Tracing the Threads of History and Fantasy

Bethany

July 25, 2021

A final portrait for now, and probably a bit of a blog hiatus for a week or so. The mistress that followed after Missy Blackwood was Barba Bracken’s younger sister, Bethany, groomed for the position by her father and sister. Alas, poor Bethany soon ended up a head shorter for sleeping with one of the Kingsguard rather than the King, who by then was “fat and foul-tempered”.

For Bethany I wanted a look that was less haughty and a bit sweeter and prettier than Barba. I used the same skin as for her sister (Bella from Logo), but I switched to another Logo head, Chelsea. The hair is from Truth and the dress from Senzafine. I couldn’t think of anything symbolic to give her for a necklace, so I opted for a design from the Plastik that felt fairly medieval in style.

Missy

July 22, 2021

I’ve tried doing portrait series before, but I always get too ambitious and too caught up in making them feel similar. So, we’ll see where I end up with this one. The genesis of the idea was to do some nice portraits for our game to spruce up the website a bit. Here, I am trying to portray Melissa “Missy” Blackwood, one of King Aegon IV’s mistresses.

To create her look, I am using LeLutka’s Erin head with alaskametro’s Ingrid skin (using the flat chest add-on since Missy was supposed to be quite slim and flat chested), which I think gives her a sweet sort of beauty that suits the description of the character. The hair is one of F&M Oblivion’s releases for Hair Fair, a style inspired by Giulia Farnese, also a famous mistress. It is a very elegant, ladylike style with a silk cap at the back. The raven jewellery is a nod to the arms of House Blackwood and I thought that the Heloise gown from Junbug could fit into Westeros well enough.

Red Nights

May 24, 2020

More often than not my posts are firmly anchored in fantasy and/or history, but when it comes to roleplay and character creation in Second Life there are of course many more options. For example, the Cyber/Punk Fair is still open (until June 7th, in fact) and it showcases a very different realm of possibilities. To do justice to the Novianna set and Sinon visor from Petrichor, I headed over to one of the longest-running sims (or sim collections, rather) in Second Life: InSilico.

Fantasy Faire 2020 - Faewinged

May 03, 2020

The beautiful wings from Static was the seed of inspiration for this post. As soon as I unpacked those among the blogger boxes, I knew I had to put together an outfit that used them. However, it took a week before I settled on the other key piece, namely the Viscivorus skin, a collaboration between the Plastik/Petrichor and Trap. Or rather, I am using the included tattoo of the markings, which I feel have something of a feather-like quality to them. The flexibility of being able to use the markings from the skin on an altogether different skin is quite a bonus, I must say. The skin also includes materials appliers for both body and face, though I was not able to get it to work on the face. Finally, I am also wearing the Hayden hair from Wasabi that you saw on Ran in my last post; this unisex style works great for both male and female avatars.

As always, remember that the Fantasy Faire raises money for Relay for Life and the American Cancer Society, so do keep an eye out for the RFL vendors and donation kiosk when visiting the Faire! Today is the last day of events and organised programming, but the Faire sims stay around until May 10th.