Taylor Barzelay is a star basketball player from a rural small town, who appears entirely ordinary, until it is discovered that she is secretly the "Galaxy Crowned" of the planet Cyandii. As one of the few survivors of the destruction of her planet, she was forced to take the form of a human boy using an alien device. This all changes after she meets a new girl named Katherine "Kat" Silverberg, who recently moved from Metropolis. Kat makes Taylor experience things that she has never felt before and makes her rethink everything she has ever known about the world around her.
Taylor later appears as a side-character in Dawn of DC's Hawkgirl (also written by Jadzia Axelrod) as a superhero named Galaxy. It takes place six years after the events of Galaxy: The Prettiest Star; Taylor and Kat finally move to A-Town, a borough of Metropolis that is primarily populated by aliens.
Galaxy: The Prettiest Star provides examples of:
- Artificial Limbs: Kat uses a prosthetic after losing her leg in a drunk driving accident.
- The Big Damn Kiss: Taylor and Kat share a momentous kiss after Taylor was kicked out of high school and not allowed to attend homecoming due to being an alien. This isn't the first time they kissed, just the first time in public, showing that Taylor really doesn't care what the rest of the school thinks of her anymore.
- Break Them by Talking: Taylor's unnamed "brother" has one where he breaks Taylor by telling her that she doesn't see him as a human, she only sees him as part of her cover.
-
Broken Aesop: It has been noted
that the story's message about being trans can come across more like a theme of detransitioning, the complete opposite. Taylor was raised as a girl by Good Parents, was forced to present as a boy by an external force, and later doubts about it lead to her turning back into a girl. - Canine Companion: Taylor has Argus, a corgi-like robot that watches over her.
- Cool Car: Kat's car has flames painted all over it. Justified because she painted it herself to separate it from her father, as it was a gift from him.
- Cryptic Conversation: According to Taylor, residents of Ozma Gap are experts at this.Taylor: Vagueness is an Ozma Gap specialty. That and rust are our major exports.
- Curtains Match the Windows:
- Taylor's true form has cyan eyes and cyan hair.
- Taylor's human form has brown eyes and hair.
- Kat's mother has brown eyes and hair.
- Dark and Troubled Past:
- Kat and her mother moved to Ozma Gap from Metropolis to escape her father, who was responsible for Kat losing her leg. His attempt to make amends with her was laughably bad; it seems like he just gave her a car and was done with it.
- Taylor saw her family and people massacred and forced to live in the form of a boy for six years, while knowing she was really a girl.
- Dating What Daddy Hates: Taylor's "father" hates the fact that she's dating Kat, but more because dating a human could blow their cover instead of any racism or homophobia.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- The town's reactions to Taylor revealing her true alien self are meant to evoke transphobia, especially as the main character is explicitly trans. The principal expels her because he claims that she is a "distraction" to the other students, a couple of girls corner Taylor in the bathroom and berate her about whether she is really supposed to be there, and her best friend rejects her and tells her that he wishes her dead because he thinks she was wearing the mask of his friend instead of her being her true self.
- The Vale are described as a group of extremist aliens that wiped out anyone that was different from them, serving as a metaphor for hate in general.
- Drunk Driver: How Kat lost her leg. Her father was driving drunk with her in the vehicle, and they ended up in a nine car pile-up. Superman was able to save her life, but she lost her leg in the process.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": Downplayed. Kat would rather people call her by her nickname instead of Katherine.
- Don't Call Me "Sir": Kat's mother says that while she appreciates Taylor's manners, she would prefer to be called by her first name, Zinnia, instead of "ma'am".
- Expy: Taylor is one of Princess Lemuria from Raideen. She is an Alien Princess who's kingdom no longer exists and subjects have been killed, leading her to hide from their killers on Earth. Both also have long, green hair, and adopt a psuedonym to help hide their true identities. While Lemuria and Taylor both pursue an Interspecies Romance with a human, Lemuria's is heterosexual and Taylor's is queer.
- Full-Name Ultimatum: Kat's mother calls her by her full name after she is caught coming home late at night, though it's more jokingly than anything.Kat's mother: Katherine Angelica Silverberg! You do not just drive off in the middle of the night.Taylor: Ouch. Middle name.Kat: Yep. She's serious.
- Futureshadowing: When Taylor tells Kat that Ozma Gap is "a great place to hide out in", Taylor is foreshadowing that she is in hiding as the few survivors of the massacre of her planet, which happened six years prior to the events of the story, but only really comes into play a couple chapters later.
- Heroes Love Dogs: The main character, Taylor, is heroic and has a robotic talking corgi.
- Humanoid Aliens: Cyandiians are humanoids with purple skin, bluish hair, pointy ears, blue eyes, and horns.
- Innocently Insensitive: When Kat asks her mother to stop being "mushy" with her around Taylor, Kat's mother responds with "I'm sure his mama does this to him," which Taylor is visibly taken aback by. Taylor's mother is dead and Taylor is currently in hiding from her parent's killers.
- Interspecies Relationship: Taylor is an alien princess from the planet of Cyandii and is dating Kat, a human.
- Ironic Echo: Taylor's best friend Buck tells her that he would "hide bodies for [her]" out of loyalty, but after discovering that she is really a girl and an alien, he angrily tells her that she is "a lying, filthy alien, and the only body I’d hide is yours, so that no one would ever find you."
- Law of Alien Names: Taylor's full alien birth name is "Taelyr Ilextrix-spiir Biarxiiai".
- My Nayme Is: Zigzagged. Taylor's true Cyandiian name is Taelyr, but she mostly goes by Taylor.
- Queer Colors: Taylor, a trans woman, is shown wearing a t-shirt with the trans pride flag on the cover art.
- Nonconformist Dyed Hair: Kat has dyed green hair and is a free-spirited, rebellious newcomer who mostly wears clothing that would be considered "alternative" or punk, especially in a rural small town like Ozma Gap.
- Otherworldly Technicolour Hair: Taylor's alien form has long green hair.
- Princess Protagonist: The main character, Taylor, is the princess of the planet of Cyandii. Unusually for this trope, her kingdom no longer exists and her people have been massacred. She's also in hiding.
- Pointy Ears: Taylor has pointy ears after she takes on her true form. Justified, because she is an alien princess from the planet of Cyandii.
- Robot Buddy: Argus, an alien robot that takes the form of a talking corgi, can record and scan things and watches over Taylor.
- Shout-Out:
- Taylor mentions the line "I am large, I contain multitudes." from "Song of Myself", a poem by Walt Whitman in Leaves of Grass.
- The title itself is a reference to "The Prettiest Star" from David Bowie's Aladdin Sane.
- Ozma Gap is named after the character from the Land of Oz novels, who was also a princess disguised as a boy.
- Then Let Me Be Evil: Taylor decides to destroy her school after she is kicked out for being an alien and denied entry to Homecoming, but she realizes that making life worse for everybody else isn't going to magically make hers any better so she decides against it.
- Trans Tribulations: Though most of it is told through metaphor and symbolism, Taylor struggles to be accepted after she sheds her disguise of a human boy and embraces her true identity as an alien girl.
