The Pleasure Palace: The Opium's Curse

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STORYLINE: There was defeat in victory. The Cursed A.N.G.E.L was bleeding badly. He needed blood, lots of it. He was delirious. He had already ripped EVA limb from limb, and still he battled on. He attacked spectators blindly, but the blood of genetically engineered humans could not satisfy him. The thirst drove him to more and more horrific acts of violence. Standing calm in sea of screeching people was a man with a dart gun. He knew the Cursed A.N.G.E.L's weakness. A dart soon found it's mark, and the A.N.G.E.L collapsed. ..."Opium. God, why did it have to be opium?" he moaned. He hated that crap. Opium cursed him. If only he hadn't been so damn high on that moonless night long ago, he would have realized from where that bump-in-the-night came, and ran like hell.

ROMP is a fantastic new event for adults with the slogan of "elegant kink." That's right, the best of SL designer's have created new quality products to spice up your sexy time. Don't miss it! For my first post on ROMP, I am showing the Slingback chair by CerberusXing. It comes in teal, pink, black, beige, and purple. Each chair comes with hud will change the silk drap texture and you can also edit tint it like I did above. The chair has 7 single animations, 9 cuddle animations for couples, 5 cuddle animations for a threesome, and the adult version has 9 animations for couples, and 7 animations for threesomes. All poses are adjustable and can save your settings. Land impact of 10. ... The silky heart shaped bed is by Bauwerk. You can get it in PG and Adult. The PG version has 27 single animations, and 38 couple animations.  All poses are adjustable and can save your settings. Land impact of 14. ... Other pieces in the settings are the Kumotori Bath house with purple orchid. I tweaked the textures on it to remove all symbols on the rice paper. The Madpeas bonsai to the right is from the past round of The Arcade. Outside is the Enchanted Pond by Studio Skype and the Dysfunctional Designs Fenghuang Statue.

Now a little more about what we are wearing. Aarya returns to BishieStyleSL for a cameo as the vampiress who created the Cursed A.N.G.E.L. I wish her a speedy recovery from surgery and hopefully she can return to blogging soon. Her outfit is by Barerose, hair by Truth, skin by Glam Affair, and pet Shiro is a gacha by Aii. ... You'll have to forgive me for mixing styles here. The Ao Dai by Barerose comes with pants, but who needs those? *throws away* lol Besides, look at these excellent shoes by BOOM. They have a materials' suede look to them you can see in advanced lighting. They are sale at Collabor88 for only 88L and come in girls and guys and many colors options. The Runaway hair Darcy is from Manga Fair. I love the bangs, and though it's meant for girls, it works perfectly on the guys too! The smoking pipe is fun older item by Rozoregells and it contains several poses with the pipe, like I used above. The dark headdress is from Latex Web and was past gift. I combined it with the TAMA Japanese Lantern hairsticks from a past Genre round. The pearl necklace is from Monster and has several strands. It comes with a resize script. The arm wraps are by Dark Prophet Designs from a past Fantasy Gacha. ... ok, I will be bringing you more of the ongoing story from Cursed A.N.G.E.L, and more great things from ROMP!

Both ROMP and Manga Fair end July 30th.

Setting:
Chair: CerberusXing Chained Slingback Chair - purple [mesh] (ROMP)(PG 467L, Adult 723L)
Bed: Bauwerk Heart Bed [mesh](ROMP)(PG 485L, Adult 740L)
House, orchid: Trompe Loeil Kumotori Bath House, shell (edit texture)[mesh](300L)
Garden pond: Studio Skye Enchanted Pond V2[mesh](699L)
Statue: Dysfunctional Designs Fenghuang Statue[mesh](165L)
Bonsai: MadPea Bonsai Tsume, gacha [mesh](past, The Arcade)

On Him, the Cursed boy:
Sandals: BOOM Tired Sole Sandals Gents - khaki [mesh](Collabor88)(88L)
Hair: Runaway Dandy Hair - black and whites[mesh] (Manga Fair)(250L)
Outfit: BareRose Mens Sleeveless Ao Dai C2 Purple [mesh](190L)
Headdress: Latex Web !LW FanChains Hairpins GIFT (past, free)
Necklace: Monster Kink Beads :: Pearl (39L)
Wraps: Dark Prophet Designs DPD Arm Wraps - Neutral gacha [mesh] (no longer available)
Hairsticks: TAMA Japanese Lantern Hairsticks [mesh](past, Genre)
Hands: Slink Male Hands [mesh](450L)
Feet: Slink Male Feet Flat [mesh] (650L)

