This two-for-one deal was more than Hiei bargained for.
We’re super close to the bonus round, so I will thinking about what that’ll be. Thank you all SO MUCH for the fun comments and tags! It has been a blast reading them, and I loved drawing Hiei for you guys!
“My son, those stars are already dead. Mere ghost light.”
Okay. So. Long post so most of this will be under a cut (I’m not completely cruel), but I wanna talk about this, because it’s something that I frequently see people get wrong about the Iron Lung universe, and like I’ve said before, space is the one thing that will forever put me in “UHM ACKSHULLY ☝️🤓” mode, so that’s what I’m about to do. And you all have to listen or I’m going to be very upset.
THE STARS ARE NOT “GONE” FROM THE NIGHT SKY IN IRON LUNG.
Yes, I hear what you’re all gonna say - “but Sammy, that’s LITERALLY the main plot point! The opening line in the movie is ‘the stars are gone’, what are you talking about?” Please allow me to explain, because for this to actually make sense, y’all need to understand just how unfathomably big space is.
The closest star to Earth is, obviously, the sun. The sun is approximately 8 light-minutes from Earth, meaning that it takes the sun’s light just over 8 minutes to reach us. When you look at the sun (which you shouldn’t do btw), you’re seeing it as it was 8 minutes ago, not what it looks like currently. So, if the sun were to suddenly just vanish Quiet Rapture style, we wouldn’t know it was gone for over 8 whole minutes. For 8 minutes we’d have no idea anything had even happened. Life would continue on as normal.
Now let’s look at the second closest star to Earth. That honour goes to the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, which lies about 4 light years away from the sun. So, it takes light from Proxima Centauri over 4 years to reach us, and vice versa. If Proxima Centauri got Quiet Rapture’d right now, we wouldn’t know it was gone for 4 years.
Are you starting to get it now?
“We can all still see them!”
~10 year old Simon was very much right to say this! Space rambling aside, it’s a very astute observation that points to the intelligence and curiosity of his character, even at such a young age (as clearly no one else is questioning why the stars are still visible while The Father is preaching about them being gone).
So let’s look at the Quiet Rapture from the perspective of ~10 year old Simon, watching it happen in real time.
Let’s say Eden’s space station is just outside of Mars’ orbit (which is fairly accurate to the movie based on the flashback scene). And then BOOM, Mars is gone.
Several minutes pass. What’s that? Earth is gone too?
A few more minutes and it’s Venus, a few more and it’s Mercury. In 13 minutes, the sun is gone too. In a little under 5 hours, Pluto is gone, and you’re starting to think this is a pretty widespread thing. The whole solar system is vanishing before your eyes.
But then it seems to stop there, and you’re thinking, well that’s it then, the whole solar system disappeared and we’re all that’s left here on these space stations, but I guess the rest of the universe is fine, right?
But The Father is saying the stars and planets in the entire galaxy - possibly even the universe - are gone, and it doesn’t make sense. The stars are literally right there??? Nobody else seems to question it. You get weird looks when you try to argue about this because nobody talks back to The Father, and he just laughs coldly and gives you this vague explanation with “ghost light”.
(And the worst part is that he isn’t even wrong).
Four years pass and there’s a new surge of panic. Proxima Centauri* and it’s two companion stars, Alpha Centauri A and B, have just vanished from the sky.
*Bear in mind Proxima Centauri isn’t actually visible to the naked eye (more on that later in the post), so whoever discovered it was gone was most likely using a telescope, if any of those survived the Quiet Rapture. Alpha Centauri A and B are visible in the night sky, so you would be able to see them blink out in real time in the Iron Lung universe.
It only cements The Father’s authority over Eden because somehow he knew they would. He knew they were already gone to begin with.
