Rant incoming because this post reallyyy irritates me. (No offense to OP I’m sure they’re a great person but this specific opinion of theirs ground my gears down to the fcking bearings okay)
“Cold blooded murderer”??? SIMON? The man who apologized to a damn DESK that he hit too hard? The man who apologized throughout the entire movie after accidentally irradiating three people, even though those three people were effectively the ones sending him down into a hellish landscape of blood? The man who sobbed over accidentally breaking the seed pendant? Ohhhhhhhh I am so sick of people mischaracterizing Simon as this violent, cold-blooded freak of a killer.
Everything we see in the movie points to him being an unwilling participant. He consistently claims, even AFTER being effecticaly tortured psychologically, that he didn’t want to hurt anyone, that he had nothing to do with Filament Station’s destruction. Even Ava seemed to believe him near the end. There is NO indication that he was ACTUALLY at fault for FS, and EVERY indication that he wasn’t.
The only indication we see in canon that Simon has ever killed anyone himself was the flashback of him as A CHILD, standing over dead bodies with blood on his hands. Then we see an image of someone, presumably his own mother, handing him a fcking knife. At least to me, they to show those two flashbacks in that specific order ON PURPOSE. It is showing us that child-Simon was being nurtured to kill by the adults; that event, him killing other kids AS A KID HIMSELF is probably how he got the name “The Butcher”. So yes I will say Simon has probably murdered people in the name of Eden, but he is not a goddamn “cold-blooded killer.”
And that quote? The “You have the highest body count out here, killer!”
Here is the whole conversation we hear during that sequence:
Simon: “I didn’t want them to die.”
Brother of Eden: “Excuse me? What the fuck did you just say? When did you grow a conscience, Simon? You go the highest body count out here, killer! Not one of us has more blood on their hands than you. Simon The Butcher lost his nerve. You’re gonna have to kill your own brothers to stop this!”
Simon: “You’re not my brother.”
Brother of Eden: “Your words, not mine, Butcher! I wasn’t even there. I’m just the guy who told you to cross the wires.”
Yeah. “I wasn’t even there, I’m just the guy who told you to cross the wires” was so clearly a reveal that the flashback conversation was being altered by the eel. That male voice is of the other Eden brother who died on the SM-13 before Simon, whose consciousness joined the eel upon his death just like the people on SM-8. The Eden guy “wasn’t even there” (“there” = the attack on Filament Station). Just like how the eel contradicts herself on Simon’s mother; “A mother who wouldn’t even recognize the killer she spawned”/“Or is death the only thing she taught you?” Which is it, a mother who taught her son to kill or a mother who would hate her son for the “murderer” he’s become? The eel is clearly grasping at straws in this whole sequence to make Simon break and destroy the blackbox, but he doesn’t, because he KNOWS the eel is fucking with him.
And the first two lines, the “I didn’t want them to die” and the “Excuse me?….” lines: You know what that sounds like to me? It sounds like Simon having a conversation with someone who is full up on Eden’s dogma, hounding Simon for “betraying” Eden by trying to stop them from blowing up a whole damn station of innocent people. And that line “You’re gonna have to kill your own brothers to stop this” SPECIFICALLY is what makes me think this is what one of the other soldiers of Eden told Simon BEFORE they finalized the attack on FS. That Simon was gonna have to kill his own brothers to stop them from blowing up Filament Station. Which means, at least to me, that Simon got his “butcher” title BEFORE Filament Station, again probably for what he’d been forced to do as a child in that flashback.
Simon explicitly says: “Eden gave me a tattoo, the C.O.I made me burn it off. I didn’t choose either of them.” This is so obviously the movie’s way of telling us that Simon had already been working on deconstructing the cultish lies he’d been taught on Eden; he didn’t choose Eden. He was forced to be there, he was an UNWILLING GODDAMN PARTICIPANT in Eden’s agenda FROM THE GET GO. It’s one of the first damn things we learn about him!!!
Yes, Simon has probably killed people, at least as a child. But there is NOTHING in the movie that would ever convince me that Simon is a “cold blooded killer” and I am sooooooo tired of people making him seem like a merciless violent asshole! No, he is not a patron saint, no he is not perfect, YES he is flawed and an extremely complex character but he IS NOT COLD BLOODED FFS. He is the DEFINITION of “unwilling participant”.
Did I overreact to this post? Definitely. But this is my blog and I’ll overreact however I damn well please on here😭
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