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

haha, nice. erskin's certainly been standoffish and unfriendly towards her, so it makes sense she wouldn't have too high of an opinion of him either, unless she were particularly friendly. plus he's just frankly not a good dog.

 

I figure that as wolves they wouldn't have any more 'heirarchical' dominance structure than human friends would. They'd all agree that Logan needs to do the most listening and obeying, because she's the most thoughtless and excitable, and could get into the most trouble, the way a little kid would need more guidance and control. Though if Erskin's going to be a shit, they'd all agree— and he would too— that Logan is allowed to push back at him for it.

Aside from that, they'd just 'lead' at whatever they were best at or felt most strongly about, and the others would naturally fall in and follow that lead in that situation. Bel's a good combat commander but I think would find it stressful to always be deciding everything for everyone all the time, Erskin has a lot of general being-a-wolf experience but is also kind of a little shit, and nearly as thoughtless and excitable as Logan. Pancho is pretty chill but also pretty sensible, and good at responsible medic stuff.

With a dog and a very new werewolf in the group, though, Erskin is definitely going to be experimentally throwing his weight around, to see where the push-back is. Because: he is kind of a little shit. Also like... wrestling, racing, and keep-away are very fun and exciting friend activities! So of course Erskin is going to be doing a lot of provoking.

 

huh, i think i just realized how little pancho knows about erskin beyond 'werewolf boyfriend with werewolf dad'. bel and erskin know the rough strokes of each other's backstories, but like, it seems to me 'bel's new boyfriend is pretty much illiterate because he's the mostly-wolf kind of werewolf' is a little more to take in than 'bel's new boyfriend is a werewolf'.

also i feel like a lot of people would expect bel to date like, you know, other intelligent, heroic types. people who build libraries for starving children kind of people.

 

other thought: bel is used to knowing human social conventions and nonverbal communication through rote study, and he does pretty okay at it, but he must have a lot of memories of blundering around and fucking up as a teen. and he also knows that yeah, humans definitely let themselves get bulldozed and then just be quietly resentful about it. but with werewolves, he's got this whole built-in magic translation of what werewolves are conveying nonverbally. if a wolf was feeling quietly resentful, they would be sitting there with their ears back, going I AM QUIETLY RESENTFUL at anyone who looked their way.

so if Bel was being pushy with wolf-shaped dudes, he'd be seeing very clearly and immediately who was going along with it because they thought it was a good idea, and who was going along with it because they were intimidated. like, werewolves with experience can perform lies, but i think it involves enough concentration and effort that werewolves wouldn't go in for casual, social-smoothing lies. they would especially not recreate the subtle nightmare that is human guess culture, urgh.

 

to clarify: erskin was having problems simply spelling the words at all, with regular letters, even before they got to teaching him what combination of dots and dashes stood in for the letters. so he would have hit his limit before they even got to the morse part.

 

i guess have bel be adjusting his expectations? maybe proud of him for even trying?

 

i'm assuming that pancho's trucker mom would be buying the kind of dogfood that's cheap and misleading and has like, pictures of flowers and potatoes and carrots on the front to pretend like 80% filler is a good thing. but in this case i think cheap high-carb high-fat dog food would probably be fine for everyone. putting on a few pounds is the least of everyone's worries, and not-enough food or setting bel to hunt fresh meat for everyone would be worse.

eta: tbh i want human kibble. i know people keep trying to invent cheap and good meal replacement powders and cereals and whatever, but man. sometimes i would like to just stick my hand in a fucking bag and pull out a handful of dinner.

 

Mmmmm now I want trailmix. It's hard to find cost effectively though outside of like, those giant bags they sell at costco. Also: way too many mixes have way too many peanuts. I get weirdly angry at peanuts considering that I like peanut butter just fine and eat a lot of PBJ.

A bunch of 'make your own human chow' websites recommend cooking rice and lentils in a rice cooker. I should probably get on that instead of just lying around and whining.

 

https://diy.soylent.com/recipes haha look at this

 

so i was thinking, the safehouse could be an abandoned barn with a little bunker under it and a lot of old fields, or an actual working farmhouse with an ally in it that can put them up for awhile, or a creepy mystery concrete bunker complex. any preferences?

 

im gonna sleep on this too. i kind of like the idea of 'quaint little abandoned-since-the-80's farmhouse with a spooky fucking mess of concrete tunnels underneath' though.