writing an endless story

Perhaps.

But is it not, on the other hand, incredibly funny to point to a guy in line for the door facing the other direction and wearing a face mask, sunglasses, hoodie, and ball cap and tell my partner, "Hey, that's Shitty Rick, he's not allowed in here"?

Flat arches

Brachydactyly type D

Whorls in hair

Distinct spinal deformity

Scabs

Tattoos

Wig easily clockable as a Wig

Full-body disguise, same necklace

Amputated finger

One leg shorter than the other

Always ordered the same weird drink at some point every single time without fail

Same belt

Same shoes

Changed clothes but kept coming back with the same person

Distinct body odor

Missing a canine tooth

Uniquely pronounced superorbital ridge

Skin condition

Birthmark

Unique facial tic

Kept trying to get into the same place, ALWAYS in full disguise- Wig, glasses, clothing, makeup, etc- so consistently that every time a "new" person showed up, it was them

Mentioned their Russian mother to every person they spoke to, to the point that "they would not shut up about their Russian mom" was enough to know they'd been there

Left and came back in a full face mask but changed nothing else

Orthopedic platform shoe

Space (and stars) are a much newer concept to Erid, at least relative to us. They cannot perceive stars. They can't even see their own sky.

And then here we are, utterly obsessed. The number of songs, movies, and TV shows that reference stars, the moon, our sun, it's light, astronauts, space — we can hardly go five minutes without bringing up at least one of those things. NONE of them are things Eridians have an established affinity for; to them, they're scientific concepts, and that's pretty much it.

And yet, stars are one of the first things our kids learn how to draw. We have a specific name for the connections we trace between them, and those constellations have been built into thousands of years of our history. We fought a proxy war based on who could get to them the fastest. I absolutely believe that, to Erid, this would be our defining characteristic above and beyond anything else.

Eridians have 5 network-solid contact points with the ground at all times and supernaturally good hearing. What does this mean for a primitive eridian with no knowledge of science, living on a 2g rocky planet (which therefore would have a massive heat retaining mantle and very active plate tectonics)?

It would mean they feel every bit of the ground moving, and hear the background noise of convections underground. They would hear the groaning resonant vibration of a mountain slowly growing from these two forces pushing into each other

Humans have a natural telescope as their main sensory feature. Eridians have a natural seismograph

While watching each other eat so they don't choke to death, humans would share stories about the stars, what they must be and why they dazzle their senses so. Provided there wasn't an earthquake at the time, they'd be unaware of the subtle motion of the ground beneath them, because the rocks block out all visible light that might let them see it

While watching each other sleep, the awake eridians would tell stories to each other about the sounds emanating from the ground, what they must be and why they dazzle their senses so. With no light reaching the ground, they would be completely unaware of the septillions of nuclear explosions in their observable universe (or roughly 10,000 or so visible light stars), because the vacuum of space doesn't transmit sound

Grace might get to Erid and talk to eridians who know more about geological activity than Rocky did, and more about it than any human does

When humans entered the scientific era we tried to get answers about the stars by using devices to enhance our senses of the stars. What's up there? Why does it work the way it does. We have models of heliocentrism dating all the way back to the Greeks. But we didn't even have the theory of plate tectonics until the 1960s

For eridians, instead of looking to the sky they would look to the ground. Scientifically minded eridians would have probably discovered plate tectonics thousands of years before they were even aware of a universe beyond their planet

Before that, eridians may have fought wars on who could be near the fault lines. Or scientific revolution proxy wars on who could first directly interact with the mantle

Eridian pebbles would create representation of the quaking ground. Countless songs would reference plate tectonics. In fact, their word for it would probably have a lot of cultural tie-ins because it would have been a concept for so long. We call famous people "stars" perhaps they call famous people "mountains"

hope is a weapon, by @mumblesplash (x)

Tricky one cause the kernel's built around creating the need for salvation from a higher power, and you'll have to change up a lot of the systems for evaluating your own and others' moral worth to avoid operating with a deficit when there's no inbuilt release valve.