“I’m like the water when your ship rolled in that night
Rough on the surface but you cut through like a knife
And if it was an open/shut case
I never would’ve known from that look on your face
Lost in your current like a priceless wine”
Taylor Swift – Willow
October has always been one of my favorite times to wander around Second Life because the entire grid seems to change personality for a month. Everything gets darker, candles start appearing everywhere, pumpkins find their way into every corner, and creators get to lean into ideas that probably wouldn’t make nearly as much sense in the middle of May. Halloween has a way of giving everyone permission to get a little more strange for a while, and Second Life has never exactly needed much encouragement there. It’s also one of those times of year where I inevitably end up buying something I absolutely did not need because somebody made something weird, creepy or interesting enough that I convinced myself I could find a use for it. After all these years, I don’t see that changing anytime soon, and honestly I don’t really want it to.
This October comes with something else, though, because Salem is back. Prism Events is bringing Salem back to Second Life beginning October 1 and running through October 31, and it has actually been a while since those doors were open. Digging back through what I could find, Salem dates back to at least 2016 in Second Life, when it was already part of Prism Events alongside Tannenbaum. It continued returning over the years, with the last round I can trace happening in 2021, so this isn’t simply another October round showing up on the calendar. After several years away, Salem actually gets to feel like it’s coming back.
It’s a little strange getting to write about that return as an official Prism Events blogger because Salem isn’t new to me. This is just the first time I’ve been on this side of it. I was a shopper long before anyone was giving me things to cover, and at least once something I found there officially made its way onto this blog. That’s one of my favorite things about having such a ridiculously long archive at this point. I can think I’m starting something completely new, go digging for five minutes and discover that Past Lucky already left evidence behind.
That evidence takes me back to October 2019 and So Sweet, The Nectar Of Your Heart. It was one of those Halloween photos where I clearly decided there was no such thing as doing too much. I was a ringmaster, Cori had become this skeleton queen puppet, and there were bats, skeletons and a giant hand looming over everything because apparently that seemed like a perfectly reasonable way to spend an evening. Sitting in those credits was the [ContraptioN] Faceless Mask (yes, you’ll see them here again this Salem trust me), which was new at Salem that year, and I even finished the post by telling everyone to get over there before the event closed on October 31.
Seven years later, I’m walking back into Salem, except this time I’m officially invited and I’m bringing Mackenzie with me. Somewhere in the process of looking through everything for this first post, she also became a witch, which didn’t require much convincing once the pieces started coming together. What began with one dress quickly turned into her makeup, jewelry, the room surrounding us and eventually the way we’re interacting inside it. By the time I stopped adding things, this had become much more of a Salem photo than I originally expected it to be.
The song ended up falling into place just as naturally. Willow by Taylor Swift already has that enchanted quality running through it, but the choice becomes even more fitting because Taylor Swift is one of Mackenzie‘s favorite artists and folklore and evermore are among her favorite albums. If I’m building so much of this photo around her, pulling the soundtrack from music that actually means something to her feels a lot better than reaching for an obvious Halloween song just because there happens to be a witch standing in the photo. It gives the photo a piece of Mackenzie before we even get to everything she’s wearing, while leaving the deeper meaning of the song to settle in as the rest of the scene comes together.
Mackenzie‘s look started with the AsteroidBox Elizabeth Dress, and I think that’s really where this entire idea started taking shape. There are a lot of ways to do witchy clothing in October, but what caught me about Elizabeth is that it doesn’t immediately read as a Halloween costume. The plaid/rose options and lace, fitted corset and longer uneven skirt give it this older gothic feeling that can absolutely become witchy once you put it into the right world, but it still looks like something she’s wearing rather than somebody dressing up as a character for the night.
The dress has quite a bit of customization packed into it too, with 20 color and pattern options along with choices for the corset, lacing and metal details. It includes PBR and fallback materials through the HUD, so there was enough flexibility there to start thinking about the lighting and colors of the room instead of having to build everything around one locked look. For Mackenzie, she picked what she wanted to and kept it dark enough to fit Salem while leaving some room for the smaller details we were going to add to it.
