#building his resolve

[delta-pavonis]

OKAY. OKAY.

HEAR ME OUT.

Hellknight!Hob wearing this. Chest hair and tiddies out, full happy trail, all of it...

Of course, I think about that, and that inspires a ficlet. And then that ficlet turns dark. So... *shrug* *shoves new baby out in the world*

Rated T

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The first time Hob sees Dream is when the latter has the audacity to enter the Morningstar's realm. He watches as the Dream King intimidates Squatterbloat into bringing him to the Palace. The demon is stupid and gullible, easily swayed, and Hob has a mind to bury his morningstar in the moron's fleshy head, but he would rather observe the visitor and his raven from the shadows.

Hob trails them, the straps of his armor expanding and morphing to cover his body with the mottled charcoals and midnights that are the palette of Hell. Squatterbloat leads the King in a circuitous route to their destination, passing a cell whose occupant not only commands the attention of the sovereign of the Dreaming, but whose pleading pains him. Curious.

He follows the pair of black figures beyond their guided tour, all the way into Lucifer's Hall, sliding unnoticed through the crack in the main doors. Hob is good at his job. He hadn't been successful at being a bandit and cutthroat in life for nothing.

Hob takes a place in the long shadows of one of the pillars and observes.

Apparently the Lord of Dreams and Nightmares is here in Hell to retrieve his helm, one of his important symbols of office. And of course it is some overly ripe idiot like Choronzon who has it. Sometimes Hob just wants to kill them all and promote new individuals to the positions of power, sometimes the house can't be cleaned, it needs to be razed and rebuilt.

But what is truly awe-inspiring is watching the battle between Dream and the Morningstar themself. The Dream King wins, although not handily. It makes the victory even more impressive. Hope. Of fucking course. Hob is quite sure that he has never seen the Lord of Hell so visibly angry in all his 600 plus years in the underworld.

Helm secured and confidence restored, the Lord of the Dreaming is proud and... well, he is incredibly beautiful. He is sharp angles in soft greys and blacks, luminous white skin draped in flowing ink, spikes of hair wafting against gravity.

Curiosity getting the better of him, Hob follows Lord Morpheus and his raven back outside. They walk slowly through the barren, twisted landscape, calculated and careful. Imperious.

Hunger ripples down Hob's spine. He wants.

The Lord stops, body going more still than death. "I am here in my official capacity as King of Dreams and Nightmares. You have followed me for long enough. Show yourself, fiend."

The Dream King's voice is so much deeper and darker than Hob expected and now it is directed at him and it goes directly to his cock. He decides to drop any pretense all at once.

Hob has no shame as he steps out from hiding, the shadow-plates sliding back and leaving him in what really amounts to a series of leather straps and a loincloth, buckled to accentuate the triangle of his torso and the strength in his chest, with sleeves from biceps to palms. The Knights of Hell need no metal protection - they shield themselves in darkness and guile - and so Lucifer Morningstar gives them intangible weapons: the ability to inspire lust and envy as much as wrath. He drops his physical weapon and holds his hands out to his sides.

"Dream King," Hob inclines his head. "I am not here to harm, nor am I here at the behest of my Lord, the Lightbringer." He meets the King's piercing blue eyes and has to grit his teeth to hold in a gasp at how sharply they cut into his breast.

That look trails from Hob's head to his toes slowly, then back up. Judging. Assessing. "So why do you dog my steps, Hellknight?"

He shrugs and takes a step forward. There is no reason for Hob to not be bold. He has long been dead. He has been a resident of Hell and served the Devil themself, has lived that fate worse than death, for almost seven centuries. He has, quite literally, nothing to lose.

So Hob nudges a the magic at his disposal into the cant of his hips, the tilt of his head, the purse of his lips. He lowers his eyelids and takes another step towards the luminous being of black and white before him. "I merely wish to look my fill before I can no longer."

"Bossss..." The raven flies a nervously tight circle above them. He is summarily ignored.

