going over to my minimalist girlfriend’s house and she apologizes profusely for the mess and there’s just a single perfect, fresh pea on the floor of her living room
i deserve a medal for this post. not because i was particularly funny but because i survived an onslaught of nearly one hundred gimmick blogs in the wake of this post popping off, and the fact that i didn’t try to track any of them down and snuff them out with my bare hands is a testament to my immeasurable strength and should be rewarded. at one point i had “the official letter h” add on to this post. you wanna know that blog’s gimmick? the really funny and original and worthwhile gimmick the official letter h blog had? yep you guessed it they just gave me the god damned letter H and then fucked off. only jesus knows the suffering i endured over that harsh winter, and he wept for me
its still 6/6 over here for me, so happy percy day to my beautiful beautiful son. i don't draw digitally very much anymore, so this is a present (and adrian, because i like PHM too :D)
This is super indulgent and also I need to go to bed but today I've been thinking about wanting to write a sickfic with poor Percy and Thomas.
I like to imagine engines feeling under the weather due to overexposure to elements like dust and debris, or just having a bad day and having a hard time steaming (common for Henry). They might need a day to recover, or need a part of them cleaned out and cleared (like their funnel/smoke stack).
I also imagine that because engines are more human-like, they might get their own version of a cold or flu. A washdown with hot water might help with this and get them feeling clearer in the head.
Idk what I'd have happen to Percy, but I think Thomas would be quite worried, especially when he hears that another engine has to pull the mail truck for the day. While working Thomas might become preoccupied thinking about his friend, leading to some oopsies and minor accidents. When he arrives home to Tidmouth Sheds for the night, though, he feels relieved that he can provide Percy with comfort and companionship. He might not be able to do anything to directly make him feel better, but he can at least (metaphorically) provide a shoulder to lean on.
I imagine steam engines could have runny noses, with the source being water from their boiler. This might lead to extra trips to refill their tank during the day due to water loss. Keeping an eye on a steam engine's water levels during illness is very important, and is frequently a source of stress among an engine's crew.
I also feel like it might not be easy to convince some engines to take a day off, seeing that there is such a culture surrounding "being useful" among engines. Working through their problems is common, so getting hard-working engines like Gordon (especially) or James to rest can be very difficult. Even Edward can get restless taking a day off!
I don't think i've ever talked about my liking of Nia and Rebecca in the series period. Ive never mentioned what i think of them, and how they behave. this is a VERY passionate rant post about how they're written but because im such an opinionated person, its my interpretation of them.
and don't get me wrong, i love both of them!! you can have a good character but have them be poorly wortten :D
TLDR; Swithin rants about their opinions of the writing of Nia and Rebecca whilst throwing a few other engines under the bus. Keep in mind, this is not me defending the fact that henry and edward shouldn't have been replaced, this is me ranting about how poorly written and stereotypical they are to female roles.
tw; opinions.
I do not believe Nia and Rebecca are well written female characters within the cgi series. Both of them remind me of the most stereotypical female characters one can develop in a short period, and at this point are just filler characters for a show. While I enjoy them as characters, they’re both just stereotypical. Rebecca is the happy go lucky careless female lead, and Nia is a Mary Sue, but at the same time the “we need to make the equality write off” characters. Most importantly, neither of them have insecurities that others have. My point here is that Nia and Rebecca are poorly written characters, they both lack depth, and erase some forms of representation, but this doesn’t make them bad characters.
In addition to these topics, I'll be inserting my opinions of Percy because he's my absolute favorite character in the show, and how his representation of being misunderstood and mishearing got turned into him being portrayed as an incompetent child.
Let's start with Nia. I have a lot to say about her. Nia lacks depth in the way of who she is. She’s super similar to Gordon, has poor communication with several characters, and doesn’t have a purpose besides being there. I say she and Gordon are very similar because they’re both proud, stubborn, and intelligent engines. While that might be all they have in common, their differences are very obvious. Gordon has insecurities that are plainly obvious, he hates being seen as less, he hates not being seen as good, and he hates being compared to his brother. Nia? Nothing. She is a poorly written equality character just so Mattel could make a mark in the world and proudly say “We have equality” while erasing a well beloved character, Edward. I would love to see Nia be more insecure about how she looks in a similar way to James would, or be worried about something as small as how her wheels look, but Mattel doesn’t give us that.
