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The post you sent's interpretation gets his trauma pretty close, but misjudges a few things. Since you asked for my opinion, I'll come at this fully objectively and in good spirit!

He would think he’s dead and hallucinating, or being toyed with by the monster and hallucinating, or slowly losing oxygen and hallucinating.

I'm very with you on this one. I have several posts talking about Simon's mental health: PTSD Triggers Masterlist, Simon & Psychosis ft. Bloodymary, and Mental Health Conditions Masterlist, if you want my opinions on that. He'd be detached from reality out of trauma response. We see this occur in the movie itself.

A small part of him would hope it’s real, but the rest would firmly believe it’s fake, and he’s fucked. He would spend hours at a time just staring at the stars, failing at convincing himself they’re not dead. He would be spacey and tired and he wouldn’t be all that coherent.

This is combating with Simon's begrudging hope/denial of the Quiet Rapture being truly the end. It wouldn't be a "small part" hoping it's real. Simon would full send with that shit. If Simon woke up to a world full of stars, he'd be losing his mind believing all his mad theories to be right - that the Quiet Rapture did happen again. His mind wouldn't go to "this isn't possible," but rather, "oh my god, it was possible and everyone else was wrong."

He was repeatedly belittled for this mindset on Eden, it seems. Simon was the "hope guy" in a crowd of nihilists. This is most likely one of the reasons he was excommunicated from Eden and left abandoned on Filament Station. It was seditious behavior.

So, he'd be overjoyed. Possibly a lot of yelling. Good yelling. Crying about how the war could finally end. Crying over a future where he wouldn't have to be a tool anymore. I don't think his first thought would be "universe hopping". He'd be thinking of his friends, and of all the people who he mourned.

That does not negate the severe possibility of Cotard's Delusion (the delusion that you are dead). Simon can celebrate the planets coming back and still believe himself to be deceased and wandering them. Interesting prospect, that.

I almost wonder if he'd believe his sacrifice into the anomaly was the cause of the planets coming back. Simon has enough of an ego. He'd immediately catch onto the suspicion after being told by the Eel that the Anomaly was a fragment of what caused the Quiet Rapture. I think Simon would be battling with the possibility of his death being important. It would be harder for him to come out of the delusion because of this.

I agree that Simon would be incoherent after seeing what he saw down in the ocean. I don't think that would ever go away. If he wasn't schizophrenic before, he certainly would be at this point. (I use "schizophrenic" hyperbolically, he'd possibly have reactive psychosis).

If you go with the mutation trope, it’d be 100x worse, because he would be in absolute denial. The last thing he ever wanted to be seen as was a monster, and if he’s turning into one— Clearly this is just the monster making the worst reality it can for him.

Agreed. He'd be in distress over the mutations. There would be a lot of long and grueling nights of mourning in horror, because the ocean never really left him. Did he ever truly leave it? He might see this as confirmation that the Eye in the Void really did steal his soul. It would feed into the paranoid delusion that it will come to collect one day.

If we build onto the idea of Simon believing he brought the planets back (this isn't really true, but he is suspicious), he'd be trying to rationalize being at peace with it, and would fail at that. Simon can't go back, even if he gets twisted up in thinking it's important that he lets the God take him.

Simon would feel disgusting. The denial thing would be a major problem. If Simon could, he'd be doing everything possible to cover it up. The scars and mutations would only further to push the narrative that Simon is a mangled corpse.

You know that hallucination trope Simon has, where he believes other people may be the Shadowman? Yeah, that happens to him. Simon sees himself as the Shadowman. That's the whole point.

Someone might try to get his attention, but he wouldn’t hear you until you touched him — At which point he’d instinctively react violently.

A better descriptor to "violently" would be "viscerally" or "fearfully."

Simon's going to be reaching for a knife that doesn't exist and then realize he fucked up immediately. It is a knee-jerk reaction type deal, just as we see him do in the movie. Simon grew up in a war. Grew up in a place where theft was more common than trade.

He also has a severe freeze response issue, so he might just lock the fuck up and stare, wide-eyed and silent, until his head straightens out.

"Oh shit, I'm so sorry" type shit. He'd be very embarrassed, or try to play it off as a necessary reaction. "If you didn't sneak up on me , I wouldn't have done that." Simon has a hard time with blame-shifting to handle his guilt. See Simon's Morality, Anger Issues, The Ugly Truth: A Psychological Deepdive.

