You Know, One Of The Fun Things About Looking Into The Subway Twins In The Aftermath Of PLA (and As Someone

You know, one of the fun things about looking into the subway twins in the aftermath of PLA (and as someone who tends to skip the battle subway in B&W) has been realizing just what fun characters they are. The two share one brain cell whenever they’re in a room together. Literally, speaking the same lines and doing the same actions in sync. Even when apart, they tend to gravitate to the same ideas and wants (granted, in their own ways), the same kinds of Pokemon, and fixate on the same objects. Which- yeah. They’re identical twins. That tracks.

It’s when they’re apart that the differences start to accumulate.

On one hand, you’ve got Ingo: the one with a perpetual frown on his face, wears darker clothing, and whose primary partner Pokemon is presented as the floating goth ghost chandelier: Chandelure. (Fun fact they’ve both got one- in fact the majority of their Pokemon overlap, but most media (and fanwork) depicts Chandelure as being one of Ingo’s).

At a glance, you’d expect him to be serious and formal at best- until you walk into his train at the end of the single battles and he starts cheerfully introducing himself and excitedly starts the battle, or when you beat him and he applauds your victory and cheers you on. Or in Pokemon Masters, where he’s actively distraught by the fact people have trouble reading his facial expressions and so will loudly explain how excited he is and how much he loves battling whenever he enters a room.

Even in PLA, where he’s rediscovering who he is along with everyone else, he still clearly enjoys the same hobbies- not only fights himself, but seeing other people have great battles. He’ll just straight up have a heart to heart about his personal feelings and predicament with a stranger he just met an hour ago, can’t resist a smile from a good battle, and despite the fact he’s clearly lost the light behind his eyes, is still such a friendly, helpful soul who genuinely wants to see the best in everyone. (it would be so funny to see the reactions of the PLA crew seeing normal-Ingo and what an aggressively friendly ball of sunshine he actually is. It’s just something missing from most ‘Ingo is reunited with his brother and memories’ fics).

Then on the other hand, you’ve got Emmet. The Subway Boss who drifts through life with a smile on his face, wears lighter clothing, and whose primary Pokemon is a big poofy colorful dumb looking bird whose better at running then flying. And whose most famous line (I like winning more then anything’) is one of the longest sentences he says to the player in the original game.

In contrast to his brother, Emmet speaks in clipped, factual statements. While loving his Pokemon and battling, he views his team through a very strategic lens, wanting the best, perfect combination of moves and strategies. Even when you beat him, he announces how much fun he had fighting you in the same matter-of-fact way he has of speaking (he lost. You are verrrrry strong) and ends on a very simple note that you should ‘ride the trains more often!’. In Pokemon Masters, he’s much more detail orientated then his brother, questioning the Player for all sorts of details about the location and what they look for in a good battle. He’s still very clearly excited to fight the Player, and to bring the Battle Subway to a new location, but has a very ‘there is nothing in life more important then winning’ attitude that’s just barely friendly enough to stop him from having a threatening aura. It’s also worth noting that, despite the two of them both sharing the same title, Emmet talks about how much he looks up to his brother and respects him as both a trainer and in individual.

When you fight both of them in B&W, Ingo will have a whole conversation with the player about the nature of team battles and trusting in your partner as much as you trust yourself. Emmet has a serious of short quips that are no more then three words each. We get the feeling that, where his brother has trouble expressing himself with his facial expressions and falls back onto his words so that people’ll understand him, Emmet has trouble expressing himself with his words and has learned to use his facial expression to project how excited he is outwardly- large smile, over the top gestures despite his simple sentences, a sparkle in his eye so that people are actually willing to approach him and don’t get scared off by this ultra-stern rules abiding boss at the end of a train.

When you beat them together, Emmet comments on you having a good combination and being strong, and it being a fun battle. Ingo applauds the player but also reminds them that beating the two of them was only one milestone in their life, and actively encourages them to go on to do even greater things further down the line. Emmet seems like a very here-and-now kinda guy, focusing on the life that’s in front of him, while Ingo is focused on the line ahead and what he can do now to prevent regret in the past. (Which is ironic, isn’t it?).

