MARY 2 — Mary visits while Johnny fishes; he mistakes her for a fish, catches a boot

MARY 2 on PS1 at night: Johnny stands on his raft fishing with the rod arched out over the water while Mary the mermaid surfaces near the shoreline. — MARY 2 on PS1, captured during the v0.8.4-ps1 chapter-select grind. Johnny is on the raft mid-cast; Mary the mermaid has surfaced at the shoreline. The "He catches a boot" line in the caption audit actually fits this scene — see the FAQ Q on caption-vs-scene-title divergence for why FISHING 2 carries a caption that belongs to MARY 2.

Validated on 2026-05-03 after visual and audible signoff, including far-right and true far-left runtime stress playback.

Pack identifiers

ADS dispatch: MARY.ADS scene 2
Slug: mary2

What this scene is

Johnny is fishing when Mary the mermaid swims up. He mistakes her for a fish on the line — and after the confusion clears, he ends up reeling in a boot instead. Confirmed by direct on-PS1 playback observation while capturing the chapter-select thumbnail; the earlier “first encounter” caption-mapping had the meet-cute right but missed the boot beat. (This is also where the “He catches a boot” line in the FISHING.ADS caption audit actually belongs — explaining the mismatch flagged on FISHING 2.)

Validation note

This scene proved that one island-relative vignette can expose more than one screen width of source pixels. A single host position clipped useful action depending on where the island sat: the opening fishing line, Mary and her splash, the boot throw, and the lower-water cleanup all needed different sightlines.

The validated high and low packs are built from a wide scene-relative multi-view stitch. Foreground-only captures at controlled host/test positions restore the edge-clipped action pixels and remove stale lower-band overpaint. The fish thought-bubble interval needed a separate full-host bubble injection because foreground-only capture kept the fish but dropped the white bubble shell.

Those host/test positions are capture evidence, not runtime pins. Production playback remains variable-position safe; visual stress runs passed at far-right and true far-left placement.