netgirl_y2k

sageofthesky asked me to talk about Dorne.

First, a fact that might get me run out of ASOIAF fandom on a rail, the first time I read the books I didn't care for Oberyn Martell as a character. I wasn't actually interested in Dorne at all, really. But I think a lot of that was that by AFFC... you know how at this time of year if you're going to a lot of parties, and drinks, and Christmas whatevers, there comes a point where you're going: No, George, I can't possibly meet any more new people... Well, it was like that.

But then I wasn't interested in Sansa either during my first read of the books. Clearly I didn't know my own mind.

Oberyn I didn't really connect with until season four of the show, and the casting of Pedro Pascal, which was basically the only thing the show did right this year, and they're lucky that they got it so, so right. It's actually bought them more good will from me than they frankly deserve at this point. This is why I'm not too perturbed by the spoilers that Jaime's heading for Dorne in S5; Oberyn made you want to see more Martells, to visit Dorne. Was there anything about the show's take on the Tullys and Riverrun that made anyone want a season of Jaime wandering around the Riverlands?

This actually brings us neatly to the elephant in the room when it comes to S5, which is the show's writing out of Arianne. I'm... miffed, but perhaps not as miffed as you might expect me to be. I think because I'm not at all surprised; I remember thinking, ages ago, before we even knew that Dorne was going to appear in S5, certainly before any casting announcements happened, I thought, I bet the show will leave out Arianne and make Trystane the heir to Dorne.

Actually, the thing that annoyed me more than the omission of Arianne - and on some level I've accepted that Arianne was the sacrifice I had to make in exchange for never having to see a Greyjoy nuncle on my screen - was a tiny little thing. There's a scene in Tyrion's cell when Oberyn says that his father took him and Elia to visit Casterly Rock. It was his mother! His mother who was the ruling princess of Dorne! And why change that? It's such a tiny little thing; it'll mean nothing to non-book readers, and a lot to me some people. I mean, if you're writing out Arianne anyway the fact that Dorne has equal primogeniture isn't really going to be a plot point, but why not just let it exist quietly in the background?

Actually, when I want to annoy myself, I indulge my suspicion that one of the reasons Arianne was written out (another, I think, and a not totally invalid one, was to make the Trystane/Myrcella romance more prominent) was that with the Sand Snakes there too, they didn't want that storyline to be too female heavy.

I will concede that Arianne is not immediately the easiest character to like or sympathise with, but then look at the wonders the show has worked with Cersei Lannister and thwarted avenues of female power.

I'll also say that I adore that huge swathes of tumblr have mentally fancast Ayisha Hart as Arianne and just carried on like the show isn't ass-backwards stupid. I also adore that literally the only time I see Atlantis on my dash is when people have chopped up footage of Ariadne scenes to recreate the Arianne ones. I was especially impressed with this one.

Back to the books, obviously I love that Dorne practices equal preference primogeniture. For all the canonical parallels between the North and Dorne I wish this was another one. I want Sansa Stark, reluctant and kind of rubbish heiress to Winterfell. I mean, I like the Queen in the North stuff as never gonna happen wish fulfillment, though I can see her as regent/castellan for one of her younger siblings; but I think Sansa has to go south to realise how much she wants the North.

I love how many great female characters Dorne gives us. The Dornish/Rhoynar stuff was worth the price of AWOIAF to me; I was a little surprised that Nymeria of the Rhoynar wasn't the warrior queen a lot of fandom had cast her as, but ultimately I really liked what we saw of her; I could completely see how she'd be Arianne's hero. As an aside, I love that Arya names her direwolf Nymeria; I love that Arya knows about Princess Nymeria, and Visenya Targaryen, and Wenda the White Faun. I think the fact that Arya, and Brienne and Asha too, essentially like and respect other women is one of those awesome little details that sometimes gets lost in translation.

I love Meria Martell, a fat old woman, whose response to people trying to conquer her country with dragonfire was basically, no, you fuck off. I love that, ultimately, she won. I like to think of her as the logical predecessor to Genna Lannister and Olenna Tyrell.

