Simon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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bottlecaplogs2026-04-15 10:16 pm
i_can_read) wrote in bottlecaplogs2026-04-15 10:16 pm
Entry tags:
Simon in April
Who: Simon and YOU.
What: Catch-all and specific top levels,
Where: Around,
When: All of April
Warnings: Horror genre references, body horror specifically, cult/religious trauma, dissociation and emotional issues, so much swearing, etc. Just Simon Things (TM)
A. Yeah my heart it spoke, and the stars replied -> OTA
Simon is easy to find on clear nights. He drops his shields for as long as possible--as long as he dares, because how long? is a question that dogs him, haunts him, taunts him, fills him with fear and forces the stones around him to close up once more--and floats or lies in the grass or rests in the fork of a tree, bathing the nearby area in a red glow.
What's he doing?
Looking at the sky. Specifically, he's looking at the stars--all the many hundreds of thousands of them, spread across the abyssal vault of heaven. Large ones, small ones. Shimmering curtains and waves, clustered scores of speckles barely distinct from one another. And bold, shining monuments to light, standing apart from any neighbouring gleam. He stares up into them with his own swirling pools of light--the pools of light that are his eyes--their radius so large and wide-armed that they almost evoke the galaxies above.
Small, pale, imitations of the miracle that dwarfs him. A tiny, feeble imitation in the lush world below. A world vibrant and verdant with life.
It almost--
It almost.... makes him feel like he was meant to. Like God is real. Like--like maybe this is what God is. This is God, or God's doing. But then, what is he doing here? What is he, Simon, doing? Here? What is he? What's it for? Why? Why--why is he, Simon, here, why him? And for what?
So it's not always a peaceful moment.
Sometimes it is, sometimes the wonder of it all eclipses the grief, the fear and confusion.
But sometimes... sometimes there are sounds. Quiet, muffled sounds. Like he might be... crying?
Don't worry, though--he'll stop the very instant he hears anyone coming. And his voice--sharp with paranoia and danger, or coarse with emotion and suspicion.
"Who's there?"
B. Plant Your Hope With Good Seeds -> Closed to Henry and Parvati
Despite a not-very edifying (or perhaps too edifying?) conversation with Umemiya, Simon is nonetheless undeterred. He's interested in the garden, and he wants...
He wants to do that. He wants to garden. Just a little. He doesn't know how, what with the utter lack of hands... or legs... or any way to carry or dig or bury or plant. He wants it so badly. It's like an ache--or a burn. A compulsion, an impulse, something nudging at the back of his mind.
He's been thinking about it, sitting there in the grass and under the canopy of nearby trees. Sealed up inside his shields, where he can see only darkness and hear the world only dimly. Protected. Encased and isolated, sheltered and solitary. Safe.
Ha. Safe isn't real. But it feels safer.
Bwcause if he stays in there, encapsulated by the darkness and the security of his rock shield, it feels like.... well, like the submarine. And when it feels like the submarine, it becomes easy to defy gravity.
The downside, of course, is that he can no longer even feel vibrations through the ground. And this leaves him completely unaware of anyone walking by.
But that's fine, right? It's not like he's going to drop his shields and scare the bejeezus out of anyone all of a sudden--
Or so he (doesn't) think, dropping his shields suddenly right as someone walks by.
C. Training wheels fell off -> OTA
[Simon still spends most days rolling around, opening his shields to look around and then closing them to follow his planned path.
Or else he's in the air--flying with his shields up like the world's most dangerous aircraft. Because he still navigates the exact same way he did back in the submarine, with the camera. He recognises the irony, but it's... kind of comforting, weirdly. It gives him something to do. And every time he opens his shields, he has a new vantage, a new vista to take in.
It's an experience that never gets old. High or low, terrestrial or aerial.
He just.... he doesn't have the best control while flying, so..... um. Possibly he falls. With luck, it's merely nearby. But sometimes he falls directly onto someone. Or onto a building, or onto someone's current project.
It's a work in progress, okay?]
D. Wildcard!
[Drop me a line at![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
railerat or just throw something at me here and I'll figure it out!]
