Eudeamon : what now ?

Some time has passed since S-6734's release. During that time, several other Banes (L-1109, V-4275, L-8746 and others) were born and enjoyed (sort of) their short sentences their own personal way. All of them learned how hard Banishment is, how alienating and sometimes depressing it is to not be able to communicate with friends in a world where communication is the key. But at the same time it is very rewarding, like an accomplishment, a challenge, and a vacation from the everyday concerns. From all I could read and all I've discussed about with friends, SL Banishment has the exact same effect it has on Katrina in the novel. I would call it "asymmetrical isolation" as the Bane is isolated from the world but the world is not isolated from the Bane. To pull the plug off would be "symmetrical isolation", you just cease to exist but it frankly becomes old and unrewarding very quickly. This, on the other hand, to me is BDSM at its best. Helplessness and vulnerability to an entity (the Custodian), and safety and isolation from the rest of the world.

Isolation... well sort of. It's more a matter of focusing the attention on something in particular instead of the usual scattering and waste of time. Banishment requires an Operator (a human) and/or a Custodian (a machine) to "handle" the Bane and monitor/correct her actions. For now, the two are the same because there is no script made to punish the Bane for her Protocol Violations yet. Some people are on it already. I will be working on a Custodian script as well, that will interface with the Spy plugin of my stuff (as in : the remote will have a special Custodian sub-menu and both scripts will communicate and act like one). I have done the specs already and have plenty of wicked ideas. But as it will take a while before I'm even able to start coding (some other projects are higher priority), I will not talk about what it does yet. And I need to build ground rules for a Banishment Project prior to starting anything technical. And last but not least, I don't want other people to stop their work when learning I'm working on something similar, while their creativity and experiences are what the project needs the most.

So far the group will be divided in two categories : Banes and Operators. The former will have to buy a Banesuit, while the latter will be paid to monitor the Banes (several Banes per Operator). Now will they be paid by the Banes, or by a donator (me for the matter), I still don't know. It will be a business, I'm pretty sure of it, because it requires time to monitor someone, leading to a retribution. What I'm sure of is it will be a select business, not just anybody will be able to join. To be a Bane requires an iron will and a strong personality. And only non-violent "criminals" will be allowed to go for Banishment.

So there will be Operators, and there will be Custodians. N Banes per Operator, and every Bane will have her own wicked Custodian. The Custodian-to-Eudeamon transition will of course require human roleplay (I may be specialized in AI, there is no such thing as an AI yet, let alone coded in LSL. lol). That's where things have to be really kept under control because each Eudeamon will be unique. Will an Eudeamon played by an Operator ? Or by the Bane's best friend ? I would love the second option but that would require the friend to read the novel, and that would lead to clashes when other friends learn they have not been "selected" to be part of the Bane's mind.

Mind. I'm weighting my words here. What is an Eudeamon anyway ? Barebones it is something that enters your mind, judges your inner self and decides your "value". It leads to inner peace, it creates a symbiosis that transcends human abilities, to make something almost supernatural out of the poor isolated hopeless creature, to become a human computer. In the novel we only hear about "good" Eudeamonic-Banes, those who have been judged "worthy" and granted "salvation" by their Eudeamons. But what about the others ? Those whose mind is dark enough to create a conflict with the Eudeamon ? How do they survive ? Do they turn insane ? Do they desperately attempt redemption ? Do they exist at all ? We don't know. As I said, each case is unique and that's what I want to reproduce here. The Banishment Project might become an institution one day, but it will never be an industry. Of course there will be little ways to tell one Bane from another but inside their helmets, the experience has to be unique and earned. Those who come demanding "I want to try Banishment ! Put me in a Banesuit ! Show me my Eudeamon !" will be kindly ignored.

But there is no such thing as a mind-reading computer yet. Someone has to read the Bane's mind and that's where S-6734's brilliant idea of writing her own experience down on notecards solves the problem. Other Banes did the same and I think this is the key to a successful Banishment experience. But let's take a break here. How does it work in the novel ?

Katrina is banished and starts thinking about her own condition, strives to keep her own sanity, and suffers merciless punishments from an autistic computer solely programmed to make her life miserable. But as her mind takes the heat and as time passes, that computer learns about her inner self. After some time (months usually, but in Katrina's case it went faster due to the child rescue), the Custodian is able to decipher all these thoughts, to put a pattern on them, and to find the right way to learn and anticipate the future violations (it's what it has been programmed for in the first place). And it judges. One day, the Custodian strays from its primary function and you know the rest.

