An open Tumblr letter to younger fans, from a 77-year-old TOS fangirl
* who has shipped Spirk since that night in 1967 that Amok Time first aired
* and helped storm NBC to keep TOS on the air for a 3rd season
* and wrote fanfic way back in the day
* and was privileged to be around for the earliest days of fandom, when Leonard used to come to your house if that’s where the fan club was meeting and sit on the sofa with you in that Spock hair cut and eat cake
All of you who are writing TOS/AOS fan fiction and creating fan art now: remember, YOU are the ones shaping the traditions of fandom. You have inherited the kingdom. Bless you for keeping it vibrant, growing, alive. In fifty years, you will be the ones who are remembered for molding it and handing it down to the future. It probably doesn’t feel like now, but you are making history.
Your current addiction to TOS and the feels you get when you contemplate the love between Jim and Spock will be with you for life. It won’t always be in the forefront; you will sometimes go years, sometimes go a decade, without Star Trek being more than a passing thought. But then something will remind you and every consuming feeling you feel right now will come rushing back, every bit as powerful and deep and strong as it is today. All there, right where you left it.
The friendships you make in fandom will be with you for life. Like all friendships, they will wax and wane as the focus of your life shifts over time, but you will always be able to pick up the thread. You will — to give you a hypothetical example — be 77 years old and discover Tumblr and get a rush of Spirk feels after a decade of not giving TOS a thought, and contact your 83-year-old fangirl friend in the nursing home, to whom you haven’t spoken in several years. You will open the conversation with, “So, Jim and Spock love each other and that just makes me so happy.” And your friend in the nursing home will sigh and say, “Yes. They do love each other. It’s such a comfort.”
That look that Jim and Spock give each other, of absolute adoration and acceptance and love? That’s real. It’s rare, but it’s real. One of my greatest joys in life is to see my son and his husband give each other looks like that. Of course I don’t know you; I don’t know your strengths and struggles or your place on the spectrum of gender or anything about your sexuality or what you look like or what your life has taught you to believe about yourself, but I do know this: YOU DESERVE TO BE LOVED AND LOOKED AT THE WAY JIM AND SPOCK LOOK AT EACH OTHER. Please don’t accept less than that in your life.
The future of our planet does not seem very hopeful at the moment. But please remember that when Gene created Star Trek, the world was in turmoil and the future seemed very bleak. Star Trek is, was, always shall be about hope. Reach for it. When TOS first aired, we hoped to see some form of a Starfleet on the horizon in our lifetimes. That vision must be passed on to you. Do it. Make the world worthy of launching the human race out into space. CREATE STARFLEET.
You are all creative and funny and amazing. Far more amazing than you know. Be kind to yourselves. Live long and prosper, kids.
Tags are in reference to my first bullet point. Meant as a kudos to your work, but feel free to untag yourself if you don’t want to be linked to my ramblings; I won’t be offended! (Also, this extends to a thousand other artists and writers out there who deserve kudos. tag at will.)
ok but this unironically works. talk about how the working class is exploited and you can basically sell full-on marxism to your average republican if you do it right. all you have to do is avoid the words "Marx," "capitalism," "socialism," "communism," "means of production," etc - just use synonyms. say "big business" or "corporate shareholder interests" instead of "capitalists." say "a government that prioritizes the needs of the working people" instead of "socialism." it WORKS. I've DONE it. the hardest sell are usually things like social and racial equity, welfare, things like that, because people have been primed with the racist/classist idea that those things are somehow unfair - but you can get your foot in the door to getting them to buy into those too if you start with class issues. read up on your theory, make sure you REALLY understand your own ideology, because that will enable you to reword it and successfully sell it.
In my experience, you can often help sell 'welfare' stuff by appealing to self-interest with a touch of Aren't We Great.
Disability benefits: "I mean, sure, there are probably some sad sacks who are gaming the system, there always are, but hell, with the amount of taxes we pay, the government can afford a few freeloaders, right? I'd rather pay for a couple people who don't really need it than not have the system at all for if I need it, or my kids do, or whatever. I mean shit happens. What if some asshole drunk driver puts me in the hospital and it takes me a year to get back on my feet? Or Heaven forbid something permanent happens. I'll sure be glad that I can get disability then, won't I?"
