stay beautiful

i wandered the dreaming this evening in this gown. it elicited several comments from people i like and respect. but the most trenchant came predictably from a complete stranger, in a place so strongly imbued with of memory and meaning. i was in the jeweled garden, in the ruins of nexus, the city that i sort of regard as the omphalos of my second life personal geography.



and in my pixel hands i held the city's tombstone and epitaph, my most treasured possession in this world.

she apparated suddenly, falling right in front of me, and in the brusque way of the noob told me that my av was amazing. and then asked for a landmark. her parting words to me were, "stay beautiful." and then disappeared.

if only it was so easy as that, no?

the pensive juana wears:

disturbia gloves, stockings by catwa
audrey gown and hat by alb
blood beads earrings by spica
midnight oshun collar by dark eden
amaya armwarmers and arm belt by gauze
skull nose piercing by avz
dreams noir by red queen
Whispers of Night Deathly F Lost Gloom Stalker

alice in wonderland/strange girls

i was bored and went to the alice in wonderland ride. it was odd but not creepy.

i was bad and jumped off the ride and wandered in the display. while there i met an avatar named avril bosshart. she was nice, and gave me a radioactive cookie. this is the first time in recorded history that i have worn a cookie like that. but it seemed fitting.

there were other very interesting displays. i wished though that you could be shrunk or be turned into a giant, when you passed the "eat me" and "drink me" signs. it reminded me too much of the disney cartoon version, in the end.

juana in wonderland wears:

sade dress set & carpe noctem boots by nightshade designs
dream hair by red queen
forbidden 14 skin by lionskins

it seemed the sort of place to wear this outfit. it reminds me a little of the RL alice and the pirates label that i see often in the gothloli bible.

and then this is where it gets a bit odder. i found a big top circus stage set up. it seemed the thing to do, to put on a saloon outfit, and do a little dance. i was in the middle of something and then i realized that avril was there. she'd found me, and so i asked her if she wanted to be in the machinima. she changed into a really lovely deadly clown outfit, and then we did our little strange girls thing in the big top.


the strange girls wear:
on juana:

midnight victorian and amaya kimono cuffs by Gauze
rose suede hairpin (wine) by G Field
black coffin ring by Schadenfreude
goth hat by unknown
aDiva couture temptress hat by aDiva
platform dia de los muertos shoes by Grim Bros
susie leather choker
june hair style by Catwa
forbidden 14 by LionSkins

on avril bosshart:

shoes, dress, hat, parasol, and skin from Carnival of Doom
Machette hair by Deviant Kitties

i am a very, very, very bad jew.

it's passover, and it occured to me to dress juana up like the angel of destruction, and roam an ancient egyptian themed sim.

i am not normally so bloodthirsty but found a really cool new skin called "kaballah" on xstreet by Nikita Fride.

it has various kabbalistic symbols, but my fave is the huge hamsa on the back. i wear hamsas in real life, pretty much keep them everywhere, and found it funny that the second life logo is a modified hamsa.

i was making an outfit to go with this splendid new skin when the hilarity of this idea struck me, and i just had to do it.

in lieu of a seder, the ritual meal where all the foodstuffs have a meaning, i purposely included a few things to serve as a kind of visual/clothing seder. so i suppose this is my utterly vain, profane, and probably semi-sacriligious passover observance this year.

• the bands are symbols of slavery
• amusingly enough the belt of the skirt has an anhk on it, a reminder that we must mourn the egyptians, because they were suffering too.
  
• the bones and skulls on my shoes reference both the bones of the slaves that were crushed to make mortar for the pyramids, and also the scorched lamb bone of the seder plate.
• the horns are for the common misconception/mistranslation that jews have horns.
• the bracers and torc are from the "abbadon" set. "abbadon" supposedly means destruction in hebrew.
  

michal the second life angel of destruction wears:

skin: Kaballah by Nikita Friede
horns: i don't remember, by Siyu Suen (illusions)
hair: fluff by jet doll
bracers, earrings, torc: abbadon set by tekeli'li
armbands: from amaya set by gauze
belt, silks, legbands: naughty isis set by nightshade designs
shoes: Dia de los Muertos platforms by grim bros
top and bottom: murder ballerina set by snatch

murderous ballerina

everything old is new again.

