Category: Second Life Creator Spotlight

UPDATED: Fantasy Faire in Second Life Runs from April 18th to May 7th, 2024

So, it’s a very lazy springtime Sunday morning, and of course, I have my main Second Life avatar, Vanity Fair, slow dancing with my main male SL alt, Heath Homewood, at the LOVE romantic dance club, dressed up as a medieval queen and her knight—you know, as one does. 😜 It sure beats just turning on the radio while you’re doing laundry! (Hey, don’t judge me; we all have our obsessive little hobbies to help keep us sane in these trying times.)

This is my rather roundabout way of saying that it’s Fantasy Faire season once again in Second Life, and this year there are no less than 20 regions, each with its own unique fantasy theme. Roleplay opportunities abound, as well as hunts and quests, auctions and shopping, arts and entertainment, a literary festival, a film festival, and a grand masked ball. Something for everyone! There’s even a special radio station!

Fantasy Faire (running from April 18th to May 7th, 2024) is Second Life’s annual fantasy roleplay festival and shopping event, and a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society:

Celebrating its sixteenth year, Fantasy Faire 2024 is the largest gathering of fantasy designers, enthusiasts, roleplayers and performers in the virtual world, bringing their own visions together to support the American Cancer Society’s vision of a world without cancer.

Fantasy Faire is one of the megaevents of Relay For Life of Second Life. RFL of SL is a part of American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life fundraising. You can visit their page of the Second Life Teams to see how much various SL events have earned for Relay For Life during the year.

In 2023 Fantasy Faire ranked 12th out of 40,000 Relay For Life Teams worldwide in terms of money-raised. In addition, Relay For Life of Second Life was the 8th highest RFL fundraising community event worldwide.

Participating stores usually have several special offers on merchandise, with the proceeds going towards the American Cancer Society. For example, Heath’s wonderful Caelan armour (with its Tree of Life motif) and chain mail suit are available at the Poet’s Heart store at Fantasy Faire. The Caelan armour is L$300 for a fatpack of 13 different colours, including the green shown below, and the chainmail is only L$100 for a fatpack of 19 different colours. One hundred percent of the proceeds from the sale of these items during Fantasy Faire goes to the American Cancer Society. I don’t know if you’ve ever been shopping for armour in SL, but I have, and I can tell you that L$400 for a full fatpack of armour and chain mail, is an exceptional deal! You can easily spend up to ten times that amount, on just one colour of armour!

The armour and chain mail comes in the following male and female sizes, and includes everything except the helmet and whatever weapons you choose to carry:

Sizes for Male Mesh Bodies:

  • Belleza Jake
  • Inithium Kario
  • Meshbody Legacy male body

Sizes for Female Mesh Bodies:

  • Belleza GenX Classic
  • Belleza GenX Curvy
  • Maitreya LaraX (but since you are probably going to alpha out your entire body underneath the full-body chain mail anyway, this would likely fit Maitreya Lara 5.3 or earlier versions as well; please get a demo and check first, though!)
  • Maitreya Lara PetiteX (and probably older Petite bodies, for the same reason)
  • Meshbody Legacy female body
  • Meshbody Legacy Perky
  • eBody Reborn
The Caelan armour (in the Tree of Life motif), and the chain mail are available at the Poet’s Heart booth at this year’s Fantasy Fair (please note that the helmet is not included; I picked up this one a couple of years ago from the 10th anniverary giveaway at Eleran’s Crafts, as part of complete set called Faraam, and tinted it green to match the armour here).

Here’s a closer look at Vanity Fair’s magnificent (and, I must confess, rather intimidating!) outfit:

Full style credits below

Madame Noir has a store at Fantasy Faire (SLURL), but you’ll have to go to their mainstore location to pick up this gloriously over-the-top Queen ballgown (please note that the main store location is rated Adult, as it also stocks festishwear, as you might have guessed from this tightly-corseted gown!). I believe the Madame Noir store is currently undergoing a renovation at the moment, but trust me, it’s worth a visit! The proprietor seems to have gone of her way to rig for the new Maitreya LaraX mesh body, and I see so many amazing things that I want to buy there!

