I realized today that the reason I love showtunes so much is because I’m autistic. Showtunes don’t usually bother with overly complex metaphors, they’re part of a set story so it’s really easy to understand the context, and theatre professionals tend to actually enunciate when they sing so listening to showtunes isn’t an auditory processing hell game of What The Fuck Is Happening Now? It’s like. Autism heaven music.
To all Bloodymary enjoyers: Simon IS NOT an engineer!
In fact he's not even a mechanic, so consider scrapping that headcanon unless you wanna give him a whole different backstory!
Iron Lung spoilers under the read more but I bring some evidence
In the movie, Simon's first moment in the submarine (SM-13) involve him looking over the control console, and then going through some folios available to him. The very first one he picks, one with quite a few pages, is an instruction manual for operating the sub.
He looks at the cover for a whole two seconds before giving up. He doesn't even bother.
(yes the gif has a weird loop don't worry about it)
The only instruction he does bother with, is the next folio with One Page on it, and all it depicts is the panel at the back of the sub, and a single arrow going "CAMERA". He verifies it works and gets to piloting the sub. The controls are pretty simple, he just rawdogs it.
Later on when the sub's engine has gone offline due to some, err, rough ridin', he finds a crawl space under the floor of the sub and goes down to find some way to revive the engine. When he finds only the black box mechanism (at first), he gives us a lovely piece of his mind.
Not that we needed more proof that him and technical shit don't go together, but there you are. He went down there without even knowing if there would be anything to help or fix the issue. Dumbass extraordinaire <3
Now you may think, oh so he doesn't do hardware but he can do software! Wrooong, he cannot. Later in the movie the computer console is activated and is attempting to download files but the clearances have been rescinded, Simon can't access anything. This is what he tries.
He tries "HELLO" first, yes, and when the other three attempts that aren't even basic console commands fail, he tries asking nicely.
So nah, this man doesn't know much about machines or systems besides some very surface level stuff. He's very capable of learning in a pinch, but if he has a choice then he would very much rather not.
david szymanski knowing about bloodymary is hilarious to me. imagine you're an indie horror game creator and a crazy popular gaming youtuber plays your game and loves it so much he turns it into a movie, starring himself. despite being self-funded and produced, it achieves a level of success and earnings so big there are articles written about it challenging hollywood. then a few months later a big hollywood movie comes out also set in space and now a large portion of fan content for your game is ship content of the youtuber's character and ryan gosling.
I love how the biggest space guys on tumblr right now, Dr. Captain Ryland Grace and Simon the Convict, are played by Mark “send me to space I don’t care if I don’t come back” Iplier, and Ryan “oh my god please don’t send me to space. Why are you sending me to space?!?” Gosling.