#ttte raul

[zlaysasa]

О да я наконец-то решился прислать сюда это чудо :)

[fraiserabbit]

oops i seem to have fallen in love with @projectanimations​‘ raul and ivan designs 🤭 (x)

[number1spongebobfan]

Finally saw The Great Race today! Here are my international engines designs!!!!!

[imitation-steamroller]

*cracks knuckles* Alright, I’ve had a couple days to chill out, and I want to try my hand at rewriting BWBA. Well, certain elements of it. I was going to start a six or seven post long headcanon about Nia’s relationships with the rest of the team, new and old members, but this takes precedent.

Big World Big Adventures is a hell of a concept, one that honestly sounds really interesting on paper, but the execution left a lot to be desired. I like the movie, but it could have been better. Season 22 got off to a rather rough start, but it seemed to find its footing a bit partway through. I can only hope seasons 23 and 24 can pick up the slack.

So, starting with the movie...

The Movie

I said this in another post, but I think it’d be cool if the movie was used to expand on The Great Race a bit. Instead of Thomas suddenly deciding to follow a racecar around the world, he was chosen to participate in some big exchange program that was being held for the competitors in the Great Railway Show. But maybe due to impatience or human error at the docks, Thomas ends up on the wrong ship and goes to Africa instead of India.

From there, the movie would play out about the same, except it’s Thomas going from port to port to find a ship to India, with Nia following along so she can see the world and make sure he doesn’t get himself killed. Eventually, they end up at a dock with two ships: one bound for India, the other for Sodor. Thomas goes to India to start S22, and Nia decides she wants to settle down somewhere small and goes to Sodor.

It’s silly and unrealistic, but so are most Thomas movies if you think about it.

The Show

Okay, here’s where we get into the real meat. I’ve got a lot to say about the Sodor and international episodes, but I think we’ll start with-

The Show in General

There are a lot of aspects of BWBA that bother a lot of people, one of which being the Steam Team. Personally, I’m not as fond of the concept as I used to be. All it does is cause fan favorites to be pushed aside and create in-fighting within the fandom. Honestly, I’m torn between adding Rosie to make the team equal or just breaking them up all together. Adding Rosie would make the team even and give her some more spotlight, but breaking them up could allow more characters to have their chance to shine.

Next up are the opening and ending sequences. Dump them completely. There’s no reason for them to be there aside from regurgitating the episode plot and lesson, and most of the episodes feel rushed or unfinished since they need to make way for these segments. And like, I feel like it talks down to the child audience, too. In the show’s 30+ year run, the audience has always been able to figure out the moral - When there is one - for themselves, so why dumb down the show even further.

Next is the fantasy sequences. Dump them, too. We’ve had them before in episodes like Sticky Toffee Thomas and Other Side of the Mountain, but they weren’t very long and were easy to ignore. The episodes grind to a halt for upwards of a minute whenever these intrusive and oversaturated fever dreams play, so why not cut them out entirely?

Then you’ve got the bouncing. I generally don’t mind it as I feel that it makes the characters just a little more emotive, but the character models are all very clearly not made to do this. There’s a scene in one of the Brazil episodes where the engines are messing with a football and Raul is outright floating off his chassis, and another in an Italy episode where Gina looks like she’s about to break in half. Despite my feelings on it, I think the best thing to do would be to cut it out completely. It’d certainly make things easier for the animators.

And finally, you’ve got Thomas as the narrator. And like everything else I’ve mentioned, you can cut him out too. A Shed for Edward proved that we don’t really need a narrator for Thomas anymore when it was mistakenly aired without the narration. And personally, I was never completely sold on John Hasler or Joseph May. I always preferred Ben Small and Eddie Glen as Thomas.

Now then, let’s get onto-

The International Episodes

I think my biggest issue with these episodes - outside of the fantasy sequences and the lack of weight to the engines - is Thomas himself. The only explanation we’re given for him being in these countries is that he was ‘sent to help out on the x railway,’ and he spends most of these episodes acting clueless and causing trouble. I’ve got two ways of fixing the former, but I want to focus on the latter for a second.

