Fetish in Text

While nothing beats reality, there is something to be said for the virtual. The virtual medium I prefer is text. 3D environments just cannot express what is really going on. Something like World of Warcraft is just a distraction and while something like SecondLife gets closer, (you can at least wear fetish garb) it is still more of a disappointing distraction than an enhancement to any scene.

I much prefer text. I played online text games for years, I am a reasonably accurate and speedy typist. and my imagination and vocabulary in close enough sync that I can express what I am doing, seeing, or feeling. I will take a text encounter any day of the week and twice on Sunday. you can express yourself, try things you might never do in real life, and save it all in a file and re-read it again later.

What kind of text?

Email: I have exchanged many erotic scene mails with people. They have included collaborative stories, writing assignments giving by (and graded by) exacting Mistresses, and fantasies thrown out just to start things going. Email has the advantage of allowing time to think and structure a story or a response. You can also assign tasks to be done and reported on. The downside is the time lag between replies while the person on the other side crafts their response (or goes on with real life).

Instant Message: This has the immediacy of two (or more) people in contact. There is somebody live at the other end typing back to you. Your interaction is immediate, subject to the typing abilities of both sides. This can be quite exciting. I have had many wonderful IM exchanges. Sometimes I just have a scene in text, sometimes I have been given small tasks during the chat. (Go to the supply closet, get a small binder clip, put it on your left nipple and leave it there until I tell you otherwise.) Upside to this are being live and immediate with another person. The downsides can be the text environment itself (distinguishing actions from the spoken), any large mismatch in typing speed, accuracy, or style ("I lower my head to your delicate, porcelain toned foot, kissing each toe gently, then taking each toe in my mouth successively, from big toe to pinky, sucking on each" "cum on sux it mak me wants it")

Special Environments: There are online text environments designed to accommodate online encounters. I personally favor one called the "Isle of Shadows." Such an online site is built to give depth to and reality to a text encounter. You can find rooms and equipment that gives the feel of really being in, say, a dungeon. There are "devices" with "controls" to use on your partner, restraints, attire, and a series of things that add a lot of flavor to a text encounter. Upsides are the extra feel you get from such an environment. The downside is that there is some learning curve to be able to use the environment. Having played text games and being into computers, I can jump in pretty easily, but it can be intimidating to many people. This a mitigated somewhat by the fact that such sites generally have friendly users who are generally happy to help new users. There is also the problem of having to use a terminal program to get into these environments. You can just go to a command prompt at type "telnet isleofshadows.net:4510" to get in, but if you want to really work with text, you will want something better.

I play, virtually, in all three environments. I will gladly entertain any questions in/on the first two, but I would like to encourage people to try number three. People playing in detailed text environment is a shrinking population. This is a real shame, because there is no real replacement for such environments.