Typical HMD post, please post critique, comments, as long as it's constructive and not just "LOL U SUCK".  Please make it something I can do something about, not just that you hate me.  Details are important.  Anonymous commenting is on.

Work in progress to infinity.

Apologizes a lot
Barrier Warrior
Beautiful All Along
Butt Monkey
The Eeyore
Groundhog Day Loop
Heroic Self-Depreciation
The Klutz
Pale-Skinned Brunette
Suicide as Comedy
Interrupted Suicide
Dark is not Evil
It's all My Fault
Heroic Blue-Screen of Death
Loners are Freaks
Barrier Maiden
Shrinking Violet
Hollywood Homely
Dark and Troubled Past

Miranda - derived from the latin mirandus meaning "Admirable or wonderful"; created by Shakespeare for his play 'The Tempest' (1611)

Lotte - German topographic word 'lot' meaning 'dirt'.


Once upon a time, there was a baby girl and from the moment she was born she had bad luck.  Her first instance of bad luck was just being born female when her parents prayed to heaven for a male.  The next one was right after, when her birth mother died.  It seemed the tiny little girl was cursed from the moment she entered the world.  

Her father was an older man who didn't like being alone and remarried quickly.  His new wife was the only mother the girl could ever remember.  The family wasn't that wealthy but had a title and land to pass on so an heir was needed.  The bad luck of the girl struck again, for her stepmother was unable to have a living child -- only malformed dead creatures that barely resembled babies.  The girl was blamed, not out loud, but in whispers throughout the household.  'Cursed' they said.  'No good' they said.  'Can you see?  It's unnatural how the girl doesn't speak' the servants would whisper.

It wasn't until the fifth miscarriage that her stepmother began openly blaming the cursed girl.  Meals sent to her in her room rather than in the dining room, left at home for holiday.... forgetting her birthday.  Where was the girl's father?  Since her birth, the older man couldn't stand the sight of the child who took his beloved wife anyway.  A blind eye to everything and denial of his new wife's cruelty was the new order of his day.

'Useless, you'll never be any good at anything.' her stepmother told her daily.  'Look at that face... what man will want you for marriage with that face... your father will be stuck with you forever." was at least said once a week.  'That hair, it never does anything but wave around your head in a bush' was told to her every month before it was shorn off to her chin.  Even in school, where the woman's words couldn't reach, the children took over.  'Look at the girl in black, isn't she pathetic.' the girls said.  'Don't go near her, she's cursed' said the boys.  After school, they would dare each other to go touch her, then laugh and not let her play with them afterward.

At first..the girl still tried hard.  For everything she failed, the cursed girl would try something else.  Couldn't ride a horse?  She would try sewing.  Couldn't sew?  She would try cooking.  Couldn't cook?  ..and it would go on and on.  For years like that, even until she was on the cusp of womanhood. Until, she started to believe what she heard.  It was a slow process but eventually it doesn't take a genius to realize that if a whole town thinks you're unlucky, cursed and ugly...doesn't that make it true?

It was then, on the threshold of adulthood, the cursed girl, no the cursed woman made her decision.  She had to accept who she was.  If she was ugly, cursed, unlucky, then there wasn't a thing she could do about it.  Slowly, she began using it to her advantage.  When made fun of by children on the street, the cursed woman would begin sending her 'unlucky' beam at them to scare them away.  Rather than try to make herself pretty, she accepted her ugliness and didn't even try, turning into a spinster at seventeen.

At eighteen, her stepmother told her she wasn't welcome and told her to leave.  On her way out, as his only and final duty to his daughter, her father gave her the inheritance from her mother's side.  She left and never looked back.

For seven years, from job to job, her life was the same.  Scaring children, avoiding adults when she could, loosing a total of one hundred jobs.  Her father died but she felt nothing but guilt that she ...felt nothing.  It wasn't until the last year of the seven that the thought of suicide entered her mind.  Perhaps...perhaps the world would have been better without the cursed woman.  Maybe she was a mistake that should never have been born.  No one would miss her.  As she would lie awake with her insomnia, surrounded by her wine bottles, the cursed woman would think of these things as she tried to sleep and try to NOT think of the kitchen knives just two rooms away.. Perhaps she would have, if not for the clock, the clock she happened along by accident, about to be thrown away, much like she had been.  When she asked the store owner about it, he said it was no good, old, broken..useless.  He said she could have it for free and gave her the key to wind it.  On impulse, the cursed woman turned the key and....for her, it worked.  It was like divine providence, for once in her life, something LIKED her.

Then one day, her life changed forever.  October the 9th to be exact.

There was a white haired boy.

And next a dark-haired girl.

And monsters.  So many monsters.

And Innocence...her..Innocence?

A child that wasn't a child promising to kill her for it, nailing her with spikes through her hands to her beloved clock!  She was hurting the boy and the girl.. because of her!  Then the boy.. he protected her with his body, he couldn't fight anymore...but the cursed woman couldn't let him die, couldn't let them die.  The first people ever to be kind and like her, the first person ever to tell her 'thank you'.

The clock...Innocence.... redemption.

And maybe she still was cursed...but not so useless after all.