Demera Isra-Meng

❝The most interesting people you’ll find are ones that don’t fit into your average cardboard box. They’ll make what they need, they’ll make their own boxes,❞ ― Dr. Temple Grandin
One of the only ways Demi knows how to interact with others is through his crafting projects. He puts all his passion and feeling into them, as he struggles to outwardly emote what he's feeling, making people seem him as a kind of robot who doesn't feel, despite that this couldn't be further from the truth.

Although Demi can come off like he doesn't care or even extremely selfish due to his neurological disorder, the truth is Demera would do anything for his friends. He fears change and growth and wonders if the more people get to know him the less they'll like him. He is aware of how difficult he can be.

While he can logically analyze situations between other people (who is secretly dating, what people are insecure about, etc.) when he is added to the equation, it's nearly impossible for him to understand how things connect.

Where his friends are involved, Demera takes things at face value and might not notice lies or jokes. He tends to take things like pranking, jokes, or debates too far because he won't notice the subtle social cues that tell a person it's time to stop.

Some of these abilities were written by Hizrihel.

Actives

Photographic Deduction: Demi has astounding deductive and information processing abilities the likes that no human could. When he focuses his mind on a task, he can deduce and connect situations, patterns, and connections extraordinarily quick.

He can read body language, figure out people's motives, and gather information that others couldn't even imagine just by people watching or looking into his surroundings. This makes him an amazing amateur detective.

This helps him to predict attack patterns in a physical fight, analyze minor details about a person (IE if their clothing has cat hair on it, etc.), and find patterns in seemingly unrelated events.

The closest comparison to this power would be Sherlock Holmes' abilities.

Of course, paired with his ability to retain knowledge and his inability to understand the theory of mind, this can cause Demi to go into a sort of fantasy realm where he is consumed by this knowledge and cannot focus on other things.

Passives

Dense Skeletal Structure: Andromedans have a dense skeletal and muscular structures. While this makes internal injuries rare and gives them an advantage with melee weapons, it makes them incredibly heavy. Even the lighter members of their race typically weigh more than the average human male. For their weight they’re agile, but you’ll be hardpressed to find one comfortable twirling and jumping around or for that matter comfortable in deep water, seeing as their density makes them sink like a rock if they don’t have something else to help them float.

Eidetic Memory: Demi's memory is photographic in nature allowing him to memorize songs, books, and other text/images upon his first investigation of them. With the use of his other gift, Demetra is skilled at learning and fluently speaking languages.

While this does help him resist all forms of mental magic, it also is a major contributor to his sensory overload. He can't forget the things he learns by pushing them to the back of his head, leaving him with plenty of useless facts and data.

Demera never experienced childhood amnesia ( the phenomenon where adults cannot recall information and memories previous to four years of age and have fewer memories from their childhood). In fact, Demi can recall his time in the womb.

Enhanced Senses: In dark light they can see with the visual perception of an earth feline. For smell, their acute sense of smell puts them on par with the average gray wolf. You can even compare their hearing to that of an owl. However, having enhanced sensory perception is also a hindrance to Andromedans. Subsonic sounds make them incredibly sick, inducing vomiting and nosebleeds easily. Both sub and hypersonic noises cause them to lose their ability to balance properly, causing them to stumble drunkenly at best and belay them completely out at worst. Incredibly bright lights make them sneeze and cough a good deal and long exposure to bright light gives them lasting headaches, this is made many times worse at night when a bright light shone in their eyes can leave them blind for several minutes. This is only an issue with earth made, artificial lighting, but since it’s practically everywhere, it’s a huge pain. Strong smells and tastes can cause migraines, blindness and vomiting.

Super Strength: Andromedans are incredibly strong compared to humans, but this strength comes with a drawback. They need a minimum of several decades worth of training to properly control this strength. It’s common for young ones to hurt themselves doing what should be ordinary everyday tasks. Throwing a baseball too hard could easily result in dislocating several joints in the arm, gripping a glass a little too hard can shatter it and send shards flying all over the place, or embed them in the hand. If they’ve never been around humans, or lack a good understanding of how relatively squishy humans can be, this can lead to breaking hands during handshakes or winding someone ill-placed pat on the back.

Common Magic Items

Simple Language Charm (Andromedian): This is the standard language charm provided to most characters. It translates a characters mother tongue into English, and allows them to hear English as their mother tongue.

Weaknesses

Motor Control: Demi struggles with his motor control. Doing things with his fingers, like putting small mechanical pieces in places or using chopsticks, is difficult for him. It takes him twice as long to figure out how to accurately and adequately do things like this compared to other people.

Overstimulation: Demera is hypersensitive to sounds and lights even compared to his race. He hates bright light and always has the lights around him dimmed very low. When forced outside his house, he is usually wearing sunglasses and a hat tucked over his eyes.

When in the presence of loud noises or many people speaking (which is pretty much anywhere) Demi will randomly act out by screaming, holding his head/ears, or going into a catatonic state.

Theory of Mind: Theory of mind is the ability to understand that other people have beliefs, desires, and goals for themselves that aren't your own on an emotional level. While Demi can understand this logically, he can't do so emphatically. This can make him seem selfish or cruel.

Theory of mind is crucial in everyday activities involving other people. It is the ability to comprehend and analyze other people's emotions and how you should react to them.

Without this, Demi doesn't see even the most blatant shows of emotion, and when he does, he doesn't connect them with himself (IE: he doesn't see that he should apologize for making someone upset).

○ Demera is the eldest of three children to Raphael Isra and Aurora Meng. He was born on a refugee's vessel after a failed rebellion on his home planet.

○ Later, his parents would come to the Starlight Observation Station and get themselves jobs as academy teachers. Demera and his family have been on Manta Carlos since January 2017.

Both his parents work at the academy as college professors. They're well off enough as far as Demera is concerned, but he doesn't have his own part-time job and thus no spendable income that goes directly into his pocket.

○ Eldest child of Raphael and Aurora.