It’s slowly starting to get to you too, because as the years go by, more and more stars wink out of existence, silently taking their planets with them…
But while I was thinking about all this (read: stewing about all this because I’m not gonna lie, it’s a pet peeve of mine in this fandom. No hate to any of y’all, I’m just a huge nerd and probably undiagnosed with the ‘tism so I get a little uppity about these things, hence this entire fucking post), I started to wonder what the actual timeline of the stars disappearing would look like, so I did a little research, and it’s gonna blow everyone’s minds;
Here I’ve compiled a list of all the stars within less than 20 light years of Earth and the solar system, complete with some color coding based on stellar type. (The metric of 20 light years specifically will make sense by the end of the list.)
❤️ - M class (red dwarf)
🧡 - K class
💛 - G class (stars similar to the sun)
🤍 - F class
🩵 - A class
🩶 - white dwarf (stellar reminant)
[NOTE: I’m not worrying about B and O class stars because there are none within 20 light years of Earth.]
Additionally, stars highlighted in BLUE are visible to the naked/unaided eye
AQR = After Quiet Rapture
- 1 year AQR
- The sun 💛
- All planets in the solar system
- 5 years AQR
- Proxima Centauri ❤️
- Alpha Centauri A 💛
- Alpha Centauri B 🧡
- Barnard’s star ❤️
- 10 years AQR
- Wolf 359 ❤️
- Lalande 21185 ❤️
- Sirius A 🩵
- Sirius B 🩶
- Gliese 65 ❤️
- Ross 154 ❤️
- 15 years AQR
- Ross 248 ❤️
- Epsilon Eridani 🧡
- Lacaille 9352 ❤️
- Ross 128 ❤️
- EZ Aquarii A ❤️
- EZ Aquarii B ❤️
- EZ Aquarii C ❤️
- 61 Cygni A 🧡
- 61 Cygni B 🧡
- Procyon A 🤍
- Procyon B 🩶
- Struve 2398 A ❤️
- Struve 2398 B ❤️
- Groombridge 34 A ❤️
- Groombridge 34 B ❤️
- DX Cancri ❤️
- Epsilon Indi A 🧡
- Tau Ceti 💛
- GJ 1061 ❤️
- YZ Ceti ❤️
- Luyten’s Star ❤️
- Teegarden’s Star ❤️
- Kapteyn’s Star ❤️
- Lacaille 8760 ❤️
- SCR 1845-6357 A ❤️
- Kruger 60 A ❤️
- Kruger 60 B ❤️
- DENIS J1048-3956 ❤️
- Ross 614 A ❤️
- Ross 614 B ❤️
- Wolf 1061 ❤️
- Van Maanen’s Star 🩶
- Gliese 1 ❤️
- TZ Arietis ❤️
- Wolf 424 A ❤️
- Wolf 424 B ❤️
- Gliese 687 ❤️
- Gliese 674 ❤️
- LHS 292 ❤️
- 20 years AQR (when the events of Iron Lung take place)
- Gliese 440 🩶
- GJ 1245 A ❤️
- GJ 1245 B ❤️
- GJ 1245 C ❤️
- Gliese 876 ❤️
- LHS 288 ❤️
- GJ 1002 ❤️
- Groombridge 1618 🧡
- Gliese 412 A ❤️
- Gliese 412 B ❤️
- AD Leonis ❤️
- Gliese 832 ❤️
- Gliese 682 ❤️
- Omicron Eridani A 🧡
- Omicron Eridani B 🩶
- Omicron Eridani C ❤️
- EV Lacertae ❤️
- 70 Ophiuchi A 🧡
- 70 Ophiuchi B 🧡
- Altair 🩵
- EI Cancri A ❤️
- EI Cancri B ❤️
- GJ 3379 ❤️
- Gliese 445 ❤️
- 2MASS J15404342-5101357 ❤️
- GJ 3323 ❤️
- Gliese 526 ❤️
- Stein 2051 A ❤️
- Stein 2051 B 🩶
- Gliese 251 ❤️
- LP 816-60 ❤️
- Gliese 205 ❤️
- Gliese 229 A ❤️
- Alsafi 🧡
- Ross 47 ❤️
- Gliese 570 A 🧡
- Gliese 570 B ❤️
- Gliese 570 C ❤️
- Gliese 693 ❤️
- Gliese 754 ❤️
- Gliese 908 ❤️
- Gliese 752 A ❤️
- Gliese 752 B ❤️
- Gliese 588 ❤️
- Eta Cassiopeiae A 💛
- Eta Cassiopeiae B 🧡
- 36 Ophiuchi A 🧡
- 36 Ophiuchi B 🧡
- 36 Ophiuchi C 🧡
- YZ Canis Minoris ❤️
- GJ 1005 A ❤️
- GJ 1005 B ❤️
- HR 7703 A 🧡
- HR 7703 B ❤️
- 82 G. Eridani 💛
- Gliese 268 A ❤️
- Gliese 268 B ❤️
- Delta Pavonis 💛
By the events of Iron Lung, only 107 stars (excluding the sun) will be undetectable by any telescope.
