So, October has rolled around for 2022 (why do the years seem to speed up the older you get?), and with it, inevitably, comes Halloween and thoughts of ghosts, monsters, hauntings, and more, together with their familiars in the form of pumpkins and black cats, bats and spiders.
It’s a time of year when it is hard to avoid such things in Second Life, where the Americanisation of Halloween has very deep roots. Call me a humbug or grumpy so-and-so, but by-and-large I tend to find all that goes on around October 31st largely a bit tiresome and repetitive – although there are exceptions that get me to park my case of grumps at the door and go with the flow – such as the Calas Halloween build (which will be popping up in these pages very soon) and, for 2022 Cica Ghost’s Pumpkins and Things.
Just as with Cica’s September installation of Pink Fairytale took a light-hearted look at fairy tales and childhood stories (see: Cica’s Pink Fairytale in Second Life), so Pumpkins and Things offers an easy-going look at the Halloween period, and the aforementioned creatures, witches and so on – albeit with a little warning from the Master of Macabre himself, Edgar Allen Poe.
Caught under a pumpkins sky (do make sure your viewer is set to Use Shared Environment, this is a setting where black flowers offer toothy, maniacal grins, and large worms slither (some with very human-like arms, hands and faces) as they tower over a landscape of twig-like trees, pumpkin flowers, large pumpkin houses, a blocky little town and the toothy flowers – some of which resemble spiders sitting on sticks, whilst Cica’s black cats are to be found throughout (together with some of Cica’s trademark sit points and dances!).
Again, like Pink Fairytale, this is an installation to be seen and enjoyed, rather than described or shown in still shots. Monsters they may be, but it’s hard to believe any of the characters sitting within Pumpkins and Things would actually do anyone any harm – hence, perhaps the little warning from Mr. Poe, as used by Cica for the installation:
Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see
Used in a short story by Poe in 1845, the quote became very closely associated with the California gold rush at the end of the 1840s, when it stood as a admonishment against believe everything said or written about concerning the ease with which the gold rush lead to riches. Here, as well as possibly underlining the idea that for all their looks and teeth and strangest, the characters in Pumpkins and Things really mean no harm, the words might be taken as a little poke to remind us that no-one should really take the Halloween period too seriously, and simply have fun!
SLurl Details
- Pumpkins and Things (Epsilon, rated Moderate)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 