It's Valentine's Day. To me, it's a problematic holiday for many reasons. One of the most obvious is because I'm aro ace. This holiday promotes romantic and implies sexual love. Pushing amatonormativity everywhere. I don't have either of those. It's like rubbing it in my face every time I go out. I do experience a very strong platonic love, so celebrating that would be great. Still advertisers would like to promote a certain type of love. So, as much as I would like it to be for all types of love, it's not played up as such. Many aro aces do have it as a day to treat yourself or be with friends. It still feels weird. Many aro aces have vented about Valentine's Day in the aro ace group I'm in on fb. There were no posts for a while until now. So, it's difficult.
Another reason is my ex-boyfriend dumped me on that day. It was over the phone, I was still recovering from being hospitalized, and he was on the other side of the state. Probably one of the worst times and ways to do it. This was a long time ago. He had made such a big deal out of the holiday before, his friends told me he was thinking of proposing, we were together for 2 and a half years, and it seemed to come out of no where. Some aro aces apparently feel good after breakups, but it hit me hard. I was very platonically and emotionally attached to him. So, every Valentine's Day is like a reminder...
It's also technically a Christian holiday. It is, after all, named after a saint. While it's been heavily commercialized, it still has this other meaning to it. This has always been a bit unsettling to me. I'm not Christian, I'm Jewish. In Judaism, we do have a minor holiday celebrating love called Tu B'Av. It's a bit different, though.
I do like the candy and chocolates. Especially, when they go on sale the next day. I don't really like flowers. I think roses are cool looking, but wouldn't want to have them as a present. Flowers don't last long, and make a mess. I've always felt that way about them. If people need a romantic symbol, I would think a flower is weak. It would seem the relationship or the way they felt about each other is fleeting and messy. That doesn't sound good. Candy and chocolate nourish people and tastes good. That's better symbolism, I think.
I'm up to 89 pages in total with writing both Alliance 3 and the cookbook. That's quite a bit in a month. I also skipped a few days. I'm up to the meat section in the cookbook, and it's making me even more hungry every time I go through it. I've noticed there are quite a few recipes from friends of her family and family members in this one. (A couple of the names aren't familiar to me.) Those have been interesting. Often, the recipes aren't with exact measurements for those. Instead it's things like a dash of this, a layer of that, half a jar of this (not saying how many oz are in that jar of something...), etc. This has also seemed like an interesting time capsule. A lot of the recipes are from the late 70's and early 80's. One in this section was from 1969, and it was obviously typed up on a typewriter. Even if people aren't interested in using such old recipes, it's interesting to see what was considered 'good' back then. There were a lot of Bisquik recipes from 1977. That's really old. They luckily listed the oz in the cans of stuff from back then, and how many grams of other things. That way it can be easier to figure out even if sizes of stuff have changed over the years. The mixes and other stuff might have changed a bit too, though. I guess people could look that up as well. I'm even interested in making some from this section.
In 2 days, the preorder period will end for both ebook versions of Alliance: Dawn and More Than Meets the Eye (my memoir). I won't know how they did until then. I think people would be more interested in the ebooks first, since it's cheaper. I pretty much get the same amount in royalties either way. I'm nervous about it. Once the preorder period is over for both, I'll add links to the side of this blog to them. Just like I did for the first 2 books. That way people can always check them out. This blog might get a little more messy looking. I think I remember seeing that I can add another page. So, maybe I'll do that in the future, and post some of this stuff from the sides on there.
AVENues did do a piece on my memoir, and that issue, called Aces in the Media, was put out a couple of weeks ago. They interviewed me, which was more like a form full of questions to fill out. They also added the excerpt I gave them. I'm not sure if it was a good one, but it was on how I felt in a romantic relationship, if I remember correctly. I thought it'd be best to use something from the aro ace chapter, even though I do refer to being aro ace throughout. They also asked if they could use my cover art in it, and I agreed. I'm new to that sort of thing. Hopefully, my part was done ok. I still haven't had the nerve to look at it yet. The next issue is on aces with mental illnesses. Interesting, since I also have mental illnesses...They want aces like me to tell their stories before their deadline. I'm wondering if I should? It's like lately they're putting out issues that relate more to me than usual. Obviously, besides the ace part.
Not sure if I mentioned this before, but I started a few playlists on Apple Music based on my books. One's for the Alliance series, another for Sweet Endless Terror, and the last one for the memoir. The easiest one has been Sweet Endless Terror. Basically, looking at any horror or suspenseful music for that. Might look at each story's theme in the future, too. (Space, hearts, classical for going back to a certain time, obsession/stalkers, etc.) Alliance hasn't been as easy. Although, there are a lot of themes in that one. Like, fantasy, slight horror, what it means to be human, demons, specific demons (medusa, phoenix, dragon, etc.) in it, peace, hate, hardship, and so much more. I think the problem with that one is there are so many different themes to look at. I haven't really touched the memoir one much. I might add music that was popular throughout my life. Maybe themes based on the chapters? All this sounds fun, and I haven't looked that often into any of them. It's kind of to connect more with my writing. It'd be interesting if I created a playlist for the cookbook, too. Wonder what would go in there? I guess there are food related songs, but not many. Maybe songs from the 70's and 80's? Fun stuff.
Still learning German. Some of it has been frustrating, but most of the time it has been fun. They say things in odd ways. A lot of it has reminded me of Yiddish, and I'm glad I know some of that. I know that Yiddish is a mix of German, Hebrew, and a little Russian; but I can actually see where some of the words come from. I just got through the travel section in Duolingo. That one was 6 sections long, which is one of the longest ones. I think next is either another one on the body or numbers. Should be interesting.
Youtube:
I wanted to see if there were any amv's with anime I saw a while ago, and if there were any of my fave manga based music videos or mmv's. Even though I like a lot of the newer anime stuff, these were something different to watch. The manga ones give off an interesting effect. It was kind of cool to see how many I found.
Kuroshitsuji (Black Butler) manga:
xxxHolic:
Tsubasa (Wings) Chronicle:
Shiki:
Gintama:
Boku no (My) Hero Academia:
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