RF "Stealth gag" (Mouth corset)

Another new one from RF, and one that has being oddly missing until now

Appearance

In terms of design, its as expected for a mouth corset. A high long collar, extending down to the bottom of the neck, and up over the mouth, very snugly. It has a variety of latex and leather textures for the main panels, and some metal ones as well. Ten for latex and leather, four for metal.

You can hide the rivets at the front as well. Katie mentions her reasoning for this pretty well. With the rivets on, it pretty much states there's a pear gag attached to the covering. Without.. You can pretend its whatever you like. Ball. Panties, inflatable, etc.

One issue i had is with the alpha, and my camera at its typical angle, I can see a through myself due to the gag not being tight against my face enough. Fortunately the alpha is not required, and with it off the gag doesn't clip me at all. Hopefully this is the same for anyone else who has the alpha issue.

The style menu allows use to hide/show the metal, as well as adjust textures for Lacing, D-Rings, Chains, the Cover, the Gag Plug and the Rivets  The odd bit here is the gag plug isn't even visible unless you cam inside your head..

If/when you use the leash option, the leash comes out of the middle of the gag, right where your mouth should be.

On a side note and completely unimportant note, the gag seems to fit the KaS catsuit(size XS at least) near perfectly.



Function

This is pretty much identical to the Scolds Bridle, without the blindfold or earmuffs and of course the style options that go with them. Same gag levels, same gag options, same renamer, etc.

The only other option I could find that was different/new is the option to turn auto alpha usage (via RLV folder) on and off.

EDIT: I just discovered that this thing, like the AiTech gag, can muffle emotes using its built in renamer. I.E an emote that is Aria yells "Help!" would come out as  Aria yells "Wewk!" When set to Garble. This may sound familiar. The AiTech 'best gag in SL' has this system as well.. Making it no longer unique to them.

Scores

Appearance - Unique in SL.. bar maybe MBs, but that one is very bad in comparison - 9/10
Function - 9/10
Price - 275 linden

RF Scolds Bridle

Newish gag from RF!

Appearance

First off, its made of metal, so those wanting a nice skintight leather/latex/etc gag  will want to look at something more like Katies Mask gag instead.

So starting with the actual bridle.. With the gag, its a metal harness around your head, with the gag riveted via a plate to the harness in the front. A small d-ring hangs from the gag plug, presumably for leashing purposes the sub around. The plug cannot be removed, so no open mouth option.There's also another D-ring on top of the harness.

The blindfold can be worn separately from the harness/gag, though the rivets look a little odd on the front if the harness is not under them. You can also add metal earmuffs, to block out sound.

For customisation, you can freely recolour/texture five different parts, or the whole lot at once. There's four metal types, Iron, Rust, Silver and Gold, with varying degrees of shine you can apply. There's also a default button for changing back to normal

Function

To start with you have the Plugin menu, this contains Katies usual plugins. Next we have style, covered above. Then we have Sign. Sign I like. Its pretty much sign language, albeit very simple. You can choose from 17 different options and you will do a gesture depending. be it a wave, pointing to something, etc.

You can turn RLV off with the next button, and access the Settings via the following one. Settings is the usual. Expose/update/get items, etc. Following that is a leash which can be applied to either of the D-rings mentioned in the Appearance section

Next is Take Keys, which is obvious and moves some buttons around - will get back to that shortly. The following two menus are Restraints, and Lock/unlock. The latter is obvious and needs nothing mentioned. The restraints its split into three areas. Gag, blindfold and Earmuffs. The Gag has 6 settings for mumbling, as well as adjustable channel, various RLV restrictions you can adjust and a renamer for good measure.

The blindfold is simpler, three settings. Faux lets you see still, though does take away map privileges. Half makes the screen blurry, and full obviously blinds you. Earmuffs are in the same vein, faux, half and full. Half blocks names and I think distance, while full obviously makes it impossible to hear anything. Back in the main menu, below each of the submenus for adjusting the restraints is a Remove button for its respective piece (gag/blindfold/earmuffs) and lastly an option to UnAll.(actual spelling)

Once locked, the menus shift around. Sign becomes the first option, leash becomes second, etc, and Timelock appears. Timelock is split into your typical Timelock for releasing once it ends, and Timebound which merely removes the restrictions while leaving the device locked on.

Scores

Appearance - Metallic so not my area of expertise.. It looks good though - 7/10
Function - Plenty of options here - 9/10
Price -  400 Linden

Side note

Those curious about my outfit here that you can see the top of - KaS just released a new mesh catsuit. Go pick it up if you want mesh shiny goodness

AiTech - Shiniez mermaid suit

A tribute item tonight! Everyone should know Shiniez by now, his art and storyline is legendary.

Appearance

This is based on the mermaid seen HERE and in terms of design, is accurate. Rigged mesh, so very easy to fit, and of to be honest it looks damn good. If I was rating this on just the looks alone? Would be 10/10 in an instant. However I'm not..

