Underground in Gor: Panther Country
by Alphaville Herald on 14/05/09 at 7:47 am
Sim line saves Wanderer from sex-slavery in part 4 in a series
by the Wanderer
The kajira looked up at me, worry in her eyes. “They will capture you and rape you, Master.”
“Who?”
“The forest-girls. Don't go into the forest.”
A noob Gorean like me can sure be stupid. Despite several warnings, I went into the forest.
Only a sim-line stopped my becoming a sex-slave.
A Geekboy's Ultimate Wet-Nightmare
Who are these wild women of Gor? You've seen the outfits, and they fulfill a subcategory of male fantasy that is too good to resist: babealicious babes in animal-skin body floss and warpaint who drag men off for sex.
Only problem: that Gorean will-to-power thing. When the Panthers are done, boy-toy does not get to be king: he gets sold off and remains a slave. By-the-book Panthers might be escaped kajirae, or they might be born wild. Either way, if you have a prick, even if you are not one, you become prey.
Whatevah, I thought, striding manfully into the thickets. I'm tough. It's a weekday. How many of these girls will be around?
In chat I spoke a line from “nerd night,” my weekly face-to-face gaming session:
“Bring on the Leather Goddesses of Phobos!”
That reference to a 1986 Infocom game, with its scratch-and-sniff card, 3D glasses, and “lewd” playing mode, was only sillier than the Panther-girls' forest in one detail.
SL's leather-goddesses were not run by some prehistoric AI on a TRS-80. This time around, skilled players were waiting to tie up a geeky Earthman, use him up sexually, then sell him for kibble.
To Boldly Run Away
Goreans are obsessed with making a place, as much as their avatars, cross that famous and uncanny valley. The best of the Gorean sims have an obsessive attention to detail that impresses, despite the graphical limitations of SL, and I was running my client light and fast, in case the Panthers started after me. As I roamed a forest sim, I was stunned by the realism. The trees were placed to create the sort of confusing beauty one gets under a nearly closed canopy. Strategically rezzed beams of light came through a few openings. The prim count was high and the forest floor detailed with undergrowth and stones to trip up a stranger or hide a Panther.
This type of design–Gor aside–points the way to the next generation of higher-bandwidth virtual worlds, where ecologists and landscape architects will be on the teams making things look “right,” even if the world is a faraway planet. This rapture over the forest made me forget, for a crucial moment, where I was.
Then the first name popped up, at long range, on my radar. Then a second name appeared. Uh oh. Company. I was wearing my combat HUD. What would be the range of Panther's bow?
I set myself to running and, fool that I am, saw the village through the trees ahead as a place of shelter. I clambered over a stockade (well, sat on a tall object and fell inside). By then three names appeared on long-range radar. Should I use SL's other tools to cheat?
Duh. Of course I did.
Hoping to rally the village guard, I looked around. The place was not only rather crude by Gorean standards but also full of kinky curiosities like a hitching post for humans, a triangle for whippings, a row of human-sized cages, and other naughty paraphernalia. One sees those things in Gorean cities, too, but here they were clustered and in the company of enough Sheena-of-the-Jungle décor that I had to conclude only one thing.
“Dumbass, this is THEIR village.”
I pulled up the mini-map. Five green dots.
A Cheater Escapes The Leather Goddesses
They were in a rough crescent, moving up slowly but clearly working as a team. They were still at the edge of the village. If I ran back, I'd cross their line and hope that lag worked in my favor.
But they knew this place. I didn't, so I ran away, away. When danger reared its ugly head….etc. I hopped onto the parapet, and I still could not see them, though one had moved to close range.
First rule for first-person shooter: keep moving, Asshat. There I was, a cardboard-cutout target against the sky for their arrows. The design of the stockade was really good; an avatar could not fit between the upright stakes.
Why didn't they pincushion me? Two were at close range, but still unseen. Now there were six on radar. I could imagine them IMing their Panther-Sisters. “Hey! ru still at work? Log on with your Panther alt! There's a MAN in our village!”
Second rule for first-person shooter: I was in a kinky fantasy, not a first-person shooter. They were going to net me and then have their fun.
A river crossed the way ahead. So I used the same trick that had gotten me into the village…sit, stand, fall, run like hell. Then swim in all my gear.
A war-cry sounded as I ran again and got that little reassuring moment of lagging followed by a change of sim-name at the top of my client window. Soon I was in another village, clearly a rustic Gorean one run by the boys. Empty: the Gorean Masters and their kajirae were still ensconced in their cubes, dreaming their dreamy-dreams of submission, mastery, and pseudo-epic chat.
The green dots were now far away. I'd never even had time to cam in on them.
