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mean-scarlet-deceiver · 3 years

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Something I saw on a certain other person's tumblr made me think of something. Do you think anyone on Sodor (especially Gordon) knows about Tornado, the new Peppercorn A1 that was built recently? And if so, what do they think of them? (Side note, I view Tornado as a girl for...whatever reason. Not sure why.)

Oooh, I hope you asked that blog more about Tornado, too. <3 (I gotta assume it’s @joezworld and perhaps, in a way, you already did.)

Female Tornado headcanon accepted, btw!

Some bonus gender headcanon:

Identical members of a class are the same gender. Usually. There are certainly exceptions. These exceptions are typically built in a different batch and with modifications that result in an (unexpected) gender change. There are also some heterogeneous classes, but then they tend to be dominantly nonbinary… and it seems possible that in those class engines who are identifying as male or female are doing so under pressure. I’m not about to get too definite on that subject, just passing on some recent in-universe speculation...

What is known very well is that engineers can’t really decide an engine’s gender. Many of them, in the 'lead designing engineer’ era of historic names, did tend to skew towards often designing classes of the same gender. And sometimes they try to ‘aim’ for a certain gender by design, but, even when you are sure you have an intuitive handle on it, you can’t really be 100% sure how it will turn out until you fire them to life.

As far as post-awakening, usually humans get the accurate gender from the voice… but engines themselves are, of course, the best authority on the subject. They are usually much too in awe of their creators to correct them, but they may find their tongue loosened once they are sent off to their first assignment. Also, an engine can take a glance at a strange engine from a hundred paces and identify their (accurate) gender. They are completely at a loss as to explain how. They just can.

Anyhow, all this said: I’m theorizing almost all of Gordon’s family to be male… because even non-identical but related classes pretty often have the same gender… but I like the notion of girl!Tornado as the last, belated addition to the family tree.

So, let’s do this:

tl;dr: Hell yes, the North Western engines knew all about her building. Also yes, she has in fact spent some time on Sodor, and… well, [SPOILER REDACTED].

1) So, Sodor engines (well, more the North Western and Arlesdale engines than the Skarloey engines) have a… complicated relationship with preservation culture.

(Yes, Tornado is a new engine, not a preserved engine—but, bear with me, this is relevant.)

The North Western in particular has lots of connections to this world, for obvious reasons. But they are not exactly of it. (The Skarloey Railway is much more embedded due to its symbiotic relationship with the Tallylyn... and it shows in the relative lack of this drama.)

City of Truro, Stepney, and Flying Scotsman are far from the only famous visitors hosted on the NWR, and Thomas is far from the only one to have been sent off in return.

Why were are those visits the ones portrayed in the books?

Because they were by far the most pleasant all around.

And, even in those stories, you can see some of the drama threatening and nibbling ‘round the edges of what was otherwise ‘a splendid visit, everyone was friends, yay steam! 😃’.

Most of the visits to Sodor went more along the lines of ‘their guest left kind of annoyed by the chilly reception and did not ask to go back.’

So, why drama?

Like I said, complicated.

It certainly doesn’t help that Our Friends have, over the decades, developed what amounts to a goddamn complex about being ‘working engines.’ It’s a collective thing, a cultural thing, peculiar to the North Western, and probably directly traceable to FC1’s management style. Ages after his passing, it’s still going strong.

Doesn’t help that FC2 maintained his incredibly high standards for what makes a ‘useful engine’ for most of his tenure… but he'd started to question the wisdom of this by the end. Mainly because, while he had privately committed to a course of ‘I’m never going to scrap one of our engines,’ he certainly had not intended to commit to a course of ‘we will continue to operate all of our engines full-time, forever, on this same railway, no matter what, no matter how little financial sense that makes.’ But he and all future controllers have discovered that this was basically all that is now acceptable to their mildly-to-moderately traumatized fleet (they’ve pretty much all survived a genocide, you know. Plus, some of them survived FC1, to boot!) Their manifesto, rallying around which they are for once all of one mind, seems to be: We work full-time, and we stay together.

It basically always goes down something like:

* * *

FC: … look, James, now let’s just talk it through, what this could look like; I thought you hated goods work anyway—

James: You will make me part-time over someone’s dead body.

FC: …

James: *snatching up and hoarding every truck in the vicinity* And you’re more fragile than I am, sucker.

* * *

FC: Thomas, you complain about most of the other engines here like you get paid to do it anyway—

Thomas: I CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT MY DAILY DOSE OF THE ANNOYING GREEN CATERPILLAR, KNOW-IT-ALL SQUARE FIRETRAP, AND HIGH-MAINTENENCE DIESEL DIVA.

