Brian Molko by David Bailey, ca. late 1990s.

Carmen Maria Machado in Queer for Fear: A History of Queer Horror

THEY'RE BACK

been thinking about trains

there's cafe cars/meal service on the train and plenty of leg room/you can get up and walk around. plus minus if there's wifi.

Sleeper car, Winnipeg to Churchill. Longstanding dream trip!

Note the Gusto 05 - Oluwande

Michelle Rodriguez as Holga in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Excuse me, no one told me Michelle Rodriguez is in this movie?!?!

I gave my soapbox speech about how weight loss is mostly bullshit to two different patients in a row yesterday and so help me I’m pretty sure one of these days someone is going to say “but SURELY you agree I’d be HEALTHIER if I lost weight!” bc you can see the disbelief in their eyes. And like. Sure, maybe! You might see some improvement in biomarkers like LDL and A1c, and your knees would probably feel better. But you would be amazed at how much more good you can do for yourself by focusing on things you can actually meaningfully change without resorting to making yourself miserable. Eat more fresh fruits and vegetables—it’s hard bc they’re more difficult to prepare and more expensive per calorie and go bad faster than other foods, but they’re what we evolved eating the most of so they’re what our bodies need the most of. And walk around more; sure, cardio is great for you, but if it sucks so bad you don’t do it, it isn’t doing shit for you. And we evolved to walk very very long distances, a little bit at a time, so our bodies respond actually very well to adding walks into our schedules, which is vastly easier than adding workouts that are frankly designed to be punishing when the definition of punishing is “makes you less likely to do it again in the future.”

You get one life. It is shorter than you can begin to imagine. Don’t waste it hating yourself because somebody is going to make money off that self-hatred. You deserve better than to be a cash cow for billionaires who pay aestheticians and dermatologists to make them (or at least their trophy wives) look thin and beautiful no matter what they actually do.

And ONE MORE THING—listen. We are NOT evolved to lose weight, we are evolved to hoard it. We came about in a world of famines. Not only does your brain have MULTIPLE failsafes built in SPECIFICALLY TO PREVENT WEIGHT LOSS, but there are epigenetic factors—factors that are not DNA but travel with it and affect how it is expressed. So if your parents or grandparents lived through a famine, like, oh, say, the Great Depression, YOU are more likely to gain weight and more likely to have difficulty losing it. AND! We live in a world highly affected by industrial pollution—there is no corner of the world free from it, micro plastics and industrial chemical pollution have been found literally everywhere ever studied—and many of those pollutants affect our endocrine systems. Looking at records of lab animals going back to the 1960s, where we have excellent records of what genetically essentially identical animals ate, we know that LAB ANIMALS FED THE SAME AMOUNT OF THE SAME CHOW WEIGH MORE NOW THAN THEY DID THE IN SIXTIES. So no. You’re not fat because your willpower is somehow busted. (Willpower, fun fact, can be depleted! By DEPLETING BLOOD SUGAR! Baumeister’s work in the 2000s demonstrated that.) You’re fat because your body wants you to live, and because the ultra rich have knowingly poured poison into the world because they don’t care if you die.

So YOU need to care if you live. And how you live. Please love yourself, because the billionaires will never give a shit about you. Weight Watchers has a 96-99% failure rate. Weight loss is a scam that makes billions of dollars every year. Love yourself too much to fall for that. Don’t wait until you’re thin to love yourself or to start living, because a) that day may never come and b) it’s okay if that day never comes. You are worthwhile and enough right now. I promise you that.

Did I mention that all studies on the subject are very clear--like, we do not need more studies on this, which is a bananas thing for a scientist to say--exercise does not lead to weight loss. It just doesn't. Anyone who tells you it does is wrong. It's good for you because it's good for you, not because it makes you thin. It improves your blood vessel health; it improves your heart health; it improves your body's ability to manage blood sugar; it improves your muscular health. It does not make you thin.

Reducing calories can reduce weight, but your body, as previously mentioned, is trying REAL HARD not to lose weight. I see a lot of recommendations for 1200 calorie a day diets. Google "starvation study" and look at how much the men in that study were given. It was over 1500 calories a day, and they were miserable. They became skeletal. They felt awful, depressed, foggy--because your brain is the single biggest user of calories in your body. It is so metabolically active that your brain uses around 30% of all the calories your body uses. Guess what happens when you starve your brain? You feel like shit. You feel stupid and depressed. Don't starve yourself. It doesn't work and it makes you feel awful and you will get rebound weight gain above whatever you lost, guaranteed, and then you'll blame yourself for "letting yourself go" because our society is built on lies.

We also cannot and should not ever suggest that anyone can lose more than 5-10% of their body weight and keep that off. It's just not possible. Bariatric surgery is a WHOLE other can of worms, I don't have the energy to explain why I almost never recommend it to my patients, but just know that if anyone has ever suggested you lose more than 10% of your body weight through behavioral changes, they are bullshitting you.

Hey @chaoticmurdertwink! It’s your guy! 

FIC WRITERS RETREAT 2023

WE ARE BACK, BABEY! (registration info coming soon!)

For the first time since 2019, there will be a full-on FIC WRITERS RETREAT again in August of this year!!

August 10-13, to be exact. We've had a slight change of venue, so we'll be meeting in Oakville, Ontario this year. Final cost and registration process is still being finalized, but the ballpark is really similar to what it's been: roughly $450-$500 CANADIAN* that includes all meals from Thursday night to Sunday morning, 3 nights accommodation (private room in shared 2-person suite), and all conference expenses. You just have to get yourself there.

(*Current exchange rate with USD makes this $331-$368 US)

For those of you who don't know, this event started in 2016 where a whopping SEVEN (7) people got together in Barrie, Ontario for three days of writing, writing talk, fandom discourse, and general shenanigans. None of us knew each other, but this little handful of folks took a chance and started an amazing community that is still going strong. Subsequent years we had just on 20 participants on average, from all over. We survived a three year hiatus and are keen to get up and running again!

Every year we've met, we've had a great mix of familiar friends and new faces, and every new addition has been such a gift. Please feel free to scroll this blog and contact anyone who's come to the retreat before. If you like what you see, consider joining us this year!

I will tag all new posts with #fic retreat 2023 or you can follow this blog for updates.

@daringlydomestic @laughing-at-the-darkness @seriouslymarythough @elizabeth-twist @mydogwatson @hiddenlacuna @aquabelacqua @chriscalledmesweetie @elsajeni @jaskiersvalley @doctornerdington @anyawen @ivyblossom @inexplicifics @inber @silentauroriamthereal @arcwin1 @tiger-in-the-flightdeck @phileasfoggstiddies @fleurdelis221b @swissmissficrecs

I just don't know how well the tagging worked in the original post. Please @ me if I left out someone I shouldn't have!

Wonderful!! I’m so happy this is continuing, and I hope one day I’ll be able to come. Have fun, friendos. ❤️

20+ years for both Star Trek and Sherlock Holmes. 30+, even. Pathological loyalty is a personality trait of mine, but in these cases it is warranted.

look i love stede as much as the next homosexual but when mary was ready to kill him in ep 10??? homegirl was 100% justified

It was genius, that episode. Empathy for everyone all at the same time. Such accomplished writing.

STAR TREK - THE ORIGINAL SERIES Season One, Episode Seven: What Are Little Girls Made Of?