Gods Kneel Before Our Crime

This is my daughter Lia 💔 Her dreams have become so small, just to live without fear and to eat when she is hungry.

I am a mother and I feel helpless every day in front of her. She lost her school, her childhood, even her simplest rights

Her father is injured and lost his job, and I am now pregnant with a baby who will be born in a tent with winter coming. We have no home, no safety, and not enough food.

I write to you with a heavy heart and I ask you to please help us, even a little. Believe me, any donation no matter how small can make a big difference for us, a loaf of bread, a box of milk, a blanket.

We are close to reaching our goal, and any help or sharing from you could give my daughter some of the safety she deserves.

✅ Vetted by gazavetters my number on the list 665

You should be able to add anyone you want on your health insurance plan.

You should be able to sponsor the visa of anyone you choose to move to your home country.

You should be able to name anyone you choose as the legal-from-birth legal coparent of any child you give birth to.

You should be able to apply for student aid on your own at any age.

someone on reddit explained 😭

Iron Lung is a video game adaptation. It shares a lot with its source material but brings real, tangible consequences to the fore. The Convict now has a crime instead of an inferred one. The Convict has a name, a backstory, a personality.

But everyone else outside of the Iron Lung are film characters. They are purely of a film world and its tangible consequences.

What I mean to say is-- Simon is a video game protagonist in a film, and his crimes become starker as a result.

Had Iron Lung's early years been adapted as a game, where you play as Simon scrounging for resources and killing when necessary, the deaths would not feel as tangible. They become numbers, data, a means to an end.

(forgive my references to my main fandom but--) Simon in fact shares a similar starting point to both Sephiroth (FF7) and Squall Leonhart (FF8) -- child soldiers raised to follow a purpose, told to not question, and avoiding rebuke by following those guidelines. I would argue both exceed Simon's body count in their first on-screen deployments. Both were teenagers.

But, those are numbers. Data. It is only the story moments that matter. But Simon doesn't get that luxury because he's now a film character and an 10-20 body count is inexcusable. Which is fair enough, but its also fascinating to me.

Would we be more forgiving of Simon were he still a video game character?

Should we be less forgiving to video game characters?

Perhaps I'm a little too forgiving of Simon in general, but when it comes to characters like him, I always put forth the question; would he have killed had he been living a normal life?

*raises hand and sniffles* Teacher.. teacher! I know the COI probably didn't even get a trial, but but has anyone considered they seen him much older then he was? Culturally do you think anyone cared?

I know 17 would be a different age from how earth would see it, but if Eden uses IMC, and the COI uses ECI, if they converted that at all they'd assume he's 31ish. They tried a 17 year old orphan as a 31 year old.

I'm half being dramatic, for real though do you think 17 to Eden/Mars is a full grown man or do you think they purposely got rid of this literal kid because no one could handle/wanted to deal with him? I've never been good at math either so I might have messed this up completely.

Me looking at skrunkly fresh to prison Simon who absolutely has blood on his hands, maybe some dried in his hair: Free that child! He did nothing wrong! He's just a baby!

Another thing, if they 16 years he spent in prison is ECI, it really only felt like 8.5 to Simon, which still is a lot but he must have been thinking he was crazy. Hearing them talk about his sentence and it's been almost double then what it feels like? Poor man is making dashes on the innards of his cell trying to keep track of how old he is.

Bonus ironmary thing of Simon's birthday not being on the earth calander, and grace assigns him a birthday lol.

Okay, hold on. I gotta dissect this ask like a little frog to understand what's going on here.

the COI probably didn't even get a trial

No, I don't think any kind of a standard trial was held for Simon, although I do think the COI sort of feigns one to seem civil. If the COI works off of collectivism and assholery, I envision some kind of bullshit "everybody who wants to send this guy to the space gulag, say I" and then everyone voted against him. Who was left alive to defend him but himself? What was he going to say, "I didn't do it"? The entire jury would have been biased.

I think that "trial" would have lasted less than fifteen minutes.

has anyone considered they seen him much older then he was?

Actually, I used EIC (earth time) to calculate Simon's age in the timeline I built using the game lore. I did this for clarity purposes.

They would have seen Simon as a 17-year-old, if they translated his native IMC age over to EIC. He's biologically 17 by the time of Filament Station. It's only the numbers that are different because of the way Mars rotation works. The humans all still age at the same rate.

This also means that, at age 33, while Simon was down in the Iron Lung, he would've been, in IMC, 17 and a half.

Culturally do you think anyone cared?

No. They definitely sent a 17-year-old to the space gulag. Remember, they're all blind. They're all monsters. Nobody gives a shit, in the end.

"It doesn't matter." is the gateway drug into terrible, horrible, awful things, and it seems to be a huge reoccurring line in the movie.

The dismissal of important things:

The leak in the sub? Doesn't matter.

