#depersonisation cw

[thenugking]

carpecake said: Please elaborate?

OKAY I’ve been on  Horrifying Thomas the Tank Engine Lore hell all day and I would love to talk about it, here goes.

So as you probably know, one of the central themes of Thomas is being A Really Useful Engine. What you may not know is that engines and other vehicles who aren’t Really Useful are at risk of being Scrapped, aka Murdered.

Scrapping is a constant threat and multiple characters have almost being scrapped as a backstory and these backstories all tend to be finished off with “but now he’s been rescued he’s Very Happy working on the Nice railway, and everyone says he’s Really Useful, and the moral is that scrapping him would have been Wrong because even though he’s a bit old or not a diesel engine or whatever, he's still a good little worker and that’s what Matters!!” (and yeah it’s pretty much always He, there’s a sexism problem in thomas too but that’s a whole other thing)

Like Donald and Douglas’ origin story basically goes like this:

the fat controller orders a new engine, donald

donald turns up with his twin brother, douglas, because otherwise douglas was going to be scrapped

that is, murdered

they’ve both “forgotten” their numbers and lost their number plates so the fat controller can’t work out which is the one he actually ordered

(and this is the only way they can be told apart because engines on The Other Railway don’t actually have names, I can’t remember if they named themselves or if the fat controller named them but yeah a lot of these living beings are just referred to by numbers)

anyway the fat controller will keep them both For Now while he gets this sorted out

Donald and Douglas both work exceptionally hard and do great jobs in the hope that they’ll impress the fat controller so much that he’ll keep both of them

instead of, you know, sending one away to be murdered

but they accidentally fuck up a bit, which annoys the fat controller and makes him reconsider

at one point donald swaps tenders with douglas in the hope of saving his brother’s life and being the one sent away to die instead

yep

anyway the other engines end up sending percy to plead for donald and douglas’ lives with the fat controller

and in the end he keeps them both because they’re really useful!!! But not before telling the other engines he’s annoyed at them trying to influence his decision making by pleading for donald and douglas’ lives

also later episodes suggest douglas might have developed ptsd from his near murder

like no exaggeration here this is just.... what happens in the stories.

Douglas later helps rescue Oliver, his brakevan Toad and (in the books) his coach Isabel from being scrapped too. Their backstory is that Oliver’s driver and fireman left their homes to help them run away after learning they were destined for scrap. They’ve just spent their nights on the run and their days in hiding, because getting caught will mean Oliver, Toad and Isabel are murdered. (Drivers and firemen are usually good allies who do a lot to protect their trains, I love them.)

(Also in the tv show the episode starts with Douglas telling off Edward for chatting to his friend Trevor the Traction Engine instead of working. Edward tells Douglas that he has a lot in common with Trevor actually, in that they were both saved from being scrapped. He adds that now, Trevor can be Really Useful.

Like.... Edward knows what’s up. He’s not about to talk openly about how fucked up it is that they all have a choice between being Really Useful and death, but he’s here to try and build solidarity and make Douglas think about stuff.)

There’s also a theme of vehicles who've been a bit of an asshole being punished by being made unable to move or talk to anyone. The most famous example is in one of the first stories, where Henry refuses to come out of a tunnel because it’s raining and he doesn’t want to spoil his paint, so because he’s a bit vain, the fat controller punishes him by bricking up the tunnel and just leaving him there. The narrator claims he deserves this. He’s let out a year later because another engine is needed to help Edward with a heavy train, and the narrative’s focus is on how happy Henry is to be given a chance to be Really Useful again.

(The one that fucking haunted me as a kid is Stanley/Smudger. He’s an engine Duke tells Peter Sam and Sir Handel about to frighten them into being hard working and Really Useful. The engine (Stanley in the books, Smudger in the tv show) came off the rails often and didn’t care and then humans Had Enough and made him Actually Useful by bricking him up and turning him into a pumping engine (books)/generator (tv). After which he just... sits there, miserably watching the other engines going past and either unable to speak to them any more, or treated too much like an object now for anyone to bother to speak to him. Plus in the books the reason he kept coming off the rails was because he’d been re-gauged badly. By humans.)

There’s also the implication that the reason steam engines are so often at risk of getting scrapped is because they keep being replaced by diesels who work better, which creates a hostility between steam and diesel engines. And like, come on, diesels aren’t the bad guys here, the bad guys are the humans that are genociding living sentient beings. But it sure does help the humans if the steam and diesel engines keep fighting each other, instead of noticing who’s the real problem!! 

(Out of universe, a lot of the Scrapping narrative was author Reverend Awdry venting his frustration that good working steam engines were being destroyed just to make way for diesels but like my dude when you’re writing these guys as sentient this creates some uh Problems you know)

((Also at one point he writes Percy going off on how British Rail is run by evil assholes who fucking destroy steam engines for 0 reason all the time and then puts in his author’s notes “haha silly Percy with his Ideas, sorry british rail love you guys really!!” like there’s a Lot of stuff going on in the thomas the tank engine world okay))

anyway yeah Thomas the Tank Engine is about a bunch of engines and other vehicles having to be Really Useful to avoid death, while the fat controller rules them “fairly” by being willing to keep them alive, unlike controllers on The Other Railway (aka British Rail) and does Nice stuff for them, like invite over Gordon’s one living brother when Gordon’s upset to discover the rest of them have been murdered, and get more expensive coal to help Henry’s chronic illness (yep henry is canonically chronically ill, again there’s a Lot going on in thomas) instead of just scrapping him.

tl;dr thomas the tank engine is set in a capitalist dystopia, let the engines rise up and run the fat controller fucking down

[thenugking]

30 Days of Dragon Age OC Challenge Day 4

Day 4: Mind Matters: Briefly describe your OC’s mental state. Are they neurotypical or neuroatypical? Do they have any mental illnesses or a history with mental illness? How do they handle stress?

Isaline:

So, between the ages of 4 and 19 she was in a Circle, believing that she's Sinning just for existing as a mage, not thinking of herself as real person, and accepting every bit of emotional abuse thrown at her because she Deserves It. So like, her mental state isn't great. She is a Bundle of anxiety at the start of the game and at one point, suicidal. She's currently doing much better, but still self doubts and gets anxious easily. She's used to being stress so is able to handle it well, although tends to just collapse and sometimes have an anxiety attack once the stress is over.

Corinne:

She has PTSD due to loss of control of her magic and accidental murder during childhood, which she still has nightmares about. She can pass as neurotypical far better than the other two though. She's good at handling stress, she has practised a Lot at controlling her magic, which tends to flare up when she's stressed, so she's taught herself general "keep control when stressed" techniques.

Estella:

Brief Description of mental state: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Neurotypical?: Nooooooooope Mental Illnesses?: All of them, all at once Handles stress: EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE NOW AND ALSO SHE IS SCREAMING AND ALSO LAUGHING Was Tranquil for six years, and now isn't, and has ALL THE EMOTIONS BACK. So, like all cured Tranquil, she tends to be impulsive and irrational and Feel things very, very deeply. And suddenly has to deal with the fact that she's just spent six years as a slave and being regularly raped. Also she now has a daughter, who was taken away from her by the Chantry when she as born and wow okay that's a Thing. She has very minimal control over her emotions and very little ability to handle stress and in general is just a Mess. Very mentally ill and has?? some kind of personality disorder?? BPD fits her pretty well, although I think it's really a "was Tranquil and now is Not" personality disorder that Earth doesn't have.

While her mental state is Ungreat though, she does basically start group therapy sessions for cured Tranquils, and with Fiona expands this into group therapy for all mages. I'm really pleased about that.