We in the NewsTeam would like to start the magazine with some new important updates from us. After a long and intense discussion in the NewsTeam and together with the Admins we have decided that the team is in a need of a change since we have noticed that the Virtual Popstar community is not interested in news and facts/informative articles anymore; therefore we have decided to change the name and the purpose of the team. From now on, the NewsTeam will be called “Tea Team''. We have a new badge that fits our new approach better and from now on our new purpose is “to spill the tea” which means we will now only discuss gossip in our articles. We hope these changes will be appreciated by the community since it’s something we've been working hard on and been discussing for a long time to make sure to make the VP community happy.

To celebrate our new approach we would like to spill the tea:
Rumours have it that BloomCissi and Atencia had a fight recently and are not talking to each other anymore (unless they are trash-talking each other). Our trustworthy source saw them arguing in a Discord server if it’s okay to have pineapple on pizza and apparently BloomCissi were strongly against that and insulted Atencia by saying “You are ruining a perfectly fine pizza with your disgusting warm pineapple!”. We are hoping they will bring the fight to the threads so we can enjoy some drama!

One of our most trustworthy sources told us that Libertas, who is in BT, NT and SMT, has decided to leave all three teams because they have decided to make their dream of owning a cat café a reality. Our source even sent us the message they received from Libertas; “Hi Jess, can you please remove my badges? I have decided that 2020 will be the year I finally make my dream of owning a cat café a reality which means I unfortunately can’t be in all the teams as well. I’m going to be busy baking, petting the cats and cleaning their litter boxes.” We in the Tea Team really hope Libertas is going to wash their hands before baking or else we won’t visit the café!

This months Member of the Month is Luminescence. She has been nominated due to her initiative with both the game weekend hosted by FT near the beginning of the month and the Hunger Game Simulator hosted by SMT spanning a couple weeks. In so doing so, she has helped create a sense of community while giving everyone something fun to do to take our minds off the unfortunate circumstances some of us are facing She's always a ray of sunshine and a pleasure to see in the forums.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
My name is Maria (but everyone calls me Lumi here), I’m 19 and I live in Finland. Science intrigues me and my dream would be to get accepted into medical school. On my free time I like to watch Netflix, play vp or look for funny memes.

How much time do you spend working on your teams?
It depends if it’s just a regular week or if there are any special, extra events going on. If I had to guess, I’d say 5-10 hours a week. Sometimes I might take extra responsibilities (e.g. those ”extra events” or helping other team members with their duties) so I wouldn’t be surprised if I spent even 15 hours during such week.

What motivates you?
Seeing people’s responses to events/threads I make. If the community likes what I do, it gives me a huge motivation booster to keep working even harder.

Another thing that makes me want to do something for the community is when people complain about being bored in VP. Often I come up with something little, such as The Game Weekend (shoutout to everyone who participated in it - let’s do it again some day!)

Do you think you'll apply to other teams in the future?
Definitely! I love my current teams but I’m interested in few other teams as well, hoping that I’d be given a chance to work for them one day.

Thanks Lumi for the wonderful interview.

If you know someone who has gone above and beyond this month and should be nominated for member of the month, please send a message to the News Team account with who you are nominating and why.

We got few smaller updates this month, which a lot of users were happy to see. The biggest of them was that on 10th March the background was changed to more of a darker artwork, featuring some stars or galaxies on the left side and an alien looking creature with human features on the right. The background was again updated the day after with some minor changes. Some users had for a while been complaining that the previous background was too light and uncomfortable for the eyes, and with dark mode on different devices, apps and websites becoming popular across the world, it seemed to be appreciated that VP now followed the trend.

The second noticeable update we got on the 10th is that the FC prizes have now been increased, while the entry fee is still the same. Now you can win 5100 pd, 25500 pd and 102 cr, instead of 3600 pd, 18000 pd and 72 cr which were the prizes for the three contests previously.

On 9th March females got a new manager set, which awoke some nostalgia for many users. The set is made by Solovey and meant to look like Candace Flynn, the older sister of Phineas and Ferb, from the early 2000s Disney Channel cartoon named after the two boys.


