ACverse thoughts of the day: historians if the Assassin-Templar War was common knowledge
literally the most boring topic of study, you show up with a thesis around them, and your teachers roll their eyes so hard they can see their own brains;
"Please, this is a serious institution, do reconsider your topic of study to something more... engaging."
nobody takes them seriously, because primary sources are so bountiful, it's almost embarrassing;
the most intriguing study about the war is the overall lack of splinter factions and infighting;
there are furious debates and speculation on what surely were related factions being assimilated into larger non-related factions, and how the Assassin-Templar dichotomy spread;
many historians look into the records left by both orders to fill in the gaps in their own research;
Abstergo has research fund grants that many try to apply for, and it helps them keep their fingers in any papers being published to tuck away any compromising information;
Abstego being related to the Templars and their very fucked up deeds is fairly well-known, but nobody can do anything about it. think Shell and ExxonMobil bullshit;
some whistleblowers crop up now and again but after the initial outage, not much comes of it. maybe a scapegoat or two get arrested but that's that;
there are conspiracy theorists who think the Assassin-Templar conflict is a hoax, everybody hates them;
historians adore the assassins because 1. they are terrible gossips and 2. they FUCK, and they write a lot, so it's free insider knowledge
HCs dose of the week: stuff Desmond did for work during his runaway years
seasonal jobs depending on the city he was in before he made it to NYC, possibly cashier work in tourist attractions cus he was good with numbers and people;
street busking, he's handsome and i know he has a good singing voice;
your average customer service clerk on chain stores, like Virgin or Blockbuster;
a quick jaunt helping organize and carry inventory for a local store which led him to get recommended for,
working inventory on a logistics warehouse, meaning that Desmond Miles is in fact, forklift certified;
odd jobs as he was recommended to by friends and colleagues, anything from running mail to small fix-ups around the house;
outsourced custodian work for an apartment complex, which was the most chill work he ever had if you ask him;
stagehand for a local indie music scene, mingling with goths, metalheads and punks. he mostly did electricity and light directing, but on occasion, he did stage management;
a longer-than-expected period at a mechanic's workshop, got a taste for tuning up cars and bikes there;
food industry, maybe a prep cook or waiter on a smaller restaurant. not fast food though;
and of course, front bartender on high-end bars like Bad Weather.
Shaun's idea of showing off his cooking skills is making tacos. storebought hard shells. with kidney beans. no not even black beans. he will strain the fat off the meat too.
Modern timeline bits we should have gotten in AC3 but we were robbed:
big city chase scene with diving into buildings and vaulting over cars to ditch pursuers. bonus points if it's in São Paulo, the portion of Manhattan we get is too vertical for a nice free running-heavy segment imo.
speaking of, small scene of the São Paulo assassin team welcoming the group and helping set them up with what they need to get around. (it was said they were moving locations but they never said they were moving away from the city, maybe just different hideouts. i sincerely doubt the brotherhood would let themselves be thrown off a major city like that.)
on the topic of Manhattan, we should have gotten a stealth escape sequence on the way out of the building. we went through a whole thing to jump from one building to the next, there's bound to be enough security to make this interesting.
which means, access to more gear!!! smoke bombs, sound poppers, flashbangs, gun silencers, hell even improvised weapons from office supplies. i know the brotherhood is stretched thin but c'mon!
Desmond finding and releasing more animus project test subjects. He's right in the heart of the whole project and he only walks out with his dad? Nuh-uh, if there are anymore subjects (and knowing Abstergo, there is a very high chance there are), then he's also walking out with them.
an actual, sincere, thesis-lead, fight and then confession with Daniel Cross. those two need to fucking talk more than exchanging a few snide remarks at each other, i am BEGGING.
Desmond! Riding! A MOTORCYCLE!!!! Perfect way to go full circle, the thing that got him caught in the beginning is the thing that saves his hide in a pinch.
access to Bill's emails, as well as Becca's and Shaun's. i don't care if it's sus, this is a brotherhood. they are stretched thin and with windling numbers, but all the more reason to keep in touch and find solidarity and companionship on one another. i wanna hear from the other teams, i wanna know what's going on around the world with them, and i want them to reach out to each other.
BONUS POINTS if Desmond opens up about reading the team's emails back in Monteriggioni and addressing the fact that they basically tried to schedule a dinner out without inviting of thinking about him. among other things too, he was so left behind in the socializing!!
on that note, Desmond gets to talk to his mom. i don't care if it's too dangerous, let him talk to his mom!! if you're gonna make your character feel sorry for refusing the call and regret being away, then make that mean something? hell, let him send her an email at least!
Desmond, Shaun and Becca break time. No Bill, just the three of them catching up and, discussing what happened back in ACB. you kill off one of your biggest side characters and we're supposed to just carry on? i'm not having it, this can't go unaddressed for the audience, it's so cheap. (no that bit from the Juno story hours doesn't count)
Shaun and Becca being more than voices on your ear. We should have gotten a bit of them having the spotlight, maybe infiltrating Abstergo's servers to wreck havoc and cover for Desmond's escape. Maybe even giving us environment cues to use on the fight against Daniel as mentioned above. A sliding door to break a chokehold, or overloading a server to make the power go out to give you an advantage, shit like that!
