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Es gibt im Englischen das geflügelte Wort “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” von Charles Colob Colton. Auf Deutsch übersetzt bedeutet das in etwa “Nachahmung ist die ehrlichste Form eines Kompliments.” Das mag zwar sein, aber es nervt mich zusehends.

Irgendwie bin ich inzwischen auf das Abhalten von Gefährtenschaftszeremonien abonniert. Ich habe 2009 auf Deutsch alleine zwölf Zeremonien gehalten und zusätzlich noch für eine Freundin eine auf Englisch. Mir sind die Texte für die deutschen Zeremonien nicht aus dem Himmel in den Schoss gefallen, sondern ich habe diese in mühevoller und stundenlanger Arbeit selbst erstellt und dabei auch noch einiges selbst aus dem Englischen ins Deutsche übersetzt. Bei einigen Themen bedurfte es auch Recherchen im Internet. Scheinbar sind meine Texte gut oder zumindest brauchbar.

Gut genug jedenfalls, dass jemand Bekanntes in einer Sim Anfang Herbst eine Zeremonie gleich ganz eins zu eins nach meiner Vorlage abhielt, ohne zu Fragen. Mitte Dezember war dann eine nordische Zeremonie gewesen, und der Ablauf war ebenfalls an meiner Zeremonie stark angelehnt, mehr noch, viele Sätze wurden nur ein wenig umgeschrieben oder gar direkt übernommen.

Skandal! Im deutschen Gor stellen nach und nach momentan zahlreiche Sims auf einen anderen Combat Meter, den sog. Metalife-Meter von Tala Nagy um.

Ausgelöst wurde diese Welle durch die öffentliche Ankündigung von oookusama Hirano im Gor-Unterforum auf slinfo.de, ihre eigenen Sims (Asperiche&Asperiche Harbor sowie Turian Plains) auf diesen Meter umstellen zu wollen. Der einfache Auslöser dafür ist gewesen, dass der NLSv2 keinen eingebauten Combat Meter mehr hat und man so vor der Frage stand: erlauben wir noch CM-Kampf oder konzentrieren wir uns nun vollends auf das reine RP? Für Kusa stand die Antwort fest: Metalife ist das Mittel der Wahl.

Damit löste sie eine ungeahnte Welle aus, die halb Deutschgor erschütterte, so könnte man meinen. Innerhalb einer Woche stellten noch die Sims Kargash, Collar, House of Tarn, Pariah Coast, Thentis Hills, Torcodino und das Dorf Kaiila auf den Meter um. Es folgten bald noch Landa und Lydius, im Axt Fjord läuft er testweise noch für ca. 2 Wochen, und seit gestern ist das komplette Südland mit seinen sechs Sims auf Metalife als alleinigen Combat Meter umgestellt worden. Damit ist er bisher auf ca. 20 deutschen Sims der alleinige Combat Meter geworden, die innerhalb von weniger als 14 Tage von sich aus umstellten.

That’s life; I was looking for nothing in particular and stumbled upon a small writing called “Houseplants of Gor” in a forum. In short it is a parody of Norman’s writing style and philosophy at all, quite funny to read. So, here we go:

The spider plant cringed as its owner brought forth the watering can. “I am a spider plant!” it cried indignantly. “How dare you water me before my time! Guards!” it called. “Guards!”

Borin, its owner, placed the watering can on the table and looked at it. “You will be watered,” he said.

“You do not dare to water me!” laughed the plant.

“You will be watered,” said Borin.

“Do not water me!” wept the plant.

“You will be watered,” said Borin.

I watched this exchange. Truly, I believed the plant would be watered. It was plant, and on Gor it had no rights. Perhaps on Earth, in its permissive society, which distorts the true roles of all beings, which forces both plant and waterer to go unh appy and constrained, which forbids the fulfillment of owner and houseplant, such might not happen. Perhaps there, it would not be watered. But it was on Gor now, and would undoubtedly feel its true place, that of houseplant. It was plant. It would be watered at will. Such is the way with plants.

[Mehr]

One of the things you should really be aware about role play is that it can be quite time consuming. In better sims there is always something going on, you can try hard to achieve perfection in it, you can study a lot, talk a lot and so on. This can lend to the fact that some people are just going to be in the RP sims only for most of their time, neglecting their friends and being there for months.

Then, when the RP phase is over, they need to really start again, since they neglected so many old friends and quite some of them may have removed them from their friends list. So, take the advise, while RP is fun and allright, don’t let it become your number one priority, if you haven’t started in such a sim directly. You might hurt some people in the process, badly.

