Otherworldly

It has been quite some time since I did a proper skin review with a detailed look at a body. There simply haven’t been much in the way of new skins to look at if by new I mean not just a new face on a previously existing body. I did take a few looks at how various favourite skin lines of mine look on Slink’s Physique mesh body but that’s the closest I’ve gotten to full skin reviews in a while. Until now, that is, and even then it isn’t a brand-new body as such, but it is a (largely) new-to-me body. I have been eyeing Pink Fuel for a while, tempted by the many body options supplied, but none of the faces have been quite to my liking. That is, none of the “normal” faces; I really liked the Drow skin which I did feature in an earlier review, albeit without actually going over the body in detail. I’ll be sorting out that oversight in this review where I will be looking at the brand-new group gift from Pink Fuel (I joined the group—which costs L$250—after seeing the preview of this face on Plurk) together with the Slink Physique appliers.

Now that Slink has brought out an update to the Physique mesh body, I really needed to get some less dressed photos done. The Tortuga Princess gacha set from aisling for the Fantasy Gacha Carnival turned out to be just what I needed, especially in combination with the Garden Pavilion from Dysfunctional Designs for Collabor88.

We Love Role-Play opens its August round today and it looks like a very strong collection. I’ve gone for an all-out fantasy look for my first post from this round, featuring new items from Lumae, Trap and Alchemy as well as a new hair from Wasabi Pills and horns from an earlier round by the Plastik. There are so many great accessories at the event this time that

A new round of Enchantment - the fairy tale inspired event where you collect stamp cards and stamps at the participating main stores that you redeem for exclusive prizes at a special location - is just around the corner and the theme for this round is Bluebeard. It is a quirky story as fairy tales go, with some very traditional elements and some unusual features that seem to be the resulting of legends and history being conflated. For my first photo for this round, I am showing a dress by Pixicat and a ring by aisling.

This post is the result of me nagging sachi Vixen to create a paler tone for her Genesis skin line. It showed up yesterday, in the shape of Taliya Fae and Taliya Goth, with appliers for both Physique and Visage. The Fae Visage HUD includes the return of some lovely flowery eye makeups that look just amazing on a mesh head and once I had put it all on I decided that for my next blog, I’d be an elf queen. Not a fantasy elf but a folklore elf, the kind that lures mortals to wondrous places beneath the hills. As it happened, a few pieces from We Love Role-Play‘s July round (which opens today) fit perfectly with what I had in mind.

A new round of We Love Role-Play is just around the corner and for my first post for the July round I am heading to Egypt—or something very much like it, anyway—courtesy of Kalopsia’s awesome Sand of Time set. Also from the July round is the toga from !gO! and the jewellery from Bliensen + MaiTai.

Mesh has unbdoubtedly brought a lot of fantastic changes to Second Life and these days I don’t wear much that isn’t mesh. I haven’t purged my inventory of texture clothing (too much nice lingerie) or sculpties (too much nice jewellery) but mostly it is all about mesh. Still, I probably wear less variety of mesh than most as I have not adjusted my shapes to fit the Standard Sizing system. I am simply too wedded to having realistic, well-proportioned shapes with a natural amount of body fat. Fortunately, my staple type of clothing (gowns, glorious gowns) is quite forgiving when it comes to not being perfectly within a particular size, so I have been able to stick to my usual style of shape while still moving into mesh clothing.

Mesh body parts, on the other hand, has been a different story. Oh, the hands and the feet from Slink are of course amazing and they do fit just about any size. And I have enjoyed wearing the Visage mesh head from Slink as well, treating it just like any other face variation (just with a much prettier profile than the regular SL head can manage!) that I might make for a particular skin. But breasts, butts and bodies? None of the ones on the market have appealed to me, being far too exagerrated even at the smallest settings and clearly made to cater to a very particular look (don’t get me started on gigantic butts that require you to have hardly any belly or body fat!).

That is, until today, with the release of Physique from Slink.

One of the things that mesh has brought is the ability to do really awesome cloaks and this is something that Damien Fate of FATEplay has embraced. This cloak is one of his offerings for the current We Love Role-Play round and since it ends in a few days I wanted to give a last reminder, because it is a truly awesome round! My gown by the Muses is also from there and yes, I know I have worn this particular design several times, but it is one of my all-time favourites and it looks particularly stunning in the Gold/Flame colour, inspired by the arms of House Martell. You may just see a few more shots this week inspired by Dorne, seeing as a certain upcoming episode of Game of Thrones has been on my mind a lot lately.

Adam n Eve has recently released two new skins with appliers for Slink Visage - Taliya and Shona. The latter is a darker skin and while none of the current heads are made explicitly for a black skin, Shona can still be used on both Emma and Becky with good results. In this case, I am using Shona on the Emma head and I paired the skin with this amazing outfit from Alchemy from the Fantasy Gacha Carnival.

Dysfunctional Designs has this fabulous Library Set out for the May round of We Love Role-Play and you really don’t want to miss it. It is packed full of different shelf options and could easily by used to setup anything from just a single shelf in a room to a full library. All pieces come with several wood options, so you can fit them to a range of rooms.

For a couple of more looks at the library parts, some other We Love Role-Play pieces and a gorgeous new hair from Analog Dog, read on.

Fantasy Faire is drawing to a close, so best get cracking to get that last minute shopping do! Although fashion fairs tend to have a significant gender imbalance, with nine sims full of designers, there’s a great deal of items for men who want to jump into the fantasy world. I felt like going green, for my part, as you can see below with these items from De La Soul, Wasabi Pills, Exalted, LaNoire Soleil Designs, and House of Rain. Besides Wasabi Pills, all of these designers are new to me, so that makes it doubly exciting!

The Palace of Tears is a stunning build that is part of this years Fantasy Faire. There are no vendors on this sim, but if you do the second part of the hunt, you will find yourself there. And even if you don’t do the hunt, do visit because it is a gorgeous build with some really haunting and creative decorations in the palace gardens.

From skin with the rough texture of stone to skin with the dark-grey colour of stone; with so many fantasy events going on, finding a good fantasy skin is not hard at all—the only hard part is choosing if you only want one. I was fortunate enough to get a chance to blog this particular skin for this round of We Love Role-Play, but though I opted to keep the whole look grey scale, I moved away from the traditional white hair of a drow.

Both the Fantasy Faire and Enchantment are still going strong so it is time for another little event cross-over. It seemed to me that the Enchantment releases from HopScotch and Lark would make a fine pairing with Alia Baroque’s RFL release for Fantasy Faire from Fallen Gods.

The Fantasy Faire has now been going on for a few days and many of you have probably had a chance to visit. If you are anything like me, you probably have favourite stores that you check out first. I even tend to go so far as to make a list of stores to visit for each sim, just to keep myself organised. But if you always head for the known quantities, how are you going to find those exciting new things? The “My New Shiny” Blogger Challenge is about encouraging bloggers—and everyone else—to branch out a bit. When I was on my browsing the sims during the blogger preview, I tried to do so with an eye towards finding something new that would catch my attention. That is how I came across Arx Loricatus. And when I needed an outfit to go with my fancy new sword, one of the review copies sent out seemed to fit particularly well. As it happened, it came from a brand that I’ve never blogged before either, 22769.