Lark Space

A new aromantic and asexual blogging carnival

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Aces on Parade

What is a blogging carnival

A blogging carnival is an event to encourage folks to post about a particular topic. Every month, there's a theme or discussion prompt for participants to respond to, and at the end of the month there's a roundup post linking to everyone's submissions. The idea is to encourage discussion and bring attention to blogs that might otherwise go unnoticed. Blogging carnivals are an artifact of a bygone era of the web, and I want to bring them back.

A new start

For over ten years, Sciatrix and Siggy organized an asexual blogging carnival called A Carnival of Aces. Later, Sennkestra organized an aromantic blogging carnival called A Carnival of Aros. Over time, the communities around these carnivals shrank, and by 2023-2024 they had mostly fizzled out. I participated in both regularly for several years under a different name.

I'm primarily starting this carnival as a discussion group for some IRL friends, but would love to open it up to new contributors if there's interest. With sites like Neocities, there's been a renewed interest in blogging and personal sites, and I'm hoping to help grow a new community of aro and ace bloggers. If you're reading this, you're welcome to participate!

How it works

Traditionally, every month, a different blog hosts the carnival. They come up with that month's theme and post a call for submissions, folks send them links to their submissions, and at the end of the month they post a roundup linking to and summarizing everyone's posts. For now, I plan to just host the carnival here, but if it attracts a lot of submissions, that may change!

Submissions can take any form! Some examples:

If you don't have anywhere to post it yourself, you may also request a guest post on the host's blog.

Hosts pick a "theme" rather than a specific prompt to give contributors a lot of freedom in choosing what to write about, but they may also give examples of potential prompts as inspiration. You don't need to respond to more than one of them, and you're more than free to choose your own or take the theme in a different direction!

For ideas about what possible themes might look like, see the Carnival of Aces and Carnival of Aros for many years of examples.

Next steps

If this carnival is something that interests you, please reach out! I'll let folks know when we start the first month's theme.