He/Him. Irish. Habitual lurker. AuHD.
Stay for Thomas/RWS, Madoka Magica, Railways, Fate, Zelda, Metal Gear, RGG, Star Wars, Doctor Who (Classic, Modern and EU),DragonBall
and other cringe stuff !
Hi everyone, and Merry Christmas from 2024 if you're reading from the future. After the joy of writing my long post earlier today, I thought it best to make a little (read: extremely long) pinned post to introduce myself and what I shall be pulling from in regards to any future lengthy TTTE/RWS posts.
The Long-Winded Preface.
Before getting into the swing of things, I would like to thank some users. Some are friends, and some for now are strangers.
I would like to thank my dear friends Andrew and Ryan for their support and enthusiasm when sharing my thoughts in smaller spaces and for helping give me the confidence to unleash my thoughts into the wild.
I would also like to shout out another dear friend in Mike as well as many other skilled fellow fandome members such as @demonofnowhere , DDandT6, @joezworld @mean-scarlet-deceiver along with many more fic/headcanon writers here and on AO3 for sparking my desire to explore my own interpretation of the 'verse in the first place.
Below the cut, I will be introducing myself personally as well as my diving into my (admittedly early and subject to change) interpretation of the TTTE/RWS Universe.
Which, from now on will be tagged seperate from general Thomas-posting under the working title of: Our Magnificent Machines or TRWS: OMM
The Boring Personal History Lesson.
I'm Killy, common username: PapaJape, I'm a member of "The Fandome" (I will never call it anything else, thanks for the brainrot Mayoorhan), who's been active since 2014. In my time I have gone under a few names on places like BlueSky, DA, SiF and the old TTTE Wiki Chat. You may already know me from time spent as PapaKilly, KillyJapes, KnapfordTerminus, SpecialCoalMaster99 and NorthwesternE2. My primary forté is Trainz, where I enjoy taking pretty screenshots and producing the very occasional video.
I am a former moderator on the late Sodor Workshops Discord Server (may it never return) and a member of the "marketing team" for the site, that while not disbanded, it has been about as active as the site itself in the last couple years, which is to say, not at all.
After a long time, a recent diagnosis of adult AuHD and the ongoing exploration of treatment thereupon, I have found my love for this universe reignited, the enthusiasm led me to discovering (and reading alot of) works by the users mentioned above and many others besides, which led to this post and (hopefully) beyond.
Since 2020, my interest in work inspired by the RWS waned heavily, my main interaction being the support of my friends such as: CarsonsVideoWorkshops (Watch The Jury it's very good), AuldLangSyne, TardisRescue and Rydyronen. Aside from these, there was only the occasional wade-in when other friends made content for trainz or when moots shared interesting train related projects.
It's my Sandbox, and I Pick The Toys.
So, vehicle things at last. In most instances, I will be using the lore provided by The Island of Sodor: It's People, History and Railways and Wilbert's letters, layouts and lectures as my main base of operations, from there I will be frankenstien-ing on bits and pieces that I find interesting and some that bring me joy and/or amusement. All versions of the TV series, spinoffs, and even fanworks (with proper credit, respect and right to request removal to the authors) shall be subject to the plucking of bits I like.
I am a Doctor Who fan, the sorting, accepting and vetoing of mountains full of contradictory lore is a way of life. It will not be much different here.
In future posts things shall be refined into a more discernable (yet even more complicated) shape but in short:
Almost every official story and character exists in some form in OMM with some tributes to my most treasured unofficial stories, concepts and characters likely to sneak their way in as time goes by.
To Mercifully Conclude.
I hope I didnt scare anyone off with this merciless text-wall but I thought it best to consolidate my main information before diving into minutiae. If any TTTE-blr users have made it to this point thank you for reading, I look forward to interacting with any and all of you in the days and weeks to come.
every time i hear people talk about how rain and mildly warm temperatures is "awful weather" and temperatures in the thirties with no rain for a week is "nice" i feel like i'm in a particularly fucked-up twilight zone episode
one time in college i was in a creative writing class and this guy was holding up the critique with what i can only describe as like cinemasins dinging another student's writing. and at some point the professor said "the plot is the fork and the prose is the meal. you are critiquing the taste of the fork"
Girl Oliver is the sort of person who'd write many songs about how great she is. Self-mythologizing, loud, and unable to sit still, Girl Oliver always makes her presence known. How much of this swagger is genuine and how much of it is posturing to protect herself is something she doesn't want to examine.
