Erik Torreon has been through the mixer. In a way I feel really bad for him, but I’m also happy for him since he found something to live for.

As we played I could see disturbing parallels to my own personality coming out. I’m someone who is socially pretty shy and I have a few close friends, but I’d kill or die for them. I see Erik having those same traits, along with him abhorring violence. I wanted to steer him away from violent conflict, but that’s easier said than done in Rivertown.

The Emilee episode would have emotionally scarred him badly, and what happened with Delia—oh my God for the millionth time by the way!!!—would have nearly driven him over the edge. But it got me thinking if searching for a monogamous relationship was really the wisest thing in this nasty world. I mean, people are keeling over all the time, either falling through falls or having the ceiling caved in on them if they’re not being shot by cruel scavengers or the MPD. It seems like you’d be better off having a big group of friends and family so when something rotten happens to someone, who have a whole community to fall back on.

Erik never got out to Concord (thanks for nothing Devlin!) but I think that’s would be his idea of heaven. Coming from a tight-knit community, the every-man-for-himself approach would have been pretty foreign to him (again, thanks for nothing Devlin! At least you got what you deserved.) But I saw aztalan and Concord being a rural/urban equivalent of the same basic social situation, where a small group of people have each others’ backs and defend their basic rights and freedoms, even though there’s no rule of law besides some vague sense of human dignity. That sense of dignity was really lacking in this world we created, and I found that the most depressing thing of all.

Will Erik’s new, great, democratic institution work? In a word, I doubt it. I just don’t see how in those conditions, with that kind of scarcity, people would put aside their individual wants and needs in order to rally around a social good, unless you’re blood relations. But Erik (like me?) is a dreamer and (like me) he’s still young with a lot to learn. I see him having a childish crush on the jack, then on Emilee, then on Delia, and ending with this dream of democracy for Rivertown.

What bothers me (and I mean honestly bothers me, I find myself daydreaming about this in class) is that I don’t see this ending well for him. The fellow with the heart of gold will likely have it cut out of his chest in that city. He’d be better off heading back to aztalan with his tail between his legs, but I think his romantic pride won’t let him. I worry that Erik is going to wind up on the 10 o’clock news or on the side of a milk carton.

And if that’s Erik’s fate, what does that say about my own?!? ;)

--Eric