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Character Name: Starla Makenna Li Kirke. Makenna is part of her first name, not a middle name. She insists that you address her as Starla Makenna. It makes her sound distinguished, and she's all about distinction.
Age and Birthday: October 30th, 2004 (17)
Bloodline: Halfblood. Both parents are halfbloods with one magical and one Muggle parent. The Kirkes (prior to Andrew's father marrying his Muggle mother) had been purebloods for several generations - though they could have not been described as one of the "old" families a la the Weasleys or the Malfoys - and it was therefore expected that any children would be wizards and attend Hogwarts, an onus carried on to this day.
Home Residence: Portsmouth, a small coastal town in Southern England near the Isle of Wight.
House and Year: Ravenclaw, seventh year
Current Classes: Ancient Runes, Arithmancy, Charms, History of Magic, Muggle Studies and Transfiguration. Preferably Starla Makenna would like to become a career academic, but if this is somehow not possible for her, she supposes a career at Gringotts would suit.
Sexuality: Asexual. Or as close as one can be to. In an age group which is known for obsessing about their sexuality and the opposite (or same) sex, Starla Makenna is notable for not appearing to pay any attention to hers at all. She reasons abstractedly that if she had inclinations away from boys and/or towards girls, there would have been some significant happening to make her realise so, but as there has been no such thing, she assumes that she is straight.
However, by her logic for someone to realise that they were homosexual or bisexual, there must have been a lot of thought given to this and for one to have at least a moderately large sex drive to necessaite giving a lot of thought to this. So how can she assume that she doesn't catch the Snitch for the other team, when she may simply have a low or late starting libido? She's not attracted to any of her male classmates, but conversely she's not attracted to any of the females either. In other words, she doesn't know. She's likely straight, but enjoys whittling away her time feeding her brain cells musings on such things, and will ponder this for hours. Needless to say she hasn't had any boyfriends. Or the other. She wouldn't be adverse to telling her parents that she's a lesbian for the shock value or to be rebellious, but hers are just too darn nice to give the desired reaction.
Appearance: Being a witch loathe to fall into cliches, it is ironic that Starla Makenna's looks slot her neatly into one. She's the ugly pretty girl, the hottie who could be but whose existence is suffocated under layers of oversized clothes and drab garb more befitting of a woman well over twice her age. By and large she does a rather thorough job of supressing any natural good looks she has by the sheer monotony of her day-to-day attire: large horn-rimmed glasses, loose-fitting trousers and oversized jumpers woven from boring neutrals. No matter how many times her mother manages to toss out her father's older woolen items, they always seem to end up in Starla Makenna's wardrobe, and the nicer and more feminine things purchased for her recently by said mother relegated to the back to keep company with the mothballs. If the impression she wants to give is one of the ivory-tower intellectual too lost in the deeper ponderings of the universe to care about such mundane day-to-day manners as coordinating clothing, she certainly succeeds. Next to her Albert Einstein would come across as being decidedly fashion-forward. And as for Trelawney and Grandmother Longbottom, well, at least they trouble to accessorise.
Despite looking as though she reached into her wardrobe on any given morning while under the influence of an especially bad Confundus charm, in some ways the form that Starla Makenna presents to the world has as much thought and care put into it as the painstakingly teased blonde curls of one Izzy Finnigan. She has to try to look this bad, and for good reason. Her biracial heritage seems to have landed her with the best pickings from her caucasian father and chinese mother (neither of who were exactly bottom dregs themselves in the looks department at her age) ending up with some height from the former and from the latter an exotic tint to a face that, when not obscured by the coke-bottle glasses seemingly surgically attached to her, flips all the right switches in terms of conventionally attractive proportions. Incidentally, it's not that she's allergic to contact lenses. She could wear them if desired, but that's too much work and she just doesn't care enough. Besides, in her mind they could make her look prettier and therefore less intelligent. And we couldn't have that now, could we?
The rest of Starla Makenna's looks can be summed up through statistics. She'd prefer it if this entire section had been written in this manner, as she is anal like that. Long straight dark brown hair, usually pulled back in a ponytail for convenience's sake. People may realise she's a girl otherwise. Brown eyes. Full-lipped mouth, which will be appropriately described as a pout. She has this expression often, you see. High cheekbones. Tall figure which is thin without being scrawny. One can almost see why she feels a subconscious need to hide herself away in order to be taken seriously. In terms of posture, her own arrogance and unwavering belief in the superiority gained through her cleverness prevents her from slipping into the slouch and stooped stance that plagues many intellectuals due to years of bending over a desk and ferrying heavy tomes from one side of the library to another. She stands to her full five feet and eight inches and looks people directly in the eye, even looking down at them if you will, literally in some cases, figuratively in all but where her most valued professors and a few housemates are concerned.
