This is a one-shot, I’ll not resume blogging (if I resume blogging) at least until january when, supossedly, my RL life will still be messy but with lots of free time in my hands.
The excuse to adding this to the World of Fashion feed is that I’ll release soon a new expansion for the Pandora Hud, that probably will be called Dark Desires (hotter hugs, some rubbing, but still no sex animations, sorry :-p) in colaboration with somebody… but who is “somebody” is an interesting story that will have to wait for other day… so if you are only interested on fashion, and you already took a mental note of it for your Chirstmas gifts, you can leave this post now; it will not be about fashion anymore.
I know I’ve lost most of my readers (not you, of course, since you are reading this, but the other ones that will not notice I did it) and that coming and going away will not do nothing to recover them; blogs need a steady rithm to keep interest. Anyway, a nice pic from time to time helps to bring people back; here have yours (I know it is an old one, but I wanted to remember you the facial animations of the Pandora Hud, and there will be a new and definitly NSFW after the cut *winks*).
Posting your oppinions in a public way, knowing that somebody else will read them, is addictive, and I’ve been dying, DYING, to come back and talk about a lot of things that I’ve readed in other people’s blogs; Lillie, Soph, Faerie, dandellion, Kate, Vint, Zippora and so many more… I am sorry, but I didn’t keep links to the original posts. Also, I wanted an opportunity to thank the ones that comed and leaved messages of support, roses included :-)
Also, there was a darker motive; a thorn that, by writing about it, I hope to remove.
Ok, here we go, here is the long post/ and definitly Not Safe For Work cut… I am going to burn matherial for a docen posts in a long one, and the funny thing is all the time I’ll be talking about my favorite theme. Myself. Please, keep reading :-)
Are virtual identities real? Maybe it sounds like an oximoron… I mean, it is virtual against real. But anyway, let me ask again: is London Spenger real?
Believe me, she is, but she isn’t “me”, the typist. Also, the typist you know isn’t me. Also, I am not who people thinks I am at RL, because they don’t know the typist or London Spengler. We are made of shards, and nobody knows them all. Saying that one shard isn’t real only because it doesn’t have a physical nature is as silly as saying that while we are showing our “work face” we don’t truly exist, since it isn’t the whole us. For me, London Spengler is much, much more myself than the face I show at work.
But one of the points impacted me; can love be real when you hide your “true” identity? True love, true confidence, has been said to hold no barriers. If I don’t have enough confidence on my SL lovers to tell them my RL information, do I really love them?
I think that I can love them as much as I love my husband, since I am also keeping my SL life hidden from him. Maybe it isn’t a perfect love, but it is mine. To be true, the classical notions about perfect love are as full of crap like the ones of looking for the perfect match.
To me SL love is somewhat the modern equivalent of the old platonic, romantic letters that remote lovers exchanged from years and years, without never meeting. The feelings are there, and they are true, even if you don’t know your interlocutor in the real life.
Forget about perfection. Love isn’t perfect, people isn’t perfect. We take what we get, give what we can; don’t tell me it isn’t real because there are some barriers. In fact, the barriers make it real, since they mean it matters enough to accept some limits.
Be carefull, I am not saying SL love is bad or good. Zippora was right when she said that cheating eats time from RL families, and that is a bad sin; it happed to me, until it reached a dangerous level. Also, SL hapiness can make your RL marriage happier. It is hard to balance it, but I am sure it is possible. At least, I keep trying.
Of course, there isn’t only pure love at SL, virtual passion plays a key role, too. To the people that says it isn’t real, I can only answer it is, and that it is a pity they miss it. We are lucky sex isn’t limited to the friction of mucoses, or it whould grow old really quick.
Sometimes passion goes too far and becomes obsession. I usually am too tired, busy, or surrounded at RL to try anything naughty, I only crave some hugs and a cuddle. But sometimes… sometimes I want it hard and cannot deny the beast. There is a dam of hornyness waiting to explode, a desire so intense that I become a mindless, selfish, craving fury, needing it, needing her, everything, anything, here and now. I am lucky that it doesn’t happens often, because it scares me and when it happens, I can only look at myself and wonder why am I so crazy, so animal… Don’t tell me it isn’t real only because it doesn’t happens at RL.
