#deferentiality

[nyoomerr]

Fic prompt: SY is the chosen cleric of LBH, the world's most possessive divine emperor, accent on the divine. He did not sign up for this. (Meanwhile, LBH is trying to figure out how he can fit a divine empress into this pantheon)

i actually got very into this AU once i thought about it for 0.5 seconds, so here's a lil drabble that i hope to expand on and put on ao3 in the future ;>

---

Shen Yuan wouldn’t consider himself to be particularly religious. He believed in the gods, of course - the proof of their existence is written on every street corner and under every roof. The lights of the city that have no discernible power source outside of the goddess of invention herself, the unemptiable food basket that had been gifted to Shen Yuan’s father by the god of plenty, the buzz of raw energy in the air each weekend when the city gathers to say its prayers. 

Undoubtedly, Shen Yuan had grown up in a city blessed by the gods, so naturally he believes in them. He just doesn’t much care for them.

A city blessed by the gods is also a city kept by them, after all. No inventions that could possibly be construed as a weapon would ever be approved by the ministry of creation. No civil courts existed when the gods could directly send down divine punishment to sinners.

No life in the city would ever survive if the gods found it unworthy.

Shen Yuan knew, objectively, why the rules of the gods were so strict. Divine Emperor Luo wrote them himself, and each one had been crafted specifically to prevent the sort of strife and abuse that he had witnessed when he was a mere mortal. Every schoolchild learns the story of the pitiful Luo Binghe who struggled to reach the heavens, faced every day with proof of humanity’s dishonor and ugliness.

When that pathetic Luo Binghe had awakened his blood as the Divine Emperor, he’d immediately sought to rewrite the rules of the heavens to fix the issues he’d seen as a mortal. It made sense. It even worked, to some objective degree of measurement: starvation and war between human lands was barely heard of, these days.

Shen Yuan casts his eyes up to the ceiling of the chapel. A mural of Divine Emperor Luo is painted in bright splashes of color, his eyes piercing down at the viewer as he holds a drink in one hand and a woman in the other. An image of wealth and wellness; a warning to stay in line if you wish for a similar happy ending. 

Shen Yuan thinks that the Divine Emperor must truly have had a hard life, to rule as such an immature god. A child that never got the chance to grow up freely, now imposing their black-and-white outlook of life on an entire land of people who are mature enough to understand that life isn’t so simple.

Shen Yuan looks back down, peering through barely open eyes at his feet. He isn’t supposed to have his eyes open at all, during prayer. It’s just - despite the issues he has with the gods’ reign, and despite the apathy he feels in place of admiration or piety, he really can’t help but think - 

How pitiful, to have ascended without first understanding the joy of being human. How sad, to have your ‘happy ending’ worshiped by the masses without understanding it yourself, believing it to be good only because it follows your own strict rules. 

Shen Yuan sighs, a quiet release of air in the quiet of the chapel.

His next breath in feels electric. 

The vaulted ceilings of the chapel suddenly feel claustrophobic. The quiet hum of hands rubbing against hands in silent prayer rises to a crescendo of skin and movement and life. What low light the candles lining the pews had provided now burns as brightly as the light of a hundred divine lanterns, but there isn’t anywhere Shen Yuan can cast his eyes towards that is less shocking to look at. 

And there, at the front of the chapel, is a god. 

Shen Yuan’s breath catches. He can’t look away. The god is beautiful; more divine than any blessing that Shen Yuan has ever witnessed. 

He is also looking directly at Shen Yuan, meeting his gaze through half lidded eyes and with the laziness of an apex predator. 

Around Shen Yuan, the other church-goers have begun to break from their prayers, startled and choking on the divine presence around them. Many of them dare to sneak peeks at the descended god, but none of them seem able to look directly at him, their eyes sliding off of him before they quickly duck their heads and take up the pose of prayer once more.

Shen Yuan still can’t look away.

Slowly, the god steps down from the pulpit and begins to approach. He doesn’t bother to look at Shen Yuan as he moves forward, casually glancing around the chapel as if assessing it. His eyes catch on the mural on the ceiling - his own face looking down at him, though paling in comparison to the beauty and power of the real thing. 

And then he pulls his eyes back to Shen Yuan, and Shen Yuan realizes with a start that he’s stopped walking, standing directly in front of the pew Shen Yuan is sitting in.

Shen Yuan wets his lips. His pulse beats jack-rabbit fast in his throat.

“Divine Emperor Luo,” he greets. “How - how can I serve you?”

The weight of the Divine Emperor’s attention is no lighter than if Shen Yuan had held the entire ocean on his shoulders. He looks at Shen Yuan as if he might eat him, and expects Shen Yuan to thank him for the honor of filling a divine stomach.

