Otherworldly

It is (almost) that fantastic time of the year when the Fairelands return to us. Yes, it is time for Fantasy Faire 2021. From April 22 to May 9th, you will be able to enjoy 21 amazing sims! I will be blogging the Faire this year as well and I thought I would start with a little sneak peak from Nefekalum, paired with a bunch of fantastical goodies from a couple of other events. So dive in!

A bit of fashion, a bit of home & garden, all set against a beautiful sunset that represents a first for me—I bought this lovely sky setting and the matching water on the Marketplace. EEP has its issues, for sure, but sellable and tradeable presets are a great idea. This particular preset is Mesmer from DHS and if you want to try it out for yourself there is a demo.

The reason that I started looking at buying a ready-made sky was that I am still not as comfortable working with EEP as with Windlight and I wanted a really nice sunset for showing off the setup I made with the deck from EED Home & Garden from the Home & Garden Expo together with the boulders from Fanatik’s Land Shapes set. On the deck I have also got a few decor pieces from Headhunter’s Island, also for the Home & Garden Expo.

In my last post, I did a tour of Hope 9, one of the Home & Garden Expo sims. I teased the upcoming releases from Teegle and gave you a look at the other creators on the sim, such as RVi Design. Now the time has come for a closer look at the Horse Ranch Homestead from the latter as well as the Teeglepet Fjord Horse and Teeglepet Connemara Pony.

The Home & Garden Expo opens tomorrow, with nine sims full of fantastic creators and many, many vendors raising money for Relay for Life and the American Cancer Society. The event, running from the 27th of February to 21st of March, will make it ever so easy to get your house or your whole sim looking fantastic you give support to a very important cause.

I got the chance to blog the event and to start my coverage I did a tour of my assigned sim, Hope 9. And since Hope 9 is sponsored by Teegle, I did it on horseback. Look below for a video, a sneak peek photo of one of the two new Teeglepets as well as credits for what I am wearing.

A dashing nobleman visits his mistress and gifts her with a magnificent set of jewellery. She sits down at her vanity to admire how the stunning necklace and earrings looks on her, adding a dash of perfume while she is at it. Her lover looks on admiringly.

I love how this came together, the beautiful vanity from Dictatorshop serving as the focal point for the rendezvous. The store is very generously offering group members an L$1000 gift card for L$1 to cheer everyone up. There are plenty of decor-only items in the store for under 1000 and even quite a few with PG animations or a more limited selection of Adult animations. If you want the really fancy versions, with all of the adult options, they cost more but they also include a very large selection of animations so they are well worth it. There are several different furniture series available, to cater to a wide range of tastes.

In just a few days, Dutchie is releasing this great-looking wooden pool table with a choice of five colours for the felt on top. I had the opportunity to take an early look at it to film a short video of the PG version and of course I had to take some photos as well. For that, however, I used the Adult version, which adds several menus of adult animations to the playing, socializing and romancing options in the PG version. Still, the images included are fairly clothed, except for some hints of nipple courtesy of the sexy Izzy robe from Salt & Pepper and some partially obscured naughtiness. There’s definitely much more to be discovered on those menus. ;)

I used a new skybox from Del-ka Aedilis called Christmas in NYC to setup the scene in. Del-ka Aedilis primarily creates builds inspired by various historical eras so this one is a bit of a departure, though a very nice one! Its sleek, modern and spacious and the snowfall outside the windows together with the fireplace makes it feel very cosy.

I also have to highlight the hairpiece & hairbase from EMO-tions. I love these kinds of hairs, they look both fabulous and realistic. Oh, and the fabulous group gift skin from Clef the Peau, here worn on the lovely Lilly, the gift head from LeLutka.

I’ve gift-wrapped myself today in this little number from Voluptas Virtualis that I absolutely adore. It seemed appropriate since so much of what I am wearing are gifts from generous creators, whether at their stores or at the Winter Shop & Hop. And while the skybox and the furnishings weren’t free, they were bought at Apple Fall’s incredibly generous Black Friday sale.

This is also my first photo on the new Firestorm release, with EEP instead of Windlight. So far, I am finding it incredibly useful to be able to flip through skies using the Quick Preferences but also annoyingly slow to import windlight settings and difficult to use the new way of adjusting the sun and moon. We need batch importing and we need to be able to get and set exact numbers for the sun.

