Me When Someone Who Has Been Nice To Me Every Single Time We've Interacted Is Nice To Me:

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At least I'm not trying to be someone else. No one likes me when I'm myself. *I* like you when you are yourself!

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WANTED: TO BORROW AN ORANGE CAT Wanted: to borrow an orange cat to have a lasagna dinner with Garfield-loving twins, aged five. Will return the cat happy and cared for. Cat will not be required to eat lasagna if contraindicated. Please take your cat back at the end. Not looking to adopt. Thank you.

"This guy has completely gone mental," is Simon's first thought when he sees the ad on the bulletin board at the university campus. He considers it; he has an orange cat, after all, but this guy doesn't sound sane at all, or maybe he is a serial killer who wants to take cat owners out of this world because he has a personal vendetta against them. No, Simon, you are watching too much crime drama. Maybe the guy is a sweet dad who wants to make his little children happy. He takes a photo of the paper, still not sure if he will call this Wilhelm guy to borrow his innocent cat for a dinner party with two toddlers. This is insane.

He makes the call. He is skeptical at first, and Wilhelm, or Wille for short, as he wants to be called, mentions it before Simon even has a chance to and tells him it is very understandable. He sends them the picture of the children with their Garfield plushies, watching the cartoon with an adorable look on their faces. It looks legit, and Simon believes him. So they set up a date for Simon to bring his cat on one condition that Simon will be there as well.

Wille opens the door with the most enchanting smile, and Simon is already captivated by his charm. Okay, he was very gorgeous in the photos with the kids, but the real him standing right there is not enough for words. Fuck, why does he have to fall for the most unavailable guys? This guy is married with children. Could he be more unlucky?

Wille invites him and his cat in, and the little girls look at them behind their dad's legs with curious eyes. Simon takes his cat out of the box and makes proper introductions. He tells them what Jelly likes and does not. She usually gets on with kind children, but better safe than sorry.

Wille did actually set up a kids' table for them to eat their dinner, his cat included. He put on actual cutlery, but fortunately plastic ones. He serves the girls their long-awaited lasagna and some cat food to Jelly---her favorite one since he kindly asked Simon which one it was with the most persuasive reasoning that it's the least he could do for their favor.

He set up another table near the kids for them as well, very similar to the kids' table, but this one is more adult with real cutlery after all. Simon almost thinks this is like a date. He serves them some lasagna as well, and it is the most delicious thing Simon has ever eaten. They ask each other a couple of questions about life and work and some mundane stuff. It is not awkward at all, but it should be because they only know each other for thirty minutes, but it is not.

"You must have been very young when they were born," Simon comments out of the blue. Wille never mentioned the wife in the span of one hour they spent together. Maybe he is a single dad, and he has a chance after all. But that doesn't have to mean he's into guys at all. He needs to get his mind out of the gutter asap.

"I was 17, I think." Wille thinks it over, "No, I was 16. It was way before my birthday."

"You were so young. It must be very difficult to raise them with uni and your job."

"Their mom doesn't trust me at all when it is my turn to babysit," he chuckles. "She is calling every hour to check up on me, and I think I am doing great here. What do you think?" He smiles, and Simon's own matching smile falls flat. Yes, the mother is still in the picture, which is a downer, but babysitting? He calls taking care of his own children babysitting? He must be an asshole despite all this sweet persona. At least this will soften the blow when Simon can't have him.

"Can we do this again?" Wille asks with a small, shy smile on his face. Is he hitting on him? All of a sudden, Simon doesn't find him attractive at all. "I didn't think the girls would be that happy. I know I am being greedy here, but if it is possible for you, we would be really happy."

"I don't know," Simon mutters. He doesn't want to see this guy who is flirting with him in front of his children. He is not that guy.

"They are going to run to me in about three minutes asking if they can keep the cat; just wait." he chuckles. Why does he have to have the most beautiful smile? He is an asshole. It is not fair.

"You said you didn't want it for adoption."

"I am not trying to deceive you here."

"I wouldn't be so sure." Simon mumbles under his breath.

"Can we adopt the cat?" The girls come yelling in unison. At least he knows them very well.

"No, we can't," Wille explains. "You know your mom is allergic to cats. That's why we are doing this when she is not around. Remember?"

The tears well up in their eyes as Wille speaks. "I should have seen this coming."

"Uncle Wille, please. Pretty please." they beg in unison again with their little puppy eyes, and Simon is an idiot.

"My brother and his wife are coming in an hour to pick them up and I really fu--fudged up big this time." Wille whispers, censoring the swear word in front of the children, and he looks like an absolute dream; all the ugliness coming from the misunderstanding Simon caused himself disappears because when has Wille said they are his children at any point in his conversation?

Simon gets down on his knees to get to their eye level. "You don't want your mom to get sick, do you?" The little girls shake their heads with sniffles. "How about I bring Jelly again when you are here next time? Does that sound okay?"

They nod their little heads, satisfied with this solution. Simon tells them to go and say goodbye to his cat because they would have to get going soon.

"You don't need to do that if you don't want to," Wille says in apprehension after the girls are out of their earshot. "I really should have thought this through. This is on me."

"It is not a problem." Simon smiles. "How else am I going to find an excuse to see their very hot uncle otherwise?"

"Oh." Wille blushes. "I thought I was alone in this."

"You were definitely not. It is just that I was dumb." Wille scrunches his eyebrows in confusion, and Simon tells him to let it go. It will be a very embarrassing story if things go further.

"You know what we should do right now?" He smiles with a mischievous look. "We should set up another date."

"They won't---"

"Without the kids and my cat. Just us."

