Enslaved

Graves' new Hive set comes in ruby red as well as in the usual black and white. The pack of all three colours is cheaper than any two sets, and Sian can't recommend it enough.

Sian finds the whole thing that so many Second Lifers have with slavery fascinating and repellent in equal measure. There's like this whole virtual subculture, which, although initially based upon a series of godawful fantasy novels by a chap with serious misogyny issues, has become very much its own thing, with its own rules, and even its own viewer hacks (Restrained Love Viewer, or RLV), allowing all sorts of consensual abuses of one's liberty and dignity.

Here's the thing. It's always consensual. It can't not be. If you don't want your avatar to be tied up, chained up, silenced, or forcibly transformed into a doll, cow, robot or whatever you wish, you can turn off.

But here's the other thing: is it healthy?

An anecdote: one time, Sian, in one of the other accounts she used to have, was talking frankly with someone about sex in SL. And Sian expressed the opinion that she really hated porn-language, the constant talk about "pussies" that aren't cats and coming with a U and all that. How it's demeaning. Dehumanising. And the other person stopped and said, "but that's how real people talk when they're having sex".

Um, no. No, it isn't. That's how people in mucky movies talk when they're having sex.

Don't get Sian wrong. She wears these things, after all. Sian actually applauds the ability to use SL as a way to explore one's fantasies, especially the impossible ones. But you have to realise it's fantasy. If your fantasy sex-life messes up how you see real sex with real bodies, and how you view real men and women, you need to step back and think about it.

It would be a horrible thing to have the sharing of your own body ruined forever by things you picked up in a virtual world.

Matchbook Monday's new Enslaved earrings aren't possessed of the same range of scripted features that her other things are, but frankly, does it matter? They're really great.

Sian wears:
[Graves] Pieces from G363 Hive Ruby and G362 Hive White; G226 Ankle Boots ruby; freebie Collar and Cuffs
[Beautifully Grotesque] Voluptuous Lips Eccentric-Black
[Amorous] Die Schlacht (Nipple Covers/Chest); Enslaved (Earrings)
[A:S:S]  Drama shadow - Burgundy
[Nuuna] Nuuna's Eyebrows 15
[Negaposi] ELFIN EYES - White Out
[Vaughans] Bride of Sian Nose Ring - future
[CaTwa] 3D NoAlpha Lashes #1
[Heartsick] : Rumour : Eternity : Au Naturel