Otherworldly

Sometimes, the best present might not be something you buy…

I am much too stuffed from enjoying the fruits of all the cooking done the last few days at our julbord to write anything particularly lengthy, but I should manage a little festive post at least. It all started with the lovely Aphrodite jewellery and matching shoes from Sax Shepherd Designs. It is texture change using a HUD and after a bit of playing around, I settled on this striking black and red combination. Then I saw a post on Flickr using the Giselle lingerie and Alexis corset from erratic which I had completely missed at Uber in November. Once I went to try it, I found to my delight that one of the sizes was fitted mesh based on the Slink Physique body. This is now without a doubt the best-fitting piece of mesh lingerie I own and I think it looks stunning. You still use some alphas around your midsection to properly simulate a corset and that works perfectly.

But what really inspired the specifics of the photo was the “A Libertine Christmas” gacha from Libertine. It features a very nifty scripted Christmas tree that you can decorate with the ornaments that you win. But you don’t need to fiddle around with placing the ornaments and you don’t need to worry about winning 50 red balls. Oh no, you just click the tree, select decorate, and after marking an ornament you have one, you hold down CTRL and drag it to the tree. You will then be able to active that ornament in as many or as few of the pre-defined spots as you want. It was actually quite a lot of fun!

I love the contrast between the frosty surroundings (and the streetlamp, for that Victorian touch) at the Neva River sim and the black and dark red of this outfit, which is based around a gown from Senzafine and jewellery from aisling.

Gothmas by Gaslight is now open, offering two full sims of dark, elegantly twisted creations with a christmas/winter feel to them. Nephilaine Protagonist has really outdone herself with her Pale Empress releases for this event so it is fitting that they are both names for goddesses, namely Skadi and Persephone. It is the latter ensemble that I am featuring in this post, with a bonus gothic gazebo from Souzou Eien as part of the backdrop.

Elymode is back. After a long hiatus, Elysium Eilde has returned to Second Life and reopened her store with new clothes, makeup and poses. I am showing one of the new lingerie sets in this post and it comes with a full set of appliers for Slink, Belleza and Omega.

I am also teasing a few releases that will be available at Gothmas by Gaslight when it opens tomorrow. This is where you’ll want to do your holiday shopping if you prefer it with a dark twist.

Time for another of those portraits inspired by The World of Ice and Fire. Both Ran and I are big fans of Dorne and we were absolutely thrilled that GRRM wrote so much about the region for the book. In particular, the story of how Nymeria led her people to Dorne and joined forces with Mors Martell made us squeal with excitement when we first read that part of the manuscript. So, of course I had to do an interpretation of Nymeria. There are a couple of great pieces of art in the book showing her as well, though in this case I didn’t really look at any of those.

Still waiting for something resembling winter to make an appearance around here. Maybe more snowy pictures in Second Life is the key to reminding the weather what its supposed to be like? It also gives me the opportunity to show off a new fantasy skin from PXL for We Love Role-Play as well as a set of seasonal pauldrons from ieQED for the same event.

I wish I was some place like this right now, in a cosy cottage surrounded by snow. Instead, I have am stressing with holiday preparations while it is distinctly green outside. Fuck global warming, I say. The only thing green around Christmas should be the fricking tree.

But oh well, at least I can get a little extra holiday feeling through Second Life. I went on a bit of a splurge during the Black Friday sales and picked up an enormous, heavily discounted (seriously, like 90% off) package of skyboxes and sim surrounds from Landscapes Unlimited. Some of them are getting on a bit in years whereas others use the latest features such as materials and there’s definitely some great options available for giving yourself some larger vistas to work with, whether just as a nice place to hang out or for photos. We’ve still not had time to finish the different environments on our sim (landscaping really isn’t one of my talents), so this will give some great options for different backdrops.

This is a post of last minute reminders for A Tattered Page, My Attic and for various Black Friday sales. We’ve had a busy weekend (culminating in a dog show today), but its a few hours until midnight still (especially if you’re in a different timezone from us).

I’ve been a very absent blogger these last two weeks, apologies! It has been quite a hectic month and somewhere along the line, my photo ideas seem to have been misplaced. But for the last week or so, I’ve been toying with a themed series of shots and after a few false starts (trying to find appropriate prefabs proved to be a bust) I think I know how to do them. The basic idea? Portraits of various characters that appear in The World of Ice and Fire, the book that Ran and I released together with George R.R. Martin exactly a month ago.

So, this is the first such portrait, showing Rhaenyra Targaryen, one of the two siblings who fought over the Iron Throne in the Dance of the Dragons. This portrait is showing her towards the end of her life, not long before she will be devoured by her half-brother’s dragon, Sunfyre. She wears a rich, but more modest gown and several pregnancies has left her plumper than in her youth.

Have you been to Enchantment yet? The event is more than halfway done, but there is still time to get those stamp cards filled out to claim the prizes that you want. For this round, the creations are inspired by the fairy tale Rumpelstiltskin.

I love getting new skins, not the least because it is always a good excuse for getting naked. That is, save for some gorgeous jewellery and a pair of ultra-sexy shoes. And once you’re mostly naked, then lounging about on a new bed seems like a really good idea… You see? It all comes together so nicely.

A Tattered Page is a new event in what has become a veritable ocean of events, but this one really stands out and deserves recognition if you, like me, love books. Each round is inspired by a book, but for this event the inspiration has to be supported by a citation from the book. I have certainly started feeling that many themed events are becoming increasingly filled with items that only have a very tenuous connection to the theme so this is a welcome change of direction. If I have read and loved a book, I want to be able to really see what aspects of that book that the event creators also have fallen in love with, that makes their items all the more special to me.

For the first round of A Tattered Page, the participating creators have read and been inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I admit, it has been quite some time since I read Frankenstein, so I am not as familiar with it as I ought to be. What little reading time I’ve had this last month has been eaten up by reading for a class, alas, so I wasn’t able to brush up on it either.

I am all made up of Slink parts today - hands, feet, body and even head - since there is a new round of My Slink Obsession in full swing. Adam n Eve has released a new skin, Charli, for this occasion and she is made for the Slink Visage mesh head (but you can also wear her as a regular skin). I am also wearing lingerie in the form of appliers for Slink Physique from Luxuria, though it is a regular in-store release.

I keep saying I won’t spend more on gachas and then of course something new comes along that I just can’t avoid giving a few tries. Fortunately, my abysmal luck at The Gathering last month did not carry over to the new round of the Fantasy Gacha Carnival. That said, though some stores had yet to setup, I don’t know that I will be playing much more than what I’ve already done (well, alright, there’s a few machines I will have to visit). I think the glut in fantasy products is starting to show and it is becoming harder and harder for stores to stand out, especially when it comes to gachas. There are some fantastic-looking pieces available, but they’re not necessarily wildly different from things I already have in my inventory.

My big prize, however, definitely is a stand-out.

If it wasn’t for foolish boasts and ill-considered promises, there would not be many fairy tales to tell. Rumpelstiltskin, the theme for the new round of Enchantment, is a prime example of both. As before, Enchantment is a stamp rally event, meaning that you purchase as many qualifying items from participating merchants that you want and each purchase gives you a stamp card. You then visit all the merchants to fill your card(s) with stamps and then you head off to the prize location to claim one prize per card. The event page has a visual key to all the prizes so that you can determine in advance how many cards you will need.