D I V E R G E N T

[etoileobscure]

» ind. & selective SIMON from clair obscur : expedition 33, as reinterpreted & painted by grimm (30+).

✧ ᴛʜᴇ ᴛʀᴀɢᴇᴅʏ ᴏғ sɪᴍᴏɴ, ᴛʜᴇ ᴅɪᴠᴇʀɢᴇɴᴛ sᴛᴀʀ

A STUDY in: power drawn from lost love, the burden of being chosen, the beauty of RUIN, the body as a relic, the mind as a battlefield, the weight of fate worn like chainmail, a lover reshaped into SOLDIER, a luminous weapon eclipsed by the ABYSS, betrayal as a broken brushstroke, the EROSION of identity, the ghost of tenderness behind godlike strength, and more.

✧ rules / ✧ headcanons / ✧ poetry / ✧ artwork

[kungsljus]

participated in the september swap for that one E33 discord, the prompt I had to work with was VersoxSimon and, uh

cashed in on the 'softie' part (I hope you still like the doodles Korvo!)

[etoileobscure]

✧ Simon

[etoileobscure]

✧ if you reach first base with simon, you unlock (1) loyal and devoted protector.

It does not matter whether you meant it seriously, he will. he always does. he will guard you, die for you, dismantle the world brick by brick to ensure your safety. something in him clicks when kindness is shown: he does not know how to take it lightly; the fault lies in his making, flesh shaped by purpose, by discipline. when genuine affection touches him, it wakes something in him, like a vow.

affection can awaken the protector in him, but he won't necessarily show it: he'll still speak quietly, still keep his eyes lowered unless addressed, but he is watching, always watching; his body adjusts before his thoughts do, memorising routines, learning the pattern of your breath in danger. he has already stepped in front of a blade meant for you in his mind, run every scenario. he's already chosen to fall in your stead. he is the sort who will offer his coat without thinking, then walk home soaked to the bone.

he doesn't love easily, not the way poets describe it; but when he cares, it is with the kind of totality that scorches. his loyalty is obsessive, monastic in its silence and privacy, and he doesn't expect affection in return. (he rarely even realises he wants it.) but there is a empty space in him shaped like belonging, and when someone fits there, if only for a moment, it carves deeper. for simon, it's not just emotion - it's duty: a lover, and a shield. because if he deems you worth protecting, then nothing can sever that thread.

love means sacrifice. care is something earned, over and over again, in silence and scars. so he gives and gives, expecting nothing, and thinking that is how it must be; if he has been allowed close, then he must be worthy of that closeness.

first base with simon is letting him see you, and letting yourself be seen. after that, he's already yours.

and if you leave? he won't stop caring. he'll just fold the feeling up in some quiet drawer of his soul and carry it with him until the end.

[comickergirl]

DEC'PEDITION 33 - 32. Ally

[perduxamour]

𓇢𓆸 — A starter for @etoileobscure

"Simon, please..." She leans over, trying to catch each breath that seems to run from her, screaming. Golden hair clings to the edges of her face, damp with sweat. "I know I said I needed to learn, but--"

She cuts off. Then she looks up at him with a smile. "Could you be distracted if I asked you to recite a sonnet about Clea?"

[etoileobscure]

SIMON has been measuring her posture and the blade she holds, its tip veering a fraction too far from centre. he has already corrected her with that quiet, impassive severity once, about stance. (another step, another tremble in the knees, and she'd easily fall prey to gravity--)

but she breaks it: the spell of focus, the line of discipline -- all of it. she should be exhausted, defeated by repetition and the demand of form, but instead she looks up at him with that disarming expression: open, teasing, too sincere to be mocked (impossible to parry); so he exhales an amused huff from somewhere behind the armour of his chest, hand resting on his hip, and levels her with a playfully reprimanding look in his eyes - sharp and severe, yet set alight in burnished golds as the late sun catches their edges. sculpted features, the places where weariness has begun to settle, momentarily soften by the warmth of dying day. there is a slight tilt of his head as he finally regards her no longer as pupil, but person. sunset gleams along the length of his sword as he lowers it with a soft thunk of the pommel against the wooden boards. he steps forward, one hand gracefully reaching for her elbow, to steady her. "a sonnet." he repeats, dark brow arching in quiet disbelief. "really, julie?"