Eyeliner: CL-NINE CL9v2l_HeadEyeline01C(bk)(free)

Eyes: S0NG Winter Violet Eye [mesh] (50L)

Applier Hands: Tableau Vivant Tone 05 (90L)
Skin: Tableau Vivant Sean Skin - Tone 05 G (990L)
Pipe, pose: ROZOREGALIA BOUHACHI*PIPE2(B)Si/R (400L)

On Her, the Vampiress:
Guest appearance: Aarya Phantomhive of the Dark Phantom blog.
Pet: Aii Ugly & Beautiful Designs Familiar Spirit Shiro, gacha [mesh](50L)
Outfit: BareRose WYS Sidare Zakura [mesh](190L)
Hands: Slink Relaxed Hands [mesh](450L)
Feet: Kokoia Tip Toe Bare Feets [mesh](10L)
Hair: TRUTH HAIR Fernanda [mesh](250L)
Eyes: Dead Apples Sinistre Eyes - Bloodlust (299L)
Skin: Glam Affair Vera - Horror edition GIFT B (past, group gift)

MEME: What's your Digits?

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Before I answer the Meme questions, I want to point out two great items for guys and girls at Dark Style Fair. The event ends June 7th so hurry over to pick up the goodies! The Compass Tech Muffler I am wearing from Contraption fits in a wonderfully mysterious way. It's perfect to hide behind when you've been sloppy in your feeding habits. Boowahahahaha. Little Lolita is modeling the fitted mesh Bat Corset from Violent Seduction. The corset has cute bat bows in the front and back. It comes in black, blue, candy, green, ice, lavender, leaf, mint, peach, purple, red, teal, or white and each color has it's own complete color change hud.

Each time Berry's What's your Digits Meme comes around I take the time to reevaluate my shapes. It's a good exercise to do, especially for tweaking proportions. This Meme helped create the standard sizes thanks to Wisdom of the Crowd averaging. Using the standards eliminated the quirks in my shapes mostly for the better, while I still maintain my ideal Bishonen proportions. ...Now I have a confession to make. I switch shape and even tweak shape for clothing, or pose, on almost every image I do. My digits can vary greatly so it doesn't make sense to list my digits ranges. But I can say this, my main avatar above, which I wear when I am not blogging, uses a standard size medium and clocks in between 7' 8" (234 cm) and 8' (244 cm). For the girls shown on the blog, I've taken over that duty from Fulli. She might be back in the future, but for now I'm carrying the load. My girl shapes are all over the map too as I hunt for the right tone. I'm still trying to find my way around the girl dials. lol Little Lolita above is becoming one of my favorites. She wears a size extra small and stands without heels at 6' 4" (193 cm). ...yeah, maybe not so little Lolita. lol  Just for comparison, here is what my guy and girl avatars looked like back in May of 2012.

Have you tried any of the new fitted mesh avatars released by Linden Lab? What do you think of them? What are your thoughts about Fitted mesh?

Yes, all the vampires series ones! They are fun, nicely made, and a joy to clown around in. The normal series avatars however are harder to love because the faces don't have expressions, or have eyes that blink and move. It puts me in the Uncanny Valley and it feels like wearing a costume rather than inhabiting an avatar. The vampire series doesn't have that problem because they aren't trying to be realistic, they are costumes.  Fitted mesh clothing is great when it's well crafted. It makes it possible to convert girl clothes to femboy on the female base (that means no breasts or wide hips, and broader shoulders). This is a tomboy shape with fitted mesh I did here.

1. Have you tried any fitted mesh avatars/bodies created by residents?

Yes. I tried the demos for 3rd party fitted mesh for girls. The WowMeh had been the front runner for the ladies, but it's currently being reviewed by Linden Labs and not for sale. The Fitted Mesh Body Warz are just beginning too, Slink and Belleza girls are rumored to be in development right now. Of all the currently released fitted mesh girl shapes, the one I like the best is Chip Midnight's CMFF girl. It's not a fetish shape, it's Girl Next Door, and it wears existing hair and mesh in standard sizes. You can choose to wear the head or not, and use premade alphas, or create your own with his applier app. Basically, it's built to be modded. It aims to eliminate the need for slink attachments. The feet work with a rotation for the different heel heights. And the good news is Chip will be releasing a fitted male avatar at some point. I'm sure it will come after most the bugs and issues are worked out on the female first. As far as fitted mesh for the guys, that's the only one I know of in development. There a several male mesh bodies, but they are currently not fitted mesh. p.s Utilizator's Kemono has just released, it's not fitted mesh but selling like hotcakes. It has a neko twist to his anime girl Avatar2 shape and M3 Head.

