One sentence description:

If you're curious as to whomst I'm picturing as each character, please refer to the 'cover pic' of their story. I'm shit at giving vivid physical descriptions -but I swear I'm trying to get better, I really am- so the cover photo being the OC in question (and maybe their pairing partner if I can figure out the finer points of graphic design just enough to slap a cover together) is what made most sense for me to do.

Ages & Backstory may have been toyed with here to make things fit and flow as cohesively as humanly possible. Sorry up front if this bothers anyone.

General

Full Name: Starla Hope Baxter ( Clay )

Reason for name: Silas and Nina immediately honed in on Starla Hope and Stella Faith when they discovered they were having twins. When they discovered it was not twins but triplets, they originally intended for Nelle to be named Stephanie Joy but then events took a dark twist. When Starla and Stella were adopted by the Baxter family, their original names were kept. This was fortunate, as it made things so much easier for Nina to track at least two of her daughters down when she was able.

Nickname: Starshine, Star

Reason for nickname: Family nicknames that stuck.

Age: 33

Gender: Female

Place of Birth: New York, NY

Birthday: June 15th

Currently living in: Port Charles, NY

Species/Race: Human

Ethnicity: Caucasian

Blood Type: N/A

Occupation: Starla owns her own tattoo parlor / metaphysical & psychic shop. She reads palms and the tarot out of the back of her shop. She also sells crystals, herbs, home made soaps bath bombs, lip balms and shaving creams, candles and other stuff. She also sells paintings that she does via Jerome Gallery.

Sexual Orientation:Straight

Social Status:N/A

Relationship Status:Single

Status:N/A

Appearance

Body Build: Curvy, hourglass figure

Height: 5'5

Weight: n/a

Skin colour: Fair, pink undertones

Hair style: Starla wears her hair in short face framing waves that stop even with her shoulders. She loves to fluff it up and give it extra volume.

Hair colour: (Natural) Brunette (Current) Sandy blonde with brunette roots

Eye colour: Light Brown

Distinguishing Features: Freckles on the bridge of her nose, a small and darker freckle just above her upper lip on the right side

Preferred Clothing: casual / hippie / vintage glam

Accessories: Handmade bracelets and bangles on her right wrist, a handmade anklet that matches the one Stella wears, one of the 3 necklaces that Nina had made for her 3 girls and bold red lipstick if she's feeling fancy. She does always carry a silver Zippo that has red roses, a skull and a snake coiled around the skull and she's never without a pair of heels, whether it be boots or just stilettos in general.

Health

General health: Starla suffers from migraines and acid reflux, something she tends to ignore because she's an idiot and she loves her spicy food.

Posture: Kinda good, kinda not so good.

Any physical illnesses?: Not really.

Any mental illnesses?: Nope. Nelle got all those, poor girl.

Take drugs?: She may or may not partake in a little marijuana now and then.

Smoke?: Mhm. She prefers menthol cigarettes.

Mental/Emotional State

Archetype: N/A

Mental age: Her actual age

Act before thinking/Think before acting?: Act before thinking, duh.

Emotion-wise, generally: N/A

Conversation

Way of speaking: she speaks with a soft and pronounced lazy drawl. She's kind of got herself a bit of an alluring voice and people have told her it most certainly does not match up to their expectations of what they'd think she sounds like because of her personality / style.

Common conversation starter: Usually it's pestering someone to get a tattoo, tbh.

Swears?: It's her native tongue

Made-up words?: Every now and then she forgets a word and makes a clever substitute.

Made-up language?: She and Stella have a special code they use when they want to say something that others around them won't pick up on.

Likes/Dislikes

Likes:

- Spending time with her family

- Haagen Daas ice cream pints

- Classic rock

- Thrift shopping

- Coffee

- Crossword puzzles / word searches

- long hot baths

- napping in the sun on a beach with the biggest margarita she can find

- Tequila. It just doesn't like her back.

- That first stretch in the morning

- 80's movies

- Amusement parks

- Turtles

- Snakes

- Lizards

- Cats

- being naked

- the smell of certain kinds of cologne

- freshly mown grass

- being outdoors

- light rain

Dislikes:

- Feeling powerless, vulnerable or defenseless

- Having someone else's beliefs or choices shoved down her throat

- Being told no or that she can't do something.

- Strong bad smells

- feeling caged

- being talked over or down to

- most authority figures

- Extreme humid heat

- Mosquitos

- Mud between her toes

Hobbies

Reading the tarot for people

Giving massages

Giving tattoos

Dancing, she's just gotten into it.