In short, Starla Makenna is smarter to you. And even her appearance is designed to let you know it.
Played By: Chyler Leigh. As the movie these icons are capped from is several years old and she doesn't look like a teenager in recent candids, I couldn't find many good shots of her. The icons already uploaded are what I'll use for her. Pictures can be found here, here and here.
Descriptive Personality: Most professors would consider Starla Makenna's prose to be flawless, but her conversation hardly parallels this. It is hardly that she is inarticulate. Indeed, she can be capable of subtly nuanced debates and when in the mood possesses a dry, capable wit. Quite simply, she can seldom be bothered with the intricacies of small talk, particularly when it involves her so-called peers. She truly doesn't consider people her own age to be her peers. If something is important, she feels, it is either currently written down somewhere or will be someday. Unless it is about quantum theory or alchemy, she quite simply doesn't want to know. Unless you feel the same way, she quite simply doesn't want to know you either.
Starla Makenna has yet to learn to value traits other than what Ravenclaw house represents. In some ways she is a pure, almost extreme, academic. She believes that one can only achieve what one's own intelligence permits or, as may be the case with some, limits. Therefore an averagely brave but highly intelligent person will still achieve more than a very brave but only averagely intelligent person, as intelligence is the funnel through which you channel all other skills. Her own celebral superiority therefore leads her to feel superior in other ways, and she has flitted through life firmly smug and convinced of her self-worth.
It is fortunate that Starla Makenna did get Sorted into Ravenclaw (except perhaps not so much for her housemates themselves). The hat did strongly consider Slytherin due to her burning desire to prove herself and her conceit, but in truth she would have been only less out of place in her father's old house. Blunt to a fault, she lacks the necessary tact and guile to survive the interpersonal politics of such a house. Her habit as a first year of sassing back academically inferior (yet much larger) senior students would have similarly landed her in the hospital wing a fair few times. Being placed in Ravenclaw and surrounded by less Croylian types somewhat diluted this impulse. While she still considers the vast majority to be her intellectual underlings, she at least respects that to be Sorted there, they have to not only be reasonably intelligent, but to value that trait and to an extent learning for learning's own sake. Because of this she's comparatively more respectful and tolerant towards them. Partially as she can at least respect that their hearts are in the right place, and partially because she has to be out of survival necessity. After six years' worth of attendance her favourite people at Hogwarts still remain the professors, however.
In terms of nature Starla Makenna is more bitchy than genuinely mean. It is not that she sets out to hurt, but that she doesn't care enough to soften any verbal or written barbs. Through her logic whenever she bites, it is because the other person did or said something daft in the first place; she was therefore provoked and it was deserved. That, and she doesn't believe most people are clever enough to detect her barbs. She delights in wordplay and the tacit insult. It's an art form to make a derogatory comment subtle enough so that the recipient takes a few bites to get it, and yet not so obscure that it will slide by undetected, and still yet not so obvious that said recipient can call her out on it and retaliate in kind. This may sound cruel, but it is the chance to show her wit that delights Starla Makenna. To her it's like a sport, a chance to show how sharp she is against an opponent, and the hurt inflicted is seldom the main aim. She seems almost unaware that there are actual feelings involved, and that to many other people it is very much not just a game. Emotions are inconsequential to her. It is only thoughts that have meaning.
In spite of this she is a follower of "pick on someone your own size." While preschool children bore and repulse her, she is not overly unkind to younger students, as why should they be as intelligent as a sixth or seventh year? They haven't had her experience and years, so why should they be able to read in six non-magical languages? For her immediate peers though, there is no excuse, and it is them she will come down the most heavily upon. Her standard comeback is, "I would retort, but that would be the cerebral equivalent of bullying." However, she is not completely heartless. She is nice to animals, as being animals she does not expect them to reach her level of intelligence and therefore can't lose respect or discriminate against them because of it. However, other than hampsters and the like, she hates the majority of them! Ironic, yet so fitting.
There is something about Starla Makenna, in spite of her fanged elitism, that needs to be - not necessarily liked - but approved of. She is loathe to do something in front of others that she is not exceptionally and inately skilled at and, as a large part of learning comes from mistakes and therefore to an extent failure, seldom acquires new skills. Secretly she may wish to be more skilled on a broomstick than what she is, but as she isn't, will simply fob off the trait and say that it's a waste of time, that it snatches her away from her books and that she never wanted to learn it anyway.
