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.

spoiled all, spoiled all

Sooooo....been a hot minute, huh? Comp's still down. You forget how much memory is tied to machine these days. Passwords. Financial data. Appointments. Programs.

In my case, a ton of books, music, and graphics as well...All locked up inside a dead box.

I am not best pleased with 2026 so far.

the head is only a dangerous dead weight

Day after day...night after night...I can feel all my selves slipping away. If it were just the grid, I could maybe fight it, but I ask the girls if they've ordered the power supply yet, and I'm being given various shades of no. "We're looking at a couple models", they've said. Then that became "No, not yet". One of them is hoping to catch a friend for "troubleshooting".

I have no computer and I must scream.

And in RL (more or less), the world is on fire. And all I can do is watch, and send emails to my Congressional reps, and mend. There is an insane level of mending that built up before my carpal tunnel surgery. And after...well, I'm still sewing everything by hand.

So my my But that's enough of that, I'm getting more bored of talking about it than I am of talking about the eternal headache. I just...want...time...to breathe.

But hey, Vibes is on Tubi, so it's not all bad.

kill your pride, turn your fear to a weapon

Not doin' well. Had to unpack a deliberately reinforced line of embroidery, ended up jabbing the seam ripper through the fabric tree times. Now I have to reinforce the remaining threads, mend the new holes, and probably track down a smallish patch of some sort to cover it all.GAH.

So.

Channels keeping me sane:

BigGaming64 (If One Topic at a Time didn't exist, he'd be THE most wholesome YouTuber.)

fastpassfacts (All animatronic history, all the time.)

WhyJordie
(All mechaniphobia content, all the time.)

HordesofHorror (Horror reviews, both film and books, much like SpookyAstronauts.)

KingKey (Supportive drag king moments.)

And one bonus single vid, P.M Seymour reading a Tumblr post on bees (Every point you need to defeat vegan arguments about honey.)

did you just say you're finished? didn't know we started

So...hey...

I still haven't fixed the blog, beginning to despair of that happening before 2027...and I might have enough images formatted and linkable from the "Lillith's Thorns" Medici Collar shoot; and I am going to review what I can long-distance, but...that will be the last with shots of me. (Though, won't lie, tempted to see if I can inveigle Justine and/or Lucifer as models. Haven't asked yet, it's just idle pondering for the moment.)

Why? Well, because my comp's power supply toasted. Rotten timing. We're trying to see if we have enough to get one this month; if we don't, it may mean February--or longer--



AND I AM ALREADY LOSING MY GODDAMN MIND--

But it's okay. I will get through this.It is going to be mental updating every thing from my phone, though.
Oh, and for all the (non-American) friends who've asked:



All caught up? Fab. Because 2026 is shaping up to be a razorblade rollercoaster of psychopathy!



Indeed.

I'm in the ruins too, I know the wreckage so well (part one)

Okay.

Okay. Okay okay okay.

This needs to get done and the past two months in tailspin DO NOT COUNT. Okay? Okay.

I'm saying that a lot.

This also may run for more than two entries.



Also, I want to put a pin in this one to revisit later, because I forgot I tinted a pair orange and then took a bunch of shots in blue latex. Keep this on the back burner for now.

Also this one (from the same set in blue):



I know the image quality is bad, but just--put a pin in this for later, too? Because I did find a problem on the horns! (It's me. The problem is me. Not even kidding, because I fractured another mesh item from an entirely different maker in the same way yesterday.)

So. The first set was the blue and gold, and I took a bunch, and then--forgot where I put them? So next up was a few days later, and the image below is straight out of the box:



No modding, as-is standard (non-PBR; there are both PBR and non-PBR textured versions in the package), just picked one and hit add.

And then....things get a little...vague? I have about twelve pictures, in assorted outfits uploaded to my image host, and maybe six different half-completed entries? But I know I took a few shots while shopping at Moss and Luna:



...and I think that's either the PBR version (maybe?? PBR is strange for me, it works, but it's always weirdly highlighted in a pale, milky-blue shine??), or I've done something weird to them. Because of course I would.

So then I went through the pics I'd uploaded two months back. Like this one:



--which shows the HUD for the set. (And yes, there are two versions, the PBR HUD, and the standard HUD.) Near as I can tell, this is also straight out of the box, very little if any adjusting.

I'll go into some features in part two, which I'm hoping to get out tomorrow? In the meantime, I kept feeling like I needed to retake pictures, or take more pictures, or find the...I suppose "perfect" background...I don't know.



Maybe it makes no sense. And I wanted to say more. There's more pictures. Void stars, I have more than enough frames. This run of--unfortunately, only three--I only caught the mistake in post-processing--I thought I'd moved the horns back enough to not protrude, but instead, I gave myself a second set of eyebrows.

Anyway. There's more. Also, watching Pontypool while trying to figure out what to say to type this? Maybe not my best choice.

((Insert from the Editrix: I'm going to go post this as the first entry in coverage of, but the entry I'm going to post after was actually written weeks ago, and I just want to get SOMETHING out today because kicking myself in the back for the last two, possibly two-plus months, is starting to leave a dent.))



((Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.))

((Oh, and you can still find them on the back wall at Vae Victis' main store. Set you back by L$500, still, I believe, which again, is a reasonable amount for horns this adaptable. Ta!))

I'm in the ruins too, I know the wreckage so well (part two)

((The aforementioned entry from before yesterday's. Probably going to cover some of the same ground. All right, carry on.))

[[HOOOOOLLLD EVERYTHING! This was one of the drafts I put together back in...August?? Hard to tell, because it's listed NOW as October 11th. Go figure!! So, THIS was technically written BEFORE. Okay? Everyone caught up? Yay.]]



Oh no. Background alpha. Okay, hold a tic...

So, straight out of the box, the "Lucent" Ribboned horns, in Standard. Biiiig antlers.

Don't get me wrong, they're impressive as they are, but they feel like my skull would cave in. So, a little bit of Y, a little bit of overall shrinkage...



Ah. Okay, that's....wait. The eyebrows have gone weird...



NOT EYEBROWS. I'm dim. That's the protruding bone ridge in front. Wild.



(This is also called, the backgrounds will shift back and forth because Em Cannot Decide Things...)

This isn't going to be my usual deep dive--I'll get a good capture of the HUD, because there are a LOT of options--because this is only half the set. There's also a PBR version.



And same thing, right out of the box, save for that odd, pearlescent coloration that--at least for me--looks the same on EVERYTHING that's PBR.

Find then on the wall here for L$500!

I go fall down nao.

it's just your shadow on the floor

(This section was written on July 11th...)

Great. Sat myself down today after oversleeping, and told myself sternly I was not going to log into SL until I did at least one of two things:

1. I get the blog template fixed; or
2. I finish coding the Lucent horns entry.

(Ended up never finishing either one and logged in anyway...but the below few frustrating days did NOT help, to be sure.)

And guess what happened? I learned imgbb was BROKEN!!

Won't deliver any linking codes, and I can work with a lot, gang, but if I can't even get the direct image links to code by hand, I'm dead. Dead dead.



(Which I had to upload using a NEW linking service and just MORE OF ALL THE WHY--)

So, hey, how about some links while I wait? Scientists have discovered a way to recreate Egyptian blue pigment.

And this drummer is so amazing, I had to look him up. He's Timothy Fletcher_ on TikTok. Just phenomenal.

And I think her name's WhyJordie on both TikTok and YouTube, but she has a semi-crippling (and real) set of phobias, among them thassalophobia (fear of the deep sea and creatures therein), megalophobia (fear of large structures anywhere, above or below water), automatonophobia (fear of animatronics, or it can also cover statues and mannequins), and let's not forget her deep, abiding terror regarding submechanophobia (fear of submerged anything, but traditionally large sunken ships, buildings, or flightcraft), and she's added the quirk of also being traumatized by large ship chains, and large ship propellers).

I seriously don't have space to link everything. Thing is, she is a deeply terrified person, this is true--but she's also a fan of horror, and likes being afraid. (Totally get that, it's why I specifically pay for a monthly Shudder subscription.) She's engaging to watch, funny, witty--there can be worse things than someone virtually holding your hand while you both freak out at a shared visual.

(And that's as far as I got before leaving in in drafts f o r e e e v e r r r ...Oh, and let's not forget yesterday's joy, on the first of Septus '25, illustrated below:



(So yeah. Apologies for worrying m'friends [and loves] over the past, uh...FIVE MONTHS?!??...I'm working on it.)

(And the blog template's still not fixed. I may give up.)

but the railroad track will bring me back when the lonesome whistle cries

[[Insert, belatedly, from the Editrix: I'm getting there.]]



I TOLD myself, I was not going to leave without blogging SOMETHING, because dear gods...February?! Was the last time I did??

Ignoring the eight unposted drafts, I may post them, I may not, they weren't "official"... whatevers...

Then THREE DAYS WENT BY...



So I told myself I was going to run all the shots so I could work on it offline! And...I spent the next two days largely unconscious. I....I Hate. This. Brain thing. SO much.

But okay. Okay okay fine, it's only been nearly a week, I'm still on...some kind...of track...and now I have pictures!

.........

And from two to now (7:26 pm PST), I have just been editing pictures. And they're calling me off for dinner.

I....I Hate. This. Brain thing. SO. Much.



HEY GUESS HOW LONG IT TOOK ME TO FIX THE BLOG GUYS
GIVE ANOTHER TWO WEEKS *AT LEAST* TO FIGURING OUT THIS IMAGE WAS MISSING
DID I MENTION I HATE MY BRAIN RIGHT NOW?!

So expect a full review. Soon. At, uh...some point.



Also I really need to figure out what to do with the now four staggered half-complete builds floating over Cardew that were meant to be a new store....

AND THE BLOG CODE IS STILL BROKEN....

It...it...yeah. I'll get there. At some point.

do you hear the people sing?

Happy Buy Nothing from Billionaires Day.