“Do you think you can?” He asks, and Shen Yuan shudders at the sound of his voice. An infinitely powerful being, and he’s speaking to Shen Yuan as if Shen Yuan were a peculiarity, something fit to either be played with or disposed of once the god has finished assessing him. 

“Can I - um, my apologies, Divine Emperor, can I…?”

“Serve me,” The gods says. “Or did you offer such a thing unthinkingly?”

Shen Yuan stares at him. Divine Emperor Luo stares back, his gaze sharp as he takes Shen Yuan in. 

“Can you,” Divine Emperor Luo says, voice low and dangerous, “serve a god that you see as pitiful?”

Shen Yuan jerks back as if slapped. How useless would it be to say that he hadn’t meant it? If a god can hear any thought about them, not only directed prayers - for certainly, Shen Yuan’s private ruminations about the tragedy of Luo Binghe’s story had been nothing like a prayer, and yet they had clearly been heard - then there is no point in lying. If Shen Yuan were to claim one thing with his mouth and another with his mind, he’d only be branded one of the many sinners to be smited by the Divine Emperor’s just hand. Deceit was hardly looked favorably upon; to lie to a god that could hear the truth from your own mind would be suicide. 

Shen Yuan hesitates. At his back, he knows his family must be terrified, and yet he also knows that they dare not look at the Divine Emperor, and that their heads must be bowed in prayer like everyone else in the chapel. 

A room with a hundred people, and it may as well just be Shen Yuan and his god.

The Divine Emperor’s lips quirk up. It isn’t a friendly expression. 

“Your god, little Shen Yuan?” He asks cruelly. “You can pity me, and you can know in your heart that you are incapable of serving me, and yet you claim to be devout to me in the same breath?”

“Aren’t I yours, Divine Emperor?” Shen Yuan asks. His voice does not waver, but it is a near thing. “If I didn’t belong to you, could I dare to live in this city? Every living thing here must live by your rule; naturally, we must all belong to you.”

“What pretty words,” Divine Emperor Luo says. His eyes glint red from beneath his lashes, and Shen Yuan thinks -

Ah, so red is truly the color of the divine. 

Divine Emperor Luo’s eyes are very suddenly the same deep brown that his murals all portray him with. Shen Yuan lowers his gaze deferentially, and wonders idly if all the other too-sharp pieces of the Divine Emperor would smooth out if Shen Yuan’s thoughts lingered on them. 

“If Divine Emperor Luo finds my words pretty, then I will dare to keep speaking,” Shen Yuan says, keeping his eyes turned down. 

“Go on, then. Speak.”

Shen Yuan takes a shuddering breath in. His family is still cowering behind him. The old lady who lives down the street is shaking in her pew across the aisle. 

And Shen Yuan has never considered himself especially religious, because believing in the gods is very different from placing your faith in them. 

“To spy is the manifestation of distrust,” Shen Yuan recites, the words long since memorized after a lifetime of growing up under the gods’ many rules about morality and punishment. “A lack of trust in others implies something impure within yourself. Spying should be punished with ten lashes.”

Shen Yuan’s mother lets out a quiet sound of alarm, stifled so quickly it sounds like a whimper. Shen Yuan does not bother to send her any sort of mental apology; it would not reach her, and would instead be intercepted by an outsider. 

Besides, Shen Yuan had known well what he was doing, quoting the rules that the Divine Emperor had written right back at him, implying that a god should be punished. It would be foolish to apologize for something he had done so purposefully. 

“Spying,” Divine Emperor Luo says, after the silence in the chapel has stretched long. “What a funny way to describe listening to the prayers of my followers. Is it spying for you to hear a call made to you from within your own house?”

“If all of the prayers that the Divine Emperor receives sound like what he heard from me,” Shen Yuan says, glancing back up to meet the god’s eyes defiantly. “Then I wonder why he hasn’t bothered to descend before today to scold us all.”

“Does little Shen Yuan think I will scold him?” Divine Emperor Luo asks, voice soft. 

“I think,” Shen Yuan says, “that a god normally so busy with punishing us would not bother to descend unless it was to fulfill those duties.”

“The world is good, from the work that I do,” Divine Emperor Luo says sharply. 

“Is it?” Shen Yuan asks, and he finds that his fear has been pushed down, his chest tight with a lifetime of reading about the gods and wondering why, if Luo Binghe’s life was so miserable, would he be unable to recognize misery in his own subjects, living every day in fear of him? 

Luo Binghe had been pitiful, and he’d never been allowed to grow up peacefully, and Shen Yuan truly thinks it sad that a divine being could live in such a tragic way. 