Family: Starla Makenna had very little time with her parents all to herself, and has resented them for it ever since. She has especially resented younger brother Jack and his rather unimaginary but unembarrassing given name. In less kind moments - and she has plenty of them - she tells him that his name is as dull and indistinguisable as he is. She also tells him he's "nice" - while privately thinking to herself that in Old English "nice" used to mean stupid. Because she's, well, nice like that.
Fortunately for Jack, his parents are as nice in the modern-day sense of the word and as pleasant a pair of people as Starla Makenna is not. Mother Mei (nee Lin) works for the Apocathery owned by the Bobbin family and brews potions, while father Andrew serves ice cream at the new parlour open in place of Fortescue's at Diagon Alley. He even introduced several new flavours there, including the surprisingly popular Peanut Butter Cluster. He entered the workforce more recently than his wife, with Mei being the breadwinner while he stayed at home with the children until they were both school-age. As Andrew is a halfblood and Starla Makenna was showing clear signs of being a gifted child, he advocated her and Jack's attendance of a Muggle school until they received their Hogwarts letters.
Mei and Andrew did start dating during their sixth year, but they could hardly be described as high school sweethearts. For one thing, they weren't inseparable. This was in spite of Andrew's best efforts. Better qualities aside, Andrew was (and still is, his wife says resignedly) rather needy and wanted to spend every waking moment with Mei, but the Hufflepuff had classes to attend and study for, prefect duties to fulfill, housemakes to bake her infamous cakes for and didn't seem to see Andrew as the top priority that he wanted himself to be. Also in spite of his best efforts. Mei was additionally, while not immature, rather childlike and trusting in her outlook and at the time not ready for a serious relationship. She similarly wasn't ready to deal with the libido of a 16 to 17 year old boy, and while Andrew tried his best to respect her boundaries, seemed to view his as the Mr Hyde to his cheerful, peanut butter-loving exterior.
Furthermore, Andrew and Mei were never seen as the golden Hogwarts couple they needed to be in order to be classified as high school sweethearts as most of their classmates couldn't quite believe that they were together in the first place. That the loud, exhuberant Gryffindor and quiet, bookish Hufflepuff were an item of sorts garnered mostly amusement and gentle skepticism. Friends would covetly speculate why they were together and when the inevitable breakup would happen. Some, such as Mei's housemate Zacharias Smith, told one or the other explicitedly that they should stop seeing each other. Andrew was also fitfully jealous, something that both angered and upset Mei.
Andrew proposed to Mei by stashing the ring in a bag of chocolates, appropriately enough Reese's Mini Cups. However the cup containing the ring had slipped to the bottom of the bag, and poor Mei had to chomp through almost its entire contents without knowing why before she found it. Afterwards she was so stunned that she sat in silence for several minutes before eventually accepting Andrew's proposal, and even then needed longer for it to sink in before she was able to react. This is the sort of story that Starla Makenna finds nauseatingly cute. Minus the cute part, actually.
Detailed History: Growing up, Starla Makenna was what would be described by most as a precocious child. In English precocious seems to have two connotations. One, that of being an unusually gifted and advanced child who is skilled and knowledgeable beyond his or her years, especially academically. Two, of using said giftedness and advancement to be a downright little hellion. Both definitions especially apply where Starla Makenna is concerned.
While she was a preschooler, Starla Makenna's parents noticed that she did not associate much with her peers when left at a daycare centre on the odd occasion that Andrew couldn't look after her. Worried, they took her to a child psychiatrist, only to be told that she had a high IQ. Unfortunately for Mei, Starla Makenna's grandmother, a formidable Chinese matriach, got wind of this. She espoused how wonderful it would be to have someone "exceptional" in the family (with the underlying meaning that Mei was not and her husband was even worse) and that the Kirkes must take advantage of her early intelligence and push her into a preschool for gifted children. Not wanting to exacerbate her daughter's already pronounced oddities and anti-social tendencies, Mei initially balked but was gradually worn down. Starla Makenna therefore began a program to teach her how to read and write before school-age. This is what is known in educational circles as "hothousing."