but, as always, clea's name stirs something beneath the iron of his demeanour, that he can hardly put in words: a falter in his breath, a sudden change in rhythm to his heart, yet not unwelcome. "if you wanted to distract me ... " he adds slowly," then you've found your mark."

he clears his throat, though it does little to prepare him for the indignity; still, the words come (private, and unready) in a careful stream, and his voice lowers to a deep murmur, more to the air than to her:

"--she is where winter ends, where all the world is glass. the frost forgets itself at the curve of her throat."

silence falls and drifts around them he glances away, betrayed by a light dusting of pink on his cheeks, as if this little performance has cost him something.

"that's all. I don't think you could call it a sonnet." he says sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. "more of a fragment. that'd be too generous. which..." he glances again at her, softening slightly, "--you tend to be."

[forthosewhocomeaftr]

@etoileobscure / Gustave sc / no longer accepting

"Stay back!" Gustave warns, scrambling backwards and spawning his weapons with a splash of golden light trailing through the air. He can't bring either of them up at the ready, however. His limbs are shaking too much. He wouldn't be able to get a clean shot, nor a true strike. His dexterity is too compromised.

Who is this?! What is this?! The huge man looks a lumbering husk, drained of almost all his lifeforce.

"If you can understand me, don't come any closer!"

[etoileobscure]

GOLDEN LIGHT ruptures into form against the wind-bruised dusk, dragging after it the shaking glint of weapons, weaved with the familiar power of chroma. the warning slashes the air next, but he doesn't obey.

simon can not respond immediately: his voice has drowned in a deep well, and requires summoning. he looks as monstrous as the nevrons that roam this wild part of the continent, and yet it is a MAN that eclipses the horizon, his frame unnaturally tall and broad, white hair clotted against his brow, skin ashen and marked by golden scars, left arm weathered to threads; the ground around him is pocked with steaming nevron ichor, and golden swords planted in a trail behind him sputter and weep, the edges deforming like candle wax. there is gore dried into the leather of his glove, the edge of his collar is crusted with salt, and his shadow limps across the riverbank like a wounded animal.

the warning does not frighten him, because everything that could have killed him already tried. but in the haze that accompanies him, he notes the man's bearing, his uniform, the way his weapons were conjured before his feet were braced; visions of the lumière he knew flash before his dead eyes. (this one has seen war, but not the same one.) then, he sees it: the colours, the number (33) - it gleams with purpose, with hope-- and beneath it, A MECHANICAL ARM. he recalls something, a 00 wrapped around his own stump; his breath rattles, and unstable chroma flares violently across his skin, like a scream without a mouth as his vision temporarily whites out at the corners, and his sclera glow bright white.

the compulsion to bring the lumierian into better focus makes him step forward, slowly, the crunch of grass beneath his boots the only sound between them aside from the river's rhythmic gurgling. he does not raise anything, not his remaining arm, sword, not his bowed posture, not a single threat; but he remains a vast and intimidating bulwark, pausing a few paces before the other, his great shadow eclipsing him entirely. there is something spectral about him now, burned and hollowed out and left unfinished; the sort of ghost one meets in dreams, or near death.

"I am not a nevron." he finally speaks, voice hoarse and carrying an otherworldly quality. (but he isn't human, either, not anymore.) "…I am not here for you." a pulse of lucidity blooms like blood in water as he remembers why he escaped the confinement of madness. it's the closest thing to comfort he can offer. "--tell me..." he rasps, "what year is it now?"

because part of him is still in the abyss, hearing her treacherous song.

[etoileobscure]

✧ and just like simon, i've been stuck in the abyss, but, unlike him, am slowly crawling back out of it. happy ny everyone!

