Simon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
i_can_read) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
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
"You really think so? Why not?"
no subject
Simon hesitates to speak. Or maybe it's that his attempt to speak becomes defunct the instant he tries to use it--because the truth is, Simon has never seen a real cat. For all his certainty that he knows what a cat is--triangle ears, small face, whiskers, long tail--he's never actually seen one with his own eyes.
So he opens his mouth, and nothing comes out. He tries again, and a short, choked sound comes out before he manages to even attempt an actual word.
"--hhgh... it's... you. You don't... llllllllook like... a cat."
It comes out sounding weak. And incredibly pathetic.
no subject
Hang on, hang on, they definitely remember this one -
"- 'blue' everywhere else?"
This is the thing they've had people comment on the most, so they assume instantly that's what Simon has a problem with.
no subject
Which is why Simon completely disregards that entire train of thought, because he is not a man (or... meteor, or minior for that matter) who can afford to get bogged down in relativistic quandaries. His mind is a murky enough place already.
"I don't," he says out loud. It's at least slightly less pathetic sounding, although there's still an undercurrent of uncertainty.
"But--the ears, the ears are wrong. They're supposed to be triangles. Little triangles." He asserts this with surprising certainty.
He's not stupid, he thinks to himself.
He knows what a cat is.
no subject
"It's not polite to comment on someone's oversized ears, you know!"
They lick the back of their paw.
"What am I then, if I'm not a cat?"
no subject
He can't think of anything. Or maybe one thing.
A mouse. Big, round ears and a long tail... is a mouse.
But he doesn't know a lot of animals, and he knows he doesn't know a lot of them. He mostly knows there used to be a lot of them--hundreds of kinds, even--instead of none. So he's not sure how right it is, as a guess. He's not liking his odds.
Then again... if this isn't Earth or Mars or any part of the 'world' he knows, then who says it's anything from there at all? This is too complicated. He's tired of it and he's only been thinking about it for a few seconds.
"Do you have to be anything?" he asks. Like this might be a trick question.
He's kind of hoping that's the right answer.
no subject
"I've got to be something, don't I? I'm here!" They're hiding their expression behind their paw again, but there's an odd glint in their eyes for a moment.
"How about this? If you figure something else out later, come tell me and I'll let you know if you're right! Until then I'm a cat."
In the meantime...
"So, were you just enjoying the view, or were you thinking about how you missed out on getting launched?"
no subject
Typical Simon: given two choices, he didn't pick the 'right' answer and explain himself--he reacted to the option that he felt more strongly about.
Though in this case, things may also have been influenced by the fact that he doesn't really want--or know how--to explain why he's looking at the stars, or why he was crying while doing it. Even Simon finds that pretty embarrassing--but more than that, it's just. Overwhelming. How does one begin to explain how it feels, or what it means--to see the stars again? After all this time? After all that suffering?
So maybe it's more accurate to say that he chose the feeling that's... easier. Easier to understand. Easier to feel. Easier to think about. Easier to verbalise.
no subject
They're not even trying to hide that they're teasing him anymore. Though they leave off there, extending their front paws (away from him) to first stretch themself, then scratch at the tree bark.
"It is a nice view!" They're being genuine with that comment, with a sort of 'so I can't blame you' sentiment - not that it sounds any different in tone from the rest of what they've said...