http://faerye.net/tag/valentinesPosts tagged with "valentines" - Faerye Net2013-02-15T04:05:48+00:00Felicity Shouldershttp://faerye.net/http://faerye.net/post/anti-anti-valentinesAnti-Anti-Valentine's2013-02-15T04:05:48+00:002013-02-15T04:07:17+00:00<p>It’s come to my attention that I haven’t made my position on Valentine’s Day clear: so unclear, in fact, that even my co-protagonist thinks I object to it. I don’t! I’m not anti-Valentine’s. I’m sort of mildly anti-anti-Valentine’s.</p>
<p>As long as you can get past the fact that two thousand years and iterations ago, it was religious, I think it’s nifty to have a holiday celebrating love! I just think the focus on romantic love is…weird and reductive. The way most romantic relationships go, you probably should be showing love on the regular anyway. But our family, especially our friends? We may not say that enough…or at all. It’s easy to be ashamed or tongue-tied about how much our friends mean to us. I’m all for another push to tell them.</p>
<p>This year, I’m taking part in <a href="http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com/" target="links">Mary Robinette Kowal</a>’s <a href="http://lettermo.com/" target="links">Month of Letters Challenge</a>, and a few weeks ago I happened across a really ancient sheet of stickers: the plain red heart stickers that my mom must have had a bulk supply of when we were growing up. We sealed all the valentines with them for my whole childhood, as far as I can remember. It seemed like a sign to stop being lazy and send some love out this year!</p>
<p><img src="http://faerye.net/media/heartstickers.JPG" width="500" /></p>http://faerye.net/post/geek-valentines-serious-discussions-for-geek-couplesGeek Valentine's: Serious discussions for geek couples2011-02-14T16:21:53+00:002011-02-15T21:44:55+00:00<p>Those of you who know me well may expect that if I acknowledge Valentine’s Day at all, I usually mark it as Oregon Statehood Day or extol its origins in the celebration of familial and platonic love before its absorption by <a href="http://faerye.net/post/reluctant-romantics" target="links">the romance cult</a>. So I’m going to shock you: this is an actual romance-related blog post to mark Valentine’s Day.</p>
<p>Good communication is key to any lasting relationship, romantic or otherwise, and there are certain important conversations that the experts suggest people have before entering upon romantic commitments. But those experts are usually not geeks, so they overlook all sorts of situations that are specific to the geek lifestyle (or to the lifestyle geeks wish they had.) So, I have taken it upon myself to lay out some discussion topics. These are not small questions like who drives the starship: they touch on religion, ethics, life, death, and all that sort of thing. It’s important to settle such points if you want to be celebrating the tenth anniversary of your victory against the forces of evil together, instead of going on adventures all by yourself and wondering where your zippy banter has got to.</p>
<p>What is my authority to designate discussion topics for you and your co-protagonist? My authority is that I have a blog and you are reading it.</p>
<p><strong>10 Serious discussions for geek couples</strong></p>
<p>10. <strong>Am I free to date if you die?</strong> It’s just good to get this out of the way: how long should you wait to make sure your old honey isn’t going to be revived, or resurrected by magic, or regrown by sinister corporations?</p>
<p>9. <strong>Will you kill me if I am facehugged, bitten by a zombie, et c.?</strong> If it comes to that, your partner should do you both. If you’re not willing to even get someone <em>else</em> to stake my vampirized corpse, cut my head off and fill my mouth with garlic, what kind of commitment can you offer me?</p>
<p>8. <strong>Do we convert if we witness a miracle?</strong> If the Holy Grail cures your dad’s gut wound, do you consider yourself illuminated, or just move on to the next thing?</p>
<p>7. <strong>Do we welcome our alien overlords?</strong> For instance, I’m pro-cephalopod overlord, but I’m not too keen on reptilians.</p>
<p>6. <strong>Are we going to get cyber implants? If so, how many?</strong> If flashing lights and servos are a dealbreaker for your co-protagonist, it’s best to know now.</p>
<p>5. <strong>Are AIs and manufactured sentients deserving of human rights?</strong> Social justice, baby.</p>
<p>4. <strong>Is being body-switched with your worst enemy grounds for a break-up?</strong> For the record, Callisto is very pretty. If you have to switch bodies with an evil murderer, you could do worse.</p>
<p>3. <strong>Does the holodeck count as cheating?</strong> However you come down on the general rule, it’s best to specify that holodeck-snogging people you actually know is creepy as hell, as well as potentially more relationship-endangering.</p>
<p>2. <strong>Are we raising the kids Orthodox Jedi or Reform?</strong> Oh, sure, some of us geeks are atheists and so forth, but you know if you raise Force-sensitive kids without any religious training, they’re much more susceptible to Sith interference.</p>
<p>1. <strong>Are we in this for loot, or XP?</strong> Sure, you think this is an abstract question, but when you’re bickering over whether your co-protagonist should take the dream job or the six figures, or whether to return the culturally significant artifact to the village or fence it, you’ll realize I was right.</p>