New shirt, new pants

I'm the first to admit that I'm out of touch with what's what in terms of fashion in Second Life. I don't mind admitting that my interests are elsewhere (you know, scripting, building, that sort of thing). That said, I do like to try and expand my wardrobe. Not only is it fun to go shopping now and again, it's also nice to be able to wear different things.

And Miss Vila appreciates some different looks for me too, obviously.

However, I tend to find that much of the clothing for blokes in SL isn't really to my taste. Not that I could tell you what my taste is (that's not to suggest it's hard to define, it's just I've never really bothered to try and define it), but when I look at a lot of stuff for males on the MP it does nothing for me.

And, sadly, with the advent of mesh (which I personally really like), what is to my taste often seems to fit badly, even when I modify my shape to try and match.

So I was rather excited to pick up a whole load of demos from a couple of shops I found via the Fantasy Faire last week, which resulted in an outfit I'm rather happy with:

The first I stumbled on was FATEwear. They made the outfit I wore for the dance just over a week ago. I grabbed a bunch of demos from their shop and, while many didn't fit well at all, the shirt worked really well. This is kind of rare for me. I struggle to find mesh shirts or tops that look..... right. They always seem to come out wrong in the shoulder bit this shirt seems to just work. I also picked up a casual suit too that works well -- I might photograph that and post it at some point.

The pants, which I'm seriously happy with, come from 22769. I've being looking for something like them for ages: big, baggy, long and perfect for going barefoot. These are just spot on, very me. The texture on the black ones is just the sort of thing I like too:

The price is silly too. Just L$130. Given there's a few colours I can see me grabbing a couple more.

Just hanging around

When it comes to throwing about the really big prims Miss Vila's the one who does that. Generally I build little details, and do all the scripting, and give my input and ideas for designs, but she's the one who throws around the huge prims like it's no big deal.

Which often means when we're working on a big project, like the one that will get revealed later this week, I'm just hanging around.

Sometimes literally. ;)

Fantasy Faire

Late on last week Miss Vila and I took a trip out to have a proper look around the Fantasy Faire. Although we'd been there on the opening day, just an hour or so after it opened, that was a flying visit so she could pick up an outfit she wanted for the Raven Park Middle-earth dance. This time we just went along to have a good look around and enjoy the builds (and, of course, spend a little more money seeing as how it's all in a good cause).

Here's a few pictures from our wander:

I'm not even going to bother to try and write about it -- so many others have written so much. All I will say is that it was an impressive build and I'm in awe at how much work it must take to organise it.

On top of that I found a designer I've not seen before who makes a few things that I rather liked the look of and, more importantly, Miss liked too. I've since shopped at their main store this weekend (I might try and write about the purchases later).

Middle-earth

Yesterday evening we had another dance at Raven Park. This time around the dress (and music) theme was Middle-earth.

Thankfully, unlike with the last dance, finding costumes was pretty easy. Miss Vila had already seen one that had been advertised as going to be available at the SL Fantasy Fair and, earlier yesterday, with a bit of minimal sleuthing, we found it. As it happens, even though I'd already sorted myself with an outfit, I ended up with another one there too (from the same shop).

I even sorted myself with a beard. A first for me!

(I should mention that the outfit I'm wearing there is the first one I purchased and, yes, there's a texture issue with the brooch/clasp on the cloak. I dropped the maker a line and he sorted me with a fixed one within a couple of hours -- excellent service. And the fact that I didn't wear it in the end is no reflection on the outfit, it's just that the one I ended up with was 100% mesh and Miss likes to see me in mesh outfits where possible)

The dance itself was loads of fun. Here's a selection of photos:

I really enjoyed the evening. As with the Firefly dance, there was lots of great banter about all things SciFi and fantasy and, on top of that, because many of the people there were builders and makers of things RLV and kinky, there was a good bit of building talk too, with lots of ideas being swapped.

And there was a late appearance of an Easter gag. Well, dragon egg gag. That's what we decided. ;)

Mostly, though, I rather enjoyed the constant flash of Mistress leg. ;)

Hopefully there'll be another dance in a couple of weeks (it generally depends on the demands of RL on those involved). And there'll likely be another fairly geeky theme. Yes, one topic of conversation was ideas for future dress themes, and I was given the task of recording them. And record them I did. ;)

In a hole

The last couple or so weeks have been fairly busy for me in SL, and busy for Miss Vila in RL. As such, I've had what might be described as an easy time. While we have spent time together it's been fairly fleeting. That didn't, however, appear to stop be from getting into trouble.

Earlier this week I was showing her a gag that I'd made quite a long time ago and was thinking of tweaking and finally putting on sale (I've being ensuring all of the Z&A gags are available via the affiliate programme and I was reminded of this one that wasn't for sale). While showing it of I was trying to talk through it and, thanks to the "gaglish" text changing that's built into it, it appeared that I called her a "whiny bitch".