Rebecca’s turn now, I have a lot to say here as well. I will say this once, her character is a standard happy go lucky but careless character. She loves her job but messes up trying to make a great first impression by leaving stations early to get on time to places and in the end, it messes up the time table, confuses passengers, and even upsets the Flying Scotsman. The same thing happened with her like it did to Nia- Rebecca also lacks a sense of flaws. Her class was prone to wheel slippage, so why can't she be self-conscious about something as simple as that (Thank you Unlucky Tug, great insecurity to give a character!) be implemented into the storyline. She lacks depth by being a walking stereotype of a character.
And while you could make the argument that it's a kids show, a kids show still needs to have depth. In the end, a character not having flaws makes them lack representation. For example, James and being vain. His vanity comes from a place of fear, hurt, and self consciousness. In a way, he's worried if he doesn't look good enough, he’ll be scrapped. He's over confident, yes, but once he realizes he'll do something that risks ruining his paint, he gets sloppy and careless just to get the task over with. He wants to be comparable with Henry and Gordon. On the topic of those two, Gordon represents a need for schedule and repetition, which was EXACTLY what Gordon was built for. He's the prototype for the A1 Pacific, he was built for repeating runs, testing until he breaks. It's the big downfall of the relationship in the show between him and Scotsman because Scotsman teases him that he’ll be little because he’ll never run on the mainland. Much in the same way, Henry is stuck in there with his anxiety issues. Yes the CGI series (especially nitrogen) butchered Henry, and ill stand by that opinion, his cautiousness comes from not wanting to be stuck in a place where he was before. He doesn’t want to be seen as a failed engine anymore. Where are these flaws for Nia and Rebecca if not there? They’re dumbed down to cute female engines who are there just because they needed an excuse to be the main cast.
Another great example of a character not used to their full potential is Edward, who for a while was shown to be scared of being scrapped. Edward is a kind old man archetype. His whole thing was being kind, but cheeky, and having good advice for when someone needs it. In the series he encourages Thomas to tease Gordon, and many see him as wise when others see him as a silly old man (COUGH.. GORdoN… COUGH). When he was sidelined, he became visibly more and more upset in the model series, going from a happy old man to being sad and worried. His being flawed was thinking he’d be scrapped because he was old. And then Emliy joined and suddenly there was an older engine. I only bring this up because while Edward got sidelined, he never lost what his character was like what had happened to percy. Having these flaws while being sidelined was his lost potential, and he eventually got around to being better, but he still has a well written personality, archetype, and has flaws and insecurities that Nia and Rebecca lack.
In the same way they’re both dumbed down, Percy was too. He's extremely childish, immature, and stupid. But he really isn’t. In both the books and the model era, he was in big issues. Percy is yes, immature from the start, but he is far from dumb. He has misunderstandings that get corrected, and taken as a chance to learn, but it's because previously he had never ran before- do we remember that he didn’t even have a name? Percy gets so stereotyped down into a child that he cannot recover from it. His insults go missed, his personality gets stereotyped, and his flaws get smothered away. He is a flawless character by the end of the show (besides being a tad dumb) but if anything, it's exactly how Nia and Rebecca are.
While they are poorly written characters, they aren't bad characters. They have their own purposes they do, but they just feel like a lazy attempt at equality. Nia being just a Mary Sue and Rebecca being a happy go lucky careless just gives “stereotypical female” character to me just like Emily did when she was first introduced to the show. A bossy female? Sounds like a very narrow minded view of a character. They lack what's important- having flaws and insecurities that make a character what they should be.
And while it's just my opinion of them, they show what they were written for. Inclusion. That's all. I like these characters, I just wish there was more flavor to them.
also if you're curious, NO i don't forgive Nia for telling Gordon he'll still see Henry around because he was grieving a loss even if he could still see henry around. NOT GIRLBOSS OF HER.
I swear to god when I get my ap test results back in July and dint see at the least a three im ending it ALL I RAPPED MH SOUL OUT ON THOSE ESSAYS DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?
