a lot of people assume psychosis hallucinations are super intense all-consuming horror movie shit like the memes about the hat man or always horrible debilitating things that make you dangerous to be around
but in my experience 95% of my hallucinations are getting spooked by very clearly hearing someone knocking on my door or calling my name from another room or hearing footsteps walking behind me which are "just" my brain recreating the horror of an abusive childhood
i *have* gotten the "bugs crawling all over me" hallucination once or twice though and yeah that one is exactly as terrible horrible as it sounds AUGH
(not trying to put you on blast specifically, you're just a good example to jump off of)
media and pop culture hypes up psychosis a lot as The Worst That Can Happen out of sanism, so even when you try and filter that cultural bias out you still assume it's based on something
when, no, psychosis is actually very simple: it's just hyperactive pattern matching. it's your brain's signal-to-noise ratio being off balance, it's seeing images in random static. it's not always this special uniquely big thing, it's in fact quite mundane a lot of the time.
no one is immune to psychosis, it's not purely the realm of the insane. anyone is one bad night of sleep or one bad case of food poisoning or one bad fever away from being just like me on my worst days.
and this, indeed, is why solidarity with the insane is so important: you, yes you too, are just one bad day from joining us, and no perceptions of being a "temporarily embarrassed sane person" will save you from the oppression of the psychiatric institution.
I've seen Vampire!Simon running around on here and as the vampire guy I gotta get in on this.
Vampire!Simon who is actually very much dead. He did die during the events of Iron Lung and the thing that survived is just his body with the biological imperative to feed given to it by the blood ocean. Grace rescues him and learns very quickly that the thing he has is just an empty shell.
Simon is cold. Simon does not speak. He does not breathe or eat or move very often unless he's seeking out blood. Which is immediately a problem because the only source of blood anywhere near him is Grace.
The first time he feeds off of Grace is a fight.
Its sudden too, Simon doesn't normally move so Grace isn't prepared when he lunges at him and bites into his arm. It takes Rocky rolling into him (hard) to dislodge Simon and the struggle ends up taking a chunk out of Grace's arm.
Grace becomes more cautious around Simon while something happens below the surface with Simon too.
The blood activates something in him. Simon is still dead, and the man he was before is gone. But Grace's blood is human and that connects with Simon's own biology enough that he starts to act more human too. He starts to blink, he occasionally moves to stare out the window, he touches things to investigate their texture, little things like that.
Its baffling to Grace who is trying desperately to figure out what the deal is with the living dead man on his ship. Like any good scientist, he chooses to run experiments.
Blood seemed to be the catalyst so Grace draws some of his blood and injects it into Simon. Simon of course doesn't react directly. He doesn't move, doesn't flinch, nothing visibly shifts and there are no readings to take because his body is dead.
But he does change, slowly.
The open blisters and wounds start closing, and the fog clears from his eyes. So Grace keeps doing it, every day, he injects Simon with his own blood and monitors the changes.
It takes months, but eventually Simon looks more like a man than the body of one.
He still doesn't talk, or breathe, and his heart does not beat, but now he moves a lot more. There is reason behind his eyes, and intent behind his actions. He is curious, he learns, and he explores. Its not uncommon for Grace to find Simon in just about any room now, silently watching some tiny process that Grace would lose interest in in a few minutes for hours at a time.
Simon still does not recover the man he was Before. He was essentially reborn on the Hail Mary a new type of thing. His body keeps the record, even after its healed with the scars and the pitted marks dug deeply into his skin. The hunger and the need for blood are the deepest physical reminders, and left too long they pull his mind down into a world that is only blood and teeth and pain. Left that way he will become insensate and devolve into a mindless creature bent only on survival and the cessation of its hunger.
Grace never learns this because he never lets Simon go hungry.
Gradually, Simon regrows his personhood. Its the last thing to come back to him, and he doesn't come back the same. He has different pieces to work with this time, and a different environment to build in. Some things are the same, though he'll probably never know that, like his sense of humor (dry and a little bit mean) or his willpower (nothing can take that from him not even death and the rebuilding thereafter) but mostly he's New.
