The Right Recipe

Recipe

Ingredients:

1  dash of romance

2  lbs of Twilight

4  cups of magic

A  splash of mystery

Directions: combine ingredients vibrantly!

End result? Darkmoon Angelgate.

Angelgate established and created by the Sanctuary Project (East Anglia, UK) is on a dual mission.

“To create and provide therapeutic approaches to support mental health and well being. (We enable creative, spiritual and therapeutic exploration for individuals and groups.) And to explore the potential of virtual worlds as a medium for personal and community transformation. Angelgate is a virtual space for real life activity.”

 Although their statement sounds a bit dry and clinical, what they've created in SL is anything but. In fact Angelgate home both to Darkmoon and Angelos, is an extraordinary environment, an alternate reality within an alternate reality. Rich in mystery and folklore, it is a recipe for a spell that casts the magic of flawless beauty.

Twilight in Darkmoon, is that time of day when light and dark vie for attention while remaining in perfect harmony. Sweets and wine sit on a table nestled inside a charming gazebo atop a rolling hill; a romantic setting to enjoy intimate conversations. In the distance, graceful swan shaped boats rest next to quaint docks bathed in sunset light. All are ready at a moments notice to gently float you through mystical caverns full of strange and wondrous surprises. Tell your friends ghost stories in an ancient cave with petroglyph decorated walls while hunkered down around an ancient campfire. Dance with fairies in an enchanted forest. Deliver a vampire nip to your lovers paled skin throat. Spontaneous role play is encouraged here, but leave your Gor home. This is a place of emotional fantasy and deep spirituality.

Surprisingly, it is also a place of learning! Ever wanted to know the mythical or spiritual traditions of a given culture? Most objects here are clickable and each click delivers delightful snippets of knowledge!

Collect notecards filled with information about everything from the uses of lavender to the details of the Fallen Pillars of Atlantis beneath the sea. Other clicks lead to fascinating web pages that keep you entranced for hours.

Mysterious, magical and romantic. Darkmoon is a dream of yearnings end. Sit on a rock on a hill that overlooks the water and experience a sense of real life tranquility. Get a kiss from your immortal beloved under the mother tree and taste it on your own very real human lips. You'll fall in love with this little slice of heaven. Let it cast it's spell. It's the light, the last sanctuary if you will, of the soul who thirsts for what could be if only one had the right recipe...,

Darkmoon, Angelgate     Donate ecstatically!

More Photos On Flickr

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19 Night Gallery and Saint George Park    Art For The Very Dark!

Second Life

The Dot In The Exclamation Point

It's like the vampire's teeth.

Or that one riff in the Phantom Of The Opera score

that creeps you out but sets the mood for the entire production.

Sinatra Spook House is those teeth, that note, the icing on the cake.

Hidden inside a large warehouse Sinatra's Spook House amusement ride takes you through his version of the dark and the things that live inside it.

You pay 10L to ride, sit on the contradictory  cute little purple train, (cute? purple?) put 

your camera in mouselook and type SPOOKY into chat, and the train begins to roll.  Slowly you glide through dim corridors full of creepy surprises, a constantly moving kaleidoscope of riot, and color.

It's a quick jaunt through the night, a fun diversion with friends before you're off to darker adventures. 

And although it's the dot in the exclamation, it is worthy of mention. Sinatra's Spook House adds that special touch to any dark SL experience.

Sinatra's Spook House

Sinatra also makes some pretty interesting gadgets and motorbikes, check out the pics on Flickr

Sinatra sings.., well.., Sinatra!   Club Sinatra - Hotel and Dance Club!

19 Night Gallery Cemetery

Secondlife

THIS IS MADNESS!

Novelist Suzi M or Xirconnia Morph says The Asylum is a tribute to both Limelight, (formerly a club in NYC) and the Eastern State Penitentiary. She states that "It is not a reflection of madness, I promise. :)"

I beg to differ. Suzi I think you're too humble! I think you've perfectly captured a visual metaphor for being just a little bit "off".

What if my reality were not shared by my friends or neighbors, and I could show you exactly what I see from my perspective. What would it look like? What would it feel like?

Well I think it might look a little bit like The Asylum; Stairways and floors are narrow and crooked, cracked and perilous. An ominous merry-go-round spins silently all by itself at the end of a long, cavernous basement room. Skeletons boogie, better than I do, on a psychedelic dance floor. A circular staircase climbs to.., nowhere. Ghosts playfully menace, until they become tedious, and human fish swim in very normal aquariums. Granted, this is not the "I hear my dog telling me to kill you" kind of over the top insanity, but more of a "I'm having trouble focusing on our conversation because there are ghosts poking me in the side," type of crazy. Which raises the question, if I see things like this am I insane? Or creative? And perhaps these states are defined by how beneficial the results?

The genius of The Asylum is that it is educational, you don't notice it's lessons right away, it's oddities creep up on you. Only after you notice something you thought was there, that really wasn't, or find yourself falling through the floors.., yet again, do you begin to understand that what at first seems empty, is chock full of strangeness and surprises. It encourages philosophical musings; is the definition of insanity based on common culture? Are you insane because they don't see what you see, or is it their flaw? If you see crooked floors and human fish, what degree of insane are you? The brilliant layout of the build itself helps keep you off balance as you try to read meaning into what's there, or what's not.

On the real life side Xircon is a writer and has a room dedicated to her written and artistic work in the middle of The Asylum. If you read her novels you'll know that one of her characters wakes up in an asylum and that parts of The Asylum are modeled from the novels. She has a free short story to download on her page with Smiling Goth Productions. It's called The Lazarus Stone and boy was I hooked from the very first sentence;

"The body they carried with them was starting to smell." Insane? Creative? Who cares, it's delicious and all about the results anyway right?

Silent raw and powerful, The Asylum allows you to experience reality from a very different perspective. Uncomfortable of times, it allows you to imagine what it must be like to live with a slightly skewed sense of reality. How at times this view could be frustrating and/or lonely.

But more importantly The Asylum forces you to examine your own ensconced definitions. Maybe you'll think twice before applying labels to people you may not understand, who don't see what you see.

Be prepared to keep this place in your thoughts for a long time, after all, it is a place of the mind.

There is a HUD you can pick up that you can use to mark educational builds in SL You can pick it up at the Asylum or im me and I'll shoot you a copy. And don't forget to mark The Asylum itself!

The Asylum

The Asylum Photos On Flickr

Suzi's Imortal War Trilogy From Smiling Goth Productions

Second Life