Some while back I posted a tongue-in-cheek "Victorian Manifesto" in which I called for fewer naked-vickie-in-a-temple pics and more fully-realized period pieces. As I discussed in the manifesto, and the threads that followed it, the difficulty is that one needs much material to make an 1880 London street scene (or a 2004 Ginza street scene, for that matter). To make it as easy to gather up the appropriate Victoriana -- horses, tack, hansom cabs, street lights, apple-sellers, urchin clothes, parasols, walking boots, gentlemen's wear, cobblestones, wrought iron, Bathstone and London Stock brick, opera capes and ermine trims -- as it is to gather up a sword, a temple, and a tattoo, we need to motivate and gather enough creators around the subject. It needs a central clearing house, a link farm, a friendly place where people can ASK for non-lingerie items and get immediate response. I thought the Victorian age might be a good subject for this sort of development. Thanks to the tireless efforts of, I think, a bare handful of creators frontier America is beginning to look plausible. Key parts of the infrastructure still need to be identified and built to make it truly possible for the recovering naked-vickie addict to come in, pick up the props and costumes they need, and render off a pic of a frostbitten old gold-panner in gold rush Alaska. Fuedal Japan is also coming along, but slowly. The big advantage it has (besides cross-over; a tea room is a tea room, whether it be in Edo or Mega-Tokyo), is the tireless Japanese Poser community (out of which has recently came a fantastically detailed historical castle set). Sorry, I'm rambling a bit. The shoes are not a problem sui generis; they are part of a larger shortage.