Stardustly

Hi anon!! So glad you asked ;) now I can finally info-dump about my favs mwahaha

For my space story, the main characters are Proto Callan and Nova Nadeli. Proto's name is derived from protostar, a baby star in the early stages of formation, and Nova's name from supernova, the death of a star. They're the blond buzzcut and brunette respectively in most of my illustrations nowadays!

A little on their backstories: Proto is one traumatized dude. He went to a private boarding school for his entire secondary education and was originally specializing in pre-med. He comes from a well-off family who hold high expectations for him, being their only heir and all. Thus Proto was dead set on becoming a neurosurgeon until the day of the career fair his last year of high school. Suffocated by the pressure, Proto enlisted in the air force last minute and escaped his fate in medicine. Basic training and duty shape him into a cynical version of his younger self. After witnessing the worst of mankind and unspeakable horrors, he vows to never get close to anyone again and returns to pursue an education in aerospace engineering. Through his professor, he landed a spot in the new international space program.

Nova, on the other hand, moved several times in her childhood due to her parents' careers. As a result, she became extremely social to compensate for her short-lived friendships and borderline-workaholic parents. She always had a love for aerospace, seeing her father design aircraft at home and going on field-trips to local spacecraft manufacturers. For university, she moved to the city to pursue a dual degree in physics and general engineering, then got a masters in physics. She secured an internship at ISERA for aircraft design and calculations.

Our two leads made it into an extremely selective and revolutionary space program under ISERA, an international partnership to accelerate space exploration and research. Man-made wormholes have just made mainstream news among academics and the world's top physicists to be highly plausible, which catalyzed this entire program. Selected astronaut candidates have gone through extensive screening and testing to ensure that they are the best of the best, making the position highly sought after.

After the first few weeks of training, Nova and Proto become close friends, supporting each others' career aspirations at the same time. Nova vies for the co-pilot role because of her love for flying and helping others, while Proto reaches for the illustrious commander position. Nova makes Proto's commander goal her main project and becomes heavily involved in his training and "campaigning." This leads to some... problems later on, both on land and in space.