I Recommend All My Fellow TTTE Fan's Listen To This, I Could So Imagen The Engines Of Sodor Singing This

I recommend all my fellow TTTE fan's listen to this, I could so imagen the engines of Sodor singing this during the early days of the railway when it was first being built. Regardless, it's such an awesome listen!

This was honestly more insightful than it was as entertaining as I thought. The whole time I was just going- "Yep, that sounds like me." "I do that rather often." I'll hopefully have a final diagnosis by this January. I'm not a doctor and I'm obviously not about to self-diagnose myself. But back to this post, this was an amazing read, and it's honestly given me some ideas about character traits for my own version of the tugs. The chess thing makes a lot of sense for Zorran, and the more I'm dwelling on it, maybe giving Zip a condition that's on the spectrum sounds like a good idea and makes sense. Obviously, I'd wanna do a lot more research into a topic like that, but we'll see. Again, your work is amazing, and you just gave me some food for thought into my art and in IRL. Thanks for answering my question, and I hope you have a warm drink to calm down from that nightmare, best of luck to fight off the spooks and creeps.

OOooooo! Can you elaborate on Zorran's and Zip's autism? Zip I feel like he would be on the spectrum but I'm not a doctor so I wouldn't know what to give him. But Zorran? I'm really interested to hear about your interpretation. Your art is gorgeous by the way, keep up the amazing work!

TW // Masking, religious trauma, just talk of trauma in general, talk of autism (that can be a trigger, putting just in case),

NOTE: This is all coming from an autistic person myself, so I am familiar with most symptoms than some. I'm also no doctor as well, so please take this with a grain of salt. I'm also sorry if this sounds messy and has tons of typos, I just woke up from a nasty dream, but it's okay.

All of these are headcanon and bound to change, but it was still fun writing nonetheless. I love overanalyzing characters.

Canonically, he's shows to not understand things from first level perspective, and even if given further detail he still doesn't understand. You need to be precise and explain yourself more when giving him instruction or talking with him because he's bound to misinterpret.

Zip is the easiest so I'll start with him:

Zip has also been shown to misuse terms. Devious is the one, and he loves it. Even after knowing the definition and the purpose of the word, he still uses it from time to time. It's sort of his love language or go-to word when things get hard to explain, so if he calls you devious, it's sort of an award for you because he likes you.

Zip has also been shown to misinterpret tone, and use the inappropriate mindset in certain situations. One situation that was definitely imminent was between the talk with Zorran, Zak, and Zip and Captain Zero. "What kind of idiots do I have working for me?" This mother fucker literally replies with confidence, "Really devious! >:D"

Like with the first point, you need to be precise with him, and state your intentions so confusion doesn't set.

Zip doesn't mask, nor does he know how to. Because of that, he's the one that stands out more. He's tried to but doesn't know where to start. He never gotten the support autistic people need due to religious trauma. He was really prone to autistic meltdowns because of this lack of support. Luckily, as an adult, he's learned how to control them more. Whenever he feels overwhelmed, he was a tangle named Rapunzel.

Out of all the Z-Stacks, even Ten Cents, Zug understands Zip's autism the most. He knows what to do when Zip got overstimulated or overwhelmed, and he knows what to do when Zip was super confused to the point he started heavily stimming. Zug can just instantly tell, and he just doesn't know if it's the paranoia speaking or if he genuinely has a keen eye for people's behaviors.

Even though it sounds so dumb, Zip has a special interest for astronomy. He'd ramble on and on about the stars, and the types of stars there are. He'd tell you about everything in the universe. Zip might have another special interest in Vikings and sailboats. If he ever visited, he'd listen for hours to Captain Star about the sailboats and the Vikings, gaining knowledge and he'd ramble to either Zug or Ten Cents.

He might even vibe with Zebedee with the topic. He rambles to him, and the Harbor tug replies with a historical fact about them and Zip just goes "woowwwww. :0"

(Zebedee is a history buff in my eyes.)

•••

Zip does daydream a lot, hencing one of his face sheets. He daydreams about a lot of things. Like how the day would go, a ton of scripted events flowing through his head, and maybe even some things he enjoyed. It stunts him a lot during work, but it helps him get through the day.

Zip definitely doesn't know how to properly express his emotions. This is called alexithymia, where you cannot identify or express your emotions properly unlike someone who can. It leads to a lot of discomfort and confusion. Zip definitely has that discomfort and confusion part. Self-projecting a little bit, whenever he feels something he cannot identify, there's a heaviness in his chest, and it feels like waking in cheese and jelly (imagine how thick it'd be).

