The whole discussion, not only the puppet analogy,is quite interesting. I was thinking as I looked around for ideas about personae and similar concepts that the role play is more to the point in the case of SL. I don't SL, so I can't really speak with a great deal of autohroity sorry authority on that. But then of course you start getting into the idea of (Radhika noted this, I think) the construct of our personalities and what came first to mind was different takes on the Greek agon in _Homo Ludens_ which I think has been discussed here several times. There is, apparently, something termed the ludic fallacy, which is described in Wikipedia as "the misuse of games to model real life situations". But then: is life constantly being "mis-modelled"? That question "Would you write about a puppet separately from the puppeteer?" brings to mind Yeats's last line in the poem _Among School Children_ "How can we know the dancer from the dance?" And I would say that regardless of the (art) form, we can't, which makes the puppet analogy bear out. Except to the extent that once the performance (dance, puppet play, film) is staged, then interpretation takes place and the performer no longer possesses every aspect of the performance. In perhaps Foucauldian terms, different fields and domains come into play (!) and copyright lawyers (for example) need to be consulted, often along with film critics, sociiologists, internet researchers...... Perhaps the main difference between my interpretation and the puppet(eer) analogy is that I think both the (arguably) inert puppet and the living breathing puppeteer can be interestingly viewed and discoursed. Cheers, Will William Bain PhD Student Comparative Literature Department of Spanish Philology Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona --------------------------------- Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage.