Luna Jubilee recently threw down a love challenge in response to a big number of people suffering from what I can only describe as the blahs. I’ve been feeling them myself, so this seemed like a fun way to step back and take a look at what I love in SL. I really like a lot of things about SL but there are only a few that I love. Some are objects or huds, but I have some good friends in SL too, and it’s one of them that I want to highlight for my love challenge.
This is Stewart. I’ve known Stewart for a couple of years.
Stewart usually doesn’t speak unless spoken to. (I remember falling out of my chair the first time he spoke to me unprompted) Stewart loves mathematics. Stewart still has the same shape and skin he started off with in SL and sees no reason to change. He is a self-identified grump, but is quite chivalrous and is always dashing into frays to stop jerks from perpetuating their jerkiness. He’s the perfect catalyst for my brain--I am not someone who can self-generate creativity—sometimes he can say one word to me that starts an explosion of creative ideas.
What I most love about Stewart is his generosity. He lets me put stuff all over his sim and when I go over the allowed prims he doesn’t get mad, just gives a gentle nudge, “maybe a couple hundred fewer prims, dear?” He re-terraforms to suit whatever random structure I am sticking on his property and asks no questions. And when I needed a place to retrench for awhile, he freely gave me that place, again asking no questions and asking for nothing in return. Everyone needs a friend like that.
He likes fitting prims together into intricate buildings—especially buildings that actually exist in RL. He’s especially insistent that those buildings be historically and architecturally accurate. Here is his recreation of Doune Castle in Scotland. In the background you can see his build of Harlech Castle in Wales.
The great American poet Grace Noll Cowell puts how I feel about Stewart into words better than I can.
I never came to you, my friend,
and went away without
some new enrichment of the heart;
More faith and less of doubt,
more courage in the days ahead.
And often in great need coming to you,
I went away comforted indeed.
-Grace Noll Cowell “Thank you, friend”
May your SL be full of joyously matched corners and perfectly rendered prims, my friend.
