Pretty Damn Queenly

a fun kind of queen

 As a child, playing princess wasn't really my thing. I had dolls and cuddly toys, yes, and I used to make little houses out of my Nana's sofa cushions, but I also had a car mat and a book about dinosaurs and I liked to watch Power Rangers and Batman with my mum. I didn't go through the teenage princess thing, either, but instead threw my lot in with the knights and the soldiers and the rogues, the mages and the necromancers who put the dead back into their graves (not the more traditional other way around).

Queens are where it's at. If I had to occupy any position of power within a monarchy, I'd want to be a queen. My husband would not outrank me, and I wouldn't suffer any of that pea-under-a-mattress or cursed spinning loom nonsense. I'd be the benign dictator I'm starting to think my country needs (did you see any of the Clegg/Farage debate? Kill me now).

The leaves remind me of the Roman laurel wreath. I have no idea if that was even remotely the intention behind this design.

I know it wouldn't be easy, but I'm not sure that ruling should be easy. If it's easy, you're missing something somewhere, you're not engaging with the problems and the nuances of the problems of the people. And I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth and a chair at Eton with my name already written on it - in cursive on a little golden plaque - so I don't waltz with an air of entitlement sniggering behind my hand at in-jokes with my fellow Bullingdon Boy chums. I'm also not afraid of Islam, and have an open mind about the EU. Oh - and I'd consider employing as my allies and advisors any homosexual the kind members of UKIP can identify as having the ability to control the weather (I'd imagine that kind of skill is worth a Nobel Prize, at least).

What does any of this have to do with Second Life, Kitti? I hear you, oh noble and patient subjects, and I will give you the answer you seek. This self-indulgent ramble was inspired by the beautiful items I was asked to blog to help promote the Fit for a Princess Event, which opened in SL on April 1st. I was overwhelmed by the amount of things I received to blog (even more than from FutureWave!). There's no real way I could blog it all, but there seem to be lots of other bloggers on the case, too - so between us, perhaps we'll do it justice.

The fair itself isn't huge, but is packed full of really great and beautifully made items. It's really simply laid out in a circle, and the building itself has palpable textures and a shiny floor that reflects the arches in the roof perfectly (which is a really cool SL effect, I think). I realise that blogging fashion doesn't really fall in with my usual style of blogging, but I do like to take snaps of and record here some of the wonderful things the creators in SL are making, and I think this is one way of doing that. 

My dress in the first picture was made by aemeth. I've been a fan of aemeth since my early days in SL, and the make-up I bought from her store not long after I first started SL has aged magnificently and is still amongst my favourites. This dress is so lovely, but it's fun too - and I think funness is overlooked by the majority when talking about monarchy. What's the point in being a princess (or a queen) if you can't have any fun? I love the folds and the creases as the dress gathers into the cuffs and the hem - so realistically. 

The crown and collar in the second picture are by Evie's Closet and their leafy design seems to invoke a ghost of the old god-emperors of the Ancient Roman Empire. They're much more delicate, of course, than Caesar's laurels, but they are so so pretty.

Royal Blue I

Royal Blue II

The last things I want to show you are this beautiful ballgown and these super sparkly nails. The ballgown was made by Peqe, and it comes in a whole bunch of colour combinations, each named after a Grimm/Disney character. I don't tend to dress Kitti in blue very often, but I thought the softness of this dress in Hades (named after the Hercules' Hades, of course) was too pretty and sweet to miss out on. My glittery Rhinestone nails (appliers - for Slink hands) match perfectly, too. They're courtesy of A:S:S.

All of the items I have mentioned in post are available at the Fit for a Princess event, and there is so, so much more. If you'd like to go and see for yourself, click here - here! Even if you're not really into princessy stuff, like me, there'll most definitely be something there for you. I mean, how queenly do I look in those last pictures!? Pretty damn queenly, even if I do say so myself.

Miscellany

it's dark in here

Sitting in my unsorted screenshots folder is a small collection of random pictures I have snapped for various reasons that, by themselves, don't have enough weight to have their own blog post. I like to let them mount up in the corner, then post them all together in a swirl of dust. So here goes.

Chipped nail varnish

I am as big a fan as anybody of the SLink add-on hands, and the grid seems now to be awash with people making virtual nail varnish. At the Cosmetic Fair, I found this advert for chipped nail varnish. I'm not exactly a fashionista, but I'm aware that chipped nail varnish is 'a thing', if you like, in the real world, and so I suppose it wasn't going to take too long to make an appearance in the virtual world. I didn't buy the chipped nail effect, so I can't tell you first hand (lol) how good it is, but it looks pretty cool from the pictures. Nail varnish is something I own quite a lot of in real life, and this love hasn't been lost between realms. 

It's also worth mentioning that these varnishes, and the other make-up on sell by this vendor at the Cosmetic Fair, was all modelled by men. I didn't notice anything else at the Cosmetic Fair using male models, and I thought it was pretty cool. At no point did I think 'this must only be aimed at men, then', and I started wondering whether the appearance of more male models would open up the forum, and allow men to look at female models and still consider the product for themselves as I did. 