The learning process is long, and I would very much compare it with reading notecards written by the Bane herself in SL. The Bane writes her thoughts, fears, findings, insights... Not necessarily long stories (I would encourage her to keep things short), but key informations that would be useful to "improve the efficiency" (whatever the meaning) of the sentence. These notecards would be aimed at the Operator and used as a base to the roleplay. Saying too much only gives them more means make her life even worse, while saying too little delays the ability to turn the Custodian into an Eudeamon. There are several possibilities : the Bane could keep all the notecards to herself until she decides to give them to someone in particular, or she could keep them until an Operator requests them and gives them to a friend of the Bane's, or something in the middle.

Perhaps the Operator will be in charge of deciding when to hand the notecards to the person who will take the role of the Bane's Eudeamon, if any. Perhaps several friends can incarnate the Eudeamon even (who said it could not be schizophrenic)... Perhaps most Banes shall never find their Eudeamon because their sentences are too short (I would tend to think the majority of Banes will be in this case, as it's about isolation in the first place). As I said earlier, this Project will not be a "find your own Eudeamon in ten days" diet program.

Anyway this duality Isolation/Salvation is the key part of the Project. Some people will come for the first part, others for the second one. Both will have to be carefully thought, tested, trashed, thought again, tested again... but we have time.

RealRestraint update 1.12

Finally ! I've been quiet for a while, working on my stuff for this update and finally released it last Saturday. Well first of all let me explain what an update really means. As I use my stuff a lot (even if not always the prims I designed), I immediately spot weaknesses and things I would want to add. And customers sometimes send suggestions (okay, a lot of them send a lot of suggestions :p), so an update is the result of a long process.

When I decide to go for it, I start working on it relentlessly until everything gets ironed out, it usually lasts two weeks. And then, notecards to write, is everything there ? Have I not forgotten anything ? Let's check again. No I did that. Did I ? Shoot, what is the version of this script again, did I compile it or is it still on my local hard drive. I check. Oh noes SL has crashed again ! And so on. It can drive you nuts, really.

Finally, the big jump, the day of release. Usually I try to release at the beginning of weekends so people have time to enjoy the new features, and I have time to correct mistakes when there is any (I say "when", not "if"). But it's a loooong process. Let's see : there are 11 items to update, every one of them being quite different from the other. Some require a new Leash script, others require a new RealKey, some require new scripts, and some even require a new build. Now, every content creator knows that SL must not be trusted. It crashes, it rolls back, it reverts permissions, a pure joy. Each product is a list of items contained in a folder, that must be put in a box, the box needing a notecard which embeds another one, and a landmark. Each box goes into the sales server and voila.

Only... this is an update, not a new release. This means that all the items must be put into the update servers (the white mushrooms), and this is where it gets funny. The Police handcuffs are in 3 versions (basic, elbows, belt), the shackles have 3 parts (of 4 items each average), and the other items are quite scattered and heterogeneous. And my inventory is a mess. lol. So it's not easy. Not mentioning that there is not 1 server but 15 scripts, each almost identical to the others, but different enough to recognize the footprint of the item to be updated.

So there are several thousands ways to make mistakes and to only spot them after the update, and it took more than 8 hours to process it all. Busy day. But not rushing, being patient and double-checking every double-check helped. Now the update 1.12 is out.

Hah ! You really thought I would go technical and put release notes here, right ? You wanted to be bashed with "Fixed this and Changed that" lines, just for your geek pleasure ? You perv. This is a well-educated blog, you know. Check my shop for details. :p

Eudeamon (end... for now)

So it's over now, S-6734 is no more, and Sophia Barrett is reborn. I could release her last Sunday in the afternoon, and we were not alone... The moment she could hear words from someone who was not me was... strong, to say the least. It took a while to unlock all the restraints from the Banesuit and discover the fragile girl beneath, smiling. It really is like a chrysalis, after all. I checked for Banesuit Withdrawal Syndrome but fortunately there was none. She was not speaking very clearly (two weeks gagged and all that) but I could gather that she was feeling good and enjoying fresh air. After being denied almost everything for so long, even the simplest things can give you pleasure. There had been no protocol violation prior to her release, as she behaved in an exemplary manner. She was feeling a bit depressed, that's true, but the hope of freedom helped her staying in the tracks. But... part of her wanted to stay in the suit. I could tell by looking at her.

