Soulplayers

It's not even a category of people. It's just one of those categories people make up so that they can explain away their psychological neuroses instead of actually dealing with a serious emotional problem. Allow me to explain.

What is a soulplayer?
According to goreanforums.com (and for the record, this blog post has been sitting as a draft for a LONG time- so it's not a specific reaction to someone or something or even the linked thread. The recent thread just gives me a good vehicle to shit all over this "theory" of soulplaying), it is:

"A soul player is a bit of everything and somewhat stuck in the middle. They don't consider themselves lifestylers, they don't live Gor, M/s or even D/s in their real life. However they are much more than the pure roleplayer in that they FEEL a lot of their RP and they want to have those feelings.

Where a roleplayer might be laughing and having a good time with whatever is going on, no matter how intense or ugly or cruel, a soul player might be really feeling some of the things their character feels in RL too. They don't consider their characters to be exactly their RL selves, they understand that it is a character, but they identify with and have many similar feelings as their character."

It's important to note that that definition is pretty meaningless. It actually says nothing of interest and provides no concrete action that defines a soulplayer except "a soulplayer is confused about how they react to their environment." But, from this definition, the takeaway point is that a soulplayer is someone who either does not understand the difference between fantasy and reality...or actually understands the difference but wishes to pretend that the fantasy is real.

From a psychological standpoint, a soulplayer is mentally deranged. This is not an exaggeration: identifying as a soulplayer either connotes someone who, at best, has a very poor emotional vocabulary and cannot properly explain and relate what they are experiencing...or, at worst, someone who suffers from out-and-out hallucinations and a particular form of psychosis.

Time to unpack the "definition" into something that is meaningful. The first attempt to define soulplayer comes from distinguishing a soulplayer from a roleplayer:

"Where a roleplayer might be laughing and having a good time with whatever is going on, no matter how intense or ugly or cruel, a soul player might be really feeling some of the things their character feels in RL too."

The first thing to note is that the definition completely miscategorizes and misidentifies what a roleplayer is vs. how a roleplayer reacts to a situation. This sentence really just identifies two different types of roleplayers who react differently to the same stimulus. This is like arguing that there two distinct categories of people based on their reaction to candy: one group is called "Sugarphiles" who become deliriously happy whenever they eat candy. They jump up and down, smile a lot and want more and more candy. They cannot get enough of the stuff. Then there is another group called "Grumplestiltkins" who do not really enjoy candy and have a piece every once in a while, but really have no desire to eat a lot of it.

While there is no reason why people can't be separated into two groups by their reaction to candy...the separation and categorization doesn't actually say anything interesting or give any insight into the two different categories of people. All you know is that one group really likes candy and the other doesn't like it as much. It's not even an either/or choice: there is no reason why someone who eats candy can have an intense reaction on occasion.

Similarly, the first sentence of the definition just tells us that there are some people who do not necessarily get emotionally involved in their roleplay and there are some people that get very emotionally attached to their roleplay. But, at their core, both groups are roleplaying and both are having emotional reactions to that roleplay. They are exposing themselves to the same stimulus. This is to be distinguished from distinct groupings like "lifestyler" and "roleplayer," which are mutually exclusive categories. Lifestyler, for the purposes of SL, is generally used to describe someone who is always in-character: their SL persona is always their Gorean character. Roleplayer means someone who adopts the Gorean person exclusively as a character; once they are no longer engaged in roleplay, they drop out of character and adopt a different personality. These groups are fundamentally distinct in that they are grouped by inherent traits (one that recognizes an OOC/IC split and one that does not). Whereas soulplayer vs. roleplayer is simply distinguished by a preference (one that is extremely emotional vs. one that may be emotional).

Second sentence:
"They don't consider their characters to be exactly their RL selves, they understand that it is a character, but they identify with and have many similar feelings as their character."

Again, this distinction is only created by a complete misunderstanding of what roleplay actually is. Here's a dictionary definition:
"to act out the role of; to represent in action."