I want all the fics about Elia Martell that make her the protagonist of her own life. The ones where she survives on a wave of righteous, impotent fury; the ones where Lyanna survives too, and well, this is awkward. As an aside, I sometimes get into fannish arguments about Sansa or Dany and whether it was normal for girls in Westeros to be married in their early teens; and my argument is that a) as far as my layman's knowledge will take me, that wasn't even true in medieval Europe, and b) doesn't even seem to be true in Westeros; girls (and boys) are betrothed at an early age, but unless there's some sort of immediate land grab happening the actual marriage takes place much later. Catelyn and Cersei were both wed in their late teens; Elia in her early twenties. Although, I have a headcanon that the reason Elia's marriage was so comparatively late was that up until Arianne was born she was Doran's heir and couldn't be married outside of Dorne. Actually, not that I harbor any ill-will towards Doran, but what I wouldn't give for ruling princess of Dorne!Elia and her biggest supporter Oberyn fic.

Actually, I've always wondered how marriages work with equal opportunity primogeniture. Not so much inside Dorne, where you arrange the marriage of your heiress to somebody else's second born son and vice versa, but when an heiress marries outside Dorne-- Like, we know Arianne harbored hopes of marrying both Edmure Tully and Willas Tyrell. How would that have worked. I mean, time share? Would Arianne have given up Sunspear (seems unlikely), did she think either Edmure or Willas would have given up their claims and ruled as her consort?

To be fair, all that really tells us is that teenaged Arianne was a hormonal idiot who thought she could have her cake and eat it, which only makes me like her more, really.

Today, at the request of an anon mouse, I shall be rambling about my favourite asoiaf minor characters.

Obviously there's Genna Lannister and Olenna Tyrell, who both leave huge impressions despite having comparatively little page time. Now Westeros is not a world that's being secretly run by little old ladies, and we know this because they'd be doing a damn sight better job of it. Someday fandom is going to decide that it loves me after all, and provide me with a fic where Genna and Olenna hang out, and snark, and bitch about how they're surrounded by idiots.

The thing about asoiaf is that there are so many characters that my favourites really depend on what fics I've read lately, what chapters I've been rereading for fic writing purposes, and, like, the phases of the moon. Recently I have been thinking a lot about the Mormont women.

I mean, there's the obvious reason that they're like a little matriarchy there on Bear Island, except I don't really think that's true, because it's easy to forget that two generations does not a dynasty make, and that Lady Maege only came to power through the unlikely confluence of events that led to Jeor being at the Wall, and Jorah fleeing into exile without issue. Mostly, actually, I forget that Jorah and the Mormont women are members of the same family; really, because I do think of them as this little matriarchy, but also because Jorah is so very much a member of Team Dany that it's hard to remember that he has any other loyalties (even though, hello, traitor). Actually, if Dany takes the Iron Throne, Bear Island is probably being handed straight back to Jorah, that's a thought.

And who inherits Bear Island now anyway? Alysane, of course, now Dacey's dead, but does it revert back to male preference primogeniture after her, even though her son's younger than her daughter? And are Alysane's children even her heirs given that she claims not to have a husband, that her children were fathered by a bear? Relatedly, as Maege is Jeor's sister, how come her daughters are Mormonts at all? Did she marry a cousin with the same last name as her, if she married at all? If you unexpectedly become lord/lady of somewhere do you get to adopt the name of the ruling family (for example, if Harry Hardyng becomes lord of the Eyrie does he become Lord Arryn...)? Is there an exception made for old families that have reached a dead end in the male line; or, more likely I think, are there exceptions for old families who rule some small forgotten part of Westeros, provided you carry on as normal and don't tell anyone?

These are the the things I think about.

Also I think there's sometimes a tendency in fandom to use the Bear Island ladies as an example of how things are different for women in the North, and I don't think that's true either. There are lots of very strong women in the North, to be sure, but apart from the Mormonts, not really in the martial sense.

Well, there's Arya Stark, and maybe Lyanna Stark, depending on where you fall on the Knight of the Laughing Tree thing. My position on that, by the way, is that I want Lyanna to have been the knight of the laughing tree, but while I buy that Lyanna would have been a warrior if she could, and while I buy that she might have known how to swordfight, having browbeat Brandon and Benjen into teaching her in the godswood in secret, Ned being in the Vale and not part of Operation Stark Boys Teach Lyanna How to Duel; but I'm not sure how you could learn to joust well enough to beat even middling knights without it becoming common knowledge, no matter how good a horsewoman you were.

My other opinion on that is that Robert's Rebellion is built out of so many conflicting stories that it doesn't really matter whether Lyanna Stark was the Knight of the Laughing Tree or not.

