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

hm, yeah. this was supposed to be jeeves-and-wooster but got really life-or-death really fast! it'd be a bummer to admit we made a version of them that can't actually work out romantically.

so, where i was going with this was, erskin's instability is also the reason for his reluctance to engage with bel? he knows he's kind of a violent headcase and he still sucks at being around people he dislikes. and needs a first mate who will work with him, not against him, since he's already bearing up against hostile pressure from above. and bel has good ideas that would really help, but presents them in such a needling, combative way that it's just another layer of stress for erskin, not fun.

i think bel needs to lighten up? he could appeal to erskin's playful side, the mischievous tickstery game-player. because right now it seems like, he's set himself up as one more dangerous asshole in erskin's life that's leaning on him to be someone he isn't and probably can't be, then trying to punish him when erskin fails to live up to the imposed standard. that definitely inspires hate, but more than that it inspires fearful loathing! in the main rp they've been through a lot and can now genuinely trust one another to be there for them, but it's early days in this relationship so far.

perhaps bel could sort of negotiate his way through this medbay encounter, like, figuring that out? kismesis are supposed to bring out the best in one another, and erskin responding with cornered fury and violence to bel's sulky dickhead behavior might finally train him out of it. bel can be clever and creative and fun, and he does genuinely care about people and have a vast sense of responsibility. if erskin can believe he's actually got good intentions he'd actually relax into the kind of teasing competitiveness bel would want from him.

also, if bel would explain what he wants and how his demands fit into a larger context, his criticisms would come off more like criticism and less like unprovoked personal attacks. i think he's expecting erskin to draw conclusions that bel considers obvious, but aren't at all to erskin.

 

ok! sorry if i'm being frustrating. i think perhaps i tend to interpret bel as being crueler and more aggressive than you intend for him to come off as, then filter that further through erskin's issues. too many issues! i'll dig up examples— if i can actually find any! might be like last time where i was really misremembering stuff— tomorrow.

i'm going to make an effort to pull erskin out of his constant (tedious) freakouts, and have him be more snarky and wry. i forgot that i initially wanted a character who was good at laughing at himself and liked a dangerous challenge, not just someone who joylessly smiled through the pain of his tragic backstory.

if you'd like, i think it could be fun for bel and erskin to pester and bicker and slapfight through erskin's appointment, so that he actually has something like a good time.

 

You've been perfectly polite, so no worries.

"also, bel's criticisms and assumptions were meant to give erskin a chance to go "HA! in fact, watson, there is a method to my madness!""

Alright, I think the problem was that Erskin's explained himself once or twice already when it comes to 'why do you micromanage everything'. It would be micromanagement in a regular ship; on this one it's filling in unavoidable personel and labor gaps. And the conditions for 'Erskin does actually have to do a lot of non-captainly work' haven't changed yet, so Bel continuing to snip at him about that seems intentionally mean and unhelpful. 'Just stop doing the stuff you need to do because I don't think you should do it because I wouldn't do it if I were you (but I'm not you and not trying to understand anything about you)' is not something Erskin can take in stride indefinitely.

Plus like, they're just coming off the event/argument that went like this: 'you won't have to work so hard if you get labor units' 'ok but we're not going to get labor units i experience sabotage regularly' 'aha! we got labor units' 'the labor units are sabotaged. now we have more work to do.' And this is after Erskin's done his best to stress to Bel the night after he went berserk over the phone issue, that he needs to stop assuming Erskin does stuff because he's an idiot, and ask him for explanations, and work with him on compromises and new courses of action.

I think the frustration is that in this AU, Erskin isn't the one who needs to prove himself to Bel, it's the other way around?

 

Nah, I don't think they could work out red, and anyway Bel/Galley is the cutest. Plus I'm not into the whole, adversaries-to-lovers dynamic.

Okay, let's see if we can figure out the ship.

-Is Erskin coordinating: well, he's got his phone, so I think to a certain extent yes. He coordinates with department heads in the evenings to figure out what needs to be done, and who's available to do it, then makes the judgement calls on how many dudes to allocate where, then the department heads make the decisions on what to do with however many dudes and resources they have. He's not always running around to each and every department every day like he was when he was trying to teach Bel everything that needed to be done. And when it isn't crunch time on repairs, he'll spend more of his time coordinating things via phone phone while gardening, because he likes gardening. The notion that he should be sitting in a chair in a room while coordinating things would be absolutely baffling to him, though. He's high-energy enough to want to be working all day. If there's paperwork to do he expects Lainey to bring it to him wherever he is, then he'll pause to fill it out.