UBI: "I dunno, the kind of guy who'll just sit on the couch playing Call of Duty all day if he doesn't have to work, I kinda don't want him on my job site anyway. That type is just taking up a place that you could fill with someone who'll actually get the job done, you know? You end up short-handed even though you technically have enough people because everyone else has to pick up his slack. And it'd mean that if your boss is a dick you can tell him to shove it and not worry your kids are gonna go hungry while you find a better place. We can sure as hell afford it."
Racial equity: "I've got a lot more in common with a Black guy who's just trying to get the job done than I do with some rich white asshole who thinks the sun shines out of his ass because of how much money mommy and daddy have."
a few people have replied stuff to the effect of “damn this looks cool but i don’t know anything about Doom” and that is officially my cue to start nerding out about it
This is the Doomguy. Demons call him “The Doom Slayer,” but everyone who loves him calls him Doomguy.
Once upon a time, Doomguy was a security guard working for the Union Aerospace Corporation. He was stationed on a remote space base on the Martian moon Phobos. He used to be in the Marine Corps, but he was dishonorably discharged after his CO ordered him to fire on unarmed civilians and he responded by putting his CO in a full-body cast. He spent most of his time as a security guard jerking off to porn on the clock, according to the original game’s manual.
One day, his bosses at the UAC fucked up super bad when experimenting with teleporters and opened a portal to Hell. Demons quickly swarmed the base, possessed Doomguy’s fellow security officers, and started taking everything over. Doomguy thought that wasn’t very cash money of the demons, grabbed a shotgun, and started asking them politely yet firmly to leave.
Doomguy does this on Phobos for a bit, dies, finds himself on the Martian moon of Deimos which had been swallowed in to Hell itself, and gets right back to fighting demons. He rappels down from Deimos in to the depths of Hell, kills more demons, and then escapes through a portal in Hell to Earth.
When on Earth, Doomguy discovers that the demons killed his pet rabbit Daisy. This motivates him to power through a bunch of extremely difficult levels designed by American McGee, a bunch of really shitty rushed ambitious levels designed by Sandy Petersen, three expansion packs designed by fans, a short jog through some levels designed by Nerve Software, and an entire game that was exclusive to the Nintendo 64. During these games he kills a lot of demons, saves humanity, stops the demonic invasion of Earth, and resolves to stay in Hell for the rest of eternity to make sure this never happens again.
And… he does that. He spends eons traveling between Hell and parallel dimensions, putting a stop to demonic invasions across the multiverse. He does this for so long that the demons canonize him as a part of their weird demonic religious belief system, dubbing him The Doom Slayer. The demons chronicle Doomguy’s rampage in a collection of stories called The Slayer’s Testament. He meets an order of alien knights in Hell called the Night Sentinels, whose own home world was pulled in to Hell by the demons and who had become just as effective at killing demons as he had. He pals around with them for a bit but eventually the demons get the better of them all and all that’s left is the Doomguy. This pisses him off really bad, so badly that when he went on his latest rampage he didn’t notice that the demons were leading him in to a trap. The demons drop an entire temple on his head, knock him unconscious, and lock him in a sarcophagus.
An undisclosed amount of time passes, and eventually the UAC from an alternate universe busts in to Hell by accident again. The UAC starts pulling natural resources and artifacts from Hell and using those resources to power all of their technology. Turns out, using Hell Energy to power your electronics makes people go crazy, and eventually this turns in to another full-on demonic invasion. This is where DOOM (2016) starts, with the Doomguy waking up from his nap in a UAC lab where they had been studying his sarcophagus. Doomguy realizes that he’s in a “same shit different universe” situation and gets to work stopping the demonic invasion and angrily ignoring the input of every single person that tries to talk to him. He’s seen all this shit before countless times and is sick of hearing excuses and monologues. He’s through with the niceties of it all. Characters tell him to “carefully deactivate” all of the different science machines that let humanity safely use Hell Energy. He smashes them to bits with his feet. Characters assure him that this was all for the “greater good,” he knows that the greatest possible good for humanity is not fucking with Hell anymore. They don’t know what they’re messing with, he does, and he has to fix the problem in his own special way.
The clip above is from Doom Eternal, set to release March of next year. The clip of Doomguy casually strolling through his UAC base and just sort of asserting himself is the result of the character having experienced several thousand years of this bullshit and being just So Through with it all. He’s not gonna hurt these people because ultimately he’s fighting to protect humanity, but as far as he’s concerned he doesn’t owe anyone in this scenario the luxury of his politeness or respect.
