Otherworldly

I do love an opportunity to bring my Teeglepet animesh horses into my photos. It isn’t always easy and I am waiting eagerly for more poses and animations made for posing with your horse, because it can be tricky to make a good composition without that. In this case, I used one of the built-in horse & rider poses and then a couple of stand-alone poses for myself with the horse looking pretty in the background in the new Dapple Rose coat from Cinnamon. This is a new release for Redeux (which just opened) and is available for both Teegle (pets and the avatar) and Water Horse a 25% off during the event.

For this post, I combined a new release from Slink and a pretty, wintery gacha from Fallen Gods with some beautiful seasonal decor items from Libertine and Roawenwood. The Slink release might possibly have called for a video, but I’ve experimented with just showing it with an animated gif. What is it, then? You’ll have to read on and see. First, I wanted to highlight the Snowstorm gacha from Fallen Gods, which you can find at The Liasion Collaborative. It is a unisex tattoo gacha with snow flakes in gold, white and ice (blue) for head and body which includes both Omega appliers and BOM layers.

I would never find the time to change up our sim with the seasons, but I do like having a permanent winter area and it is probably one of my favourite parts of the sim. I love snowy trees and the way light and shadow plays on snow. It was of course the perfect spot to setup the firepit from Roawenwood, so that I could warm myself by it while wrapped in this lovely gown from Junbug. To the existing forest, I added some variety in the shape of a few of the dead trees released by Dysfunctionality for 50 Linden Friday.

Sometimes, the right place for a bit of romance (alright, naughtiness) is a secluded corner of the castle, leaning up against a tapestry that keeps the cold stone wall away from you. After all, beds and couches can get a bit tedious in the long run. That’s when Roawenwood has your back (quite literally) with this new release for We Love Role-Play. The “Up Against the Wall Hanging Tapestry” offers nine different textures, 1 casual talking animation, 17 cuddles & kisses and 19 adult animations. I quite like the animation selection and it is a really nice way to have access to couple animations in locations where, for example, a bed would be out of place.

After a very busy first weekend of December, I am trying to slow the pace down a bit and enjoy the build-up to the holidays by slowly getting into a Christmas mood. This dress by Faida and Velvet Whip was not intended as a Christmas dress, but I would definitely like to have it for a Christmas party, especially in this frosty silver colour. The dress is will be available at We Love Role-Play when it opens in a few hours, together with a L$50 Christmas special. The earrings I am wearing are in fact the L$50 item from another vendor, Bliensen + MaiTai. Make sure to check all the stalls so that you don’t miss any of them!

My hair is a new style by Wasabi, available with and without bangs and featuring a pretty texture-change ribbon. It is out at Tannenbaum and so is the candle from the Plastik, which includes holdable versions for both your left and right hand as well as a rezzable version. A HUD provides plenty of texture options.

This weekend, Dutchie released four collar styles (plus a freebie leash handle that works with them), each packed with a carefully curated selection of bento animations. There’s 42 solo collar animations and 6 couple animations. The collars also include a bound walk, crawl walk, ankle lock and neck lock. Each style costs L$798. The best way to show the collars was with a video, so of course I brought Ran on to hold the leash and help me demonstrate the functionality of these collars. Hope you enjoy!

The current round of Romp ends tomorrow, so I wanted to squeeze in a look at two things from the event—a furniture set from Roawenwood and a pair of stockings from Luxuria. The furniture has poses for two and three avatars at once as well, but I didn’t have any extra bodies handy for these photos. The idea is that it is a “kennel” bed set (for girls, not dogs, even if my dogs would have liked the lower bed!) with solo animations that include various lays, a set of tasks (knitting, sewing, embroidering) and a set of beauty routine animations. The work animations auto-rez and attach props, but the beauty ones don’t, which I am not sure whether that is intentional or a glitch. There is also a “sisters” menu for two avatars, with hairbrushing and gossping, an adult menu for two female avatars, and a threesome menu (two females, one male) with cuddles and sex. The style of the set is pretty versatile, here I have it in a fairly rustic setting but I could see this kind of wood finish in a more modern room too.

