Otherworldly

Yesterday, I turned myself into a man for the day and took a walk around the SL Renaissance Festival. Across the sims dedicated to the event, there are some beautifully atmospheric areas. This one uses custom builds by Harshlands which also are available for purchase in their store at the festival. The one I’ve focused on in the second image is called Baron and is a donation item where the proceeds go to the American Cancer Society.

The top half of my outfit is also from the festival, a very elegant long coat from Noble Creations. A shirt peeks out from under it as well and it fitted very nicely over the trousers from ContraptioN.

It is still a learning process to get the lighting just right to show off PBR as well as possible, but I am pretty pleased with how this gorgeous Teeglepet tack set from ContraptioN came out in my photos. The Carousel Trappings set is a beautiful rendition of the tack of a classic carousel horse, now available at the Dog & Pony Show for the vast majority of Teeglepet horse breeds. I decided to pick it up for the Pegasus, since a baroque horse suits my image of a carousel horse. The set includes both fallback and PBR textures, but of course I wanted to use the latter and the leather in particular is spectacular. I am also using a new coat for the Pegasus, the Glimmer coat from Hoofbeatz, also available at the Dog & Pony Show.

I picked up two more poses from Animosity after discovering their horse & rider poses through the Dog & Pony Show, to get a bit of a circus girl feel to these photos. My outfit is perhaps more Steampunk than circus, a new release from Petrichor & Ersch for the Engine Room (which has so many cool new releases this time around). The huge hud with texture options meant that it was easy to come up with a combination that suited the colours of the tack.

A final adventure for this year, as the Fairelands are set to recede into the mists today. It has been a wonderful experience as usual and as much as I wish the sims would stay all year around, it wouldn’t be the same. I already can’t wait to see what the amazing worldbuilders and other creators will come up with next year! I will leave you with a video from Avalon and of course credits to everything can be found at the end of the post.

The demonic steed, eyes glowing, raced along the narrow gorge, past thick, thorny brambles that seemed to reach for both it and the carriage that it pulled. Suddenly, it reared up, neighing shrilly, as it found the path blocked by a massive tangle of brambles.

Seydr and En Pointe welcome you aboard a collaboration truly fit for the spookiest of all months.  The Midnight Ride carriage, available at the Engine Room, and the matching Midnight Rider harness from the Dog & Pony Show, will let you hitch up a Teeglepet and go for a wild ride. Add in the Theia Eye System from Seydr to make your steed look demonic enough for the role and pick up a suitable coat, such as the Draconic from Nocturne Skies, and your wild ride will be ready.

The Fantasy Faire closed yesterday, but thankfully bloggers had a chance to wander the sims a final time today. I took the opportunity to ride through some of the sims on one of my trusty Teegle steeds and take a few last photos. I hope everyone has enjoyed the Faire and done lots of shopping and exploring. Until next year!

I love how this image came out, both moody and seasonal. I’ve been struggling a bit with ideas again, but I think it is partly because I have been trying to force myself to blog the wrong things. For next year, I will need to rethink my blogging commitments. On the one hand, if I don’t have some things I actually have to do, I can get too indecisive and just never get anything done because I keep waiting for the perfect idea. On the other hand, if I have to work too hard to get inspired it can be draining.

Anyway, when I saw this lovely dress from Faida and Velvet Whip at Redeux, I knew I wanted to do something with it. But I’ve wandered about in it for a few days now without just the right idea (see above), until I remembered the Starlight Lantern from Contraption that I picked up a few weeks ago. Off to my little winter landscape in the sky I went and then the magic happened.

It is high time for some seasonally appropriate witchery. The Come, Behold Me! pose from Be My Mannequin? is suitably dramatic and here it is embellished with little flames in each hand and a magical aura swirling up from the ground. The altar behind me is from ContraptioN and was acquired for a mere L$50 last Friday, quite the bargain, and it features several texture options for the altar cloth as well as on/off switches for the lights. The build is from a previous Nomad gacha, a stone building with tall windows that works great as a small chapel.

The striking Morticia hair from Magika got even better when I realised it offers the option of a separate colour on a small section of the hair. By picking the multitone white and black texture for that section I was able to get this effect of white streaks at the front of the hair, which I absolutely love and really wish that more styles had. In this particular case, it also sets off the Herne Crown from Bliensen + MaiTai beautifully. You will find this lovely piece at the Narrative even and it offers several metal options via a HUD.

I admit it, I have a thing for big swords. Well, any swords, really. It just looks so cool to be carrying one around and you always look great when posing with one. So when ContraptioN released the Mercenary’s Flambard for the Warehouse Sale, I went right over to grab it and insisted that Ran do the same. After all, while you can pose alone and look cool, a duel looks even cooler. Of course, we needed to dress right too. For Ran’s part that meant a trip to the Engine Room to pick up the amazing Bloodlust outfit from toksik whereas I received a review copy of the Aeon gacha from deviousMind, a very cool steam punk outfit that also is available at the Engine Room.

