#little westssays

[littlewestern]

City of Truro or GWR in general

Ohh, delightful pick! Man, I love this guy. Probably one of the few pieces of art I still like from my early days of drawing humanized engines too, lol.

Truro is so great, what a canvas we've been given as a fandom! That said, since his characterization is kind of sparse I hope you don't mind if I pepper in my own Truro here. I assume you won't since you asked me specifically, but y'know. Fair warning.

Truro is so wonderful because he's absolutely peak Just Some Guy, a regular-degular old passenger engine with job to do, who just so happened to do it really, really well one particular day. I could go on for a while about how I think this would have affected a lot of aspects of his service and preserved life, but the long and short of it is this: Truro enjoys his fame, but maintains an approachable humility that I think other engines are naturally drawn to. It's a potent combination which will easily snare both engines more famous than himself, and unsuspecting ones of more humble origins.

I've previously written him as something of a playboy in my human AU, but it's not that Truro himself is more romantically inclined than other engines, that's just how I decided human-engines would behave if given yearly access to rented ballroom space, hotel rooms, and free drinks. Engines (in Ray world) tend to take a long view of relationship feasibility, and as such are generally polyamorous by nature with a few notable exceptions. Human!Truro has dabbled in fleeting little flings with a few engines, including: NYC 999, the Pioneer Zephyr, and... Well. We all knew where this was going, right?

The only engine more speedy and handsome and dashing and famous than Truro is of course, The Flying Scotsman. It feels right, yeah?

Scotsman has this commanding presence you just won't find anywhere else outside of a room with a Gresley, and he's gregarious and smart and funny and just so winning. This type of personality is like catnip to most engines, but Truro is unique in that he can match that energy beat-for-beat with a sharp tongue and sardonic wit that Scotsman (unlike his brother) finds fascinating and intoxicating. Most engines in the company of the fastest engine in the world would struggle to maintain their composure, but Truro is cool as anything. It's the kind of situation where trying to have a conversation with them immediately feels like an intrusion, because they really only have eyes for each other.

I said most engines in Ray world would be polyamorous, but that's only as a result of the realities of engine life. If you're in service you're constantly away, or if you're preserved, you're probably not preserved at the same place. The logistics of your love life are of no concern to the people who are responsible for you. It's simply unreasonable to expect exclusivity in these cases.

That said, I think Truro and Scot would consider each other to be their first and best options for partners. I know this dynamic lives exclusively in my head, but I hope I was able to communicate why I love it so much without getting too far into the weeds. I feel like most people also ship this, so hopefully my take on it is fresh enough for you! Thanks for the ask!

[littlewestern]

On Hank

(This one goes out to the anon in my askbox who requested Hank for the bingo meme. I'll do you one better <3)

So to preface this I think some context is required. I’ll be brief.

When I started this train misadventure with @greatwesternway, I personally had no plans to watch beyond Season 6, which was the last season that I remembered watching as a child and so the last season I had any personal attachment to. Once that had been done, however, and I still wanted more trains, I skipped directly to season 17 (to see Duck) and then proceeded to watch the rest of the CGI (backtracking to season 13) and then all the movies and specials.

This watch order left a gap, Seasons 7-12. I was not looking forward to watching Seasons 7-12. I had no special memories associated with them, and knew from prior research that the characterization and writing was… shall we say, less than stellar. I also knew that these seasons added many one-off characters that the CGI would not end up carrying over, and which I had basically zero interest in. Who cares about Flora the steam tram? Not me, certainly.

Imagine my surprise, then, when Season 12 (of Steady Eddie infamy) delivered perhaps my favorite one-off character of the entire show, and a pretty good all-around episode in general.

Let’s talk about Hank and his episode, Heave Ho, Thomas.

Despite appearing in only one episode, we know a lot about Hank’s character. We know that he’s big, strong, gregarious, friendly, quick to compliment others, and– perhaps most importantly– American!

Yes, the engine whose color scheme is red, white, and blue and who has a Texan accent (which Michael Angelis is attempting so, so bravely) is American. Shocker!

I’m pointing this out primarily because it’s interesting on its own: the show never directly states that he is from America, but it’s made very clear to the audience that that is the case.

