Virtually His

There is a quality to the Second Life experience that is hard to convey to anyone who has not been involved in virtual reality for some time.

When I first came into Second Life, I saw the avatar on screen as a little cartoon figure that I was manipulating around (very awkwardly). With time the movements became second nature, rather like learning to drive a car and when my avatar would fall or bump herself I would cringe. If someone threatened me, came up to me when I was alone at night in my virtual house, I was creeped out. This was the beginning of being "avatarized".

After about a year or more of being in Second Life, I discovered that really while I was inworld in my avatar I was a different person. The friends and experiences that I had been having in Second Life were different than my real life experiences, people reacted to me differently on the basis of how I was presenting myself in Second Life, so really I had a slightly different personality. I was beginning to split into my SL self and RL self.

This is a process that is very familiar to those that successfully make the adjustment to virtual reality.

Virtual reality affords us with opportunities to explore aspects of self that we may not be able to explore in real life or may not yet be ready to explore in real life. It can augment activities that an individual is already pursuing, such as artists and musicians who enjoy bringing their art into virtual reality or be a way of exploring a total fantasy realm by being a dragon or a mermaid.

Just like Middle Earth, Gor is not a real place, but in Second Life, real people are using the recreation of Gorean societies to explore some real themes of male and female sexual roles. Because the line between reality and fantasy is less clear than playing at being a dragon or an elf, questions frequently arise in discussion and between individuals about how real the activity is, how real relationships are.

To some, the whole idea of sex with pixels is silly. But of course sex, love, dominance, submission, all primarily happen in the brain. When two people who are able to be fully present in virtual reality and are skilled communicators roleplay together they can connect in ways as powerful, or even more powerful than in reality. I feel the power of my Master's male principle dominating me. I feel his lust, love and his displeasure with a physical response in my being. When he touches me, I feel the touch. When he commands me to a position my muscles twitch and when he takes me sexually I feel it and respond.

It is important when entering into a relationship in SL as a Gorean roleplayer that you are clear in your own mind as to the extent of the relationship you can/will agree to because a lot of the misery that people go through is because of differences in expectations. If you really hope to meet someone in your area of the globe with whom you might have a lifestyle M/s relationship with, you really should not be wasting your time with someone for whom Gor is only a game that is a fraction of their time and interest in Second Life and no part of their RL plans.

For me the experience of roleplaying as a kajira in Second Life is valuable to me on its own. I don't necessarily need anything else. Why mess up a perfectly good virtual life with messy RL? But particularly to those new to Second Life, this seems an odd concept. One can only say, "give it time"!

There is no right or wrong here, but finding a good match between Master and slave can take time. Sometimes the whole idea of Dominance or submission is so exciting to the person new to the roleplay that they go into some sort of frenzy of need to collar or be collared and they make totally unsuitable choices based on a few sexy flirtatious lines, a forum post, an erotic dance. If there is any argument for the power of virtual reality, it is the evidence of how many Masters make decisions about collaring girls led by their dicks rather than any thought of how things are going to work--in what way the girl's skills, language, time availabilities, age, location, interest in rl relationships--are a match to his own preferences.