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And like? I am absolutely tickled by the idea of Simon trying to pretend he was part of the crew and Grace just doesn't remember him in order to keep from like being shot out the airlock or something. His personal stuff? Oh, he already unpacked it. His job on the ship? Umm...engineer! Yeah. Why does he keep breaking down crying in the plant room? No reason, don't worry about it.

Then when Grace finally puts the pieces together and confronts Simon expecting him to be a stowaway or something Simon instead goes well I'm from another dimension where all the stars and planets are gone and I was trapped on a submarine in a blood ocean and then I somehow wound up here.

Simon has vaguely heard the stories of the Hail Mary. Humanity's last ditch efforts to save the stars, which was ultimately fruitless. As far as humanity knows, the Hail Mary launched with three passengers, and then nothing. Radio silence. No beetles, no hope.

What happened in the Iron Lung universe was this:

Grace wakes up with dead crewmates, meets Rocky, and everything proceeds as canon, except Operation: Time Go Fishing. Rocky is too late in breaking the xenonite and the ship crashes on Adrian. No beetles are sent because everyone is dead.

What everyone in the Iron Lung universe THINKS happens is this:

Grace, the coward who was forced onto the ship that would save the world kicking and screaming, who openly declared that he would sabotage the mission. Well. Sabotaged the mission. He got everyone killed, the stars died, and basically, he doomed the human race. Everything now is Ryland Grace's fault, and his name is practically synonymous with Coward, Murderer, and Pretty Much The Devil because he Killed Everyone.

So, Simon ends up on the Hail Mary, but he doesn't show up on the trip to Erid like in many other fantastic fanfictions. He shows up right after GRACE wakes up. And when he realizes Grace doesn't know jack about shit, he lies, somehow shoots Yao out the airlock without Grace noticing, and convinces him that he, Simon NoLastName, is DEFINITELY the pilot on the Hail Mary.

From Simon's perspective, he's in a Time Travel Fix-It Fic. He is stuck on a spaceship with the devil incarnate, who Killed Everyone, and his job is to watch the guy like a hawk to make sure that he doesn't do that again. And also hopefully handle the whole alien thing, because that probably is related to the whole Killing Everyone that Simon is here to stop. In his mind, Grace is just faking this whole nice guy 'I have amnesia' nonsense until Simon puts his guard down and Grace can do whatever he did to get everyone killed last time.

From Rocky's perspective, he's in a Buddy Comedy, but he got TWO aliens instead of just one! And the science one already likes him and seems to understand a little bit of Eridian! Amaze amaze amaze!

Wait, but how does Grace already understand Rocky?

Because, from GRACE'S perspective? Here's the plot twist. Grace also time traveled.

He knows something is up with Simon. Obviously. He knows something fucking weird is happening. Obviously. He also knows he has one (1) goal, no matter what, over everything else. He doesn't have TIME to worry about Simon, or whatever is going on.

The ONLY priorities that Ryland Grace has is to Succeed at Operation: Time Go Fishing and Don't Let Rocky Die. And he's willing to go along with Simon's presence and pretend to still have amnesia to get there, because he NEEDS to get back to Operation: Time Go Fishing.

So the entire AU is Grace and Simon essentially doing the highest stakes improv that the universe has ever seen, neither of them trust each other, both of them think the other is going to murder them and is also super evil, and both of them are terrified of the other fucking them over and dooming the human race...

Grace, staring at Simon, who is constantly lying, saying cryptic bullshit, and is incredibly suspicious at all times: “This guy is gonna murder everyone, I just know it.”

If Simon is discovered by a completely different Eridian all together.

I mean, Erid is a big planet! It is totally reasonable that someone completely unrelated to Rocky would be the one to find him! Let's say he gets spit out into orbit above Erid on the other side of the planet from where Adrian/Rocky lived. It's far enough away that no one on the Adrian side knows anything about him.

Oh, oh. Wait. Even funnier. He's somehow discovered by an Eridian pebble.

You’re in a boat, on the blood ocean. And In that blood ocean is a submarine. And inside that submarine, is a convict. You’re here to slay him. If you don’t, it will be the end of the world.

Think about it throughout PHM Ryland never talks about having a family he mentions having a girlfriend once in the book all we really know about her is that they moved in together briefly and that she had a lot of stuff.

Let’s say after Ken and Barbie break up. Ken decides to go out on his own and stumbles upon the real world. There he learns about science and becomes completely invested in that pathway. He either eventually figures out how to become a human or he stays a doll which could explain why he was the only one to survive his hyper sleep (and so he can live with rocky longer)

It could explain why he so heavily believes in non water based life so much because he WAS a non water based life form. Water doesn’t exist in Barbieland it’s all plastic.

Furthermore this could explain why he decided to become a teacher being a doll previously it’s only reasonable to assume he’d enjoy kid’s presence the same way Barbie does.

He also loves the beach and we all know that Ken’s previous job was beach

In the Barbie movie the CEO of Mattel states “we’re not worried about Ken…. Ever.” Meaning that it’s likely they wouldn’t care at all if a Ken left Barbieland and perused an education became a scientist and eventually a school teacher.

All this to say imagine Simon and Grace getting into some kind of fight where Simon is like

“You have no idea what it’s like to live your life forced to be a cog in the system. Knowing that what you want doesn’t matter, nobody caring about who you are not even your name matters”etc. etc.

and the entire time Grace is having PTSD flashbacks of this:

And then responds with:

woops! Not even Rocky's fault this time.

A followup to this

Where do they come from. What do

they hope to achieve.

you all say: I love you I

love you I love you.

At minimum about 4.5 thousand people liked this without reblogging it.

The points you make are very true; we do live, unfortunately, in such a topsy-turvy world.

I feel that, in parallel to your observations, there is more and more justification for the Baudelaires' moral wrongdoing throughout the series, culminating in TPP (Olaf's trial). So by the time we reach the end, we see the "good" side of Olaf and the "bad" side of the Baudelaires.