Rayne's Welcoming Guide

[acid_rayne]

Congratulations on your new residence for God-knows-how-long.

Either you're aware of why you're here, in which case you're part of Team Warden. Or you don't, which means you're here to work through whatever cosmic mistake you made to end up here. It's like rehab, except on a spaceship.

Deal with it.

The first thing you'll notice is a bunch of people complaining they're bored. This will, without exception, be anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks after they and everyone else got humiliated in public or experienced agonising pain. These calls for 'something to do' will herald yet another chapter of doom, either known as a 'flood' or a 'port'.

These people are stupid and may be smacked in the face. Hard.

A flood is where the ship gets swamped by influence and can result in anything, from turning into a giant beaver (in either sense of the term), turning into an over-sexed (or under-sexed) teenager or shitting your guts out.

A port is when whoever steers the ship decides we need to dock at the nearest reality. If you fall off the side, well done - you get to be one of the natives and not even realise it. Then the rest of us have to go find you and you get kicked somewhere it hurts. If you don't, then you'll have a fun team-building exercise with whoever you're teamed up with. This will almost always be something painful, miserable or which endangers either your sanity, life or both.

There is an Admiral. We do not, however, know the ship's Captain.

Wardening techniques vary - as do those of inmates. Prepare to meet assholes, vampires (oh, wait, I repeated myself), werewolves, cowboys, racists, rapists, genocidal sadists, school bullies and just about every other hideous stereotype you can imagine. The inmates can get pretty varied, too... After a while, shit will grind you down to an apathetic, territorial, spiteful shadow of your former self. That's generally when you either regret choosing to go here or decide you need to rehab, no matter what.

There will be riots. These will be put down.

There will be gay love affairs. Big ones. If you're homophobic, you'll want to close your eyes a lot. In fact, if you're a guy, you'll wind up kissing some other dude at least once and somehow later claim it was an 'educational experience' and seriously believe it. God knows why... If you're into it, go have fun - just don't try pretending it's some kind of bullshit philosophical exercise. It's fucking, OK? End of.

There are an inordinate amount of attractive people. There are also some pretty damned ugly ones, too. Maybe it's a quota thing.

At some point, you'll find someone who knew you from a book/play/film/TV show/fucking video game. Ignore this. Or embrace it and think to yourself how somewhere out there, Nixon's portrayed as a cape-wearing, cartoon superhero robot. Or stuck on the cover of a Mills And Boon novel... Or both. Point is, it looks like we get eaten up by reality and regurgitated in some... Other way, on some strange world, far away from our own.

There are also weird groups of people who... Gravitate towards one another. They get in weird conversations. Don't even try to understand them. They're built on a foundation of some in-joke one of them made five months ago and the weirdest things lead to one or the other of them face-palming for reasons you'll never understand. Insanity follows if you try.

The easiest way to make friends is to not trouble anyone else. When someone's pissed off, that's the last thing they want, OK? Just don't. Besides which, they've probably got mind-powers or hypnotism or the power to crap out a turd made of lightning at a million miles an hour - do you want someone like that mad at you? Didn't think so.

If, however, you're in trouble, then ask for help. There's only a 50% chance anyone will notice in time (given that there's no such thing as a rota, we all sleep at weird times and have our own shit to deal with) and that whoever does will want to exploit it for their own ends. But, y'know... You could get lucky... Probably.

In short, your life is now ruined and you'll most likely wind up getting eaten by a giant space squirrel. At least twice.

That pretty much covers it.

Comments

[kingfor-aday.livejournal.com]

I haven't had the space squirrel yet.

And this place doesn't always grind you down.

[acid_rayne]

You will do...

[kingfor-aday.livejournal.com]

But now, I'll be on guard for space squirrels. I'll see them coming.

[acid_rayne]

Well... They are giant.

[darknessb4me]

Was that necessary?

[acid_rayne]

Sure it was. Now I can just tell new folks to look at this. Saves time.

[puzzleprince.livejournal.com]

Is the aim of this guide to reduce our newcomers to tears?

[acid_rayne]

Oh, honey... The ship already does that for us.

[naughtbutlife.livejournal.com]

Well, madam, you certainly put a tremendous amount of effort into this.

[acid_rayne]

Sometimes you just need to put these things down on paper.

[naughtbutlife.livejournal.com]

No one could have done it as succinctly and to-the-point as yourself, Rayne.

[lotoftrouble.livejournal.com]

You know Rayne, I'm bored.

[acid_rayne]

Never let it be said you don't know the consequences of your actions.

[lotoftrouble.livejournal.com]

When the giant squirrels come after me, I shall only have myself to blame.

[neuroticalson.livejournal.com]

Good tip about the 'I'm bored' thing.

As for everything else: All this flood shit isn't making me more eager to cooperate with anything.

[acid_rayne]

I know this happens while we're on our way to the next port... And I know we're meant to do assignments with whoever we're paired up with, when we get to one.

But it hardly ever helps. We might as well just stand still.

[neuroticalson.livejournal.com]

Yep, you might as well.

I think it'd be better for most of you if you left us inmates alone.

[jurisfictional.livejournal.com]

[Have a quiet laugh. Thursday is genuinely amused.]

Believe it or not, this is one of the most helpful primers I've ever read.

[acid_rayne]

Glad someone got some use out of it.

[una_persson]

Sarah and I were talking some time back about compiling a newcomer's guide to the Barge. I think you may have done much of our work for us.

[acid_rayne]

Aw, man... You mean I left something out?

[una_persson]

...Actually, you know, I think you covered everything really important. The remaining details are those on which fresh small talk is built, or something like that.

[young-idealist.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I'm with M. Nygma on this one. And I realize how ironic that statement is.

[acid_rayne]

Why, you two know eachother?

[young-idealist.livejournal.com]

Not directly, no. I think he's a sort of friend to my inmate.