Later I teleported to a Gorean sky-mall (those Priest-Kings are sure good merchants!) and looked around for some new shirts. I found–guess what?–a nicely tattooed Panther girl. I greeted her OOC, since no such meeting could happen in-character.
“Great avatar,” said I. “Good ink!”
“Thx. But they won't let me into this sim,” she said. “No warrior women.”
“Try this forest,” I said, and gave her a landmark. “I nearly got caught there.”
“Cool, dude. See you.” She teleported away.
I don't want to see her again. It's just a game, right? Why didn't I feel that way running from the Panthers? Maybe male fantasies about the Leather Goddesses of Phobos are not as appealing when the net comes down and a collar is locked around one's throat, geekboy.
[To be continued…]
Corona Anatine
May 14th, 2009
tips for panthers
1
create a male avi
join regular Gor
feedback all the panther related info you hear as a male avi to your panther sisters
2
read up on vietcong tactics / trap construction
the deadfall traps and impaling devices are low tech enough not to upset the priest kings
Jessica Holyoke
May 14th, 2009
So your report on Panthers was how well you could avoid them? THE feminist role on Gor and you skipped around them?
The Wanderer
May 15th, 2009
@ Jessica, who wrote:
“THE feminist role on Gor and you skipped around them?”
Two notes:
1) No…not “skipped.” Ran. I planned to eavesdrop on their chat and get some snaps of “Panthers in the wild.” Then I chickened out. Fled. Buggered off.
But you do give me an idea for another installment. I’ll go back AS a Panther girl.
2) How “feminist” is the Panther ideal when it comes from and remains part of an overarching male fantasy? These Panthers, on the surface, seem straight out of Mary Daly’s Gyn/Ecology. Scratch that surface and you find the same pattern of oppression of the other sex that forms the basis of Gorean culture.
Some progress. I can think of a number of works of Feminist SF that are better written and not premised on oppression.
But hey, it’s just a stupid RPG, right? Maybe so…but I still didn’t want to be the victim of anybody’s fantasy. By the same token, I’m not going to call a Kajira “slut” or “beast,” terms I hear bandied about in Gor.
Ssieth
May 15th, 2009
Feminist? I’m not sure I’d call them that but it does seem like a startling omission not to speak to some of them. Go grab a bunch to have a chat with – they’re roleplayers like the rest of us
Chav
May 15th, 2009
…yeah, you just wrote about how you ran away from them. They’re the least reactionary/oppressive aspect of Gor and you couldn’t be bothered to talk to them and write about them? Being captured isn’t so cool and fun when it happens to you, is that it? Did that give you any insight into what the Goreans belittle with their misogynist play-acting?
Jessica Holyoke
May 15th, 2009
The reason why I call panthers feminists because ideally if you are a by the book panther, then you reject men’s society that would have a woman be either a slave or trapped in the ways a free woman is. If you are not a by the book panther, or a panfur as they are sometimes called, then its a bunch of capture, sex and release. There are both groups and the latter is not really feminist.
Emperor Norton Hears a Who?
May 15th, 2009
You do realize Wander they were most likely avoiding you. The story I got is the women in these places get an endless line of guy aggressively trying to be their slave boys. Most likely they saw you are just another n00b looking for freebee kinky sex and not there to roll play.
Quit being a coward and go back and talk to them.
The Wanderer
May 15th, 2009
Thanks for the feedback. Points taken! Captured or not, I’ll go back and try to talk to them, as a male avatar. If I get raped, you’ll get your lulz about it right here.
Scylla Rhiadra
May 15th, 2009
I would certainly not claim to speak for the entire VERY broad range of approaches to “feminism,” but I do think, on the whole, that most would NOT call panthers feminist.
In part, this is because I think The Wanderer is right when he notes that what the panthers represent remains embedded within an “overarching male fantasy”: the panthers make no “sense” outside of the larger context of Gor.
More important, for me anyway, is that feminism does not simply oppose male hegemony, nor does it seek merely to “turn the tables” on men, as the panthers seem to be doing. Rather, feminism most usually locates its views on gender relations within a reformulation of models of how power is deployed and shared. The most usual model for feminist approaches to power highlights consensus, diversity, and openness; it rejects the “classic” male paradigm of top-down authority. It certainly does NOT embrace violence and physical force which, again, seem to be very much what the panthers are about.
Tristan Belgar
May 16th, 2009
Watcher, I’d recommend walking straight up to them, without a weapon in hand, and offer them something to trade. Be polite and non-confrontational and there’s a good chance you won’t be dressed in pretty silks and dancing around the campfire for them by nightfall.