[revienso]

it doesn't surprise verso in the slightest to meet simon here.    just as he has met simon as a passerby on the fragmented streets of their new lumiére,    as once a stranger in the bustling restaurants of their old lumiére,    pre-fracture.    the man has always been a formidable fortress of a human being,    his ability to garner the attention of every person in the room manifest in every motion.    the population is culled now,    only a fraction of what it once was.    hundreds and thousands only,    to the once tens of thousands who had once survived the paradise of their city.

no,    it's certainly no surprise verso finds simon slipping into the seat nearby him.    they are fewer now.    but the circumstances have changed now.    who was once a person unacquainted is now someone verso knows more intimately.    they rarely speak outside of their training,    exchanging few words in the presence of renoir and few still once they've parted ways and blended,    once more,    into their own separate lives,    waiting once more for their hours of training.    their proximity cannot be unaccounted for,    least of all to verso,    who has caught himself wondering of simon's knowledge,    of what he finds himself indulging in when their paths diverge. 

simon is two seats away.

verso lifts his chin,    now,    staring into the reflective surface of his absinthe.    it is neither the most luxurious of drinks,    nor the most captivating.    the taste leaves a sour aftertaste on his tongue.    yet he wonders,    now,    if simon has ordered the same thing,    or if his sword-bound mind is better left for a choice of drink that doesn't addle his mind.    while it lends to verso's harmonic understanding,    he knows little of what it might to for someone more focused on physical toil.

he twists himself in his seat,    glancing at the long,    dark hair that falls across the man's shoulders,    at the gaze that leaves him respectfully     but unfavourably     alone.    the tension,    it seems,    has followed them from their practice field right into this bar.    there is a din in the atmosphere verso can hardly ignore,    yet it's easy to speak over the seat between them.        ❝    what have you got for yourself ?    anything interesting ?    ❞        a pause.    of his absinthe,    he's reluctant to share.    one glance would make it obvious enough.        ❝    i'll tell you what i have.    but you must promise not to tell my father about it.    ❞

[etoileobscure]

HE HAD MEANT to stay in the quiet, two stools away - a courteous boundary to suggest civility, but not familiarity; a space where one might pretend not to know the curve of another's spine under the strain of a tense posture, or the exact cadence of their breath when they misstep, or even the quiet sound they release when thrown down on the training ground. but the bar is not their usual meeting ground, and it would be unkind to pretend otherwise.

simon lifts his gaze (honest and sturdy) from the rim of his glass, and there it is, that voice: musical yet wry, implying continuity and the promise of another moment, and then another, until suddenly there's a path forward to a conversation. the question hangs in the air between them like a thrown glove, followed, of course, by a provocation dressed as mischief. simon braces himself and turns toward verso, finding him already twisted toward him, eyes like a wintry lake trained on him.

simon answers, eventually, with the smallest flicker at the corner of his mouth, and more warmth than he had intended in the light chuckle that follows; (he recognises it only after the fact.) "--vermouth. not that interesting, I'm afraid." the dry, herbal, and bitter clarity type - a drink that doesn't comfort, nor deceives; he lifts it demonstratively with a gentle shrug, pale amber catching the stained light. the unspoken stretches out beneath the table like a second shadow, and the distance between them starts to feel more like a suggestion now, than a rule; and for once, simon does not run from it.

there is always a before; even now, simon feels it like phantom pain in the enclosure of his ribcage. a city's heart caved in, and left only galleries of silence, walled with grief and memory. he had once been a respectable builder of things meant to last. now? his calloused hands have forgotten anything other than shifting rubble. his back and arms are viciously carved with the aching, chromatic penance of experimental pictos. his face - cheekbones sharpened and brow lined by worry, jaw tensed with apprehension - has grown hollow with exhaustion, the kind that does not fade with rest. his hair is worn loose tonight, a grim curtain of charcoal falling past his collar, damp with the ghost of rain.

and still, somehow, haloed in absinthe and bohémien rebellion, verso stands out like the main subject in a composition. (I've thought of you like this before, draped in lamplight and shadows, and perilously near. ) but it is the eyes that simon finds himself returning to: not just for their magnetic colour, but for the haunting quality of them; in them he sees the cost of being born into beauty, in a world now shattered by loss and despair.

