His eyes glow in the dark, like a cat. He’s part angler fish and eel (yes he’s got the antenna thing, transmasc!simon beloved)
the eridians gave him a prosthetic arm, I don’t know how those work so like don’t pay too much attention to that
he’s also got extra teeth and a bit more ribs than usual, it’s not really noticeable but it’s there I promise, his hair also fades into a dark red near the ends, and one of his iris’ is slightly redder than the other
Grace and Rocky come across a dark patch of space containing a very confused space station and the fucked up blood moons
Grace ends up parlaying with the COI and essentially sending them directions out of the dark patch and informing them about Astrophage and how to use it as fuel and how it’s eating the stars. As an act of good will and to further prove that he is an ally and telling the truth, he sends the information with a spare water recycler the Hail Mary had just incase of the first one breaking (Grace trusts Rocky to fix and maintain the main one on the ship)
It works! Ally aquired! Yippee!
The COI pack up their stuff from the blood moons and cancels the sending convicts down (they found the black box on the surface btw) and tentatively follows the Hail Mary’s directions to the (fading but still present) stars
Curious about what the COI told them about the blood moons, Grace and Rocky go fishing once again to confirm if the ‘blood’ is some form of astrophage (it is but very mutated and bad)
Swimming around the blood ocean is a freshly mutated Simon trying to find the surface with great difficulty until he senses the sampler on the chain and grabs it to use it to guide him upwards but it suddenly is pulled up into the Hail Mary with Simon instinctively clinging onto it for dear life
White the chain is being pulled up Grace and Rocky FREAK OUT cause “oh god we actually fished out an alien! What do we do what do we do????”
Said ‘alien’ is fine but passed out from the speed and sudden temperature and air pressure change. He is kept in the airlock with oxygen and a prayer that that is what he breathes
He’s fine, new crewmate aquired!
The arm that got ripped off got reattached by the blood into a powerful fish tail (maybe cause the blood though it more useful or just didn’t know how human limbs work we don’t know) he can hold and pick things up with it after some practice
He has gills and can breathe in blood water and air although blood feels gross to breathe and air makes him thirsty easily. He sometimes wears a wet shirt to keep his gills hydrated, Grace is incredibly normal about this
Rows of teeth on one side that keep falling out and growing back when he bites something too hard (like Rocky’s space ball when Simon tries and fails to fight him)
whenever a tooth is lost Grace swipes it to study it all excited like a kid in a candy store
Has X-ray vision he can turn on that gives him a headache but lets him see through the blood ocean and some walls with green flashes of light
He refuses to use it on the ship until 100% sure it won’t give anyone radiation sickness
(Grace is the only one who can’t see through walls lol)
Has a small anglerfish like lore that glows red and flashes green when he uses his X-ray powers. It brightens and dims based of his mood which he’s pissed he can’t control
Has big ol claws and Webbed hands and feet that are stained or coloured blood red, Simon hates his hands and how they remind him of the metaphorical blood on them… also he can’t wear gloves anymore so yeah, not his favourite
Grace thinks Simon is the coolest thing he has ever seen and is constantly caught between wanting to treat Simon respectfully like a person to make him feel better and wanting to study him and science nerd about his body’s abilities and powers and how they work
When food runs low on the way back to Erid, Simon stops eating and goes into hibernation. Grace and Rocky monitor him and Grace gives him wet blankets to not dry up and an iv of fluids. When they arrive and they get scienced food sent up via the space elevator Simon wakes up like he just had a nice nap and wasn’t asleep for months with little to no food, Grace cries his eyes out with relief
I think a smooth carapace is more off-putting than a shell with wear. Tattoos and crevices and bumps and layers, jewelry and their equivalent of dermal piercings. I think that the more interesting textures and surfaces to echolocate off of the better- 'visually' appealing not by colors or fashion but by textiles
Simon as a mutated fish creature that can survive the hot dark and high pressure environment of swimming deep in the blood ocean, can actually spend a bit of time outside the dome on Erid with an oxygen mask, a light and something to cover his gills
Grace is extremely jealous and demands detailed explanation of what the planet is like
Simon: “Uhhhhh it’s real hot.. everything feels heavy? Lots of rocks everywhere?”
Grace: “Come on I need adjectives ADJECTIVES”
Simon: “…dry?”
Grace: “AND???”
Simon: “Smells like ammonia”
Grace: “… It’s like I’m there -_-“
Later Grace sends Simon out again with a human camera to film things… the camera melts almost instantly.
