Winged mutated Grace in a swapped bloodymary au. The creature/entity he sees being a void, not a light, and instead of teeth and blood its ink and eyes and feathers.
Black tendrils emerging from his ripped off leg and climbing his hip, the wings bursting from his back being mostly cartilage and inky ooze in the beginning. They grow with care and good grooming, which doesn't happen until he's on the hail Mary and Simon sees the stumps. Sees the protruding spikes and thinks about freshly hatched chicks back home. Looks up how birds care for their feathers, how the wings have oil glands, how its this delicate process of pruning and straightening and Grace can't really do it himself so...
(No astrophage/modern day - angst and please good ending)
Grace just popped into a shop after school and runs into a group of his students buying snacks. --- Two masked men enter the shop and start yelling.
Grace positions himself in front of the kids. One of the robbers thinks the kids are easy pickings, Grace disagrees. Cut to Grace grabbing the hand of one of the guys trying to grab a kid and getting a gun pushed against his forehead. The guy tells him to let go, Grace says "don't touch the/his kids".
Why has this idea taken form you may ask?
Because:
If Grace can find it in himself to be brave for his kids after being unwillingly sent off to space, than why can't he on earth?
Bonus!!!!
(doesn't need more people, BUT yaoi/twins?)
Bloody Mary with Simon getting called about what happened and rushes over. He then holds Grace as the adrenaline wears off and he realizes how freaking scared he was.
OR!!!!!!
Coltand Twins, Colt is Grace's emergency contact, they haven't talked much (before or after the whole faking death) and long story short they make up.
Do with this as you will, but if someone makes this a fic on here or post it somewhere else, can I get a link and potentially some credit? Unless this already exists, than drop a link to it please 🙏
Has anyone done something with the idea of it being Grace that somehow manages to connect to the speaker in The Iron Lung? Through all the mind bending eldritch voices another somehow breaks through. It's soft, tentative, full of hope and inquisitive speculation and Simon is having fucking none of it. Get the fuck out of his head you can't keep doing this you can't keep giving him straws to grasp at everyone is gone everyone is dead you cant-- you cant--
But then there's another, and now they're... bickering? Are the voices fighting eachother? No, no there's music. Is that music? He can't remember ever hearing something like that.
Not sure when to have them show up tbh. When Simon's going back for the other ship in the nest? When he's laying with the black box wrapped in the lifevest? Earlier? Maybe Grace pops up in the beginning like a rogue transmission and they have a conversation about being forced to do something 'for the good of mankind' and how fucked that is for them. But also that Grace did do what he was trusted to do, and its that flash of conversation that gives Simon that final push
Idk just thinking about Simon coming to crave Grace's company in the form of his voice alone
The Murderbot Diaries are a power fantasy about being aromantic and still developing extremely important dedicated emotionally intimate partnerships where you are a top priority in a person's life, equal to their other family or romantic attachments despite your own emotional difficulties. And having guns in your arms
Everybody's having fun portraying Grace as the soft hearted damsel in distress and Simon as his big scary guard dog, as if Simon "welded into a metal box" Ironlung isn't shattering at the first kind touch he receives and Ryland "abandons his entire planet and species for his alien buddy" Grace wouldn't rip the universe apart if it tried to take Simon away.
I like to think that Simon and Rocky's early friendship involves a lot of aggressive banter that usually ends in Simon punting Rocky across the Hail Mary. Rocky is a professional rage-baiter and Simon has a short temper. They appreciate using one another as a verbal/physical punching bag (Rocky hates it when his snarkiness goes too far and he makes Grace cry and Simon would rather throw himself back in the Iron Lung than accidentally let his anger out on Grace. So Rocky and Simon make this weird mutual agreement to just... Squabble out their bullshit)
Bonus: Rocky is pissed he can't get Simon back for all the punting while he's stuck in his xenonite ball. So, one of the first things Rocky does once he finishes making his xenonite suit is to dead-leg Simon from behind when he least expects it. This starts up another round of bickering as Rocky scampers off to give Grace a hug while Simon is still writhing on the floor spitting profanities
pro-tip: your blog is about you. be self-indulgent, self-absorbed, and self-possessed. go all in on your obsessions. this is a work of self-expression, a living monument to your heart.
This is an AU I've been cooking up for the past few days, and I'm ready to share it now! Keep in mind, this is a Showtime AU, cause uh, surprise, I really like that ship as I do with Checkmates. And I thought, what better way to draw the ship than to combine it with my favorite anime of all time (cause robot boy, young girl with strange eyes, and all, you see the vision, right?)
More characters and stuff will come from this soon enough! For now, I'll take some time to explain these two a bit more right here if you're interested:
For Pomni, I kinda wanted her personality to shift a bit from Riko, the character she is playing—it's basically about when you wanted to do something really bad as a kid, but the dream kinda falls apart as you get older. Then something reignites your passion for what you loved, and you decide to just take the plunge and go for it. Literally, in this case. As much as the Abyss called to her, she grew distant from it as time went on, showcasing her typical anxiety before she later became more confident. She still has extensive knowledge of the Abyss, but y'know. She uses it more when she's assisting new cave raiders until the plot starts.
And for Caine, I imagine he has two sides to him: his goofy ringmaster persona, and a more serious, but contemplative self. Not exactly having a god complex, due to his lack of knowledge of his purpose. There are supernatural forces at work surrounding the Abyss—more Lovecraftian than magical. Some relics can have world-bending abilities, and as for Caine, he's mostly mechanical, aside from the fact that he is nearly indestructible and has a laser canon that can destroy anything. Inexplicably, he is made of these relics, while also having very human properties and functions.
So in a way, he's powerless in this AU, but he's not without abilities that make navigating and surviving the Abyss way easier. Ultimately, he finds a new purpose in trying to protect Pomni down into the netherworld, because together, they're all they have to make it down there at all.
I love this headcanon about ShowTime and how Caine's systems will always reboot on its own if kisses quickly escalate into something more, so he won't remember what he did in the last 1-15 minutes.
Sometimes Pomni deliberately brings him to this point out of curiosity, like how long he can last this time👀
Russian Roulette, in a way, he doesn't mind at all...
