Tag: Love

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! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Join the New, Classy, Elegant LOVE Club for Free (But Today and Tomorrow Only!)

Love is under new management, with a new formal dress code and new rules, and I have found it to be a worthy and elegant successor to the Frank’s Jazz club(s) of yesteryear.
Vanity Fair, a photo taken by SL photogapher Aggie Rowlands in the LOVE club, April 3rd, 2024 (Flickr link; be sure to check out her photostream!)

As the uncrowned freebie queen of Second Life, I have tended to devote much of my time to posting about fabulous freebies in SL avatar fashion to my blog and to my Steals, Deals, and Freebies group in Second Life (more often lately to the latter than the former, as I have been slowly scaling back on my coverage of Second Life). But today I wanted to share a different kind of freebie: a limited-time opportunity to join a wonderful club I have found, before they start to charge a group membership fee to members!

I have greatly mourned the loss of Frank’s Jazz dance club, which used to be a place where you could throw on a suit, tuxedo, or ballgown, and listen to smooth jazz and golden oldies in a beautifully appointed, elegant environment. After the original shut down, several copycat upstarts popped up, but eventually all closed down. *

However, I recently chanced upon a place which I have been spending a lot of time at over the past week, and I think it is a very worthy successor to the Frank’s of ye olden days! It used to be a slightly seedy tag dance club which encouraged female nudity, but it has recently changed ownership, and imposed some new rules and standards of behaviour, and a new formal, non-sexist dress code.

I must confess that it has been truly wonderful to find a place where I can get all dressed up, and hang out in an elegant, romantic ballroom, listening to the smooth musical classics of yesteryear and more recent times: from jazz, swing, and R&B, to current adult contemporary ballads: Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Eva Cassidy, Barbra Streisand, Rod Stewart, Linda Ronstadt, Michael Bublé… the list goes on and on. In fact, I often leave Vanity Fair or a similarly well-dressed avatar standing in a discreet corner of this club, turn up the volume on the stream, and have it on as some relaxing, nostalgic background music while I do something else in another Windows tab on my PC, or even while tackling the dishes or a little housecleaning!

Vanity Fair (dressd to kill in a brand new ballgown from Son!a Edge), hanging out near the bar at the new Love club. Much more satisfactory than listening to the radio!

The name of this club is, simply, Love. I am on a much-needed vacation from work this week, and have been popping in at various times of the day and night all week to check this place out. Love appears to be quite popular, with anywhere from 20 to 70 avatars at any time, both during the day with a more European crowd, and in the evening with a more North American crowd. In addition to the default Legends Jazz music stream, Love’s new owners quite often schedule guest DJs, live singers and performers, and tribute acts.

The dancefloor at LOVE is busy during the day and into the evening
The LOVE club is well-stocked with singles and couples dances

Here’s the freebie part: you can join the Love club group for free, but only today, March 31st, and tomorrow, April 1st! Starting April 2nd, 2024, Love will require a group membership to attend most events. In a recent notecard posted to the group, the new owners state:

…Pass[ing] 2500 members and still striving to provide our members with the best possible services and high-quality experiences, as well as for enhancing our exclusive offerings, we have made the decision to ask for membership fees for all new members from 2nd of April, 2024.

It means that :

  • From 2nd of April, all new membership will cost L$790;
  • Current members will naturally remain members without any fees;
  • Access to the LOVE venue will be then [for] group members only from April 2nd;
  • “Love” group members will also have special access to special Noir’Wen events, activities and offers [Noir’Wen is the name of the region where the Love club has its home].

The group membership will give us scope to schedule and plan for Live Performers (singers, dance groups, DJs and Tribute Acts), offer a stipend to our official LOVE photographer and Cigarette Girl, as well as organize specialist “themed events” on a monthly basis.

We will be arranging regular “Open Nights”, and events which will give temporary access to non group members and guests.

Under the new management team and formal dress code, we want to assure you that we remain committed to providing value and quality to your SL experience. Your continued support enables us to innovate, grow, and provide you with the quality experience you deserve.

Anyways, I have found a place I feel quite comfortable visiting and enjoying, and wanted to give Love a shout-out in my blog, and alert you that you only have a couple of days to join Love’s group for free! The name of the group is “Love” (yes, with the quotes), and here is the group’s URI, which you can copy and paste into text chat in order to join the group: secondlife:///app/group/0ecc3e77-afdf-129d-cc5a-21dd9647e9f8/about. (There’s also a group join sign at the entrance.)

Please note that, while the female dress code is now much less sexist, and any lewdness and nudity will probably get you quickly ejected, that this is a club where tag dancing is still allowed (with rules). According to “Love” group description:

Welcome to “Love” a tag dance and romance venue. For flirtatious, glamorous, charming patrons with a creative sense of distinction. A stylish, sophisticated venue for intimate and romantic rendezvous. We encourage tag dancing in our ballroom dance venue, where patrons may cut in on a couple by politely touching a dancer on the shoulder. “Love” is a friendly elegant tag venue Tag Dancing, Jazz, Music, Romance and Sensual Fetish. Formal dress code applies to all,

Also, from a notecard recently posted to the group:

Welcome to “Love” a tag dance and romance venue. Our new luxurious and high-class venue for dance, romance and seduction with an elegant and smart theme.

