a life so entwined

Simon who had no last name because even in this other life he was born and raised in a cult, Eden was a self-sustaining underground doomsday cult and took in those who were so damn scared of the way the world was going

The butcher who was useful because from a very young age he had proven himself to be good with his hands, strong and sturdy, who was told he was better off working indoors the with machines and plants only far away from other people because he was violent and angry never mind the fact that he is pushed and screamed at and picked on and pushed and abused until his hands calloused and bled and he knew the insides of their machines better than he knew himself, he is their dog wild and feral and violent

The butcher who was tending to the plants when Eden was raided by Ava Kaplan Head of the Petrova Taskforce and her people, the project wasn't well funded yet and they needed a place to work, the Eden compound was perfect, in that it was well equipped with their own labs and generators and pharmacies, in that few knew of Eden's existence and those that did wouldn't be sad about the cult being quietly wiped off the face of the Earth

The cult member who wasn't sent to prison or quietly executed like many of the other members of Eden, instead Kaplan found use for him yet and had him work on building the Mary (she found use for many of the people that had been raised in Eden, though she would only ever admit it to Simon years later)

The engineer who was regarded with suspicion and sometimes outright contempt from the other members of the project, who focused only on building and working and keeping his head down because that is all he has ever been good at, all he has ever been violent and angry and good with his hands so he should keep his head down

The head engineer who was working one night when Ava Kaplan invited ordered him to walk with her, with a sneer on her face and a scoff when she called him her head engineer, she held his arm to make sure he wouldn't run off during their walk below an endless starry sky, and she watched she watched him stare in pure awe at the sight before him as if he had never seen the stars at all

Head engineer Simon who became Ava's person, though neither of them would ever admit it, who followed her around because and was told every detail regarding the project simply because she trusted him, he wasn't a scientist like Elli or the ship captain like David, he wasn't even the engineer being sent on the Hail Mary like Jack was, but who was still always there at every meeting and every party and every gathering

Head engineer Simon who never realized they were preparing him to be a stand in for Jack in case the worst happened, who had barely started mourning when Ava called him into her office and told him that he was needed for the project because there was no one who knew the Hail Mary better than the man who had built her from the ground up

Simon who was every bit a violent and angry dog when they tried to take him, who bit and screamed and hit, who may have killed someone in his desperation to get away from their hands that grabbed and wanted and demanded that he die, who demanded to know how this was any better than what Eden had been doing, that if he stayed with Eden at least he'd be alive, Eden may not have been the place he chose but at least they didn't send him to die, at least he'd been allowed to live

Simon who woke up alone on the Hail Mary and saw the hastily written 'Simon Kaplan' on his items and assumed Ava must have been his family, all the pictures he had Ava was in every single one of them, who didn't understand what was happening but knew enough to understand that this was important, but knew he couldn't do this alone, he was no scientist, he was good with his hands, and he was scared

Simon Kaplan who nearly burst into angry and terrified sobs when he was found by Rocky assuming that this was going to get be what killed him, who was violent and distrusting and swore constantly in his frustration every time he couldn't understand Rocky, who endured and learned and adapted because he has always been resilient

Simon and Rocky who save the stars, who are Erid bound when their radio picks up on a signal and there is the sound of a man begging for his life, who find a moon that practically glowed with an ominous red light

I am. Ill. I am ILL . about this. Grasps your shoulders. Stares at you in your face. Your brain is so big.

But seriously I'm so glad you like my silly role swap au!!!! Amaze amaze amaze⋆˚✰ ݁˖⭑.ᐟ

Currently plotting out a fic and stuck between if it should be a long fic or a series of one shots so we'll see, as of right now I've got 2k words written so hopefully it lives up to it's potential (˶ˆᗜˆ˵)

Also @sisiren not to put you on the spot but your tags had me WEAK

Hear me out. Walk with me. They rival each other in strength.

Simon suggests wrestling one day as a way to expel restless energy- he and the brothers used to wrestle all the time back on Eden. Grace is hesitant- Colt used to like wrestling but back then, Ryland was always the smaller and "wrestling" usually just meant getting bodied until he relented that Colt was the winner. But he's Buff now. And Simon is Also buff. So he agrees, purely out of scientific curiosity over who is stronger.

The answer: a draw.

At first, Grace seems to have the upper hand considering, er- he has both hands. Simon is still getting used to balancing without a whole arm weighing him down. So there's a bit of a learning curve there, but as soon as he gets his footing, he's meeting Grace's strength in turn.

Rocky, who rolled in halfway through, is Wholly Confused, slightly worried, and tempted to try breaking them up. That is, until Grace explains what it is they're doing, in between fighting for his life. Because at this rate, they've both gotten Extremely competitive about it. Rocky spends the rest of the time watching them with amusement. They are like pebbles. (He's also a little sad he can't join the fun too, but alas, ~800 lb rock.)

