I know we all make our favorite ASOIAF men to be sex gods and everything...

But after rereading Fire and Blood and hearing of Argon I's relative reluctance in bed (WITH TWO SEXY ASS WIVES!) I decided to do a S-F tier list for all the men's prowess in bed.

If you have a strong opinion I welcome you to send me an ask :)

Why Darkest Dungeon Is A Minimalistic Storytelling Masterpiece

Asa speaking! This is going to be a long essay-post, so buckle up! In case you don’t have enough time to read through all that, or you just don’t feel like it, here’s a TL;DR: Darkest Dungeon, although not story-driven, manages to tell you just enough about the characters and the circumstances to get you hooked, but not enough to clearly explain what exactly is happening, giving the players lots of ground for theories, while at the same time forcing no plot on the players. The best a player can do to understand the characters is collect the bits and pieces we are given and interpret them.

The Darkest Dungeon fandom is one of the wildest I’ve been in. Everyone has different interpretations for the same characters, and the headcanons (well, most of them) manage to uphold the integrity of the characters to a great degree, despite how random they can become. This of course owes to the way the plot is written and executed.

I admit, a big reason why I play games is the plot. I love myself a good story, with fleshed-out characters I can relate to, and having a story is a great way to keep me involved even if the game ends up being too hard, because I will push through in order to see where the story goes.

Darkest Dungeon is not one of those games. I originally wanted to play it for the art style and the memes, to be honest, and it has grown into so much more since then. I play when I’m bored, I play while chatting with my friends through Discord, and strangely enough, I play when I’m feeling too stressed (at least when my favourite character dies I’ll be stressed because of that and not because I didn’t pass my lessons). I think about the game every day, and it never ceases to amaze me, both because every mission is unique and because you can always find something new in the game, a new detail, or perhaps a playstyle you hadn’t thought of before.

This game is one of the most original ones I’ve seen. Many concepts are subverted or twisted and made into something spectacularly different than what you would expect. At the same time, the plot and the differences are not forced upon the player; a player who is in it for the gameplay can just go on and start assembling new teams to fight bosses without having to go through pesky cutscenes, and the characters are essentially nobodies, which takes away the worries of what would happen if they die. (In fact, I believe that this is one of the aspects that discouraged many players from playing the second game; the fact that, unlike the first one, this one is more character-oriented. I understand and respect that, no two people find the exact same allure in a game. That, however, is a matter for another day).

On the other hand is the player who likes the story. This player, a player more like me and Bedelya, can spend countless hours looking into game content, and still find new things to fuss about. (This may be because both of us love literature and giving meaning to everything, but I’ll get to that in an instant). Where the gameplay-oriented player may enjoy the Ancestor’s monologues before the bosses because they offer a distraction until the game loads or collects the journal entries to boast that they collected them all, the story-oriented player enjoys them because they offer a deeper understanding of the game’s world. They will read them carefully, and perhaps wonder when all these troubles began.

The story-oriented player, however, will not stop there. An inquisitive mind will wonder who these people are, what brought them to the Hamlet. A keen eye will notice that the stressed players’ lines are no mere filler text. Maybe a skill or two has some strange properties. A restless player in love with stories will try to give those little details meaning, and in turn, once they have their meaning, they will seek to perfect their understanding.

This is where the wonder of this game lies: even being given the least details possible, one can deduce the identities of the characters, their motives, their loves, their fears…

You begin the game with two characters: Reynauld and Dismas. You only know their names, their professions, and their skills, and the fact that something drove them to the Old Road, where they are to help the Heir reclaim the Estate. You open up Reynauld’s character sheet. One of his quirks is “Kleptomaniac”. With a little looking around, you learn that this is a behavioural disorder people might develop when under extreme pressure. This means that Reynauld had been in a stressful environment for a while.

You take your heroes to a mission. Dismas is stressed and becomes irrational. Many of his quotes seem to be about a woman he loved, who is now following him in the form of a ghost. These might be the ramblings of a madman, but he references similar –not identical, but similar- scenarios a lot of times, and you begin to wonder: are those bits and pieces of his past, a past he left behind?

A jester comes into your stage coach. This man carries with him a sickle and a lute. One of his skills, only one, has a dirk. This skill has low accuracy compared to the rest. It bypasses guard and drives him one rank forward. You execute the skill in combat. He seems like he’s putting his whole weight on the hand with the dirk. Even the grave robber, who uses her pickaxe only once, has it mentioned a lot of times; the blacksmith, the guild, even on her equipment, it gets upgraded alongside her far more used daggers. The jester’s dirk is nowhere to be seen. Something is off in this situation.