Which!! After he gets over the dissociation, he’d be overly violent and reactive — Because once he realizes he’s alive, he’s not letting that go. Simon is so used to clawing, kicking, screaming, BEGGING for life, that if it’s just handed to him like that, he’ll maul anyone who he thinks could take it from him. He probably hurts people a lot, intentionally or not, and sure he feels horrible for it, but in his eyes, that’s the price you pay for survival.

Okay, so I see you doing the complexity thing, and I'm with it, but consider: you're writing his violence to be too explosive. Simon is a pressure cooker. If we look at real-life trauma responses, dude isn't going to be violent unless he's cornered. In a fix-it scenario, Simon might imagine the corner he's being backed into, and that could cause some problems.

But Simon is also a rational communicator. He might be psychotic, but psychotic people aren't stupid. They're afflicted, not dumb. Simon spends half the movie just trying to get people to talk to him normally:

All Simon wants to do is communicate. So, there'd be a good chance he would be trying to figure things out before shit hit the fan. Simon doesn't want to fight and would rather talk his way around it. Simon is scared of fighting, but was forced to do it anyway.

The only time Simon violently explodes is when he's pushed past his breaking point with annoyances. He doesn't explode at Ava or David at all, even when they are pretty much labor-trafficking him. He only explodes at annoyances and at the Eel, who challenged him first, and who murdered his captain.

Whoever his companion may be (this post is directed at bloodymary and convineer scenarios, platonic or romantic or otherwise), they don’t make it out unscathed. They get a few claw marks, black eye, whatever.

Simon's only going to fight if someone does some unusually cruel shit to him. Which, was happening to him during the entirety of Iron Lung. Simon's actually a chill AF guy. He's Cool Like That, but his anger issues are like a simmer-pot that can overflow sometimes. I do not think Simon would be attacking the first person he wakes up to find. I think he'd more-so be in a state of confusion and asking tons of questions. He'd be grilling the person.

It’s when he realizes they aren’t fighting back, but on[l]y being defensive at his attacks, does he realize he’s allowed to live. And now he has to face the fact that he kind of just attacked the only person who seems to have ever genuinely cared for him, excluding his mom.

So, Simon's cared for more people than just his mom. We see this in the way that he reacts to seeing his Brother's pendant in the terminal compartment, and realizing that they sent another one of his people down into the ocean to die.

The repeated trauma of having those people taken away is truly what fucked Simon's head up. Again; it was wartime. His mother was his comfort, sure, but Simon closing his heart up after losing his mom doesn't seem right, considering he latched onto the pendant and sobs when it breaks.

Simon's a bleeding heart and a softie (well, compared to other people in the Iron Lung universe. He might come off as strange to someone like Grace). Though, the embarrassment in a theoretical scenario where he does attack someone is on-par.

Also. Simon would not be open about his past, and he would get defensive and violent if you tried to ask— that includes talking about his time in the iron lung.

I agree with this.

But, it's not for the sake of being secretive, or withholding information. It's about keeping himself calm. It's about avoiding PTSD triggers.

For example, Filament Station is a massive trigger. We see he has episodes immediately after it's brought up:

Simon doesn't want to talk about Filament Station because he knows it sets him off.

So, yeah, he wouldn't want to talk about his time in the Iron Lung, because he's trying to do anything and everything possible to not think about it. It's not about "not trusting" anyone with the information, it's about Simon running from his past.

* Astrophage is more like a virus that either alters people, causing them to commit crimes or violent acts, or a power that supervillains are starting to use.

* Grace is still a middle school teacher who got bitten by the spider, obviously.

* Adrian is the one who stitched up the suit (the Aunt May of this universe).

* He has all the perks of a normal Spider-Man, but he's still Grace, so he's incredibly clumsy. He does have a super-strong spider sense, and that's what saves him 100% of the time, but he absolutely does not have the agility. When adrenaline kicks in, he can do anything, but otherwise he'll trip over the most ridiculous things.

* He was wearing his yellow raincoat the first time he saved someone, so now he wears it over his suit (along with his white Converse).

* The spider was discovered by SHIELD (which is undercover as a scientific research facility that Grace works for part-time). After the original test subjects (who were only able to survive the spider mutations if they possessed a specific gene) were killed in an attack, Eva delivered the spider to Grace so he could be bitten before other villains got their hands on that power. (My boy gets unwillingly turned into a savior in every universe.)

* Simon is still an ex-convict who, in exchange for his freedom, is asked by the evil company of the day to test a series of mines infected by what appears to be blood from a meteorite (which eventually turns out to be the symbiote Ellie!).