In the end, they both collapse from sheer exhaustion before a clear winner can be announced. Grace's experiment goes without a clear conclusion. Thus, he has to test again, obviously.

- inhabitants of the vat have taken to affectionately calling themselves the vatlings, with Eva as their benevolent dictator and head of their unofficial government on board the ship

- after some weeks of boarding the ship, time quickly becomes lost on everybody so they revert to basing everything around the position of the sun/moon/stars

- this quickly led to an ongoing joke of the vat being a pirate ship with Stratt as the Captain

- and quickly spiraled into the whole ship, save for one Captain and her lapdog, dressing up in pirate costumes one April fool's day (of course Ilyukhina bought extra costumes for those two but the best she managed to put on them was a hat and eyepatch)

- she did get Stratt a real sword though, no one knows how she managed to procure it but Eva proudly brandishes it in her office

- sickness is rare but not impossible on the ship, if one person is down, it is inevitable that everyone goes down (except Stratt and her primary crew, who she drags onto a private jet to wait out whatever disease to run its course)

- if she so much as hears one cough from any of them, she kicks them off and sends them back to the vat (Grace only survives since years of teaching around living petri dishes has strengthened his immune system, while Stratt is always the last one standing, but her cursed sleep and eating schedule ends up being her downfall)

- the multicultural makeup of the ship has led to factions forming among vatlings of similar origins, and mock wars are declared nearly every week that always devolve into petty pranks

- peace treaties too, each with more ridiculous articles than the last, such as renaming little russia to little america after a cold war reenactment between members of ROSCOSMOS and NASA (which did not last longer than a week thanks to Komorov)

- Grace refuses to pick any side during these wars but ends up helping anyway, including stacking neon party wigs on Dubois (with help from Shapiro and Ilyukhina) after he nodded off during another last minute team meeting, or convincing Leclerc that no it's not snowing that's just frozen rain

- they rarely attempt to prank Stratt, once Ilyukhina convinced Grace to try the same prank they did on Dubois on her, but the best they managed was one green wig and a blurry picture when she passed out after three days of irregular sleep (one eye shot open and that was enough to send the pair scampering from her office)

- Ilyukhina often defects for no reason other than to stir drama, while Yáo pretends to not care but is willing to broker information to anyone for the right price (a pack of cigarettes and an hour of their PTO)

- being the dictator director, Eva does not step in during these wars, so long as work is completed by the end of the night (she understands how stir crazy living on a boat can be)

- the mess hall has a rotating schedule to represent the different cultures on board the ship which inevitably means everyone complaining once its time for English-based meals (no one wants to eat mushy peas or beans on toast, but an argument breaks out on whether chicken tikka masala belongs to England or India)

- the Olympics causes a return to nationalism among the vatlings and is the only time Stratt is seen repping her country's flag

- speaking of, the vatlings held a mock Olympics (the Vatlympics) themselves with increasingly strange competitions based not on country/heritage but on respective roles on the ship

-Stratt catches wind of this and forms her own team made of the best in each crew simply termed the Leads (did not last long, Ilyukhina quickly retermed them the Strattlings)

- she tried getting the astronauts to join her team but they chose to stick together led by Yáo who surprisingly became quite competitive

- events included but were not limited to swimming laps around the Vat, running along its length (suprising to no one Redell wins), bowling using discarded equipment and a mannequin head that no one knew where it came from (Grace has shockingly good aim), a spelling bee amongst the science factions (despite being the lead astrophage researcher, spelling is not his forte), extreme hide and seek (won by Shapiro and Dubois who of course knew all the best hidden places), and cultural dance forms (it was impossible to select a clear winner but Lokken did surprise everyone by performing a hallingkast)

- they hold a funeral for Antarctica headed by Leclerc (he's bawling the entire time), Ilyukhina almost poured one out but quickly remembered the newfound Prohibition enforced on the vat

- an illegal speakeasy is formed by the chemists when Stratt limits alcohol usage only for galas and the monthly team bonding events, they take orders from the crew teams until one suspicious request for mead shows up (little known fact, Eva has a sweet tooth)

- a makeshift Eurovision is held (including non-euro crew members), Eva almost considered joining but started getting a sore throat after endless meetings that always ended in her yelling at greedy capitalists trying to profit off the end of the world

- Lokken and Grace's beef is so well known amongst the vatlings that a silent system is formed to alert if one gets within 10 feet of each other (fails every time, those two can rarely hold a civil conversation, Grace likes to think himself a calm man but Lokken knows the exact buttons to press)

- (eg. During the Vatlympics in a particularly heated staring contest between team bio-engineer and team Leads Strattlings, Lokken and Grace had the misfortune of being paired, Lokken only won when she whispered independent evolution, causing Grace to yell about panspermia)

Simon who had no last name because even in this other life he was born and raised in a cult, Eden was a self-sustaining underground doomsday cult and took in those who were so damn scared of the way the world was going