Unfortunately, I'm an idiot and I didn't note down the name of the shop selling these. If you have it, pop it in the comments? Thank you.

Moving on.

Apple for teacher?

Another fair: I snapped the above picture at the Enchantment Fair. The Enchantment Fair is offering fairytale themed items, and the first three months' are about Snow White. The first stand I came across when arriving at the fair was this one, selling necklaces featuring this wonderfully made poisoned apple, amongst other things. I just thought it was all kinds of wonderful. It was made by aisling, and I really, really want to buy it.

Do not adjust your screen

Yup, that's right - I found toothbrushes. Toothbrushes that sing to you. I have no idea where I was when I found these, except that it was at yet another fair that was selling a lot of things aimed at children. I'm not sure how legal these are, since they use what look like straight-lifted Disney pictures and no, I didn't buy one, but they did make me laugh. Dental hygiene is clearly very important to beings whose teeth are fake and who cannot eat, drink, or get gum disease or bad breath. I'm filing this one with the toilets and the washing machines that originally informed my original essay and the opinion that our avatars are nostalgic for a world we want to escape (which is an intellectual Chinese finger-trap).

Let's not linger here, we're not dentists:

Fighter pilot Vespers

I found a wonderful picture of this little space rocket on Flickr (which I am struggling to find again - sorry!) and, realising that I'm becoming a little bit of a hermit, decided I would go and explore the sim it was in. Norah Vespers came with me, which always makes any trip twice as fun. We found the pictured rocket and, of course, Norah hopped in it. Dressed as modern space-girls as we were, we made the rocket seem dated, retro, rustic, and I like the idea that we became a portrait of nostalgia on several layers.

On the same sim, we found these:

Got milk?

 Police golf cart milk float Robin Reliant things. Yup, wouldn't you be just petrified if one of those was coming after you? With our fit space-girl bodies, we could almost definitely out-run those things were we to get into trouble - which, of course, we never ever do.

And finally, a werewolf tried to scratch me. No, really, it happened!

see dialogue top left

Except that, because of the way SL almost pedantically upholds social maxims (namely, thou shalt not do anything to anybody else unless they give you expressed permission), he had to ask me if he could cut me up with his claws first, and I of course said no. I have no idea where this guy saw me to even attempt to attack me, but attack me he did. I was in the comfort of my own skybox when I saw the notification, and that seemed to make the offer simultaneously more funny and more scary. I've written a little bit about Bloodlines here, which I shall lazily paste a link to rather than explain again - here. Personally, I think he might have been more successful had he forced the action on me using the /me function, but I'm also kind of glad he didn't do that, for obvious reasons. Polite werewolves are definitely a thing now, especially since Anne Rice is writing their life stories. Being English, and a lover of Anne Rice, I appreciate politeness ;).

Yes, Kitti is wearing cat ears in that last picture, but is that really the oddest thing in this post?!

A Handful

Also in love with this skybox from Scarlet Creative, created by/for William Weaver as a gallery space

That's right - I did it. I gave up. I gave in. I gave - sigh - all my money to SLink (no, the prices are very good) and bought a pair of their mesh hands. They match my mesh feet perfectly, which I also have on in this shot, you just, obviously, can't see that far down. I'd been putting it off and putting it off, and then my friends went and bought them and I wondered why it was that I'd been putting it off. Perhaps it was out of loyalty to my lovely nail add-ons from Izzie's, but that isn't really fair because Izzie's makes nail varnishes for the SLink hands, too, so I don't have to give all those lovely nail colours up. And now I'm just babbling.

To the point: mesh hands. Kitti has mesh hands, and they're beautiful. There isn't too much more to it than that. 

I've been waiting for an excuse to use this pose for literally months

There is a teeny bit more, though. The mesh hands work by using an alpha layer to hide your system hands, then the hands themselves go on top. That reminds me of the hands the inventor makes in Edward Scissorhands, and, I suppose, it is a little like that. But when I put the hand-alpha on this morning, Kitti's breasts suddenly burst out the front of her shirt. Confused, I went into the shirt folder and put the alpha that was supposed to be keeping her chest hidden behind her shirt back on - and her system hands reappeared again. I am a magician, ladies and gentlemen, with a handful of alphas and alphas that are a handful.

When I'd finished scowling (and reluctantly giggling), I remembered that there's a limit on the number of alphas an avatar can be wearing in one go, and Kitti was already wearing four to begin with. A fifth was too many, so was knocking the others off. Her shirt, trousers, hair and feet only attach to her body and appear to lie neatly against her skin because an alpha has hidden the limbs beneath. If I kept going, chasing fallen-off alphas through my inventory, perhaps I could make all Kitti's different body parts appear and disappear like a macabre kind of circus side-show...

But enough. I'm starting to sound hysterical. Who knew a pair of hands could cause such (trivial) trouble.