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

idk either! this particular arc has been a little difficult.

 

Well, I think consent in the context of pale romance would be a lot different than consent in the context of like, sexual intercourse. It's more like how doctors and police get to treat you. Your moirail isn't just a best friend that does some emotional therapy, they are there to save you— and anyone else in range— from yourself. You might not AGREE that you should stop doing drugs or engaging in really reckless dangerous behaviors or throwing murder tantrums or getting sucked into revenge cycles. But your moirail is there to shove you around and make you do what's best for yourself. Like, if you were going to do what was best for yourself in the first place, if it was as easy as a friend saying 'don't do the stupid thing' and you would say 'okay then i won't do the stupid thing,' you wouldn't need a moirail.

Anyway, it seems to me that (alternian) trolls are all pretty chill with constantly coercing and harassing each other. No one respects your boundaries until you make crossing them more unpleasant than respecting them, through harassment or revenge or immediate violence or whatever. It's how their hierarchy works and explains a lot of their defensive attitudes towards being openly sincere and vulnerable. A certain level of omnidirectional hostility is just the default politeness level.

ANYWAY even assuming that adult trolls have chilled out a little from the canon teens we see continuously tearing verbal (and physical) strips off each other, I think Jethro shoving Erskin around wouldn't be anything either of them would perceive as a rapey violation. If anything, Jethro putting himself in the risky (and romantically traditional?) position of getting loud and abrasive and commanding with a highblood in order to snap him out of a short-term-reward-long-term-disaster situation would be a pale overture, enough that Jethro might have to throw in a 'no romo!! o///o' amendment. After all, Erskin could decline the proposition by attacking him.

A regular medic with no personal attachment to the situation would probably continue to take indirect and non-provoking actions, watching out for their own life first. 'Trolls look out for number one' seems to be the default nonromantic state. 'I ain't gonna do anything i don't want to if you don't make me, fuck off'. See: Sollux, who's extremely altruistic by nature, but always makes a lot of noise about how everyone else is twisting his arm about getting him to do anything generous or helpful. And Terezi, who's extremely concerned with morality and righteousness, but presents this very carelessly sadistic front.

Anyway!!! So I think trolls negotiate consent less like 'do you want to do thing' 'yes' ok then'. And more like Baby It's Cold Outside. 'hey do you want to do the thing' 'no' 'you have to' 'aww, well, ok, if i HAVE to, dang'. A direct yes is a degrading capitulation, so a soft no stands in for it and lets both parties retain plausible deniablity. This leads to a lot of genuine violations when the insister disregards hard no's, and the further up the rank scale, the more blithely the insisters disregard any amount of no's. But hey, Alternia's basically awful and trolls are fucked up. So this fits.

This got long. BUT ALTERNIAN SOCIAL MORES ARE REALLY INTERESTING TO ME. In a story set in a coercion culture, not all of Our Good Guys are going to know how to flawlessly negotiate open and enthusiastic consent though, you know? In a lot of cases they'd just know how to negotiate consent in the regular coded ways they grew up with, and what makes them Good Guys is that they try at all.

 

hey, i just thought: what if you can't have a noncon feelings jam, because it involves both parties actively sharing themselves and their inner vulnerabilities. it'd be as strange a term as 'noncon making love'. any amount of pestering someone to share their feelings is just flirting, maybe bordering on harassment, because nothing would really happen until the other party actually agreed to engage.

the rape version would be getting someone intoxicated enough they don't notice you're interrogating them— that it's not a mutual exchange— or psionic probing/coercion, or breaking into someone's private accounts or diary. and in all those cases, to me, it really does seem like a violation. someone's taking this stuff from you for their own satisfaction, it is in no way a relationship or even a transaction. brrrrr. and it gets even worse when you consider how likely anything learned would be used against you, to further control you. BRRRR.

 

yes and if he wants to play it off as professional, it'd be on the level of, 'we are on a group project together and I'M not going to fail and YOU'RE not going to fail, now sit the fuck down and do the goddamn work'. (never mind that that's the romantic turning point of a bajillion teen romance movies...)

 

maybe jethro could do things like, demand he count to ten, or list the hemospectrum in three, six, and then twelve ranks, or tell him the types of asteroid, stuff like that, when he finally realizes that erskin will just pathetically agree with him if asked yes/no questions. i think erskin tends towards placating— jollying people along— at the best of times, and when rattled will do just about anything to escape direct aggression rather than confront it and risk provoking more.

that particular problem solving approach is probably way more common to low and midbloods, who are more likely to have smaller lusii and/or be orphaned than highbloods, and still make it to maturation. i suspect most anxious, nervy highbloods get chewed up and spat out by their peers sooner rather than later.

 

Ok, I'll can have Erskin start to be more cooperative if it's bugging you. I was assuming Jethro would like, go sit on him or something. Or you can just summarize it!

For the record, when Erskin tries or intends to do some exasperating, uncooperative, self-destructive thing, I don't consider it godmodding for anyone to have their character go stop him, otherwise I'd have written that he just went and did the thing. I think Lainey pushes him around all the time. He needs a fair amount of pushing around, haha.

 

Sure, go for it!

 

I am about!~ and after a nap I am feeling much better, so yeah, let's do this. >:D

 

Does Lu venture forth with or without Twitch?

 

alrighty, I can start--roach mentions she wouldn't mind bringing Twitchy out too--did we wanna do this in googledoc or do you think we could manage in forum?

 

hm I think forum's doable if you do