Let Bayous Be Bayous - OOC

lol welp they were in pity and we should respect their life choices XD

 

Sorry that took me forever to finish. Sundays are my busy days, and I was weirdly stuck on finding the right music.

 

It's alright, I got really distracted organizing things this evening, so it might take me a moment to reply, as well XDD (Out of curiousity, where are you in the world?)

 

I am in the Midwest USA, in Indiana. I keep really weird hours, though, since I am the house spouse and I don't have a job or classes or anything locking me into a schedule. :D I was guessing you were somewhere Europe-wards?

 

Yeah, I'm in the UK :) I hope Vastar's accent doesn't slip too much, because I only know that kind of palance from movies and TV (and Gamzee, obvs) XDD I'm housebound most days for health reasons, hence having lots of time as well <3

I've lived on cold dreary moorland for decades now, but I spent a couple of months in Florida some years back and that's mostly where I'm getting the swamp from, as well as the bayous of New Orleans, which I've never been to but would love to some day XD I would freaking upright murder to live somewhere wet and green and hot like that, lol XD

 

The past few days have been kicking my ass in terms of spoons - sorry I just haven't been able to post very frequently.

Vastar's accent is actually pretty great, and the small slip-ups just give her more unique character, honestly. Someone who grew up as isolated as she did would have verbal quirks.

Indiana is swelteringly warm and humid in the summer, and bitterly cold this time of year. I would honestly love to live somewhere with more moderate year-round temps, because my chronic illnesses are all exacerbated terribly by cold, and moderately by sharp shifts in weather. :-P

 

Urgh yeah, same - I mean we don't have it nearly as extreme here in Yorkshire, but I swear it's not the cold air in winter that my lungs hate, it's the constant shift between the chilly outside and overheated inside, you know? (I'm on medication, so it hasn't happened for a couple of years, but the medication is because otherwise my lungs are ridiculously prone to infection in winter and it's landed me in hospital for weeks at a time.) Also the cold and wet always gets into my joints D:

I've been thinking of making Kholai much more of a villain than Vastar ever suspected - maybe even like the pitch version of a gold digger, except when Vastar didn't die of all his 'friendly' traps, he faked his death so he could move onto the next target. (Also I want to toss a violetblood semi-feral at them before they get out of the swamp, maybe?)

 

I have instituted a personal rule the last five years or so that if it's below zero F, I'm not going outside unless it's life essential, because even when I bundle all to heck my breathing is screwed up. And, of course, the early arthritis in my hands hates it too. Summer is much more tolerable, but I don't want to go too much warmer climate-wise because I don't want summer to become intolerable.

Villians are good! Antagonists are good! Apkuri really is decent in a strife - what she doesn't have in direct troll-on-troll experience she kind of makes up for in ruthlessness. She'll have compassion outside of life-or-death situations, but the... oh, what words am I looking for? ...moral blankness of her various feral and near-feral periods comes in useful when she can't get away from a fight.

 

Ahaha, and I've got an apology and some info that affects your most recent post @lilacsofthedead ... Mintuu is cerulean, not teal. Sorry for not making that clear. I guess the color in her sign came out kind of ambiguous, too. >_>

 

Oops! I'll edit that, then - her vanished kismesis was cerulean, as well XD

 

Edited that XDD

Also, while we're on the topic of signs, Vastar's is the Leviathan cross, one of the alchemiac symbols for sulphur and the human soul, as I understand it -
(Because I wanted something with an infinity sign to echo her horns, and ties into her SGRUB title as the Witch of Heart)

 

That's really neat! Mintuu's sign is just Sagitta/the arrow.

 

Are you guys okay?

 

Kit's been feeling kinda under the weather of late and keeps trying to write a reply and getting distracted. :s They say sorry (and cold meds have been deployed, so I'm hoping they'll feel better soon.) Sorry for leaving you hanging!

 

It's cool! Tell them to drink lots of lemon and ginger tea and feel better :3

 

Anomal(eee) is making me wild orange tea rn - it has lemongrass and all kinds of other herbs and it tastes like the sun :D

I am willing to try to write a post today, though, although it may take me forever with how spacey I am :P question - what do you headcanon trolls' reactions to having their horns touched being? I've seen a lot of range in fanfiction.