Next up we have the comics; each of the characters has one comic that depicts a part of their past, the one that played the most important role into making them the characters we know in the game. The catch: these comics have absolutely no words, not even as sound effects, like “slash”, or “bang”. One has to pay close attention to understand what is happening, and even then, many of them remain mostly unclear. Why did the antiquarian kill the wizard? How did the occultist get to the shrine?

Even something as small as the characters’ unique trinkets can say something about them. In the base game, the bounty hunter’s trinkets are mostly helmets, so it might mean that it is highly important for him to hide who he is. He also has two talons, which show an affinity for birds of prey, who kill swiftly and silently. He is shown, in his comic, to kill four men in a matter of minutes, and he has a whopping amount of 21 quotes comprised purely of three dots, showing silence, and 14 more with non-verbal sounds. Then, you get to his Crimson Court trinkets: a vengeful kill list, which means that there are people who have wronged him, and a collection of teeth, which means that he keeps trophies from his victims, which, being a bounty hunter, could mean that he needs to show proof of his work, or, if he’s been killing for a long time, that he has developed a serial killer urge, and that removing the molars from his victims is something he feels the compulsion to do. Perhaps it is both. Then, there’s his quote for the Crimson Court set: “They Will Pay”. We know for sure that someone wronged him, but we know neither what happened nor the identity of the offending party, or how many people they were.

It has become clear that this game offers huge amounts of information, while at the same time offering very little. In my opinion, this also makes it extremely fleshed-out and realistic. You meet those people who came here for work. You only know what they do, not who they are, but their words, the items on their person, the way they move, they are the only things that let you get a glimpse into these people’s desires, ideals and worries. You are a cold employer, or a nonchalant colleague; you do not know who they are. You are only interested in their qualifications and in keeping them in good shape, so they can serve you better. There are no guides to tell you of these folks’ past, no in-game flashbacks to tell you why they are who they are. The only way to learn about them is to study them, learn about them, perhaps even ask them about their past. The comics, if you’d like to take it that far, could be times when a character asks another about themselves, and they answer. There are no words, because that was a long while ago. There are feelings, hence the frequent appearance of the stress halo and the importance of colours, and they all see things differently, hence why each of the comics has its unique elements; the plague doctor’s comic is the only one illustrated like a guide to a procedure.

I enjoyed talking about this subject. It’s been on my mind for a while now. Perhaps those are some far-fetched ideas of a person with lots of curiosity and the desire to find meaning and explanations in everything. Perhaps all this is too much and false. Perhaps Red Hook really did intend to hide all those details and have players find them out. I don’t know for sure, and I won’t know until I ask.

I would like to thank a Tumblr post I saw a while back for bringing the Dirk Stab’s stats to my attention. I do not remember the blog I saw it in, sadly, but I would love to find it and give it proper credit. I would also like to thank one of my friends, who made me realise that, even though you start the game idealistically (“Oh no, look, my highwayman Caen got masochistic, time to get him to the gambling hall!”) you end up becoming quite the mean boss as you see that you can’t keep everyone in good condition (“Oh, my antiquarian got a creeping cough again? Who cares, she doesn’t attack anyone. What’s her name again?”). Lastly, if you got this far, I’d like to thank you, for sitting through this essay and listening to my ideas. Give yourself a pat on the back and a cool glass of water!

Thought I'd share this with the class

This chapter was very interesting, even if it was mostly set-up. Besides learning the new girl’s name and getting confirmation that she just get kicks from playing with people, the most insightful part was definitely seeing Asa and Yoru’s reaction to the fame.

We see that Asa feels happy over the fame, even if she denies it, and even Yoru admits that it feels soothing, like a need being met, fulfilling. This isn’t surprising at all, after all the whole of Yoru’s goal is to become relevant again, for people to fear her once more, to know of her, and she’s insecure over being called dumb and whatnot: she craves recognition, wants power so she can make people see her wether it be through inspiring awe or inflicting suffering and destruction. Asa has struggled a lot with feeling like she was invisible, or worse, being seen and getting negative attention, being bullied and judged and seen as dumb, annoying, ugly, boring, useless, someone who always messes up and can’t do anything right, worthless. She is afraid of the spotlight, but we’ve seen that she wants it as well, notably inside the aquarium, in that blissful moment when everyone was cheering her for having her phone. So of course, getting such widespread attention, praise, validation, when she hadn’t even intended for it, when she was just being herself and doing her own thing, it’s like being accepted for once. Being seen, and being loved, not only from a small group like a class but on a wide scale.

