Five in "the Wastelands"

This sim “The Wastelands“ (actually two sims) is one of the “musts” of Second Life. A lot has been written about it. What is striking is the coherence of sims. The brilliance of textures and details is staggering and there is a lot of humour invested too, for instance the living underground. Once I discovered somebody had made a beautiful bed in a deserted metro tube under the surface.
(As written before Five likes “the hidden things” very much, this “not showing everything immediately” is rather lacking in Second Life. Just what is contrary to the aspect of selling as much and as fast as you can.)


But also remarkable are the differences between the buildings, their individuality within the theme. This means a lot of individual people are working together within a common idea: the most difficult thing there is, staying yourself, in coherence with a group.




For me, “The wasteland”, is T.S Elliot’s poem.

This is a superb link for the poem (http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/)


The poem starts with:

April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

…..



But the poem has nothing to do with the wastelands sim. Although the description fits, the poem dates from before the notion of total destruction. We, living now, are aware and very conscious of the fact that some people have the power to destroy everything there is. (Quite a miracle it didn’t already happen!) But the fear of annihilation has entered our mind, because endless books are written and movies are made about this final disaster.


So this sim is the landscape, which might still exist, after the bomb. The scenery is based on the comic of Antony Johnston, the videogame Fallout, or the movie Bladerunner.


Recommended for this sim is simply wondering around, and looking for clues, where to enter. There are lots of clues lying around! Just search out where people live, what they have found out to live in.....sometimes even guarded by an giant shrimp, be careful!


Interesting for sim builders is the edge. Five was wondering how the people of the sim could “dig” so deep in the surface. Have they made holes? Can a surface of a sim be broken? At the edge one can see how it is done. The total surface is raised high above see level. Then locally the surface folded sharply, and deep abysses are made. In these deep spaces, the underground constructions are made, and the surface is covered up with prims having textures like the soil. So for the eye on the surface the deep ravine is invisible. Really ingenious application of the restricted possibilities of Second Life. All this can be seen at the edge of the sim. Don’t go there if you prefer to stay in the fantasy of the sim! (Don’t look at the last pictures then!)



As I see it, the sim is also a protest against the childish behaviour, seen mostly in Second Life. The phenomenon that almost everyone is going to copy his real existence, the trying to sell (but failing), the building of a home, the disorder of individual enterprises, which in their individuality are sort of all the same. Maybe “The Wastelands” is not even a protest, better still; it is an example of what is possible, when working together is a joy and stimulates fantasy.





Ok to finish the picture of under the sim....don't look at it!