-- BE THE PSEUDO-INTELLECTUAL FANGIRL

You want to be her? Are you sure? Things are pretty crazy up here in her dark, book-strewn attic.

-- BE THE PSEUDO-INTELLECTUAL FANGIRL

All right, fine. Don’t say she didn’t warn you.

Your name is LIFEINABOX66 and you are EIGHTEEN YEARS OLD. You have your laptop open and are ponderously making your way through composing a number of ONGOING FAN-MADE SAGAS. You decided, in lieu of doing something productive like CONTINUING TO WRITE a few of the RABID PLOTBUNNIES that PLAGUE YOUR BRAIN INCESSANTLY you shall instead create a LENGTHY PASTICHE of the webcomic HOMESTUCK that NOBODY will find funny but YOU. You don’t care because you are A BIT OF A PRETENTIOUS ESOTERIC.

You have a number of INTERESTS, most of which revolve around READING CLASSICAL LITERATURE and EXPLORING FAN-BASED MEDIA. You don’t even see the two as MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE.

You are particularly enamoured of the ROMANTIC POETS, chiefly PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. You have a weakness for POLITICAL PLAYS such as those written by TOM STOPPARD, SARTRE, PETER WEISS, BRECHT and STANISLAWA PRZYBYSZEWSKA. You are interested in all manner of ANTI HEROES, both SATANIC, FAUSTIAN and occasionally even PROMETHEAN.

You have a deep, disturbing fascination with the FRENCH REVOLUTION and, indeed, all manner of REVOLUTIONS. But particularly the FRENCH, owing to overexposure to VICTOR HUGO’S LES MISERABLES from an EXCEEDINGLY YOUNG AGE, even if it is set SEVERAL DECADES LATER. You frequently bemoan the fact that you were born SEVERAL CENTURIES TOO LATE. This despite the increased prevalence of POLITICAL OPPRESSION and LACK OF SANITATION that you would no doubt find intolerable.

You have often described yourself, publically, incessantly, though not always concurrently, as a LESBIAN, a SOCIALIST, a ROMANTIC, a VEGETARIAN and an OSCAR WILDE FANATIC. Indeed, despite your aforementioned orientation, you have a SORDID and PASSIONATE MENTAL LOVE AFFAIR with this witty and brilliant figure. You have a number of other IDOLS, many of whom are rather inconveniently DEAD, yet all almost uniformly LEFT WING.

You have a penchant for MUSICAL THEATRE and also SONGWRITERS that no-one has HEARD of or will ever CARE about.

You have a sibling named ALUMINIUM who prefers to remain GENDER NEUTRAL online. You and your AFOREMENTIONED SIBLING have co-written a couple of FAN-MADE STORIES, including the lengthiest your ongoing sagas, ‘STARS FROM THE GUTTER’. You also have an AWESOME FRIEND known as SHRIEKING MINTIES 51, with whom you have exchanged countless EMAILS of astonishing lenth and verbosity. You are positively certain that the two of you ought to be MARRIED.

You still harbour an obsession with the manga AXIS POWERS HETALIA which borders on the UNHEALTHY. However, you have somehow become an active participant in the YU-GI-OH FANDOM. Possibly you should go back to writing HISTORICAL FIC OF PERSONIFIED COUNTRIES exclusively, but addiction is a powerful thing. You blame ALUMINIUM and LITTLEKURIBOH equally. Your FICS tend to be OVERLY DETAILED and laced with all manner of DEGENERATE PHILOSOPHY and LITERARY REFERENCES.

You urge all visitors who were patient enough to reach the end of this diatribe to scroll down and EXPLORE THIS HUMAN DISEASE CALLED FANFIC.

xXx

90% of people in the UK have experienced refrigerator-related injuries in the past decade, but 60% of these incidents are not reported to the police, due to fear of repercussions from the Kitchen Utensil Mafia. 50% of these fridge attacks are believed to have been premeditated. Every ten minutes, a small child is crushed by a malevolent refrigerator. Fridges operate through fear. We must send a message to show that we will no longer stand for being afraid in our own kitchens. If you believe that the government must do something to prevent these malicious attacks, please repost this to your profile.

