Lily, 31, she/her. Lion/Badger modeling Badger/Bird. Genderfluid chaos entity who came back to Tumblr after all these years mostly to be part of the Sorting Hat Chats conversation and also to share D&D character builds. Media-Eval's resident Doctor Who correspondent. Might also talk about my writing WIPs, who knows?
What to do when your unsupportive parents start suspecting you're queer: a guide
So before we start, this advice will come from lived experience, and works best on conservative religious parental figures. But not all people are the same, and different things work on different people.
If your parents notice you have done something radical to your appearance (cut hair, grew it longer, anything not stereotypically your perceived gender, etc.) reassure them it is just "teenage rebellion". Cite some rebellious thing your parents did as teenagers, and reassure them that you'll "laugh about it" in a few years.
If your family goes to a Christian church, try to go along quietly. Those services usually don't last more than three hours and you'll keep up your appearance as "a good kid" if that is your reputation or you'll gain some favour from your parents or something along those lines. I know those services are not fun, as someone who went to them for my whole childhood, but trust me, it will keep suspiciousness off your back extremely well
I highly recommend that you do all your queer-related googles in incognito mode. And if you do art, draw something wholesome, like cats, and use that to cover any overtly queer art/physical media. And I also recommend hiding Tumblr.
If there is is extremely high suspicion of queerness, then you must use the diversion tactics. For suspected non-straight sexual orientation, have a casual conversation about your parent's marriage and how you desire a similar one or talk about the cute boy/girl down the street, but make it sound natural. That last part is important. For suspected genderqueer ness, do one stereotypical thing for your perceived gender. For example: my parents were quite surprised that I cut my hair short. (It was shoulder length actually, not even that short) So I painted my nails.
Assess risk of being kicked out. If you ever overhear your parents talking about kicking their child out of the house for coming out, then that's not good and perhaps more stealth measures should be implemented. Evaluate general attitude towards queer people. Most likely it's not going to be good, but some are like "I don't care what they do but they shouldn't do it in front other kids.", some are like "I just don't want to do their 'life style' but others are more "God made man and woman in his image. Homosexuality is a perversion against God." The latter is more likely to take extreme action against you if you are found out. (Source: have you seen those anti-pride protests?)
I hope my advice has been helpful. As always, hopefully you have someone else who is supportive, and when you move out, you'll be able to live life on your terms.
In brief, this message is directed towards the people currently writing the Extended Railway Series (ERS) on Sodor Island Forums (SiF). If you know someone who writes for/manages this, please forward this to them.
So, I've been reading the ERS for years. Actually, at this point, it's been 17 years - I registered in 2011. I've been reading this more than half my life. I am intimately familiar with almost every book you've written, character you've created, and plot line you've crafted. I have seen it all.
And with that in mind, I have to ask:
What in the name of God are you doing?
The stories you guys write... are bad. And they're bad in interesting and varied ways. Stories are written in which nothing happens; stories are written in which characters are badly misconstrued; stories in which characters have their potential squandered for no reason. I could go on, and provide receipts if needed but don't worry, I already did that!
Check it out here: https://www.tumblr.com/joezworld/784436718345617408/express-engines
Alternatively, I have reproduced a portion of my previous complaint here:
There’s just one problem with all of this: The ERS is, from a very fundamental standpoint, bad.
I don’t mean this in a critical “this is terribly written” way - far from it, in fact. The real issue with the ERS is more fundamental: they created a world, a rich tapestry of words and stories, that draws from the works of Wilbert and Christopher Awdry… and then they made it profoundly miserable to be in.
Now, this is not a bad thing, as @mean-scarlet-deceiver has rather masterfully written, but with SiF, it’s a more cloying and existential form of misery that doesn’t really do anything or go anywhere. Sodor is on its face a normal place to live, like any other part of England, but read almost any story and you will find things happening that seem to go against the grain of most TTTE fic writers, but also of just basic understandings of human decency.
Starting off from the beginning, ERS book 42 Evan the Private Engine is a great example of what I’m talking about. Evan, the titular engine, is a privately owned narrow gauge engine operating on the Skarloey Railway. At one point, many years ago, he broke down and was abandoned by his owner in situ. Now, for everyone who is a dyed in the wool TTTE fan like me, search your feelings and think of what happens to this engine next. Is he adopted by the Skarloey engines? Do they re-home him somewhere else? Is this actually a story being told by Skarloey to the other engines? Vote now on your phones.
[Buzzing noise] Wrong answer! What actually happens is that Evan is left where he is for so long that everyone forgets about him, and he’s covered in the overgrowth out by the lake. When he’s discovered “many years later,” he’s lost his memory, and will never get it back.
This is the first book in the ERS. I told @lswro2-222 about this and she’s still mad about it.
