I just learned today that Regretsy, one of my favorite websites, is hanging it up after three and a half years of whimsicle fuckery. Well in honor of them and their “Things That Are Not Steampunk” series, I’d like to offer some discoveries I’ve made while browsing the “Women’s Medieval/Fantasy Costumes” tag at the good ol’ Second Life Marketplace.
And so, without further ado…
…read some of the Marketplace listings for genitals.
Continue reading “If you ever need something to laugh about… (probably NSFW)”
Photo by Tel MacArthur, at his club The Cat’s Meow.
So the other night I’m hanging out and dancing with my fabulous friend Teleny and we get to talking in IM. I mention that I’m thinking of getting some new lipstick for Mistletoe, because between the VERY pale skin and very thin lips, the lips just kind of disappear sometimes.
“Have you considered getting a new skin?” he asks.
“No, no, I really like the skin. I just wish I had a little more color in the lips is all.”
Well we got to talking some more and I mentioned, you know, I might consider doing bargain cosmetics as a kind of a side thing. I know I am FAR from what one would call a fashionista, but, I’m not completely inept and I think people would be willing to pay for something like that. And it’s a thing to do.
But I’ve got a marketplace shop for Manic Elf things as Mistletoe already. I have one for Clover’s Kitchen. I sort of even have one for Petal.
So, I dusted off a seldom-used RP alt and spent yesterday getting her made over. Meet Honour Samuels, founder of the not-yet-existing-but-in-progress Flattery Cosmetics. That’s my first-ever lipstick she’s wearing.
Keep an eye out soon for “her” products: lipstick, mesh nails, mascara, eye shadow, blush… you know. Pretties, but at an affordable price. Think like Avon or Mary Kay. In fact, once I get Flattery going, I plan to even have shop-at-home vendor “catalogs”, like Avon or Mary Kay.
I blame you, Tel. Unless it takes off. Then I thank you.
And as an aside, if I say so myself: how gorgeous is Honour? I’m in love with her deep eyes and her new Wasabi Pills mesh hair. And that’s what an expensive skin looks like, heh.
This is a thing I’ve been meaning to write for a while, but I never quite know how I’m going to go about it. However, in light of the recent loss of an SL friend to depression (see previous post), and the fact that it’s “that time of year”, I think it’s time I just stopped making excuses and went forward.
If you live with, if you suffer from, if you have or are had by depression, you are not alone, and here’s my tiny bit of evidence:
I, Laura, whom most of you know as Mistletoe Ethaniel and/or Clover Windlow, live with depression. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder officially about 12 years ago, but depression is something that I’ve known since at least the age of 4 (I have a vivid memory, for example, of crying and telling my mom that it was for no reason, that I just felt like crying). I’m no stranger to the frustration and the pain and the isolation; if anything I get more frustrated with it now because god damn it by now I should have it all together.
And I don’t. I know that nobody has it all together. I’m sure that outwardly I appear to have it more together than most. That has taken decades of self-discipline to master, and sometimes I feel like a real fraud for it when what I’d like to do is stay in bed and just cry for no reason.
I want to talk about the things that help, the things that have gotten me through the unfathomably dark places, because maybe it will help someone else too. No one thing will make the depression go away entirely, but they can (I hope) help you break free from its grip. And I hope this can offer some insight to people who love someone with depression as well.
Medical Treatment.
Depression is not a character flaw or some kind of “weakness”. It’s a disease, and a potentially fatal one at that. You wouldn’t stay home from a doctor’s office and try to “ride out” diabetes, or mask it from your friends and loved ones, or beat yourself up for not being able to make it go away with your own strength of will.
By way of medical doctors and pharmaceutical treatment, I can live my life. It doesn’t make the depression go away and it certainly hasn’t made my personality go away (a fear many have regarding medication) or my creativity go away (a fear I myself harbored). But it has made it manageable; it’s like reins and a saddle for a wild horse. It’s hard to remember to take it sometimes, but if/when I go off it, the effect can really be a mess. That’s where I come to the next thing:
Self-Awareness.
