Wildefire Walcott's Mistressy Musings

Second Life's Endangered Spaces

2008-11-06T00:47:00.000-08:00

Linden Lab's October announcement that they were planning to significantly raise prices on openspace islands sure caused a stir. Some rental estates evicted their tenants and shut down immediately. Others began deleting their openspaces as they became vacant. After a good week of listening to feedback (AKA "rage") from the community, the Lab came up with a plan to introduce a new land product called Homesteads, which are approved for residential use. These new homesteads will be priced higher than today's openspaces, but for the first six months of 2009, the price will be significantly lower than the outrageous amount they were asking in the October dramabomb.

Even though the new prices are being phased in, and the initial increase isn't that huge, at this time a number of great openspace builds have already been shut down as a result of last week's blog post, and I know of a number of other public builds which were scheduled to be shut down soon, last I heard. Over the weekend I was listening to a song by The Dears, and some of the sentiments it expressed really related to my feelings about the whole openspace controversy. I spent Sunday and Monday teaching myself how to use Sony Vegas Movie Studio, then I traveled around the grid looking for cool openspace sims to photograph. This was a bit of a hassle because Windlight blows my computer up. I crashed 9 or 10 times collecting the snapshots used in the film.

I posted at both the forums I frequent, requesting snaps of other folks' openspace sims, but hardly anyone responded. (Those who did are credited in the video.) Oh- I also want to thank the avatar Detect Surface for letting me use a couple pics of the gorgeous but now defunct Sector 66 build.

Anyway, here's the movie.

Performance Comparison: Openspace Sims versus Regular Sims

2008-07-21T08:27:00.000-07:00

There has been endless conjecture on the Second Life forums about the true capacity of openspace sims versus their "full sim" counterparts. We know that up to four class 5 openspace sims run on a single core in a four-processor Second Life server, whereas regular sims each have their own dedicated core/processor. This generally means that up to 16 openspace sims will run on a single physical server, versus 4 regular sims. It is assumed (but I don't know whether anyone has confirmed) that regular sims and openspaces run on different servers; that you won't see a mix of openspaces and full sims on the same box. We also know that openspace sims are allocated less physical memory per instance than a full sim. But in terms of actual, tangible data, we don't have much else.

Residents with a lot of experience on both kinds of sims seem to agree that script performance is generally worse on openspaces, and that sometimes openspaces can experience "mystery lag" in the absence of any obvious cause. (It is thought that this is due to the increased number of "server neighbors" that openspaces have.)

I have conducted a series of tests on two class 5 sims, one openspace, and one regular sim. While the tests do not address the differences between how the presence of avatars or intensive physics operations affect sims, they do provide some insight into the script capabilities of the two kinds of servers, and hint at the effects of server neighbors.

Testing Methods

All benchmarks were performed by running the Standard test suite on Mysti's Benchmark Sim Tester v1.1 by Mystical Cookie. The benchmark tester performs a number of specific script-intensive tasks and calculates an overall score based on how quickly the sim performs each task. In all cases, lower times and scores are better. Note that all tests were done under Second Life server version 1.22.4.90499, over the weekend of July 19-20 2008.
To eliminate variance caused by avatars visiting the sim, access to the sim was limited only to my personal group, and I would teleport away after beginning tests.
To keep any attachments from interfering with the tests, I visited the islands in "Test Female" form, which includes no HUDs or other attachments.
Both islands are standalone sims with no other adjacent regions, meaning they weren't sharing any data with other sims, and were not subject to the performance hit of "child agents" from nearby sims.
To account for any variation due to "server neighbors" (other sims sharing the same physical server as a sim undergoing testing), I restarted each sim after performing each test, and I tested each case (empty versus object-populated) three times. Any visible spike in a given test metric could likely be attributed to laggy server neighbors during that particular round of tests.
For the object-populated tests, I placed an identical selection of items in each sim. I chose items that I knew from experience as a landlord use a fair amount of script time. For example, temp rezzers, disco balls, and texture-cycling prims. (I did not want to shame any designers in this post, so I am not publishing my list of specific items. I can provide the list upon request.)
Before choosing which items I'd use for the object-populated tests I visited a random sample of 10 of my own openspace sims to see how many scripts the average occupant was running, and what the average "Script Perf" metric was. The script performance metric indicates how many script instructions per second are being executed on the sim, and is the most important number to watch when trying to determine the general script activity on a given island. I kept placing scripted items on my test openspace sim until I had reached the average Script Perf number. I then duplicated this build on the regular sim.
While it likely doesn't have any bearing on the test results, both sims had identical parcel and estate settings, as well as the same terrain (default island design #2). I also set my client to Low graphics settings so the sim wasn't burdened sending a lot of object data to me like happens when view distance is turned way up.

Summary of Results
You can examine my raw data here. The results I present below are the average scores for each battery of tests. Note that the "Empty" score for a given test is for when the tests were run with no objects other than the tester itself in the sim, and the "With Objects" score is for tests run with objects in placed (the exact same set of objects in each sim).

Regular sim (lower scores are better)

Mysti Score: Empty - 1,600, With Objects - 1,661
Rez Check: Empty - 0:00, With Objects - 0:00
For Loops: Empty - 3:24, With Objects - 3:30
Lists: Empty - 3:56, With Objects - 4:03
Link Msgs A: Empty - 3:43, With Objects - 3:49
Link Msgs B: Empty - 3:42, With Objects - 3:49
Encryption: Empty - 6:12, With Objects - 6:33
Object Chat: Empty - 5:36, With Objects - 5:50
Land Scan: Empty - 0:04, With Objects - 0:04
Total Time: Empty - 0:26:40, With Objects - 0:27:41

Openspace sim (lower scores are better)

Mysti Score: Empty - 1,495, With Objects - 4,397
Rez Check: Empty - 0:00, With Objects - 0:00
For Loops: Empty - 3:00, With Objects - 8:40
Lists: Empty - 3:35, With Objects - 10:42
Link Msgs A: Empty - 3:44, With Objects - 10:37
Link Msgs B: Empty - 3:44, With Objects - 12:09
Encryption: Empty - 5:10, With Objects - 14:49
Object Chat: Empty - 5:36, With Objects - 16:09
Land Scan: Empty - 0:03, With Objects - 0:08
Total Time: Empty - 0:24:54, With Objects - 1:13:16

Observations

After I had set up the duplicate builds on both islands and confirmed that each island had the same number of prims and scripts running, I immediately noticed that the openspace sim had a "Script Perf" rating three times higher than the full sim (14249 to 4590). Since full sims are supposedly more powerful than openspaces, I had expected the regular sim to be the busier one, since it would have more processing power to devote to scripts. But I wonder if this means that openspaces are tweaked to devote more of their resources for script processing than full sims are, since script performance is the most obvios limitation of openspaces? The benchmarking results would seem to corroborate this theory, as the openspace sim actually fared better than the regular sim in the "empty sim" tests.
After every sim restart, I recorded the sim ID and IP address as reported by Help > About Second Life. By doing this I confirmed that after every restart both the sim ID and IP address did change. (There had recently been some conjecture that user-initiated restarts did not move the sim to a different server, but these tests prove that sims do in fact move when restarted by residents.) Note that I did not restart either sim between tests 3 and 4, as indicated by the raw data. This way, when you look at the last empty test results (test 3) and compare them to the first "with objects" results (test 4), you know that any difference in score is due to the object/script placement, not a change in server neighbors.
In one case, my regular sim actually jumped to a different co-location facility! I confirmed this by doing a tracert on the old and new IP addresses. This was very surprising and isn't necessarily good news for estate owners with lots of adjacent sims, as border-crossings between sims in different co-location facilities can be painful.
The regular sim tests did not indicate any major issues related to external factors (server neighbors?), as there is rarely as much as 6 seconds of variation on the score for any individual test. The difference across test passes was more pronounced with the openspace sim (the shortest test pass was almost 17 minutes shorter than the longest one), which may indeed confirm the theory that openspace sims are more likely to suffer the effects of laggy server neighbors.
The additional script load on the full sim during the "with objects" tests had only a trivial impact on the sim. The average total test pass for the full sim was only a minute longer when the sim was populated with objects. This is in stark contrast to the nearly 300% performance hit the openspace sim took under the exact same script load.
Even though the openspace sim scored significantly more poorly on the "with objects" tests than the regular sim, its dilation was generally 0.99-1.0, sim FPS was routinely 44-45, and the sim was easy to navigate with my attachment-less Test Female avatar. This is good because it means that while script performance in a given openspace might be sub-par, the sim itself can still be perfectly usable, so long as script responsiveness is not a major factor in one's enjoyment.

Conclusions
Based on the final results, I believe we can safely conclude the following:

Since an empty openspace sim actually performs a little better than an empty regular sim on the script benchmarks, it appears that openspaces are tweaked to allocate more processing power to scripts to make up for their inadequacies.
When running under a normal script load (based on a sample of currently-in-use openspace sims), script performance of a class 5 openspace sim is nearly 1/3 the performance of a regular sim. (Hey, it could be worse!)
Since the "with objects" tests barely affected the full-sized sim's results, while they profoundly affected the openspace sim's final numbers, it's clear that full-sized sims have a lot more headroom for script processing; these tests didn't even touch a regular sim's threshold.
Unless the large discrepency with test 5 on the openspace sim is attributable to some other factor (running on newer/faster hardware than the other tests?) the influence of server neighbors (other sims residing on the same physical server), seems able to have a non-trivial effect on openspace sims, while the interference appears to be less marked on full sims.
Performing a user-initiated restart on a sim (openspace or full) does land the sim on another physical server most (if not all) of the time, and may even land you in another co-location facility.
Even though the openspace sim scored poorly compared to the regular sim once scripted objects were added to the mix, the fact that sim FPS and time dilation remained admirably high shows that an openspace sim can still be perfectly usable and otherwise "healthy" even as script performance begins to suffer.

Work Remaining
These tests primarily focused on raw script performance and the influence of server neighbors, and did not cover things like intensive physics operations or anything related to avatars. I am not personally equipped (or motivated) to investigate these avenues, but I hope someone else out there is. *winks*

Buying or Upgrading a Computer for Second Life

2008-07-07T07:55:00.000-07:00

It seems like every couple of days someone's posting on one of the Second Life forums asking one of the following questions:

My computer runs SL very poorly. What can I do to speed it up?
I'm planning on buying [a specific model of computer] for playing Second Life. Will it be fast enough?

I hope to answer those very questions here. Before we continue, I would like to note that your overall experience in Second Life is governed by many things, and only some of them are under your purchasing control:

The health of the sim you're connected to. If the sim you're currently in has a bunch of laggy scripts, or is overcrowded with a bunch of avatars, you're going to experience classic "lag:" a delay between what you do in SL and when it actally occurs.
The current load on the Second Life infrastructure. Every time an object or an avatar rezzes, the sim has to contact the asset servers to load any texture, script, and prim information. When Second Life is very busy, all the sims all over the grid are slamming the asset servers constantly, and this can result in laggy, often unbearable performance.
The connection between Second Life's servers. Second Life is a network of computers spread all over the United States (and some parts of Europe). If there are issues on the internet backbone that connects those various locations, there will be crummy performance in-world.
Your ISP and service plan. Broadband service providers offer a number of different plans that determine your top networking speeds and various limitations. Your plan and the overall quality of your ISP's service can affect your experience.
The connection between your computer and the sim you're on. This is often called your "ping time," and can be affected by general network conditions, hardware in your ISP's infrastructure, your own networking hardware (cable modems, routers, wireless cards, etc), and more.
Your computer's configuration. The operating system, drivers, services, and applications running in the background all play a part in how well your computer behaves during gaming sessions.
Your computer's hardware. This has to do with the actual physical components of your PC. This article primarily focuses only on hardware.

Why performance matters
The most obvious benefits of having a fast computer are that it enables you to have a smooth gaming experience at high screen resolutions, with all the fancy graphics effects turned on. There is another, more fundamental benefit, however, that has to do with how games are designed. Most 3D games have a "main loop" which is a constantly repeating piece of code that performs the most important parts of the game many times per second: drawing the screen, checking for mouse and keyboard input, moving your avatar, etc. If your computer gets overburdened performing any one of these tasks (most notably drawing the graphics), the entire game suffers. For example, on a really slow system, even typing in chat can be painful on Second Life because it takes up to a second for any letter you type to even show up on the screen.

Hardware components that affect gaming performance
Here are the basic computer components that have a direct impact on gaming performance:

Display adapter. Also called the "video card" or "graphics adapter," this is the part of your computer that generates graphics on your screen. Most computers in the world have so-called "integrated" or "on-board" graphics, which are not designed for 3D gaming, because they steal memory and processing power from your system, instead of doing it on its own. All true "gaming PCs" (even laptops) have either NVIDIA or ATI graphics with their own video memory.
CPU. Also called the processor, the CPU is the "brains" of your computer. While it was once easy to compare two CPUs by simply looking at their "clock speed" (which is these days measured in gigahertz, or "GHz"), CPUs today come with 1, 2, or 4 "cores" which are kind of like mini-CPUs, so a 4-core CPU can almost do the work of four single-core CPUs at the same clock speed.
Memory. Also called "physical RAM," and measured in gigabytes (GB), this is very fast temporary storage for the code that's currently running on your computer. Every program currently running on your system uses at least a little bit of memory. Different operating systems have different requirements. Windows XP seems to run games wonderfully with 2GB of RAM, while Vista does best with 3GB or more (although you currently won't see much of a boost past 3GB). Modern operating systems do something called "paging" or "swapping," where, if physical RAM gets low, they will automatically start using a portion of your hard disk for "virtual memory" so you can still run your programs, but performance slows down significantly as a result.
Hard disk. This is one of the most overlooked aspects of system performance, even though the hard drive is the single slowest part of any PC- sometimes several hundred times slower than physical RAM. A fast hard drive speeds up things like booting your computer and launching applications, and also speeds up any program, like Second Life, that uses a local cache to store things like textures and prim data. The standard speed for most notebook hard drives is 5400 rotations per minute (RPM), which, frankly, is too damn slow. Many computer dealers offer faster drives as an upgrade, which I really recommend. More on that later.

