Have you ever actually put thought into trying to figure out where Scottish traditional dress even came from?

[Originally published on Facebook on 11/8/2015]

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“You know, it’s super cold and windy and rainy all the time up here. The clothes people use further south just don’t really cut it. We should probably make some sort of special clothes for just people who live up here.”

“You’re right! We should all wear skirts made from wool!”

“…wh…uh… you mean, like, particularly long, warming skirts?”

“Nah, I was picturing something, like, knee-length.”

“…okay, you know, what, humour me: how exactly is that meant to keep anyone warm?”

“Well, you wear wooly socks as well.”

“Oh. Well. I mean, the thing about socks is that they don’t attach to anything at the top, so if you move around too much they can work their way down to the ankles, but I suppose that would kind of work if we all just walked slowly when we were wearing it – ”

“Actually, I thought we should use this outfit for dancing.”

“… … … all right. All right. Okay. I have a feeling I am going to regret asking this question, but here goes: Did you, pray tell, have any particular kind of dancing in mind?”

“Well, mostly reels I guess.”

“Yes. Yes, I thought so. Anything else? Anything else you suggest we do while wearing our rain-sodden, open-legged outfit, protected from the cold by nothing but unsecured footwear, desperately quick-dancing around for warmth?”

“One of the socks should have a blade.”

“Oh, of course.”

Potentially controversial opinion which might get me put on some sort of Bad Ace Watchlist

[Slightly adapted from a post originally published on Facebook on 10/8/2018]

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Speaking as an aromantic asexual who is currently in a life partnership with another aromantic asexual: literally every time someone tries to explain what a queerplatonic partner is, it just sounds to me like someone who’s never actually experienced friendship trying to describe friendship.

And whenever someone tries to argue otherwise, that the traits of a queerplatonic relationship are manifestly different from those of a regular-platonic relationship, I just feel like Marge in that one episode of the Simpsons where Lisa gets a crush on her teacher and keeps trying to insist that what she feels is meaningfully different from a romantic crush (“You’re going to have to accept that I feel that way about your father!“).

Like, look, it makes sense that we would make a term for “friend who is also a life partner” the same way we have “romantic partner” or “spouse” for “love interest who is also a life partner”. I’m not sure why “queerplatonic partner” is the one that caught on (because, um, what if they’re not queer? Your platonic life mate can be cis and heterosexual; even Kevin Smith understood that) instead of other, less misleading options like “platonic life partner” (or, if you must, “moirail“) but I appreciate the idea of there being such a term.

But like, maybe we can stop pretending it’s a wholly different thing from a friend, rather than being a subcategory of ‘friend’ the same way ‘romantic partner’ is a subcategory of ‘lover’?

It’s okay. You can just admit that friendship can be as vast, varied and potentially intimate as romance. You can just admit that “friend” is not a lesser category than “love interest” and we do not need a different thing to be “like friendship but Actually Important TM“, and that the idea that friendships are meant to not be deeply intimate partnerships is actually a very harmful one.

You can. It won’t hurt anyone. I promise.

I feel like people should talk more about the fact that, from an intergalactic point of view, humans are basically canonically one of the recurring villain races of Doctor Who.

[First published on Facebook on 2/8/2017]

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I feel like people should talk more about the fact that, from an intergalactic point of view, humans are basically canonically one of the recurring villain races of Doctor Who.

It’s literally canon that we regularly return to imperial conquest as a political system. There are AT LEAST FOUR different Human Empires (at least seven if you look at expanded universe stuff). And it’s not even like the word “empire” can be handwaved as just a mistranslation or something. The original Earth Empire explicitly had colony worlds where human overlords ruled over subjugated natives . The Second Human Empire had industrialised enslavement of natives as a capitalist business model. We don’t know much about the third one but at least one comic story mentions it in definitely-not-flattering-terms. All we’re really told about the fourth one is that it spread across a million planets and a million species and that it styled itself “The Fourth Great And Bountiful Human Empire”, but reading between the lines there seems to imply that they A) viewed themselves as the philosophical inheritors of their ancestors’ legacy of slavery and subjugation, B) viewed the aforementioned slavery and subjugation embodied by the first three empires as “great” and C) CONQUERED A MILLION SENTIENT SPECIES THAT WAY.

That’s not even That’s not even going into the facts that technically the government of Earth’s solar system was officially allied with the DALEKS in “The Daleks’ Master Plan” (although granted that was the result of political corruption by like two people, but still) and the currently-canon ultimate fate of human DNA according to “Utopia” and “The Sound of Drums” is that it degrades our descendants into either Futurekind (who are evil Mad Max cannibals) or Toclafane (who are self-mutilated sadistic psychopaths).

Or all the various stories where some one-off human scientist turns out to be the true monster all along.

Like… the Doctor seems weirdly blasé about the fact their pet favourite race is kind of a constant threat to the wellbeing of the universe, throughout basically all of time. Do they not realise, or are they just ignoring it, or…?

Hey, Girl

[First published on Facebook on 2/8/2019]

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Hey, girl, are you a roguish archaeologist? Because you’ve got a wicked smile and I think you stole my withered heart.

It was 1986. Vienna. We’d both just gotten back from the Phillipines.

What was I, a mere boy, doing in the Phillipines? Good question.

What were you doing, a mere second-year archaeology student at the time, inexperienced, in over your head, deep under that clockwork gravemound with the mentor that trusted you?

Were you only ever there for the heart? Or were you there to avenge your father’s legacy?

It doesn’t matter now. He’s gone. They both are.

But the heart’s still beating, isn’t it?

That’s the only reason you’re here.

But it’s only part of the reason I’m here.

So tell me, girl: are you a roguish archaeologist these days, or have you become something else?

You don’t remember me, do you… Katherine Dare? Or, should I say, Anastasia Belloq?!

…

…no?

Sorry, I mistook you for someone I knew. Here, have a drink on me.

[TIPS BARMAID, SHUFFLES AWKWARDLY DOWN THE BAR TO DIFFERENT BARMAID]

Hey, girl, are y