meet miss raven blue

miss raven blueSomewhere deep down inside me there's some sort of frustrated fashion designer or costume designer or production designer or art director trying to get out...

Okay, if I'm being honest, it's actually not that deep down, it's pretty much just under the surface.

And I added the last two in because I don't just like to create things, I also like to shuffle around things that other people have already made, and put them together in new and unusual ways...

So it's no grand surprise that I love avatar makers and the like (doubly so because I've mentioned it on several occasions)... be they dollmakers, avatar creators like MiniEgo or Meez, making an M&M self, a Simpsonized likeness, doing a Picasso portrait or making a South Park doppleganger...

And Miss Bimbo is the latest in a long line...

It's more dollmaker than avatar creator, but it's in the same family...

I first heard about the site at the end of March when there was all this bruhaha because it supposedly was encouraging "girls as young as nine to 'buy' virtual dolls breast operations and facelifts". And of course, I love a good bit of media hysteria over internet sites... so I had to check it out...

But of course, because everybody else had had the same idea, the site had basically fallen over and gone boom, so it slipped my mind until this weekend...

You have to love it when the media gets itself all worked up over something, and only does a half assed job at reporting the facts, which then gets everybody else worked up, which then lets the media get all worked up again...

I was skimming some of the media reports earlier, and one particular line stuck out to me... "when the contestants run out of virtual cash they have to send text messages"... now, let's just look at the word "have" in that sentence... the dictionary defines "have" in this type of instance as "to be required, compelled, or under obligation"... but you don't HAVE to do any such thing... you CAN buy extra money by sending text messages... but you can also get a boyfriend and a job, since both of those will earn you money too... and I've always been a strong believer in never doing something that requires cash when you can get the same thing for free...

It reminds me of a whole storm in a teacup that was whipped up about the Neopets website a few years back when an Australian mother got her panties in a bunch about her son playing on that website because there were "slot machine" games... and you know, we must protect the kiddies from the gambling... but the kid had obviously only been playing on the site for about five minutes because he came out with a massive amount of garbage about how the site worked, and nobody at the "current affairs" program bothered to do any fact checking... but I digress...

You gotta love a good controversy though... it's the kind of advertising that money just can't buy... there's no way that they would ever have gotten this kind of media exposure without it. God bless a completely rabid and unfettered media...

Anyway, I'm not sure how much I really like the website... well I kinda do, I like the little "goals" you have to complete to get to a new level (which is also why Miss Blue has long, straight, blue hair... despite her name, it's actually part of the tasks on this level), but I'm not really fussed on the fact you also have to "challenge" other Bimbos at certain points to level up as well (although so I don't end up doing the "rabid media" thing myself, that only happens on five out of twenty levels)... partly because I'm still not completely clear on how it works, and partly because it relies on other site users playing ball with you, and that's always a big ol' pain in the butt, waiting on other people.

It does let me indulge in that fashion designer/costume designer urge, to a certain degree, though... as much as my "Bimbo Dollars" will allow anyway... and it's always annoying that the items you'd like to see in certain colours are never available like that (although stuff does keep becoming available as you level up)... I do like the ability to mix and match and layer and accessorise though... yeah, I know, gay much right?

Now all they need to do is create a "Mr Bimbo" with pretty much the exact same game play, but just different graphics and I'll be a happy chappy!

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