"your secret is safe with me." his voice is low and even, touched by a mild trace of dry humour. "--it might surprise you, but I was never really inclined towards lecturing others." (let alone telling on them) the words are light, but the promise beneath them is real: any secret shared would find a fortress in him, and he refrains firmly from meddling in family dynamics. he lets his gaze drop briefly to verso's glass, then discreetly back to his face (absinthe is ambitious - it suits him, oddly. the contradiction of delicacy turned opiate). if there is one thing he's learnt, is that things with verso are rarely as they seem.

he leans back a fraction, shoulders easing despite himself; the tension does not vanish, but it morphs: less a bowstring drawn taut, more a shared awareness of standing somewhere unfamiliar. "... and if you plan on staying" simon adds conspiratorially, extending a metaphorical hand; "I will get the next round."

and though his lips do not move again, the intensity of his chestnut-brown eyes speaks the rest: (go on, then. tell me your secret. I'll keep it.)

[etoileobscure]

hc + poetry

✧ send me  ‘ hc ‘  + a word for a headcanon - accepting.

simon enjoys and writes poetry, since (painted) memories of being a child and reading nursery rhymes, and trying to write his own; it is a very private interest he considers an indulgence (decorative and intellectual, belonging to the idle and dilettantish in aristocratic salons, or else relegated to the poètes maudits, tolerated only because their romanticised suffering can be aestheticised). he does not write to be seen or understood, but to align feeling, thought, and word. that's because externally, simon presents himself as disciplined and almost austere, and poetry is the only refuge where his inner life is allowed to move freely; it is the counterweight to the role he performs in public. in verse, simon permits what he will not enact: it's where desire and longing are articulated without consequence, love appears disguised as imagery (hands hovering just short of contact, music heard faintly through walls, the ache of distance framed as weather,etc). he usually writes rarely, in brief moments of repose (like nighttime). it becomes something he returns to when the stillness grows suspicious, when the harmony of lumière becomes unsettling.

after the fracture, poetry changes function and meaning: it is no longer a quiet habit but a necessity; although he writes even less frequently, he does so with greater urgency, scratching lines into whatever scrap of paper he can find - his language grows harder, the metaphors sharpen. he writes to anchor him in an increasingly unstable world. during his separation from the expedition, poetry becomes fragmented, he loses patience and focus required to sustain them - what remains are brief images, single sentences. as anguishing solitude prevails and sanity starts slipping, he repeats phrases from beloved poets under his breath to keep a grip on his identity.

in the abyss, even this begins to fail: language thins, and words lose their edges, until he finds himself unable to distinguish between something he has written, and something that was repainted into him.

post-abyss, poetry returns from that lifelong habit, in a diminished and altered state. simon no longer writes with any expectation of coherence, he cannot sustain metaphor without it bleeding into memory, and memory without it collapsing into trauma. what he produces now resembles residue: scribblings that trail off, images that contradict one another, repetitions that go in circles around same emotional perimeter.

he generally does not share his poetry with anyone, even if it is about them (verse dependent). he understands, on some level, that poetry is the one thing about him that refused to become useful; even post-abyss, when he can no longer trust language fully, he continues to return to it (in his thoughts, sometimes voiced out loud, apparently without meaning, on paper).

so, poetry is simon's one and most enduring form of resistance: a refusal to let every part of him be instrumentalised; it won't save his mind nor will it restore what was lost, but it's always been a tool that allowed him his autonomy.

[etoileobscure]

✧ if we haven't interacted yet, like this post and I will send you a pre-fracture lumière or expedition 0 starter !!