Madame Noir has a free group join, that gives you a bit of a discount on your in-store purchases, as well as a lovely selection of free group gifts:

The group gifts wall at Madame Noir

The Imperium head chainmail and the matching Regium crown are from Unholy (SLURL). They can be used together or separately, Both the crown (unrigged; resizable) and the chain mail (rigged) come in sizes to fit male and female avatars, and each has a HUD with many options, including ten different metal textures for various parts of each item. I decided to choose a silver metal tone to match the metallic sheen of the outrageous sleeves and collar of the Madame Noir Queen ballgown!

Complete Styling Notes

Vanity Fair is wearing:

  • Head and Makeup: the new LAQ Era2 female mesh head (UltimateHD version)
  • Body: the new Maitreya LaraX mesh body
  • Skin: LAQ Susanna UltimateHD head skin and matching Next Level Maitreya body skin (the Susanna head skin fatpack is currently one of the gifts at the Bellisseria 5th Anniversary Gift Plaza)
  • Crown: Regium crown by Unholy
  • Head Chainmail: Imperium by Unholy
  • Gown: the Queen gown by Madame Noir
  • Shoes (not shown): silver Heidi pumps by Garbaggio

Heath Homewood is wearing:

  • Head: Catwa Daniel mesh head
  • Hair: Boy Next Door by Exile
  • Body: Belleza Jake mesh body
  • Skin: Blaze head skin and matching body skin by Birth
  • Helmet: Faraam helmet (part of a complete knight’s outfit) by Eleran’s Crafts
  • Rest of Armour: Caelan armour and chain mail by Poet’s Heart

PRO TIP: Looking for free weapons? Jomo has a small stone building next to its main store (exact SLURL), where you can pick up dozens of free swords, shields, spears, staves, axes, and other weapons. No group join is required, and everything is free!

Please note that these are not scripted weapons, but they can be resized and modified as you wish. I use them with a very handy HUD I purchased from Antaya, called the Unisex Roleplay HUD, which offers a variety of static Bento hand and arm poses for use with unscripted accessories such as the sword I picked up from Jomo. Here’s the exact SLURL to find the roleplay HUD at the Antaya store.

Of course, most roleplayers would probably use some sort of scripted weapon attachment, part of a system which allows you to draw and sheath a sword using special keystrokes, etc. (there are many such systems already well-established in Second Life). The Antaya HUD is used more for static items, or for photography in SL.

Jomo offers a treasure trove of swords, spears, and other weapons—all free!
The unisex roleplay HUD from Antaya offers a wide variety of useful hand and arm poses, to use with accessories such as books, lanterns, purses, and weapons.

Be sure to explore the many different regions of Fantasy Faire; some of the best landscape designers in Second Life work their hardest each year to wow visitors, and each region has a different fantasy theme. Even if you don’t buy a single thing, it’s great fun!

UPDATE April 29th, 2024: Ava Bloodrose Delaney has informed me, “[Fantasy Faire] got extended to [May] 7th by the Lindens at the Jail & Bail event on the 19th.” Thanks, Ava! I have updated my blogpost accordingly.

UPDATED: Major Avatar Apparel Creator Blueberry May Leave Second Life: Are There Greener Pastures Elsewhere?

People are often mystified as to why I continue to write about the now-twenty-year-old virtual world of Second Life, when there are so many other, newer metaverse platforms which I could discuss and dissect on my blog. I attempted to answer that question in 2019: Editorial: Why Second Life Is the Perfect Model of a Mature, Fully Evolved Virtual World for Newer Social VR Platforms to Emulate. There’s quite a lot to learn from Second Life’s rich history; ignore it at your peril!

In today’s SL lesson, we learn that there may, indeed, be greener pastures than venerable, long-running Second Life—even for those creators who got their start on the platform! And it would be wise for the newer metaverse platforms, too, to ponder the possibility that their current user base might depart for more lucrative opportunities in other virtual worlds, or even from some unexpected competition!

As usual, I am a little late to report the recent news that major women’s avatar apparel brand Blueberry has decided to, at the very least, hit the pause button, and quite possibly, leave Second Life altogether.

Nobody seems to know the future of Blueberry…

To make a real-world comparison, it would be as if Zara or H&M—or, here in Canada, the ubiquitous Reitmans—suddenly decided to go out of business. Blueberry has been a phenomenally successful store in Second Life, easily earning over a million dollars a year in revenue, according to this October 2022 business article from the Observer. Blueberry might well be the single biggest creator of womenswear in Second Life. In other words, this is major news.

