Kayla Harris

[blastinus]

Name: Kayla Harris
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: 12th
School: George Hunter High School
Hobbies and Interests: Sewing, science fiction, fighting games, cosplay

Appearance: Kayla stands at 5'5" and weighs 110 lbs, slightly underweight but still healthy, with very little muscle definition. She is African-American with a light brown skin tone due to her father's mixed-race Irish heritage. She has a round face with a small nose, thick lips, and large brown eyes, with some light freckles across the bridge of her nose. She has black hair, naturally curly, which would reach down to her shoulders if she straightened it, but she tends to keep it tied up in a messy bun instead.

Kayla prefers comfortable clothing, wearing t-shirts and jeans with bright colors and pastel tones that help her stand out, along with dark-colored sneakers and flats. During the colder months of the year, she'll wear sweaters and hoodies, but her wardrobe is otherwise unchanged. During the school trip, she wore a stylized gray t-shirt with the words "JAZZ MACHINE" superimposed over a cartoonish picture of a robot playing a saxophone, over which she wore an oversized blue and white pullover hoodie designed to emulate a shiba inu, with dog ears on the hood. She also wore a light blue and white plaid skirt that reaches down to just above the knee, along with white knee-high socks and black Converse sneakers.

Biography: Kayla Harris was born on October 30th, 1999 to Rodrick and Angela Harris, an account manager for an environmental remediation company and a freelance journalist specializing in art respectively. Kayla is the third-oldest of six children. Her older sister Jazmine (22) has graduated college and lives with the family while searching for a career and her older brother Octavius (19) is out of state studying biomedical engineering in New York. Her younger brother Marquis (15) is a student at George Hunter High with Kayla and her twin siblings May and August (11) are in middle school together. In addition, the family has two pets: a border collie named Charlie (8) and a tabby cat named Felicia (4).

Life with such a large family has been chaotic and often fraught with conflict, whether it's quarreling over bathroom rights in the morning or simple matters like what to watch on television. Kayla and her siblings would argue constantly, but with no hard feelings towards one another, just regular sibling squabbles. Kayla's parents, while quick to reprimand them or take away TV/gaming privileges if it ever came to blows, would let them carry on in most cases, preferring to let them resolve their own arguments and come to a compromise without their intervention.

Before moving to Chattanooga, her family lived in Atlanta, GA along with her paternal grandmother Arlene. Kayla and Arlene were very close when she was young, and her grandmother would be the one to kindle her love of sewing. Arlene was a retired seamstress and had an old sewing machine which she always worked at, putting together whatever projects caught her fancy. When she was four, Kayla began to watch her grandmother's work with fascination, and a year later, once she had built up the courage, she asked Arlene if she could try it herself. Her work was clumsy and sloppy at first, but as she practiced at it, and with her grandmother's advice and teaching, she began to create costumes and outfits for her dolls, graduating to real clothes when she was twelve. She has continued with this hobby even to the modern day, putting together clothes, bags, and other items as gifts for her friends and family along with mending her own clothes when the need arises.

As a child living in Atlanta, Kayla would be social and outgoing, quickly forming friendships with the other children in elementary school. However, her personality was often forceful and she had difficulties sharing and taking turns, so she would be sent home now and then for fighting and shoving her peers around. This tendency to forcibly get her way has persisted into adulthood, though it has been toned down a little with age and experience. As her younger siblings were born, she also became bossy and authoritative, acting as the responsible leader and stepping up in school whenever she saw a problem that needed fixing. Her approach to this was less than tactful though, and rather than taking the diplomatic route, she preferred to point and command with varying success, especially with her twin siblings, who preferred to just tune her out.

In 2007, her father Roderick would receive a lucrative job offer in Chattanooga where he could work in the field of environmental science. He and Angela talked back and forth on it, and though they were hesitant to leave their friends and extended family behind, they agreed that it was the best option. Kayla adjusted quickly to the move, though she was also sad at first. She has kept in touch with some of her friends in Atlanta through social media and text messaging, even after making new friends in Tennessee.

