Arriving In Chaos And Light

It is evident upon landing at LEA 23 that, although “The Inevitability of Fate” is not yet finished, there is much to see.   The sim, created by Rose Borchovski, depicts the story of Angry Beth and the child lot during a war.  A child carrying a fish under their arm greets visitors.  She stares to the sky, bubbles emanating from her mouth, as if she too has become what she might fear.  The terrain is surrounded in water, with a hill off to the right.  Instead of a sea bed, the terrain is covered in words.

    At the landing point, the eye is drawn to a man with an illustration for a body.  The illustration depicts just what happens if one is overwhelmed with greed—in this case, a large fish has discovered that food isn’t everything.  The man’s heart lies atop this illustration, forever beating.  Stretching across the sim borders are large posters with similar cursive print as the terrain below the waters.

    I click the teleporter to travel to the main part of the exhibit.  I am greeted with more children.  One bedecked in swimming trunks and a party hat has caught a fish while another child looks on beating a drum.  Yet, the expression on their faces is one of fear.

The expression on their faces is one unlike I have ever seen on a mesh sculpture.  It evokes such a powerful mixture of fear and horror.  Behind them is the city, the night sky only lit with light from windows.  Perhaps they were ordered to bring home the evening meal.  A pig and rat look on from their feet with similar expressions of horror on their faces.

    Looking below, I spot a mountain of pigs that have seen better days.  Perhaps they were also a circumstance of fate, destined for someone’s dinner plate.  There is a play on words with two mesh signs: “Fool” and “Full”.  

Below this, I discover what I missed from my limited draw distance on the ground—a large mesh fish, snagged by a fish hook and wrapped by the fish hook with a cavalcade of characters and objects balancing on its fins.

   

    It is clear what this sim’s message is—children are hurt by war, even if they did not witness it.  Children can be affected by war even if they hear no mention of it from family or friends.  Media can spread the news quite easily, and nowadays, most children hear it on television or perhaps hear their parents talking about it.  There is no way to shelter children from this news—we can only explain to them that war happens when people disagree, and it can lead to horrible consequences.

Yet in this darkness, there is a speck of light.  There are still wonderful things happening in the world.  People still go out of their way to help others, to shelter them from the storms of war.  It is through this light that we discover our true character, and as a result, ourselves.

If you’ve never been to Rose Borchovski’s LEA exhibit on LEA 23, please take the time to do so.  She has spent a LOT of time painstakingly placing each prim into place.  It is a sim everyone needs to see, and everyone will, I think, come out of it with a different message.