In order to roleplay, all an individual must do is adopt a persona that is not themselves. That is the only requirement. By definition, everything that is done within Second Life is a form of roleplay as someone is creating a digital persona of themselves to inhabit a virtual space (i.e., playing SL is living a second life, which is distinct from a person's First Life, aka reality). Removed beyond that, everyone that creates a Gorean character for the purposes of inhabiting a Gorean sim in SL is engaging in a form of fantasy roleplay: as Gor does not exist, the persona that inhabits that space is also fake. While a person may try to imagine themselves as being "dropped" into Gor and thus, everything they do within the Gorean world would be the reactions they would normally have...it's STILL an act of imagination.

Therefore, this second line of the definition is completely dishonest in what roleplay actually is AND is completely dishonest and mischaracterizes the distinction between a soulplayer and a roleplayer:
*Neither a "soulplayer" or a roleplayer genuinely believes that their Gorean characters are exactly like their RL selves. Both groups create a character based on what they imagine their environment to be. Even if someone tries to transport their RL selves into Gor, they cannot exactly be like their RL selves, because...their RL self does not know how to act in Gor. All the person can do is give their best estimate as to what they'd do in that circumstance. Given that there are no 10 foot tall giant bugs roaming Earth, a person is just engaging their imagination when they try and contemplate how he'd react if he saw a Priest King.

Therefore, the most accurate statement you can make is that both soulplayers and roleplayers use their RL experiences to help create a character based on Gor.

*There is no requirement or definition that says that roleplayers, as opposed to soulplayers, cannot identify with or share the same feelings of their character. In fact, to suggest that there can be total separation is ludicrous. Roleplaying is an exercise in imagination, creativity and thought experiments: what would someone do in a given situation? In order to actually roleplay and create action for their characters, a person needs to have a bank of experiences and ideas to draw upon. Some of these ideas can be imagined; for instance, a person can construct a roleplay scene based on what they've read from the Gorean books and/or other fantasy novels. However, for a lot of daily interaction, a person draws on their own real life experiences. To that extent, anyone who is roleplaying is identifying in some way with the characters they present because they must either use some their own life experiences or use those experiences as a reference to shape and create the character. While it may be the case that soulplayers try to downplay the use of their imagination vs. roleplayers, again- the difference is in degrees. There is no fundamental difference in the way a soulplayer or roleplayer (as yet defined) approaches roleplay except that soulplayers have a more visceral reaction to their roleplay than these supposed roleplayers.

Looking over the definition that was proferred, there only seems to be one crucial difference between a roleplayer and a soulplayer (besides the order of magnitude):

"However they are much more than the pure roleplayer in that they FEEL a lot of their RP and they want to have those feelings." (emphasis mine).

Again, the first half of the sentence is a disingenuous statement. There's no reason or explanation as to why a roleplayer wouldn't feel a lot of their roleplay. Everyone, every human being, has an emotional reaction to what they create. Again, the statement, instead of trying to make a factually correct assessment, seems to want to impress the point that a soulplayer takes those emotional reactions much more seriously than a standard roleplayer.

It's only the second half of the sentence that seems to make any sense: there is an implicit understanding that roleplay is fictitious. While a woman may be a real life submissive, she is not actually a slave. And even if she is an actively practicing BDSM slave, she is not actually a Gorean slave...if only for the reason that Gor does not exist.

It seems as though a soulplayer understands that the feelings are based on an elaborate and very fake fantasy. However, if the second half of that statement is true, the pull of the emotional experience seems to overwhelm their basic cognitive functions so they assume that the imagined experience is real. In simpler terms, because they feel so moved after a particular roleplay event, the person assumes that their emotional state is directly tied to that particular action.

Incidentally, this train of the thought is the exact same thought process for a person suffering from drug addiction: the person consumes the drug in order to enter a (generally) euphoric altered state. The person understands that the drug alters their sense of reality and that the emotions they experience are not "genuine," but rather a product of that altered state. Regardless, they don't care because the power and draw of that intense emotional experience consumes them.