Tag Visitors, share dreams of intimacy and romance.. We respect diversity and cultural differences, whether this be relating to gender, sexual preferences, ethnicity, or other identities.

Please, follow some basic rules for making this beautiful place yours and give respect to all Visitors and Staff.

FORMAL DRESS CODE : is expected to be formal dress and emphasize seduction and sensuality while remaining elegant and chic.

For Men, we suggest a smart style such as business or chic casual suits or a formal tuxedo, slacks & suit jacket, or simply a blazer. It is a must for respecting and honoring women… Yes Sir. You are here to seduce and to flirt, so look like you mean to do that!

For women, we welcome your good taste and your seductive creativity, whether formal, sexy, classic or more daring… Dresses, gowns, cocktail dress, evening suits (with pants) are encouraged. Emphasizing seduction and sensuality while remaining elegant, chic and at the same time feeling desirable if not sensual.

For fetish and more “kinky desires”, we will regularly organize specially “themed” dedicated events and activities, so during these themes you can “WEAR WHAT YOU DARE”

,,,

Please give genuine respect to all. This will be the base of our flexibility and [rapport]. This is an exclusive venue for humans, and no other living species will be permitted in the club. [In other words, adult human avatars only; no furries, dinkies, tinies, centaurs, etc.]

No nudity (showing genitals), no t-shirts, jeans, shorts, sandals or beachwear.

Wear our club tag as much as possible, please. And remove any commercial [i.e. visible group] tag such as “escort”, “prostitute” or “pimp”.

No financial dealings or operations will be accepted. As well as no harassment of any kind.

Try also to remain light in terms of scripts, as it causes lag and will jeopardize movement.

If you require a change of outfit or costume before arriving in the club, you will find a cabin at the landing space to do so.

Of course, we won’t accept weapons of any kind other than your seduction and tantalizing powers.

We will not accept or tolerate any misogynistic language, behaviour, or attitudes.

We will not tolerate or accept any child related porn, relations, childlike avatars or pedophilia.

We will not tolerate any racist abuse, language, behaviour or attitudes or any racial slurs.

So, if after reading all this, you are somewhat intrigued, and especially if you (like me) have really missed the grand old days of Frank’s Jazz club, Love might just be the place for you! I have taken advantage of the free group join to sign up both my main avatars and small army of alts. 😉 I must admit that I quite like the club, my female avatars and alts have not been pestered, and it looks like I will be regularly spending time here, listening to the oldies and looking fabulous as always!

Coupon Clip, dressed to kill, and listening to the Legends Jazz sound track in the classy environment of the Love romance club under new management!

And so, I cordially invite you to check out Love for yourself. Here’s your taxi: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Noir%20Wen/91/225/32.

UPDATE April 2nd, 2024: Well, I do hope that you took advantage of that free group join while it was available! Here is a 40-second video clip of my main male and female avatars, Heath Homewood and Vanity Fair, out on the dance floor at Love:

UPDATE April 5th, 2024: Just a couple more shots of Heath and Vanity dancing at LOVE. This is where ye olde system-layers-and-flexiprims ballgowns of yesteryear still really shine! Some things just cannot be improved upon, after all these years.

Heath and Vanity do some groovy dancing
Heath and Vanity dance the classics at LOVE

*Please note that Frank’s still has an Elite VIP club, which I believe costs L$1,000 to join as a member, but which is, sadly, a subdued echo of the original, powerhouse dance club. Vanity Fair was once a member, but as a freebie fashionista, I decided I had to keep all of Vanity’s spare group slots free for stores and events! Priorities, people!! 😉

UPDATED! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Gifts from the 17th Birthday Shop and Hop Event

As promised, here are a selection of some of the wonderful freebies you can pick up as part of the Second Life 17th Birthday celebrations (more details here), which run until now until July 12th, 2020.

First, a pro tip: before you visit the Shop and Hop event, visit the SL17B Gift Boardwalk first. Why? Because many of the Shop and Hop vendors have also wisely made their gifts available here, as well as their booths at the Shop and Hop event. Trust me, you will find it much easier to get into these two sims than try to pry your way into the crowded, laggy Shop and Hop mall sims, which seem to be limited to 45 avatars each at a time, maximum. (Then again, so do the Second Life 17th Birthday sims where the Boardwalk is located.)

The SL17B Gift Boardwalk: Start Here

UPDATE June 20th, 2020: You should also know that there are a lot of gifts here at the Gift Boardwalk that are only available here, such as this striking, geometric design gown by Blue Rose Creations:

In this blogpost, I will be providing exact SLURLs to the locations at the Shop and Hop mall sims (not the SL17B Gift Boardwalk). Like I said, start at the Boardwalk first, and then, only if you cannot find it there, try to get into the Shop and Hop sims (I would strongly urge you to wait until July. The gifts aren’t going anywhere.)