 

Oh yeah! :D I saw that post and apparently had a tiny Kankri skulking in the back of my brain, or something, because I literally read that bit and went:

#tw: horn touching

:')

 

pffthaha urgh kankri you wreck (how the hell you wound up as the Signless is a motherfucking miracle in my mind)

tw: long post is long

But yeah! My personal headcanon is that they're sensitive, but not necessarily erogenous, if that makes any sense - a troll's horns are used to give a kind of spatial awareness of the world, so they can find their way even when it's pitch black out - they use their nocturnal-adapted eyes just as much, of course, but blind trolls aren't nearly as helpless as blind humans, even without Terezi's taste/smell-to-colour synaesthesia.

They're pretty well protected, but the cores are full of nerve endings the same way a turtle's shell is - they can feel pressure and temperature, and another person's hands on your horns is shockingly intimate, because it really fucking hurts to get one broken. Because trolls don't shed their horns like cervids - deer and the like - their anatomy is more likely to be more like a goat or antelope horn, aka a spongey core with a hard outer layer - you could very well bleed to death from a snapped-off horn, if not staunched in time. (I don't know enough about invertebrates to really extrapolate a great deal from them, so I'm just working with what I've got.)

Also the hornbeds are even more sensitive, especially in wigglers who haven't hit their adult molt yet and their horns are still growing rapidly - horn care in a moment. It's quite often like when someone else scratches your itch - it just feels so good and your toes curl and your spine melts, but it's not necessarily sexual unless it's done in a sexual context. Also like hair-pulling, depends on if the individual has a thing for horn-grabbing, and works in a similar way like 'you could rip it off if you pulled too hard, so I'mma go with it so you don't, and plus that slight pain is a little sexy.'

Vastar mentions her horns are quite rough, and that's because due to her caste she doesn't have the right degree of cutaneous oil to keep her hornbeds moisturised in such a humid enviroment. Like humans who live on the sea, trolls of the landweller subspecies can get dry or flaky skin when in or around the water too much, and Vastar as an inbetweener isn't quite enough fish to have the right skin to be constantly amphibious. (It's my headcanon that Eridan doesn't have enough of it, either, which is why he isn't as seaworthy as Feferi, also that he's a freshwater fishtroll, but that's besides the point.)

Vastar obviously does try to oil her horns once a fortnight, same as human kids are taught to brush their hair or clean their teeth, but because of their shape it's difficult for her to get in underneath them, for example. Not without help, at least. So they're rougher than they should be, and may well look pretty neglected to your girl Appie.

TL;DR - I'M GLAD YOU ASKED :D

 

AWESOME I LOVE RAMBLING ABOUT HEADCANONS

so
yours matches the one Anomal(eee) and I had been running with pretty exactly - we had one extra tweak
@Anomal(eee) you are going to better at science words than me, pls halp?

 

Okay, basically same ideas wrt structure and sensitivity, and because trolls are apparently pretty hardy as far as surviving lots of blood loss goes (eg Vriska and Tavros). I also go with the headcanon that deliberate, prolonged pressure on the hornbeds (like either a deep pressure massage or someone digging in to try and rip them out by the roots) will result in what amounts to a shock response- blood pressure drops and the body dumps a fuckton of pain-suppressing hormones into the bloodstream. The troll would be mostly unresponsive if they are still conscious, in a state like that, but also has the chance to survive trauma to its horns- and if they're in a position where something's managed to get close enough to trigger that response, they're pretty much fucked anyway, so the body goes into damage control mode rather than trying to keep fighting.

Now, since trolls seem to be about as kinky as humans, naturally I figure that means that some would induce that state intentionally/find the experience enjoyable (my thought is primarily as a sign of trust in the pale/flushed quadrants, because I can't see many rivalries being able to stand up to one of them so emphatically winning, with the other person so blatantly at their mercy as that), but it would be a pretty intense gesture, and since it's hard to trigger on accident, probably not something that these two would have to worry about stumbling into if we're going with this headcanon. Anyway, that's the gist of it.