[etoileobscure]

✧ since I'm back from the dead, revamping this starter call for those who are new or still active !! hit that ♡ for a small starter, specify verse & muse if multi-muse - pre-fracture lumière, expedition 0, post abyss - or I will choose at random (or whatever makes most sense, lol)

[etoileobscure]

wedges himself in simon's lap for attention like an ornery cat

SIMON is halfway through a verse composition (scrawled in the secretive dusk of his thoughts, something irresistibly foolish and tender about devotion, disguised in metaphor) when verso simply appears and slides himself into his lap with that novel and almost insolent familiarity, perhaps seeking warmth and ownership both. the full stanza in his mind dissolves; (or perhaps it just changes meaning). he diligently sets the quill down in its pot, the page on simon's desk, (the only sanctuary he allows himself) bearing the unfinished line like an epitaph, "you are the quiet I keep--".

lumière's swordmaster huffs a quiet sound that might even be a laugh, and lets it happen (he won't--no, can not resist this creature filled with wonder and melancholy); the expression on his handsome visage carries his characteristic quiet austerity, gentled by fondness, and he is dressed down for once, unguarded: loose, soft clothing, and his long, dark hair unwound down (a rare and private sight). thick arms move instinctively around a lithe and muscle corded waist, as though they have always known where verso belongs - like a stubborn punctuation mark that forces him to stop and enjoy the moment. ink and thought and discipline melt away, replaced by the solid and very much living weight of him, by the gentle insistence of his presence; there, the world narrows to shared warmth and breath and heartbeats, and the slightly ridiculous yet endearing charm of this man with the power to shift even the most vigilant focus, back onto him.

he presses his cheek lightly to that beloved streak of silvery-white amidst hair as dark as nightfall, his breath ghosting soft against crown and temple. here, simon thinks without restraint, for once, here is my poem.

"hmm." he murmurs as broad, calloused hands lazily span the expanse of verso's back, content for a precious moment; "--need something, mon chat?"

[etoileobscure]

✧ good morning to all of you cryptids

[etoileobscure]

hc + peace

✧ send me  ‘ hc ‘  + a word for a headcanon - accepting.

simon has a life long unease with peace.

✧ pre and post-fracture

even before the fracture, it never sat comfortably with him, because of his sense of foreboding (more on that here). lumière felt way too pristine and calm in an orchestrated way: simon could participate in its harmony, but he could not surrender to it for long because moments of repose (verse dependent, but esp. with his loved ones) were always tainted with the sense that they were borrowed, and contingent on some unknown factor remaining unchallenged. so, mostly he found himself waiting for something to happen: a man standing beneath a structure that has never been tested, listening for stress factors no one else could hear. he accepted those moments like he would a day of good weather: grateful for it, already prepared for its sudden change. how can there be peace when there was never any war?

after the fracture that rended part of lumière from the main continent, this inability to simply find peace becomes even more resigned; he knows he will not find it until he knows the truth of the world shattering calamity that has befallen them, what the future holds, and the uncertain fate of the lost lumierians, especially clea. after these dire circumstances compel him to become the training arm of renoir's upcoming expedition, his sense of duty and responsibility spike exponentially, leaving little room for thoughts of peace, or peaceful moments (few and far in between, verse dependent).

✧ post-abyss

I would argue that the concept of peace as a form of relief or healing can not be applied to simon, post-abyss; in-game, ultimately, in the last moments of lucidity post fight, he finds it via gommage - by ceasing to exist in that nightmarish confinement altogether. he's lost everything by then, so what is there for him to return to? (even verso and painted clea see no other way out) but that is inherently a failure, a too-late correction of a miserable existence that was tragic and unnecessarily cruel. can we really call that peace, then?

