Illusions

Alright, so I'm officially the proud owner of Carnivale. I'm also now the proud owner of the 250 usd a month tier fee. This wouldn't be a problem at all for most content creators, seeing as a lot of folks are casual creators who use SL as a creative outlet and mostly recycle their income back into the world. I... don't. What you pay me is what I've got. If I have a lean month or the market is bad, I turn my thermostat down and eat Ramen Noodles. However, I'm far too attached the old place now to let it go or resell it, that's going to be the last resort if I find I really can't afford this sucker.

So what to do with the place? I've been batting around some ideas forever, but never wanted to act on anything that would take over the entire island, since I felt that Vanessa still owned half of it and would be coming back for it. Here's my most persistant plan:

I have some pretty obviously varied things in my store, and a vague "organization" with the many little divisions in my store building at the moment that separate them. Pirate stuff on one section, next to elegant English lady things, next to jewelry, next to animal horns. Hmmm...

Well, I was thinking about making that separation and that division even more drastic, but having fun with it, and having an entire "zone" or area, or "den" of each theme. So imagine on a part of the island is a black and white Burtonesque dreamworld where there's a haunted Harlequin Hall. Not too far away is a luscious forest glade to find the roses and fairy horns in. A quick teleport, and suddenly you're in an elegant old English tea room perusing millinery, and then poof, you're on the Indigo Rose checking out the pirate booty.

There are definitely pro's and cons to this, and one of the cons being if everything is in one place, it's easy to manage and it's easy to find. Having them in other places could definitely get frustrating if you're after something specific and don't know where to look, and it could also be quite confusing. On the other hand, some of the pros could be that working on each zone would inspire me to make far more into the theme, and invite other vendors to contribute pieces that I found useful in my own outfits. I just can't tell you how often I get asked "where can I get the clothing you wore with that?" or "where did you find the skin for that?". Imagine being able to go the the Harlequin Hall, get my belt, marotte, hat... then scan down the wall and have Doc Eldritch's jester outfits, Nomine's Pierrot skins, and Artilleri's Wild Wendy pants all in one place? Seriously, how cool would that be? It'd be a whole harlequin themed mini-store.

The way I've been planning it in my head is that the telehub would be taken from Kriss Lehmann's idea of images of each location, with a brief description of what they held. Keeping the hall as my example, it would show an image of the Harlequin Hall, with text beneath it saying "Harlequin Hall: Gothic jester accessories and clothing". Then you'd be able to simply touch the picture, and poof! You're standing there waiting for things to rez.

With all of those ideas of change, I've decided that my current theme and architecture will be preserved for my event hall and my mask building (possibly for jewelry and the angel wings, too). Sort of the masks, and everything that doesn't fit the other very strong themes.

I'd still like to get some other people in to help pay the rent though. I've thought of a few ways to have that happen: One possibility is charging rent to the vendors I invite into each themed area, which hardly seems fair since I'd be inviting them and telling them what they could sell, and paying me for that seems like a rip off. Another possibility is an idea I've been batting around, but finding unlikely because it would be a lot of work, is having a home be in each area. so there would be a Harlequin Hall and a Harlequin Home, and a Fairy Grove and a Fairy Den, and it would be a furnished prefab built to the theme. (Prefab being the house building itself, then possibly having all of the themed furniture be for sale separately). I'm not sure if this would even work as far as renting it out to someone, since being that close to a store doesn't allow much privacy, and that's the entire reason most people in SL even have homes.

I could also do an apartment building style build, with a collection of apartments (I'm thinking maybe eight), with a community sandbox and community garden, and the same themed, furnished, decor. So instead of having the rentable home right there with the store, it would be a showroom for furniture made for the theme, and the apartment building would be the actual place where people would be doing their living and socializing. I've been thinking that with eight renters, I could keep rent at something reasonable like 4500L for 250 prims a month (not including provided furniture). That would contribute a nice, sizeable chunk of the tier, and make things much less stressful for this little Siyubug.

So there's my plans! Let me know what you think, I'll write more down as I think of them, but that's the general sketch of my machinations >:)