One of my favourite things about The Doctor Falls is that like… the Doctor is actually kind of… useless in it.
Like he doesn’t get taken out at some huge, climactic, heroic moment, or anything like that. He gets zapped like, 30 seconds in, as an unforeseen consequence of his own plan, and has to be hauled to safety by Bill. He spends most of the episode stumbling around mortally wounded, admitting that he has no real idea how they’re going to get everyone out of this– then ultimately he gets shot because he was too busy gazing with rapture at the bloody moon to see a Cyberman.
I don’t know, it’s just such a poetic summary of what Moffat was going on about here:
Davison’s Doctor is beautifully unaware that he is a hero — he simply responds as he feels he must when confronted with evil and injustice, and does so with a very ‘human’ sense of fluster and outrage. In one of the comparatively few perfect decisions in Doctor Who, Davison is allowed to finally expire saving, not the entire universe, but just one life. This isn’t to show, as has been suggested, that he’s any less capable or powerful than the other Doctors —just that, for him, saving one life is as great an imperative as saving a galaxy. This, then, is the Doctor as I believe he ought to be — someone who would brave a supernova to rescue a kitten from a tree.
We’ve just.. come so far from the Doctor that was burdened with an obligation to be the most heroic person in the room, and would totally short-circuit when he couldn’t live up to that [which generally just led to even worse disasters] because PTSD, because of being forced into a War he wanted nothing to do with and being broken by it.
Even in the Huge Fuck-Off Explosion plan [which was almost entirely of Nardole’s engineering, and not his own] his primary contribution is empathy. It’s decoding the Cyberman’s perspective so they can figure out what they’re going to try next, not running around trying to figure out something enormously clever and spectacular to explode them harder or anything like that. Just “this is what their motivation is, so we have to consider that.” so Nardole can do the work of exploding them more effectively.
And his last thought before the Huge Fuck-Off Explosion is a lamentation that he didn’t get to fulfil a childhood promise to his friend to see the stars. Not a trace of Ten’s outrage at the burden the Universe had dumped on him, or even Eleven’s quiet surrender to the fact he had no more tricks left– because being the Big Damn Hero isn’t his solemn duty anymore, we’re beyond that.
Not that Ten / Eleven were somehow lesser Doctors or something, not at all, because the Big Damn Hero stuff was a completely natural consequence of his experience in the War, the War was a natural consequence of other narrative stuff I could go on for days about [I might, some other time] and the emotional fallout necessarily had to be dealt with to arrive at this point.
But… as Moffat says… this is the Doctor as he ought to be. Completely unaware that he is a hero, and aspiring to nothing beyond unremitting kindness, even if it kills him.
All I can think of now is his absolute incredulous disgust when Peri tells him "you used to be sweet."
Like, I dislike the exchange from a Doylist perspective because you don't sell your new era by putting down the previous one, but there's a Watsonian argument to be made that what he's saying with his "sweet? SWEET!? Effete is more like it..." retort is something like "I very much was not, and whatever I did to give you that impression I apparently need to do the opposite of now, and probably forever actually. Do you have any idea how many people I got killed??"
My interpretation has always been based on what the Doctor goes on to say next, something about having been so repressed during his decorative vegetable phase that he'd been on the verge of going entirely unstable. For me it ties in nicely with my conviction that his time in the Zero Room was the only time the celery Doctor truly was in possession of anything like the final personality which the regeneration process untilmately would have given him but for the chaotic environments the Master kept forcing him into, first Event One and then Castrovalva. It seemed entirely in character to me for the first thing he said on dropping that personality was, "Woah, glad that's over," and then ultimately to overcompensate; and I was saying from the first time I saw the story that it was very much in character, however rude and not ginger it was.
I also don't think the Doctor was as inclined before the Time War to feel guilty for deaths he which attempted to prevent but was unable to, or which would have happened whatever he did. ...Though there is that exchange between him, Mel, and the commander of the liner with the Vervoids which goes something like, "Doctor, why do people die whenever you show up?" "Hey, you have no right to say that to the Doctor!" "Yes, Mel, he does." But to me that exchange always stood out as the first time the Doctor himself said anything like that or that anyone else said anything like it to him, and I think it remained the only time until after the Time War. Yet it was the dreamcoat Doctor who said it, supporting your posit that that is something that preyed on him during that life.