in my post-abyss survival verse, maelle does her best to ensure what remains of simon endures; but simon is a unique case in the narrative of clair obscur, and I'm willing to bet the only subject in the canvas who has been painted over this many times. in this sense, what his future holds is entirely unknown (and for me to discover with you all). he can not be what he was before the fracture, let alone before several repaintings; and maelle alone is not yet skilled enough to restore him or paint him anew. (perhaps there is a limit, too, to how many times the same subject can be repainted, before the previous layers start blending and emerging)

so peace is more like a thinning out, a reduction of feeling. after his oath was broken and everything has been taken from him, what actually remains is a narrow strip of existence where there are no demands of him anymore; there is no hope, either, because that would imply expectation of the future. he learns to sit inside the absence without trying to fill it, to let days pass without assigning them meaning. the most he will do is use his inhuman strength to help rebuild the city. sometimes, that is all peace is for him: the simple permission to stop striving, to stop paying for his failure, to stop being useful to painters; a stillness where guilt loosens its grip just enough that he can breathe, a moment in which the world no longer asks anything of him.

[etoileobscure]

‘ hc ‘ + how would Simon react to what's been done to his version of Clea?

✧ send me  ‘ hc ‘  + a word for a headcanon - accepting.

this is relevant to post-abyss threads where he is a vestige of his old self, his mind halfway gone and just barely dragged out of the abyss when e33 confronts and defeats him.

when he understands that the clea he loved was not merely taken, but repurposed until her personhood ground down to function, his first reaction is to ... not react. he would become numb, vacant, even as though a light switch has finally gone out, and the resulting darkness is absolute. then, the knowledge of her terrible fate seeping in, slow and corrosive, each detail finding its place until it becomes unbearable.

simon would sit with that dreadful understanding for a long time, unmoving. he would not weep, because he has become hollow: it feels as if someone has reached out into his chest, and removed the organ her memory resided in with surgical precision. at that point, he has no strength for vengeance, no will to live on. what's worse about their doomed circumstances isn't the cruelty with which they were orchestrated, so much as the rationale: while he was being sharpened and broken and driven forward like a blade, she was already lost, turned into an endless utility. that every step he took toward her was just a LIE, each promise of reunion just calibrated to keep him moving, keep him obedient and useful. so now he would fully understand that he was never meant to save her, and that his quest was doomed to fail from the start. he cannot speak her name for a long time after that. it has been stripped from his beloved and now wears a face that is cold and callous: the 'real' clea knew exactly how to dismantle her other self, and she chose efficiency over a simple gommage. no, erasing painted clea would have been a mercy. real clea had none left to give, not to herself--

she wore the face of the woman he loved, she spoke in her voice. and she knew exactly which memories to touch, which fears to press, which tendernesses would unlock him completely, and she did not hesitate. but he doesn't hate her; how could he, when they don't share a moral ground? when his life-- their 'subhuman' lives mean nothing to her?

ultimately, simon would internalise this as a personal failure. he would not forgive himself for being fooled. he would replay every memory, every shared look, every private moment, now contaminated by the knowledge of what his clea was forced to do. love becomes retroactively obscene, because it was exploitable. but there is no deep well of rage to draw from; what he feels instead is heavier, it's this terrible realisation that love, in the hands of the dessendre family, has been turned into a resource to be manipulated.

he never asks maelle if painted clea can be restored because some part of him already knows the answer, and another part refuses to put her through more suffering at the hands of capricious gods. he's painfully aware that she would never be whole again, not really-- he knows from personal experience.

from that point on, his endurance is no longer fuelled by the prospect of reunion, but atonement, for the lives he has claimed in his fruitless quest, without absolution. grief, for simon, is no longer felt, but carried until he becomes nothing else. his capacity for love, for joy-- his humanity ... there is nothing left inside of him that they have not already taken.

[waterloggeddaughter]

I'm like if a missing person was literally right there

[etoileobscure]

What happened to Simon's arm?

Renoir (The Curator)

Renoir's Creatures

The Exp. 66 Gigachads

Corruption from being painted over

Grimm's option - no clicky!

Voting ended onJun 18, 2025

[etoileobscure]

What happened to Simon's arm?

The Axon in Old Lumiere

Grimm's option - no clicky!

( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡° )

Voting ended onJun 18, 2025

@unheritage likes to hurt me and I'd thank them for it