Simon's hope that the Quiet Rapture might happen again? Doesn't matter.

SM-8 research lead beginning to lose her mind? Doesn't matter.

Ava's promise to get Simon out of the blood ocean? Doesn't matter.

So, no. No, it didn't matter at all that they sentenced a 17-year-old to at least 62 lifetimes in prison. There is a collective "eye for an eye" no matter the cost mentality, and it's rampant.

I know 17 would be a different age from how earth would see it, but if Eden uses IMC, and the COI uses ECI, if they converted that at all they'd assume he's 31ish. They tried a 17 year old orphan as a 31 year old.

Again, 17 is the correct Earth-based age. You can take an Earth age and divide it by 1.88 by the rotation of Mars to get the Martian age.

If the C.O.I. converted 17 years old to IMC - to what Simon would have viewed his own age as natively - he would've been nine Martian years old during Filament Station.

Again, he's still biologically 17, it's just a timekeeping difference. To a Martian, a ~45-year-old is the equivalent to an elderly person (84 EIC).

do you think 17 to Eden/Mars is a full grown man or do you think they purposely got rid of this literal kid because no one could handle/wanted to deal with him?

Nine, culturally, is still the equivalent of a 17-year-old. We've sent younger than that to war in real life, so this is not shocking in the slightest that they would do this, albeit incredibly tragic.

They knew he was a kid. They sent him anyway.

Not fully because they couldn't deal with his outlandish daydreaming and seditious behavior, but because they had no one else. He was able-bodied, trained well, and close enough of age, so they sent him.

Free that child! He did nothing wrong! He's just a baby!

Nah. He's guilty as fuck. You don't earn a title like the Butcher for being a sweet innocent child. Simon was engaging in terrorism, whether he wanted to or not; he chose to do it because they were going to kill him if he didn't. He could've chosen not to do it, could've chosen to die rather than kill for Eden, but... again...

Simon chose to live.

See the Ramifications of Filament Station if you want to know just how bad it was.

if they 16 years he spent in prison is ECI, it really only felt like 8.5 to Simon, which still is a lot but he must have been thinking he was crazy. Hearing them talk about his sentence and it's been almost double then what it feels like?

Simon isn't stupid. He knows EIC just as well as IMC. It would not have been confusing to put two and two together that 16 years in EIC was 8.5 in IMC. I think doing inter-calendar calculations in this universe is so common that most people can do it inherently.

Remember that Mars and Earth were in contact for hundreds of years before the Quiet Rapture.

Only the people who are ignorant enough to be shitty and not learn the other calendar would be confused. Simon would still have to take the time to figure it out, but he can do it.

So, I'm friends with someone who makes airplanes for a living. They wish to remain anon. I tossed them some SM-13 renders to see if they could make anything of it (for wiki purposes), and got this in response...

The only thing left they had to say:

something i don’t like is the way a lot of ppl make simon very stoic in fanfics as if he was at ALL stoic in the movie 🫩 the only bits i can think of is at like the very beginning when he’s entering the ocean and he’s understandably over it and already wants to leave. even that doesn’t last long bc he immediately starts trying to get his captors’ attention once he notices the depth level has dropped into the red zone.

i also dislike the common trope that he’s quick to anger and that his go-to way of expressing any negative emotion is anger. he’s angry and upset a few times in the movie but from what i noticed it’s almost ALWAYS preceded by others’ being rude, disregarding his valid concerns and fears, and being trapped in a frustrating, confusing situation that he has CONTINUALLY TRIED AND FAILED to find a reasonable and safe solution for. ‘oh he yells at ava after he comes up for the first time!!’ yeah after ava continued to ignore his fears surrounding returning to the blood ocean due to there being something alive down there (SOMETHING HE WAS CORRECT ABT MIND YOU) and dehumanized/dismissed him to the nth degree. he only acts angry when he feels like a trapped animal who has no other solution.

if anything, i’d say his go-to reaction to being in a new or confusing situation is to remain calm and be communicative. the skeleton is gone? he takes further photos with the radiation camera to confirm his findings and then reports back to COI. he’s informed that he has to ram the skeleton at full speed? he takes deep breaths and summons his courage whilst confirming several times that yes, he’s supposed to ram it; yes, ramming it will attach the skeleton to the submarine; and yes, getting this skeleton should mean freedom, however temporary.

he’s smart and resourceful and he grew up on a ship where there weren’t many people left and he likely had to get along with plenty of people he didn’t particularly like in a close proximity (something i’ve inferred from his references/the bits we see and hear of his past often containing others’ yelling at him or him disagreeing with those around him (insisting that the stars/planets are still alive and his refusal to take part in whatever happened to filament station + his attempts to stop it). he’d understand that the most rational thing to do in these situations is to calm down and try his best to understand/be understood through clear communication.