But that doesn’t make him blind to the way that Luo Binghe’s immaturity has scorched the mortal plane, nor does his pity completely dissolve his anger over such a thing. 

Shen Yuan’s fate had been sealed from the moment they the Divine Emperor had descended. If he’s going to be punished regardless, then it will be for having said his piece. 

Dying from bitching this pathetic god out is a far better story than dying from having only thought it. 

And yet, before Shen Yuan can open his mouth again -

The Divine Emperor turns suddenly, facing the cleric at the front of the chapel. The old man is clutching at his prayer book with shaking hands, and he ducks his head instantly when the god looks his way. 

“Take him in as a disciple,” Divine Emperor Luo commands, gesturing lazily in Shen Yuan’s direction. “I want him trained and moved to the main church by the end of the year.”

Shen Yuan looks at the cleric, and then back at the god in front of him. He - what?

The Divine Emperor glances back at Shen Yuan, his lips quirked up and his eyes once more a blazing red. 

“There’s another reason for a god to descend than to administer punishment,” he says. “We must also appoint clerics.”

And then Divine Emperor Luo is gone, the space where he once stood crackling with divine energy. 

In disbelief, Shen Yuan - the first cleric to be personally appointed by the Divine Emperor in nearly a century - falls to his knees. Fuck, he thinks, and he hopes that the god is still listening to hear it. 

[naamahdarling]

How can I get a doctor to answer a straight question over a portal message? Because I'm dealing with three who can't answer these questions (the answer they gave is in parenthesis):

1) Tell me if telehealth is acceptable for a followup on a weird thing. (I need to make an appointment to discuss the weird thing but they won't say if telehealth is okay.)

2) Tell me the size of a thing they have. (They keep saying they only have the one size but won't tell me what it is.)

3) Tell me whether or not they can refer me for testing before my appointment or if I need a separate appointment for that. (They can't review test results without an appointment, but can't tell me if I can have the testing done first or if I need two appointments.)

4) Tell me if I can get a one month extension to my scrip until I have my appointment. (I need an appointment on the books to get meds, which I already have set up.)

I have asked each of them at least twice in as direct a way as possible, and every time they answer a very similar question I did not ask.

I get they are busy, I do, but I am just going to have to keep asking. They are wasting time they could use to help someone else. They are making their own problem worse.

[corallapis]

In view of what you've told me, you had better avoid such things until you are restored.

[commsroom]

"not him. i'm not doing it if it means that he gets to stick his fingers in her brain and mess around with her mind again." vs. "officer eiffel? he's your deadman's switch." eiffel refusing to let hilbert operate on hera unless he can hold him at gunpoint. hera threatening hilbert with an agonizing death if he so much as thinks about harming eiffel. both of them in a position where hilbert is the only one who can operate on them to mitigate damage he inflicted on them in the first place, and both of them so, so protective of each other.

[catofoldstones]

I am too dumb for the asoiaf tumblr fandom and I am too level-headed for the asoiaf reddit fandom, where do I go?

[musette22]

Just took the girls out for their evening walk and came across this beautiful baby - Alpine, is that you? 🤍

[papiermachecat]

The way he puts his hands behind his back when he’s being polite is so endearing to me

[not-so-terrible]

So Kisame's often considered the fourth most powerful Akatsuki member, but the top three are pretty unanimously Obito, Pain and Itachi. And with Kisame's motto being survival of the fittest and MO being taking out the weakest links, it’s fascinating to see him end up as one of the most well connected members of the Akatsuki. And since the top three never openly get to clash, technically speaking, he stays loyal to all of them. He's; 

- Working broadly for Pain, Akatsuki's open leader, who wants to create peace through traumatising the world through a cycle of war

- Working secretly for Obito, Akatsuki's real leader (and by proxy, Madara and Zetsu, Akatsuki's real-real leaders), who wants to create peace through trapping the world in a dream realm

- Working day-to-day for/with Itachi, the Akatsuki's biggest name, most powerful field member, and a secret double agent, who wants to create peace through becoming the most powerful shinobi that's ever lived,  and through using that power 'as much as he wants', 'lead the world to subjugation'

So either Kisame is the ninja equivalent of the minions, or the dojutsu wielding top three of the Akatsuki all looked to him and went 'yup, he's Henchman Shaped'

[poorlittleyaoyao]

But WHO is WWX true best friend? WQ? He doesn't think much about her after her death. JC? LWJ?