The demons are coming from a portal at the core of Mars? What a coincidence, he’s on one of the Martian moons and there’s a gun designed to blow up planets right outside. There’s also a bunch of demons outside, so that’s gonna need to be addressed. This guy has a key to the door out? Sweet. He’s just gonna borrow that right quick. That guy has a plasma rifle? Doomguy always liked that one. It belongs to him now. Time to go outside and hit things until the industrial metal stops playing.
What if Topham had gotten the Atlantic he wanted?
I know what I'm basically pitching here is essentially "It's A Splendid Life/A Small World" but with Henry, but it's an interesting thought process because this change likely means that Gordon doesn't wind up coming to Sodor.
Okay, I got really into the weeds thinking about this one.
My first instinct was to say "I already had a post speculating about how the timeline changes if you Splendid Life each of the other original six characters." And I do think my thoughts here are very similar so far as the Henry portion of that post goes: Without Henry, the railway in general and definitely Topham Hatt I in particular do not have what I think was their most important catalyst for growth. The railway survives financially just fine without Henry. But it's not our N.W.R. It doesn't develop its soul.
That post also covered Gordonless N.W.R. but it's not so applicable because my answer there was: lol, what N.W.R.? It went bankrupt by or during or not long after WWII. However, if N.W.R. is Gordonless because it got its secondhand Robinson Atlantic, I think that's a very different prospect. Because I believe Topham Hatt knew what he was about. I think "secondhand Robinson Atlantic" best suited the railway's needs in 1922. Unless the Atlantic's personality completely and utterly and just really spectacularly sucked, then I think the railway would have been BETTER off… in the short term. It wouldn't have had its (up until 1935) financially disastrous Henry I experiment. And I maintain that Gordon (although as it happened the financial savior of the place)—overpowered, and with his finicky third cylinder that Crovan's Gate would not have had the least experience in maintaining—was not at all ideal for the role he was tapped for… in 1922.
The most obvious change, however, is that (without Henry I and Gordon), we also do not get Percy. Even if the Atlantic was the most entitled and demanding engine of all time, I do not think they would have had the necessary support to strike and twist the Fat Controller's arm in the direction of Percy's dodgy workshop. Even if this Unknown Entity could have got James onside, that makes only 2 and not 3 of them, with no Gordon as forceful speaker.
Put a pin in that – more notes on James in this timeline to follow – for now, though, yeah. Although of course one never wishes to Thanos-snap three of our six friends out of the timeline, I do think that in the 20s and 30s the railway would have chugged along smoothly enough (or, at least, no-smoother-and-probably-more-so-than-they-did-in-canon) and that our other friends would hardly have been aware they were missing out on anything. Like, in the canon timeline I'm sure 1930 N.W.R. was making more money than Henryless 1930 N.W.R. But the former's expenses were higher, and at any rate even if it is coming out ahead, I don't think it's enough yet to make a huge difference. Those gain of income and opportunity would need to compound over the next 20 years before we can really see the effects by just looking around.
In the meantime, a functioning Robinson Atlantic would have kept the operation afloat… albeit the Fat Controller would have certainly snapped up James when the opportunity arose.
I think Thomas is still likely to get his branch line. Even without Gordon and Henry being involved, Thomas would have been getting quite bored on station pilot duty in 1925. Perhaps he did not get a chance to take Henry's train, but I don't know that it would have mattered. There were other big rude engines still around for a while. Even if there weren't (hell, maybe the N.W.R. got those other Big Blue Engines after Gordon, like maybe Gresley started a bit of a vogue), sheer boredom would still have Thomas complaining and it's likely that Edward would have taken pity on him at around the same time he does in canon. There's even some wiggle room of a few weeks in either direction for Thomas to still be at Wellsworth when James crashes.
Basically, I think Thomas is unaffected. He and Percy don't even interact in the RWS until the advent of Charles Hatt's controllership so it's not like he has a gaping hole where a best friendship ought to have been. He's doing fine in the Topham Hatt I era. Has fewer big engines to tease but I trust he pulls through.
I have a bit of a headcanon with Edward where—to a lesser degree than Topham Hatt, but not dissimilarly—Henry was the making of him as far as maturing his character. If one accepts this headcanon then maybe Edward is a little less understanding than he is in canon… but he's still basically himself enough that you'd have to squint to notice.
