#2024 you were good to us | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

samuraisharkie · 2 months ago

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I know I’m posting a lot of like. semi-bitter stuff and especially posts with frustration towards the Democratic Party and the liberals who refuse to look anywhere but themselves when it comes to why they failed, as well as acknowledging the fear and anxiety that comes with what we’re about to go through. But I want to say, that despite all of that and the awful feeling in my chest, I have so much compassion for the world. I still think we can fight for a better future, that it’s not over. We got this. It’s bleak but it was going to be no matter what, and we can make it. The results have inspired me to get even more active and try even harder, and I know there’s a lot of people that feel the same. We’ll all support each other, and we will make it. It’s going to suck, and I don’t want to put down the very real fear and danger folks are in— but I also don’t want to give in to that feeling of hopelessness and doom. There are so many people all over the world facing similar plights, or worse, and the least we can all do is keep fighting and supporting each other! Again I don’t want to step on the very real anxieties and fears and sadness from the results of this year’s election, I just feel some encouragement is in order amidst all the fear. For every person that refuses to turn on each other and continues to stand with all those who suffer just like us in our own homes and all over the world, we will be stronger for it. Take care of yourself, and take plenty of time to cry and fear of course, that’s not wrong, but don’t forget it isn’t over. There’s still a lot of love in this world!

#current events #us elections #election 2024 #palestine #don’t give up.#I’m putting tags on this but I’m bracing for some idiots to find this #if you are one of the liberals who still thinks this wasn’t entirely the democrat’s own grave and that it’s somehow third party voters #or minorities or whateve: kindly scroll. I do not want to deal w ur rabid fear-crazed asses rn and tbh you will regret saying these things #btw if you voted for Kamala it doesn’t automatically make you one of the people I’m annoyed with. it depends on how you did it #if you did it acknowledging she sucks and is condoning genocide but were acknowledging your acting out of self preservation?#ur good you understand where you’re coming from. as long as ur not blaming anyone other than Kamala and the Dems themselves #and the people who were allowing them to step all over them without vying for our leverage #not to mention the alt republicans. like they’re getting blame here too obviously lol

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mean-scarlet-deceiver · 1 day ago

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Lightshow snippet :)

I've been trying to write a "spiritual sequel" to Steam and Light for 3 years running. It was to feature BoCo (along with a foul-mouthed relief driver) running a couple of holiday specials in mid-December, appropriately decked out in lights... and trying all the while to feign seasonal cheer. Unfortunately the truth is that he regretted this job one second after he let his malewife talk him into it he agreed to it. The result was to be an offbeat little fic for those of us who have ever worked customer service during the holiday. <3

This is me throwing in the towel on this project - just can't quite get the plot to cook.

However, I hereby offer some snippets for anyone who wants one last scrap of under-the-wire Sodor Lightshow 2024 content.

I also wanted to debut my headcanon that Bill and Ben's drivers play Pokemon Go on the job

"Hold still, will ya? We only turned over your engine so we could see what they look like—it'll be a good half hour yet!"

"A half hour?" BoCo looked at the clock mounted at Wellsworth shed, as if somehow it could back him up. But the second hand just went round uselessly at its usual speed, and the workers kept on with their fussing.

"At least. Don't get your pistons in a twist, lad; there's plenty of time."

"And if you don't hold still," quipped another worker, "I'll break out your Santa hat, and you'll wear it till it's time for your train."

BoCo made a face. He thought it was very reasonable to be restless, seventy minutes into his fitting. As the minutes crept by, and the sting of being made sport of held over his headcode as a threat to ensure good behavior deepened, he began to feel slightly murderous.

He wondered if this was how it was for Gordon and James, every other day.

BoCo rolled towards the platform rather unwillingly. There was still plenty of time before they were due, and he always preferred to back onto his train at the last possible minute, when all was just about ready and the passengers were too preoccupied with boarding to bother much about him. But his driver only snorted that shed staff had not gone to all the trouble of decking him out only for them to hide away from the public, so straight to the platform BoCo went.

