OKAY so idk if this is canon cus I can’t find the post but someone made a post about how Eridians apparently don’t have a spacial memory/recall/remembered spacial awareness like we do, and therefore if they walked through a room and “saw” it, then tried to walk through the room “blind” aka deaf and unable to echolocate, they’d be totally lost. They don’t retain awareness of how to navigate that space. Unlike humans, who can mentally visualize the navigable area of a room they can no longer see, allowing us to walk around in the dark with some semblance of where things are. That post mentioned how confused Eridians would be seeing Grace walk around his house in the dark and not run into Everything, he actually seems to know where he’s going.

And then I had a realization while rewatching Iron Lung. THEY WOULD FIND WHAT SIMON DID INCONCEIVABLE. Absolute freak of nature shit. And what I mean is his ability to map his surroundings and learn them and navigate them. Simon literally could never effectively see things while moving, all he had was a proximity radar and occasional shitty photos that would only ever be “how things looked 3 seconds ago”, and he mapped the area in the blood ocean with decent success and at certain points no longer even needed his map. He managed to gain a sense of his surroundings outside the ship, and understand those surroundings, navigating essentially blind. Only knowing/discovering if something is in front of him once he’s right there almost up against it, close to collision. Building a visual of the space by approaching a direction until he is stopped. And that method of navigation?

In all reality, what most accurately describes the way Simon navigated is by feel. Simon navigated by touch.

walk with me here:

we are with Simon the entire time in the movie so all we have to go off of is what he's seeing and hearing. He's not sitting on the shores of a blood ocean, he's not swimming freely in this ocean, and the only thing he can see are grainy x ray photos which could also just be any complex cave network above or below water.

we don't hear the gentle lapping of blood hitting a rocky shoreline, we hear creaks and bangs and other unsettling noises but not that. even if Simon's porthole was open all it is he's seeing is the color red.

now i CAN see him not wanting to go swimming bc, like, *gestures to movie* but i don't think the mere presence of a body of water would freak him out. the blood at the end is not at all like water. but i can def. see him not wanting to get wet or go swimming or anything bc of that feeling of just being submerged is enough.

i feel like it'd be more likely he is repulsed by blood, doesn't even like the color red much, is very claustrophobic, and etc etc with other issues but i don't think being afraid of the ocean would be one of those things.

now, if on Erid they go out of the dome and they go to an ocean on Erid and maybe in the very dim light [or maybe his cool eye thing can see through the darkness unlike Grace] Simon sees that the water is orange/red due to iron or other heavy metals in the water -- then i can see him freaking out.

i also can see him wanting to avoid plants for a hot second especially trees. like i feel like he'd want to avoid looking at that tree in the biodome more than he would avoid walking along that shoreline.

i feel like he'd be more bothered over the fact he's been in confined spaces his whole life and now, while this space is much bigger, he can't go anywhere without being enclosed in something.

Something something a butcher precisely cuts and breaks carcasses down. Sometimes they may also be the hand that kills but normally a butcher is thought of as someone who takes the carcasses of (insert animal here) and breaks it down, removes certain things, discards some things, reserves other things.

Something something Eden needing people to break bodies down, whether they are prisoners who died, cultists who start to waver from the cause, casualties of fighting, etc. Sometimes it’s just easier to break the bodies down. Maybe harvest some organs if Eden citizens need them for medical reasons. It’s easier to bury them that way. It’s easier to transport bodies that way.

Something something maybe the butchers (bc Simon isn’t the only one but he’s effective at it) sometimes do need to finish the job, as in maybe someone is injured or sick, not a prisoner or a traitor but someone who is injured beyond help. Sometimes the butchers need to finish the job before doing their normal job. Maybe sometimes they’re corralled into service to help with fights here and there.