SLUniverse Forums - Blogs - Lewis Luminos http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/ Second Life discussion forum and photo sharing en Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:25:13 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/images/styles/bingo/misc/rss.jpg SLUniverse Forums - Blogs - Lewis Luminos http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/ Numb and sick http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/763-numb-sick.html Sun, 26 Jul 2009 20:36:30 GMT You know, normally I'm an optimist. I'm the guy that believes that every cloud has a silver lining somewhere, even if you have to hunt for it. But this whole thing about being banned is just something I can't see any silver lining in at all.

I've done some googling, and reading up about what other people have done when they've been banned, even when it was through no fault of their own, and it seems that it's almost unheard-of for Linden Lab to reinstate a banned account.

Their ToC says "We can ban you for any reason or no reason."

And here's why I don't think they will reinstate me.

Reinstating me is an admission that they were wrong. It's them saying "OK we screwed up." And that, potentially (if I was a content creator, or if I was rich) could open them up to a potential lawsuit.

They have, according to their terms and conditions, no obligation to even tell me why I'm banned. And that is just plain depressing.

I'm thinking that I will have to take a break from SLU and Plurk, at least until I can manage to read posts about SL without feeling sick about how much I've lost. ]]> Lewis Luminos http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/763-numb-sick.html OMG a fashion post http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/566-omg-fashion-post.html Sat, 11 Apr 2009 16:45:41 GMT I don’t normally do fashion, but today I think I’m going to make an exception. I’ve picked up new hair yesterday (one of the... I don’t normally do fashion, but today I think I’m going to make an exception. I’ve picked up new hair yesterday (one of the advantages/disadvantages of dating the customer service rep for a major hair creator - I get plenty of choice, but damn it’s bad for my bank balance. And before you suggest it, no I wouldn’t dream of asking for freebies just because I’m dating one of the staff).

And then today I dropped a bunch of L$ at what I think is now my new favourite menswear store; Casa del Shai. First positive thing - the pants meet the shirt without showing an expanse of my pale, soft belly. Guys with washboard abs might like to show off in this regard but I like to keep my beer-gut hidden thank-you very much, and it annoys me no end that 99% of men’s pants look like they’re about to fall off the hips. These are proper high-rise ones. Thank you Shai.

I also bought a tanktop set (black, light grey and brown) and two checked shirts. I particularly love the second one here, which comes in both open and buttoned-up.




Full Credits:
Skin: Signature - Daniel
Hair & Beard: Discord Designs - Kaneda & Arturo (Flame)
Eyes: my own
Shirt A: Shai - Mallory (Olive)
Tank A: Shai - Men’s Ribbed Tank (Grey)
Shirt B: Shai - Madras (Pumpkin)
Tank B: Shai - Men’s Ribbed Tank (Brown)
Pants: Shai Rolling Stone Jeans (Copper)
Shoes: Hoorenbeek - Combat boots (Brown)
Necklace: my own


http://slurl.com/secondlife/Casa%20D...hai/150/99/691 ]]> Lewis Luminos http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/566-omg-fashion-post.html Indecisive http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/565-indecisive.html Sat, 11 Apr 2009 11:27:55 GMT When I first started wearing the prim beard in SL I wasn't sure that I liked it. The other day I took it off and reverted to my shaved skin (well, nearly-shaved) and certain people protested.

So... I guess this is a little poll of sorts. Which looks best?



Also this is how I look today:


 ]]> Lewis Luminos http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/565-indecisive.html Divine Badger - new venue http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/554-divine-badger-new-venue.html Sun, 05 Apr 2009 14:35:56 GMT So... I ran out of prims in my parcel at badger so I have rented another, and moved the skygarden/meeting place to the new location. It's no longer in the sky, technically, it's on the side of a mountain. The dance floor is done away with so it's just garden and cafe-terrace this time. Above, not shown in the pic, is my store; some of the items on display in the garden are for sale in the store. This time I have some poses set up; cuddles on a bench and some individual ones on a blanket under the tree. All nice and relaxed.

Divine Badger philosophy meetings will resume here, beginning again the weekend after easter (April 19th).