I have a love/hate relationship with gachas. It can definitely be a exciting to play, but it can also be really frustrating. Over time, the excitement factor has lessened, but sometimes a set crops up that brings it back. For example, Lux Aeterna’s “Feast for a King” at the Arcade. Lux Aeterna makes beautiful things that are very much in my wheelhouse when it comes to style and sources of inspiration and the two rares in this set created an immediate “must have” feeling. Fortunately for my virtual bank account, the beautiful skybox landed in my inventory almost right away.

Yes, its another blog/vlog with a horse. I just can’t help myself, it is so much fun to show them off in motion rather than just in static images. This time, my Arabian is wearing the gorgeous Emperor Tackset from Cheval D’or. Plus, I have a really cool hair from Mythril (which I may have called Magical Unicorn Hair instead of Mythic Unicorn Hair in the video) which also needs to be seen in motion as it is animated AND includes a HUD with hair poses. Now, as you will see if you check out the video, the riding around part did not work out so well on a somewhat laggy sim with fairly narrow passages. But you never know until you try! Well, I suppose I could have figured it out in advance, but since I did it at 11 pm, I wasn’t at my sharpest. ;)

As usual, I have included a couple of stills below and also the full credits. The sim I used was Ahiru, inspired by the Japanese Edo-period. Its quite lovely!

As I promised, I have a lot of things to show you from The Horse Show. This time, I thought I would focus on four new releases from Teegle that enhance your interactions with your Teeglepets, as well as some accessories for prettying up your horses. I am also featuring a new set of riding boots from Eudora 3D.

Now, before you dive into this video, I want to point out a couple of things about the hitching post and the grooming add-on. I attempted to use both of them at the same time but was unsuccessful in doing so. I thought it was because the horse needs to have the hitching post set as an animation partner to use that one and for the grooming to work I needed to be set as the animation partner. However, I was told in chat that it should be possible for a horse to be partnered to two things, so I am not sure if a) these add-ons were not setup to allow that or b) I was doing something wrong. I will update accordingly when I know more.

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.

October is upon us and Second Life is filling up with all things spooky. From the trio of witches in my earlier post, the time has now come for a dark queen. After winning a skin from one of the gachas from Fallen Gods at the Halloween Shop & Hop, I was inspired to give the annual Fallen God & Goddess contest a try. In my caves from Fanatik, I installed the Evil Throne from Kalopsia, and I dressed myself in the latest release from Senzafine for We Love Role-Play, a seductive piece perfect for a queen of necromancy.

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!).

A somewhat eclectic mix today, with everything from decor to new eyes. We’ll start big, though, with another building from Del-ka Aedilis. This one is from their medieval series, so it seemed to fit well with wearing a Viking-inspired gown by the Muses. The kitchen garden on the side is a separate item from the same series and can be combined with most any of their houses. The jewellery is more fantastical, a fairy-delicate set from lassitude & ennui that comes in a range of beautiful, shimmering mixed metals.

The braids are the latest style from Wasabi, which comes in a straight and a slightly windblown version where both the bangs and the braids have swung to one side. And then we have the eyes, the Oculi from FATE. Damien Fate calls them spiritual successors to the FATEeyes and that is fair enough, though they are quite different in many ways. The HUD is sleek and easy and even with just the included textures they are highly versatile as they tint beautifully. The HUD also allows very easy positioning vertically, horizontally and depth-wise.

There is also a free developer kit for making your own textures, something I am eager to have a go at. Their biggest new feature is properly speaking the realistically dilating and contracting pupil; it is perhaps not what excites me the most, though I need to play around with how it can affect expressions in photos and how it looks on video. Either way, I like these eyes a lot. They may not be the ultimate mesh eyes (for that, I would like BoM as well as appliers, but because these use special textures that won’t work), but they get close in that they offer both excellent positioning and easy customisation.

I did promise you would see more of the Teeglepet Pegasus and here’s a whole video, complete with lots of rambling from me as I attempt to fly a whole circuit of the Fairelands. If you just want the nitty-gritty of what I am wearing, I go through that at the beginning (there are also credits at the end of this post) and then you can skip through to see examples of Mythos in flight. Of course, you are welcome to watch it all, too! I’ve also included a couple of stills to give a good look at the Pegasus and at my clothing. Taking a focused picture of yourself while on a hovering Pegasus was anything but easy, but I am pretty pleased with the end result.

And, as always, keep in mind that Fantasy Faire is raising money for Relay for Life and the American Cancer Society. If you visit any of the linked vendors at the Faire, keep an eye out for the special RFL vendors that donate all or part of the proceeds of their sales!