#infinity train apex

[mimosa-sex-tea-people-contrsf]

We as a society really moved past how good a representation Apex from Infinity Train was about cults and how they lure people in, especially in a children’s show

It’s midnight and I’m sitting here thinking about cult of the conductor

[thesecretingredientislove]

I was watching Infinity Train again and then

Tobey!?!?!?

[inkshine]

Villains in some adult media: *wants money and power and doesn't care about anyone else* *works for the Evil Government or the Faceless Bad Group* *just shows up to be evil and leaves/dies.*

Villains in some kids media: *was pushed to the dark side because of forces beyond their control and is secretly a good person fighting to be free* *was driven by grief to do the unimaginable* *one of the most threating, unhinged and/or emotionally tormented characters you've ever seen*

[artbyblastweave]

Some potential Infinity Train Homebrew antagonists and Train factions I’ve been screwing around with, thinking along the lines of a ttrpg or something:

The Scuttler. A rogue passenger who, like Amelia, figured out a way to subvert the train’s control systems with a relatively simple hack, except the specific system he figured out a way to subvert was the “Car Expungement” protocol used on the turtle car in book 3. The Scuttler is a negative utilitarian who uses his trick to perform what he perceives as mercy kills on cars with existentially horrifying premises, such as the Chrome Car and the Hey Woah Woah car; his failure to ask any of the denizens inside their opinion on this mark him as a holier-than-thou prescriptivist, which is what got him on the train in the first place. Protagonists tasked with stopping him are stymied by the fact the Scuttler is capable of engaging the protocol on a delay after he’s left a car; they’re forced to interrogate several suspects who were present in the last car hit by the scuttler.

The False Conductors. A successor/sister movement to the Apex, founded in the 80s by a former corporate raider who lived through the original change in management. The false conductors are fully aware that Amelia was a usurper who subverted the trains intended purpose. However, they view this as proof of concept- if she could pull it off, why couldn’t they? The conductors are a goal-oriented nomadic warband, attempting to reach the front of the train, re-usurp One, and impose their own vision of what the train ought to look like. Unlike the Apex, the group is not particularly tight knit and in fact stymied by constant infighting and power plays over which of them is going to be “first among equals” once they secure the engine. While  the group tends to act as a magnet for career criminals, corporate sociopaths and assorted egomaniacs, the moral tone of the group has drifted towards the sympathetic at points in it’s forty-year history, since “kill and replace one-one” is honestly a pretty value-neutral goal. When the players encounter this faction, the goal will be to determine if the movement is at one of its “viva le revolution” phases or its “social darwinist” phase; a secondary choice being whether to wait a while for the Conductors to decamp and push forward, or to try and get ahead of them with the knowledge that they’ll be on the parties heels for the rest of the game.

New Clabernathy. In the 1930s, tensions in the rural town of Clabernathy  boiled over  after a pair of starcrossed lovers from rival families boarded the Infinity Train in order to elope. With no trace of the lovers, foul play was assumed; the formerly-tight-knit town drew lines and erupted into a Hatfields-and-McCoys-style war. The traumas and no-win situations caused by this conflict led to the train making dozens of return trips to the area to grab other residents who’d hit their breaking point in one way or another; the further disappearances only exacerbated the conflict, with each side blaming the other. Over the course of two years, New Clabernathy was nearly entirely depopulated, be it by train, violence or conventional migration by those rich enough to escape without the use of a magic train.

New Clabernathy was founded within a lush grassland car by the 70-odd Clabernathy residents who managed to regroup once aboard the train; it turned out to be much easier to survive on the train than as in a 1930s farming community, and many of those who’d boarded the train had done so without the intention of ever going back. 

In the modern day, New Clabernathy is one of the largest human-majority communities on the train. With the tagline “anywhere but home,” the settlement is billed as a haven for passengers with compelling practical reasons not to go back to Earth- loan sharks, criminal pasts, economic destitution and abusive circumstances. Inadvertently exiting the train is viewed by Clabernathyians with the same gravity as a death in the community, due to the stakes that lead a person to become a permanent resident. Due to the shady nature of many long-term residents, the community mixes the aesthetics of a pirate town and an aggressively pacifistic commune. Mayor Ally Dupree- one of the original starcrossed lovers, edging into her second century alive- keeps the plates of the community spinning, acutely aware of the dangers that the settlement might slip back into the same paranoid infighting that destroyed the original Clabernathy.

The Train Babies. General slang term for people born on the train who consequentially do not have numbers and cannot leave.  Frequently runaways from New Clabernathy who lack the rest of the town’s baggage and want to explore, although many result from Apex Members who aged out of the group. Train Babies are defined by the fact that they’re the only people on the train without a designated reason to be there; individual train babies have a bad habit of “breaking the script” in cars that weren’t meant to hold up to prolonged scrutiny from passengers, and many burn out on adventuring after realizing the degree and scale of the train’s artifice, succumbing to Ennui.

An honorary and intriguing figure in the train baby scene is George Kelpo, the world’s oldest train baby. While otherwise a normal passenger, Kelpo’s pod was hijacked by a rogue denizen before he had a chance to receive a number. Kelpo was discovered by the train babies during his personal adventure to find other numberless passengers, and he’s accrued a reasonable following of train babies who wish to escape the train with him should they ever learn the location of the famed number machine. Privately, Kelpo is unsure if he’d even be able to leave if they did find the machine; he boarded the train due to a difficulty coping with the loss of his grandchildren in a boating accident, and even he’s not sure if his self-appointed role as surrogate grandfather to the train babies is helpful or emotionally regressive.

The Orb Weaver. A roaming, spider-like denizen for hire who uses a salvaged code gun to perform ad-hoc plastic surgery on denizens who want to be reshaped. The orb in the code-gun is uncharacteristically versatile, capable of turning anything into almost anything else so long as the second state is slightly larger than the first. This is because the orb is actually creating the same thing every time;  a sort of gelatinous, mentally responsive hardlight illusion around the target that morphs into whatever new form they were visualizing. The illusions have the unfortunate side effect of gradually eroding the original form within, becoming incredibly brittle when the original form is completely consumed. It’s unclear if the Orb Weaver is aware of the side effects, but the money is good either way.

[shmorlock]

Grace meeting with Lake after getting off the train...

[aerielart]

I went way harder on this than was strictly necessary but, it's finally here! Just a little comic about Grace post book 3 because I couldn't stop thinking about it, and that AMA question about if she kept any of Simon's ashes.

Also featuring my headcanon about the new Apex, which became kind of a therapy group for people who are struggling on the train :)

[wayward-delver]

You know, Samantha “The Cat” is the only denizen Simon ever treats like an actual person. He even seems to respect her advice far more than even the other humans like Grace, be willing to hear her out and doesn’t directly lash out at her for questioning his beliefs/ideas. I mean it’s ironic that the Denizen that caused his hatred/bloodlust is only one he values to whatever extent he allows. Not to mention he never directly calls her “null” during their shared screen-time, opting to use her true name instead. This basically contradicts his whole “nulls aren’t people” argument without even realizing it. 

This show’s writing is on another level.

[pietromaximoffreal]

Simon finding out his step dad is a bear must have been very difficult but he doesn’t need to yell at his cat mom