Dr. Thana Graves
[[hello hello! This is a more detailed look at the lore and backstory for Miss Thana, as I'm feeling a little bit less afraid™️ of posting her here. Buckle up. It's a ride.]]
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Basic information
Name: Dr. Arthona "Thana" Graves
Aka: "Art" (only used by people she's very close to. If you're on a 'knowing her actual first name' basis with her, she'd probably let you call her that. Like, a small handful of researchers can call her that.)
Gender / Pronouns : female | she/her
Age: Anywhere from her mid 30s to 40s
Birthday: December 1st
Height : 5'8
Build : strong arms, strong legs, overall a bit 'thicker' but in the way that you look at her and think "oh she probably chopped wood every morning as a child"
Hair color : Black with blue tips. Highlights sometimes, it just depends on her laziness level.
Hair texture : 2C waves she is not equipped to properly take care of.
Eye color : very pale, cloudy blue (think post-death Helen in Death Becomes Her
Skin tone : Gray-ish. Not a peachy note in sight. All of her undertones are blue to the point that her lips are naturally blue.
Notes :
"Art" as a nickname came from her twin brother. When they were very small, "Arthona" was a little too hard for him to pronounce, so it stuck.
"Thana" came from an elder family member that did not quite get the pronunciation of her name right, and she liked it so much more than "Arthona" that she insisted to go by that as her preferred name.
Literally hates being called "Arthona" literally do not call her that if you value keeping all 10 fingers.
Her healthy body temperature is 52 Degrees farenheit. Neither her nor her brother have a straight answer for why, but she accredits it to a childhood injury.
Presently, she has the following scars and markings:
A scar at the base of her thumb from a shooting range incident (slide bite).
Two scars on the back of her thighs from an incident when she was a teenager. Her brother and his friends were jumping off a cliff into the water below, but the moment she made it to the cliff, she got anxious. She chose to sit and slide her way off the cliff, cutting up her legs and falling into the dirty lake water. Stitches were required.
A scar on her forehead from getting hit by a car as a child. This is elaborated further in the next segment.*
Multiple deep scars across the front of her shoulders, chest and stomach from attempting to get a sample from 682 to study the decomposition of matter removed from it.
A bruise-like birthmark on the back of her neck.
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Backstory
Arthona Eliza Graves was raised in the northern region of Appalachia with her fraternal twin brother Edgar. Hunting, fishing, and playing in the woods were a regular part of their early childhood. Their family did not have much because their father was a miner and their mother was a waitress, but they were a generally happy little family.
*There was an incident when she was 6 years old involving a car speeding down the mountain highway her family lived off of. She went to cross the road and insisted she was big enough to do so on her own. Unfortunately, people that are not local like to speed on mountain highways.
The outlook for her was not the best, but she made a speedy recovery, albeit with the side effects of a deathlike pallor and a reduced basal body temperature. The Graves family did not press charges against the driver.
Things changed when the two went to school. Edgar consistently tested with excellent scores, while Thana was the child in the class that couldn't sit still, couldn't focus and stay on task, and couldn't finish her work. This resulted in Edgar testing into the gifted program and placed in a separate class (which already spiked little Thana's anxiety), and Thana being given an early intervention ADHD diagnosis that would carry throughout her entire life.
Edgar would receive praise for his high scores, while Thana was repeatedly met with:
"you're just as smart as your brother, you just don't apply yourself."
"can't you just focus this once?"
"are you sure your grades are good enough to get you into college?"
"you just don't try hard enough."
Under any other circumstances, this would have likely resulted in some resentment. Especially considering that both were born a certain way that made them like this. Thankfully for Thana, her brother was her biggest supporter and would never let her talk herself down.
Due to this, the pressure was on. Thana decided for herself that If her grades weren't impressive enough, she would be as impressive as she could be in other ways. She was involved with multiple clubs at her school, even becoming president of the forensics club. She was always the first to get her community service hours submitted for the school year. She was a cheerleader, not head, but a cheerleader nonetheless and received a scholarship for it.
She attended college and received her Doctorate in Osteopathy with a minor in forensics, as well as dual-enrolling to receive an associate's in mortuary science. Both by the skin of her teeth. Her original plan was to become a crime scene investigator, but once her degree was said and done, she just wanted to return to the mountains.
She moved back to her hometown and took a job performing autopsies at the local hospital, saving up to pursue her real dream of opening a funeral home and being a funeral director.
Everything was relatively normal until the day she found something odd in a body she was examining. A gland of some sort on the brain that should not have been there. Multiple tests were run, but no one could quite pinpoint exactly what it was.
Turns out, that was the brain of someone with latent psychic abilities. Thana did not know this and forgot about the whole occurrence until two months later when she was recruited by the foundation.
Her main focus is to study the decay of Type Greens and perform autopsies as necessary, but her role involves more than just that. If it's an anomaly and it died, it has likely gone to Graves at one point.
"somebody's gotta touch the dead bodies, may as well be the one that studied 12 years to do it."
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Personality
Thana is... Thana. She is snarky and sarcastic and comes off as callous until she truly warms up to someone. Once she is comfortable with you, prepare for chaos. Her unmasked self is very energetic.
Considering her line of work, she has a very morbid sense of humor.
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Other
She is a class 3 researcher.
Her favorite color is blue.
Her favorite food is pulled pork and Mac and cheese.
No one can read her band shirts (namely her Chat Pile shirt makes people scratch their heads).
Has a Goliath Bird eater tarantula named George that may or may not be anomalous and also may or may not communicate by squeaking. Only Thana can understand him. One pocket of her lab coat is George's Time Out Pocket™️
The other pocket usually holds her vape. If you want to be her friend, buy her a vape.
Also partakes in the Devil's Lettuce. Due to the nature of her job, people rarely question it.
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Thanks for reading :)
Special thanks to @policy-0f-truth for making her brother Edgar and letting me make him her twin brother for Thana's canon. Edgar is his own character and he is awesome and Hunt is an awesome writer that inspired me to do this stuff in the first place.
