Lust for Life

The "Grocery Shop like a Boss" post is making rounds again, and one of the bitchlings commented that they are moving out on their own for the first time so they were collecting ideas/recipes.

Which got me to wondering; do we have a "How to Preserve Your More Precious than Gold Grocery Haul" post floating around? And if not, should we start one?

We do not! And I agree--we should start one!!!

I'll start:

Tomatoes, carrots, and peppers can all be frozen without any preparation whatsoever. Just bag 'em and toss 'em in the freezer. So if you're worried you won't get to those vegetables before they go bad, freeze them for later recipes. They can then be used in a stirfry, curry, soup, chili, sauce, salsa, smoothie, whatever. And it's much easier, cheaper, and faster than canning.

WHO'S NEXT, BABIES? How are we preserving our grocery hauls?? This WILL become an official Bitches Get Riches World Heritage Post.

Cosmic Truths of Cheap Grocery Shopping: 12 Universal Rules to Save Money on Food, No Matter What You Buy or Where You Shop

Recently I was reminiscing with some friends in my current fandom about BBC Merlin - a show I greatly enjoyed to start with but never finished watching because (a) I heard the quality declined steeply, and (b) I didn't want to watch Arthur die. There was a stunning fanvid that gave me a lot of foreboding tragic Arthur feels, which coupled with all the great fic that that fandom produced, honestly probably greatly fed that desire to peace out before he met his tragic end. (I never wanna see my faves die. This is not the only show I never finished because of this aversion!).

I loved that vid and I wondered if it was still up anywhere. I managed to remember the name of the song and lo and behold, I found the vid! It's "Red" by obsessive24 from 2008, set to the song by Elbow and still embedded on livejournal and up on vimeo (password: merlin).

And despite the 2008-level video resolution - 360p! - it really holds up. A beautiful song with beautiful editing and effects. I dunno how many times I watched it back then. And I found an lj post from another fan who loved it so much they did a very in-depth review complete with timestamps and screenshots! One fan crafted the vid as a love letter to Arthur and his tragedy, and another fan wrote a detailed analysis as a love letter to the vid. I love fandom so much sometimes.

Scrolling through the vidder's youtube channel and looking at all the canons she's vidded, it really hit me what a golden era of fandom that late 2000s-early 2010s felt like to me, such a beautiful blossoming of communities and fanworks fertilised by improving technology and a diversity of fan cultures. Improved home computers, editing software, DVD ripping and torrents meant that more people could make vids; broadband internet and sites like youtube and vimeo enabled easy streaming and sharing (as opposed to downloading a whole vid to watch before you knew if you'd even like it!); portable mp3 players encouraged the proliferation of podfic and fandom podcasts (I loved hearing the diversity of accents of my fellow fans from all over), and themed playlists (I got so many amazing music recs from those things!); and tumblr boosted appreciation for beautiful and creative gifs and gifsets as well as other visual arts.

Seeing generative AI content spreading in fandom - AI-written fics are in my tiny fandoms on AO3 now and it makes me very sad - and having started writing my own fic recently (better late than never!), I've been thinking a lot about creativity and why we do what we do when sometimes it's really hard work. And it really does come down to love - for a canon, for a character or ship, for our fellow fans, for the sheer joy of creation.

I don't have many answers to how to discourage AI in "fanworks" (in quotes because if a fan didn't actually make it is it a fanwork? I think not!) but I really hope it doesn't become an entrenched norm. I would much rather read baby's actual first fanfic or a fic that is full of SPAG errors but is written from the heart by a fan who loves their canon - or got extremely pissed off at it and wrote the fic to right some wrongs - than perfect but soulless prose written by a machine that can only churn out what it does because other people stole fan- and published works and fed them to it.

Can fandom please keep on being creative and DIY? Don't make a computer program write your fic or make your edits, please. Fandom is about imperfect love for imperfect canons and people, not about churning out pixel-perfect content for the content gods.

Black people fight for everybody. We stand in solidarity with women, lgbt people, poor people all over the world of every skin color and background. Every religion and nationality.

Today, stand with us. Be with us. Tell a black person you love them. Hug a black person (with consent). Ask that hot black girl out today. Make a black person smile. Black lives matter to everybody and you matter to us.

Stand with us on Juneteenth like we stand with you all year round, and I hope a happy Pride month continues for all of us

Lost my mind a little and added (if my math is correct) 5,615 beads to Nim Teasdale's Odenwald pattern. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing!

The goal was “soothingly weighted but not uncomfortable to wear, even as someone with chronic pain.” It could have been a little heavier, so maybe I’ll make a shawl with larger beads another time, but I’m very pleased with this one. I used size 6/0 seed beads, applied as I go with a .6mm crochet hook.

Yarn-wise, used 2 cakes of YarnArt Flowers. I knitted the fully purple sections from both, then knitted all the way through the yellow-oranges with a single ball. When I hit the beginning of red-oranges, I used yarn from both cakes, alternating between them. (Not the entirety of both, I played it by ear to make sure I made it through the full rainbow.)

I do have edited charts with bead placements. I will only share them with Nim's permission.

So let me offer some words of reassurance:

Growing up is great. I know it's scary and sometimes it sucks, but big picture, I genuinely think growing up is great.

(I say this as someone who had a p Not Fun Time when I was younger, so btw, that's both my bias and also proof that you do NOT have to have had a good childhood/adolescence to enjoy growing up.)

Leaving middle school? Fantastic. One of the greatest blessings of life is no longer being in middle school. At least 95% of adults will agree with me on this. (translation: ages 11-14 in the US)

Leaving high school? A bigger jump, and adulthood has a lot of stuff to figure out, but honestly really nice! The vast majority of adults would also agree with me that "No longer being in high school" is one of the great blessings of life! You just get so much more autonomy, potentially in not having to go to school/do homework and/or just as a newly legal adult. Also, most jobs are both easier and more bullshit than high school, and college is at least way less strict/gives you so much more autonomy/treats you like an adult (translation: ages 14-18 in the US)

(And because I know some of you are like me and definitely wondering: No, you do not have to ask to go to the bathroom or to leave the class in college, and yes, it is glorious.)

Leaving college? A good thing! Next stage in your journey! Yeah, if your college experience didn't suck, you probably have some things you're really gonna be sad to lose, but that's not inherently a bad thing! And if your college experience did suck, then the prize is no longer being in college! And whatever the case, just like for high school, I promise that the vast majority of jobs are both easier and more bs than being in school (translation: tertiary education, ages = adult, yes this explicitly includes community college and trade school)

eat your young | dedra & syril get some! pull up the ladder when the flood comes. syril never left that sunless room. dedra falls alone.

made for @nubreed73's vidukon 2026 vidshow on physical space and its emotional significance

As in, do any of your memories take place during the 90s (yes, a single memory from 1999 counts).