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Rather than blow off my state of angst and stress and all of that stuff, I will do the Bad Personals Ad meme. Hooray for displacement activity. Or something.
... what an appropriate bit of music to come up right now.
The rules: Write yourself a dating ad.
1) It has to make you sound as unappealing as possible
2) It has to be honest - you can't lie at all
3) It can't sound as though you're deliberately making yourself sound unappealing.
Me: Nearly thirty, small-breasted, too thin. I have all my hair.* An introvert who prefers quiet nights in to going out to dinner, the movies, clubbing, or any of that noisy stuff that involves other people. College dropout who is nonetheless a cranky intellectual. I am an extremely religious and devoted pagan, a hard agnostic, and a mystic; my faith is a central part of my life. My psychological issues are adequately controlled with herbs and attention to my diet; my mobility issues are resolved with occasional use of a cane. I have socialist politics, quirky use of language, and a tendency to pontificate. I hate telephones; email me -- odds are good I'll be at the computer tending to any of a number of online forums, chats, or games, or back to it within a half-hour.
I'm interested in your personality and whether you have pretty eyes rather than your sexual prowess. Ability to handle my sardonically biting wit a necessity; ability to handle my bouts of flashbang temper with grace and panache a definite plus. I am horribly allergic to cigarette smoke and a variety of foods that make me difficult to cook for. You must be able to accept the affections of my cat and not be alarmed by my snake, my habit of attempting to grow hallucinogenic plants in the windows, or my tendency to be completely distracted by half-audible music in restaurants. I demand a high level of communication, though I am frequently incapable of communicating clearly (or even verbally) when under stress.
I am not going to offer you an exclusive relationship; I have two significant relationships that consume much of my time and attention, and you will not replace them. If you also become a significant relationship, your compatibility with the rest of my family and your willingness to be involved in the well-being of my as-yet-hypothetical children are matters of great concern.
* Added to the LJ version when I remembered there are people who are offended by women who don't shave their legs.
... what an appropriate bit of music to come up right now.
- I'm so into you
but I'm way too smart for you
even my henchmen think I'm crazy
I'm not surprised that you agree ...
The rules: Write yourself a dating ad.
1) It has to make you sound as unappealing as possible
2) It has to be honest - you can't lie at all
3) It can't sound as though you're deliberately making yourself sound unappealing.
Me: Nearly thirty, small-breasted, too thin. I have all my hair.* An introvert who prefers quiet nights in to going out to dinner, the movies, clubbing, or any of that noisy stuff that involves other people. College dropout who is nonetheless a cranky intellectual. I am an extremely religious and devoted pagan, a hard agnostic, and a mystic; my faith is a central part of my life. My psychological issues are adequately controlled with herbs and attention to my diet; my mobility issues are resolved with occasional use of a cane. I have socialist politics, quirky use of language, and a tendency to pontificate. I hate telephones; email me -- odds are good I'll be at the computer tending to any of a number of online forums, chats, or games, or back to it within a half-hour.
I'm interested in your personality and whether you have pretty eyes rather than your sexual prowess. Ability to handle my sardonically biting wit a necessity; ability to handle my bouts of flashbang temper with grace and panache a definite plus. I am horribly allergic to cigarette smoke and a variety of foods that make me difficult to cook for. You must be able to accept the affections of my cat and not be alarmed by my snake, my habit of attempting to grow hallucinogenic plants in the windows, or my tendency to be completely distracted by half-audible music in restaurants. I demand a high level of communication, though I am frequently incapable of communicating clearly (or even verbally) when under stress.
I am not going to offer you an exclusive relationship; I have two significant relationships that consume much of my time and attention, and you will not replace them. If you also become a significant relationship, your compatibility with the rest of my family and your willingness to be involved in the well-being of my as-yet-hypothetical children are matters of great concern.
* Added to the LJ version when I remembered there are people who are offended by women who don't shave their legs.
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It's a thing about social clustering, for one, and modes of likeness. For the subset of people I know via poly circles, for example, the 'I am not offering you an exclusive relationship' isn't the obvious negative it can be outside those circles. I spend a lot of time with cranky pedants, thus have a higher tolerance for cranky pedantry, thus have people on my flist who are liable to be also cranky pedants, and so on.
It's a thing about known context. "I think I can control my mental illness with herbs" is one thing in the abstract; if one knows more about the relevant issues, their likely causes, and the things that affect them and how, then this is not as likely scary. It also means that the "If you become a serious relationship, your compatibility with my other relationships matters" is full of known factors, rather than the otherwise likely "join my commune/cult!" interpretation.
The 'unable to appear to be attempting to make oneself unattractive' thing is likely construable to include things like writing like an illiterate (also potentially excluded by the 'no lying' clause) or making deliberately crass commentary. Thus, the unattractive bits have to be layered into the subtext; if the reader does not pick up on said subtext, that's a failing. (And I suspect that people who are familiar with each other are more likely to miss these things without close reading.)
And then there's, y'know, the things about self and the things about others.