Fic about the Mormonts that I would like:

-Fic about Dacey Mormont that isn't Robb/Dacey; not that I don't think that there aren't interesting things you could do with this, especially using the king and his knight trope, especially considering that Robb is a boy-king who's chosen to surround himself in battle with warriors more skilled than himself, one of whom is Dacey-- there's a whole puppy love thing. It's more that a lot of the fic that I've tried for this pairing seems to come at it from the angle of giving Robb a more suitably "kickass" love interest than Jeyne Westerling, in ways that I find distasteful.

-Alysane Mormont/Asha Greyjoy, femslash or friendship or anything; I was rereading the Asha chapters of ADWD recently, and how quickly Asha goes from thinking of Alysane as the she-bear who is her jailer, to Aly who is her companion in adversity is delightful to me.

-The one where Arya Stark is fostered on Bear Island.

-The one where the North is an actual historical matriarchy, dating since before the days of Aegon's conquest. Okay, it's not really about the Mormonts, but I want it anyway.

lareinenoire asked Following the massive influx of new canon from The World of Ice and Fire, which story do you want to write the most?

Huh. There were things about awoiaf that delighted me (that there are about three generations of Tullys named after muppets; there's a Ser Kermit who is succeeded by his son Ser Elmo. This, I assume, was a prime example of the thing where you get stuck, write something obviously silly - I favour a string of swear words - to remind yourself to come back later and fix it, only they forgot.) Things that interested me (I have adopted the headcanon that the Dornish bought peace and continuing independence by promising to put Rhaenys Targaryen, who they'd been holding in some dungeon somewhere for years, out of her misery), but nothing that really made me sit up and go I must have fic about this at once.

I don't know, very little of my fic features the historical characters, I tend to focus on the characters who're kids now and their lives post civil wars/apocalypse a la dragons and ice zombies. And if I do write more historical fic it'll probably be something about the league of dead mothers (something where Elia survives on a wave of righteous, impotent fury; something where Joanna lives and it changes nothing in the bigger picture because Tywin isn't a jerk because his wife's dead, and he doesn't hate Tyrion because his birth killed Joanna, he's a jerk because he's a jerk, and he hates Tyrion because his pride can't cope with having fathered a dwarf)

By the way, if you are at all interested in historical asoiaf fic check out lareinenoire's AO3 page at once. Start with the Within the Hollow Crown series.

I am interested in historical Targaryen women. I want a fic about Visenya and Rhaenys Targaryen and what their relationship was like independent of Aegon. I want to know more about Rhaenys Targaryen, the queen who never was. The tales of the Dragonknight and his love for his sister are great romantic stories in canon, and I sort of want to deconstruct that to give Queen Naerys, trapped between a brother who was actively trying to kill her with childbirth, and another who was too devoted to his own vows to actively help her, a voice.

As an aside, I wrote my all female Night's Watch AU before The Princess and the Queen came out, and the set up was that years ago Rhaenyra Targaryen had been lady commander after the Dance of the Dragons; I'd had Rhaenyra in mind as a sort of Visenya Targaryen type character. It still works with what we know of her in canon if you assume that having fought a war and sat in on her father's councils since girlhood she could be a pretty decent general without being herself a warrior, and more so if you handwave that she was allowed to take her dragon with her when she was exiled to the Wall. Still, you have to squint, and to this day it irks me.

One of the things that really pleased me about awoiaf was the amount of homosexuality there was in the world. I like how the assertions that Rhaenyra's sons were bastards were as much that her husband's preferences were well known as it was character assassination. And I liked the canon confirmation that in Dorne nobody cares. And I loved the description of Sabitha Vypren as "enjoying killing men and kissing women." Fic about this lady pls.

The asoiaf I really want to write, and this has nothing to do with awoiaf, is the one where Sansa Stark is a lesbian, and her attraction to knights is aesthetic, but not romantic (at least, not after she meets a few of them up close) or physical, and how you would possibly navigate that in a world that has no language for it.

drizzlesofcastamere asked my favourite childhood cartoon/cartoon heroine? Which is a question I can't actually answer first hand.

Fun thing about me, before I started secondary school, about twelve, I don't actually remember very much at all of my childhood. Not because it was awful or anything; I was a much loved and well looked after kid, I was also for a long time a pretty sick kid. A lot of my early years have just disappeared into a blur of surgeries, and physiotherapy, and wheelchairs (which I didn't mind so much), and leg braces (which I really, really did).