As someone who does have alexithymia, it is absolutely abysmal, and I envy those who can identify what their emotions are or what they're feeling.

Now onto Zorran:

Zorran is more complex with his disorder. I'll go into the canonical things I noticed from him.

Canonically, he can get really upset if his plans never follow through. I think this is apparent in Sunshine whenever he tried to connect the dots on how he was seen. It doesn't help that Captain Zero said not to argue with him, and just accept that he was seen.

I also wanna add onto the fact that autistic people have a hard time noticing their surroundings, and thinking about the true consequences of actions thanks to scripted events. It hurts like an ant, but it happens, no matter how hard to try to be mindful.

Zorran is also oddly ... smart. He has a good sense of direction on his plans, and interprets things differently. It's shown nearly ... well, everywhere. I think as an escapism and a special interest Zorran would plan random scenarios in his head. This special interest would sometimes flow into things that don't need planning.

The wonderful @brownsugar-chan also said that Zorran's special interest would be chess. I can agree! I think that might even feed into his special interest of planning. If chess is one of his special interests and combined with planning, he'd definitely win a lot of chess championships in school.

Zorran definitely has tone problems; whenever he talks, he sounds very aggressive and upset. He also has a confident tone in his voice, maybe even sometimes during times where he shouldn't be. I like to think that if he was talking with you in general, and you never knew that most of the time he spoke with this influx, you'd probably think he would be arguing with you, even though it isn't his intent.

He also tends to have a weird infliction in his voice if you listen carefully. No I'm not talking about his accent, it's just how sometimes he delivers his lines. It could be considered as weird or uncalled for. As someone who has that weird infliction in their voice, it sucks, and sometimes outsiders will think you are weird or too aggressive. I bet Zorran could agree.

Zorran does seem to have a weird way of experiencing and showcasing empathy. Another common thing of alexithymia is when someone cannot express empathy properly, and when they try to, they seem heartless or apathetic. We see this in Munitions, especially during the Puffa scene, and when Ten Cents went for the barge before it blew up.

Other common side affects of this can be confusion and discomfort, but also anger and outbursts. Definitely Zorran has the aggressive side of things. While he might not mean harm, he does seem apathetic from an outsider's perspective.

Onto more headcanon things, Zorran does mask, a lot. He's pretty good at it. It does have his toll on him, however, and he feels ashamed of it. When alone where he can unmask, he has massive stim attacks. Do you know that weird feeling in your arms if you don't stim for a while. Imagine that, but you have to ignore that for a while, like a whole day. I think people who mask understand that a lot, and I feel so sorry for those people.

Zorran is definitely undiagnosed, or at least late diagnosed. Before being diagnosed, he felt so ashamed of his symptoms thanks to his mother and being a gifted kid. He learned how to mask over the years, but it was hard at first.

Nobody knows about his symptoms, not even his two bestest friends in the entire universe, Zebedee and Zak. This was during the time he didn't know that those two were also neurodivergent (Zebedee has PTSD, Zak has depression on the aggressive side). Whenever they do find out, it was during one of his stim attacks, and ya know, those two supported him and helped him through it.

Zorran does daydream a lot. Not as much as Zip, but still daydreams. You can tell if he seemingly just stares into space, at nothing if he is in daydream mode. He daydreams about the plans in his head, like stated before, and scripted events.

The only stim he's watered himself down to is to bounce his leg, and that's about it. However, he does have a pocket knife, and he twirls it around his fingers, sort of like a stim so yeah.

Zorran and Zip definitely had some heart to heart moments. Taly did propose that Zip gave Zorran his tangle, and Zorran fell in love with it before breaking it. Zip had to explain to him that he can put it back together, and Zorran was like "...Oh."

•••

I think that about wraps up this post. Thank you to anyone who read it. It took me so long to write it. If y'all have anymore questions let me know. :)

Tf did I just walk into?? 🤨

I got a ball stuck in my wheels!

I'm having a leap year to work for a while then go into animation school in 2024. I don't really do new years resolutions. (I think that's what they're called.) On the plus side, a lot of new movies coming out next year. A new live-action Transformers movie, and a Mario Brothers movie! Lets go!

just wanna read your comments or reblog, so here what I'm going to ask

what you gonna do on 2023? hey it's December already, just a few more days it's new year, so what's your plan?

Me with @ttte-tugscrowskullausmainblog

This is basically how it is

@just-a-douglas-simp-existing

Little late for that bud, here, I got a passed-out child of yours and Mr blue brat. Don't ask me how, I'm still unclear of it myself.

I got a ball stuck in my wheels!