Realism and role-play

When I first came to Second-Life, I marveled at all the fantastic creations and possibilities. I spent hours looking at fairytale make-belief and I loved being able to fly and teleport all around the world by simply clicking a few times with the mouse on my computer. That wonder kept up for about a year and I guess I was much like a kid in a toy store.

Then, after a break when I didn't spend much time in-world, I returned and discovered much had changed, not in-world but with me. People became more important to me then creations and suddenly the surrealism that I marveled at before almost became irritating. I seldom flied any longer, and I could get irritated when there were no stairs in a building but only teleporters between the floors. Teleporting between remote locations was still a must I had to accept though.

I also started experimenting with BDSM then, and soon I also found there that I preferred the gear that would be believable real-life. Details like sound and good animations or emotes became more important to me than the actual functionality or severity of restraints and furniture.

When I play now, realism is more or less vital to me, both from objects and persons. Concerning objects, it's much up to myself to find the attachments or dungeons that are realistic enough, but people are a bit harder to select, at least in the beginning. I suspect many just role-play but as long as they do it believable to me, it doesn't matter much. Many destroy it by exaggerating though, or by suddenly go "out of character" and ask things like "((Would you be ok with me raping you?))" or "((How soon must you go to bed?))".

Many question and even criticize the way I immerse, and some even say there must be something wrong with me doing it, but I also meet many who say they function the same or similar, even if they themselves role-play or see their immersion as a kind of role-play.

I guess in one way everybody role-plays all the time, because we all adapt to the demands and expectations on us from the surrounding. Those who don't are often said to have some kind of personality disorder, e.g. being sociopaths or socially disabled. I also adapt to those requirements. In real-life I need to be responsible in my job, make money to pay the rent and eat, behave in ways so society won't throw me out and friends won't turn their backs on me. That includes things like being restrictive in both expressing and living my sexuality.

In Second Life I actually can shed many of those required role-plays and more be the one I like to be. I can be childish, playful, spend time with friends instead of at work, and express and enjoy my sexuality in ways I could never permit myself to do real-life. So the question is, if I role-play, do I really do it in Second Life or in my real life. But to me neither is really role-play. It's just the different requirements that make me display different variants of the real and one me. It's no more different than that I do things at my real-life work that I don't do with my real-life friends and vise versa.

In the end it all boils down to my basic requirements. Except for the absolute necessities in real-life, like air to breathe, water to drink, food to eat, clothes to wear and a place to stay the night, I need to have friends that make me feel needed and appreciated in both places, I need to make people feel happy and comfortable, I need to have my sexual needs fulfilled, be they caressing, kissing passionately or making love soft and gentle, or being helpless, tormented, used and abused. Both sexually and in some other respects my real life and Second Life complements each other and makes me one whole person instead of shattered fragments in different places.

I try to respect people going about things differently than I do, both in Second Life and real-life, and I wish they will do me the same courtesy. But sometimes, when their ways interfere with my own, by condemning my ways or being abusive to me, my patience and respects run out as well. Then they will often find I'm not always a sweet little submissive, but a real bitch who can bite hard. And still, neither the submissive nor the bitch are roles I play, but different sides of the one and only me.