#genetic memory

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[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

H.W. Hurst - The Thousand Year Memory - Sphere - 1983

[lumiark]

i saw a tiktok where a mother is lulling her baby to a Rammstein song and immediately thought "Jason"

[catofadifferentcolor]

Terrible Fic Idea #85: The Old Guard, but make it Assassin's Creed

My brother has always been a big fan of Assassin's Creed, but I never gave the games a shot until recently, when it seemed a natural progression from all the Crusades research I've been doing for The Old Guard fic I want to write but probably never will. Once I realized Isu bullshit could be a perfect explanation for TOG immortality, this (incredibly self-indulgent) crossover was born.

Or: What if Merrick Pharmaceuticals was a competitor of Abstergo Industries?

aka the And The River of Time fic

Just imagine it:

Pharmaceutical research is an expensive, cut-throat business. Viagra is a $2 billion dollar a year industry. Humira, the blockbuster drug of 2018, sold nearly $20 billion in the US alone. So I imagine if you're a pharmaceutical CEO of limited morals and great ambition, it might seem like a better idea to steal ideas from your competitor who seems to hit it out of the ballpark every time instead of pouring billions of dollars into what may turn out to be an unfruitful venture.

Enter Hugh Merrick, father of Steve Merrick and founder of Merrick Pharmaceuticals. Needing a blockbuster and desperate to get one over on Abstergo, he hires a hacker to slip into Abstergo's servers and find him the ripest, juiciest plum they can sometime in the early 2000s, before the (modern) events of the games or the 2019 TOG movie.

The hacker comes back with the schematics for the Animus.

The idea of genetic memories seems absurd, but Hugh figures that if Abstergo has been using the Animus since the 1980s to get ahead, there's no reason he can't do it too - all he needs is a single Piece of Eden and all his problems are solved.

Hugh builds the Animus and has the hacker go back into Abstergo's systems looking for a candidate to put into it. But finding someone with Assassin blood seems dangerous - they're likely to be an assassin too and could be dangerous if they try to escape, plus the Templars killed off nearly all of them. Templar descendants are out because most are Templars themselves and if Hugh's plan is to succeed he heeds to stay off their radar for as long as possible.

The hacker returns with Abstergo's list of people who may be useful if all other avenues fail. It contains a list of people who were peripherally involved during the invents that interest them - mainly high-ranking courtiers close to Popes Alexander VI and Julius II - and their descendants. They might know things about events of Ezio's time.

Enter Joe and Nicky.

For the past few hundred years, their primary cover identities involve being the children or grandchildren of their previous cover story, all the way back to their first deaths. There are fewer questions and you get to "inherit" all your old stuff.

This method has worked quite well for them - until Merrick learns that their "ancestors" were part of the court of Pope Julius II from 1497 (when he was still Bishop of Ostia) until his death in 1513. Nicky was his private secretary, Joe was a court painter, and contemporary sources suggest they were highly placed enough to know whatever Pope Julius II knew about Ezio's apple. Such as where Ezio might have hidden it.

It's not an unreasonable plan, except for the pesky fact of Joe and Nicky's immortality. After all, the animus is designed to draw on genetic memory, not the subject's own memories. And even if it can be used to view memories laid down in their own genes 500 years ago - which is doubtful, - there's a high likelihood of it killing them - and if Hugh were to learn of their immortality, things would only get worse for them. But they have little choice once they're captured and brought to Hugh's secret research bunker somewhere north of Inverness.

What follows is a largely self-indulgent stroll through the more interesting episodes of Joe and Nicky's life together.

Nicky's first go in the animus is a jumbled, confused mess as Hugh's tech minion learns the ropes as she goes. Nicky ends up hopscotching through his early memories - for instance, a memory where he's learning how to use a sword as a young squire jumps to him using the same move during the Siege of Jerusalem. That strand of memory continues on for a bit until another interaction gets him sent into the memory of another battle/training session/conversation with the person in question and so on.

