Kaitlin Peccable has put up a classroom scene. (A clarification: only the blackboard, bookcase, and apple actually are part of the link set with the title given above; the other parts of the build are simply titled Object. I am using that title as the overall name of the build.) On the front wall we see a blackboard, with “HELP! Magazine Making Sense of Second Life” written very neatly, with guidelines to help direct the letter forms. There is a bookcase under the blackboard, with a sculpty apple sitting on top. (Second Life tech enthusiasts will recognize the standard library sculpt shapes for the apple and stem; Kaitlin has added nice texturing.) We can’t read any titles in the bookcase, but the books look like fancy library editions.
Facing that wall at an angle is another wall with a window and another bookcase with similar books, defining the classroom space. A bit in front of the far wall, we see a row of three desks; one has a plywood chair behind it. (The desks are not plywood; they are textured in a darker, somewhat distressed-looking wood.) One desk has a pair of poseballs on the lid: the Essensual Designs Hold Her animation set. They place the man sitting on the desk lid, with the woman sitting with her legs across his lap and her arm around his shoulder. The desk with the poseballs has a plywood cube next to it.
Halfway in the space between the desks and the blackboard is another set of poseballs: Couples 19 by Nytemyst Grace. (That’s the creator of the animation, not the poseballs; the actual ball is a standard Nyterave poseball as used by many animators.) This set poses the man partly kneeling before the woman, with his arm raised and around her waist; her arm is around his shoulders.
Hovering in front of the blackboard are T0Much’s additions to the build. A hovering sign reads “WHAT IS A PRIM?”, and two examples (a plain plywood cube and another box with hollow and twist applied) hover near it. Slightly below that is a plywood recreation of Monet Destiny.
So, now that you know all about what the work looks like — what do I think of it? Seeing these stereotyped classroom images in the Second Life setting is a bit jarring; we’re (mostly) not children here, so the scene is a return to our past, not an image from our present. The addition of romantic poseballs is also a bit odd, given the very elementary school look of the build (the ultra-neat lettering and the apple for the teacher); they are an intrusion of adult (or at least adolescent) reality into an idyllic childhood scene. (They also suggest activity that is not, well, prim.) And what does the presence of the cyclops-like Monet in front of the classroom mean? It looks like we’re not in Kansas anymore…