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

irl eevee for your edification

 

apologies if you wanted to have erskin explain that to him, bel is a history nerd and a smarty pants and i couldn't imagine he didn't have the ability to figure it out once the question was in front of him.

 

nope, he's a smart potato and it's cute when he goes all sherlock!

 

i think now it is Erskin Time

 

oops! okay, erskin will descend soonish

 

Erskin hasn't gone like Full Intimidating Captain's Bling but he's definitely in like, the actual formal captain's suit that captains are supposed to wear, rather than a t-shirt and shorts. It's more of a HEY FUCKTRUCK I OUTRANK EVERYONE HERE than a GAZE UPON MY INDOMITABLE SPLENDOR AND PISS YOURSELF, PEASANT message.

He also probably looks fine as hell.

 

erskin is super pissed off because a) even as a baby bel won't fucking listen to him and b) if baby bel dies, commander bel probably isn't coming back and c) a lot of this ship will fucking kill you SO IT SURE WOULD BE GREAT IF ANY VERSION OF BEL WOULD DO AS HE'S TOLD, EVER.

 

bel is being infuriatingly calm, like the arrogant little sassmaster he is, apologies to erskin's blood pressure :D

 

bel: *does impulsive bullshit without any forethought or research*
bel: i'm so smart
erskin: FUCKING FUCK YOU OH MY GOD

 

i think he might subconsciously want to get spanked

 

hmm, SHOULD erskin snap? i think he's got a lot more self control than young erskin, even though it IS bel and he CAN very easily get under erskin's skin. then again, three hours of sleep after partying and an exhausting week has him pretty frazzled. but if he did snap, bel would probably feel really vindicated?

what would actually make bel feel bad or realize he actually is in over his head here and needs to not blow off erskin's entirely legitimate concerns?

 

subconcious? bel knows damn well he wants to get spanked.

 

ok yes, that's fair :D

i think if instead of focusing on how bel isn't good enough to survive and doesn't deserve to be free (that's how this is sounding to bel), he presented it like "my job is hard enough without introducing extra variables, everyone is relying on me, don't make me neglect my duties to deal with you" bel would be a lot more willing to capitulate.

not sure you could get bel to feel bad no matter what, but could get him to be more cooperative and possibly apologize.

 

haha whoops, looks like erskin doubled down on 'would you fucking for once admit you don't know everything and follow my lead' which has never worked on bel yet and probably never will. even when bel knows he doesn't know everything, he's still got that ironclad faith he can improvise his way to victory.

out of curiosity, could erskin get bel to lose his temper?

 

also i think bel is too confident helmsman galley won't hurt him, but erskin is too confident that galley will kill them all as soon as he works out how. the reality is probably somewhere in the middle? this galley probably would throw himself into another DEATH OR FREEDOM charge if he got the opportunity, but he's fond of erskin and increasingly in love with bel. it's just, being in love with people doesn't really stop you from being really fucking angry about being a slave forever, or wanting to rip yourself and all your captors apart for it.

 

empirically, yes. :D

 

it's funny how young bel and erskin's arguments always seem to circle around to bel flipping his fucking shit over galley and erskin being increasingly hurt and bitter that bel seems to care so much more about galley than him, and feeling like bel's always dismissing erskin's problems and feelings in favor of irrelevant, catastrophized social justice bullshit.

but in this case, this is the first time bel's ever flipped out about galley, from captain aspera's perspective, so his annoyance here is just that bel keeps on being unwarrantedly confident about really stupid conclusions drawn from a really incorrect assumption of whatever fucking situation he's just narrowly survived.

 

i think to get bel to give, erskin would have to convince him that he was actually in danger, or that some other actual bad consequence occurred. keep in mind this bel is fresh from a whole lot of gruesome murdery danger and rough living; avoiding life support glitches and talking down panicky clown victims on a spaceship is a sunday afternoon ice cream social compared to that.

 

that's an excellent point! he's probably perfectly fine to survive the sunslammer, but from erskin's point of view, he was LITERALLY JUST AT A WAKE for all the ship's dead. he has no faith whatsoever that anyone can survive anything. he does not want a lil kiddie version of bel wandering out a fucking airlock because he thought he knew better than the sign on the wall that said AIRLOCK.

 

man, you know what, i bet young bel has no idea that he and erskin are a team in this universe, and that erskin is sort of freaking out about losing that support. he and his erskin are nowhere near that level yet, they're almost always adversaries.