Genre: Rose Fairy in the Club

This Genre is Urban, and so I started my descent into the night by making up a neko club girl! I actually love the combination of ears, tail, and hair enough that I'm setting my neko alt up with them - I'm a calico with attitude!

White Egypt

Pixicat is having a retirement sale, which gave me a chance to pick up a few things I hadn't before, including this wonderful dress which comes in several texture styles, all of them recolorable. A number of other things I've already show off in the past are also on sale, and I really encourage you to go! Pixicat's style is elegant but edgy, sometimes the edge like the metal bodice and spikes of the dress above, other times it's interesting cut outs and lacing, and still other times its elaborate embellishment as home in a 1700s French Court as anywhere else. Always it is vividly itself. This dress drew me in particular because of the heavy, shiny metal of the bodice and how it wove into the softer leather and fabric pieces. One thing that mesh has given us is elaborate halter-tops, and this one is no exception, with the band passing through an O ring to hold the dress up (the band can also be festooned with silver spikes).

I'm a huge fan of hard/soft contrasts - I think it's part of why I like fades so much, with their extremes and the smooth transition between. In this case I went with shades only; something in the lack of color appealed to me, and I tried to stick to stark blacks and whites so that the spots of vivid color would stand out even more. I also decided to match shade and height as much as I could, or at least work in some alteration of shade, and thus on the white end of my skirt I've placed bright white shoes, and on the dark end I've alternated a black staff with white wings. The shoes are from Miseria, and I picked them up at a completely different event paired with a completely different outfit, but it was with some glee that I saw how well they fit the outfit here. I  wanted a very simple shoe with an elegant line and a substantial shape - in this case the extreme height of the shoe with it's narrow heel and the straight and simple curve of the toe and platform of the shoe combine well with what I was hoping would be an upper class but industrial look. 

My hair and accessories, in contrast, draw from an entirely different well - in this case a wink and nod at ancient Egyptian culture. The Fantasy Gacha Carnival jewelry and staff from Sax Shepherd Designs came first, and I spent some time trying to figure out the colors I would choose. I only had three color choices for the scarab, and so I settled on this Lapis Lazuri shade which reminded me of long distance images of the earth. A few moments of research on color significance in Egyptian art told me that green was associated with life and the river, and blue was associated with spirit and gods, and that seemed like it contrasted nicely with the theme of purity and death invoked by my white/black base. I've been feeling the pull of opposing forces in my life - the rise of optimism and the fall of failure - and the idea that there might be a greater purpose and a hope for rebirth appealed. I wanted to make the staff and jewelry seem of a piece, so that dictated the scarab design even though I had more choices for scarab on the staff. What I struggled with most, color wise, was the sun ball the scarab is pushing - I briefly toyed with it being yellow, but adding another color muddled things rather than solidified them; in contrast with the staff for my A Spot of Blue look, likely due to there already being blue and green in the mix, rather than a single hue of pink. Color combination can make or break a look.

I settled on this lovely shade of white to green, which helped to decide the colors of my hair - a new purchase from Taketomi. I actually saw a completely different hairstyle on a blog and went to seek out the store it came from, which triggered a shopping spree. I had looked up some images of Egyptian style hair, though I wanted to stay within my range of usually-blond, and I wanted it to be more modern; Egyptian hair tends to be tightly curled or braided with elaborate headdresses; I went for a smoother silhouette but wanted to include some thing braids and a bit of fluff. One thing I like most about this style was the locks of hair tucked back over the shoulder, which gives it some movement. The second I saw that Taketomi included a blond to green fade, I knew that had to be what I used, and I think it gives a callback to the sun stone both of my scarabs are pushing without being too obvious. My final, definitely obvious touch was adding the eyeliner from Zed Sensations which is outright taken from popular media inspired by Egypt and usually rendered, as they are here, on the bodies of white people. I paired it with a soft crimson splash from Mock, one of her recent group gifts given out during a flurry of conversation; I really encourage people who like naturalistic and subtle cosmetics to join the group and never look back.

A Spot of Blue

The Fantasy Gacha Carnival opens on November 4th (in just a few hours!) and remains open until the end of the month. Sadly, long before that The Trace will close on the fifth, so head by to enjoy it while we still have it.

