I can't tell you why but something inside is dancing with fire

An update? Yes! An update!

I still have work to do on the sidebar, but--the blog is finally unbroken! Or at least mostly unbroken. I am not changing it again for a good long while.

And--since I went to a certain awful haunt back in September, that's how I've dated it. So the progression of the new entries goes:

1. 24 September: The Clockmaker's Curse, part one
2. 29 September: The Clockmaker's Curse, part two
3. 12 October: Harvest Hollow, part one
4. 13 October: Harvest Hollow, part two

Now? More work on the neon haunt. Because for some mad reason, I went back to it and the skybox surround had disappeared, and the entire construction slipped down a half meter. Why? Who the heck knows.



I also decided--because it's this year's Firestorm perma-pet, in bright pink and black--to have a haunt pet. Meet Judy Boo.

Well, she's kind of hard to see, I added a label and an arrow. Did that help?



Maybe this helps more. In the meantime, still working, and hoping--perhaps fruitlessly--to be finished before November!

knelt down at the crossroads, can't get the devil off my mind (part two)

So here's part two of Harvest Hollow. (Part one being yesterday.)



I get it. Kitchen's where you carve and cook the bodies. But it's...gods, it's overdone. The cauldron under the toxic water spout's neat, though.

Blogger changed their content policy recently, and there is a passage on violence and gore, but I'm erring on the side of Second Life being just digital violence? I may be wrong, but I'm holding to that.



But I'm also confused--the corpse has been wrapped, but the feet are exposed? The feet are exposed, but the head (now detached) was wrapped? Or was the head exposed, too? Then why not remove the hands, if head removal was to prevent dental records being used to identify Mm. Nameless Wrapped-in-Plastic?

Am I overthinking this again?



The rest of the haunt had nothing new, we've all seen it a dozen times by now. But outside, there was a bumper pumpkin ride. That seemed neat.



Another Madpea contribution--and you can't see it here, but the selection in the upper right, A1? Salmiakki bats! Even virtual salmiakki is marvelous. Bat-shaped salted licorice? Even better!



And I won a new ghost plush from the haunted crane game.

All in all, am I unhappy I went? No, not really. Did it spark joy? No, not really. Apart from great landscaping, there's very little we haven't seen before, and most of the more "fun" things are in the "CARN-EVIL" section. Still, there is fun to be had--there's an easy maze, tons of picture opportunities (if you don't mind advertising for the estate), and it's not the worst hunt I've been to. (That distinction still belongs to the Clockwork Curse.)

I'd say...go if you want? Or don't, I'm not your mom.

took the blacktop to Texas, Stevie Ray was on my mind (part one)

Welcome to Harvest Hollow, since I'm ditching the personal haunt that's eating my brain for the night (the night being the fifteen minutes I remain on the grid)...



Right. Let's goooooo.



Seeing the entrance area, I'm fairly sure that somewhere nearby is the rental office for the estate. There are paths leading to more haunted areas--I took the road to the left, then turned right at the fork after the bridge--but overwhelmingly, it seems like it's not a Halloween build, just an enhanced commercial build. Does that make a difference?



I will say, the sim is very pretty. Seriously, for the stroll factor alone, it deserves a visit.



...and almost instantly, I have to dock a skull for the advertising. Maybe it's because I'm frustrated with my own haunt-in-process, maybe it's because the survey that asked me to answer--in the welcome area at the entrance--for a "gift" really leaned hard into me answering that I was going to follow them on Facebook and rent from them soon, and...seriously, that is the exact wrong tack to take. I don't have Facebook, and I have no need to rent, but now if I did, it wouldn't be from them.



Maybe that's too much to put on a pumpkin. I don't know.



I thought this was a nice touch. Not only Madpea's knife mirror (since the rest of this particular haunted house is...repetitive), but the translucent butler who both greets and dusts.

Normally, I'd probably tie up the review here, but I took ten pictures, and I'm going to use all ten, so...this is now part one.Part two's coming very soon.

am I jumping trains? I ain't turnin' back (part two)

Picking up where we left off.



