“The Girl On The Bridge… She’s Playing A Lullaby For All The Sleeping Trains Of This Town.”

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:

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!

Have an adorable child Underfell Frisk. (I’ve noticed I based my Underfell Frisk’s personality off my OC Nene, they have the same feel)

Don’t think I’ve had an art block this big since years ago. Insanity thy name is Nuvex~

I’m still drawing but whenever I work on my comics I just melt into a puddle of self pity and procrastination, lovely stuff I tell ya.

So, sorry for the long wait on new comics! Hopefully this will be over soon.

Still enjoy all this random content!

i think they have different tastes in music.

part two to this

WHO MADE THEM BRITISH

Gotta love me some good RBC x WBC content

I love how there’s dozens of other cells on this literal battlefield and these two only have eyes for each other

I imagine the rest of the immune cells just let RBC go ahead to meet up with her bf

Good strong bf assuring his bae

he’s so concerned

WBC ONLY EVER DOES HIS LITTLE HAT TIP THING AROUND HER I’M YELLING 

THE WAY HE LOOKS AT HER?!?!? they didn’t need to animate this but they did are we not blessed

that blush tho

two hat tips in one episode??

look at them in the background and how some of the other neutrophils are like *eyes emoji* I bet you a stick of gum that the immune cells already think they’re dating

EVEN BETTER, WE GET THE BLOOD CIRCULATION EP NEXT EPISODE AND I’VE NEVER BEEN MORE EXCITED

find someone who looks at you like wbc looks at rbc

Imagine being the first one in the Pearl clan to have a pokemon battle with Ingo. Or even just see one. Like idk, maybe he's picked up Machop, gotten his hands on some pokeballs from a wandering trader & has been useful around the village with it and for some reason he & Irida have a battle.

And Irida tells her Glaceon to head out onto the arena like normal but then you look over to Ingo. He's posing, he's got an intro speech, he's pointing, he's got one hand on the brim of his cap. He turns, ominous look over the shoulder & tosses the ball straight up in the air. You can practically hear the theme music. Imagine the absolute cognitive dissonance.

The people there have barely seen Pokemon battles outside of being attacked or watching wild pokemon fight & here's a goddamn professional battler doing a whole routine, coat flaring. Also he's one of the most skilled trainers in Unova and brought a Fighting type against an Ice type. Unless Irida's Glaceon is tough as hell (and it isn't) or Ingo's Machop is very underlevelled, Ingo's the one who wins that fight.

Here’s a list.

What’s it for? yeah.

Ingo Confirmed Canon Information - Bad at facial expressions but good as vocal expressions (his face looks very neutral even when he sounds excited) - Speaks very loudly, has no indoor voice - While this is more obvious in the Japanese games, Ingo speaks in a overly polite/formal way - Yells “BRAVO” when anything smth he finds exciting happens - Left handed Manga Depiction - Appears to be easily frustrated when losing battles - Emmet’s impulse control through brute force, will simply grab and remove Emmet when he’s being too abrasive - Repeats the name of the trains destinations in the speaker after Emmet does the first announcement. Maybe this is just a thing trains do but it’s important to me. - More expressive than in the games (not by a large margin) Pokemon Masters - Seems to have an overbearing sense of responsibility(?) - Hisui is not the first time he’s been transported into a different universe for unexplained reasons. - Does not seem to be aware that his face doesn’t show the emotions he’s feeling. - Most of his conversations are about trains and rail systems. Emmet Confirmed Canon Information - His face is always very expressive but he speaks in a monotone way ( he will look very excited and yet talk in a very neutral way) - While this is more obvious in the Japanese games, Emmet speaks in a more informal way than his brother - Gets very serious while battling - Right handed - Starts the majority of his sentences with “I am Emmet” - Says “very” as “verrrry” - Likes winning more than anything else - Prefers double battles

Manga - Will loudly announce he is going to eavesdrop on your conversation as he walks towards you - This depiction of Emmet appears to generally be louder and more energetic - Does this weird stiff walk a lot - Mainly does the location announcements on the train speakers. Idk how you call them.

Pokemon Masters - Really looks up to Ingo - Prefers the rules of a double battle - Puts a great deal of importance on safety - Seems to have a thing with combinations; he states multiple times that he loves combinations when it comes to pokemon battles and takes great interest in the sync pairs system. - Mentions Ingo a lot - Considers him and Ingo as “each other’s closest rivals”

【BROTHER!】

This is fastest I’ve ever churned out a comic, and it was fueled by needing to see Emmet ride on top of a train thats on fire. Fandom said Emmet gets to be unhinged, and i said “say less” lmaoo

I just need them to reunite, I’m begging.

Bonus dumb thing: