taylor lyden muller - the eighth district - fin

Taylor, quite honestly, looks his age. Out of all the things you could imagine, he's probably the most relevant-to-age people you could think of. He doesn't look older, nor does he look younger than his sixteen years on earth. He looks basically in the middle and if you were to look at him, you'd say he looks sixteen, not a day under nor a day over.

The first thing you'd probably notice about Taylor is possibly his facial features. No, they're not stereo typically beautiful or perfect, but there is something about them that makes you want to see what the next expression on his face can and will be. His face shape, for example. It's rather long, with a wider forehead and larger cheekbones, tapering down into a fairly thin chin. The end of the chin is more rounded than squared, coming to a fairly undramatic point. It's a fairly run-of-the-mill district eight chin, and is really nothing special.

The most interesting feature on Taylor is probably his eyes. They're quite an unusual color for his hair color, a shade somewhere between chocolate and amber. They're not an uncommon color, but they're not quite common either. They're very animated eyes, always having some other thing that they're constantly darting to. Taylor's eyes aren't large, but they're not quite small either, landing somewhere in the middle of the two sizes. Slightly almond shaped, they curve in on the inner corners and are framed by fairly thick eyelashes. Because you know, a vast majority of the time guys have those and I'm sitting here like "are you kidding me." Eyebrows frame the said eyes, and are rather pale and thin.

His nose is large on his face. Not in the overwhelmingly-so way, but more in the way that it's just simply there and nothing that nobody would call a feature that was overly attractive. It adds character, he presumes.

Taylor's hair is cut in a rather uniform fashion, very close to the head with little extra detail. He has fairly short bangs that probably couldn't even be considered bangs accompanied by shorter side-parts of the hair. His hair is a rather sandy shade of blonde with sprinklings of colors similar to cinnamon, light brown and honey blonde.

Nor is he particuarly tall. Taylor stands at about 5' 10'', which is pretty much the most average height for a male. his body isn't thick, nor is it thin. He's perfectly medium when it comes to everything sized-wise. His legs are fairly proportionate to his torso and so forth.

Taylor is an eccentric person. As in, he holds onto the strangest little bits of things for a long period of time. He's not one to forget anything, and always seems to hold onto little bits of things that really don't matter. This behavior about loving little quirky, eccentric details is fairly odd, especially for someone his age. He tends to cling onto these little details and doesn't want to let them go because they're so obvious to him. It's pretty difficult for him to see the big picture because he is so fixated on the little details that really don't have a point.

If you were to give somebody an award for over reacting to every little thing in life, it'd probably go to Taylor. With every single little roadbump that heads his way, he makes a big deal about it. He throws all things aside, and while he rarely cries, he always is thinking about how it was such a bad or good thing that happened. This behavior usually leads to him making big deals out of things that should be regarded as details or footnotes.

A good thing, though, about Taylor is that he is probably considered one of the most hardworking people you've ever met. He knows how to get something done and he focuses on getting it done before he moves onto anything else. This determination to make sure that everybody elses wants and needs are accounted for is purely unselfish and makes sure that he was raised the way that his father intended his son to be when he told him to work at a sock factory.

Despite his hardworking personality, Taylor can be a bit of a downer sometimes. He rarely looks to see the positive in things and is usually considered a pessimist. Just more towards himself than anybody else. He usually doesn't tend to bring people down purposefully, but by being negative about his own self, he tends to make other people feel bad about whatever because he's such a downer.

Due to not being an utterly socially accepted human being stuck being alone and all that, Taylor has the need to talk to something that will listen. So, he talks to plants. No, not in the "oh, they're going to reply to me" way but more so in the way that he just needs an outlet to talk to somebody, and since he doesn't have that outlet, he resorts to talking to plants. It's not a crazy person thing, just more eccentric.

On August 23rd of the 30th Hunger Games, a young man by the name of Reginald Muller won the crown of the Hunger Games for district eight, making him the third victor from that said district. He wasn't exactly the most impressive victor, in lieu of doing much of anything, he manipulated his allies and made them do his bidding as he hid and didn't seem to do much. In fact, he didn't kill a singular person and was known as "The black death" among the capitolites during that games year due to his allies always dying in his place. The final battle barely even happened, the opposed, who was from district six, had simply committed suicide because she didn't want to end up like the victors who took medication and illegal substances. Reginald was a victor after this, and the sheer lack of blood and gore that was delivered by the victor may of disappointed the capitol, but his cunning ways and almost charismatic capitol-like personality did win over the majority of the people, so the games were considered a success and no further consequences were given immediately.

Reginald went home to cheering crowds and a home in the victors village, and at the age of seventeen, became all but an overnight celebrity. He came home to a large amount of people wanting to associate themselves with him, whether it be the mayors daughter (who was already married to one of the wealthier families in the district) to the lowest of the factory workers. They believed that he was the absolute best victor because of the small amount of bloodshed he had caused and looked at him as something of a trophy of the district. But finally, he decided to pull a cinderella and invited everybody in his age group to join him at his home for something of a party. There was music, dancing, food items and all that fun stuff. Of course, the people in the eighth district had surplus amounts of clothing to wear, because we all knew that cloth was smuggled and they could make wonderful things out of simple and old patterns. And that was the night that a rather humble-looking girl in a green gown ran into Reginald. And they talked all day and night, and pretty much figured that it would benefit them mutually to become engaged. Her father was on his death bed and the owner of a sock factory in the district, and she was the only child in her family. He was a victor, so it wouldn't look like the capitol would object the new ownership of the building.