Components that don't affect gaming performance

Sound card. Most computers come with "on-board" audio, and unlike integrated graphics solutions, audio doesn't require a ton of processing power. You can buy nice, expensive add-on sound cards for your desktop (and even laptop) computer, but you will only see a tiny amount of performance improvement, if you see any at all.
Network card (wired). As with audio, most computers come with built-in Ethernet networking ports for wired connections. There are some so-called "gaming network cards" out these days, which are supposedly optimized for online games. They make two arguments: First, they say the cards free up system resources by offloading tasks to the network card. Second, they prioritize gaming network traffic, treating "gaming packets" with preferential treatment. The end result, supposedly, is reduced ping times. So far, these cards have yet to prove themselves. They don't improve FPS, the ping time difference is sometimes noticeable, but doesn't necessarily boost your gaming experience, and unfortunately, these cards aren't always that reliable.
Network card (wireless). The average broadband connection today is between 512 kilobits to 5 megabits per second. In comparison the absolute slowest WiFi (802.11) card you can buy today is 11Mbps, over twice the speed of the average broadband connection. Any new wireless card today at least supports 802.11g, which is up to 54Mbps. Most, if not all, wireless chipsets are add-on cards or plug-in devices, so they do not use a whole lot of system resources. So long as you have a good router, uncongested air, and you're within a reasonable range of the router, any wireless card is going to perform just fine.

Benchmarks
In order to see how these different components contribute to Second Life's performance, I ran controlled tests on a number of different computers. You can see the full results online, and a description of the tests and my findings follows.

Click the image to see the results.

Testing procedure
In order to get consistent, comparable results across all systems, I picked a low-traffic, high-prim/high-texture location (Fairy's Grove Creations in Aurora), and did not move my avatar at all between logins. I also configured each of the computers to run SL in exactly the same way (you can see some details about this in the Benchmark Test Notes tab of the published results):

All had fresh installs of the 1.19.1 (4) build of the official Second Life viewer.
All were configured to run Second Life at 1024x768 in full-screen (non-windowed) mode. This is because screen resolution has a direct impact on performance. Also, full-screen mode performs a fair amount better than windowed mode (it's just not very convenient for people who build in SL).
My avatar was placed at the landing point of Fairy's Grove Creations, in Aurora, facing the opposite direction from the store. To see my exact position and viewing angle, click here.
The "Aspect Ratio" setting in Second Life (which is only available in full-screen mode) was set to Auto-Detect.
The metric I used to determine performance was "frames per second," or FPS. Just like frames in a movie, a 3D computer game draws the screen you see many times every second, rebuilding the entire scene from scratch. The FPS can fluctuate, depending on how many things the game has to draw and how busy your computer is with other tasks.
I only monitored the FPS when there were no other avatars on the screen, because every avatar causes the computer to work a little bit more to draw. As I said, these results reflect best-case scenarios in terms of performance.
I recorded performance on two graphics quality settings: Low and Ultra. That's what the two "FPS" columns in my results represent- the number of frames drawn per second at the respective quality settings. In my tests, the differences between Low and Ultra were not that obious; the only really noticeable difference was that you could see further off in the distance under Ultra. But as you see from the benchmark results, the difference in performance was profound.
All computers tested were relatively "clean." They didn't have any other programs running in the background, and weren't bloated with a bunch of unnecessary software.
I often had to wait a few of minutes after first logging in with a new computer because it took a long time for all the textures to download. I only recorded the FPS when it appeared that all the textures were fully rezzed.
The only change I made to my interface was to close the minimap, and enable the statistics bar (CTRL+SHIFT+1). (The minimap covered up the statistics bar, otherwise.) I watched the FPS number at the top of the statistics bar. Do not confuse this with the "Sim FPS" metric, which actually talks about the current sim's performance, not your computer.
Finally, it's important to note that while the standing-still FPS ratings here are a good measure of how fast these computers render 3D graphics, they do not reflect the effect of the amount of installed memory or the speed of the installed hard disks, as neither of these things is directly related to your computer's ability to render graphics. They both only become important when you're actively trying to move around and do things in-game. For example, if your computer doesn't have much memory for Second Life, every time you turn a corner it will have to load a bunch of things from your cache, causing noticeable slowdowns in responsiveness and on-screen rezzing, even if your FPS rating doesn't drop.

Understanding the results
While I expected the one computer with the integrated graphics chipset (the Dell D630) to perform badly, I was actually kind of shocked to find that this 3-month old computer performed worse than two computers that were manufactured over four years ago. Even though it had exactly the same CPU and memory as the admirably-performing Dell D830, the lack of a 3rd-party graphics solution caused it to run Second Life at almost 1/4 the speed.

Something I personally found kind of alarming was the fact that our brand-new quad-core Dell desktop didn't perform as well as my 2-year-old dual-core Gateway notebook (with a lower clock speed!) at the Low quality setting, although it did do a fair amount better at Ultra quality. My guess is that some of the computation-heavy operations involved in the high quality graphics settings benefited from the extra CPU cores, while the low-quality settings weren't using all the power the CPU had to offer... but I don't know why the Dell would perform WORSE than the Gateway at any setting. The results were consistent, though. The Dell was simply slower. (I will note that the Dell seems to play World of Warcraft about 15-20 FPS faster than the gateway at comparable resolutions. There's something about SL the Dell just doesn't like, apparently.) The Dell is running Vista, which supposedly doesn't perform as well on games as Windows XP... but I don't think that alone accounts for the discrepancy with Second Life.

The single-core systems all performed worse than the multiple-core systems that had 3rd-party graphics, even though their CPUs all had comparable clock speeds. The single-core systems also tended to have less RAM than the others.

None of the computers in the test had less than 1GB of RAM, so the effects of memory aren't very pronounced in the results. Three of the bottom four computers only had 1GB, but they had slower processors and worse graphics cards than the others, too. I will probably do a future article about getting the best performance out of Second Life, but for now, just know that while Vista requires more RAM than Windows XP, Vista actually makes better use of available memory than any previous version of Windows. There are still a LOT of people out there with 512MB or (gasp) 256MB of RAM, and I feel for those residents. I really do.

Notice that of the three fastest computers in the test, the one with only 128MB video memory did fine at the Low quality settings, but terribly in comparison with the others at Ultra quality. This may be because Ultra increases Second Life's "draw distance," which means the program displays things further off in the distance. While the draw distance was low, the display adapter's video memory was adequate to hold all the textures it needed to display on screen, but once I bumped things up to Ultra and more prims came into view, the display adapter ran out of memory and had to start loading the extra textures from system memory, slowing everything down.

Buying Recommendations

Who makes the best computers?
Every major computer manufacturer makes desktops and laptops capable of playing Second Life just fine. You should base your decisions on things such as reputation, price, features, and aesthetics. There are "boutique" shops like Alienware and Falcon that make super-duper fast computers for super-duper high prices, but when you consider that ANY computer is going to start showing its age within the first year or so of ownership, I just can't justify the expense of some of those places. Of course, if it's a desktop you're after, a savvy techie type can build her own system for less than it would cost to buy an equivalent system from Dell or Gateway, or whatever. Doing it right is harder than most people seem to think, however, and I personally like having 24-hour tech support, which is something I wouldn't have if I built my own.

What about Apple?
The new Intel-based Macs are not the fastest computers in the world, but they're damn nice. It seems that Mac support for Second Life seems to lag behind PC support, so if you're buying a computer mostly to play SL, you're probably better off sticking to a cheaper, faster Windows-based system, even though I have no real problem with Macs. You really should not bother with any of the pre-Intel Macs these days, though. The latest SL client versions don't seem to run very well on them, from what I hear.

Laptop or Desktop?
Unless you're the hardest of the hardcore gamer, a good notebook is going to deliver all the performance you need in a portable, convenient form factor. Anyone who says laptops aren't powerful enough for gaming has never used a powerful laptop.

A notebook with a wireless connection will connect to Second Life from anywhere in your house, or even from Starbucks or the airport. I personally value this flexibility over anything else, and I will never buy a desktop computer for my own personal use again. The fact that all the technology of a laptop is crammed into such a tiny area means that notebooks are not very upgradeable. In fact, the only things you can normally upgrade on your system are memory and hard drive (and wireless card, often, but that's normally not necessary). The small size also results in a higher cost; you can easily spend twice as much money getting a laptop as a desktop that meets or exceeds the same technical specifications.

Get a desktop if you're more concerned about "future-proofing." You can replace any component of a desktop for better parts as they become available, and bigger models have plenty of room for expansion. They also cost less than notebooks, and are usually performance leaders; the fastest desktop at any given time is going to be faster than the best-performing notebook. That's just how it works out.

Laptop Minimum Requirements
When choosing a notebook computer, make sure that the computer you select meets or exceeds these recommendations. Any other options available from the manufacturer are irrelevant to gaming. (Although, I can promise you that a lot of the cruddy software they'll preload on your system is unnecessary and will steal memory and CPU cycles from your games until you clean up your computer a bit.) Remember, these are minimum recommendations. If you can afford better, go for it:

Display: The computer MUST have ATI or NVIDIA graphics with at least 128MB of video RAM. 256MB is recommended, as you won't be able to upgrade your video later on.
CPU: Choose an Intel dual-core CPU with a clock speed of at least 2.0GHz. For the past couple of years, Intel processors have consistently delivered the best performance, power efficiency, and features. If you're really strapped for cash and you find a super-cheap AMD-based system, go for it. It won't be too much worse than an equivalent Intel system.
RAM: For Windows XP, get at least 2GB RAM. For Vista you'll see the best performance with 3GB. Less will be tolerable, so long as you don't run any programs in the background, and more than 3GB won't make a noticeable difference just yet.
Hard disk: If you can afford it, pick at least a 7200RPM hard drive. Faster drives are usually smaller. I wouldn't want to have a hard drive any smaller than 60GB. 80GB or more is better.
Wireless adapter: Pretty much all notebooks include WiFi capability. You want 802.11b/g at a minimum. 802.11a is kind of useless, while the faster 802.11n is growing in popularity. Unless you KNOW you need Bluetooth or WiMAX capability, you can pass on those options.
Operating system: Even though I personally kind of hate Vista, and it still doesn't perform quite as well as Windows XP, any brand-new computer is going to be designed for Vista, and support for it will improve over time. If you can afford it, get Vista Home Ultimate edition, because Ultimate includes all of the Media Center features of the Premium edition, plus Remote Desktop, which is one of the most useful home networking features Microsoft has ever produced. If you don't need Remote Desktop, then Vista Home Premium will suit you just fine.
Extra power supply (optional): In order to conserve battery power, notebooks automatically cut back on performance when they're not plugged in. You will always get the most out of your laptop when it's plugged into A/C, so it's really handy to have an extra power supply for traveling or if you typically use your notebook in different rooms of the house. Your computer will come with one power supply, and an extra one will probably cost about $50 USD more.
Cooling pad (optional): 3D games make computers work hard, and when computers work hard they heat up, and when they heat up, performance starts taking a hit. When my Gateway gets too hot, Second Life performance gets very choppy and big black triangles start appearing all over the screen... and then it locks up. A cooling pad is a little platform that you set your notebook on that cools the bottom of the computer with some extra fans. They draw extra power, so they're another good argument for an extra power supply. Make sure to get one that matches the dimensions of your computer (there are special cooling pads for wide-screen notebooks, for example). These cost $20-50 USD.

Desktop Minimum Requirements

Display: Same as for laptops; no integrated graphics- ATI or NVIDIA only. NVIDIA has been the performance leader, these days, and supposedly has better compatibility with Vista. With desktops, you have a wider range of choices. Some motherboards support technologies like NVIDIA's SLI, which actually lets you link two video cards together, making them act like one super-fast display adapter. All of your options here are out of scope for this article. 256MB video memory minimum.
CPU: Intel Dual Core, 2.2GHz minimum.
RAM: 2GB for XP, 3 for Vista.
Hard Disk: Here's another area where you have tons of options. Some systems have "RAID" configurations which give you a choice of either super-fast or super-reliable storage, while others offer standard "SATA" drives, which are similar to those in notebooks. The standard speed for desktop drives these days is 10,000RPM.
Power Supply: Get the highest-wattage power supply your computer can support. The biggest, fastest video cards use a huge amount of electricity, and getting a heavy-duty power supply from the start will help future-proof your computer a bit.
Cooling Solution: Just like with notebooks, the hotter your computer gets, the worse your gaming experience will be. There are many desktop cooling solutions available these days, some better than others.

Extended Service Plans
Every computer will come with at least 90 days service/repair, but all manufacturers I know of offer extended plans for a wide range of prices. Some plans actually cover in-home support; they will contract a local repairman in your area to come out and fix your problems. Others just offer phone support and parts replacement. Since I'm a notebook user, I expect my notebook to become basically obsolete within 3 or 4 years, so I won't buy a service plan any longer than 3 years. While I typically don't buy service plans for smaller things, like iPods, I have used my warranty plans on my computers several times, so I feel they are a worthwhile (if optional) expense.