What: Catch-all and specific top levels,
Where: Around,
When: All of April
Warnings: Horror genre references, body horror specifically, cult/religious trauma, dissociation and emotional issues, so much swearing, etc. Just Simon Things (TM)
A. Yeah my heart it spoke, and the stars replied -> OTA
Simon is easy to find on clear nights. He drops his shields for as long as possible--as long as he dares, because how long? is a question that dogs him, haunts him, taunts him, fills him with fear and forces the stones around him to close up once more--and floats or lies in the grass or rests in the fork of a tree, bathing the nearby area in a red glow.
What's he doing?
Looking at the sky. Specifically, he's looking at the stars--all the many hundreds of thousands of them, spread across the abyssal vault of heaven. Large ones, small ones. Shimmering curtains and waves, clustered scores of speckles barely distinct from one another. And bold, shining monuments to light, standing apart from any neighbouring gleam. He stares up into them with his own swirling pools of light--the pools of light that are his eyes--their radius so large and wide-armed that they almost evoke the galaxies above.
Small, pale, imitations of the miracle that dwarfs him. A tiny, feeble imitation in the lush world below. A world vibrant and verdant with life.
It almost--
It almost.... makes him feel like he was meant to. Like God is real. Like--like maybe this is what God is. This is God, or God's doing. But then, what is he doing here? What is he, Simon, doing? Here? What is he? What's it for? Why? Why--why is he, Simon, here, why him? And for what?
So it's not always a peaceful moment.
Sometimes it is, sometimes the wonder of it all eclipses the grief, the fear and confusion.
But sometimes... sometimes there are sounds. Quiet, muffled sounds. Like he might be... crying?
Don't worry, though--he'll stop the very instant he hears anyone coming. And his voice--sharp with paranoia and danger, or coarse with emotion and suspicion.
"Who's there?"
B. Plant Your Hope With Good Seeds -> Closed to Henry and Parvati
Despite a not-very edifying (or perhaps too edifying?) conversation with Umemiya, Simon is nonetheless undeterred. He's interested in the garden, and he wants...
He wants to do that. He wants to garden. Just a little. He doesn't know how, what with the utter lack of hands... or legs... or any way to carry or dig or bury or plant. He wants it so badly. It's like an ache--or a burn. A compulsion, an impulse, something nudging at the back of his mind.
He's been thinking about it, sitting there in the grass and under the canopy of nearby trees. Sealed up inside his shields, where he can see only darkness and hear the world only dimly. Protected. Encased and isolated, sheltered and solitary. Safe.
Ha. Safe isn't real. But it feels safer.
Bwcause if he stays in there, encapsulated by the darkness and the security of his rock shield, it feels like.... well, like the submarine. And when it feels like the submarine, it becomes easy to defy gravity.
The downside, of course, is that he can no longer even feel vibrations through the ground. And this leaves him completely unaware of anyone walking by.
But that's fine, right? It's not like he's going to drop his shields and scare the bejeezus out of anyone all of a sudden--
Or so he (doesn't) think, dropping his shields suddenly right as someone walks by.
C. Training wheels fell off -> OTA
[Simon still spends most days rolling around, opening his shields to look around and then closing them to follow his planned path.
Or else he's in the air--flying with his shields up like the world's most dangerous aircraft. Because he still navigates the exact same way he did back in the submarine, with the camera. He recognises the irony, but it's... kind of comforting, weirdly. It gives him something to do. And every time he opens his shields, he has a new vantage, a new vista to take in.
It's an experience that never gets old. High or low, terrestrial or aerial.
He just.... he doesn't have the best control while flying, so..... um. Possibly he falls. With luck, it's merely nearby. But sometimes he falls directly onto someone. Or onto a building, or onto someone's current project.
It's a work in progress, okay?]
D. Wildcard!
[Drop me a line at
no subject
He waits, though, at least for a little while. It gives him time to come down from the conflict, and the shock. And it gives him time to... think. Process what happened, and... try to get his bearings. The imaginary ones, that are inside his head, in his memory. The memory he can almost feel as real, the security and certainty of steering that lets him control his shielded, limbless bodylike he once did the sub.