"You wish to more than look, Hellknight, for I can taste your dreams." The Lord of Nightmares snarls as he takes multiple steps to get into Hob's personal space. "You dare-"

Hob laughs loud enough to interrupt him and those ice shards widen in shock. "Oh, yes. I dare." He steps up once more and now their faces are within inches of each other. "How do you think the Morningstar trains their knights? Do you think there is anything you could do to me that would be worse than 700 years of this?"

The resonant chuckle that curls across Hob's skin should probably worry him, but he cannot muster such sense when he is watching the pupils of the Dream King's eyes bleed black outwards, eclipsing his eyes entirely, and wholly captivating Hob. "Lucifer Morningstar's sins often get in the way of their... creativity."

A pale hand shoots towards him and Hob braces for impact, for pain.

He gets nothing of the sort.

Fingers that are the coolness of a lake in summer skate with hedonistic gentleness across Hob's cheek. The palm cups Hob's jaw sweetly. Honeyed breath caresses Hobs lips before they are pressed together. Then he is being kissed with the fondness and warmth of a dear lover.

And that is when Hob realizes that he has vastly miscalculated.

Against his better judgement, Hob is lost to the tide of it. The softest touch of tongues morphs into lazy familiar licks, mapping Hob's mouth as if to memorize, immortalize.

The King of Dreams pulls away and Hob is left panting and hazy.

"I touch you, I kiss you, as I would a lover, as I would my beloved." The King whispers it like a benediction. Hob gasps at the horror that settles into the marrow of his bones. "And never will you feel it again."

And then he is gone.

Hob watches, frozen, as each stride the King takes covers miles. It is only when they have disappeared over the horizon, both Lord and Raven, that Hob realizes tears are streaming down his face.

[ilynpilled]

The golden armor, not the white, but no one ever remembers that. Would that I had taken off that damned cloak as well.

When I reach King's Landing I'll have a new hand forged, a golden hand.

Cersei might like that. A golden hand to stroke her golden hair.

I am not myself. He eased himself down until the water reached his chin. “Soiled my white cloak . . . I wore my gold armor that day, but . . ."

“Gold armor?” Her voice sounded far off, faint.

Jaime slid into the offered seat quickly, so Bolton could not see how weak he was. "White is for Starks. I'll drink red like a good Lannister."

She did as he bid her. "The white cloak . . ."

". . . is new, but I'm sure I'll soil it soon enough."

“That wasn't . . . I was about to say that it becomes you.”

When he was done, more than three-quarters of his page still remained to be filled between the gold lion on the crimson shield on top and the blank white shield at the bottom. Ser Gerold Hightower had begun his history, and Ser Barristan Selmy had continued it, but the rest Jaime Lannister would need to write for himself. He could write whatever he chose, henceforth. Whatever he chose . . .

"Robert's beard was black. Mine is gold."

"Gold? Or silver?" Cersei plucked a hair from beneath his chin and held it up. It was grey. "All the color is draining out of you, brother. You've become a ghost of what you were, a pale crippled thing. And so bloodless, always in white." She flicked the hair away. "I prefer you garbed in crimson and gold."

At its head Jaime stood at vigil, his one good hand curled about the hilt of a tall golden greatsword whose point rested on the floor. The hooded cloak he wore was as white as freshly fallen snow, and the scales of his long hauberk were mother-of-pearl chased with gold. Lord Tywin would have wanted him in Lannister gold and crimson, she thought. It always angered him to see Jaime all in white.

Ser Jaime Lannister, all in white, stood beside his father's bier, five fingers curled about the hilt of a golden greatsword.

Fissures had opened in his cheeks, and a foul white fluid was seeping through the joints of his splendid gold-and-crimson armor to pool beneath his body.

Glory wore trappings of Lannister crimson; Honor was barded in Kingsguard white.

His cloak was Lannister crimson, but his surcoat showed the ten purple mullets of his own House arrayed upon a yellow field.

"My lord," the lad asked, "will you be wanting your new hand?"

"Wear it, Jaime," urged Ser Kennos of Kayce. "Wave at the smallfolk and give them a tale to tell their children.”