This version of Simon was created by patience and kindness and to no small degree love. (Can be platonic or romantic, but personally I think its Grace's general sense of love for his fellow human, even if Simon doesn't fully qualify) And as a result he navigates his new existence with the same sense of patience and care.
Eventually he extends that to Grace as well. He learns as much about the man as possible, cataloging his reactions to everything he can as well as remembering just about everything the man has ever said to him. Grace has taken care of him, so naturally that means he should take care of Grace. After all there are many things he can do that Grace cannot or should not.
Simon can survive the vaccume of space just fine, so if something needs dealt with outside the Hail Mary, hes on it. He's read everything available on maintenance months ago, he doesn't sleep so he had to do SOMETHING with the time. He can go fetch that sample, no need for Grace to get suited up and go into danger.
Its doing something like this that causes him to get, like, electrocuted or something which they learn has very different effects on Simon than it would a human.
Its not that its painful in the physical sense. Simon doesn't really have bodily sensation like that any more, if he feels anything its dull. Its that for the moment the current runs through him, he can Remember. Who he was before, what happened to him, how he died, all of it. But just for a moment. Barely long enough to glimpse let alone connect with.
Grace hypothesizes that its because the human body technically runs on electricity, and Simon, being dead, does not have any running though him. (This causes Grace to spiral wondering not for the first time how the fuck Simon actually moves and functions if not the human way, which is a whole other tangent that probably consumes the rest of that day. Grace does end up solving that, and finds that its not electricity but the borrowed blood cells in Simon's body supplying him with energy not entirely dissimilarly to how The Hail Mary's engines run on astrophage which is a whole Thing for him. It takes months of blood analysis to be able to conclude this)
Eventually Simon asks (signed, he still can't talk and Grace knows sign due to having had a favorite student who was deaf) if there's a way they can safely electrocute him so that he can solve the mystery of who he was and what happened to him.
Enter the tens unit from Grace's coma.
They hook Simon up to it and Grace gives him one last chance to change his mind, but Simon is set on this. He saw just enough to know this is a bad idea but he wants to know.
They do it and he learns and Grace has to watch as months of progress are lost within the span of an hour.
When Simon comes back up his eyes are foggy and blank again. He looks haunted and he doesn't respond to stimuli. His body is still dead, there's nothing Grace can do to encourage it to help bring his mind back. The best thing he can do is keep feeding him.
Simon doesn't move, Simon doesn't sign, he doesn't blink or breathe or touch anything for days. Its just like it was when he first arrived and Grace realizes how much he's adjusted to Simon's silent presence in his life. How much hes come to depend on it.
So he sits with Simon until he comes back, reading to him and petting his hair and holding his hand. Reminding him that the world is still there when he's ready and able to come back to it. Its slow, it takes weeks for Simon to work through whatever it was he saw, but Grace makes himself be patient, makes himself believe that Simon will come back.
When he does, its barely a twitch at first. He squeezes Grace's hand and the tiny gesture has the man on the verge of tears because he's NOT patient and he's been terrified that this would be permanent. (Bonus points if this is during the Fishing Trip so Grace both has to do a mission Simon would have done if he were Present, AND it results in Rocky being injured and as unresponsive as Simon so Grace is Double Alone and has no idea if either of his friends are ever going to come back to him.)
Simon takes longer to recover this time than he did the first time. Once his consciousness makes it back to the surface again its Different. He flinches when Grace reaches for him even as he immediately settles into the touch. He spends hours staring at the room full of plants instead of studying the ship itself. When its time to feed him, his eyes fixate on the syringe of blood with a mix of hunger and trepidation so powerful Grace can almost taste it.
Grace asks, eventually, of course he does. He's a scientist and a concerned friend, he can't not.