Upgrading an Existing System
If you're not happy with your current system's performance, you might be able to do something about it. Your chances are much better with an old desktop than with a notebook, because there's not much you can replace on a notebook. Please keep this in mind, though: The typical "expiration date" on a desktop computer is about 5 years, and for notebooks it's more like 3 or 4. If you're puttering about on a 6-year-old system, you might be better served saving your upgrading dollars for a new or used computer on eBay or CraigsList. It really depends on what you can afford and what your options are.

How do you know what you already have?
A lot of people simply know they have a slow computer; they don't necessarily know anything about the individual components inside the case. Windows includes a useful tool, called dxdiag (the DirectX Diagnostic Tool), which will give you most of the information you need. These instructions were written for Windows XP, but should hold true on Vista.

From your desktop, click Start, and then click Run.
Type dxdiag in the Open box, and then click OK.
The System tab of the tool will tell you about your operating system, how much memory you have, and what kind of CPU you've got, in addition to its clock speed and the number of cores.
The Display tab will tell you what kind of display adapter you've got, in addition to the amount of video memory you have. Please note that some integrated graphics solutions will actually report a positive number here, for "Approx. Total Memory" but it's kind of a lie. Most, if not all, integrated graphics solutions steal memory from your system, they don't have their own.

Hard drive speed is very difficult to determine programmatically. Luckily, most hard drives report their size and speed on a big black-and-white label on the top of the drive itself.

Upgrading a Laptop
The only things you can do to improve performance on a laptop, other than tweak your software and operating system settings (for another article), are to add more memory and replace the hard disk with a faster model. You can do both for about $400 total. Your manufacturer will likely have upgrade parts for you, but they won't have the best prices. For memory, go to Crucial and for hard drives, go to Drive Solutions. (They have those USB hard drive transfer kits there, too!) Both sites let you look up your computer model and make recommendations based on what your system will support.

Upgrading a Desktop
While desktops offer more expandability, they also require a bit more knowledge to upgrade, and aren't always worth the effort. The best single thing you can do to improve graphics performance on a desktop is to replace the display adapter. (Or, to install one to begin with if you were previously running with on-board graphics. If your system is really old it might have PCI or AGP graphics, which is much slower than modern PCI-Express graphics, and also hard to find replacements for. Your best bet for PCI or AGP cards (or any other computer parts, really) would be NewEgg.

Also remember that the biggest and the best video cards require the most electricity. The power supplies that come in most off-the-shelf computers, are usually bare-minimum in terms of what they can support. Make sure your power source can handle all your upgrades.

Memory can be tricky to upgrade, because some motherboards have weird requirements, like, maybe it will only accept 2 DIMMs at a time, or maybe you have to use the DIMM slots in a special order. You also want to make sure you use the right memory for your system (look your computer or motherboard up on Crucial's site), and that the DIMMs you have match in terms of specifications.You can replace your hard drives (or add additional ones), but you'll need to know whether your drive uses IDE, SATA, or some other form of storage bus. But if you currently are running Second Life with anything less than 2GB of RAM, you will see improvements with an upgrade.

It is possible to upgrade CPUs, but every generation of CPU requires a new generation of motherboards. A five-year-old PC simply cannot support a modern-day processor. You will need to find either an old processor that fits your motherboard, or be prepared to get a whole new board and processor (which may mean upgrading other components).

Final thoughts
Second Life is a very demanding application, and if you love it as much as I think you do (considering how much time you've just spent reading this), I think you'll find that it's worth the significant investment in computing power required to make it run best. Some day I may post some tips for squeezing the best possible performance out of Second Life once you've got a computer that meets the minimum requirements.

Island Moves and Profile Picks

2008-04-01T10:35:00.000-07:00

Considering how congested the grid has become, it's no wonder that some estate owners choose to take advantage of Linden Lab's undocumented policy of moving entire estates for free if they are surrounded by other islands or reservations in such a way that expansion is impossible. Unfortunately, while you may not be paying $150 USD per island to relocate your estate if you choose to do this, the move does come at a cost: After the move, any profile picks entries that residents may have had to parcels on your islands will be invalidated- to an extent. What follows is a summary of exactly what breaks and what doesn't, and the potential impact on any businesses that might be located on your islands.

Two Kinds of Profiles
First off, you must understand that at this time, Second Life maintains two profiles for every resident. There is the old-style "Full Profile" that you see when you use Search > Places, and then the newer "HTML Profile" that's used when you use the Search > All feature or conduct Second Life searches from the web. (Here is the HTML profile for the famous builder, Light Waves.)

HTML Profiles only contain information from the 2nd Life and Picks tabs of the Full Profile, and are indexed by Linden Lab's search appliances and factored into search rankings in Search > All and web-based searches. Full Profiles contain a lot more information and changes in them are reflected immediately in Search > People results, whereas it can sometimes take days before the changes are reflected in Search > All.

To business owners, the primary effect of HTML profiles is that any Picks entries that payment-info-on-file residents have to their businesses help boost their rankings in Search > All results, even more than Traffic.

I should also note that in a similar manner to resident profiles, places in Second Life have two listings: The Search > Places listing and the HTML listing. The HTML listing works just the same for places as the HTML profile does for residents.

What Breaks
You will see different results, depending on which search method you use to look at someone's profile:

If you use Search > Places to view a person's profile and look at their Picks tab, the picks to moved locations that were created before the island move will appear to be intact (they won't say "no parcel" like stale picks often do), however when you attempt to teleport to them, you'll be greeted with the following error: "Could not teleport. Unable to find teleport destination. The destination may be temporarily unavailable or no longer exists. Please try again in a few minutes."
If you use Search > All to find the person's profile, and instead of clicking the picks link on the HTML page, you click View Full Profile and look the the Picks tab, you will have the same problem.

What Still Works

If you use Search > All to find the person's profile, and you click the picks link on the HTML page, you will actually be taken to the HTML listing for the place in question. You will successfully be able to teleport from the HTML listing.
Search rankings are not immediately affected. The island move does not cause Second Life to generate a new HTML listing for parcels on the moved island. As evidence of this, see the following:

The roleplaying location, Space Colony Necronom VI is located on an estate which was recently relocated. Here is the HTML Picks link from a resident's profile that was created before the island move:

http://world.secondlife.com/place/7e3ae773-065e-3ddc-6026-9eee462eb4ea

And here is the link from another resident who added the place to her Picks after the move:

http://world.secondlife.com/place/7e3ae773-065e-3ddc-6026-9eee462eb4ea

The links are identical, and take you to the same page. This means that Search > All is oblivious to island moves, which is a good thing.

What This Means to Businesses
Profile Picks can influence your business in a number of ways, some more subtle than others:

Your search rankings will not immediately be affected. You will have some time to get some new residents to update their Picks before the change begins to make an effect on Search > All results. (Picks do not factor into Search > Places results.)
Residents who use Search > All exclusively will not see a difference. If you stick to the HTML profiles when browsing people's picks, you won't even know that anything changed.
Residents who use Search > People or who click View Full Profile from an HTML Profile might think that your business no longer exists. The misleading wording of the error message they get if they attempt to follow a pick to your place could prompt some folks to go elsewhere. Remember that Picks are a great, free "soft advertising" campaign. People might discover your business through other folks' picks, and may not have ever heard about it otherwise.
Residents who discover their own picks are broken will likely remove the malfunctioning pick from their profile, but might forget to add a new one after the move. This may have a gradual negative impact on your Search > All rankings if no one new adds picks to your place.

Advice for Estate Owners
While the effect of island moves on profile picks is mitigated by the fact that HTML profiles still work, it can affect traffic at the businesses on your islands, and the effects might be slow and gradual as residents weed out broken links from their profiles. If other businesses rent land on your islands, you should warn them about the consequences so they can notify their info groups and friends to update their profiles after the move.

I have been in contact with Linden Lab about this topic, and it sounds like they will be documenting this problem as a known side-effect of an island move- but don't expect a fix any time soon.

Openspace Survival Guide

2008-03-31T12:28:00.000-07:00

The concierge team is still very swamped with Openspace orders, and the process for handling these orders is rather clunky and error-prone. Here are some tips for getting your tickets handled as quickly and problem-free as possible. I'm assuming that you already know what an Openspace sim is, and you're familiar with the changes in the program:

PICKING A LOCATION
If you want your island to be placed near one of your existing islands, this is the most frustrating part of the process- for many reasons. First of all, even though you can't yet order Openspaces through the Land Store, you still have to use it to determine where it's safe to put your island. Unfortunately, the Land Store sucks in so many ways that I don't even want to get into it. I'll just tell you what you need to do:

Go to the Land Store and click 'Manage Existing Reservations.' This should bring you to a list of islands that you've previously ordered from the Land Store. (If all your existing islands were bought from other residents, you probably won't see anything here, unfortunately...)
Click the Location entry for one of your islands. This will center the map over the island you picked. Take note of the selected island's coordinates and look for any memorable 'landmarks' in the surrounding area that you can use to find your way back later on.
Now click 'Return to the Land store' and wait a few seconds for all the reservations (the yellow blocks) to load.
Before doing anything else, look for ANY blue (ocean) cell on the grid that isn't touching an existing reservation or island, and wait a few seconds to see whether you get the "This Space is Available" message. You may have to do this many times because the Land Store map is at least 9 months out-of-date, and many of the cells that look empty actually have islands on them now. (I own 12 islands now and only 3 show up on the Land Store map.)
Take note of the coordinates in the "This Space is Available" message and use that as a guide to start navigating toward your desired location. Remember that the grid coordinates increase from Left-to-Right and from Down-to-Up (not Up-to-Down). If you've got really fast eyes, you can sometimes see the coordinates in reserved or already-built cells by watching the status bar at the bottom of your browser when you click on them. Otherwise clicking on those cells won't help, because the Land Store (infuriatingly) only reports coordinates for open cells.
Repeat steps 4 and 5 as you make your way closer to your target coordinates, and keep an eye out for landmarks that might help you find your way. When you finally get to your desired location on the grid, center your map on your island and zoom in/out as needed.
Once all the reservations are loaded, click around in the vicinity of your island(s) until you find an available space. You may be surprised at how many reservations are surrounding your islands today, and even more surprised that LL is still honoring them even though you'd think most would have expired by now if the reservation program were still active.
Once you've found an available space, write the coordinates down. I also recommend that you pick 1 or 2 extra available coordinates to include in your order, because it takes so long for these things to process that someone else could claim your preferred space before the Lindens even look at your ticket.

PICKING AN ISLAND NAME
You won't have the Land Store wizard to help you confirm the validity of your island name. If you pick an island name that's too long or is already taken, the Lindens will stop what they're doing and ask you to think up a new name, and this will delay the delivery of your island by 1 business day. Make sure that the island name you pick follows these guidelines:

No more than 3 words
A total of more than 3, but less than 20 characters, including the spaces
Only alphanumeric characters; no punctuation please
Not already in use
Do not use the names of real-world cities and towns
Cannot use "SL," "Second Life," "Linden Lab" or "LL" or other wording that could give the impression of direct association with Linden Lab
Must be PG

Note that I have noticed a number of brand new islands with names up to 24 characters in length. (The above requirements were quoted to me by Concierge staff.) I have requested clarification from Linden Lab about this, since I had to rename one of my own Openspace orders since the original name was 21 characters.

SUBMITTING A TICKET
1. Go to secondlife.com/support and click 'Submit a Ticket.'
2. Once you're signed in to the support site, fill out your ticket with the following details:
3. SUMMARY: I gave mine descriptive names like: "Openspace order for (island name)"
4. TICKET TYPE: Land and Region Issues
5. REGION REQUEST: Openspace Order (this is new)
6. DETAILS: Be very clear and specific here, and be sure to specify all of the following:

ISLAND NAME.
ESTATE NAME. This can be one of your existing estates or a unique estate just for that island.
DESIRED GRID COORDINATES. I recommend either giving them a list of desired coordinates in order of preference, or giving them explicit instructions about what to do in case the coordinates you requested are taken by the time they get to your order. If you don't do this, they will stop and ask you where to put the island, delaying your order by one day.
DEFAULT TERRAIN TYPE (optional). You can request one of the default island shapes as specified in the Knowledge Base article, 'Default Private Region RAW Files.' If you don't specify an island type, your Openspace will be empty ocean with a flat seafloor. One of my new Openspaces was delivered as empty ocean, despite my request for an island shape. No biggie, as all the RAWs are available for download anyway.

WAITING
It's been taking around 10-11 business days (up to 15 real days) to process island orders lately, assuming you don't make any mistakes in your order ticket. Resist the temptation to submit more tickets inquiring about status, because the time a Linden spends handling those tickets is time they could have spent setting up your islands.

Ignore the ticket status field in your support queue. Lately, peoples' tickets have been showing up as "New" until the day the island is delivered. Also, you won't be charged until the island is delivered either, so don't consider your USD balance an indication of progress either.

I also think it's wise that you keep an eye on your USD balance. I pay for new islands out of my in-world earnings, so I like to make sure that I've got enough USD there to cover both the island orders and my tier for all my existing islands. If your USD funds get drained away on existing tier while you're waiting for the order to be filled, the Lindens will have to submit a manual charge for the remaining balance of the island order fee, and you really don't want your credit card company to pick that day to deny your charge from this shady Linden Lab outfit. I have friends who have been long-standing LL customers for months/years and their credit card companies just arbitrarily decided to deny a SL-related charge out-of-the-blue. This is just one more headache you should try to avoid.