Here be clockwork spiders. But I couldn't stir myself to care.



And the galling thing is, there are some nifty ideas here. A corrupt mage, trapping an entire town to fulfill his mad scheme to control time itself. The mage parting people out, extending limbs, to turn them into twisted replacement parts for his clockwork creations. Those aren't suffused with mediocrity, at least on the concept level.

No, it's just the entire concept of the haunt is depressingly mediocre.



Could this have been done with existing dark ride scripting? Absolutely. Would it have required time investment on its own? Absolutely. Is the haunt "designer" just effing lazy? Maybe.



Even "fight" scenes could have been done with existing technology. Why, then? Was it just a cash grab? Well, it's not a dark ride that charges. Though it IS listed on at least Firestorm's destination page, if not Second Life's at large. Does that count? Who knows?



And it's not even that it's AI start to finish. It's that ALL of AI is based on one solitary concept: teaching a machine mind to hallucinate. And it's especially obvious in this ride, because everyone has the same six faces, everyone has similarly-detailed clothes, every single set piece looks like every other set piece. It's goddamn derivative as hell.



Case in point, three of the "time portals" opening.



If you haven't tired of the haunt itself, there's a very matchy-matchy maze after, with "gifts". Which are also designed by AI.



And the pic above this one was the last one I took at the haunt site itself. This pic was set up with the gifts I gathered from the maze. I took two images, chose the better one of them, then deleted them from inventory. They're worth the nothing the rest of the haunt is worth.

Here's the thing. Set aside the ecological devastation of multiple data centers drawing enough local water to force droughts, drawing enough power to spike electricity costs for people dozens to hundreds of miles away, causing enough noise from multiple gas-powered turbines to cause hearing damage (similar to families that live too close to airports) in people in those centers' vicinity--those are heavy costs, and those are real, and they matter.

But the bigger cost, for Second Life, at least to me: this required so little personal creativity. I mean, hells, for all I know, this could be a job-lot design from another place entirely, and the dark ride's owner didn't even feed in prompts, they just bought the entire construction. (And again, that just makes it worse, not better.) It's depressing, it's lazy, it's tied to systems that rip our own creativity from us, as individuals, and we're already seeing the effect in essays and research papers, resumes and lesson plans. Hallucination machines do not invent anything; they recombine. And they recombine based on destroyed rare books and stolen art. Why is Second Life encouraging this? Why have a copyright system at all if no one's going to care?

I care. I won't return. Everyone who visits this haunt is now dumber for having listened to it. I award it no points, and I will quietly pray for its extinction from the grid.

I need coffee. This was emotionally draining beyond belief.

am I running away? am I changing tracks? (part one)

It's been forever since I updated, and I want to get back to that. I need to get back to that. But while I'm taking a break from updating holiday information--anyone in the Gearhaven group will see that later--and concurrently taking a break from the most insane haunt I've ever made--and pictures on that are coming, gods help us all--I want to talk about something else.

I want to talk about the most depressing dark ride I've ever ridden--in SL, or out of it. Let me introduce you to The Clockmaker's Curse.

And this is probably going to be at least a couple entries.



I think any reader of this blog grasps the issue immediately. Love the details if you will--I did--admire the concept of a steampunk dark ride--I did, too. But it's AI, start to finish. The images, the visual effects, the narrator's voice--all of it. It's all artificial intelligence.



Usually, I ride every dark ride I've gone on in SL twice. More if I really like it, but at least twice: once out of mouselook, for pictures, and the second time as intended--the "correct" time of day, in mouselook, just for the experience.

This one? Popped out of mouselook when I found a reasonable image for this entry, popped back in, because I knew this would be the one and only time I rode it. And my gods, it broke my heart.



