Coastalmedusa - Catsandcameras - Tumblr Blog

Reblog this if it’s okay to DM you and shoot the friendship shot.

I had the pleasure of seeing @hellenhighwater 's eight dark purple pedestals and the very cool sculptures at Art prize this afternoon!

Art by Boris Groh

this is amazing 🐈 ♥️♥️

The whole damn state works for the feds

cleaning up your own living space: sucks ass

cleaning up a friend or romantic partner's living space: deeply satisfying and even a little entertaining

scientists can't explain this

My favorite exhibit at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art was a gorgeous painting called "Still Life with Cat and Fish" by Jean-Baptise-Simeon Chardin. There was that lightning-in-a-bottle moment where you just sort of really fixate on a particular painting the whole time. Where you're going through the rest of the pieces and trying to absorb them and learn, but in the back of your mind, it's all sort of connecting back to that one thing that stuck with you. You read about how to make pottery glazes from clay, from rust, all the reds the world has to offer, and it all just reminds you of the bloodless, bloodless flesh of a gutted fish painted in 1728. You think about your cat back home, how she's getting old, how maybe you ought to paint her. You think about fishing with your father as a kid, how he never made it to old, how maybe you ought to paint him, too. You ponder the phrase "still life" in a real existential way that makes you feel pretentious. When you get to the gift shop and find a sketchbook small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, you snatch it up quicker than you mean to, make a bit of a scene, laugh a little too loud. The cover is cropped up close on the calico cat, dead fish out of frame in a particularly sanitary way that reminds you that people probably have more positive memories of calico cats than dead fish, and the colors aren't quite right, but you feel a little less silly for having been so enchanted as you flip concrete evidence of its marketability in your hands, make small-talk with the cashier, think about death, try not to think about death, try not to think about death, try not to think about death.

Second favorite exhibit wasn't an exhibit but was this girl with pink hair who had portraits of Tim and Eric, who you may know from television series Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, tattooed on the backs of her calves.

tumblr users will see the word shrimp and black out and hit reblog without reading the rest of the post

🦐

the epidemic of grown adults playing tiktoks at full volume in public is rampant why are you acting like a 7 year old with their first ipad you have a mortgage

did it work

Lily Evans Fic Rec List

Part One: Blood Magic

These fics incorporate a Lily who did intentional magic to defeat Voldemort rather than the "it was Love" explanation. If anyone has more recs along this line, please please leave it replies/reblogs, I'm always looking for more!

the stranger in the shell of a lover by @slashmarks (Snape/Lily, 11.3k, T)

Rec: Slashmarks writes my favorite Lily of all time, and this is the literal best concept - Lily as DADA teacher who breaks Voldemort's Defense curse, with a hilarious and compelling Snape/Lily teacher romance.

This was very like Sev. He was good and he was bad; she loved him and hated him and it was simply a coin toss which would come out on top at any given occasion. He was her first best friend and the closest she had ever had, the boy she had snuck out at night to meet and whisper about her fights with Tuney and who had in turn muttered recalcitrant confessions about his parents' fights. They had made up spells together, learned about illegal magic and acquired the first gasps of the skills they would use in the war: Sev to kill and Lily to save. He was the only person she had ever let read pieces of her diary. He had spent years helping torment her muggleborn friends until finally she had refused to let him make her an exception, and then she had been included, too.

The Art Of Dying by The_wig_is_a_metaphor (James/Lily, 11.4k, M)

Rec: I love the magical worldbuilding details in here, Lily’s dynamic with Dorcas, and conflict with James over Dark magic.

“Lily—it's not a waste of time—the power of names—” “Is a superstition, like everything else—like your fear of me, and of what I'm doing—oh yes, you think I haven't noticed?” Lily sneers, and it's a strange, ugly expression that makes her face look wrong and unfamiliar. “You think I haven't noticed how you avoid me? How you can't stand to touch me, or my son? How you hate me for what I made you watch—what I made you do? So reluctant to contribute even a moment of pain for the safety of my son—” 'My son', again. Not 'our son'.

where dust was once a man by slashmarks (Lily/Narcissa, 3.3k, T)

Rec: A Lily Comes Back Wrong/is semi-resurrected fic - the writing is stunning and it utilizes the parallels between Lily and Narcissa, and Lily and Voldemort, so well. Plus there's a great Narcissa and Bellatrix dynamic.

