[cutekittycats]

wow i've been watching this one ouo
good luck to all of you guys!

[toccata]

good luck everyone!

[cutekittycats]

I'm curious to see the winner
Will this be judged soon? cx

[Bovidae]

I'm curious to see the winner
Will this be judged soon? cx

i haven't had time to sit down and read everything since i've been so busy and your forms are all so long! i'll get to it when i can

[cutekittycats]

I'm curious to see the winner
Will this be judged soon? cx

i haven't had time to sit down and read everything since i've been so busy and your forms are all so long! i'll get to it when i can

Ah okay c; Sorry for bothering you, I was just curious as a friend of mine is in this competition

[Bovidae]

congrats antiquaries! this was very hard to judge so i will be making runners-up as well!
pterodactyl, fragmentary blue, paola, congrats, you're my runners-up!
please PM me with a picture of a drink to use for inspiration and a hairstyle you want!

♥



Username: Hi, I'm antiquaries, a non-owner ;u;
Deer's name: Natalya
Gender: Female c:





♥ CLEVER ♥ SWEET ♥ KIND ♥ DREAMY ♥ ABSENTMINDED ♥


♥ Natalya is a book worm and a very clever Deerssert, who loves to read mainly fiction books but also likes a dash of nonfiction. She's a smart cookie and quite content to curl up with any book at any time.

♥ Natalya is a kind and sweet Deerssert. She's always willing to help others out <3

♥ Natalya is often dreamy and absentminded. She reads her beloved books so often that she's got a personality that's a little bit strange. She loves referencing random parts of books.

♥ She's a little bit quirky, too, and has some peace-love-unity motifs. Also, when Natalya is REALLY into a book, it's difficult for her to discern fact and fiction. So her friends (who know the way she is and love her for it) just kinda leave her alone for a while so the effect can wear off.

♥ She's never been the kind of dreamer that pretends to run across open clouds, but she is the type of dreamer who sets huge goals, and the kind of dreamer who closes her eyes and imagines success, imagines her own and then a character's success.







"You can't possibly want me to get all of them!" Did that sound sweet? Playful? It wasn't. Natalya becomes an absolute train wreck when you ask her to list her favorite books or series, because to be honest she reads way too many and loves way too many. But the glasses perched on her nose are there for a reason--being a fast, speedy reader, Natalya loves thick, heavy books, and the books she's found are the thickest and heaviest books are the slightly dated historical fictions.

An excellent example is War and Peace. A quick interview with her about the book will reveal as much information as a quick interview about candy canes with a Cinnamon Bun who can't speak. An excerpt is posted below:

NATALYA:
"Wait, you want me to talk about War and Peace?" At this point, her voice is only slightly panicky. While she's a nervous gal, Natalya can manage to keep her cool most of the time.
YOU:
"Yeah. Like, who's your favorite character?"
NATALYA:
"Uh, um, Natalya, maybe? No, I'm sorry, that sounds egotistic, but I'm named after her...I do think she's a cool character, I guess? Um, she's described as 'not pretty but full of life' which is good? Not to be rude to people who are pretty!" Aaaand let the fear begin. This is when her answers turn into confusing rambles of mush and pea soup.



It's not as if she isn't an expert on the subject, either. In fact, she's probably the most educated Deerssert on War and Peace, like, ever. Along with most of Tolstoy's other books. She's read War and Peace a total of 17 times, and added more to her incredibly thorough and detailed notes every single time! She's nearly memorized the entire darn thing, from every sigh and pause to every word howled in the night. No one knows the book like she does. But you'd never know it, not with the way she dances around things like a butterfly.

However, people have managed to figure out she's something of an intellectual (and a little bit of a hippie, with her peace, love, and freedom motifs that, like everything else, are kept to herself). So whenever they see Natalya, people will think of heavy books. Thick books. Books that are usually Natalya's preferred reading material. But every once in a while--just every once in a while--a teen fiction book graces her shelves and she absolutely loves it.

Like, loves it to death.

Take for example The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. It's the sort of novel that Natalya should scoff at, from her peers' perceptions, because she likes GOOD fiction. Fiction that makes you revel in rich writing and fabulous adjectives that force you to dig out that dictionary that was printed in the 1800s. Fiction that forces you to wonder for days about a single sentence, and fiction that inspires you to wake in the middle of the night and suddenly gain insight as to the meaning of a paragraph.