// New female manager set

March mega credit week, which started on 2nd March, included a total of 11 beautiful sets - 8 female and 3 male. The week featured designers Chalya, Mikkelrev, Ad0xa, Aeris, Lily, Moss, Lonika, Crown, Solovey and non-D Helmi. There were a variety of styles across the chosen sets this month, and you could get your hands on everything from a denim jacket and lolita dress, to a bag shaped as the sun and enough plants to cover your avatar, as well as two majestic fantasy sets by Solovey for the two most expensive female cr packages.


// €12 female by Lily and Moss, €6 male by Mikkelrev, €96 female by Solovey

And as usual, on the Saturday during MCW, which this month was the 7th, the monthly auction took place. This month, the four sets featured designers Lily, Crown, Solovey and Chalya.


// female sets: pd by Lily and Crown, cr by Solovey


// male sets: pd by Chalya, cr by Lily

It's been a busy period for the teams of VP, with no less than three teams hosting applications and finding new members to join them during this month.

First up is the Blogger Team, which hosted applications and subsequently had a Harry Potter-inspired bootcamp last month, before finally announcing their new members two weeks ago. In the end, two new writers and two new layouters were chosen to join the team. We would like to congratulate the new members, and we look forward to seeing what new exciting blog content they'll come up with!

Next up is the Forum Team, which hosted applications at the beginning of March. After the end of the two-week application period, the five new members were announced just over a week ago. Once again, we would like to congratulate the new members, and we look forward to seeing what new threads they'll be making!

The third team to join the action was the Event Team, which hosted applications for the first time in years. Applicants were tasked with either coming up with two new events, making a new layout or submitting a new design, depending on the position they applied for. We are still awaiting the results, so in the meantime, we would like to wish all applicants good luck!

This month the competition updates page will be pretty short since we only have had SMT’s two who wore it best this month.

This month both the WWIBs was published pretty late in March, the first one was published on March 16th and deadline was March 30th. In the first WWIB, which was hosted by the Instagram group, the female users had to use a red kimono and the male users had to use an orange kimono to dress up with. The prizes were some fabolous hairs, the female one is made by Solovey while the male prize is made by Dani. We wish everyone who entered the competition the best of luck!

The second WWIB this month was hosted by the Twitter group and it was a short WWIB which ran from March 23rd to March 28th. In this WWIB the females had to dress up by using a short brown vest while the males had to use a brown coat. The prizes are some cute dinosaurs made by Wishbone from the Dutch server. Good luck to everyone who entered this competition!

Corona
Just like the Coronavirus is on everyone’s lips in the media and society, so it has also been a topic getting a lot of focus on VP. There were a lot of speculation forums, as well as people seeking inspiration for what to do with their time when society as we know it is on lockdown. ForumTeam made a thread with official updates from around the world as well.

LE Weekend
Jess decided to try something new this month as an attempt to remove some of the backlog of unused sets sitting around on the server. There are countless of both old and new unused sets on our server that can’t be used for something like DM, HoF or WoF because they are already ig on another server. Therefore, Jess introduced LE Weekend. From 1 pm GMT on March 7th and until the evening on the same day, a bunch of sets were released in the shop, one set - or item - released every 30 minutes on the hour. If you want to see all the items released, check this forum FT made. The sets were unlimited and relatively cheap, whereas the single items were limited and relatively expensive. Unfortunately, there are a serious lack of male sets on VP at the moment, and that was also clear in this event as there were only two sets released for males.Jess is continuing this event by releasing three sets every Saturday for the foreseeable future. Those sets will be available in the shops for 48 hours.

Game Weekend
Together with some other users, ForumTeam’s Luminescence decided to host a Game Weekend. It took place on the 14th and 15th of March and was a weekend with games of any kind, from Monopoly to guessing games to raffles and everything in between. Everyone could host a competition, and all the comps were written up with their starting time in a forum to make it easy for everyone to keep track. Many people participated and it was a great success. Hopefully there will be more Game Weekends in the future.

Hunger Games Simulator
If you have been looking at the Hot Topics on the frontpage at all this month, you have probably noted the popularity of the Hunger Games Simulator. For those who don’t know about it, it is a website that allows you to host your own Hunger Games. You enter the participants, and then the simulator comes up with different scenarios and ultimately who dies and who wins. There have been countless games this month, a great deal of them taking place between the 20th and 27th of March, where SMT hosted a big Hunger Games event together with three users who have hosted a lot of games on their own: Azriel, Josten and Teabag. In that period there were roughly two games a day, and the winners of those games got prizes by SixSixSix for the females and Rowan for the males.

Calculate my score!