Ballerina

My other recent SL project from this weekend was to pick up a ballerina AO and then assemble a couple of ballerina outfits for it.  I was kind of thinking of my old City of Heroes character Nina Ballerina, but ultimately none of this looks much like her.  But anyway, this kept me entertained for an afternoon.

Kinderwhore

Kinderwhore:  an image used by a handful of mostly female punk rock bands in the US during the early to mid 1990s.  (Per the Wikipedia article).

This look is most frequently associated with Courtney Love of Hole, who is recognized as the one who brought it to the mainstream and is sometimes credited with creating the look:

But it is also associated with Kat Bjelland of Babes in Toyland, who claimed that Courtney stole it from her (they were once in a band together):

But it seems clear to me that the first person to sport this look was Chrissy Amphlett of the Divinyls (Courtney cites her as an influence):

The Divinyls were an Australian rock group, and Chrissy reportedly got the idea to dress like a schoolgirl from seeing Angus Young of AC/DC in concert:

So yeah.  Schoolboy look, schoolgirl look.  I should probably mention the Catholic Girls, who sported a schoolgirl look back in the early 80's as well (and like to claim to be innovators of that look as it pertains to rock music):

But anyway... kinderwhore... a look sported by others also, including Kim Shatuck of the Muffs,  Jane Garside from Daisy Chainsaw, Jennifer Finch from L7, the members of Lunachicks, Jessicka from JackOff Jill, members of Switchblade Symphony, Fluffy, and even Twiggy Ramirez of Marilyn Manson).

Last week I sought help from the SLUniverse forums to come up with outfits that would work for this look, and I found several.  Here's some screen pics:

This dress is from the Secret Store & Nyu, their "Fall Babydoll Dress".  Paired with ripped tights from *Sheer* and worn black army boots from Hoorenbeek.

This is the "Vivian" dress in black from G. Field.

This is the Montgomery dress in ebony from ColdLogic.

This is the ShirtDress in black from COCO, paired with ripped tights from COCO (free VIP gift) and LaceUP WorkBoots from COCO (loose version -- they were only 100 Linden).

Last but not least is this Marnie dress in black from Has Been (a free VIP gift, it cost 50 Linden to join the group though).

I think the Has Been Marnie dress and the Secret & Nyu Fall Babydoll come closest to the Chrissy Amphlett look shown above, and to the Courtney Love look in the first photo.  But the others work to and are nice looking dresses.

A Witch in New Oonduroo

Exploring a little Medieval RP sim dressed as a witch.  Very pretty place!

I've been doing other things that I need to upload at a later point... working on costumes, taking pictures.

September Update

Although I knew I hadn't been in SL much the last couple of months, I'm amazed that the last update I did for this blog was in May.  I kind of know why -- from Late May through July I played Everquest, pretty much on a regular basis, and even leaving the game running with my character in trader mode when I wasn't actually playing.  That made logging into anything else extremely difficult.

But I stopped playing EQ at the beginning of August -- I was pretty much bored with it.  I did what I wanted to do, I didn't really make any new friends, I wasn't really prepared for the slow slog all the way to level 100.  I might go back, eventually.  We'll see.

In August I spent nearly every day writing.  I know I logged into SL once or twice, but it wasn't until a week or so ago that I really logged in for any significant amount of time.  Rainfurrest is coming up, and I'm planning to meet one or two online friends there, so I had to log back in if only to connect with them and let them know I was still going to be there.

I spent nearly a full day sorting through my inventory.  For a year or two (or three) I've been leaving new clothing folders on my main inventory page, or dumping them into my clothing folder without sorting them further.  I've also avoided doing what I typically do so that I can easily remember what a given outfit or item looks like -- take a picture, upload it, and place it in the folder with the clothing.  So I had a large number of outfits and clothing items that I couldn't remember much about, and I spent a full day trying things on, taking pictures, and sorting them into the proper folders.  I stared a brand new set of clothing folders because one of the other reasons I had avoided filing things away was a fear of losing track of my recently-purchased items.  My older folders have a lot of very old clothing that I don't actually want or use.  I did a little culling, but that's a whole other project that I don't have the time for right now.

Anyway, I rediscovered some things that I liked and saved them as outfits I could change to easily, and then I went out and took some pictures.  Two of my newest outfits included a "Victorian Jailbait" dress that I'd bought at the World Goth Fair, and some shorts and a top I'd bought at a more recent clothing exhibit.  I took photos of both outfits, along with a "sweetheart" sweater outfit that I bought some time ago that I liked.

