I Love You...and you...and you...and you....

I read the Profiles of my friends to catch up on their interests, to see new pics (since appearances here change from day to day) and mainly, to see who they're married to this week. Love is everywhere in SL and I constantly marvel at the ability of friends and aquaintances to find "true love" again and again. Names have been changed to protect the incredibly fickle.

"Loveslave" has a new and wonderful master about every third week I read her Profile. Each time, he is the one, the only, the answer to her prayers and the reason for her being. He lights up her world, he completes her dreams. Her gives her the love, the attention, the intensity that no other has. He is the one who finally understands and accepts her for who she is. There are endless pics of them (mainly naked) attached at various spots on each other's body. Her world is bliss, their union perfection - until the next master comes along. I think Love's fingers are getting tired, because the words have started to remain the same - only the pics change.

Another aquaintance, "SMan" is constantly on the search for the love of his life and he finds her with alarming regularity. SMan's relationships run a very familiar pattern. At first, he has never met anyone like "her". She is the one who finally gives him the love he has searched for, the one who measures up to his (ahem) high standards of behavior. The one who understands what he wants, what he needs, what he expects from the woman privileged to be by his side. There are photos of them arm in arm, gazing into each other's eyes with laserbeam intensity. His Picks contain cut and paste paragraphs of the touching moment he declared his love and asked her to be his. His world is perfect, she completes him like no other ever has. No change for about two weeks, then suddenly, it's over. Gone are the touching photos and words of love and devotion. His Profile sits unchanged for about a week before, wonder of wonders, he meets a new love! Lather, rinse, repeat.

Am I making fun of my friends? No, not really. SL is a place of fantasy, of dreams. I guess the "perfect love" is the ultimate fantasy. And really, is there anything more delicious than the beginning of a new love affair? But it begs the ultimate question: Can love be for real in SL?

The First SL novel

New world notes has a post on the first novel to use SL as an essential element.

Interesting SL machinima by China Tracy.

China Tracy: i.Mirror part 1


China Tracy: i.Mirror part 2


China Tracy: i:Mirror part 3

Other people's fetishes

So Jane and I are in this store and find a quite detailed embalming set and an IV drip and a Giant Novelty Antique Syringe. Wow. Other people's fetishes are so bloody funny! Seriously. How can embalming someone be arousing? *Laughing* Now the giant syringe I can imagine being used in a dom-nurse scenario... (at this point Who has to be physically jolted out of daydreaming about Jane in a revealing nurse uniform). But before I could tell Jane about it, her SL client crashed. Damn SL!

And then I saw a nicely done Lathe and could not think of a single fetish thing one could do with that. Can you? What fetishes do you find funny? And the foot licking animation from Bits & Bobs does not count!

"Consenting Adults" and all that...

An official Linden blog post describes LL's response to a German television network capturing images of sexual ageplay in SL. In very brief summary their response included

1. Banning the two individuals involved (a 57 year old man and a 27 year old woman)
2. Proposed strengthening the age verification procedures in SL drastically.
3. Reiterating their zero tolerance for child pornography.

So is sexual ageplay in SL between two adults bad?

In my view sexual contact or interaction between an adult and a child is unquestionably and horribly bad. Clearly how bad depends on the specifics but that is beside the point here. Are depictions in the form of cartoons, drawings, computer graphics, etc. of sexual interaction between an adult and child also flat out bad? Now I am not interested in the strictly legal question here. There are laws on the books regarding this in some jurisdictions and I am not qualified to comment on them. What is at issue here is whether it is morally reprehensible (enough for SL citizens to support banning of the people involved) to create a depiction of an adult having sexual contact with a child? Lets make this simpler still. I am not talking about depictions that are intended as art but rather depictions meant purely to satisfy sexual fantasies as was most likely the case in the SL situation mentioned at the top.

My answer is that I believe that what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes or in the company of consenting and suitably warned adults is their own business. Yes, there are things that such adults might do (as in the issue at hand) that might make me regurgitate the contents of my stomach but perhaps I do things that might offend more refined sensibilities than mine. So yes, I buy into the "slippery slope" argument about where do we draw the line.

What do you all think?