Things do not improve from there. The ERS is filled with countless stories of:
Engines being forgotten about for decades, (ERS #152 – Scrapyard Engines)
Engines being threatened with scrapping after suffering from mechanical issues (ERS #58 – Brave Mountain Engines)
When said engine (quite reasonably) tries to ensure their place on the railway by sabotaging someone else, they’re sent away for scrap anyways (ERS #70 – Norman the Mountain Engine)
Engines rather abruptly deciding to leave the island of Sodor, for almost no in-text reason. (ERS #221 – Dane the Electric Engine)
Engines rather abruptly deciding to leave the island of Sodor, just as their character arc was reaching a high point (ERS #320 – Procor the Mainland Engine)
Massive interpersonal conflicts between members of railway staff that would in any other universe result in someone quitting due to the toxic work environment. (ERS #462 - The Joint Controllers, ERS # 464 - The Fat Controller's Birthday Party)
Extremely out-of-place bouts of anti-diesel racism all the way in the 1990s (ERSN #9 – Dockside Engines)
The Fat Controller (among others) treating engines like children, property, or in some other extremely dehumanizing way, even if they had no control over the situation. (ERS #452 – Lorries and Engines, among many others)
I could go on for some time, and many of these are far from the worst examples. There’s also a huge number of baffling choices, like creating an engine that can only talk in horse noises, and then much later having this engine have a mental breakdown over his inability to communicate. (ERSN7 - The Pegasus Railtour Campaign) They also killed off Stephen Hatt, but did it in a way that rubs me the wrong way and does nothing to really add to the character's legacy. (ERSN #15 – The Hatt Family’s Engines) I could go on about this one for about as long as I could go on about Pegasus, but I don’t have that much time at any point between now and forever, so we'll leave it at that.)
Meanwhile, interesting characters are often created and then immediately set aside in favor of things that are nowhere near as interesting. Now that I know this is a matter of taste, but would you rather read about a diesel engine placed in storage for so long that she turned malevolently insane, (ERS #169 – Sudrian Diesel Engines) or various background characters like a skip lorry that interacts with almost none of the “main” cast of the island? (ERS #475 - Rocky the Skip Lorry) I know which one I want to see, which is why the insane diesel hasn’t gotten a story all to herself since her introduction in (checks notes) 2011.
However, all of this pales in comparison to the real issue with the ERS - all of this is more or less subjective, but there’s a real, substantial, problem here: Nobody actually seems to like each other.
Reading through the stories, there’s this overwhelming sense that none of the characters - engine, person, or otherwise, actually enjoy each other’s company unless it’s explicitly stated in text. Even then, that measure is sometimes shaky, as characterizations can change from book to book. Engines can be on good terms with each other in one, and the next, they can be snapping at each other for no clearly defined reason.
Well, they might try to define it, but the ERS is rather insistent on following the short, easy to digest four-story format used by the Awdrys, which means that any character development occurs suddenly, and with little room to flesh things out. What this results in is often poorly-explained conflict that could be salvaged if they ever strayed away from the standard 4-story format. A good example of this is ERS# 340 - BoCo & the Freight Diesels. This book is actually one of the better ones in terms of character arcs - it follows a pair of class 60 diesels (Spartan and Wakefield) as they deal with the fallout of their brother/leader leaving Sodor unexpectedly. (ERS #320 - I could go on about that decision as well. The character was written out because it conflicted with what the actual, IRL locomotive he was based on was doing. Meanwhile, I’ve got City of Goddamn Truro running rampage through Sodor.) These three engines have better-than-average characterization due to the absolutely god-tier introductory story they received (ERS #151), but even still, the relatively short length of each book/chapter means that the contents of book 340 and the preceding stories don’t exactly give us enough insight into the engine’s psyches to fully grasp what’s happening. It’s not so much of a case of “telling instead of showing” as it is “this comes at you quickly and without any real advance warning.” This is probably more true to life with how people act under stress, but… this is fiction. You can show the audience what’s going on. There’s a good reason why some of the best works in the ERS are the long-form ERS Novels that allow characters room to breathe.
(Also, in #340, the Fat Controller just absolutely rips an engine a new one for causing an accident, in the process completely sidestepping the fact that said engine had a driver and a second man on board the entire time. SiF does their level best to infantilize the engines whenever possible while at the same time making them 100% responsible for the failings of the people around them.)
Another great example of this is Daphne - the NWR’s Deltic that I stole for my own fan works because there’s a solid core to the character, but she’s been sadly let down by the works that follow. In the ERS she has a decently traumatic backstory, with lots of room for expansion of the character or at the very least, hints of other things. However Daphne is at most a secondary character to the ERS, and often appears in other stories, rather than her own. In these, the writers follow a handy rule of thumb for writing her:
Deltics are loud, and so naturally, Daphne must be loud. Loud people are annoying, so Daphne must be annoying. Because Daphne is annoying, she must often speak without thinking. Because she speaks without thinking, she must be the most irritating bitch anyone has ever seen.
