(This is part of a longer article I'm writing for our monthly magazine, on the subject of sexual 'edgeplay' -- roleplaying activities like abduction and dismemberment, that deliberately blur the line between healthy and unhealthy behavior. Click here for part 1, a general overview on the subject.)

Like most other things in Second Life, it can be difficult to find on your own the handful of edgeplay clubs that now exist in the grid. This is a growing complaint about Linden Lab, in fact, the puppetmasters behind that virtual environment; that as the grid's size and population grows to the level of major RL global cities (600,000 residents as of today, with a land mass larger than Boston if displayed at actual size), it is becoming more and more difficult to learn of the endless variety of things to see and do there. Indeed, those who are habitual players of the game argue that this is why SL shouldn't be considered a 'game' at all, but rather a very real, complex and persistent urban environment -- just as if you had packed up one day and moved to San Francisco or Denver, with all the joys and frustrations that come with such a move.

In this light, then, the process of discovering new places in the grid is the same as moving to any new large city; it is the process of reading magazines and websites, randomly discovering new places on your own, making friends and then asking those friends for recommendations. This is how I first got exposed to the world of edgeplay in SL myself, in fact; by being at a random goth danceclub one night, having one of the clubgoers check out my profile, see that I do this blog and that I have a background in writing about sexual topics. She rang me up privately at the club via IM, asked if I already knew what edgeplay was (I did), and if I'd like a little tour across the grid of the places she frequented.

It's hard for me to resist such invitations, which is what found me hopping from one den of iniquity to the next last Friday in the middle of the night. And I admit, for someone who's already been exposed to as much of the dark side of humanity that I have, even I found some of what I saw unexpectedly gruesome. Edgeplay clubs in SL are where chaos and anarchy reign, where the base primordial urges of humans are kept not in check but rather let loose to run wild. There are things I saw on my tour that made me queasy, that made me uncomfortable, that made me wonder who could possibly want to voluntarily take on the role of the victim in the roleplaying scenes I was witnessing.

As mentioned before, this is an important thing to take into consideration when visiting such clubs; that they fundamentally work through roleplaying, by avatars voluntarily taking on a part and then acting that part as convincingly as they can. So in that sense, it was also possible to see why edgeplay enthusiasts would find this erotic, and why such activities have suddenly started to blossom in the grid. There is a certain hedonistic pleasure to letting your id run unchecked, especially knowing that your fellow clubgoers are all voluntary participants; the same thrill that Fight Club tapped into, perhaps, the deep lizard-brain part of us that wants to fight or fuck our way out of every situation. There is a definite taboo-breaking thrill to be had in politically incorrect behavior, especially within the sexual realm; edgeplay clubs merely take this thrill to its virtual extreme.

After the jump, then, reviews and links to four of the edgeplay clubs I toured last weekend; please be aware that the photos were taken the next morning, deliberately so that other residents wouldn't appear in them, and that you can expect to see a lot more depravity in these rooms and hallways if you visit of an evening. Also be aware that self-righteousness is not tolerated at such clubs; that if you find yourself compelled to complain about the way people are being treated there, the owners will simply toss you out and ban you from returning, as is the power of any landowner in the grid. Ah, if only the real world worked the same way as the virtual one sometimes.

So first, let's acknowledge the one aspect of edgeplay that actually does get enacted in the real world the most, an activity known in the swinging community as "party and play" (or PNP); it's simply the process of downing as many controlled substances as one can stand, often while in the middle of orgies with random strangers doing the same. It's the PNP community that has led to the rash in crystal-meth addicts in the gay community in recent years; and there is no more horrific example in the mainstream culture of this activity than the fabled crackhouse. Much like 'dogging' in the UK, crackhouses are often talked about but not often seen; legendary spots of evil, where addicts engage in random acts of violence and sex, in exchange for hits off a dirty glass pipe.

And thus is the image upheld in the Crack Den (Endless Death 108/48/304), the first stop of my tour last weekend. Now, whether most crackhouses really are notorious lawless pits of hell is a matter for debate; their interiors have been so exaggerated by television and movies over the years, it's hard to tell where reality ends and dramatic grandiosity begins. But that's of course the point of fantasizing about edgeplay situations; that unlike actually acting on them, which might hold all kinds of nasty surprises you weren't expecting, merely roleplaying them allows them to be tightly controlled, a sort of perfect vision of what in reality could be a very messy situation. In this sense, the Crack Den is a perfect echo of its visitors' desires; a Disneyesque version of the PNP ghetto, all dirty mattresses and spilled liquor bottles, where all of the reckless behavior can happen without any of the RL consequences.

