FIN Gemma Andrea Sole District 1

Appearance:
Gemma Sole usually looks intense and intimidating, with her dark, glittering eyes, straight brows slanting down over them, and her curtains of wavy, dark hair. Her plump lips rarely turn up in a smile. Her emotions are almost always locked behind her finely shaped face, and she hates to let any hin t of a feeling show through. Because she looks far from approachable, no one yet knows her well enough to tell what she's feeling in spite of her closed expression.

Gemma is small, though of average height, but this is just something that makes her train harder than ever. After years of training, her slender arms and legs now have noticeable muscles. Still, her body has never granted her the brute strength that she wishes it had, and she relies heavily on her technique and agility. When she was younger she was stick thin, but now the only things left from then are her slender ankles and wrists and a kind of delicate air about her. She looks much weaker than she is, but people who underestimate her often regret it.

Gemma doesn't have much time to worry about her appearance because she focuses on training above all else, but she likes to wear sharply defined eyeliner. Her warm complexion tans very quickly, and she can spend all day in the sun without getting burned. In the summer her skin looks much darker than it is in the winter. She scars easily too, and years of training have left her with some marks. Her summer tan camouflages most of them, so she doesn't worry about it.

Gemma is moderately well dressed. Her parents have the money to buy her whatever clothes she wants, but she doesn't think about her style too often. She usually wears something simple that she can move around in. She very rarely wears skirts or dresses.

She is naturally graceful. Her movements flow, and sometimes she looks almost like she's doing some violent, quick dance when she's fighting.

Personality:
Gemma is a ball of intense, pent up emotions, locked tight. She hates that she's so emotional, considers feelings to be weak, and tries lock them up and pretend she doesn't have them. She gets extremely distressed when they get out. She wants to be a fighter, the soon to be victor of the Hunger Games. Not a teenage girl.

One of the reasons why she works so hard at being a Career is because while she's training, her mind is sharp and absolutely focused only on what she's doing. She doesn't have to worry about her feelings, about how she doesn't have any real friends, about how she's almost sure that her dad is still cheating on her mom, about the fact that she has nothing to live for but the Games, and if she loses, her life will have been pointless.... these thoughts and worries are for the weak and Gemma wants nothing more than to forget them. Because she is stronger than that. Training can make her stronger than her weaknesses. If she keeps training and wins the Games, her life will have meaning. 

She's always been a loner and she tells herself she likes it that way. She tells herself that friends are distractions, things that take time away from her training. She has plenty of acquaintances, but she highly doubts they actually like her. She doesn't know them well enough to like them and isn't willing to try to get closer to them. The last thing she wants is to accidentally reveal the sympathetic, kinder side of herself-- the weak side. She hates to be vulnerable.

Gemma has worked hard on her reflexes, and she almost never flinches. However, if she's startled in some way that has nothing to do with physical training and fighting, her mask will crack and something of her real feelings will show through. 

She's proud and defensive and will not tolerate being disrespected. She's too fearless sometimes-- she is not good at understanding her own limits and can overestimate herself easily.

She will be admired, she hopes. She'll be important. People will look up to her and want to be friends with her and she'll never be lonely again. Her parents will be happy and she can bring them back together and she won't be useless. 

History:
Gemma comes from a wealthy family. The most work Mr. and Mrs. Sole have ever done is attending the parties of people who they don't actually like, and occasionally hosting their own.

Gemma's parents always had more time for each other than they had for her, their only child, so she spent a lot of time playing by herself as a child. They were embarrassingly in love for most of Gemma's life, so when they started having problems a few years ago, it threw Gemma off kilter and she felt a little bit lost and unstable. That was the time when she and her best friend Anthony were closest, because she really needed support.

A few weeks into that time, everyone seemed to be whispering and talking about her. She found out that Anthony had told them what Gemma had told him about her mom cheating on her dad. Everyone held her at even more of a distance than they had before, snickering about her behind her back, and Anthony used the attention he got from dispensing such an important piece of gossip about people with such high social status to become one of the popular kids.

Gemma distanced herself from her peers after that. She never spoke to Anthony again if she could help it, and without him to pass time with, she put all of her energy and anger into Career training, working harder at it than she ever had before.