Painting

Reading erotica or horror

Watching true crime (serial killer) documentaries

Paranormal investigation

Spontaneous road trips

Tanning

Swimming

Cooking

Yoga

Surfing

DIY / Arts & Crafts

Listening to music

Habits

N/A

Strengths/Weaknesses

Strengths:

- Witty

- Intelligent

- Romantic

- Maternal

- Observant

- Driven

- Family Oriented

- Easy to get along with

- Sense of humor

- Empathetic

- Protective

- Adaptable

Weakness:

- Holds a grudge

- Petty

- Temperamental

- Sarcastic

- Stubborn

-Reckless

- Impatient

- Outspoken

- Impulsive

- Absent-Minded

- Confrontational

- Dirty Minded

- Uninhibited

Skills/Abilities

Starla is very artistic. She's not only a tattoo artist, she's also getting fairly well known in the art world due to her paintings and sketches.

Fluent in Creole, French and Spanish. She wants to learn Italian and Portuguese.

She has a major in Anthropology and a minor in Art.

The swim team Starla was captain of in high school went to State finals and won.

Education/Intelligence

Education: College graduate

IQ: N/A

EQ: N/A

Secrets

If you were to look in her yearbook for senior year, you'd find Starla flashing during a pep rally. It's not a big dark secret, but it's a secret. In addition, she used to sneak out onto the roof of her adoptive parents house at night and have herself a little midnight toke while writing in her journal.

She hides the fact that she smokes from her mother out of what she feels is decency. She's nearly swallowed a cigarette just because Nina walked outside and she happened to be standing outside having a smoke and she didn't want her mother to see her.

Fears

Small spaces

Being buried alive

Being trapped in a burning house

Dreams/Goals

She's already accomplished her known dreams/goals. She wanted to become a tattoo artist and she is. She's a pretty well known artist in the right circles, which is what she wanted.

Her secret dream is to settle down in a big older house (turn of the century or later) that has a little backyard for the menagerie of animals and kids she wants to some day have to play in. She just hasn't like.. Slowed down enough to be bothered meeting anyone to help her get started on this little dream of hers.

Views/Opinions on...

Government: She's wary of authority figures at best.

Religion: She's more spiritual than she is religious, tbh.

Economy: We're all on a ship that's sinking more rapidly each year.

Technology: It's alright but she doesn't absolutely have to have it and often chooses to unplug when she wants to really decompress.

Favourites

Food: Chicken tetrazzini, barbecue, the corner brownie

Colour: Dark purple

Animal: Snakes and cats

Number: N/A

Holiday: Halloween

Season: Fall

Time of day: Night

Thing to watch: Documentaries on unsolved cases or true crimes. She also watches stuff like Ghost Adventures.

Movie: The Lost Boys, Against All Odds, The Breakfast Club

Show: Ghost Adventures,CSI Miami or Vegas reruns, Criminal Minds and secretly, soap operas or dramas.

Type of art: Painting

Genre of music: Classic rock

Genre of literature: Erotica or documentaries. Fun fact, she's actually read the book that Peter wrote as PK Sinclair.

Genre of shows: Supernatural themed, drama or documentary

Genre of movies: Horror or romance

History

Starla Hope Clay was born on June 15th in New York, New York to parents Silas and Nina Clay (Reeves). She is the first of 3 identical triplets. Silas and Nina were overjoyed at the arrival of their triplets and in the beginning, life seemed like it might finally settle down and get peaceful because having the girls really did help the newly wed couple straighten out a lot of pre-existing problems and the girls seemed to bring both parents a sense of peace and sheer joy. Silas broke things off with Ava and while he promised to remain involved in the life of his daughter, he refused to have anything further to do with her because he was determined to fix his relationship with Nina.

Silas would take Kiki every other weekend and as a result, the triplets were allowed to bond with their sister. Ava always tried to pull something slick whenever the exchange occurred, but Silas wasn't having it. The co-parenting relationship was strained and given Ava's criminal ties, Silas and Nina were actually trying to build a swaying case against Ava in the hopes of winning sole custody of Kiki.

Things were going great until suddenly, when the girls turned 10, they weren't anymore. Nina was driving home from work one night and an SUV started to tail her, speeding as it practically rode her bumper. The SUV would later be revealed to be driven by a member of the Jerome crime family at the order of Ava as revenge because she discovered that Silas was going to attempt trying to take Kiki away.. Her plan backfired. One, Silas wasn't even the one driving the family car that night. Two, Silas shut down completely when Nina slipped into her coma and when Ava tried to use grief as a way to crawl into bed with him and make him forget the custody case he was going to pursue, he brutally rejected her. Ava was furious, so she then turned to Madeline Reeves, Nina's mother and she convinced the woman that Silas wasn't fit to be a father. Madeline called in an anonymous favor with some friends of hers who worked in welfare and a surprise visit from a welfare agent revealed that Silas was drunk. Functional, but drunk. The house was in a total state of disarray, the girls were happy but they were a little dirty, having just eaten lunch. Assuming the worst about the situation she'd seen, the agent took the girls out of the home.

