abilities / skills

• • Athletic Ability: As the cheerleader captain of San Romero, Juliet is highly skilled in athletic ability, allowing her to perform leaps of unrealistic feats, acrobatic capabilities, possesses extended endurance, and sheer force. She can jump, vault, somersault, cartwheel, pirouette, and flip at virtually peak human capabilities. This isn't a trait innately possessed by the Starlings as Juliet routinely exercises to keep her body slim and limber despite sometimes thinking she might be putting on excess weight (possibly due to her love of lollipops).
• • Pole Dancing: One of Juliet's methods of fitness is to pole dance which uses a combination of both dance and acrobatics centered on a vertical pole. This plays well into Juliet's already high level of athleticism as it utilizes stretching, significant muscular endurance, and coordination in conjunction with rhythmic routines all incorporating the pole. It can also grant a sense of self-empowerment that builds self-confidence in both erotic and non-erotic qualities, which makes Juliet feel a sense of freedom from constraining power structures, especially given the performative aspect of said dance. Juliet admits that she practices pole dancing alone in her room, and often she does it naked to get less wind resistance, sometimes while wearing clear lucite heels.
• • Karate Training: As a part-time student of Sensei Morikawa, Juliet has been trained in defense, capable of fending off several enemies at once, even those with the physique of high school football players and adult men, nearly without any signs of difficulty or vulnerability. She combines martial arts with her cheerleading routines, even to the point of punching while holding her pom-poms. These attacks are not incredibly strong, but they are able to weaken and stun zombies to allow Juliet an easier time to land a killing blow. While she does not have a formal belt to signify her rank, Morikawa rated her as a sandan (3rd-degree black belt).
• • Chainsaw Proficiency: Juliet favors her pink, heart-embellished, bedazzled chainsaw as her primary weapon of choice in formal combat. With this knowledge, she is capable of construing considerable harm to her opponent with ease. This mostly includes severing off limbs and decapitation. Despite the dangerous risk of the sharp-bladed teeth attached to a high-speed rotating chain, Juliet is incredibly comfortable with wielding it swiftly, sometimes one-handedly, while jumping, handstanding, tumbling, and even spinning on a pole.
  

  Juliet has perfected several combination attacks combining her chainsaw with gymnast-like movement, flowing between sweeping low attacks aimed at the legs and higher elevated strikes to attack the head and torso. Chainsaw Stab, Armadillo Spin, Chainsaw Full Swing, and the ultimate Holy Chainsaw are some of her more commonly used combos.

  A phone and a MP3 player are also housed inside the chainsaw's engine compartment.

  One might speculate that this is a magical or magically-powered weapon as it seemingly has infinite fuel. Juliet never needs to put any type of gasoline into it, nor does it appear to have a battery pack or electric cord.

  Her chainsaw has been upgraded twice thanks to birthday gifts:

• ⁃ Chainsaw Blaster: From her older sister Cordelia, since she loves firearms, this upgrade transforms Juliet's chainsaw into an eight-round launcher capable of firing explosive projectiles, allowing her access to long-ranged attacks, taking down flying zombies, and clearing explosive barrels and obstacles from a safe distance.
• ⁃ Chainsaw Dash: From Sensei Morikawa, this upgrade adds exhaust pipes, a fuel gauge, and a powerful engine, allowing Juliet to slide the spinning blade of the chainsaw along the ground and quickly dash forward, acting as a guillotine battering ram to any undead in it's path. The momentum provided by the engine also allows Juliet to clear distances she wouldn't be able to even with a running jump.
• • Star Soul Power: Easily the most fantastical ability in her arsenal, anytime Juliet slashes a zombie or monster with her chainsaw, she may receive a star soul as a reward. After managing to collect several of these stars, Juliet can activate her Star Soul Power. This causes her to become enveloped in a rainbow monochrome layer, boosting her strength, stamina, and natural abilities for a limited time. In addition, the song "Mickey" by Toni Basil will automatically play from her chainsaw during this mode. Because of her amped speed and abilities, Juliet has a much easier time killing several zombies in swift succession. She dubs this "Sparkle Hunting," and the result can be a feast for the eyes as the zombies are surrounded by a galactic backdrop of color as their heads fly off in an explosion of neon hearts while in slow-motion.
  

  Spectators have questioned Juliet on where do all those rainbow thingies when she cuts a zombie in half come from, and her reply is always, "From awesome".

weaknesses

• • Human Limitations: Despite her colorful, sometimes over-the-top skills, Juliet is still a regular mortal human and is vulnerable to harm.

trivia

• Juliet's surname can be viewed as a reference to Silence of the Lambs' protagonist, as both share last names and are called to action during their lives at their academies/schools.

• Juliet's name is taken from the main heroine of the famous Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet.

• Juliet's favorite quote is credited to Leonardo DiCaprio, despite it originating from Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. This means that the quote Juliet uses was sourced from the 1996 adaptation.

• Juliet stated that the first zombie she killed was when she was 6 months old, using a sharpened rattle.

• Juliet has a notable habit of swearing frequently during her fights.

• Juliet is fluent in Japanese.

• Her surname "Starling" is a surname of Anglo-Saxon origin, indicating that Juliet's family has English/European heritage. "Starling" is a Middle-English surname literally meaning "Starling", in reference to the bird of the same name. "Starling" was also used as a nickname for a raucous or voracious person. As a cheerleader, this is fitting for Juliet.

• San Romero High School pays homage to the iconic creator and director of the zombie apocalypse genre, George A. Romero.

tie-ins with the lollipop chainsaw game / significant roleplay plot points

• Juliet is played after the events that happened in the Lollipop Chainsaw game upon receiving the good ending, which involves saving all of her classmates and defeating "The Zombie of Zombies," Killabilly. This means that Juliet's mother Elizabeth does not become a zombie, and Juliet celebrates her 18th birthday with her family. The only significant change is that Nick does not survive his sacrifice to destroy Killabilly. I've taken a creative liberty with this because during the ending, Nick gets resurrected because of his selfless sacrifice, but his head gets attached to Morikawa's 77-year-old body. Juliet doesn't come off as shallow to break up with him because of that; however, it would have trapped this character to that NPC, leaving no room for a potentially different relationship through play. So as much as I did love Nick throughout the game, I had to say goodbye to him.

• There is no sequal or epilogue to explain what happens after the events of the game. Since San Romero High School appears to be based off Columbine, I have to assume crisis counselors and the like were called in to help deal with the grief of the lost classmates, faculty, and others. There were several cheerleader and football player zombies throughout the game, so Juliet must have lost several close friends, in addition to Nick.

• I rarely age my characters, so Juliet will still be a senior in high school for 99.4% of the roleplay.