Now, this analogy is a bit disingenuous. Most drugs create a pathological addiction because of a chemical dependency: the person is compelled to chase the altered state because their body needs the drug. However, there are recognized addictions that have absolutely no chemical stimulus: shopping, gambling, eating, etc (generally classed as a type of impulse control disorder). In this particular case, the subject creates an associative addiction: eating makes them happy, so they mentally tie the idea of being happy with the idea of eating food. In an effort to become (or stay happy), the person then compels himself to eat, which creates a type of chemical dependency (in this case, eating stimulates an endorphin rush and a release of some other neurochemical transmitter like dopamine). So essentially the person trains their brain to create a chemical addiction to a particular activity.

The dangers of soulplaying seem obvious: by intentionally blurring the line between reality and fantasy, the individual is essentially creating a situation that will cause emotional turmoil. The person is feeling a huge emotional rush, but they cannot pinpoint the source and cause of their emotional upheaval. As the definition points out, the person has an intuitive understanding of the difference between fantasy and reality, but the draw of the emotional rush persuades them to blur the line so that they want the feelings that are drawn from fantasy to be feelings that exist in reality. This is the mental equivalent of forcing oneself to enjoy chemical addiction. The activity, while pleasurable, creates a completely unhealthy emotional psyche.

If left untreated, the end state of soulplaying can be exhibiting psychotic behavior. This doesn't mean "lock someone up in a straight jacket and pump them full of meds" kind of crazy. But it does mean that this continued necessity to blur the line for an intense emotional payoff will make them depressed, force them to disengage from reality, create difficulties in forming lasting social relationships, heighten irritability and make them prone to sudden emotional outbursts. Simply put, soulplaying is not healthy for the brain.

Eventually, a soulplayer will have to reconcile the pull of the fantasy against the reality of the fantasy and choose a side: roleplayer or lifestyler?

The soulplayer is confusing cause and effect: it is ok to have strong, visceral reactions to roleplay. It is not ok to confuse the source of those strong reactions to the actual roleplay itself. This is easy to understand when passively consuming forms of entertainment like watching a movie: people can be titillated and excited by watching a man murder a person during a horror movie. But no one in their right mind would say that the excitement and rush that they felt meant that they had a desire to commit murder. To be sure, it is entirely possible that the person has latent homicidal tendencies that came to the surface because of the the movie. Possible but not likely. More plausibly, the person felt excited for some more benign reason: for instance, watching murder might be somewhat cathartic. A person has a lot of pent-up frustration in their life which they are not able to vent. Watching someone commit a very violent action may be a way to release that stress and frustration. And that release...can feel like euphoria.

This is harder to understand when actively participating in forms of entertainment: actors who continually engage in love scenes commonly form off-screen relationships because they feel that the chemistry they possessed on screen may translate off-screen. To be sure, this might be a valid observation. More likely though, the chemistry was not actually chemistry between two individuals: it was between two characters. Trying to understand the line between fantasy and reality is extremely important because it forces a person to be honest with their emotions and learn what they are feeling and most importantly, WHY they are feeling the way they do. Soulplayers categorically do not do this extremely important emotionally healthy task.

And that is why soulplaying is so dangerous: when confronted with this inconsistency, the soulplayer has to essentially become content with confusion. Rather than distinguishing fantasy from reality, the soulplayer merges them: everything that occurs in the fantasy environment is real and everything that is real can be transported to the fantasy environment. And that is one of the major symptoms of psychosis: the loss of contact with reality. The only difference between clinically-diagnosed psychosis and soulplaying is that soulplaying is INTENTIONAL. The person is deliberately forcing themselves to become mentally unbalanced. They want to live with a blurred line between reality and fantasy.

Again, confusion is not a problem...so long as the confusion is eventually solved. This is why soulplayer is not actually a category of person. Soulplayer is considered a "tweener" category precisely because it's inherently unstable: they understand the difference between IC and OOC; they just wish there wasn't a difference and so they pretend that there is none.

