MissDrag, wearing the Anatomy mesh body, looking good and feeling absolutely FABULOUS, darling! (And, to quote drag queen Mrs. Kasha Davis, “There’s always time for a cocktail!”)
WARNING! This is a super-long blogpost because, late yesterday evening, I received news about SeraPRIDE and their Ultimate Drag Superstar Contest, so instead of writing up a separate blogpost, I decided to add it to this one, which I was already writing. So go pour yourself a coffee (or some wine, or whatever your favourite beverage is!), settle in, and enjoy a little longform reading. 🙂
As my regular blog readers know, I have a drag queen avatar in Second Life, named MissDrag, and I have written about creating a look for her many times before on this blog (here, here, here, and here). I have spent many an enjoyable hour gallivanting around the grid as a drag queen, in search of sisters or a place to death drop. Alas, my search was always in vain (and searching for “drag” under Places in Search led me only to the countless drag car racing communities in Second Life).
Well, I am pleased to announce that I have taken my RuPaul’s Drag Race obsession a step further: I am now performing in drag shows in Second Life! Yes, I can now proudly add digital drag artist to my resume! I even earn money from it!!
The stage at Pal’z SL Premier Drag Club
Pal’z SL Premier Drag Club (SLURL) is operated by Pal Mally, and holds drag shows Thursdays and Fridays from 8:00-10:00 p.m. SL Time/Pacific Time. Pal is assisted on stage by a hostess, who is usually FrankOh, but at last night’s show drag queen Red Rioja filled in. (Please click on each picture in the gallery below to see it in its full-size glory; these are just one of multiple costume changes each queen did during their shows!)
Pal MallyFrankOhRed Rioja
As you can see from these pictures, you can do drag in EVERY body: classic system body or modern mesh body, male body or female body or something in-between (more on that in a moment). Pal Mally’s notecard with instructions for potential drag artists states: “No avatar will be refused (except child avatars), so the sky is the limit.”
Here’s a 25-second video clip of my very first drag performance last week, with Pal Mally and other drag queens! You can use the dance animations Pal provides, as we did here, or provide your own, as I did for my second show this week.
My first drag performance! (I’m in the red wig.)
Just as in real life, drag queens can receive tips from the audience during their performance! In the one-minute video below, you can see the drag queen Red Rioja set up her tip jar during her set, and receive a L$100 tip from me:
Red Rioja (a.k.a JackBeary) performs at Pal’s drag club, and receives a tip from me!
I actually earned over L$1,000 in tips from an appreciative audience each of the two times I stepped on stage at Pal’z drag club! It’s the best feeling in the world.
I donated some of my earnings back to support the club; there’s a donation box located at the rear of the dance floor.
At the end of the evening, Pal Mally invites everybody to dance on stage:
How I came across Pal’z drag club is quite a story in itself. At this year’s SL Skin Fair, Malediction announced a new male mesh body called Anatomy, which could work with both male and female heads, and could be shaped using the body sliders for a wide variety of masculine and feminine looks:
The body comes in two versions, Fit and Soft, and the package includes six base shapes which you can use as a starting point: Feminine Curvy, Feminine Slim, Masculine Chubby, Masculine Classic, Masculine Muscle, and Masculine Slim. The Anatomy body features 7 nail types and lengths, 5 feet types (flat, low, medium, high, and tiptoe), and something I hadn’t seen before in a mesh body, optional asymmetrical arms Bakes-on-Mesh (in other words, you can have different tattoos on each arm, if you wish).
In an April Fool’s joke, the Anatomy body creator, Adrien Absinthe, said they were going to release a “Bimbo Body”, and then instead released a free add-on to the Anatomy body, a ridiculously oversized set of breasts called Big Boobs which completely replace the regular male chest pecs on the Soft version of the body.
My first thought in seeing this was, “Wow, that would make a great drag queen breast plate!,” and I laughed so hard that I landed up buying the Anatomy body! So congratulations, Adrien, your April Fool’s joke made a sale. 😉 The Anatomy body retails for L$4,499 here in SL or L$4,949 on the Second Life Marketplace, so if you want to save some money, buy it in-world.