The team slowly but surely tipping the scales against Bill. Yes, we all know we're in a deadline, things are tense, yadda yadda. They are still people, and you make people overwork for too long, and they break in terrible ways. Desmond should be able to bring a measure of defiance to Bill's iron fist, telling him off often so that Shaun and Becca can catch a breather too, and it helps. Which would be a great way to segue into the Bill rescue mission, it's not what he would have wanted them to do but well, his orders are shit anyway, so let's save his ass.
i'm inspired so as a cont to this post, Clay headcanons that only make sense to me part 2:
Clay had several instances of carpal tunnel syndrome and other hand tendon issues. Some of it was from biting more than he could chew when working for his father, others from simply overworking himself during college;
His mother had a penchant for outdoorsy activities, particularly hiking and nature preservation efforts, and they would often go on trips to camp out and just spend time together. His father would accompany them when he was younger but with time it became a son-and-mother activity even as things grew tenser at home;
As a child he struggled with retaining spoken requests which made helping his father a bit of a struggle since he needed to memorize measurements and the right tools to bring him, so he got the habit of writing things on his hands and arms which followed him to adulthood. He used to get bullied about the ink stains on his skin and his parents even got a bit of a chiding about it at a parent-teacher meeting once, because the ink might make him sick;
Before that he once went around naming each tool on his father's toolshed, even writing them down on the handles. To his credit, Harold did his best to recall the names and use them so Clay could find them more easily. Even as an adult, in his head certain pliers are Julie or Thomas, and each size of torques are a different B name like Bob, Billie, Bernard, Bart, etc;
He'd rather die than ever, ever admitting to that particular habit to another human being, though;
One of the things he truly misses from when he was a kid and things between his parents were still nice, was their movie nights on weekends. Without failure, his father would drive them all after breakfast to the nearest Blockbuster or cinema, and they'd pick out a movie to watch together. Even when things got hard financially and in his parent's marriage, that was the one thing they kept trying to keep alive, though it often ended up in arguments and tense awkward silent drives back home;
Once he began to explore his sexuality, he started to use a clip-on earring on his right ear but never around his family. HHe never got it pierced so he didn't have to raise questions with a hole in his ear but also because his phobia of being stung in general;
As anyone who works with machines of any kind, he developed his own rituals for his computer as well as for when he started to study the Animus software. One of those is tapping a camera lens before using it, or rubbing the logo of whatever computer he's using;
While he's not exactly a fan of tea himself, he really dislikes straight black coffee. It's either lattes or several spoons of sugar for him, and if he's drinking black coffee then you know it's a Bad Day;
He has opioid tolerance, which majorly sucked when he needed to have a corrective surgery for a hernia, and doubly sucked during his time at Abstergo since the Animus may require drugs to induce an altered level of consciousness;
He has a drawer containing all the extra bits and leftovers from projects. From extra screws and caps from furniture kits to chips and boards that aren't obsolte or broken to bits that he meant to put back eventually but always forget to. Over time the drawer evolved into a shelf and then to a considerable corner of his childhood room at his father's house. Both men refuse to do a cleanup of it just in case they need those at some point;
Speaking of, he had a small period of job hopping fresh out of college, mostly out of HR mismanagement and trying to juggle more than one job at once. Long story short, he ended up with three different work laptops that he never managed to return and are now way obsolete for much use. He keeps meaning to get rid of them but they always make him laugh, so he gives them a pass;
He's a tense and fussy sleeper, so he has a tendency to get tension migranes sometimes and they leave him with a very sour mood;
While he always nurtured an interest for space, he had a more complex curiosity for the sea and ocean life. He found it fascinating but it always left him feeling morose and ill at ease, while space always put an idealistic twinkle in his eyes. The ocean was just too close to be so full of mysteries and unknowns, while the final frontier seemed too far to give him any sense of foreboding;
Even so, he never met the sea. Only lakes and rivers, or seen it from above when he flew on planes, but he's never stood on an ocean beach proper.
Hi so um. I really really enjoy reading your analyses of Clay .. your headcanons are the best and I feel like you're the only other person that enjoys him right . If possible do you think you could share more of your headcanons and thoughts for him because they stir fry my brain just right 👍 thanks
omg hi!!!! oh dear i'm, so bashful rn fjhsbfjseh i'm so glad you like my hcs!! \o/
mmm i'm not sure if i've got all that many hcs off the cuff to share, the post i made a while back was the most i collected over time that i felt confident about posting online. he's a very dear character to me and close to my heart, and i have a few hcs that are a bit sensitive to share publicly on my end (anxiety do be hitting)
tho, give me a few days and i think i can cook up a few other ideas for a part 2 post soon :3c all my brain power is currently going to my desmond study notes of late and i wanna finish it before i run out of steam
also for the long run, i do plan to share more of my main rewrite/hc fest au eventually if you wanna keep an eye out! it's where most of my hcs tend to go or come from :D
and thank you for the message, it made my night!!!! TvT <33
random special interest thought of the day: Desmond goes out of the Grand Temple for a walk to clear his head after a stressful night’s sleep, maybe enjoy the sunrise, nothing big, and comes back with a whole litter of kittens crawling out of every pocket of his hoodie and backpack.
