#Who'd have thought.

[winged-void]

"Get bullied by a delusional woman** with a superiority complex" turns out to be a popular subject here.

[yes-i-have-thoughts]

Blood and Roses (FAITH AU)

1

2

3

4

“Whatcha doin’, Mark?”

Sarah’s voice snapped her brother out of his thoughts. The ten-year-old stared at him, her eyes still full of wonder for her “cool older brother” even at the age where she should start detesting the adults around her.

“Nothing, Srook.” Mark flipped the booklet in front of him closed and ruffled his sister’s short blonde hair. “Just making note of something.”

Sarah batted her brother’s hands away from her hair and gave him a playful glare. He shook his head with a small smile.

“Sarah, stop bothering your brother and get ready for soccer.” The two’s mother flicked her spoon at them like she was wagging her finger. “Mark, finish your writing. And stop distracting your sister.”

“Wh–I’m just sitting here!”

“I don’t wanna go to soccer,” Sarah whined over her brother’s arguing.

“You are going to play soccer whether you like it or not, young lady.” Their mom stood up, dumped out her bowl of now flavoured milk and put it beside the sink. “I won’t have you being lazy all summer like your brother.”

“I’m going to look for a job!”

“Uh huh. Sarah, upstairs, now!”

Sarah whined again as she started up the stairs. Mark ran his fingers through his hair. “Look, mom, I am going to start looking.”

“It took you a year to get your driver’s licence. Who’s to say a job will be any easier for you?”

He bristled. “That’s not fair–”

“You’re a slow learner. I’ve heard it all before. Do you know what your problem really is?”

Mark rolled his eyes. Here we go. “I’m lazy.”

“Sloth is a sin, Mark Healthcliff.”

“Yes, I know.”

“And yet you laze about anyway.”

“I’m not–love of god.”

“Don’t use the lord’s name in vain.”

He was starting to lose his patience. “Mom, I promise, I’m not trying to be lazy. I’m doing my best with school and stuff, okay?”

“Don’t you take that tone of voice with me, young man!”

Mark winced and hunched his shoulders, mumbling an apology. His mom crossed her arms and pinned him with a glare before going to the stairwell. “Sarah, are you ready yet?!”

“I’m COMING!!”

“I gotta start getting that girl up early,” their mother whispered to Mark. Still bristling internally, Mark didn’t respond.

Sarah was bouncing down the stairs a few minutes later, dragging a large red bag behind her. “Mom, can Mark drive me to soccer practice today? Pretty please?”

“No, I’m taking you. He’s job hunting today.”

“What? But moooom!”

“She’s right, for once.” Mark leaned back in his chair, meeting his sister’s eyes. “I’m trying to get an interview somewhere.”

Sarah grumbled something under her breath, then smiled brightly at her mother when she gave her a suspicious look. She ditched her red bag to dart over and give her brother a quick hug before heading out the door. Their mother left some last-minute orders before she left: wash the dishes, do your laundry and clean your room if you’re not going to be on the phone all day.

Mark drummed his fingers on the table until they left, then grabbed the book he’d been writing in and headed to his room. The dishes and everything else could wait. Something more important was nagging at his mind.

He was up late last night, waiting for Cesar to return from whatever had scared him. He’d been incredibly vague about it, which wasn’t like him at all. He’d put the phone down somewhere, likely speaker-down; and then it’d been hung up without a word. Maybe he thought that since he had been away for so long that Mark hung up first? Should he have said something?

In any case, he should’ve called him back. Here’s hoping it’s not too late.

Calling the phone in Cesar’s room got him nothing, so he tried the house phone. His mother picked up almost instantly. “Hello?”

“Hi, Mrs. Torres, it’s Mark. Is Cesar around?”

Cesar’s mother hesitated for a moment. “No, I…Haven’t seen him since last night. He’s not at your house?”

“No, but he called me last night.”

“What did he say to you?”

Oh man. From the tone of her voice, either Cesar was in big trouble or he was about to be if Mark said too much. “Not a whole lot, just that he was going to check on something. He asked me not to hang up on him.”

Cesar’s mother’s voice broke when she spoke next. “Oh my god.”