Something I wish we had seen was episodes focused on the international characters. Mattel said they were trying to push for gender equality in the show, only for the girl characters to do absolutely jack shit. And the international guys don’t do much either, do they? More often than not, they’re just tour guides for Thomas.

I know S24 has Yong Bao and the Tiger and S23 has Crowning Around, but I would have loved an episode about Hong Mei being a sore winner, or an episode focused on down to earth Noor Jehan dealing with high and mighty Rajiv’s shit all day. Or hell, maybe give Ashima some time to shine! How has All Engines Go done more with her in an episode and a half than the original series did with three seasons and a whole movie?

And if you absolutely need Thomas in every episode, just make him the the protagonist’s sidekick, or give him some background gags or something. Or better yet, have him at the beginning of an episode, then transition over to Hong Mei, or Raul, or whoever the episode’s protagonist is, like the Small Railway Engines adaptions did.

Now, as for my point about his reasons being in these countries.

1. The episodes take place during the movie

I feel like when BWBA first came out, everybody assumed this was how it would play out, with the international episodes set during Thomas and Nia’s adventure, and the Sodor episodes being set after they come back. And personally, I feel like this is the best way to do it.

Maybe Thomas could be busy trying to finish his work so he can go to the docks and look for a ship to India, while Nia convinces him to stop and at least pay a little attention to where they are. Maybe they could meet the railway show engines and have some kind of conflict with them (Vinnie at the very least) or the engine could show them some region specific thing about their railway.

2. Thomas goes on a second world tour

Essentially what the show did, but this time there’s a reason for it. The way I would do it is have the international episodes set completely in India, when Thomas is doing the exchange I mentioned earlier. Maybe he could swap with Ashima so we could get some episodes of her on Sodor, or Rajiv so we could get him interacting with James.

Anyway, when Thomas comes back to Sodor, he finds out the The Fat Controller wants to send him from another country. Turns out, Thomas gained a lot of attention during his adventure, and FC wants him to go on an official rail tour, leading to the rest of the international episodes in S23 and 24. And if you need to have multiple countries a season, just have him come back part way through so FC can send him on his way again.

And with that out of the way, we can move to-

The Sodor Episodes

Okay, so I actually prefer the Sodor episodes to the international ones, if only because Thomas isn’t the focus of all of them. That being said, they’re still not great. Once again, my biggest issue with them is Thomas, albeit for slightly different reasons. Why is he here if he’s supposed to be going around the world? He outright references Trusty Trunky in Thomas’ Animal Ark. Where’s the continuity?

So starting off, I would remove Thomas completely. If the episode isn’t expressly stated to take place before the BWBA movie (i.e. An Engine of Many Colors), or during a short period where Thomas is between trips, then Thomas has no business being on Sodor. Instead, have the first two or three episodes take place during the movie so we can see how the engines got on without Thomas. Then at the end of one of them, we introduce Nia to Sodor so we can have some eps about her adjusting to her new home.

Aside from introducing Rebecca to the rest of the team, Nia doesn’t really do a lot in S22. She’s mostly a supporting character this season, then gets Counting on Nia towards the end, which is a whole other conversation. If I remember correctly, seasons 23 and 24 aren’t much different. And apparently she becomes the safari engine for the animal park in S24, which just...no. All kinds of no. The general consensus among fans is that she should have been a utility engine, and I 100% agree.

And 100% keep her personality from the movie. In that, she’s sassy, cheeky, and confident, but also mature, calm, and she knows when to leave when she’s not being treated right. I would have loved to see how that Nia would have interacted with the Tidmouth crew.

From there, you introduce Rebecca as the new express engine, as traffic has been increasing since Thomas' big world adventure. I think Rebecca’s episodes are fine so far, but she doesn’t leave much of a lasting impression. Maybe she could have a one-sided rivalry with James. Maybe he thought he was going to be the new express engine, only to be shown up by this eternally happy newbie.

