Artimae Moongazer

Arti

Protagonist (Plant Girl)

14 galactic standard years

Female

None

A short bob that goes down to her chin

Lime green, very fluffy and soft

5 feet, 5 inches

125 pounds

Tiny little scars all over her fingers from her experiments

Pear-shaped and stocky, she has round hips and thicker limbs.

A light tan, slightly yellowish from never actually being under a sun

70% human, 30% tiny bits of unidentified alien races (in this universe, humans have integrated themselves into the intergalactic community, so nobody is pure human)

Dark brown

She acts confident, but it's an act to conceal her severe self-doubt and fear of not being good enough. She is also crap at social interaction. Growing up in such an isolated community means that she doesn't have very good social skills. Artimae has a lot of trouble admitting when she’s wrong, and is stubborn to a fault if anyone tries to correct her. Even if she knows she’s making a mistake, she won’t back down, as she believes it would show weakness. She believes that she has to be the best and always right no matter what, which leads to some issues for her later on...

She constantly fiddles with the pockets of her jumpsuit, as she has to have something to do at all times, and has a bad habit of staring at people in public, as she usually wants to get to know new people, but is too socially inept to do so. She doesn’t understand most slang, even though she tries, and when talking to strangers, Artimae tends to bounce between talking as fast as physically possible and struggling to pronounce the most basic of words. She only swears if she is in a truly terrible situation, and while she uses big words around her fellow scientists to make herself seem smarter, she uses a vocabulary closer to that of a normal kid her age around everyone else.

Her desire to learn. She wants to be able to explore and gather information about anything and everything she can get her hands on. Arti is also determined to earn her doctorate one day, so she’s taking advanced online classes and constantly scrounging for scraps of knowledge. She wants to earn her doctorate to officially become part of the scientific community, a group that she idolizes as perfection itself. Artimae also really likes the idea of adventure, so while she’s happy to remain on Vera City for now, she daydreams about becoming an officer on an exploratory ship (think Star Trek lol).

She thinks that anyone who isn't scientifically minded isn't too smart, as she was raised in a community of scientists. With things like negative emotions and mental illness, she sees them as kind of separate - like there's no way those things can affect her - and she doesn't have good coping mechanisms for her own issues. Arti believes scientists are the smartest and most moral people as a group, and has trouble thinking of science as anything other than perfect and infallible.

She is good at spotting mistakes and things that are out of line, and can analyze information to figure out the best path to take. Artimae is intelligent, and also a surprisingly fast runner when properly motivated.

She is an avid botanist and likes solving puzzles and riddles. She also likes to read nonfiction and attempt experiments with her plants. She’ll have long talks with her bestie, Kaz, through HoloChat, and is attempting to learn to draw, but not very successfully.

Arti is enthusiastic, curious, and clever, and puts on a show of pride and confidence to convince herself that her fears of uselessness are unfounded. She’s created a sort of bubble to appear more confident in herself than she actually is, a result of her time on the space station, where she is surrounded by people many years older and wiser than her, so she feels like she has to overcompensate. She believes that mental illness and negative emotions only affect those other people, not her, so she just repetitively tells herself her fears don’t exist and represses her negative emotions, as no one has told her any differently. She can also be quite nosy, eavesdropping on conversations she’s not meant to hear and looking for things she’s not supposed to see, an offshoot of her curious nature. Artimae hates when information is kept from her, and doesn’t like when others keep secrets. She’s naturally investigative, leading her into trouble more often than not. Arti would climb a 100-foot tree if she thought there were samples of a unique plant blight near the top. Of course, afterward, her best friend Kaz would have to get her back down. Artimae isn’t sassy or sarcastic and isn’t very good at straight out lying.

Green

A tie between her holotablet, as it lets her talk to Kaz and communicate with the outside world, and her plants, as she is super passionate about botany.

Elka berries (tiny little purple berries that taste slightly sour). She LOVES sour foods.

Student, botanist

Isn't involved in galactic politics, because she just knows that getting involved in politics would just be a source of endless frustration for her (because of her distance from any sort of major planet and her young age, she wouldn’t be able to express her opinion, and she hates feeling powerless)

Atheist

She’s never actually met any animals in person, but she likes looking at picture of loupas online, which are wooly, sheeplike animals about as big as a teacup.

She is a pacifist, and can't really fight

She has grown up on a scientific research station her entire life, raised by two loving parents, Elias and Valerie Moongazer. The station, Vera City, is very separated from the rest of the galaxy, and has a population of about 20 scientists of various disciplines. Artimae has never left the station, but she’s pretty content with video-chatting her best friend Kaz, who travels all over the galaxy with his moms’ space hotel.

She is homeschooled by her parents and the other scientists aboard Vera City. Therefore, she knows a lot about biology, chemistry, and physics, but not so much on history or how to order food at a restaurant. She also takes online classes to try and earn a degree in biology.

December 25

No pets

The inciting incident in Arti’s story is Vera City getting ‘sploded (rip)