I think prior to his death it was definitely JC. WQ is his Mad Science Bestie, especially in CQL, but she’s not his Overall Best Friend, kinda like how you might have a coworker/ teammate/ castmate/ whatnot that you cherish and trust, but don’t really hang out with independent of the interest or setting that initially bound you. Meanwhile, he and JC are sitting there with Best Friends Forever bracelets in all but name and pine after each other after their separation.

AFTER his death, though? It’s totally LWJ. WWX is one of those people who’s like “I married my best friend!!!” In drama canon, where he and LWJ become mutually close during his first lifetime, the vibe of that “we are best friends and also fell in love.” In novel canon, where LWJ takes up like 75% of his brain space, the vibe seems more “my romantic partner is my sole emotional priority.”

Poor WN. He’s never cracking the #2 at any point. 🙁

[anghraine]

This passage is sometimes slightly misread, but I think it's significant:

As for myself [Darcy], it is many, many years since I first began to think of him [Wickham] in a very different manner. The vicious propensities, the want of principle, which he [Wickham] was careful to guard from the knowledge of his best friend [Darcy's father], could not escape the observation of a young man of nearly the same age with himself

That is, the "himself" in the last line is Wickham and the young man of nearly the same age with him is the now twenty-eight-year-old Darcy.

Every time I think of that detail in conjunction with Wickham preying on fifteen-year-old Georgiana and, a year later, sixteen-year-old Lydia ... whew. He'd be a shitheel anyway, but however he may present himself, he's in fact a nearly thirty-year-old shitheel who repeatedly targets girls in their mid-teens.

[secretmellowblog]

@breadvidence recently wrote a great bit of Les Mis meta where they pointed out how Jean Valjean’s “compliments” to Javert in Montreuil-sur-Mer really are just..... conciliatory flattery, and don't reflect his real feelings about Javert at all. And that's a great point, and something I wish more people explored! Lines like "you are a good man and I esteem you" aren't Jean Valjean's earnest feelings towards Javert. Instead they’re examples of the way Jean Valjean often retreats into excessive deferential politeness to authority as a survival strategy. As I mentioned in another recent post— Jean Valjean is a genuinely kind person, but he’s also someone who often has literally no choice but to act overly polite to authorities/the police, because if he’s not polite enough they might start to find him suspicious. If he doesn't lick their boots enough, they might start investigating him. He's instinctively deferential out of fear of violence. He's flattering out of fear. He's polite "at gunpoint." He's polite to cops the way you're polite to an armed police officer who pulls you over.

And Jean Valjean's polite tranquil behavior towards Javert during Javert's "resignation"— saying things like “you are a good man and I esteem you, I want you to keep your job” and etc etc— is later explicitly confirmed to be at least somewhat of a calculated tactical decision Jean Valjean made out of terror:

He was carried away, at first, by the instinct of self-preservation; he rallied all his ideas in haste, stifled his emotions, took into consideration Javert’s presence, that great danger, postponed all decision with the firmness of terror, shook off thought as to what he had to do, and resumed his calmness as a warrior picks up his buckler.

I love the phrase "he resumed his calmness as a warrior picks up his buckler"-- it's such a great way of summarizing how Jean Valjean's ability to have polite conversations even when he's breaking down internally has been such a useful defense mechanism for him. I also love the contrast between the excessively polite way Jean Valjean talks to Javert when he’s acting out of terror/self-preservation….vs the more honest way he talks about Javert when he’s alone during Tempest in a Skull:

“That Javert, who has been annoying me so long; that terrible instinct which seemed to have divined me, which had divined me—good God! and which followed me everywhere; that frightful hunting-dog, always making a point at me, is thrown off the scent, engaged elsewhere, absolutely turned from the trail: henceforth he is satisfied; he will leave me in peace; he has his Jean Valjean. Who knows? it is even probable that he will wish to leave town! And all this has been brought about without any aid from me, and I count for nothing in it!”

It's just extremely funny. The contrast between “you are a good man and I esteem you” vs “that Javert, who has been annoying me so long” <3 The contrast between “you are an honest man” vs “that frightful hunting dog” <3 The contrast between “I want you to keep your job” vs Jean Valjean fantasizing enthusiastically about how hopefully Javert will leave town and never ever annoy him again. <3

It makes the “Punish Me, Monsieur le Maire” stuff even funnier. Jean Valjean is dissociating out of panic and saying whatever polite platitudes he thinks will flatter Javert....but those polite platitudes keep making Javert spiral further into long-winded deranged rants about how he dESPISES this kindness and it enRAGES him, as Jean Valjean just sits there very politely & quietly losing his mind. It’s peak comedy really.