bonus points, Shaun is allergic to fur and Becca gives them a tablet with baby sensory videos and toddler apps
i did a Desmond headcanons post a while ago, so it’s only fair i do one for my other All-Time Blorbo so,
Clay headcanons that only make sense to me:
- Clay was born and raised in suburban Chicago, and spent most of his life there, save for a few family roadtrips during vacations and then training with the Brotherhood. Infiltrating the Animus program was the first time he ever went abroad;
- He had a collection of space-related clippings, like NASA news, reports on coming eclipses, blurry pictures he took with his father’s borrowed camera, which eventually became clear pictures after he got a telescope for his twelth birthday. There was a leaflet and pictures from a space exploration museum exhibit he went with his school, a faded grinning moon keychain he got from an aunt, and his most prized possession, a picture of four-year-old him grinning and staring up at the sky when he saw the Halley comet;
- After getting severely stung as a kid, he became phobic of bees and hornets and gets very antsy around large flying insects. Ironically, he’s also one of those people who never seem to get stung by mosquitoes;
- He often watched anime movies at a friend’s place after school. First time he watched Akira on a bootleg VHS, he had nightmares for two days because of the body horror. Afterwards, he developed a fascination with cyberpunk and technology in general;
- His first gaming console was a second-hand Nintendo 64, but if you ask him it was a Playstation 2. He ran a bet with a friend of his that if he could fix it, he could have it, and said friend agreed since the neighborhood maintenance guy told him it was more worth it to get a new one than fix it. Clay pulled it off after pouring months on the thing, and many a Halo split screen nighst were had thanks to it;
- Clay went into a Mechanical Engineering major and a Computer Engineering minor for college, and he went through the oath cerimony and he had an engineer’s ring. He often tapped it on something when he was lost in thought;
- While canonically his therapist was a major ass, Clay did in fact have ADHD and OCD. He almost had to quit college several times because of his symptoms;
- He’s one of these people who hoard internet tabs on their browser, and god help whoever deletes even one of them.
- He’s also incredibly picky about his filing system, digital and physical, which has both been a hindrance and a boon for his programming classes;
- He played Dungeons and Dragons and other TTRPG during high school, and in college he was a bit of a forever DM in the nerd circles there, though because of how his campaigns constantly died because of scheduling issues, he stopped doing homebrew and stuck to adventure books instead;
- He was also positively insufferable when the Lord of the Rings trilogy came out in theaters, and he almost failed a college class because he was in line for premier tickets instead of taking an exam;
- Clay realized he wasn’t straight really young, but only figured out he was gay in his teens. Going to college helped him explore his sexuality more, but joining the Brotherhood made him more confident and comfortable in his own skin, and he went to his first pride before being inducted as a full-fledged assassin;
- He never came out to his father, uncomfortable with being this vulnerable with him, but coming out to his mother was a bit of a “oh I knew already, I was just waiting on you to tell me yourself” situation;
- After his mother left and went back to her parent’s home in Detroit, he kept in contact with her and often relied on her for support when he didn’t find it with his father;
- The divorce was a long process overall, what with his father in denial about it and then the whole arguing about splitting assets. His mother did remarry though, and he had two stepsiblings from it, a younger brother and a baby sister. It was rocky at first for him during visits on holidays, but eventually they worked things out;
- While he does drink on occasion, he refuses to touch stuff like spirits due to bad memories from his father’s alcoholism;
- He won’t admit it even at threat of death, but he hates deep dish pizza with a passion. It’s too much filling for too little crust, he’d rather eat a sweet traditional pie instead;
- Speaking of, he absolutely loves jams and jellies. He can’t explain why, he just does and he’ll take those over any other spreadable anyday;
- His favorite snacks are fried fish fingers with spicy ranch, and jelly donuts. He’ll kill several men for those and that’s a promise;
- Clay does have curly hair, but he has a hair brushing tic and it pretty much kills any curl definition he has and it looks vaguely wavy instead;
- While him and Rebecca collaborated on several projects together, they never met personally as they were rarely in the same team, and they only knew each other through codenames until the Animus infiltration mission;
- He went to the Farm for a portion of his novice training with Bill, though he didn’t spend much time there. Only a few of the other kids who grew up with Desmond had stayed there, and that was the first time Clay ever heard about him;
- Lucy had thought for a bit that Clay had a crush on her during his time in Abstergo, and he awkwardly reassured her he couldn’t even if he tried. It made for an oddly sweet conversation, and ended up cementing his trust on her beyond Bill vouching for her.