Or maybe she could have an episode with Gordon, who’s stressing out from all the changes happening on Sodor. Have Rebecca - the engine whose life has suddenly been uprooted and has been sent to this tiny island - be the engine who talks to him during Forever and Ever. Not Nia, who had some level of agency over the changes happening in her life.

And maybe you could give her an episode with Nia, who she doesn’t really interact with much if I remember correctly. In her introduction episodes, Rebecca is shown to be a little self conscious, and gets into scrapes because she wants to stand out or be like the other engines. There so easily could have been an episode about Nia helping Rebecca find some confidence and seeing everything great about herself.

Closing Thoughts

As stated at the beginning, Big World Big Adventures is on hell of an idea, one that I honestly think could have been wonderful if it was handled correctly. And while I won’t say that this is 100% the way to do it, I do think it’s at least a little better than what we got.

A few days ago, I made a post that said that BWBA might be the worst part of the original series. And while I haven’t completely changed my stance on that, I’m hoping the next two seasons do something to convince me otherwise. Guess I’ll have to wait and see.

[howardduck1490]

Raul (Teen Titans Go! Style)

This time it’s Raul in Teen Titans Go!

[teotalksaboutstuff]

Big World, Big Adventures Railtour Program Part 8: The NWR Shows Off The World

This final part to the BWBA program shows off my headcanons for the engines that came to the NWR to be put on static display during their visit. I’ll delve into the North Western Railway Museum one of these days on this blog, though it is located at Vicarstown and uses the old sheds there.

Nuria (Spain)

Nuria was built in 1892 for the Torralba-Soria railway, and was used as this line’s main source of motive power alongside the rest of her class until about 1941 when the railways were nationalized into RENFE. She was then reallocated to Miranda de Ebro, where she remained until withdrawal. She was placed on static display there, and would do the same when she went to Vicarstown in December 2015.

Nia (Kenya/Uganda)

Nia is listed as two nationalities here because the railway she was built for was in fact for what is now both countries, and was built when Britain was still occupying them. She was built in 1926 as Kenya-Uganda Railway ED1 No. 327. She was present when the Tanganyika (now Tanzania) railway was merged into the East African Railway, and she served with them until withdrawal at an unknown date. What is certain is that said date was before 2005, as she was a static display at the Nairobi Railway Museum at this point. She went to Vicarstown on long term loan between July 2018 and July 2020.

Malcolm (Australia)

Shane in this universe is named Malcom due to the name of his basis, the real SAR 520, being “Sir Malcolm Barclay Harvey”. He was built in 1943 as an express engine for the South Australian Railway, a career in which he served until 1969 when he was withdrawn. The next year, however, he was run by the SAR on special trains all the way until 1998. He went to other owners after that, and went to Vicarstown four times: in May 2016, September 2018, July 2019, and July 2020.

Tamika (Australia)

Tamika visited Vicarstown alongside Malcolm. She is a narrow gauge steam railmotor that was built in 1905 and withdrawn in 1932. She was restored in 1984 and is currently owned by the Pichi Pichi Railway Society.

 Raul (Brazil)

Raul was one of three vertical boilered engines built in 1931 for the Sao Paulo Railway. He worked here until 1959 when he was sent to the Amsted Maxion factory in Cruzeiro, where he worked until 2014. He was withdrawn and preserved, and visited Vicarstown three times: May 2016, May 2019, and June 2020.

Baroneza (Brazil)

Baroneza is the name of Gabriela in this universe, as she is based on Baroneza II, an 0-6-0T built in 1852. There is almost no other information on this engine other than the fact that she currently resides in Nogueira as a static display. She went to Vicarstown alongside Raul.

Maria (Brazil)

Yes, I am aware that a pair of twins were in the canon series, though the engine that survives of their class is No. 215 “Maria Fumaca”, so only one of them survived here. Maria was built in 1912 to work a narrow gauge railway somewhere in Brazil. She is preserved and operated tourist trains in Bras, and she went to Vicarstown in June 2020.

[misspeppermint2003]

Thomas and Friends humanized characters no. 7

[sukipershipper]

Hey, look! It's Yong Bao, Raul, Carlos, and Gina! Finally I finished this friggin thing