Esteria Silversmith

1. she takes a lot of inspiration from her father, who was a wwii POW in a nazi camp apparently

2. someone brought up a terrific point about the similarity between murderbot and incarcerated people (and is trying to get the books into the hands of prisoners they work with! so cool!); martha hadn't made that explicit connection herself but it was still a cool moment. truly the power of art there!

3. some weirdo probably-cis guy ended the q&a with a horrible question that he/him'd murderbot and asked if it would fall in love with a "female" bot (?????) and martha said murderbot is already in a romantic relationship with ART, although she said it wasn't romantic the way humans would define it and certainly wasn't sexual. (altho she is aware of the fanfiction and finds it funny, and reassured everyone she has been in Fandom enough that nothing anyone could do would shock her, haha.)

4. someone asked a question about preservation as a "communist utopia," and the age gap (a gen x woman versus a younger-trending audience) was pretty apparent since the soviet union and American cultural attitudes towards that very much color her thoughts on the word "communist." But she made a pretty powerful point about preservation not qualifying as a "utopia" considering their attitude towards bots, and she identified it more as "hopepunk or solarpunk." and pointed out that dystopias are... well, we are in one in the US.

every fat person you know for the most part probably has a story like this, of medical neglect. many of the stories i've heard personally are when the complaint or the doctor wasn't related at all, like being told to lose weight at the ear nose and throat doctor or at the dentist. it's straight up just bias. it's such a thing that in the show Shrill it's portrayed, when Aidy Bryant goes to the gynecologist and her doctor suggests she get gastric bypass.

the studies on health and fatness are simply not that black and white and there is basically no research that shows that more than an incredibly tiny minority of people can lose weight and keep it off for more than like 2 years. bodies have set points that they gravitate towards, it's not a personal failure. this also is how the weight loss industry succeeds so well - repeat customers.

some of the harm associated with fatness is also due to weight cycling, which is very hard on your body and is even worse if you get off a GLP1, which according to a recent study causes weight to be regained at a rate that is 4x faster than without taking a GLP1.

you don't have to hate yourself. you don't have to hate other people for their body type either. it makes me so sad to see the thinspo tag going around again in 2026 a lot like it was back in the day.

some resources to learn more here:

https://www.reuters.com/article/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/feeling-fat-may-be-worse-for-you-than-being-fat-idUSTON079061/

Fors Wall.

My girl literally commissioned not one, but TWO murders as gift for her teacher. Bro literally went "teacher would be happy if this guy died... Mr. World, please kill this man" and then brought a decapitated head to said teacher.

Twice she did this. Twice.