SLURL for new location: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Badger/208/224/87

]]> Lewis Luminos http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/554-divine-badger-new-venue.html <![CDATA[you're right, you're right...]]> http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/498-youre-right-youre-right.html Fri, 06 Mar 2009 01:15:24 GMT So maybe now is the time to start using words like "girlfriend" and "lover." Mmm. I don't want to rush things but I can't believe how happy all of this is making me.

I wish I could persuade her to come over to SLU.

Definitely going to have good dreams tonight.

:hamsterlove: ]]> Lewis Luminos http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/498-youre-right-youre-right.html Alice http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/491-alice.html Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:24:34 GMT Well, for all my talk about how I wasn't looking for a relationship in SL, and didn't think I'd ever have one... it seems I was wrong. Alice contacted me a couple of weeks ago to ask about the philosophy group I'm starting, and, well we talked a lot and it all sort of snowballed from there.

We have a lot of shared interests it seems, and we have a very similar attitude to SL itself, and SL relationships in particular. And she's actually in the same timezone as me.



I'm not going to use words like "love" yet, or even "girlfriend", because it all seems too soon and I don't want to jinx it. But being with her makes me very, very happy. ]]> Lewis Luminos http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/491-alice.html on forum drama and flamewars in general http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/352-forum-drama-flamewars-general.html Sun, 28 Dec 2008 23:23:04 GMT Wow. I'm glad I've been away from SLU for most of the week, seems that it all erupted in drama and bannings, and of course had I been here I would not have been able to keep my neb out. My response though, is here and not in the forums because OMG more drama, and I don't really want to re-waken threads that ought to be quietly euthanased.

Now I've been a member of forums and other net communities for over 10 years and in all that time I've always been polite and friendly on joining, I take time to get to know the place before I post, and I do not immediately jump into flamewars and start insulting people. In all these years I've seen people join forums, and immediately start acting like an asshole, and then they wonder why they get treated like one.

These people who wonder why they get involved in so many flamewars, why they believe that nobody likes them, why they think they're being persecuted all the time, I wonder how many times they look at their own attitudes. The answers are there.

Having been a member of several trauma-survivor communities, including one with a pretty tough reputation that I've been a member of for over 6 years now, the "OMG I've had a life of trauma" card is one that just makes me laugh. I've seen it so many times. And you know what? It does not excuse being an asshole. There are plenty of other people who've also had a life of trauma who are NOT assholes.

The other one that makes me laugh is the "I'm a newbie so everyone hates me I'm not in the clique". To that I'll just... well, first I'll spend ten minutes LOLing, but when I'm recovered I'll point to the first few posts I made on SLU. Yes I whined, but the reaction I got was 100% supportive and positive. Why? Because I'd been NICE. I see exactly the same thing on that other forum - some people join and immediately act like assholes, and are surprised when they get treated appropriately. Other people join and are respectful, and they are treated appropriately too. Its a simple equation.

Join a forum with guns blazing, the insults and defensive attitude on full-blast and saying "I'm not nice, deal with it," makes you 100% responsible for the way you're treated by others.

How like that other forum, SLU is. And how un-coincidental that they're my two favourite internet communities ever. ]]> Lewis Luminos http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/352-forum-drama-flamewars-general.html Gender and disclosure http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/344-gender-disclosure.html Sat, 20 Dec 2008 17:24:24 GMT (crossposted from my main blog) This is a collection of thoughts that sprang out of an interesting thread... (crossposted from my main blog)

This is a collection of thoughts that sprang out of an interesting thread, in which the OP lamented the fact that as a lesbian woman, she found it incredibly difficult to find other genuine RL lesbians with whom to form relationships, and instead was disppointed by the number of “lesbians” who were, in fact, straight men with female avatars. The purpose of this post is to correlate my thoughts on this and related matters, and expand on them a bit. Be warned for tl;dr.
This whole issue is an ethical minefield, and because of my own situation it is also one that touches very close to home.


