Hello! I'm Rooks, a freelance artist! 27! All my art is done by hand, be it my sketches, linearts, landscapes, needle felting, sculpting, stained glass, ceramics, and beyond! I do touch ups with GIMP, but try to keep it minor. My primary focus is on character design, which I personally have the most fun with. I do take commissions and currently all my slots are open! More information to come! Currently using some of my older works and photos to get the ideas going, not even the best of stuff, not until I am able to get some good software, scanning equipment, and watermarks.
Simon wakes up after being found by Grace but he isn't violent or scared. He's completely shut down. The trauma he went through was so intense that his brain had to shut down to protect him. He was already mortally wounded and his body needed to save all the energy it could to survive. Simon is awake, his brain is still active but he remains otherwise unresponsive.
It terrifies Grace because he and the Eridians can treat someone's wounds but they can't fix this. This is way out of their field of expertise; it's up to Simon if he's going to wake up. Grace spends most of his time talking to Simon, hoping that if he keeps engaging him, it will stimulate his brain enough to wake him up from his vegetative state. He talks about nothing and everything. He makes jokes and wishes to hear a laugh in return.
One day, Grace realises that Simon is sweating and when he puts his hand on his forehead, he's burning up. He's running a fever. Before he can panic, he sees Simon squint a little. Grace stops moving and breathing. It looks like he’s thinking about something and it's taking all his strength.
"M–m o m...?" he barely manages to whisper.
His voice is so rough that speaking must have been painful. His eyes are moving a little but are still glassy. His voice was so tiny, fragile and sounded fearful. Grace tears up. Because he found a man who was maimed in the worst way possible. So traumatised, his mind had to pull the plug. And his first words were him calling for his mom like a lost and scared child. He doesn't know him or what happened to him but the cruelty is unbearable. What kind of monster breaks someone to this degree? He doesn't cry but it's a close one. He manages to stop his fever.
He speaks again a few days later. It's to his mother again. He's softly crying and apologising on loop. Grace waits to see if it will pass and when it doesn't, he decides to act. He whispers soothing words and runs a hand through his hair, hoping it will work. The man eventually calms down and falls asleep. He hates what hurt him more and more every day.
He wakes up more and more often. He can answer basic questions now but he's not all there yet. Grace is pretty sure he only understands half of what they are saying to him. His days can be summed up to sitting up, eating a little, staring at the wall, passively looking at Grace while he talks, eating again and going to sleep. That's it but it's progress. He remains hopeful. It stays like this for a while.
Until Grace is startled awake in the middle of the night by a blood-curdling noise. His brain is screaming, distressed on a molecular level, reminding him that humans are animals. He runs to the man's room. Here on the ground, the man is crying with such anguish and rawness that it's gut-wrenching. The sounds are being ripped out of his throat between violent sobs. Hearing a human being in such visceral pain feels like torture. These are the sounds only someone dying would make, even if Grace knows deep down that this isn’t the case. He's probably suffering so deeply mentally and emotionally that his brain is interpreting it as physical pain. It's filling him with the urgent need to help, fix or protect. It's triggering his instinct in a way it has not been in a while.
He wearily steps closer to him, checking for any signs of aggression and when he sees none, he crouches and puts his hand on his shoulder, carefully. When he sees no aversion to his touch, he slowly tries to hug the other man. The cries don't stop but they aren't as loud. He buries his face in Grace's shoulder and they stay like that until it's soaked with tears. Eventually, the crying dies down to little choking sounds as he tries to stop crying, holding onto his shirt. He's like a heartbroken child desperate for affection and reassurance.
Grace holds him tenderly and tries to curl himself around him, to hide and protect him from the rest of the world. After what feels like hours, he eventually starts to fall asleep in Grace's arms, utterly exhausted. When his eyes are about to close, he whispers, with a raw throat.
" 'm sorry.... Thank you..."