One of those details came from the ALASKAMETRO<3 Celeste Makeup Set, and this became one of the favorite additions because of how subtle she could make it. The set has six eye makeups and six lip options for EvoX/Fit X, and there’s a pretty wide range between them. Some are considerably darker and smokier, while others play with stars, moons, metallic details and warmer colors, so you can take Celeste somewhere much heavier than she did if that’s the look you’re after.
For Mackenzie, she went with eye number five and lip number three. The eye has those warmer bronze and gold tones with the little crescent moon worked into it, while the lip stays softer with tiny gold details. I like that you don’t necessarily notice everything immediately. From a distance it’s makeup that works beautifully with the rest of her face, but once you get closer the moon and stars start revealing themselves. It gives her that little bit of magic without covering Mackenzie underneath it, and against all of the candles and warmer light in the finished scene, those gold details have a chance to come alive.
Then NaaNaa’s Katherine Necklace gave her what I wanted around the neckline of the Elizabeth Dress. There’s the velvet choker with its ornate detail, then the layered necklace underneath with the beads and cross pendant. It adds more of that gothic influence without taking over the dress, and there are HUD options for the metals, gems, beads, fabric and ornament so it can be pulled toward whatever colors you’re already using.
That’s where the three pieces really started working for together. The dress establishes who Mackenzie is in the scene, Celeste adds these little celestial details that you have to get closer to notice, and Katherine fills in that space between them with something darker and more ornate. None of the three feels like it was selected because I needed another product from the event in the photo. They build on each other, and without those creators making those pieces, the Mackenzie standing in this scene simply doesn’t exist.
Once she looked like she belonged there, KraftWork’s Modern Witch Cabinet gave me the world to put around her, and this thing is pretty much responsible for the entire scene existing in the first place. I could have put Mackenzie in front of some generic dark wall with a few candles and called it witchy, but that wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting. The Modern Witch Cabinet gives the photo somewhere to happen.
The cabinet itself is packed with books, bottles, candles, plants, crystals and all of those curiosities that make a set like this fun to photograph because every time you move the camera there’s something else sitting on a shelf. The complete collection goes well beyond the cabinet too, with tables, a bench and 36 decor pieces to actually build the room around it. There are two wood choices for the furniture, four blanket options and three rug patterns, which gave me enough freedom to make everything feel like one room rather than simply rezzing the advertisement and standing in front of it.
I especially love how much smaller decor is included because that’s what sells a scene like this for me. One bottle or stack of books isn’t necessarily important on its own, and half of it may barely register in the finished photo, but take those things away and suddenly the room feels empty. Those little pieces are what make it feel like Mackenzie has actually been using this space, collecting things and leaving them wherever they belong. That’s the difference between having furniture behind us and actually creating somewhere I believe these two people could be standing.
The table takes that one step further with a proximity effect that brings magical symbols to life when you get within three meters of it. That’s exactly the kind of completely unnecessary detail that I mean as a compliment. KraftWork could have stopped at making a really good-looking witchy furniture and decor collection and it would have done its job perfectly well, but having part of the set respond when you walk into the room gives it another bit of life. Suddenly the magic isn’t only something I’m suggesting through lighting and poses. The room itself is participating.
All of that is also why I don’t want this to become a giant Halloween spectacle just because Salem happens during Halloween. I’ve already done that, and the old 2019 post with its skeletons, bats and enormous floating hand can happily sit in the archive as evidence. This time I’m much more interested in making all of the strange stuff feel normal. This is more or less Mackenzie‘s room. Apparently, these are things she owns. There’s magic happening on the table, candles burning around us and a collection of bottles whose contents I’ve decided I’m better off not investigating.
Secret Poses’ Season Of The Witch gave us the piece that turns all of that from a scene built around Mackenzie into something the two of us can actually share. The set includes five friends poses with candles included, and what I like about them is that there’s an interaction happening rather than two avatars simply being positioned next to each other. Depending on which one you use, they can feel playful, close, conspiratorial or a little strange, which leaves enough room for the people using them to decide what the moment actually means.