Starla, Stella and Nelle all wound up in the same group home. However, it wouldn't stay this way. The triplets came up with a plan that would hopefully keep them from being split up and they assumed that Nelle would go along with it, however, she refused to play along like they begged her to. As a result, Nelle was placed in a foster home first and her foster parents went on to adopt her, making the arrangement permanent. Starla and Stella remained in the group home for a few months and in those few months, it was the two of them against the world. They made a pact to find Nelle and their father, Silas again when they were able. Starla and Stella eventually get placed in the home of Sophia and Bryant Baxter of Montgomery, Alabama. Bryant was a stern and solemn preacher and Sophia was his boisterous and feisty wife. The girls were expected to attend church every single Sunday and before long, Bryant had them singing in the choir, something that neither girl particularly enjoyed for differing reasons.

Starla and Bryant clashed from practically the word go. First of all, Starla was a total daddy's girl and she automatically had the chip on her shoulder of "Oh, he's not my daddy so I'm not listening to a damn thing he says." and secondly, Starla liked to question things just a little too much for his liking. He also wasn't fond of the fact that if he used a scripture during an argument with her, she was well versed enough in the bible he made them both read and her sunday school lessons thus far that she could immediately think of a verse in rebuttal or some sort of intelligent argument as to why what Bryant said wasn't iron-clad or didn't make continued well into Starla's teen years, just so we're clear.

Starla befriended a lonely old woman she met while doing "volunteer work" for the church and this old woman taught her how to read the tarot and read people's palms. She also had a lot of interesting old books that she happily let Starla peruse at her leisure whenever she stopped by to visit. Starla felt like she'd found a kindred spirit. When the old woman died, she left Starla the book collection, her personal journals (what Starla later came to find out were a grimoire of sorts) and several other things. Bryant was furious when he found the items in Starla's possession and he burned them in the fire pit in the backyard, making Starla stand and watch. This only made Starla more determined to keep the man at arms length and as a result, this created tension between the sisters because Stella was just going along quietly like a good little girl with the whole perfect family image and to an extent, Starla felt betrayed by this.

High school only saw the twins drift further apart and the closer time drew near to Starla being able to leave the Baxter home without the worry of the Baxters stopping her or dragging her back, the more free she started to feel. Starla fell in with a group of kids that Bryant and Sophie disapproved of and despite being grounded, having privileges removed and the like, Starla refused to stop being friends with them. This was her line in the sand. It was also the end of the Baxter's patience and good grace. The summer of Starla's tenth grade year, she was sent to a church camp. Some good did come out of this, however. Starla began to talk to a therapist about her feelings. She explained that while she was grateful to have been taken in by the Baxter family, they weren't and would never be her real family and as soon as she was legally able, she had every intention to leave. At the end of the summer, the therapist turned over her journals from the time to Bryant and Sophie and they finally got a glimpse into Starla's more private inner workings. Things seemed to settle down at home after this. Bryant relaxed his rules on the twins and as a result, Starla occasionally chose to come to church events and bible study on her own. She stopped pushing back so much when Bryant and his wife tried to include her in family time. They stopped forcing her to be a part. Starla and Stella mended their relationship and Stella revealed that she hated a lot of the stuff too but she was just playing along to keep the peace. She told Starla that she still had every intention of leaving when she was legally an adult. She also told Starla that all the times Starla accused her of loving their adoptive parents more than their real ones, it hurt her. That she did care about the Baxter family because they weren't awful people and she was just happy they weren't stuck in worse but she would never love them more than her real parents. The sisters grew close again.

Around Starla's senior year of high school, Starla actively started trying to find their sister Stephanie (Nelle) with Stella's help. They also tried to find their father and their mother. For whatever reason, their records were sealed and they couldn't access them, so for the time, this deterred the twins. Starla started focusing on catching up in school and she went on to graduate with a solid 3.0. Stella graduated with honors and went on to university. Starla decided that she was going to travel for a while and work odd jobs here and there. Maybe try to sell a few of her art pieces before going to college to earn a degree. The twins go their separate ways but they are in constant contact. And they both continue to try and find the family they'd been ripped out of / unlock their records.