The two were married two months later on the agreement that it'd mutually be attainable for their well-being, and found out that they kind of did like each other. Sure, they weren't the most compatible, she was too skittish and under the impression that she was a domestic goddess, and he was a little bit cold and mean hearted, but they liked each other enough.... And pretty soon, their oldest son, Harrison, was born. Harrison was a good kid, or so he grew up that way. He was kind of the type of person that floated along, not doing much in his toddler years. Sure, he was as rambunctious as the other terrible twos, but Harrison was never what you could consider a special human being. Even when his younger brother was born, who is the main character of our story, Taylor, he didn't mind and took him under his wing, it seemed, as almost a best friend.

So from the day Taylor was born up until he was fourteen or so years old, he was raised pretty decently. Sure, his family had a tad bit more money because of the sock factory and the victor, and he went to the capitol once because he had a nasty cold and his father was kind of concerned about him (He was cold-hearted, but never neglectful.) But outside of that, he lived pretty normally. His father was always persistent on making sure that his two sons got the most normal lifestyle and worked for their keep at home. Thus, he sent both of them to work in the sock factory the minute that they turned eight years old. It was basically something that he had to do; in which wasn't a bad thing, really. They learned to interact with people who weren't snobby and stuck up, the type of people that would hold their heads high. He learned to work with the people who his father had grown up with, and while Taylor found their manner rather crude, he liked it because of a large assortment of people who seemed to have a family-like connection that he never really had.

And when he did turn fourteen, something happened. A girl who was his age (Two months younger, but still..) got transferred to the toe-mending station, which was where he worked. There was an awkward silence or two between the two, but finally Taylor just started talking about how much darning socks was repetitive. And the girl, Bree, added onto the conversation by saying how socks were just stupid. And they formed something of a friendship. They'd torment each other about their sewing skills and pretty soon, Taylor was comfortable enough to introduce her to her father as "My friend, Bree" and not "The person who stands next to me on the assembly line". As their friendship grew, Taylor began to feel more than a friendship.... He thought that it was something that could happen... So over a discussion about socks, he leaned in and kissed her. It was awkward, but it happened, and somehow, the two ended up together a few months before Taylor's fifteenth birthday.

And their little fluffy romance worked. It honestly did. They'd sit down and talk for hours over tea during breaks, and they exchanged worker ID cards that they kept on each others bedside. It was sweet and somewhat innocent. They were best friends who kept together because of a sock assembly line. It was something that people knew about, but it wasn't hugely public. All in all, it worked. Perfectly, some would say. Well, until the day that Bree's father was fired from the sock factory, in turn, she had to leave. And that was where it started to crumble. When they didn't see each other, it was difficult to schedule around breaks. And finally, she just gave up and told him that they needed to break up because "the spark just wasn't there anymore" All on his sixteenth birthday, which made the whole thing even worse. When he came home that day, he was so devestated with his mothers general ignorance towards everything, he hung a rope in the garage, intended for suicide since he was so overly desperate about everything that had happened and felt like he compulsively needed to have Bree in his life or he'd be better off dead; and got his hand caught in the hand when his mother opened the door so she could vacuum. When his father saw the mark, he gave him the most saddened expression and told him not to mope about a girl.

But he couldn't really get over it. His older brother just told him to get over it and to help him find something to snort (Yep, his brother was infatuated with the idea of illegal substances, but couldn't get any because "In district eight, you can't even get real drugs!") Sure, his brother was supportive enough but really didn't feel the emotion that was oozing out of Taylor. So, he tried jumping off of a bridge, standing at the top, only to be knocked over by his brother on accident, landing in a pile of shirts headed for the capitol via train. But Taylor had to explain to his parents on why exactly he was late, and they just shook their heads and told him that he couldn't leave the house unless he was going to work or school, and he had to be supervised by one of the two on the way to school. All in all, it was a horrible thing for him, and trying to keep himself entertained was nearly impossible.

So he began to take care of all the little chores in his house that his mother was uninterested in (which wasn't much, since she loved to vacuum and make "food" which really wasn't food, but instead her copying recipes from magazines in the capitol which usually got messed with and tampered with in the proccess, so she improvised with her own creative ideas. Which usually involved raisins because "You like raisins!") But beside the point, the one thing that wasn't in his mothers interest level was taking care of the dying plants on the windowsill of the front window. He started to water them, and then read about the plants in a small pamphlet his father had laying around about them. Apparently the plants were healthier when you talked to them. So he started to have basic conversations with the plants. His history, who his father was, his favorite type of music, what he looked like, how the plants felt about everything. These basic conversations stemmed into a routine of him coming home from work and sitting among the plants, and having conversations with them. Of course, they didn't reply, but he found a sense of comfort in talking to something that wouldn't judge him. He even began to sing simple little tunes to the songs, just being quirky and singing whatever came to his mind at the moment.

taylor is sixteen years of age - taylor resides in the eighth district - taylor has a secret password and it's <img src="http://i41.tinypic.com/16h2ibt.png"> - hat tip to better off dead for inspiration