Otherworldly

The Truth Collective is a collaboration between Truth and, at the moment, Faga and Wasabi. The Rowena style is by Truth and Wasabi, with Wasabi making the mesh and using Truth’s regular textures. The style comes with and without bangs and with the long ponytails either thicker or thinner.  Its a pretty cool idea, this kind of collaboration, and it will be interesting to see what other styles come out of it.

The outfit is called YingShui and it is from another NextUp collection by deviousMind.  Yellow isn’t usually my thing, but if you call it Gold or, as here, Saffron, I am all for it. ;) The collection includes two types of commons, the shorts & top shown here and a dress, as well as several rares. The tattoo is again Ceres from Nefekalum, but here I am using the golden base and the red overlay together.  The pose comes with the couch, which is by Roawenwood.

One can do worse for exotic glamour than taking inspiration from the flamboyant peacock, as Chandra Meehan has done for her Parvani set, available at the NextUp event both in a NextUp version and in a fatpack of all commons and rares. There’s 25 pieces in total in the set; 22 commons divided across tops & panties and belts & tails, 1 rare full outfit, 2 rare props. Two of the common sets feature peacock markings and I am showing one of these, “Lapis Peacock”, together with one of the props. The column includes two leaning poses for showing off your fancy new outfit.

I love the We Love Role-Play release from deviousMind, “Mistletoe”. Not only is it a sexy holiday dress, but the little scythe for harvesting mistletoe hanging from the belt is the icing on the cake. Perfect for the girl who wants to ensure that there’s mistletoe hung wherever it is convenient. Alternatively, if she has any Norse gods to slay and needs to fashion herself a few arrows. The set includes an unrigged piece of mistletoe as well, which you can spot in the background. The rest of the decor is from various holiday sets from Libertine, including the awesome decorateable tree.

Under a red sky cut through by lightning, the dark priestess sought to learn the future, calling up eldritch magic to do her bidding.

I love this EEP setting (Daves HD Thunderstorms 9), it is just the kind of dark drama that this scene needed. The centerpiece is the Silver Scrying Bowl from HEXtraordinary, with the magic effects coming from Dreaming Thicket. The hair from F&M Oblivion was first out at the Hair Fair and is now available at the Fantasy Room. And my outfit? Who else could it be from but Chandra Meehan of deviousMind. Its dark, sexy and full of attitude.

This dynamic pose from Be My Mannequin called for cool outfit and a cool location. I think I found it in deviousMind’s Yuna outfit and in Dystopian Nights, a small Blade Runner-inspired build.

The pose, called All My Rage, is available at Tokyo Zero together with two other new poses. They are sold as singles or in a fatpack with a 10% discount. The gun prop is included with the pose.

Yuna is sold in a NextUP vendor (or as a fatpack) at the NextUP event. There are two types of commons, the Silk Dress and the Top & Glove set, and three rares: Leather Corset, Silk Fan and Parasol. The dresses are gorgeous and elaborate, so you don’t need to spend tons to get a great outfit, and the rares are really cool additions.

This week, I was one of the lucky winners when DeeTaleZ did a social media giveaway of their latest skin, Hope. I used to wear DeeTaleZ quite a lot, but lost track of the brand a bit in the transition to mesh heads, especially when Catwa became dominant and I didn’t wear those heads at all. Now their releases are almost entirely for EvoX, which I do wear. Hope caught my eye and I entered into the draw and a few days later I was surprised to have the full pack including add-ons sent to me. Naturally I had to give it a thorough look, but first I had to go shopping for the new body skins. In the process of doing so, I managed to buy one tone for the wrong body…oops. Too eager to get setup!

Be My Mannequin has a set of poses inspired by The Nightmare Before Christmas out at Enchantment’s Burton-esque round. A strange choice for this summery scene, one might think, especially as I picked the pose with the snowflake prop. But I love the incongruity of this combination and the reminder that no season—or anything else—lasts forever. As usual the fatpack (called Weary King) of all three poses is event-exclusive and offers a 10% discount. Also available at Enchantment is the Helena hair by F&M Oblivion, a large and quirky updo very well suited to the theme. Here I went for a light colour and a more whimsical feel.

The lovely butterfly swarm is by deviousMind and available at We Love Role-Play in a range of colours. These can be worn with most bodies and include an optional particle effect of additional butterflies. I matched it with the butterfly and bee decorated April bikini by deviousMind.

My badly timed taste of Covid, which has left me with an annoying cough and tiredness as well, has meant that I’ve seen far less of this year’s Fantasy Faire than I would have liked. We’ve now passed the halfway mark, the Faire officially ends on the 8th of May, so I will have to get some serious exploring in the next few days. First up, I had to return to Opet, Alia Baroque’s stunning Egyptian-inspired sim. What better place to show off some of the poses in the Isis set from Astalianda as well as the spectacular Dai crown by Bliensen + MaiTai? The outfit is not from the Fantasy Faire, however, but a new NextUp release from deviousMind for the Secret Garden.

