S101 - Miles, Melanie "Millie" [DECEASED]

#1

Name: Melanie “Millie” Miles
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Grade: 12
School: John Endecott Memorial Academy
Hobbies and Interests: Documentaries, food science, radical feminism, swimming, video games (especially survival games), environmental activism, marine biology

Appearance: Millie is 5’6 and 110 pounds, giving her a concerningly underweight frame. She is lanky with long limbs and no curves, much to her displeasure. She is Caucasian with pale skin.

Her face is heart-shaped with low round cheekbones and slightly hollowed cheeks, a small upturned nose, a wide mouth with lips that are on the thinner side, and deep set round blue-green eyes. Her chin is bony but small, and she has a thin neck and a slight Adam's apple. She has smile lines when she grins and the beginnings of crow’s feet, especially under her eyes. Millie’s voice can be a bit nasally at times, but otherwise pleasant sounding. She had been noted by others to sound sweet and melodic, if not a little high pitched.

Millie wears natural makeup for her pale eyebrows and to give more color to her skin. She also modifies her appearance with push up and padded bras, although she has given up on other forms of shapewear because of discomfort. She has long almond-tipped nails and pierced ears. Her hair is a light sunflower blonde, and while it was dip-dyed ombre blue before, the color has faded to a light dirty teal, further exemplified with the blonde part being tinted greenish from swimming pools. It reaches the bottom of her shoulder blades and is wavy. As of now, Millie’s sense of fashion aligns with teen trends and it makes her appear rather generic, with her striving to just look attractive more than to stand out. Tie-dyes, graphic tees, and denim show up in her outfits often.

On the day of the abduction, Millie was wearing a seafoam green and white tie-dye t-shirt in the pattern of a spiral, with the center of the spiral being on her chest and the words “This is my good day shirt” in a blocky font on the front, written in butter yellow bordered by white. Over that, she had on a heavy light blue denim jacket with a patch on the back that portrays the upper half of a simplistic yellow sun. She had on yellow sweatpants with a pattern of large daisies printed on it, and white Converse shoes. Her hair was tied up to a messy half-bun with a white scrunchie and her nails were alternating gold and teal. As for accessories, she had on golden hoop earrings, a thick choker made from braided light brown leather, gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses with blue lenses fading to yellow at the bottom, and an assortment of about four bracelets on each wrist, from a selection of bead bracelets, gold bangles, woven bracelets and seashell bracelets.

Biography: Millie was born to then-20 year old Angelie Miles and a man named Mason, during their brief affair after which her father left and maintained minimal contact, aside from paying child support and the occasional email. Angelie, a customer service representative, lived in poverty in her youth and dropped out of college, and suffered from from overeating as a response to food insecurity in her childhood. Having a child out of wedlock further strained her already-rocky relationship with the rest of the family. Angelie is slightly emotionally unstable, being prone to mood swings and long depressive episodes. Angelie is distrustful of mental and physical health professionals due to medical biases in the industry, and has never actively sought therapy or other professional help for her obesity, something that Millie is exasperated at; instead, she has a tendency to turn to online groups and home remedies and often recommends them to Millie. Neither Millie nor her mother ever made serious attempts to contact Mason; Millie thinks of him more as a sperm donor than anything else, given how he never had a hand in raising her.

Millie did decently well in school ever since elementary, but she struggled to make friends. Throughout her younger childhood years, Millie would seek out older kids to connect to and fit in with, feeling like they are more responsible and better to talk to. In fact, Millie was what multiple adults in her life called precocious, or more mature for her age, something that she took to heart. Even now, Millie prides herself on this, despite the fact that she isn’t much more emotionally developed than her peers, citing her interest in politics and science as proof of her maturity.

Angelie’s health has long been a source of concern for Millie. Because she has mobility issues, Millie was responsible for quite a lot of chores around the house. When she was 13, she tried to confront her mother on why she wasn't in contact with the rest of her family or her father, after her favorite teacher participated in bring-your-child-to-work day. When it turned into an argument, Angelie started crying, and Millie a burst of anger, started to yell at her, insult both her health and her competence as a parent, and eventually ended up physically injuring her mother by throwing a mug at her.