The outfit I'm wearing from Cila will be released there - and almost everything I'm wearing is a common, which should entice those of you who normally avoid clothing gacha due to the difficulty in getting needed pieces to complete the look. The rares are the red corset piece (not shown) and the staff with the enormous blue stone. You can also mix and match between the colors, as they're in complementary shades of red and pink, and use the same decoration pieces. I kept to one shade for the full effect, though! It can be worn with and without the jacket, offering up varying levels of the theme, which is layers of scale skilfully rendered and colored. If you approach them from the side, you can see it isn't just a texture pattern, but rather looks like layers of cut and sewn fabric have been layered over each other. It's also all fitmesh, which led to interesting effects with my stomach in particular - Deoridhe's mesh form has a belly, which is extremely rare in Second Life, and enough saddlebags to smooth out the line from hip to waist. In the past, this has led to a problem with fitmesh because the mesh ends up rippling unattractively around those areas. With this mesh, however, I really liked the effect of a bowling out forward, and it made the bloomer sides look cute under the curve of the corset.

Recently, a few people expressed a desire to hear bloggers talk more about our styling choices and reasons for combining things as we did - and I thought I'd make a few notes here, since this is a very simple look. I wanted to center and highlight Cila's outfit, which is unusual and cute, and I used all of the pieces which didn't overlap, choosing a single color so that I could keep my shading mostly monochromatic with the single drama point of the blue ball in the staff. The high neckline of the jacket discouraged jewelry, and I decided to leave it off altogether. I wanted a cute hairstyle to complement the look where the hair would have bits of the same pink as the outfit, and I settled on Ploom's recent release, which comes with adorable headbands. Hair color was easy - the pink matched perfectly - and the only thing I struggled with there was how to tint the ears; as you can see I settled on the dominant shade of the look, white.

The cosmetics and nail polish was where I spent the most time - both in trying to match the slightly cool, matte pink and in the question of whether I wanted a second (or third) spot of bright blue. I ended up settling on a matte pink eyeliner from cheLLE (closed) - one of my go-to eyeliners because of the brightness of the color and the solidity of the shade - and layered two lipsticks, a matte shade from Damned to set the tone, and a gloss from Mock to finish it off. Ironically, the final effect is to make them vanish all but entirely except in closeup; in this case I wanted that, though for other looks or when I'm highlighting the cosmetics the focus will shift. Finally, I picked through nails I hadn't tried yet for something that had the right warm pink-white I wanted, trying on a bunch of different shades of pink and white until finally selecting a pearlescent shade from Frogstar. Like the cosmetics on my face, the ultimate goal for this look was to have the nails fade into the background in concert with the outfit, and I think this shade - a gold edged nailbed with a white french manicure - accomplished that well.

There's a part of me that always feels bad when I select a creator's work in order to fade into the background, harmonized with the main theme of the look I'm trying to make. That is part of making a look instead of just combining disparate elements, though - some must play a supporting role to the others, or it's chaos.

Rust in the Moonlight

I have been planning this post for weeks, ever since I saw the chest lace from Aisling at We <3 RP, and I'm so thrilled to finally have pictures so I can share it with you all, albeit later than I had hoped for. This look is a sort of unholy alliance of Aisling and Alchemy, and eventually they will take over the grid in a wash of amazing As, and we will all be kneeling in supplication and look really awesome. Starting at the top, this amazing headdress was a rare in her gacha at The Secret Affair (now closed), and I was lucky enough to get two of the Mother of Dragons headdresses, which is completely amazing, and then I was lucky enough to meet up with someone who had two of the Hear Me Roar headdresses, and by the end of our meeting we were both feeling very bouncy. The gacha isn't (yet?) available at the Alchemy store (which is lovely, even under construction), but hopefully it will be as I want many people to be able to enjoy this headdress/crown combo based off of a creamy colored dragon like Viserion. I especially liked the nose guard with the hanging chains, which gave it the air of a military helmet while retaining the delicacy of a queen. The curving horns around the face are also a lot of fun, though it can make it difficult to match with hair - I ended up focusing on bangless styles, which worked the best with the shape of the headdress, and found that I could layer it into my hair for verisimilitude, with little strands caught up in the tines.

