Tag: Misc Events

Lovefest – the Second Life celebration of the birth of H. P. Lovecraft – opened its doors on Friday, August 17th, 2018 and will continue through until Sunday,  August 28th. The theme for the festival this year is The Path of Madness.

This year marks the event’s 7th anniversary, and marks the 128th anniversary of Lovercraft’s birth on August 20th 1890. As with previous Lovefest events, there is once again a wide range of celebratory activities – shopping, music and dancing, live music, film showings, open microphone events, live storytelling in voice, dance troupes and an adventure for people to enjoy.

A high point for event Lovefest is the associated adventure visitors are invited to join. This year, things are taking a slightly different route, taking a walk along the event’s theme.; although the opening of the adventure has been slightly delayed to dealing with some last-minute issues.

With LoveFest 2018’s Story Quest (Hunt) we are treading along “the Path of Madness” this year…

Lovecraft Festival is thrilled to take on this new and extremely intriguing theme – inviting our guests to visit the notorious Arkham Sanatorium in the spirit of HP Lovecraft.

Please forgive the delay, but we will have this fine mini-quest in order soon. Our merchants and staff have some fine things in store for this great little experience. Hopes are to have it in full swing by Monday!

– Runa the Wild Elf, on the Lovefest blog

Those visiting the festival will find themselves in a New England themed coastal town where the streets radiate out from a central landing point presided over by H.P. Lovecraft himself, in the form of a giant statue of the man. Here visitors will find a rich tapestry of merchant stores, entertainers, dancers and more within the market and the waterfront wharves.

Event Schedule and Other Information

The 2018 festival website has a full (and final, at the time of writing) schedule of events, together with a list of entertainers, DJs, readers and live performers. The website also includes a list of the event’s participating merchants and sponsors.

About H.P. Lovecraft

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was born on August 20th, 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island, where he spent most of his life.

A child prodigy, he was reciting poetry when just three years of age, and writing his own poems by six. His grandfather – one of the adults who raised him – encouraged his reading, presenting him with a wide range of books and stories from the likes of One Thousand and One Nights, and the Iliad through to his own original stories of Gothic horror.

As an adult, Lovecraft was introverted, riven by a lack of self-confidence, was unwilling to promote his own literary efforts. Only published in pulp magazines in his lifetime, he was never able to support himself with his writing, and died in poverty at the age of 46 in 1937. It was only posthumously that his work gained recognition – notably the Cthulhu Mythos – and he was elevated to the status of one of the most influential writers of horror fiction in the 20th Century.

Rich in theme as well as narrative, his work has influenced generations of horror writers who followed after him, including the likes of Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Alan Moore, Junji Ito, Caitlín R. Kiernan, William S. Burroughs, and Neil Gaiman.

In addition, film directors John Carpenter, Stuart Gordon, and Guillermo Del Toro have all acknowledged Lovercraft as an influence in some of their work, whilst artist H. R. Giger of Alien fame has also pointed to Lovecraft’s tales as a point of influence.

SLurl Details

• Lovefest (Ravenheart, rated: Moderate)

The Shop and Hop (or Shop ‘Til You Drop, if you prefer the region descriptions) event, organised by Linden Lab, and featuring 60 SL merchants and designers, has opened its doors to shoppers.

Following the success of the SL14B in-world shopping event, in November, the Lab posted an invitation for merchants to sign-up for a Christmas event which would be timed to run through the holiday season until January 1st, 2018. The invitation in part described the event thus: “We are looking for merchants willing to offer a discount on some of their items (think Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals!) and possibly provide a little non-exclusive gift to holiday shoppers.”

The result is 60 stores within the event’s mall-style environment offering a broad cross-section of goods: clothing, accessories, jewellery, homes and prefabs, furnishings, decor, landscaping, boats, novelty items – all of which makes the event something for everyone.