That didn't go down so well.

Neither did the near-constant arguing from me that she'd misheard.

Anyway, fast forward to today and I find myself naked and locked in the ground cage that can be found in the walled garden here on Raven Park. The one that's filled with water...

which doesn't allow much of a view of the surroundings (although, I must say, what little I could see was very attractive):

Once I was securely locked -- minus any IMs (incoming or outgoing), maps or even the ability to see avatar names -- Miss settled down to have a good long chat with me about my attitude of late.

I won't go into details but she made the point that many of the things I do, even things I do for her, are often motivated by what I think would be good or would benefit me. Often I'll ask or answer a question in a way that's about my interests. She's right, of course, and I apologised for making that sort of mistake over and over again.

At that point I thought to actually ask her what she wanted, what her wishes were (rather than me trying to interpret them through the filter of my view of them) and... bam! I ran out of chat allowance in the Z&A Sub-Allowance. That was seriously frustrating as I'd finally understood what she was trying to tell me and I could no longer let her know.

Miss just smiled, rolled over, watched the clouds and made the devastating point that if I'd bothered to ask that question in the first place I wouldn't have used the allowance up on myself.

Now that I was, in effect, gagged, she made her point without me being able to say a word or react in any way. She told me that she wasn't going to give me any more talking allowance today and that I'd do well to spend more time in the hole and think about what she'd said.

With that she set a timer on the cage (to 2 hours -- I'd already been in there 1) and went and sat on the bench for a little bit:

before heading off home and leaving me alone with my thoughts.

As of now I'm free of the cage and dressed again.

From now on I'm determined to make better use of my talk allowance when in my Mistress' presence.

Floating away...

Despite the fact that it doesn't always work out well (region crossings being what they are in SL) I've always had a bit of a thing for flying in Second Life. There are some really fun vehicles out there. My taste has tended to lean towards helicopters and the like (you can have fun with them without needing multiple regions to get the best out of them). So when a friend alerted me to the fact that all the vehicles on the famous Terra Aeronautics store were just L$11 now I had to grab a load.

My firm favorite right now is the balloon. Especially given you can repaint it:

I think I can even get away with floating around Raven Park in this.

I also grabbed an airship that's very Raven Park. When I get a little bit of time, and when it's quiet down on the ground, I'll try and take some pictures. I did rez it out on the workshop's vehicle build/test platform and it's huge!

We had a shindig

Late last week Miss Vila was kind enough to release me from the most recent main restriction. The main reason for this was in anticipation of the weekend dance at Raven Park. As mentioned over on the Z&A blog, the theme for the dance was all things Firefly. In the past few months I've managed to get Miss Vila hooked on it, Miss Eve is a long-time fan and, it turns out, at least two other residents of Raven Park are fans too.

So it was decided we'd dress the part for the dance. This was perfect for me, I had just the outfit waiting and ready:

Well, mostly. I dropped the coat but added a gun (with Miss Vila's permission -- generally we don't permit subs to carry weapons on Raven Park, and generally don't permit non-D/S-RP weapons in general). I'd highly recommend that gun if you're ever looking for something Firefly-themed. It looks stunning and works really well too.

Apparently though I was the only one properly organised. Both Miss Vila and Miss Eve knew exactly which characters they wanted to go as (Inara and Zoe) and both appeared to know exactly what look they were going for. Easy, right?

No.

I spent the next couple or so days listening to both of them telling me how it was impossible to find anything they needed for their outfits and how it was all my fault. Yup, my fault! I should mention at this point that it was Miss Vila who first suggested we should have a Firefly-themed dance at some point, and it was Miss Eve who says "let's do it!" when I mentioned this to her. Which, of course, makes it all my fault. O_o

Anyway...

Finally, the day came, and everyone had an outfit. I think Miss Vila made a stunning Inara:

Miss Eve managed to sort her Zoe outfit in the end. We even had a petite River and a Reaver. And we also got a Wash!

We had loads of fun for the couple of hours of the dance. There was much talk about how awesome Firefly is, and lots of talk about SciFi shows in general.

When the dance had ended we all decided to head off for a quick photoshoot. The location? The in-world sample of this amazing build (one day I'll somehow make the space to have one of my own rezzed all the time). We popped the cargo bay door open and created a group shot:

Was lots of fun.

And, now, it's back to the current main project. Hopefully this'll keep Miss Vila busy enough that she'll forget about her apparently terrible shopping experience last week and the fact that, somehow, it's my fault. ;)

So that's where my shop went...

It was sort of heartening to read this blog post a little earlier today. While I've noticed the missing prim thing a lot over the past few months, and while they always appear when I do an edit, it's got a lot worse since this week's rolling restart. And it's always a little worrying to see my shop looking like this:

A fix somewhere down the line would be really nice.