The thread eventually closes with the line that people should respect a soulplayer's choices in how they deal with SL. That statement only makes sense in the sense that people should respect drug addicts because they have free will and the independent choice to do what they want. In that sense, soulplayers should be "respected" in that they have free will to make decisions on their own. However, those decisions should NOT be respected or even encouraged if they are bad ones. And there is zero reason to explain why soulplaying is a good choice. Eventually, the reality of the situation will catch up to a soulplayer and crush them. That is not a hypothetical scenario; that is inevitable.

I just wish soulplayers would go away.

Terminology

Another rant. Bear with me all you non-existent people reading this rant; it's long.

There was a thread on goreanforums.com about aftercare. Honestly, I have no idea what aftercare is (it's some term used in BDSM communities). I don't really think I want to know what it is either because it will probably make me really upset. Anyway, that's not really the point.

This is what irks me about goreanforums.com: the people sharing these concepts really have no idea what they're talking about and the people receiving the information don't know that these "smart" people dispensing advice have no idea what they're talking about. It's the blind leading the blind which begets a situation of complete and total idiocy.

Now, I don't mean to pick on the specific people that contributed to that thread. Their intentions were good and it's noble that they're trying to find some answers in a space that supposedly houses people that should know this sort of thing; the problem with tricky concepts like aftercare is that, if you really don't know what you're talking about...talking about the concept in public actually makes the situation worse, not better. Because instead of finding answers, you're now swimming in a huge pool of misinformation, some of it helpful but 99% of it is pure garbage. Although goreanforums.com is a bit worse than the normal situation: 100% of the people who populate goreanforums.com have absolutely no professional expertise or experience or formal training to draw upon so their advice is pretty unhelpful.

So instead of being helpful, these threads degenerate into pharmaceutical drug ads:

Are you feeling sluggish? Upset stomach, sniffles and itchy all over? And we'll list about 10 other horribly generic symptoms that 90% of the general population will have, just to make sure we include everyone in our ad. Talk to your doctor about Placebox, the new drug that cures doesntreallyexitis, which can be found in 0.00000001% of the population, but the only reason we're running this ad is to make you super paranoid that you have the condition and you bug your doctor enough that he just prescribes you the damned medicine so you can get off his back. And using the drug won't actually make you any healthier. We just want to confuse you and scare you enough so you buy our crap.

Except on goreanforums.com, the ad reads something like this:

Are you feeling confused? Do you constantly feel in emotional upheaval about roleplay and you are unsure on how to properly react to it? Incidentally, EVERYONE who roleplays feels this, but we're going to use shiny words like "subspace" and "aftercare" and never really define them, so you can confuse what you're currently going through (which is normal) with these conditions (which are exceedingly rare). And that way, instead of growing up and understanding and developing an emotional vocabulary like a normal person, you can pretend you keep going into a "subspace" and need "aftercare" in order to solve this problem. And we'll also confuse you enough so you forget that the supposed "dominant" who sent you into this subspace is probably not really dominant but is only playing one on TV...that way, you can demand that the actor who played his job really well must actually BE a dominant and then assume responsibility for solving a "problem" that was caused by you forgetting that you're actually only playing a slave on TV. So don't worry, this ad was created in order to create more excuses on why the problems in your life aren't your fault by introducing you to words that you don't understand and then improperly using them so you'll be super confused!

It's just annoying.

Look, I don't doubt that there is such a thing called "subspace" and there is such a concept called "aftercare." But those terms only exist and can only be used in a BDSM environment. SL Roleplay is NOT a BDSM environment: it's total and complete character acting. Sure, the problems are similar, but they're not the same. Mixing and matching terms from the two different worlds only CONFUSES the issue, not helps. And in a world where most people are confused on what's going on in the first place (because they are not accomplished actors and have never received formal training or expertise on acting), using these specialized terms is a very very very very very bad and dangerous thing to do.

