#bellectra

She is one of the coaches of the Wembley Park production and is a sleeper car. If you go to wikipedia and read the plot summary of StEx, there is a Belle the Sleeper Car and that is not this Belle. Nor is she Duvay, the other sleeper, or Belle, the Bar Car. See they cut the original Belle from all productions in 1992 and she hasn't been seen since, but then in 2017 they put on a workshop for making changes to StEx...that's a different rant. But in the workshop they replaced two of the coaches, Ashley and Buffy with Belle and Tassita. Belle specifically takes Ashley's place, who is a character that they tried to replace with Duvay for two tours from 2012-2013, but didn't continue on beyond that, as the Bochum production (the longest running StEx production) didn't replace Ashley with her when they did their production changes to reflect those made by the UK Tour. The reason they've been trying to replace Ashley is because she's a smoking car, and they keep wanting the show to be modern so they want it to reflect how smoking cars aren't used anymore, as well as the fact that everyone knows that smoking isn't good for you. To go back to the workshop, not much is known about Belle in this one aside from her replacing Ashley and that she is a completely separate character to the original Belle. She's basically the pilot version of the Belle from the Wembley Park production. Bochum implemented the changes presented in the workshop into its production in 2018, but didn't take the coaches and instead replaced Buffy with Carrie the Luggage Van and Ashley with Belle the Bar Car. No one likes that she's named Belle and we all just call her Brandi. The fandom has a tendency to rename the post 2018 versions of characters, and I'm not really for it, but this one I fully get because, why oh god why is she named Belle, it's not even an alcohol pun! Anyways, jump cut to 2024 the Off West End production at the Trabadour Wembley Park Theatre. This one followed the workshop and used Belle the Sleeper for their Ashley replacement. But now there's this problem within the fandom. You see, she goes from being a character that existed in the workshop that for the most part only major StEx fans would know about to a prominent supporting character in a currently running production. Meaning that there are now two Belle the Sleepers in the shows history. Something like the wiki has an easy time of differentiating the two by just adding that she originated from the 2017 workshop to her page title, but no one's gonna just refer to her as that when talking about her. A few fans tried doing the fan rename thing, but none of them stuck for two reasons. One, no one could really come up with one that really worked and two, Wembley Park brought a lot of new fans to StEx. As a result there's a lot of new fans that know her as the only Belle and just refer to her as Belle the Sleeping Car, same as the original. The AO3 tag is a mess, don't get me started. However, there is a solution all the way back in the very short lived Broadway production. There was one line that they changed for Og Belle's song where they refer to her as "Memphis Belle" and the wikipedia refers to her that way. Meaning that the fandom kinda follow suit and refer to original Belle as Memphis Belle to differentiate between the two. Personally I do do that, but I also refer to this Belle with "Wembley Park Belle" when I tag her in posts, just for even more clarity.

Well that was a long preamble of complicated history regarding to how this character came into existence. But, Belle in the show!

Like I said, she's the Ashley replacement, but there were changes regarding her role due to the changes they made from the workshop. I have negative feelings about the changes, but that's beside the point. Belle makes an appearance during "Rolling Stock", the opening number but doesn't do anything prominent till "Crazy" where she and the other coaches sing back up for Rusty's introduction song. She stands up to the diesel engine's to leave Rusty alone, but does agree that he probably won't do well in the race. Pearl then makes her appearance and she's officially introduced. She doesn't put up with the sexism (coachism? coachogyny?) of the engine's and stands up for Pearl and the other coaches. When the engine's leave she leads "I Am Me", the shows girl power anthem. She stays pretty much on the side or as ensemble for the most of the rest of the first act, with the only exception of her racing with Silver Bullet during the first qualifying heat of the championship. Act two she watches Greaseball ditch her girlfriend for Pearl, and the ensuing reaction of Dinah being heartbroken over this. She and Tassita then do back up and support as Dinah sings "U.N.CO.U.P.L.E.D.". She seems pretty happy at the idea of Dinah ditching her girlfriend all together, but is interrupted when Electra's components come and tell Dinah about Electra wanting to race with her. Belle tells her not to go with, but Dinah decides that she'll race with Electra, unless Greaseball changes her mind. Belle decides to give up on trying with Dinah after that, and is once again sent to the ensemble for the rest of the show. And that's Belle.

In regards to personality, she doesn't really have the most going on. I would say she's the least thought out in regards to the Wembley Park coaches, but I also say she has more than Brandi and Carrie from Bochum. She's very kind, but independent, and wants the other coaches to not rely on engine's for anything, which she encourages both with Dinah and Pearl. She's also pretty no nonsense as evident by how often she doesn't put up with the engine's shit. Similar to Tassita being the world's sassiest coach, but more aimed in a specific direction.