I know exactly what happens if I miss a dose. I know exactly what happens if I miss two. I know exactly what happens if I take too much. I know exactly when my body is not acting like it should, because something has interacted with what I’m taking (by the way, Seroquel + Dextromethorphan = NO). One of the– I hesitate to say advantages, but it’s the best word I can come up with at the moment– of depression is that it kind of removes you from your self in a way that you can be a dispassionate observer. I am easily able to distinguish what’s “me” and what’s “not me”.
And while I’m discussing self-awareness, I want to stress the importance of not making one’s illness one’s identity. It’s why I tend to stay away from like-diseased groups. I am not bipolar; I have bipolar. I’m still me. In fact most of the time I’m more me than I’ve been in a while, if that makes any amount of sense at all.
Discipline.
And no I don’t mean the whips and chains “yes Mistress” stuff. I mean something far more difficult: self-discipline. The discipline to take the medicine every day at roughly the same time (an alarm clock setting on my phone helps). The discipline to get out of bed when I really really don’t want to (the hardest thing for me to accomplish, when I’m depressed, is this one task. I don’t know if it’s the same for others but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. Holy hell). The discipline to go to work and put on my game face when I really don’t want to. The discipline to call the doctor or counselor when I’m just not able to hold myself together on my own. The discipline to make myself something to eat (another sure sign I’m depressed is an anti-compulsion to preparing food for myself).
The hardest part, though, is not beating myself up if I’m not able to do any or all of these things. That creates one hell of a vicious cycle. I try to remember– to have the discipline– to not talk to myself in a way that I wouldn’t allow anyone else to talk to me. Or, on hard days, like I would talk to a child.
Continue reading “Depression and mental health: let’s discuss it.”
I was not long back in Second Life, not even a full month. I had just re-opened Clover’s Kitchen and was taking a break from setup to hang out with some friends in Seven Isles. Chocobo races, if memory serves. That was the day I (as Clover) met Cern Glenwalker, a sensitive, kind fellow who wore grand antlers on his head. We got to talking and in not much time struck up a RP romance.
Perhaps they seemed an unlikely match. Clover, married to her work and devoted to her daughter; Cern, a lonesome widower and old-fashioned romantic.
Of course in the time of the pretend romance, what I like to hope was a genuine friendship was born.
This is the part where I look back, where I scour my memories, to think if there was something I could have said or done differently, where I ask myself if I was really a good enough friend to someone so deeply, so painfully, in need of one. I don’t know if I could have made things different. Probably not.
We ended up going our ways. The RP was too much for me to keep up with, with re-opening a shop and all the marketing and stocking and all that went with it. He’d pop into the Wee Little Irish Pub from time to time– wish I had a picture of that red kilt he wore– but time went on, the pub closed, the clientele went their ways, things got quiet.
I only got the news, on New Year’s Eve, of just how quiet.
Depression. Fuck. Depression is a horrible, torturing, silencing, scourge which kills. It twists your mind by making you afraid to talk to people about how much it’s truly making you suffer. It freezes your heart until you start to think nobody cares and nobody can possibly know what it’s like. It’s killed people I know. It’s claimed the life of another someone I used to know.
And I am stung in the heart by his loss. Anyone who knew him at all must surely be.
Cern, whose real name I didn’t even know until recently, is now a ghostly name on my friends list, linking to someone who will never log on again. Another good human being, swallowed up by the ice.
Backing the truck up, those of you who haven’t encountered them yet, a Flatterbot is a (duh) bot that IMs you randomly. Their usual MO is to start by either accusing you of bumping them or else claiming to be catching up with you, their long lost friend. They then compliment your avatar, give you a long sob story about an ex-boyfriend that made them log off, and their brave return to start SL all over again… and oh by the way, could you maybe “loan” me 300L to get a new avatar put together?
This is all old news for many of us by now. Many shops now have signage warning about this practice, and many blogs have covered what to look out for and not to fall for it.
But up until today, I was under the impression that any amount of reply to a Flatterbot went largely ignored or unheard by their anonymous programmer. I was wrong. And apparently I touched a nerve.
Below the cut, my complete interaction with just one such Flatterbot while I was shopping in Henmations.
Continue reading “Think Flatterbots don’t listen when you talk back? Think again.”
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