“What’s going on?”

“Mark, he hasn’t been home since he came back from the graduation party. He was acting so odd, but he said it was because the others were smoking something…”

There was a long silence between them. There was a soft sniff from the other end before Cesar’s mom hung up the phone. Mark uneasily put his own down.

Cesar has either been kidnapped or ran away, and he was the last one to hear from him. But what he heard wasn’t going to be the slightest bit helpful.

What had happened to him? How was he supposed to help any investigation? If Cesar did take off, why call Mark and then never respond?

The phone ringing again startled him out of his thoughts and he picked it up, hoping against logical reason that Cesar was somehow on the other end. “Hello?”

“Greetings, Mark Heathcliff. I heard that you had been job hunting. Well, we have a job for you. Come to this address…”

–

"House cleaning pays well," Summer said. "I had that as a job last summer."

"I guess." Mark hunched his shoulders, feeling a little foolish about complaining now. "But I just…I don't know. I feel weird about this."

"So they knew your name and phone number! Big deal! God, you're so paranoid sometimes."

Ruby swatted the back of her older sister's head. "Lay off, Summer."

"What, Cesar's not here to defend him anymore so now you're doing it?"

"Shut up!"

Summer laughed and raised her hands to get away from the redhead's onslaught. "Alright, Jesus! I'll stop!"

"Where are they sending you, anyway?”  Ruby asked, turning to Mark.

He shrugged. “Some place on the edge of the county, I think. I’ve never heard the address before.”

“How much will you be making?”

“Ten bucks an hour.”

“Well over minimum wage, then!” Summer grinned. “Good for you! Hey, maybe I should track down this person myself and try to get the job.”

“Great idea! Then you can get lured out to the edge of town and get murdered too.”

Summer laughed. “That probably would happen, yeah. A pretty young thing like me?”

A well-loved red van pulled up to the sidewalk the three were standing at. Summer waved at the driver and turned to Mark. “Well, I’m off to check out the campus. Good luck with your job.”

“Tell your sister I said–HI!”

Ruby squeaked when her sister yanked on her arm, dragging her towards the back door of the van. The two had a small playfight before Summer ran around the back of the van to the passenger side door and jumped in when the van driver opened the door for her.

The van tore off in a cloud of gravel dirt. Mark shook his head before turning back towards home.

His mind kept turning, cycling through two different points. Cesar up and vanishing and his upcoming job at a very strange address. Were the two points connected, or was he overthinking it?

God, he wanted to figure it out with someone. But the person he usually calls about overthinking moments is gone.

[hussyknee]

my disabled ass, after (1)good day: "obviously I am cured. in fact it may have all been in my head. who can say? now to rejoin society!"

me, the next day: "it has come to my attention that i may be chronically ill."

[hyacinthsdiamonds]

You know, in movies where they get a character to essentially glow up to seduce someone, but then they're really, really bad at flirting? That's Charles, seemingly being assigned by the GPDA to swear, and him essentially becoming a wide-eyed country girl in the big city for the first time during this mission* lmao. He tried so hard to make it look casual, but he practically tripped over himself to bring Max and his penalty up at every opportunity in preparation of dropping the swear bomb and possibly joining him in community service 😭✋️.

[mindibindi]

The Doctor (having yet another mid-chase identity crisis): If you take away my arrogant certainty, my fix-all sonic screwdriver, my magic TARDIS, my regenerating Timelord genes, who even am I?

Donna (used to mid-chase identity crises now that she has all her memories): My Favourite Martian? My new housecat? The skinny weirdo I let live in my garden in exchange for him putting the bins out? I dunno. Come home, have a decent meal and we'll figure it out.

[varyathevillain]

no joke but what I really want for Buddy Daddies as a fandom is to make fanart and fanfic post present time ep12 where Rei wears an arm orthosis when working.

I think varied disability aids being represented would be fantastic, and personally would write Rei as someone being deeply proud of something he's done for his family, but also understanding with time that using an orthosis also helps him at work and in raising Miri. with a giant portion of mobility/motorics aids being represented by prosthetics, seeing more variety and exploring it in fiction would also help making a step in normalising disability treatments.

