SVU Animations started in 2006 as a small furniture and aquarium store housed in
a basement on the mainland sim of Furness. Due to the store being located in a
basement, the name Variety Underground was chosen. Mliss Ristow, the owner of Variety
Underground, began working on a line of prim shoes to be sold alongside the
various other items in the store. Mliss Ristows shoes quickly became popular and
soon turned into the flagship item at Variety Underground. In order to keep up with large demand
many satellite shoe only stores were opened under the name Shoes by Variety
Underground, which eventually came to be known by the initials S.V.U.
As Mliss Ristow grew in SecondLife she began to create animations for herself
and her friends that filled the void created by the absence of truly hardcore
and fantasy role play style animations. These animations were placed into an
item for personal use running on MLP 1.0 that came to be known as the SVU Ruff N
Snuff bed. When the owner of The Faded Lotus theme play sim asked for a version
of the bed for one of the play areas there Mliss Ristow wrote her own bed
control script set that overcame many of the shortcomings found in MLP 1.0 and
released the product for sale.
The Ruff and Snuff bed was the first item of its type in SecondLife and demand
was overwhelming. SVU became the go
to place for hardcore forced style items and animations that focused on edgy,
and many times controversial, fantasy role play. SVU customers often requested
different styles of animations and devices and as these items were added to the
SVU lineup, the store grew.
In 2007 SVU purchased Animatum, a full mainland sim for its own exclusive use.
SVU moved from the mainland during the Linden Lab driven adult exodus
by purchasing an island sim and
maintaining the store there for many years. In
the years from 2007 – 2011 Mliss Ristow and SVU won many awards for both
animation and scripting, saw great press and write ups and maintained an
extremely popular presence in SecondLife.
In late 2011 Mliss Ristow was pulled away by RL events and SVU suffered. Without
new releases and direct customer interaction SVU squeaked by as a store just
paying for its own presence. In 2012 SVU was downscaled to a smaller half sim
location where it ran, and waited for Mliss Ristows return. In 2014 Mliss Ristow returned, rejuvenated, refreshed and ready to get back into SecondLife full time. SVU acquired RL office space on the US East Coast to conduct business from and the Thunderbird Island sim on Freedom Continent, adjacent to the renowned Bondage Ranch, was purchased and SVU began a comeback.... |