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

would it be possible, when jethro comes in to check on erskin, for erskin to have blearily chewed through his drip lines and crawled off to hide in a corner or under a piece of equipment? or are there alarms that would go off?

edit: maybe it's the alarms that make jethro jog in to see what the fuck, while erskin himself is like AAAH CARRION EATER ALARM CALLS ARE GONNA LEAD PREDATORS RIGHT TO MY LOCATION AAAAAAH and not inclined to be happy about anyone messing with him before he digs under a sufficiently sturdy rock

the idea of erskin huddled under some equipment like a deliriously pissed off hermit crab and sticking his hand out to take swipes at whoever comes close just strikes me as pathetically funny

 

well, i could just edit in 'so he did', on gally's post? and we could switch off to jethro?

edit: don't feel bad about being stuck on posts, everyone gets stuck on posts, except me, because i'm perfect, and any time it seems like i get stuck on posts is a lie told by my enemies.

 

Hmm, yeah, I was thinking it would be cute for Jethro to coax him back into the tank, or get Whitey to, but if there's no real means of communication then that would be really dangerous of him to try. Feverish, freaked out highbloods are dangerous enough without also being blind-deaf.

I guess let's just proceed as if everything's going pretty ok? Erskin's being a real trooper and staying more or less put. He's also probably looking pretty tired and thin from like a week or two of extreme distress, and is balled up in miserable fright against whatever edge or corner of his tank he can get his back against. And maybe clutching his horns. Any resemblance to smutty pale centerfolds is very coincidental.

 

should i describe how erskin's doing in the thread or do you wanna start with jethro walking iN?

 

ok! there you go. i don't think he's delirious so much as heavily medicated and on like day 4-5 of sensory deprivation. poor dude.

 

having like a first grade reading/writing level is not at all helping Erskin's coherency, even aside from everything else, and probably makes him seem a lot more heavily medicated and feverish and panicky than he is (though he is also those things too i guess?), if jethro doesn't know his background. which i guess he doesn't!

 

Poor erskin isnt just regular amounts of workaholic i think, or arrogant, he's actually been shoved in a position really young where he's genuinely one of the only things effectively standing between his crew and their inevitable deaths by neglect and sabotage, and pretty much all his superiors make that clear. Plus plenty of his subordinates, who've been happy to pass every serious problem up the ladder and into his lap. Plus the latest disaster was pretty gruesome, and would have been worse if he'd just kicked back and let it play out according to regulations instead of busting his ass finding and carrying out an alternate solution to 'we all die' or 'they all die'... So it really vindicates his concept that like, he's the only guy manning the barricades and has just got knocked off his post and they're all going to be overrun any moment.

I think Bel has some concept of this by now, how much pressure erskin's been under, if Jethro talks to him about how irrational and obsessive the guy is.

He can definitely take another week off tho. Bel's a good officer! Erskin's just not rly adjusted yet to the concept of having enough of those, is what I mean.

 

so whether or not erskin is supposed to be able to make up his own picturescapes, especially at this stage of facility with vr, i like the idea of echoing of his dream powers in the regular universe.

also i have a love-hate thing with zdislaw's work, it's so beautifully sad and loathsome.

 

i think i'll mostly link to the pictures rather than insert them. they're generally repulsive! so if you don't want to see them, you can just not click on them.

 

i think it's kind of a set-piece? not quite immersive but like a stage or a diorama. you can sit and look at it from outside, or you can go sit in the middle of it. he's conveyed a lot more data than just a 2d image but might be too clumsy still to make things really 'real'. if that makes sense.

i like the idea of bel standing around in it though! i'd be interested in how different it is from bel's expectations, if it is. if it's like 'i was really expecting more raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens' or if it's like 'well he's miserable right now so this figures'.