ok so apparently i’m a machine that generates TTTE au’s but never actually writes them so i’m just gonna compile all the ones i can currently remember. is it for posterity? future reference? self-humiliation? we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.
1. 💙💧Blue Sodor💧💙
a.k.a “Oh, oh oh, you don’t want blue flavor? You don’t want blue flavor, huh? That’s crazy. Mr. Too Good for Blue, over here. Here, have a large cup of blue. On the house. Get out of my face. Bozo. I spit on people like you. P t o o.”
tl;dr: James isn’t given the choice to be red after his accident, thus the universalness of NWR Blue is never broken. The ramifications of this are… surprisingly huge. (The butterfly effect giveth and the butterfly effect taketh away.)
James for starters will be a completely different engine. A mild-mannered everyman whose rough-and-tumble LYR upbringing occasionally resurfaces in times of dire stress or conflict… but 99% of the time it doesn’t. He’s like if the archetypal Water Cooler Guy from an office was an engine, (a fate worse than death, if you’d ask the “irl” James.)
A Sodor without room for unique colors or James the Red Engine’s ✨panache✨ may find fame less easy to capture. It definitely won’t make it on the telly; “kids watching could confuse one engine for another! We’d better film elsewhere, crew.”
Fame is of course the NWR’s ace in the hole, its paprika at the cookout, if you will. If you remove it, it quickly becomes just another railway, (or an unseasoned chicken breast indistinguishable from a lump of rubber at the cookout mentioned prior,) and if the NWR’s just another railway… things are on shakier ground.
This’ll be a commonality in all of these AUs really: the fact that Sodor isn’t allowed to develop as it did “irl,” (a colorful, caring if overly snippy place,) usually leads to either unsatisfying success, hand-to-mouth existence, or all-out ruin.
2. 🤜Two Big Engines🤛
a.k.a. “Sodor has become a highschool hallway with rails and there’s two jocks in it shoving the tank engines into lockers.”
tl;dr: Henry was built as a well-performing Pacific from the outset. Once on Sodor, he and Gordon rule the roost pretty unhindered, becoming an insufferable pair of snots that are untouchable considering they do carry the place, much as they shouldn’t be told so. The railway is, compared to “irl,” pretty sour, charmless, and most of all less empathetic. And likely dieselizes down the road. Thanks fellas.
Also poor James is reduced to either (a) a simpering squib, (b) a bitter little wallflower, or (c) a blend of A and B.
Major kudos to @/mean-scarlet-deceiver for inspiring this one!
3. 2️⃣Edward the Twin Engine2️⃣
After chatting about their oc, good-ol’-sound-as-a-bell 36, MSD and I once headcanoned up a brother for Edward who was, more or less, the engine-sona of Chuck McGill from BCS: brutally competent under the right circumstances, waspish, celebrated a bit too much for his own good, emotionally stilted and unavailable. In this AU he’s with Edward on Sodor from the very beginning. (I call this engine Charles; MSD prefers Lewis. We’re in arbitration.)
tl;dr: This AU examines a Sodor and an Edward developing with this new personality in the mix.
Is there less room for nonsense? Or more? Is Thomas gonna be more of a loose cannon under Charles’ tutelage or will he be more under heel than we’re used to? Is Edward gonna be a less admirable and wise engine in his brother’s shadow, and go full Saul Goodman? (Ignoring the lack of legal drama, meth dealing, Chicago sun—okay I’ll stop.)
4. 1️⃣Thomas, Minus Friends🪦
a.k.a. “OHHHhhh mygodthey’realldead. They’re all DEAD! what the fuck dude. what the fuuuck.”
This one I’ll admit is a bit unsubtle and over the top but I kind of don’t care.
tl;dr: The Railway Series books were only fairly successful, the Hatts lost influence early on, and the NWR wasn’t as financially comfortable, ergo Thomas is preserved as a sort of show-pony trinket… but hardly anyone else we know from the railway joins him. They were all scrapped by the late ‘60s in line with the rest of BR steam.
Thomas, (who at least still has Annie and Clarabel otherwise he’d just be out of reasons to live,) ekes out a hollow, smile-for-the-cameras existence. He’s dispirited, lonely in a future that he doesn’t feel was worth living to see, guilty that he was chosen to endure while his friends weren’t, visibly 100 as opposed to physically 100, and actually finds tourists PRETTY DAMN ANNOYING for making this living death of his happen and continue in the first place!
…
So those were all fun. Are they getting written? It’s dubious. Will I ever make an AU where things are jusr genuinely nice and copasedic? Fuuuuuuuck no, what’s the entertainment in that?😇