I do agree that it is as Colin Baker that the Doctor first becomes aware of his own inner darkness (and as McCoy that he first starts to weaponize it). It's easy to point to the thing with Lytton as what really brings it all home to him - that is probably the first time he is standing in a pile of bodies going "hang on - this is MY fault." But like, I think the seeds of it are laid across the previous era. You talk about him not yet feeling guilty over the people he fails to save, but like. Adric. And the fact that he starts ranting about Cybermen in reaction to an episode about Daleks - that happens to end with Tegan stand in a pile of bodies saying: "I love you but this is lowkey your fault." Choosing to watch the Master burn instead of saving him. Regenerating with the litany of "she's dying, Doctor" ringing in his ears - and the bitter culpability inherent in "I owe it to her to try because I got her into this." The fact that his last word as he's dying is "Adric?" I think that there's an argument to be made (the one I am making, in fact) that he goes into his Dreamcoat era already with a bit of a complex about getting people killed.
And then Peri gets killed 🙃
And like usually the turn from "what have I done" to "what have you done" is a villain arc thing but like, after the darkness of the Sixth Doctor era (and the way the Valyard has been deliberately playing on this insecurity) there's something almost triumphant in the "you... killed Peri." He's had all this growth about acknowledging his own culpability and ability to be wrong about this and then there's this moment of wait. Hold on. I know I'm a hot mess but I didn't do this. You did this. On purpose. And it's like... it doesn't absolve him of his mistakes or go "Oh nm" on the character development but it lets him be a hero again.
"I'm not going to let you stop me now" and "I should have stayed here!" are two of the Doctor's finest moments in the whole series and they're about the Doctor acknowledged first his faults and then his virtues.
....oh heck. It's CS Lewis's enchantment schema isn't it - the Doctor's progression of enchantment with Heroic Meddling
Unenchantment: I never interfere! Never! [Hartnell]
Enchantment: I not only admit them, I am PROUD of them! [Troughton]
Disenchantment: I owe it to her to try, because I got her into this... [Davison]
Reenchantment: I should have stayed here! [cBaker]
Anyway, yeah, my assertion is that the Doctor is Like That in his Dreamcoat era because of all the blood he waded through under the veneer of playing the nice, chill, boring one in his Celery era.
And my secondary assertion (which I know I have made before) is that the War Games ep 10 and Trial of a Time Lord are bookends to a single story, much like the first and last episodes of Star Trek: the Next Generation - if Picard had flipped the script and gone all John Sheridan on Q's pretentious backside.
Sorry OP for sixing your five post I just. Have a lot of feelings.
Doctor Who being about memory could be attributed to Steven Moffat who made the power of memories an enduring tool in his writing kit, but it's also an inevitable product of simply how long-lived Doctor Who is and how large and intimidating the story is, which creates the ancient conflict of how much time the show should devote to nostalgia and acknowledgement of how many characters and histories the show has had. Even the title "Doctor Who" suggests an invitation to discover the central history behind the mysterious traveller who saves the day. The show is so old because of how it thrives on change and renewal, but it has never been able to completely disregard its own history. Doctor Who is about memory because it's about change and the future can never exist without the past.
The War Games, a second doctor story and the second ever regeneration story, is never called back to in the same explicit way as the Curator or Bad Wolf or casual references to that time the Doctor wore celery, but it is a deep dark scar in the very fabric of Doctor Who's continuity. The Doctor's relationships with his companions change afterwards, growing more protective and possessive of them to a disastrous degree. After our first intro to the Time Lords our understanding of our heroes origins is reframed and colored in a new way. "A man is the sum of his memories, a Time Lord even more so" reveals to us that while our hero frequently changes faces, it's the history he carries with him that defines him as Doctor Who, and "if no one watches, Dr Who will kill himself." When Jamie and Zoe's memories of the Doctor are wiped it is a violation of the story itself, because if their adventures with the Doctor is wiped from their minds, then Doctor Who is taken out of their lives, and they are essentially exiled from the narrative. That's why the Doctor never revisits Jamie and Zoe AFTER their punishment. The Doctor does not exist in their reality. They're not in the same story as him anymore.
Doctor Who is about memory. Doctor Who is about the War Games.
"Time loop stories as an allegory for grief" is great and all but love love love when a time loop is entirely self-inflicted and it quickly becomes apparent it's a sort of anxiety disorder driven savior complex.
C'mon, save 'em all. You're the only one who can. :D
Much ink has been spilled on Homura and her spiralling neurosis, especially since Rebellion painted such a devastatingly vivid picture of it all, but I feel like in a way, Madoka herself gets lost in the shuffle here. And I love Homura, so goddamn much, don't get me wrong, but Madoka is still my favorite of the cast overall, and I wanted to talk about her. (This is very stream-of-consciousness, fair warning.)