Below you see MissDrag, wearing the Anatomy body with the Big Boobs add-on, with a female LeLutka Evo X mesh head, Lilly, which I picked up as a free Christmas gift in a previous year (I alpha’ed out the feet completely and used a pair of older feet-in-high-heeled shoes I picked up at a freebie store several years ago):
And here’s three more MissDrag looks, all using the Anatomy body with the Quinn male mesh head, which was a LeLutka Holiday Special event gift from last December (please click on each image to see it in full size):
Anyway, to get to the point: I posted some of these photos on the Anatomy Discord server (where, by the way, they have a gallery featuring works by the many designers already creating clothing, footwear, and accessories for this body!), and somebody DM’ed me to ask where I got the wig in the third picture above, and he told me about Pal’z drag club! It’s funny how often that sort of thing happens in Second Life…the butterfly effect in full force.
Late last night, I got the following message via Discord:
Hi Ryan. I don’t know if you’d consider sharing this information with your blogging community, but I am wanting to spread the word as far as I can for the Rainbow Railroad project. This weekend is our final weekend to receive applications for contestants to sign up and participate in this year’s drag race. The winner will receive L$25,000 worth of gift cards, and they will be crowned this year’s Ultimate Drag Super Star.
The team of Seraphim has also been working very hard to reach out to creators and entertainers to ask for their time and/or donations for this event. The Second Life community has donated over 1 million Linden dollars’ worth of matching donations and prizes towards the SeraPRIDE event. We are hoping to bring in guests to join us in the celebration and help raise awareness and funds that go directly to the Rainbow Railroad project. If this is something that interests you, and you’d like to pass on this information to others, I am including some links and video clips to include in your publication.
PLEASE NOTE that the deadline for applying to perform at the SeraPRIDE Drag Race event is very soon! The contestant application will remain open until 11:59pm Second Life Time/Pacific Time on May 15th, 2023 (the day after tomorrow). Chosen contestants will be notified with more information by May 22nd, 2023.
Seraphim is always up for a great party, and what better reason to celebrate than PRIDE?! Seraphim is planning a full day of activities on the SeraSim, including giveaways, gifts, live music, parties, and a brand new, exclusive drag performance for 2023!
Rainbow Railroad works with LGBTQIA+ individuals facing persecution and violence simply because of their sexual identity by helping secure relocation, safety, and support. Since 2006, Rainbow Railroad has helped more than 7,621 persecuted individuals from over 38 countries.
So, what are you waiting for? Get your application in today! And be sure to tell ’em Miss Drag sent you… 😉
To celebrate LGBTQ+ Pride, Jackalope is throwing a 50% off sale, and they are also holding a Pride Hunt. The hunt items are free and you do not need to join the Jackalope store group to get the individual hunt items, which all together make up a complete rainbow outfit!
Everything Vanity Fair is wearing in the pictures below—the fishnet crop top, skirt, badges, earrings, bracelet, the wonderful combat boots with rainbow socks, even the Bento pose and the backdrop!—is a hunt prize from the Jackalope Pride Hunt.
One of the free hunt prizes is this wonderful, colourful backdrop! The collection of balloons to the left and right are separate items and you could easily reuse them for other celebrations such as birthday parties:
Now, I should caution you that many of the hunt prizes are rather fiendishly hidden all around the store (including the ceiling!). If you get frustrated, here’s a pro hunt tip from Auntie Ryan 😉 …in the Firestorm viewer, if you press Ctrl-Shift-R, it will turn on wireframe mode (which is essentially X-ray vision). Press Ctrl-Shift-R again to toggle it back off. (If this feels like cheating to you, then don’t use this tip.)
Sahara eyes by Avi-Glam (free gift from the SL17B Shop and Hop; more information here)
This next Pridewear freebie is from a store called 28LA, and it is a doozy! Teleport to the store, and click on the rack of clothing outside, and you will receive a Pride collection of apparel, with designs for for both male and female avatars! The male clothing comes in sizes to fit Belleza Jake and Signature Gianni mesh bodies, and the female clothing is designed to fit the Belleza Freya, Slink Hourglass, and Maitreya Lara mesh bodies.