It clearly incites a war in Simon as who he was clashes with who he's become. His present self trusts Grace implicitly, his past self doesn't trust anyone. And its his story that's being told and its his trauma that is being put on display, his world, his fears, his end. Simon wants to tell Grace and he wants to bury it all so deeply inside of himself that it never finds its way back to the surface. He has to make a choice here because he could very much do that. He could become the blank slate imprinted with Grace's image that he'd been up until that point. It wouldn't be hard, if anything it would probably be better for all of them. He knows what he was now, knows the man was far more of a monster than whatever he physically was now.
But Simon wants to live, and if he did that it would be choosing death in the realest sense he was now capable of.
So he tells Grace. All of it. Everything he can remember from growing up on Mars, to moving to Eden, the Quiet Rapture, living through it and the things he had to do in order to keep living, Filament Station, Prison, and finally the Iron Lung. It becomes more and more real for him as he talks about it, the ghost of who he was settling beneath the skin of who he is now. Its not a good feeling, but it does feel right. Like taking off sun glasses and being able to see the world in the right color scheme again despite the light being bright enough to hurt.
He's still not that man. He remembers him now, knows who he was and what he did, but he's changed. Who he became when he woke up in Grace's world does not dissappear, if anything that version helps repair the broken version he rediscovered. He's quieter somehow, doing the great work of healing all over again, reconciling and reworking what he can until he's a third new thing.
Simon is stained in blood down to his soul. Its never coming out, but he can coexist with it now. He is a predator and he has consumed the lives of dozens to continue his own. Thats just how nature works and he will never stop mourning it. He doesn't deserve love but he found it anyway and he will keep it until it chooses to leave him. He is new and he is old, he died and he is alive.
Simon learns to hold the contradictions of his existence without breaking. Slowly he finds solid ground again and begins to rebuild.
Grace watches him do this and cannot help but marvel at the unbreakable human spirit. (Grace does not think this applies to him, despite having watched a man rebuild himself from nothing, grasping at memories that told him he was a thing he could not be and choosing to become more in spite of it. It takes Grace telling Simon his story and Simon pointing it out for Grace to realize they did the exact same thing.)
Whoo! I think I went a little crazy there! And I'm not even done, NSFW from here down.
Anyway, can't forget the horny bits because it is essential to me that after Simon comes back to himself with his memories that he has an aversion to needles. An aversion that Grace can completely relate to, since frankly he does too. They have to be weird about it though, before one of them suggests Simon simply uses his sharp ass monster fangs to just bite Grace. Its also important that no matter where they choose for the bite site the entire thing feels unbearably intimate. Grace cannot stop thinking about how Close Simon is to him, how even a cold dead body feels like a comfort to him because at least its humanoid and moving. Simon can literally feel Grace's heart beating and for the moment they're connected he feels alive too. Which is more than a little addictive to him, and something he hadn't even realized he'd been missing. So he makes every effort to get closer to Grace while he's feeding. Like if he gets close enough he can capture Grace's beating heart within his own rib cage. Simon constantly pressing closer and making little desperate noises while he drinks in Grace's life flusters the shit out of Grace who cannot help his reactions. The man has been without another body he could touch for a so goddamn long it's not even a thought he gets to have, its a physical reaction that does not ask for his permission when he gets hard about it. He doesn't stay that way for long though, between the blood loss and Grace's own over thinking he goes soft before he can get off but it does become a recurring problem.
It takes Simon three days of this to notice. He asks Grace point blank if he wants to fuck while they do this and Grace initially tries to decline. He's just feeding Simon, it shouldn't be sexual and he feels bad about making it that way. Of course he rambles until Simon lays a kiss on him. Its quick and gentle, not intended to tell him to shut the fuck up, more to shock him out of the spiral he's tumbling down. Simon tells him that he doesn't mind feeding Grace's hunger in exchange, which Grace quickly shoots down. He doesn't want Simon to think he's exchanging food for sex, especially given that only one of those things is a necessity Grace does not want to share that kind of dynamic. Due to, once again being functionally dead, Simon does not get hard while he's feeding from Grace so there's nothing to point to to assure Grace he isn't offering just as a form of payment and Grace's self esteem issues are a beast of their own so without the easy confirmation its almost impossible to get the man to believe him.