I also interpret (interpret, not headcanon—I fight on this hill) Edward not becoming a branch line engine until we're in the Charles Hatt era. In this timeline that might not be true, because supporting Henry I and even Gordon was I think a major pull factor keeping him in on the action—"Wellsworth pilot" is just such a useful post for that sort of thing because it gives him the flexibility to be called on when needed, and he's needed often enough that there's no need to find additional work for him down the branch. So in this timeline I suppose he could do Brendam line work a lot sooner. Still, maybe not. Depends a good deal on the capabilities and needs of The Robinson Atlantic (TRA?).
Then we get to James, and this is the part of the thought experiment I'm loving. So James crashes onto a Sodor without a Henry and Gordon. Isn't that fascinating?
And there are two competing effects of this:
In canon when James arrives he initially drifts into an Edward-coded sphere; they get along, and, for at least the first three sentences (🙃) of Troublesome Engines, he's as content as Edward to do some shunting at Tidmouth. By like sentence four of the book, it's Henry and Gordon's influence that gets James grumbling and starting to resent "odd jobs." And it's apparent in the books to come that James is continually big tripping over his Big Engine status… but none of that influence exists here.
So maybe he'd stay in that Edwardian orbit… but again, it depends on the X factor of The Robinson Atlantic. Because here's the thing. The Atlantic would not have been so unambiguously a "bigger" big engine the way Henry I and Gordon are. Our Pacific Friends are gargantuan, especially on the context of 1920s Sodor. TRA is heavier than James but less powerful and older—built no later than 1906, a whole era and locomotive revolution before Henry's and Gordon's original designs.
In this timeline James is truly the Herculean young gun of the Sodor main line.
And boy is this fun to think about?!!
I know a lot of you read that sentence about Alternate-'Verse James and cringed and immediately began composing jokes about how the island is doomed, doomed.
But, I think you're wrong. I mean yes, a puffed-peacock James with relatively few colleagues who can keep him in his place would be loud and prone to overexuberance. But I don't see him being any worse in the role of top dog than Gordon tbh. I actually do think this James in many ways is less troublesome than canon James. Because a James who doesn't get the recognition he needs is an angry and sulky and snippy and desperate and reckless James… and it's this insecurity that causes at least 50% of his problems (RWS and TVS). A James in his full well-admired glory is mostly just charming and thoughtless and superficial. He'd lack Gordon's gravitas, but I think he'd actually get fewer bees in his bonnet re: shit mainland engines and/or little engines do/say. See, James likes having fun. He might be a bad influence on "lesser" engines but he'd spend far less time condescending to them or being offended by them.
A Gordon with a well-fed ego is touchy and prideful. A James with a well-fed ego just has a more amiable temper.
And (albeit I agree with @greatwesternway that James is one of the smartest members of the cast) I don't think James has that… insubordinate cunning that Gordon sometimes displays, indeed in "Trust Thomas" Gordon has to coach James in simple deceit. And James will jump for any new paint job offered (unlike Henry and Gordon, who do not soften their stance when new paint is used to try to appease them in TE). So frankly I think James'd be less of a challenge for Topham Hatt… Indeed, you might chalk this up as a bad thing. Much like Henry I's unsatisfactory design and his troubles challenged Hatt to become more flexible and compassionate, maybe Gordon's flirtations with revolt made Hatt steelier. Flint sharpens flint and all that.
Furthermore Topham Hatt's experiments with Big Engines (two of which, at least, were successful) made the railway as a whole far more ambitious than it had any right to be. (One example that we know of, which I think stands in for others we must imagine: when Henry is made reliable on Welsh coal, Sodor seems to finally have a mainstay for what has to be one of their most important trains. Who was even taking that thing before Henry? Could be one of the failed loaners, who Hatt was able to get rid of once Henry was made well, or could be they had to contract that lucrative job out to the L.M.S., which would frankly kinda suck.) The presence of a Gresley Pacific and one of the venerable class of Engines Who Won the War must have lent a certain… seriousness to the N.W.R. operation that it wouldn't have otherwise had, made the prospect of letting it be "its own region" somewhat less ludicrous because Gordon's and Henry's presence made Sodor seem like a small but weight-carrying piece of the overall rail network. Indeed it was probably Sodor's war performance that allowed it its postwar autonomy, which surely they couldn't have been granted if they had needed bailing out from outsiders. Could Sodor have kept up with its war duties with one aging Robinson Atlantic in the place of Gordon and Henry? I mean who knows, maybe it was the Superman of locomotives. But it's safe to guess probably not. So the railway needs outside assistance during the war, and can't position itself as semi-independent afterwards. This spells the beginning of the Bad part of the timeline for Our Friends (💀💀💀). The Modernisation Plan will come for their home. The Hatts don't already have a Major Miraculous Engine Restoration under their belt; who knows, without Henry I, if they ever developed that stomach or that sense of responsibility? Maybe James, once he starts feeling the existential pressure, goes full-on Small World!Gordon. Once things finally start getting bad on this much more fragile railway (and they will), they could get very, very bad indeed.