Luxuria’s Heaven Thigh Highs (the writing on the back reads “this way to heaven”), which includes both appliers and system layers, comes in eight colours for easy matching with lingerie—or with nothing at all. ;)

I have teased it a few times already, since I have basically been wearing it all the time since I picked it up, but now it is time for a closer look at the new female skin from DNA. The creator, Brox Riaxik, is far from new to skins in Second Life and was previously behind the Signature brand. But with the advent of Bakes on Mesh he’s decided to launch a new set of skins that will take full advantage of the possibilities that BoM offers. The idea is to have skin bases, for male and female avatar, and tattoo add-ons for altering body type and facial features. Right now, you can get a pack of the male and female skin bases for just L$500, which is pretty insane considering that they include 64 tones. The pack also includes a set of “phenotypes”, variations in body type that you can overlay onto the skin bases for even more variation since these are also tintable.

Yesterday, I set about getting this post ready, uploading images to Flickr and the blog. Then, dogs and deadlines happened and here I am, a day and a half later with nothing written yet. And since the deadline is still hovering over my shoulder, this will have to be short and sweet. As I mentioned when reviewing the Quinta Palace from Fanatik, they also had a new castle out. In contrast to the palace, the Stalker Castle is a compact build with a footprint of 30 x 28 m and 170 prims.  There are three levels (plus the roof) and the castle is lit by torches and braziers. The beautiful lighting inside is what made me want to shoot it in the snow and even have it snow inside, which of course is perfectly plausible when you’re a snow queen courtesy of the latest deviousMind release.

Sometimes, even virtual floors need a good scrubbing. Of course, when your scrub bucket is made by Dutchie, you may end up being distracted from your work and things are very likely to get dirty rather than clean! Though there are two actual scrubbing animations and if you’d like to keep your roleplay safe for work, there’s a PG version. This, however, is the adult version, which has 30 couple animations and 2 sequences.

This past weekend, Fanatik released two new builds. I’ve done a video tour of the largest of them, the fantastic Quinta Palace. At 375 prims and 52 x 52 meters it is not something you easily tuck away on a small parcel. However, if you have the space for it, it would make a wonderful centrepiece of a sim. This beautifully crafted and textured build is inspired by the Quinta de Bacalhoa palace in Portugal. In the video, I walk through the two levels to give you a good look at the whole palace. I have also included some pictures below and of course the credits to what I am wearing in the video.

I have probably mentioned this before, but I am not much of a shoe person IRL…except when it comes to riding boots, that is. In SL, I am not much better, unless we’re talking shoes for roleplay looks. Like these gorgeous, embroidered shoes with knee-high, tied-off stockings that Adam n Eve has out at the new round of We Love Role-Play. They’re the perfect shoe to wear with a ball gown, but of course I wanted to show them off so I opted for something a bit more revealing. To setup the scene, I used a selection of pieces from Libertine, which was just perfect for the boudoir feel I wanted.

A few weeks ago, I showed off the five female heads from Slink. Now the turn has come to the two boys, Anderson (who was released together with the female heads) and Finn (who came along a little later). I brought in Ran to help me as well, since he has more male skins in his inventory. There’s not that many new Bakes on Mesh skins for male heads as of yet, but he found some nice options from Aeros and Birth among his existing system layer skins and I used a recent group gift from 7 Deadly s[K)ins.

Aeros still has their system layer skins available, both in-store and on the marketplace, and the creator (Pi Rain) states on their profile that new Bakes on Mesh skins are coming. Birth has most of their system skins still available and are currently updating various newer skins with BoM-layers. 7 Deadly s[K]ins has a few system layer skins available, including among their more recent male releases.

The Plastik has a new gacha called Karynis Mage out at the Epiphany, another massive set with lots of different options and of course tons of texture choice via the HUDs. To match the pale, opalescent skin from Fallen Gods I went for a frosty, shimmering look in my texture choices as well as an almost-white hair colour. The fantastical swirls of ice come from the “Of Fire and Ice” prop from chanimations, with the fire options turned off.

Today is actually our RL anniversary, so it seemed particularly appropriate with a romantic moment in SL as well. After all, sea monsters need love too! I have also spent a few days dragging Ran over to the world of Bakes on Mesh, so now he’s fully kitted out with a Slink Physique Redux body and the latest Slink Visage head for men, Finn. You will see more of the head in a dedicated review, but first we wanted to show off a couple of cool free gifts at Slink, the Monster Ears and Monster Teeth augments. We are both wearing them in this picture and it is as easy as putting them on which automatically hides your default ears and teeth. Slink also offers (but not for free) six other types of addon teeth and three other types of addon ears. We’ve got plans for those as well, so keep your eyes on the coming blog posts.