If your joining a discord server and are a PROSHIPPER and having your links where minors can access with your nsfw materials; respectfully don’t be upset when people ban you for drawing incest/pedophilic/zoophilic material.
but first; let me get you definitions.
Proshipping: like/shipping/not harassing people over their pairings regardless of what it is.
Darkshipping: Incest/Peeophilic/Zoophilic pairings
Comshipping.: complicated pairings.
“fiction doesn’t affect reality!” You r never picked up a fucking book. You are telling me you have never read a single history book, utopian book, or a booo by itself. It has been proven several times. There are times fiction has affected reality- seen in kids adapting behaviors from shows, if you still don’t believe me, there is are hundreds of debates on it. Many people have their mindsets changed from fiction, but many choose to say it doesn’t affect reality so they can go off and ship their bs.
Now the person I’m targeting this post too will never see it since I’ve already blocked them on their nsfw account because it was accessible through the links in their bio, but if they see this on their main, then what fucking ever. Block me if you must; I’m a child after all and you like to draw kids with adults and brothers kissing. I might as well be your target audience.
Stay out of my way if you like dark ships simply because you can get away with a calling it something that won’t affect reality.
if you are struggling with pedophilic/zoophilic/incestuous thoughts, please contact someone about it. I know opening up is hard, i understand, but healing is more worth it.
BRO DYLE TIMESLY AND THE FLYING SCOTSMAN?! You have TASTE 🔥🔥🔥
YESS TY TYYY ❤️❤️ they’re some of my favorite characters because they have lack of like what’s the word display in both their medias (not so much scotsman irl but in ttte- different story)
TLDR: swithin yaps about ttte shipping and if henry is related to gordon/scotsman.
to my lovely ttte mutuals, this is me using my ultra cool loco knowledge (limited btw, i know more abt american engines considering im american) and using it to push my shipping.
im gonna end up making a slide show on this, arent i?
So, recently I had a Gordon roleplayer slide into the DM's of my Flying Scotsman rant account over on tiktok, whilst i do not mind this, there was some things that happened. While i was goofing of with them, i mentioned "im gonna go find henry" and he said "well that's your cousin." Whilst on a HUGE technicality, yes, I personally do not see that. This person continued to try and say i was hot. As if he was not roleplaying as Gordon.
There's things you can and cannot debate. One of those being that Scotsman and Gordon are related. They're canonically brothers. This is a KNOWN fact. This is shown and mentioned multiple times. Builder, engine type, them legitimately calling each other brother. I do not like incest. I will never like incest.
Now for the henry is Scotsman's cousin thing- on a technicality, yes he is. How? Originally, henry was a stolen copy.. and blah blah blah we TTTE fans know this! he was originally a GNR Gresley locomotive (specially a hybrid between an A1 and a C1) This is a KNOWN factor in the ttte community that henry was rebuilt into a LMS Stanier 5MT Black five. Some people chose to believe that this henry is a second henry. a DIFFERENT HENRY. THEY WOULDNT EVEN BE RELATED THEN.
So yes, there's evidence that henry is Gordon's cousin. But there's also evidence hes not.
"This is like saying don't ship usuk because they're like father and son then shipping canada and us" - ken, also said "this is like people not shipping gerita because Italy may or may not have Germanic blood then turn around and ship incest."
This is a completely valid thing to relate it too. Because that's what it feels like. They MAY OR MAY NOT be related, and if you choose to believe in specific aspects of the community and what is theorize, then that's completely fine! I am not saying you absolutely HAVE to agree with me, I'm laying out the details of what I believe. And I believe that it is likely that henry in his new form is a different form of henry.
There is so much to go into this that i could continue to rant on and on about, but my hands are getting tired. and my eyes ache from having to deal with the utter dumb assert of some people. There's evidence to argue both sides this, but many people wouldn't listen to the opposing side. i could make a 50 slide presentation and people would still be up my ass saying "erm actually, they're related!" when its not my belief or the case at all.
So as a final conclusion, I, Swithin R LastName, Ship Henry/Gordon and Henry/Scotsman because I do not agree with them be related. Theres evidence to prove my argument, and opinion based, after he is rebuilt, he would've no longer been related to any of the Gresley locomotives.