I spended most of a morning arranging things to give Natsumi a surprise; you can see the picture below. I looked for the right nipple piercings, edited them to remove the prim nipples and addapted them to my skin, scripted a new animation interceptor to substitute the one that the arm restrainer brought, that didn’t work right, changed a lot of clothes until I opted by the tattoos, adjusted the blindfold and the gag, and more. At the end, I rided the (spanking) horse and waited eagerly for my lover to log, storing naughty messages on her IM hinting what was waiting for her…
…and she logged 40 minutes later. Sometimes passion should learn to think and believe less in sheer luck :-p.
I had forgotten that the poor Nat is a slow riser; I am sure the only thing she wanted in that moment was a hug and a cup of coffee. Also, I was more than a bit bored, had started scripting a pair of things, and wasn’t truly in the mood… but we tried anyway and we where getting into it… when she crashed, and soon after it I had to attend some RL matters. I logged for five minutes, we hugged and caressed each other, while I felt more than a bit silly about the gagged and bound thing, and I went away. Life cannot be much real than this.
There is no perfection, even between pefect lovers; but there can always be love, and that’s all that matters.
If we accept there is love an hapiness, passion and desire, we cannot deny there are darker emotions.
Some people has seen my rage. As I said, I usually try to avoid confrontations, but sometimes innocent comments had lead to harsh comments, and then angry ones. As my faulty memory can reach, I can remember three big blunders.
In the first one I thought the writers of a fashion blog had misleaded and attacked harsly an oppinion of mine that was in fact supporting them, when it had been done by an independent reader. I was wrong, and I apologiced.
The second time was worse. I defended something that I thought it was important, against somebody. I don’t want to go over it, but one of her lines where that if houses hadn’t a security system or blocked land, she had all the right to enter or peep inside; I don’t mean we don’t do it sometimes, but she alleged it was right, denying common sense or intimity respect… and everybody else though it was funny. Nobody helped me and, when I leaved at the end, I felt lonely and hurted.
I probably am too soft hearted, maybe even a drama queen. But once I was called a troll, and I cannot take it.
I despise people like Prokofy Neva, who thrives in empty accusations and half lies. She accused Lillie of supporting underage sex at SL, when the true thing is that she only talked in an open and ponderated way about her oppinion and the truths of sex, in words that never meaned the conclusions Prokofy extracted from them. I cannot even tell that the dirtness is in Prokofy’s mind, because I am sure she deliberately ignored the truth and distorted the facts.
Troll.
Some people says this word isn’t real, that there aren’t consecuences. I only know what I see, and I don’t like them. If you use a virtual enviroment to be nasty or rude, you are nasty or rude; maybe you decide not to reveal that in real life, but you are. And an hypocrite, since you do it in the hiding.
Troll.
Maybe here lays the main problem with LL; there will always be morons that faced with the experimental and evergrowing nature of SL will think “the rules of the game” don’t apply (and no, I am not calling SL a game :-p); some feelings thrive in anonimity and movility, when we don’t have to face the consecuences of our acts. But if you feel tempted to think it isn’t real, it is only a game, don’t do it. It is real people, and so you are. Don’t taint somebody life, don’t taint yours.
Troll. The word had been bouncing on my mind for weeks.
In my third blunder, I was called a troll.
It is too easy to be hurted on the net. Some time ago Gwen asked in a slightly annoyed way for some explanations about a comment I did about taxes, but when I explained back, she never answered. I am pretty sure she simply forgot about it, but it still itches. So much work talking about taxes, for nothing.Another example; somebody told his friends about a problem but not to me, and even if I know I am only a casual friend , that our time is limited, that I don’t go telling my problems to everybody, I felt leaved outside, and hurt. I know it is silly, but that is how it felt.
Of course I am not perfect and hurt people without even thinking about it. I was invited to a collaring ceremony and at the end I didn’t asist, nor even sended an IM telling I wasn’t going to go; to be true, I simply forgot about it. I’m want to apologice, I am sorry it happened, but now it is probably too late. Also, I’ve been told that I’ve been rude when asking casual friends to disable the notification of their online status; in that moment it seemed a nice idea to keep them on my list and not seeing them logging in and out, something that makes me crazy. It seems it wasn’t good enough.
