Genre: Olive Underworld

Darkness walks the grid for a little while longer as Genre continues with the theme of Underworld. Deamons, death, darkness, and everything that goes bump in the night is represented, from Death herself to the accoutrements of terror. The Underworld is Greek in origin, but since the days of Athens it has been expanded into a variety of religions, worldviews, and fantasy realms. Genre's Underworld covers the gamut, from traditional Greek dress to batwings and thorned horns and even the odd Japanese influence. I went more fantasy Christian, with the horns and batwings of a demon dressed up in a pretty frock.

The horns are courtesy of BlackPearl and curve out of my temples in a swirl of wires, bands, and metal leaves. I love the combination of natural and decorative, with triads of leaves all over the top and back, and long mental wires hanging down like branches and twigs. The crown is included - an inverted cross at the brow and hanging metal strings from brow to temples. In addition to the dark metallic texture, the entire headdress is materials ready and is cleverly applied so that it looks like metal gleaming through dark rust, catching the light in bits and pieces through a dark haze. My wings, on the other hand, are from Chimeric Fashions and have a matching horned mask I'm not showing here. The shape is a simple, wonderfully curved batwing accentuated with curls of olive. Each bone is left in shadow while the membrane thins to a dark olive brown. I especially appreciate how the curls leave gaps where the forearm bends down, and how each finger goes in a slightly different direction. I also was tickled when I realized the hue matched the browny-black of my headdress and the bulk of my Blue Blood dress with it's green accents. Blue Blood has long been a favorite of mine, and I'm so glad to see her step fully into the world of articulated mesh. In this case, it's a sleeveless, deep v-necked gown that beautifully mixes revealing with full. The folds and gathers at the waist are full and broad, meaning that it moves smoothly with my movements and looks natural even with wide stances. The fabric has a good heft to it as well, and fit my body perfectly. I also love the details, like the buttons at the bottom of the v-neck, and the grommets on the belt and collar. The fatpack is your purchase, so you get all of the colors along with a color changing HUD - offering eight riffs on this dress with the lapel, belt, and underskirt all changing color while the rest stays the same.

The demon is in the details, and for this look I went with a combination of eyes, cosmetics, and accessories for the succubus on the go. Eyes and lipstick both come from Senzafine, and have a fantastic pearly effect to them. I mismatched two of the six varieties and punched up the glow a little. One of the advantages to mesh eyes is that they can be paired hetero-chromatically, and I loved the idea of an off-color demon. The purple lip is shiny without being too obvious, the sort of glow one might get off of feeding from the life-force of the wicked before their inevitable descent into darkness. It stands out well over the striking Gauze base - also available with red highlights along the side for date-night. I wanted something simple but non-human, and this fit the bill perfectly. The final touch was this collar, stolen from the neck of Cerebus himself, and shared with the rest of us from Hate This. Being more of the brief than swanlike in the neck department, I often find collars a but of a trial to fit, but the narrow design of this one and the fact it is editable made resizing and placing a snap - and I only pricked my fingers a couple hundred times on the lethal-looking spikes! Unlike a lot of collars which pass on the verisimilitude for the extra-spikey, this collar not only has grommet detailing on the front, but the back has a perfectly rendered buckle, complete with slightly extended tongue and beveled collar end. I'm not normally a spikes kind of girl, but the delicate placement of the spikes, and the differences in length of spike around the collar, gives this a classy, polished feel.

Swing by Genre this week to pick up accessories to make your inner demon sharper and give her lips some of that pearly, soul-eating sheen!

Genre (Anime): Cherry Blossom Decadence

There are many themes which Anime has brought out of Japan, and one of the most evocative and enduring is cherry blossoms. They represent ephemeral beauty, not simply of the "Nothing gold can stay" variety, but of the swift death of the warrior in pursuit of her ideals. In Japan, early spring is the time of Hanami where friends and families gather together under the cherry blossom trees to eat, drink, and celebrate - a tradition that goes back for centuries. Gifts of cherry trees were given to the United States after World War II and planted around the Tidal Basin there among the monuments to presidents Thomas Jefferson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, as well as the memorial for Martin Luther King, Jr. There is nothing quite like that double row of trees - one above the rim of the basin in an endless curve, and the other reflected back as the water gently laps against the wall.

