Gemini Jones

[Grand Moff Hissa]

Name: Gemini Alita Jones
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: 12
School: Southwest Red Rock High School
Hobbies and Interests: Manga and Anime, Horror Movies, Cosplay, Photography

Appearance: At 6'2" and 170 lbs, Gemini stands well above average height. She has a generally rectangular build, with shoulders, hips, and waist not diverging too significantly in width. She has a long face, with a straight nose, round brown eyes under eyebrows of moderate thickness, thin lips, and slender, long ears that lay close to her head. Her slightly wavy, medium brown hair comes to the base of her shoulder blades, and she often ties it back into a messy low ponytail. She is quite nearsighted, and wears glasses to correct this; while she has a number of different pairs, her favorite and most commonly worn have octagonal lenses and a thin black frame.

Gemini is Caucasian. Her ears are pierced one apiece in the lobes, and otherwise she has no tattoos, piercings, or notable scars. Her posture is decent, but she moves with a certain lack of grace, often appearing unsure or unsteady, something that especially frustrates her when in costume, since she struggles to emulate poses or postures. She has a mostly clear complexion, and often wears makeup, favoring subtle lip gloss and eye shadow for daily wear, though when dressing in costume she adjusts appropriate to the character she's portraying.

Gemini varies her style of dress, sometimes sticking to basics and other times going for more elaborate outfits. On more casual days, she almost always wears clothes with writing of some sort on them, preferring jokes or references to her favorite pieces of media over brands and simple logos. She tends towards t-shirts and either jeans or knee-length skirts though she can be much more adventurous when the mood strikes her or when in costume. On the day of the abduction, Gemini was wearing blue jeans, a white t-shirt tied behind her back to make an impromptu crop top with "Thou Shalt Not Try Me –Mood 24:7" written on it in ornate font, and an open denim jacket covered in pins and badges, as well as red Vans and white socks. She was not wearing earrings.

Biography: Gemini was born on July 15, 2006, in Las Vegas, Nevada, to mother Megan and father Robert "Robby" Jones. She was the young couple's second child, following elder sister Valentina by three years. Gemini's mother was going through a period of interest in astrology at the time, and named Gemini for her birth sign according to the Sidereal Zodiac, something that would eventually create fairly significant confusion. Gemini resents her name to some degree, being neither a twin nor a Gemini by the reckoning used by most people, and her mother had lost interest in astrology by the time Gemini was old enough to take an interest in her own name. This has not created any lasting tension between the two, however, and Gemini has never really stuck with any nickname.

Megan and Robby were a young couple, in their mid-twenties, working low paying jobs, Megan as a cook and Robby a gas station shift manager. The couple often relied on Megan's parents for help, and they found themselves in a difficult economic situation much of the time. Partially due to this stress, their marriage fell apart in 2012, exacerbated by an emotional affair on Megan's part with one of her coworkers. Robby dropped out of their life entirely for a year, going on a journey of self discovery; ultimately he resurfaced in California, having moved back in with his parents and come out as bisexual. He resumed contact with his daughters and began paying child support, and over time he and Megan rekindled a friendship, leaving them on fairly good terms in the present day. A few years later, after returning to school, he found work with a startup as a software engineer.

All of this was a significant amount of upheaval in the early years of Gemini's education, which had notable effects. While she was bright and a quick learner, she was also prone to outbursts and emotional volatility, particularly struggling with any sort of instability in her friendships. She made a handful of close friends in elementary school, some of whom persist to the present, but also got off on a bad foot with many of her peers, sometimes lashing out at them over perceived slights. While Megan did her best to guide her daughter, she was absorbed with her own problems at the time, and Gemini's issues didn't entail physical conflicts or active bullying, just arguments with her classmates that at worst devolved into raised voices, which made them comparatively easy to rationalize and ignore.

Gemini's late elementary school and early middle school years brought improvements in her home life in most respects. Her mother attended night classes at community college and ultimately was able to make the jump to a career in HR. She also became romantically involved with a man named Theo Hamilton, and after a year the two became engaged, marrying six months later. Theo got along great with Gemini and her sister in their younger years, quickly becoming the favored parental figure due to his willingness to spoil them. Additionally, while not wealthy, his job as a skilled carpenter dramatically improved the family's finances.

On the school front, however, things were not so rosy. Gemini's troubles with her peers persisted, as her established patterns of behavior had long settled into habit and she was still quite anxious and wary. She was still quick to bicker, and while she was less liable to raise her voice she made up for it with personal, pointed insults. She also developed early physically, hitting a growth spurt at a young age that quickly put her on the larger size of her class; her whole family tends towards the taller end, but Gemini is the tallest of her close female relatives by three inches. Her comparatively large size combined with her mercurial temperament to make her come across as intimidating to some of her peers, and she was sometimes teased for this, though typically from a safe distance or behind her back.

This period of relative stability carried through into high school, with Gemini developing a general dislike of school less for the learning, which she broadly enjoyed, and more for its pressures and social aspects. During these years, Gemini turned more and more to her hobbies and home life for happiness and fulfillment. One of the biggest outlets for her was anime and manga, which had long been a passion of both her mother's and her father's—in fact, Gemini's middle name was derived from one of their favorite characters, the titular heroine of Battle Angel Alita. Gemini had been introduced to anime at a young age, as Studio Ghibli films were more common viewing in her house than the more traditional American Disney canon. She found great comfort and happiness in the stories she took in, and in the whimsy, magic, and horror possible with animation. Some of the first works she read on her own were age-appropriate manga, and she often would discuss favorite stories with her sister and mother, or watch the same series as her father and talk with him about them over the phone.

Her stepfather, however, had no interest in animation, considering it childish. While this didn't pose any real problem to Gemini's enjoyment of the medium when she was younger, it did mean that this was an aspect of her life she did not share with him, and there were sometimes moments of light conflict when he felt left out of activities with Gemini, her sister, and her mother, even though he had no interest in partaking in the first place. As time went on, Gemini's mother spent less and less time keeping up with any series, in part because of this, but Gemini maintained her own interest and found friends who shared it. Nowadays, she favors darker, more mature series aimed at adults, with some of her favorites including Fire Punch, Ikigami, Akira, Berserk, the works of Junji Ito, and the manga version of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Despite these preferences, her stepfather is unable or unwilling to accept that comics are written for anyone other than kids, and this is sometimes a point of contention between them. Gemini does still gravitate towards older works, especially series that are complete. She grew up with media that her parents liked, and she sometimes frets about series that are still ongoing, worrying that they'll decline in quality or even be left unfinished—something she was especially nervous about when Kentaro Miura passed away in 2021, leaving the continuation of Berserk up in the air for a time.

Towards the end of her middle school career, this passion for anime and manga also led her towards an interest in cosplay, the creation and wearing of costumes replicating those in stories. This started when Gemini wanted to be San from Princess Mononoke for Halloween. With her mother's help, she made an amateurish costume. While doing research, she began to engage with the broad online cosplay culture, and quickly her interest expanded beyond just Halloween. Gemini loved finding a way to bring pieces of her favorite stories into the real world, and also enjoyed the process of researching things and then making them. As she's grown older, she has carried this significantly farther, investing in a sewing machine and attending anime conventions in costume. Some of her past costumes include Milly Thompson from Trigun, Faye Valentine from Cowboy Bebop, Rin Asogi from Mnemosyne, and Tsumugi Shirogane from the Danganronpa series, inspired by a group play through of the series with friends. She poured a significant amount time into a cosplay of Fuchi from Junji Ito's works, but the results did not live up to her expectations and she retired it after a single day.

She is a fairly unexceptional seamstress and while she follows a wide range of cosplayers and costume-makers on social media, she has no following of her own to speak of; her results are decent for her age and level of experience and she pays alright attention to detail, though, so sometimes her less skilled friends come to her for help with their own costumes. She is much worse when it comes to props, and often either purchases them online or barters with more skilled friends. Her makeup skills are also nothing special; she's better when it comes to simple and minimal effects, but will sometimes attempt more elaborate designs. Her track record on that front has been poor, leading her to frustration on several occasions. Her eyes are quite sensitive, so she won't wear contacts. As such, she mostly favors costumes that allow her to incorporate glasses. She'll style her hair for costumes, but isn't willing to cut or dye it, instead relying on wigs. Her styling is decent, but she's somewhat limited by her materials; she works with synthetic wigs due to their comparatively low cost, and this is also the part of her costumes where she's most prone to cutting corners.

Gemini does enjoy other media as well, especially horror movies. She first got into horror in late elementary school, reading ghost stories and other age-appropriate, mildly frightening tales. During middle school, this quickly blossomed into a more full-fledged fondness for the genre, particularly film; she found she liked being frightened in a relatively controlled situation, and enjoyed the dramatic visuals and soundtracks. While Gemini's parents monitored her media consumption at home, they allowed her to spend time with friends more or less whenever she wanted, and several of Gemini's friends were left effectively unsupervised. She was thus able to access some heavily violent or mature material at these friends' houses, without her parents being aware. While she enjoyed slasher movies well enough, Gemini did over time develop a preference for more psychological movies and has in recent years also expanded into foreign horror movies, enjoying the different cultural contexts and expectations seen in them. She's especially fond of the Scream series, especially the more recent entries, and some of her other favorite films include Hereditary, Ju-On: The Grudge, and Audition.

In the summer before she entered high school, Gemini was caught out in her unauthorized horror viewing by her sister, with whom she tried to share some of her favorite movies. While Valentina was by this point approaching her senior year of high school, she had much less of an appetite for frightening things, and didn't think her younger sister had any business watching gory movies. Gemini was grounded for a month at her stepfather's insistence, and this drove a wedge between her and her sister for about twice that long. When the grounding expired, however, her mother lifted most of her media restrictions, reasoning that Gemini didn't seem particularly disturbed by the movies she'd consumed, and that trying to keep her away from them would just make them more enticing. This was, however, a minor point of contention between Megan and Theo, the latter of whom felt that, whatever Gemini said, she would be too young for R-rated movies until she turned 17.

Since the summer of her freshman year, Gemini has been going to stay with her father in California for half of each summer, the longest span of time she's spent with him since he moved away. This has been a generally quite positive experience, helping Gemini broaden her view of the world. It also led to her interest in photography. Before her first trip, her mother gave her an old Canon Powershot A540, and Gemini took it with her to document her vacation. While she took pictures casually with her phone before, Gemini found that having a physical camera made photography a more conscious endeavor, and she took to studying the art in a more intentional way, reading several books on the subject targeted at beginners. She enjoys being able to record her experiences and share them, but also enjoys the creative control she can exert, using framing and effects to create an impression distinct from the in-the-moment experience. She keeps up with her photography even when she's at home, and has placed in a few small photography competitions held at the school. She also sometimes offers her services to the school paper, and to friends who want their costumes photographed. Over the past few years, she's acquired several other cameras inexpensively at secondhand stores, including an Olympus SP-800UZ and a Canon Digital Rebel XSI. While the latter is the camera she favors for more serious work, she still uses her A540 as her daily camera due to its comparative so far hasn't been willing to spend the money, and she's very comfortable with her current options. She favors photographing her surroundings and enjoys urban landscapes. She generally avoids photographing people as her primary subjects unless she has specifically been asked to or is at a convention, and she avoids self-portraits.

In high school, Gemini's life has settled into a fairly solid state, though not one she is entirely content with. She still does not really like school, and often mistrusts her classmates; she is very sensitive to insults or criticism, sometimes even reading it where it is not intended, and is quick to go on the offensive when she feels targeted, arguing with her peers and throwing insults of her own. This has left her with a reputation for volatility and for being an easy target, and a number of her peers think poorly of her or keep their distance due to this. Among friends, however, she's seen as passionate and warm, willing to help out when others are in need, and a number of classmates she's less close to also have a decent impression of her due to this. Gemini's friends tend to be either classmates who share her interests, particularly in horror and anime, or people she's been close to for a long time. Regardless of her relationship to someone, she can be anxious and self-critical, often fixating on her past decisions or worrying that she's making a mistake or being taken advantage of and seeking reassurance. Gemini considers herself heterosexual and has dated several boys, though can be a difficult partner. She's somewhat prone to monopolizing attention and can get jealous, and as such is strictly monogamous.

