Hey. Not to be aggro at you or anything because I don't think you mean any harm by it, but you might consider that it's sorta innapropriate to make a cutesy submas headcanons out of the Darius McCollum story. Like it just feels very off to me to take a real life story about a black autistic man being shuffled through the american system before finally being put away indefinately in maximum security lockup and turning it into a story about a couple of white autistic men being rewarded with careers for being good at trains. Like, there is actual human suffering and systemic racism built into that story. Again, not trying to come at you in an accusatory way. Just thought you should consider.
Actually, I completely agree with you! It's why even though I came up with the idea, I have 0 intentions of actually incorporating it into any works nor doing anything with it. If I ever do anything with Emmet and Ingo, I can assure you that this is not their backstory. For me to actually do anything with this idea, I would be unable to mentally leave Darius McCollum out of it and would feel guilty about rewriting his very unique story in such a way. For me to do anything with it would feel like I'd be whitewashing his story and downplaying just how unfortunate his whole situation is and how much the system has genuinely failed him. (From what I know about him, I wholeheartedly believe that Darius McCollum deserves better, and just HATE that the system has been set up to just thoroughly screw him over with no recourse. The solution to this problem is so OBVIOUS and the fact that they DON'T just give him just SOME sort of tangentially train-related job (with conditions, of course) INFURIATES me and really highlights how much this society of ours and the system in which we are forced to exist just hates the poor, the disabled, and the neurodivergent, ESPECIALLY if they are a person of color, and is looking for just ANY excuse to criminalize people and to fuck them over just because they can. It really goes to highlight how our justice system is ONLY interested in punishment, whether the 'criminal' deserves it to not, and not prevention, nor to ensure that crimes don't happen again. Basically, FUCK the police.)
But I still like the idea and thought that it was a funny and wanted to share it. I honestly didn't expect it to get as much attention as it has. I thought that it would maybe get like 20 notes and die out... But now that it's been spreading around and people really do seem to resonate with the idea, I don't want to punish people for not knowing the truly unfortunate situation with Darius McCollum. For myself, I don't think that I'm capable of separating this idea from Darius McCollum, and if I tried to do something with it, details form Darius McCollum's life would inevitably end up leaking in there. But for people who don't know about it, they may be able to create something entirely different and new with the idea that would exist entirely apart from his story. And if that inspires people and they do something genuinely interesting and unique with it, that would be good! I would like to see that! There are a lot of ways to do, 'serial train hijackers' that would be wholly different from Darius McCollum's story! I don't want to deprive other people of the opportunity to play with the idea, even if I feel that I can't.
Also I will admit that giving Emmet and Ingo a happy ending in this kind of idea is at least in part me expressing my frustration with Darius McCollum's situation and my wishing, wanting, and imagining a better path for him. I think that Darius McCollum should be rewarded, or at the very least not punished for his expertise in trains. I think that the MTA would only benefit from trying to find a way to hire him in some capacity. And I wish that in real life this could have a happy ending. But as it stands that can only happen in fiction. Deep sigh. And besides, it's not like train hijacking is an activity exclusive to Darius McCollum (though admittedly serial train hijacking is pretty unique). The real roots of this whole idea actually lie with Keron Thomas' story. (A while back, I was looking for train facts and Keron Thomas' story came up. I read how a 16 year old kid hijacked/illegally operated a train for several hours without getting caught and immediately thought, "Oh. That's 120% Emmet and Ingo when they were 10 or something!" I only found out that Darius McCollum is a person who exists because much more recently I was trying to figure out Keron Thomas' name.) And everything really seems to have turned out fine for Keron Thomas and his whole situation! So I think that there is a place for harmless train hijacking stories out there that aren't necessarily intrinsically tied to Darius McCollum.