Otherworldly

We’re almost halfway into Hair Fair 2021 and now is a great time to visit. There’s gifts out in most booths and all of the sales donate a percentage to Wigs for Kids, so it is a perfect type to stock up on some new styles. Wasabi has two new styles out, each with styling options. I accessorized lightly with a couple of pieces from Cae’s retirement sale.

Hair Fair, one of the oldest events in Second Life, is back again after a hiatus last year. Just as before, the event raises money for Wigs for Kids; a percentage of each sale is donated to the charity. The event runs for two weeks, untill July 4th, and covers a total of six sims. The layout this year is super easy to browse through and the sims are very low lag as well. There are gifts from many of the creators and there were quite a few styles for men available.

The first hair that I am going to show off is the Everly updo from EMO-tions. I had already decided that I wanted to put together a vaguely 17th/18th century inspired look for the couple pose “To Live” from Be My Mannequin for the Anti-Event. An elegant updo suited the look very well. Other than that, I decided to raid my inventory for my outfit and the decor, the latter being a mix of items from Rustica and Libertine.

The ornate chamber basin from Fantavatar & Moonstruck, with two different washing animations, was the starting point for this scene showing a somewhat voyeuristic glimpse of a lady in her chambers. The “fire eater” fireplace is another great decor item from Fantavatar & Moonstruck. I sized it down somewhat to fit in this room in the Townhouse Cosimo from Del-ka Aedilis and I think it makes for a fantastic centerpiece for the room. The rather sheer gown is an older release from Junbug which sells the idea of a thin undergown very well I think.

A new round of Redeux is opening today and running from June 14th to June 20th. Remember the full Laketown build from Del-ka Aedilis that I showed off a few weeks ago? Now they are starting to release the individual builds from this set and the first one out is the Laketown Tavern and Inn. Available together with it at the event is the Tavern Table Set and the Medieval Dishes Rezzer and all three releases are at 25% off for the duration of this round.

Also shown in this post is the Sam hair from Wasabi, a unisex style that can be worn with and without a cap and that is available at the current round of Anthem.

Night has fallen over the desert. By the fruit trees and date palms of the oasis, a large, striped tent has been erected. There’s no sign of activity outside of the tent, but inside someone waits…

Beaches, in my mind, are best enjoyed in solitude or as a couple. Not the least because it means clothing is highly optional and that beats a wet bathing suit or bikini any day. So when Dutchie released a set of beach essentials for FaMESHed, I headed up in the sky to my Kingdom of Islands Solid Sky Landscape from Landscapes Unlimited to get comfortable with Ran on a very private stretch of beach. The clothing we left in our inventories, so there is some nudity in the images.

The sand storm delayed her and left few tracks to be followed, but eventually she found the site of the battle. But she was too late.

Be My Mannequin? is a pose store that I discovered quite recently and then was fortunate enough to get accepted as a blogger for. They offer single, couple and group poses of the “storytelling” variety, meaning they are great for building a scene around. That suits me perfectly, since I rarely have much of a need for straight-up modelling poses but instead want to show a moment from a story.

This particular pose included two variants for different shapes and I found that even though mine and Ran’s shapes tend to differ a bit from the SL average, the fit of the alternate version was very good. I also wanted to show how different a single pose can look depending on the angle, so I setup two similar shots from different angles.

Alia Baroque went all out with Renaissance decadence for the Ice & Fire event, bringing three gorgeous pieces from this Libertine that go beautifully together; the Optimo Dierum Throne, Gianicolo bench (free-standing and wall version) and Tales of Might divider. I cleared out one of the grand rooms in Fanatik’s Dungan Castle to make room for this setup and then Ran and I dressed in some of our favourite pieces from the Muses. Though not from the Ice & Fire event, I thought F&M Oblivion’s Sansa Stark-inspired hair was a suitable choice to go with my Lucrezia gown and my Fair Lady jewellery from Old Treasures.

Both the throne and the two versions of the bench offer several texture options for the seat, including marble and stone versions for the benches which allow them to be used in a garden as well. There are solo as well as couple animations and the latter include both cuddles and adult animations. The only thing I would have liked to see as far as the animations go are some more sits that work with long dresses, apart from that it is a fun selection. I particularly like the couple pose I used for the bench, which portrays them arguing.