Over the next couple of days I went on a few clothing quests.  First, I was looking for items to round out the above costumes -- the Victorian dress in particular -- and while doing so I came across a chainmail armor outfit that I liked.  I'd been in the mood months back to come up with a Medieval armor costume of some sort, for which I'd settled on something from BareRose, but I liked this outfit -- it covered more than a chainmail bikini but was essentially your typical Red Sonja/Boris Vallejo impractical armor outfit.  For this, I went on another quest for a good sword and some poses designed for a sword, and then I took a few pictures with it.

While on my quest for a sword I found a neat pair of moccasin boots and bought them.  A few days later I went on another clothing quest to assemble an outfit to match these boots.  I was thinking something Native American or a kind of Post Apocalypse outfit with Native American touches.  My search led me to three different outfits, all of which had their good points.  I decided to try out all three and mix and match.  The most authentically Native American outfit came with a feathered hair ornament that I used in all three outfits.  The other two outfits included fanciful loincloths that could be worn over jeans, which made them perfect for a more Post Apocalypse look.  One outfit allowed for Lola Tango breasts, so that was a bonus in it's favor.  I still think I need to tweak each outfit and mix and match more, but I like all three, and took pictures of all of them.

Above is my mix & match outfit:

Top: from Indian Kokopelli outfit, from While Dreams Shop
Jeans: Boneflower Low-Rise Jeans Flirty Fairie Native (old)
Belt: croc leather belt BLACK silver buckle, nova @ Delirium's Ether (old)
Boots: The Native One Moccasins Black Female, from Soul Distraction
Gloves: from *Songfeather* AzzA outfit
Choker: Bone Black & Red choker with silver Thunderbird, Butterfly Creations
Belly Chain: Dream Catcher Belly Chain, Cherokee Sensations
Hair Ornament: Five Eagle Feather Headdress from Buckskin Women's Red Outfit, Timber Creek Outfitters
Left arm: rusty upper arm belt FEM CJ Feather AMAZON, Primtronics
Right arm, wrists, skirt thigh: Sakari Oufit Bracers, Armband, Skirt, thighband, Tamiron Forge
Earrings, belly ring, necklace: Spirit Bound Dreamcatcher set, Cherokee Sensations

Shape: Colette's Centerfold, modified
Skin: Pink Fuel Kumi <Peach> - Smokey Meow
PMD - Faded Warpaint 2
Hair: DrLife Natural Hair Leila Beauty Red
Eyes: IKON Lucid Eyes - Optimism (ML)

Kali, Goddess of Death (World Goth Fair)

I visited the World Goth Fair in Second Life and wandered around looking at everything.  I only had a couple of thousand Lindens to spend, and I really wasn't sure what I was looking for, but I was in the mood to come up with a new goth look of some sort.  But I got more than halfway through the merchants and I was really disappointed in what I found, nothing that really reached out and grabbed me and begged to be bought -- until I came across this wonderful Kali/Goddess of Death outfit.  This is "Beautiful Death Couture" by Boudoir.  The dress was expensive (1200 Lindens) but you get what you pay for, and this was far and away the most amazing thing I came across.  It includes the hair, makeup, just about everything you need for the outfit aside from your own skin and shape.



Skin:  C:K Elis Feather Skin
Shape:  Colette's Amazon (modified)
Makeup:  Pin Me Down - Evilyn
Earrings:  [ S H O C K ] Graceful Death Earrings
Boots that you can't see:  Zero Gravity Boots from Caverna Obscura

Everything Else:  Boudoir, Beautiful Death Couture

Pictures taken at Mystical Darkwood with the Doomship environmental setting.

Big Sales, and Post-Apocalypse Pics

There's an impossibly popular sale going on right now -- Truth Hair has everything half off.  Now, that might be a good deal, and they might have pretty good hair, but it's hard to comprehend how popular this sale has been.  Not only has the store sim been constantly full for every day of the sale (I think it's been at least a week), but also the next-door sim has been very crowded and sometime full, because people that can't get into the store sim can sit at the sim border and "cam in" (use camera controls to look into most of the store) and buy stuff that way.

I did this too.  ^_^  I found that I was able to purchase things from the neighboring sim, but that often my purchases would not appear in inventory until after I'd logged off and back on (or, as was usually the case, crashed and then logged back on).  Eventually I even managed to make it into the sim itself and was able to see the whole store and wander around a bit until I was satisfied that I'd bought all I needed to buy.

