21 Shoe: ieQED

In only an hour and a half until the twenty-first of January begins, and with it the first 21 Shoe of the year! I've had a lot of fun having a sneak peek at the one day exclusives, including this amazing pair of snakeskin shoes from ieQED - one in the pale yellow and white of an albino royal python - my favorite snake, for the record - and the other in the striking red, black, and white of the milk snake - the kinder cousin of the venomous and reclusive coral snake. The textures one these shoes are sumptuous, standing up even to being enlarged so much, and practically glow with color. I also really like the shape - both for the shoe, and for the shoe being a snake shoe; the toes seem somewhat blunted and rounded like the nose of a snake, and the stiletto heel is simply elegant. There isn't much time to wait for going to ieQED to pick up these amazing shoes, so get your pocketbook ready!

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

The Domination of the Frost

We're entering one of the hardest months of winter, when all of the fluff and shine has begun to harden to ice and sleet; when months of icy cold have frozen spirits; this is when Jackie Frost, the younger and in some ways crueler spirit of winter, comes out to play with people who thought her big brother Jack was bad enough. February was always the whinging month, when what was once fresh and clean, turning the world to a land of clouds, became hard and gray and enough already. Jackie Frost is made of stone, her heart a barren rock formed in the palms of Fallen Gods (now with SLink appliers), impervious to the frost sliding silvery white fingers along her curves and sprouting out curling tendrils of ice which catch the wind and flow in the breeze. Besides the frost, the only nod to clothing she wears are filigree bands holding jewels gathered from the farthest reaches to the north, the shapes inspired by her filigree wings and all bearing the touch of Sax Shepherd Designs.

She's marked her face with frost in narrow bands, like those created by Nuuna, long stripes interspersed with small dots of ice. Cupping her heels are the long fingers of winter made real - disembodied hands from ieQED whose spikes touch the ground and cut through any pretense. They are Surreal (Event) in their formation, unearthly in their function; surely only the stone of her body and flutter of her wings make it possible for them to support feet impossibly high. And yet she walks, her hair (from Wasabi Pills) edged with frost and held up by the breath of icy winds itself. She summons rime out of still waters, and where she steps crystals and death itself are left behind, panting for the warmth of unsuspecting mortals. Fear her when she stalks the nights, taking ever wider routes and seeking doorways that haven't seen her footprints for centuries. Keep windows tightly shut, fire burning brightly; beware the kiss of Jackie Frost.

( More pictures here. )

Credits:

Skin: Fallen Gods, Materica - Black Marble
Hair: Wasabi Pills, Christy
Ears: Illusions, Seelie Ears
Eyes: De La Soul, Rainbow
Eyelashes 1: SLink, Mesh Lashes
Eyelashes 2: Flugeln Brise, 05-A
Cosmetics: Nuuna, Aza White
Wings: Sax Shepherd Designs, Filigree Fae Wings (Soon to be Released)
Hands & Feet: SLink, Rigged Mesh Hands & Feet
Jewelry: Sax Shepherd Designs, Winter Fae (Fantasy Gatcha Festival)
Bracelets: Sax Shepherd Designs, Frills ~ Ione Diamonds
Nails: Fallen Gods, Materica Frost
Clothing: Fallen Gods, Ice Crystal Outfit
Shoes: ieQED, Hand Spike (Surreal Event)

Poses: Long Awkward Pose

Location: Winter at Icewater Village
Light Settings:
Water Settings: Mirror Water

Photographed by Deoridhe Quandry
Post processing: Cropping, only