The power of RLV

For at least a year now I've been meaning to write an article about the power of RLV. Quite often, especially in Femdom circles, I'll see people pour scorn on the use of RLV. They'll talk like it's a waste of time, like it's all just "button pushing", that it's about your avatar being treated "like a puppet", that it isn't "real submission", or any number of other silly and easily-refuted vacuous nonsense. And every time I see this I get this urge to write an article in defence of, and in praise of, RLV.

This isn't that article.

However, that said, I did want to write something about the power of RLV and how it's not about RLV itself but about the interplay between two (or more) people.

As I wrote the other day, for the first time in a long time I find myself pretty heavily restricted by RLV. Now, sure, by some people's standards my restrictions aren't as heavy as they could be. There's so many more restrictions Miss Vila could have applied (and she's made it very clear that she'd wished she could) but a balance has to be found between that desire and the need to get on with my work for Z&A and to also be available to help our customers or the residents of Raven Park.

But I'm finding that the restrictions I do have applied have had a pretty profound effect. I'm locked in arm straps and leg straps. While the arm straps don't directly apply any obvious restrictions they work well as a visual component to the fact that I've had "fartouch" removed (in other words I can only touch, and edit, objects very close to me). The leg straps heavily restrict my movement. All I can do is slowly bounce along. Also, they're coded to get slower and slower the more I hold the arrow key so I have to stop for a moment and then go again. To go along with the straps I'm also denied "sittp" (I can't sit on anything that isn't right next to me) and I'm denied the ability to fly.

The upshot of all of this is that I have to get very close to anything I want to interact with and I can't just TP around the region (I can TP to landmarks, I just can't do things like sit on objects far away or do the old double-tap-TP thing in Firestorm).

On top of that the helmet I'm locked in imposes a windlight setting that's gloomy and set at the same time of day all the time. Because of this I've got very little awareness of the day/night cycle in-world (the lamps in the region that are coded to turn on at sunset being my only clue).

All of this has the effect of slowing me down, making me think carefully about what I want to do, where I want to do it and why I want to do it. It also makes me realise just how reliant, right now, I am on Miss Vila. It's a very strange mixture of frustrating and calming.

It's also helped me focus. The past few days I've spent a lot of my time very close to a box:

In this box is a growing body of code that, all being well, will turn into new Z&A products -- possibly some time early next year. Because of the way I'm restricted, because there's not a lot else I can be getting up to right now, because building on any reasonable scale is almost impossible at the moment (see the "fartouch" thing above), this box, and the code inside, has been a large part of my world. Without the distraction of complete freedom I've being enjoying concentrating on this code and this code alone.

And this, for me, in part, is the power of RLV. It's not the scripts in the items I'm wearing. It's not directly the restrictions those scripts have imposed. It's the feeling of being under someone's control and the feeling of being in bondage that I derive from those things. It's the drive to make the most of what abilities I do have in-world right now. It's the connection I have with Miss Vila when she's not around.

It's about people.

And it's powerful stuff.