I have some headcanons. I often believe she has narcolepsy, as she will randomly fall asleep while standing up in the show. Which is also just a fun thing I like when the sleepers get to do. The other is in regards to some family headcanons I have. Cross-production time, I think Momma is with Memphis Belle, and their kids are Duvay, Rusty and Belle. Sometimes I refer to Belle as Belle Jr. as a result of this headcanon because I do think she is named after her mom. The other idea I've been playing with is that she and Rusty are twins and the kids of OLC Pearl and Rusty. Obviously she's still named after Memphis Belle, because OLC had Belle, but in an honorary way, rather than a family name way.

This fandom content is kinda low in general when it comes to ships and headcanons regarding her. That she's related in some way to Duvay or Memphis Belle is probably the most consistent. There was a time where fans were doing the rename thing where I saw Barbara as a suggestion but I don't think anyone has really gone with that. As well as her not having much fan content for her. Like, her most popular ship is with Orange Flash and that's more based on Bethany Rose-Lythgoe (First Cover Belle) and Marianthe Panas (Orange Flash) doing a lot of tiktoks in costume together, rather than anything in the show itself. And then the rest of her more popular ships I feel are based on vibes or aesthetic. Like with Slick or Lumber. The only one that really has a basis in canon is SleepingBullet, and that's just because they were racing partners, which the fandom enjoys pairing up.

Overall I do love her, even though she doesn't have the most going on, and the fandom doesn't love her enough. So...

This is Electra:

They are a diva bitch who has never done anything wrong in their life and I love them! ...yeah, they're my favorite, okay!

Electra is one of the only eight characters that has been in every production of the show (before anyone gets on me I'm not counting the original workshop as a production). Their gender and sexuality are a big part of the character and how they are portrayed can vary. Canonically they're bisexual as evident by their flirtations with both male and female characters, as well as their song being titled "AC/DC" which used to be common slang for bisexual. While being portrayed by male actors and referred to exclusively with He/Him pronouns until 2024, early on Electra would be covered by women. However, after the song "Make Up My Heart" was added to the show, Pearl's interest in Electra became explicitly romantic rather than just for racing and while they seemed to be okay with letting Electra be flirty and bisexual, they wouldn't let the same happen for their lady lead and all future productions would keep him male. In 2019 the casting call for Electra described him as being "gender fluid/androgynous" and the in 2024 Electra was officially made non-binary and referred to with They/Them pronouns. Maybe one day someone who's singing range is Contralto, Mezzo-Soprano pr Soprano will play them again someday.

Their story is often dependent on what changes they've made to StEx for various reasons, but the first act has stayed largely the same. Electra arrives for the world championship about halfway through act one, disrupting everyone with an electric charge and joined by their components. They make a big show with AC/DC pulling everyone in with an emphasis on Pearl being entranced by them more than anyone else. They're then interrupted by Greaseball and the two get into a standoff. Electra is meant to race with one of their components but they get a headache and instead have Purse make an offer to Pearl to race with her. She accepts and the two place in the finals. When Poppa/Momma wins a place in the finals and wants Rusty to race in their place, Electra appears with Pearl which is what spurs Rusty to say yes at the end of act one. Act two beginning with the Rap and both Greaseball and Electra going head to head in explaining why they're the best and going to be the one's to win. Pearl then ends up deciding to race with Greaesball in the final race (I'm not getting into the convoluted-ness of this) and Electra then asks Dinah to be their partner in the race. They then get a call from CB who tells them that he's going to crash Rusty, which Electra does nothing about. Rusty is then crashed, which calls for a re-run, and Dinah decides that she's done with racing and dumps them. Electra then races with CB in the final race, which results in them CB and Greaseball crashing. They all live and are offered to be converted to steam at the end of the show.

There's changes based on productions. Like, once Make Up My Heart was added to the show Electra would appear to Pearl when the song was over to make the offer to race themselves this time. In the OLC Electra would still crash but instead of singing One Rock & Roll too Many with CB and Greaseball they would instead sing No Comeback as a diva fit and skate off before the finale. Certain productions would make the choice to have CB offer to crash Greaseball instead of Rusty, which if I am being honest I think has made more sense in terms of Electra. Like, I don't think Electra even knows who Rusty is half the time. Then in the New Starlight Express (a rewrite of the OLC show that changed in 1992), they drop the cheating plot all together, so Electra just crashes with Greaseball. And then in the second north american tour they kept CB but cut the part where Electra knows about the cheating subplot. So when I say they literally did nothing wrong, there are at least two productions where they literally did nothing wrong. And then the Wembley Park changes where everything CB does is done by Slick, plus this thing where they use the magnatism to get Dinah to race with them...I don't like it, it's done about as well as the actress playing Dinah makes it, and ultimately doesn't make any sense from a character standpoint at all. (Plus does Dinah dirty in the process, but boy could that be a ten part video series on how badly this show treats Dinah most of the time.)