Also if you search up clips of the two from the B&W anime, one of the only straight clips you can find is a 30 second clip of them investigating someone (*coughteamrocketcough*) messing with the subway. In it, Ingo wants to get to solve the mystery to protect the city and the people who use the subway. Emmet focuses on holding the guilty party responsible. They also naturto run on the subway tracks, which is very important.

Writing Submas? Here’s Our Local Trains.

I’ve been seeing some posts in the Submas tags that have made me think this might help some people, so here goes:

In the greater NYC metropolitan area, we have a few different rail agencies. I grew up here as a Weird Train Kid (read: undiagnosed autistic girl), so I’ve spent a fair deal of time around all of them and know them very verrrry well as a result. These are the essentials that will help you write Submas more authentically!

A few abbreviations to be aware of before we depart:

MTA: Metropolitan Transit Authority

NJT: New Jersey Transit

LIRR: Long Island Railroad

NYC: in the context of the city, New York City - but in the context of railroads, New York Central

PRR: Pennsylvania Railroad

CNJ: Central Railroad of New Jersey

DL&W: Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad

That said, let’s get into the meat of this.

Let’s Talk MTA For A Second…

The MTA in New York City actually oversees more than the subway system. It covers buses, the subway, two car tunnels, several car bridges, the LIRR, Metro-North, and a light rail on Staten Island. For an in-depth look at the subway system, you can read my Submas primer here, where I covered it. The subway will obviously be the one element you need to be the most concerned with here (and I’m happy to answer questions on it anytime!), but it’s important to know that the LIRR and Metro-North are also under the MTA’s jurisdiction. Metro-North operates commuter rail north of NYC, with any west-of-Hudson rails being operated by NJT under contract with the MTA, and the LIRR moves people around on Long Island. The LIRR is actually the busiest commuter rail line in the United States, followed by NJT and Metro-North. We like our trains here.

Culturally, you should know that the LIRR is notorious for having what are known as “drunk trains,” which are trains filled late at night with passengers returning to the suburbs after partying in the city all night. Nobody likes being stuck on the drunk train with these people except cultural anthropologists. It apparently even made it into an episode of How I Met Your Mother.

You have two major stations in Midtown. Which one is Gear Station supposed to be?

I am fairly positive that Gear Station is an amalgamation of Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal. Architecturally from the outside, the building resembles Grand Central more, given what happened to Penn Station:

Compare Grand Central, right down to the green roof:

Once you get inside Gear Station, though, you notice that a lot of it is actually underground. Both Grand Central and Penn Station have significant below-ground portions, with Penn Station being entirely underground nowadays. (Those of you who have been here for a while may have seen me draw Ingo complaining about Penn Station. He’d have his reasons to, believe me.)

The structure in the middle reminds me a lot of the information desk at Grand Central:

Writing Submas? Here’s Our Local Trains.

And the general darkness is more like Penn Station.

Penn Station once had beautiful natural light. In 1963 they stole that from us and New York has not forgiven them.

We could have had it aaaaaallllllll…

Grand Central was built by the New York Central, and Pennsylvania Station was built by the Pennsylvania Railroad. In the late 1960s both the NYC and PRR weren’t doing very well and they merged into Penn Central. We don’t talk about Penn Central.

New Jersey Transit?

Right, NJT, the bane of my existence. We’ve had a love-hate relationship for the majority of my adult life. NJT does not know this, but I do.

NJT operates commuter trains on lines once owned by railroad giants like the Erie, the DL&W, and the CNJ. Despite being the second-busiest commuter line in the entire country, New Jerseyans are frequently found complaining about them because we need to get places and they’re delayed because they saw a snowflake or something.

In all seriousness, NJT isn’t horrible and they do what they set out to do, but as a regular commuter myself I understand the complaints. It’s frustrating.

If you look at the composition of Ingo and Emmet’s team, a large portion of them can be found on the “Jersey side” of Unova (especially the Chargestone Cave area), which implies to me that they either are straight-up from New Jersey or spent frequent time in the area building their team, so they absolutely would be familiar with NJT and how to use it. I don’t usually get into headcanons in these posts because they can be very personal, but I’ve often thought it would be funny and cute if they spent time as kids looking for the remains of Penn Station in the Meadowlands, because when Penn Station was demolished for some reason a lot of the rubble was thrown into the marshlands.