"Blimey," cried a half-grown boy's cracking voice, anonymous in the throng. "They sent us the diesel, this time!"

"Ooh, gilt and flaaash," said another, with exaggerated awe.

"Sparkly!"

"I think you're a little confused, Diesel," laughed another, "you got all dressed up, but the girls' school is down in Suddery, innit?"

That was about all the reaction he got. The general laughing and shouting afterwards really all had to do with the students' own affairs, but BoCo did not know this and he felt his face start to harden into a grimace—which wasn't very professional, on a passenger service. To soothe his feelings to something more neutral, he gave a brief growl of his engine. "Is anyone here a diesel," he muttered to his driver, all irony, "and hasn't said anything yet?"

"Take it easy, lad," warned his driver. "No need to get your pistons in a twist."

BoCo glared. The smoking boy was too bold to do anything but smile back, although most of his companions started to giggle and shuffle nervously under the weight of a rumbling diesel locomotive's frown.

But not all of them. "C'mon, don't tell tales."

"Yeah, Diesel. Be a mate."

"Relax... have a puff." The tallest boy, taking the funny little whatever from his friend, made a gesture of offer.

This set off a new round of sniggers, and the engine had had enough. Not breaking eye contact, he gave a honk on his horn.

"PORTER!" he bellowed, making everyone on the platform jump. Save for the insouciant youthful delinquents before him, who only pulled lazy faces of disgust. "If you would help these boys find their way out of the rain, and into a carriage!"

There was a collective groan and "awwww" from the boys. They began to shuffle, as if heading down the platform of their own accord. But they were such lallygags about it that, for all their amorphous shuffling, they hadn't really made an inch of progress before a porter and a schoolmaster came into BoCo's view, chivvying the boys along.

"Rat-sneak," one of them muttered out the corner of his mouth, as they passed level with the engine's bufferbeam.

"Rustbucket," hissed another.

"About as fun as old Eddie, this one..."

BoCo revved his engine, and finally got a jump out of them.

Though even then they laughed as soon as they were out of sight, unrepentant.

BoCo pressed his eyes and lips tightly shut for a moment. He then largely ignored the scolding of his driver, who had run out in alarm at the racket, and who was now grumbling that a body was expected to man a diesel-electric all on her own these days, even though you couldn't trust any engine alone for a moment.

In turn, BoCo growled protest about the blamelessness of his conduct and, especially, the insults he'd been subjected to—as a rule he wasn't a fussy sort of engine, but no locomotive busts their axles day in and day out only to take being called a rustbucket without a murmur. His driver was not oversympathetic. "Abbey boys are snotrags?" She snorted. "I'll alert the press."

People milling about at the fence grumbled among themselves, and a few even called out angrily to the porter as he made his way back into the station house. “Come on, mate! We’re all freezing our—” The cross passenger looked over at BoCo, and reconsidered. For some reason Sudrians were rather particular about their language around locomotives. “—wheels off.”

The porter ignored the yells.

The coaches, playing telephone, relayed up to BoCo (and down to the other end of the train) that the child was “overstimulated,” and Stationmaster had given them permission to board early so that the mother might be able to calm the girl and perhaps get her to nap quietly before the rest of the throng boarded, in hopes of avoiding a screaming meltdown.

BoCo thought this perfectly sensible, and not much cause for the drama of the other waiting passengers. He explained as much to his driver.

“They all turn into hags, this time of year.” He could feel the driver giving them a dark sideways glare. “Reckon I ought to stay with you this time, and protect you?”

“My knight in shining armor,” BoCo said drily, making her cackle with a trace of real appreciation. More passengers trickled into the station, waiting impatiently for the porters to allow them to start boarding. BoCo eyed the clouds and the clock. The former loomed but continued their progress south-east. He reckoned if they started on time they were likely to miss the rain. He’d be just as glad, to catch one break today.

“Was the day so bad as that?” [Edward] asked at last.

BoCo’s mouth quirked briefly, albeit he’d expected this. “I’ve had worse. But I don’t know how you stand these things. The Middle Station was awful!”

