Tuesday, September 14, 2010

At least these come with instructions

Recently, a dryad and her husband went off to a quiet place, in the privacy of their travels, they let nature do what she does best. No pretend clinics, midwives, doctors or expensive pretend packages. Just using the opportunity of moving in Real Life, to do a fade to black birth, the purchase of the best prim baby I could find and a few edits to my skin made it all possible.


The Prim baby I chose is what most prim baby manufacturers consider a sort of filler product. It's basically a baby, minimally scripted. It makes some unoffensive noises at random intervals. And does nothing. While my purchase is intended for the brief period of delivery and care of a newborn, This is pretty much all I need in a Prim baby.

There are several reasons people find prim babies annoying, or creepy. But some of the reasons *I* personally (a consumer of such products) find most of these products so despairing, is not just due to the spam, or the way the soviet baby plays you. It is the lack of care that go into these highly scripted, meticulously built systems.

I will give you actual examples of things I have encountered during demos, and being around gigantic pregnant barbie dolls. I'm not going to name product names.

[Prim baby] starts to feel tired and very sleepy

[Prim baby] whines cause her diaper needs to be changed.

[Prim baby] feels her tummy growl...is hungry

Now, I'm no spelling or grammar nazi (far, far from it) but I do draw the line at spell checking a product that took so much effort to sculpt, build and script. This must be done, otherwise you get tosh like you see above. Someone went to all that trouble, and didn't feel the need to correct these errors? Such as.

Baby is feeling tired. (and/or sleepy)
-surely no one is so stupid that they need both "tired" and "sleepy "to get the message across that someone needs a nap.

Baby fusses and needs to be changed
- seriously, we all know that means she shit her pants. We don't need such intimate details spamming an RP session. But even worse... "cause?"  Seriously?  We couldn't crap out a "be" for that "cause?"  not even an apostrophe ('cause?)

Baby: I'm hungry
-And surely there must be some way to convey an infant is hungry, without "Tummy growl" and an ellipse that appears to cut out the rest of the sentence. Believe me I am the QUEEN of over used, and inappropriately used ellipses, and I can tell you this is taking the piss.

There are plenty of other instances, where I have seen something that made me want to go put my old body back on. I remember once, a woman with a talking tummy landed with something of a thump, and her tummy responded

OMG (name) be careful! your pregnant!

Yeah. Apparently tummies not only know how to talk, but also know internet slang, but not the difference between your and you're.

(for the record, the only "tummy" I wore was one I made myself, out of a prim, and a very easy script that reminded people it did not talk, when it was touched. No one touched, unless I asked.)

Like I said, I am not a grammar nazi, in fact I am kind of the opposite of such. I figure if you know what someone is saying, it is good enough for me. You sort of *have* to be that way when you have real life kids with disabilities. But even so, my kids will get help with spelling and grammar if doing a report, or a review online. Which just goes to show... there are times when you need to pay more attention to these things.

I wish I could say my prim offspring search was over. I figure I can get more miles out of my delivery baby, because we mythological types tend to think we live and stay young forever. But eventually, I will need to upgrade. Zooby's could be the winner (If I purchase, still debating other options!). *shrug* They are at least somewhat modifiable, unlike the infant I purchased. In order to give her a crappy set of twigs and a pacifier, I had to create a separate attachment for lower left arm. It works alright for now, but not in the long run.