I Hate You Drank Less Water Headache I Hate You Slept Too Little Headache I Hate You Slept Too Much Headache

Drawtober Day 5 - Scarce

psh, this party sucks *teleports to the cactus dimension* oh i don't like it here

slay my name.

I go outside regularly

Whenever I see aro/ace discourses and whether they belong in LGBTQ+ spaces, my initial thought is always the same:

Who are you to decide?

What none tells you about being on aromantic and/or asexual spectrum is how isolating it is. You feel lonely. And it's constant. Lonliness because of identity isn't always overwhelming, but it's present somewhere deep down. You feel lonely not because of lack of sexual/romantic attraction but because of society and amatonormativity.

When I was in elementary school, all my friends had crushes. I never understood that because even if I liked someone, it was always in platonic way. They insisted I couldn't possibly not like anyone and I felt forced to fake a crush. In middle school people started dating each other and I comforted myself with "I'm too young for that, time will come". By the high school I already knew something was "wrong" with me, I wasn't like the others. People began having sex not because they were expected to do that but because they actually wanted to. That was such shock to me, I thought media was exaggerating with passion and attraction but apparently all those things happen irl too. Hence I realized I was "the weird one". I forced myself to have same experiences but it felt more like obligation to me than something I trully wanted. I felt dirty after being touched, it repulsed me. I felt like something is broken within me for not enjoying sex. I could never fall in love. People called me coldhearted, they thought something was wrong with me. Few therapist tried to "fix" me, even set me up on dates. I internalized all of that and began seeing myself as "not normal".

Now that I'm older and know there's nothing wrong with me or being aroace, I still can't shake years and years of "I'm not normal" I experienced. It still haunts me. I hear someone talking about their sexual experiences and part of me still feels "not normal" when seeing how "normal" people live. I feel lonely. Parents insist I must find a partner one day. They don't believe i don't experience romantic attraction towards other people. Outside of aspec communities online, I don't experience any support. When I step outside, I still feel like something is wrong with me. Intentionally or not, society still makes me feel like an outsider. It's because of amatonormativity that roots too deep.

There's nothing wrong with people being romantic or sexual, far from that - but vast majority of cishet folks out there expect me to act same as them. Mere thought of someone looking at me as sexual being makes me cringe. I never felt romantic attraction towards anyone. I don't want to be in a relationship - I'm different from the "rest". It's lonely. Felling of isolation became association to me as part of identity. I don't even form closer platonic bonds because inevitable question of my romantic/sex life would inevitably come. For the longest time I felt like I needed to censor that part of myself. I assimilate with surroundings and hope noone finds out my "little secret".

If we as society educated kids more about LGBTQ+ stuff, then maybe this chronic feeling of isolation in aspec communities would diminish in few generations. However what I can say is that from very early age I experienced romantic/sexual attraction very different from what is considered "standard" - and that is why I relate to LGBT experiences innumerous times more than I will to "standard' heterosexual heteroromantic ones.

So stranger on the internet, who are you to swept all my complicated feelings and experiences regarding sexuality under rug because they can't fit in your narrow definition of how romantic and sexual attraction should be.

You give a knight a phone with the tumblr app installed and he makes an account and immediately follows the urls king.tumblr.com and queen.tumblr.com and then he accidentally drops the phone in a muddy creek

passed out and had a dream that tumblr staff just quit one day without warning and the entire website was just like a basic screen of html code and people were posting things like “YOU FUCKING GUYS WHATS GOING ON” “WHERES THE WEBSITE” “WHAT THE FUCK DO WE DO” and staff posted a youtube link where some teary eyed shirtless dude with no nipples explained that “you bitches don’t deserve a website. make one yourselves” so everyone unanimously decided to hold an election to decide who was going to be the king of tumblr and the election decided that some random middleaged man named Jinkle Fishwipe would be the new president of tumblr and there was some sort of live recording where it was revealed that Jinkle was literally just One Trout that someone dumped onto a podium and then it died. and at that point everyone in the audience took out daggers and started stabbing each other. and then i woke up