“I think not." Jaime would not show the crowds a golden lie. Let them see the stump. Let them see the cripple.

Behind the lords came a hundred crossbowmen and three hundred men-at-arms, and crimson flowed from their shoulders as well. In his white cloak and white scale armor, Jaime felt out of place amongst that river of red.

Jaime Lannister wore a doublet of red velvet slashed with cloth-of-gold, and a golden chain studded with black diamonds. He had strapped on his golden hand as well, polished to a fine bright sheen. This was no fit place to wear his whites. His duty awaited him at Riverrun; a darker need had brought him here.

Jaime had thought long and hard about whether to wear his gold armor or his white to this meeting; in the end, he'd chosen a leather jack and a crimson cloak.

For an instant, the deep red clouds that crowned the western hills reminded him of Rhaegar's children, all wrapped up in crimson cloaks.

Seven bloody hells," he started, "who dares—" Then he saw Jaime's white cloak and golden breastplate. His swordpoint dropped. "Lannister?"

quotes specifically focusing on his hand:

“The boy is dead." Jaime had drunk three cups of wine, and his golden hand seemed to be growing heavier and clumsier by the moment.

His golden fingers were curved enough to hook, but could not grasp, so his hold upon the shield was loose. "You were a knight once, ser," Jaime said. "So was I. Let us see what we are now."

“Radiant." Fickle. "Golden." False as fool's gold. Last night he dreamed he'd found her fucking Moon Boy. He'd killed the fool and smashed his sister's teeth to splinters with his golden hand, just as Gregor Clegane had done to poor Pia. In his dreams Jaime always had two hands; one was made of gold, but it worked just like the other.

"Men shall name you Goldenhand from this day forth, my lord," the armorer had assured him the first time he'd fitted it onto Jaime's wrist. He was wrong. I shall be the Kingslayer till I die.

One of them wore the ruins of a crimson cloak, but Jaime hanged him with the rest. It felt good. This was justice. Make a habit of it, Lannister, and one day men might call you Goldenhand after all. Goldenhand the Just. The world grew ever greyer as they drew near to Harrenhal.

The weight of his golden hand had grown irksome. He fumbled at the straps that secured it to his wrist.

Well, what's one more broken vow to the Kingslayer? Just more shit in the bucket. Jaime resolved to be the first man on the battlements. And with this golden hand of mine, most like the first to fall.

Around him he glimpsed the faces of men he'd done his best to kill in the Whispering Wood, where the Freys had fought beneath the direwolf banners of Robb Stark. His golden hand hung heavy at his side.

then the subconscious conclusion:

"Is it?" She smiled sadly. "Count your hands, child."

One. One hand, clasped tight around the sword hilt. Only one. "In my dreams I always have two hands." He raised his right arm and stared uncomprehending at the ugliness of his stump.

I think the narrative that is being told in the color symbolism present in Jaime’s story is the realization that glory has no presence in the man he wants to become. He gradually realizes again the truth of the golden hand covering his stump being a golden lie. It is more an embodiment of his sins, a heavy burden he carries. True honor and change will not be wrapped in gold, and obviously not crimson. But this should not lead to the return of his cynicism, which is how he approaches this early on, and why he wants to delude himself about it. He greys, and he sheds the red and gold color. The white becomes him. The crimson & gold comes back when he does his duty for the horrid Lannister regime, when he sustains loyalty to his family, and emulates his father. Nonetheless, he keeps drawing nearer to the blank white shield at the bottom of his page and distancing himself from the crimson at the top. But maybe the lesson is that he cannot start over like that. Maybe his only choices are not the evil Kingslayer and the glittering Goldenhand the Just. Maybe he should just be Jaime. That white shield is tainted. Our good actions do not wash out the bad. They will exist simultaneously. You will never be the golden heir, the perfect pure white Just Knight. You are a crippled broken man. But that does not mean you cannot choose to continue living and keep pushing to change for the better:

“What else can I do, but die?”

