No Ordinary Exchange

love is always reborn

1. HAPPY HALLOWEEN! And in honor of Halloween, here is your obligatory reminder that someone's culture is NOT a costume; treating it as such is cultural appropriation, and it is racist and wrong. (For example, "dressing up" as Native Americans or other indigenous peoples, or wearing blackface to dress up as a Black character, celebrity, etc.) Cultural appropriation is very, very easy to avoid if you just take a moment to think about the "costume" you're preparing. Be respectful!

2. HAPPY ACE AWARENESS WEEK! Aspec individuals own Halloween this year, and wow does it feel good. In honor of this week, allow me to give you a rundown of asexuality! The asexual spectrum is where an individual experiences no sexual attraction (i.e. they are asexual), or maybe they do experience sexual attraction, but only in certain circumstances (e.g. they are graysexual or demisexual; "asexual/ace/aspec" are umbrella terms). Asexuality is not celibacy, as celibacy is when a person intentionally chooses not to have sex. Asexuality is not a choice; it is about the lack of attraction. An asexual person can also choose to have or not have sex, of course, like any other allosexual individual! And because asexuality is about the absence of sexual attraction, it is an inherently LGBT+ identity. Asexuality has also been around since the beginning of time, like any other sexuality, even if the term did not yet exist. The first explicit mention of asexuality is from the late 1800s, I believe, though there are many instances in historic documents before then where the experience of asexuality is described, just without modern terminology for it. Furthermore, asexual individuals might experience romantic attraction (e.g. they may be biromantic, heteroromantic, homoromantic, panromantic, etc.), or they might not (i.e. they may be aromantic/arospec). Every person is different! (Information condensed from AVEN, Ace Week, and my own prior knowledge.)

In honor of Ace Awareness Week, let me remind y'all that our girl Sonya is CANONLY ASEXUAL! (It's canon because she's my OC, lmao.) A lot of y'all noticed her ace ring she wears, and that makes me smile. :D Again, happy Halloween, guys! This chapter is a long one, but I think it's a good one. No spoilers, but let's just say that y'all deserve some levity after the tension of the past few chapters. I hope you enjoy!

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Callum stayed in his bedroom for most of the next day. It was a mixture of him not quite feeling ready to talk to his aunt and also his desperate need for alone time to mentally prepare himself for the art showcase that evening. He'd discussed his introverted-ness with Soren before, how going out and interacting with people - even his friends - always left him exhausted, even after short amounts of time. Soren was the opposite, apparently, as he'd claimed social interaction left him more energized. They'd concluded from their insightful conversation that the charging and draining of one's 'social battery' had to be the key difference between introverts and extroverts.

So, for the sake of maintaining that analogy, Callum was charging his social battery by staying in his room before the showcase, when it would undoubtedly be completely drained. Hence why he was contentedly sketching away his troubles instead of studying for finals while the Carole and Tuesday soundtrack played quietly in the background.

He'd originally been working on a sketch of Soren and Rayla playing football, but he kept getting distracted and consequently frustrated with himself when he made a mistake, so he'd soon moved to sketching Claudia in different witch outfits for Macbeth. She'd been very excited when the cast had been provided pictures of their costumes, and had promptly spammed the group chat with photos of them.

Of course, those sketches didn't hold his attention for long, either, even if they did require more brainpower to truly focus on. Instead he turned to his traditional comfort sketch: his mom. He preferred sketching her from memory, just to prove to himself that he'd never forgotten her appearance, but he had a photo of her tucked into the cover of his sketchbook for whenever his mind faltered.