And the reason I know I was a loved and well looked after kid was that I am now a much loved and well looked after thirty-something. Actually my mum told me to stop by on my way home the other day so that I could pick up some soup she'd made for me, which gave me the opportunity to say: Hey, mum, do you remember what cartoons I liked when I was little?

Apparently, I was obsessed with, and I quote, a cartoon version of The Three Musketeers, except that they were all dogs. The internet informs me that this was doubtless Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds. I've just found the theme tune on youtube.

( One for all, and all for one! )

Proof positive, if any were needed, that my childhood could not have been all that bad.

I also apparently liked the Ewoks cartoon, which doesn't seem to have had nearly so catchy a tune, He-Man and She-Ra.

So, yeah, my mum makes me soup specially and remembers my favourite cartoons twenty years later; whatever it is that I don't remember, it's probably not that I was being beaten with lengths of rubber hose.

Actually, I do remember-- it's not properly a cartoon, but I remember being confined to my bed after dislocating my hip for, well, not the first time, and watching our VHS tape of The Phantom Tollbooth just over and over again endlessly. It's possible that I internalised this song for use in later life.

( Don't say there's nothing to do in the doldrums )

For today selenay said Okay, I just have to: Any day, life-related pizza preferences :-D

Okay, see, I know what I did there I missed a comma (in my defense, whoever I copied and pasted this from missed the comma, I just didn't catch it) and you mean life-related pizza preferences as opposed to, like, virtual pizza preferences.

Um, if you ever come to Scotland you will be presented with the option of having haggis as a pizza topping. I beg of you, I beg of you, do not avail yourself of this option. There are times and places where eating haggis is appropriate; at a Burns Supper, for instance, or at two o'clock in the morning when it's been deep-fried and served alongside chips (additionally I suggest having spent several hours in a nearby tavern before embarking on your haggis eating adventure), but on top of a pizza is not one of them. All of this also applies to black pudding.

There is also a thing called a pizza crunch. Which is one quarter of an onion pizza, deep fried, and served with chips and a can of Irn Bru.

As an aside, when I was a student I had a drinking buddy who used to drink vodka and diet Irn Bru, because she thought that the sugar in Irn Bru was really bad for you; the vodka aside, forget the sugar, it's whatever makes it glow-in-the-dark orange that's going to kill you. Oh, for those of you not familiar with Irn Bru, here enjoy!

You used to be able to get pizza-crunch for lunch when I was at school. We were all shocked, shocked, I say, to grow up and discover there was a public health crisis in Scotland. I ordered one a few months ago in a fit of nostalgia; nostalgia for the days when I could eat deep fried pizza without spending the rest of the evening lying on the floor feeling nauseated, perhaps. Which just goes to show you that nostalgia is a lying liar who lies.

My favourite pizza topping is Florentine; the one with the spinach and poached eggs. By the way, if you make people a Florentine pizza they'll be really impressed; you run out of time, present the same thing on top of bread and call it Florentine Toast they'll look at you strangely. Maybe if I'd gotten some nicer bread?

Any non-pizza questions can go here :-)

My first post for the December meme comes from escritoireazul, favourite things about dogs and why you love them.

Let me begin my answer with a picture of my puppy.



Look at her little face! Although, it is important to remember that behind that innocent expression is a mind that's going: MISCHIEF MANAGED!

No, we've always had dogs in my family. My parents thought that it was a good way for kids to learn responsibility. This had the effect of making me a very responsible dog owner (all my dogs are trained, and neutered, and vaccinated, etc.) but otherwise had little to no measurable impact on the rest of my life. I take the well, nobody's yelling... approach to adulthood.

For example, earlier this week I succeeded in accidentally de-worming myself. It was time for the puppy's worming medication, which is a sort of spot-on that you put on the back of her neck, so I did that, went to do something else and forgot all about it; half an hour later I came back and picked the puppy up for a wee bit of a cuddle. Now the first thing Freya does when you interact with her is to launch herself full force at your face like the face huggers from the Alien films - I am, to her mind, a giant chew toy - and she managed to smear her spot-on stuff all over my face. So I'm sitting there going: my lips and tongue are tingling and going numb, that's weird... which is when I remember about the puppy worming stuff; now this is stuff that even the dog isn't meant to take internally. Anyway, long story short, I am not dead and probably free of parasites.