So Simon goes to increasingly more ridiculous lengths to try to make it obvious that he does in fact want to fuck Grace. Idly nibbling the man's fingertips when they're watching a movie in the don't go crazy room. (How does he always get Grace's hands??!) Not bothering with a towel after a bath. (He will literally walk around naked for an hour or more, seemingly unbothered by the whole ass alien who's now asking questions about his anatomy since Rocky rarely if ever hears Grace naked) Moving Grace bodily if he needs him somewhere. (He's so strong its frankly terrifying yet hes so gentle when he takes Grace by his hips and leads him where he needs him to go and its SO HOT???)
Just dozens of little attacks against Grace's libido until he finally cracks.
Its during a feeding, Simon has Grace in his lap with his lips pressed against Grace's neck in a kiss. He's not bitten him yet, drawing out the anticipation into something that tangibly has next to nothing to do with his need for Grace's blood. He's got his arm tightly wrapped around Grace's waist, keeping the man anchored right where he is, which is straddling Simon's lap with his hardening bulge pressed to Simon's belly. Simon is being as slow and deliberate as he can 'prepping the site' (they learned that Simon's saliva is actually antiseptic so he is actually cleaning Grace's skin to reduce the chance of infection too, he's just multitasking) and its driving Grace insane. Grace has never in his life wanted sex like he wants it now. His entire body is hell bent on that outcome and for once his mind is on board too. The combination of weeks of stewing in his own frustration and the headiness of having someone so unerringly focused on his wants and needs gets to him something crazy. He finally just asks Simon to touch him, which was the only thing holding Simon back in the first place.
It starts off slow, Simon so focused on making it good for Grace without snapping him out of whatever state he's in to allow this to begin with. But it quickly gets out of hand. Turns out despite not being able to physically get hard, Simon is still capable of arousal and watching Grace fall apart on top of him from nothing but fangs and fingers gets him so goddamn horny he gets off from watching alone. Its the weirdest sex either of them have ever had, just Simon drinking from Grace while Grace rode his fingers to climax, yet its the most satisfying too. Grace did exactly what he was comfortable doing, and Simon got to give exactly what he wanted to give with no more being demanded of him. It was much more intimate than either is used to either, since Simon was feeding from Grace they were sharing a life for a moment.
Its a lot. They don't do it every time (having the option for release makes Grace a little less desperate for it and his normal disposition toward sex comes back, which is pretty much just Eh) just whenever the need arises. They do experiment a little however, because Grace will experiment with everything forever. They figure out what sorts of things they enjoy including (always Simon feeding, thats a kink they both relish in, but also Grace getting himself off in Simon's lap is a big feature, Simon feeding from the femoral artery is a whole thing since it means Grace can't get hard but will almost always cum anyway, Grace fucking Simon while he feeds from him however is their collective favorite since it feels the best and sets up a closed intimacy loop between them as well as allowing Simon an easy way to get off too) and what things they don't (Grace doesn't like being restrained and neither does Simon, Simon straddling Grace is kind of a no go like logistically because he's just big enough to make it hard for Grace to move which activates the whole 'no likely restraints' thing, just plain sex without the feeding isn't really enjoyable for either of them, and under no circumstances should Simon give a blow job). It takes them a lot of trial and error but eventually they figure out a balance.
Its the strangest yet healthiest relationship either one of them have ever had and they don't even call it a relationship.
I do love thinking about how Simon is probably like. The Iron Lung universes John Wick. Bro is TERRIFYING.
So with that in mind imagine some random COI or Eden soldier also gets temporarily zapped into the PHM universe and sees this relatively mild mannered guy telling Simon The Motherfucking Butcher to please help move some things to the side so they can sleep on the couch easier.
And Simon fucking LISTENS. He grumbles a little bit but he does it. And then The Guy Who Bewitches Apparently gives Edens Living Nightmare a little pat on the shoulder with a thank you when he's done.