I don't think Madoka has much of a capacity for hate. Probably the closest she gets is her hostility towards Kyubey in the latter episodes of the anime, but even that is more just disbelief, then resigned acceptance, that their worldview and thinking is so fundamentally incompatible with her valuing human life and happiness, that there's just no point reasoning with them. Distrust, disappointment, absolutely, but even then it never reads as hate. She can get angry, she isn't a robot, but hate requires an energy she just doesn't have.
Kriemhild Gretchen, in prior timelines, is the witch of salvation. A dark messiah engulfing the world in a destructive salvation, whether that takes the form of a lotus-eater machine (not unlike Akuma Homura's later actions) or just mercy-killing everyone is unclear, but also besides the point. Kyuubey describes Madoka's eventual fall as "becoming the wickedest of all witches" but it's striking that even at her absolute worst self, Madoka never wants anything less then the best for all people. The form that benevolence takes is twisted into something harmful, but the benevolence remains firm.
Kriemhild Gretchen, in the final timeline as the universe is rewritten, is much more overtly malicious, yet even then her description paints this as a result of being the culmination of Every Magical Girl In All Of Existence's curses, all funneled through Madoka/Kriemhild Gretchen, so how much of that is really her own?
Madoka just isn't a hateful person. It's not in her nature, which is in stark contrast to just how deeply Homura's level of self-loathing goes.
And yet, all of that being said, it's also striking that Madoka fundamentally does not like herself one bit either, let alone love. Her selflessness is borne half out of unconditional love and endless forgiveness for literally everyone else on earth, and half out of a fundamental lack of self-esteem that can only be passingly appeased by making herself helpful to others. And if she makes herself helpful to Every Magical Girl In All Of Existence, does that finally give her some real self-esteem? I'm not so sure.
Again, it isn't self-hatred. She has the capacity to aknowledge Homura's pain and efforts and countless loops for her sake and appreciate it all; whereas Homura actively and consistently rails against the idea of being worth similar effort spent on herself by anyone else. Yet even then, it's framed as "all of this allowed me to be what I am now." IE, all of this allowed her to be worth something in her own eyes, because she's sacrificing herself for the sake of so many others.
And sure, at least she may not be giddy or gleeful at the sacrificial component of it, it doesn't read as a suicide for the sake of the self-termination in its own right...
But she's still a little too okay with it for comfort, too.
The only indication we get that she might not be is during the Flower Field conversation in Rebellion, and as many have pointed out, that's very suspect because of how her memory has been tampered with and her awareness is funneled. I simultaneously think there's just enough validity to it that Homura's interpretation isn't as self-serving or false as it gets painted as by her detractors... but by the same token, I do feel like it still aligns with my prior points about Madoka's values placing everyone else so much higher and herself at a negative. (A mild negative, but a negative nonetheless.) She talks about loneliness, but also about not wanting to leave others alone, not wanting to hurt Homura or her family by leaving them behind. It's still couched in language painting herself as a coward, as someone unable to do something so good, casting herself as something lesser.
Madoka doesn't hate herself, she's not built for that. But in practical effect, her equal lack of self-love doesn't actually feel too meaningfully distinct from Homura's endless wells of self-loathing.
And that's why, as much as I love Madoka's final wish, it completely rewired my brain chemistry as a teen and I still absolutely love it for the magnificent loophole-exploiting Uno Reverse Card it is; there's also been this slight undercurrent of unease to it. That Madoka's grand selflessness could be so self-destructive, just doesn't entirely sit right.
And Homura, even if this is definitely influenced by her own biases and neurosis, sees it the same way. For all the good this does, is it not still a form of self-harm? Is it really okay to sacrifice Madoka either? This is the Omelas thought experiment all over again, can we really abide by a (relative) utopia if one person is still getting undermined to uphold it, and why is it so hard for us to imagine anything else? And she acts on that.
Of course, Homura being a hypocrite with her own, far deeper self-loathing, has decided that clearly the solution is that Madoka needs to be happy... at the cost of Homura's happiness and their relationship, and it just winds up being a different form of the same stupid self-destructive math. She'll call herself a demon! She'll play the villain! She'll torment her friends to keep them at arms-length and wear everything she hates about herself as a badge of pride and all the while be absolutely fucking miserable actually, so long as Madoka gets to exist and be happy again. It's an imperfect, unsustainable solution because it's just repeating Madoka's same triumph/mistake in the opposite direction and a different, more bitter flavor.