Of course, for both of them, such recognition and fame is only a substitute for meaningful human relationships, and it can’t replace those. I think it’s actually very lucky that Asa and Yoru have each other currently, it’s good to be reminded that for how much Asa is alone and isolated currently, she was so even more before Yoru, and Yoru similarly doesn’t seem like she had anyone, rotting away i alleyways losing strength more and more over time. Asa seems to want to keep a cool head over the fame to be self-righteous, but is it more because she wants to keep a collected appearance or because she truly doesn’t want to be sidetracked and be swept away?

Either way, I think it’s interesting that she recenters herself by reminding themselves that she’s doing it for Chainsaw Man. In a way, her goal then is something like a human relationship like I mentioned. Not that I think she thinks she’d get to get closer to Chainsaw Man or something, but that she’s motivated by something akin to selflessness, for someone that means a lot to her. A lot to Yoru too. Yoru sees Chainsaw Man as the one who took away her recognition, who stole her thunder, by eating atomic bombs out of existence, meanwhile Asa sees Chainsaw Man as one of the first people who saw her, who talked to her at her lowest and looked at her at her filthiest, and decided that she was worth something, worth protecting. I’m getting sidetracked here but ough!! Let’s just hope Asa doesn’t lose sight of that interpersonal relationship that he inspired her to pursue, gave her the courage to do so, because of easy and fickle validation from fame, is what I’m trying to say.

On Denji’s end, things seem to keep getting worse, even as they… Kinda get better? It turns out the woman is an ally and not an enemy, but Denji seems disappointed by their fight being discontinued, losing the rush he’s so acquainted to. He can’t be Chainsaw Man anymore, right, but he could still fight as Denji, except… It’s not necessary, he’s protected and people have it covered. He loses a possible love interest and enemy as she turns out to be something more like a colleague if anything, their relationship becoming professional and distant by nature, himself making a comment about that. She says that she likes/admires him because he’s Chainsaw Man and Denji is stunned, is it because that attention is a crumb of recognition, recognition that he used to be center stage for all the time just not long ago? Or is it because he’s "Chainsaw Man" in her eyes, because even as she speaks to him the crumbs of validation are directed at Chainsaw Man and not Denji, because he lost the opportunity to have a genuine connection as himself. Fame gives and even as it does, it takes away.

It’s very possible that Denji feels jealous of Asa in the posters scene. Not only does she get to fight devils and do what he’s not allowed to do anymore, but she also gets to do it with her name and her face public. While he was told times and times again that he couldn’t have his identity be public for his safety, Asa gets to do it freely wothout repercussion (thus far), she gets to be liked as herself. But moreso, I feel like the scene’s about loss. With Asa rising up in fame, Denji will have to keep hearing about her and her exploits, not only as a reminder of not being able to be Chainsaw Man anymore but also a reminder of the girl he liked that he had to dump. He couldn’t keep Chainsaw Man, and he couldn’t keep Asa either. Things have possibly never been more normal for Denji’s daily life, and yet it is utterly miserable.

this is for tim minear's burner account here on tumblr.

can we get an eddie diaz dancing episode so that ryan has to relive his "step up" days?

asking for scientific reasons, that's all

I need to hear Arkin And Asa say each other's names

I NEED TO HEAR ASA SOFTLY SAY ARKINS NAME LIKE HE'S SAVORING IT

AND I NEED ARKIN TO YELL ASA'S NAME IN A FIT OF (PASSIONATE) RAGE

PLEASE-

oh yeah and saying 'haha yeah im sorry that was bad but not actually that bad lol xoxo' or nothing at all?

guys really. :(

Excluding the Darkest Dungeon and the DLC areas, the boss that is the greatest foil to the Heir is hands down Brigand Vvulf: - Instead of rebuilding and reclaming the Hamlet, he tries to take something that is not his and destroy it. - While the Heir works from the shadows and orchestrates the missions, Vvulf jumps head first into action alongside his men. - Similarly, Vvulf guards every single one of the bandits on his fight. The Heir, on the other side, is an awful boss who, without qualms, sends their mercenaries on missions with minimal preparation, sends them to stressful situations, sees them suffering from illness and does nothing about it or perhaps even actively tries to get them sick, or even hires newbies with the sole intention of sending them to their death. - The similarities expand to their mercenaries (workers? we don't know why these people are with Vvulf). The Heir's mercenaries come to the Hamlet thinking that they've hit rock bottom and hoping to win something, be it fame, catharsis, money, redemption etc, or at the very least a noble death. The brigands know damn well that they've taken the low road and have no regrets or hallucinations about it, or else they wouldn't agree to join the raid.

