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mirrorthoughts · 8 months

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The Identity Crisis of Desmond Miles

Alright, here we are 😂 Thanks to everyone who has voted on my poll (and yes, I know it's not over yet but I wrote this already anyway 😂), I’m actually surprised I got more than 10 votes (and all of them on a yes 💕(the one for the results was mine 😂I wanted to see how it’s going)).

So yeah, Blorbo thoughts about Desmond’s brain, how the Animus maybe-probably works on it and how it’s actually possible that Desmond still has a (probably in the end very weak) grasp of his own identity (below a readmore, because I don’t know how long this will get 😂😂)

The Start

First a few facts I will base this whole… essay on

Desmond learns skills from his ancestors, so the Animus has to impact him deeper than only on a surface level (surface level would be like playing a VR version of a game).

I don’t have the precise ages/dates in mind for the lifespans of Altair, Ezio and Connor, but even if I’m being conservative we’ll get at least 80+ years of other people’s memories in contrast to Desmond’s 25 years of life (…just realized he’s about half a year older than me, so maybe it’s not a surprise he’s one of my forever-blorbos <.<…), one of those, namely Ezio’s he actually ‘lived’ from birth to retirement (= ~55-60 years).

AC Revelations is the only real glance into Desmond’s own memories (aside from what he tells us at the beginning of AC1 and 2). From a doylistic view I know that Ubisoft probably just didn’t want to expend more effort to create Desmond’s memories the same as his ancestor’s, especially because they probably knew at that point they would kill him in the next installment anyway. From a watsonian view the way his memories are all bare bones - mostly his voice talking as if it was a story he remembers and not something he actually lived, without people/faces and places he knew - comes across as if he doesn’t really remember all that much anymore, as if they were really old memories buried by the rest of his (or rather his ancestors’) life.

The brain can hold a lot of information and memories. Even more than you might think. We all know about those Guiness World Records guys that taught themselves to easily remember a myriad of numbers, words, things, whatever. I actually recently saw a very good video about how to do that even as a ‘normal person’. And I’m not even talking about people with photographic, eidetic, echoic or other types of ‘perfect memory’. So, I think we can agree on: the brain is fucking awesome (most of the time) and probably can actually handle the 130+ years Desmond has experienced.

Desmond

Desmond’s ‘life’, according to what his brain experiences when he was in Abstergo’s hands looks a bit like this: Desmond (25yrs) -> Altair (however many days/weeks) -> Desmond (one night’s sleep) -> Altair (however many days/weeks) -> Desmond (one night’s sleep) -> repeat until he gets broken out of Abstergo.

And it only gets worse. Yes, he gets more “free time” when he’s with Shaun and Rebbecca, but at the same time he experiences weeks, if not months of Ezio’s life at a time! Sometimes even years. (We can argue about how the time jump-function works in the Animus, but he still gets the information of what happened how during that time because Ezio knows all of that shit, so even if it’s not as detailed as what he actually actively lives through he still gets the memory of what happened during that time as far as I’m concerned).

And then we have the most extreme ratio in Revelations: Mere seconds of being Desmond (hello computer/brain-speed!) against another few months/about a year of Ezio’s time.

During AC3 it’s not as clear cut how much time he spends in the Animus, thanks to them being inside, but I’d guess they’re about at the same ratio as with AC2, maybe a bit better since he does get to go on missions outside.

In total that makes maybe three months of Desmond’s time (it’s about half a year from when he got kidnapped to when he dies minus all the time he was in the animus. Tbh I think it’s even less than three months he has as Desmond/himself during that time) against literal decades of memories and experiences of his ancestors during the same time. And of course the Bleeding Effect that even disturbs his ‘Desmond time’.

So much for the ‘mathematical’ side of it all 😂

To summarize: Every memory that Desmond makes as himself is overshadowed by dozens of memories he makes as one of his ancestors. So piece by piece, Desmond’s own memories get buried deeper and deeper in his head and those 25 years he actually was only Desmond get fainter and fainter as the new memories he’s making as his ancestors are getting favored by his brain.

Identity Crisis

At this point, it wouldn’t be surprising if Desmond really believed himself to be Ezio, right? After all he’s lived about 55 years of Ezio, he remembers being born as him (and wasn’t that an awkward scene to play… nevermind experience for Desmond), growing up as him, and of course everything we as the player played through with Ezio. And although aside from some verbal outbursts against especially Lucy and a few scenes of the Bleeding Effect we actually don’t see much of it during the game (as far as I remember at least). But we also know about the in-game consequences of using the Animus in detail - hello Clay - and that Abstergo doesn’t really care about the effects of the Animus on their victims as long as they get from them what they want/need.

And yes, Rebecca’s Baby 2.0 was optimized by her to make it better/easier for Desmond. But better/lesser effects still means there will be some effects. And also… afaik Rebbecca has her informations about the Animus from whatever Lucy ‘smuggled out’ of Abstergo. Lucy is said to be a Templar spy, so what informations did she really give Rebecca? Bc as far as I’m concerned it would be to Lucy’s/the Templar’s advantage if Desmond would find them what they need more or less by his own choice and then is brain gets scrambled to hell and back so the Assassins won’t be able to get more informations themselves, right?

Anyway, @Raett (who was a lovely participant in the discussion of these thoughts) hit me with that lovely sentence of “If you've spent more time being 'Ezio' than being 'Desmond' than what's to say [you aren’t] Ezio with memories of Desmond?”