The dress and armor pieces are all from Aisling, from We <3 RP and The Secret Affair (both closed). The Secret Affair gacha is in place at the Aisling Mainstore, which is awesome and tempts me to try once more for the gorgeous headdress that matches the jewelry and armor pieces. The Lady of Highgarden are available in black, gold, and silver in shoulder, arm, and hand armor (commons) a necklace for each metal color (rare) and a headdress which I believe is texture changing (ultra rare). The chestlace, which isn't yet available in the main store, has all of those metal colors plus more via a HUD system and is editable - something which came in handy when I was trying to fit it over the Quarth dress that had been available at The Secret Affair and hasn't made it to the Mainstore yet. The delicate open lacework matched so well between these different items that I simply couldn't resist trying to fit them all together, and I think I managed to do so pretty well. I had to resize the hand flowers (which were HUD controlled and not editable, but the HUD allows you to expand things along a single axis) to fit over my SLink hands, but the resulting effect was largely realistic and natural. I think the slightly lighter shade of gold added some texture and variety to the overall look. The rigging on the dress was well done with the fabric falling naturally, and the texturing remained solid in most reasonable poses - no dress likes a Captain Morgan pose. I also liked the varieties available - multiple metallic highlights, the shoulder flutters which can be various levels of transparency, and in the case of the exclusive release for The Secret Affair, an entire second set of textures for this aqua gown. I am really pleased with Aisling's continued work in accessories and their foray into clothing, and am vibrating in anticipation of their next releases.

My Sax Shepherd Designs shoes, which I've been unable to take off since I got them, are now almost finally available to everyone at the Fantasy Gacha Carnival - also known as Deo's Wallet Cries - which is open on the fourth. The shoes themselves are commons with the anklet as a rare, which I think it an elegant way of adding a little value to the rares without depriving people of awesomely colored shoes. They both fit over the SLink high feet, and like so much of Sax Shepherd's stuff, they come with a HUD which lets you change to bunches and bunches of colored jewels, really adding to it's re-wearability. I particularly appreciated the natural stone effects he included, which make the jewels appear burnished. Mother of Pearl is a relatively rare jewel effect, as is opal, but you can see how well they are fitted into the band of the sandals to really make them look natural.

( More pictures here. )

Credits: 

Skin: Izzie's, Irene
Hair: Magika, Bliss
Crown: Alchemy, Mother of Dragons
Ears: Illusions, Seelie Ears
Eyes: De La Soul, Rainbow
Eyelashes 1: SLink, Mesh Lashes
Eyelashes 2: Flugeln Brise, 05-A
Eyeshadow: Elymode, Metallic Aqua
Lipstick: Izzie's, Fuyu
Wings: Sax Shepherd Designs, Filigree Wings
Hands & Feet: SLink, Rigged Mesh Hands & Feet
Nails: A:S:S, Glamour Silk
Dress: Aisling, Quarth Lady (The Secret Event)
Chest: Aisling, Chestlace (We <3 RP)
Bracers & Necklace: Aisling, Lady of Highgarden (The Secret Event Gacha)
Anklet: Sax Shepherd Designs, Fairy Tale Tease (Fantasy Gacha Carnival)
Shoes: Sax Shepherd Designs, Fairy Tale Tease (Fantasy Gacha Carnival)

Pose: Don't Freak Out

Location: Rust and Stardust
Light Settings: Phototools, Moon Light 4
Water Settings: Mirror Water