Gemini is a decent student, but not an exceptional one. She's bright and learns quickly when she puts in effort, but can be unmotivated or quick to give up, and tends to worry and second-guess herself, which means she often performs below her actual knowledge level on tests. She does best in subjects that allow room for personal expression, favoring English class, which she can also relate to her interests more easily. Math is a mixed bag; if she actually fully understands a given aspect of the subject, she does very well, but if there's room for doubt she frequently struggles. She does not like gym class, largely because she is generally a fairly uncoordinated person and finds being put on the spot in a team context stressful and humiliating, something compounded because people often assume her height will give her an edge in games like basketball or volleyball.

Reasonably independent, Gemini works at a local convenience store on some evenings and weekends, saving some of her earnings and using some of them to fuel her hobbies. She has a driver's license but does not have her own car, though is usually permitted to borrow one of the two family vehicles; she takes driving very seriously and is more than a little nervous about it, preferring to hitch a ride with friends if possible.

Gemini has a fairly good relationship with her biological parents. While she and her mother have less in common than they once did, Megan is still Gemini's most trusted confidant, and often intervenes in conflicts between her and her stepfather. Robby is a more distant presence in Gemini's life much of the time, but is all the more beloved for that, and Gemini keeps in regular contact with him as well as treasuring her summer visits. Recently, he has become seriously involved with another man, and has confided to Gemini that he's thinking of proposing. While Gemini only spent a little time with Robby's boyfriend during the previous summer, her impressions were positive and she's broadly in favor of it.

Valentina and Gemini have never been especially close, despite sharing a number of interests and having even attended the same school at the same time at various points over the years. Valentina is much more of a social butterfly and is easily able to get along with others, but never showed any interest in helping her sister with these issues. If anything, Valentina viewed Gemini as a bit of a drag, and preferred to spend time with her friends. She is currently in college in Reno, and is the family member Gemini speaks with least frequently.

Theo and Gemini's relationship is far and away the most fraught. While they got along very well when Gemini was younger, things have been on a decline since near the end of middle school. Gemini is frustrated with her stepfather because she feels like he expects an impossible mix of things from her, and that everything she does is wrong—anime is too childish, but horror is too mature; her school performance isn't good enough, but also she needs to prioritize her social life; her friends aren't a good fit, but also anyone new she meets is even worse. There's some truth to it, too; Theo has never been quite sure how to interact with his younger stepdaughter, especially as she has grown older, and finds many of his attempts to more actively parent overruled by Megan. This often leads to him being snippy or passive aggressive.

The biggest wedge between them, however, came in the middle of fall semester, when Gemini had a brief pregnancy scare. She had been dating a boy her age since the end of the previous school year, including a long-distance span during her summer trip, and when the couple found an unexpected moment unsupervised at Gemini's house they took advantage of it despite not having their usual precautions on hand. While Gemini at first was fairly unconcerned, having estimated that the risk was probably low based on where it fell in her cycle, when her next period was late she panicked despite this not being a particularly uncommon circumstance for her. Her anxieties grew over the course of two days and she finally impulsively disclosed the whole thing to her mother and stepfather. Theo was worried and furious and wanted to revoke most of Gemini's freedoms and privileges, while her mother took a much more constructive and supportive approach, getting her a pregnancy test (which came up negative) and helping her arrange more responsible birth control practices. Ultimately no punishment was enacted, and Gemini never even mentioned the situation to her partner, highly embarrassed by the whole thing. Still, she deeply resents what she feels was a lack of support from her stepfather when she needed it most, and will still slip into frosty hostility towards him at the slightest provocation.

Gemini is politically active and lands on the progressive side of the spectrum, something she has in common with both of her parents. Her stepfather claims to be apathetic to politics, though he is clearly less personally progressive; he always votes the same way as his wife and rarely even reads the issues himself. Gemini is especially concerned with LGBT rights given its relevance to her father, and she voted for D'Cruz in the recent election. She is an atheist, having not been raised with any religious traditions beyond a generally secular version of Christmas.

After graduation, Gemini hopes to move in with her father for a year, living in California to establish residency before applying to a state school there. This plan has broad support from all of her parental figures, though she suspects that Theo just wants to get her out of the house.