I feel like Jean Valjean’s deeply weird thing with Javert often gets flattened in different directions, when people interpret it. Either Jean Valjean is an all-forgiving all-loving angel who thinks Javert did nothing wrong, and all of his flattery is sincere expressions of admiration—- or Jean Valjean is (like in the BBC version) the kind of violent pitiless person who would angrily order Javert to kill himself. It's rare for writers to get anything resembling the hilariously baffling ambiguous Weirdness of his relationship with Javert in the book. I think it's because adaptations often don't grasp the idea that a genuinely kind compassionate character can also (underneath it all) still be deeply tormented, broken, and angry-- and that their anger doesn't mean they're any less kind, or any less capable of pity and mercy.

[mxtxfanatic]

Alright, I’ll bite: has there been some turning point in the mdzs fandom where jc stans and shippers are now being ostracized? Because why am I suddenly seeing posts where people are acting like being pro-jc is some sort of fringe stance that the mainstream fandom will hate you for???

[spectrum-color]

I keep seeing this theory that Adolin will revive Maya and become an Edgedancer and live happily ever after as a Radiant but like…Maya voluntarily sacrificed her life because she thought the Radiant bond was too dangerous to be allowed to exist. Why would she form one all over again? “Whoops, the Recreance was a mistake, time to help Adolin become Radiant #394947 now” would be decidedly underwhelming.

It’s more believable to me that she would convince Adolin that it’s a terrible idea and that he should try to get his father to disband the Order. Of course that would put him at odds with the other protagonists which a lot of people wouldn’t necessarily like. Fortunately for me, I love that kind of drama and think there needs to be some fractures on the “good” side soon to keep things interesting.

[bloodycowboyclub]

[commsroom]

eiffel's problem is that he sees every injustice as an interpersonal issue. he doesn't understand how his flippancy or apparent leniency towards hilbert might look to hera; in his mind, it doesn't contradict his support for her. to eiffel, it seems obvious - he is also one of hilbert's victims, hera is his friend, of course he's completely on her side - but he fails to fully grasp how the stakes are different for her.

ep 19: "you need to stop treating this like a joke, officer eiffel." / "hey, i'm the person for whom the joke tolls." / "i get you're scared he put something inside you. but i hope you haven't forgotten emergency code alpha victor. he put that in me." and ep 51: "they're just jokes! they don't really mean anything." / "see, eiffel, you get to have that. they can be 'just jokes' for you because you're... well, you. but we don't get that."

the issue in shut up and listen is eiffel's repeated, if unintentional, microaggressions, but it's also his general use of dark humor as a coping mechanism - jokes he feels justified in making because of how the subjects of those jokes have impacted him. eiffel sincerely believes in treating people equally, but his idea of 'equal treatment' can be idealistic and naive. he has an awareness of interpersonal harm, but he's lived most of his life without ever being confronted with the reality of structural harm - being pre-judged and othered and having his life devalued on the basis of outside categorization.

but the thing about that is that it has happened to him, too. eiffel is an addict, and a convict, and marked as from a lower socioeconomic class than minkowski or lovelace, and those things are the reasons goddard futuristics was able to buy him as prison labor and - without his consent - consider him expendable for medical experimentation. none of that is a coincidence, but he doesn't see the systems at work, only his own actions and regrets. which he then equivocates to the worst actions of people who don't share his sense of morality or guilt.

eiffel's ability to recognize and bring out the humanity in the people around him is one of his best qualities, but... on the basis of his identity, he's been able to live a life where he conceptualizes himself as the default person, and that's been reinforced by the pop culture he loves so much. that's a massive blind spot. he assumes everyone navigates the world in a similar way, and so, on some level, he sees everyone around him as an extension of or a reflection of himself. if evil is always personal, then it can always be reasoned with.

[rapeculturerealities]

Woman Claims Hulu Employee Used Personal Data to Contact Her

A woman is taking to TikTok to call out Hulu after she claims a male employee used her personal information to get in touch with her after a customer service chat.

In a series of videos, Aryan Strauss said a Hulu employee emailed her after she spoke with him about refunding her the money she was charged for canceling her subscription too late.

On Monday, Strauss explained in a TikTok video that she reached out to the company via its online chat feature and spoke with an employee named "John" who sympathized with her financial struggles as an unemployed single mother.

John refunded Strauss the money for her canceled subscription and offered her kind words before the call ended.

Strauss went on to express her appreciation for the "genuine experience" of the customer service call, but "didn't think anything of it" until she said she received a message from John's personal email.

"He has all of my personal information, and he chose to use it," Strauss said. "How many other women has he done this to, and how else is he using my information?"

According to Strauss, her attempts to report the issue to Hulu were met by other male employees who didn't immediately understand her concern. Strauss claimed one manager asked if she'd led John to believe it was OK to contact her.