Seeing her mother’s struggle with her weight caused Millie to have an opposite but just as unhealthy relationship with food. In middle school, when she was nearly overweight, she followed several fad diets and began to restrict her eating as a way of both losing weight and to assert control over herself. When her general practitioner and mother noticed her dramatic weight loss, she began to eat more as an effort to avoid institutionalization, but started purging soon afterwards, and has been regularly purging for the last few years via vomiting. Millie’s view of her own body is paradoxical; on one hand, she nearly fetishizes her own skinniness and that of others, to the point of saving photos of very underweight people as inspiration online, but on the other hand she feels insecure over her own body’s lack of femininity. She dislikes exercise but swims regularly because it’s the only sport that she feels like interests her, and one of the only sports that her mother can participate in with her. Millie dislikes having her disordered eating called out, and goes to lengths to avoid being seen as mentally or physically ill. Her disordered eating is a manifestation of her own issue with control, a way for her to prove to herself that she is not a creature of impulse.

Though she swims regularly, with or without her mother, most of Millie’s hobbies are based online. Immersing herself into a fantasy world is a form of escapism for her. She regularly plays video games for hours at a time, with an emphasis on survival games, and she has branched out to more exploration-centered, creature-heavy games as of late. Because she doesn't like high-paced or competitive gaming, exploration and survival games are more calming for her.

With her mother nearly wheelchair-bound, Millie does most of the chores, especially cooking, and even though she doesn’t like the act of making the food herself, food science interests her. She loves documentaries about weight loss and obesity, such as Superfat vs Superskinny, since she was in sixth grade after stumbling on a My 600 Pound Life episode on YouTube. Her mother encourages this hobby in her, gifting her nutritionist cookbooks, fostering her fascination with food and its interactions with the body.

As she grew, she found herself becoming her mother’s caretaker as Angelie's health declined. Because of this, and her own tendencies, she never really liked going out, and as thus tended to entertain herself by binging the large collection of documentary CDs in her mom's collection. One day, she stumbled upon a documentary on Shulamith Firestone, which pulled her into the radical feminist ideology. She has fallen deeper into the belief, believing, mainly, that female exploitation is systematic and that it requires the total restructuring of society in order to demolish the patriarchy. In truth, Millie’s political identity is largely wrapped up in her personal identity, and she believes that politics is a large part of who she is and a defining part of her personality, in spite of her relative youth and lack of political awareness. Since she was introduced to politics early in life and online, for a long time she viewed politics as a hobby or a community, almost like a fandom. Her engagement with the feminist movement mainly revolves around her tumblr blog, and she attends marches and protests frequently. Ever since one of her online friends came to her for support after being sexually assaulted, Millie has been paranoid about being the victim of a violent and/or sexual crime by men, and that only fed into her beliefs; she semi-ironically identifies as a misandrist online and, despite being attracted to both men and women, staunchly rejects the concept of ever being involved with a man romantically or sexually.

Millie is also into environmentalism ever since she picked global warming as a topic for a sixth-grade science presentation. While doing research for it, she was horrified at what she learned; because she kept several pet fish and frequented aquariums as a child, she had an early interest in marine biology, so she was distraught over learning about ocean acidification, pollution, and mass extinction. Ever since then, marine biology and environmental sciences went hand in hand for her, as she focused specifically on learning about and spreading awareness on how climate change affects ocean life, with a focus on her favorite animals, turtles. Millie is pessimistic about the future of the world because of the amount of tragic or otherwise negative information she has absorbed over the years on how the environment is deterioating, which has a legitimate impact on her mental health. The fact that humanity knowingly pollutes the world despite knowing the consequences makes her slightly misanthropic. To contribute to the cause, she often participates in environmentalist fundraising events, volunteered in a marine life summer camp to teach elementary kids about wildlife preservation, and plans on minoring in environental science in college in addition to studying for her career of choice.