But again, until WWII, I think the dynamic on Sodor with James in his full glory, with 'most all his dreams of superiority fulfilled, would have likely been rather… pleasant, on the whole. Pleasant small backwater railway vibes, nothing more—but also nothing less.
No. 26062 stalls just before the platform, derailed, with the level crossing gate and a bush along for the ride as the gate's hinge rusted shut over the rainy prior week.
No. 26062 stalls just before the platform, derailed, with the level crossing gate and a bush along for the ride as the gate's hinge rusted shut over the rainy prior week.
ok but this unironically works. talk about how the working class is exploited and you can basically sell full-on marxism to your average republican if you do it right. all you have to do is avoid the words "Marx," "capitalism," "socialism," "communism," "means of production," etc - just use synonyms. say "big business" or "corporate shareholder interests" instead of "capitalists." say "a government that prioritizes the needs of the working people" instead of "socialism." it WORKS. I've DONE it. the hardest sell are usually things like social and racial equity, welfare, things like that, because people have been primed with the racist/classist idea that those things are somehow unfair - but you can get your foot in the door to getting them to buy into those too if you start with class issues. read up on your theory, make sure you REALLY understand your own ideology, because that will enable you to reword it and successfully sell it.
In my experience, you can often help sell 'welfare' stuff by appealing to self-interest with a touch of Aren't We Great.
Disability benefits: "I mean, sure, there are probably some sad sacks who are gaming the system, there always are, but hell, with the amount of taxes we pay, the government can afford a few freeloaders, right? I'd rather pay for a couple people who don't really need it than not have the system at all for if I need it, or my kids do, or whatever. I mean shit happens. What if some asshole drunk driver puts me in the hospital and it takes me a year to get back on my feet? Or Heaven forbid something permanent happens. I'll sure be glad that I can get disability then, won't I?"
UBI: "I dunno, the kind of guy who'll just sit on the couch playing Call of Duty all day if he doesn't have to work, I kinda don't want him on my job site anyway. That type is just taking up a place that you could fill with someone who'll actually get the job done, you know? You end up short-handed even though you technically have enough people because everyone else has to pick up his slack. And it'd mean that if your boss is a dick you can tell him to shove it and not worry your kids are gonna go hungry while you find a better place. We can sure as hell afford it."
Racial equity: "I've got a lot more in common with a Black guy who's just trying to get the job done than I do with some rich white asshole who thinks the sun shines out of his ass because of how much money mommy and daddy have."
I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard
Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.
Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.
Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.
Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.
SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.
SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.
Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.
Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.
Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.
Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.
Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.
Ask yourself, how does this piece make you feel? (No wrong answers)
Look for an artist statement nearby. What does it say about the artist and their relationship to their work? What does the artist say that they are trying to convey with their art? What contextual clues can you pick up from what they say about their background, or what they omit?
Look at the title of the piece. What is the artist saying about their work by naming it that, either explicitly or implicitly?
Look at the medium. Is there anything about the piece that stands out to you, knowing what it's made of?
Look at the year it was made. What cultural events might have been happening around this time? Was this piece part of a particular art movement? What was the purpose of that art movement, and what was it trying to say?
Accept that sometimes, you still might not get it. This is perfectly okay.
a small thing i learned from my sister dying is that i really would rather the people i love be a burden than be whatever the hell else they'd be if they weren't. yes even if it's messy and not always fair and hard completely inconvenient for everyone involved. even if it's weird. even if i'm rolling my eyes a bit inside sometimes. i just want you to bother me. please always bother me
like "it's rotten work" "not to me not if it's you" actually sometimes it's still rotten work. even if it's you. and i'd still do it a million times over
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