No guarantees, though.
Calling panthers feminists or not is missing the point a bit. They’re not a bunch of plucky 1970s feministas fighting the patriarchy from the forests. They’re as barbaric as everyone else on Gor; perfectly willing for slaves to be used, traded and abused, as long as it’s not they themselves who are the slaves.
However, despite the common view of Norman’s women being dependent on men, he treats them with a certain nobility. For example:
—
He regarded her.
“I am not your slave,” she said.
“The throne of the Ubara of Ar,” he said, ” is empty.
They looked at one another.
“Thank you,” she said, “Ubar.”
“I will have all arrangements made,” he said, “for your investiture as Ubara of Ar.”
“But,” she said, “Marlenus, I do not wish to be Ubara of Ar.”
“I have the forests,” she said.
Marlenus could not speak.
“It seems,” he said, “that I am not always victorious.”
“No,” she said, “Marlenus, you have been victorious.”
He looked at her, puzzled.
“I love you,” she said. “I loved you even before I knew you, but I will not wear your collar and I will not share your throne.”
“I do not understand,” he said. I had not thought, ever, to see the Ubar as he stood there, looming over this woman, whom he might, did he choose, seize and own, but standing there numb, not understanding.”
You do not understand,” said she, “because I am a woman.”
He shook his head.
“It is called freedom,” she said.
Then Verna turned away from him, in the skins of a panther woman. “I shall wait for my women in the forest,” she said. “Tell them to find me there.”
Jessica Holyoke
May 16th, 2009
Scylla,
The panthers, to me when they are by the book, I suppose could be said to turn the tables on men because they do take men as slaves and turn around and sell and trade them. But the part about them not making sense outside of Gor is confusing because they are part of Gor itself, so they wouldn’t make sense if you took them out of that context by definition.
It would be like saying that being a Jedi is your religion…no, its like people going around speaking Klingon…no….ok, poor examples.
But in a Nietzschean will to power type world, do you think the women who would protest the masculine status quo would march and make signs?
We
May 16th, 2009
As I see and understand it, all women in the Gor books are simply large examples of “Even this personality of woman can be broken and turned into a willing slave!”. So the strength that any of them shows in the beginning in the books is only there to be served as a counterpoint to the submission they inevitably are forced by Norman’s terrible writing to show at the end.
Course no one really goes “by the books” and why would you, the books are god awful, pure 6th grade horny teen fantasy by a person who never mentally progressed past that.
corona anatine
May 17th, 2009
ideally if you are a by the book panther
some thoughts
they are either escaped slaves or born in woods
yet according to what i understand of gor slave girls are the product of millenia of selective breeding – and should not therefore want freedom
therefore the panthers should in the main consist of free women who have fled
if children are born there – then some would be males
such boys would be brought up in a female dominant society
some of which as adults would inevitably find their way back into mainstream gorean cities
taking with them the inbuilt belief that women are superior or at the very least equal
this would inevitably raise the status of women in gorean culture
2
the strange way that all panthers seem to be restricted to animal furs and spears
if they capture males then they would also capture male weapons and garments and equipment
therefore a typical band of panthers should have the same gear and weapons as gorean males
any group of humans that has the strength to take on and kill big cats would have the strength to wield male weapons – even if only the smaller ones
and a society of outlaws in a forest setting would gain physical strength which would match that of males
now
given they are outlaws some groups at least would team up with male outlaw groups
they would lack the contraceptive implants routinely gievn to kajira and therefore the birth rate among panthers would be much higher
it would not be many generations before the number of humans in such groups which promote female equality would outnumber the male domination goreans
the end result should be fairly obvious
corona anatine
May 17th, 2009
history and archeology in the real world show that every society where there has been an unequal balance of power sharing between the sexes is inherently unstable and inevitably collapses
the sharing of power between the sexes may not be in the same spheres of influence within a society – but it is always approximately equal – even in Islam this is the case
mothers in law in islamic cultures wield formidable power within the household
gor is a society of humans and therefore it also has to have a equality of power between the sexes or it is unstable and on the verge of revolutionary collapse either from inside or from external forces
Lady Anahit
May 25th, 2009
panther girls ARE considered ‘free women’ {Slave Girl of Gor}i need the exact quote to this please help
samira_alqaifi@yahoo.com
Enlai
Mar 24th, 2011
Stumbled upon your post and thought it was a riot. On sim I’m from you would have been capped so fast its not even funny. As you saw more than one start to come on they may have suspected a raid was starting if they say you. Best move would be too ooc im one of them to avoid any problems. Like many parts of Gor they can be nice if you play it smart. If your seriously newer to Gor some will be more willing to help.