I love the ridiculous things that we do for our dogs. Like, my old dog Cooper was very fond of rolling in fox shit, which has a repugnant smell, and the only thing, the only thing which gets it out is tomato ketchup. So you find yourself standing on your back steps in the rain applying condiments to a medium sized omnivore and being annoyed that no-one is around to hear your frankly brilliant hot dog joke.

My last dog Eustace-- you know how if you have dogs all your life there's one that will always hold a special place in your heart? Well, mine was Eustace. He was the dog against which all future dogs will be measured. He also once ate a bar of soap and puked bubbles for three days.

I temped for a while, then I gave up work for a few years to be a full time carer, after that I was a nervous wreck for a while, and even now I work strange and irregular shifts. I also have a terrible tendency to hermit. On the days that I'm not working I can quite easily not leave my house or speak to a single non-internet person, and worse I don't even notice that I'm doing it. Dogs enforce routine, is what I'm getting it. Much as I might like to not get out of bed one morning, I can't because the dog needs to be walked. My sleep cycle, which is otherwise wracked by insomnia and panic attacks, is kept semi-regular by the first and last times the dog needs out. They get me out every day - rain, wind, or brain weasels be damned. I've always been a person of a nervous disposition, as they say in the films, but earlier in the year it got a bit out of hand and I was referred for some counselling. Had I ever thought about harming myself? they asked. No, I replied, I wouldn't. What makes you so sure? they asked - I'm assuming that was a compulsory question. Now of course there's family and friends and work, but when put on the spot, the two reasons on the tip of my tongue for why life was worth living were 1) there's a new Doctor Who in the autumn, and 2) but who'd look after the dog? I like to think of this as my taking joy in the small things and not just being really sad.

Some people get an endorphin rush from exercise, I just get sweaty and cross. My point is that you think without a dog I'm going to spent my Sundays traipsing up and down the East Ayrshire coast for four hours? No, I'm going to spend it sitting still eating and drinking things, probably in a pub.

I love dog people. Dog people are a bit mad anyway. These are people who when offered the opportunity to own a creature who will destroy your possessions, cost you a small fortune, at times massively inconvenience you, whose crap you will have to pick up for ten years, after which it will die and break your heart - these are people who go: where do I sign up?

I have always thought that dog-walkers and fandom are very similar little subcultures. Just as you wouldn't dream of discussing fanfiction or shipping with your non-fandom friends, dog walkers can have a cheerful and lengthy discussion about all the weird things that their dogs have eaten which later had to pulled out of the other end of them, as though this is a perfectly normal thing to be discussing. There's also the thing where we don't always know each other's real names; there are people I've known for years, who I see virtually every day, who I have spent many an hour chatting with, and who I know only as, like, Bailey's owner.

My mum likes it when I have a dog. She feels like I'm safer. Yeah, me and my vicious attack puppy. Mothers, eh?

Dogs are always pleased to see you. Whatever is happening in your life, however bad your day has been, there is one creature in all the world who is simply happy you've come home.

I love how many different types of dog there are, and how it's sometimes hard to believe that they're members of the same species. Like, the people next door have a teacup Yorkie who is already dwarved by my three month old Lab puppy. The people across the street have a Staffie who before they rescued her had been used as a bait dog for dog fighting, and she's the nicest dog in the world and what was done to her could make you weep. Border Collies are ubiquitous around here; brilliant dogs, but I've never met one who wasn't as mad as an eel. My mum has a Spaniel who's a failed sniffer dog, and boy am I glad that she didn't have him when I was a teenager, failed or not.

Me, I've always favoured Labs, Retrievers, Setters - big, good-natured, stupid dogs. You know that scene in 101 Dalmations where Pongo is trying to find a girlfriend for Roger and all the women are exactly like their dogs? It's like that.

The Doctor Who special was... well, it was trying to be a Christmas episode, a rousing send off for Matt Smith, and to round up all the dangling plot threads from the last four years, and as a result it didn't do any of these things particularly well. Which is exactly the same problems as Tennant's final episode had. So.

That said, I wept at the regeneration, and I say that as somebody who never more than intermittently warmed to Eleven. I am desperately looking forward to Capaldi.

Today's meme post comes in the form of a response to a question: The female doctor. who would you cast? how would you write her? etc etc. And you shall be pleased to know that I will not be answering this one in the form of poetry, and probably not at great length, as I am dreadfully hungover (damn 7% Belgian beer) and really ought to be in my pyjamas, watching The Deathly Hallows under a duvet.

