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.

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!

no fecking thanks mate.

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

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.

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.”

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.

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

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