But all the same, I think the core idea she's working from, before her own filters twist it darkly, is sound. That Madoka's act of self-sacrifice isn't quite the meaningful self-actualization Madoka wants it to be, even if it gets very very close, and she deserves something better than that. Not hating herself is all fine and dandy, it's good that it's not that, but it still isn't enough. She deserves to love herself, too.
i can’t stop misreading aromantic as aromatic. like yeah girl you’re smelly as fuck!!! you’re like incense the way i love the vibe you bring to the room!!!!! on account of your odor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I got inspired by current events and wrote a nice little story for it. I'm starting to move everything onto A03 just so it's easier to find, but you can read the whole thing under the break.
An Engine For Everyone
Present Day
In the modern era, the North Western Railway has become world-renowned for its historic fleet of locomotives, coaches, and freight cars. Enthusiasts come from all over the world to see them, and in the process, bring in a significant amount of money.
However, the NWR is a working railway, doing its best to keep up with the travel demands of the Island’s residents and visitors, while also operating safe and comfortable services. This means that many of the “truly historic” operations that enthusiasts wish to see don’t actually occur all that often. For example, almost all of the railway’s main line coaching stock are British Rail Mk. 1, 2, and 3s, most of the trucks have been equipped with bogies and air brakes, and many of the engines have been modified and painted to the point where they bear little resemblance to the black-and-white photos of yore.
While many enthusiasts are content with seeing historic equipment still in every-day service, not everyone is on-board with this state of affairs, and frequent demands were made of the railway to run services “like they used to,” with period-appropriate equipment, paint, and the like.
The Fat Controller, never one to turn down a good idea, even if the ones suggesting it were annoying, agreed, and the railway began operating “heritage charters” in the early 2000s.
These charters were not intended for the traveling public, and were instead aimed squarely at the ‘discerning’ enthusiast. For an exorbitant ticket price every Sunday, they would be guaranteed a historically accurate train trip across the NWR’s network, on a wide variety of rolling stock.
As one would expect, these trips were massive successes virtually overnight. The train consists were wildly varied, ranging from Gordon and a line of teak express coaches; Henry and some four-wheeled fish vans (along with a number of brake vans for the enthusiasts); Caerphilly pulling chocolate-and-cream coaches; Bloomer towing a line of open coaches; and of course, Thomas, Annie, and Clarabel.
Another key player in this lineup was James; he hadn’t changed in his appearance in the slightest since he arrived on the island almost a hundred years prior. Additionally, as a mixed traffic engine, he was just as likely to be seen pulling freight as he was passenger services. This meant he was able to easily portray any period of the Island’s railway history without breaking the “immersion” the enthusiasts cherished so much.
----
“I’m historically accurate!” he crowed to the other engines when he first found out about this.
“It means you’re boring and predictable,” Edward said, without opening his eyes. “You haven’t changed at all in a hundred years.”
James glared at him, and opened his mouth to retort.
“Yes you are,” Edward continued. “And no, you haven’t.”
James began to turn red.
“Liking diesels does not qualify as ‘changing.’”
James reddened further. “I-”
“The works once received a poorly-mixed batch of your paint and you were so upset about it that they started producing it in-house.” Edward still hadn’t opened his eyes. “It was about the same colour as your face has turned by now.”
Around the shed, the other engines couldn’t hold it in anymore, and they howled with laughter as James tried (and failed) to compose himself.
----
In spite of this, James adored the heritage charters. The passengers usually made the trip into an event, wearing period appropriate clothes and listening to old music. They took lots of photographs during the event, and he was usually the central focus. Even better (for him, not anyone else), he soon became a favorite of the enthusiasts, as his ease in front of the camera meant that it took no time at all to stage photographs - something that took an age with some of the other engines. As a result of this, James was running at least one charter train a month by the 2010s, far more than any of the other engines - even Thomas. Some groups even requested him specifically, and would spend all day getting photographs of him.
In the sheds, there was a feeling of dread about this. James could be insufferable on a good day, but if he let this go to his smokebox, problems would occur.
But it never did. To everyone’s continued surprise, James remained his normal self, even as the railway’s advertisements of the charters began to feature him prominently.
“What?” he scoffed when someone finally slipped up and mentioned it to him. “Me? Because of that? Why?”
“Well, I mean, any engine would-” Henry stuttered, mentally kicking himself for speaking without thinking.
“Oh come on!” James crowed. “Everyone has always wanted to photograph me! All that’s different nowadays is that the cameras also have telephones, so everyone can do it!” He paused. “Maybe, Henry, the rest of you just can’t handle the attention!”