Iron lung mer Simon au/story that came to be on a delightful walk in the sun :)
THE MER GUARDIAN OF THE BLOOD TREE
This is a long one so under the cut it goes!I’m not a writer so I just kind threw my thoughts into a post so yehaw, bear in mind I haven’t actually seen the movie in theatres cause I’m very sensitive to horror so my knowledge is from tumblr posts, the movie plot wiki, game video essays and various theories
Feel free to use my au thingy for your stuff but credit this post and share it with me cause I would be so very flattered to inspire and I wanna see more feral Simon/convict <3
(spoilers for iron lung)
Simon gets turned into a monster by the blood ocean as we see but the glass in the Eden tree seed pendent cracks and it absorbs the nutrient rich blood and explodes in sudden rapid growth into a mighty bright red maple tree that gets nicknamed the Cain tree
The tree growth from the blood is so rapid that even when it seems to stop, it’s still growing at the speed of bamboo so you can constantly hear creaking when you’re near it
Enough of the blood ocean was absorbed to reveal some islands that COI can investigate and make a base on to monitor the tree and the blood ocean levels
Ava who only just survived the failed rescue mission (they call her the cockroach of women you just can’t kill her) finds a smaller fucked up blood monster that is surprisingly humanoid, lurking around the tree base watching the scientists with suspicion. Upon closer inspection she realised with horror that this is what remains of the convict she sent to die, reanimated and corrupted by the blood ocean into something feral and monstrous.
mer Simon seems feral and dangerous, even snatching one of the workers on the tree base who was trying to collect a bark sample. The team notice in horror that the blood ocean level rises some when mer Simon drags the body into the ocean
The team think he’s trying to feed the blood ocean but he’s actually protecting and feeding the Cain tree, that blood ocean is what’s feeding it after all and it’s gonna run out one day surely
No one is allowed to attempt to approach him without a harpoon incase of another… incident
Simon is still in there somewhere, back to his old butcher job ways, feeding his precious tree with bodies but the last shred of sanity in him has him watching and waiting to only kill those he deems worthy of his wrath
The sap from the tree is very rich in nutrition and calories but drinking too much induces madness that makes you want to kill yourself on or near the tree. mer Simon then gets to collect the body and add it to the blood ocean
Mer Simon always finishes off his victims on land before dragging the body to the blood ocean despite him being much stronger and faster in the blood, perhaps a mercy on his part to make his victims not suffer
Mer Simon does not like the scientists tapping his precious tree but the sap is incredibly useful and nutritious in small doses so they have a prison warden bring down another convict to offer the mer as a sacrifice to bargain with him. He watches and listens from the blood as they explain the deal and the bound convict begs for his life, he slowly emerges from the blood ocean towards the pair and looks over the offered convict before slashing his bounds with his claws and pouncing on the warden instead, killing him quickly and effectively. Ava does not give the order to shoot or stop this
The spared convict gets hired as a worker on the base keeping an eye out for the mer and doing whatever odd risky job the scientists don’t want to risk doing but he is alive at least
The convict tries talking to the mer and was surprised (and naturally terrified) when it emerged from the blood ocean to chill and listen to him. After hours of the convict talking, telling stories and thanking the mer for not killing him, the mer slowly as not to startle him, gives him the remains of the Eden glass token the maple tree burst from, connecting the dots of where the tree came from and upon sharing this with the scientists, the convict gains their respect and gratitude (still gotta work but the team are nicer about it and use his name ((I don’t know what that name is yet but I’m open to suggestions))
Ava tries talking to the mer to apologise to Simon incase he’s still in there and to try and get him to do some tests or gather samples on him to see how he became like this. She finds that he is very radioactive and that touching him without protection is a no go. Despite that he oddly enough seems to want to get close so she dons full radioactivity protection gear and manages to get “blood” and plasma and skin samples from the mer while he curls up on her lap while she (awkwardly as she’s not the most affectionate woman) pets his hair to distract him. She tries to give him food rations but he refuses, either because he doesn’t eat human food, he doesn’t trust it or he selflessly doesn’t want to take the limited resources when the blood ocean seems to keep him alive
After taking the samples to the lab, the team discover that he is made of the same stuff as the blood ocean and scientifically shouldn’t be alive with how much radiation he is full of but somehow that same radiation seems to have repelled the rest of the blood ocean from absorbing him fully into the hive mind. (that combined with his drive to survive and force of will perhaps? Who knows)
His left arm seems to come from the body of someone else, upon doing dna tests the arm got traced back to the previous convict sent down in the iron lung (the same one who left Simon the note and Eden seed pendent) it functions as an arm perfectly fine and was warped into a mer creature like the rest of his body, it just bends at a slightly different angle as if it was attached quickly and blindly by something much bigger