An interesting thing about the Crack Den is that they sell their own crack there; it's a scripted object, one that makes you glow while in the complex, alerting all the other roleplayers that you're now "high" and voluntarily playing the role of the victim. It's a smart touch, I think; not only does it help make it easier to tell who is actually roleplaying, but also adds to the immersive quality of the roleplaying experience, as well as raising a little money for the people who maintain the land. It's a tricky subject at all RP environments in the grid, one that people are always tackling in innovative ways there; of how to make the RP experience as compelling and persistent a "reality" as possible. Also be aware that this is the most serious RP edgeplay club I visited, the one with the least amount of lurkers and tourists; if you decide to visit the Crack Den, please be prepared to be approached while there.

Perhaps on the opposite end of the edgeplay spectrum, then, is a place like Liberty (Liberty 125/186/28), the second stop on my tour. While still devoted to the topic of forced abduction, rape and violence, instead of the crudest reality Liberty delves into the fantastical, building a place where romance novels and erotic fairytales can come to life. Liberty is designed for a more innocent type of edgeplay; the world of pirates and big bad wolves, of the intruder in the office and the cat-burgler in the bedroom. While still dark in nature, the pure meticulousness and outlandishness of Liberty's build will have you almost unconsciously smiling, and thinking back to the days when you were 19 and loved those silly Anne Rice naughty fairytales. It's a place to try out such fantasies, in fact, simply by taking a stroll through its grounds and coming upon like-minded strangers; it is the details that make it such a pleasure to simply visit as well.

It was then time to move on to Faded Lotus (Kot 153/176/54), the one club on my tour most likely to run into problems with those who politically oppose edgeplay. And that's because Faded Lotus caters to a type of fetish called Dolcett, a truly odd phenomenon that arose because of the web; they are fans of the unknown Toronto-based eponymously-named artist, who is known for cartoonishly violent illustrations of sexual activity, such as people getting impaled on giant spits and roasted over enormous fires. Faded Lotus provides an entire estate for those who are interested in acting out such activities; it is in their facilities that you can chop up another avatar, cook them, brand them, roast them and more.

The Dolcett set I think might be the most interesting edgeplayers in the entire grid; this is one of the only parts of RL edgeplay fantasies, after all, that can't be actually enacted in the real world, not without just a tremendous amount of gore and bloodshed, and with participants dying long before they were ever able to enjoy any of it. It is deliberately cartoonish behavior, albeit rooted in the real yet horrific behavior of the Jeffrey Dahmers of the world; it is so extreme, in fact, so far removed from reality, that one wonders how many of its participants get legitimately aroused by it, and how many do it simply for the shock of the new.

Faded Lotus is also a popular destination for ponygirl enthusiasts, a very real subsect of the BDSM community, who hold an infamous RL convention each summer in the Wisconsin woods. Ponygirls (and those who love them) are interested in the process of literally turning a person into an animal; of an "owner" forbidding them from speaking, considering them property, forcing them to perform manual labor and "show tricks" for an audience. That's what the annual Wisconsin get-together is mostly about, is constructing an environment where ponygirls can literally be treated like horses; where hitching posts are erected, feeding troughs, campwide talent shows and the like. Needless to say, a virtual world like Second Life is almost built for such fantasy recreation; Faded Lotus has an entire stable facility for public use, all of the elements built specially for the body structure of humans pretending to be horses.

And finally there was the pinnacle of the tour, both the most deliciously evil of the clubs and the most popular; the appropriately-named Hard Alley (Yulmu 152/239/621), most of which consists as a vast underground labyrinth. This is edgeplay taken to Hollywood high-concept extremes; a decaying, radioactive cesspool of filth, with trash fires and torture devices strewn randomly throughout the space. It is the darkest, most nihilistic of the clubs I toured, and a strong argument for the emotive power of effective architecture; much like my RL visit to Dachau in 2003, Hard Alley literally feels more evil because of the way it was built. I was warned by my guide that it's become a bit of a tourist trap of late; and indeed, it took us three teleport attempts before we finally caught the place without its maximum number of visitors.

That said, the sheer number of visitors at Hard Alley assures its high number of legitimate roleplayers as well, those who take the environment very seriously indeed, and are ready to initiate profoundly disturbing scenes with random strangers at a moment's notice. It is corporate synergy gone horribly, horribly wrong; all the dank creepiness of a first-person-shooter console game, but with a level of sex and violence that could get you arrested in some parts of the world. It is one of the best examples I've seen, both sexual and non-, of meshing a high-concept roleplaying theme with highly inspiring architecture; I don't know whether to be tickled or very disturbed.

As mentioned, a lot more photos will be published in the magazine version of ITG, coming to a browser near you on October 1. And then tomorrow, an interview with the woman who gave me the tour I just recounted. Yes, she's a woman in real life too. And what she has to say about the subject may surprise you.