FC: *hopefully* You’d only be away six months out of the year?—

Thomas: I’d be away PERMANENTLY because the very first time in EXILE I’d OFF MYSELF, FATMAN.

FC: *sigh*

* * *

Okay, so I’m taking some artistic liberties here for the sake of comedy. But, seriously. This is an island-wide mental issue. And there is no voice of reason that management can lean on here to influence the others. Edward arguably established the dynamic… then sealed it in stone with an infamous freakout when the first preservation offer was sprung on him in the mid-‘60s. It is not an exaggeration when I assure you that he reacted with approximately the same grace and restraint that James would have if you suggested to him that he would make an excellent industrial engine in the salt mines, or if you questioned to Gordon’s face whether an engine as slow as him is really suited for passenger work. (Percy, incidentally, had miles of fun when, a few years after this kerfuffle died down, he got the second offer: “‘No, thank you.’ Three simple words, Edward. It wasn’t hard!” “Very droll, Percy.” “It never occurred to you to handle it that way? I am surprised!” “All right, that’s enough…”) As for Toby, FC3 felt personally betrayed when his old friend managed to smilingly and blandly psych three electric trams in a row right off the island… (it was very impressive, by the way, and even the other Ffarquhar engines have been a bit leery of him since)… but FC3 didn’t have a patch on how betrayed Toby—who had not seen any evidence that their workload was actually due to expand—felt.

Anyhow, this attitude all has its own roots and reasons behind it. Point it, it definitely colors their view of ‘showboat’ engines. Like, on the whole, they are for the heritage movement insofar as it’s sticking it to anyone who doubts steam… but they got considerably more ambivalent about it as time went on and the age of steam ended anyway. And, while they don’t actually begrudge anyone who was rescued from the modernization massacre… there is some baggage there, some long-standing issues that are embedded in the issue of Who Was Saved, and Who Was Not. Some of it is a perpetuation of age-old railway classism. But then, to tell you the truth, most of the engines have gradually figured out that it’s not so much the engines as the people involved in preservation that they have a problem with.

This—‘get mad at humans for their decisions, instead of feuding with other engines’—is kind of very new territory for them, and they’re still exploring it, and trying it on for size.

But it definitely spills over into their attitude about stuff like this. Did they know about Tornado being made? Hell yeah they did. They have become incredibly conscious and attentive to current events in their broader world since the days when so many of them were oblivious to the end of steam on the mainland. One of the reasons that the RWS books became so bland is because the engines are a hell of a lot less naive than they used to be… the books were always playing up their naivete anyway, but since the ‘60s the author has been afraid of alienating their original audience if he depicts just how skeptical and shrewd the children-on-wheels have grown. So we’ve gone from “a pretty unerring instinct for choosing the events that really did have the biggest effect on the railway as a whole” to “deliberately choosing incidents that were nothingburgers to begin with, because much of the Real news lately is too hot to handle.” (Prosper by the political sword, languish by the political sword!)

Anyway, the point people started fundraising to build replicas of ‘extinct’ engine classes was pretty much the turn where the Sodor engines went “what. the actual. fuck.” and decided that all their negative feelings about preservationist societies must have been valid all along.

Because this shit started in the ‘60s and 70s.

Like.

Did you guys not notice that there are living engines rotting in scrapyards? Still in restorable condition?? (FOR NOW???)

The Sodor engines are collectively pretty bitter about this.

They can be relatively zen about engines being chosen over others because they are more useful. (I mean, they will fight to the death to make sure it doesn’t happen to them. But they accept this as a part of life.)

But what is the use of creating new steam engines to do the publicity circuit pony-show thing when you still have former hardworking engines in the clutches of the Woodham Brothers? ‘Friends of steam’ my arse.

Also, wtf humans, you took such great care of that family of engines the first time around, yeah, sure, you should definitely waste a ton of money and resources getting a second shot at it! /s

I’m saying all this from Our Friends’ point of view. There are some arguable answers to the above question. But they are not answers that hold any water for the Sodor lot. Basically, to them, creating replicas is a slap in the face to many of the neglected dead… and neglected not-yet-dead.

2. So, Gordon was really, really rocked when he heard about the creation of a new A1 in the early ‘90s.

Like, by this point, he’s long since grieved the Doncaster brothers and cousins he’s lost… but this certainly kicks it all up again.

And he knows that it doesn’t only kick up his grief again. Back in ’68-9—that eighteen-month period where steam came to an end, both he and BoCo lost almost all their families, and Oliver escaped to Sodor—Gordon processed a massive amount of emotion. Not only his own. He became acutely aware that, grieved though he was, he was far from the only one to have suffered, and that he was, in fact, by far one of the luckiest.

