Any tips on how to write Simon?
I am struggling so bad you wouldn't believe me😭
oh do i ever. i may be insane about character study but it continues to serve me well. i have a full character history/analysis that i use for reference if you guys would ever want to see that as well!
one of the biggest mistakes i've seen in the way people characterize Simon is that he often (but certainly not always!) tends to fall into one of two portrayals: either he's extremely aggressive and borderline abusive or he's a poor little guy who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time during the attack on Filament Station.
listen to me when i tell you this. neither of these are true. Simon is sort of a difficult guy to write because he's an extremely morally complex character. Simon earned the nickname 'The Butcher' well before the attack on Filament because among his brothers he was the most aggressive in the fight for resources between Eden and the COI. he has minimum 62 deaths on his hands and we only have that number because that was the casualty from the attack on Filament. Simon has absolutely killed more people than that.
however, Simon is not an inherently confrontational or aggressive character. does he get aggressive? does he spend basically the entire movie confronting? oh, absolutely, but that's because SImon is utterly desperate to survive. that is his ultimate, intrinsic motivation. Simon has never been guaranteed another day and he's had to claw tooth and nail for the resources he needed to stay alive.
he was entirely— albeit frustratedly— willing to submit and comply to the demands of the COI if it meant he got to go home. he spends the entire movie trying to get the information they want and literally begging to just go home. he also displayed an immense amount of remorse when he almost certainly caused that guy's death by blasting him with a fuckton of radiation— Simon has killed because he had to, not because he wanted to, and he's haunted by a guilty conscious because of it.
so, all that being said, how do you write him? it's pretty heavily dependent on what setting you're writing him in but the most important thing i can impart upon you is this:
if he's not in a horror move, do not write Simon like he's in a horror movie. please, i am fucking begging you. if Simon is in a situation where he's not having to literally kill to survive— and if he's aware of this— he's not going to be reacting like he's in a horror movie. if we're dropping him into PHM, that's not a horror movie setting. he will not be having to choose between fight or flight for every single one of his reactions.
Simon is also a pretty distrusting character just by nature of the way he grew up and how he had to operate in the world— it's going to take him a while before he gets to a place where he's comfortable in any way shape or form.
basically you gotta write him like he's a rescue dog. initially he'll be incredibly jumpy and skittish and he will absolutely lash out but that's because he's scared. Simon, at his core, is scared and reacting on instinct when he feels like he's being threatened.
since we never saw Simon outside of a horror movie setting you'll absolutely have to take some creative liberties with how you write him. personally i interpret him as pretty docile but the most important thing is just to make sure you're not making him one-dimensional. we as people are multifaceted and so are our characters.
tldr, Simon is complex and you have to write him as such.
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