[oatmealcrisp-freak]

It makes my heart ache that Penber starved Naomi of the validation she so rightly deserved so much that the second a freaking kid goes, "I think you're right" her eyes light up and she says, "Really? You mean that?" Honey... Oh honey...

She is a former FBI agent. He is a highschooler. LIKE.

Light's literally not even gassing her up. He's just acknowledging and respecting her intelligence and treating her like a goddamn person, and it has her practically over the moon enough to smile since probably the first time Penber died. She's being told that her deductions make sense. Her brain is worth something after all. Light's not lying when he tells her her theory could become central to the Kira case. It's literally the truth. He acknowledges this to himself. It's basic fact. And he treats it like such, and verbalizes that to her as such after a touch of light skepticism to see the strings she's connected. And she's all for it.

And she has indeed connected them. Every single one. Everything she's saying makes sense, but she's been so goddamn trained by Penber that she was very nearly resigned to not being believed. She's adamant to explain her conspiracy board piece by piece in person because she's so acutely aware of getting swept aside, but she still knows she's right, and that her deduction is important, and she overcomes that fear and goes anyway.

She is a careful, intelligent woman. She IS. All Light does is respect that and she's suddenly spilling fucking everything to a kid she doesn't know, who she knows is tied to the police, who she knows have a leak, who she knows her fiance was investigating. She plays some cards close to her chest but she's just so swept away by being believed for once that. Well. She dies.

Light very quickly falls into honeytrapping and using women as tools but based on this I wonder how much of it is his. I don't know. Headcanon territory alert but. Seeing a reflection of the self in them? IIRC he only does this to women who are blatantly attracted to him. He doesn't seek to use Naomi in any way. Manipulate her, yes, as she's a very real threat but she's also blatantly a person to him even before he learns how much she knows. I very well could be reaching, but I could see Light seeing people who are attracted to him and being disgusted by them. He knows he's attractive on the surface, but underneath...

Does Light see the world as rotting because he's viewing it through the lens of self? Ykno?

They see his face and swoon and suddenly it's like they don't seek to know him at all. He's effectively been a prop his whole life, a model 'good son', and he sees that he's become a prop to these people too. So, too, do they become props to him. He's serving his worth to them by just being there - it's practically reciprocal, and therefore the fair and right thing to do.

Light uses Misa. He's not kind to her. He uses Takada. He's really not all that kind to her either, though he's less blatant about it to her face for the most of it. He cheats on them with each other aaaaand literally doesn't care if they might be hurt. But he still trusts Takada to effectively become his second, and trusts Misa to information gather and write names and follow a plan outside his immediate supervision. He is a two-timing manipulative gaslighting bag of dicks who'd happily sell them to the devil for a corn chip, but I'm tempted to think that's because he knows their worth, their abilities, sees his need of them, and is therefore always keeping that in mind as he tries to seduce them sweetly to where he needs them to be. Light thinks women are easy as hell, his opinion of their intelligence is definitely a hand waggle at best but he still sees them. And honestly, he thinks everyone's intelligence is a hand waggle at best, and he thinks everybody is easy to manipulate, and he's, frankly, not always proven wrong. His dismissal is pretty sex-neutral. Women probably get singled out because statistically she's gonna be straight and therefore attracted to him and that's just another button he can mash. Looking at Mikami, I have no doubts he'd treat men who are interested in him in the same way.

Naomi, obviously, is not attracted to him in this way even though he's able to please her with almost excessive ease. Naomi therefore seems to retain her personhood in his mind. 'She's just a woman', yeah, he thinks to himself as he's freaking out and going over worst case scenarios where he might actually have to assault her. She's smaller than him. Her long hair means she has an easy handhold. He's not really figuring out that she could kick his ass before he can do so much as yelp... he still hesitates, doesn't go for it, and finds another way. He thinks to himself that she's too careful for him to successfully assault her even though she's 'just a woman'. People say he taunts her after she walks away to commit her suicide but I'm not so sure he is. He's ensuring his alibi publicly in every way he can, to anyone who happens to pass them by, to anyone who can see him smile, to anyone who can hear him and register his 'friendly' voice the moment he's not speaking so only Naomi can hear. Naomi is a threat. Naomi is careful. Naomi is very, very fucking smart. Light needs to ensure his victory as much as possible, and is acting to do this from every angle even as Naomi is in the grips of the Death Note's thrall because she's goddamn Naomi Misora.

