Cathy (Catherine Palen) did an interview with a great artist, Igor Romanov. He specializes in erotic photography in Second Life. During the interview they decided to make an actual photo shooting. The two of them being the protagonists. The result was the featured image of this post. Very erotic isn’t it?
Here is the link to the interview: Igor Romanov with Catherine Palen
This raised the question in my mind: How much did she feel fucked when making this picture?
We started a discussion on this topic. Please read the thread and join the talk. We would love to read your opinion and how much you actually immerse into your virtual persona if at all.
Here my comment on the topic:
Cathy,
Correct me if I am wrong. What you mean is erotic in the same way as looking at an erotic scene or a picture. Not intimate in the sense of getting fucked. Whereby it is an interesting question in general whether or not you “feel fucked”, when somebody enters your avatar with his pixels. Is it in general just an erotic image or is it indeed a “mental penetration”.
I guess this depends on how much one actually immerses into his virtual persona. In another words: How much do you see your avatar as a virtual representation or yourself, a virtual persona or a pixel-doll which does not have any kind of connection to your real life self.
I believe there is strong distinction to make between:
1. Virtual persona
2. Virtual representation of yourself
3. An avatarIt would be interesting to read from others how “real” is their virtual persona to themselves. I believe that the more you actually developed a virtual personality (or alternatively a virtual representation of yourself), the more you would feel “fucked” in such a situation.
In my case I can tell as much as this:
Caroline is not a pixel doll. Caroline is not a represantation of my real life self either. She is the “other me” in a virtual world. Sounds a bit like split personality disorder and maybe it is in a way.
To me this would not have been “making a erotic picture”, it would have been “shooting a photo of me getting penetrated”. The result is the same but because of the immersion being different the feeling would have been different too. If that would have been a good or a bad feeling bears relevance in this context.
This does not apply to my ALTS. They are not virtual personas, they are either pixel dolls, under cover disguises or role play characters to me. I have however ONE avatar which comes close to a virtual representation of my real life self, but I hardly ever use it.
Did I express myself good enough for this to make sense?
Please leave your views on the topic in the comment section (in the original thread please).
Carol
I share your thoughts on that. To me, it is my body -it’s me in world. When there, it is the only world and I won’t change who I am any more than I would outside for someone else.
I absolutely agree with you Caroline.
This is the same reason why I refuse to change my avatar appearance: she is “another me”, to use your words. I fully impersonate myself in her, and when she does something in the virtual world, I feel it’s catually me doing it.
I agree with you, Caroline, and with Damien. My roleplay in SecondLife hinges on the phrase: collaborative storytelling.
My avatar is not me, but as an actor (and especially as an improvisational actor) my skills are limited. Therefore solak Ohtobide is not the image of my Real Life self, but my Real Life personality inhabits this character on the screen. He is an avatar puppet that I use to explore the choices I did not make in RL, and of course to explore some of the dangers that I avoid in RL. I identify with him, much as I would with a protagonist in a movie or novel. However it is more, because in SL I am not just watching, I am also the coauthor and codirector of every scene, and that brings it much closer to home than just reading or watching a story play out on the paper page or cinema screen.
The moving pixels are merely a reference point upon which the added detail and adjustments from the emote text are critical to having a moving experience, whether we’re pretending to be students in a class, friends sitting around a coffee shop, family at a holiday dinner, or intimates rubbing our mucous membranes together.
Damien is me, but at the same time, he is not me. We’re like two faces in a Rubik’s cube, similar yet different. We inhabit the same body and at times can get mixed up with each other but that is usually very short lived.
Of course, that’s just in normal situations. In SL sex, things tend to be a bit different. I know this answer’s a bit weird for some, but whether or not I actually feel the sex hinges on the emotes. I’ve said before that words have a stronger effect on me than the animations do. This is because the animations play in a never ending loop and eventually lose their magic while the words in emotes bring images to my mind, and it’s these images that really bring the fucking sensation. This is especially true when the emotes are detailed, the animations playing in front of me take a backseat to the images in my mind. The opposite can be true as well if there is no emoting and all that’s shared are Ooos and Aaaas. It would just be pixel porn.
So to finally answer it properly, I can feel like I’m actually fucking when I’m having sex in second life, but it’s not all the time that it happens.