#helllllmode

so very early on in the SWG planning stages, i knew that i wanted lawrence to have spent time in england as a watsonian explanation for why his accent is the way that it is. i also didn't think it was very realistic that a man in his late 30s/early 40s (i wiggled the ages a bit in SWG to age lawrence down, just a hair) would have no possible inkling on earth that he was gay -- or maybe i was just interested in exploring the perspective of someone who had sort of come out and then gone back into the closet? it's been long enough now that i don't remember every single thread of the thought process. but either way, i figured, if lawrence spent time in england, then it would make a lot of sense if he was over there for his schooling. and if he was over there as a beautiful young man in grad school, in a country where nobody knew him (and a place he would leave and never visit again, in his mind), then wouldn't that be a good place for him to have messed around and gotten some experience with men?

so the general idea of simon was roughed in at that point. it was at this time that i was ALSO going buckwild rooting around in cary elwes' back catalogue, and i came across one of his very first film appearances in the 1984 film Another Country. this film follows the story of a quasi-openly gay oxford student and his struggles to reconcile his high bearing and lofty political ambitions against the threat of his sexuality being found out. it also stars baby cary elwes as this gay student's lover.

so, shamelessly, and because Another Country is (sadly) not a very well-known film, i lifted rupert everett's likeness to use as the faceclaim/physical inspiration for lawrence's past british lover, and i decided that this new lover character's personality would have a good amount of everett's character in him as well. but i didn't want to TOTALLY rip this character off, so i wanted him to at least have an original name.

readers may not have cottoned onto this, but pretty much anytime i get to name an original character in SWG (or in ANY of my saw headcanon/fanlore), i will always always ALWAYS try to give them a biblical name. most of the important canon characters have biblical names, so i like tailoring my ocs to fit into the world a little better that way, too. simon was picked as a name essentially because 1) no other canon saw characters are named simon, 2) it sounded suitably british and stuffy. i had decided by like chapter 3 of SWG that lawrence's middle name was jude, but i actually didn't know about the fact that the catholic saints simon and jude have a shared feast day until much later! i still think that's a crazy-cool bit of coincidence or fate.

so! there's the initial, vaguest form of simon. he was envisioned first as more of a literary/narrative device than a character in his own right-- he was just meant to illustrate to audiences that lawrence HAS been with men before, and he also works in SWG as kind of a totem figure, to push up against lawrence's internalized homophobia and/or as another point of comparison for lawrence to use between adam and alison when he considers his past and present relationships.

out of all the incidental OCs i've made for the purposes of SWG, though, simon was always the one i was most attached to, maybe BECAUSE he started off as so vague and purpose-built. over time, he got a little more fleshed out as i discussed him with some of my pals and wrote the occasional ficlet featuring him (none of these have been finished/posted.... yet...?) and his personality became more distinctive. he loves 80s new wave! his music taste was hugely impactful on lawrence's! he's a bit of a cheeky prankster, like if adam before the bathroom had a sunnier and more outgoing disposition!

he ended up being a cardiologist because i liked the thematic/symbolic resonance of him being a doctor of the heart, both calling back to his romantic relationship with lawrence AND with the heart motif that i love so much in saw/SWG specifically. when it was time to give him a name, i was thinking again about his original narrative function as a foil to lawrence and a sort of shadow/mirror of adam. despite the way that his relationship with lawrence is portrayed in some of the nightmare sequences of SWG, in actuality the two of them had a very sweet and positive relationship, so i also wanted to suggest some of that purity in his full name. hence, whitehart. (and again, it also sounded suitably stuffy and british.)

as a final treat, here's a bit of an exchange between a young lawrence and simon, written for a fic i started ages ago of lawrence questioning his gender while reflecting on moments from his past:

"Laur, have you finished your write-up of this week’s lab yet?”

Lawrence groaned and shook his head, pressing his face further into the pillow. The smell of Simon’s shampoo and hair gel intensified, which only weakened Lawrence’s resolve to get up.

“Why, Lawrence!”

Simon gasped, and Lawrence heard the sound of Simon’s sheets rustling. He could perfectly imagine the scandalized look on Simon’s face and the delicate hand raised to his chest. Lawrence scoffed.

“Have you finished the write-up, Simon?” Lawrence asked, without raising his head.

“Oh, don’t let’s point fingers, darling.”

Lawrence smiled.

“That’s what I thought.”

He finally lifted his head and rolled onto his side. Simon lay beside him, propped up on one elbow to look at Lawrence. Just as Lawrence had imagined, Simon’s hand still lingered near his chest, hanging limply at his wrist. The afternoon sun splayed through Simon’s bedroom window and across the boarded floor, filling the entire room with warm, golden light. Lawrence smiled and reached for Simon’s shoulder. Simon watched him with one eyebrow raised.

“What is it, dear?” Simon asked. “Are you going to haul me out of bed so we can get started on our schoolwork?”

Lawrence grinned.

“No.”

As he pulled Simon downwards, Lawrence had just enough time to register the look of delighted surprise on his face before he kissed him. Lawrence pulled Simon closer, settling his hand on the back of his neck to loosely tangle his fingers into Simon’s hair. Simon hummed softly against Lawrence’s mouth and shifted his own grip to Lawrence’s waist. The too-big Adam and the Ants shirt that Lawrence wore— Simon’s, naturally— had shifted at some point while he’d slept; Simon’s hand found the exposed skin of Lawrence’s hip and slotted comfortably into it. When Lawrence sighed, Simon nipped down on his lower lip and tugged gently at it. Lawrence whimpered, and then Simon pulled away to grin down at him.