During this uneasy transition period, Kayla would develop an interest in science fiction thanks to her father. At night, he would read her stories like The Iron Man and The Little Prince, and she would be sucked into these worlds with their fantastic technology and outlandish beings. Her imagination was stoked by ideas of robots and spaceships and amazing beings with their own languages and societies, and after she learned how to read, she would pore over novels on her own, eventually getting into authors like Douglas Adams, Robert Heinlein and Ray Bradbury. In her preteen years, with some prodding from her friends, she would eventually be drawn into the world of science fiction anime/manga, adding shows like Space Dandy, Steins;Gate and Cowboy Bebop to her list of favorites.

Though Kayla only had a passing interest in video games in elementary school, her older brother Octavius was an avid gamer who would try to get her into his hobby with little success. When she was twelve, however, that changed with the arrival of Soul Calibur V. The fast-paced action, sudden highs and lows, and competitiveness of the fighting game genre suddenly clicked with Kayla and she was hooked, not just to Soul Calibur, but also to Tekken and 2D fighting games like Guilty Gear. After school, the two of them would play for hours, to the annoyance of their other siblings. Kayla has even participated in a few local tournaments, though she has never gotten past the first round. This has not bothered her too much, because she enjoys just getting to play the games.

In addition to her acquired love of fighting games, in high school, Kayla began applying her sewing skills to cosplay based on video game characters. With makeup tips from her friends, her first attempt was Hisako from Killer Instinct, which ended up taking second prize in a Halloween costume contest. Emboldened by this success, she began designing costumes based on other costumes, wearing them to local conventions and video game competitions in order to show off her talents. She has posted the results on tumblr and has even worn less unusual costumes to school, just to see if people would notice.

Aside from her cosplay, high school has been up and down for Kayla. She's had no issues fitting in with the anime, video game, and fashion scene in school and even joined the k-pop appreciation club because a friend of hers was there. However, she has also rubbed some people the wrong way because of her sharp personality and lack of tact when it came to criticism. She's assisted the drama club by designing costumes for productions on occasion, though that's the extent of her involvement with anything not related to her interests. With the exception of her science courses like Chemistry and Biology, she has also been lax in her academics, barely squeaking by with a C average, especially in mathematics courses, where she has zero interest.

Kayla has no idea what she plans to do post-graduation, though she believes that she would be happy with a career in tailoring or fashion design. She has little desire to pursue higher education, and just plans to attend UT-Chattanooga for an undeclared major. Her father Roderick is hoping that she'll follow in Octavius's shoes and become an engineer or a research scientist, but she's not sure that she'd want to do what her father does as a living. For the time being, she's hoping that something will jump out at her in college.

Advantages: Kayla's assertiveness and bossiness may be an asset if someone has to take on a leader role. She has friends among the video gaming, anime, and cosplay crowd and could depend on them as potential allies. She's also strong-willed and confident, making her unlikely to snap under stress.
Disadvantages: Kayla is physically weak, making her easily overpowered in a confrontation. Her lack of tact and pushiness may rub people the wrong way and she's unwilling to subordinate herself to others, which may cause conflict if she runs into other strong personalities.

[Latin For Dragula]

Heya, Blast. I'm Plush and I've got just a couple things I'd like to dig into with Kayla before she's approved, so she's DENIED on this pass.

Is there any particular reason Kayla and her father bond over science fiction after the move? She's about 8 years old according to the timeline so it seems likely if he's reading to her then he would have been reading to her before as well. What caused the change in routine?

Kayla's advantages and disadvantages aren't well represented in her profile at the moment. You say Kayla is strong willed and confident, but the greatest stress she faces over the course of the profile is the move many years ago. That didn't bother her much, and since then she's led a fairly normal life. I don't see anything that would lead me to believe she'll handle the stress of being kidnapped and forced to watch her friends die any better than the average student. If you want to keep this advantage she's going to need more serious conflict in her life.

In her disadvantages, has Kayla's pushiness caused her difficulty before? She's involved in a wide variety of clubs, some of which she's only involved with because of friends, and she's not in charge of all of them. Does she clash with others in these settings, or during things like group projects? Has she left any clubs or opportunities because she couldn't get her way? The way her profile is written right now it comes off as if she's mildly annoyed a few members she's not close with, but she has thriving connections despite that, so it's a questionable disadvantage.

That's all I've got on this pass. Post here once you've punched up these notes and I'll give her another look!

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This character biography has had no alterations for more than two weeks and has been put in the abandoned characters forum. This profile is eligible for resubmission by the handler upon alterations requested by the staff.