All that thread will do is allow the casual passerby to think, "Hey maybe I really am a sub. This subspace and aftercare idea sound totally like me. Maybe it's not my fault. It's his fault! I knew it! Ha, I don't have to fix myself. I just have to find a better Master and demand he give me this aftercare stuff!" Which is exactly the same thought process as, "Sniffles and itchy scalp? Whoa, I totally have the sniffles and itchy scalp. Maybe it's not a cold and dandruff I have; maybe it's this weird funky disease that will be solved by this magical pill. That way, I won't have to do anything to solve my problem! Wow, that was so much easier!"

Not good. Not good. In the end, these type of threads only screw me over more because it confuses kajirae so much that they decide they really are kajirae and run off to find me so I will become their therapist and solve their complex emotional problems. Gah. Do. Not. Want.

Rant off.

Guttentag

Apparently, my last post is pretty popular with people in Germany. It was linked by, from what I can tell, a German Gorean internet message board, linked here. I'm pretty sure they're making fun of me...which is totally cool! There's really a lot of material out there so if someone can't make fun of me, perhaps they need to stop and take stock of their life.

As I do not understand a lick of German, I have no idea what the thread is about, what it says, or why my last post has something to do with the topic. BUT...I have figured out that "rollenspielwelt" means "roleplayer" in German. And quite frankly, I'd rather be called a rollenspielwelt than a roleplayer any day of the week and twice on Sunday. I also have no idea what "gegenüber" means either, but I'm pretty sure I'd want to be that to. Anything with an umlat is gold to me.

So hello Germans!

Submissives

Ranting time...and what are blogs if nothing else than a way to rant in public and hope no one reads it although secretly hope that the right people actually do read it?

I don't understand "submissives." I don't WANT to understand submissives. Most women in SL Gor self-identify as submissives. I can understand and appreciate that. I have my own understanding of what being an overall submissive is (and I've shared it on this blog a few times), but it's clearly not the definition of choice of most submissives in SL Gor. As far as I can tell, "submissive" in SL means to be intellectual lazy, helpless and wanting to obviate all responsibility for themselves and their life choices. They'd rather pawn that off on someone else. Essentially, being a submissive in SL means to be an overgrown baby. Apparently, that's a good thing.

And even if that's the definition (or even if I'm wrong), I have no problem with that. Everyone has their emotional and psychological problems. I've got plenty myself that probably make me appear childish and selfish, so I really can't be throwing rocks at that type of behavior. Where my problem occurs is when women confuse roleplay with reality and assume that because my male characters portray dominant personalities and react well to submissives...they assume that I personally am a dominant individual and am actively looking for submissives to dominate in my normal life. Ergo, them.

This can't be farther from the truth. First of all, my characters are fake. They exist in an imaginary roleplay world that are subject to the rules of John Norman's very stupid writing and the rule sets contained within them. My characters have to be callous and "dominant" because Norman says they must be. That's not reflective of my actual personality simply because...shocker...I don't live in Gor. I am a product of my environment and my environment says I must respect all people and treat them as equals. So I do, and more importantly, I want to treat all people as equals.

Second, I'm not looking for a relationship in SL Gor outside of someone who can entertain me in roleplay. I find it monumentally stupid to try and find love in a game where people present false depictions of themselves. I understand that this is no different than trying to find a date at a club where a woman is all dolled up and not acting "naturally" because she, too, wants to instantly attract a mate. The only reason I tolerate clubs is, well, it's real so even if the woman is faking it...I might get something tangible out of it like sex or a companion to do fun things on a date with. For an online relationship, I'm simply deluding myself: as long as I can convince myself this person is what I want, I'll stay. Seems rather hollow and superficial to me. I'm not saying I can't do it- it just seems a waste of my time.

