#is Tumblr going to terminate me for this?

[trainsinanime]

Trains in Miraculous Ladybug - The Season 6 Tram

Part 1: The Metro Train

Part 2: The Metro Station

Part 3: Startrain

Part 4: The Gare du Nord

Part 5: The Bus

It's a new season, and we got a new art style, new trains, buses, cars, villains and anxieties in the world of Miraculous Ladybug! Mostly trains, of course!

At the end of season 6, the right person got elected mayor, which immediately transformed Paris into a wonderland of walkable urbanity and plentiful urban transit, even more so than before. That's literally canon. As part of that, the city has gotten trams. A lot of them. And they're weird. Time to restart this series of posts that I thought I'd finished long ago!

This will only focus on the trams we see, because there's just one episode out yet, "The Illustrhator". This will contain spoilers for what happens to the trams there. There is also a new bus that we see very briefly, but I'm hoping other episodes will tell us more about that.

The Vehicle

The trams we see are single four-axle vehicles. Yes, four axles, we do get to count them.

The design looks like they're individual small wheels rather than connected axles, which is a common design that has its advantages and its drawbacks. The floor tram is entirely at one level, seemingly about 30-40 cm above rail height.

We do get to see its interior as well. Nice big windows, different seating layouts, a big wheelchair area, and readers for Navigo RFID tickets at all doors. And, interestingly, fold-down seats, which are a feature on older Paris metro rolling stock.

We get a tiny hint of the inside of the cab as well. According to the display, we're going forward, and we're on line T3A towards Porte De Vincennes. And we're going 70 km/h.

There is actually a real-life Paris line T3A that does terminate at Porte De Vincennes (where you can change for the T3B), and I want to talk more about that, but before we can go there I need to talk about the rear of the train first. It has an open platform!

The rear platform

Don't worry about it being raised in the air here, that's just because the tram is currently falling down because the bridge is collapsing.

But don't worry, that is not a supervillain thing, the bridge just did that on its own, that's perfectly fine…

…right? The characters treat it like it's perfectly fine that this bridge just partially collapses without any supernatural interference, but, uhm, I have concerns. Questions even. Frankly I'm far more worried about that than about any supervillains. Alya and Nino later interview the mayor, and they completely ignore that a city bridge collapsed while a tram was going over it.

Sorry, I keep getting distracted. The rear of the tram has an open platform, which looks silly, is silly, is completely unrealistic, and I love it! See, while I am not aware of any trams like that, unless you count partially open ones like the San Francisco Cable Cars, but those are not quite the same.

However, there is a precedent for this platform, because Paris has a long history of city buses with such platforms. A good example is the Renault TN series

Picture from Wikimedia Commons, taken in 1950 by Sven Goliath, published by the Stockholm Transport Museum Commons

These were mostly a thing in the 1930s, but then got brought back in limited numbers in the 1960s after a Saviem SC10 had an accident that destroyed most of its rear, and RATP decided to be funny while rebuilding it. Later Saviem built these busses in series.

Picture from Wikimedia Commons, Tumblr won't let me link to the actual page there but it's on the Wikipedia article, taken by Sauvabus (bus historical association), published under CC-BY 4.0 international

All buses since then have put their engine at the rear, which has a lot of benefits, but also means it's right where this platform would go, so this has fallen out of fashion. Today you can only experience it when the one private transport museum near Paris has its monthly opening day, which is something I really need to visit one of these days. Here's a video showing the experience:

So there is precedent for this rear platform. Does it serve any purpose? Not really. Is it fun? Absolutely! And that's all it was on the Saviem SC10 as well, really. I love this platform. It's historic, it's quirky, it's fun, it's great.

The show definitely aims for a retro-futurist vibe now, seen e.g. in cars, like this modern take on the Citroën DS:

This modern take on this 60s and 70s legendary classic is what the modern DS brand should do, instead of their array of generic boring SUVs. Anyway, I'm not going to go too far into that, if I start talking about the cars in Miraculous Ladybug I'll never stop (yo is that a modern Peugeot 504? They literally modernised Aphrodite from Only Murders in the Building!). But I will say that this detail matches nicely.

