When you see this, I’m going to be in the cab of Strasburg #90, driving a steam locomotive like I’ve always wanted to.
I’ve loved trains my entire life. I wrote a whole essay about how they’ve always been something I’ve come back to again and again, which you can find on my main blog - but I’ve had to hide this interest for a lot of my life because I knew my peers would make fun of me growing up. Later, when I got my autism diagnosis, I felt like I had to keep hiding it because it was a stereotype. Here and there, it’s come out in places (read: 2014), but it always went back into hiding.
But this feels different - the way you all love Ingo and Emmet for who they are has helped me finally embrace this part of myself again, the way I did when I was a little kid, and now I’m going to finally live that little girl’s dream. She’s going to drive the train nearly 30 years after she started wanting to do this. I cannot thank the two of them - and all of you - enough for finally allowing me to be myself after all this time. It means so, so much to me.
I’m still thinking about Wen Zhuliu only choosing to drink after looking at Madam Yu’s corpse. And Jiang Fengmian’s I guess but mostly The Violet Spider’s let’s be real here.
First Wen Chao commands him to drink as he was instrumental on destroying the Jiang and our guy looks slightly off to the side:
Then after about twenty seconds of badgering he finally picks up his drink but pauses after noticing that it’s drugged:
Then the camera slowly pans over to JFM and YZY’s bodies and he looks over again:
Closeup of his face as he hesitates again:
And then he chugs! And lest you think its not about whatever the fuck their history was, CQL gives us one last lingering shot of Madam Yu’s bloody, dangling body:
Just her! Sorry JFM, you’re just a freeloading extra according to your wife’s former indistinct mumbling. Though possibly extra lolrip to poor Jiang Cheng who doesn’t even get so much as a brief meaningful sidelong look of regret.
The snow-desert air is humid and hot, and the tension thickens the air until each breath feels like fog. They’ve been circling in conversation for a while now. For all their fancy words, it’s a rut. Quackity wants the outpost gone. Tubbo wants the outpost left alone. Both sides know that they’re both being unreasonable. Two immovable objects.
Tubbo looks nonplussed. Ranboo looks confused. “You’re intimidated by two children making walls?”
—
Quackity doesn’t know Ranboo that well. He knows enough not to trust him, but beyond that…the kid’s made so many friends and so few enemies that it’s hard to get a read on who he is. But he knows Tubbo. He knows him all too well.
It’s dawned on Quackity throughout the conversation that Tubbo won’t fall for the same thing twice. And he saw a lot of what Quackity could do - during the elections, during Manburg, during New L'manburg. Tubbo watched Quackity pull out his bag of tricks on Wilbur, on Schlatt, and even on him - the Butcher Army was Quackity’s idea to begin with, even if it was the President who gave the final order. Tubbo’s a quick learner, let alone for his age. And he’s stubborn as an old goat. And that combination isn’t good for Quackity right now. He’s dealing with Wilbur, and with Dream, and with trying to keep Slimecicle from giving away state secrets (Quackity swears he doesn’t actually tell him any, but the slime is a good spy at the wrong times). He can’t have another problem waiting to happen.
The last time they’d really been at odds, Tubbo had been running on pure rage and defensiveness, and still managed to lock Quackity in a verbal corner. He’s grown up fast. There’s no way this is just for cookies, but he can’t prove anything. Tubbo’s made sure of that. And if the rumors are true, he’s even more ready to make good on his threats than before. They dance around the topic, but the Gandhi that Tubbo speaks of is not a peaceful man. If anyone on the server could pull off what he’s implying, what Quackity’s intel confirms, it would be Tubbo. Tubbo’s too smart to leave unchecked, and he’s gotten more unpredictable with time. He’s learned all of Quackity’s tricks, and is ready to throw them back. Tubbo is fed up with being manipulated. Quackity taught him too well, even when he didn’t know he was teaching.
—
Foolish doesn’t know Tubbo too well. He seems pretty cool, and enthusiastic about the mansion to live in, but the rumors say he was really busy right before Foolish came to the server, and he’s probably become a little less of a people person from all of it. But he knows Ranboo. At least, he knows him a little better.
Ranboo’s a good guy! He’s friendly, and he pays well, and he doesn’t like making people upset. He just wants people to be happy. That’s a good thing. And he cares a lot about Tubbo. They were gonna live in the mansion together. You have to really like a person to be willing to put up with living with them for extended periods of time. So it makes sense that if Tubbo’s serious about this cookie outpost thing, then Ranboo is going to back him up. Maybe a little less confrontationally, but that’s just Ranboo’s style.
But Foolish remembers the Shulker Agreement. Ranboo was…a little different. He’s always been a little different, but he was a different kind of different right then. More confident. Less jittery. Very…convincing. He was very clear about how the deal was going to work, and yet Foolish still came away feeling like something happened that wasn’t supposed to happen. Maybe it was something about Ranboo’s eyes. Foolish sees the world a little off-color - the price of the gleamin’ greens he’s got - but Ranboo’s eyes are definitely normally a different color. During negotiations, he could’ve sworn they were the same, and neither of them the color they were supposed to be. Or maybe Foolish had been staring at the chandelier too long again. It did things to his head. Ranboo said he was good at getting what he wanted. It makes the innocent act right now all the more unsettling.
—
Ranboo’s question hangs in the air. Are they intimidated by two children making walls? Around a cookie farm?
“Yes.” The word falls matter-of-factly from Foolish’s mouth. He’s intimidated. Quackity smacks him on the arm to shut him up, and tries not to wince at the impact of his hand on the hard muscles. Ow. Just because it’s true doesn’t mean they should say it.