Today at noon SLT The Horse Show opens its doors, marking the start of the first ever event dedicated to the Teegle Bento Horse Avatar and the Teeglepet Animesh horses. You could say that I have actually been waiting for this event since before it was announced; I love themed events and thought that something focused on the growing Teegle market would make perfect sense. That makes me especially thrilled to be able to share a look at the lovely autumnal event space and the many vendors that are a part of the event. You will be able to get everything from a brand-new Teeglepet to awesome interactions for your horses and stables for many different tastes. I will definitely be blogging several more things from the Horse Show in the coming week(s), but for now I leave you with the sneak peak. You will find credits at the end of this post, as usual.

I am so excited! I just discovered that Mythril has finally released several interactive pose sets for Teegle horses and riders. There have been lots of pose sets for just the horses before, but these are among the first sets that include poses for the riders as well (this includes some sets where the rider is posing besides the horse rather than on it). I want them all, but I had to restrain myself a bit and started with the Action set which includes canters, gallops, rears and even an archery pose that I need to pick up a bow for.

For my dashing outfit I made use of ContraptioN (love the Crossroads Walker set with hat & mask) and lassitude & ennui and in the background you have the ruins from Fanatik (don’t miss their sale!).

Until Sunday the 12th, Dictatorshop is offering a L$1000 gift card for just 1 Linden if you are a member of their group. If you aren’t a member, it is free to join! Dictatorshop has a very large selection of adult furniture in various styles and of course both Ran and I thought the offer was too fun to pass up. We came away with a couple of pieces from their Smuggler’s Cove range, one of them being a pillory. As you might guess, there’s NSFW content inside this post, even if this first image is entirely safe (and shows off the new Indigo hair from Wasabi for Anthem very well.

I love it when an idea comes together and the result is a scene where you can feel that there is a story behind the picture. In my mind, I drew some very loose inspiration from the Wheel of Time as it could conceivably accommodate the two outfits we wanted to show off within the range of cultures and clothing styles described for the world. That would make my character an Aes Sedai, perhaps from one of the Borderlands given the style of dress, and Ran could probably pass as a nobleman of Andor. And yes, we used to roleplay on a pair of Wheel of Time MU*s, before A Song of Ice and Fire took over our lives, so for a while we were very immersed in that setting. In fact, the first characters I tried to create a look for in Second Life were my WoT-characters.

Yesterday, the inaugural round of Hullabazoo opened. I think they have done an excellent job of describing their event on their page, so I am going to quote them:

“HullabaZoo is all about animals and creatures.  It’s more than a shopping event and will have classes, a quest, contests, photo ops, parties, and more.  Best of all we’re raising money for a great cause!  HullabaZoo is an annual event and we would love it to become the BIGGEST creature event of the year - one that you look forward to, get excited about and look forward to it’s return each year!

HullabaZoo isn’t a mainstream fashion event with an “animals” theme so you won’t find zebra-print nails, or paw print T’shirts for human avatars.  You will find creature avatars, pets, rideables, props and mods as well as accessories and mods for those creatures.”

The chosen charity for the 2020 event is the Jane Goodall Institute. I’ve only had time for a quick visit so far, but it looks like a great setup and I am really interested in checking some of the things they are planning before the event ends on March 31st. During that quick visit, however, I had time to check out the new Dressage System from Mythril and that is what this post (and, more importantly, video) is all about.

Animesh has been on the grid for some months now, though only more widely adopted since it was added to the Firestorm Viewer more recently. A search through the Marketplace shows a growing selection of animesh objects. But the one I had been waiting for only came out yesterday, namely the first two horse breeds from the new Teeglepet range from Teegle. You may recall that I reviewed the Teegle Bento Horse Avatar when it came out over two years ago. I love the way it moves and the modelling of the different horse breeds, so I was very eager to try out the Teeglepet. As soon it was out on Friday, I hurried off to buy Maestro the Hanoverian and Sugar Cookie the American Paint Horse. To learn more, watch the video! Credits and some more discussion, including a brief comparison between the Bento Avatar and the Animesh Horse, at the end of this post.

For credits and some more discussion, including a brief comparison between the Bento Avatar and the Animesh Horse, continue reading below.

ContraptioN and Hotdog have a fanastic collaboration out at The Men’s Department, a set of fencing swords & poses as well as a set of fencing attire (not shown). This was definitely an excellent reason to do another video; even the poses are static it allowed me to show a much wider variety than I could in a couple of images. But of course I needed to take some cool shots as well, so you will find those after the video together with the full credits for all items worn and used. This post also features new outfits from the Dreaming Thicket and Stitched.