And we discussed, OOC. Not for as long as I wished (we both had some obligations) but enough to point out what was good and what was going to be improved (I sound like my boss here, lol). Essentially, boredom due to S-6734 depleting her pool of interesting places to visit. Not being able to touch anything is somewhat unnerving as well (although it's a powerful part of the isolation as the sub has to make people understand that she's asking for help to, say, open a door). Talking is of course to be prevented, but hearing should not be at all times I think. After all Banes are able to hear. And last but not least, monitoring. That's the Eudeamon part and can be roleplayed well enough to transcend the isolation itself, and make the whole experience unforgettable. But it needs a few means of coercion (right now it's only monitoring, one cannot act remotely on the Bane). I will be working on it soon.

The only important thing is that she loved it, as I did. And that she does not want to be back in a Banesuit again before some time, which for someone like Sophia means a lot, trust me. We're already discussing about the Project and all that, how to make the perfect Banesuit to match the one of the novel, how to organize things so one Bane gets one Operator, things like that.

But it seems other people are having a good time already :) I would like to mention Subbie Union, where Lex and Velicia are experiencing an isolation not far from Banishment, and doing a good job at it. Better, they even published an awesome tutorial about a do-it-yourself Banesuit. With some of Marine in the gear (no, not in the suit. Hehe). This is an interesting blog by the way, not only about this particular kink. Check it out there : Subbie Union

There are so many things to say about all this, and yet so few ways to say them. Because it is so personal, you know. I will probably talk about it more in the future because it's too good to be put aside :)

Eudeamon (2)

This story has been making so much noise around us lately... The experiment is going as planned, the subject S-6734 is behaving in accordance to the rules of her sentence.

Subject has expressed concerns about her own captivity. Feeling lonely, unable to do anything, isolated from the outside world for a long time can get on your nerves, and even S-6734 gets the blues from her past life. Although the experiment is really aimed at feeling totally isolated, and on this matter it is a total success, I am glad her sentence is almost over so she can recover and reunite with her friends.

I have received quite a lot of requests from people who want to try the Banesuit... To these people I want to say two things : thank you for your interest and please reconsider. Think about Katrina and her fantasies that turned into a nightmare in no time. It is fucking hard and depressing to be alone, believe me.

It just so happens that I have not experimented on S-6734 without knowing how it feels first. Oh I was not in a Banesuit, I had never even heard of this novel at that time, but I was trussed up to a wall, in an empty skybox, forbidden to IM, unable to move, always staring at the same wall in front of me... and it lasted a full week. I do know how it feels to be alone.

What S-6734 is missing the most is not her friends (although she does miss them terribly), but another Bane. More than one even. I do want more Banes around. But I want to make some additional scripts to reinforce the control and restrictiveness of the Banesuit first : punishments, requirements and if possible the "keep distance from other Banes" rule. I want it to be hard, really hard, so the experience is real.

Being a Bane is no walk in the park. Hehe. But I'm here for S-6734.

PS : Thank you all for your comments, it shows how powerful the novel is for us...

Eudeamon

Sophia Barrett. If you know her you can't help but worship her for her awesomeness, niceness and kinkiness. I mean, it's impossible not to love her, she's such a sweetie. And a hell of a perfectionist, too. And she's into tight, inescapable, long-term bondage. And into latex, like me.

We have known each other for months and like I said in a previous post, she helped me a lot when I was still starting my business. What I started to do to her this weekend was part of my effort to tell her how grateful I am. Let me explain.

She's into latex, ok. Who isn't ? She's quite different from your average latex-whore though, it is more a religion to her. No wonder, she founded the Latex Dolls and Latexia in the first place. A religion, I'm telling you. And Saturday she shared it with me, she introduced me to one of her inspirations : Eudeamon. A novel about... it's difficult to explain. It's about unconditional love, of course, loneliness, rebirth... and a flavor of latex. It's not a fetish novel, and is certainly not meant to be erotic (there are like a handful of such paragraphs). The story is brilliant, the background, rock-solid. Available online for free, it's quite long (91 pages) but you'll read it in one day like I did. The author should really start to write books for a living if you ask me. Don't hesitate to congratulate her.

You can read it there : www.evil-dolly.com/Eudeamon.doc

Now why am I talking about this novel ? Well, because the book... shook me a little. In a positive way. It's definitely food for thoughts, the kind of book that makes you think about yourself, how you perceive others, what your kinks really mean... It gives you a glance about sub-space, about isolation, despair and how to transcend them, about the limits of human sanity. Like meditation. I feel better now that I've read this book although I cannot clearly point out why. But who cares. Read this book, and you'll know.