I have at different times said that Lena Headey, Miranda Richardson, Miranda Hart, Indira Varma, Sheridan Smith, or Sophie Okonedo would be interesting choices to play the Doctor. But I think my first choice would be Olivia Colman. Her name came up a lot when people were discussing the possibility of a female Doctor last time, and with good reason, I think.

As an aside, if the possibility of a female Doctor wasn't at least discussed at the BBC, then playing the pronoun game prior to the announcement of Peter Capaldi was a dick move.

Anyway, Olivia Colman, great actress, can do comedy and drama and darkness, which you need to play the Doctor. She's interesting looking, which I say with the very best will in the world, in a very Doctor-ish way. She's old enough to do it; because I don't think you could have an actress in her twenties playing the Doctor, not only because she'd be judged that much more harshly than anyone else, but partly to keep the Doctor distinct from the recent run of companions, and partly for the same reason I don't want another bloke in his twenties, there's a sense of age and gravitas that the Doctor needs, I think.

The other thing about Colman is that she's extremely well liked by the public, at least in the UK. You know how when people are talking about their fantasy female Doctors, and the conversation quickly turns to the likes of Maggie Smith or Judi Dench? And I don't think that's pure wish fulfilment, I think people know that there would be a lot of shit talked about any actress in the role, but that it would be less, and more quickly shouted down if it was someone considered a national treasure, you know?

That said, I don't think the objections to a female Doctor would be as strong as a lot of people think they would. At least, not among casual viewers. Fandom... well, fandom will always be fandom, god love it. Almost every time I get to talking about the possibility of a female Doctor somebody brings up that story about Steven Moffat asking a room full of fans at a convention if they'd stop watching if the Doctor was a woman and they all said yes. And I don't really see the relevance. It was a self selecting audience, a bunch of people invested enough in the show to go to a convention, asked a leading question by a man they presumably admire. It's the inmates running the asylum. I mean, imagine prior to Elementary asking a roomful of people at a Holmes convention how they felt about Lucy Liu playing Watson, and look at how that turned out.

I would write the female Doctor as the Doctor. I've been thinking about the reasons I never really got Eleven, and yeah, a lot of it is related to the writing, but also Eleven is, to me, the first Doctor whose maleness was ever more than notional, if that makes sense? Where he was an alien, and unimaginably old, but also unquestionably male. I feel like with any of the others you could have cast a woman, changed the pronouns and carried on much the same, you'd still have the Doctor. Eleven, with his I like bad girls and I don't understand women, was not only the first Doctor that felt specifically male to me, but he felt male in a way that drove me away from the character.

I'd also never mention the fact that the Doctor was a woman. I mean, I'd mention it once in the regeneration episode, in a I'm a woman! New teeth! New kidneys, I don't like them! type way. But never after that. I'd think I'd give her a boy companion, or at least a boy and a girl. My first choice for a boy companion to a female Doctor would be Clyde off SJA.

I've talked before about how my family tend to go abroad for the holidays, all except me; and the wealth of little orphan annie jokes that I could, and have, spun from this.

This year, everyone's at home. Guys, it's awful. Spending the holidays with your family only works if you aren't together the rest of the year. I mean, my family are pretty close, and we rub along together very civilly, generally speaking. But these last few days, it's the sense of confinement, and enforced jollity, and the atmosphere of passive aggression so thick I'm surprised it hasn't set the smoke detector off. We're all stuck in, having an unofficial competition to see whose stress induced ulcer will gnaw through their stomach lining first. And making tea, passive-aggresively.

Which makes this the perfect day to talk about my favourite places to go alone.

I go lots of places alone, not a in weird, anti-social, trainee serial killer type way, but in comfortable with my own company, I have different interests and keep different hours from many of my friends type way.

Like, I don't understand people who won't go to the cinema alone. You'll be sitting in the dark, not talking. It's the very definition of Company Not Required. Actually, I really want to go to the pictures soon, just to get me out of this house, I'm probably the only person in the world who looked at the runtime for Desolation of Smaug and went: Well, that's just not long enough! I go to see bands by myself too, for similar reasons, it'll be dark and you'll be watching what's going on on stage anyway. This does require a sense of timing, so that you get there just as the music starts, and don't have all that standing around the Glasgow Barrowlands drinking by yourself awkwardness.