The butcher who was useful because from a very young age he had proven himself to be good with his hands, strong and sturdy, who was told he was better off working indoors the with machines and plants only far away from other people because he was violent and angry never mind the fact that he is pushed and screamed at and picked on and pushed and abused until his hands calloused and bled and he knew the insides of their machines better than he knew himself, he is their dog wild and feral and violent

The butcher who was tending to the plants when Eden was raided by Ava Kaplan Head of the Petrova Taskforce and her people, the project wasn't well funded yet and they needed a place to work, the Eden compound was perfect, in that it was well equipped with their own labs and generators and pharmacies, in that few knew of Eden's existence and those that did wouldn't be sad about the cult being quietly wiped off the face of the Earth

The cult member who wasn't sent to prison or quietly executed like many of the other members of Eden, instead Kaplan found use for him yet and had him work on building the Mary (she found use for many of the people that had been raised in Eden, though she would only ever admit it to Simon years later)

The engineer who was regarded with suspicion and sometimes outright contempt from the other members of the project, who focused only on building and working and keeping his head down because that is all he has ever been good at, all he has ever been violent and angry and good with his hands so he should keep his head down

The head engineer who was working one night when Ava Kaplan invited ordered him to walk with her, with a sneer on her face and a scoff when she called him her head engineer, she held his arm to make sure he wouldn't run off during their walk below an endless starry sky, and she watched she watched him stare in pure awe at the sight before him as if he had never seen the stars at all

Head engineer Simon who became Ava's person, though neither of them would ever admit it, who followed her around because and was told every detail regarding the project simply because she trusted him, he wasn't a scientist like Elli or the ship captain like David, he wasn't even the engineer being sent on the Hail Mary like Jack was, but who was still always there at every meeting and every party and every gathering

Head engineer Simon who never realized they were preparing him to be a stand in for Jack in case the worst happened, who had barely started mourning when Ava called him into her office and told him that he was needed for the project because there was no one who knew the Hail Mary better than the man who had built her from the ground up

Simon who was every bit a violent and angry dog when they tried to take him, who bit and screamed and hit, who may have killed someone in his desperation to get away from their hands that grabbed and wanted and demanded that he die, who demanded to know how this was any better than what Eden had been doing, that if he stayed with Eden at least he'd be alive, Eden may not have been the place he chose but at least they didn't send him to die, at least he'd been allowed to live

Simon who woke up alone on the Hail Mary and saw the hastily written 'Simon Kaplan' on his items and assumed Ava must have been his family, all the pictures he had Ava was in every single one of them, who didn't understand what was happening but knew enough to understand that this was important, but knew he couldn't do this alone, he was no scientist, he was good with his hands, and he was scared

Simon Kaplan who nearly burst into angry and terrified sobs when he was found by Rocky assuming that this was going to get be what killed him, who was violent and distrusting and swore constantly in his frustration every time he couldn't understand Rocky, who endured and learned and adapted because he has always been resilient

Simon and Rocky who save the stars, who are Erid bound when their radio picks up on a signal and there is the sound of a man begging for his life, who find a moon that practically glowed with an ominous red light

For reference, the event itself won't be held for at least 2 months, to give me some time to Set Everything Up, as well as to not step on Art Fight's toes at all (I'll be participating this year and I don't wanna be swamped), and it would also be an 18+ only event (primarily due to iron lungs status as an R rated movie and my own personal comfort as the host)

“Does Markiplier know about this? Does Ryan Gosling know?”

Religious themes galore!

QPR Bloodymary so we still get aroace Grace (hell yeah)

“Has anyone considered Ava x Eva?” (Yes the ship is called “Trolley Opeartors” I believe)

“Don’t forget to give Simon one arm!” (nodding in agreement)

“This is the best ship name”

“WAIT??? MARKIPLIER???????”

More crossovers!!!! MORE!! (Mouthwashing, Mickey 17, Coltland twins, etc.)

Absolutely banger art

Absolutely angsty comic

Simon, who has spent his entire life trading out enclosed space for enclosed space. Eden, the COI cell, the SM-13, even the Hail Mary and (eventually) the Erid biodome. He's never known the freedom of an open space. And yet he can't help but crave it. He can't help but feel trapped. Imprisoned. Welded in. Pressing himself up against the Mary's capula window above the lab certainly helps. Even if he can't truly go out there, at least the vastness of space is unending. He can't be trapped within the universe as a whole. And yet. The closest he will ever get to true freedom is pressing himself against cold glass that keeps him firmly within the warm confines of the Mary. This ship is at least far more spacious than his last, and for that he is grateful. But it doesn't always help, not when the capsules are a little too dark, a little too crowded, a little too hard to breathe, a little too hot-

But then Grace is there, reminding Simon to breathe. Reminding Simon that he's not trapped anymore, not in the same way. Sometimes Simon will press his forehead to Grace's just to feel the comforting heat of another person, as opposed to the suffocating heat of the SM-13.