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

Would it be an interesting thing to play thru or just depressing, if erskin hits max withdrawal tolerance and sneaks off in the day to arrange a tawdry vampire hookup? Hed definitely be considerate enough to leave a note saying 'dont worry i'll be back soon', but i think determined enough to cover all his tracks so they couldn't stop him and/or blow up any of his new buddies.

 

hot and heavy pile action! if anyone ever asks erskin if he's going to put out pale pornography, that guy is getting punched in the snoot.

anyway i'm really sorry you've been having crummy medical times! i hope you get well soon. i'm down with spending however long you like poking around behind the scenes. i feel like a big nerd but it's fun just to talk about fan characters and figure out who they are and what they'd do in situations. i guess that's also why it's fun to dream up goofy AUs. speaking of, some time you feel well, i think it would be fun to do a hogwarts AU thread some time. like, just some random, disastrous weekend. maybe a hogsmeade trip that involves everyone getting detention, and erskin getting double detention.

but ok, that's something for some other time.

suggestions for more steamy pale action events: erskin finds the remaining vodka and the wisdom of getting totally hammered is discussed, erskin and jethro fuss over their lusii, erskin and jethro magical arts and crafts hour, erskin and jethro magical dreamtime adventures, bel coming back from exercising and erskin and jethro teasing him, erskin and jethro and bel realizing the teasing has gone awkwardly far, erskin and jethro and bel actually do go have a threesome. poor bel. um.... wheelchair jousting? probably wheelchair jousting is more of a bel <3< erskin thing. they should definitely wheelchair joust.

 

also, hm, reactions... i'd imagine that bel would be furious, since he has the least understanding of why erskin fell in with cloris, and how he's been affected. so like, scared as hell at first to find that erskin's vanished on them again, even with the little note erskin would have left, and then as soon as erskin comes back, super pissed off and betrayed?

jethro i think would have every right to feel betrayed. sneaking off on your moirail to do dangerous shit is pretty bad, right? but i liked that bit where jethro noted that erskin wasn't always the one driving the prowler, that made me laugh. and also it's good he kind of recognizes that erskin does deeply stupid shit for very obscure reasons... so like, i'd imagine he would be really hurt and frustrated, but his awful experience with the bite wound has kind of primed to make the connection that erskin— who already is not a champion at the self-control olympics— is going after something he really desperately wants.

ummmmmhhm i think erskin is also hitting peak tolerance for being hemmed in and controlled by his quadrantmates? obedience and cooperation are not in his nature, and i think some aspect of sneaking out wouldn't just be 'avoid a big argument', it would also, kind of, be like 'you can't actually control me.' giving bel the slip again would definitely make him feel extra pleased with himself— he knows it fucks bel up, but wouldn't be able to judge if it was a bad kind of fucking up.

i don't want things to get tediously cruel or unfun, or stressful and sad for you, but like... i do want to throw more contentious yelling and fussing and struggling into a blackrom? i feel shy about being pushy or bossy, but it turns out i don't really have fun with writing a gentle bromance rivalry kind of blackrom. it's too... nice? i like writing niceness best as a rare ray of sunshine, i guess, not as a default setting.

anyway to me it seems like all the respect and desire of a healthy blackrom should be balanced with actual hate and fury, that's what's so fun about it to experience, or to write. you should care about beating your opponent, your nemesis, you should want to blow up and lash out and really strain yourself to defeat this guy who drives you so nuts, not just because it's a fun game, but because you hate them so much that kicking anyone else's ass would be an incidental distraction from your life's work of kicking this guy's ass as hard as it needs to be kicked. does that make sense? this is the guy in all the world that you need to throw down with because they are just that incredibly aggravating.

urf, late night rambles. take your time with responding to all this.

 

that all sounds really reasonable, actually. i agree that this is the wrong front, too, when you put it like that. they'll have to work something else out on the island. maybe erskin can discover some intellectual thing he's good at— or maybe he can start messing with bel in dreams? where they can be as violent and brutal as they like with way fewer consequences.

i think erskin doesn't have a death wish, he's just dealing with not having a death wish really badly. he was definitely an adrenaline junkie when he was romping around the globe, but now he's had to face up to how actually almost dying really really sucks and is scary, and is not coping well? then again i've been spotty with keeping his traumas consistent. the problem of writing a developing character, i guess. it definitely looks like he's courting death, when it's more like he's trying to find any way around being scared of dying, up to and including frying his own brain? and of course cloris was pretty happy to go in and emphasize his fears and frustrations— i think erskin's new comfortableness around jethro, physically, is directly related to how cloris is dead now. maybe jethro will be happy to figure that out.