Back to Sophia. Sophia Barrett has chosen to become a Bane. She is now S-6734, sometimes called Sophia Bane by her monitoring agent -- me. She is isolated from the outside world by her Banesuit, trapped in her own personal walking prison, monitored by senseless people who are her only link to society. She is mute and deaf except to her monitor, mercilessly bound and yet, she is authorized to do whatever she wants and go wherever she wants.

She goes to public places like Bondage Ranch, slowly hobbling her way among the free, who come mildly amused at the sight of a latex-clad, hooded bound girl, apparently unaware of their comments. Sometimes one tries to communicate with her, but quickly gives up as she can not respond in any way but the most primitive ones. Frustration, arousal build up inside her... and nobody notices. Eventually people avoid her, then finally ignore her. She's alone in the crowd, invisible like a ghost, helpless like a child. A roaming prisoner.

She tried to communicate with her friends Tess and Pseudo but they also gave up after a while. It had pointed a malfunction in her isolation system by the way, and I had to fix it. I quickly summoned her to the nearest maintenance station and now she's properly isolated again. Her Banesuit informs me on her every movement and allows me to give some feedback and orders from the distance. I can also pleasure her when I feel like it (she's a good Bane, very obedient), but I refrain from doing it too often. Hehe.

She loves her new situation, and I enjoy monitoring her very much. She's like an experiment. But don't get me wrong, I perfectly know what I'm doing to her mind, and I do know it will be hard for her sometimes. I'm trying to make her experience as painless and rewarding as possible, it's part of the rehabilitation contract. But I will not yield unless she safewords. For now, she is mine, totally.

Maybe with time more Banes will roam SL. I would love to see that.

And also...

... I envy her.

RestrainedLife 1.03

Well I promised I wouldn't release a new version every three days... well it's too hard to keep. lol. After much discussion with Henri and some bug-hunting (especially one which was making the linux viewer crash and not the windows one), plus a new feature or two, I decided to release the 1.03 yesterday.

Huh ? Where is the 1.02 ?? Well Henri already released his 1.02 and includes the RestrainedLife features in his Cool Viewer so, in order to not confuse the users (and to avoid being bogged down by questions) we agreed it would be better to be a 1.03 finally.

New features :
* Some improvements (user-friendliness, security)
* Edit and Rez prevention on demand. When you're restrained, you're not supposed to be able to build, are you ? Well, you are by default but if your owner decides playtime is over... y'know :)

I'd like to talk a bit about these last features. Ollalla wanted me to ensure the cells in SLBI were secure. Totally secure. She jailed me with my cuffs and my beloved Fairlight boots locked (cuffs blocked, as always, I couldn't imagine otherwise). At first she didn't tell me why, just that it was... "a test". Of course I was feeling good and light-headed already but then she explained what she intended me to do. The rules were simple : I was expected to escape the cell. Using the custom viewer (I'm forbidden to use the regular one anyway). The locked boots prevented me from teleporting to another place or to even sit on a chair across a distance.

I'm no cheater so I didn't want at first but she convinced me easily. She told me that I was going to be punished very severely if I was still in the cell when she comes back and I better start trying right away. I was a bit puzzled at first because I designed the cells with security in mind so finding a way out was not an easy task. She told me she expected a list on her desk with all my attempts and their results.

So I did. I tried everything I could (even the most wicked ways) and eventually depleted my ideas. I wrote everything down and gave her the list (it was not on her desk mind you, for I was still in my cell the day after). Oh I could escape once but she was around and she put me back in, thanking me and telling me to try something else. She was quite impressed with the list.

I loved the frustration, the secureness of the cell, and was despaired for a while... you know that kind of mixed feelings... But on top of it, I loved Ollalla's brilliant idea. She wanted me to realize I still had to improve my stuff, and how. Being no techie, she couldn't point the problems out directly but she always finds a way :) What a blast ! I really felt trapped, like never before in SL.

So here it is, the 1.03 mostly comes from that frustration, that despair, and that mild deception when I could find a couple of ways to escape (which were hindered by my cuffs, I needed them off to test). 1.03 solves them all with the No-edit and No-rez restrictions now.

Thank you Sugar ^_^

RestrainedLife 1.01

Just a quick release with a couple of bugfixes : emotes are more tightly monitored (OOC goes through, special characters in [ ()"^_-=* ] are prohibited, otherwise the message is truncated), IMs going through when in Busy mode are now scrambled too, chat bubbles emotes have been butch... restricted.

It also includes a couple of changes and fixes from Henri Beauchamp's own patch (a derivative from my own), although we decided to fork our codes because he wishes to integrate the features in his own Cool Viewer, which is not only BDSM-related. Thank you Henri !