Starla's travels took her to New Orleans and she got herself a job in a tattoo parlor answering phones and booking sessions. Mickey Delano, the man running the parlor saw her artwork and took her under his wing. He pushed her to try her hand at entering some of her paintings in a local art show and this is where she first meets Franco. Franco becomes another mentor type in her life and he brokers the first sale of her artwork. From then on, Starla lets him deal with that end of things and Franco becomes her manager, sort of. Starla begins working towards earning her license to give tattoos and when she gets it, she gets the first of five tattoos as a memoir of the milestone. This tattoo is a sternum tattoo and it's an original sketch by her. She becomes the secondary tattoo artist in Mickey's shop and she also becomes a favorite to several of the locals. Stella comes to visit whenever school is on a break and the two spend their time trying to piece together the puzzle of their pasts. Every time they think they have a lead, they turn up nothing. Desperate for answers and to put her family back together again, Starla places an ad in several "missing connection" sections of papers around the state they were born in but when nothing comes of it, she forgets she's done it.

She's celebrating her 21st birthday with tequila and a new tattoo when a number with a New York area code calls and leaves her a voice mail. The second tattoo is on her right forearm and it's a colorful head of Medusa that flows up the inside of her forearm and the tequila for once isn't the cheap stuff. Mickey discusses the fact that he's been diagnosed with a terminal illness and he tells her that since she's the closest thing he's got to family, he's leaving the tattoo parlor to her when he's gone. This is a sombering point in the night and Starla's reeling from the news so she kind of just doesn't bother with checking her messages for a day or two. When she finally does, it turns out that Silas is the one who left the message. In excitement, Starla calls her sister to tell her that she might have found their father.

Stella and Starla are reunited with Silas a few months later. Starla ends up taking over the tattoo parlor early because Mickey's health hits rock bottom and he ends up bed-ridden. Starla takes over the tattoo parlor and when she's settled in, Silas comes to visit and check the place out. He kind of laughs and tells her that her mother would've gotten a kick out of seeing the place. They talk about Nina and Silas explains that she's being kept in a facility and due to the fact that their grandmother hates him, he hasn't been allowed to see her unless he pays off a guard at the desk and slips in for an hour now and then.

Starla and Stella keep in close contact with their father and start to make the journey to New York every major holiday to keep the man company. While they're all there, they usually slip in to visit their mother. Silas asks if either of them have been able to find Stephanie(Nelle) and both twins admit that they haven't but they're still looking. Silas admits that he's also doing his own search but it's almost like she vanished. (It's later revealed that the reason for this is that the Bensons had her name changed upon adopting her because her name didn't fit their 'image' as a family, lmao. Yes, I theorize that her parents are every bit 'those kind' of people).

Franco sells one of Starla's earlier works to a man he knew only as PK. It's abstract, violent red and black brush strokes on a white canvas. PK was in charge of the transaction for the buyer, later revealed to be Valentin Cassadine. When Franco tells Starla that a writer brought one of her least favorite paintings that she'd done, this makes her curious and it prompts her to look up the name Franco gives her. This is how Starla has her first brush with Peter August. The book really grabs her attention, but when she's finished it, she puts it in her collection and kind of just forgets it's there.

Starla and Stella are led to believe by their grandmother that Nina is dead and they make a trip to New York to help their father grieve and make whatever arrangements he needs to. After they've spent time with Silas, Starla returns to New Orleans and gets back to her life.

Months later, Starla begins to receive calls from another New York area code but they always hang up just when she answers the phone. Starla traces the number and realizes that it's her mother calling. She writes it off to a sick joke because Silas warned both Starla and her sister about Ava Jerome and her undying need for revenge due to his actions so Starla assumes that somehow, Ava used her connections in the criminal underground and is using her late mother's phone to call her just to hurt or scare her.

This turns out to be false. Starla arrives at her tattoo parlor one morning to find a woman standing outside waiting. She unlocks the door wordlessly and the woman follows her in. With her back turned Starla tells the woman, "Like.. are you going to say anything? Because this is more than a little creepy."

The woman introduces herself as Starla's grandmother, Madeline. Starla hadn't ever met her grandmother as a child and given the way Madeline was looking down her nose at Starla and everything in the tattoo parlor around them, Starla got the feeling that this might well be a good thing. "Your mother is alive, you know. I simply didn't want your father getting his hooks back into her. She was always too good for that bum." Madeline sticks around for an hour or so and explains that Nina awoke from the coma and "maybe she needs her daughters to come home." - a vague hint at Nina's mental state upon awakening. Starla scoffs at this and folds her arms. "My father told me about you. He told me never trust a word that comes out of your mouth."

