CRUISE!

SS Galaxy - Queen of the Sagittarian Sea

Wandering in search of a newspaper 5 landed in a cruise ship! Looking at the map with CTRL M, it turns out that this cruise ship consists of 3 whole sims!
Always new wonders to admire in SL!
The perspectives on the deck are really awesome, because of the stretch of this 3 sim construction.
In the lounge, and indeed everywhere else maps of the ship are displayed, which is good because you tend to loose your way, it’s all sooo big!
Swimming pool, sunbathing, ballroom, everything is there, also lots of paintings. Hmmm, well, always the problem what to ask for this kind of art, is it a real painting, which makes it beyond all pricing, or is it just a picture of a painting, uploaded for 10 L$, and duplicated at infinitum?
Of course, of course, a casino, I bet it isn’t the only one in SL! Slotmachines too, tens, twenty thirty, yes yes, we know the breeding of slotmachines is a matter of a millisecond. Lol!
On the deck a huge dome can be seen, being the Galaxy’s ballroom. Nice structure, consisting of rows and rows of prim windows! A bit a calculation to get these windows right…
Good, very nice, for the events on the Galaxy, the ship provides free evening wear. Blue is the main color. Indeed other free assets, such as a tuxedo can be bought, also for 0 L$!
In the middle of the casino there is a horse track, for the betting, will it function?
Shops of course are to be found here, prim hair for instance, since the ship is a mall too. Sometimes the shops are a bit difficult to enter, because the extend two decks, and you have to cross two sims to get to the stairs between the decks and getting back, or would there be a faster way?
This ship makes one wander: what kind of structures could be thought of, to stretch a few sims, and at the same time retain a kind of unity.
Landscape of course, architecture, palaces.
But isn’t this idea great, not to build a landscape first and then put your things on it, but right from the start construct a world in the form of a gigantic ship. Indeed a ship like this IS a world. Some of 5’s friends spend all his time on two sims, rarely leaving this space, 5 could imagine there are people living on the Galaxy all there SL life!
Maybe ships, these cruise ships, are the largest moving structures in RL. Of course architecture on land is always bigger, but it doesn’t move. Ok, in SL this ship won’t move either. In that sense it is comparable to the stone ship in the summer palace in Bejing. Only the size!

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!