I can almost name the engine, too. There's a particular similarity of faces with generative models. Midjourney comes closest--the faces are similar, the particular detailing...the utter lack of everything-is-Pixar-shaped (see PXZ.AI or YouCam). It might not be, it could be another engine I havent run across--and if you scan up to the first two images, that particular style layout, that font, those colors are everywhere in SL right now, and that is also depressing. I've gone to two iterations of the Whispering event, and I'm not going back a third, because...as much as I'm fond of a few creators who've had booths there, the inundation of AI textures, AI text, AI image layouts...it all looks the same, it's all instantly recognizeable, and it's all AI nonsense.



The story wasn't even terrible. Black Hollow was a normal small town, until the Clockmaker arrived. He wanted to preserve time, and he did it with arcane rituals and souls. You have arrived in Black Hollow, years--or decades, or centuries--later, and are advised not to stay after dusk. But...you do. And thus, the ride begins.



I'm not saying the haunt's bad, per se. (Though somehow that makes everything worse.) I am saying it's 100% AI.



I am saying that if I had known about it in advance, I never would have gone.



I am saying if this hadn't been so obviously, so carelessly AI, I might have been far more invested.

On to part two.

heart full of blues, space and time

While I decide if it's too late to back-date posts that contain the last of the Hair Fair pics, I got hit with this when I was listening to the Wednesday lives at the Slippy Ship:

[18:16] Toni Axel (tonharu): Hey hi, how are you? Im wondering if i may ask you a question if im not bothering you? If i cant its ok i can leave then. Many people in Second Life are unnecessarily rude, and if that's the case, I can leave.
[18:17] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr): I mean, I can be unnecessarily rude if you want, but what's up?
[18:17] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr) also braces for the do I have some amount of Lindens line

I mean, because it's constant in nearly all social media sites now. Bots everywhere.

[18:18] Toni Axel (tonharu): Its cause i want to know if you can look my photography work? The photo is like the one i am using on my profile, i have made. Can i make one professional photo for you? im sure you will like the result. I need a client now cause i need pay my rent studio, If I lose my studio, I lose my job. D: 🥲 I make custom tattoos too. The price of my work is 3,950L$ and its the value i need. Feel free to say no though.
[18:19] Emilly Shatner-Orr (emilly.orr): I can, though I generally take my own photographs. I am in no way professional, but I'm always there. :D

So I looked his work over. He's up on Flickr, and I swear I've seen some of it before, especially this guy. (Which is not me saying he's fake, I may have looked it over because of some sales event or other.

Here's the main problem, though--he doesn't have a LOT of work, get me? Especially as he joined Flickr in 2017, and he's got five years under his belt in SL. So...what, is photography a recent thing? Did someone hack the account? I don't have those answers.

I also don't have four thou to have a sideways headshot does, thank you but no. Still, they seem decent enough to recomend on a basic level, so...if you have four thousand Lindens burning a hole in your pocket, and you crave a sideways head shot, go ham. Kept his name in.

this could be a case for Mulder and Scully

These last few days have been...fun...

First week or so, bad head was bad. As much as I loathe that that's still a factor, it is. It's annoying beyond reason, but it's still something I have to deal with, find coping management skills for, or try to deny. The usual nonsense that is my life.

When I finally got around to opening hair demos--last night--I spent three hours posing, trying on different demos, and taking pictures. And now I can't...
find...
a single...
one. And it's eating my brain.

You can find the first part--well, barely a part, but whatever--here, and this is...part two of two, because I never got past a few demos and Hair Fair closed. {{Insert from the Editrix before publication--this was meant to go out on June 6th, but...I become less capable by the hour. It's now...later.}}



Yeah, well. Enough of the wee violins. On to actual hair coverage.



(It doesn't help that the second run of pics did not exactly...work well. This for instance. Got a pose, got a background, hopped on to find the next hair...watched my head rotate ninety degrees. This is actually the back of the hair I was wearing. Unexpected.)



Moving on. This is Navy+Copper's "Dream" style (for head L, chest M). It's in the forty-sixth color on the hair (sort of a muted navy-ish tone), and the twenty-second color on the bangs. It's not rigged to specific bodies or heads, but it has nine different sizes for the head shape, and nine sizes again for the chest. And this has definite potential.

You can find Navy+Copper in the Blonde region at Hair Fair.

{{Again, note from the Editrix: no, you can't. But if you like the style, and didn't grab a demo of it from the Hair Fair Update group, drop a note to Gia Pawpad, ask when it'll turn up in the main store.}}



Next up, no_MATCH. I wasn't feeling the first style in the box, but the second one, no_PROOF, I liked. It comes both with and without attached bobble braids.

You can find no.match in the Redhead region.

{{Again, no, you can't, your best bet is checking the mainstore. If you haven't run across them before, they are THE shop in town for unisex styles. Nearly everything they make they show on female and male models in the product photos, so femme, masc, nonbinary, indistinguishable fur of alien production--you can probably find something that works.}}



Finally we're up to the /TRUTH/ Collective, with Mochi. (This time out, the 'Collective' portion is their companion store, Litterbug. They're in the same building is TRUTH hair is in.) I didn't count the colors, tiring day (because these were reshoots), but I do know it's a shade from the Jewels hair HUD for the main hair, with a separate tint for the bangs.

The HUD for this style has the standard Colors and Streaks sections, with a third tab for the hair ribbons. My only complaint about this style is the hair ribbons. The color swatches are vivid, the dots precise, until they're applied. Then...they seem to fade. The navy swatch, the color I'm showing here, looked navy on the accessories tab. Once on, though, those ribbons are closer to a rock blue, or a pale dusty slate?

And I'm not saying that's a one hundred percent for perception, either--I was running with an old ringlight, and while the larger ring's a bright actinic white, the three interior lights, well...I forget what tones I picked. So it could be the lighting for my shots, not the color application in toto.



And I wanted a shot from the back, so I went to the Grayscales HUD. I'd forgotten the end section of that HUD departs black and white for deep, shadowed hues. So this is one from there, the one that goes black/lilac/black. Barely past shoulder-length, but still, a fun, charming style overall.

((and hey GUESS WHAT I CODED WRONG and I'm making a reference point to this from the next entry I post--which is, I guess July 7th, when I caught the silly mistake...yeah. FWIW, whatevs.))


This year, /TRUTH/ Collective's in the Brunette region.

{{And for the last time, no, their Hair Fair booth's folded up and disappeared. But the style should be back at Truth's mainstore soon.}}

And that's...really that...for this year, I guess. Seeya.

things are getting strange, I'm starting to worry

Hey, guess what I forgot? (I mean, apart from posting on the blog, finding a working layout for the blog, gutting inventory of at least 25,000 more items, getting more done in the Garden, decorating the mansion, and/or fixing the haunt...)



Yep. Hair Fair. Which, yes, is opening on the 30th, and also yes, was completely forgotten by the me. Void stars.

I only have half the demos pulled down, haven't unpacked a single one, and why yes, am adding emotional panic over not having all the demos open and sorted before now--



Yeah, well...I'll just have to get on that, I suppose.

RULES FOR THIS YEAR SINCE I'M ALREADY STARTING OFF BEHIND:

• I'm not covering all of the offerings. There is not enough time with a fully working brain.
• I'm only posting the ones that I a) think look good on ME, or b) are really innovative and different from the rest.
• If I run out of time/get tired/get overly stressed for other reasons, I may just grab the stylist's product image and post that.
• To avoid any more event stress, I'll link to coverage of the gifts available rather than try on everything myself.

And I'll try not to completely lose my mind in the meantime. Aaaaaagh.


{{Very belated note from the Editrix: this was the announcement of Hair Fair launching, and I managed...all of one post on hair demos. Go, me. Woo.}}

I am damaged at best, like you've already figured out

So...it's been a while. Ms. Kalia Anatine sent this out today:

🌙 A gentle reminder from your neighborhood witch:
The tricksters are out causing chaos, tossing shady little links like cursed breadcrumbs. Please double‑check every name before you tap... only Melora, Kalia, Dreamsphere, Xartashah, and Yasmina will ever call things out safely in the group.