And remember, like all islands, the tier you pay on your Openspace will be monthly, on the date specified in your "Final Resolution" email that you get when your island is delivered.

The Reservation System: Then and Now

2008-03-31T11:13:00.000-07:00

In September of last year, Linden Lab discontinued the ability for residents to order island "reservations." Until that time, it was possible for people who planned to buy an island in the future but weren't ready to do it right away to reserve a spot on the grid for 90 days for a (usually) low fee. The reservation program was at times controversial, because some residents used it for extortion, intentionally bidding on reservations that surrounded existing estates, thereby blocking the estate's expansion until the estate owner paid the reservation holder to sell the reservation. Many of us assumed that when the reservation program ended, all those thousands of reservations currently cluttering up the grid would finally expire, alleviating the expansion headaches of established estate owners.

Unfortunately, six months after the reservation program ended (and three months after all those existing reservations should have expired), this is what you see when you look in the Land Store today (hint: yellow = reserved):

Considering that the Land Store map is grossly out-of-date (it only shows three of my 12 islands, and one of them is in its old location), some of us assumed that maybe all that yellow was just vestiges of long-expired reservations- but we were wrong. Residents are still being extorted by reservation holders, and new sim orders are still being denied due to existing reservations.

It's important to note that a single reserved spot on the grid effectively blocks expansion into any of the cells immediately surrounding it, both adjacent and diagonal, so all those thousands of yellow cells on the grid are actually preventing expansion into many more thousands of cells than it would appear just by glancing on the map.

So what's going on?
Well, despite the fact that all mention of reservations has been wiped from the Second Life Knowledge Base, the reservations program is still alive and well (and making Linden Lab a lot of money). I spoke with someone on the Concierge team today and learned that some of the reservations that show up on the map are indeed expired, and will not be honored if an estate owner wishes to expand in their direction. However, the majority of reservations still registered in the Land Store are actively being maintained by paying residents. You see, once you have a reservation, it's yours as long as you keep renewing your reservation fee every three months. The existing (valid) reservations will only expire once the holder decides to let the "subscription" lapse.

What can estate owners do about it?
First off, if you are an estate owner and someone who owns a reservation near you offers to sell the reservation to you, don't feel compelled to take the offer unless you consider it reasonable. If they're offering the reservation at extortion-level prices, you should Abuse Report the individual and include any IMs or other correspondence with the person in your report. It's one thing to decide you no longer want to keep the reservation and offer to give it up, but another to use it to intentionally extract cash out of established residents.

If you wish to expand and there are reservation slots or built islands that might block your way (remember, reservations block diagonals now, too), contact Concierge or add a note to your support ticket about the reservation in question and ask them to confirm whether it's still valid. They will allow you to expand if the reservation holder's no longer paying for it.

If you determine that all the reservations surrounding you are, in fact, active and valid, you have the option of moving your entire estate- and lucky for you, if your estate is surrounded in such a way that expansion is impossible, Linden Lab will waive the $150 USD per-island move fee and relocate your entire estate somewhere that you'll have more breathing room for free. It's not documented in the Knowledge Base, but it's true, and has been done several times already. The $150 fee is not so much a profit center as it is a disincentive to moving islands around arbitrarily. They want to limit the amount of busywork they have to do on island moves, so they charge a fee to ensure you only move your islands when you really need to. It would be silly for them to charge $150 per island to a resident with 10 islands (who's paying Linden Lab as much as $35,400 a year on island fees), because if that resident simply decided "well, I don't want to pay $1,500 to move, so I guess I just won't buy any more islands," that would hurt Linden Lab in the long run.

So, next time you're in the Land Store and groaning over how hard it is to find anyplace to plant an island, know that you're not completely out of options.

Life After Domming

2008-02-29T11:27:00.000-08:00

Since the announcement of my retirement, I've been contacted by many friends and strangers in-world, asking how I've been doing in the aftermath of my decision. I just read about a friend of mine who's also decided to simplify her Second Life, and that prompted me to post an update of my own.

It's been a bittersweet affair. Some of the pets took it hard, while others weren't much surprised- a few were actually rather supportive. Only two pets formally chose to exit the family (one had already been essentially absent for a while), and the rest opted to remain with us under Kelly's care. They haven't been around as often as they used to be, though, and I have mixed feelings about that- part of me worrying that they're just slowly falling away, and the other part just glad to have more uninterrupted time with Kelly. Oh I've also done a lot of shopping, and I organized all my clothes, hair, and skins!

I recently opened two new residential islands, and I was fantastically busy with those for a while, but now we're all rented out and I can spend most of my time just doing whatever I want. It's liberating, and has made SL pleasant again. Things aren't perfect, though. I'm nursing some ego issues and trying to figure out my role in the world. For nearly my entire Second Life I've been "Mistress Wildefire." It's part of who I was. I still have my domme moments; sometimes I flirt with subs who show up at my mall, and I get a little excited- but at the end of the day I'm happy to have a limited set of in-world commitments.

My real-life commitments, however, are another story- and they are taking a toll on my Second Life. I've had to shave at least a half-hour off of my nightly online times, and I'm still not getting enough sleep. When I'm logged into Second Life these days I'm frequently too tired or sick to focus on building or doing scenes. I've just been hanging out with Kelly and the occasional guests, although soon we're going to embark on a big building project together, if I can ever muster the strength.

I feel a lot of personal pressure to keep this blog going; I certainly have a bunch of things to talk about yet. It's just a matter of finding a way to work it back into my life. Stay tuned. :)

EDIT: I've been thinking about this some more this evening, and I wanted to add that I've also been experiencing a new sort of vulnerability that I never really had here before. Up until now I've always had several pets or playmates on hand- if one went absent the others would take up the slack. In any case, I was never at risk of being truly alone. But now there's just Kelly. She is my Second Life, and I'm sensing myself getting even more protective of her- of what we have together- than before. I just hope she continues to put up with me. ;)

Wanted: Roleplay Event Coordinator for New Desperation Isle and Beyond

2008-02-22T11:23:00.000-08:00

We are looking for someone to help develop lore and set up roleplaying events for New Desperation Isle and an upcoming, not-yet-announced, public RP sim. The goal is to add some depth and direction to roleplay on our islands, especially considering that our busiest hours at New Desperation Isle are times when neither I nor my partner are online. New Desperation Isle is a dark, adults-only island, whereas we have not yet decided the ultimate content rating of the sim we're currently planning. As compensation for your efforts, you will be given 4096 square meters of land on one of my residential islands, rent-free (a monthly value of USD $30), or equivalent cash salary.

IMMEDIATE RESPONSIBILITIES:

Developing and maintaining lore for New Desperation Isle. To some extent, the island itself tells a story, but we hope to formalize it in an official backstory that sets the tone for the RP.
Conducting occasional organized RP events. Ever since I established the original Desperation Isle in 2006 I have gotten requests from visitors to hold events that immersed guests in a meaningful storyline. We are also interested in less serious events, like contests, just for fun.
Assisting and instructing new visitors. A lot of our guests are new to Second Life and new to RP, and would benefit from informal tours and instructions on how to use things such as teleporters and posed furniture.
Keeping the peace. We are lucky enough to have a generally mature fan base, and griefers/disruptive guests are rare. The event coordinator will be granted Deputy status, with the ability to freeze, eject, and ban unwanted visitors.

FUTURE RESPONSIBILITIES:

Helping plan the new island. My partner and I are already coming up with ideas, but we will be open to suggestions that will help shape the sim's identity and suit it for meaningful roleplay.
Coordinating events on the new island. It is hoped that whoever gets the ball rolling on New Desperation Isle will be able to carry out these duties on the new island as well.

REQUIREMENTS/QUALIFICATIONS:

Must be familiar with existing adult SL roleplay communities. The ideal candidate will have experience in some of the better-known roleplay sims, as a basis for how things work and what people are likely to expect. Previous exerience in live-action roleplay (LARP) or text-based RP (MUD, messengers, RP forums) is a big plus.
Must be online during our peak hours. As our core audience is largely European, our busiest hours are between 12pm-3pm PST (whereas my partner and I don't come on until 10pm). We do not expect you to be on our islands every day during those hours, but you must be generally available and spend a reasonable amount of time there helping our guests and conducting events. You must also be able to meet me and my partner occasionally for planning sessions. We are in-world every night from 10pm-12am PST, and I am online in the mornings on Saturday and Sunday.
Must be literate and relatively fluent in English. While we won't necessarily hold your spelling against you, you must be able to communicate clearly (remember, most of our guests are European) and intelligently.
Must be open to adult-themed, erotic roleplay. New Desperation Isle is an erotic playground. While we're still not sure whether the new place will have any overt sexual content or theme, you must be able to respectfully interact with people who move in these circles.
Building skills are desirable, but not required.

To arrange an interview, please contact me in-world or via private message at SLUniverse, Second Survivor, or the official SL forums. To learn more about New Desperation Isle, visit the New Desperation Isle website.

P.S. This is not related to the hardcore RP that I have advertised in my classifieds or elsewhere on this blog. Kelly and I are handling that one. ;)

The Limo Broke Down

2008-02-05T16:46:00.000-08:00

Feel free to shoot me now for quoting Oprah Winfrey, but when I read this a few weeks ago it really rang true:

"Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down."

Since around November I've been feeling increasingly drained and spread-thin in-world. I've complained here before about my increasing in-world work load, but real-life work has heated up as well (hence the fact that I've not posted in over a month), leaving me with less energy and an earlier self-imposed curfew during my night hours. Pet attendance has been spotty for months. I might go for several days without seeing a single pet, then on Friday night six of them will show up all at once. I took numerous breaks during this period, sending out group notices that while I'd be online, I wouldn't be actively domming for a week or so. These mini vacations helped a bit. I'd resume my domming duties refreshed, and spent quality time with the pets who bothered to show up.

Unfortunately, I found myself unable to remain very motivated to scene or domme for more than a week at a time. The past couple of weeks have been very emotionally difficult, as I kept asking myself: "I've been doing this every night for two years straight- what's different now?" Ultimately, I realized that my question contained the answer: "I've been doing this every night for two years straight."

As skilled as I like to see myself, I swear it feels like I haven't done anything new in many months. This is not to say that familiarity is necessarily a bad thing; married sex can be great, for example. The difference between "married sex" and what I've been doing all this time, however, is that I've been nurturing these relationships with LOTS of women and men, all going through the same stages of discovery and growth, and while it might be new for all of them (at least at first), as conductor I found myself just repeating scenes like some off-broadway actor, and getting repaid for my efforts in shitty attendance or impatience on the part of needy subs. Pets or playmates would come to me with ideas for long-term roleplay, and I'd just think, "Sheesh, I've done that five times already with different people."

It's taken me a long time and a lot of heartache to realize that just like in everyday relationships, it's the quality of the relationship- the strength of the mutual bond between both partners- that matters so much more than the number of acquaintances you have. For the past year, my partner Kelly has been by my side- always there for me to lean on, but at the same time not wanting to get between me and my pets. She's always afraid to be a distraction, preferring to leave me alone with my pets when I'm deep in the middle of things. Although it took me ages to come to this conclusion, I am so glad I finally realized that I needed to honor Kelly's devotion, and prioritize it over the fleeting needs of those who were only with me when they felt I could do something for them.

Well it's taken me a rather long time to get to the point, and I apologize: Last night I retired from domming in Second Life so I could focus on growing in love with Kelly and a select few now-former pets who have chosen to remain in the Walcott family. Kelly is the acting domme now, as she graciously offered to take on my pets who wished to remain connected with us. (If I didn't have her, I'd still be domming, but it would be out of concern for my pets, not because I wanted to.)

I will very briefly summarize what this means for me, my family, my estate, and this blog:

I am still fully involved in Second Life, and have no intention of ever leaving. If you rent land or mall space with me, you're safe. :)
I am still involved in the Second Life BDSM and D/s scene. My new freedom will allow me and Kelly to begin developing some new builds and RPs that we hope will be positive contributions to the community.
I have given my pets the opportunity to stay on with our family with the understanding that Kelly is now sole Mistress. Those who wish to move on have our understanding and blessings.
I am not becoming anyone's pet/slave. I am a very needy and impulsive sub, and simply not fit to wear someone's collar. :) And besides, I'm at least 60% domme anyway.
Desperation Isle Estates is expanding, and will continue to grow for the forseeable future. Expect to see at least one major public build in the coming months.
My problems and recent decisions have nothing to do with the fact that I've not been posting here recently. My absence has purely been the result of too much stuff to do in real life. I assure you, I have a long list of things I plan to discuss here eventually. I just need to pace myself.
This probably isn't permanent. If and when I ever go back to domming, however, I'm going to increase my "probationary" period with prospective pets to a month, and will take things much more slowly.
All of the above only applies to Second Life. I am continuing to practice and enjoy domination in my real life- although this is a rather extreme case of quality over quantity.

Second Life Domination Round Table in Planning

2008-01-02T12:21:00.000-08:00

As a result of this blog, I frequently get IMs from subs and dommes in SL, asking about a variety of topics. While I do my best to help out, sometimes I don't have enough relevant experience in a given area to authoritatively comment, or other times I think it's a situation where something that may work for me may not work for others. And, you know, sometimes I have questions too! Anyway, it's in the interest of building up the knowledge and skills of the SL domination community that I propose we hold a sort of "Domination Round Table" where SL dommes and doms gather together to discuss common problems and "best practices" in their roles.