The Free Pridewear Collection from 28LA
Finally, we have the Pride Festival in Second Life, which runs from June 24th to 28th. Most of the vendor booths at this event have free gifts (you will have to join the free Pride Festival group to get them). Here’s a look at three of the many gifts:
this colourful eye makeup from ALMA (system/Bakes on Mesh, plus Catwa, LeLutka and Omega appliers);
the Proud Lips by Dotty’s Secret (system/Bakes on Mesh, plus Catwa, Genus and Omega appliers);
June is traditionally the month when LGBTQ* Pride festivals happen in cities around the world, but of course, most such festivities have been cancelled because of the ongoing public health emergency that is the coronavirus pandemic.
Luckily, Second Pride, Second Life’s biggest Pride party, starts tomorrow, June 5th, and runs until June 14th, 2020! This year’s theme is Together, and there’s never been a better time for queer people and their allies to come together to celebrate in virtual worlds, when meeting up in the real world is difficult or impossible!
Many Second Life stores are giving away group gifts to celebrate Pride month. For example, if you join the Luas group for L$50, among the many free group gifts you can pick up in the Luas store is this new, versatile Claim minidress, which comes with a HUD to allow you to tint the top and bottom parts of the dress to any of six different colours, as well as choose one of six different stickers for the front (including a pair of rainbow lips for Pride). You can also choose to go logo-free if you wish!
As you can imagine, this is the time of year to pick up rainbow-coloured freebies! The rainbow flag was popularized as a symbol of the gay community by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker in 1978. The different colours are often associated with diversity in the gay community, but actually have literal meanings as follows (source):
life (red),
healing (orange),
sunlight (yellow),
nature (green),
harmony/peace (blue),
and spirit (purple).
The store group for EQUAL is free to join for a limited time, and among the many free group gifts are these wonderful, rainbow Jensen sneakers, which come in sizes to fit Maitreya Lara, Belleza (male and female), Slink (male and female), Signature (male and female), Legacy (male and female), EXMACHINA, and Aesthetic mesh body feet, as well as an unrigged pair which you can probably adjust to fit many other avatars:
Fancy Decor has a trio of free, lovely decor items for your Second Life home. Head on down to The Arcade gacha event, and just inside the entrance to the arcade to the left (SLURL), the Fancy Decor gacha machine has a free gift of two different Pride coffee mugs. Unfortunately, they don’t come with a hold/drink animation, but they will still look fabulous in your virtual kitchen!
And, in one of the small white tents that circle the central stage on the Second Pride sim, Fancy Decor has another gift: a beautifully-decorated Pride cake on a platter! (Here’s the exact SLURL so you don’t go hunting all over the place.)
There are a few of the other freebies you can find at the stores at the Second Pride festival. Here’s a fun, spilled-paint rainbow shirt, courtesy of the Saint Elizabeth Catholic role-play university for women (who knew that such a thing even existed?), which comes in both men’s and women’s versions (here’s the SLURL of their tent):
The gift from Lucky Lola’s tent is this festive set of helium balloons (SLURL):
At both their tent (SLURL) and their store (SLURL) on the Second Pride sim, the Gay List is giving away oodles of free stuff from the Regimade Factory Store: animations, dance fans, particle effects and attachments, and a box which, when unpacked, gives you several hundred different dance effects to experiment with! Here’s a shot of one pair of dance fans, and one of the dance animations in the boxes:
RIOT’s free gift is a Pride flag you wear as a cape! It comes with a HUD to change the design to one of six different textures, in sizes to fit both men and women:
UPDATE June 11th, 2020: Cat Pink has just released another one of her videos, giving an overview of other Second Life stores that are offering Pride-themed group gifts:
*which, of course, stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer…and the asterisk at the end of the acronym is meant to cover everybody else who feels that the previous categories don’t include them. We queer folk are nothing if not inclusive!
