Pleyre

Vampirism. Lycanthropy. Cheap spells gone wrong. A woman brought in for her prenatal has to be told her baby is a lindworm. Someone is literally being followed by the anthropomorphic personification of the Black Death.

Like when Gandalf spent literal PAGES trying to figure out why the vibes were off in Moria and Legolas chimes in with just "it's a balrog :) that shit's evil :) we're so fucked :)" like what do you MEAN you knew already and just didn't tell him??

Or at the beginning of Two Towers when Aragorn thinks there's something nearby so he puts his ear to the ground to listen, and then like 10 minutes later is like "hmmm i hear horses" and Legolas is just like "mm yep. there are 105 blond bitches with spears" like you just let your friend put his face in the dirt and you can SEE them??

gandalf is scratching his head in moria, and legolas is thinking "oh man, the wizard noticed something off *besides* the obvious balrog that we all are aware of??"

Dennis who started drinking when he was 14 and could shoot whiskey by the time he was 16

Dennis who started smoking when he was 13 and now only occasionally gets a cigarette out after a bad shift

Dennis who has a mean right hook and has taken down men twice his size with one punch

Dennis who can fix anything if he has the right tools

Grace is the funniest bitch in the project by accident. He's used to being around kids so he's forgotten that filters are a thing and just says the first, dumbest joke that pops into his head. He has no control over it. Nobody makes him feel bad about it because they're afraid of what Stratt will do if they hurt his feelings.

the mixing of eridian and human languages (and not just english! even english speakers use phrases from other languages! youre telling me grace isnt c'est la vie-ing this entire goddamn trip?) and idioms and body language and various non-word sounds is going to be a sonic nightmare for humans and eridians alike.

in the short window of the story they've already morphed several, now multiply that across the entire trip!

i keep thinking about rocky picking up gesticulation from grace, but on erid it's the equivalent of a human talking with a hand in front of their mouth.

and i shudder to imagine all the scientific short hands they come up with to speed up research! hey rocky thanks for solving the astrophage problem too bad no one knows what the fuck you're trying to explain to us!

manners! social customs! they're fucked!