The Infrastructure

Look at that station! Gorgeous! The designers of this show have created a tram stop in the style of the famous Guimard metro entrances, with their beautiful Art Nouveau design. That's amazing. I wish real tram stops in Paris look like that.

As for the tram stop itself, it's a low floor island platform with walkways to the sides, which matches modern standards for new tram stops worldwide. The track has gras planted on it, which is also common and popular, as it helps absorb noise, water, heat and pollution and it just looks nice. Yes, side platforms are more common, but this is still what a modern urban light rail network can and should look like. The only thing unrealistic about it is how pretty it is.

It should be noted that there's no overhead lines here, so the trains are powered by batteries, probably. That, or hydrogen, but a hydrogen tram would be a supremely bad idea, nobody would ever build something like that…

…except for Hyundai for some reason.

God that thing annoys me by its very existence. Hydrogen is expensive and will remain expensive for the next few decades, and this is what you're spending it on? A tram!? Trams should run with overhead wires. That's the good thing about a tram, you know where it's going to be, so you can put a wire there to give it power, and then you don't have to worry about batteries or hydrogen storage or whatever…

Sorry, I got distracted. Anyway, no overhead lines is realistic, and if they ever say, "it's a hydrogen tram" in future episodes, that'll be realistic too, even if it shouldn't be.

Instead let's look at this!

Closer…

Yeah! They finally fixed the metro map! The old one was an unholy mess of lines that didn't match anything (which I complained about before), but this one clearly has the Seine flowing through Paris as it should, with the island in the middle. The transport lines on it don't seem to match anything I can recognise, neither Metro nor RER, but let's just assume they are the new tram lines that happen to go this way.

Compared to the real thing

Real-life Paris abandoned trams in the 1930s already, being a negative trend-setter there. It didn't help that trams were limited to lower top speeds than buses were at the time. However, since the 1990s, trams have made a huge comeback in the Paris region.

(Aside: Note that I say the Paris region. There's only really one tram line in Paris itself (plus a few stops from the other ones). Where Berlin or London absorbed most of their suburbs at some point in the 20th century, Paris didn't, so the actual Paris part of the Paris region is surprisingly small. That's why Paris has both far fewer and way more inhabitants than e.g. Berlin, depending on what you count.)

Anyway, the tram lines in Paris mostly serve the suburbs, providing tangential connections from one suburb to the next so you don't have to take the metro or RER into the city centre, change at fucking Châtelet-Les Halles, and ride back out again. A unique feature of the the tram network is that each line is separate, with its own tracks and maintenance facilities, and at times very different technologies used. Most of the tram lines don't connect to other tram lines at all, each line is just out there doing its own thing. And since they're out in the suburbs, as a tourist you're unlikely to ever see one if you don't go looking for it.

The exception to that is the T3, divided into T3A and T3B, which runs in a 3/4 circle around Paris along the outer boulevards. The final quarter is where rich NIMBYs live, so it'll be a while until the circle gets closed, I fear.

This actual T3 is run with long bi-directional vehicles with no open platform anywhere in sight, and pleasant but considerably more boring stations. It does have green track (meaning with grass) in many places, though, and it has overhead wires.

In Paris, the trams are used as very long buses (with some overlap with really tiny metros) in underserved areas. Serving areas outside the city core is really the main thrust of Paris transit development at the moment, with a 200 km metro extension, the Grand Paris Express, being built exclusively to better connect the suburbs. This mega project is one of the coolest things happening in public transport anywhere in the world at the moment. The trams augment this.

I do actually think that some trams in Paris's city centre could make sense, to replace the busier bus routes. And there are definitely thoughts about that, but with all the money going towards doubling the size of the Metro, I don't think we'll see that very soon.

