Ziggy

Ziggy is the crew's most openly fearful member — which makes him, ironically, its most visible kind of brave. Everyone else manages their fear. They push it down, lock it behind walls, refuse to let it show. Ziggy wears his out loud, in his voice, in his wide eyes, in the speed at which he talks when he's nervous. Which is often. And then he shows up anyway. That's the whole character.

He was properly nurtured, in a good home, by parents who loved him and taught him to think before he acted. That caution lives in him — it's not something the block put there, it's something he came with. What he's still learning is that caution and cowardice are different things. You can be afraid and still stand your ground. You can shake the whole time and still not run. Ziggy does both, every time, without fully understanding yet what that makes him.

He talks fast. Nervous energy, always. He asks the questions nobody else will ask — the obvious thing sitting in the middle of the room that everyone's thinking and nobody's voicing — because he hasn't built the walls that would tell him not to. That quality makes him easy to underestimate. It also makes him almost impossible to replace. Ziggy is often the voice of the reader: the one saying what everyone is actually feeling out loud, before they're ready to admit it.

He's also the funniest one. This is not a coincidence. Nervous talking that happens to be sharp is what humor is. The crew would be a lot quieter without him. And a lot less honest.