New World Notes

THE NINE SOULS OF WILDE CUNNINGHAM

One avatar, many souls (originally published here.)

When wilde Cunningham gets their Second Life sea legs, they'd like to build a house. They'd also like to build a castle, though not as much as a house, and to a lesser degree, they'd also like to run a store. They all seem to like creating note cards, however, and also love waterfalls. Some of wilde wants to influence the world positively, while at the same time, another part of wilde wants to fly a helicopter and get some guns. Another portion of wilde would like to be a woman; still another, to make money and publish the first part of their life story. More wilde desires: to communicate their thoughts with ease, and to be honest about their challenges.

I finally met wilde Cunningham after days of residents enthusing to me about them, and truth be told, if I hadn’t known their story beforehand, I’d probably never notice them. Because at the moment, wilde is a startling avatar, with their bulky body and their orange skin, and red hair jutting in every direction from their balding head.

But there's a very good reason for wilde's appearance, and also for their name.

"We decided on our name because we have a group at our program which we had to name, some time ago," wilde Cunningham tells me. "We took ideas, and then voted on them, and named ourselves 'the wildes' back then. We have had this name for two years." Cunnigham laughs. "Just too wilde to be normal."

I smile, and they continue: "How did we decide on what we would look like, and our gender? We formed the man avatar first, because that day, we had more men in the group. We always wanted a female one, but we haven't taken the time to create her yet. Mary and Johanna would like that very much. We decided on how wilde would look first by starting with skin colors. We have both black and white in our real life group, and didn't want to have those because neither is better than the other. So we picked orange."

And this is probably a good place to introduce wilde in all their components-- though maybe their friend lilone Sandgraine is the best person to do that here, as she did for me, some days before I actually met them in person, as it were.

MISSING MELTS

Late last November, a woman was sitting in her home office, waiting for her broken computer to be repaired, when the disease that had been wracking her heart took its final toll, and killed her. She was 33.

Days later, a ceremony and vigil was held in-world for her, the mourners in black, their heads bowed, gathered in a ring around a shrine that bore her real life photograph. It depicts a young African-American woman with vivacious eyes and a giant grin, and even if most of the residents who came to mourn didn't know her in that incarnation, they still knew her well enough. On November 24th, a capacity crowd was there to remember the woman that most of them had only known as a slender, sexy brunette, the wittily-named ingenue known as Meltsinyourmouth Steed.

Someone there did know her well enough to know the why and how of her passing.

"She died wishing she was in Second Life," Malora Brodsky tells me. "Her computer broke [the previous] Wednesday... She had to wait nine days from Thursday to get hers back. She was on [her] hubby's computer checking e-mail... his computer wouldn't play Second Life." But by then, Malora and her had known each other her well enough to speak by phone, which is what they'd been doing, the previous day.

"We talked on phone around Midnight, Saturday night," Malora says. "She was tired and TV'd out... she hated not being able to play Second Life."

"And she died a few hours later, pretty much."

"Yes. She didn't call me Sunday, like she usually did..." There's silence on her side of the channel. "So depressed." Malora is a voluptuous redhead with ice blue eyes, given to wearing blood red capes or silk stockings and little else. (Based in part on the videogame character BloodRayne, one of her favorites, and a look that Melts embraced, when Malora tried it on.)

Malora's silent for awhile longer, and I ask her if we should talk about this later.

"Pardon me," she finally says. "Old wounds are open again... gawd, I miss her so much. Her spirit was unequalled. She was so full of love."

She learned that Melts had died on the day it happened. "I called her house to tell her about my mother." They spoke every day, around lunchtime, and for a couple hours in the evening. "And her hubby said she passed away... I had a hard time understanding him [at first]."

News of her passing spread quickly through the Second Life community, and Melts' many friends began planning her memorial, for the following week.

"She loved everyone," Malora says. "But she [also] told everyone how she loved me.  We were the happiest couple."

Because as it happens, Malora Brodsky was not just a friend. In Second Life, the two women were married to each other. "Other women propositioned her," says Malora, "and she wasn't interested in women, 'til she met me... We saw each other and stars flew. We knew we were destined for each other."