I've only spoken to a couple of people so far, and we're only in the earliest stages of planning. We have yet to pick a venue and I've only got a rough list of discussion topics:

Balancing Work and Life: How to effectively run an in-world business and care for your pets.
How Many Is Too Many?: The feasibility of maintaining a large family of pets.
Tasks and Restrictions (SL): Assigning meaningful, ethical tasks to your slaves.
Tasks and Restrictions (RL): Extending the relationship outside of SL.
Multiple Personalities: Dealing with pets who frequently use alts.
When Punishment isn't Play: Distinguishing between roleplayed punishment and real corrective action.
Honoring Your Peers: How to respectfully co-exist with your fellow dominants.
Essential Equipment: Trading notes on the best restraints and toys for SL domination.
Too Many Toys?: When do scripted gadgets become more of a distraction than a roleplay aid?

I have acquired ownership of a FemDom group, which I will be using to distribute information on the round table as things develop. If you have suggestions for topics or events, or you feel you'd like to contribute in some way, please IM me in-world for an invite. I don't have a date set in mind yet; we'll have it when we have something worth presenting.

Seeking Participants for Extreme Humiliation RP

2007-12-27T01:38:00.000-08:00

You'd think I'd have learned my lesson from attempting long-term organized roleplay earlier in the year but I haven't. I have an immediate need for both submissives and dominants in a planned very extreme humilation RP. It will be easier to list what's not allowed than what's allowed:

No roleplay involving minors.
No mutilation.
No cannibalism.
No snuff.

If there's something you will not do and it's not in the above list, this RP probably isn't for you. I'll speak to dominants and switches of any gender or sexual preference, but as far as submissives go, for the time being we're only interested in women.

For the most part, sessions will be conducted in private, although there might be occasional public scenes. We will not be accepting any "observer" queries. Only people interested in actually participating will be invited to our private sessions.

In order to participate, you must be online at two yet-to-be-determined nights of the week during my regular hours of 10pm-12am PST. You must be an experienced erotic roleplayer and must have a non-newbie avatar. We will have several sessions, although the exact number has not yet been determined.

If you are interested, please IM me in-world or send me a private message on one of the forums I frequent (SL Forums, SLUniverse Forums, Second Survivor).

Bouncing Bosoms in Second Life (NSFW)

2007-12-17T20:02:00.000-08:00

Not long after flexi prims were officially introduced to Second Life, someone released a line of flexi boobs. It was a great idea; default avatar chests are frighteningly static- but the results were disappointing. They only matched skins produced by the creator, you had to be nude (or at least topless) to wear them, and they looked like weird cones of jelly rather than full, buoyant breasts.

Several fetish designers have released "inflatable" non-flexi breasts since then, but they all lacked that sensual sway of the feminine chest. Well last week I received an IM from a stranger urging me to check out Smashing Prims (note: site doesn't work well in Firefox, and features auto-playing video with music), by Raven Ivanova- a designer who has brought us a couple steps closer to realistically moving prim breasts. (Hey, were they trying to tell me something?)

Raven has released two related products: Bouncing Bosom (BB) Breasts and BB Dresses. The breasts are a standalone product for nude or topless use, while the dresses include a set of BB Breasts textured to match the dress. Both product lines share some common traits:

The breasts are designed to match Raven's line of Realistik Skins. The breasts are moddable (for resizing), so you could probably tint them to match your own skin, although this would not be feasible with the ones that come with dresses, since the textures include fabric from the dress.
Unlike the previous flexi prim attempts at swaying bosoms, these are sculpted "static" prims that are scripted to move under various conditions.
Some of the animations work with your AO; they only bounce when you're walking or running, for example.
You must have a moddable avatar shape, because they require that you set your avatar breasts to size zero.
Second Life applies lighting to prims differently from how it lights avatars. This is part of the reason prim penises never seem to match guys' skin. To address the problem both the dresses and the standalone breasts include a "chest light" which helps smooth out the coloring between avatar and prim. It works.

Despite the above similarities, there are some distinct differences between the dress and breast products as well:

The breasts that come with the dresses feature a pop-up menu where you can select from a variety of animations, from the motion-sensitive bounce and jiggle to the constantly-moving dance animations. The standalone breasts do not have menus, but instead come in packs that include a different set of breasts for each motion-specific animation. Disappointingly, there are no dance options in the standalone breast pack.
The standalone breast packs also include large- almost grotesque- nipples and these nipples are themselves scripted in half of the breast pairs included in the package. Clicking one of the scripted-nipples sets cycles the nipples through normal, erect, and animated states. When erect (or especially when animated) the nipples manage to be even creepier than they appear on first sight.
Even though the bosoms included with the dress sets lack the scripted nipple option they all have a subtle "bump" underneath the fabric, which is nice compared to the featureless mounds our Linden shapes give us.

The standalone breasts (normal nipples):

The standalone breasts (erect nipples):
It's pretty clear that realism isn't the goal here. Both the breasts and their animations are larger than life (at least for most of us), and I think you can have a lot of fun with these when you go into it with a sort of fantasy mindset. Raven also produces a series of "liquid silver" shimmering gowns are another example of interesting work that would be impractical or impossible in real life but unique and interesting in-world.

I have produced a video that compares what my avatar looks like while dancing both with and without the Bouncing Bosoms. I'm wearing the black brocade BB Dress with the tan Realistik skin. I used the most subtle dancing animation for the video, which may not have been a good idea given the tiny resolution of a typical YouTube video, but the shot of me coming up the walkway should leave no doubt that these babies can move. The video at the Smashing Prims website is worth a watch too. (The video is safe for work, by the way.)

The video:

This Woman's Work

2007-12-11T10:43:00.000-08:00

While few of us consider our Second Lives a mere hobby, our in-world hours usually fall within "hobby time." Most SLers have real-life families and jobs that take priority, leaving only a few precious hours a week to spend with one's in-world friends and family. The fast-paced nature of Second Life relationships highlights peoples' desire to make the most out of their limited online hours, but things get complicated for folks who run businesses or have jobs within Second Life.

Boiling Frog Syndrome
For my first year in Second Life I had no business aspirations at all. Even once I had acquired my first island, I merely considered the land use fees a justifiable entertainment expense, and operated at a calculated loss. Some time in February or March of this year I thought it would be nice to set up a little mall at my island so my designer friends could get some free exposure and sales. I slapped together a little mall and let people set up shop, rent-free. It filled up quickly, and before long I had a waiting list of people who wished to sell there. I eventually expanded the mall, but charged this time in order to control quality and to subsidize the island a bit.

Eventually I wondered, "Wouldn't it be nice if I could get my second life to pay for itself?" I then tried my hand at mainland real estate rentals and resales. Although I had some success with rentals, I was disappointed with my inability to protect my tenants from their neighbors' awful taste, so I decided island rentals were the way to go. I divested my mainland holdings and moved my tenants over to my first rental island. The island was full within a few days and I quickly reached my goal of breaking even. It was about this time that my deputy, Vivienne, began producing her first prefab skyboxes. We formed Desperation Isle Productions and went into business together.

My various businesses were paying my subscription and land use fees, but this did not cover my recreational spending. I soon found myself thinking, "Wouldn't it be nice if I never had to purchase Lindens again?" I got more islands, we diversified our product line, and so it grew. Something happened along the way, though. At first I could spend a couple days setting up an island, and then a few minutes a day here and there dealing with customers, but once Desperation East went live I found I was spending a minimum of half an hour of customer service and rental maintenance every day and various projects kept coming up, some of which occupied days or weeks of my focused time.

Like the mythical boiling frog who didn't foresee its fate until it was too late, I found myself overwhelmed by my in-world work, and not spending enough time with my partner or devoted pets; a situation I'm still struggling with today. All I wanted to do was to be self-sufficient. Ironically, I saw financial independence as a key to in-world freedom, but the opposite happened; I became a slave to my work- and my pets, my partner, and I all suffered for it.

Difficult Questions
If you're one of the few individuals who can pretty much be in-world whenever you want, this is less of an issue for you, but if you only have a few hours a week to devote to your second life you should ask yourself whether you can responsibly care for your in-world loved-ones while also maintaining and growing a business. Here are some more specific questions you can ask to assess the situation:

Do I enjoy my work? If you're doing something you love, it's probably worthwhile to devote at least some of your time to it. But if it's not something you really have a heart for, why are you doing it at all?
Do I need the money? If you wouldn't be able to afford your second life without some form of in-world income, and scaling back your expenses isn't an option, a Second Life job or business may be a necessary evil.
Am I available enough to my pets? SL work requires a lot of AFK time, direct customer interaction, or hopping around the grid, depending on what you do. Are there uninterrupted time windows when you are there for your pets?
Am I able to focus my attention on my pets when they're around? It's one thing to be physically near your family. It's another to be mentally available as well. If you're constantly flooded with customer service IMs or preoccupied with projects, you're not going to be able to give your family the attention they deserve.
Are you having fun? Is the business stressing you out? Do you find yourself hoping your pets don't log on because you don't want to be bothered while you work? Are you snappy with your friends when you're trying to get something done? Do you ever get a chance to relax and just enjoy your second life? The longer stress, resentment, and exhaustion mount the more likely it is that you're just going to burn out. Be very honest here; it's important.

I must ashamedly admit that my own answers to the above questions are not good. I really do enjoy the work I do in Second Life- I love building, getting to know designers and residents, and helping tenants with their problems. But I only started doing all this stuff to provide a nice home for my family without having to pay for it. Now I have that and more, but I feel I barely have time or energy to enjoy it all.

Get the Balance Right
If you're so overworked you're neglecting your family and not having fun anymore, you need to find a way to balance your work, family, and personal time. Here are some ideas I'm personally considering or trying to implement now:

Schedule "work-free" nights. If possible, set a day or two every week where you just don't do any business stuff. If your pets are comfortable with it, sign on as an alt that only they know about, so you're not distracted with customer IMs.
Establish regular work hours. Most devoted SLers have a pretty regular online schedule. If you are so lucky, decide on a time window where you focus on your work, and then reserve the rest for family or private time. Although some of my recent projects have made this infeasible, on ordinary days I'm trying hard to get all my work stuff done within the first 15-30 minutes I'm online, then not even think about it for the rest of the session.
Prioritize responsibly. Something I hear from many submissives whose dominants have SL businesses is that their dom/me will just teleport away at the drop of a hat the moment a customer of theirs demands attention. Some customer matters are more important than others, but please consider whether an ad-hoc support call really supersedes the immediate, precious time you have with your pets. If you'd prefer to be with your family, arrange a time when you can work with your customer. You'll find that most reasonable residents understand that you're busy and will accommodate your schedule.
Listen to and observe your pets. Different subs have different levels of neediness. Every minute you spend on your work is a minute that they're without your guidance. Some are more self-sufficient than others, and many of them will not tell you when they're beginning to have a problem with the amount of time you're not spending with them. Read between the lines when they talk to you and watch for changes in behavior and schedule. If they stop logging in very regularly or often, they could be feeling neglected and hopeless.
Look for ways to delegate labor. I'm very much a do-it-yourself kind of person, and sometimes it just doesn't even occur to me to distribute the workload. If you have some trusted, devoted pets, give them responsibilities. Make their roles clear and compensate them for their work, if not with money than with praise and quality time. If this is not a feasible option for you, try looking for a business partner or hiring someone from outside the family to help out.
Downsize. Are you making more than enough money- so much that the effort you're putting in doesn't really justify the additional rewards? Scale back. It's hard to do- for ego reasons as well as logistical ones- but it's an option if you're overwhelmed. You're no good to your family if you're so overworked you can't focus. There's another, much more drastic option that I'd only recommend if you could make the same decision if your work were not a factor: If you have pets who are already not on very often, or whose long-term goals don't really sync up with yours, you might consider freeing them so they can find a better situation, and so that you can focus your remaining free time on the pets who will benefit the most from it. This is a terribly difficult thing to do, and should never be done lightly. Personally I've not come to that step yet, but I have almost completely cut back on entertaining any submissive friends who are not my collared slaves. It just wasn't fair of me to spend time with them when my collared pets were barely seeing me as it was.
Relax!!! I agonize so much over how to split my time between my work and my pets that I frequently end up not just "having fun" at all. I'm serving my customers or serving my pets- who's serving me? Go explore, go dancing, get laid (*blush!*). A happy mistress is a healthy mistress.

A Second Life career can be both fun and rewarding in a number of ways, but just as in real life you must always weigh the personal benefits of your business with the needs of your family. I am personally not through the woods yet on this matter, and I pray my story serves to keep you wary of the potential issues of being a businesswoman domme. I'm also eager to hear any helpful suggestions from my peers.

Playing Favorites

2007-11-26T13:42:00.000-08:00

I have a feeling that in any family with more than one submissive, the matriarch will inevitably have one "favorite;" one sub who merits the most doting, the most time, and the most ready forgiveness in the case of transgressions. I think this is also true for most biological families: Any mother loves all her children, but even if she never says it out loud, even if she's uncomfortable admitting it to herself, there's probably one son or daughter who's even more dear to her than the others.

Through my tenure as a Second Life domme I've almost always had more than one pet, and there has always been a favorite. It was never a conscious decision- it was more of an understanding of how much I appreciated a given submissive on a number of levels, and how that one pet met my needs more fully or consistently than the others. I believe I made a mistake, however- and made this same mistake over again several times- and I think it's time to admit it, explain why it was wrong, and to move on. My mistake? I told every "favorite pet" I ever had that she was my favorite. I did it confidentially, and I was always sincere (there was always only one favorite at any given time), but I told them and it was wrong.

