Less Equals More for the Restrained Life Viewer

by Jessica Holyoke on 12/11/09 at 8:00 am

Better bondage in Second Life

by Jessica Holyoke

Rl1

When you hear about a new Viewer, usually you hear about the new things you can do with it; it will run faster, it can encypt your IM's, it can make your boobies jiggle.   (And honestly, I would be worried about a company complaining about not being able to read your private messages.)   But there is a viewer that provides less experience for the user, the Restrained Life Viewer or RLV.

RLV is an addition to the main SL viewer that allows for other items and people to control your SL experience.  If you wear the right attachments, then you can be forced to sit on a poseball.  You can be not only stripped nude but made to wear skin or other attachments.  You can be frozen and unable to move, intentionally, not because of lag.  You can be gagged and unable to speak in main chat, understand main chat, or be able to see peoples' names.  You can be trapped and unable to be teleported or teleported against your wishes. 

Rlv1

An example of the viewer is that there is a scripted apple that if you wear it, it turns you into a tree, with branches, bark, and leaves.  Then you as the tree sprouts another apple that can turn someone else into a tree.  You cannot move, you cannot talk, you look like a tree.

But the interesting feature with the traps is that RLV makes SL more socially interactive. 

If you get trapped, and the settings are right, you have to get someone else to release you from the trap.  You can't use tricks to get out, you have to wait for someone and then convince them to let you go.  Its a little like creating a socially interactive game that depends on being social to be successful.  

RL10 

Is RLV compatible with Immersive Workspaces and Second Life Enterprise?

14 Responses to “Less Equals More for the Restrained Life Viewer”

  1. MattyK Snowpaw

    Nov 12th, 2009

    I use the RLV API on Emerald, it’s quite an amusing little toy when you have things like OpenCollar, and while it can seriously dampen your freedom, allows some interesting experiences from said “traps”.

  2. This is an advertisement

    Nov 12th, 2009

    Great advertisement, how much did they pay?

  3. mh

    Nov 12th, 2009

    I think most organizations don’t really want the users to have total freedom in world to begin with due to risk of it becoming a time wasting playground.

    For this reason RLV like functionality will I think become the norm for many.

    For example, taking over control the avatars camera and cutting off ability to open unmonitored chat windows could be very useful minimal restrictions for presentations.

    Also a single sim configuration could perform multiple roles simply by using the technology to control a given AV’s path or ability to interact with things along a path.

    And after all RLV is the uber Dom-fantasy come true. How could a corporation not love it?

  4. Chloe Constantine

    Nov 13th, 2009

    Cool! That’s us at Think Kink. And a really neat pic. Thanks to whoever took it :)

    As to RLV. I think the piece is really well written. I’m told, though, that an SL modeling agency uses RLV to ensure appropriate changes of clothing for the models. Which is a really cool idea.

  5. DagnyT Dagger

    Nov 13th, 2009

    RLV is a great enhancement tool. It helps to better create the feeling of not being in control. For instance, if one is blindfolded, they can be made to not see names or locations. They’ll have no idea where they are, or who is around them.

    Sadly, many people over-use it, and the RVL user becomes little more than an animated Barbie doll.

  6. Chloe Constantine

    Nov 13th, 2009

    Nice comments about RLV. I thought that was a well-balanced article. It’s also cool that you used a picture of the Think Kink store.

    I am aware of a modeling agency using RLV to change outfits for the models.. so.. it’s not just in the realm of restrictions. But.. it is fun to use it that way

  7. Scylla Rhiadra

    Nov 13th, 2009

    What is required to get out of a trap is not “social skills,” which implies a two-way model of communication (at least), but rather an ability to submit oneself to the expectations of one’s “rescuer,” which is something quite different. In essence, “saying the right thing” to obtain release means allowing someone else to determine what one says: submitting, in other words, to a kind of ventriloquism. There is undoubtedly a skill, and a challenge, to that kind of submission, but it’s not, in fact, real communication at all.

    I think it would have been interesting had this article explored the issue of “escape” from voluntary restraint. With some attachments, the sub is, in fact, incapable of releasing himself/herself at all, without logging out and making adjustments (I think) to the viewer. Depending upon one’s perspective, this either increases the importance of “trust” — or the chances of being forced into behaviours with which one is uncomfortable.