Synergy Lab is currently running an Ice & Fire event, which naturally meant I was over there to check things out as soon as possible. Creators are allowed to use both the books and the show as inspiration. I would have liked to see a few more items that were clearly inspired by either (without infringing on any copyright) rather than being more generic fantasy/medieval, though that is always welcome as well!

Two creators that brought some very nice decor items were Del-ka Aedilis and Fantavatar & Moonstruck. The former has created a set inspired by the furnishings seen in Stannis Baratheon’s study on Dragonstone whereas the latter has made a safe that might even suit the Iron Bank of Braavos!

After the Fantasy Faire, one thing stuck in my head: the dragon (or, more specifically, the wyvern, since we wanted to be able to portray a Targaryen dragon properly) from Prehistorica would be a very neat avatar to have for fantasy photos. But should I wait to see if it would be released as an animesh instead of a bento avatar? I did start with the bento avatar horse from Teegle and I still think it is fantastic, but the animesh horses are easier to use for photos since they do not require me to have an alt on playing the horse. But after inquiring and learning it could be quite a while before any animesh dragons see the light of day, I decided to take the plunge and sent one of Ran’s alts shopping.

For the first outing with our new wyvern, we went to Del-ka Aedilis Laketown build, a whole town in a rezzbox. It is currently available at an introductory promo price for the whole build but the buildings will also be on sale separately soon. I definitely recommend visiting the display build, its beautifully setup. And despite what my pictures might suggest, it escaped the visit by the dragon without any fire damage or crushed roofs.

I love well-researched period clothing and accessories and with this hennin Old Treasures has really hit the mark. A hennin is the classic “princess” headdress, a cone or steeple, often with a veil attached. They are associated with the late Middle Ages, particularly with Burgundy and France, which is why I opted for a Burgundian-style gown from the Muses to go with it. This is an older release, so it has two general fitmesh sizes rather than fitmesh for specific bodies, but that works fine for gowns.

This time around, Enchantment offers us a look at the magical and whimsical world of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. To create a portal into this realm, I setup the Oberon’s Gift statue from Fantavatar & Moonstruck as a guardian by the Dolmen Experience Portal from Fanatik. For my outfit, I opted for Dreaming Thicket’s Fairy Ring dress and added some flowery antlers from Acios.

What is an “Experience Portal”, you might wonder? It is a new line of products from Fanatik that you can use to setup automatic teleports on your sim. You need to be able to enable an experience on your sim and then you load in one or more landmarks in a portal. If there is just one landmark, walking into the portal will trigger the teleport. If there are multiple, it will trigger a menu with options. The portals come in several different styles to suit different environments.

Tomorrow is your very last chance for this year to visit the wondrous realms of the Fantasy Faire. This may be my last post for the year, unless I manage to squeeze out another one tomorrow, but don’t count on it. For this one, I opted for focusing on a couple of builds available at the Faire to create a Viking homestead.

As soon as I saw the Alicorn from Teegle, I knew that once I had shown it off with its “out of the box” appearance, I would have to transform it into one of my favourite fictional equines. Imraith-Nimphais, the blood-red flying unicorn from Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Fionavar Tapestry. If you don’t know it and you love fantasy, please give it a try. Its one of the most beautiful, heart-wrenching series of books that has ever been written. Those of you who have read it will know why I included a dragon in one of the shots.

The dragon, of course, is one of the amazing creations by Prehistorica: The Dawn Kingdoms, who also created the whole of the Khol Dracys sim. I don’t think actual animesh pets are for sale (alas) but it seems for display purposes they turned their dragon avatars into animesh. And now that I saw that the avatar comes in five sizes, I have to get one (unless, of course, there’s a pet version around the corner…). But dragon or wyvern? Decisions, decisions, but I think wyvern to use for some Targaryen dragon photos.

The Fantasy Faire has been extended until the 12th of May, giving you a few more days to explore the gorgeous sims and shop for a good cause. I finally caved in and bought the gorgeous Noahne Barding from Tutto e Vanita for my Teeglepet Pegasus, which of course will mean that I know need to get a copy version of the Pegasus to have both winged and wingless copies around. You see, the Pegasus makes a fantastic baroque horse.

Together with the beautiful armour from Old Treasures, which happened to match one of the texture options for the barding extremely well, I ended up with a look that made me think of a conquistador making his (well, her) way through a lush jungle on the hunt for a lost city in the Seventh Valley.