"Poor Narcissa Black," said Lily Evans, mocking, from her bedroom inside Malfoy Manor. She spoke to Narcissa by the name Narcissa still called herself in her head, the unmarried youngest Black sister forever in her mind. "You have what you wanted, don't you? Your pureblood husband, your ancestral manor, your pureblood son. You have your sister back, the only sister you deign to acknowledge, and you have your service to a Dark Lord, but it isn't what you thought it would be, is it? He's going to take your son, the same way he tried to take mine... But you won't do what I did. You can't do what I did, but I don't think you'd want to anyway."

we’re already in the aftermath by slashmarks (Sirius/Lily/Remus, 15.8k, T)

Rec: Master of Death Lily grappling with her and Harry surviving post 1981 and magical Britain's reaction to her post defeating Voldemort, with a dark and fascinating spin on James/Lily.

Lily had been dead for months in a very literal sense. She had planned for this, of course; planned and calculated and bargained for Death to take her place and leave her waiting, asleep more than gone. She hadn't known what it would feel like: the waking, the return to life, the horrifying, nauseating fear and the relief and the guilt. Harry was alive. Harry was fine. James was not, and it was her fault. She had planned for James's death and accepted it as a part of the price of her bargain with Death. If James had been willing to go along with what she was doing, to hear about it and help and participate, she might have saved him. She might have tried to persuade him anyway, but of course she had seen his horrified objection to even so much as she had to do for Dumbledore to break Voldemort's curses and had known better.

defector of a kind by slashmarks (Sirius/Lily, Lily & Marlene, Orion & Sirius, 7.8k, T)

Rec: A fic about Lily getting involved in the political situation during the First War, with really fascinating Orion characterization.

Voldemort was supposed to have mastered death, and bragged about it constantly. Lily was going to beat him at his own game – but first she had to understand it. - Sirius sighed. "Did you really write to my cousin and tell her she and the – and Voldemort screwed up a curse analysis?" "Yeah, I really did. Fifth year." "Jeezus," Sirius said, imitating Mary – not Lily. She had known she needed to blend by the time she started first year, from Sev. It was a strange kind of caution that had governed her cursing and her clothes, even the length she let her mother cut her hair as a child, but hadn't told her not to write letters correcting the leaders of a fascist revolution in their intellectual endeavors.

Lily Potter & the Lightning Bolt Scar by rosestone (Sirius & Lily, Harry & Lily, 15.5k, T)

Rec: Lily is resurrected by the Golden Trio; absolutely fantastic Lily characterization. Rosestone also wrote the fic Cure centered on an OC which incorporates Lily deflecting the Killing Curse intentionally.

"You're probably thinking about that time I booby-trapped that old Order safehouse before the Death Eaters got there." Sirius scoffed as he shoved a pile of blankets away.  "You booby-trapped it while they were blasting the wards down!  You almost killed yourself doing whatever that ritual was you made up on the bloody fly - and wasn't that a nice thing to discover while I was trying to drag you out, that you were playing with magic the Ministry outlawed for a damn good reason like it was Baby's First Potion-Making Kit -" - Magic surged around Lily, dangerous and wild and full of possibility, and she laughed.  Maybe this would go wrong.  Maybe she'd drag her own soul out alongside the horcrux.  But right now - right now, with magic curled around her like a lover's caress, she wasn't sure she believed anything could go wrong ever again. Voldemort wouldn't know what hit him.

The Recruitment by silenceinwinter2019 (James/Lily, 8.4k, T)

Rec: This explores Voldemort recruiting Lily to the Death Eaters. I adore the interactions between Voldemort and Lily, and Bellatrix and Lily, in this.

She barked out a laugh. “Am I supposed to kiss your feet with teary thanks now? Singing thank you, my lord for letting me live over my son’s corpse? Geez, what kind of fucked up family did you have?” Those red eyes were unreadable, but his magic closed in on her, and it smoldered, turning oppressive. “If your mind is made to die with your spawn, I will not waste my time convincing you otherwise,” he said. “Let your foolish Gryffindor honor serve you right then.”