Battle of Skandia is def one of his best books, the Will he warning the water hits me like a fucken bullet train every single time

Also consider:

- Halt telling Will he can do whatever the the fuck he wants to while training the Skandians to shoot

- The fact that the women and children aren’t just locked up somewhere and actually play a role in the battle unlike every other book/film I’ve read recently

- Actual good reason to use volleys instead of free firing

- Halt telling Horace not to give a shit about companionship when the Skandians are running alongside their horses

- Skandians straight up just keeping up with horses on foot just bc they don’t like riding them

underrated scenes from the battle of skandia

read this book in one sitting in a hotel hot tub… here we go

(every scene. it’s every scene)

- the very first page, when it takes Will a solid five minutes to figure out that the sound of dripping water means Thaw

- when Halt and Horace are heading to Skandia from Teutlandt, and Halt can tell that Horace is holding in a question, except Horace has decided not to ask the question, and Halt is going *absolutely nuts* because he wants to know what the question is

- Will tracking Evanlyn and the Temujai who captured her for hours on foot through the snow, despite being desperately out of shape, and he continues on by remembering everything Evanlyn’s done for him

- Halt arriving just in time to save will from the Temujai, and they’re both crying at the reunion. also Tug going batshit crazy when he senses Will in the vicinity and then refusing to leave his side…. yes these are tears in my eyes

- Halt: “I left what I considered a fair price” for the Temujai horses… the fair price being Absolutely Nothing, of course. also, he says this was two decades ago. also, Halt is thirty-six in this scene.

- when Halt and Erak scout the Temujai army for the first time and Halt shoots the Temujai scout from behind cover by picturing where he is in his mind!! what the fuck!!!

- when Halt and Erak escape from the Temujai army and Halt slaps Erak’s horse with his bow to keep it galloping and Erak is clinging on for dear fucking life

- when Halt and Erak return from scouting the Temujai army and Erak dismounts his horse by falling face-first into a snowdrift

- Will regaining his shooting ability, and Erak returning his double knife scabbard because he hoards everything he gets his hands on

- Evanlyn going nuts because she can’t help with the war effort, sneaking onto Slagor’s ship, being trapped there for eighteen hours, discovering an undercover plot, getting exposed as Duncan’s daughter and invoking Ragnak’s Vallasvow to kill her, and turning the fuckin tables on Slagor by exposing him in turn

- Halt dressing up as a Skandian in extremely oversized clothing and subsequently throwing up in the Skandian helmet

- Will and Halt recruiting and training a hundred slaves as archers for the battle, and Will demonstrating incredible leadership skills despite being?? seventeen??

- every moment during the battle, when the little plots and counterattacks that Halt has devised goes exactly to plan, including: Will’s first archer volley taking down an entire Ulan (group of sixty), Will facing literally fifty Kaijin sharpshooters, Horace being the ultimate shieldmate, and Evanlyn directing volleys like a badass. this trio is unmatched.

- also, randomly, POVs from FOUR temujai characters, including the intelligence colonel that exposes Will and Horace’s archers. honestly appreciated because they broke up the battle scenes and Flanagan actually did a fair bit of worldbuilding and characterization

- Horace and Will fighting back-to-back, and Horace tells Will to duck and he flips his sword behind him and stabs the Temujai that Will is fighting

- Evanlyn facing down the deputy general of the Temujai army and his personal bodyguard, not being the slightest bit afraid, and the moment before the downstroke Will throws a knife and kills him

- Halt: “there is not the SLIGHTEST chance Erak becomes Oberjarl” then Erak: “i’m the new Oberjarl” Halt: “i fuckin called it. reverse psychology”

- Horace being knighted by Duncan and appointed to the Royal Guard.

- when Crowley returns Halt’s silver oakleaf and Halt knows that he’s home at last.