My favorite thing about Thomas the Tank Engine is that it canonically takes place in a train post-apocalypse where the Island of Sodor is the only safe zone in a totalitarian dystopia in which steam trains are routinely killed and their body parts are sold or cannibalized for repair
If you think I’m kidding you need to read the original books
could you please direct me to a source? i would feel much better if this was validated.
It took me so long to find this quote online but I did it because it’s so much darker than one might expect from Thomas the Tank Engine:
“…Engines on the Other Railway aren’t safe now. Their controllers are cruel. They don’t like engines any more. They put them on cold damp sidings, and then,” Percy nearly sobbed, “they…they c-c-cut them up.” -”The Bluebells of England.” Stepney the Bluebell Engine. Rev. Awdry, Wilbert. London: Egmont Publishing, 1963.
This illustration, by Gunvor and Peter Edwards, accompanied the above text in the original book, and depicts a pair of unfortunate Other Railway engines moments before being disassembled with a blowtorch.
HOLY FUCK LOOK AT THE ONE IN THE BACKGROUND THEY TOOK ITS FUCKING FACE OMG
the early thomas the tank engine books are pretty standard stuff. saccharine bubblegum type stories and illustrations. if you watched the show, it’s like that in book form.
the second half of the railway series are so fucking dark and surreal i’m convinced they were a result of reverend wilbur awdry doing copious amounts of lsd and having hallucinations of his own death.
Excuse me but the very first story in the Railway Series is about an engine who hides in a tunnel and refuses to run because he doesn’t want to get his paint job ruined in the rain, so railway management seals off the tunnel.
They eventually let him out because another engine breaks down or something, but the original plan was to just leave him in there forever.
On the show, didn’t they also hook up one engine to a generator, so he’d never move again? That was literally one of the lines, I think. It’s on some other post on here. It was chilling.
Yes! This also happened in the books, to an engine referred to only as “No. 2″, but the television series applied the same scenario to an invented character named “Smudger”, in the episode “Granpuff”.
“Smudger,” said Duke. “Was a show-off. He rode roughly and often came off the rails. I warned him to be careful, but he took no notice.” “Listen, Dukie” he snared. “Who worries about a few spills?” “We do here! I said, but Smudger just laughed.” “Hahaha!” “Until one day, Manager said he was going to make him useful at last. Smudger stopped laughing then!” “W-w-why? What did he do?!” “He turned him into a generator. He’s still there behind our shed. He’ll never move again.”
Jeez and crackers, either i missed all of this horror or my young mind blocked it out.
I guess that depends on your definition of unique.
If you define unique as rare (and valuable), then gems such as alexandrite, grandidierite, jeremejevite, musgravite, and black opal are some of the most unique gems in the world, found in very specific, limited regions of the world. With these, finding them in a pure form is incredibly difficult, which is why they’re usually worth so much. Black opal is one of my favorites, since it looks like a rock swallowed a galaxy.
If you define unique more subjectively - on uniqueness of appearance rather than rarity - then there are a few other gems that stand out. To list just a few that are my personal favorites:
Ammolite: this gem is similar to opal — both fossilized shell-making, silica-rich creatures but in this case made from fossilized ammonites (nautilus) rather than diatoms (which are a kind of plankton) — but you can find it as whole nautiloids that can then be made into gemstone pieces (though I kind of prefer it whole but that’s my inner paleontologist speaking)
Fluorite: possibly my favorite gemstone mineral, fluorite is awesome for a couple of reasons - namely, it forms in near-perfect cubic crystals, is dazzlingly glowy under UV light, and comes in almost every color (usually clear, purple, and green, and occasionally a rare blue or impure yellow)
Hackmanite: this gem is a particular kind of sodalite that actually changes color in response to light (it’s called tenebresence, and it’s the same concept as transition lenses in glasses - just natural and in a really pretty gem) - when it’s mined, it’s usually purple, but over time, it turns white; if it’s put back in the dark, it’ll fade back to purple, and you can repeat this over and over and over
Labradorite: with this gem, light reflects off the crystal structure in such a way that the rock has really strong blue-green iridescence, and it looks different every way you turn it - the light will hit it in one spot and the dull grey rock will suddenly explode with all this amazing blue color
Pietersite: I love this gem because it can come in any color - from brown to yellow to red to blue to purple to grey - and I’ve never seen two pieces that look even close to identical. Technically, it’s a variation of quartz - a really, really awesome variation of tiger’s eye quartz that looks nothing like other quartz types
These are just a few examples, and this is a really long and rambling answer to a very short question, but I think uniqueness can be defined objectively in terms of rarity and worth, or subjectively in terms of how freaking cool and special they are
all gems are freaking awesome
^ this is me on a geologic rampage that I thoroughly enjoyed
hoooooooly shit. looked up the story. he saw her pics, “fell in love” with her, didn’t even know her real name, just get nickname, didn’t know her address, just her phone number, barely spoke her language at all, showed up in her town and called her all “i’m here!” and she was like “the fuck? no, i don’t want to see you”, so he got alcohol poisoning wasted and rescued by cops and was comped a night in a hotel before flying right back home.
JESUS CHRIST.
Holy shit. yeah there’s no “girl decides she’s not interested” here, it’s “boy was a creepy stalker to some extreme degrees when girl NEVER EXPRESSED INTEREST IN THE FIRST PLACE seriously who does this” but yeah let’s pretend this guy is the hurt little victim here and she rejected him after he went to ~so much trouble~
He fucking wrote an essay about killing her and then filmed the murders with a camera mounted on his chest -
“Early on the morning of February 5, police say, Coast Guardsman Adrian T. Loya used a handgun to murder Lisa A. Trubnikova and seriously wound her spouse, Anna Trubnikova—filming the carnage with a camera mounted on his chest.
Then, police say, Mr. Loya went outside the Monument Beach condominium where he had shot the Trubnikovas, picked up a rifle, and began firing at police who were closing in on foot.
Before he was taken into custody, police say, he shot Bourne Police Patrolman Jared P. MacDonald, 44, just below his bulletproof vest, seriously wounding him.
Police further say that Mr. Loya had planned the murder of Lisa Trubnikova, writing a lengthy essay stating his reasons for killing her. Police said they found the essay on a thumb drive in his Bourne motel room.”