For the past five months or so Millie has been in an on and off ambigously semiromantic/sexual relationship with another woman online, who went under the name of Allison. The two never met in real life, and met because of a mutual friend on tumblr, who posted frequently about feminism and queer theory with the two and several other friends. Allison began sending semi-jokingly flirtatious messages to the both of them, and Millie reciprocated, also semi-jokingly. They hit it off after Allison began commenting on her selfies, and they started using terms of endearments for fun. Millie is still in the dark about several details of Allison’s personal life, but knows that she’s in her early twenties, and lives in Seattle. She isn't particularly invested in the relationship, and she knows that Allison has other partners. The two send semi-ironic, sexually explicit messages occasionally, for instance talking about Allison's flings and partners or roleplaying absurd sexual scenarios, and refer to each other as girlfriends, but don't consider themselves as conforming to the idea of a romantic relationship; Allison is grayromantic and asexual, while Millie simply doesn't see any future if they ever meet in real life, so they don't plan on ever meeting up. The foundation of their faux romance is based on joking around and acting like a couple for fun, such as calling each other "babe" or complimenting each other's features and calling each other hot. Allison knows that Millie is a high schooler, but thinks that she's 18 instead of 17.

Millie isn’t exactly ostracized in her school, but she lacks a wide or a close social circle. She is more concerned with being liked back by the people that she likes than forging new relationships. She is somewhat social and attends parties to destress in an environment where she could just talk to people and enjoy the presence of others, but doesn’t like talking about other people. She considers herself to be quite independent and doesn't require much social interaction nor attention to survive.

Because she is responsible for most of the household chores in her home, as well as assisting her mother, Millie feels as if she is saddled with responsibilities; between everything she has to do at home and at school, she feels exhausted and has little time for herself. Despite this, she still does her best to maintain her grades and make sure that everything she needed to do at home is done; she diligently keeps calendars and schedules for her chores. She doesn't particularly enjoy her life right now, but also feels like having too much freedom would be overwhelming for her. Her schedule doesn't change much day to day and she doesn't react well to any sudden changes of plans.

As she entered her last year of high school, Millie has become increasingly irritable. She has finished her applications for eight out of ten colleges, and most of them are out of state. Most of the good schools that she applied to are either unlikely to accept her due to her 3.4 GPA or too inaccessible in terms of tuition or distance, but she desperately wants to study out of state or abroad, and is willing to shoulder the student debt and inconveniences. The prospect, however, still stresses her, just like the fear of having to live by herself and rearrange her social circle, and her response to stress is anger. She doesn’t have a good outlet and has recently resorted to taking her anger out at home, feeling as if it is safer to blow up at her mother over inconveniences than her friends. She is aware of her own anger issues and apologizes for her outbursts, but is sometimes too stubborn to admit that she's at fault. In her attempts to hold herself back from yelling at her mother, she has instead been getting into conflicts with a few of her classmates more, making her situation even worse. Millie is dead-set on her career path of food science, which she feels like she's more knowledgable in and will have better jobs than environmental science. What she isn’t set on, however, is how she would handle possibly moving away and having to balance college, life, and taking care of her mom.

Advantages: Her independent, strong-willed personality is a double-edged sword that may help stabilize her mentally in the game’s traumatizing and demoralizing environment when alone. She is generally responsible and has experience in attending to someone's health, and might be better at taking care of herself, such as managing injuries or resource intake, than most.
Disadvantages: Millie has problems managing her anger and negative emotions, and can be prone to outbursts, which may escalate conflicts. She is severely underweight and physically in terrible shape. Many of Millie's peers have noticed her increasingly bad temper and may view her as more of a threat. Having lived a very predictable lifestyle, she may struggle to adapt to the arena's conditions.

Designated Number: Student No. 101

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Designated Weapon: TEC Torch

Conclusion: Being so thin, you'll need something to keep you warm. I know something that could keep you warm.- Cecily Lacoste