And he's asleep. Who apologises for crying? He doesn't answer because if he speaks, he'll cry. Grace doesn't move or leave. He'll stay with him for as long as he needs him to. He looks so young and at peace, sleeping in his arms like that. Grace has to remind himself that he's against violence, no matter how much he wants to avenge the man he's holding.
you'll get the urge as an artist or a writer to say out loud the things you're worried about "the proportions are off" "kind of out of character" "i'm not good at summaries" "didn't get as much detail as i wanted" "i made a mistake and here's how" and that's the self-conscious part of your brain telling you "it's bad and if you don't tell them you know it's bad then they'll think you're stupid" but you've got to ignore that little voice and pretend you think it's good or else that little voice is going to ruin your life
Some of the best advice I have ever gotten was from a creative writing professor. She said never apologize for your work. Never critic it before someone else does.
Her reasoning was you are the creator. You made your work from nothing and can see all the flaws and seems and holes. But your audience may not see any of it. Maybe they will; maybe they won't. But if you TELL them about the holes and the mistakes and the problems....they will 100% see them. So don't tell them. Don't sabotage yourself just because you think you're not good enough.
thinking about how when you experience a lot of shame in your formative years (indirectly, directly, as abuse or just as an extant part of your environment) it becomes really difficult to be perceived by other people in general. the mere concept of someone watching me do anything, whether it's a totally normal activity or something unfamiliar of embarrassing, whether I'm working in an excel spreadsheet or being horny on main, it just makes my skin crawl and my brain turn to static because I cannot convince myself that it's okay to be seen and experienced. because to exist is to be ashamed and embarrassed of myself, whether I'm failing at something or not, because my instinctive reaction to anyone commenting on ANYTHING I'm doing is to crawl into a hole and die. it's such a bizarre and dehumanizing feeling to just not be able to exist without constantly thinking about how you are being Perceived. ceaseless watcher give me a god damn break.
I absolutely have the head canon that Grace VERY occasionally loses his memory due to the whole 12 years of space sleep thing. I also feel like he's someone who forgets about his own issues until they're punching him in the face.
SO I JUST REALIZED A THING, which is not much in regards to canon but, fodder for whump or theorizing:
That's a rather neat placement for Simon's back injury. That's on his lower ribcage and I've already mentioned bruised/fractured ribs, but you know what else is in that general area?
Fucking kidneys.
He fell a number of feet right onto his kidneys, at a pretty significant speed. It's safe to bet that he has some blunt damage to the old beans. Best case scenario, it's some mild bruising and he can walk it off (mostly). Less better scenario? Issues with blood filtration, including hydration control and, you won't believe it, issues with red blood cell production.
I love that the main critiques of iron lung are that it was "confusing and hard to follow" my brother in christ you are watching a story from the perspective of a man going slowly insane in a submarine
I've had this blog for four months. That's a lot of people so fast!
To watch the Iron Lung fandom be birthed in front of my eyes, then to find out I'm helping the people in this space learn the art of writing, makes my soul so happy. After writing school, I lost my spark, but you guys stubbornly dragged it back out with the outpouring of love you give every day. Thousands of notes in a day, every day without fail, is something I've never been able to fathom. Wow!
While you're reading this, please consider donating to the non-profit disaster relief volunteer group, Cajun Navy. They rode into the Hurricane Helene 2024 disaster zone on horseback (there were no roads) to deliver MREs, medicine, water, and to facilitate search and rescue of missing people. They personally delivered rations and crucial medicine to me during this time, so I can vouch for their legitimacy. They are still out there doing debris clean-up operations and looking for our neighbors to this day.
If Markiplier can do a blood drive, then I'm pushing disaster relief with my platform, because I've lived the apocalypse, and so have many others, and I believe we can do so much more good together, as a fandom whose source media is about a world in scarcity crisis. We can put that passion back in places where it counts.
So, with all my heart, thank you, and please share if you can't donate.
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