There are many American engines on Sodor (Rosie, Caitlin, Connor, Porter, Timothy, Victor) but Hank is the only one (aside from Victor, who I would consider a special case) who is shown to be Culturally American. Most of these other engines are given British (or in the case of Caitlin and Connor, Irish for some reason) accents and their status as transplants isn’t really commented on in the canon.

I’m not bringing this up in relation to Hank because I have a problem with this from a technical perspective, but because Hank being American is– I would argue– actually the crux of the whole episode and what makes it work.

(Hank actually gets a model face as opposed to a CGI one for this shot! This episode might have been planned for before the decision to switch to CGI faces had been finalized.)

The episode proper starts with Hank arriving on Sodor. Thomas and Percy are both excited to meet this new special and strong engine, but Thomas expresses some doubt that he could be stronger than any of the engines on Sodor. Already we’re seeing some hometown pride from Thomas, indicating both that Hank is an outsider and that wherever he’s from, Thomas thinks Sodor is better. Sir Topham Hatt gives Thomas his 3 strikes jobs for the day, which he instructs Thomas to do while showing Hank around the island.

Hank arrives and immediately sets Thomas off by calling him “one of the finest little engines [he’s] ever seen”. Thomas, being as he is, takes offense at being called “little”, disregarding of course that to Hank, the big fuckoff PRR K4 Pacific, every engine on Sodor is little. And of course, Hank doesn’t mean “little” as an insult either. He means… cute! But Thomas, being as he is, gets buttmad about it.

Hank sees the load of freight cars Thomas is set to haul to the factory and offers, quite magnanimously, to take them instead, setting Thomas off even more. And perhaps Hank is underestimating Thomas here, but on the other hand, to Hank it would be like offering to carry a child’s backpack. The narration even tells us that Hank is merely trying to be helpful. He’s got that Southern Hospitality thing goin’ on!

As these seasons adhere to a specific formula it doesn’t take a genius to see where this episode is going. Thomas doesn’t exchange his current train for the next as he was instructed and instead tries to do all of them together as Hank watches, offering each time to pull the train instead and getting turned down. Part of that aforementioned Southern Hospitality, though, is taking people at their word, and so Thomas struggles on in a valiant attempt to win the Cutting Off Your Nose To Spite Your Face Award.

(Thomas, all out of Puff and Pull.)

It’s here that he gets called "Handsome Hank" in the episode by the narrator in passing. This is fun, because I love when one of the stereotypes Americans are given outside this country is that they're attractive. I suspect this comes from our only cultural export being film for 100 years, and so the impression that people who don't live here got was that Americans all look like movie stars.

Hank being called this is interesting though, in that sense, it characterizes him as American again without outright stating the fact, but it's also interesting because 'handsome' is not an adjective that gets ascribed to engines in canon. For this reason, I suspect it is a title in the vein of "Duck The Great Western Engine" or "James the Red Engine". It's a name given by humans to the engines as a form of address.

Because if it isn't... Well, how-dy Hank! Thomas (or the Narrator at least) thinks you look handsome! Add that to the list of things Thomas just can't stand about this guy! He swanks in here, disrespects Thomas, belittles him, and has the gall to look good while doing it. What a Hospitable asshole!

(Handsome Hank! I absolutely love these pieces of concept art and I'm so glad we have them.)

Hank is so Hospitable in fact, that when Thomas is completely out of steam and can’t whistle at the stations because of the heavy train, Hank announces in front of God and everybody that because Thomas is out of puff: he, Hank, will whistle for him! To Hank, this is just common courtesy. If he can’t pull the train, the very least he can do is whistle for his new friend.

Of course, this is about the worst thing you could say in front of an engine like Thomas. Thomas, who thinks everything is a competition, every offhand comment a slight against him personally, and every action he can’t do a knock against his own Usefulness. It’s not his fault, really. When you come up on a British railway with engines like Gordon and James, you expect to be belittled and patronized. But Hank isn’t being passive-aggressive here, he’s just being American!

Well of course, as it goes with these seasons, Thomas cracks a cylinder and learns a lesson about asking for help or somesuch, Hank has a party thrown for him and is promptly forgotten about for the rest of time forever, The End. It’s not a very satisfying conclusion or a particularly good episode when taken at face value, but I think it works if you look at it as a Cultural Differences sort of episode, where the sensibilities of two different railways come into contact and are, at least initially, at odds with each other.