And… just imagine. You’ve just gone through decades of memories, your own memories are faint right now (see point 3) and you’re not quite sure if those actually are your memories or if that’s just something you’ve seen. Maybe you are Ezio after all? Maybe you only dreamt of those ‘memories’ of Desmond - after all that weird vision of a woman that called you the Prophet also talked about someone with that Name! Okay, alright, then you are obviously Ezio, right? You remember your family, your sister, after all you write to her regularly when you are not visiting. You remember Constantinopoli, you remember traveling to Masyaf, you remember finding Altair’s body, his memories.

Wait.

You remember more of Altair then the memory discs have shown you. How can you remember more of Altair’s life? It was already a miracle in your eyes that you saw his memories at all! You remember someone named Connor, Ratonhnhaké:ton. You remember him living in the future, not as far as Desmond, but still far closer to him than yourself. How can you remember the future if you are Ezio? But you remember your - Ezio’s - whole life, so you have to be Ezio, right? But you also remember Altair’s life. Not all of it, but years of it. And you remember Ratonhnhaké:ton, remember how he became Connor, remember his work and life up to somewhere in his later twenties.

And you remember, though faintly, Desmond. You remember that diabolical machine Desmond used. You remember what he was forced to do.

You can remember remembering, reliving your memories.

Are they really yours? Or maybe, maybe you aren’t Ezio after all.

Remembering

So, now that Desmond’s gone through that circle of ‘who am I?’ and ‘I’m Ezio, right?’ and ‘I have to be Ezio, but I can’t be Ezio, so who am I?’ probably more than just a couple of times, what actually is it that brings him back every time?

The short answer is probably ‘reality’, even though that sounds dumb as fuck at first 😂

But in a wider sense that’s actually true. A person’s memory doesn’t only consist of seeing and hearing things, as much as someone who played the games might get the impression because the average person has yet to be able to smell/feel/taste things from computer games 😂.

And that’s the crux, the only thing that actually saves Desmond from loosing himself completely: Sensory impressions, which are a great trigger to remember things.

The clothes he’s wearing don’t feel like any of his ancestor’s clothes. Their make and design are completely different, the fabric was produced in a different way, the clothes themselves, like underwear are even a modern invention (modern men’s underwear is actually largely an invention of the 1930s). And of course nowadays most people wear a lot less layers than it was custom in most of human history.

Then there’s sound and smell (and visuals of course), a modern city is so much louder than even ancient Rome has been. More people (the world’s population is more than 20 times larger than during the 1400s (Ezio was born in the latter half of that century). And between 2011 and 2023 we actually gained another Billion of people on this world!), loud and smelly cars, food stalls, tared streets, large buildings and modern architecture. Cities in general.

And of course he has his companions who would jog his memories by being there.

And his companions are the ones who also trigger another sense of Desmond: touch. Or at least I hope they do <.< touch starvation is a bitch and even a hand on your shoulder or sitting closer together and almost touching and stuff like that do help a lot.

In the same vein we also have Desmond’s own bodily awareness by the way. Especially after months of mostly lying in the Animus he won’t be as strong or enduring as his ancestors and when I think about how Ezio’ running around Rome in his armor… well Desmond definitely has a long way to get anywhere near that strength 😂😂😂 So, his body doesn’t feel like either his ancestor’s bodies. And he also has different markings on his body than them (aside from the scar on his lip that he shares with Altair and Ezio) and, of course, he has his tattoo.

And I think that’s what is grounding him the most. While he sure as hell can fall into one of his ancestors’ personalities when he’s hiding somewhere in the woods, cars - and technology in general - and cities and people have the best chance at pulling him back into himself. Even small things like a tea one of his ancestors remembers that just doesn’t taste quite right. Because over the hundreds of years the plants used to make that tea changed by natural evolution or - more likely - by cultivation through humans.

Coping

I’m kinda curious what they would have done with Desmond if he’d survived in canon. But since they didn’t really let him survive (I’m expertly ignoring the Reader btw.) we will never know an answer to that, I guess <.<…

Though I think with a bit of therapy he’d actually be able to compartmentalize the memories of his ancestors quite well? I mean… I actually think I saw something similar in a fanfic, but since each of their lives was so uniquely different I think it would actually be pretty clear cut to shove each of them in a dedicated space - like a mind palace or something.

I mean, mind palaces work by using a place (real or imaginary) that you know very well and kinda… sort what ever you want to remember in those places. Other than Desmond who mostly has the farm (and I don’t think he’d want to use that place and revisit it every time he tries to remember something specific) each of the other three kinda has at least one dedicated space he knows like the back of his hand. For Ezio he could use Florence, Monteriggioni, even Rome (though maybe a place he isn’t going to travel to that often). For Altair Masyaf is the most likely choice in my opinion. And for Connor he has the homestead and his ship. Just places he hasn’t the same connection to as Desmond and which he can imagine well enough.

He would probably still need a shit ton of therapy for that whole thing anyway and for coping with his own childhood and how his dad is a fucking asshole, too <.<… But he would have a chance to cope, maybe even heal.

Anyway, thanks for everyone who read this far 😂😂😂 I didn’t expect to turn this whole thing into a 2k+ essay, but well, I kinda did o_O… I have no idea if I remembered everything I wanted to write, but this thing is what you get 😂 Hope you had fun! :D (And thanks for wanting to read this to everyone who voted 💕)

#seikaze #sei's brain bubbles #assassin's creed #desmond miles #this got so much larger than I anticipated #it was actually a joke that I called it 'essay' at the beginning #but welp #now it's 2.2k plus a bit long

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