xXx

Hey, so if anyone’s interested, my sibling (who prefers to remain gender neutral - username Aluminium) and I have written a Yu Gi Oh/Hetalia crossover; I wrote Prussia and they wrote Bakura, all in email format. Yep, that’s right. Prussia meets Yami Bakura via email. The inevitable hijinks involving death threats, puppies, shipping wars, world destruction and some truly awful nicknames ensue. Knowledge of both series is not compulsory - hell, Prussia has no idea what’s going on, either. Can be found on Aluminium’s account.

xXx

21/4/11: Mine and Aluminium's new, co-written project is up on my account! It's a steampunk AU which manages to combine Victorian England and Ancient Egypt, along with an insane amount of politics and homoeroticism. So, you know. The usual. I give you... Stars From the Gutter! Have an extract:

Halfway through a particularly dense cluster of people, Marik swivels around, eliciting more indignant cries of which, again, he takes no notice. “Kura!” he yells. “Where the hell did we park the ship, anyway?”

No answer, for his elusive eel of a partner has apparently melted into the shadows. Meaning Marik is, for the moment, isolated in this sun-baked gem of a city – which, frankly, is no hardship. Alexandria has the power to continually startle him: once a battered colony in turmoil, enduring the agony of occupation; now the pinnacle of a hard-won Empire, rich, thriving, and constantly changing. Marik was not alive when it was merely a fragment of Albion rule, but as a child, he witnessed much of its rise to glory as the focal point of all Kemet. Like a microcosm of Egypt itself, it scraped the ignominious depths of servitude as an impoverished slave to English rule – then rose to fiery heights during a heated clash for independence. Marik saw the latter half of Egypt’s rise to world prominence reflected in the development of Alexandria: the background scene of crumbling pyramids gradually effaced by a steely skyline of trading airships; the visible affluence of the growing city centre, clustered no longer with solitary stalls of dubious produce, but packed with wealthy marketers, selling specialist goods, and the sumptuous native foods that the country could now afford to keep rather than export. He learned the city as studiously as he learned the English tongue, as a young adolescent.

[/Shameless self-and-sibling-promotion]

xXx

Oh, and by the way, to the person who recommended L'Incorruptible on TvTropes: You know that high-pitched sound everyone kept just hearing a while back? Yeah, that was me squeeing when I found out. A thousand thank yous! XD

xXx

Guys. GUYS. The amazingly talented NezumiYukimira is going to draw a doujinshi of Doors of Perception! *Quells excited squees, with some effort*. Check out her deviantart account for the concept artwork.

xXx

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT EVERYONE LOOK AT THIS OOH LOOK ITS AN ANNOUNCEMENT AND THE CONTENT ISN’T PARTICULARLY GOOD NEWS I’M AFRAID

OK, so some of you may have noticed that there’s no new chapter for Stars from the Gutter this Thursday.

Long story short, Al and I are finding it impossible to keep this schedule going. I’m going to be leaving for university in a week and a half, thus making collaboration insanely difficult – and already I am swamped with an enormous amount of holiday work. Basically, what I’m saying is that we’re suspending updates for a little while. Which is not to say that they won’t resume during the holidays! In fact, we’re going to try to post as many chapters as we can, possibly somewhat sporadically, during term time – because writing this thing under the circumstances is difficult, but do-able – but I’m afraid, for now, regular Thursday updates are to become a thing of the past, at least for maybe nine weeks or so. We are so, so sorry about this – most of all, so sorry to disappoint our regular readers. The positive response to Stars has been nothing short of breathtaking, and both of us have been honoured, delighted, and generally reduced to a gibbering pile of molten fangirl mush over the reviews we have been getting. Thank you – so, so much – to the awesome people who have been following this story. We promise we will see it through to its conclusion; everything has been planned out, and simply needs to be written. It just might take a little longer than we originally thought.

In the meantime, for the non-Stars-specific readers who may be interested, I’ll still be writing one-shots, and possibly even chaptered works on my own – possibly for YuGiOh, but more likely either for Homestuck or Hetalia, assuming I still possess the spare time. For anyone who prefers the Homestuck fic in colour, check out my new Archive of Our Own account, where I will be cross-posting them for this purpose! However, all in all, collaborations are simply more difficult to coordinate, particularly when you and your co-writer are soon to be at opposite ends of England, which is why Stars has to slow down for at least a little while.

Again - we are so very sorry about this. But rest assured, one way or another, Stars shall be finished!