Otherworldly

The outfit I am wearing is called “Woods Queen” and is available from Noble Creations at We Love Role-Play. However, having done a fantasy shot in the woods for my last blog, I wanted to do something very different with this. I set about browsing the Explore Second Life flickr pool and came across the Chernobyl sim with its strikingly stark landscape.

I am still making my way through the LightStar heads and today I have Makeda to show you, a head with African features. As with all of the other LightStar heads, there’s a “companion” male head, in this case called Solomon. I do hope to show some more of the male heads as well but if it is a bit tough to find Omega skins for female heads it is 10 times worse for male heads. It may just have to wait for Bakes on Mesh to go live; in fact, I have tried several of these heads with some system skins in the project viewer and they work beautifully.

In this post I am also showing you the Maxwelle Chaise from the Plastik, the Fortuna bodysuit from Voluptas Virtualis and the Brooklyn hair from Wasabi.

The final weekend of the Vintage Fair is coming up and I thought I would show another favourite item from it, namely the striking High Council set from Roawenwood. It is perhaps a little more vintage than most, but certainly right up my alley. I knew I had to blog it as soon as I saw it and I love how it looks in the build from Fanatik’s Medieval Village set. To play the part of the lonely ruler, I opted to switch to a male avatar, which also gave me the chance to show off one of the male heads from LightStar as well as the male version of the Elvenne skins from the Plastik.

Lootbox is opening today and I am giving you a taste of two new releases you will find there, from deviousMind and Luxuria. As usual, the Lootbox gacha will include lootbox rares that offer things like whole item sets, special item sets and so on, rather than just single rare items. I’ve paired the Lootbox items with a new hair release from Wasabi and a skin from the massive new skin collection at the Plastik. I also want to give everyone a heads-up about a price reduction for some of my favourite mesh heads, namely the LightStar heads.

It is time for We Love Role-Play again, so it was particularly appropriate that I ended up using the Roleplay HUD from Mythril to stage this scene. I have had so much use of it since the Fantasy Faire that I cannot recommend it enough to anyone who takes more story focused shots as opposed to modelling shots. In this case, the story is one of a woman looking out over the sea from high up in a castle, waiting for a ship that does not arrive. The new items featured are from Senzafine, lassitude & ennui and Wasabi.

I had promised a proper write-up for these photos, but we were at a big dog show all weekend and I am still worn out. Add to that a heatwave that makes being at the computer uncomfortable and I will just have to settle for the credits.

A touch of whimsy with this setup from Noble Creations, the Muses and Wasabi, inspired by the fact that the hairstyle is from the current round of Enchantment and its Alice in Wonderland-theme. The Rusty Gate (available with green leaves or rotten leaves) and the low wall make for a beautiful entrance into the enchanted woods, separating them from the mundane outside.

The additional time allotted to the Faire this year has run out and after today the Fairelands may disappear back into the mists at any time. I have chosen to say farewell to this year’s Faire with an image from Aetherea. Thanks to tireless work by Alia Baroque, the sim was rebuilt and relaunched after the original incarnation was plagued by unexplainable lag. Eventually, Aetherea also found the balance between light and dark and achieved her final form. Alas, this left Fallen Gods with fewer releases than planned, but the striking Flow skin that I wear here did get launched and there will be more releases at a later date, including versions of parts of the beautiful Aetherea build.

It has been a fabulous 10th anniversary Faire, with considerable sums raised for RFL, and I am already looking forward to next year.

A week of Fantasy Faire blogging did a number on my creativity, because after we’d been off to the year’s first boxer show, I found myself unable to think of a photo for several days. In the end, I decided it was time to play around with our setup of Libertine furniture and props again. That turned out to be just the right framing for the latest release from Voluptas Virtualis, a zippered little number that doesn’t cover too much.

No, indeed, it is not. Fantasy Faire 2018 was supposed to end today, but the Fairelands will now be around until May 7th. Official programming will still end today, but you will be able to continue shopping, exploring, doing the quest and of course donating to RFL. I will be gone for a couple of days myself and when I come back I do have some non-Fantasy Faire blogging lined up, but I hope to show a few more favourites before the 7th.

To celebrate that today is not the end, both Ran and I went shopping at Silvan Moon Designs, picking up a nice set of RFL retexturings of a pair of her outfits which we both paired with Wasabi hairs. I also added a jewelery set from Acios and used the Mythril Roleplay HUD for the bow and the curtsey. The house and the furniture set are from Rustica.

As soon as I unpacked the Memorial Monument set from Artisan Fantasy, I knew I wanted to do something with it, but it took a while before all the pieces came together. However, once I received the Rihtual set from the Plastik as well as the Helianne headdress, I had an idea for how I wanted it to look. Of course, then it ended up spending an hour testing windlight settings and remodelling my surroundings because the framing of the shot just didn’t come out as I had imagined it. Sometimes it can be a bad idea to have too strong an image in your mind before you setup a shot and this was definitely one of those times. I finally arrived at something that I was mostly pleased with, even if it wasn’t quite what I had wanted from the start.

No Fantasy Faire post from me yesterday as both Ran and I were busy doing not just one but two LitFest events for their George R.R. Martin day. First was a presentation we did together (with the excellent Saffia Widdershins as moderator) about how we ended up collaborating with GRRM and some of the things that has resulted in over the years. At the end of it, Saffia invited us to also take part in her panel discussion on adaptations, which given the theme of the day was focused on A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones. It turned out to be a lot of fun so we were glad we stayed up for it. But it didn’t leave much time for blogging, so what you are getting today is a look at my outfit from the LitFest.

While I don’t roleplay in Second Life (instead, you’ll find me on Blood of Dragons MUSH), I am most definitely a roleplayer. I also like capturing what you might call “roleplay situations” in my fantasy blogging and I often find myself frustrated by the lack of poses for such scenarios. Enter the Roleplay HUD from Mythril, which offers a wonderful variety of poses and animations for roleplayers and photographers looking for something different.

In addition to the HUD, I also showcase Wasabi’s two new hairs for the Fantasy Faire as well as a neat outfit from Stitched.

Today it was time to flit through the woods on delicate fairy wings, discovering a clearing full of strange and wonderful flowers and vines from Adorably Strange Wares.  The beautiful Daphne dress from the Muses felt like something a fairy might wear and the autumn colour went nicely with the wings from Les Encantades. But a fairy doesn’t need to keep to one season, so the Gaia crown from Acios has more of a spring or summer feel with its lush blooms. My fairy-self also has a taste for other treasures and wears a stunning necklace from Bliensen + MaiTai.

Fantasy Faire 2018 is now open and the Fairelands will stay with us from the 19th to the 29th of April. I am starting this year’s coverage of the Faire with a vlog featuring the Fairelands Junction (built by Saiyge Lotus of Balderdash) and three of the new releases from the Plastik (in collaboration with Trap) for the Faire.

Typing is still a bit difficult due to my injured finger, so to give a sense of what awaits you at the Fairelands, I am going to quote briefly from the press release:

“In addition to the ten shopping regions, there’s also five whole Fairelands dedicated to various Faire events from Memorial Garden to the Fairelands Quest, from Literary Festival to Performance Stages, from Art Galleries to the Worldling Collection. This brings the Fairelands count of 2018 into fifteen sims, just waiting for you to come and explore them.”

I have also included a couple of closer looks at the skin, horns and eyes, but for any information beyond the credits at the end I refer to the video to give my finger a rest.