The candles also end up being a surprisingly important part of tying everything together. We already have the warmth coming through Mackenzie‘s makeup, candles scattered throughout the KraftWork pieces and all of these little magical details around the room, so putting that light directly into our hands connects us to the environment instead of leaving us standing in front of it. That’s something I appreciate about poses that include a useful prop. It’s not just giving our hands something to do, it’s helping finish the idea.
That’s what all of these creations are doing. AsteroidBox gave Mackenzie the foundation of the look, ALASKAMETRO<3 and NaaNaa’s gave the smaller details that turned it into her version of it, KraftWork created the world around us and Secret Poses gave us a reason to exist together inside that world. DRD gave that world the walls to live inside with Bellweather (which you’ll see more of in the near future!), while everything else I pulled into the scene helped turn those pieces into a room that felt like it had been here before we arrived.
It also brings me back to Willow, because what started as a song that fit the look of a witchy photo connected to almost every other part of this. It’s from an album Mackenzie loves, so it belongs to her in a way that makes the choice more personal, but the more this little world came together, the more the rest of the song seemed to settle into place around us too. She’s the one who looks completely at home among all of it, while I’m the one being pulled farther into her world. The candles, the crescent moon tucked into her makeup, the tiny stars on her lips and the magic appearing around the table give us all of that enchanted imagery, but underneath it there’s still something much simpler: being drawn toward someone you love and being perfectly willing to see where they take you.
I think that’s why the song works better for me than choosing something darker simply because this is Salem. I don’t need Mackenzie to be some dangerous witch luring me to my doom, and I don’t need to turn us into characters who only exist for a Halloween photo. She can still be Mackenzie, I can still be me, and all of this magic can just be the world we’re standing in for a little while. If she’s leading me farther into it, chances are I’m going with her anyway.
Another part of Salem‘s return makes this one feel different for me. Prism Events only recently became one of my sponsors, which means Salem, Tannenbaum and Bloom are all becoming part of what I do here. After starting this post by finding my way back to that 2019 Salem photo, there’s something fitting about returning seven years later on the other side of things. I was a shopper then, picking up something that caught my attention and figuring out what I wanted to do with it. Now I’m here officially covering the event, but that part hasn’t changed. I still found things I liked, they gave me ideas, and those ideas kept growing into something bigger.
More importantly, somewhere along the way all of those separate creations stopped feeling separate. By the time I finally looked through the camera, that’s exactly what had happened. I wasn’t looking at a dress, makeup, jewelry, furniture and a pose anymore. I was looking at Mackenzie standing in a room that somehow felt like hers, surrounded by books, bottles, crystals and candles, while I stood beside her holding one of those candles and wisely deciding not to ask too many questions. The finished photo may be mine, but the world inside it only exists because those creators gave me the pieces to build it. What we do with those pieces from there is the part that becomes ours.
A lot has changed since that first Salem photo, but maybe the way I approach this hasn’t changed all that much. Give me something that sparks an idea and I’m probably going to keep following it until I find out where it goes. This time it led here, into Mackenzie‘s strange room with candles burning, magic on the table and several bottles I’ve wisely decided not to ask about.
This is only my first trip through Salem this year, too. October is just getting started, Halloween is still ahead of us, and there’s plenty more spooky season left for me to get into before the month is over. There will be more from Salem as we go, but you definitely don’t have to wait for me. Head over to the Macabre Market, wander through everything the creators have brought back with the event and see what follows you home. If your inventory ends up with a few things you absolutely did not plan on buying, you’re probably doing October right.
Willow couldn’t really have landed anywhere else. For all the magic we’ve built around us, the simplest part of the photo is still the one underneath it. Where Mackenzie goes, I’m following. Credits for everything can be found below, get on over to Salem and get your spooky going, we’ll talk again very soon!