I do go to the pub by myself, not in a creepy daytime drinker way, or on Friday or Saturday nights because that's what my friends are for. But if you find yourself with an unexpected free hour on, say, a Sunday afternoon, and you've got a newspaper or a book, there's nothing nicer than an empty bar.

I could spend hours by myself in a bookshop or library. I'm that visitor who comes round your house and makes a beeline for your books; I'm not judging you, I'm coveting your possessions, slightly less creepy. Somebody once managed to seduce me using just a room of books; and it was a rented house, they weren't even her books.

One of my dogs is a bit anti-social, loves people, a bit unpredictable around other dogs, the first week I had him he tried to eat next door's prize winning pomeranian, I don't want to talk about. So I spend lots of my dog-walking time traipsing around bizarre places, up hills and down dales, where I hope not to run into other dog walkers. One of my favourites is walking up by the windfarm out of town, which lots of people say is an eyesore, but I think is strangely beautiful. Clears the mind marvellously, me, the dogs, and nobody else in sight. Of course, given the way the weather's been these last few weeks, I'm starting to think that I'm not a dog person after all, I'm a cat person who's made a huge mistake.

And comes, once again, in list format.

-Rugby Union is the sport I follow the closest. I mean, I watch a little bit of football, mostly the international tournaments, and a little bit of the English Premier League. Watching the Scottish Premiership is genuinely like following a Sunday pub league; also supporting the Glasgow teams-- a lot of it is just idiocy and casual sectarianism with a thin veneer of football thrown over it as an excuse. I watch a little bit of cricket in the summer sometimes, but as the friend who introduced me to the game said, you have to think of it less as a sport, and more as an excuse to get drunk in a field in the sunshine.

-The Scottish rugby team are pretty shit. But that's okay, because 1) the Scottish everything team are shit, 2) they're less shit that they used to be, and 3) it's possible I'm overstating here (we're, like, 9th in the world) because nobody is as underwhelmed by the Scottish rugby team as Scottish rugby fans.

-Then again, being 9th in the world isn't much use when you play in a tournament of six.The team who comes last in the Six Nations gets a thing called the wooden spoon; and I was once at a Scotland - Italy game where they were handing out actual wooden spoons to the spectators, with the Italian flag painted on one side, and the Scottish flag painted on the other.

-My favourite Scottish rugby player is a chap called Richie Gray; partly because he's an excellent player, but largely because he's like eleven feet tall and looks like Thor.

-The warm up act at home internationals are something called The Red Hot Chilli Pipers, who are, you guessed it, bag-pipers; I'm not sure what the logic behind this is, except that after a bit of piping nothing that happens on field can possibly seem that bad.

-The last time I went to a live rugby match I had a pint of beer and a venison burger; the last time I went to a live football match I had an (unidentified) meat pie and a mug of bovril; and for any of you who didn't have the pleasure growing up, bovril is beef tea. No contest, really.

-I have a friend who every time Scotland play England, he puts a fiver on Scotland to win; I love an optimist, I really do, but if he's looking to give away fivers I'd be happy to oblige him.

-The last match I went to, our tickets were for the cheap seats, the last row all the way up in the gods; me, and not a few other people, had to stop halfway up to catch our collective breath. I am not blind to the irony of attending the a sporting event and being too desperately unfit to reach your seat on the first attempt, I don't plan on doing much about it, but I am not blind to it.

-I once broke my wrist at a rugby match; I wasn't playing, I was rolling down the grassy hill outside the stadium like a six year old.

-For the record, I think Wales will win the Six Nations next year, Scotland will beat Italy and come fifth, and I will take to wearing a false moustache and affect a Welsh accent.

havocthecat wanted me to make a bit of a sales pitch for the Kushiel's Legacy books, since we like a lot of the same media, and since I've talked so much about my affection for them this year.

A few things first, I'm pretty sure the marketing for these books was borked in some way, because prior to them being recommended by a trusted source this year I had picked them up numerous times only to quickly put them down again, going yeah, no. I read the first three books over the course of a month in, I think, February this year, which was when I was still knee-deep in grief and loss of purpose, and was failing to deal with being the owner of an exciting new anxiety disorder; I mention this because sometimes the right books find you at the right time, and I think this was one of those times.

Finally, I am not always good at explaining why I like something, as opposed to why it irks me, but... here is an incomplete list of things I like about the Kushielverse, things you might like too if you are of similar tastes and sensibilities.

( Kushiel's Legacy )