offered at the Summer of Love fair before they disappeared.
There’s more to this post, but I’ll get to that after the pretty pictures.
*All three SOL makeups, each packaged with 3 brow colors x 2 cleavage options*
Single makeups may be purchased for 700L or all three makeups in a mini pack are 2000L. I’m showing the Butterscotch skin tone, but it’s also available in the Fudge skin tone exclusively at the Summer of Love Fair
SLURL to SOL Fair
Naked Pixels and a bit of a rant after the cut
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Earlier I said I’ve been sitting on this feature, and I had a perfectly good reason for it. You see, when Rhapzody Wilde (the designer of Mynerva skins) sent me the review pack and I began to snap photos, I noticed something…odd. There were these 4 funny faded white lines on the back of the right calf. So I tried on some of the other Mynerva skins I’d purchased, zoomed in and noticed the funny lines on the Plain Jane skin, and while I was zoomed in and put on the Barely There skin, I saw seams…obvious ones.
Now here boys and girls is where I go on a rant that may hit the nerve of another blogger who seems to pride herself on “skin reviews”. I had two options when I noticed the flaws on the skins.
1. I could realize that even though in SL where we can be neko, faun, demon, dragon, vampire or whatever our lil heart’s desire…on the other side of the screen we are all human. Humans make mistakes. Humans are imperfect. Being a designer or even a blogger does not exempt us from that. And with this knowledge, I could contact Rhapzody and let her know what I was seeing. Communicate with her directly.
2. OR. I could snap some pictures, plaster them all over my flickr and plurk for my fan girls to “ZOMG!! I cannot believe a skin designer would sell something with such a big mistake! She totally must have done that on PURPOSE!” in indignant horror at the travesty, and bask in the attention without giving a thought to the fact that the designer may have made an honest mistake without any opportunity of resolving it before having her work dragged through the mud.
Well. I chose Option 1.
Rhapzody saw what I pointed out, dropped everything she was working on and completely repainted the body. Then spent the time to go through her transaction logs and replace the skins for everyone who had purchased. We spoke very openly. She cared what I had to say and was very thankful I contacted her before blogging. Doing the right thing feels good, even if it doesn’t get you all the attention.
Oh and by the way, I’m “featuring” the Audri skins from ATOMIC next…
Excellent feature and commentary 🙂
Great job, Carissa. You remembered the two most important things – there are *people* behind the avatars on SL, and people are imperfect creatures. We all make mistakes. Let those bloggers who cast stones beware.
Carissa you are gold stars all the way. I LOVE the Mynerva skins. They go very nicely with your shapes 🙂
Bravo Carissa. What a wonderful outcome and you made that happen. Those skins look gorgeous and the face, wow. Now everyone is happy and the skin and skin maker get the kudos they deserve.
I think you’re one of the few bloggers i have respect for when it comes to blogging skins. I’m sure more than once you’ve wanted to draw horror and attention to little mistakes like a certain someone (coughcough) but you are very mature and it may “Just be a skin” but to be able to go back to the designer and say “Hey, i noticed a few seams and marks on the skin is that a mistake?” is a very good thing most people should do…but they don’t!
Thanks for the post and i look forward to seeing more skin ones 🙂
Thank you all for your kind words and support. This is something I feel very strongly about when it comes to being a good consumer in SL.
If you have a problem with a product, throwing a tantrum on plurk, bitching to your friends or blogging with venom is not the most efficient way to get your issue resolved.
We’re all people, but attention whores will be attention whores. *coughcough*
There’s sadly only one person that comes to mind when saying *coughcough* and i’m glad that, despite how popular she is, there’s better blogged (like you!) out there 🙂
You rock. And so does Rhapzody. Well done Cari.
Cari. I love you. I don’t get to tell you often enough but this little rant reminded me how much. <3
What do you do if you contact the creator and she declines the opportunity to fix her skins? Do you toss it aside and refuse to blog it, or do you blog it with an honest review?
Under those circumstances, I believe it’s a matter of personal preference. Any review that I do will be honest. Personally speaking, if I’m given items that I don’t feel have the quality or relevance to feature on my blog, then I won’t. They usually hit the trash bin of my inventory.
Hypothetically speaking, if Rhapz had declined the opportunity to acknowledge and correct the small issues I saw with an otherwise gorgeous skin, I would have blogged anyway, and noted the imperfections. I would have still highlighted the beautiful face and recommended the skin with a “buyer should be aware”.
The point I was attempting to get across with this post was that a very accomplished skin designer (not Rhapzody) has recently been criticized mercilessly by someone who considers herself an “esteemed skin blogger” for a mistake that was merely forgetting to turn on a layer in photoshop. This blogger made no attempt to contact the designer, and instead took the low road of attention whoring sensationalism.
In the case of the Mynerva skins, it was a similar issue as a missing layer. After speaking with Rhapz she realized that the 4 lines I saw were bits of the photoshop template showing through the skin. It was an honest mistake that she was almost embarrassed to let slip and determined to correct.
I make the distinction on my blog by featuring items from designers who care about their work and it shows, and from my perspective I tend to overlook designers and products who churn out items without focus on quality and originality. If that is their business model, I don’t condemn them for it, but I don’t offer them my support or approval either.
Thank-you, Carissa.