This was a major, emotional watershed for him.

There is a much gentler, more emotionally available side to Gordon these days, dating from this upheaval.

That wasn’t won easily.

And now… well, fuck, let’s stir that almost unbearable burden up again.

He wasn’t sure how to handle his own mixed feelings… let alone how to handle the knowledge that he and his would probably, again, be an object of bitter envy, for almost all the rest of the engines have their own losses.

So how does Gordon handle this impossible mess? How does he prepare himself to receive the new addition to his family?

In the most classically Gordonian way possible:

Reverted to bragging endlessly throughout the entire process of Tornado’s creation, testing, commissions, certifications, and tours.

He was an un-shuttuppable on this topic as he had been back in the ‘30s, during the Great Races and Flying Scotsman’s and Mallard’s triumphs.

Except that, at least back then, the topic had been rather entertaining. The rest would have followed the Races and record-setting with keen interest even without Gordon around to keep them so minutely apprised.

But Tornado’s early life is not half so intrinsically interesting.

Plus… while the engines aren’t quite as salty about this sort of thing these days (relatively few ‘unrestored’ engines are around, and the return of steam operations carries some of its own pride), again, this is a long sore subject. And not a dead letter, yet. Henry and BoCo both had a sibling that they knew personally who are waiting around in storage during this time, in miserable condition, for funds to be raised for their restoration. Duck doesn’t have one at that time, but only because one of his siblings sacrificed any real shot he had at moving again to donate parts to the others. What’s left of him is still conscious.

These are surely not the only examples on the NWR—just a sampling—of those who have engines they care about still waiting for some fraction the amount of money that is now being poured into making Gordon’s new sibling/cousin.

And, per the North Western usual, they are unimpressed by any appeals as to how this is ‘the resumption of steam!!!!!1!!!1!’ Excuse you? It never died, over here. They reckon the new engine is another high-priced, useless novelty, so our “working engines" don’t particularly see the value in all this.

To the degree that it is undeniably kinda exciting… yet again, of course it’s the bloody LNER Pacifics who get this privilege. It’s been half a century and still.

Then add to all their old longstanding issues Gordon being his old level of insufferable about the whole thing, and, well…

When Tornado is invited to Sodor in 2015 (as she inevitably is), the engines pretty much all go into top-gear “let's haze the hell out of Gordon’s baby sister!!!!” mode.

3) Here’s the good news.

Tornado? kind of? LOVES IT?

I mean, at first she ranges from intimidated—to cross—to furious.

But Tornado’s had a… a weird sort of life.

I’m not saying miserable or friendless. Far from it.

But.

Imagine a cross between being born a royal, and also being identified as the dalai lama, and also spending all your time around a) people who are not your kind or b) people who are great-grandparent-aged.

Throw on a liberal dose of “loads of people are interested in you as the representation of a ton of history that you yourself haven’t experienced.”

That’s Tornado’s world.

The A1 Society and National Railway Museum, of course, dote on her. She’s been showered with attention and care from the point of being a set of frames. She gets along decently well with the other engines of her generation.

They’re electric, of course, but most of them aren’t prejudiced. Most anyone who does have beef with her has it because of how “specially” she’s treated. But she does have a core group of UK network rail engines doing similar work who she’s cool with.

Of course, it always does sort of low-key suck, being the only one of your kind in a group.

And she’s far less intimate with them than the rest, since she does not stay regularly at their depots.

As far as Tornado being around other steam engines, and other famous engines… well, she has more in common with them. But it’s ssssssooooooooooo high-pressure! The expectations are so high during all of her appearances and her speed trials and during her many visits to heritage railways, which is what makes up much of her life. It’s all fun, in some ways! Like the rest of her family, Tornado loves admiration and excitement. But the expectations are a lot to keep up with. Just… a lot.

Besides, its not always so damn exciting, you know, to so often have the duty of listening politely when the hundredth person or engine just on this tour waxes on about how you remind them of this locomotive that yes, you are related to, but who was also cut up half a century before you were fired to life… Those bits are kind of the opposite of exciting, actually.

She knows Flying Scotsman and many of the remaining A4s. Honestly, the A4s haven’t been in steam in so long that they’ve gone a bit loony. (They’re sort of predisposed? There are plenty of other museum engines who haven’t been in steam for just as long, and they haven’t gone nearly so far round the twist.) And she and Scotsman got on very well. He’s supportive and sweet, and gets a kick out of her when they get a chance to catch up. But they haven’t actually met so very often, between ’08 and ’14.

