Scylla Rhiadra

Yes, dear, but breasts are beautiful. And p****** are . . . well . . . um . . .

It is rather alarming to have to ask this question, but . . . . . . you DO realize that you are not, actually, a "Doll," right? I mean, that you are a sentient person with free will and all, who is RPing being a doll for the duration of a particular Scene with one or more other people? This may seem a subtle distinction to you, but it's an important one. The consent of the "Doll" you are playing is not required, because she is not real. YOUR consent, and equally the consent of the person playing with you, is, because you both are real people, with free will, and to whom real harms might ensue in the course of the Scene. Dollification is a reasonably well known and not uncommon sub-genre, so to speak, of D/s and BDSM. It falls solidly within the parameters of those fields, and prior consent, safe words, etc., etc., are still an absolutely necessary part of how it works. As for the "Community Doll Philosophy," I just want to underline what Maddy has already said: interacting as "Dolls" with "normal people" who quite possibly have next to no understanding of even the basic fundamentals of D/s and BDSM is quite simply insane. Apart from the fact that it's a recipe for misunderstandings, abuse, drama, and god knows what else, it is also communicating an absolutely false notion of how D/s actually works.

Well, false equivalency in the sense that what you generally propose is much more dangerous than peeing in the pool. I'll explain, since you seem not to follow . . . Not peeing in the pool is a curtailment of your "rights" on the basis of furthering the common good. Exercising your individual choice to pee in a pool in defiance of this impacts upon everyone else also in the pool. Choosing to disregard Covid safety protocols, such as mask-wearing, social distancing, and vaccination, is similarly an insistence upon "your rights" that potentially impacts, and indeed endangers everyone else in your community. Deciding that you personally find the articulation of prior consent, or the setting of bounds and limits, etc., in a D/s context annoying, "boring," and deleterious to your personal enjoyment puts those who might choose to interact with you, including a Dom(me) at risk because you are exposing them to the danger of being subsequently negligent in not obtaining prior consent. (And there are other reasons too.) What this all comes down to, Arielle, is a marked tendency that I've seen from you over and over again to insist upon the priority of YOUR personal preferences and choices over the well-being of everyone else around you. Basically, you don't seem to care much about anyone else. I hope that made this clearer?

On both this and on Covid safeguards, Arielle, you're a little like someone who, arriving at the swimming pool and seeing a sign prohibiting peeing while in the water, opines that, really, that's a choice that should be left to everyone to determine for themselves.

Thank you for this, as well.

Yes. She offered it to me under the pretense that it was French Onion soup. It's the results of an "experimental" quickie recipe for apple pie. Rather like the sad, deformed survivor of some grotesque genetic experiment, really. I still feel queasy thinking about it.

This is what she wants you to believe. DO NOT BE FOOLED! THE TRUTH IS MORE HORRIFYING!!

That's only because you don't know how it is SUPPOSED to look.

My god, Maddy. Do you have NO moral compass whatsoever?

You are most certainly NOT an idiot. This all started about 4 hours ago. And thank you for your kind words. 🙂 I am half Ukrainian, actually, but second generation Canadian. We lost track of remaining relatives still living there a couple of decades ago. In any case, people are people. And bombs and guns tend to kill them, whoever is pulling the trigger.

Kyiv (Where there are bombs dropping, if you're just tuning in.)

lol, um, thanks. 😏 Not been following the news? There are Russian bombs dropping in Kyiv as we speak.

Frick. Wrong Thread. TOO MANY PICTURE THREADS!!

"Unhinged" was actually the first word that came to mind! But only a little. 😏

That's quite the overbite you have there. 🙂

Admittedly, I don't contribute to group chats a great deal, but do on occasion and, like Starlander, I have to admit that I have very rarely had problems with it. It's not that I doubt that people do, or that it's broken. I just haven't experienced that much myself. I wonder if that suggests that the problems might be somewhat localized?

But WHYYYYYYYYY? I mean, yes, it's certainly true that I could have my pick of fine young male specimens from the Subcontinent. I mean, duh, obviously, right? And most of the ones I've known were apparently promising young engineering students, with good prospects! But, seriously dahling, the time zone difference would be just too too boring. And can you imagine the expense of flying family and friends out to Mumbai for a wedding?

I don't think I've necessarily learned a great deal about other cultures from SL. I have a reasonably multinational friends list: the only continents not very well-represented are Asia and Africa, although I do have, or have had, a fair number of Indian friends (one or two of whom wanted to "marry" me, as I think I've noted before here). But I'm very leery about reading too much about a "culture" from the individuals I know who are representative of it. I know a fair number of Swedes, for instance, but they are all very different. Similarly, most of my American friends are very progressive: collectively, they provide a rather distorted view of the totality of the US political landscape. Possibly the only "big things" I've learned about another culture are from American friends. I get mildly freaked out by the occasional insights into gun culture there, and how really horrific the health care system seems to be. That doesn't mean that there aren't immense benefits to be had by interacting with people from elsewhere, of course. Different perspectives and voice are soooo important. It's just that I'm careful not to generalize too much on the basis of my exposure to individuals.

