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For November Carnvial of Aros: Commitment Last month I posted the following: "For story research / practice / curiosity ... who wants to have a DEFINE THE RELATIONSHIP conversation with me? I am curious if defining relationships would bring me more connection / happiness / calm. If so it'll be good practice for continuing doing that. My characters have to define their relationships, yet I rarely do. So fair's fair." And someone agreed. (They also agreed I could write this blog post) The Research I don't know if this is an aplatonic thing, a me thing, or an internet thing - but I have a very poor memory for interactions with individuals, instead I remember how I feel about interactions in the space or group with a decent memory of specific interactions but not who specifically was involved.  An upside of online relationships is there's a digital trail. I was able to skim through our past interactions to get a baseline for the type of interactions I enjoyed with...

Disclaimer: theories of marginalization and privilege.  The November Carnival of Aces prompt is Invisible Activism . My interpretation of this prompt is a smidge roundabout, so hold on to something. A key part of activism is understanding the needs and concerns of everyone in the community you advocate for, including those whose experiences and intersections are invisible (or low visibility).  Spectrum of Visibility Identities and experiences exist on a spectrum of visibility. Their noticeability may shift over time and can be affected by your choice to disclose, how you express yourself, where you are, who you spend time with, and more.  I choose to speak frequently about asexuality, which increases the visibility of this identity.  The low visibility of my gender is a choice I make and could change in the future. My health conditions are classified as "invisible illnesses," however their visibilities fluctuate. They become more noticeable as a symptoms flare up ...

Timely Questions Will you participate in or support Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week (ASAW) in February? How? What can you do with this time to prepare? Who can you collaborate with? Who can you follow or promote? Do you have a goal for 2021 related to being an ally? A group project? A resource? An area to learn more about? What are future opportunities you have to be an ally?  What is an ally mistake you have made in the past? Why was it a problem? What did you do to make amends? What can you do going forward? Ally Questions What advice would you give to others on being an ally? What does being an ally mean? Do you have an example of someone being a good ally to you? What ally practices do you hold to? Have there been times when it was difficult to be an ally, or you were not sure how to be an ally? Where could you find support or advice? Being Ace and an Ally Does being ace affect how you are an ally? What would you ask from allies outside the ace community? How can the ace c...

When I first read Brandon Sanderson's announcement about an asexual character , I noted three things: especially in the larger context of queerbaiting, I thought it was very respectful to his fans to acknowledge possible disappointment and explain the decision he has sensitivity readers and mentioned the decision was based on how the character feels (which means this wasn't a quick grab for diversity points) the character seems* to deprioritize their asexuality, which is an ace experience that I am happy is getting representation I was happily spreading the word, when someone countered that this was disrespecting the character's wishes and used a quote from the very article I'd just read and shared. “______ would prefer you focus on other aspects of [their] identity, rather than [their] sexuality.” I've gone down a rabbit hole thinking about this, and haven't entirely made up my mind. So here's a set of questions to get your head spinning too.  ...

Queer Lit Readathon Round 6 is November 29th to December 5th 2020. [IMAGE: Queer Lit Readathon Challenges for Round Six. Source ] Normally, if there's a bingo board, I want to go for blackout. I even made a plan for round six that required at least five hours of reading a day and titles of gloomier genres. So I tossed out that plan.  Just because I have an impulse to blackout the bingo board, doesn't mean I have to follow it.  Instead, I came up with a 3 goal challenge centered around personal reading goals and dusting off my digital shelves. It even had a semi-reasonable rate of sampling two titles or collections a day.  Aaaaaand then I decided to simplify to one priority goal. Because I could use more calm and simplicity in my life.  Goal: Allo Aro Reads A poem, flash fiction, or web comic chapter a day - or more 💛💚 Reason 1: Balance My Free Online Aspec Fiction, Poetry, etc is not balanced. I suspect there are fewer aro and specifically alloaro narratives in e...

I didn't question it at first when I noticed some of my more recent posts had hit 30-40 views. I did notice the lack of comments, but I thought maybe that's just how the blog community rolls.  And unlike with Youtube stats, I can't see how much of each piece of viewed content was consumed. So maybe a lot of the views were click through. Or maybe I wasn't presenting content in a way that encouraged comments. So, I took the boost in views as inspiration to try to put out a post a day and see what sticks. Only the new posts were getting 0-1 views (which makes more sense seeing as how new my blog is and that I have yet to put time into exploring and commenting on others' blogs).  At which point I checked the stats.  [IMAGE: drastic spike to 392 views on November 12, 2020, then it flatlines back to near zero.]   [IMAGE: Romania 382] I googled "blogger views from romania" and discovered that this is a scam where they are hoping I would click the link that direct...

Happy  Aro Tunes Thursday ! A weekly call on Aggresively Arospec's Tumbr for songs that "make you feel proudy arospec" or "you feel like claiming for the community for no particular reason." The original intention of Aro Tunes Thursday is to submit songs to Aggresively Arospec and see all the songs others submitted, but I like having the space to dig deeper.  [Image is the album cover "Called out in the Dark." There is a cube of galaxies with a red border on a black background.] Spotify link to Wonderland by Melissa Adams   "I'm not Snow White, but I'm lost inside this forest. I'm not Red Riding Hood, but I think the wolves have got me. Don't want your stilettos. I'm not not Cinderella." I'm absolutely reading into this (it's what I do) but to me this is about those who are not fairy tale characters can still have some of the experiences of fairy tale characters. Therefor, those who are not romantic (whether aroman...