I'm unusually hard to hold onto

Miss Dagmar Kohime warns us of the dangers of unintentional mushroom consumption: namely, if one is on a horse, and one nibbles unsuspectingly at a toxic fungus, one's horse falls over.

Good to know.

Sir Edward comes through again, this time, with a post of Miss Ordinal Malaprop's that is, as he said, well worth reading.

I cannot help but be reminded of the last doll hysteria that--because there is crossover between playthings, doll forms, and children in presentation--left many of us in a talking circle on Support for Healing, discussing our fears and the (then) coming storm concerning ageplay, child avatars, and dolls as a whole. Many in that circle were outraged; most were simply scared. This was just before Miss Zoe Llewelyn closed Dolltopia, which to this day makes me grit my teeth in frustration over the close-mindedness, from fellow residents and media alike, that provoked her fears so that she felt closing that sim was the only option remaining to her.

She still owns it. She still pays tier on it. She has sworn never to open it. In essence, it is now the constant wound in her side--the peaceful playground she wished to open for the benefit of all dolls and child avatars, forever run aground on the shores of prurient thought and repressive intentions.

I don't think there's a person alive, who values the continuation of the human species in any fashion, who does not believe protecting children is not a good thing to do. But to take the battle for such protection to a place where no true child can come without deceptive intent--to take it to a world populated primarily by adults and, in some extraordinarily rare cases, teens--regardless of avatar appearance--it's specious, it's flawed, it's unreasonable, and may I say it, just plain wrongheaded.

And of all the hosts of reasons why an adult would wish to play as a child, that is at the heart of most of them--that return to innocence. They do not, by and large, wish to be adult brains in tiny bodies, reacting as adults, looking like children...they wish to be children, to forget the pressures of the adult world, to experience their Second Lives free of adult boundaries.

How, in anyone's reality, does that lead to children being exploited? There are no children to exploit, first, and second, the children of Second Life? Do not wish to be exploited, nor to exploit others!

Have we become so emotionally barren, so psychologically stunted, that we cannot see any adult with any child and not think the worst, in this day and age?

Apparently Linden Labs thinks so. And shame on them for being so infuriatingly small-minded. As Miss Malaprop stated, this is a slight which will not be easily forgotten, nor forgiven. By adults and Second Life's children alike.