This article was inspired by comments by a couple of posters on Brian's Page, commenting about video games that have damsel in distress sequences that last two or three minutes if you get to the right levels. I read them and thought, "Come on you guys! What are you two doing scrounging for whatever table scraps a corporate entity might deign to throw you, when there's a huge damsel in distress feast taking place on Second Life, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, and you can not only watch it, you can be part of it!

Then I realized that I was in no position to judge -- I'd been doing the same thing all along with reviews of mainstream movies that almost always manage to mishandle bondage and damsel in distress themes, when Second Life Gor exists, and is doing incredible things. So I had to write about it.

I've had a problem that creative folk have had throughout time -- I've encountered something so good that it makes me feel that all my efforts have been a lot of useless nattering, while the REALLY creative folk have done something I couldn't even begin to match. I'm talking of course about Second LIfe, specifically the Gor regions of Second Life commonly identified as SL Gor.

As a newbie to SL Gor, I have been impressed as hell with what they (the inhabitants of SL Gor) have done to make SL Gor what is is. What SL Gor is, is better than the Gor novels, better than any sword and sandal movie ever made, better than any video game ever invented. It is WILDLY more creative than I have ever dreamed would be possible.. I’ve been exploring the place for a couple of weeks now and I’m stunned by the sheer complexity and scope of SL Gor, which has filled me with an inordinate sense of glee. If my avatar could directly express my emotions, you’d see me running through the various Gorean sites with my hair on fire and an insane grin on my face, waving my arms in the air and going “WOOOOOO HOOOOOO!!! YIPPPEEE!! WHEEEEEE!” (Of course, that would be rude, so I don’t do that. But I FEEL like doing that a lot.)

SL Gor isn’t just better than I expected, it’s better than I could have imagined, and I’ve got a vivid imagination. You like sword and sandal movies, you like adventure movies, you like damsel in distress scenarios, you like sexual bondage scenarios, on SL Gor you can LIVE them 24/7, if you like.

Let me give you a concrete example of how SL beats anything else going -- the collars. There are a variety of collars on SL, some of them for free, some that you buy in Linden bucks (the official currency of SL, with a rate of $1000 Linden bucks to US $4 and change. It's a great exchange rate!) One of the best, if not the best, collar is called the OpenCollar, and it's free -- a collaborative effort of programmers and designers who love their bondage play. You can pretty much equip yourself for any kind of damsel in distress scenario you like with all the free stuff that's out there -- and it's free to sign up on Second Life too.

There is more to the collar around this kajira's neck than meets the eye. Literally.

Now, SL collars don't just sit on the wearer's neck. They come with a series of scripted commands that control the avatar. But that's not the real genius of SL collars -- one of the scripts allows OTHERS to control the avatar. So if you are given control over an avatar's collar you can make it do a number of things -- assume Gorean poses like nadu and tower, place its wrists behind its back as if bound, bellydance, wiggle its butt at you, give you a blowjob, bend over for leashing or for doggie style sex -- there are typically 30 or more such commands in a collar. The person who has given up control of the collar has literally given up control over his or her body (in SL terms). It's a beautiful metaphor for controlling another person, and also a huge amount of fun.

But WAIT! It doesn't stop there. You can attach a leash to the collar, a series of chain links connecting the collar and it's wearer to persons or objects. You can set the length of the leash, so that the wearer is unable to move more than a meter, or three meters, or ten meters, from its holder. You can yank their chain, literally. You can set the collar so that it spies on the wearer, revealing their location and their personal messages to the leash holder. And you can do a lot of other things. It's actually better than a real leash in most respects.

There's also a thing called a "Force Collar" in SL Gor which allows one to take another captive and collar them against their will .(Most collars require the wearer to turn over control to others consensually. I don't know how a force collar works but it may well be roleplay in which the collar wearer pretends to have control wrested from her (or him, but mostly it's her).

And the SL collar, although a brilliant example of BDSM imagery on SL, is hardly the only innovation. SL is the product of many people with programming and design skills doing their own bad thing, and it shows.

It is hard to explain how much more intense and involving Second Life (SL) is than anything else out there. It's not just that SL Gor is better than movies, television and books, it's that SL is on a whole different LEVEL than movies, television, books and other Internet media (message boards, games, etc.). You see, there are no rules for how people interact on SL. There are no particularly favored forms of imagery or gameplay in SL, the participants do it all -- make up the rules for how they interact, design the scenery and the devices (heh) as well as the world they live in.

And as much as I rave about SL Gor it is only the third largest community in SL generally. Two others are larger and there are a lot of people who aren't part of any community, just doing their own freaky thang. (In fact, the Scotland educational system uses SL heavily as a remote teaching tool -- the only limit is the users' imagination and things that seem likely to embroil SL in legal trouble, like gambling and age play (child avatars). Since all SL inhabitants on its main grid have to be over 18, the sexual activity of avatars is pretty much unfettered (heh).

The builds are just incredible. Locale after locale after locale I’ve visited have been complex and well-thought out iterations of Gorean cities, camps, etc. Many of them would be a pretty damn good Gor sim all by their lonesome, but they’re just part of a huge collection of Gor sims that totally kick ass. (OK, I’ve been to a couple that had me scratching my head -- Tavern Akira for example, which looks like a futuristic mall, but they’re rare exceptions.)

But even more than the builds and imaginative stuff like SL collars, the thing that has REALLY impressed me is the way you have managed to strike a balance between having SL Gor be an online sex site and Boy Scout Gor.

ALSO FROM PAT POWERS

The sexy is one of the things that makes Gor what it is.

My other fear was that in an adult environment the sexy would be so overwhelming that what you’d have is Porno-Gor, which is to say roleplay in SL Gor would be like the plot in a porn film -- a bare minimum of rp and threadbare builds with the whole emphasis and the vast majority of the time spent in the furs doing the sexual rp, using the poseballs, etc.

My other concern about balance in SL Gor was that it would either be totally dominated by pedantic "by the book" types who would turn SL Gor into an endless series of feuds over what was truly by the book and what wasn’t, or that it would be dominated by roleplayers who would use Gor as minimalist scaffolding for enacting their own fantasies, be they medieval, Barsoomian, or just an endless series of raids for the World of Warcraft types who aren't really comfortable with all the slavegirls floating around.

Well, I’ve seen all of this in SL Gor to some extent or other, but what I’ve seen most of all is that the SL Gor inhabitants have managed to achieve both diversity and balance in their vision of Gor. There are some sites that lean one way or the other in various directions, but overall there’s a pretty good feel for what Gor is about. You can visit most sites and feel you’re in a Gorean environment once you get clear of the markets that tend to cluster near the teleport sites. Markets which contain plenty of authentic Gorean gear like fireplaces and pottery and swords and camisks and tunics, but also contain every last sex toy ever invented.

The many arguments, discussions etc. I've encountered on message boards devoted to SL Gor strikes me as people with a common interest but different viewpoints striving to stike a balance they can agree on as to what SL Gor should be.

SL Gor has many detractors on SL, but frankly they have no idea what they’re talking about, and a lot of it sounds like ill-disguised envy. The SL Goreans have done a great job. SL Gor FREAKING ROCKs and let no one say otherwise.

But what if you don't care for SL Gor? No problem. There are plenty of other scenarios in Second Life. It's really just a a matter of how you and your friends (if any) want to work it.

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