Valentines Meet and Greet

[ysabetwordsmith]

I've been participating in snowflake_challenge, where lots of folks want to see more activity on Dreamwidth. While researching community activities, I came across the idea of thematic meet and greet events. That seemed like something which might work here, given a membership of several hundred people and a new theme each month. So I made one for this month's theme.  It gives people a place to meet folks with similar interests, and to squee about the current theme.

Here is the basic outline. Fill in as much or as little of it as you wish, depending on your interests as they relate to the Valentines Fest.


Name: Whatever you wish to be known by.
Sex/Gender Identity: Share any descriptions you wish people to know about you, including pronouns.
Sex/Romance/Other Orientation: Who you connect with and how.
Find Me At: Your other blogs, services, or venues.
What I Love About Valentines Day: Favorite activities, traditions, decorations, stories, etc.
What I Hate About Valentines Day: Things you wish would go away, in real life or entertainment. Die, trope, die!
What I Love to Do By Myself: How do you treat yourself when you're alone? Self-love, self-romance, favorite sex toys, favorite snuggly things, places you like to visit alone, your One True Chocolate, whatever.
Heartbreak: Ways you enjoy breaking your characters, canonical breakups and betrayals, favorite fanworks about breakups, that time you got your heart broken, creative revenge ideas, horrible ex tropes, and such.
Romantic Favorites: Romance movies or novels, fandoms, tropes, etc.
Erotic Favorites: Sexyfuntimes in fiction, movies, art, or whatever. Slash all the things!
My Kink(s): In person, writing, or reading; favorite toys, pervertables, plausible deniability, kink-friendly fandoms, best kink scenes in movies, and the like.
Platonic Favorites: Nonsexual intimacies, situations. tropes, sex-free movies or books, ace/aro-friendly fandoms, and so on.
Favorite Blogs or Communities: Anything on Dreamwidth, or other venues, relating to the above topics.
About My Blog: A general description of your blog metaphor, what your blog contains, common formats / media, activity level, typical rating level, featured fandom(s) or original work, etc.
What I Create: Anything you make that relates to the Valentines theme or above topics; fandoms, formats, recurring motifs, and so forth.
What I'm Looking For: Things you would like to get from this activity; readers, comments, recommendations of fandoms or fanworks, new friends, wider representation of something, etc.


Feel free to copy this Meet and Greet into your blog as well as filling it out here -- you may catch some of the holiday traffic.

<br /><strong>Name:</strong> <br /><strong>Sex/Gender Identity:</strong> <br /><strong>Sex/Romance/Other Orientation:</strong> <br /><strong>Find Me At:</strong> <br /><strong>What I Love About Valentines Day:</strong> <br /><strong>What I Hate About Valentines Day:</strong> <br /><strong>What I Love to Do By Myself:</strong> <br /><strong>Heartbreak:</strong> <br /><strong>Romantic Favorites:</strong> <br /><strong>Erotic Favorites:</strong> <br /><strong>My Kink(s):</strong> <br /><strong>Platonic Favorites:</strong> <br /><strong>Favorite Blogs or Communities:</strong> <br /><strong>About My Blog:</strong> <br /><strong>What I Create:</strong> <br /><strong>What I'm Looking For:</strong> <br />

Comments

[sweetsorcery]

Name: SweetSorcery

Sex/Gender Identity: Female

Sex/Romance/Other Orientation: Aegosexual

Find Me At: sweetsorcery sweetsorcery

What I Love About Valentines Day: An excellent excuse to write/receive soppy fics for exchanges!

What I Hate About Valentines Day: Commercialism

What I Love to Do By Myself: Settle in with a pot of tea or a bowl of soup, and a favourite gothic horror audiobook or old movie; wrapped in a blanket if the season permits it. Settle in to write while listening to a favourite playlist or nature ambience. Astral travel. Have a relaxing bath or foot bath.