My Mistake
I doubt many people recommend that mothers tell their favorite offspring whom they love the most, primarily because there's the chance that this could slip out during a sibling argument, resulting in bitterness and resentment within the family. But perhaps there's not even a need to put it into words; if you're around each other as much as a mother and child are, the two of you probably just know.

Although I'd never dare tell my real children who my favorite was, I told my pets. Why? While I don't remember all the situations, I know that sometimes I chose to reveal the pets' status to them when they were feeling insecure, or regretting some kind of change in their real-life schedule that affected our time together. It was a reassurance that I wouldn't disown them, an acknowledgment of their devotion. In a blood family, you usually don't have to worry that you'll be disowned if you get a new job, but the Second Life submissive doesn't have the same implicit assurances.

I've had five favorites over the years- and every one of those pets is still with me. It's not that I'm capricious that things changed so much over time, it's just a result of the evolving dynamic with the family, often due to unavoidable changes in peoples' real-life schedules.

It's Not a Title
Each pet can potentially interpret the meaning of her status a different way, possibly ascribing meanings that aren't there. For example, the pet who one day realizes she's not "the one" anymore might think that she's failed Mistress in some way, or is perhaps being punished for some unspoken misdeed, in the same way that the Olympic Comittee revokes titles from athletes who are found to have cheated to gain their medals. But that's the difference: There is no competition for your place in my heart. I don't pull names out of a hat or judge you by a list of strict criteria. My love for you is the result of your devotion to me. If you don't have the time it takes to nurture a meaningful relationship, you can't hope to be the one most dear. But simply "being there" is not enough either.

Keys to My Heart
There is no formula for love, no way to force your way to the top spot in my heart- but I can tell you the things that all of my favorite pets have had in common. If you demonstrate all the traits of The Loyalist or The Angel as spelled out in my catalog of SL submissives, you definitely stand a chance of being my number one. You cannot force it, and if I stay true to my word, you may never really know- but you simply cannot go wrong by living up to those standards.

Moving Forward
I have informed the family that just as I will not tell individuals where I think they fall in my own classification scheme for submissives, I will no longer explicitly bestow private "favorite" status upon anyone. I want my pets focused on enjoying our time together, not fighting over some title. I know this decision can't put an end to all the rivalry that sometimes occurs within the family, but it's one thing I can control.

If you find yourself developing a special fondness for one of your pets that goes beyond what you currently have with the others, I urge you to express that fondness privately with actions, not words. If the bond between you is as strong as you feel it is, you two will both just know.

New Desperation Isle Video Tour

2007-11-10T23:51:00.000-08:00

The pets and I just cooked up a promotional video for our adult playground and fetish mall, New Desperation Isle. You can check out the video at the Desperation Isle Estates blog.

I Am Two

2007-10-29T10:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my second rezday, and I am having a hard time accepting that it's only been two years since I first walked around the Waterman welcome area, wondering why other peoples' avatars looked so much nicer than mine, and what the hell I was supposed to do next in this weird place. I stand by my suggestion that SL-time operates at roughly 4x real time, for in the past two years in Second Life, I've done the following:

Served under two masters and two mistresses (if I include my alts), before accepting and assuming my role as full-time domme.
Been made the primary or secondary owner of around 400 Amethyst collars, as evidenced by the 'owner help' notecards that clutter my inventory. *Eek!*
Engaged in two SL partnerships- the first short-lived, the second still going strong- despite going into SL with a personal promise that I'd never fall in love here.
Owned land on five mainland sims and five islands, and set up "home" at least three times.
Turned my Second Life hobby from a significant money sink to a financially self-sustaining enterprise that allows me to fund several free, public areas that I enjoy and believe in.
Met more people whom I truly consider friends than I ever have in my real life.
Discovered and nurtured my latent dominant nature, and allowed those revelations to open up new possibilities and relationships in my real life.
Built a family of devoted pets whom I'm proud to call my own.
Lived through the rise, reign, and fall of the best forum ever. (R.I.P. Second Citizen)
Been inspired by the skill and creativity of many pets, friends, and acquaintances who are constantly working to enrich the Second Life experience.
Watched Second Life grow and evolve from a time when you were lucky to see 1,000 people online after 10:00pm my time, to now where there's at least 30,000 folks in-world 24 hours a day.
Loved and lost, and experienced all the anxiety, jealousy, and uncertainty that entails.
Lost friends and pets to real-life schedule changes, personal situations, and illness.
Mourned the loss of favorite haunts as places move, change, or simply vanish.
Encountered more clearly mentally unstable individuals than I ever hope to in real life.

I don't know who I'd be today if I hadn't discovered the places and people that comprise Second Life. I've always felt blessed to have the real-life friends and family that I do today, and I feel just the same about my SL counterparts. It hasn't always been easy, but it's always been worth it.

I'd like to note here that my real-life work is commanding a lot more time and attention than usual, and will continue this way for at least a couple of weeks. I may not be here, on the message boards, or in-world as much as normal during this period, but I'll be back. And as always I'm working on "something big" for this blog in the relatively near future (well, several somethings, at this point). So keep checking back. =)

Remembering Desperation Isle

2007-10-22T00:30:00.000-07:00

It was just yesterday that I discovered the following series of almost perfectly annual events:

On October 28, 2005 I logged into Second Life for the first time.
A year later, on October 18, 2006, Linden Lab delivered my first island, Desperation Isle.
A year after that, on October 18, 2007, I cleared out the entire island and uploaded a new custom terrain.

Desperation Isle is no more, having been replaced by the more elaborate New Desperation Isle, but countless memories were forged on that island. It seems like it was so much longer than just a year. I shot the following footage the night before I wiped out the island. It is safe for work (all the furniture was already gone and I was the only one on the island at the time). Enjoy.

Those Three Words

2007-10-16T10:49:00.001-07:00

Several times I've tried to write about this subject, but always found myself at a loss. I'm forcing myself to get these thoughts down, even if it's not as coherent as I'd like. I think some of it needs to be said though... and that there will likely be more to say on the subject in the future.

In my very early days of online roleplay I remember stumbling into a room where two naked female avatars- we'll call them Cara and Amber- were making love and shouting ecstatically,

"I love you, Amber!"
"I love you, Cara!"

This was the first time I'd ever heard anyone in this virtual existence utter those three words, and it left a big impression on me. For me, few things deliver the aphrodisiacal rush that the verbal expression of love does during sex- but only if it's genuine. I envied those women their love, and wondered if I'd ever find such a thing online- and also whether I should, considering my real-life commitments.

Behind the Profiles
For reasons I haven't fully sussed out, the 2nd Life profiles of most Second Life dommes (including, admittedly, my own) give the public impression that this is a cruel and ruthless woman whose only interest is to objectify and control her subjects. They are cold and clinical, conveying nothing of what I see as the real glue that holds a D/s family together.

I submit that unless you are truly a "roleplayer" who truly maintains a sort of unbreachable philosophical wall between your first life and your second, it is neither realistic nor feasible to endlessly dole out cruelty and humiliation without ever developing a deeper bond with your subjects. I can be damned nasty and devious when I'm in the mood, but I am not evil. If I do an extreme session with a pet, it's because I care about this person and wish to do something I know he or she will enjoy. If I hated someone so much that I could do nothing but torture her, I'd prefer she wasn't in my life at all; hate takes energy and time to nurse, and it's not as fulfilling as the alternative.

A Different Kind of Love
I can only really speak for myself on this matter, so it may well be different for other dommes- but the love that I develop for my slaves tends to be more motherly than romantic. The forms of its expression may include sex, but that speaks more of our lifestyle and interests than the nurturing, protective love I feel for my slaves.

From what I've learned from my pets, the things that nurse their love for me are when I devote time to them, plan special scenes that cater to their interests, include them in my public and private dealings, and maintain a dialogue with them about their desires and feelings.

The things that endear my pets to me are their sacrifices: When they forego sleep or time with others to be with me, when they wait at my side silently while I take care of business or focus attention on their siblings, when they express sorrow about having to miss opportunities to be with me due to external commitments. I'm also honored when they write or create things in my honor, when they stand up for me if I'm not there to defend myself, and when they rebuff unscrupulous mistresses who'd attempt to make them their own.

Consequences
As love grows between a domme and her slave, the emotional stakes mount. Jealousy peeks in- the mistress grows concerned when her pet spends time around other dominants, and the pet can grow emotionally competitive against his siblings or his mistress's romantic love interests. The prolonged absence of a slave without warning can result in real-life worry accompanied by lack of sleep and appetite. The loss of a beloved slave to another dominant results in a broken heart rather than just a tarnished ego. Just as in real life, love in the Second Life D/s relationship is an emotional liability; but like many priceless things, it's often worth the risk.

Veteran Advice

Don't force it. Love develops naturally, but sometimes it can be one-sided- or sometimes it just takes longer for one partner to "come around." Let love take its time.
Express your love in actions. There are some who are very quick to say, "I love you, Mistress" and some who never will. Words can help, so long as they're well-timed and sincere, but true love takes many forms.
Keep an ear to the ground. Other pets notice when you treat their siblings differently. Be wary of their feelings and reassure them of their value whenever you can.
Take it seriously. Never say "I love you," if you don't really mean it. No one's forcing you to ever say it, so when you do, it should be sincere.

The Big Question
Is Second Life D/s really just a game to you? Are you really capable of spending weeks or months with the same people in-world and not developing some kind of lasting bond? If not, you probably know what I'm talking about. When allowed to blossom, love enhances the D/s relationship, uniting not just the avatars, but the people behind them.

Quick Update

2007-10-10T13:56:00.001-07:00

Wow, I just noticed I haven't posted here in a couple of weeks and wanted to let you know that I've got a stack of topics to cover here, and will definitely be tackling them soon. Real-life work has been rather hectic of late, and I have spent the past two weeks in-world doing nothing but working on the replacement for Desperation Isle, New Desperation Isle.

The new island opened on Monday, and I have been very pleased with people's reactions to it. My slave Clara did a ton of work on the place, as did my partner Kelly and our good friend Vivienne. We have some big and exciting plans for the old island, too, which I'll announce later.

Finally, I'll just note that I've got a couple of lots still open for rent on my residential island, Desperation West, and will soon have some vacancies on Desperation North, as a tenant who's renting 1/4 of the island is moving in with a friend who's letting him have half an island at below-cost. (My prices are among the lowest for island rentals in Second Life, but I can't compete with less-than-cost!) Please contact me if you're looking for a place to call home. :)

The Expletive Acronym Caption Gallery

2007-09-26T09:22:00.000-07:00

In July of 2007, Aimee Weber asked members of the now-defunct Second Citizens forum to visit the vintage advertising repository, plan59.com, and come up with humorous captions for any pictures they found there. One poster, Expletive Acronym, was up to the challenge and delivered nearly 150 surprising, hilarious, and sometimes shocking captions over the next three days. I archived the thread before Second Citizen's administrator took the board offline in hopes that I could preserve Expletive's astounding body of work. Please enjoy! Click the little slideshow down below to view the gallery.

Subspotting: A Mistress's Field Guide

2007-09-24T10:56:00.000-07:00

Whaddyaknow, it's another double-post Monday! The longer you move in D/s circles in Second Life, the more you begin to see patterns in the behavior of submissives. I've identified a number of prevalent behaviors and personality types among the SL submissive community that I hope will aid other dommes in determining how to respond to these pets, and how to minimize the possibility of future problems. Please note that several of these behaviors are unique to- or more pronounced in- Second Life, and also that a mistress should never use these labels when speaking with her pets. These descriptions and suggestions should simply serve as a reference, not as a tool for chastising submissives.

You will probably find that some submissives fall into more than one of the following categories. I will note common overlaps where appropriate, and also describe the impact of certain behaviors on the domme and her family. I've tried to keep this list kink-agnostic; I'm intentionally omitting any classification that involves a specific fetish (for example, restraint subs who wish to be forced in mouselook most of the time), although you will likely find some overlap between those niche types and the more general descriptions below.

Types of Second Life Submissives

The One-kink Wonder
These subs are almost entirely focused on a single, specific fetish or fantasy. It may be something pedestrian, like "I like to wear latex" or "I like to worship boots," but can also be left-of-center, like "I enjoy being eaten whole by giant anthropomorphic squirrels."

Impact: These subs can be fun for certain scenes; they often very excitedly express their gratefulness for a well-conducted RP that suits their tastes. These subs can be exasperating, though, because they don't have the same enthusiasm for anything unrelated to their kink of choice.

Overlaps: One-kink Wonders are often also Roleplayers, Phantoms, and/or Butterflies.

The Onanist
While many subs likely masturbate in real-life during scenes from time to time, the Onanist does it regularly and often gives you updates in IM, and even asks for permission to go AFK for clean-up afterward. Sometimes the Onanist will request permission to release in real-life, and these subs will drag a scene out until they achieve it.

Impact: Some dommes consider this kind of feedback to be Too Much Information (TMI), and while I used to be of this type, I've sometimes found it kind of exciting to know the physiological impact I'm having on my slave. Note that these pets sometimes become reliant on you for their personal sexual release, however, and you may begin to feel obliged to do scenes with them just to help them get off.

Overlap: Onanists are often also Visitors and/or Butterflies.

The Visitor
The Visitor is a collared slave who acts more like a dinner guest. He doesn't keep a regular schedule, only popping in when he feels like it- but demands your full attention on the rare times he graces you with his presence. He's also quick to log off if you choose to focus your time on your more reliable pets.