Floating in the the blood ocean is the black box attached to the life vest, upon Ava befriending him he disappears for a few days and returns with it to give as a gift! The team rejoice and seing the black box fixed to the lifejacket with Simon’s dagger hilt, Ava breaks down at the full realisation of Simon’s Sacrifice and thanks the Mer, desperately hoping that Simon in in there enough to hear her gratitude
Jack the welder escapes from the med bay he was put in after getting blasted with radiation (he has radiation poisoning and some kind of deadly cancer) to find and cuss out the mer he’s heard about for closure before he succumbs to his condition. He uses crutches and a chair to get to the blood ocean and upon the mer poking his head out the blood ocean by the shore, Jack ‘lets the sopping wet bastard have it’
Mer Simon watches and listens unreadingly from the blood as Jack cusses him out until he gets bopped on the head with one of the crutches. The Mer attacks
Mer Simon gets in some bites, Jack gets in some punches, they end up tussling until Jack passes out (from radiation or exhaustion he doesn’t know) the entire scuffle was seen and recorded by the people in the base and they send the convict over in radiation protection to break it up/retrieve Jack to put him back in the med bay
By the time the convict arrives the Mer was looming over the unconscious Jack chewing on him but scatters when the convict arives
They bangage up and scan Jack in med bay while he very dramatically recounts the tale of his fight with ‘the feral beast man’ and the doctors are absolutely flabbergasted! Not by the story, they saw the fight and know Jack got his radiation poisoned ass kicked, but at the scans showing that despite him taking in more radiation, he is by some miracle of science, cancer free!
The team theorise that perhaps some kind of makeshift chemotherapy happened from the radioactive mer bites but they are all very confused.
Jack rings the bell they have on the ship and in the distance the mer listens.
After resting and the radiation poisoning fading with help from the doctors, Jack returns to the blood ocean shore to declare to mer Simon that they can call it a draw
Mer Simon hisses at him
Mer Simon has Fins and gills and powerful muscles for swimming through blood with relative ease. Can crawl and jump on land but is seemingly bothered by being out of the blood ocean for too long but seems able to breath just fine on land
Many Sharp teeth and an unhinging jaw with rows of more teeth like the eel
Red pigment on mer features but human parts are mostly human colour, if a bit blood stained and scarred from the painful transformation
He’s unable to talk but can make noises, point to things and press buttons to communicate eventually. Seems able to understand others but a bit slower to understand complicated instructions (or bored of long winded explanations it’s hard to tell)
They one day find him on shore investigating one of the computers and pressing buttons seemingly at random. Ava shoos him off incase he breaks or deletes something. She sees that he’s added to the captains log she was going to write for the day and out of sheer amusement she reads what he wrote:
————
Captains log | day 2753 | Cain tree base
FSGCDHVHBBCBN?/(£((;&(,(£(321)&£
H
JJGGJ&):?£&&
UUUUUUUUUYFGGUIIEFJIYDFGU(:£’bd
GGHVHJGVHJKKBBVSSSSNIIAMKONSSSSSSMON S IMON. SIMON
———-
Simon is in there.
After getting him to understand that it is not safe to touch him or be close to him without radiation protection he starts hanging out near where they keep the safety suits when he wants attention or if he has something to bring them from the blood ocean (usually a piece of iron, glass or computer parts from a ship but sometimes it’s something gross or terrifying like a giant bone with an even bigger bite taken out of it like it’s a cheese string to remind them what’s down there)
A bored worker who got dog vibes from mer Simon (who is a deadly, terrifying killing machine don’t forget) tries to play fetch with him by throwing something into the blood ocean that Mer Simon retrieves cause he was feeling helpful but when it gets thrown again and he catches on to the disrespect, a severed arm is added to the blood ocean and a new rule is added to the COI Code of conduct [DONT PATRONISE THE DEADLY BLOOD MERMAID]
As the COI continue their work and gain more of mer Simon’s trust and cooperation, they set him up with an old keyboard and cracked monitor that wouldn’t be too missed if it broke or had to be recycled. He only occasionally bothers typing on it and for a long time it’s just keyboard smashes and his name but he slowly seems to practice and remember words and how to type them, although it often takes him a lot of tries to get it right and the keyboards back space doesn’t work. This has a bonus however in monitoring how good his mental faculties seem to be working in this state. the convict one day sits with him and essentially reminds him/re-teaches him how to type and spell. It takes him a while but eventually he is able to share his thoughts and knowledge with the team in broken words such as:
———-
TREA TREE SAPP BLOOD BAD KILL YOU DONT TAKE
EDIN EDEN EDEN HOME EDEN HOME MISS HOME EDEN
NOT HURT TREE TREE LAST EDEN TREE MINE NEED SOIL NEED BLOOD LIKE EDEN SORRY
SORRY
DEAD CROO FGSGDFG CREW DEAD CREW SENT DOWN IS BIG MONSTER BLOOD EEL MONSTER EEL MONSTER TALK TO ME DONT TRUST EEL MONSTER WANTS MORE CREW TO JOIN MONSTER
BLOOD HUMAN HUMAN BLOOD OSHIEN VC DDF TY FGG OCIEN);??,((? BLOOD OCEAN OCEAN IS HUMANS
————
The team are confused and shocked by all the things mer Simon is able to type but for Ava the most shocking thing he ever types happens when she sits with him one evening to talk about the mission and her regrets and the impossible task she has on her shoulders and how very sorry she is that things didn’t turn out better for Simon.