WHAT DID THIS BLONDE HAIRED FREAK DO TO GET THE BUTCHER TO DO WHAT HE ASKS (extended friendship. Thats literally it. And they will never accept that as an answer). Grace does not have 'Scary Dog Privileges' he has fucking CERBERUS on SPEED DIAL.
i love how everyone draw Simon absolutely BEEFED UP like yes.... Give him muscle give him fat he's wonderful and beautiful and dhefiavriagczjgdkdkgsgdkgxxjc
This is an utter crackpost because I like applying my endless character knowledge onto weird situations.
This isn't necessarily a shippy post, more-so a "put the blorbo in a situation and see what happens" exercise for myself.
Fix It HCs: Simon and Video Games!
I just went down a rabbit hole on how video games psychologically affect war veterans on behalf of Simon, for this hyper-niche headcanon-with-logic tangent.
I have seen a handful of people write Bloodymary scenes where Simon gets really into survival horror games, and I just keep thinking to myself... homeboy wouldn't want to play "Trauma Simulator" and risk triggering his own PTSD repeatedly, right? I know some war vets absolutely love militaristic games...
Simon did not love what he did. Simon wanted to be anywhere else.
He'd be good at those kinds of games... at a cost. Because he'd be back there, mentally. Not good for relaxing. Simon is a distractions kind of guy.
Simon would want control and predictability. He'd be playing the most mundane shit imaginable, because he could just shut his brain off for a while, and not think.
Nothing that simulates work, because he did enough free labor for a lifetime, so I think he'd have a chip on his shoulder about stuff like Powerwash Simulator. It would evoke a very serious "ah, yes, more bullshit for me to do" annoyance reaction.
Simon's an exploratory, "get into trouble, test boundaries" kind of dude, so I see open-world being a big deal to him. The tantalizing concept of, "I can go wherever I want" would have him addicted.
I also think he'd enjoy tycoons as a secondary little "I want to feel wealthy. I want to Have Belongings" crack hit, sometimes.
So, what games are predictable, low-stress, offer lots of freedom, don't contain gunfire, don't make you perform a labor task as the main subject, and lets you dragon hoard an inventory?
No Man's Sky (on peaceful. He'd kick ass at the fuel management system and would be filling up a notebook of star charts SO fast. "I get to name a WHOLE planet I found?!" He'd love that shit. He's immediately becoming a GekNip smuggler.)
Slime Rancher (Dude would get lit one day, not leave the laptop alone out of the ADHD jitters, and be like... shapes and colors... holy shit I can extort these little alien blobs for MONEY. OH YEAH.)
Skyrim (I think he'd LOVE feeling like a hero and running around with a greatsword. He's eating upppp the "you're the only one who can save us!" plot to balm his own soul a little bit, plus, no gunshot noises to worry about, and he'd be enthralled with the forested/mountainous map environments. He'd be running around over-encumbered with a grudge against Delphine and YOU KNOW IT. He doesn't trust that woman. Everything he owns is stolen or looted. He has 100 sneak and 0 magic stat. Kills a chicken on accident and dies to the guards. AVOID HERMAEUS MORA AT ALL COSTS.)
Stardew Valley except he does the thing where he utilizes every single square inch of farmland to build a complex and efficient workflow, becomes a millionaire and never once talks to an NPC
Do NOT let this man near ANY games with gambling involved or you will lose him forever. I hear an addiction gene warning alarm in this man and it's LOUD.
The Sims. He'd get way too invested in making a death maze for his enemies in his backyard and learning what Normal People life is like by watching his sims do nothing. It's a taste of Earth and Simon's starving for anything.
A game like Party Animals would take him the fuck out, especially with Grace or Rocky. Fastest way to get him to start screaming.
He'd be a little shit and an annoyance to the game engine. I also think Simon would get frustrated with complex controls really fast, but he's too stubborn to give up, so he'd be sitting there button mashing until something happened.
You ever try to play video games with an annoying brother who's always running in the opposite direction as you on a split screen? He's that.
He doesn't like manuals. Point him in a direction and tell him to start swinging. He'll figure it out!