Don’t miss the chance to explore Opet as well as the other Fairelands. And while you’re doing so, make sure to find some donation vendors or donation kiosk to contribute to the fight against cancer.

Carefully, you peer into the clearing, in the middle of which can be found an ancient, stone-walled pond. The knowledge of who made it, and why, has been lost to the mists of time. But it is known to be one of the few places where one can easily spot the elusive fae.

Ostara’s Altar is now open, and there’s a shopping guide to let you plan your purchases ahead. The Olde Pond is by Candle and Cauldron and the lovely spring-green skin is another version of Arcana’s Fae-skins, this time the Cirice face in Clover. The fanciful outfit and matching accessories are a previous release from deviousMind which includes everything worn, from leaves to butterflies to antlers and ears.

The faerie leads you through a flowering field towards a secret door beneath a hill. Will you dare to follow her? If you do, will you ever emerge into the world again and will a hundred years have passed in a day?

We Love Role-Play is open for another round and I love how the releases from deviousMind and lassitude & ennui go together (you’ll see the latter in the second photo) for a dryad/faerie look. To find the perfect spot to photo this, I paid a long overdue visit to Ode and found it as lovely as I remembered.

deviousMind’s April outfit is a bikini made up of flowers, butterflies and bees. You can choose between three levels of coverage for both top and bottom. The Dryad shoes from lassitude & ennui are low, lace-up boots that look as if they’re made from leaves. Both the bikini and the shoes are for Maitreya Lara only.

Both poses used are from Be My Mannequin? The first is Pandora (includes the key prop) from the Pandora’s Box fatpack and the second is Vastness from the Star Gazer fatpack.

The Engine Room is open again and it may be even more amazing than usual, posing a serious danger to any virtual wallet. I’ve been by there a few times already and I expect a few more trips as I agonize over colour choices.

My first choice for what to feature was easy, however. Chandra Meehan of deviousMind has released the Agnes clock harness and leather top which works together with a number of her other releases. I opted for combining it with the Avery set as it included both hotpants and a pair of seriously cool boots. The end result might be called boudoir steampunk?

Be My Mannequin has released three single poses meant for gazing up at the sky; a stand, a sit and a lay. I loved the mood of them but struggled with finding the right setting. That is, until I recalled the Utaraa set from deviousMind for We Love Role-Play. These faceted crystals made me think of reflections and so I went and setup the lay pose, Vastness, in the water and started playing around with the EEP settings for both the sky and the water.  I am very happy with the final result, I think it conveys the sense of Vastness very well, almost letting water and sky merge into one.

I’ve featured the Ludus Magnus from Del-ka Aedilis before, but what better build to use for a bad-ass battle pose? This is another pose from Be My Mannequin?‘s set of poses for Enchantment’s Iliad and Odyssey round, this time using the included prop sword. The Ines set from deviousMind for We Love Role-Play is perhaps not standard-issue gladiator wear, but this leather-and-feather set has such a fierce attitude. The hair from Analog Dog is currently a free gift in the mainstore, in the Freeball (you need to cam around a bit to find it). I also like how the Ashlynn head from Slink came out with this expression from Vista’s Facial Bento hud.

To show off the Ludus more fully, I built up a small mountain with the help of Fanatik’s Lofoten set and placed it on top, with one of the sim surrounds from Landscapes Unlimited providing the dramatic backdrop.

The current round of Enchantment gives me creative anxiety. I love (read: am completely obsessed with) the Iliad and the Odyssey, which means that I want anything I do inspired by that to be especially nice. Hence I have spent days trying to decide what to do!

Then an idea presented itself as I tried out the set of “Build-a-Battle” poses from Be my Mannequin (available as singles or a fatpack at the event). I wanted to portray one of the Amazons, who came to the aid of the Trojans later in the war (after the death of Hector) under the leadership of their Queen, Penthesilea. With the hunt-gift helmet from Whymsical Marketplace and an earlier release from deviousMind inspired by the goddess of the hunt, Diana, I put together my look and went in search for a good location. Once there, I couldn’t resist this night-time windlight, just look at that wine-dark sea.

Cheval D’or has a gorgeous, circus-inspired harness out as a limited set for Valentine’s. I picked it up for the Pegasus and colour-coordinated it to my outfit via the HUD which offers both some preset textures and the ability to tint on top of these. The set also comes with two types of reins, static ones and a set for using with a cart.

Speaking of my outfit, that is another NextUp release from deviousMind, the GoodFortune set which has a bit of an Asian-inspired feel to it (though perhaps not so apparent with the pieces I am using). I am finding that this type of gacha-replacement works pretty well, though admittedly deviousMind has always had very fair sets where its easy to get useable items without needing every piece. For example, the SilkBlouse and Panties are in the same set and are perfectly wearable without anything else.

My hair is Wasabi’s latest release, out now at Anthem. The Pink hair is unrigged (and thus resizeable) and includes an optional hair clip. The skin is Selene in Milk from Poema’s Rahra-line which I really like on the Zora head from LeLutka.

Both of my poses are from Be My Mannequin; I have blogged these particular poses before but they suited the scene very well. The horses are using poses from Mythril.