Mer Simon leads her to the keyboard and types
————-
FORGIV FORGIVE YO HFVF YOU
I FORGIVE YOU
———-
He dives away into the ocean and Ava for once lets herself cry…
The next day Jack teaches mer Simon how to spell swears and insults.
—————-
FUCK YOU GUY IM NOT A DOG KILL YOU KILL YOU ARM GONE NO ARM HAVING BASTARD FUCK YOU BITCH
FUCK YOU JACK WHY YOU WELD WITH NO GLOVES ON YOU CRAZY BASTARD YOU TASTE LIKE SHIT FIGHT ME
FUCK THE IRON LUNGE LUNG IRON LUNG COFFIN WHO MADE IT SUCKS AT MAKING THINGS NOT KILL PEOPLE
SORRY ABOWT ABOUT RADEATIO(:6;;;((
RADIATON>#%^>%%%
BAD LIGHT
DIDNT KNOW SORRY
FUCK THE IRON LUNG NO MORE IRON LUNG FOR ANYONE AGAIN OR I FEED THE TREE AGAIN FUCK THAT
Makes his own soaps and shampoos, the fur shampoo he uses has purple tint dye to keep his white fur perfectly white
Pansexual and polyamorous
Doesn’t get jealous of people much at all but gets INCREDIBLY jealous of objects.
His castle has a hidden library and in the library is a loose brick that hides a single romance fiction book (he has no idea why the library had this book among the informative books he was supposed to read but he can’t bring himself to get rid of it) the book is about a princess trapped in a tower who falls in love with the dragon that guards it and it is gay AF
Susie finds it and Ralsei is HORRIFIED but Susie is just like “FUCK YEAH DRAGON YURI” and steals it while Ralsei sweats and pretends he hasn’t read it 36 times
Doesn’t like kids at all but lancer slowly grows on him
He’s gnc male but also a little on the bigender/genderqueer side but represses it out of guilt
Lancer lovingly calls Ralsei his ‘boy sister’ before Ralsei even came out to himself, just based on vibes
In the light world his vision is much worse as he has albinism induced light sensitivity that gives him low vision problems walking around in the daytime. Kris helps guide him places sometimes which gives Kris species euphoria being his unofficial seeing eye dog (therian Kris peak)
His vision is much better at night and in the dark but still not great even with his glasses
Absolutely LIVES for cuddles and any form of touch but after a while he gets overwhelmed and splats facedown on the floor like in the pc version mike fight
Drools in his sleep and sometimes also when getting pet or scritched for a long enough time which he is mortified by but he can’t help it! After his long isolation it feels just too good and he can’t get enough bless him
Paints his horns and nails pink but they are naturally black
He files down the tips of his horns and nails to appear less threatening but leaves his fangs which are REALLY sharp
He had a teething phase where he would bite and chew on the castle walls, it looks like general wear and tear of an old building to everyone else but nope! it was a cranky Ralsei chomping on bricks!
Has a hard time telling the difference between romantic and platonic feelings
Is very easily converted by Noelle into a huge Christmas fanatic
Toriel would absolutely LOVE HIM
Ralsei and Berdly would bond easily as Berdly loves info dumping about video games and Ralsei knows little to nothing about them or how to play them and wants to learn all he can. A truly symbiotic relationship
Decided since Ive been working on my style more I thought I'd work towards a much better design that I like. And look at him!! My darling!! I wanna put him in more outfits so uh, look out for that.
I decided to make his eyes smaller because I think he's far sighted, so when the scene where susie takes his glasses happen his eyes are bigger haha.
I just finished the other free commission too. A lot of thanks for this person as well, really appreciating for them reaching out to me and helping me prmovating my commission!