In a mid-April Facebook post by Blueberry’s proprietor, Mishi (the text of which was also posted in an April 13th, 2024 notice to the Blueberry store group in SL):

Hi fam ❤
I’m very sorry to say that I will be taking a break from SL. Blueberry does not plan to release any new items for the foreseeable future. At some point, I will share an update. Right now I need this time to reflect.
I do consider all of you berries as my forever family and I am eternally grateful for your support and understanding. Thank you for all of your love.

The store group notice goes on to add:

Please send all questions regarding credit to blueberryxx in a notecard and any other questions to [a URL, which unfortunately which appears to have been cut off by the character limit in the message]

Somebody suggested that the URL shortner redirect might be to the contact page on the House of Blueberry website, which is here: https://www.houseofblueberry.com/contact.

Okay, first, let’s deal with the practical matters in the wake of this news. Then, I’m going to pull back for a bigger picture.

If you have ever been a customer, you should go to the Blueberry store, as soon as possible, and head for the Information Wall in the front entrance to the store (exact SLURL):

The Information wall at the Blueberry store in-world

First, if you have made any purchases from Blueberry in the past, hit the Redeliver sign, follow the website link, and get redeliveries of everything you’ve bought over the years (for some of you, it’s a lot!). If the store shuts down (as is indeed possible), you will want to have backups of your purchases in your inventory, since you won’t be able to get any redeliveries.

Secondly, Blueberry has always been very generous with gifts of store credit over the past dozen years (since its founding in 2012), particularly during shopping events such as the regularly-occurring Shop and Hops. Click on the blue Check Store Credit sign to see what your current level of unspent store credit is, and spend it now.

All right, now that that’s done, let’s dig a little deeper into what’s happening here. From the long and growing discussion thread on the topic on the Second Life Community forums, started by Persephone Emerald, I will share only a few quotes:

  • “It was repeatedly reinforced by the CSR’s [customer service reps] in group chat that the store would be closing, no idea when, but if you have any store credit you should use it pretty sharpish.”
  • “The Blueberry Discord [server] seems to have disappeared too.”
  • “I don’t think it’s also been mentioned here that the group moderators said in the group that they were basically laid off, but were continuing to support users as best they could for the sake of the Blueberry customers and group members.”
  • “The store is closing in SL. The CSR’s have announced that in group and her Discord group is gone as well.”
  • “They have no more CSRs, only recently laid off employees. Those people are saying they do not know whether the store will stay or go, but they know that for now, no new releases. No support provided, buy at your own risk. Whatever was said three days ago is vague, and it still remains a mystery on what is happening with this brand.”

In fact, there was so much speculation (some quite unfounded), that Mishi posted a second message to Facebook:

I want to stress once again that this is not a goodbye.

I need a minute to reflect on the changes I want to make to the future content I want to create.

Please allow me some time to think in peace. This isn’t just a business for me, it has been my passion. This platform specifically has been my passion. The people have been my passion.

So I ask of you, please, to take my word at face value here. I don’t want to make promises to anything because I don’t know what changes I want to make as yet.

So, aside from closing the Blueberry Discord server, and letting their customer service representatives and group moderators go, we really don’t know anything at this point. We’re just going to have to wait and see. (But don’t wait if you had your eye on something in the store, or if you have unspent store credits. Do it now!)

But I now want to focus on the bigger picture here, and speculate a bit about what’s possibly happening with Blueberry. Blueberry and its owner, Mishi McDuff, started off small, as the Observer noted in its 2022 article:

Mishi McDuff, founder of House of Blueberry, or Blueberry for short, attended a 2011 virtual concert in Second Life, an online gaming platform some call the first metaverse. She had wanted to see Sean Ryan, a Texas-based singer and songwriter, perform. McDuff joined the platform for the first time and attended the concert with her starter avatar. But alongside characters dressed as fairies, warriors and supermodels, she felt out of place. For her second virtual concert, she wore a polka dot dress she created in Photoshop, and concert attendees asked to buy her design for their own avatars. 

McDuff founded Blueberry knowing Second Life users were willing to spend money on their digital identities. Its first year, Blueberry recorded $60,000 in sales according to McDuff. By 2016, its yearly revenue hit $1 million with a team of three, designing virtual clothing for Second Life.

But, like many creators who got their start in SL, Mishi started looking at creating wearables for other platforms:

Last year [2021], McDuff decided to expand the team and scale the company as interest in the metaverse swelled. It has now entered the Roblox metaverse and sold more than 20 million virtual assets total. In addition to digital clothing, their portfolio includes accessories, hair styles, pets and pet clothing.