Troll.
If you know about the third blunder, you will probably think that it wasn’t so important; a casual argument that went a bit too far away. I could even believe so if it had happened to anybody else, but it happened to me, and it was too much. I’ve been raging inside for weeks, and I don’t like it. I’ve asked myself why my anger doesn’t dissapear, why I keep hurting myself, why I stay away from places and people I like only to avoid that person. I pride myself of not hating, but this was too near to hate.
It took me a long time to discover why I felt so hurted. In fact I’ve never been sure until now, after writing this. It is because we are virtual. We exist, but at the end we only have our emotions and our words to express them. When my word where distorted and used against me in a word fencing game I hadn’t accepted to play, it was denying the only thing I had to express myself, my words. It was denying my identity.
That’s why trolls are so powerfull in Internet, and why people keep feeding them; it is a matter of live or death, even if it is virtual.
I will not tell you my interlocutor was evil or trollist, but I am still sure there was no truth in her; there is a limit to misunderstandings, and too many of my phrases and ideas where distorted against me not to be intentional. Yes, I know it is called dialectics in real life but, to my virtual self, it was raising a barrier where reasoning has no sense, where she wasn’t defending her ideas but attacking mine. She talked to win, and I was powerless. And it hurted, because I knew her, and her friends, and never imagined something like that could come from that direction, and I felt lonely again.
And she called me troll.
But I am not calling her a troll. I believe she thinks what she did was right, as I do think I was. Probably the truth lay somewhere else, and it doesn’t matters anymore, because it happened, and some things, even if they look inocent, are too sour to be forgotten. It happened and a whole chunk of my virtual life has been spoiled for me even if, until now, I hadn’t admitted it. Things never will be the same.
At least tonight, after writing and rewriting this post, the hate dissapeared. There is no forgiveness, since no apologices had been presented, and probably the cause of my rage was too esoteric to be accepted as justified. Maybe I was wrong, but if I was, I am too silly to notice it. I will not apologice, nothing will change. Sometimes shit simply happens.
But I know I am not a troll, I know I am real, and nobody can take that from me. Trolls doesn’t have negative feelings, they feed on them.
When we drive our dark, passionate, inside lizzard raises. Maybe the Internet isn’t as stressfull as driving but it is more anonimous, and maybe that anonimity makes our emotions so raw here; new borns in a strange enviroment without body language, without real life consecuences, without peer pressure. Yes, there are communities, but we can always reinvent ourselves; be can be born again and start anew.
But if you are lucky, there is a moment you cannot do it. You can tweak yourself, change things, but to be born again whould mean to kill a part of yourself. I know because I did once. A lot of people at SL is like that: real. Dandellion wasn’t able to escort because she is a real being, not a lot of pixels, and only real feelings where applied for her. Lillie escorts and she is real, because she keeps it clear that she may escort, but she isn’t a whore (even if she has whoregasm .-). Again, true feelings. My SL friends are real, as my antagonist is.
It doesn’t matter who you are, or what you do. What matters is it matters to you; it makes you alive.
What a wonderful post. Straight from your heart. Thank you for letting me read it.
I agree with Blade. Thank you for pouring out your heart. It’s very clear that we are real people in the virtual world, with real emotions and all the problems – and joys – that comes with it.
*hugs*
my first time reading your blog.
you have touched my heart
very well spoken
Dear London.. I have so missed your raw feeling and honesty. I’ve said it before.. I only wish I could expose my soul as you do.. thank you for a moving post.
London, I’ve read your blog off and on for a while, but have never posted. This demands a few words of appreciation for your honesty and openess.
Thank you for validating all of us in SL who do not just view it as a game and for sharing your feelings with us.
Why did I suddenly become Zippora, and I should remember that your blog is NSFW. *is going to have red head for the next of the day when the colleague smiles at me* :p
And I think you are right with your analyses of why we feel more attacked when somebody discusses what we say online. ‘We’ are indeed made out of a lot of words, a few skins, some prim hair, etc…
(can’t help but think is that prok huge ego is because of it’s huge vocabulary (but limited thinking)? ;))
You’ve done it again London. Nothing for ages and then POW I’m left speechless on the floor re-reading over and over.
