An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Starlight Express - Phillips/Stilgoe/Webber
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Hydra/Killerwatt/Rusty (Starlight Express), Hydra/Rusty (Starlight Express), Electra/Killerwatt (Starlight Express), Components/Electra (Starlight Express)
Characters: Killerwatt (Starlight Express), Hydra (Starlight Express), Rusty (Starlight Express), Electra (Starlight Express), Components (Starlight Express)
Additional Tags: Starlight Express Wembley Production (2024), Threesome - M/M/Other, They/Them Pronouns for Hydra (Starlight Express), They/Them Pronouns for Electra (Starlight Express), Infidelity, Sad Wet Dog Killerwatt but he doesn't even realize, Title from an Orville Peck song, Implied Sexual Content, Electra has kind of a toxic/culty relationship with the components, Light Angst
Summary:
He hadn't even intended on any of it. He had gone, after their latest victory, to give them Electra’s congratulations on their victory. That was his habit for most races – even if his boss did not send him directly, he preferred to do so. It was good to maintain a sense of civility with their competition, to give their engine an air of being gracious in their defeat (even if that wasn't always the truth).
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Killerwatt goes to give Rusty and Hydra his congratulations on a victory over Electra. They have other plans for him.
Hi! This is something I’ve wanted to do for a bit. Let’s start with my first completed Stex fic!
These are going to be styled like pretend interviews for the things I want to answer or share. I’m just not into QnAs via askbox that can be hard to find with time. Some asks will be suggested questions I got when looking for suggestions in private.
(1) “How did the idea of Another Believer come to fruition?”
-I wasn't really looking for fresh ideas to be honest...
-I guess the initial idea came when I listened to 'A Human's Touch' by TWRP for the upteenth time and thought, 'Huh I bet there's a way to make this about Hydra and Rusty somehow.' Then much later I would draw an idea for my own design of Rusty if he were to convert to Hydrogen.
-I've always adored the idea of the train characters being robots and made that into my own meta. I can't pinpoint when or where the exact idea of 'Rusty crashes during the OLC race and forty years later Hydra discovers him' but something about it struck me so bad during my Christmas holiday I set to work right away.
-As for the fic title's choice, that one's a little easy. I got into 'Parkour Civilization' by Evbo on YouTube and one fan animatic by BunniesWithKnives really inspired me. The lines "Guess what? You got more than you bargained. Ain't it crazy? You got more than you paid for. So give me just one more chance, one more glance, One more hand to hold." really struck me as something Rusty would feel. Slowly, through the process of writing this story, the song's theme of 'building another believer' grew.
(2) “This story was birthed while you were writing another fan fiction. Did you balance Another Believer with your work for that?"
-Haha, I tried...
-Rolling into Starlight is its own beast. I doubt I would try to replicate the twenty-five pages, thirty chapter fan fiction nor its production. The whole reason I think I made the first three chapters of Another Believer so fast was because I was so tired of 'okay now think of these trains as teenagers in a small town' when it came to writing. It was a very nice refresh that was much needed to write the trains as trains.
-But I did continue to have ideas for Rolling into Starlight. I filed all the drafts I wrote for the future updates away so those should see the light of day in the near-ish future.
(3) “Errrmmm so I couldn't figure out a bonus question please just tell them a fun fact about the production."
-Certainly!
-Fun Fact: When I was trying hard to edit or hammer out the next chapter for my own deadlines, I would put this on loop in the background:
-...I don't want what really drove me to write 'Another Believer' with this one to be honest. Maybe the techno themes (and Megaman.exe in general if you know you know) really linked well with the story of rebuilding Rusty.
(4) “Were there any plot points with Hydra that were missed?"
-Absolutely. I wanted to dig more into his tinkering hobbies or the fact he's a bit of an 'ambassador' for hydrogen fuel trains. I felt like it would just complicate things in the story and that his tinkering hobbies should stay a hobby that doesn't really need much of a backstory.
(5) “How were you able to write long chapters?"