    Some of the speculations on non-BDSM uses of the RLV here are interesting, however.

  8. Odeis Kiri

    Nov 13th, 2009

    Now if only there were a decent tutorial on how to use RLV on the net. Oh sure I’ve found a couple. But nothing really straightforward for newbies like me.

  9. Mammon Linden

    Nov 13th, 2009

    “And after all RLV is the uber Dom-fantasy come true. How could a corporation not love it?”

    mh, Linden Lab wants to talk to you soon about a lucrative consulting opportunity for our forthcoming Suit Life Enterprise™ project.

    You clearly understand the corporate customer. My ppl will call you, soon!

    If I may be so forward, lad (or is it lass?) let me add “welcome aboard, mh Linden.”

  10. Sacha Kessel

    Nov 14th, 2009

    Is this article seriously trumpeting the virtues of a viewer designed to reduce the careful relationship between a dominant and a submissive to mere clicks? Oh sure, its the ‘fantasy’ your living, using the UI to help you ‘feel’ more Dominant/submissive. I question anyone who relies on the digital environment to ensure their side in the D/s lifestyle. Next thing we know we’ll have Chris Hanson luring in SL dominants and subs. I mean if you really want to pretend, why not just RP Gor?

  11. Myriam Brianna

    Nov 15th, 2009

    “Is this article seriously trumpeting the virtues of a viewer designed to reduce the careful relationship between a dominant and a submissive to mere clicks?”

    That’s the problem I see, too, with the RLV viewer – and systems like Xcite, for that matter. Instead of taking the time to describe what sub would experience, taking into account the personality of this partner, many a “dominant” in SL instead would click, click, click until there is a completely silenced and usable puppet before them. With Xcite you have – when used wrong – sexual interaction, something deeply personal even in the context of a virtual environment, reduced to an interaction of scripted emotes.

    That said, both systems have their merits. One can use the RLV API and Xcite in a manner that does not destroy the experience, but those who can pull this off would fare well without them, too. Still, the props I value most just give well done visuals and leave further immersion to me, my mirror neurons, and imaginative faculties. And common sense in deciding what I can and cannot do when in bondage or with a bound person before me.

  12. Prof. Archie Lukas

    Nov 16th, 2009

    Role play bullying under a fancy name

    no fecking thanks mate.

    as for total control, why not get a bot instead, far more convenient.

  13. Miss Petunia Amaryllis Courtney Taliaferro, Second Life League of Decency

    Nov 16th, 2009

    Perhaps this tool of perverts can be put to good use! We shall make a silk purse from this sow’s ear!

    Imagine:

    *Restrained Life 2.0: you MUST wear modest clothing and cannot remove it, ever.

    *Your avatar will be swept into wholesome and uplifting events, such as lectures on doily-making or readings by the enlightened and haunted poet, Septimus Severus Legume, then chained to your seat in the lecture hall.

    *You will NOT log off SL until you have completed a series of tests to show you have been uplifted morally.

    *You may be flogged by Linden Lab Beadles™ for failure to be uplifted. For each flogging your bank account will be debited and the proceeds given to Linden Lab (with my organization getting it’s 10% dividend).

    *Repeated failures to be purified morally will result in automatic teleport for “enrollment” in Mr. Bumbles’ School For Young Miscreants™.

    To work, code-monkeys! We have a mission! Oh brave new world, that has such restraint in it!

  14. Corvan Nansen

    Nov 18th, 2009

    I keep making this distinction over and over again, and it’s amazing to me how many people don’t think of it themselves, and then smack their foreheads with an “Of course!” when shown to them.

    For context, I run RLV at all but a very few exceptional times in SL. I am a submissive, in a D/s relationship.

    The distinction to be made is between submission and bondage. If I am told to stay in one place and I do so voluntarily, that is an act of submission. If I am leashed to a post and because I’m running RLV unable to remove the collar the leash is attached to and hence unable to leave that location, that’s bondage. RLV is completely irrelevant to submission and totally relevant to bondage. Both submission and bondage are good and wonderful and fun, but they are entirely different things.

    I like to think that I am a good submissive for my Miss. I am also very fond of strict and restrictive bondage. Both give Miss and I great pleasure and fulfilment, and without RLV the second would really be play-acting. With RLV it’s much closer to reality.

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