“Live,” she said

Maybe the blank white shield is an impossible ideal not made for him. But what remains if he cannot be crimson, gold, or the pure white?

yet she knew it was him. “Even at a distance, Ser Jaime Lannister was unmistakable. The moonlight had silvered his armor and the gold of his hair, and turned his crimson cloak to black.”

He was always meant to be a grey character. Why don’t we mix that black & white?

[paintingformike]

ok but what if. when el finally confronts mike about the confession she straight up just asks him to say ily in front of her face right at that moment just to test if he’s able to actually do it eye-to-eye with her. then he just stands there completely dumbfounded cause he cant say it and the only reason he was able to do it in surfer boy pizza was bc he had to say something to help her and he knew she was in a complete other dimension while all he had to do was look at her unconscious body (while he wasnt even sure if she could hear everything from him) and thats how she confirms that he really isnt *in* love with her...

[aparticularbandit]

So the thing about the interplay between DR0 and DR2 is this - the question of if you went back far enough, could you prevent someone from becoming who they become?

And that's kind of what we see in play out in theory in DR2. If you remove those years from the Remnants, if you remove their relationship to Junko, then they can be - can become - entirely different people.

Which would then beg the question of, well, if you can do this with the Remnants, could it have been done with Junko? And the answer, given in DR0, is absolutely yes. Junko without her memories - Ryoko - is nothing like Junko.

(Which really counters her argument that she was born that way because, clearly, she was not. If she was, then the loss of her memories wouldn't change anything. But it does.)

The question then becomes, well, how far do we have to go? Or, more succinctly, how many memories do we have to remove to make Junko not Junko?

DR0 removes everything but Matsuda. It gives her short term memory loss, and it makes her rely entirely on her memory notebooks. (And, really, I'd argue that it should have removed Matsuda, too, but didn't, which might be a flaw. Kind of like how when Kyoko had all of her memories removed, she could still figure out she was a detective. (And I guess the idea of memories returning gets addressed first in DR1 - because Kyoko slowly remembers her relationship with her father and her grandfather. Junko didn't perfect Matsuda's method; she just shortened the time frame, which made the effects last longer.)) And, of course, when she regains her memories, she immediately reverts back to being herself, as planned. (And maybe this is a form of testing, not of resolve but of...of something else.)

I would expect that Junko would need more than her two years removed, that it would need to go farther back.

But how far? Where is that moment of no return, where Junko becomes, well, Junko?

[wereh0gz]

favorite werehog moment?

Every moment of screentime he has in Unleashed

[daz4i]

btw with all my posts abt dazai surviving i do think it will take at least a few more chapters until that's revealed. maybe we'll get a continuation of chuuya's storyline but dazai needs to stay dead for a few more chapters for the pacing of the story as a whole (as frustrating as it is for those following it monthly)

[cantshinebrighterthanyou]

I think Ricky's arrival at camp has a layer to it that I haven't really seen discussed yet, that makes the Rina forshadowing almost more deliberate?

Maybe it's the fact that I've been hung up on the Rina slowburn, but I was expecting the payoff to the 'Lily has the harness'-plotline to take a little while. At the earliest, as a cliffhanger for the end of E01. But no - Ricky and Lily lasted from the last (two?) eps of S2 to only halfway though the first of S3.

If they were gonna rush the Ricky and Lily plotline this much, why include it at all? Because they needed Ricky to be almost a day late to camp. Late enough to arrive after EJ has been appointed director, so that Ricky could be there for the "Who said anybody would?" moment.

We all knew Ricky/Lily was going to be a plot device, but it turned out to be the direct set up for the heaviest rina forshadowing we've ever had and I am so here for it.