-Lainey is kind of Uhura in this situation, she does a lot of the calls. She'd be working with Bel on the paperwork mostly, and only pulling Erskin in when she needs a signature or an Erskin-specific judgement call. She's probably got a clearer big-picture view of the ship's connections and resources and schedules, but Erskin knows what's going on at ground level.

- Bel could probably work with them to streamiline this process and find places where everything could work more efficiently. But stuffing Erskin into an office to sit at a desk isn't going to be the solution at all. Bel and Lainey can do that. Probably Erskin was treating his department heads as equal peers and taking orders from them half the time— Bel could put a stop to that, and institute a clearer chain of command / process of delegation. Does that make sense?

-Bel's job as first mate just being 'secretary' would be boring, yeah. And overlap a lot with Lainey's communication officer job. I like the idea of him as an Ideas Guy— help Erskin come up with clever plots and plans, anticipate problems and brainstorm solutions, stuff like that. Make stuff more efficient, use his superior education to exploit loopholes. Erskin would genuinely admire that, as he did Bel's idea to rent out space. It'd be nicer than Bel just walking around going 'no no no everything is stupid'. Which is also boring.

-I like what you said about Erskin needing validation, it makes sense to me. He tries really really hard and he wants someone to pat him on the back and tell him he's a good boy. So— Bel probably needs to be someone who's approval he cares about, rather than just who's cooperation he needs to secure. Otherwise it might actually end up being Murfey he starts looking to, because Murfey's got an air of competence and authority while also being friendly and fun. Which... might be cute! Murfey and Bel could talk about that, maybe.

 

Damn! Yeah, if bel's that standoffish and doesn't want erskin's approval (or respect?) they might not be compatable this way. I'm willing to interperet what this bel says as 'trying to be helpful' instead of 'what an incredible asshole' but ive clearly got my own defensiveness issues there to deal with! We've had this set of problems before, but we've worked through it too. I miss how tumblrs tag system let us annotate our posts. But itd help me out if you left more footnotes for me to grok what's going on in bel's head and what you'd like out of an interaction.

i feel like they COULD have sypathy for each other-- bel's a hard and unhappy bastard, but he's been trained all his life to be like that. Erskin could pity him for it, and want to shake him up and tweak his nose and make him have fun. when they were having a good time at the party, i really liked that! They were cute.

Say we rewind to erskin coming into the medbay, have the procedure be much less gruesome, erskin much less pained and vulnerable. He can tease back and be in a good mood too, maybe they can swap gruesome dismemberment stories. Figure out how to balance a hatefriendship, instead of launching right into violence and angst. When bel is critical of him, maybe he can challenge bel right back, to adapt his mindset to the respurces at hand-- he could def tease bel about the killbots.

I default to angst, gore, and tragic violence when im tired, and honestly ive had a stressed and off-med kinda week, so, bleah. Its harder to write erskin being a mischevious free spirit with a big compassionate streak, but it works out better and i like it more.

Funny how when we're not doing well our characters don't do so great either!

 

Also what if erskin is like 'ok i conceed we really have something passionate and compelling here, but im not doing shit till we're friends.'

Bel's bitter little romance gland can be like 'guh???'

 

Yeah i think so! Pancho and murfey could have a good laugh. Also, he could practice w galley, who also wants to be pals.

I think if bel were slotted into the 'fussy snapbeast' category in erskin's brain, he'd be more resilient and take less of bel's shit personally. Erskin, by this point, has practice at being charming-- lainey trained him for it.

 

huff! i'm finally home and got a regular keyboard.

also— erskin definitely isn't a teflon soul, he's just... bouncy? resilient? so there can still be some friction there. bel is gonna need to do some emotional work too!

ok i'm gonna trim back to erskin's entrance and start over.

 

okay, erskin's entrance to the medical bay's gotten rewritten, you can trim out bel's nonsensical answers! his stump probably looks blistered and gross, with ropes of raw and exposed biowire, but not the rotted-out nightmare i wrote in initially. bel's response would still be accurate though.