In terms of recolouring, it has a good selection. 18 colours, with 3 different areas re colourable (base, trim and belts). My pics show the default and my usual combo of black/red as examples.

Then we get to the bad. It has NO built in AO and suggest using a normal mermaid AO. This strikes me as an issue for what is meant for a realistic bondage RP mermaid suit.. Int his suit, you should be forced to crawl along the floor for example, not float in the air. And it has a ton of issues with a few AOs as well, the lacing often getting messed up or the material stretching. At the very least it should force my feet together at all times.



So to put it quickly. It looks amazing, but the lack of built in AO (especially for the price) hurts it severely in my eyes, which is a shame. Shiniez designs deserve at least a basic bondagey mermaid AO.

Function

This thing is VERY basic. You can turn on/off RLV, turn on/off running, touching and flying, as well as enable a slow mo which as it suggest, makes you move much slower and set it to quiet, which just lets the bound one and her captor get the messages from the suit.

Otherwise you can toggle it between 3 locking types. Anyone, single key and no one.

This doesn't need fancy commands and such I admit, but again it just feels like something is missing.. Probably due to the lack of AO again. This review feels too short as well.

Closing thoughts

I think its obvious what I'm gonna say. Give it a built in AO! At the very least force the feet together, and give us RPers who want to be bondage mermaids the options for more realistic play such as well, being forced to crawl in it, not float using a third party AO.

Scores

Appearance - Would be 10/10 but for the stretching issues caused by lack of AO - 8/10
Function - Extremely basic - 7/10
Price - 900 Linden. Now I;d say this is worth it for a shiniez lover. But for the love of god get a good AO first, else the stretching destroys the look.. - 5/10 (liable to change if the creator listens!)

Extra

Right now this review seems both short and harsh to me. But I love shiniez art, like many, and honestly was annoyed at how they felt just leaving out an AO seemed appropriate. I'll likely update this if/when an update to the restraint is released, if only cause I want this one to succeed so badly.

TL;DR

Amazing looks. basic function. Basic funciton I'm more than happy to live with. Lack of built in AO hurts it so badly that I almost didn't post this review.

RR - Siren Ropes

Finally got around to these. Reason it took me so long will be explained in post.

Appearance

Nice and snug ropes, as expected. Thin cord as opposed to the thicker used by her previous rope set which is a nice difference, and mesh of course that *should* make resizing easier. More on this later.

Its Marine, so you already know that the textures are gonna be good. 20 built in Textures, the ability to tint it as you see like and even adjust the material between 7 presets. Adjusting the material does not change the texture so much as it changes the colour and shine settings, so for the latex ropes to look best, you want some pretty high lighting settings and good windlight.

Now for the bad side. These ropes are the single hardest thing to fit in SL I have ever used. Take the leg ropes (noticeable in the hogtie one especially),there's a big gap between my legs and the rope at the bottom. However if I try to make it tighter at the bottom, it starts to clip at the top. And that's just the start. There is a pose in the arms, Over Head, that nearly everyone I know cannot get to fit right. Its mostly due to arm length being too long or short from what I can tell. This one is being fixed I believe, but then you come to straitjacket and well..

Lets just say fitting these takes time. Plus some viewers still have a bug that makes them crash to desktop when editing mesh occasionally to make it doubly annoying.

Function

Thankfully the frustration of fitting does pay off. 8 base poses as opposed to the usual 6 for both arms and legs, plus add in the anim hud (get it under plugins > anims) gives a ton of extra poses. Furthermore you can even adjust how your legs and arms are for sitting in the latest huds Marine has included a tutorial on how to do this on her own blog - read it here

The legs have quite a few less plugins than the arms, but include handy ones like RL time, autotie, leash, and a handy one for tying the subs shoes on via a rope that curls under the heels. Realkey is not included, but anyone can untie after awhile like the shibari ropes.

The style menu allows certain poses to change certain parts of the ropes. For example Style 1 of hobble has my knees tied and a rope going from ankle to ankle somewhat loosely to allow me to shuffle. Hit Style 2, and that ankle rope disappears. For the legs, you can also show/hide the crotchrope and a certain.. accessory that goes with it.

The Arms plugins are a bit more varied. Allowing touch restrictions, RLV folder access, unwearing, and so on.

Style for arms allows you to show a snug rope harness around your upper body. Like the leg ropes, some poses have multiple styles. Supertight for example hides some elbow ropes when on style 2, while style 1 has your arms even more cocooned.

Otherwise its similar to most of marines toys, a tried and tested setup that does the job.

Closing thoughts

These ropes are great, and new set is always nice. The resizing is a BITCH though. Usually I have no problem with mesh gear, but these were harder even than some of the gear that has about 30 prims per piece. I suppose my shape is a tad slim for these.

Functionally they work great. You Can find the two extra poses on the More.. page, as the first page has no room for extra buttons. Thanks to the style menu, there's plenty of variation as well.

Now if we just had tape restraints in this vein, my SL collection might finally be complete.

They cost 1000 Linden

Scores

Quality - 7/10
Function - 9/10
Price - 8/10