The verdict

I like that tram. I don't think it's what Paris would actually have, a longer articulated bidirectional model without a rear platform would make more sense, but I love the quirkiness of it. This season is off to a good start.

[skinnypaleangryperson]

Wow, incredible. Back to back from night to morning I read the most unnecessarily rude, abrasive thoughts from a thread on Rick and Morty Reddit, and in the morning and even worse one from BoJack Horseman read (unsurprising, since they're always the worst). When it comes to these communities and the complete lack of "morality"when it comes to these parts of the modern world I'm starting to wonder if I'm in complete hell. When I rent about it on other platforms I'm much, much more deservingly abrasive about the way that these literal absolute abrasive terrible clones are constantly coming out with every day of their life like it's the same person with a different account in a slightly different body, but what's disturbing is that it actually is a different person every time despite the fact that they all have the same exact a morbidly terrible cheap awful malicious personality.

Of course it would be the two things that all of my passion projects, daydreams, and want for community have poured into for the past couple of years. It can't be a coincidence that the most morbidly unnecessarily rude, hypocritical, terrible and attempt at being "abrasive" people would be on these reddit communities. Obviously most of them are self-projecting or are being rude to complete strangers on TV show Reddit communities of all things, and the fact that they have even one minute in their life to do something so low and scummy the way that these people do just goes to show the kind of people that these people are in that they shouldn't be worth worrying about much less being affected by. They wish they had that kind of power.

Still-I've been inwardly 😬😬😬😬 for the past 24 hours. I don't even look at a single comment on these Reddit communities anymore because I know it's just full of either repetitive boring g***bage, or full of people that are so rude and terrible on top of that g****bage that you can't even believe that these people can even function. Every single day it's like they're trying to outdo themselves from how unnecessarily hypocritical, rude, and unnecessarily morbidly distasteful they are, and that's the generous Tumblr exquisite way of putting it, that they are with their excuses for what they call words.

It's amazing that no matter how much you tell these people that no one cares and to not bother their people with their low quality awful rude abrasive unjustified thoughts that nobody wants except for people as low as them, and no matter how many of these clones that I block they just keep coming out like little bugs battering at my face.

[syb-la-tortue]

holy shit I had no idea your thing got terminated. Godspeed bro

yeah there's not really a way to announce it for anyone who followed my main account but don't follow me elsewhere and didn't already know about this back-up... they'll just assume I stopped posting, or won't notice at all that's possible too.. makes me a little sad but nothing I can do about it but move on

[takadanobaba]

▽▲ Part two of the Subway to Stardew introduction events! ▲▽

You can see part one here!

Special thank you again to the wonderful @xdoctorsparklex for helping me work on making the submas Stardew Valley mod!! She wrote the script while I encoded it. (Also thank you for writing so much... you're the best!!)

I wonder who they're writing to.... the answer may shock you......

EDIT: Part three is here!

[tinystepsforward]

algerian trans women arent able to compete in women sports at all, but yeah its makes no sense to call khelif tme. youre so fucking smart.

(this is a response to this post) i see you don't believe that i'm quoting one of the trans women in my life about that, which is your prerogative. it's also your right to miss my point entirely both about the ways this alienates intersex people and about the rigidity of a binary that comes down to the same shrinking circles terfs draw when they try to quantify what a woman is (speak up for women, the most organised nz group, have now submitted on the human rights act suggesting that all babies be karyotyped at birth and the results be public, bc they can't establish any other definition they agree on. absolutely fucking nobody, not even their christian or conspiracist allies, agrees with them on this one.)

but you don't have to take my word for it! when i was at that consultation with the nz law commission, i was in a room with many other intersex and trans people, including trans athletes and trans women like lexie matheson who consult on trans inclusion in sports at a high national level. i don't think there's a single person in that room who did not name what was happening to khelif as we spoke as transmisogyny, who did not speak of her as part of a group with whom we all shared something.