Madeline leaves and despite telling herself a thousand times that there's no way the woman was telling the truth, the idea won't leave Starla alone.

Meanwhile, in New York, Nina learns what her mother has done to her daughters and she's horrified to learn that not only did Madeline help Ava exact her revenge, she paid to have records sealed for a while so that Silas couldn't take it upon himself to look for the girls. Nina gets all the information she needs to find at least two of her daughters from Madeline and this is what she sets out to do. After she has her mother thrown in prison, of course.

Starla is painting and drinking tequila one night to work through a nasty breakup when the door to her apartment is pounded on. She opens the door to find her mother standing outside with a man. The shock is enough that Starla drops her bottle of Titos and faints. Curtis, the man with her mother, calmly picks up Starla and carries her into the apartment, putting her on the couch. While Starla is out, Nina gets to kind of wander around and re-acquaint herself with a daughter she missed out on raising for the most part. Starla comes to and Nina appears, holding out two Aleve to Starla as she states in concern, "I hope the bottles in your kitchen aren't something I need to worry about." and then Nina hugs her daughter so tight that Starla can't actually breathe for a minute. Nina tells her that she's been to see Stella, that her first priority as soon as their grandmother told her what happened was finding her three girls. Nina asks if she's been able to find their sister Stephanie (Nelle) but Starla tells her she hasn't. As they're talking, the door to Starla's apartment is being beaten down and there's a man in the hallway angry and yelling about Starla and her audacity, telling his wife what he'd been getting up to with her on the side. Nina is concerned. Starla opens the door and throws clothing and other personal effects at the man, slamming the door closed in his face before he can react one way or another as she calls through the door, "Yeah, well.. I'm not a homewrecker, either. And the sex wasn't that good anyway, don't flatter yourself you dumb fuck. As far as you giving me anything? All I recall you ever giving me was a goddamn headache. Take your shit and leave, douchebag." Starla doesn't mention what just happens and for a few minutes, Nina struggles with whether she should or not, especially when she caught a glimpse of the man at the door and noted that he was significantly older. She finally does bring it up and Starla shrugs it off, tells her that it doesn't happen often and after this whole shit show, she'll definitely be deleting her dating app because "the hook ups aren't worth the fuckin hassle". Nina spends a few days in town with her as she did with Stella already, and then she leaves to return to Port Charles (where everything that's going to play out with Nelle begins to play out when she discovers that Nelle is in town and has ulterior motives for being there) after making Starla promise to call and check in and come to visit sooner or later.

Starla visits Port Charles sporadically along with her twin Stella and during these visits, they seem to reconnect with their sister Stephanie, who is now known as Nelle. Nelle keeps her distance, but on the surface, she seems fine. Starla and Stella don't realize just how much Nelle resents their close bond. Or the close bond they have with their mother, Nina. She keeps it well hidden, even inviting the two to come and celebrate the birth of her son with her.

Things come to a head during one of Starla's last visits to New York before choosing to make the move there permanent. Nelle has snapped due to Michael trying to take her son away. Nelle blows up publicly and tells her sisters that they abandoned her, thus creating the person she turned into. Then she tells Nina that while she believes she 'loves her' she doesn't believe that she loves her as much as she loves Starla and Stella. Later on during the night, Nelle and Carly are fighting and Nelle sees a chance to escape her upcoming trial and probable prison sentence, so she stages her fall from the cliff. Nina has people searching for Nelle's body for days but it's never found. Forensics determines that the current was too strong and possibly carried Nelle's body out to sea. Nelle is declared dead and after a quiet service at an empty grave, Nina and her remaining daughters go back to Nina's place. Starla and Stella discuss things (They have been for a few months now) and they decide that maybe they should move to Port Charles. They find commercial spaces for rent downtown and they put in their bids, returning to their homes to pack up and prepare for the move while waiting.

Starla moves to Port Charles to be closer to her mother and upon arrival, she opens her tattoo parlor / metaphysical shop, doing a lot of renovation work to the space ahead of opening day. Currently, she lives in a little apartment over her shop.

Personality

See Strengths and weaknesses. I feel this sums her up better than anything.

Relationships

Family: Nina and Silas Clay, parents. Sophia and Bryant Baxter, adoptive parents. Stella Clay and Nelle Benson, identical triplet sisters. Kiki Jerome, half sister (via Silas). Olivia Locke and Rafe Kovich Jr, cousins (via Silas' twin brother Stephen).

Love interest: Peter August

Friends/Allies: Stella, Kiki Jerome, she eventually befriends Ekaterina Spencer and Adele Corinthos.

Enemies: Nelle Benson

Quotes

N/A

Trivia

N/A