I mean this seriously. Daphne’s entire role in a lot of the ERS is to show up, say something unintentionally insulting, and then drive away. She had a good introduction to the ERS in book #135, but since then she’s mostly been a loudmouth side character. Even her entry in the ERS guide says so:
Daphne is best known as the big diesel with the big mouth! There is little denying that she is a good worker when she wants to be, but her occasionally spiky temper, bossiness and boastfulness can often lead to her fall from grace. She also has a knack of speaking without thinking, something that has caused many an upset or unfortunate incident over the years.
This is not an interesting character. This is an annoyance of the highest order and I don’t know why they keep her around.
At no point since her introduction over a decade ago has anyone tried to change this. They let her stagnate in the background while the fucking horse engine gets his own novel!
-
I apologize, I’m getting slightly off track here. What I’m trying to say is that the ERS fundamentally does not understand its characters, starting at the Fat Controller and working their way down the list. There’s hundreds of episodes of someone getting yelled at for an incident outside their control, even when it’s plainly obvious that it had to be. Characters vary wildly, and act outside of what you would expect, considering when a story might happen in-universe.
A great example of this is in Book #338. Honey, a new-build diesel shunter, is bought by the Ffarquhar Quarry Company and in short order, pulls every capital-D-Diesel trick in the book to get Mavis replaced… and it works. Mavis is hauled away on a lorry to an uncertain future, (she eventually gets bought by the NWR, don’t worry) with everyone in real fear that she’s going to get scrapped. Now, in my works, Thomas and Co. would probably commit murder; a lot of more normal folks might have the entire Ffarquhar branch in an uproar - something like the deputation that saved Donald and Douglas way back when.
What SiF does… is nothing. Absolutely nothing. Thomas and Co. not only don’t try and get Mavis back, but they eventually welcome Honey into the branch line family a few books later (ERS #368 – Christmas at Ffarquhar) despite Honey being one of the only engines in the ERS or the original RWS to succeed in her evil mission.
This is such a fundamental misunderstanding of the characters, starting with the most obvious one - Thomas the Tank Engine - that this almost would have to be set in the 1960s or 1950s. Nobody has grown attached to Mavis yet, and Honey isn’t obviously evil or something.
Naaaaaaaaaaah. This story canonically takes place in 2018 and Honey speaks in Gen-Z/Millenial slang while actively sabotaging Mavis in broad daylight. I wish I was making this up.
I apologize if this is long, but the complaints still stand. With the exception of a single book featuring Zelda, nothing has changed in any real way.
And that's a shame. I want to like the ERS, I really do. I want this franchise to be good, and it's not.
So I have a message for the guys at SiF: let me help.
I don't want to write new stories for you guys, I don’t think that will change things. What I want to do is work with you guys, behind the scenes, and figure out how everything is going so wrong with you guys. I know people who are good at this fanfiction thing. I've been told that I'm pretty good at this fanfiction thing. I can help. All you have to do is let me.
If you'd like to reach out to me about this, please feel free to contact me at the following places:
This tumblr account. Leave me a message, reblog this post, send an ask, or tag me in another post
From the Nashville Zoo’s fb page! Here’s the petition, please please please take a moment to add your name (even if you’re not from Nashville!). If you are from Tennessee, contact your representatives and make it clear that the people do not want this data center. This is an AZA accredited zoo which is home to several species of critically endangered animals, we NEED to protect it. Make your voice heard!
a new reality tv show called So you think you can write Doctor Who
twelve episodes, twelve contestants - a mix of annoying middle aged sci fi authors, fan fic authors and random people off the street
a variety of against the clock writing tasks, big finish scripts, ability to interact with actors without shouting at them and challenges where you have no budget or doctor for an episode
judged by solely by christopher eccleston
this is how you find the new doctor who showrunner
$50,000 immediately dropped into my bank account wouldn't improve EVERYTHING but boy it sure would be a grand, sexy little start to a good, happy life path, don't you think
wanna hang out [remembers it's rude to put expectations on people] it's cool if not [remembers people like to know they're wanted] but I'd really like it if you did [remembers selfishness is bad] we can do whatever you want though [remembers that handing someone a blank canvas isn't as effective as providing a suggestion to bounce ideas off of] like sucking each others fingers for example
not my circus not my monkeys but my home planet has taken away my only means of leaving this circus and the monkeys here found me and took me in when I was deeply unwell and babbling about my shoe. so actually I am quite fond of the circus and I have become the monkeys' scientific advisor
2087
amandla
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
izzy806
blakekathryn
snowghoul
andulkaphoto
yousharknotpass