When she goes on tour to Sodor.

She’s never had this sort of experience.

An experience where other engines were manifestly unimpressed with her.

Not hating her (she has experienced some of that, before), just… utterly… unimpressed.

Besides, the Sodor engines haven’t been able to properly screw with a new young engine in decades. They are spoiling for it.

With most guests, the Sodor engines have some manners. But, well, she’s Gordon’s family, isn’t she? So, treat her like it. Everyone enjoys screwing with Gordon, except that they hold back a bit because he’s intimidating. This one isn’t!!!!

Tornado’s never had the good old-fashioned “den of sharks” yard hazing experience.

She’s never gotten to snipe and prank and try to give as good as she gets.

She’s never had the hard-won “vitriolic best buds” dynamic before.

Yeah, yeah, I know in many ways this sort of “it’s not bullying! it’s toughening up!” line of thinking is bullshit.

But, in this particular case? With Tornado’s highly leonine personality?

Well. It totally works out. 4) Here’s just one sample of what goes down:

James. James is the one inclined to actually be jealous and resentful (how come I’m always the first to lose passenger trains around here???!?!?!1!? Which isn’t strictly true, but everyone else has long learned it’s a waste of breath to try and tell him this.) With most of the other engines, they rub Tornado in subtly the wrong way with their profound lack of awe. Like, Tornado doesn’t have an incredibly outsize ego… she’s certainly more grounded than a certain Gresley prototype Pacific was when he first arrived on Sodor almost a century earlier… but she has been treated like she’s special all her life, so it is a bit of a shock when she isn’t.

James, however, pays her the dubious compliment of being eaten alive with jealousy.

That much, Tornado can deal with easily. When James starts in with his “thinks she’s so special…” bitchery, she can just smile and say “I don’t think it. I know it!”

This doesn’t help her impression among the others as ’typical, given her lineage; should be taken down a few pegs, for her own good’… but it does shut James up for a while.

But James quickly adapts and changes tacks.

“Oh, no worries, I’ll take it!” James sweetly tells the Vicarstown shedmaster one fateful morning. “Those tankers are far too heavy for your lot. And, of course, Princess here can’t handle trucks!”

Tornado isn’t stupid. She knows she’s being baited.

But it’s not in her nature to back down from a dare.

(She may not have even realized it till this minute, because she’s never been casually dared in her ultra-managed VIP life before. But she is just a bull when a red flag—or a smarmy red engine—is waving at her.)

So, naturally, she snorts and says that she’ll take them, rather than have Granddad over there risk getting a frame bent.

She’s quite imperious, and James of course wants to offload the job on her, so she gets her way rather easily. (James doesn't even get worked up at the digs about his age. This could be a Really Useful dynamic and he's prepared to exploit 'avoid some crap work—with a bonus chance at Her Highness making a fool of herself' for as many times as she might let him!)

Her crew knows they’ll have to face some flack from the A1 Society for allowing this. But, truth is, Tornado is incredibly headstrong, and there are volunteers beating each other off with fire pokers for the privilege of working with her, so getting into a power struggle with her is definitely the end of the line. Basically, this is the one way in which Tornado is quite spoiled—she can practically get her crews switched out at will.

In other words, they’re running a risk to their jobs either way... so, hell, why not acquiesce and let the girl have a go.

Besides, what can go wrong?

As a matter of fact… nothing much does. Oh, of course she takes a few slams from her train—every single time she starts. And she has to start often, as she’s shunted aside more than once on the way. (WTH is this bullshit, and why does anyone ever put up with it? Like, seriously!) She also has to take a lot of backchat, as she bickers with the tankers half the way, until she has to give it up due to need to save her breath, and having to just take it from the little swine infuriates her.

Also—it takes over three and a half hours to get to Tidmouth.

The three and a half longest, hottest, bumpiest, most aggravating hours of her life… before she finally pulls into the harbor yard, and sinks into an exhausted cloud of steam, looking a proper thundercloud.

(She’s got the family-typical eyebrows, y’all. And they’re being put to max frowny-face use right now.)

Honestly, everything went just fine, but Tornado doesn’t know that, and she feels bitterly that she’s made a fool out of herself.

And, before she’s even quite recovered the ability to speak… she wants to go another round.

She’s still in the world’s biggest strop. But she is determined to try that again, and do better.

So she calls out to Henry, who is being coupled up to container freight, and demands to take his train.

He laughs at her.

Tornado takes being laughed at with the same grace that the rest of her family does. She offered to help. She, Tornado, the most magnificent steam engine currently on the rails. And he couldn’t even manage so much as a ‘no, thank you’?

