When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
"When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer" by Walt Whitman. Also known as the best poem ever.

So yeah. I'm Fedorable. Pleased to meetcha.

I'm seventeen, I live in southern California (no, I don't see Speidi or Lauren Conrad walking around all the time, to my eternal delight. Unfortunately, I am in quite close proximity to many of the "real housewives"), I'm known far and wide for my giftwrapping and cooking skills, and if my stories seem weird, it's because they come from random ideas that pop into my head at the most random of times or jacked-up dreams.

There are three things in this world I hate. Puppets, centipedes, and Claymation. Anything else I'm fine with, but I just can't get past this pupaphobia, chilopodophobia, and Claytred.

Regarding Reviews: I like reviews. Reviews make me happy. Reviews make me realize that people have taken the time to read my story and actually felt enough to click the button that says "review" and type some thoughts. So I'm going to be a shameless beggar here and say, "Hey, review!" Nothing irks me more than seeing stories with 600 hits and 10 reviews. So yeah. Reviews are nice. Chances are, if you review my story, even if the review is like two words long, I'll be like, "Hey, that person reviewed my story! Clearly they're extremely cool" and click on your profile. And then, chances are, I'll say, "Wow, they have stories! Since they were so nice as to take the time to review, maybe I'll read and review their work too!" See? Everybody wins! Bottom line? Please try to review. Even if it's a short review, I'll try to review your story as well, and that makes everyone happy.

I have something else to say, too. I am not easily pleased. Yeah, I like reading stories, but growing up with an English professor as a mother has led me to have extremely high standards. I am a harsh reviewer, I'll admit it. I often find problems with things that I read, and since improving is usually thought of as a good thing, I always point out my criticisms to the writer, no matter how big or how small. You have massive plot-holes? I'll point them out. You misspelled a word? I'll point it out.

However, just because I'm critical doesn't mean I'm mean. Even if your story is a disaster, I'll still try to find something nice to say to you. I learned this a few years ago. I was an innocent reviewer, but I was a little more blunt with my advice back then, and then people would get easily offended and flame my stories. Now I have more tact. The end.

So understand that if I'm being critical, I'm not trying to hurt your feelings. So please, don't start flame wars. Because if you start flaming me, chances are I'll abandon my honor and flame right back. And I know exactly which buttons to press on easily offended tweeners.

AN AWESOME ANNOUNCEMENT!

On Friday, June 1st, I will officially graduate from high school! I'm pretty much done with all of my exams, so I basically bring my laptop to school and mess around on the computer all day. You know what that means!

No, not Tumblr. I've been writing! I hope to get my stories back on track and update at a semi-regular basis.

My Stories:

-Odd Kingdom Out: So basically this kingdom is gender-flipped. The prince is kind of a wimp, and the queen makes a lot of the executive decisions: Prince Damian is more or less a figurehead. The knights are all female, and the guys play the distress role. The kingdom of Attra thinks nothing of this until they go to war with a rival kingdom and are mocked. Is it so weird that females are knights? I look forward to exploring gender roles a bit more as it progresses.

-A Local Secret: In the city of Rosewood, everyone's buzzing all around Braveheart Park, a death-by-brain-explosion-or-defied-gravity amusement park. But right on the cusp of Braveheart Park is a small, forgotten local park. Two troubled teenagers meet there and find each other and their inner peace. The "local park" is a place" that's recurred in several of my dreams, so I connect with this one a lot more than my other stories. While in the planning process, I actually stumbled across a very close replica of the "local park", so that's definitely helped me.

-High End: I realize that what I've discussed in the summary has not happened yet. I promise, I won't go rambling on plotless like certain authors we know. I just need to establish what I'm doing before I lay the meat down. Writing a story is like making a sandwich. And luckily, my sandwiches are amazing.

Basically, Julia Armstrong has moved to a new city and is completely reinventing herself. It's going pretty well. She's got friends, she has several guys, she's doing well at swimming, and she's escaped her old best friend who confessed his love for her. But after she catches one of her new friends in a...shall we say, compromising position with her mom, it goes into overdrive. She becomes a control freak, obsessed with her image of popularity, beauty, and athleticism. But will she go too far?

-False Grins: Turns out I can make something other than romantic stories that I won't continue (uhhh). Basically, this is a bit of a rant from a man named Peter James. He's nice, genuine, and hardworking. The one catch? He's a clown. The public refuses to see his good intentions, instead choosing to scorn him for his external appearance. I wrote this because I don't care what y'all say about me, I LOVE CLOWNS.

Upcoming Stories:

-Untitled and Unsummarized: That isn't a title. That is a description of my story so far. All I know is that I want to try something involving vampires but so far I haven't worked out just how to do it without falling into cliche.

-Stuck in the Webs (working title) Sometime between first and second period, a group of fairies appeared, took us all into the snowy woods, and demanded that we serve them. It's nice that fairy tales really can come true. Based on this ridiculously cracky dream that I had in which I proved Inception wrong because I still remember everything from beginning to end.

-Untitled and Unsummarized 2: Electric Boogaloo: Yet another one. This one will be about magicians. I absolutely adore magicians, but I can't figure out just how to do it because I keep falling into the bog of The Prestige (which I love, but I need to go beyond that). Details will go up once I figure it out.

-The Optional Essay: This is just a little drabble-y multi-perspective story I've been messing around with for about four months exploring various types of students and their experience with the whole college admissions process.

-When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer: So I don't know if you could tell from my profile, but I absolutely adore that poem by Walt Whitman. It ranks among my favorite poems of all time, and one of the reasons behind this is because I, for whatever reason, felt a deep and immediate reaction to it. When I was reading, I imagined a little story behind it, and that's precisely what this story is: a novelization of the poem. It will most-likely be a one-shot.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

I don't care if it's a cliche, I love it.