My introduction of the cherry blossom as something brief, beautiful, and redolent of death was through CLAMP, a famous quartet whose many stories made the leap from drawn material to anime. It's difficult for me to say which of their many creations is my favorite, but my love hops nimbly between Card Captor Sakura (one of their gentler Magical Girl series), Tokyo Babylon (side story to X/1999 whose focus is the love between a pure boy and a cruel man), CLAMP School Detectives (another X/1999 side story, completely unrealistic and enormously fun), Angelic Layer (a Magical Girl story once removed), and xxxHolic (a mind-bender of a series, and companion to Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles). Cherry blossoms take a central roll in Tokyo Babylon; the two main characters, Subaru and Seishirō, meet under a cherry in full bloom and death and beauty haunt their entire, destructive interaction. I find the melding of sweetness and murder enticing, and all of that is contained within a cherry blossom.

It seemed appropriate for me, therefore, to settle on cherry blossoms for my second look from this month's Genre. Vengeful Threads' kimono-inspired mini dress is covered in pink cherry blossoms on a black field. The wrap dress has a wide belt, reminiscent of an obi without having the same straight shape; the color-blocking harkens back to other traditions without hewing too closely to them. I love the long leg-warmer boots, and the distance between the hem of the skirt and the top of the sock is just wide enough to be evocative. I couldn't resist the lure of impractical clothing with weaponry, though, so I added a bamboo shinai from Souzou Eien - also available at Genre. This is a wonderful, basic training sword and comes with three included poses that can be switched between by tapping the sword. You can also do what I did, and have it go along for the ride as you pose!

I went simple for the hair, choosing a solid, unrigged mesh style from Chimeric Fashions, who typically does some rather wonderful masks. It's a twist updo with large buns in the back, and since it's a single object it's easy to resize to fit a variety of head shapes. I particularly appreciated the big buns as they gave me a place to tuck hair sticks from Distorted Dreams; the lavender was a touch less pink than the rest of my look, but it made for a softer counter-point to an otherwise bright ensemble. There are two versions - one with beaded dangles and the other without - and my only complaint is that I don't have them in every color of the rainbow! I'm a total sucker for hair sticks. They default to facing forward, but I found it easy to shift and reposition them to the back of my head instead, and they can easily be adjusted to work with any hairstyle. Adding a third lavender accent is a tiny, floofy and cute doll from Muse that I fit against the front of my head. The little flower and ribbon bedecked ornament might not quite fit with my ...ruthless presentation as a cherry blossom assassin, but my love of sparkles and adorability won out over all other considerations.

Chiaroscuro

It's been a little over a week and I feel like I'm finally settling again - though my apartment has become the usual weekly mess. I feel like I'm settling into blogging again, too, after several deliberate and inadvertent gaps. There is something about refocusing on tasks left undone that is like things coming into the light from darkness - like one of my favorite things in art, chiaroscuro. I made my attempt at it again this time, using projectors and a no light setting in Second Life, and while I still think there are some kinks that need to be worked out in how I'm using the light in world, I'm overall very happy with how they turned out - and I have a lot to do to make my projectors more useful in the world.

Part of what inspired this second attempt (the first is here, pre-projectors) attempt at chiaroscuro was this amazing dress from Purple Moon Creations, which has a unique shape and uses materials in order to amp up the shine.It catches the light beautifully, shifting the match any hue provided, and the shapes and enormous jewelry are incredibly striking. I paired it with a Ploom hair I've been wanting to show off for a while. As a long style - well past the waist - it requires a slim-cut dress and something dramatic enough to stand up to it's enormous waves, and together they are simply stunning. The large, unusual shapes cradle the large waves, and I love Ploom's ombre offerings - in this case a blond to black fade which emphasized the shadows. Due to the sheer drama of these two pieces together, I kept additional accessories very light - webby wings from Deviance which are my go-to- wings for anything Unseelie, a mask I just picked up from the Seelie Faire, a mesh leaf confections from Chimeric Fashions, and bright red lips courtesy of Madrid Solo.