Some people have said that it's not really worth the hassle, you're saving something like 75 cents on 1 hair package purchase, but I spent a lot so I suppose I saved a few bucks overall.  Anyway I had fun doing it, it was kind of a challenge, and I have more new hair than I know what to do with.

Which is good, because I nearly ran out of money.  Not only by buying hair, but also Curio is having a skin sale (they are about to retire their old skin lines) so I spent 2,000 lindens there as well.

And then... since I've been in a post-apocalypse phase lately -- I went ahead and bought some more things for an updated outfit including new skin and hair.  Here's a few pictures I took at a place called Frozen Mind:

Post-Apocalypse

I saw these sims advertised on SLU and went to check them out -- very nicely designed set of post-apocalyptic sims, about five or six in all I think.  I changed into another of my old avatars, my drow "cyber badlands" avie, and wandered around taking some pictures.

Steampunk World Expo 2013

Thanks to Robert Jung on the SLU forums I went and checked out the Steampunk World Expo 2013.  It's a very beautiful Steampunk sim.  I changed into an old Chinese Steampunk costume/avatar and wandered around a bit, and took a couple of pictures.

More Avatars

Earlier in the week I bought a new avatar for another of my alts, Rei Sin.  This is the Utilizator Rikugou B avatar, an anime robot girl avie.  Like the Avatar 2.0 it's a full mesh avatar, but specifically designed to be an anime robot girl.  There are only a couple of costume options, I picked up one of them.

I'm not really sure how much I like it, but I wanted to try it out anyway.

I had a weird sort of dream that I was thinking about over the last day -- kind of a Second Life dream where, once you die, you are uploaded to a computerized world.  But you start out with a very generic avatar, and upgrading you avatar is very expensive, and if you can't find a job you are kind of stuck in a Generic Avatar Ghetto life.  At first I was dreaming about Avatars with very plain looks or even grayish, almost stick-figure bodies, but later it changed to a situation where everyone started out as a 3-foot doll, and you had to pay money to get a full-sized, realistic human avatar.  In either case, the best and most realistic avatars were incredibly expensive, so that only rich people could afford to look good.

So I was thinking about this dream and I decided to make a doll avatar in Second Life.  I know there are a lot of places that do these sorts of avatars, but I wanted it to be doll-sized, or at least in the range of about 3 feet like in my dream.  This Curious Kitties Broken Ball-Joint Doll Avatar fit the bill perfectly!

I found some "broken doll" poses on the Markeplace from Fruct0se, so I was able to pose my doll in a realistic (non-alive) manner.  ^_^

That was my experiment for the evening.

How I Spent My Free Money

This is ShinobuEden Resident, the new "freebie" character I created back in late Decmeber.  I haven't been doing much with her, I kind of abandoned my newbie experiment after a week or so, but one thing I had done is collect my free 1,000 lindens from back when Second Life was giving them away on Amazon (for a few short hours).  I had done nothing with the money though, until today.

Shinobu Eden was my invulnerable super-strong brute in Second Life.  She was the twin of Sailor Shinobu, my invulnerable energy melee tank.  Basically she was a young girl in a sailor suit with antenna hair, somewhat similar to Sailor Moon.

Having played with the Utilizator Avatar 2.0 the last week, I decided to buy an anime-style avatar for ShinobuEden Resident with my 1,000 Lindens.  I checked out a lot of different anime avatars, but all of them were more expensive than the Avatar 2.0.  Even some of Utilizator's own anime avatars are more expensive.  The Avatar 2.0 is a beta version, it's still being developed.  Also, a lot of the available anime avatars are based off the SL body -- you get a skin, a shape, an anime head. etc.  I liked the idea of a full-mesh avatar, and I only had 1,000 Lindens, so I bought the Avatar 2.0.

I found a few more mods for the Avatar 2.0 in my search, so the picture above is with a modified skirt and corset top -- Utilizator doesn't sell these in pink.  This was just two textures for 50 Linden that you had to apply to copies of the Utilizator products.  I also discovered how to edit the stockings that Utilizator sells to make the feet invisible, so that was good to learn.

I spent 300 Linden on the avatar, 200 Linden on the outfit, 50 Linden on the mod, and I think 100 Linden on the boots and 100 Linden on the stockings.  I also bought blue open-front shorts and a blue short hoodie.  That reduced me to 69 Lindens, so I think I did pretty well.  ^_^  Sadly, she doesn't really look like my CoH character, but at least a bit closer than she did before.