Hothousing refers to when preschool-aged children, usually those who show promise, are put into schooling systems where they are taught how to read and write earlier than the norm. The end effect of this is that they look really good when they start primary and already are literate before the other children, but what parents don't realise is that their classmates - because at that age children are developing and learning so quickly - soon get caught up. So in the long run hothousing doesn't really affect the child's learning potential. Starla Makenna therefore started primary school already able to read picture books and knowing the rudiments of French and Italian (more lessons paid for by her maternal grandmother) and was soon placed a year ahead. However, while she was still intelligent and maintained a lead between herself and her classmates, the gap was beginning to narrow. Other children were learning so quickly that her head start soon began to get clipped away.
A few years later her grandmother still had plenty of time for her, but comments such as "you were such a clever little girl" become injected with the praise, and the praise itself got more and more scant. Madame Lin seemed to view her granddaughter with the same disappointment as a punter placing a beat on an outsider after a tip-off and then realised he had placed his money on a dud. Adding insult to injury, Jack had recently turned five and started attending the same school. He wasn't as clever as his older sister, but at the same time he wasn't as conceited and arrogant, and being a good-natured, humourous and sociable boy, soon became well-loved by students and teachers alike. Starla Makenna was then referred to as "Jack's older sister." In her mind not only was she now second-favourite at home, but at school too. Her grandmother, feeling that the time had come for intervention, started shipping her off to after-school gifted programs. Perhaps it was just that Starla Makenna was bored of her day school, and that in a more stimulating environment she would reach her full potential. It would have been a waste of time to point out that whatever potential her granddaughter had was currently being met.
Starla Makenna had a love-hate relationship with her gifted school. On one hand, she was around other talented children and in an environment where it was not only accepted but expected to be intelligent. On the other, due to her similarly gifted classmates she had to work harder than ever in order to distinguish herself. For the first time in her life she was not always the best at everything (which she had been at her public school, if only by an increasingly slender margin), and it terrified her. If she wasn't defined by her intellect, then what was she defined by? At home she became increasingly petulant and disagreeable, bordering on being openly rude to her father and not at all bordering on being rude to her brother and secluding herself for long periods of time in her room. In some ways she was more critical of her mother than the men of the house, believing her to be potentially more cerebral but of allowing it to go to waste. Whenever she was significantly disrespectul, for once Andrew would intervene and send her to her room. After a while he came to realise that his "odd" daughter actually welcomed it, since this time-out allowed her to read in peace without either Andrew or Jack barging in. He started to think of other ways to punish her. The only experience he had personally of discipline was in fairy tales, so he drew his inspiration from those and Starla Makenna spent many afternoons sweeping the hearth and scrubbing the kitchen floor.
As a youngster she therefore almost yearned for Hogwarts, until she came to realise that she was a late developer magically, a terrifying thought for a girl who had never been a late developer in anything. Eventually she of course realised that she was not a Squib, but in spite of both her bloodline and of subsequent glowing school reports and more "O's" in her OWLs than in the average pornography film, she has always feared that there is something faulty, something off about her magic. The idea of doing something supposedly intrinsic to being a witch worse than classmates possessing far less cleverness is abhorrent and terrifying to her. She has therefore never fully warmed to the wizarding world. Perhaps this is why she presently considers working at Gringotts with the goblins as a secondary career option, since goblins have their own magic completely unrelated to those wizards possess, and therefore no true comparisons can be made.
Ironically in some ways Starla Makenna remains trapped in childhood. There is little about her that is like a normal seventeen year old girl. She is either seven or seventy or both, depending on the situation. And while she continues to devour heavy tomes, her favourites continue to be books like The Wind in the Willows and The Wizard of Oz. Perhaps adulthood, and adults themselves, are more disappointing than what she thought they would be, and she is running out of people to teach her things. So she re-reads her childhood classics and clings to times full with more potential.
A Significant Childhood Memory: Starla Makenna's first sign of magic come surprisingly late, given all this shooting ahead otherwise. In fact her younger brother displayed magical power prior to she, not only in terms of age, but chronologically. Naturally this caused yet more friction in a relationship not exactly short of that sort of fuel to begin with. The day finally came when Starla Makenna was nine. As a punishment, Mei often charmed the family's collection of encyclopaedias well out of reach for a day. Starla Makenna recalls eying the collection and wishing her utmost that she had access to the seventh volume, as she wanted to look up something in Greek. The entire series came tumbling down upon her head, with Starla Makenna miraculously unhurt. Andrew initially attributed this to an especially strong breeze, so sure was he in his conviction that Starla Makenna was a Squib. This did nothing to endear him to his daughter.