And actually, doing some research for this episode, I found out that Heave Ho, Thomas was never shown in Japan on tv or released for home media. Maybe they thought an episode like this wouldn’t translate well for a Japanese audience? Interesting, either way!

[littlewestern]

Sonny's Title

I have a habit of making playlists for my favorite characters in ttte (you can find them on spotify or dm for a tracklist/link) and I like to name them after the engine’s full titles. Duck The Great Western Engine, Donald and Douglas the Scottish Twin Engines, etc. I think it’s a nice way to give the engines the respect and distinction of a full name and the playlist theming works well.

Which became a problem in the case of one of my favorite characters, Sonny. Sonny has so few appearances in canon and none in external media like books or magazines, so he’s never been given an official title. He has nicknames, but nothing akin to the typical format of ‘[Name] the [Adjective] Engine’. So I do what I always do in times of finding-canon-wanting, and turned to @greatwesternway​.

me: what did we end up going with for Sonny's title? did we decide? DJ: I like him as the Second Chance Engine 'cause that's pretty much the only thing we ever got about him. me: 😭 that’s so cute... DJ: Oh good! I was worried it was lame, but I didn't have a better idea. me: no, it’s perfect DJ: They never use these titles in the stories anyway. But I think it's nice for him because he's actually been given quite a few second chances. Even being found by his thieves was a type of second go of it.

Genius. Sonny The Second Chance Engine.

Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

[littlewestern]

Obligatory dunc for character bingo, please!

It's no secret that I carry quite the torch for the Skarloey Railway's scruffiest engine! If asked to choose only one episode as my favorite, my answer is Duncan The Humbug, and it's not even really close. When I first watched it, I was equal parts delighted (the dialouge for all the characters is perfectly on-point) as well as stunned at the nuance they managed to put into the character.

Duncan is a complainer. There is nothing he loves more than bearin' a grievance. That said, his position is not particularly enviable. He's a factory engine transplanted from his native environment into a scenic, primarily passenger, railway where he is expected to put on his customer service voice and take people thither and yon over hills and through valleys. This is not the job he was designed to do! But he does it. Not without complaint, mind, but he does it! As Peter Sam says, "He'll pull anything". This is a guy who is trying, and trying counts for a lot!

You know who knows how much trying counts for? Mr. Percival. You know how we can tell? Because the very second Duncan gets the chance, he heads straight to the Steamworks to tell Mr. Percival that he made a mistake and he wants to apologize. This is a dance they have, and have frequently. Duncan knows the beats, knows that his best chance at forgiveness is a prompt and genuine apology, and he delivers! And Mr. Percival, for his part, realizes that what he asked of Duncan was unfair and harsh and apologizes too! It's an extremely frank, mature, and honest relationship, and in that regard I think it is wholly unique and endlessly fascinsting. I could go on but I've said about as much as I can while typing on my phone at work lol.

If you want to read more about my thoughts on Duncan and Mr. Percival, I wrote an entire story about them in Engines In Sidings. Check it out if you like, I'm still quite proud of it! :^)

[littlewestern]

Hey, Hey, Hey! - On Music in CGI TtTE Movies

Part 1: The Anecdote (Intro)

If there’s one thing that watching Thomas the Tank Engine has taught me, it’s that the most important thing is being friends, especially when you’ve committed to watching a bunch of children’s movies of questionable quality. For this @greatwesternway​ must again be commended not only for getting her hands on all the films, but watching them multiple times (once by herself and then again with me, several times over by this point). That’s friendship!

The first movie I watched (alone) was Blue Mountain Mystery which, If you’ve never seen any of the CGI movies, is a nice one to start with. The pacing is decent, the characterization of the narrow gauge engines is good, and the inclusion of Victor’s backstory is great, bordering on brilliant writing. Really, I only had one complaint… The music.

My god, even now listening to it again as I write this. It’s like at every juncture the people responsible for this song were determined to make the worst possible decisions available to them at the time. The blaring horn in the intro, the cacophonous production, the lyrics that would earn a C+ at best in a 4th grade poetry unit, the children’s choir in the background, this truly has it all. Two minutes of baffling mediocrity in an otherwise pretty decent movie. The other numbers weren’t any better, but Working Together was particularly noteworthy.