Of those 107, only 22 stars (excluding the sun) will have visibly disappeared to the unaided eye.
So that means that by the time Simon is being sent down in the SM-13, the solar system and 22 additional star systems are visibly missing. There are many more that would no longer be visible with a telescope, and thousands more will follow in the next few years, decades, centuries.
Unless, of course, the Quiet Rapture is somehow reversed, but that’s a post for another day.
All of my incessant ranting aside, I’m really glad that Mark and David made ghost light canon in both the movie and the game, because not only is it scientifically accurate, but it’s also something that makes the Quiet Rapture that much more terrifying. It’s not something that happens quickly in the blink of an eye, it’s slow and it’s long and it’s agonizing because you already know what’s happening, and you already know it’s too late, so all you can do is watch the sky as one by one, over years and years and years, the stars disappear, the sky gets darker, and the universe seems to get smaller…
{@ctrl-shift-alt-9 I’m tagging you bc this is in-depth worldbuilding stuff and I feel like you’d be interested in it :3}
pretty nice honestly that ao3 sends you a copy of your work if you delete it. like, i already have it and i’m sure that’s true of most authors there but! it’s a nice feature
I have made additions to the Simon injuries masterlist thanks to further community contributions. We got some insights on theoretical treatment via someone with EMS training! Very exciting.
Absolutely awesome work. Thanks to everybody helping out.
This version of the transcript was handwritten and edited by myself over a week after being tasked by Markiplier's deaf community. It took twelve hours and many cups of coffee. This is not the transcript from Fandom Wiki. It is from-scratch.
This is NOT the official transcript, either. Please do not get that confused. I spent many hours slowing down audio to interpret tones due to the involvement of requested tone tags. It's eons better than what we had previously, but it will never be truly correct due to the nature of it being unofficial, even though I tried my absolute best. This is meant as a free writer's resource and does not accrue any revenue.
This version includes:
Tone tags for nearly all lines.
Italic stressors for easier tone interpretation.
Sound effects, music indication and descriptions, and basic contextual movement beats.
Indication of slurring, stuttering, muttering, etc. that was not previously included on the YouTube closed captioning (I literally counted every single stutter for accuracy.)
Extra dialogue from whispering voices that were audio enhanced and then interpreted (best I possibly could.)
Access to open annotation and commenting.
I hope this helps the community out! It was a labor of love.
"This person has a secret onlyfans!" "This artist does NSFW commissions!" "This author writes porn on the side!" I cannot begin to tell you how swag and awesome that is.
What if Xie Lian, 'Fu Yao', and 'Nan Feng' went on another mission that took an unexpected turn?
Inspired by this meme -> https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/james-franco-first-time
When i saw it I immediately thought of Xie Lian and how chill he is in near death experiences and of course how his 'assistants' would react to that is also very funny xD