The main question that seems to arise from this situation is, if your RL gender does not match the gender of your avatar, at what point, if ever, does it become mandatory to disclose this fact? And at what point does failure to disclose it become an act of deliberate deceit? The general consensus was “it depends”, and the things it depends on vary from one person to another, and one situation to another.


It is fairly accurate to say that the majority of SL users fall into one of two camps.; On the one hand you have people who take other people’s SL avatars at face value, and they do not mind if reality differs from that; they treat the other person as though they are who their avatar appears to be. On the other hand you have the group of people for whom SL is a tool for interacting with a RL person, and for that group, the identity of the typist is far more important than the identity of the avatar. The problems arise when a person from one group hooks up with a person from the other group and one or both of them have not made their position clear from the outset.


The situation that arose in the original post is clearly one of deceit. A straight guy wanting a bit of hot girl-on-girl pixel-porn dresses up in a girl’s avatar, goes to a lesbian club and picks up another girl and starts dating her. Only after several days does he confess that he’s really a guy. Kudos for him that he actually admitted it at all, many don’t, ever. But to string her along for days, to take her on dates under false pretenses… the deceipt began with the first IM, and I think that is despicable.; The amusing thing about all of that is the thought that two blonde lipstick lesbians hooking up are actually two straight guys both of which would be absolutely horrified if they thought they were wanking off to another bloke.


This leads to the development in SL of the A/S/L - pics - voice - webcam conundrum, where many guys are just too afraid to get involved without knowing for absolutely certain that the female avatar they’re chatting with is a female in RL. It starts with A/S/L - but the girl might be lying. So they ask for RL pics. But they might be pics of someone else - so they ask for Voice - but that might be cheating using a voice modulator - so they demand web-camming… and so it goes on. (And makes me wonder why they are even bothering trying to pick up girls online at all if their paranoia is so great that they distrust everyone they meet).


But there are other reasons for guys (or girls) to have avatars that do not match their own RL gender, and here’s where the ethical waters start to get murky.


Lets take situation two (hypothetically based off one of the reponses in that thread). Woman A is, in RL, a bisexual female with a slight preference for other women. She is of the type of player that really doesn’t care about anyone else’s RL identity - she takes everyone at face value, and states openly that she does not mind if the person behind the keyboard is male or female. Woman B is in RL a straight man who is experimenting with a female avatar for fun and personal curiosity, just to see what it’s like. He choses NOT to tell woman A that he is male in RL. They hook up and have a lot of fun together. Is that deceipt too?


Now lets look at situation three. A post-operative transsexual woman, who was born biologically male, but fully identifies as female, has completed medical transition and has offically changed gender and become female. She has a female avatar in SL. Is this deceipt? Is there a point at which it becomes essential for her to disclose her previous gender?


Situation four - same woman, with a female avatar in SL, but ten years younger, and this time still pre-op. Maybe cross-dressing full time in RL, and identifying internally as female, but still having a RL body which is physically male. Is this different from situation 3, and if so, on what grounds?


This is the situation that matches my own, except the other way round, gender-wise. I regard myself as transgendered, female to male; I cross-dress near enough 24/7/365, but for practical reasons (mainly financial ones) I have not and probably will never make the magic medical transition. So… is it unethical of me to not disclose this to all I meet in-world? It’s an odd situation, being transgendered in SL, because I don’t feel that it’s my SL avatar thats the wrong gender. My SL gender is right, it’s my RL avatar that’s wrong. I cannot possibly say that I’m female in RL because this is blatantly not true - there’s nothing female about me except for my reproductive organs. At the same time, I can’t honestly say that I’m male because physically, I am not. The only way out of this dilemma I can find, without deliberately lying, is to be completely up-front and honest about being transgendered. Unfortunately doing that has totally ruined any chance I might have had of any sort of relationship in SL - straight girls and gay guys don’t want to know because I’m not male. Lesbians and straight guys don’t want to know because I’m not female.