As one person commented in the previously-mentioned Second Life community forums thread:

“Roblox revenue last year was 2.2 billion dollars. And they’re moving to more realistic avatars.”

Take a scroll through the House of Blueberry website, and it’s very clear where the emphasis is! (There is precious little mention of Second Life at all on their website!)

As one commenter stated on the SL Community Forums:

We know that there’s a massive number of daily and monthly users on ROBLOX (70.2 million daily and over 216 million monthly active users)… but according to Zepeto’s numbers, they have around 300 million users worldwide.  Go ahead and look, I did so myself.

Compare those numbers to what the daily and monthly numbers are for SL, and you’ll understand why this was more or less a business decision.

House of Blueberry was also front and centre in a mixed-success initiative called the Metaverse Fashion Week (MVFW), and last year they received some $6 million in funding for digital fashion initiatives, according to a VentureBeat article dated January 16th, 2023. (I also wrote about Blueberry’s heavy involvement in the Metaverse Fashion week in a February 2022 blogpost on my blog.)

While blockchain metaverse platforms and NFT-based avatar wearables have largely crashed and burned since their heady heyday only a few short years ago, they are far from the only game in town. Non-blockchain platforms and apps, such as Roblox, Zepeto, and Snapchat, all have far larger markets for avatar customization, and they absolutely dwarf the user base of Second Life.

And the user base for Snapchat, Roblox, and Zepeto also skews significantly younger than Second Life’s, another important consideration to anybody looking at the metaverse marketplace. While it’s true that older users tend to have more discretionary money to spend, they also—sad to say—have a tendency to grow old and even die! Second Life’s user base keeps adding just enough new people to replace those who retire (or die), but not at a rate that makes it grow significantly (pandemic bumps notwithstanding).

Also, factor in that popular avatar clothing designers in Second Life have to deal with constant changes and additions to the various brands of mesh bodies which they are often asked to make apparel for. For example, take the recent decision by Maitreya to replace its ubiquitious Maitreya Lara 5.3 mesh body with the retweaked LaraX, which is just different enough to require some rerigging work (although things like shoes and rings should still work).

It takes a lot of work to rig clothing properly for a single brand of mesh body; multiply that work by the number of mesh bodies you are being asked to support by your customers. It quickly becomes obvious that the amount of work required (rigging an article of clothing for five or six or seven or eight of the most popular brands of male and female mesh bodies), to serve a user base which has stayed pretty much the same size for the past decade, poses a rather serious workload problem.

Some stores, such as Spoiled in this image, rig for as many as nineteen or twenty mesh body variations! This is INSANITY, and yet new mesh bodies and add-ons multiply in Second Life.

So, I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest that Mishi of the House of Blueberry, and whoever is on her team, have scouted out the field, done their research, checked their spreadsheets, and decided to cut their ties to Second Life, and focus on the much more lucrative opportunity to create avatar apparel for those games and apps that boast millions of users. It just makes economic sense.

The truly worrying thought is: how many other Second Life content creators are also looking at places where the grass is greener, and are willing to jump ship? (Go ahead, call the mixed metaphor police. I dare you. 😜 )

Blueberry just might be the most public case to date, but I somehow doubt that they will be the last. And the lesson here for all metaverse platforms is: be good to your content creators, or they might desert you for better profits elsewhere! What is your platform doing to attract and keep the talent that brings in new users?

UPDATE April 25th, 2024: I forgot to mention that the Blueberry store also has a group gifts wall, opposite the Information Wall in the front entrance hall. If you are a member of the Bluebeery group, don’t forget to pick up all the gifts!

However, I have just been informed that you can no longer join the Blueberry store group to pick up these group gifts. I take this as yet another troubling sign that Blueberry is planning to leave Second Life.

Second Life Creator Spotlight: The Beautiful, Whimsical Librarian Gown by BlueMoon Enterprises

Solas NaCrealai, the proprietor of the BlueMoon Enterprises store in Second Life (SLURL), is well known for her wonderful fantasy and historical outfits for both female and male avatars (she is also the co-owner of Silvan Moon Designs with Bee Dumpling). Solas is a master at her craft, as can be seen by her latest creation, this whimsical and romantic Librarian Gown!