------
Things got even more pronounced after the Pandemic. With traffic volumes at their lowest levels since the Beeching cuts, The Fat Controller was willing to let enthusiast groups charter out trains for as long as they wanted, and let them run those trains anywhere they liked. Many of these sessions were “photo charters” - a charter train that isn’t meant for the enthusiasts to ride, but instead is exclusively there to take pictures of. This meant that the enthusiasts would often have to charter a second train to carry them around in. At first, the engines pulling the second train were the ones who had been shut up in the sheds for the longest during the lockdowns, but after a few trips, James ended up on one of them…
“Oh for heaven’s sake!” he bellowed, as the photographers tried to plot out the ideal photograph. “Sam! Move forward a few feet!”
“Why?”
“So your connecting rods are down. It shows off your motion that way.”
“That’s a thing!?”
“Yes!” he barked. “For goodness sake has nobody ever had their photo taken before? This is child’s play…”
After that, he became a fixture of the NWR’s heritage charters. Even when he was the subject of the photographs, he had thoughts and opinions on the matter which were not only sarcastic, but usually correct. This greatly amused a large percentage of the enthusiasts, and before long, James’ “railfan colour commentary” became a trending topic on social media. Much like a snowball rolling down a hill, things only got bigger from there; soon the NWR’s publicity department was filming him with cell phones for use on social media.
-
“Which one is this going on?” Caerphilly tried her best to not be involved in whatever nonsense dance the interns were doing while they stood in front of James.
“It’s called Rednote, I think.”
“And what is that one?”
“Chinese, I think?”
“Why are you being put on a Chinese social media site?”
“I’m too fabulous to be restricted to just the English language; everyone needs to see my magnificence!”
“How you haven’t become puffed up in the smokebox about this is beyond me. I almost want to study you.”
“Years of Poise and Dignity, dear Caerphilly. Poise and Dignity.”
Caerphilly had no response - at least, not while the interns were still filming!
-
James’ internet fame soon came at a cost to his personal time. West Coast Railways, one of the largest rail charter operators on the mainland, was embroiled in yet another scandal about how unsafe their trains were. Many services they ran were canceled, leaving charter train and railtour organizers looking for other steam engines.
More than one of these groups asked for James by name, and he was soon off to locations all over the country: London, Penzance, Glenfinnan, and the Firth of Forth. It was a whirlwind tour that kept him away from home for almost two months; the engines would have missed him, but they didn’t have the chance to, considering his frequent appearances on social media.
-
“I see him less when he’s here!” Gordon muttered to no-one in particular, after yet another video of James pulling The Jacobite was shown to the sheds.
“Och,” Donald grumbled. “I’ve been over that bridge a hundred times back when. Why do I have tae see it again?”
“An we only video called him las’ night!” Douglas put in. “Surely we don’ have tae sit here watching him like a gawping eejit without at least bein’ able to speak to ‘im!”
“Well, maybe some of us want to keep up to date on what he’s doing?” Delta said, quietly.
“Ach, I wasnae talking about you. Yer special.” Donald groaned. “Why do I have to see ‘im morning noon and bloody night on a tiny little screen?”
“It’s not little!” one of the interns protested. “It’s an iPad Pro!”
“Lassie, I donae care what pad pro it is, it’s like trying to read something printed on a fly’s behind at fifty paces! I cannae barely see it!”
“Maybe you need glasses, have you considered that?” Gordon said imperiously.
“Och, like I need anything from you tonight!”
-
When James returned several weeks later, he was in grand spirits, greeting his friends up and down the island for several days afterwards. He spoke of nothing but the places he went, and the engines he met, and everyone assumed, somewhat jealously, that he’d been given a “working vacation” by The Fat Controller.
However, when the next Sunday came around, James wasn’t rostered for the weekly charter train. The Fat Controller himself came down to the shed, explaining to James that he’d earned a rest, and ordered him to “take the entire day off.”
The other engines expected James to push back on this, to insist that he’d be allowed to pull the next charter. However, he didn’t; instead, he thanked The Fat Controller for his kindness, closed his eyes, and went back to sleep!
The other engines looked at each other. James hadn’t missed a charter train on his own accord in over a decade - and even then he’d complained about it. They wanted to ask him about this, but they had to leave for their various jobs; after all, while the railway might be slower on Sundays, it didn’t stop.
Around noon, Delta managed to steal away from her duties, and slipped into the sheds. She found James quietly dozing in a sunny spot. He woke up as she got closer.
