Sixty Six

It feels like ages since I have blogged, but that is probably because it is ages since I have blogged. Things in my real life (yes, I have one!) reached a head and I could not really muster any enthusiasm for anything in Second Life. Not that my SL was particularly excellent. My RL finances crumbled completely and I was forced to give up my land in SL. I have moved on a few times since I first rented in SL but I felt at home this time because it was a nice secluded beach property on a residential homestead sim (i.e. not much traffic). I then totally fell out with property managers over a comment one of them made in group chat. He described one of the gay sims as being the sort of place that if you dropped your wallet, you kicked it to the next sim before bending over to pick it up. As the estate had launched it's own gay sim to a fanfare of trumpets a few months before, it seemed a particularly insensitive comment. I complained (quite strongly) in a notecard to the estate owner and the executive officer. I am the kind of person who once my beliefs are challenged, will go on a crusade. The considered response from the estate manager was that I was "stupid" and my complaint was an over-reaction. I considered the comment to be homophobic but they legitimised it by saying it was "only a joke". That softened the loss of my land, as I didn't really want to live somewhere that I felt was more about taking my money than actually accepting it's residents. So farewell Serena Estates.

My Gorean alts departed the virtual world they had inhabited for a couple of years because I finally got sick of all the crap. I was once wandering through a non Gorean sim and someone IMd me completely out of the blue and warned me to be careful as "Gor destroys people". It was actually a comment I could not argue with as I had seen it happen a few times. No one had warned me when I became a Gorean physician that I would be expected to act as RL counsellor to 'slaves' shattered by the actions of their insensitive 'owners'. Oddly enough, I tried life as a Gorean slave and found that despite being a submissive person, I am no one's slave! In the true spirit of the Gorean books, I would have been put to death for my outspoken tendencies! SL Gor seems to work between two differing states. One is that of complete boredom because nothing happens for hours/days/weeks and there is no city roleplay because everyone is either in their homes shagging or trolling round Hubs or Starbucks. The flip side of the coin is when a raid happens. Cue bitching, OOC drama, insults, cries of "invalid", etc.

I had actually gone to SL Gor looking for something specific. Having read some of the books, I liked the idea of a community gathered together for the welfare of the city and each other. It was something that I had not found within what is loosely termed the 'gay community'. I didn't find it in SL Gor either. Maybe such a thing does not exist or maybe it is because I went to gay Gor which is an extension of the gay community. In both the SL gay community and SL gay Gor, I found the same thing - cliques. If you are part of the clique, you are fine. If you are not, then you are screwed (and not in a good way). Of course, anyone who has seen Heathers or Mean Girls knows what happens to cliques!