For now, no posting links in the circle while the mischief is high.
Stay safe, stay clever, and keep your wards up, my dears. ✨

In other quick news: guess what I didn't have from /Vae Victis\? And guess what's on sale today? The Lamashtu Armored Chestpiece! It's currently (as of 26 Aprille, 2026 at least) on sale for L$99 in the Marketplace. Run!

Me, well, I have other things I wanted to say, and I'll get to some, likely, but this needed to go out NOW--and I'd already started with Ms. Anatine's message for the Moss and Luna Group. (Which, btw, if any of you aren't in--and you like the things I've posted, mentioned, or had out from places like Noctis, STATIC and Candle and Cauldron, among others--then you really should join Moss and Luna's in-world group, for their weekend sales, their group gifts, their whimsical and marvelous hunts, and their aesthetics. Just sayin'.

drowning in the silence

Second post of the day, because I have been gone a WHILE--

And this one's more random. From a message I just sent my partner:

[3:57 PM] 26 April, 2026: Emilly [VOID]: I so want to ask for a land forms kit from Fanatik that now has PBR textures, but I'm still in a tailspin after coming back, things haven't evened out, and that was AFTER I apologized for going radio silent months before.

[3:59 PM] 26 April, 2026: Emilly [VOID]: The animal wounded retreats for imagined safety, and it never works out, and I do it anyway. 50% getting tired of saying the same things, 50% not wanting to "burden" other people (and yes, gosh, THANK you for that one, mother, you've been dead a third of my life now, get the F̸̥͍̭̮͛̉̈́̏̒̑̕͜#̶̧̳̦̤̩̥̮̳̖͈͑͠C̸͇̹̺͓͎̦̘̳̼̭͇̫̳͕̋̅́̆͐͛̅̒̄̌͗̆̕ͅK̸͓̜̘̤̼̮͎̜̠͙̈́͝ out of my brain, thx). I am bad at all the things.

[4:00 PM] 26 April, 2026: Emilly [VOID]: I love you still. I will try to be in touch more often, it's just...hard. Everything is hard right now. But I will perservere.

I will, it's just...still a bit thrown from life in general at present. Pain levels spiking, check, still struggling to get ONE new prescription since my optometrist changed his policies from "grudgingly updating my prescription to one new pair of glasses" to "Sorry, no, we don't give out pupillary distance unless you purchase at least one frame through us"...

How much are those frames? Well, the "cheap" trays start at $120 per pair...



Oh, and for the gut-punch vicious irony, if I hadn't mentioned it before: lost my last client back in February, didn't know it until I fixed the comp enough to log back in. And I am using "lost" in its full sense, here--the motiver behind the screen passed away. Meeting nearly every week for eleven years...I miss him. I didn't expect his passing to be so destabilizing...but grief's like that at times, it sneaks up on us.

And with that, I think my courtesan days are finally over. My heart's just not in it. I guess I'm a Duchess full-time now, which won't be much of a shift, honestly--I pretty much am done, at least this year, with casual romps, I'm just keeping to the core group of loves. Three of which are pretty much perpetually offline...

RIGHT, this is getting dire. ANYWAY. I'll likely finish the post before this later tonight, 'cos I just crashed for the SEVENTH GORRAM TIME--

So that's it for now. Working on making OBS mah bish, because it's currently drop-kicked me into the basement, cackling maniacally. Bah. But I really want to do at least three vids, one of which should be for the upcoming five-year anniversary for Gearhaven.

(Did I not mention that? Yeah. Five years we've been on the grid. Time really flies when you're stressed beyond all comprehension, or something. But it's had its moments I would not exchange for all the perfumes of Arabia...

And I need to fix the blog layout. A-friggin'-gain...

All right, all right, that's it. Be well, be safe. Gearhaven out.

now there's a fire in the speakers and blood on the master tapes

I know. I know. The blog template still isn't fixed. I'm scattershot on answering messages. And yet, I'm asking for help to get my computer up and running, so I can finally get back to SL, because other options haven't panned out.

I'm cringing asking. But I'm asking anyway.

Help if you can. Pass it on if you can't. And thanks.