He's not so reckless as to try again without checking his surroundings, though. So, vaguely certain--or at least fairly hopeful--that the creature he'd just met may have actually fucked off, he opens up, and.
Well.
Finds that it has not.
Jack will once again find himself faced with a glowing red-and-white star of space light. Which stares at him for a second before it remembers that speaking helps.]
....why are you still here?
no subject
Dunno.
[Simon seems important. That's really it. But it's hard to explain, without using too many words, that it feels like an arrow keeps pointing him back here. Investigating him is the current objective and he just isn't thinking that hard about it.]
You're from... not here, right?
This could have stopped at 'Eden.' but I wanted to give you more,
[Simon stops. He doesn't know... where to say he's from. Eden? Mars? The COI, the Quiet Rapture, SM-13, the fucking Blood Ocean? Inside the unblinking gaze of an ignorant God?
None of these are things he can bring himself to say. Most of them are completely deranged. And the ones that aren't are somehow worse.]
I'm from... not here. From somewhere else.
[Yeah.
But he can't say just that, can he? He can't leave it there? He knows he has to answer. He just--
Well, he tries.
It was called E--
[His throat catches on the word.]
Eden.
[He doesn't want to talk about that. He doesn't want to talk about Eden, he doesn't want to think about Eden, doesn't want to think about the Tree or the Father or the blood or the Tree or the Father or the blood or the Tree or the--fuck. Fuck this. ]
That probably doesn't even mean anything to you.
[He says it with reproach. Like a self-admonishment.
Stupid. He feels so fucking stupid. Even though he has no reason to. He knows he's not. But no one knows what Eden is. Or where it is. He's getting upset about nothing. He shouldn't have said anything.
It'd be worse if it did mean something to someone, anyway.
But what if it does? What if this time is the time that proves them wrong?That lights a little spark of doubt. That scares him. And he tries to shut it down. To not think about it. But he can't.
It's too new. Too recent.
His anonymity. Eden's 'irrelevance.' That nothing he came from, or did, or was, means anything to anyone here. He's been told, more than once. And he believes it. He does. But his entire life has been defined by things outside of his control, choices made for him, what he is and what he does and what happens to him and what's done with him, and what use he is... that all of it could really be gone, could be unknown and undetermined now...
He believes it. But it's just too new. He isn't really confident in the belief.
He hesitates a moment before the need to check overtakes his relcutance to speak.]
...right?
MORE HANDSHAKE MEME FOR THESE TWO...
No.
[Said blankly, without any particular feeling behind it.
But ironically, he ends up in the same spot, making him oddly quiet for a long time. Where is he supposed to say he's from? From Kansas, or New York City, or from Rapture? They're all equally valid, he supposes. As valid as saying I'm from a secret city under the ocean built to avoid paying taxes.]
I'm from Rapture.
[That's the simplest answer, he guesses, and the one that feels most appropriate here. Another place that means nothing, but carries some weight just from the name. And more importantly, it's also where Eleanor is from. She'd never been anywhere other than Rapture, before coming here.
And really, neither has Jack if he really thinks about it.
He nearly mentions Eleanor, too, but as soon as he opens his mouth that fucking voice starts up again in his head. Reminding him that no one cares, it's pointless, just shut up and listen. So there is instead a moment where Jack hangs his mouth open, utters a noise as if he's trying to speak, before he shuts it with a click and moves to lick his paw instead.]
no subject
The word comes down over Simon like--well, like a curtain. Like a blanket of darkness, absent of light. The memory of night, suffocating blackness without reprieve, the emptiness of space spreading into an infinite void. Void of life, void of stars. Void of hope.
Fear fills him, and memory empties him out.
He doesn't blink. He can't blink.]
Rapture.
[He says it out loud, his voice hollow and echoing this creature's intonation slightly, almost mechanically.]
What--
What. Rapture.
[As though, perhaps, there is more than one.
But of course there is.]