-I say this often but it's still true: "I am cursed with thoughts and the compulsion to perfect them so I must write them out." Another Believer, like Rolling into Starlight, has insane chapter lengths because I felt like I needed to get all of my thoughts out or else it wouldn't feel full enough.
-I am, however, learning to shorten chapters or divide stories up into parts. As much as it's fun to look back at all the words or the bulk, it's much more stress-free to NOT do longer stories this way.
-Other ways I want to curb this is to just do 'TV Pilot' first chapters for all my stuff and then just plan the rest out based on my concepts. This includes my original stuff.
(6) “Did Rusty really retain consciousness for forty years? How exactly does the blackbox system work?”
-The answer is 'Yes' and 'No.'
-You see... I have no truthful answer for this. I usually play very fast and loose for all the machinery and technology that goes into my Stex meta as I don't understand how humanoid trains brought to life by the Starlight Express 100% are supposed to work other than 'it just works!'
-SO. Rusty pertaining consciousness for forty years is only possible when Hydra loops him into the blackbox reader because that's when his blackbox reactivates and feeds him the information that he's been in stasis for that long. Rusty gets hit with the emotions of being hurt and forgotten for so long since his blackbox has him logged as needing help and comatose. Thanks Hydra.
-The blackbox reader itself is like a tiny portable cassette computer you would find in the Alien film franchise. It can be plugged into a wall to get an electrical currant going and then wired into a blackbox to check the records of comatose trains. Sometimes a train would need to consent to certain treatments so a repair car or human would hook them up for proper conversation. These devices have also been used to get proper accounts for law officials. The blackbox reader is still a new series of device that was built int eh seventies and wasn't put into the wider market after further testing in the late eighties.
-Like blackboxes in airplanes and other traveling crafts, living trains have one too! They're essentially the data collection part of the train's 'brain' and located right under their processor. As their brain processes information, the blackbox gathers all final actions and thoughts. A reader can't read emotions at all but it can trace what the train's body's condition is currently in and their medical history. The blackbox itself ends collecting information when the train is not conscious or isn't hooked up to a device that can read or activate it.
(7) “Caboose and Greaseball who caused Rusty’s crashing get very little mention in the fic. Was this intentional?”
-Indeed. I had ideas on Rusty confronting Greaseball or CB returning but they would have made the fic longer and so didn't want to explore it more.
-The cut scene of Rusty confronting Greaseball would confirm that Rusty was lying about not remembering how he crashed. Greaseball would also confirm that he had been cheating all those years ago but Rusty's crash scared him away from the races.
-I wanted to add a scene at the end of CB sneaking back into the yard as BV (Bochum 2018's Brake Van) in search of work before running away at the sight of a revived Rusty rolling around. Thought it would be funny but it was just too funny.
(8) “The discussion of train kids comes up a few times throughout the story. How are train kids made? Would Rusty and Hydra have a train kid?"
-Like all other trains, their children are built!
-There are two ways to 'adopt' another train: (1) Go through a catalogue and decide what kind of train you, or you and your partner(s), wish to raise and ask the yardmaster and Control if there's space in the yard for one more. Or (2) A train mentor can become a parental figure through the train they're mentoring.
-As stated through Another Believer, Dinah and Greaseball each have their own daughter. Greaseball mentored Grace (Wembley Greaseball) and Dinah built Didi (Wembley Dinah). Grace arrived at the yard after acting up one too many times at a previous yard as a teen build and so was 'set straight' by Greaseball and other trains to the point she's bonded with him and the rest of the yard. Didi was a combination of an incomplete teen build that Dinah had asked for as she wanted a child to raise and then got help from Wrench and her friends to see her come to life.
-Living trains are inherently an asexual group. They are robots so they don't have one-to-one same behavior as humans but find their longer lifespans lonely and will mimic human behavior and rituals.
-For Rusty and Hydra: Maybe! I don't really see them settling into a domesticated family life for years. If it were to happen I think they would build a girl train with flower markings. Rusty always strikes me as a girl dad.
(9) “Any other canon characters you wished had made an appearance in Another Believer?"