The film ended and I told DJ that I’d enjoyed most of it, but that the music was very, very bad, as bad as I’d ever heard in a children’s animated feature (and I’ve watched some garbage animated features).

“The songs in the film were different songs, but they sounded almost identical,” I observed. DJ laughed and agreed, and for the next few weeks we watched better movies with better music in them. Then we got to King Of The Railway.

“This next one has Stephen in it,” DJ promised me.

“Love that guy!” I replied cheerfully. We’d watched his episodes of the show, but I had not yet seen the movie.

“It also has your favorite song in it.”

I laughed. I thought she was joking. After all, I had said that all the bad songs sounded basically the same. And as someone who has been diagnosed with incurable Commitment To The Bit Syndrome, I proceeded to ‘yes-and’ her.

“Oh, great! Can’t wait to start rockin’ and rollin’ and liftin’ and loadin’!”

DJ did not laugh or continue the joke. I was confused, but it happens! I’m not always as funny as I think I am. At least I would get to watch the movie that introduced my favorite Ulfstead Castle engine! And then, sixteen minutes into the film…

“No fucking way,” I said, at first in disbelief and then again in glorious, shrieking delight. “No fucking way!”

“I’m afraid so,” DJ said gravely. At least, I think that’s what she said, because at this point I was inconsolable. I had become unglued. I don’t remember exactly what came out of my mouth, but I know it was unkind. And loud.

“You can’t just– You can’t reuse a song you already used!” I declared, once I’d pulled myself together enough to start forming full sentences again. “You can’t hand in the same homework assignment twice!”

“Sure they can. They have the rights,” said DJ matter-of-factly.

“Well yeah,” I conceded. “But it’s just not The Done Thing. It’s not wrong, but we just don’t do it!”

Since then, the quality of the music in the CGI films has been the subject of much ridicule between the two of us, but to me especially. Sometimes I will narrate what I’m doing to the tune of Working Together. Any five syllable phrase will work, and it doesn’t even need to rhyme!

Open the ipad Lookin’ at files Drinkin’ my coffee!

So why bring this up? Well, a few weeks ago, I and several others in the ttte blogosphere received the entirety of the lyrics to Misty Island Rescue’s theme as an anonymous message. It reminded me that there’s actually a lot to say about the music, how it evolved over the years, and what makes the bad stuff bad and the good stuff good. And, yes, there is good stuff in some of these films.

So let’s make a series of essays about it! Next week, I’d like to take a look at the worst of what these movies have to offer, and break down why they don’t work and what might be done to fix them. After that, we’ll look at the good stuff and talk about how they improved on the formula, and I’ll reveal which song I think is the best out of the 13 CGI films.

‘Til then!

[littlewestern]

About:

Hello hello, new followers and old! Welcome to the Little Western!

A quick intro: My name is Ray (any pronouns!), I've been a fan of Thomas for over 20 years but only recently got back into it as an adult. This blog is open for (appropriate) questions and discussion at all times, do not hesitate to hit me up. I love talkin' about these silly little engines! :^)

Tag List:

#human!au: switchers - Art from my ttte human AU, Switchers. All of my humanized designs are posted to my main blog but reblogged here for archival purposes! Any asks about the human characters will go under this tag as well.

#transmissions from the little western - All my original posts, both serious discussions and silly memes.

#engines in sidings - A collection of standalone ttte short stories by both @greatwesternway and myself posted on ao3. Please check them out, we're both extremely proud of them!

#little westssays - Get it, like... Little Western Essays? Whatever. All my essay posts. Typically character analysis, metatextual breakdowns, or commentaries on episode production as those are the topics I find most interesting.

#the future is still silver and black - Original work based on two real-life engines: CB&Q 9911-A, "Silver Pilot" and the Pioneer Zephyr. TFiSSaB is a history of these engines told through the format of them exchanging letters. I occasionally also draw humanized versions of these characters, but that's more for fun than anything. You can read the whole thing here!

#tfissab behind the scenes - Stuff that's not directly related to The Future is Still Silver and Black but which still falls under the umbrella such as research notes, photos from our trips to the museums, or other such miscellany. Basically anything we can't put on the website directly goes here!

Posts are generally tagged by fandom and type, characters are always tagged with just their names. Except for Gordon. Don't ask.

(Please don't tag me in tag memes or post chains on this blog, I'm not interested and I won't respond, sorry!)