Part Two

Groundhog day by @artemisia-black (James/Lily, Harry & Lily, Harry & James, 900 words, G)

Rec: A beautiful snapshot of the Potter family with such vivid descriptions.

And as a squeal of Harry's laughter washed over her, her heart beat a rhythm of contradiction—each beat a testament to the love that overflowed for the small, fragile life they had created. Yet, each beat pulsed with an undercurrent of fear so palpable it threatened to consume her. The love she held for Harry was a fierce, enveloping entity; it cocooned him in an embrace so tight that the thought of anything piercing that cocoon sent tremors through her. 

but tonight your hand is steady by @broomsticks/leftsidedown (James/Lily, 1.8k, T)

Rec: "Five times Lily walked away and one time she stayed" - a wonderful character study.

That first night she thought she’d be able to appreciate forever how this new world sparkled—its floating candles and starry-sky ceilings and the talking paintings and walking suits of armour—but a week was all she got. She’d been so focused on getting to her next class—left around the marble bust of Warwick the Whatever, up two flights of stairs—or was it just one? What day of the week was this again?—that she registered the hard shove against her shoulder only when she hit the ground, quills snapping and inkpots shattering.

Stay Close by @turanga4 (Lily & Harry, 389 words, T)

Rec: A evocative and heartbreaking mini fic about The Forest Again.

Her beautiful boy, resting in her arms in the place where she belonged. Her brave, gentle son, laying murdered on this ground. It wouldn’t hurt. It wouldn’t hurt. But the idea of it pierced her more keenly than even her own death had, more even than meeting his starved eyes through the Mirror. Time must have meant something. Pain must have been possible. She remembered that she had wept as she beamed at him, and he’d seemed to do the same. Seeing, now, her child grown up and standing in the Forest, she found herself longing for a thing that she recoiled from, and felt herself caught between the sadness and the joy.

three knocks upon the door by @lunapwrites (Lily/Tonks, Sirius & Lily & Remus, 6.9k, E)

Rec: A Lily/Tonks casefic that sold me on the ship, and I especially love Lily's dynamic with Sirius and Remus in this. These characters are all feral and wild and in love with each other.

No, it was rather more the fact that Lily Potter had emerged from thin air behind her with the unconscious body of the real Ministry official Tonks was impersonating and dropped him at Lupin’s feet like a fresh kill. It was the fact that at a nod from her, Black and Lupin both fell upon him like a pair of starving dogs.

wrest up by the root by leftsidedown (Lily/Astoria, 200 words, M)

Rec: The rarepair I never knew I needed, and such an effective fic in so few words. These lines absolutely haunted me:

Shouts in the distance, but she heard only a whisper: “The only perfect mother is a dead one.”

flowers kiss and miss by leftsidedown (Lily/Narcissa, 1.4k, T)

Rec: Stunning writing and characterization through several mini fics weaved together.

That redhead Gryffindor who hangs with that Snape boy — Evans — has some awfully odd ideas. She thinks mermaids are red-haired. She thinks they sing. She thinks they’re beautiful.

some such trouble cling like vines by slashmarks (Snape & Lily, Lily & Harry, Lily & Mary, 3.4k, T)

Rec: An HBP canon divergent fic where Harry finds a box of Lily's letter in Snape's office right after Snape kills Dumbledore. The Lily voice in her letters is so wonderful and accurate to canon.

I've had about a million ideas for that potion we were working on. They're attached but promise me you won't try them until I'm back at school! First of all I'd never forgive you if I didn't get to see how they work out, but second you know it's not safe to experiment alone. Especially with a potion you'll be trying on yourself. Really, promise me - I enchanted the letter so once you get this far you have to promise me out loud or it'll all go blank, including my notes...

Defying Divination by shaggydogstail (Lily/Alice, Lily/Narcissa, Lily/Rosmerta, Lily & Sirius, Lily & Severus, T, 32k)

Rec: A lovely weaving in of tarot in this, and includes some of my favorite Lily femslash and Lily and Sirius friendship. Shaggydogstail writes an excellent Lily in general, reccing all their fics with her!