I do apologize to you for using a pose stand for many of the following pictures. It just made going through all the gifts (well over 200!) a much less tedious process. I also tended to rely heavily on vendor photos of the gifts in the mall to decide what I wanted to unpack, wear, and show you in this blogpost.

Store Credits

First, pick up the two store credit offers available at the Shop and Hop event, which mean you can pick up whatever you want from the store later!

(UPDATE June 20th, 2020: I mistakenly had written that Blueberry was among the stores offering a store credit at the Shop and Hop, but that was back in March for their birthday, and I had even blogged about it then. Please accept my apologies for the mistake, and a thank you to Brinlea for pointing this error out to me in the comments!)

Bumblebee is offering a L$300 store credit here (just attach the HUD and click on it), and Addams is giving away L$500 in store credit here (just click on the sign at their booth).

My Favourite Clothes, Shoes, Jewelry, Hair, and Eyes

I don’t usually blog about eyes, but I will make an exception for these absolutely gorgeous Sahara eyes by Avi-Glam, available at their booth here. They come in both classic system and mesh versions (Catwa, Genus, LeLutka, and Omega). I just may be wearing this pair for a little while!

Blueberry is, once again, being extremely generous with her gifts! She is giving away a fatpack of lace-trimmed tops, plus a fatpack of bow slippers! Christmas came early, kids. (Speaking of Christmas, the pink leggings are an applier from Baby Monkey and were an Advent calendar gift from last December.)

AlaFolie‘s free gift is the Floralie Happy dress, trimmed along the bottom in black lace, which comes with a HUD with four different patterns (and you can also change the texture on the black top part of the dress to match the rest). You can pick it up here (and there are another four patterns of this dress available if you join the AlaFolie store group, which is not free). Here I have paired it with the long, wavy hair that Sintiklia is already well-known for! This is the Ruby hairstyle, which comes in 17 different colours and includes a styling HUD to wear each side forward or back as you desire (get it here).

There are some rather nice hair gifts available at the Shop and Hop mall, and this is another one: a neat and tidy, top-bun hairstyle called Kristen from Ade (here), which comes in a full fatpack of colours. The slate-blue floral tied shirt is the gift from Pixicat (here).

Lybra is offering two gifts that can be worn together as shown or separately: the top comes with two HUDs with solid colours and floral patterns, and the micro-miniskirt in matching colours and patterns (which thankfully includes panties to preserve your modesty!). You can get it here.

The hair shown below is yet another SL17B Shop and Hop freebie, the Candice hairstyle by Doux (here), which also comes in a fatpack of colours.

Bella Moda‘s genrous gift is this entire outfit: a gold and red party dress, shoes, and jewelry! This is the Celebrazione Crimson dress (available here), and all the little details on each of the pieces are examples of some truly lovely craftsmanship:

Here’s a closer look at the top of the Celebrazione dress, the necklace and the earrings:

Next up is yet another hairstyle fatpack, this one by Love, called (of course!) Lovely hair (available at their booth here), along with a sexy minidress from Pulse, which features a cutout at the back (not shown here).

The dress is sized for Maitreya Lara only, but it comes in no less than eight different colours: red as shown below, plus army, black, blue, blush, plum, white, and wine! The chain belt you see is optional and comes in four choices of metal: gold, silver, rose gold and onyx. You’re all set for the nightclub in this outfit! You can snap it up here!

(I know for a fact you can also pick up this dress and this hair at the Gift Boardwalk.)

Finally, we have the Be Mine floral headband and a moon collar from Tentacio (available here; please note that the creator has mistakenly switched the labels on the included HUD for the collar—Metal should be Leather and vice versa!):

This headband is completely adjustable in various dimensions (a feature I wish more accessories creators offered), and it comes in four different versions, with pink, red, white, and blue roses.

There are literally dozens of other gifts at both the Gift Boardwalk and the Shop and Hop mall; this is just a sampling of things which I particularly liked. There are also many home decor freebies available this time around, and tons of shoes, which I have not covered here except for the Blueberry and Bella Moda gifts.

Here’s a list of all the Shop and Hop sims. Again, I would caution you to wait a week or two until the crowd dies down and you can browse and wander in peace. The 200 participating vendors are also offering discounts on a selection of their merchandise, plus a few special items only during the SL17B celebrations!

Happy freebie shopping!

O.K., back to my vacation from the blog… 😉

UPDATE June 20th, 2020: I forgot to mention one more fabulous freebie, this beautiful deep purple and brown medieval/fantasy gown by Silvan Moon Designs! This is the Iona Destiny Elven gown in amethyst:

The set comes with a separate brown leather jerkin and arm-guards, which are one piece, in case you suddenly need to ride off to battle! The detail, as always, is delightful.

Now, I regret that I did not remember to save the SLURL for this last gift, but it is on the Gilded sim. Just look for a small suitcase on a fireplace mantel inside the store, to the right from the entrance.