2. Have you tried a mesh head? What are your thoughts about mesh heads?

Yes. Because I don't think of any girl shapes as "me' I'm not bothered at all by wearing a female mesh head. I got the Slink Becky head for the expressions but I have a few problems with it. 1) I need an option either add an alpha to the eyelashes or turn them off for photography. It's brilliant the eyelashes can blink but also means the lashes need to be solid for mesh switching animation. Those solid mesh eyelashes tend to photograph poorly, so photo only option to hide them or add an alpha to them would be great. 2) The ear hole is too large. I would love to have mesh head without ears or holes where the ears were when I add a mesh ear attachment. 3) The teeth are beautiful but really darkly textured. 4) Emma won on the mesh head contest and most appliers work for her instead of Becky. So the Becky have tends to have the eyebrows too high for her face which creates a startled look. ...  I would love to see more expressive mesh heads. That's a key selling point to me. ... My favorite mesh head for girls is Nea by SnowRabbit. I just love seeing this pretty face inworld, in the blogs, or on flickr. It's brilliantly made and lifelike. She randomly smiles and blinks. There is zero Uncanny Valley about her. The only trade off is you lose your identify when you use a mesh head. You will look exactly like any other person using it. But there is another mesh head that DOES have slider adjustments! It's the new mesh head by Yabusaka. You adjust the sliders in an app, then have your custom mesh head uploaded to SL. You can play with Mesh Studio Head demo here. The new male demo version is here. As far as a mesh head for guys, my favorite by far is DollCoco Male. He doesn't have expressions but he's so nicely made. With some tweaks you can wear your own eyes with him, or even your own shape, but I recommend keeping your shape skinny to better match the head. My main avatar's old skin also matches DollCoco male perfectly.

3. Do you foresee a lot of changes to our current Second Life avatars because of fitted mesh?

Yes. We will eventually make the switch to amazingly well made fitted mesh avatars. Perhaps as soon as a year from now they will be the new standard in SL. Why? Because they are nicer looking, and it will make posing and photography so much better. But when it comes to mesh heads, people will be resistant because it's takes away their individuality. So that brings us right back to the serious need for Linden Labs to update the default avatar, because it's the only one with facial sliders and emotions. We can replace everything else with fitted mesh, but not the head. Really, it could be as simple as just converting the head to higher resolution quads, removing as many triangle poles as possible, and making new morphs for the sliders (that includes less cartoony emotes), and keeping the UV maps the same.

On Him, Dev:

Scarf: Contraption Compass Tech Muffler mens [mesh] (DarkStyle Fair)(250L)

Stocking, appliers: RunAway RA Shredded Tights Pants Black (150L)

Ears: Trap Vampire Ears [mesh](200L)

Necklace: Mandala KOTOWARI_Necklace_set (397L)

Hair: Argrace ARATA - White [mesh] (250L)

Cuffs: BLITZED Legacy Cuffs - black (299L)

Nails: Dark Passions Koffin Nails Shades of Grey (99L)
Gloves: A:S:S Slink glove appliers -  Skull black & white (115L)

Belt: :SEY Double-Hole Belt_B Stars./.A [mesh] (300L)

Feet: Slink Male Feet Flat [mesh] (650L)

Hands: Slink Male Hands Relax [mesh](450L)

Eyeliner: CL-NINE CL9v2l_HeadEyeline01C(bk)(free)

Eyes: S0NG Winter Violet Eye (50L)

Hairbase: Action Hair Base 04 Veganic - Snow (107L)

Appliers: Koolqa Knight - Slink Appliers HANDS, Feet (100L each)
Skin: Kooqla Knight of Rose - silver (990L)

Pose: Del May DM - Really? (50L)

On Her, Little Lolita:

Corset: Violent Seduction - Bat Corset - Mint [mesh] (DarkStyle Fair)(150L)

Anklets: The Sugar Garden Ruffle Platforms - Black [mesh](199L)

Hair: Wasabi Pills Yun Mesh Hair - Iceberg [mesh](250L)

Hands: Slink Avatar Enhancement Hands - Casual [mesh](450L)
Feet: Slink Female Feet (AvEnhance) - Mid [mesh](675L)

Eyes: Poetic Colors classic gen4 - m/r - blue surf [mesh] (150L)

Lashes: FTL Eyelashes - C01 Natural (280L)
Bikini: Neko-kan +NK+ Bikini 2012 -green (no longer available)
Skin: : ) BCC. [Latte] Heim 01 (past, The Arcade)

Pose: Zzang Model Runway 004