In the end, I’m fairly unusual as far as transgendered/transsexual people in SL go. Most of them do not disclose at all, partly because it ruins the immersion, and partly because in many cases SL is the only place where they can truly pass as being the gender they feel they should be. I certainly would not expect a transgendered person to disclose their RL situation. As far as I’m concerned, a TG man is a man and a TG woman is a woman, regardless of the genitals they were born with. But then again I am bisexual and it really makes no difference to me if my partner is male, female, or somewhere inbetween. I can understand it being different for someone who is 100% gay or 100% straight, where the mere thought of being with someone of the wrong gender is a complete physical turn-off. So I can see how, for some lesbian women, that a transgendered woman doesn’t quite meet the required standard.


The problem is not everyone who has a male body in RL and a female avatar, is either TS or TG. Some of them are just straight guys wanting to watch a bit of hot girl-on-girl porn and they figure the easiest way to get it is to be one of those girls. Its these straight guys playing sexual games for their own entertainment, those are the asshats that are being deliberately deceitful. But where do we draw the line, if the other woman (as in Situation #2 above) says that she doesn’t mind? Would it be deceitful for a guy (maybe a closet gay or bi-curious guy) to put on a female avatar and pretend to be a straight girl for me? I’m inclined to say no, I don’t consider that deceitful, because gender isn’t a deciding factor for me. Likewise I would believe it’s not deceipt for the people in situation 2 either.


One thing is for certain - every situation is going to be different, and the answers to the above questions will not be the same for everybody. The most important thing in any relationship, whether it’s in SL or not, is for both parties to be absolutely clear with each other right at the outset, what they’re looking for,l and if one of them does not match the others’ needs then it’s just wrong to lie about it.


With all of that in mind, I updated my SL profile today. ]]> Lewis Luminos http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/344-gender-disclosure.html Sitting in a tree http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/307-sitting-tree.html Fri, 28 Nov 2008 01:25:22 GMT I moved house today, but only just across the sim, because Aph is doing some rearranging. The one I've got now is better, almost flat instead of that steep hillside. So I build a proper house (and I think it's too big), and Aph let me have the pick of her sculpty trees to decorate my parcel. I picked a lovely red-leafed japanese Maple, and then I stuck some poseballs in it. No not the dirty sort, just the sitting-in-a-tree sort.

So here's me and Salo sitting in our new tree.



The house in the background is my neighbour's, not mine. Mine is in need of some decent textures. Kaaaarl???? :-D

Odd thing. When I'm on my main av, I think of Salo as an antirely different person, and vice-versa. And I'm definitely thinking of her as female, which I didn't expect. She's cute, but I wouldn't kiss her. That would be like incest or something. ]]> Lewis Luminos http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/307-sitting-tree.html fishing at sunset http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/298-fishing-sunset.html Fri, 14 Nov 2008 01:19:14 GMT This has to be the best picture I've taken in SL so far.

]]> Lewis Luminos http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/298-fishing-sunset.html My New Addiction http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/296-my-new-addiction.html Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:36:20 GMT 7 seas

]]> Lewis Luminos http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/296-my-new-addiction.html Wow, I have a blog? http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/198-wow-i-have-blog.html Sun, 24 Aug 2008 01:04:15 GMT Well. It's been quite an interesting experience, coming back to SL after so long. And it's not like I was around much first time round either, so while I may have more experience than the average newbie, I still do feel very much like a newbie.

In case you don't know, I was encouraged back by my friend Karl Herber. Ironically it was ME who introduced HIM to SL originally; he stayed, I didn't. Maybe this time it'll be different.

I've done much better this time with customising my avatar; although I initially intended to do it all by freebies, I've relented, and bought US$10 worth of Lindens. Most of that I've spent on skins and hair.

Speaking of hair, I visited the Hair Fair today (Lag Hell) and after trying on a million demos, I ended up buying this one (as shown in my avatar) from Laqroki. I've found it difficult finding hair of the right shade of red (namely, very light and bright coppery-ginger), and often I've found styles I like but in naff colours. This one though, is just right. Its shoulder length and shaggy, a bit curly, and moves really well, looks very natural. Don't tell anyone that I bought it from the women's section. Shhh. ]]> Lewis Luminos http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/blogs/lewis+luminos/198-wow-i-have-blog.html