[windmill-ghost]

Current Shonen Jump series I'm following:

Kaiju no. 8

Wild Strawberry

Choujin X

Kill Blue

Akane Banashi

Dogsred

[torgawl]

do you think part of the reason diluc still struggles with his resentment towards kaeya is because kaeya is more like what crepus wished diluc to be? crepus was so proud of diluc for his accomplishments as a knight and lived his dream through him as well and we know how much crepus' approval meant for diluc, more than any title or doing. i sometimes wonder if diluc feels hurt knowing that kaeya gets to live the equivalent to his past life as a knight as if nothing happened when he had to make sacrifices for his own peace of mind and sense of justice. i wonder if that's what pains him the most, not the fact kaeya ommited the truth about his past for so many years but having felt like he was the only one who cared to do something regarding his father's death and who showed any sense of uprightness when confronted with the knights' request to cover their mistake and negligence. i always think about how diluc might have felt like everything was a lie and his sense of betrayal. but maybe that didn't matter as much as having the support of his brother and someone he could share his pain with would have mattered. maybe the worst thing wasn't what kaeya did but what he didn't do; maybe it was never about his actions but the lack thereof.

[hexie-mountain]

just watched the episode and when rafa posted the still of him with that massive fucking rifle i wont lie i felt wildly uncomfortable but idk i hoped that hey at least make the case match the ammunition y’know? like it is a show about first responders and law enforcement so at least make it make sense on that front

and then they did this whole white supremacy domestic terrorist plot and yeah it was a tense episode and they went gangbuster but now that this storyline is (finally) over i wanted to ramble about the 2 problems i had with it -

a) owen not realising the kind of motorcycle club he’s mingling with like sure he only found out at that whack ass branding ceremony and yes those groups tend to pick up on vulnerable people or people who are lost and brainwash them etc etc but this man lived in new york with a jewish wife and son you’d think he’d be a bit more aware of micro aggressive behaviour and all the ways (covert and overt) people can get brain washed but whatever they resolved his cluelessness and it still bugs me

b) if tim minear wants to make a statement about the current socio-political climate he better fucking address it right or dont talk about it at all cuz sympathising with a nazi and doing the whole “he’s a bad person but he’s someone’s husband! and father!” is such bullshit people like him dont deserve sympathy cuz the things they stand for are abhorrent and conservatives try pretending its just a “difference of opinion” when it absolutely isn’t and writing a storyline by pitying a character like that… hell is hot

[kill-vonkarma-again]

why is barok a popular character. why do you guys like the man that's constantly this close to calling ryuunosuke a racial slur. i want this twink obliterated

[reyesstrand]

idk i’m just rambling here but one of the big things for ME re: the carlos is already married theory that i’ve been thinking about since i first started seeing it...everywhere (besides it being ooc in my opinion) is that we’re looking at—max—a four episode arc that narratively needs to allow us to catch up with the characters again, before tying together carlos’ secret, his work storyline, iris’ return, andrea (and gabriel) + tarlos, the other characters’ involvement w their story, the storms, and some heavy tarlos plot as teased by ronen. and then we’ll move onto other big plot points and storylines with other characters (likely tommy and marjan, and of course owen), likely leaving us without much substantial development re: the aftermath of the heavy tarlos arc until we focus in on them again. absolving the fact that carlos somehow neglected to tell the love of his life—whose proposal he happy-cried through and accepted at three in the morning without hesitation—that he’s already married and has been for a while and getting through the appropriate reactions to that (no matter the reason), while also setting them up to come out stronger on the other side of that, while dealing with the carlos work storyline effectively, just to have them happily hanging out at the firehouse a few episodes later and presumably wedding planning heavily in episode eight as if nothing happened just. i don’t see it.

also, this is the same show that has promotional material that phrases character death as a “personal emergency” and a proposal as “come to a decision”. i feel like they’re really just playing with our emotions here.

[phantasieandmirare]

Actively making that sound that Travis makes when he’s excited over the last episode

[jonghyuny]

.

[libraryleopard]

YA science fiction novel

High schooler Cole just wants to keep his head down and graduate, ready to leave behind his reputation as the guy who got kidnapped when he was a child, but his plans for a peaceful end to high school are interrupted when he starts spontaneously teleporting

Light on the sci-fi elements, more of a contemporary/coming-of-age story with a speculative twist

Gay main character; Black, bi love interest; M/M romance; various LGBTQ+ side characters (bi, nonbinary, ace, gay); Deaf side character

[imblocking-you]

Ep. 2

This guy has a straight face but his personality and thought process definitely fucking balls