As a personal note, no, I haven’t found any pieces of Penn Station yet myself. Yet.

You were a “weird train kid,” you said. Where’d you get your fix growing up?

Besides the above transit agencies, I actually went with my family to the Strasburg Rail Road a lot as a kid out in Strasburg, Pennsylvania. One of the oldest operating railroads in the United States, Strasburg runs heritage trains pulled by historic steam locomotives - it’s only a couple of hours away from where I grew up in New Jersey, so it’s not a difficult stretch to say that if the boys grew up in NJ or NYC, they’d have been able to go there as kids, too. Pennsylvania in general is teeming with heritage railways and train history (thank you, PRR and DL&W, and a lot of other long-gone railroads) so if you’re like me and you like railroad history there’s a ton of places to visit. I actually did a recent swing through the state with my dad (that Submas came with me on in spirit via plush form because I wanted to take funny photos), and in less than two weeks I’ll be on the footplate driving Strasburg #90, my first crack at driving a steam locomotive. I am either really cool or a massive nerd, you decide.

What if I have more specific questions?

Ask me! My inbox is always open and I am always SO happy to talk about train shit or go and get you photos or footage of specific stations/locations/trains/etc. I’m riding the rails underneath NYC all the time, so I’m more than happy to provide anything you might need!

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saltyyyymilk

5 years ago

Cells at work spoilers Chap 10 part 1

Can we just discuss chapter ten of the Manga? (Photos are from the manga)

It started with the usual husbando saving his waifu- I mean wbc (white blood cell) killing the germ that rbc (red blood cell) encounter.

This picture right here is my favorite cause in this three panel you could see rbc being aware of her flaw might get someone hurt. Wbc in the other hand even though he was hurt he didn’t stop to help rbc being lost.

The next page is me screaming on the top of my lungs cause one how determine rbc is to not get lost, two how understanding or respectful wbc is to her passion and lastly he immediately came when he heard rbc screams. Also i love how rbc caught the CO2 box.

CAN I JUST SAY WBC AND RBC ARE JUST COUPLE GOALS OR SOMETHING? Wbc was worried so he followed her but in secret cause he didn’t want to disrespect her wishes to do it herself. Plus when rbc was yelled at wbc flinches, its like he felt what rbc was feeling ( or just cringes)

Could i just have a wbc in real life, i mean an actual humanize version of wbc cause dang i need someone to be that supportive in my life. Look! He is encouranging her from afar, even though it looked weird from the others (other rbc)

Lowkey protecting her is just.. MY HEART CAN’T TAKE IT! Rbc remembering where wbc first saved her (total bs cause that was not the first *winks*) and blushing just killed me.

I’m as proud as wbc is proud for rbc. I’M PROUD FOR BOTH OF THEM! Lets appreciate how he gave a speech like dialogue to killer t cell about how awesome his waifu- i mean rbc was?

Rbc crying tears of joy made me tear up a little, i love this blood cell.

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saltyyyymilk

5 years ago

It’s the boys! I think I might start posting more Underswap stuff :3

Don’t repost my art.

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saltyyyymilk

3 years ago

wip (??) and a doodle

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saltyyyymilk

5 years ago

I have given up I’m gonna try again tomorrow but for now I’m just gonna read lemons until I fall asleep

There’s More Evidence That Ingo’s Going Home Than Not

This is what I think, backed up by in-game evidence.

Also, let me preface this by saying that this is for those of us who want reassurance. I ask that you do not reblog this and add your theories that he won’t go home, and absolutely do not DM me your theories or headcanons as to why he won’t. I’m not interested in them, especially not from people I don’t know, and I will block you if you do this. I’m serious about this because my friend and roommate, 1863-project, made a post seeking reassurance and asking for spoilers confirming he went home, if they existed, when it leaked a few weeks ago that Ingo would be in Legends: Arceus the way he is. Instead she had strangers DMing her their theories without asking, which was rude and the exact opposite of what she’d asked for. Submas has helped both of us in different ways; neither of us wants to see Ingo trapped in Hisui. Spoilers start here.

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