Heartbreak: No, thanks

Romantic Favorites: Too many fandoms to list but there's a rundown here sorted by active/anticipating to write/have written and will write again, and I tend to find romance anywhere. Some favourite tropes: AUs - Historical, Classic Movie, Mythology and Fantasy. I love Gothic Romance, Soulbonds, Vampire AUs, anything involving dancing and dance lessons, anything involving masquerades and roleplay, anything involving bathing and swimming and generally splashing about in water. :) I love fluff and humour. Domestic bliss is wonderful. Slow burn, seduction, flirting, and courtship - yes, please. Hurt/comfort is lovely, but only if it's heavy on the comfort and easy on the hurt. Pretending to be a couple, sharing a bed or huddling for warmth? Yay!

Erotic Favorites: Oh, major overlap with the romantic favourites. All m/m slash, all the time.

My Kink(s): Dom/sub dynamics, competency kink and praise kink are my jam! Kissing, Neck Kissing, Biting, Nibbling on any adored body part, Incest (consensual), Possessiveness, Desperation/Urgency, Partially Clothed Sex, Overstimulation and Multiple Orgasms, Somnophilia and Sleepy Sex, Fingering, Rimming, Felching, Come Play, Anal Sex, Frottage, Pet Play (including non-sexual, I love this for the trust & protection angle), (Mutual) Masturbation, Body Worship, Bloodplay/Vampirism, Consentacles, light BDSM (spanking, sensation play, restraints)

Platonic Favorites: domestic fluff, cooking together, feeding each other, hurt/comfort, huddling for warmth or snuggling in general, trust/loyalty, hero worship, having fun together and just being thoroughly in tune

Favorite Blogs or Communities: Many. I leap on every interesting looking exchange or fest too, if time and energy allows.

About My Blog: Fannish rambling, links to new fic uploads, some personal stuff, memes, drumming up interest in exchanges

What I Create: Fiction (I love writing gift fics), Spells, Food, Confusion

What I'm Looking For: Forgiving friends willing to put up with me when I:
1) churn out fics or ramble on about hyper-obsesssions usually involving tiny fandoms they've never heard of
2) go eerily quiet, because I have fibromyalgia and CFS and frequently can't get through an afternoon without napping or a few hours without being in pain; all that can make me seem disinterested or rude when I'm really just fatigued and curled into a corner. I'm also agoraphobic and have depressive and anxious phases, and I tend to withdraw until I'm more sociable again, because no one needs to deal with me like that. I prefer to be uplifting and post/talk about happy things!

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Aegosexual <<

Oh, that's interesting! I have acespec friends, but I think you're the first of this particular type I've met. I'd seen it before, but looked it up, and then I found this interesting tidbit:

Perceiving someone as "hot" or recognizing someone as sexually attractive, yet not seeing the appeal of having sex with the individual in real life. The aegosexual individual may instead prefer to fantasize about them or admire them.

That's a thing I've long said belongs on the ace spectrum, but some people say if you can perceive hotness then you're not "really" ace. I think asexuality is about not feeling a compulsion to do the sex.

>>An excellent excuse to write/receive soppy fics for exchanges!<<

Oh, good one!

>> feeding each other <<

Food is bonding:
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/fiske/pubs/Miller_Rozin_Fiske_Food-Sharing_1998.pdf

>>Forgiving friends willing to put up with me when I:<<

I have lots of disabled and variant friends in my audience, so we generally try to accommodate each other's quirks. Feel free to drop by and see if you like it. I'm doing a Poetry Fishbowl on "flipping expectations" on Tuesday, Feb. 1 so there'll be lots of activity. Leave prompts, get poems! Mostly original, but fan prompts are acceptable because I can use them as freebies, and if there's a new prompter or donor, I post an extra freebie.

>>I tend to withdraw until I'm more sociable again, because no one needs to deal with me like that.<<

I'm happy to see someone else who backs off when feeling out of sorts. I figure, if I can't hold the safety cover on The Mouth, I shouldn't be out in public, even internet-public. I go read fanfic or stab squeaky-toy characters or do housework until I can be civil again.

Re: Thoughts

[sweetsorcery]

It's taken me a long time to find a term that actually describes me accurately without long-winded explanations, so when I chanced on "aegosexual", I had a real Bingo! moment. :)

I completely agree. To me, asexuality is about not feeling a compulsion to engage in sex yourself. If one wanted to make a point of aegosexuality belonging into the ace spectrum, I guess one could quote this description of the aegosexual flag: "The aegosexual flag is nearly identical to the asexual flag, but it possesses a triangle with an inverted order of colors. The triangle represents a 'reverse' of asexuality, as aegosexuals are likely to be initially perceived as sexual individuals." :)

Food is indeed bonding! Interestingly, my first ever and favourite fandom has food sharing, cooking and food porn of every kind all over it. I've added that PDF to my reading list; it looks very interesting, thanks!