Of all the goddamn nerve!

With the engine only fuming more than ever, now that she’s both caught her breath and been wound up all over again, they get turned round, with the idea of resting at Knapford. All a-glower as she takes on water, Tornado spots a shunter preparing a heavy train of collier wagons.

Collier wagons being pretty much the example of the classic ‘troublesome trucks,’ mind you. And, again, Tornado’s not dumb. She knows this.

But, like the rest of the LNER As, she’s competitive af. Hell, at least Gordon was helpfully saddled with a massive classist complex that prevented him from rising to every bait. The notion that there were things that were simply beneath him protected him from feeling the need to prove himself in this way.

It’s a testament to how well Tornado’s been raised… that she’s not too good to be determined to try another one. And probably another one, and another one, and another one...

She is not, however, above outright ordering the shunter engine to give her the coal train.

And the two are still arguing about the thing when Donald and Douglas arrive.

Tornado thinks she's being eminently reasonable and even manifestly generous with her offer to take over. It’s not like she’s causing any inconvenience! It's better all around. With her volunteering to do the dirty work, they'll only need to send one engine with the train instead of two!

Douglas is inclined to glower right back—and his eyebrow game is also on point, y'all—but Donald jumps in first, with an impossibly sweet voice that everyone present except Tornado knows to be profoundly unnatural on him. "Ay. Sae, it's a load off we twae wee feeble auld horses, ye'll be taking?"

Okay, this time, Tornado is being dumb. Her determination to win this power struggle blinds her to the obvious signs. "Like, exactly," she says, earnestly.

When Douglas chimes in, thanking Her Grace for the grand favor, Tornado does finally twig the sarcasm. But, whatever! She got her way!

She pulls away proudly with the coal trucks, extra pleased because this time she avoids wheelslip and pulls away far more smoothly than last round. (Donald and Douglas may or may not be affixing expressions of mock-awe on their faces. But they definitely burst into a good laugh, the second she's gone. They can practically count down the minutes till It Happens...)

Tornado has worked out a lot of her irritation wrestling the damn wagons and has found a rhythm that makes her start to feel quite confident. This stuff isn’t that hard!

That's when she encounters the steep side of a certain famous hill.

It's BoCo who is dispatched to go bank her when she inevitably stalls out. For a brief moment, he’s quite bemused by the situation—what is Tornado doing there?

But, when he hears that this was Donald and Douglas's train… he rolls his eyes so hard that they may actually be stuck there to this day.

At some point Tornado will appreciate that she's made a friend that she's not related to on this misbegotten hell of a railway. But first she will have to spend a solid three days seething her way through the fallout.

And, after three days of everyone getting their jokes out, she actually finds that, in a weird way, she really seems to be a part of things on the sheds and stations.

And it's kind of great.

The banter, gossip, pressure, zingers, challenges, and minimally supervised shenanigans suit her competitive streak perfectly. She likes being a part of the three-ring drama of the North Western.

She doesn't realize all this until after she leaves.

But almost as soon as she realizes that she misses it, she's campaigning to make Sodor her annual holiday. It's the perfect antidote to her usual schedule.

5) And indeed she's spent at least a week visiting, every year since.

The NWR is only allowed to publicize her visit and give her specials if they pay up. That they are not always willing to do so is fine by Tornado, who strong-arms her owners into letting her go and do some ‘normal,’ ‘quiet’ work anyway.

She and Gordon are your typical siblings. Like many humans who had mixed feelings about a new arrival but who after nine months of the pregnancy are totally ready to meet the baby when it comes, Gordon had something like eighteen years to work through his initial reservations, and so was prepared and thrilled when she was finally steamed to live. Tornado finds him a bit baffling in some ways once they meet, and not quite as understanding as Scot—but he’s certainly saner and more fun than the A4s! And they soon got the hang of being family. Gordon is immensely proud of her, would defend her with his life, and he bosses her around ‘advises’ her shamelessly. He has minimal idea of what her life is like, which naturally he thinks in no way disqualifies him from telling her how she ought to live it. You've probably read enough to imagine roughly how well she takes that.

She gets along with most of the fleet and they've also grown very fond of her. She has a few especially close friends among the newer engines (not yet named in canon), as well as BoCo (Gordon is rather jealous).

She and James are great frenemies. They love their snark-offs and stupid competitions. They also sometimes have moments where they generously soothe each other's egos. Honestly, they have a fair amount in common, and they understand just the sort of reassurance the other is always seeking—because they both want it.

She really doesn't care for the still-unrepentant Caledonians, though.

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