at the end of the day, prison abolition informs all of my politics. i believe that we must look clearly and carefully at harm and distinguish it from discomfort or disagreement, and identify its structural sources and true perpetrators. i believe that to build a better future we must be capable of imagining one. i believe that we can build a world where suffering is not the metric by which we determine value or punishment or righteousness. i believe that we can build a world where we centre and uplift those who are most hurt, in every arena — black and brown trans women, here; in some of my other work, it's incarcerated intellectually disabled people, or asian migrant sex workers affected by section 19, the list goes on — without then pitting them against other people who share some of the same story and will benefit from the same deconstruction of the systems that hold them down. i believe we can build a world in which asab doesn't affect so much of your life by beginning that work now.

there's a politics of scarcity — you have it better than me, so we have nothing in common. i saw it all the time in brothels, the idea that the new girl is taking money out of your kids' mouths. the viciousness with which people who are struggling are so ready to abandon solidarity. is it so hard to demand better for everyone? to think less about the ways we're alone and more about the ways we're together?

maybe it is. i know that well enough as a prison abolitionist. people get scared. they swing at shadows, they swing at anyone who seems to be suffering less, they — we, i should say, i am certainly not immune — get blindingly jealous of people who seem to have it easier. that's grief! that's grief for the easier life that we deserve. and we get to mourn, and take that time to feel it, and then we can choose if we want to keep working hand in hand with each other toward a world where that grief is dwarfed by the promise of the future.

[marsdemo]

imagine it being the year 2024 and fucking dumbasses on here are still calling regular ass bloggers Bots and Psyops. maybe people just have different political opinions than you, moron

[babykittenteach]

my top song this year is the subject of ongoing legal actions predicated on the idea that it was artificially made popular by bots but no i just have hated that man for ages and have adhd

[l0stw00d]

Even if you're only hearing about it now, the issues with Tumblr's transphobia and refusal to address the Literal hate groups on it's platform aren't new. Tumblr's shitty moderation as been an issue for Years, both in its discrimination And it's inability (or more likely, its unwillingness) to remove genuinely harmful content. Tumblr is not your friend and it is not "the last good website", and you need to be willing to admit that there are currently unreconcilable issues with your Beloved Hellsite.

If you don't see that shit, good! But don't decide it isn't happening because it isn't on Your dash.

[cavity-collector]

i genuinely need to be put down like a dog i cant do this anymore man holy shit

[lulu2992]

Thank you, Tumblr, for rectifying my follower count last month and finally removing all those “ghost bots” from October 2019 ♥

The few of you whose names are hidden in the list aren’t included in the displayed number anymore either, unfortunately, but at least I know who you are and that you’re real :)

[fazcinatingblog]

but what if her aim is to just make as many money as possible, as quick as possible, and then sell the business, let someone else deal with the mess of it, and just retire with her rental properties and money from selling the business and/or those townhouses and

[the-red-butterfly]

A Dip Into The Sea

Slade and Joseph Wilson (DC comics)

1/3 Next page ->

I present to you my (belated) mermay project! An AU where Joey is a Merbaby and Slade is a young sailor 😌. No much to say tho (I mean, beside the whole fic I've got planed for this thing that I'm probably never going to write), but I'll be sure to post the second page for this story tomorrow 😗

Thanks to the Hoy Server B@ tman for the original idea for this. It is now precious to me.

And hey! if you like what I do, I do small comic commissions for anyone who might be interested <3

Also, also, if you DO want to know more about this AU you can drop me an ask with #SailorSladeMerbabyJoeAU in it, I'll do my best to answer and I might even drop a little sketch about your question if I can hehe.

.

Regular commissions l Comic Commissions

[divinekangaroo]

daughter of communists - divinekangaroo - Peaky Blinders (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

Ch 1 | Ch 2 | Ch 3 | COMPLETE

Audrey spoke careful, slow. ‘You’d like to borrow an Italian suit for your brother Thomas Shelby. So he might attend the funeral of poor Greta Jurossi. Who he was out walking with, for a few years.’