Impact: Visitors can be fun for individual scenes, but their unpredictable schedules makes it difficult to arrange family events, and their neediness on the few times they do show up can stress the domme and annoy the other pets. Visitors often participate in other roleplaying communities and have alts that they constantly roam between, looking for action.

Overlap: Visitors tend to be Onanists and/or Roleplayers.

The Human Shield
Jealousy drives the Human Shield. She is instantly skeptical of any visiting submissives that you might consider for collaring, and is often seen by other pets as cold or outright rude. She will express disappointment (either directly or indirectly) when you focus time on other pets, and has a tendency to log out without warning if things don't go her way. These pets can be good and valuable in other respects, which can make disciplining them difficult. These subs can be very emotionally manipulative, even if they're not necessarily aware of what they're doing.

Impact: Jealousy has a poisonous effect on the family. It causes stress for the domme (when she's aware of it) and can drive other pets away- which is exactly what the Human Shield wants. Depending on how valuable this sub's other attributes are, the domme must decide how to recognize and care for a Human Shield. If she deserves it, one might honor a Human Shield with special privileges or a title, and when feasible, guarantee occasional 1-on-1 time to the deserving pet. This should not be seen as rewarding the jealous behavior, but to reassure the pet that she's valued and help her to get over her negative feelings.

Overlap: If gone unchecked the Human Shield's jealousy can make her a Phantom.

The Mouse
While jeaousy is often a factor, the Mouse may also just have a natural aversion to crowds. These subs thrive in 1-on-1 sessions, but seem aloof when more subs are around, and are likely to log out early or even stay away for extended periods if the crowd exceeds their comfort level. Their timidity can be an issue because it often prevents them from expressing their feelings, making the domme think it's a problem on her part. Like the Human Shield, these pets can be absolutely darling and beloved otherwise, which makes the issue all the more difficult to address.

Impact: While the Mouse is not as active in her dislike or disconnection from the other pets, his aloofness is usually interpreted as rudeness. The Mouse's tendency to teleport away or log out the very instant Mistress logs out also generates some contempt in the hearts of the other subs.

Overlap: A mouse will often become a Phantom if not cared for properly. Note that while the Mouse's behaviors might sometimes be similar to that of The Visitor, the motivations and circumstances are usually different.

The Roleplayer
From the moment these subs sign on to Second Life they are in-character, frequently emoting during lulls in dialog, and so dedicated to the art that they even surround out-of-character instant messages (which most people consider to be OOC by default) in double-parenthesis. These subs put a lot of work into their avatars, often coming up with very unique and memorable looks. They are skilled at the craft of sensual roleplay, often having a background in text-only or other graphical RP environments. Any Roleplayer more than a couple of months old usually has a few very different looking/acting alts, whether you know about them or not.

Impact: The impact of a Roleplayer on a family really depends on the domme and her pets. If everyone involved is a roleplayer, they can end up having some great times together. If there is a mix of more "serious" or "authentic" players in the family, though, the Roleplayer can seem kind of detached, never really getting too close with family members, and often logging out if too many folks are in "OOC mode." Roleplayers can serve as good RP models to other subs, and can result in some really good scenes, but depending on your needs and your tolerance, they can be a lot of work to maintain. If you're not the type of domme who's "on" 24/7, you might have a difficult time keeping your Roleplayers happy, and you likely won't develop as much of an intimate relationship with them as you would to a more run-of-the-mill sub.

Overlap: Roleplayers are frequently Visitors (often due to their alts or other RP commitments), and may sometimes be Onanists or Back-seat Drivers.

The Back-seat Driver
These are subs that "top from the bottom," constantly sending Mistress instructions during scenes in IM, and basically choreographing the event. The occasional OOC feedback from a sub can be welcome or important, but Back-seat Drivers can make a domme feel more like a marionette than a Mistress. Even if you're not doing a scene with them, these subs will try to pry details from you, repeatedly asking your plans for them in future encounters. If you ever hear me talking about "pushy bottoms," this is what I mean.

Impact: The other pets are usually unaware of the Back-seat Driver's constant controlling of scenes, so their direct impact is normally limited to Mistress. The relentless second-guessing these subs do, and their desire to always know your plans before you get a chance to play them out can sort of suck the fun out of your encounters- and there are only so many "helpful hints" a domme can take during a scene before she gets downright irritated.

Overlap: Back-seat Drivers are frequently Onanists, Butterflies, One-kink Wonders and/or Roleplayers.

The Object
One can often identify an Object simply by taking a peek at their profile. Terms like "no limits," "a thing to be used," or "seeking only the cruelest mistress," membership in groups almost exclusively dealing with pain, humiliation, and degrading fetishes. It is not uncommon for these subs to return filled-out kink checklists where they ascribe the highest interest rating to EVERY KINK ON THE LIST. Objects require lots of (negative) attention and frequently enjoy public scenes, but unlike some of the other needy classes of slave, they are often not much help when you're trying to determine a long-term path in your relationship, because they will (often falsely) claim to not have any specific kinks, and say that the only thing they want is "to be used."

Impact: Objects can alienate their family, as their very extreme roleplay and utter absence of dignity are often unnerving to more balanced slaves. They don't tend to grow very close with their slave brothers or sisters. They frequently request to be punished by their siblings when Mistress is away, which can even result in more discomfort on the part of pets who consider themselves to be 100% submissive. They can also be a problem for a serious domme; how can you remain motivated to treat ANYONE so cruelly? One often has to contrive abusive scenes just to keep the Object happy, which eventually gets rather old.

Overlap: Objects are quite often Butterflies, but they may also be Roleplayers or Visitors.

The Phantom
The Phantom is that mysterious sub who vanishes unannounced for weeks or months at a time, without responding to IMs, emails, or group notices- and then one day logs in as if nothing had happened. Sometimes you even have to ask before they'll even offer an explanation. The reasons one goes Phantom are many, but real-life relational and health issues are commonly-cited factors.

Impact: Phantoms take a bigger toll on a family than they probably understand. A mistress naturally cares for her pets, and when one of them goes missing she starts asking herself a bunch of questions: Is he okay? Did I do something wrong? Has he lost his Internet connection? Is he even still alive? This has an impact on the family as well. If a mistress technically has two submissives but one of them goes Phantom, should she try to recruit another sub to take the first one's place? If so, what happens when the prodigal sub returns? Sometimes, when Phantom subs return, things simply aren't the same. Perhaps it's due to a real-life event they've gone through, but sadly it's often hard to rekindle the relationship after such a long absence. Also, a sub that vanishes for weeks at a time is likely to repeat this behavior throughout his tenure.

Overlap: If real-life factors are at play, almost any kind of sub is at risk of becoming a Phantom, although Companions, Loyalists, and Angels will generally try to warn you so you don't worry after them. The Human Shield might go Phantom to teach you a lesson. The Mouse might do it because he just needs a breather.

The Optimist
The optimist lives twelve time zones away from you, is only 5% kink-compatible, but STILL REALLY WANTS TO BE YOUR SLAVE! If you look at things objectively it seems obvious that a situation like this wouldn't work out, but sometimes these subs can be so enthusiastic and cute and grateful for your time that your judgment lapses. You collar her and enjoy a lovely honeymoon period, and then she comes to the realization that life on 3 hours of sleep a night isn't that great, and you end up only seeing each other on weekends.

Impact: These are really well-meaning subs, but it can drain a domme to take too many of these on. You invest a lot of time and energy into a relationship here that's just not sustainable in the long-term. When the restrictions are purely logistical (time zone or work schedule, for example), it can be a cruel torture when you both finally understand that you just can't make it work without substantive real-life changes.

Overlap: Unfortunately, these pets could possibly grow to be Companions or Angels if given the chance. You may still manage to retain one as a Loyalist, though, although both of you must consider how fair it is for you to keep a slave you hardly ever see.

The Butterfly
The butterfly isn't often content to stay in one place for very long. She hops from mistress to mistress, running away once she's had her fill. Some butterflies only accept collars reluctantly- for example if a mistress she's interested in only spends time with her own collared pets. These slaves are also the least likely to desire or follow restrictions that would prevent them from submitting to others while their owner is offline. These subs are also very impatient; they're the kind who will add you to their collar before you've even decided to take them as your slave.

Impact: Butterflies can be disruptive in that the domme and the other subs put in a certain amount of effort into acclimating new pets, and that effort ends up wasted when the sub runs away. They don't often stay long enough to develop very deep relationships with anyone.

Overlap: It is quite common for butterflies to be Back-seat Drivers. They are frequently Roleplayers, Visitors, or One-kink Wonders as well.

The Wolf
The wolf is a sub who's not really a sub. Sometimes these subs admit their switchiness, other times their dominant nature is gradually made apparent as they attempt to dominate their brothers and sisters with (and sometimes without) your permission. In the case of men, it's typically just a guy who only wants to be a slave to have easy access to some submissive women. With female avatars the sub sometimes appears to want to impress Mistress with her domming abilities, or might be interested in learning from another Mistress first-hand.

Impact: I personally have not had issues with Wolves, but I mention them because I've heard several "horror stories" involving mostly-dominant switches causing unrest within families, ultimately poaching (or trying to poach) slaves for their own stable, or even trying to dominate their own Mistress. As a domme you need to know how you feel about switches in your family, and also understand how your individual pets feel about potentially being dominated by a sibling.

Overlap: This is just a guess, but I imagine there might be overlap here with most of the other classes that aren't purely submissive or perfect.

The Enigma
This is one of the most puzzling subs, and unless the person is new to SL you will often find a history of similar stories involving this person after you've been burned by one. One's relationship with the Enigma starts out pretty normally, leading to a formal collaring and a few days or weeks of relationship building. And then one day something happens: She might "freak out," roleplaying something really bizarre or out-of-character. I once had a pet start crawling around on all fours and biting all of her sisters on the legs, and WOULD NOT STOP. I had another who requested a form of humiliation that was very unexpected for her, and then panicked and teleported away in the middle of the scene that she asked for. Enigmas won't hesitate to sever all ties with you immediately and without explanation: They will port away, quit your group, mute you, defriend you, all in a few seconds- and good luck getting that collar back. Don't expect to ever learn why they left, either.

Impact: While the scenes these pets can cause are often jarring, the impact typically doesn't linger very long, especially because it happens pretty early in the relationship, before anyone really has a chance to get very close to the sub in question. It can drain a domme, however, and cause her to wonder where she went wrong. Trust me on this, though- ask around... every time this has happened to me, I've discovered that the same person (or one of her alts) had done the same kind of thing several times before.

Overlap: These subs are often Objects and/or One-kink Wonders. The behavior of the Enigma is abnormal and may point to some real-life mental health issues, or just a terrible level of immaturity.

The Wallflower
These are the unassuming subs that can often get overlooked and neglected in favor of the more charismatic but less committed classes of slave. Wallflowers never ask for much, and are often reluctant to voice any discontent, even when asked directly for their opinions. They happily engage in scenes and while they may not be as likely to offer unsolicited thanks or feedback as others, are quietly appreciative of your time and attention. Wallflowers can be so unassuming, however, that they might not even IM you to indicate that they're online, for fear that they might be imposing.

Impact: I see every Wallflower as a potential Angel or Loyalist. Generally, these subs should be nurtured and encouraged and involved, in hopes that you can help them grow more confident and active. It can be a little draining or exasperating when you find yourself always having to make the first move with these subs, or when you have to really twist their arms to get honest opinions from them, but it can be worth the effort.

Overlap: I have not noticed much overlap between the wallflower sub and the other types, although I believe they can evolve into more assertive types of subs.

The Untouchable
Sometimes you meet a sub that you're just convinced would accept your collar if it weren't for certain barriers that are beyond your control. Perhaps he's loyal to another mistress, even though she's not online to take care of him very much. Perhaps his in-game Mistress is his real-life partner, or maybe it's a simple matter of your schedules not matching up often enough to make a true D/s relationship feasible.

Impact: These subs tend to show up only when they don't have other obligations, so their attendance cannot be relied upon. Since they're not collared subs, they can also generate some envy within the family if you spend time with these visitors when you could have been taking care of your collared slaves.

Overlap: There's usually not much overlap (although they can sometimes be Loyalists), although these subs would likely be Angels or Companions under different circumstances.

The Companion
The Companion is more than just a sub; she's a friend. This sub is happy to stand around quietly with you on build projects or even just hang out and chat if you're not up for doing a scene. You can go on silly field trips or shopping expeditions, and just be happy for each other's company. What separates a Companion from an Angel is that the Companion might still hold some cards close to the chest- usually regarding real-life matters- and might maintain a sort of emotional distance from you, for reasons that might not be clear. Regardless of how emotionally close you get to your Companions, they're valuable for friendship, camaraderie, and for keeping loneliness at bay.

Impact: Companions are a valuable asset to any domme or slave family. They don't necessarily form close relationships with their siblings, but are always around so long as Mistress is there too.

Overlap: I can't think of much overlap here. These are usually pretty well-balanced slaves.

The Loyalist
The Loyalist is usually a collared slave, but like the Untouchable, might be prevented from accepting your collar for reasons you cannot circumvent. Regardless of their slave status, Loyalists are reliable friends and proponents. If you own land, your Loyalist pets might be known to patrol your premises while you're away, offering assistance to visitors and reporting potential problems to you via offline IMs. These pets frequently offer their time and assistance in building and business matters, and can even act as screeners for potential slaves. The level of trust and respect between domme and Loyalist sub is often high enough that more real-life information is shared, increasing the intimacy and relational involvement.