The Librarian Gown in Teal

This beautifully-draped gown comes with an optional corset made from the spines of old library tomes, decorated at the back with accordion fans of book pages, and laced up the back. The fabric of the skirt is adorned with beautiful handwriting in gold.

The Librarian gown comes in five colours: teal (as shown above), plus olive, plum, rust, and a steel grey colour called “dark”. You can remove the book-spine corset for a simpler look.

The Librarian Gown in Rust
The Librarian Gown in Olive
The Librarian Gown in Plum
The Librarian Gown in Dark

The Librarian Gown will be available at the Engine Room shopping event, which runs from tomorrow, September 20th, to October 20th, 2022. The Librarian Gown is for sale at a 25% discount at the event, at a price of L$338 per colour, or L$1,350 for the entire fatpack of five colours. Snap it up at the sale price before the Engine Room event ends!

Pictures taken at the Library of Angel Manor Estates.

Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Pick Up 106 Free Outfit Fatpacks and 147 Free Group Gifts of Women’s Apparel and Footwear at Scandalize for Only L$20!

I don’t know if you have heard the news yet, but Scandalize (which already has a stellar reputation as by far the most generous store in Second Life when it comes to group gifts) has dropped the price to join the Scandalize store group from L$100 to only L$20. I don’t know if this discount is temporary or permanent, so I would very strongly encourage you to take advantage and subscribe to the Scandalize group NOW!

Between the older Scandalize store group (which, as I said, now costs only L$20 to join) and the newer Scandals SL Frees & News group (which is still free to join), you can now pick up a truly staggering haul of women’s clothing and footwear, including a staggering ONE HUNDRED AND SIX full outfit fatpacks. Yes, not outfits in a single colour, but actual fatpacks, with HUDs giving you dozens of colours and patterns, and oodles of styling options! An embarrassment of riches for female avatars.

Read on and learn! First, if you have not already done so (and many female avatars already have), join the Scandalize group and visit their main store, where you can pick up the following gifts from their group gift wall, 147 in total as of this writing!

There are four outfit fatpacks located in the Scandalize store as follows:

  • one if you join the SL Frees & Offers group for free (see image above);
  • one if you click on the Stay at Home vendor panel (see image above);
  • a lingerie fatpack located near the front entrance and the lucky boards, which requires you join the Scandalize store group for L$20;
  • and an outfit fatpack if you join the free Scandals SL Frees & News group, also located near the front entrance.

Don’t forget to walk around to the wall directly behind the front counter at the store, where you can pick up 20 womenswear fatpacks with your Scandalize group tag active:

Here’s a look at just one of the group gift fatpacks, the glorious Azahara ballgown!

Don’t forget that Scandalize also has a full wall of lucky boards located near the back of the store (you do need to be a member of the Scandalize group to slap these boards when your initial comes up). They are extremely popular, so the letters tend to turn over quickly! You won’t have to wait more than 5 to 10 minutes to pick up even more free outfits!

Here’s just a couple of examples of the free outfits you can win from the Scandalize lucky boards, which usually come in sizes to fit Maitreya, Belleza, Slink, and Legacy mesh bodies:

Scandalize Sanara outfit in pale pink
Scandalize Zarihas outfit: a grey top with optional sleeves, with a denim skirt

But wait, there’s more! Located just across from the Scandalize store, on the same sim, is the Scandalize Outlet store, where (if you join the Scandals SL Frees & News group) you can vacuum up no less than EIGHTY TWO full womenswear fatpacks!

Here’s an older blogpost from last summer with pictures of a just a few of the outfits you can pick up for zero Lindens! Read, mark, and inwardly digest the freebie fabulousness!!!

So, here’s a summary of all the womenswear fatpacks you can pick up at one stop:

  • 82 from the Scandals Outlet store (requires the Scandals SL Frees & News group);
  • 20 from the wall behind the front counter at the Scandalize store (which requires a membership in Scandalize group);
  • 4 more fatpacks scattered around the Scandalize store (for 4 different groups)

That makes 106 womenswear fatpacks (plus 147 group gifts of women’s apparel and footwear) for only TWENTY LINDEN DOLLARS in total outlay! You don’t need to spend another Linden!

Two hundred and fifty-three gifts divided by L$20 works out to only L$0.08 PER GIFT, a truly mind-boggling bargain the likes of which you will not encounter anywhere else on the grid!

So drop whatever you’re doing, join the Scandalize group for L$20 if you haven’t already done so, and pick up some serious bargains!