One of the toughest and most asked questions around is, if Gor is quite discriminating against women or not. Many just find the whole setup and role play quite disgusting because of the use of slaves, pleasure slaves, their punishments and the role women at whole play in that kind of medieval society.

So, how to approach that? Well, first let us take a look at some facts of Gor:

• John Norman believes in a natural order and thinks that living against that causes quite some trouble. So, this includes that males are being dominant, and women, while most of them are free, either need to choose between freedom or sexual fulfillment as a woman. Some people quite like the idea of such a natural order, because they think, all have there well met place in society, then, and that living against this order is the reason for many today’s troubles in society at all.
• There are many slaves around, used for whatever kinds, but both male and female are possible.
• Although there are free women, they are highly appreciated and such, their place in society is of course more hurdlesome than that of free men. They have to wear veils and such and finding a partner is not easy, for them, while though they may use kajirii.
• There are severe punishments, of course, against all kinds bad stuff, but most times it seems that women are often being punished more severe than most men are.
• There are no female warriors on Gor according to the author himself, John Norman.
• Most gamers are going to tell you, when that topic is being raised, that all women on Gor are not stronger than a 12 years old - but of course, then again, a Panther can run around pulling a hard wagon with quite much stuff on it, go figure.

Well, there might be for sure other stuff, but it might give you an idea. The picture of the woman in Gor is quite clear, also that of the man. Gor is a man’s world.

Yesterday M Linden aka Mark Kingdon, CEO of Linde Lab, published an open letter to the community, in which he heralded the nice community base of this world, their devotion and layed out the future plans of Linden Lab for the Open Spaces sims.

In short: no change at all, all he did was just pulling out a bunch of nice word, putting the same old plans in a nice looking, neater soundng package and that’s it. The tier change is coming as planned, also in the same amount in the end, it is just happening in two steps instead of one and that’s all. Wonder when the next protests are going to show up…

One quite frequent discussion on all Gorean groups and channels in Second Life is, if there is such a thing like one true Gorean role play or not. Normally the people then take two main stances.

1. There are the people who want to play as according to the books in Second Life as possible and dislike so called onlineisms. An onlineism is something, that is simple not there in the books, but became quite common in certain sims of Second Life.
   Examples for it are: there is a common phrase in the book in the region of Torvaldsland called Jarl, which is the way to adress a leader of them instead of Ubar. Bondsmaids address all free men as Jarl, but in the books there is no such phrase as Jarla to greet free women, but this is something that is quite common on certain sims in Second Life, so this is a good example. The people who dislike onlineisms don’t ust this phrase at all.
   Another example are female warriors. There is no such thing in the books, even the author itself stated there is no such thing on Gor, but on quite some Gorean sims in Second Life there are indeed female warriors. So the people who really play by the books don’t acknowledge them at all as being valid.
2. The other party of people is the crowd, which takes the stance, that while the books are depicting the daily life of the planet Gor, they are only able to depict small aspects of the whole culture at all, and, while not really mentioned in the books, quite some stuff is still possible to be there in the whole setting and most likely is there, if you come to think about it, and therefore should be considered a possible part of Gorean role play even while not being mentioned in the books at all.
   Those are the people, who don’t bother using onlineisms then like “Jarla”, perhaps also female warriors and such.

So these are the two main parties, which constantly discuss on Second Life about what real Gorean role play should be or not, what in it might be or not, sometimes also might engagne in flame wars. And because of this fact alone already, there is not just only one true Gorean role play, but every sim or alliance of sims makes up their own rules about what they consider valid role play or not. So what you get in reality in Second Life is quite a broad range about what real Gorean role play is about and what not, and coming with that, big, different rule sets.

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if the light is from within.

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Many people are now starting to whine about devaluing their land investments in SL, again. They always tend to do that, e.g. when LL adds land too fast, lowers tier feeds, upfront fees and does other stuff.

Just get one thing into your big skull: owning land in Second Life is not about getting a value. Land is made by the Lindens, as they see fit, you are on their whim there, always, and there is nothing yet to change this. Take it or leave it, but don’t always whine about that. Real estate owners with a good business approach should know better than that.

Basically, what the Lindens are telling us about open spaces sims, is that:

one normal sim runs on the core of a quad core server (e.g. Opteron), meaning 4 normal, full blown sims are running on a quad core normally.

An open spaces sim is 1/4 of a normal sim, so four of them are running on one core of a quad core server or 16 at whole, all of them put together serving the same prim count.

Being overused, the underlying maths about Open Spaces sims is that 1/4+1/4+1/4+1/4 is bigger than 1. Now that’s at least what the Lindens are trying to tell us, which I for myself don’t really believe at all.

Technorati : business, development, openspaces sims, second life