.what year is it

my imp krongus: *doubtfully* yes, my lord

me: i did eventually kill the mouse with a needle for a sword

believe me if grace and rocky could be in the same atmosphere theyd be all over eachother

evan edinger making a video about my home country and my usual method of public transport is crazy! i even recognized a bunch of places in the video which felt so surreal lol.

it's a fair overview of the state of public transport here in the ph, which pleasantly surprised me bc i'm too used to foreign vloggers milking filipino content on a shallow level for clout unfortunately. but evan does describe the experience of riding a jeepney accurately - yes there are no designated stops, you really just get on and off wherever; no there is no centralized map or database of jeepney routes, you learn where they go from other commuters and from experience. there's also a nice brief recap of the modernization scheme, which has been a huge source of multiple strikes by the jeepney drivers' unions over the past few years. like, i've had to opt to work from home plenty of times because of the strikes

evan did miss a few key points though, which @/napoleonibonaparte7198 from the youtube comments very helpfully added (direct link to comment, excerpt under the cut):

!!! WHA SPOILERS 93/VOL 16 !!!

they've got in-jokes

but rocky and grace put the whole diplomacy thing in jeopardy by being too best buddy with it. like they're both really low level members of the mission. some engineer necessary for ship maintenance, and an obligatory molecular biologist they brought along in case they found more alien cells out in space. and these two guys like, somehow keep ending up hanging out essentially "at the back of the classroom." consistently left out of the actually important negotiations, and well, they're bored!

grace steals some laptops and starts jury-rigging his own personal translator for rocky, despite the fact that the official translation software is way quicker to learn and much more nuanced. rocky starts learning english, simplifies his eridian, and immediately starts mocking grace for needing the software. they start blabbing to each other about all the weird quirks of their respective cultures and advanced science their planets can do. the whole time they are ribbing each other about culture stuff. grace eats in front of rocky. rocky forces grace to sleep in a corridor somewhere so he can keep watch.

then stratt and the eridian leader find out and it's like

stratt: you. you've been meeting in private with a member of the eridian deligation?

grace: ... yyyes.

stratt: and you shared with them classified scientific documents?

grace: i... maybe gave him. a laptop. he's so smart! what was i supposed to do?

stratt: HIM? you've assigned male pronouns to a genderless species?

grace: he said he likes to match!

stratt: do you even know the name of this eridian?!

grace: i call him rocky :)

stratt: 😰

then on rocky's side of things it's like

eridian leader: sorry did you say you called the human after one of its digestive noises?

rocky: yeah :)

eridian leader: and. you've been telling it about how to make xenonite. one of our most vital trading resources.

rocky: yes yes, grace is very ignorant about basic chemistry 🙄

eridian leader: right. and you watch it sleep. despite the fact that all the human beings we have spoken to have described this as a cultural violation?

rocky: well he didn't like it at first but he came around!!

anyway both sides of the delegation are sweating profusely (metaphorically speaking) until they see rocky and grace in action and are like ohh! they're both freaks. we are not to blame for this. these two are just really bad at navigating cultural norms.

*(He pointed into the distance.)

*(Over there, was another tree.)