And even if I were looking for an actual relationship based on my roleplay interactions, I sure as hell wouldn't want a submissive women. I find the idea of having a "genuine submissive" as a potential mate utterly repulsive. I can interact with them, no problem. But get serious with them? No thanks, not my cup of tea. I'd rather have a woman with a brain who asserts herself. Someone might argue that a submissive can be all those things and assertive...but really, she can't. It's listed within the definition of submissive that she can be assertive, but can't be an assertive person. If she can be all that, then she's not submissive- she's just pretending she is. And I hate people that can't try to be honest with themselves so I wouldn't want to have a relationship with them anyway. On the intimacy front, "submissives" and "me" do not mix- just a fact of life. And those that want to convince me otherwise are largely wasting their breath.

Finally, I think "dominance" and "submission" as state-of-beings is a crock of shit. I consider it something akin to homosexuality. There are certainly a group of people in this world that are inherently and genetically homosexual. No matter what can be said or done, these people will always be attracted to the same sex. Same can be said for bisexuals as well. But there are a group of people who experience the psychological condition of "mimicry." If you put these people around lots of gay people for a long period of time, they will self-identify themselves as gay...and if you took them out of the gay population and put them back in heterosexual communities, they'd self-identify as heteros. You find this exceedingly common in prison populations: inmates have homosexual sex inside the clink to mimic the rules, customs and behavior within prison...but revert to a hetero lifestyle when living in a mixed population. Same thing with SL: when confronted with a paradigm where everyone must be split up into "dominants" and "submissives," women see that submissive box, self-identify with some of those characteristics and then unilaterally decide that they must be all of those characteristics...when they're not.

I don't doubt there are a few genuine submissives in SL Gor. As in people who have an innate tendency to follow and please people. It's just written into their DNA. But I suspect that 99% of the "submissives" out there are actually just sexual submissives who mistake their timidness in the bedroom and sexual relationships to be representative of the rest of their personality. And if you take them out of a sexual relationship, they are confrontational, abrasive and controlling...just like normal human beings. Which is cool. I like normal human beings. I just don't like people who pretend they are something they're not.

The other truth I've learned out there is that most people who roleplay in Gor either do not understand the IC/OOC split...or don't care. They are here for boyfriends and damnit, they're going to get them. Somehow, I end up on their wish list because I can type a complete sentence and can show an original thought from time to time. I have no idea how to disabuse them or get them to ignore me. So...I rant. And this is one of them.

Alright, it's all over now. I will now put myself into that state where I debate whether I should have posted this and whether I should delete it.

Choice

As an aside to the now THREE daily regular readers- I promised posting my story of the Sa-Ta-Tor. That will unfortunately be postponed indefinitely until I figure out what to do with it. Either the roleplay is dead and I need to reconcile my ideal vision of the story with what I have...or I wait until (if ever) it starts up again. Luckily, such projects need no deadlines. They get done when it is time to finish them. Eventually, I'll make a decision but not now. So it will wait in storage as a series of blog drafts, waiting to be published.

I probably did a blog post about this earlier. If I did, who cares? Here it goes again.

Compare these two videos:





In the first talk, Malcolm Gladwell demonstrates why choice is a good thing: the more choices you have, the better chance you have at getting something you genuinely want. In the second video, Barry Schwartz demonstrates that infinite choice creates an information crisis: while you get exactly what you want, the cost it took to make the decision actually exceeds the benefit so you're overall WORSE off than you were before.

So why this topic?

Choice creates two sets of problems that interact with one another: why you roleplay and how you achieve that goal.

To create a Gorean community, much attention needs to be placed on the environment. SL, as a program, gives the creator a lot of choice in terms of creating the most authentic environment: build a Mediterranean city, Victorian style, inland city empire, coastal island, whatever. If someone can conceive of it, it can be built. The same goes with clothes, characters and everything else needed to build a Gorean community: SL provides infinite choice so it's absolutely possible to build the "perfect" Gorean community that a person wants.