bel being cold and distant and sulky is sad, of course, but it seems like a perfectly reasonable and plot-furthering reaction. erskin will have to figure out some way to reconnect with him, and would attempt to do so as soon as he got over his own set of sulks. might do bel good to be courted a bit, and not the one always dashing around trying to fix things.

hmmmmm maybe in the way erskin could prod bel into bottling things up less, bel could prod him into actually facing fears in a disciplined and effective way? bel doesn't want him to die, erskin also doesn't want to die. erskin also probably doesn't have a very good idea of what to do with himself when he's not doing insanely stupid and dangerous stuff, which doesn't help either of them, but which also kind of leads back to my earlier 'bel needs to set this poor antsy jerk some quests' idea.

 

Awwe yis. This sounds great. But now I have to figure out what apologetic blackrom wooing even looks like! Argh. Suggestions of things Bel would find romantic?

 

Oh well! Youre not alone in not groking it, it seems like one of the rarer and more obscure set of feelings for humans to feel. Im sure there are plenty of trolls that dont much care for it either.

Hey! What if erskingoes and signs bel and himself for a reenactment battle?? So bel cant back out and also HAS to come and interact with erskin. Its something bel said he wanted to do and erskin previously refused, so. And itd sort of force bel to look out for erskin, and be a clumsy way of letting bel know that erskin appreciates it? And maybe shove bel a bit into acknowledging that erskin is a sturdy and competent kid in his own way, not a fragile suicidal little blossom.

Idk it seems like a good trust building exercise.

 

speaking of bel moping byronically on clifftops, how mad would he be if erskin snuck up on him during a sulkfest and pegged him with a flaming paintball round. i don't know if it's easier or harder to mope while someone is earnestly trying to set you on fire.

 

today i was thinking about dream adventures and erskin challenging/harassing bel in dreamfights, and making him be creative and flexible, because i really like that idea! and i remembered this image. corvids and even songbirds make a game out of coasting above raptors and then landing on them, and that's hilarious, and i am really in love with the idea of bel having a cool flying dream where he's this badass majestic raptor sailing around and being handsome, and then a scruffy little cawbeast lands on his back and goes 'hallo!'.

then: aerial dogfight. bel is swift death on graceful wings and this fucking crow keeps landing on his head it is time for BIRD MURDER.

 

also, what do you think of having it be like... when erskin enters a dream he really sharpens it up? like as a side effect of his his artist/naturalist side and imagination. events get more coherent, senses the other dreamers weren't using come online like color and smell and stuff, forms and perspectives solidify, and it starts getting written to long-term memory the way waking events do.

it might be an interesting plot point if dreamers like sigmah and cloris and erskin could take over and controll the narrative of dreams, while regular dreamers like lu or galley or maybe bel would be doing good if they managed to keep control of just themselves? like, poor lu had a really hard time fighting against anything cloris wanted to do to her while she was asleep. even though lu's got a really good imagination, her psychic talents are over in the animal communion area, not the intra-troll mindfuck area...

erskin would start setting up scenarios and challenges that they'd have a fair fight in once he realized that he was significantly or entirely better at dictating the setting. so he'd set them up as rival pirates, or a wolf defending a kill from a jackal, or territorial dragons, but he wouldn't be like 'haha now you're falling' or 'i put you in a box, suck it'. to him, if the fight isn't fair, the win doesn't mean anything. it might actually help erskin develop self-control and finesse, to sort of... keep the game board stable, while he's the one holding it and could tip it towards himself at any moment— and might whenever he was sufficiently startled. bel wouldn't even have to complain if he took a swipe at erskin and got turned into a mouse, erskin would be furious with himself.

actually, the thought of bel starting to aim for getting erskin to flinch and fuck bits of the dream up is pretty cool? it seems like the kind of clever tactic bel would come up with. work on jump scares and big flashy intimidation displays to get erskin to throw up walls or drop bel in a ditch or go skittering back into the garden maze, then stand there and laugh derisively, all like 'you can't take me without cheating, can you.' it'd drive him nuts.

 

we can put off depressing rainbowdrinker betrayal for another night or two in favor of dream adventures, probably! erskin needs more sleep anyway, he's had some pretty busy days for a guy who was mostly dead last week.

 

would he actually be scandalized by jethro and erskin tipsily catcalling him from the couch or just exasperated