And Light, though he's only met her very briefly, knows that. There is no way he didn't enjoy that cat and mouse game. Of course he revelled in his victory. She was an exceptional opponent who very nearly had him in checkmate several times in, like, the span of a half hour. L's been at this for months and he's never gotten as close to catching Kira as Naomi did lmao Him being giddy makes sense in that context.

Penber trusts Naomi enough to get him tea and keep house. He tells her as much to her face. All she is, is his fiance. That's all she's good for anymore - whatever her capability, whatever her intelligence, whatever her reputation 'before', they're now worthless. He'd never even think to try and manipulate her to make use of her blatant fucking intelligence because he literally doesn't see it. He dismisses her skills out of hand. What a waste. What a goddamn waste. If Naomi had been the one investigating Light, he'd be in custody before Ryuk even told him he was being stalked.

[franeridart]

The Housecat Philosophy - Ep 30

Ep 00 || < Prev || Next >

Read the next four episodes on Patreon || support me on ko-fi~✨

[liz-wes]

wise words from genovia's current and former queens

[nick-nellson]

[rebouks]

Previous // Next

Brynn: You want to talk about it? Wyatt: Not really. [Brynn shrugged, gently running her fingers through Wyatt’s hair-.. though it wasn’t quite as relaxing as usual] Wyatt: Do you? Brynn: You have changed, he has not-.. what else is to say? Wyatt: Nothing, I suppose. Brynn: Ellis will be a good big brother; we make sure of it. [Wyatt hummed absently, his mind elsewhere] Wyatt: I’m gonna bring him in here for now… [Brynn nodded sleepily in agreement, rolling over as Wyatt left the room]

[little-mouse-adventures]

@orangerosebush's post here, with my comment and @fowlblue's tags today got me thinking.

Artemis Senior has been teaching his son matters of business from a young age. Not only was Artemis, at 11 years old, discussing stocks with his father, but Fowl Senior had been imparting his wisdom onto his son for years by that point, discussing the ever-increasing value of gold with him before tucking him into bed. Even outside of pure monetary value, Sr. had tried to go legitimate with his business dealings, leading Artemis to have a few legal ventures of his own.

We also see very early on in the books that Artemis has been regularly using Butler as a resource for his plots: bouncing ideas off him was apparently a fairly common tactic when he was scheming.

Both Artemis Senior and Butler are interested in (or at least, not opposed to) educating Artemis on the ways of their lifestyle(s). It would be Artemis Senior who would have taught his son the value of banks and safety deposit boxes and hidden safes but it was Butler who was actively working with Artemis to rob those safety deposit boxes.

In the same vein of breaking-and-entering, TLC also gives us the fun little moment where Butler hands Artemis his own lockpicks, to get into the workings of the bomb.

With one line we learn that Artemis knows how to pick locks, but does not have his own set of lockpicks. Butler, on the other hand, has both the tools and knowledge how to use them. Partnered with a brief mention in TTP of some the specific trades of those previously employed by Artemis Senior (including such things as crime lords, insider traders, and cat burglars), we can extrapolate that Artemis Senior would generally hire someone to pick a lock for him, rather than do so himself.

It's pretty logical to conclude then that Artemis learned big-picture management from his father, and day-to-day skillsets from his bodyguard.

Essentially, Artemis Senior taught Artemis how to run a criminal empire. Butler taught Artemis how to be a criminal.

[novodontia]

I think I just realized that my type is pathetic men

[mofsblog]

Hhhhhh do you ever think about how there's a high chance the reason why Oscar got attached to Arthur so quickly is because he was lonely.

[yesloulou]

Daniel goes on Nico's podcast, May 2019 | via @ NicoRosberg

[valhethella]

The divine banquet of menses || full version

for @turianmailman - their Tav, Blaethe, and Astarion