Otherworldly

There is a new round of the Epiphany on, which means elaborate gacha sets that you can either try your luck on OR in some cases buy as complete sets. The set from Chandra Meehan of deviousMind is called Azumi and described as “assassin silks”, which put all sorts of ideas into my head for how to photo it! I rather like what I ended up with, though I did have to use the skirt-less option of the dress for it to work with the first pose. But I think it really shows off the fabulous leather braces with their attached blades in a great way.

I just knew as soon as I got them that the two Christmas gifts from deviousMind and Violetility had to be paired together. A naughty candy-cane striped harness and a special North Pole? Perfect for some saucy Christmas fun. The Honey hair from Wasabi, a new mainstore release for the HUD-driven Naughty and Nice event, seemed like a nice fit for this look as well, with the braided pig tails and long bangs framing your face.

As soon as I saw the Frozen Kingdom gacha from HEXtraordinary, I knew I wanted to setup a kingdom for an Ice Queen. Around the same time, Chandra Meehan sent me the Magick gacha and when I tried it out and saw the snowflake accessories, it was clear what my Ice Queen would be wearing. I also picked up the latest releases from LORE at We Love Role-Play to build the gate into her kingdom.

There was just one problem. I did not own the Maitreya body and while many outfits do work on Slink Physique, this was not one of them. So, I decided to bite the bullet and pick up another body to be able to blog more widely. But I remain firm in my opinion that the hips, thighs and bottom of Physique Original are far better and more realistic. Physique Hourglass is a different beast altogether, though I am pretty happy with how I have managed to “tame” it. But, I digress!

When it gets colder outside, you need to do what you can to stay warm. The Naughty gacha from deviousMind together with this throne from Roawenwood seemed to me like an excellent way of heating things up. Of course, I had to rope in (ahem) some help from Ran, but fortunately he did not need much persuading. ;) In keeping with the seasonal theme, I added a fabulous hair with an optional string of lights from Wasabi as well as some additional decor from Libertine.

When you combine deviousMind and Roawenwood, you can end up with some pretty nice naughty results, like this saloon girl in an iron cage full of dirty dances. The Maeve set is the latest gacha from deviousMind, available at the Fantasy Gacha Carnival, and I just love all the ruffles on the bustle and the details on the bodice. It also makes great use of materials as seen in these shots.

Before sending me this outfit, Chandra Meehan of deviousMind asked if I was up for it, given what I said in my last post about spiders. I assured her that as long as the spiders weren’t animesh and crawling all over me, I would probably be fine. That said, there are a lot of spiders in this outfit! And I am not even wearing all of them here; there are a few more flexi add-ons, some applier layers (with or without blood) and some other hair/head ornaments (with spiders, of course). Additionally, there’s a nice accessory available for the Once Upon a Nightmare hunt.

We’re back home after a great weekend in Northern Ireland where we had been invited to visit Game of Thrones filming locations and the Winterfell Festival at Castle Ward. We had a very packed schedule so I am feeling a bit jet-lagged today even though it is just an hour time difference between Northern Ireland and Sweden. While Elio have been going through all the photos and videos from the trip sorted out—we will be publishing several reports on Westeros.org—I have been relaxing a bit in Second Life, photoing the Lightbringer gacha from deviousMind. As one of the things we did in Northern Ireland was to visit a cave, it seemed only appropriate to use the Fanatik Caves for these shots.

The roses on this harness from deviousMind gave me the idea of using the flowery wall decor from the Plastik as the backdrop. There’s a hardness to the roses on the harness, especially in black, that I think matches well with the metallic decor flowers. I also used a bit of metallic makeup from alaskametro and tried to play with the light on it in the closeup.

For Blush, deviousMind has a really cool gacha set out called “Unlocked”. The common item which forms the base is a chain harness with strategically placed locks. The rares consist of floating and wrapping ribbons (the floating ones are bento animated) which can be set to match any harness in colour and also has options for opacity. I knew right off that I wanted poses that were fairly dynamic so that the floating ribbons would make sense and after searching around in my inventory I came across the “Dancing Blades” set from HopScotch. Just what I needed!

Lootbox is opening today and I am giving you a taste of two new releases you will find there, from deviousMind and Luxuria. As usual, the Lootbox gacha will include lootbox rares that offer things like whole item sets, special item sets and so on, rather than just single rare items. I’ve paired the Lootbox items with a new hair release from Wasabi and a skin from the massive new skin collection at the Plastik. I also want to give everyone a heads-up about a price reduction for some of my favourite mesh heads, namely the LightStar heads.

A couple of days ago we jumped ahead into summer with temperatures that made sitting at the computer a low priority. Today is a little cooler, enough that I was inspired to do some photos again. This set features a mix of fantasy items items from the Fantasy Gacha Carnival and We Love Role-Play, plus an amazing hair from Stealthic that will be out on the 15th at Kustom9. I headed down into my caves from Fanatik again for the perfect surroundings, and added a touch of magic with these eerie swirls from the Plastik. I also got some more mileage out of the Mythril Role-Play HUD for putting together these pose combinations.

I wasn’t very old when I got my first book on Greek mythology and for a while I could recite some rather long lists of deities and their familial connections. I don’t remember all of it any longer but the stories remain some of my favourites. In most English-speaking countries, the Roman names for various deities and heroes are more commonly used than the Greek ones, but I always preferred the latter and you will occasionally hear me muttering “it is Herakles, not Hercules, dammit”. This gacha outfit from deviousMind, however, is gorgeous even though it is called Diana rather than Artemis. ;) Fact is that while the Romans did end up borrowing a lot of Greek deities and heroes, their own pantheon was quite different before many of the main gods and goddesses ended up merging with their closest Greek counterparts. So it might be more appropriate to refer to Diana and Artemis as “sisters” rather than exactly the same goddess.

At first, my plan had been to do a video at Skin Fair, looking at some of my favourite new releases. But time ran away with me and I did not have time before it was open to the public. However, there is one new release at the fair which definitely deserves a video to properly demonstrate it, namely the new Petite Chest Augment from Slink. To show it as clearly as possible, I have opted for staying topless for much of the video, which means I have had to age restrict it just to be safe. I show the augment on both Slink bodies and demonstrate how it reacts to the sliders.

When I first tried posting this entry, we ran into some persistent uploading issues on the site. As a result, I am posting this well after I already put up the images on Flickr, and more as a place-holder than an actual blog.

Now that I have started doing vlogs, I seem to come across opportunities for doing them on a regular basis. Take the Performer Chair from Dutchie (PG version here), for example. How could I not showcase this with a video? It is great for photos, too, but that’s the beauty of combining blogs and vlogs, I can do both. Video is also a great way to show off the rigging of mesh clothing, such as this new bodysuit and harness from the Plastik.