“You don’t miss charters unless something’s wrong.” She wasn’t about to beat around the bush. “What happened on the mainland?”
James knew how blunt she preferred things to be. “Railtours and charters have changed over there, on the mainland,” he groused. “Nobody’s really interested in the actual train anymore.”
“I thought they asked for you specifically?”
“They did! But that was so they could say I would be there! I was…” he hunted for the right words. “Window dressing for the whole affair. It could have been any steam engine and they wouldn’t have cared. They get on the train, sit down in the coaches and then don’t do anything the entire time! I might as well have been here, pulling the express!”
“Hang on, I saw all those pictures on Instagram. Loads of people were there to see you, weren’t they?”
“Oh yes, the people on the lineside wanted to see me, but I had a schedule to keep! I’d see them for a few seconds, but the people on the train couldn’t have given a toss. It was very disheartening.”
“Oh, Jamie, I’m sorry. I thought you were having a much better time…”
“Well, it wasn’t all bad, but…” He trailed off. “I don’t feel right, doing those trains again. Nobody seemed to enjoy themselves, or care! Do you know how much they charge to ride some of these trains? It’s more than my driver and fireman make in three months put together.”
“So, that’s it? You don’t want to do the trains anymore?”
“No, that’s not it.” He looked around the shed. “It’s just that… everyone was paying so much money for something they didn’t seem to care about, while everyone who did care was getting left behind.”
“That’s… very kind of you, actually. Of all the things that I thought had happened to you, this wasn’t it.”
James scoffed. “What, did you think I’d gotten hurt or something? That I would have mentioned when I called! That was just… distasteful. From now on, I’m only going to surround myself with people who enjoy my company.”
Delta smirked. “So Gordon is going to be sleeping in the carriage shed, then?”
“Pah!” James snorted. “He can go do the next batch of tours - and he’d enjoy them! They were all ‘premium materials,’ snooty people and express timings; it’d be his perfect holiday!”
“What on earth are ‘premium materials?’”
“I don’t know. Presumably some marketing tripe that lets them charge so much for the tickets.”
She smiled. “Does that include you? Are you a premium material?”
He paused, looking pensive. “Goodness, I hope not. I don’t want my name attached to that sort of thing. I am not a premium product if that’s what they offer!”
She laughed. “Of course, you're not a premium product, you’re for the people.”
He gasped, which was unexpected. “Of course! That’s brilliant! James is not a premium product, James is for everybody! My adoring public will not be kept from me by high ticket prices!”
Delta could only close her eyes and smile. “Oh, no… what have I done?”
-------------
A few weeks later
Something that James had missed while on his charter train tour of England was the announcement of a release date for a video game. Called “The Wonders of Sodor,” it was a delightful-looking game that married the aesthetics of the children’s television show with the play style of a train simulator.
Considering that it was based on the television show, and not reality, it only portrayed the engines from the television show - Gordon, Thomas, Percy, Emily, and Diesel. (By this point in time, nobody was batting an eye at the fact that many of the engines on the TV show weren’t real. It was instead an annoying fact of life they all had to deal with. Why no, Duck wasn’t still upset that Caerphilly had been deemed “too mature” to be on the TV show, why do you ask?)
Considering that only a few engines had been selected to appear in the game, and it was based primarily off of the television show, few on Sodor paid it any notice… until another announcement was made.
--------
“This is absolutely outrageous!” James had been going on and on for some time. “I am not an extra fee! I am not going to be deprived from people unless they pay ten quid for me!”
“Twelve quid.” Bear coughed. “And the game itself costs thirty.”
“WHAT?!”
--------
Later
“I am not DLC! I am freeware! No-one should be deprived of me because they don’t have twelve pounds after paying thirty! For a re-skin of Train Sim World! These people at Dovetail should-”
“Do you have any idea what those words you just said mean? Any idea at all?” Oliver interrupted him.
“No! But the children from the PR department do! I can learn new things!”
“James… this is a video game.”
“Just you wait! One day you’ll become DLC and then you’ll be mad about it too!”
“Do you… know what the letters in DLC stand for?”
“What does that have to do with anything?!”
---------
Days later
“No! I will not advertise that stupid game for them!” James scowled. “I am not an add-on! James is for everyone, not just people with twelve pounds!”
“James,” the intern said, looking at the screen of the phone. “You do know we’re live right now, right?”
A rictus grin appeared as if by magic. “Really? Which app?”
“Instagram.”