Therefore, Mo Noel will be compiling for Mac and Loom Kish for Linux, and I want to thank them both for taking care of that part of the job. Thanks :)

Promised I won't release a viewer every three days. As fixes are included the code will get more stable and eventually we'll only be keeping up to the official SL viewer progress.

My plans for the near future

I keep receiving suggestions, which is nice, and asking what I'm gonna do next. Well here goes. At the time of this writing I have just released the 1.0 version of RestrainedLife, the SLBI has just open, everything works correctly, so I will take a rest. Perhaps log a bit less, but certainly spend more time having fun than working.

So, having fun first.

It's been a couple of months I have released my RR Shibari and I'm... "nudged" at releasing ropes for the legs as well. A lot. Well relax, the prototype is in my house, but far from being finished. I want nice animations and couldn't find the time to make them recently. Now that things are settling a little, I will finish the ropes.

So, RR Shibari Legs next.

I have yet to adapt my own stuff to my viewer. It would be silly that every content creator provides restraints compatible with RestrainedLife but me ! I'm sure it will happen unless I move my ass quickly. But I don't want to issue an update just to add these scripts, it would be better if it had some value-added. There are a couple of fixes I want to integrate anyway.

So, update my stuff next.

And I have almost finished a ring gag. Its garble script is still under testing but it will work pretty much like the RR ballgag.

So, release a ring gag next.

The rest... I have some things to do (not a lot remaining) but I don't have clear ideas yet.

Why do I do all this ? Flashback... (cont'd)

I just can't stop talking... but hey I have not finished bashing you with my little story !

So they were a success and the more feedback I got the more work I was producing. Updates became necessary and overall went smoothly (I'd love to talk about the many little anecdotes I experienced such as the time I had to issue a script to my all my 100 customers after a week because I simply forgot to include the update part in the cuffs). My vendors were multiplying, Sophia Barrett the bubble girl even allowed me to squat her spot at Latexia (which she founded in the first place), and paid an ad for my cuffs for months (yes she's that nice !).

I quickly realized I had created a niche. Before I started, people liked SL restraints for the animations they triggered, and for their design. My stuff is different, not so good-looking but aimed at making the keyholder feel almighty and the sub... helpless. It is aimed at experiencing D/s more than playing it. Now don't get me wrong, everyone has their own kink, I'm not saying I have changed the BDSM landscape that much, and my goal was certainly not to compete against my friends Ame and Lulu. Some people love the design, some people love the scripts. I could have been much more aggressive on the market but... that's just not my style. And I still see SL and its scripting language as toys (although the relationships I have built there, while strictly online, are real).

No, my real goal, and you will laugh at this, was to raise the bar. That could be the real reason why I do all this : SL offered me a challenge, and I took it up. Oh I know what you're thinking : "That's a bright speech but money is spent, it's just commercial after all". No it isn't only commercial. If it were I would have bought sims, hired personnel to help me with the build, scripts and customer support, advertised to death, and undermined competition. I could have done all that. But I'm still the amateurish type, my shop is still ridiculously small and on a crappy mainland sim (yes, right where I lived before, I'm sentimental). If I wanted to make it a job I would have left my RL one, I can do that but I'm not crazy. I do that for the fun of it first.

Now, I know that most of my ideas have been copied and mimicked, I have been mad about it in the past but now I know better than to give a damn. Ideas cannot be patented, and other creators are imitated too. It would have been nice to have given me credit at least, as far as I know only Lulu did when she released her prisoner plugin, using my HUD cache concept. The others are just not grateful, or too proud to admit some of their ideas are not their owns.

So I think that answers the question "Why do I do all this ?". Because I must do something, because it's quite a challenge and because I love what I do. I know some people see me as some greedy monster... I won't bother trying to prove them wrong besides this blog entry.

And that was only about my business, I have not even talked about SLBI and Tesscatraz. I will later...

Why do I do all this ? Flashback...

I got asked this question quite a few times. Why did I spend so much time working, especially during the last few weeks on my stuff (including customer support), the viewer, the SLBI and Tesscatraz, not counting my many personal projects ?

Well not for the money obviously. I have a RL job and earn a comfortable income. And it's taking me quite some time and energy every day. Now with what I'm involved here I earn even more money but enjoy even less time to spend it. That's for the negative side.