The problem is that richly detailed environment makes it prohibitively expensive to play that environment. If you want to create an authentic Torvsland sim, you need to have people that fundamentally understand the nuances of a Torvie culture. People have to promote stories and characters that fit within that niche, instead of the generic Gorean man. And this isn't just one person. EVERY person that plays in that environment has to meet some threshold of immersion or else...the detail, nuance and sophistication is lost. Just walk into a scene where someone says, "Hi lulz. I iz Gorean. U r slave?" The mood is instantly broken. So, to keep that level of immersion, the sim has to create a whole rule set and create a system that approves people into the sim ("You must be THIS Gorean to roleplay here"). The more rules a sim has, the more time is needed to learn and understand those rules. More moderators are needed to keep the sim faithful to those rule sets. The more authentic the picture, the more people and time are needed. To actually extract the benefit of getting what you want, you have to pour in a lot of effort that you didn't think was needed. As Barry Schwartz points out, to get to the level of choice that makes you happy, you're worse off in a situation where there was no choice.

And that's a fundamental unsolvable problem for any online roleplay community: roleplay is supposed to be a diversion, not a job. But to get that deeply immersive and rich element, it's prohibitively expensive. Lots of lots of time and effort must be spent. Is it worth spending all that time and effort on what's supposed to be a game? Some people answer this question by making it personal: they use the game to find themselves a suitable real life mate. By raising the stakes, the effort is worth it (people will do a lot for love vs. just fun). Some people compromise their standards so that the benefit exceeds the effort. Most people, though, answer this question by simply just walking away.

I wonder...

...how people decide their character motivations.

I think most people create backgrounds and stories that help them shape and design their characters. I've done this on occasion: I have a general idea in my head and then I try to flesh it out with specific characteristics and tendencies that would result from that particular idea. I imagine most people do the same thing.

When roleplaying in Gor, I hear so many people say, "Well, my character is proud so she'd never do such and such." Or some guy will say, "My character's a real Gorean man and he'd refuse to take a collar out of principle. His sense of honor precludes him from doing that."

But...the interesting question is HOW does someone decide what characteristics naturally flow from that idea? What makes something natural as opposed to forced? How does someone connect a particular trait to particular actions? I can easily construct a scenario where it might sense for a Gorean man, even the most stereotypical by-the-codes Gorean Warrior, to submit completely and unstintingly to a woman. I can easily construct a situation where the most elite, proud, spoiled brat of a Free Woman would be so humbled beyond words that escape into a collar might be the most obvious solution for her. And yet...people might disagree with my assessments. So how do people draw the line between natural and unnatural reactions of their characters?

The reason this thought occurred to me dealt with the roleplay between one of my Gorean characters and a slave. I had a chance to converse with this person outside of roleplay for a while. She was commenting about how proud and spirited her character was, despite being a slave. She also mentioned that, at one point, there was a man who truly made her character understand her submission, but he disappeared from the roleplay universe...and because of that experience, her character is motivated to avoid giving away her heart again. It was very interesting to learn and I thought quite sensible. This person has thought about this situation enough to take concrete and identifiable traits to transform an idea into a genuine character.

By chance, our characters got to roleplay for a while. True to her initial explanation, her slave character was bratty, opinionated and irreverent to her station in life. So my character responded in ways I thought a Gorean man would respond: force her to recognize her reality. And not with long-winded speeches about how kajirae do this and act like that. It was quick, swift and brutal. Along the way, I tried to drop subtle hints and clues as to why my character was doing the things he was doing. He wasn't trying to devastate her character by attempting to kill her; it was a series of calculated actions and carefully constructed sentences in order to push her character into being what she's supposed to be: a submissive kajira. Or at least, what I understand a submissive kajira to be.

By the end of the scene, it was clear that the person roleplaying the kajira either completely missed all my hints and subtext, or flat out ignored it. Similarly, I also fear that I missed a lot of the hints and subtext (assuming she was sending them out) that she was giving out.

