3WSR is a roleplay/story based on Thomas & Friends. However, most of the series focuses on its signature characters, the Colorfolk, a group of magic-powered individuals who either defend or invade Sodor. It gets weirder from there. Expect No Fourth Wall and a lot of randomness.
It can be read here.
Sodor: Lost Tales contains examples of the following tropes:
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Parodied. Apparently they aren't the actual sewers, though.
- All There in the Manual: Many supplementary stories have been written to flesh out the backstories of various characters, factions, and locations.
- Artifact Title: 3WSR stands for "Three Word Story Revolution". It started out as a game under that name on a different forum. When it became popular enough to move to its own forum, they kept the name.
- Ascended Extra:
- Man In White, Man In Silver, Man In Gold, and Man In Yellow had much smaller roles in their debut.
- Suleiman and Balor have become very prominent recently.
- Author Avatar: The Authors themselves appear as characters later on, although recently they've only appeared as jokes or for meta discussion.
- Blessed with Suck: Man In Capri can use magic- but whatever spell he casts traps him under a fishbowl. During the flashback, it's implied that his entire lineage has this problem.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: At one point, Man In Infrared breaks a literal fourth wall, but Goes Mad from the Revelation when he looks across it.
- Demoted to Extra:
- The Sodor characters (minus the TUGS and Numbered Diesels) have been much less prominent lately.
- Most of the colorfolk are out of focus for extended periods of time. Virtually everyone except Man In Steel is susceptible to this.
- Since the VEC has so many named characters, only a few are in focus at a time. Inferno is a noteworthy example.
- Retcon:
- Man In Pink's backstory was changed from just a lonely wanderer who was related to Tom Tipper to a fierce rebel who was kicked from his adoptive gypsy family after coming out as trans, and now seems to have been retconned again into him leaving for a different reason.
- Basically everything to do with both the old and new Woman In Orange.
- Thomas Gold's backstory and what he was doing after the Bronze Mage arc were both hugely retconned for the Steamlin Arc.
- Billy being converted into "ROBOT CHARLIE 2.0" was also retconned by him becoming Steamlin instead.
- Running Gag:
- One of the Colorfolk's spells turns people's pants into rockets. Naturally, it's their most used spell.
- Man In Capri, no matter what spell he tries to cast, ends up trapped in a giant fishbowl.
- Someone will say something totally random, then quickly follow it up with "Just making sure you're still awake".
- Man In Baby Blue being made fun of for his name.
- (After something strange happens) "Huh, my horoscope was right."
- Trying to guess Diesel 11's real name. Eventually revealed to be David D'levin.
- The "Gift Of Carrot" and "Tale Of Tail". Due to how much foreshadowing surrounds it, may double as Chekhov's Gag.
- Percy Silver being incompetent.
- Hessenhessen and Hossenhossen's quest to "slay the demon engines".
- Shout-Out: Not only is this series set in the Thomas and Friends universe, it also references a number of other franchises.
- SOM's prison is named Impel Down, there is a fabled island called Elbaf, and various minor characters are named after characters from One Piece, as well as a handful of other animes.
- Randomly inserting Darkwing Duck into a scene has become a running gag.
- Metal bands and lyrics get namedropped weirdly often. There's even a character named Anthrax Slayer, "The Megadeth Pirate Of The Metallica Seas".
- A minor character is named Deathnote.
- There was a minor character named Dr Michaela Quinn, after Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Then her first name got retconned to Michelle and she was revealed to be a GOD spy, increasing her prominence significantly.
- Take That!: Towards a lot of disliked Thomas and Friends characters and episodes.