“Ah, well. Public school boys can be a little obstreperous, I suppose.”

“Ob,” said BoCo, stunned. “Obstreperous?”

“Some of them. Some of them are nice lads, though! Did you talk with Robert and Declan?”

Aha. “You put them up to that?” BoCo asked slowly.

“Well! I told them, when I dropped them off beginning of term, to expect you might come to take them away. They promised to say hullo. They did, did they?”

BoCo smiled weariness. He wasn’t surprised, really. “They’re nice kids,” he allowed. “But I’ve no platform manner, Edward. We all know this.”

“It takes practice.”

“This is my sixty-fourth year of service!”

Edward winced. “That can’t possibly be true,” he said, somewhere between wistful and dazed. BoCo raised his eyebrows. “But yes, I suppose I deserved that. Still, it’s not about you succeeding or failing. I knew the passengers were safe with you, and that’s all that matters.”

“I think Bobby and Declan, or whoever, might disagree.”

“Robert. He hates being called Bobby.”

“We... didn’t get that far.”

"Ooh! Ooh! It's true!"

"Give us a blink then, BoBoBoCo!"

BoCo smiled. Zippy and troublesome though they might be, the twins were also inextricably tied up for him in the ideas of home and family and he couldn't be cross to see them…

... saving, of course, occasions where they came into view recklessly pushing around trucks with explosives.

Or messing with his brake tender.

Or covered in petrol because they had "wanted a taste." (He never had pinned down exactly the sequence of events, there…)

Right, so maybe there were plenty of times he might be cross to see them.

A little cheeking off, however, never hurt. Not from these two.

And so, he obligingly flicked the lights off and on again.

"Oooooh," the twins chorused, very still and wide-eyed... for at least a whole two seconds.

Ben whistled.

"You can't operate your own lights," Bill teased Edward.

"No," Edward agreed. "I have to rely on the coaches for that!"

"Do it again, BoBoBoCo!" urged Bill.

"I will not," BoCo smiled. "I mustn't risk damaging them. And what's with the new name? It won't do, you know—I don't have that many wheels!"

"Oh, still the same number of bogies?" asked Bill idly.

"We thought you might have evolved by now," giggled Ben.

BoCo glanced at Edward, who mouthed Don't ask.

The pain appeared to have knocked out [the auto-ballaster] during the wait, which was all the better for her. BoCo felt an orderly's regret when he had finished clearing away the other containers. When it was time to approach the derailed ballaster, the loud grinding of the P-Way crane vibrated the rails - and at least two of her wheels were still touching the track.

She came to with a moan, cross-eyed at first, from her awkward angle. It took her several long moments to blink herself awake and as she was doing so all she could see, amid the darkness, was a looming, growling figure, some shape she had never seen the like of, made up of nothing but blinking flashes of red.

"Uhhnnnnmm," she groaned, in hazy, blinded wonderment. "I'm in hell..."

"No. Barrow."

This time she groaned twice as loudly. "Worse and worse! I don't deserve this, I don't... I wasn't that bad..."

#none of us were sweetie #none of us were #chatter #fic snippets #jobeywrites #sodor lightshow 2024 #sodor lightshow #ttte #n.w.r. drivers still angels thank you for asking #(she's a bit of a GRUMPY angel lmao... but i quite like her...)#(it was time to give magazine canon the salute.#half the fun of this failed fic was finding that the Relief Driver With A Bad Attitude #was vibing like crazy with BoCo.)#(he's going to ask to have her on permanently and they're gonna be SUCH. GOOD. FRIENDS.)#(she is the unlikely cursebreaker for the losing streak boco's been on with drivers for decades)#(she's not very 'nice' but she WILL always have her back. she already nearly got into a fistfight with a passenger on his behalf. <3)#ttte boco #ttte oc #ttte edward #ttte bill and ben #(they will continue to have one tag until the day i can tell them apart!)#thanks and cheers to junie (@edwards-exploit) for reviving this event!!

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