Advantages: Gemini is tall, with a potential advantage in reach and bulk when compared with a number of her peers. She has a handful of close, loyal friends who she can rely on. Her generally suspicious attitude is likely to serve her well in a situation in which caution is merited.
Disadvantages: Gemini is temperamental and anxious, often second-guessing herself and quick to take bait, which leaves her liable to react poorly in tense situations or to fall prey to manipulation. A number of her classmates are very aware of these traits, and even those who have no interest in exploiting them may hesitate to give her the benefit of the doubt due to them. Gemini is significantly nearsighted, relying on her glasses for detailed vision at a distance, and she also has relatively poor coordination.

[Ruggahissy]

Hello there. Gemini needs a bit more information at points, but together, we will get there.

At 5'11" and 160 lbs, Gemini has a conspicuous presence

True she’s taller than average but I don’t know that this is so tall as to make her out of the ordinary and it is a bit editorializing.

round brown eyes under medium eyebrows

Not sure what medium denotes here. Length? Bushiness? Height on the face?

and narrow ears

Does this mean small ears or ears that lay flat to the head?

though she can be much more adventurous the mood strikes her or when in costume.

Typo “WHEN the mood strikes her”?

Gemini is Caucasian.

This whole paragraph should go before the paragraph about her style of dress since it details her general appearance before going into clothes.

to mother Megan and father Thomas Jones

I’m going to have to stop you here for her living in Las Vegas and having a father named Tom Jones. It’s not an uncommon name -- it's not unusual, one could perhaps say -- but it makes me think he’ll be asking her “What’s new pussy cat?” quite a lot. Maybe a different first name.

The couple often relied on Megan's parents for help, and were in a difficult economic situation much of the time.

Small one but this is an independent clause and dependent clause joined by a conjunction rather than two independent ones, so you don’t need the comma.

All of this, however, was a significant amount of upheaval right in the early years of Gemini's education, and its impact was pronounced.

Feels like a very clunky sentence here. There are a pretty heavy number of long, wordy sentences throughout the bio and you may want to do a readthrough and trim some of them.

Gemini's issues didn't entail physical conflicts or active bullying, just clashes with her classmates, which made it comparatively easy to rationalize and ignore.

What do “clashes” consist of? Insults? Screaming? Some other thing?

Moving into middle school, she still has issues with her classmates, but I’m not sure how those manifest towards other students.

in fact, Gemini's middle name was derived from one of their favorite characters, Lucy from Elfen Lied.

Fan or no, I’m not sure a lot of parents would want to give their child a name associated with a human-hating sadistic murderer who lacks empathy and has only experienced sadness and torture.

Nowadays, she favors darker, more mature series aimed at adults

Can we get a few titles of manga/anime she enjoys nowadays just to get a feel for her tastes? "Mature anime" is pretty broad.

She learned to read with age appropriate manga

First, "age-appropriate" needs to be hyphenated. Second, I don't think that manga would make a good way to LEARN to read. Perhaps children's manga after she knows how to read a bit.

This started when Gemini wanted to be a character from one of her favorite series for Halloween, and with her mother's help she made an amateurish costume.

Out of curiosity, which one? In fact, I'd love some examples of characters she's dressed as at all.

She is much worse when it comes to props, and often either purchases them online or barters with more skilled friends.

Wigs? Hair? Make-up, which was mentioned in appearance?

the creation and wearing of costume's replicating those in stories.

No apostrophe needed in "costumes."

As with anime and manga, maybe a few examples of some favorites in the horror genre?

In the photography section it says mom gives her a digital camera. Is that a point-and-shoot or a DSLR? Does she ever upgrade? Also, what are her preferred subjects/ type of photography?

She does not like gym class, partially because due to her height strangers often assume she plays basketball (which she has never had any interest in)

Is people asking if she plays basketball an ongoing issue within gym class?

Reasonably independent, Gemini works at a local store on some evenings and weekends,

What kind of store?

The biggest wedge between them, however, came in the middle of fall semester, when Gemini had a brief pregnancy scare. This stemmed from Gemini's own anxieties and was quickly resolved, but in the process she ended up divulging her fears to her mother and stepfather in a panic.

I'd like more information on this because it feels like a significant life event. How did this happen? Who is this guy? I thought she was very reticent to trust people.


That's about it! Post when there are edits.

[Grand Moff Hissa]

There you go!

[Ruggahissy]

Sorry about the wait. This one is APPROVED