-MAN. I wish Electra had been included...
-I think any version of Electra has insane friendship chemistry with Rusty and Hydra. They would have met up if Electra was still in the Apollo Victoria yard after all those years but I felt it was much more in canon for Electra to continue his business elsewhere after the crash.
(10) “Electra is known as 'Elvectra' throughout the story. Is this simply Wembley Electra? What about the components? Are they the same or similar to the original London production?"
-Yes! Electra has gone through a significant amount of changes since their introduction, workshop included. He was considered a success despite Rusty's horrible crash and went on to continue a grand racing career. His line's owners then duplicated his processor and manipulated future builds of his model for work. Electra's Broadway train model is known as 'Electricita', Bochum Electra is 'Elektra', and 'Elvectra' is the Wembley version of Electra.
-An extra fun fact is that Electra's original personality matrix gets flanderized every time its copied. It takes time for a train's personality to form so each younger/newer incarnation of Electra is more annoying than the last.
-And yes Electra's original components continued their careers. Wrench was tasked with helping to care for Elvectra once they were built and thus returned to the Apollo Victoria yard a few years before Hydra was reassigned there. She and other components have more silver armor in their work attire and racing gear these days. If a major race were to occur for Electra or Electricita then they would wear more red or less silver.
(11) “Hey you mentioned almost getting done in by mold? What the hell?”
- …yes.
-Long story short: I received a rose for Valentine's Day and put it above my headboard. Days later the flower started molding and I didn't notice. I started feeling very ill and just assumed I had another cold. I get colds and just sick in general so often I didn't really question the how this had happened. I just kept feeling worse... UNTIL I NOTICED THE FUZZ ON THE ROSE. I threw it out, went to bed after sanitizing the area, and then felt much better the days that followed.
(12) “Okay… Did you have any inspiration for how the W. P. Apollo Victoria yard is supposed to look like?”
-Not really. Besides looking at different train yard maps and production sets, I tried to keep things vague. Separating an ‘old’ and ‘newer’ sections of the yard kind of helps. This was the mental map I had in my brain:
(13) “Do you feel the fuel trucks taking Rusty to Taco Bell was out of left field?”
-Yeah. I still do. I don’t like referring to memes or brands in fics or original projects because you don’t know what’s going to age well or not. Like, I could laugh now but will I look fondly back on it in five years? I’d probably cringe if I wrote a GRIMES and Elon Musk joke years ago (I did and I still do).
-But also since it is modern day in Another Believer, it’s hard to escape meme culture. A lot of people today will go ‘what do you mean you haven’t done X!?!?’ and try to remedy that to the best of their abilities. Also I think the fuel trucks know about the ‘feeding a dorito to a Victorian child / serf’ meme and would be ecstatic to try it on Rusty.
-All in all: When you write about modern day it’s kind of hard to escape brands and memes.
(14) “Any plans for a sequel or something similar?"
-I have tossed the idea around of expanding on the universe of Another Believer or writing some sequel one shots.
-The main ignition for creating sequels are the wider implications of news of a train coming back from the dead spreading. Rusty is alive and a miraculous wonder! Many people should be knocking on his door and questioning how is this possible.
-What other trains have met with a similar fate and can be rebuilt...?
-For those one shots: The main focus would be Rusty getting injured and being scared of visiting the repair shed or the nearest repair shed or train hospital is full of doctors he's unfamiliar with. As someone who has similar fears due to personal reasons, this sequel hits really close to home so making it is not easy. I would need to create a very good ending that's comfortable and saves the narrative I established in Another Believer. Also since it would be coming from somewhere personal I would then have to get over myself being open about this fear of mine...
big implications with hydra being rusty’s emergency contact. i still havent forgotten about that tiktok. imagine rustys in trouble and the first person who gets called is HYDRA. maybe th worst decision rusty could have made.
thinking about hydra not knowing if racing with someone is romantic or not. they’re like pretty sure but they’re not sure sure. so eventually they like ask rusty out and turns out rustys thought they were dating for like a month now