Photographed by Deoridhe Quandry
Post processing: Cropping, only

That Hole Inside of Me

It's been an interesting, hollow week for me. Fantasy Faire starts in two days, and for the first time in three years I'm not part of the giddy, giggling chatting in the official group; I was removed from it a couple of months back, and didn't make the cut to be let back in. This had been the first year I stayed in the group - we were encouraged to at the end of the last faire - so being removed was tough. I'm not completely sure why I reacted to strongly to it, though; it's not the stuff - I've built enough relationships with people who are active in Fantasy Faire over the course of doing different events that I'll be more than busy item-wise - but it felt rather like being forcibly removed from a community one thought one would be an integral part of for some time to come. Fantasy Faire was the first event I ever applied to, and the first I was ever an official blogger for, and the first time I ever got review copies of anything. Despite losing a number of people to cancer, I've never felt emotionally connected to fighting it; I think the issue seems to abstract, or perhaps it's lost in the background noise of general wishing that the world were a kinder place. I do feel connected to the Faire itself, however, and the amazing worlds which came out of peoples' minds and spoke so strongly to the optimize and beauty found in people coming together for a cause. I'm also sad because it loses me a couple of days in reviewing the sims themselves; Fantasy Faire is astonishingly brief and astonishingly beautiful, and so having the extra time to really sink myself into it was a blessing. I'm feeling the lack of it now, like an ache.

I've been debating writing about this since I was removed from the group and didn't seem to receive a response from the Fantasy Faire staff (Second Life can and does frequently eat things); it seems so petty, and I don't want to be seen as petty and self-centered. I want to be able to throw myself into experiencing the faire wholeheartedly, though, and being honest about my emotional responses seems like the best way to sooth the sting of rejection I feel. I've been reading Brené Brown's work on Shame and how it deadens our emotions when we try to hide our honest reactions under a façade of perfection. I am someone who has deeply internalized shame and a lot of judgement about how I should feel and what I should do in order to be even remotely acceptable as a person. There is no way to face up to ones shame other than honesty - accepting myself as a flawed person who is worthy of love and care despite sometimes being selfish and petty. Being honest means being vulnerable and opening oneself up for censure, but weirdly, having typed this out, I feel a lot better. Even in the absence of any remedy, being clear and honest offers some relief and I think now I can throw myself enthusiastically into my favorite event of the year - Fantasy Faire.

( More pictures here. )

Credits:

Skin: Izzie's, Irene
Hair: Discord Designs, Robyn
Hat: Node, Oreor (The Fantasy Collective)
Ears: Illusions, Seelie Ears
Eyes: De La Soul, Rainbow
Eyelashes 1: SLink, Mesh Lashes
Eyelashes 2: Flugeln Brise, 05-A
Eyeshadow: Pin Me Down, Soft Shadows
Lipstick: Beauty Freak, Liquid Metal
Wings: Deviance, Sidhe
Hands & Feet: SLink, Rigged Mesh Hands & Feet
Nails: A:S:S, Superglitter
Top: Sassy, Bliss Halter Top (Hunt Prize)
Corset: Sassy, Gramercy Leather Corset (Hunt Prize)
Pants: Sassy, Tribeca Leather Pants (Hunt Prize)
Anklet: Sax Shepherd Designs, Fairy Tale Tease (Fantasy Gacha Carnival)
Shoes: Sax Shepherd Designs, Fairy Tale Tease (Fantasy Gacha Carnival)

Poses: Grafica

Location: Black Spot
Light Settings: Phototools, Horizon Building Light
Water Settings: Mirror Water

Photographed by Deoridhe Quandry
Post processing: Cropping, only

Fantasy Gatcha Festival: Of Gatchas and Harpies

I spent way too much at the Fantasy Gacha Carnival,which has been a pattern this month. I was joking with a friend that I needed to open some kind of store to raise my spending money, because I can't continue this way! I was inspired by deviousMind to try shifting to another race again, and soon a lot of this will be winging its way to a newly-designated Harpy Alt (who has been a second mermaid, so she's just as happy to have a whole category to herself). Thankfully, the Gacha Gods were with me and I landed a few of the gorgeous rares - not the brightly colored one I was hoping for, but this Golden Nightingale is completely gorgeous and a ton of fun. The feet are rigged to the legs, and the wings are rigged to the arms, with flexible attachments for the proper feathery effect. The tail is not rigged, which is nice since you can move it around a bit to fit up with your clothing. There is, next to the Harpy Gacha of Shiny Doom, a Gacha of vague-bits-of-leather-and-feathers-which-pass-for-clothing. The belt is rigged, and unlike a lot of rigged things demands a bit of belly to fill it out. The top is unrigged, and came with a variety of shades of feathers in a textured top. It does not come with panties, so I added my own; the belt does not over things from all angles, so mind the rating of your sims when you wear it solo.