at least it seems that way. but my infatuation with visual kei continues unabated. this is an old dress, and an old outfit, remixed.

though this reminds me more of what juana might throw on in the middle of the night to run to the drugstore to buy razors and tampons.

despite the expression of despair, it was a happy occasion, being a shopping excursion to a new place i'd not been before.....made in hell.

the disheveled midnight ballerina wears:

skin: forbidden 20 by lionskins
hair: rQ Coy Noir
Collar from Ouka Saki Some ni Keri, armbands from the Amaya set and gloves from Gauze set by Gauze
Immaculate heart necklace by Tekeli'li
Candy tattoo MiaSnow
Murder Ballerina tutu, pants, and top by Snatch
Cut Stockings Brood Set by KC Fashions
Black Widow boots by Nightshade designs
Coffin ring by Schadenfreude

badass

Originally uploaded by al-zahra

grady wore this incredibly badass outfit at club baby seals.

:)

not to mention the other luminaries in attendance, such as momo and isa.

incroyable

i have always loved the crazy clashy mad exaggerated styles of the incroyables and merveilleuses of the directoire.

but then again when i was younger and more impressionable i had a mild obsession with the french revolution and napoleon too.

i really love visual kei. sometimes i think that the people who wear that style are like the modern versions of the incroyables (and merveilleuses, in drag).

in the dreamworld, where one can dress as madly and as improbably as one wishes with impunity, some of the meaning of this style i think is lost in translation. it is nothing to go shopping and toss together a vague facsimilie of incroyable fashion.

in particular i hate frock coats and tail coats in second life because they never fit my stumpy little avatar. and ditto with the jabots. on the bright side this is a style that requires one to look exaggerated.

so i did as best i could, and found a funny napoleonic sim to play around in. it was literally named "napoleon's empire" and had a profusion of mostly empty little palaces to loot, ships in the harbor and also circling the waters of the surrounding sea.

there was even a little guillotine in the little fortress, and a rustic looking in, complete with a little rat that would crawl around the floor in an endless loop.

it amuses me too. the real incroyables were rebelling against the revolution--they were royalists, and therefore really expressing themselves quite dangerously with their crazy clothes.

it's sad that in this insipid second life version, there is no political subtext. i suppose if i were wearing a bush/cheney button instead of a cockade it might come close, but i'd rather not. i fear that this outfit is way too restrained for proper 18th century incroyable-ness, but it's only second life, and we must make allowances for that.

jeanne the second life incroyable wears:

napoleonic bicorne hat ( i totally love the cockade) by illusions
coat, jabot, cuffs, from Pearl set & Lovebound tails by the black canary
rQ Torn Noir by Red Queen
Copper Sand Pants fall front pantaloons by Ravenswood Regency (To a T)
forbidden 20 by LionSkins
stockings (harajuku doll) and fallen disgrace boots by nightshade designs
napoleonic hussar saber by Moyer's Military

i couldn't leave that sim without trying out the guillotine. sadly there is a bit of a predjudice apparently against short avatars, because it rather inhumanely would mean that only the top half of jeanne's head would get chopped off.

but i'd rather have half my head chopped off than suffer a bush restoration.

dj tedi sound and the furry ^^

dj tedi sound and the furry ^^
Originally uploaded by al-zahra

tedi had another show tonight. it was a furry themed one. i am not a furry, and so it was hard to start from scratch, but i didn't want to look like everyone else. After searching i managed to find a vampire chihuahua AV by Shaduhka Druart on Xstreet. sadly it's not mod so the wretched hair had to stay and i was in a total hurry so ended up wearing a men's Rfyre outfit--a gothy toreador thing, that made juana look vaguely eastern european. it was such a horror finding boots for this av. I had no idea what it takes to dress a furry. It's hard! but i had an ugly pair of boots i found in one of those scary little fleamarket-like malls that sort of worked. and I added a tekel'li torc and bracers.

troy looked really scary, he wore a very intense little bunny av. I daresay he looked *crazed*. it was interesting to see all the different furry avatars too--a variety of them were there. But you can totally spot the "born furry" from the poseur furries.