I work because I can't do otherwise. I can't stand being passive, unproductive. Call me a perfect product of the modern world or a workaholic but it's the sad truth, I have to do something. But I love what I do. Let me give a bit of a background story and please don't think I'm selfish or megalomaniac, quite the contrary I'm quite modest usually. I will try to give my unbiased point of view upon things as they were by then.

When I signed up for a SL account a little more than one year ago, I had nothing to do and everything to explore. I quickly discovered BDSM there, and its community that I enjoyed right away. I mean, the very first day someone (Jerome Harford) chats with me and decides to offer me a set of Lulu's leather cuffs ! L$750 ! To a total and clueless stranger ! I worn them proudly for quite a while, and enjoyed them greatly. I decided to go along, exploring other restraints as well, because as a developer the wicked nature of their scripting hooked me right away.

And here is what I found : Lulu Ludovico's and Amethyst Rosencrans's cuffs were the most comprehensive of all the brands and... that was it. Their respective stuff were quite different and complementary but that could not be enough. Especially considering that the Kyrah Abattoir's KDC gear was stunningly looking but its scripting was not very elaborate. Now I'm talking about attachments, because good cages were very hard to find (I remember the HtF Designs ones which were very good).

I like things that lock, that I wear but are controlled by someone else (or at least not by me for a while). I like wicked behaviors and most of all, I like to innovate. At that time I was very enthusiastic because I'd just upgraded my account to Premium and had some money to spend and a First Land in Pak (one of the last of the First Land program, now the place where my little shop is located). First things first, I wanted all that KDC was offering. I mean, even now Kyrah's design is top-notch and it's the very must-have. I only had to script a little to replace her scripts with mine, and make them lockable the way I wanted. And I did. Oh, it's not hard to make an attachment to lock, all it takes is to make it complain by IM to someone when detached. With a couple of precautions it works like a charm.

One day I met Amethyst after losing my KDC armbinder her Allure sim (a very dear sim in which I was secretly working most of the time), and we immediately sympathized. She gave me a lot of advices, insights, opinions about what was going on... I think she gave me the kick start. By the way I remember her talking about Sociolotron, in which a restrained avatar stays restrained until released by the keyholder, no matter what she tries. Now the RestrainedLife viewer is kinda issued from that idea when I think about it...

One of my best friends by then was Alyssa Shenley, who was living with me in Pak. She gave me a lot of advices and feedback ("now why not put a menu on that lockable script of yours ?", "a transparent thing to block your clicks ? That's wicked !" and so on). I met Atmu Evans the sexy latex alien by then, with whom I was (and still am) very close and who was beginning to enjoy my scripts a lot, always wanting more, testing, testing, testing... I remember her first comment when she saw my scripts : "You're going to be a millionaire !", to which I answered my usual "naah". She was right, of course. RubberSlave Leroux was with me too since the beginning and tested the very first prototype of my scripts. And I met Coventina Dalgleish and her harem of adorable slavegirls, who supported me right from the start when I showed her my stuff. I also met Lillani Lowell (owner of Dictatorshop and designer of the Lockguard spec) to whom I demonstrated a version of my script, and who gave me advices too.

I was working with the bests.

And while I was testing my stuff outside with Atmu, I met Ollalla Sugarbeet while browsing in the Little Shop of Kink. She noticed the unlocked prototype of handcuffs I was wearing, which were very tiny, and showed a lot of enthusiasm about them. I gave her a pair. For a week she kept giving me feedback and suggestions, until one day I told her I wanted to sell them (that was after the 100th hint from my friends that I should sell them. lol). She gave me a lot of priceless advices regarding the costs, manuals, look'n'feel, versatility. I remember one day when she came to my skybox and I showed her the tiny key on the unlocked cuff : "omg they look like... exact !".

Let's be honest. I was not a great builder and the build of the cuffs had only one interest : realism and very tiny prims. They are a replica of the ones I own in RL and made them from the measurements I took, so they had to be sober and tiny. But otherwise they're very simple and some freebies are designed better. So I shot for realism rather than for gorgeous-looking surreal stuff. Realism means they got to do what you would expect them to do should you use them in RL. That line of conduct has been hard to keep up, especially since SL is not very realistic in itself, but I did my best. People continuously suggest and nag, and I constantly have to ponder their ideas against my own line.

At that time, Lillani was confined in a big glass cage for the Big Brother contest and I got to talk to show her the cuffs just before release (I had some problems with Lockguard). Oh by the way, she should have won the contest ;)

And I released the cuffs and an ugly-looking version of the straps (4 prims. Pah). Ollalla had demonstrated them for a full week at Bondage Ranch and people were very eager to try them, it was crazy. Now that's only one of the countless things she did to help me, and far from the greatest. It was an immediate success.