My harpy is clearly of the warrior cast, diving and guarding the nests of her family, and she wears horns around her neck - some kind of trophy perhaps? - from Enfant Terrible, and someone strung some apples around her wrist as a sort of mobile snack (both commons from the same gacha). The Enfant Terrible gacha has a variety of different things in a few colors - including my new bane, the Ultra Rare. Keeping with the inspiration of jewelry from natural items, this Mini-Staghorn Crown from ieQED means she must have spent hours hunting wild jackolopes in order to weave it together. There is a wild number of colors of crowns, and while the rares are.. well, rare, they are not impossible to get. Finally, having lost an eye in the wars, Harpyia Deoridhe shows her feminine side with an eyepatch made of flowers, a pretty gacha prize from la petit morte; I didn't land a rare from it, but given how lovely the commons are, I didn't mind. The army of flutterbyes, though, bright and sparkly and deadly if they touch you, are a release from aii, aka The Ugly & Beautiful. I landed a small army, and sensibly their creator set them up so that they stagger themselves around you if you have several - something which really comes in handy for the blogger on the go.

The number of gacha events are proliferating these days, which leaves me with really mixed feelings. On the one hand, I love gathering up a small army of things to give people, and gacha is perfect for this purpose. On the other hand, there are a few trends of high prices and low rarity statistics which are leaving me a little concerned about my own spending, and so I've been thinking of a series of rules to try to rein in some of the profligate spending, especially considering that I often end up with piles of stuff I rarely use (though really, that's most of my inventory...).

1. Only spend in gacha where I like everything I might get. One growing trend in gacha is that instead of the items all being variations on a theme, with the cooler ones more difficult to get, a few different things are placed in a gacha. This means I often only want a few items, and often the more difficult ones to get, which leaves me feeling dissatisfied about the other items I end up with in pursuit of the elusive White Stag. From now on I'm going to try to end this problem at the root; if I don't like everything in a gacha, I don't give it money.


2. Be satisfied with commons. Sometimes the rares are really cool, or there's one rare I want more than the others, and I really need to learn to step away at that point. 


3. Be cautious with gacha over 50L each. I know that seems like a small amount of money, but it adds up very quickly. To get the entire common color range of a pair of shoes I like, for example, can be 600L if there are no duplicates on a set of twelve, and very likely more. The higher price gacha, while often understandable given the complexity of the items being gachaed, are even more of a money sink and so I need to be careful.

There are times I miss the early gacha days, when it wasn't uncommon to five a five or ten linden gacha and it was for simple, fun things like juice drinks and lollypops, but it's increasingly clear that the new, higher price, higher complexity gacha are not only here to stay - they are proliferating. I want to keep a sunny disposition and keep gacha something i enjoy and squee over, and I'm hoping these rules for myself help in that endeavor.

( More pictures here. )

Credits: 

Skin: Fallen Gods, Materica
Hair: Wasabi Pills, Kiki
Crown: ieQED, Crown Stag (Fantasy Gacha Carnival)
Ears: Illusions, Seelie Ears
Eyes: De La Soul, Rainbow
Eyepatch: la petit morte, Eye patch (Fantasy Gacha Carnival)
Eyelashes 1: SLink, Mesh Lashes
Eyelashes 2: Flugeln Brise, 05-A
Hands: SLink, Rigged Mesh Hands
Jewelry: Enfant Terrible, Midsommer Dream (Fantasy Gacha Carnival)
Nails: A:S:S, Gold Thread
Outfit: deviousMind, Harpyia Belt & Bra Ensemble (Fantasy Gacha Carnival)
Panties: Blacklace, Kimiko
Harpy Bits: deviousMind, Harpyia (Fantasy Gacha Carnival)
Pixie Army: The Ugly & Beautiful, Pixie (Fantasy Gacha Carnival)

Poses: Long Awkward Pose

Location: Grendel's Children
Light Settings: AnaLutetia - outdoors
Water Settings: Mirror Water

Photographed by Deoridhe Quandry
Post processing: Cropping, only