They've also had a lot of looks over the years, and while I do have problems with the Wembley designs (mostly in how the same everyone looks) I do like Electra's. Though I do miss the mohawk.

Unfortunately I think Wembley Park simplified their personality a bit. Like I said, they're a diva bitch, but I think it took out a lot of other stuff, like them being as openly self centered, but at least was able to still keep a lot of their arrogance. I also wish they let Electra have a diva fit over loosing Pearl like they do in some other productions, versus in this show where they just have Dinah be their partner without even noticing...literally, they're not onstage for this part. Sorry, I like Wembley Park, but I also have so many issues with Wembley Park.

Generally the fandom surrounding the Wembley Park Electra feels like a whirlwind in some ways. Especially regarding shipping. As prior to this production Electra's most popular ship was with Greaseball, but Wembley Park gender flipped Greaseball to a woman, making her and Dinah's relationship a lesbian one, and boost that in popularity. Personally I do think that if they kept Greaseball male but with the same staging it might not be as popular in this production either way. One of the bigger appeals of that ship was how in each others face the rivals staging made them, and Greaseball and Electra are pretty distant from each other for most of this version of the show. So with Greased Lightning pretty much considered off the table by most fans, this leaves Electra with other options. People went back to other productions and there was an increase in Electra/CB shipping though more with the Bochum versions, not this one. So a lot of people started getting into my favorite StEx ship Electra/Components! Yeah it's not Bellectra, it's Electra and their four to six partners depending on how many of the components you want to include. However, because Wembley Park didn't do a very good job of giving the components individual looks or personalities, most of the component shipping was just with Killerwatt as he was the only component they let do things of note. Ironically he's the only character they never say the name of in the show. Then there's Electra/Porter which started because Lewis Kidd who plays Porter would often blow a kiss to Electra during their meeting with Slick. I have seen boots with Porter played by other actors, it's not always there. It's one of those ships where I get why people ship it, but at the same time I'm like "Okay, but how does it have that much fic?"

And that's Electra. Or as much as I feel I need to say about Electra to actually start talking about my rarepair.

When I say that Electra and Belle do not interact in the show, it's not 100% true, just by virtue of the fact that none of those interactions extend past, Belle participates in AC/DC.

She gets pulled in by Electra like everyone else in the trainyard and the choreography requires her to circle around them like everyone else, but it's really nothing of note. Then obviously she's against Dinah racing with them, but nothing else...Except for this!

So during MegaMix, which is the curtain call, there's a part where they end up holding hands! It also means there's a series of frustrating picture on instagram where it's just either Belle or Electra but you can see the others hand or part of their body.

This is hell to me.

I know what you're thinking. "RAB, you ship these two characters whose interactions in the show can basically be summed up as, she was a back up dancer in their number and didn't want her friend to race with them, all because they hold hands during the megamix, which isn't even actually canon?!" No. Because I started shipping them before I realized that they held hands during the megamix.

See, what happened was that I like to come up with ship names for everything. No one in the world could ship something, and I'd still want to know the ship name for it. So I was doing that with StEx and I got to Belle and Electra. Electra ships are kinda easy to come up with ship names for so it was as simple as "Bellectra". Though I also considered "Morning Storm" simply because Morning has sort of been Belle's half for symbolic ship names and Lightning was used for a couple of Electra's ship names, but now there's Blue Lightning and that makes it all messy. It's a whole thing. Anyways, I started thinking about them for more than five seconds and just went "wait, there's some potential here". The potential in my brain was pretty much, what if they hooked up after Electra recovers from their crash injuries. Then it went, well what if it was like, a fling and they were just having some fun before Electra went home. And then my brain went actually, it would be better if they were in love goddammit!

So basically yeah, I saw them accidentally falling in love when they didn't mean to. I could also see Electra just being impressed by how much Belle doesn't take bullshit from the other engine's and like that she's able to do that. Which also means I can see the components liking her as a result of this as well. Especially because I refuse not to be doing Electronents at the same time. I like to make the polycule bigger. As for why Belle likes Electra, I can see her being just as impressed as anyone else by them being a superstar racer, but also not willing to deal with all the fake showmanship that would force Electra to be more real with her. And she likes that she can be the one to do that, as well as them seeing a lot of the potential that maybe no one else does. Also because I headcanon her as Rusty's sister, the is so much fun drama I get to write.

Aesthetically I also really like them together. Silver works with pretty much any color, but Electra also has blue within their design as well, which works well with Belle's purple. There's also silver in her costume, so there is sort of a matching thing going on.