Men's Second Style

In J-horror (and to a certain extent in horror from Asian countries other than Japan) there’s a well known archetype: the scary girl with long hair. She is traditionally a ghost or spirit, often with a horrifying face and inhuman skin, and she is most definitely scary. She is almost always bent on vengeance for wrongs done to her in life. Think of the central supernatural figures in “Ringu” (“The Ring”), “Ju-On” (“The Grudge”), and “Janghwa, Hongryeon” (“A Tale of Two Sisters”, actually an example of K-horror )—you’ll know just what I mean. Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you keeping score at home, yes, I’m still powering my way through the Bare Rose folder in my inventory. Hey, if I’m lucky I may empty it out completely before the end of the year! Well, unless I make another shopping trip in the meantime. Another great ensemble (slash outfit, slash costume, slash roleplay gear) I found stashed in there is “Voyager 3b”. This is a fully detailed and outfitted astronaut’s spacesuit, complete with oxygen supply hoses and gleaming helmet. These are good things, too, unless accidental asphyxiation isn’t a problem for you. Read the rest of this entry »

For Halloween this year, or rather for the ongoing series of run-up parties and gatherings I’ve been enjoying attending, I’ve been sorting through the shockingly large accumulation of outfits and avatars in my “Bare Rose” inventory folder. Needless to say, it’s been a fascinating experience. How did so many things from Bare Rose pile up? I only wondered that until I remembered how a typical shopping trip to that amazing store tends to go, at least for me:

1. TP to Bare Rose
2. Wait for new-items vendors to rez
3. Wait for vendor textures to rez
4. See something delightful that I can’t live without
5. Click to buy
6. Go to step 4 and repeat until crash or time for dinner, whichever comes first Read the rest of this entry »

Ray Bradbury has written rather famously over the years in books and story collections about things deliciously and delightfully macabre. Evocative titles like Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Halloween Tree and From the Dust Returned hint at the fantasies and wonders to be found in the pages that lie between the covers. Of all Bradbury’s strange and wonderful autumnal fantasy titles, perhaps none more so than The October Country seems somehow to speak directly to something deep inside, something visceral, something primal. Ray’s vision is of not just a time of year but an almost-actual place where everything is slightly askew, where the weird is not at all unusual, and where the Pumpkin King reigns supreme. In autumn, the leaves fall and rot gently into the soil, the green of summer grass long gone. In autumn, the air turns crisp and cold, and often smells of bonfires. In autumn, jack-o-lanterns gleam and spirits roam the earth. In autumn, we journey into the October country. Read the rest of this entry »

Note: This post is the second of two installments.  If you haven’t already read part one, take a moment, click through and check it out now! Read the rest of this entry »

Those of you who have been following along here for a while will surely know that for quite a long time I wore almost exclusively my own shape, for pretty much everything. What you may not know is that, while I’m still recognizable as that boy who emerged fresh from Orientation Island in July 2006, my shape has indeed changed over the years. I have the whole “History of Ryan” in my inventory, from Ryan 1.0 on up—I think the current version is 3.2b. All the changes have been relatively minor, some less so than others, and I haven’t made many changes at all in probably the last year or so. Read the rest of this entry »