Thanks for the invitation, but I think I've probably missed your Poetry Fishbowl by now, plus I'm down to 3 and 4 days, respectively, to get 2 stories finished for exchanges, and I'm dragging my feet a bit. It doesn't help that I've been procrastinating by doing friending memes and commenting on meet up posts. :) *facepalm*

I definitely stay quietly in my corner when I'm having one of those phases. There's more than enough negativity in the world, including on the internet, without adding to it by depressing someone else or risking blurting something out without a proper filter. I try to get through faster by writing happy things, if I can at all manage, because that also means that, once I'm more agreeable again, I'll be returning with gifts! :D

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> It's taken me a long time to find a term that actually describes me accurately without long-winded explanations, so when I chanced on "aegosexual", I had a real Bingo! moment. :)

Yay! I'm glad you found something.

I know the search routine. I've used queer, genderqueer, pansexual, and a few other things before I on the idea of metasexual. Because trying to fit my interests into an ordinary spectrum is like trying to draw a tesseract on paper. It only sort of works.

>>I completely agree. To me, asexuality is about not feeling a compulsion to engage in sex yourself. If one wanted to make a point of aegosexuality belonging into the ace spectrum, I guess one could quote this description of the aegosexual flag: "The aegosexual flag is nearly identical to the asexual flag, but it possesses a triangle with an inverted order of colors. The triangle represents a 'reverse' of asexuality, as aegosexuals are likely to be initially perceived as sexual individuals." :)

That makes sense. Way too many people think that acespec discrimination doesn't happen because acefolk are "invisible." Yeah, tell that to Valentines Day. >_<

>> Food is indeed bonding! Interestingly, my first ever and favourite fandom has food sharing, cooking and food porn of every kind all over it. I've added that PDF to my reading list; it looks very interesting, thanks! <<

Oh, what fandom? I love food pr0n. We watched School of Chocolate recently. Chocolate sculpture, with kitchen physics tricks! Only one or two of which I'd have any chance of doing, but it was so exciting to see.

>>Thanks for the invitation, but I think I've probably missed your Poetry Fishbowl by now, <<

1) It's running now. Drop by and ask for anything you want. You can just pick a square on my Valentine's Bingo if you wish.

2) But it's kinda covered already if you want to throw in with a current piece. I needed an alt-sexuality character and remembered aegosexuality, so that's what I went with.

>> plus I'm down to 3 and 4 days, respectively, to get 2 stories finished for exchanges, and I'm dragging my feet a bit. It doesn't help that I've been procrastinating by doing friending memes and commenting on meet up posts. :) *facepalm*<<

Yeah, I know how that goes.

>> I definitely stay quietly in my corner when I'm having one of those phases. There's more than enough negativity in the world, including on the internet, without adding to it by depressing someone else or risking blurting something out without a proper filter.<<

Exactly!

>> I try to get through faster by writing happy things, if I can at all manage, because that also means that, once I'm more agreeable again, I'll be returning with gifts! :D

Sometimes I write or read happy things. It is uplifting. When I'm really steamed, I write dystopic stuff or stomp on squeaky-toy characters.

Re: Thoughts

[sweetsorcery]

I am sometimes very slow to reply to comments. Sorry!
But at least I'm all caught up on doing my assignments and am now just writing treats for exchanges. (Using a bunch of lovely Valentine's Bingo Fest prompts.)

Oh, the foodporn-y fandom is Famous Five - Enid Blyton. It's an English series of children's/YA books written from the 1940s to 1960s, when rationing was still very much a thing in England, so naturally, everyone's always eating. I've been reading them since I was a child myself, and I love it so much. It's a real comfort fandom. And it's alive and well, if tiny, with mostly a lot of post-canon slash.

If I read or wrote dystopias, I'd end up in a really bad place. I wrote a very angsty story for an exchange late last year, and I got so into the drama and pining of it all, I was as much of a mess for a couple of weeks as my suffering main character. :|