News

Posted on: Wed Jul 29, 2015 5:03am

Gwennafran (#22320)
It seemed like creative criticism took a whole leap within a month, I couldn't believe someone in the last round who said 'Everything' was terrible! & no one paid any attention to them, we always try to indirectly comment, but their comment almost set us over the edge. It was completely terrible, and completely mean. But since our last debate/fight on a newsfeed, we have reframed from saying anything towards anything/anyone.
But the recent spurs of hatred(if not exaggerating) has set us off! How can people be so mean!?

Posted on: Wed Jul 29, 2015 6:46am

Gwennafran (#22320) you're absolutely right, we should take a good, hard look at the statistics here. Now I made a chart of the past 9 ha contest entries, and I found some interesting results, come with me on this journey. now here's the image, (with a warning that it's huge) https://www.dropbox.com/s/r9njmkckoir3aza/winnersanalasys1.jpg?dl=0 . Green is first place, yellow second, and red is third.

Right off the bat we see that the "girly never places" aspect is quite subjective. In fact that's a major part of these. Right now the main leads for this month are a blue and white, a pink mix, and a rainbow/sparkle. In the group we don't have the most wide selection of colors, but a lot of the boxes get ticked.

The month before (which i did love, thank you for the suggestion though anyway) doesn't have much in the way of pink or rainbow and dominates on natural/other colors, so if the option isn't there, of course you're not going to see it winning. Same deal with the month previous. That one had the main winners being a blue and white, a gothic style, and a firery/other style. In the month before THAT we have a wide range, and what gets the win? A rainbow, a blue and white, and a natural set.

in the bird set past that we have overwhelmingly feminine designs, and the percentages aren't nearly as concentrated as we see in other months. Once again we see blue and white, a butterfly design, and a lovely teal dress as the ones that get chosen. the set past that is distinctly masculine-performative, and the more girly colors are nowhere near the place. we see a blue and black, a bronze, and a blue and orange get the wins. Past that are the unicorns. It's a natural/feminine mix, and the main results are solidly a rainbow, a pinkish, and a glittery set. The entire kitsune woman group pretty much is feminine, so it's no surprise that you get two pinks and... the lone goth one that got in. The last group of skulls has really only one barely pink themed set, and that one places, with the others being goth-themed.

when you get down to the numbers (which i made a much more compact chart here: https://www.dropbox.com/home/misc%20bits?preview=winnersanalasys+numbers2.jpg), even with this shifting around a lot, blue and white tends to dominate, with some combination of pink, sparkle, and rainbow also doing well. In rounds where there's a more narrow selection you're going to see a skewed set of results for obvious reasons, but in rounds with a wider selection you see these major themes come out on a fairly frequent basis. Far from lousy, girly is still going strong.


And that's what I have a bit of a problem with. See when I fuss about girly things, it's not because I want pink and fluff and frills to be all unceremoniously chucked into a fire, it's that I just want some representation. I like to dress up my HA in stuff that better fits the gender of you know, me. genderqueer, nonbinary me. A lot of custom ha stuff onsite is also only for female models, which just adds to the whole thing. Things in these contests HAVE to be fitted to both models, so at least I get a chance at some good quality stuff. Other people like feminine stuff, but might want colors that aren't so heavily coded. There's a lot of reasons why people have an issue with pink rainbow sparkles. You're absolutely free to respond to that by digging in and making more of it, but understand some of the reasons why there's people against it being so prevalent.

Posted on: Wed Jul 29, 2015 1:07pm

Conium (#39365)
Where has I said "girly never places"? What I'm reacting on is constant complaints that "girly are the only things winning".
I think we both can agree that just isn't the case. For a site where the majority of players are female, the monthly contest tends to get around a lot with colours.
But I absolutely agree, we have girly colour themes winning on a regular basis. Just not all the time. Not even half the time.

I did say pink almost never do well. Because, it really doesn't on it's own. I didn't realize that for you, even 5% of the set being pink is enough to turn it into a pink set. By this logic, set number 2 isn't the white set but the green one.
When I say pink doesn't do well, I'm talking about sets with at least 1/3 of it being pink, and preferable, the other colours should be neutral such as white or black.
Only, for you, a pink set is a set, where pink is present in some way. No matter how small. :/


I'm impressed that you actually bothered doing this research. Most people just scream "XXX always does this, or XXX never does this" without ever checking to see if it's the case.
I can't seem to view your second link, though.
Out of curiosity, BTW. Why 9 months? I'd personally have gone with either a full year or a half year. :P

Anyway, I got stats as well, to explain why I said the things I did. hopefully this link works.
These are old, and unlike you, I've placed my stats on winning sets only, for the entire run of the monthly contest. So our results differ some. I have focused on what actually won, rather than "what placed but didn't get picked".
Also, I don't even think I have "blue + white". Those sets are either under galaxy or under "blue + black + white".

Galaxy by many is seen as a girly category.
The pastel category is by definition pretty girly (all of them got pink and other pastels).
Rainbow is girly as well. (note: The black fox set with rainbow pattern has it's own category because it's mostly black)
Those are the three major girly categories in my sheet.