Professor Dammerall was a nice enough man, made bearable by the fact that he didn’t seem to take his own lessons too seriously, but Lily still found it difficult to concentrate on the meanings of shapes in tea dregs or crystal balls. There seemed to be an extraordinary number of rules, all of them fuzzy and indefinite, and she never could quite absorb them all. Underneath it all, Lily resisted the idea of Divination, of a future mapped out and governed by the fates. She never had much liked being told what to do.

a meeting of the minds by slashmarks (Sirius/Lily, 3.6k, E)

Rec: I've recced this a billion times but it remains a fave.

"Merlin, you're gorgeous," Sirius said, once he had her bra off (with minimal fumbling, but then he had dated the muggleborn Valerie Webster last year before her whole family was killed, so this was no large surprise). "Sweet of you," Lily said cynically but she also took his hands and put them, lightly, on her chest, so it had worked well for him. "You can touch, you know," she said, and was unable to keep it from coming out shyly. "Thank you," Sirius said, sincerely - she could really see why half of the school was in love with him, damn it -

Tall women are so cool bc like. wow. there's so much of her

Lighthouses of the Great Lakes.

by researchremora

this sucks so bad i need to [remembers suicide jokes only worsen my mental health] put on the best talent show this towns ever seen

Did you know a wild hog can be so hearty that it can take multiple high-powered rifle shots to bring it down? Did you know hogs can breed at such a rate to be so pervasive and omnipresent in an environment that they can threaten entire ecosystems? Did you know that bad code can act in a similar way— Causing problems down the line that are hard to identify the root cause of, and once you do, debugging that bad code can take hours, if not days of work? Did you know that, when asked by my boss what I was doing that had been taking up so much of my time these past few days, ‘wrangling my hog’ was a really bad answer?

My friend pioneered a game on accident called Let Hit after an embarrassing episode with a paper ball. It was the opposite of catch.

When someone threw something at you you had to willfully let it hit you. It wasn’t Let Hit if someone threw something at an unsuspecting victim. You had to see whatever it was coming and force yourself to take no action.

We got really good at Let Hit.

At group gatherings we’d play it like it was common knowledge, someone would chuck something at someone in the know and they’d just let it hit them and we’d explode with praise. “You’re so good at Let Hit!” “Look at this guy, he’s a champion!” “Not even a blink, he’s so talented!”

And it was so stupid but everyone not in on the game would be like ??? What are the rules??? And we’d just tell them what it was and you could tell we were selling them on the idea that it was fun but it was just getting stuff thrown at you.

So they’d start playing too and we’d just be like, “Oh yeah, you’re okay, I guess.” “Need to work on your form a bit” “Not everyone is good right away, y'know?”

Everyone Really wanted to be good at Let Hit. And it was literally just us throwing garbage at each other. My teen years were wild.

I was today years old. That is disgusting.

No Child Left Behind is one of the worst things to ever be incentivized in schools. It was signed into law when I was 14. Reading Rainbow was my show as a kid. LeVar Burton played a big part in why I became an avid reader to date. The joy of it. It's an adventure around the globe and through different time periods without stepping on a plane or time machine.

Children parrot behavior. In grade school, I always wanted to read the same amount of books as my teachers (50 books) and managed to double that each year. Before No Child Left Behind, book fairs and Scholastic catalogs were a serious matter like your grandma's Fingerhut catalogs. Libraries were (and still are) a wonderland.

Reading comprehension and proficiency in schools has been declining for decades. A crisis. The joy of books isn't pushed anymore and I'm always saddened by it. It's one of the reasons why I post my book reviews and recommendations on here, as well as posts from others to encourage reading and (novel) writing. Kids will parrot your behavior while the education system sadly fails to return as that example.

my jaw hit the floor

on ao3 like some of these doves aren't even wounded

what is the tastiest kind of rock

sandsrone

Stiles Stilinski and the Weasel-Lookin' Werewolves by @quackquackcey (wc27499, explicit)

Summary: A strange dream two weeks before Laura Hale's death leaves its mark on Stiles as well as unanswered questions, and after Scott's foray into the world of the supernatural upon being bitten, Stiles ends up forming a mutually beneficial deal with who else but Derek Hale, the only other werewolf they know of.~ 🐺 But is it really just a deal?

I love re-writes. This one is especially fun, with the perhaps-time traveling Stiles.