But ask Natalya her opinion. Go ahead.

"I love the book! Love it! It's fabulous, it's wonderful! I love the entire book! It's so sad, but I love it! I love it!" Oddly enough, teen fiction books (the good ones anyways) are the only books she can actually speak freely about without tangling her tongue in confusion. It's weird--she definitely likes the historical fictions better. She likes what happens when you read thick, heavy historical fictions, especially novels by those considered to be literary geniuses. And really, teen fiction is just her guilty pleasure (however satisfying it is).

But the truth stands. Natalya is completely tongue-tied about her true favorites, but the words flow like honey when it comes to the books she only likes on occasion. Just one of the many mysteries of life, I suppose.



TL;DR version:


Natalya is a dork of a book nerd who loves long, heavy historical fiction that can be slightly dated at times, but her guilty pleasure is teen fiction novels that transcend their genres.






Natalya was not always the shy but confident-in-herself deer that she is today. There is no truly tragic backstory--her mother did not die, her father did not die, she has two sisters and an older brother--but for a time, Natalya was a socially stranded Deer who didn't know where she wanted to go or where she even was. She wasn't sure if her glasses were attractive and she wasn't taking the chance. She didn't know if her intense love of teen fiction novels and War and Peace + other historical novels were acceptable and it was like her interest in those books didn't exist.

And it wasn't even that she was bullied. No, the deer in Natalya's life had always been kind to her, further convincing the nervous girl that it was her problem--that she was a spoiled rotten deer who didn't know how to count her blessings. Horrified by these thoughts, Natalya did not confide in other deer about her anxiety of social rejection. Rather she kept it in a tight little knot in her stomach that grew until one day it reached her throat.

"Natalya," someone asked her, "why are you always squinting?"




The throat-stomach anxiety pushed at her. Natalya tried to speak. Stammered like it was the end of the world. "I--I--I don't know," she gulped, backing away. To this day she doesn't remember who made the knot of anxiety into an ocean, but she does know that she drowned in that ocean. The too-inquisitive deer peered at her with amusement in their face. Natalya blinked and tried to convince herself she did not squint. She would not. She could see fine without her glasses and she would always see fine. She convinced herself that her glasses, a cute little pair of dorky looking white frames that she had picked out with all the love in the world, were ugly and unnecessary because she could see just fine. Just fine.

She straightened her neck a little in (false, imagined) confidence. "I don't squint," she said proudly, so, so happy that she had managed to delude herself into believing that those lovely little glasses were 1) useless and 2) disgusting. But the ocean of anxiety was still churning. Something was still wrong and Natalya did not know why. She had become the pretty deer with (imagined, false) confidence she had always wanted to be.




Through her worry about what was wrong, she had stashed the lovely white glasses in a nice little hatbox her mother had found one day while cleaning out a closet. It had never really been Natalya's so when her mother saw it, she assumed that it was trash. After all, they had mountains of hatboxes (Nat's grandmother collected them). She put it in the trash, not knowing the glasses were inside.

Trash day came--Monday. Natalya woke up slightly groggy and went to look in her closet, where she had hidden her hatbox and the glasses. To her horror, she could not find the hatbox, and when her mother told her she had put it in the trash, Natalya was terrified. She had made herself into someone else, but that someone else wasn't her--and the glasses were! She loved those glasses with every fiber of her being!

And also she was a little tired of squinting at the blackboard.

Whatever her reasons, noble or lazy, Natalya sprinted through the house, confusing her aforementioned sisters and brother who promptly decided that their newly respectable sister had gone insane. She rushed outside in time to save her beloved hatbox and as a result, her glasses. There was one more thing she saved from the dumpster that day, although she would not realize it until later, when she had stopped trying to cover her freckles, had openly embraced her love of literature, her shyness, and her glasses. That day, she saved herself. Otherwise, she would have spent a lifetime trying to be someone she wasn't.

And while it's not a particularly sad story, Natalya saves the story in her heart so that someday she can pass it on.

[ophanimera]

Aah thank you for the RU
i have sent my PM.

Congrats to Antiquaries and to the other RU winners!
Antiquaries, feel free to have my art. <3

[indebted]

aaa thank you so much! im so excited this is my first deerssert ;a;

[marlshore]

gosh I cant believe I won a RU!!
congrats!

sent my pm!

[toccata]

congrats everybody! you may have the art antiquaries o3o