I took the liberty of placing the blue and pink fox-set under "Pastel blue/purple/pink" for my own sanity while originally doing the sheet. Mostly to get bigger groups. I should probably change that seeing how important pink are for so many people.
The lavender/light blue/pink unicorn is under pastel as well, which shouldn't come as a surprise.

My stats has undergone a lot of simplicity in order to create groups (major disclaimer). So I'll normally look at the main colours of a set, and for instance ignore if it has 5-10% of a contrast colour, but otherwise is one or two main colours. That means some of the sets you see as PINK, doesn't register at all as such in my stats, as only a small part of the set has pink parts.
The skeleton black/lavender/cream set this month, for instance. Got around 5% pink on it. 5% is not a pink set in my opinion.

Anyway, I just realized that I only got 89 sets in my spreadsheet, so over the months of updating, a set has gone missing as I updated the sheet. There should be 90.
So I guess I need to redo my entire sheet. Maybe this time around include a field with what sets are in each category. I know this spread sheet is mostly useless to you, as you can't see what I have categorized as what. X)

But this is why I'm saying black+orange(+sometimes white) is one of the most popular colours overall. It's sharing first place with galaxy-themed sets. (7 sets each, not counting stuff for this month that's not official yet)
It is perfectly possible that going for just a year (or 9 months as you did) gives less of the many orange + black (+white), Red/orange + golden, blue + black and black + white sets that are on my top.

Can I ask what your problem is with blue and white, BTW? It doesn't seem particularly feminine for me. I know light blue was seen as a feminine colour some 150 years ago, but by now, blue = masculine.

Posted on: Wed Jul 29, 2015 1:12pm

PS: I got all the winning sets collected here. That's what my stats are based on.

Posted on: Wed Jul 29, 2015 4:51pm

I think everyone's entitled to their own opinions, but I have seen a good few comments in the news posts about how "crap" stuff is just because someone doesn't like it, and both here and in other online places one sees the so called excuse that "I didn't mean it like that, it's just how I express myself" which is probably the worst excuse ever since it's just saying I'm rude and I'll keep being rude because I can't be bothered with learning good manners or showing respect to others... Anyway, not saying I've seen it here today :) Just saying I've seen hints in that direction when it comes to both news comments and forum posts.

Anyway when it comes to HA sets, it's mostly down to the voting members of the community. It's easy to see the crits as directed towards the artists (and sometimes they really do seem to be directed directly at us) but the truth is there are as many as ten different sets to choose from each month and the voters may or may not choose a "girly" one. Then there are ten colorations to choose from and I'd say there's a great variety (even greater if we could vote for all submitted colorations instead of "only" ten) but again, the voters decide if it's the "girly" colours that'll win. (And the black and blue currently in the lead isn't exactly "girly" is it?)

If there aren't enough neutral or manly sets, paint some. If there are too many pink or rainbow coloured sets, colour some of your own. Post suggestions for what you'd like to see, before the vote instead of after... Just a few suggestions.

Also there are plenty of HA item artists that would make male compatible or male sets if they were ever asked. I make all my items compatible with both avatars but my impression is that only women are buying and most of them like "the girly stuff". So... you get what you pay for? Maybe.

Rant over. Sweet Dreams.

Posted on: Wed Jul 29, 2015 8:50pm

Gwennafran (#22320)
You're the galaxy artist right?
One thing. THANK YOU. This design, I just can't *sobs* its so frekin perty i cnt type.
Uhm, well, people who comment rude and unnecessary things R JUST JEALOUS OF UR SKILLZ. I cheer for you, and can't wait for the design to win!

Because I know it will xp

Posted on: Wed Jul 29, 2015 11:37pm

So hard to choose. I liked the galaxy but I did vote for the opal-esque one. The galaxy was a little too sparkly for me. But coloured fabulous none the less <3
Everyone did a fabulous job colouring <3

Posted on: Thu Jul 30, 2015 8:48am

When does voting end????

Posted on: Thu Jul 30, 2015 6:35pm

Gwennafran (#22320) o.o that list wow.... it makes me sad that I only joined a couple months ago so wasn't able to get the older monthly sets when they came out, some of them are wicked beautiful! Must see if I can ever save up enough GP to track some of them down one day. Ty for that link and the work you put into make it.

Posted on: Fri Jul 31, 2015 2:37am

GlitterGirl (#59399)
Yes. Galaxy was me.
Honestly, it's over the top. I just wanted to see if it could be done. But I'm happy so many people turned out to like it.

Stark (#66143)
Only a "little" too sparkly? This set was made to be over the top, I really don't blame anybody for voting on other sets.

Taena (#66637)
On the plus side, a lot of those old sets are pretty cheap by now because of items that hand out random site items. A lot of the GP set items are still hard to get by, but most of the others are by now often affordable.
I got a bunch of oldish PP trunks, BTW. Most from within the last year. Let me know if there's any you'd like, I might have some unused in my inventory. :)