Boat Trolls planning thread! (full of spoilers, non-players enter at your own risk)

Sorry bout your clinics! Im settling into having moved, so ill be around a bit more... Hmmm. I didnt quite mean for lainey to add extra dire portents to erskins rainbowdrinker habit, which id like him to keep up indefinitely. But bel could stand to get on him about the booze? Which he's mostly using to cope with social stress and withdrawal... Bel might be more open to figuring that out now? And anyway laineys advice could bring stuff to a head when erskin comes back from getting his fix, and they could hash out suicidal behavior issues.
And work out some kind of reasonably healthy agreement?

If bel tried to lock erskin up he'd just escape for spite, and bel isnt into coercive measures anyway. But run-and-chase is definitely a game they could play in better circumstances.

Idk if this is too grim for you, but jethro might show erskin cloris's pictures after he comes back? Like, look, this isnt a free choice youre making, this is a compulsion someone evil put in you.

 

I just realized: once they've primed fluffdad to catch live prey, bel is going to have to politely and appreciatively eat SO MANY little kitten gifts.
Good thing they're trolls and a squashed grasshopper or half a rat counts as a reasonable snack. Maybe bel can train him to fetch hor d'oeuvres.?

 

Imagine him figuring out the concept of candy and solemnly fetching Bel a grubcake when he has been a Good Boy.

 

Im having lainey be hard to pin down about her personal life because i think a reporter/blogger that doesnt answer questions about herself is funny.

Anyway what ive got of her so far is her mom's a giant firebreathing python named Delphine who is at least somewhat precognitive. I dont think lainey's picked up the trick yet but she is hopeful. Shes also dyslexic as fuck. arguus handles reading and writing and research for her, and she handles talking and making decisions.

Also Arguus communes with machines, a pretty unusual talent for a troll. He doesnt talk to people because hes incredibly shy and also because its hard to sort out what to say to who when you're also processing a lot of other stimulus and sometimes mistakenly argue with the fridge in front of other people. He's blind but sees through any and all cameras nearby... I dont think his range is further than shouting distance.

He had a bad pale relationship as a kid with a highblood that was just using him for his talents to Do Crimes, and treating his overstimulation fits with drugs instead of legit pale attention. Lainey killed that guy. But now Arguus is gunshy about being officially pale again so they're a very wobbly, halfassed flushed and they keep SAYING theyre gonna do some sex with each other but never do, they just hug very intensely.

Snakemom really likes arguss because he is so warm and he likes her because his lusus died way back (secretly killed by his shitty ex) and Delphine is strong and big and chill. They hang all over eachother at home. It is adorable.

 

Ok suggestion: Bel spends the day and evening out on the town, then comes back and is finally able to crash out and snooze. But it means his 'ok time to talk to erskin about his dumbass coping mechanisms' decision is postponed for the night, and that's the night erskin finally gets jittery enough to go find a fix? And if just jethro's up and about, it'd be easy enough for erskin to slip out when the guy wasn't looking-- or even just say 'im going for a walk to clear my head, ill be back in a bit,' especially if erskin had been giving off prickly I NEED SPACE vibes for hours.

Maybe jethro and bel just decide to wait and see and tear a strip off him when he gets back? And if he never gets back, then, uh, well... They'll deal with that then. (Or write him off as might-as-well-be dead)

 

Ooh, i like that.

 

Lainey is up to her ears in celebrity gossip, and photos of trolls of all ages-- if she sees a picture of galley shes going to be able to tell immediately that he's too old to be on planet. Do you want to edit, or is this an ok plot development?

 

Well, yes, I generally can. Mid-twenties can pass as late-teens, but usually by people who don't have an eye for it or just aren't looking, or because an actor has been dressed and styled to look younger. Regular women can be harder to determine the age of because they carry fat differently and for longer into adulthood, but sixteen still just doesn't look like twenty six. (though i'm still asked 'what are you going to study in college', hmf)

A lot of artists, photographers, and bloggers who are used to extrapolating as much info from a candid photo as possible to write an article would focus on age markers like jaw, shoulders, eyes, hands. And I guess with trolls they'd look to horn bands, claws, tooth wear, scars, and eyes. Even if this isn't a universe where adult trolls get black skin— and his eyes aren't shown— I would expect that with so much of his body showing it would be clear to someone like Lainey that he's on the outside edge of his young-adult growth, rather than the start of it.

So: yeah, sorry, even if Bel isn't tuned in to making those kind of judgements, Lainey would absolutely know right away. That could be a cool mistake for him to make, actually, if he's so used to relying on Pancho's better discernment and people skills that he forgets most trolls are better at reading each other's faces and bodies than him.

 

Well, Lainey's shallow, not stupid. She's going to play it as cool as absolutely possible— no reason to force a dangerous and protective romantic like Bel to make a hasty decision! What do you think of her actually playing along like she didn't notice anything, and maybe trying to get the most information she can about the situation— to make a clearer decision on her own later and/or produce a comprehensive cull report and/or because she's a nosey curious kid anyway.

Also yeah, Erskin noticed right off, he's used to judging ages of trolls in his wandering, and also just has a naturalist's eye for detail. To him Galley doesn't look anything like a kid and is really unnerving— his first impression of Galley was kinda like this. Meanwhile Cloris snuck in completely under his radar. Poor idiot.

 

yeah, that's a bummer, and it's uncomfortably similar to erskin's whole problem— but i think i figure kind of the same thing as erskin, anyway? poor bel is inextricably tangled up in a bunch of treasonous activities, and the discovery of any one of them by authorities will get him and/or his family killed. kids who might otherwise be great friends will turn him in to save themselves and their own family.

it seems to me that so far bel has only sacrificed things he didn't mind losing all that much— the responsibility of command over people he doesn't know yet in a war he doesn't give a fuck about— and is still looking at his future life as a treasonous renegade like, well, like a teenager, a very young man, a romantic. he'll be a cool rebel, he'll have a crew of devoted friends and family, it will be like one piece with more explosions. but he's still going to have to sacrifice things that actually hurt to give up, sooner or later?

i mean, i don't want to dictate what to do with your character! i'm just laying out how i see it. we don't need to be all Doom and Gloom and angstfest about it, but bel starting to see his life really diverging from other trolls' already, and starting to get a shape of how much he needs to prepare for the realities of his future, strikes me as interesting to write.