Some of the hints and subtext I tried to insert (there were more, but these were the two big ones):
*Trying to get the slave to stop using the words "I" and "beg." This is a standard crutch for slaves when they get into trouble. The first thing they say is, "I beg forgiveness." Now, while that's all well and good, I simply don't think that the right response for a true submissive. I think the better response is "I am sorry for displeasing you, Master." What's the difference between the two? The first one is inherently selfish- the tone and subject of the sentence make it all about the kajira and what she did. In the second sentence, the same message is sent but it creates a power dynamic: by being sorry, she is placing herself in an inferior position and the sentence is about the obligation that she owes him. While most slaves intuitively understand the concept of apologizing and why it's important, I don't think they ever really think about how to properly convey that sorrow. A slave is supposed to eat, live and breathe for others. Even apologies.

In this situation, the slave begged for her life. Again, that is the phrasing of a person that has not embraced her submission. Had she phrased it, "Spare me your mercy" or "I am nothing without you, Master," her answer would have been received much more favorably.

This may be too subtle and even a nitpicky thing...but I think it's important in properly conveying a submissive demeanor. A proper slave never thinks in terms of "I" or "me," but always in relation to those that are superior to her. The way she phrases things is a good measure to figure out whether she is actually submissive or just paying lip service to the concept.

*Constantly referring to her as a whore and a slut. Over and over again, the slave was referred to as a "worthless slut," "stupid whore," and on and on. I assume most people think that those are just attempts at insulting and degrading a person. That's very true. But it also serves a deeper purpose. Breaking someone for shits and giggles is generally a counterproductive idea. While every slave needs to be broken from her self-centered "Earth" perspective, the idea is that she's being broken so that she can be reconstituted to fully embrace her submissiveness. The breaking is a part of a process to create something new.

So...a beat down because someone mouthed off seems rather extreme and harsh. It really does nothing but emphasize that minor infractions result in extreme consequences. That's discouraging because it encourages the slave to do nothing...it's the only way she can ensure that she'll never get beaten. So if someone is going to resort to such an extreme measure, there needs to be a payoff.

Enter the constant stream of degrading insults like "whore" and "slut." Now, on Gor- these aren't necessarily bad words...but it's clear that in this particular context, they were. Moreover, I took great pains to use these words over and over. These weren't casual uses of a particular insult.

There's a basic concept of psychology on how people deal with failure. If someone is told that they suck over and over again, there's a good chance they will give up completely. But if someone is told that they can't accomplish a certain task, that person builds an incredible amount of will and determination to prove their doubter wrong. It's the seminal act of defiance that is deeply ingrained in every human. So, in this context, the kajira is not being sent the message that she sucks. The constant use of "worthless whore" is meant as a challenge to her: her existence and her worth hinges on the display and use of her body. If she can please men sexually, then she is NOT worthless. But if she cannot succeed in this area...truly, she is beyond worthless.

So the idea is to damage her psyche at the same time as giving her direction on how she can validate her existence. Breaking while building.

* * *

That's what prompted this blog post. Almost always, no one really ever understands the subtlety of those clues in roleplay. I don't blame them either- it's hard to pick up such meanings in a real-time interaction.

But to properly evolve a character, you have to have pretty much 100% understanding of their state of mind and motivations...even in the unconscious parts. On any given day, if I used these particular techniques and tricks on someone in RL, they would instantly respond to them...whether they were aware they were being manipulated or not. However, in SL and online environments, these tricks and methods, which are so vital to make characters into people, are pretty much useless.

There is no answer to this particular issue. There shouldn't be one. But it is interesting food for thought: how much can you really know about your character? How deeply are you thinking about what makes your character tick?

Blogroll

I don't have one. Then again, I don't really have a readership (still cruising at 2 hits a day) so I suppose having a blogroll is sort of a moot point.

That being said, I don't read many SL Gorean blogs. It's not that I don't want to...it's just that I don't actively search them out like I do my general interest blogs I read in my "normal" life.

If there are any interesting blogs or sites I should be reading relating to the Gorean experience, drop a note in the comments and/or e-mail and I'll make sure to look it over and add to a blogroll.