Racing games too maybe? He's a good pilot and that's not really where the stress came from in Iron Lung. And like. Angry Birds. Or Tetris. I can see him both getting lost in the rhythm of Tetris and playing it for literal hours, and then just the noises the birds make in Angry Birds are funny and hes REALLY good at trajectory based things for obvious reasons.
i love the fact that in this fandom specifically it seems like we all struggle with having so much we wanna make and getting frusterated that we dont have the time/multitasking abilities to make it all
Hey if you See This can you reblog this or comment on this with a character you headcanon as aromantic, asexual, or both. It can be canon it can be founded on absolutely nothing I just need more aroace stuff on here #yay
Thinking about these tweets, n like... On the one hand, I don't think Andy Wier knows about us. Or if he does, he doesn't give us any thought. I don't think Andy Wier knows or cares what a fujoshi is, and even if he did, I don't think he would spend a fraction of a second compromising his incredible intellect and brilliant vision (sarcastic, derogatory) trying to stump us or spoil our fun.
On the other hand, I do think it would be very funny if guy who wrote "two people who are so completely biologically incompatible—inasmuch they will die if they have prolonged exposure to each other's atmosphere—love each other so much they save TWO worlds from destruction" thought there was any possible way he was going to stop us. Like bro thought he could convince us of Rocky's personhood and capacity for love and then assume there was an upper level of otherness that we would not fuck with? Fucking amateur. Pathetic.
I love asking people how their parents met. You always get an interesting reply. My best friend’s parents met on the relatively new internet in 1999. My other friend’s parents met at Burger King when one was the manager and the other was a regular customer. My parents met at the beach because they were neighbors in their rental houses, mom was on a church trip and dad was getting blackout drunk every night with his friends next door.
I think we as a community need to put Eva Stratt in more bloodymary works. I want to see her dynamic with Simon. I want Simon to immediately clock the similarities between her and Ava, but also the differences. I want him to be wary of her but her to be purposefully neutral toward him. She's a historian and the overseer of an enormous project, she knows what humans look like when they're too stressed to be functional. And while she's not the most comforting person in the world she does love others so deeply. I think it would hurt her very badly to see the state he's in, moreso if you come at it as a "Iron Lung is what happens if PHM fails" angle. I think she'd feel personally responsible for the things that have happened to him and his people.
I also think the framework she engages the world with would frighten him yet be intensely familiar. I think it would be as much as comfort as it is upsetting because he can deal with Stratt's calm demands. That makes sense. Grace's kindness and care chafe because he doesn't trust it, but Stratt is so straightforward I think he would trust her a lot sooner even if he might not like her. And I think Simon shaping himself into the sort of instrument she needs when she asks him to do it would be exactly what she needs and nothing she wants. It would hurt to watch because she KNOWS what produces reactions like that in a human being and she hates it but she also needs to use it.
Idk I can just imagine Stratt stone faced with an impossibly gentle hand on this impossible man's torn and scarred cheek, suppressed tears in her tone but not her eyes as she orders some horrific necessity be done to a body that has already known too many of those. I can see Simon clinging to that little bit of humanity being shown to him by a woman who has no obligation to do so, one who would arguably benefit more from not showing him such care even if its being compressed down to this single point of contact.
When it’s announced that a Bay Area middle school teacher is one of three heroes sent to save the world, San Francisco clamors to rename things to “Ryland Grace.” Grover Cleveland Middle is quick to the draw, becoming Ryland Grace Middle the very next school year. Grace also gets a street, of course, a science wing at Stanford, a state park along the coast — by the time the Beetles return, you could probably throw a rock in San Francisco and hit a Ryland Grace reference.
Eva Stratt, meanwhile, is a stain. Graffiti tucked away in alleys and under bridges, forever painted over by the powers that be. A name meant to be forgotten. Stratt has always known this was part of the deal: after all, humanity needs a villain just as much as it needs its heroes. The best she can hope for is to be erased entirely on Earth.
And yet, light-years away, there is a beloved body of water, its surface dancing with artificial waves, that Ryland Grace wistfully refers to as The Sea of Stratt.