Impact: These subs are important assets to any slave family. They are models to the other pets, and often offer support and assistance to their siblings when Mistress isn't available.

Overlap: None to speak of.

The Angel
The Angel is the ideal submissive in every way. She is compatible with Mistress in tastes, needs, and attitudes. She shows up regularly and warns Mistress if she's going to be away. She welcomes guests and other siblings, and helps nurture her brothers and sisters when the opportunity comes. Don't be deceived by the title; the Angel's tastes can run very dark- it's the matter of compatibility and shared love and respect that defines her role. An Angel actively participates in scenes, but understands that she can't always be the focus. She also happily accepts occasional "OOC nights" and is just generally a joy to be around. She understands service, and also understands the submissive's responsibility to equip her Mistress with feedback (both positive and negative) that she needs in order to make her best decisions.

Impact: Angels and Loyalists are anchors of any slave family. They're role models, and they help alleviate the stress of dominating less mature or reliable subs. Angels aren't just a "nice-to-have" component of the family, but an essential ingredient for long-term viability. Every domme needs at least one. Sadly, these subs are so rare that you must sometimes make compromises due to time zone or other RL-conflicts. These subs deserve special consideration, and scheduled private time and custom-planned scenes are fitting rewards for their loyal service.

Overlap: Do everything you can to prevent your Angels from becoming anything else.

Final Thoughts
I must re-iterate the need to never use these labels when criticizing your pets. Hopefully seeing this list in black-and-white might give you a better understanding of the kind of slaves you hope to keep, and what your thresholds are for various kinds of behavior. Now please log in to Second Life and give your Angels, Loyalists, Companions, and Wallflowers a huge hug for me... and don't ever let them go.

New Forums for Second Citizen Refugees

2007-09-24T10:36:00.000-07:00

Many of us are still reeling from the closure of the Second Citizen forums. I wrote several novels' worth of text in original threads and follow-up posts there, and made many good friends. I've been floating around examining the alternatives now that SC is no more, and here are the places I've been visiting lately:

DUCHY OF DARKMERE
URL: http://duchyofdarkmere.freeforums.org/index.php
Run by: Lucifer Baphomet and Peasan Kuu
Software: phpBB
Summary: This forum began life a few weeks ago as a place for residents of Caledon, Clearwing, and Neualtenburg to engage in their roleplay involving the fictional Duchy of Darkmere. There is a group of subforums dedicated to this RP, but there are also several subforums related to Second Life, Eve Online, and off-topic/drama. The forum is open to anyone, but moderator approval is required. This is also currently the place to go to discuss drama currently happening on other forums. :)

SECOND SURVIVOR
URL: http://secondsurvivor.com/SecondSurv/
Run by: Fatz Schlefo and Coyote Momiji
Software: vBulletin (same as Second Citizen)
Summary: Fatz and Coyote just set up this forum last week. It's still in its formative stages, and they're actively taking suggestions to help shape the experience for members. This is a general-purpose SL forum, with subforums dedicated to Classifieds, Technical Help, and general chat. (I also expect to see some more kink-specific stuff at this board, eventually.)

ZENCITI SL FORUMS
URL: http://lucidmovement.com/forum/
Run by: Neil and Nephilaine Protagonist
Software: phpBB
Summary: At about a week old, this nascent forum is dedicated to Second Life commerce and technical matters, wish some general chat and fun subforums thrown in.

SLUNIVERSE FORUMS
URL: http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/
Run by: Cristiano Midnight
Software: vBulletin (same as Second Citizen)
Summary: Hey, SLUniverse isn't new!!! Oh, but these forums are! If you haven't visited the SLU forums in the past couple of months you probably don't know that Mr. Midnight has completely revamped them with an all new interface and much better forum software. Even if you had an account at the old forum you'll still have to create a new account at the new one. At this time, the SLU Forums are certainly the most busy 3rd-party SL forum, and you can currently find the biggest concentration of displaced SCers there. A lot of former SC lurkers have finally outed themselves there, so you'll see a lot of new faces too.

You Know Who You Are (NSFW)

2007-09-16T15:56:00.000-07:00

Normally I do not share the details of private domination sessions outside of my SL family, but I make an exception today because the subject of this tale- the victim- derives great pleasure from public humiliation. By publishing my account of our night together, I am dominating her still, this story a permanent and obvious record of her fate at my hands. I have changed her name here because it's not important. What matters is that she sees this and remembers that dark night in June. Also, please note that this story is graphic and violent- it is not necessarily representative of a typical "night at Wildefire's" or SL domination at large.

I took some of the girls out for a night drive in the country. My Dominus roared down the Linden roads through unfamilar lands, and after coming around a bend I noticed a young woman standing alone in the dark by the side of the road. The car slowed to a stop and I beckoned her over.

She had been there waiting for a date, but he never showed. Her sister had dropped her off there, but being out of cell phone range, the poor thing had no way to call anyone to pick her back up. She was lucky we'd found her. When I offered to drive her home she reluctantly climbed into the back seat of my car. I made up fake names for me and all my pets and introduced them as my "co-workers," explaining that we had just been out for an after-hours get-together. We learned that our passenger's name was Cindy.

As we sped down the country road I asked Cindy if we could make a little stop by my place. She agreed- how could she protest? Of course she had no idea that even if she'd balked, it was already too late- by accompanying me and my "peers" she had already sealed her fate. Cindy appeared a little apprehensive when I parked outside the remote stone silo I claimed to be my home, but at my friendly insistence she nervously followed us inside. I locked the door behind us and couldn't help grinning at her shock upon seeing a naked, gagged girl chained to my wall, struggling in terror upon our return. I forced Cindy to her knees and the girls stood guard while I dealt with the hanging captive. Knowing the girl would scream and plead I removed her gag so that there was no doubt my prisoner was there unwillingly. I believe as the trembling, bound girl pled for her freedom Cindy understood the dark times now ahead of her.

The hanging girl and I traded words, for some time, but when I tired of the argument I produced my concealed dagger and waved it in her face as Cindy looked on in terror. The prisoner fell silent, and I then turned the blade on Cindy and cut away her clothing. The slaves held her still as I fastened restraints on her and claimed her as my property. Next we placed her on the "bed" and chained her down. It was here that Cindy tasted my cane and whip- and knew true suffering for the very first time. The beating went on for quite a while. Cindy passed out (and was revived) several times, but Princess and I eventually unchained her and carried her out to the trunk and drove down rural roads to our clandestine medical center.

After unloading our naked, bruised cargo at the medical center, I took her for a tour of the facilities, describing the purpose and history of every major piece of equipment in our labs. Near the end of the tour I shoved Cindy into "the shower," which is not unlike an airtight, lockable phonebooth that you can fill with gas or flood with cold water. We showered Cindy down and let the tank fill to her neck before draining the chamber. After Princess toweled our visitor off I introduced Cindy to the fabled Jessica 3000. Princess strapped her in and I described the device's workings in detail as Cindy groggily listened.

I related how the warmth, vibration, and steady movement of the machine's central spike had the unintended side effect of driving its subjects to intense involuntary orgasms, despite the Jessica's macabre purpose. I explained to her the purpose of th narrow stabilizing rod that enters the anus during the procedure, ultimately helping the subject's body to turn properly over an open flame. And then I flipped the switch.

To Cindy. Society may forget her, but we never will.

Remembering the Friend I'll Never Know

2007-09-10T09:50:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning I logged in to Second Life to find the following instant message from one of my tenants waiting for me:

Hello, I am afraid that I must be leaving SL for the final time. To keep my real world relationship strong, I must say goodbye to this world. I have seven days left on my lease and was hoping that it might be possible to transfer ownership of the land with the home to my very good friend Xxxx Xxxxx. I'll still have IMs forwarded to my email, so please contact me if there is anything I can do to allow it to happen. If not, I understand as not all things are possible. Thank you for a very wonderful place to stay, I enjoyed my very short time here and will miss it. Take care.

This tenant had only been with me for a couple of weeks (the island is brand new), but she had always been very polite and responsive. Even though I didn't know my tenant beyond our business relationship, she and I had a number of mutual friends, and I'd been looking forward to getting more acquainted with her. Honoring her request, I contacted her friend and offered to transfer the land and rent responsibility to her. Unfortunately this person was unable to afford the rent, and because many of the items on the land were no-transfer (and she didn't have modify rights anyway), she was unable to claim any of my tenant's possessions.

So it was that I flew down to my tenant's former home, prepared to clear out all her belongings and set the land for resale. Even though I had admired her home from afar, this was my first experience seeing the place up close, and I was immediately breathtaken. I landed on a little dock out on the beach and noticed a trap door which led to an underwater chamber where a tentacled beast awaited victims. Up on the surface, a bloody, filthy mattress rested among a cluster of shipping crates, an ashtray with a still-lit cigarette just nearby, giving one the feeling that something ominous had just happened here.

Up the stairs I found a blood-spattered turret that seemed to serve dark ritualistic purposes and also as a kind of observatory.

A stone walkway- painted in blood- led from the turret to the main house. I followed it in curious trepidation.

I strolled around the perimeter of the house before going inside. Despite the gory trail I'd followed to get there, as I walked beneath the rustling trees and peered inside the windows I got a sense of warmth and welcoming, rather than fear.

I approached the draped entryway, prepared to enter.

Immediately inside I discovered a sort of altar- bathed in blood- lit only by the flames of several torches in the room. Some well-used racks and other restraint devices stood nearby in the shadows.

A discreetly placed black orb teleported me to the bedroom, where I found several shelves of small framed photographs (not shown here), memories my tenant had shared with her friends and lovers. An open-air entry way from the bedroom led to a balcony with a view of endless ocean.

As I sat on the veranda enjoying the night ocean air, two things became clear to me. First, I acknowledged that my tenant and I would have been good friends, had we been given that chance. My second realization was that this was a place too unique, too dark, and too lovely to destroy.

So, in honor of this friend I'll never know, I've decided to leave her estate as she left it. I will rent the property, but I will maintain ownership of the land so that future tenants can only add to- not remove from- this demonic lair on the sea. If you'd like to tour the place for yourself, go to Desperation South (111, 35, 31), and contact me for rental details.

At this point I don't think I've fully conveyed how deeply the loss of this player and her gift of the estate she left behind have affected me. The more I saw of what she'd done, the more I realized how much we had in common. The photographs in her bedroom reminded me of all the wonderful, beautiful moments I've had in Second Life, and I felt privileged to be able to sort of peer into her past and know the kinds of times she cherished. And as one whose own Second Life is largely a secret from her real-life family, I understand the stakes involved when real life conflicts with Second Life. I don't believe I'll ever have to make the same sacrifice she did for love, but there, but for the grace of God, go I.

Wanted: A Few Good Pets

2007-09-04T11:50:00.000-07:00

[Note: For those of you used to me posting only one article a week, don't overlook this post. It's one of the very rare times I've made two posts on the same day. :) ]

For the first time in many months I am actively seeking new pets. The number of pets I take on will be a direct result of schedule compatibility. If I find a promising candidate who's reliably on during my online hours, I'll likely only accept one, as I'm best in 1-on-1 or 1-on-2 situations. A prospective pet will meet the following qualifications:

Must have a compatible schedule. I live on the Pacific West Coast and am online every night from 10pm-12:30am PST/PDT (SL Time). Use the World Clock web site to calculate my online hours if you're in a different time zone. Do not contact me if you know you're not going to be on when I am.
Must be able to roleplay (RP). My family does not use "talking genitals." (Pets may use scripted penises, so long as they don't generate chat spam.) Just saying "Oooooh" and "Aaaaah" is not RP. It's spam. See this article for my personal roleplay guidelines.
Must be able to communicate effectively in English. I do not require you to be a native English speaker (most of my pets over the years have been European), but you must know the language well enough to RP effectively.
Must not have a default newbie avatar. You don't need money to look nice, and a presentable appearance says a lot about your dedication and commitment. Stop by Desperation Isle and pick up my list of high-quality freebies. You can also get some Lindens from my money tree (on the ground just downstairs from my mall) for those freebie shops that charge L$1-L$5 for their 'freebies.'
Building and scripting skills are desirable, but not a must.

Your real-life gender or avatar gender don't matter to me. The only bit of RL info I'll ever require is your time zone, for scheduling reasons. I will ask serious candidates to fill out my own streamlined BDSM checklist- it only covers things I'm interested in, and will give me a good idea about your interests and limits.

What's in it for you
In return for their faithful service, my collared slaves get the following:

Priority time. I sometimes entertain guests who are not full pets, but my collared slaves get my full attention when they're around.
Customized restriction levels. Depending on your needs and desires, we'll decide upon a set of restrictions for you to follow when you're in-world and I'm not around. This can range from near complete freedom to mouselooked/gagged/restrained captivity.
A free place to live on one of my private estates. My family lives in the Southeast quarter of my rental estate, Desperation North. I have a mansion there that is too large for me to furnish alone. We also have sky apartments available for homeless pets.
Free mall space if you are a product designer. I run the successful kink/fetish mall on Desperation Isle and give my designer pets free rent to sell their items there.
Optional real-life restrictions and tasks. Some pets request that the relationship extend to their real lives, and in these cases I can provide some amount of offline domination. This is NOT a requirement, and I only offer it to pets who request it.
My offline contact information. I do not require contact information from my pets, but I offer mine to them so I'm as available as possible, even when not in-world.

Please contact me, Wildefire Walcott, in-world if you are interested. Note that my IMs are often capped, so it's best to send me a notecard.