Thanks hon – there’s so much there for me to agree with!
As for Prok – speak not the monster’s name! I think she’s just a a very insecure person who needs to constantly remind herself of her own self worth by attacking others. There is nothing we can do except ignore her until she goes away.
You are still in my RSSfeed London, I won’t forget your blog ;-) I really missed it though, as you were actually the one that made me start blogging. That’s why I feel quite honoured that I’m mentioned here *giggles*.
And it was worth waiting for. Every paragraph I was reading made me want to react, but I’ll stay at the end conclusion, before I take over here ;-)
YES, SL makes you feel alive, with all the good and the bad emotions. That’s why I like it, and that’s why I’m still here.
Which makes me think of one of my favourite songs:
It’s not a habit, it’s cool
I feel alive
If you don’t have it your on
the other side
I’m not an addict (maybe that’s a lie)
Oh LOL, Vint, didn’t see your comment appearing meanwhile… I think London is doing some free advertisement for your blog ;-)
Just perfect!
It’s *so* good to have you back, even for just one moment! You’re a tremendously important voice in our community!
I’m sending Kit Meredith over here: you two should get to know each other! :D
See you sometime soon, I hope, love!
I used to answer you one by one, but this time I could only repeat the same words: Thanks, thanks to you all for your support, I hadn’t the slightless idea it will be like this.
(Ok, I can add something: Vint… whoops!, fixed and you should know better :-p. Zippora, thanks for the song. Soph, I only had time to briefly browse her blog, but the “shameless self promoting” touched a kind tone on my heart, and I like the rezbian definition :-).
Blade, Octover, anonymous, Elusyve, Joonie, Vint, Faerie, Zippora, Sophrosine… Thanks again for reading this and taking the effort to post your comments; they are a wonderfull blanket where I’ll snug when winter comes.
To you, and to the anonymous readers (almost four hundred in this two days!) that gived life to a lonely blog: I promise you I’ll never forget this day.
*hugs you all, deeply moved*
London, you’re an important part of our community – there’s been a London-shaped hole in all our lives these past months, and we’re all just delighting to see it filled!
Not that we don’t support you completely while you tend to your atomic life! It’s just – it’s *right* when London is here speaking the truth in all our hearts!
Hi London!
After how much Soph talks about you, and has been telling me that we need to meet, it’s good to finally be “introduced”! I completely understand the need to take time off for RL (sorry, Soph, “atomic life”) for a while. I’m gonna be doing the same coming up fairly soon. Hopefully when we both get back, we can meet in-world, and Soph will finally shut up! (:P love you hon)
Loved what you wrote above – especially the part comparing SL relationships to “old platonic, romantic letters that remote lovers exchanged.” I’ve been having the same thoughts ever since Argent pointed me to this definition of a “romantic friendship.” Still think there’s more to it, because of the immediacy and the ability to “look” at someone’s avatar, but the similarity is striking, isn’t it?
Anyway, thanks for stopping by the blogosphere and posting, and visiting my little corner, even if it was a short visit. Looking forward to reading even more from you in the future!
@Kit:
Me, shut up?? Mmmmyeah, *thati’s* going to happen! :P
Did my comment got eaten or did it not make it past the editor?
*sighs* Soph, I started answering you and ended with so many words that they are a post by themselves; I imagine it will appear soon :-p.
Kit, welcome and thanks for coming. I hate to discover bloggers I like, because I end spending ages reading their old posts. Just now the blame is on you *smiles warmly*.
Peter, I’ve no idea about what happened to your comment. I checked and it isn’t on the spam pile, so it probably was eaten by WordPress; I know it has happened to me sometimes. Anyway, welcome back, it is good to “see” you again :-)
As all the other commenters have already said most of what I wanted to write here, I’ll just say thank you for sharing this with us. I really missed your posts, as they are always great!
*hugs*
Then, as I have already answered here in more or less the same line, I’ll only say “you are welcome” *giggles and hugs you back*.