“With our two hundred thousand followers?”
“Uh huh.”
“And they just heard that?”
“A lot of them did.”
“Oh spiffy.”
---------
Weeks later
The game’s release date was just days away. They’d put up a billboard in Tidmouth. He could see it every morning when he left the sheds. So could everyone else.
“James, if I pay 12 pounds, will you move out of the way?” Gordon quipped as he waited in line for the water tower.”
----------
Days after that
The game came out to widespread appeal. Many people paid the twelve pounds. James was not thrilled, but by this point he’d accepted that he couldn’t do anything about it. (The Fat Controller had spoken to him sternly about it.)
Sunday came, and James was still taking “a break” from charter trains. In his place this weekend was a much more modern train - Pip and Emma. A few months previously, the last mainline Intercity HST trains had been retired on the mainland, leaving the twin diesels as the only HST to still operate anything close to a full intercity service. As a result, they had been painted, polished, and made to look much like they did in the 1970s, and were running up and down the main line with loads of enthusiasts on board.
The Fat Controller had been very understanding of James’ reluctance to pull any charter trains for a while (in fact, he’d been much more understanding of that than he’d been about the whole video game debacle), and had made sure that James was given easy duties on Sundays for the time being. Today’s train was a slow goods train, non-stop from Tidmouth Harbour all the way to Barrow.
The trucks were in a good mood this morning, and so while they did sing and laugh about having a “premium DLC engine” pulling them, they didn’t cause any actual trouble.
They made good time all the way to Wellsworth, but damp rails and a heavy train are rarely a good mix, and the train stalled halfway up Gordon’s Hill.
There was nothing to do but wait for a banker to help them up the grade, and James rolled his eyes as the trucks began chattering about which level in the video game this was.
Shortly, Henry arrived, and with a minimum of fuss, the two engines got the train going again. They reached the top in short order, but as James went to whistle his thanks, there was a rush of wind and a loud honk-honk as Pip and Emma streaked past in a blur of Rail Blue and Safety Yellow.
---
Later
The train was not timetabled to be fast, and it was some time before he reached Killdane. When he got there, he found the signal to be red. In the distance, he could see Pip and Emma, stopped on the main line.
“What’s the matter?” he asked the signalman.
“Something’s gone wrong with Emma,” he said. “AWS won’t let her release the brakes.”
Memories of the mainland charters made James's boiler sink despite himself. The people were all the same - snooty fussing that a failed train had "ruined their day," as though anyone had planned a breakdown. Shouted protests about a relief or rescue engine not being what they had paid good money for and came all this way to see.
A train of upset people. With cameras. He should really make an excuse and go back down the line.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” But what sort of coward would he be if he didn’t offer?
“I’ll see.”
As it turned out, there was something James could do, and a few minutes later he was shunting his train into the electric line’s yard for someone else to get later. After that, he was somewhat reluctantly steaming ‘wrong road’ up the main line towards Pip and Emma.
--
Of course, he needn't have worried. The Pip and Emma’s passengers had decided that this was the perfect time to get out and take photos, and the lineside was packed with people and cameras. As James came around the train, a cheer broke out, and more photos were taken. Once he’d been switched onto the same track as Pip and Emma, the camera clicking grew to a frenetic pace.
James couldn’t help but smile for the cameras. Maybe it wasn’t so bad after all - at least on Sodor.
“Oi,” one of the photographers said loudly. “Is this part of the DLC? Everybody have 12 quid?”
The group roared with laughter, and even Pip and Emma giggled.
James sighed, and laughed. “James is for everyone, even on a rescue mission!”
The crowd laughed louder.
---------
Later still
James towed Pip and Emma the whole way to Barrow. It had taken some time for word to get out, but by the time they reached the end of the line, the station platform was packed with photographers.
The train rolled to a stop in a sea of shutter clicks and camera flashes. It was momentarily overwhelming, but after a period of adjustment, James worked the crowd with ease, posing for photos and videos for over an hour, until the stationmaster began to clear people out so the next train could come in.
------
That night
The sheds were quiet by the time James got back. The “someone else” he’d left his train in Killdane for turned out to be him, and the delays had cascaded from there.
“How was your day?” He’d parked next to Delta, who opened one eye sleepily. “I heard your adoring public loved it.”
He smiled. “Everyone had a wonderful day… including me.”
“I’m so happy for you,” she yawned. “I guess you proved that James is for everybody.”
He laughed. “I suppose I did.”
She looked like she was on the verge of falling asleep. “Are you going to do any more charters after this?”