We knew it would happen... And still...

Thinking about why Denji and Yoshida still didn't have a major violence fight until now is maybe because they actually sees each other as friend or some sort of companion even when they didn't want to outwardly admit that.

Both of them are this FRIENDLESS highschooler boys, as if this fact isn't obvious. After part 1 Denji become lonelier and probably is seen as Chainsaw Man fanboy freak by his peers. And Yoshida clearly isn't interested into making friends because of his job that put him into believing he is in higher position and don't need any emotional attachment in order to 'protect' himself from grief & lost that are very common among Devil Hunters.

However unlike Yoshida, this Denji who actively hunt devil as Chainsaw Man but also actively seek and value relationships is very interesting to him + probably makes Yoshida a little bit jealous and projecting onto him a lil bit too hard too.

Denji is the only fellow teenager that is within his scope of work and also his ally. Yoshida doesn't need to made up an excuses to hang out with him to his higher ups. Yoshida doesn't need to hold himself from being offputting because he believes Denji could understand him anyway. He's more of himself when he's with Denji. The kind of freedom Yoshida needed even if he only thought about it subconsciously.

And about Yoshida in Denji's perspective, he is a very annoying weird individual who claim to be his bodyguard. But Denji still tolerate him because Yoshida never actually try to abuse the hell out of him, in contrary he gives him food, money, and even introduce him to a girl. Yoshida hang out with Denji a lot (off screen), and he said it himself that he want to keep "acting" as his friend too.

Yoshida reject his desperate "tonguing" offer in non consentual situation. He always give Denji choices (even though it's oftentimes stupid) and try to make Denji understand his situations better (even though Yoshida is really suck when it comes to giving reasonings and excuses—we see his examples of shitty excuses in International Assassin and Aquarium Arc, it's nothing new).

Also Yoshida is one person that outwardly tell Denji to stop transforming into Chainsaw Man and live the normal life he had now as a human. Something that would make Denji's past self overjoyed the first time he hear it.... To be validated as he is.

When you think about it, Denji could off-ed Yoshida with his current combat IQ if he really tries to. He could jeopardize Yoshida's mission easily if he wants to by transforming into Chainsaw Man in the more public, open area.

Yoshida could use more violence based method to force Denji into doing what he wants. He could cancel the food orders. He could use Denji's current crush to be bargaining chip rather than letting her go to the hospital. He could stop Denji and Nayuta reuniting and going back home by using his tentacles.

But no, they didn't do any of that.

Because deep down they understand each other and none of them really want to cut this weird developing friendship off. Yeah... you just could feel it from their moments of silence and everything.

Your honor, they’re idiots.

初めから持ってないのに胸が痛んだ

(translation: My heart ache even though I never had it to begin with) /was thinking of how this line relates to Legend and Koholint... anws have this legAsea recreating this one shot of the MV

The most Ragnar-like Ragnarsson aka Ubbe 🥰

[see hq or get copies]

Found an adult male Tholymis tillarga

Arkin and Asa on a date at an art exhibit, admiring a painting of Angels:

Arkin: Hey, you believe in angels?

Asa: *glancing at Arkin, ignoring the painting* Yes, I do.

Hi guys, as you know me I usually do not really say anything to any 'tea' or 'beef' that is happening on tumblr, but at this point, with all I have seen or read right now, I feel compelled to say something.

What I have seen (and I personally am pretty sure that most of it is true because... why would anyone try to fake that??) made me pause. Because I am not deep in the fandom / a relative lurker + associating more with ASOIAF now than HotD per se, I have removed myself from a lot of the bigger spaces and went into communities where I felt appreciated.

With that in mind, I have turned a blind eye to a lot of the stuff that was happening in Group chats / was not involved with it or had not received any sc's.

I am not an angel, yes, I have vented and said things in discords that were not nice, but I never imagined that people I considered to be friends would stoop so low to send such anons or do any of the other stuff that was involved in this shitshow.

As I have said many times before. We are all adults here. We should all know that actions have consequences. So if anyone feels like I have wronged them somehow, I will gladly text with them to rectify any problems. I am always willing to learn.

To end this.... If you feel the need to stoop down to anonymous hate, racism, xenophobia, sexism.... Please unfollow me. I really do not want to associate with you if you think that that is ok.

Asa

to add: sorry for any spelling mistakes. i am literally shaking rn.