My "favourite" depends very much upon context. Probably 3/4s of the time I'm in-world, I'm in IM with at least one person, and not infrequently two or three at the same time. I'm sort of @LittleMe Jewell's worst nightmare: I'm very very chatty (which is why, good citizen that I am, I never IM her even though she's on my friend's list). Fortunately, I'm a pretty fast typist, and good at multitasking. I also don't seem to run out of things to say . . . BUT I really really enjoy open chat in places that encourage or foster that sort of thing, and I contribute a lot to open discussions. Like most people, I hate gesturbating, but the clubs I go to almost never feature that -- which is one of the reasons I go to them. Another reason is that I really only like clubs and venues where there is an active community in open: I get exceptionally bored in clubs that are silent as the tomb, and, moreover, I don't enjoy the fact that such places also tend to be pick-up joints, with the conversation mostly happening in IM. Group chat can also be fun, but generally only in "social" groups, not those associated with stores or products or even particular sims. I can't stand voice, and haven't done it (except once or twice accidentally!) since early 2009. The other channel which should maybe be mentioned is Discord. I know it's not part of the platform, as such, but I connect a great deal with SL friends on Discord, in part because so many of them are in different time zones, and we aren't in-world at the same times. I see Discord as a sort of extension of SL, myself.

Or a forum poster who has been away for a while but just returned? @Love Zhaoying

Well, look who the (large) cat dragged in. WB!

Sorry Anna! We try sooooo hard to amuse you! Try harder, I guess?

Like most non-prescriptive dictionaries, I think that Wikipedia tends to document actual usage and practice rather than to establish a "correct" definition of these terms. And they clearly are fluid. In an important sense, as you noted initially, that's about semantics. Arielle is not distinguishing between different practices, and is generalizing from those that don't necessarily involve power-exchange, to all instances. And, maybe most important, she has some rather worrisome ideas about what constitutes "consent," which is central to any of these definitions.

I haven't read it quite so clearly defined, but that actually seems a rather logical arrangement. Although I don't know of any reasonably authoritative source (that I've read, anyway) that would accept that something is "BDSM" without the power-exchange. Maybe I've not been reading carefully enough.

This is again a category error. As Quistess points out above, spankers and strip clothing are at most components that might be employed as part of scene, and in and of themselves are neither exclusive to, nor mean "the same" as that scene. This is like saying that, because one usually takes one's pants off before having sex, taking off one's pants is the same thing as having sex, or necessarily means that one is going to engage in that activity. The bolded part is a rather contentious point which I'll let others take up if they want, but, again, it's a category error. Whether or not one "choses" to be a sub, engaging in an activity associated with that role must be an active choice, separate from any choice about one's identity, relating to that particular activity. Following the logic of your argument would imply anything that was imposed upon you by a Dom(me) would, by actual definition, be a "choice" whether you liked it or not, because you've made the initial choice to "be" a sub. I might "choose" to train and get certified as a pilot: having become a pilot doesn't mean that I don't get a choice about whether I fly an airplane or not. Choosing to be a sub (or, for that matter, being hard-wired as one) isn't the same thing as choosing to engage with a particular Dom(me), and it definitely doesn't serve as some kind of carte blanche for any Dom(me) to impose upon you, merely because you've made an initial choice to be a sub. Fair enough, but worries me is that you are not articulating these "hidden" safeguards for consent. By omitting them, you are contributing to the vast reams of utter BS and misinformation that infects so much so-called "BDSM" and "D/s" in SL. There are a great many Dom(mes) and subs here who do fully understand the meanings and mechanics of The Lifestyle, and a great many of them, happily, are here on the forums. But you can't swing a cat in SL without hitting someone who is RPing D/s without the foggiest notion of what it actually involves, because their "research" consisted of reading 50 Shades of Grey. You're not helping this situation here. The larger point is that you are also still sidestepping my main criticism of your approach, which is that there is a fundamental difference between "doing something subbish" and actually being a sub. Engaging in a scene without that broader framework of explicit consent, power-exchange, and emotional involvement is kink, not BDSM or D/s. By way of analogy . . . if I have casual one-off sex with someone I met at a club, I've engaged in the activity of having sex. I have not connected with that person meaningfully in any other way. I wouldn't say "I had a relationship last night with someone I met at a club." You shouldn't say "I was a sub for a guy I met at HBC last night" -- because you weren't.