Storm Cho, District 4

Name: Storm Cho
Age: 16 years old
Gender: Female
District/Area: District 4
Appearance:

Storm is, by her own account anyway, pretty. She is of slight stature, standing around 5 feet and 6 inches in height, with a thin build. She weighs approximately 120 lbs, with a BMI of roughly 19. She is not particularly curvy, but is lean from years of swimming and diving for pearls. Her skin is naturally a pale, fawny beige, but her time on the beaches of District 4 leaves her with a near-constant tan. It is smooth, if a bit oily.

Her large, almond-shaped eyes are narrowly set on her face. Below hooded lids lie irises of deep brown, not unlike the brown seaweed that sometimes washes up on the beaches near her home. Her slightly upturned nose is wide and set squarely in the center of her face, framed by her angular and jutting cheekbones. Beneath it lie her lips, full and usually badly chapped because she can never remember to drink enough water. Her jaw is prominently defined, squared and masculine.

Both her proudest and most-hated feature, however, is her hair. Unlike the silky, straight hair of her mother and late aunt, Storm does daily battle with the untamable mess of dark corkscrew curls upon her head. The saltwater and constant humidity of her home work in tandem to ensure that she can never do much with it. She lets it fall in unkempt ringlets down over her shoulders, occasionally throwing it up into a ponytail atop her head when she can’t be bothered with it.

As far as clothing goes, anything light and airy will do the trick. When she isn’t swimming in shorts and a tank top, she wears the loosest clothing she can find. She loves shawls, flowing pants and shorts, and sandals.

Personality:

The first thing a stranger would notice about Storm is that she doesn’t like to give you much to notice at all. She is standoffish and usually taciturn, preferring to speak when spoken to and not waste the energy that long conversations typically require. On the surface, she tends to be reproachful. Unapproachable. Bitter, even. She is slow to trust, slow to love, afraid of letting anyone get too close.

She loves school, and throws herself into her studies. Partly, this is to distract her from her inner turmoils; but mostly it is to earn the approval of her mother, which she has never a day in her life been able to successfully do. As a result, she strives desperately for the approval of others in her life and will go to inordinate lengths to please them. She is easily taken advantage of and too forgiving; as a result she is hardened and does not let people get close enough to do so. But if you are lucky enough to get close to Storm Cho, you will have a friend for life.

She is fiercely loyal and protective of those she loves. And because she is so eager to please, she will do whatever it takes to keep those close to her happy. She is kind and has a good sense of humor, although she still prefers not to talk too much. She tries desperately to find affection and closeness with her friends and other family members, sorely craving a motherly figure in her life.

Storm is unhealthily good at suppressing her emotions. A display of any genuine and heartfelt emotion from her is as rare as they come, because to show any kind of emotion at all is to risk opening the floodgates and allowing herself to feel everything she has been swallowing up for years. She is calculating and analytical, shrewd and observant. But at times the bottled up emotion gets to be too much for her, and she is often left unable to cope with the sheer overwhelming force of it.

History:

Storm was born in late May, during a violent tempest that shook the shack in which she and her family live. Her mother named her for this storm, willing her daughter to grow into a formidable force deserving of her namesake. Her father left shortly after her conception, and she never knew him. She grew up in a large stilted shack on the beach, sharing the home with her mother, aunt, uncle, older cousin, and her brothers (both older). From a young age, Storm strove to be close with her mother, though the latter was a cold and manipulative woman. She never won her mother’s approval on anything, and she was rarely ever told she was loved. Her mother firmly held a “tough love” approach with her, afraid that too much affection would make Storm soft and complacent. Her aunt Aphra, who was 18 years her mother’s junior, largely filled the mothership role that she so craved. Thanks to this, she had a relatively happy upbringing in spite of her mother’s distance.

She vividly remembers the last time her mother ever told her that she loved her. She was six years old, and awoke with a fright during a particularly violent thunderstorm. She raced to her mother’s bed and jumped in with her, shivering and crying. Her mother held her close and told her that she loved her. Two weeks later, shortly after her seventh birthday, her aunt Aphra took her out to a secluded cove near the shack as she always would in unseasonably warm days. She had been teaching Storm to swim, as although most kids had already learned by her age, she was intensely fearful of the water. They spent hours together on the beach and in the waves, learning basic strokes and playing games. When the tide began to come in, Aphra called Storm back to the beach. Storm, however, didn’t listen. She swam too far out despite her aunt’s protests, and was just turning to swim back when a wave broke over her. Panic-stricken and fighting to the surface, she was rescued moments later by her aunt. Her aunt hugged her close, seeing the water around them recede just a moment too late. She tossed Storm as far as she could to shore just as she was dashed underneath the water by a large sleeper wave, her neck broken against the sea floor instantly.


The wave pushed Aphra’s corpse and a panicking Storm to shore, where they were happened upon by a man. Seeing their condition, he went to fetch Storm’s mother. And upon seeing her sister’s body, something inside of her broke that would never be made whole again. Storm attempted to explain what had happened, and it only enraged her mother further. She hurled herself at her daughter, screaming angrily and slapping her face, before collapsing over her sister’s body. Storm attempted to hug her, a hug which her mother never returned.

From this day on, Storm knew that her mother silently blamed her. She was even more distant, and left Storm fighting to get even a shred of her mother back. When she finally had learned to swim well enough, her mother taught her how to be a pearl diver as the women in her family had been for five generations. She would take her diving for pearls, teach her how to dig for shellfish, and how to spearfish for food. She took to all with natural ease, hoping that it would please her mother and garner her admiration. She began training as a Career tribute in an academy, as many others did in District 4. Between living in a crowded home, long school days, and her days at the academy, trips to the ocean alone were one of the few things that managed to bring her any form of solace. Any time she needed to decompress she would come to the same spot where her aunt lost her life and dive her troubles away. She would hold her breath for minutes at a time before surfacing and doing it again and again. She would sit upon the beach and look out onto the sea in solemn reflection. And, rarely, she would bring her youngest brother or her closest friends to the very same cove that took nearly everything away from her.

Other: I hope this is good enough! It’s a revamp of a character I had here years and years ago, but I haven’t written or RP’d anything in a long time so if anything needs fixed please let me know