Worlded Companionship
This week I had a realization about virtual relationships, and that is how dependent on the worlds in which they take place they are. This should have been obvious, and in many ways it is: I cannot separate my notion of my Mistress from the image of Her avatar or from Her studio where we often hang out. But this week I discovered a new way that is less obvious (at least to me). Let me explain.
Last week, my Mistress, who can be scarily focused when She wants to be, got into a groove with a build She was working on. In two days, She took the sands of a desert sim and built a sizable castle-like structure and a separate pavilion with a speed and on a scale that I would have never thought possible. Kudos to Her for Her amazing ability; kudos also to SL's screwy modeling environment, which for all of its shortcomings, was robust enough to enable this particular accomplishment.
Anybody after a productivity marathon like that would require a little downtime. My Mistress didn't take it, though, first continuing to build Her pavilion and later moving onto all manner of related business matters. Also, I am ashamed to admit, I demanded some of Her time, in part because She had been so focused on other things the preceding days.
And after that, She crashed.
She disappeared from Second Life for four days and counting (as long as I've known Her, She has not been gone so long). Surely this is a healthy thing. Maybe She's spending some quality time with her RL husband. Maybe She's killing orcs in some other MMO. Maybe She took up knitting. Whatever She's up to, She isn't up to it in SL.
My realization in all of this was this: Once She was burned out on the world, She was burned out on everything in it, including me. I don't believe Her departure was allecto-related. Maybe I flatter myself by thinking perhaps Her departure was in spite of me (rather than in part because of me). Either way, I will confess to having the hope that even if She blew off the rest of SL, She would still come on to see me, when she knows I am most likely to be online. She didn't.
Thus, whereas we all like to believe that amor vincet omnes, that our relationships matter more than the material surroundings in which they take place, I think that such a notion is naive. Even when our material surroundings are pixels and chat interfaces, they are constitutive of, rather than incidental to, the social relationships we form within them.
During the time of Her absence, I have also barely logged onto to Second Life. I have friends there, ones I really care about, ones I like to hang out with. But with the absolute absence of my Mistress, I just lack the motivation to go in. It works both ways: the world is constitutive of my social relationships, yes; but my social relationships are also constitutive of the world. When the relationships aren't there, the world itself shudders and blinks out of existence.
Last week, my Mistress, who can be scarily focused when She wants to be, got into a groove with a build She was working on. In two days, She took the sands of a desert sim and built a sizable castle-like structure and a separate pavilion with a speed and on a scale that I would have never thought possible. Kudos to Her for Her amazing ability; kudos also to SL's screwy modeling environment, which for all of its shortcomings, was robust enough to enable this particular accomplishment.
Anybody after a productivity marathon like that would require a little downtime. My Mistress didn't take it, though, first continuing to build Her pavilion and later moving onto all manner of related business matters. Also, I am ashamed to admit, I demanded some of Her time, in part because She had been so focused on other things the preceding days.
And after that, She crashed.
She disappeared from Second Life for four days and counting (as long as I've known Her, She has not been gone so long). Surely this is a healthy thing. Maybe She's spending some quality time with her RL husband. Maybe She's killing orcs in some other MMO. Maybe She took up knitting. Whatever She's up to, She isn't up to it in SL.
My realization in all of this was this: Once She was burned out on the world, She was burned out on everything in it, including me. I don't believe Her departure was allecto-related. Maybe I flatter myself by thinking perhaps Her departure was in spite of me (rather than in part because of me). Either way, I will confess to having the hope that even if She blew off the rest of SL, She would still come on to see me, when she knows I am most likely to be online. She didn't.
Thus, whereas we all like to believe that amor vincet omnes, that our relationships matter more than the material surroundings in which they take place, I think that such a notion is naive. Even when our material surroundings are pixels and chat interfaces, they are constitutive of, rather than incidental to, the social relationships we form within them.
During the time of Her absence, I have also barely logged onto to Second Life. I have friends there, ones I really care about, ones I like to hang out with. But with the absolute absence of my Mistress, I just lack the motivation to go in. It works both ways: the world is constitutive of my social relationships, yes; but my social relationships are also constitutive of the world. When the relationships aren't there, the world itself shudders and blinks out of existence.
posted by Allecto Brissot at 12:42 PM
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