infinity train book 1 did things to me when i was a kid...
like wdym my dad wanted me to watch this show with him that had a girl with her dog going on the fantasy train. i liked it ok but something about tulip's parents never sat right with me. but then little me saw atticus get ghom'ed and was just straight up crying. could not watch it. my parents divorced a couple months later and i decided to watch the show with my mom because i wanted something familiar. i felt like i fell apart by the cat's car. i felt seen by how tulip tries to rewrite her memories, how she was stuck in the middle of her parents arguing. like i know people say that representation in kids shows is important but i had never seen parenting portrayed like this:
anxiety portrayed like this:
or a kid going through emotional denial like this:
infinity train felt like a kids show that took kids seriously. i wanted to be taken seriously then and i felt like this was the one thing that did that. i could write about how lake is such a good trans allegory, something that absolutely made me question gender more. i could write about how the way simon's downwards character arc made me get people like simon out of my life. but book 1 broke me because i had never seen divorce portrayed this accurately.