The mall is the same 3-region space used for the SL14B event, with the buildings redressed for a more seasonal look: ponds are frozen, stripped candies rise from flower planters, decorative wreaths and snowflakes are mounted on walls, together with wintry scenes photographed from around Second Life, while many of the participating merchants have also dressed their store spaces for the event.

In all, the participating merchants are: !APHORISM!, !Rebel Hope Designs, .{PSYCHO:Byts}., .TeaBunny., [ JUSTICE ], [ west end ], /*KC|Couture* /, *YS&YS*, #adored, ~Tableau Vivant~, ADRIATIC line, alaskametro<3, alme., amara beauty, Apple May, AZ Emporium, bella moda, Blueberry, by Crash, Cae, Canimal, Cheeky Pea, ChiC buildings – surrounds – prefabs – decor props and poses, CONSTRUCT, Contraption, Dictatorshop, Dynamic Evolutions, e l i a v a h ~, E.V.E, Envious,  etham, eXxEsS Hair, Fancy Decor, Grimes Central Design (GCD MESH),  Heart Trees Flowers Plants, hello dave, Hucci, ISON, Lapointe Bastchild, Lemon Chilliz, Lune Bleue, MadPea, Maven Homes, Maxi Gossamer, MOCO HOMES Emporium, Musa, Nani, Never Totally Dead … , New CHEZ MOI Furnitures, NOX. & Third Eye,  PATRON, Petit Chat, Potomac Signature Homes, ROC, Sweet Thing, The Forge & EZ, The Mesh Shop, Vanity Hair, http://www.studio-skye.com, zed designz  and Zibska.

All of the regions are rated Moderate, and the SLurls to each are:

• Golden
• Gilded
• Halcyon

The For Max event closed its doors on Tuesday, October 10th having broken through the L$ 1,000,000 barrier of funds raised to help Maxwell Graf and his partner in the physical world, Lyrric Fei.

The event was rapidly put together by Charlotte Bartlett, Sophia Harlow and Blazin Arubet with the assistance of Apple Fall and Shiny Shabby, at extremely short notice after Max reveal he and Lyrric were facing a heartbreaking plight thanks to a physical world situation (both have been on an overland journey to start a new life after the situation forced them out of house and home).

Writing on the event’s Facebook page, Charlotte Bartlett said:

I am literally shaking as I write this, as the level of love, help and generosity of the Second Life Community has shown us what true spirit means. The amount raised has topped across the donations/raffle and creator items over 1,000,000 Linden. This hopefully gives our Max a safety net for the short-term so he and his family can start to plan their new chapter. A list of all sales is already available to Max for audit (locked script) and donations/raffle in addition.

The total equates to just over  US $4,000, which will help Max and Lyrric in starting their new life. Nor is that all.

As I reported when For Max opened, Kylie Sabra also launched a sale of her art in support of Max and Lyrric, which ran for the same period as the shopping event. I’ve reached out to Kylie with an enquiry on how things went, but have yet to hear back. When I do, I’ll update this article.

Don’t forget as well, that even if you missed the For Max events, you can still help Max and Lyrric by visiting Rustica, their fabulous in-world store and purchasing one or two of Max’s range of furnishings, apparel, accessories, building kits and more.

This is the second time this year a respected, liked and loved creator in Second Life has encountered a major life-impacting crisis, only to see the community in which they have so long played a role rally around, unbidden in support – and with remarkably similar outcomes.

In April 2017, I was privileged to work with Saffia Widdershins on Filling the Cauldron, an event aimed at helping and supporting creator Elicio Ember and his family. held over a near-identical period, that event  also raised US $4,000. The speed of response, support and outpouring at both these events again shows not only the generosity of all those involved, whether as organisers, participating creators or artists or entertainers, or as attendees shopping and donating – but also the depth of caring for one another inherent in the Second Life community.

Thank you to Charlotte, Sophia, Blazin and all involved in For Max.  To Max and Lyrric: stay safe and stay warm – and see you in Second Life soon!