.

The ever-widening spiral of consequence from Greta Jurossi's death pulls a conflicted Vicente Changretta into the whirl.

.

Vicente Changretta/Audrey Changretta, (past) Greta Jurossi/Tommy Shelby, (very casual friends with benefits) Freddie Thorne/Kitty Jurossi, (briefly) Tommy Shelby/Freddie Thorne, Angel Changretta, Ada Shelby, The Jurossi Family (Peaky Blinders), Arthur Shelby, John Shelby, the Small Heath branch of the Birmingham Communist Youth Gang | Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Grief, Casual Sex, Catholicism, Italian Mafia, Racism, Italian Regionalism, Generational Politics, Fear, Rage, Love, Classism, Racist POV Character, Italian Political History (1930s-1940s), Immigration & Emigration, Racist Language, Antiziganism, Past Abuse, Fist Fights, Father-Son Relationship, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Strained Friendships, Intense Friendships, Involved Bystander, Fat Shaming, Gratuitious Background Screening of the Godfather, Violence, Curses, Complex Ethnicity, Unreliable Narrator, Foreshadowing, Dramatic Irony, Family

.

(For the Dragon Age followers who also overlap a PB fannish interest, Freddie and Tommy's relationship, if it had been able to grow in the series, will forever have bloomed into an on-again, off-again Anders & bloodmage!viscount Hawke style of rivalmance.)

[cookie-dough-writes]

shout out to everyones who's brains and nervous systems have been wrecked by stressors + the state of the internet + everything else going on. I promise we'll adapt and I promise things will be alright, focus on making good small decisions to protect your well-being like cutting certain platforms (instagram, twitter, whatever you feel like) and having a look through your follow list to see if unfollowing some people might help. try giving your brain a rest by letting yourself be bored some times. try doing a puzzle or a physical task without a podcast or music or netflix drama. consider not clicking on that expose video of someone you dont know. hesitate before telling someone off in the comments or joining in on an online argument that you can opt out of. protect yourself so you can make your world a better place. push yourself when needed. cut the onslaught of overstimulation where you can, if you want.

I am saying this as someone who's never felt at home irl, with adhd and dyspraxia, general awkwardness, chronic depression, struggles with regulation and im sure a bunch of other things. I really struggle reducing screen time because it often feels like the outside world rejects me, I'm sure some of you relate to that, but I'm taking small steps to make things easier for me in the long run and day to day. it doesnt matter if we don't reach some end goal of total and complete peace and purity or whatever, all that matters is that we're choosing to be more mindful of how we navigate this world of constant stimulation. and i fully believe in all of us :)

[sideflorfauna]

I love my little brother because he is chill enough to sit through an hour and a half long, winding diatribe of how I hate the direction this website is headed in, and the stupid specifics of online queer infighting and crab bucketing I’ve bared witness to in the past several years that never ends. I can air out my bad decisions and NEET habits to someone who isn’t there but understands the words I say and it’s so. cathartic

[lesbianlenas]

i have said before i have really bad hypochondria anyway i was doing better on my meds but recently i was really badly triggered bc my lymph nodes r swollen & one of them is like more swollen than the others & now i have white spots on my tonsils which indicates a throat infection not really a terminal illness but having a lump on my throat has been like my biggest hypochondria fear for 10 yrs or so so having a lump on my neck has really just like sent me & anyway i usually do not share my hypochondria fears bc ik they’re irrational but as i said this is like 100x more upsetting to me than usual bc it is my exact hypochondria fear so i had a breakdown & started crying to my mom so she made me get a doctor’s appt all this to say that i also have severe avoidance issues so before i could just pretend the bump wasn’t there & distract myself but now that i know i have a doctor’s appt it is much worse & i can’t stop thinking abt it 😔 thats my story. plagued in many ways.