“The more that you say, the less I know
Wherever you stray, I follow
I’m begging for you to take my hand
Wreck my plans, that’s my man”
Taylor Swift – Willow
Credits:
~Scene~
Building: DRD – BW – Bellweather – Building 1 ~ Deathrowdesigns Resident ~ NEW @ Salem (Oct 1-Oct 31)
Pose: Secret Poses – Season Of The Witch ~ SweetDaniellee Resident ~ NEW @ Salem (Oct 1-Oct 31)
Cabinet/Table/Decor: KraftWork Modern Witch Cabinet ~ NODNOL Jameson ~ NEW @ Salem (Oct 1-Oct 31)
Frames: blvcknest // OBSCURACURIO. frames ~ Aye Captain ~ NEW @ FaMESHed (Oct 1-Oct 27)
~Her~
Head: LeLutka EvoX AVALON 4.0 ~ Jaden Nova
Hair: Magika – Hair – October ~ Sabina Blakewell
Body: [LEGACY] [BODY] (f) (1.7.1) ~ MeshBody Resident
Skin: a.b #4- Elodie – Porcelain ~ Shana Banana ~ GACHA
Makeup: ALASKAMETRO<3 “Celeste” 2K BOM makeup set ~ Alaska Metropolitan ~ NEW @ Salem (Oct 1-Oct 31)
Collarbone Tattoo 1: [Always Never] Birds 75% ~ Dopamine Cloud
Collarbone Tattoo 2: ALBA – Romance Tattoos Bundle (8) ~ Kaiasalvat Resident
Hand Tattoos: ALBA – Lore Tattoos Bundle (5 &7) ~ Kaiasalvat Resident
Hand Tattoos: ALBA – Luck Tattoos Bundle (8) ~ Kaiasalvat Resident
Nails: e.marie // whitney nails ~ Emiliana Nova
Dress: AsteroidBox. Elizabeth Dress ~ LeithDrew Resident ~ NEW @ Salem (Oct 1-Oct 31)
Hat: Magika – October Hat ~ Sabina Blakewell
Boots: [BREATHE] – Tanemi Boots ~ daisa Admiral
Necklace: NaaNaa’s Katherine Necklace Set ~ NaaNaaPink Resident ~ NEW @ Salem (Oct 1-Oct 31)
~Him~
Head: LeLUTKA.Head.NOA.4.0 ~ Jaden Nova
Head Applier: Stray Dog HERVE EVOX TAN (V) NO BROWS ~ Gac Akina
Hair: [MFCNT] THOR Bun – Grooming Hair ~ LeBarbier Alpha
Hairbase: LeLUTKA.EvoX.Hairbase.044 (BOM) ~ Jaden Nova (Comes with the LeLUTKA NOA Head)
Eyes: [ContraptioN] Depthglass Eye ~ Walton Wainwright
Eyebase: Avi-Glam. Prism Eyes – Pack 2 ~ Eye Daddy
Ears: ^^Swallow^^ Gauged S Ears ~ Luciayes Magic
Beard: [MFCNT] Ducky Skunk Beard & Stache ~ LeBarbier Alpha
Beard Layer: PHYSIQUE X – Logan Facial Hair (v1) Tintable ~ PhysiqueX Resident
Body: [LEGACY] Athletic Edition (1.7.1) ~ MeshBody Resident
Skin: VELOUR: PICASSO HOMME Skin for Legacy (FIT/TAN) Picasso Neck ~ Kiria Mama
Nails: Pare.Cure Mesh Nails Both Hands [Short] – Legacy ~ Flazedo Resident
Jacket/Shirt: toksik – Ego Death Jacket (Legacy M) (Black) ~ crxsxs Resident
Pants: toksik – Vestige Pants (Legacy M) (Black)
Hat: [Deadwool] Cliff hat ~ Masa Plympton
Rings/Bracelets: *RE* Morbid Bracelets ~ Crashnoww Resident
Earrings: = DAE = SXD1 ~ Naomi Darkheart
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