To be continued...

SLBI is open ! Again !

So here it goes again. SLBI, for those who don't know, stands for the Second Life Bureau of Investigation, sort of a virtual version of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in RL. But this is not a police group, a griefers group, a militia, or anything nasty like that.

It is a roleplay group. More specifically a bondage roleplay group. Used by the finest roleplayers in SL, this group is about kidnapping and rescuing, a true gem in the overall crappy RP one can see around. Of course most players have female avatars but it is not gender-specific.

I can't talk about the SLBI without introducing its owner and creator : Ollalla Sugarbeet (on the 2nd picture). She's my best SL friend, and holds a good part of my own second life. I would not be where or what I am if I had not met her. I won't throw personal details at you, this blog is not really about me (granted, it is a bit), but let me say that she has put her guts into this project. As she does with every project. You'll see her name regularly here, as we're together a lot and work on the same things. A lot of the most wicked features in my stuff are her ideas in the first place. Self timers with keys available, double use of the RealKey, and others I don't have in mind now, have been her suggestions and are now a great success. But if you mention it to her she will simply smile and discard the compliment in her ever-elegant modest manners :)

But I digress. The SLBI is a roleplay group. It has always had a HQ, which was successively located near The Little Shop of Kink, Kaliwulf Kingdom and now in Zhora. Each move has given it a complete overhaul. The first one was built by Tess Whitcroft (owner of TessTech, builder of Tesscatraz), the second one was built by Sophia Barrett (founder of The Latex Dolls), the third one by me. And it's bigger each time ! Now it is located in Zhora, a sim owned by Chorazin Allen and Ally Boyle, who kindly let us squat there, trying to make it a fully RP sim. And I think we can make it !

The building itself is huge. Lobby, 3 floors plus roof with landing pad (and BBQ), a working elevator, 8 Agents offices, 6 Special Agents offices, Staff offices, Conference room, Operations Center, Interrogation rooms, Rest rooms, Firing range, Maintenance room and of course, 8 cells (the ones the inmates of Tesscatraz loved to hate). It took me 2 weeks to complete but I'm proud of it. Ollalla issued precise specifications, I only built according to them, like a contractor. She prefers the word "slave labor" and I must admit, this was it. I loved it all the way, of course :)

And it's not only about the build, everything is working there : computers linked to a single server, greylist about griefers and cheaters (also networked), cells, doors, chairs, firing range, everything does something. But that's only technical. The real heart of the SLBI is the people who are part of the group, playing and making the cases evolve... a lot of very interesting (and intricate) plots have been unfolded during the past lives of this group and now... it is up again after a few months of sleep.

Let's play.

It keeps evolving

It was funny yesterday. Amethyst Rosencrans (owner of the ever-famous Amethyst brand) and Mo Noel (owner of the MoDesign brand) were trying to compile the RestrainedLife viewer on their respective MacIntoshes, using the patch I've released along with my Windows version. Also Loom Kish told me she could compile on a Mac as well.

It was really looking like a close competition ! I was at work, trying to cheer both of them up while offline, giving advices, hearing about their frustration... and they were trying so hard ! The Mac version was eagerly awaited, I can tell from all the IMs I've received earlier. Of course only one version was sufficient but it really was not a competition, I can assure you. In the end Mo published her version on RapidShare, and at the time of this writing, I've received a message from Orchid (sort of) saying that it's now available on her site (where the windows version is, check the links section). Thank you both, ladies, and I think a good deal of people are also very grateful for your efforts :)

I would like to say something quick about the Mac thing by the way... I like MacOS X, I dislike Windows. I'm now playing SL on a Macbook Pro 2.4 GHz Dual Core SantaRosa (15''), and I love this machine for the user-friendliness and overall look'n' feel. This machine has been bought with some of the money I earn on SL, and I thank all my customers for having given me to do so. But I'm on Windows, using Bootcamp, because the Mac viewer is known to be very buggy. That's why I went through all the pain of compiling the source on this... "operating system". Took me much longer than it should have, considering that it's supposed to be my job. End of the rant.

And now Henri Beauchamp (owner of the Cool Products brand) is trying to get it to compile on Linux, to complete the trio. He will integrate Nicholaz "The Mad Patcher" Beresford's patches, mostly aimed at fixing bugs and crashes. Which makes me think... I've been told that Nicholaz viewer + Marine viewer = a BDSM fan's dream. Hehe. I'll see what I can do. Nicholaz is ok that I integrate his patches, so it's up to me now.