Wille, that asshole, licks his lips before he replies. "Sure, can't wait."

"Wait a second." Wille asks later, after their second first date, and Simon finds himself in Wille's apartment again, but this time in a room he hasn't seen before. "You thought I was their dad, didn't you?"

"No."

"Simon."

"Shut up."

"Look at the pictures I sent you. The pictures with the kids and me," he chuckles. Simon takes his phone from the nightstand and opens up his chat with Wille and looks at the pictures again.

"What am I seeing here?"

"Look at the mugs," he chuckles again, but he sounds more entertained this time.

Simon looks at the mugs the girls are holding in the picture with Wille in the middle. It was very cute when Simon first saw it, or his face. The letters stare back at him this time. "World's Best Uncle."

"I am a dumbass. A real dumbass."

"You are cute," he snickers. "You probably couldn't take your eyes off of me. I understand."

"Shut up, you smug asshole." Simon shoves him playfully out of the bed, but Wille hangs onto him and crashes their lips together with lots of giggles in between. He was right after all.

The lasagna picture with the girls and his cat easily became Simon and Wille's favorite yearly tradition.

Why is it so hard to write characters in character, every time I write a line I'm like, "would they say it like that? Wait, would they even say that at all?"

I'm going to fish my brain out Egyptian style and study it someday.

Sometimes a writer that I really look up to comments on my fic, and every time it just feels like 'Omg, hi. So, hello. hihi, well, yeah. I will give you my first born child, and also omg hello.'

💜✨.

hey guys have you ever heard of THE CHARACTER. i’m thinking about THE CHARACTER. honestly can’t even get shit done because i’m thinking about THE CHARACTER. i’m listening to a song and imagining THE CHARACTER. all i know and love is THE CHARACTER

Thoughts about Simon Eriksson below cut, responses in good faith welcome.

I’m thinking about Simon right now, because in the fic I want to write next, I want him to get in a fight with Sara, and I want Simon to be Wrong about what they’re fighting about. To clarify, Simon being wrong doesn’t mean Sara is 100% right—that would be boring, wouldn’t it? Anyway they’re 14/15 and 16 in this fic, so they’re a little younger, and it’s part of a canon divergent universe that goes in a very different direction from canon long before canon even starts. Sara is the main character. It’s her story.

So here’s the thing: I want fourteen-year-old Simon to be wrong and I want him to be a little petty and vicious about it and I even want him to be not a good brother to Sara for a time.

I actually like Simon a lot, even if I tend to write him mostly as a secondary character in my fics and not a main character. There is one fandom narrative about Simon, however, that isn’t personally appealing to me as a fanfic writer and fan, and that is the narrative of Simon as Perfect Martyred Angel Who Did Nothing Wrong Ever In His Life. I do enjoy Simon’s moments of moral clarity and maturity, and I do think the people around him sometimes take advantage of his patience with them.

On the other hand, I like that Simon is actually… imperfect and human and we don’t have to put him on a pedestal or wrap him in a soft blanket? Like he lies to Linda and hides his secret tutoring from her, he does things for Sara she doesn’t ask him to do, he sees Micke behind Sara and Linda’s back, he pulls Rosh and Ayub into a physical fight with August that they don’t want to be part of. And sometimes Simon is boldly speaking truth to power but other times he’s just being a little bit cheeky and provocative the way that teenagers can be.

In short, Simon can be as messy as many of his peers at Hillerska, especially in season 1, but hey, the rebound with Marcus in season 2 also counts! While individual instances of messiness can be more or less sympathetic depending on a situation, I feel people do Simon a disservice when they retroactively frame his entire character through the lens of the put-upon martyr. Also it’s just… less fun and more boring to me to view Simon as Always Right and Always Suffering.

On the other other hand, I also understand where some of the Saint Simon fanon is coming from. My theory—I think at least some of it is a response to an imbalance in the show’s writing (especially by season 3?) and how the writers drop threads related to Simon’s arc in season 1. I’ve talked in posts before about how the Simon-August conflict is totally dropped when it shouldn’t have been, and something should have closed the loop between them. I won’t elaborate too much on that, for now. I do actually feel that Simon and Sara’s conflict was effectively resolved in s3 but I also know there are still Sara haters out there in the year 2025 who think Simon should have left Sara to rot. So, you know.

In addition, enough critical-of-s3 fans have raised the idea (one I agree with, generally) that… Wilhelm is not always a great partner to Simon. A lot of folks see a narrative where Simon’s often taking care of Wilhelm’s feelings, but Wilhelm isn’t doing it in return for Simon. And then a lot of us are worried by Wilhelm’s anger issues and Simon bearing witness to them. I don’t know if this is an impression the writers intended to convey to the audience? Like I believe Lisa is on record as saying that the video stuff has died down and isn’t affecting Simon as much by season 2, but that seems to contradict what we see in s3 when Simon’s facing unprecedented internet harassment. I think the Wilhelm-adjacent pain Simon faces often gets swallowed up by Wilhelm’s pain. The writers find Wille’s pain pretty. I don’t think they realize how much they do.

Long story short, I think some of the Simon Did Nothing Wrong fanon is an attempt to respond to the part where the show does kind of neglect Simon’s emotional needs. And that’s valid. And I get it. And I know some people mean it in a tongue-in-cheek way whereas other people mean it in a much more serious way.

But on my end I kind of want to do right by Simon by letting him fuck up sometimes. Let Simon Do Wrong Things, and not even in a hot way! Because that is an interesting part of his character and I wanna explore it!

Anyway let me know if you’re open for me bouncing fic ideas off of you, I am in search of others who will discuss Nuanced Simon Eriksson with me.