It's evolving, so far it's still under control. The worst thing that could happen is to have 50 versions of the same viewer, compiled and maintained by as many people (all with good intents). I want only 3 viewers : Windows, Mac, Linux, all accessible from the same page (the wiki is good), that will make things easier.

So what is that RestrainedLife thing anyway ?

Ok so this blog is also about technical info. Let's get dirty.

First of all, Residents of Second Life are expected to log in that virtual world thanks to a software they installed on their computer. This software is called a "viewer", sometimes "client" by computer scientists because it connects to remote "servers" and requests "services" such as the right to live a virtual life, no less. But let's call it "viewer" for now.

It just so happens that this viewer has been released as an open-source project in the beginning of the year 2007. This means that anybody can modify its code to add functionalities, fix bugs, and even submit patches to Linden Lab (developers of Second Life) so they integrate the bug fixes and new features into the next versions. Works well and the quality of the regular viewer has greatly increased lately thanks to the open-source community.

Now, my kink is not to add functionalities but... to remove them. To be more precise, to forbid the user from doing some things on request from worn in-world objects, such as detaching them, talking, teleporting... all that makes your you... you.

Wear cuffs, lock them and if you're using that viewer... they will stay on your avatar no matter what you do. And that enhances the experience of being restrained in that virtual world as usually, a locked item can only complain when it's detached without permission, when the user is logged on with the official viewer.

My thoughts about this are complicated, long story short I totally agree with Linden Lab's policy of not being able to force anybody to do anything. This is a land of rights, nobody can be truly enslaved. But the BDSM online world mostly revolves around Roleplay and the unspoken rules that it enforces. I'm not talking about people who mix RL and SL domination, that's another subject, but only about people who, like me, log in to live their kink.

Roleplay. Now what does that mean ? It means that if two people choose to establish an online D/s relationship, the top expects the bottom to obey, learn, respect, accept punishments, overall evolve, all within the rules and limitations of the platform used (here, SL). I love this relationship and it is based on mutual trust only. But this means that you can't really force your sub to do anything, just induce her to do so. No restraint will force her, the props are just props.

It is different if the sub uses the RestrainedLife viewer because it can :
- Render a locked item undetachable
- Prevent speech
- Prevent hearing (with exceptions if needed)
- Prevent sending Instant Messages (with exceptions if needed)
- Prevent receiving Instant Messages (with exceptions if needed)
- Prevent teleporting (with exceptions if needed)
- Prevent sit-tp beyond a short distance (useful for cages)

I will never stress this enough : it is not a mandatory thing when it comes to experiencing BDSM in SL, it just enhances the experience. If you've practiced BDSM in SL before, you'll see why it is a welcome addition.

That was for the introduction of that viewer, if you want to know more, or even give it a try, you may go to my shop in-world (look at the Picks section in my SL profile), and click on the rotating cube on the left.

It is open-source of course, so if you download the executable you'll also get the source code, so you can make sure there is no trick : it doesn't do more nor less than advertised.

When you click on that cube, you are given a folder containing some scripts and a Readme notecard that explains it all. Basically, the RealRestraint products are still sold without the scripts so you have to add them yourself, according to which script does what. For instance, add the NoSendChat to the RR gag.

Then you go to the URL written in the notecard (at the time of this writing it is available on www.erestraint.com/realrestraint, thank you Orchid !), to retrieve the zip file. Once downloaded, uncompress it in your Second Life installation folder, backing your old "SecondLife.exe" file up first because it will be overwritten. The sources are contained inside the "src" folder but most people are only here to play, not to code. Don't forget to run an anti-virus.

Run the new "SecondLife.exe" executable and you're in !

Welcome !

Hello dear Second Life Resident, you somehow managed to stumble upon my little corner of web, looking for... what were you looking for by the way ?

I bid you welcome, fellow-traveler. Before you go further, please allow me to introduce myself. My Second Life name is Marine Kelley, I am the creator and owner of the RealRestraint brand in Second Life, and also initiator of the growing RestrainedLife custom viewer that some people use for fun.

Now that's a lot of "Restraints" in one sentence... that's because I'm a BDSM addict. I could talk about it for years (and probably will), but for now just be warned, this blog will be kinky. lol.

It will be dedicated to give news and updates about my products, tips and tricks, how-to's,
rants, infos about the viewer, and of course links to related blogs. I won't update regularly but then, who does ?

Now that we know each other better, feel free to leave a comment, suggestion, useful info, or just say Hi !

Have fun !
Marine