Joe's first time in the animus goes a little better, as Hugh realizes that his minion needs to learn how to program the animus before they put their most valuable subject into it, and so let's her learn with Joe. Hugh's minion (who is really beginning to regret taking this job) succeeds, pulling Joe into the genetic memory of one of his ancestors: al-Kahina, an Amazigh religious and military leader who led indigenous resistance to the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb. There should be suggestions of a Sword of Eden somewhere in events, but since they don't share Precursor knowledge, Hugh's not interested in letting the memory play out.

Nicky's second session gets them to the time period they want, but his memories have next to nothing to do with the PoE. The same holds true for Joe, when his second session puts him through his POV of that time period. And though Hugh has his minion take them up and down every memory of that time period searching for the smallest hint of anything that might point them in the right direction, there's nothing to find.

Or, rather: Nicky and Joe did meet Ezio once or twice, in waiting rooms or reception areas or the like, but they spent that time talking about art, or the weather, or philosophy - nothing about politics, or Ezio's travels, or PoEs at all.

Otherwise, most of Nicky and Joe's memories of early 16th century Rome involve Joe's rivalry with Michelangelo, who among other things persisted in flirting with Nicky even after he made it clear he wasn't interested. (Joe was, among other things, responsible for getting Michelangelo the commission for David in Florence to get him out of Rome and away from Nicky.)

There's some Vatican politics as well - Nicky's part in organizing the Swiss Guard, Joe's in organizing the Vatican Museums, and the removal of the Borgias from power - and some global politics - the 1503 dispensation for Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, etc. But most of their memories are largely Joe and Nicky being Joe and Nicky in the High Renaissance (and rather hating their jobs, as neither of them particularly like working for Julius II but were blackmailed into it to avoid being labeled as Ottoman spies.)

This goes on for several days until Hugh orders his minion to start looking for the memories of other "ancestors" - essentially, to refine the animus and her technique while he gets his hacker to find better candidates for the animus. And if this accidentally destroys Joe and Nicky's minds in the process? So be it. The plan was always to kill them at the end of their usefulness anyway.

Hugh's minion spends a day doing as asked - there's a few tantalizing glimpses of Joe and Nicky at the court of Kublai Khan in the 1270s - before she has an opportunity to act on the guilty conscious that's come to plague her.

The minion helps them escape - destroying the animus, wiping the records, and blowing the place sky high to cover the bloody swath they have to cut to get out of the secret research bunker. Amongst the casualties is Hugh Merrick, propelling his son Steve into position as youngest CEO in Pharma.

Joe and Nicky rejoin Andy and Booker - who'd been doing their best to cut their own bloody swath through anyone tangentially related to the mercenaries who kidnapped their brothers - and decide to turn their attention to tracking down PoE and destroying animus technology wherever it can be found, believing there are no peaceful uses for either. As a glad you escaped present, Booker tanks Merrick Pharmaceutical's stocks so badly the company never recovers, eventually going bankrupt.

As for the minion? Maybe she's a young Rebecca Crane prior to her recruitment by the Assassins and it’s her experiences with Hugh's animus that get her recruited by the Assassin Order. Maybe she's just a random OC who sets herself up with a new identity halfway around the world and watches gleefully as Merrick Pharmaceuticals and Abstergo Industries both eventually crash and burn.

Bonuses include: 1) Joe and Nicky being the most passive aggressive kidnapees in the history of kidnappings - on the face of things, going along with exactly what Hugh asks of them, but doing their best to focus on innocuous memories and figuring out how to purposefully make memories "skip" between similar episodes without Hugh ever noticing the glitch. Also, playing up the Bleeding Effect so that by day three they're only speaking in Medieval Italian; 2) Hugh being a better class of villain than his son. Immoral? Unethical? Yes, but in a sophisticated businessman way, not a jacket and hoodie, stab a man with a letter opener type way. For some reason I'm imagining him as Jean-Luc Picard, if Picard ever had a Mirror Universe alternate; and 3) Interludes of Andy and Booker searching for Joe and Nicky after they've been kidnapped. This should be part action-thriller along the lines of Taken, part buddy comedy, and involve an arc wherein Andy learns of Booker's deep unhappiness with his immortality and helps him come to terms with the feelings that would have otherwise eventually led to the events of the 2019 movie.

And that is surprisingly more than I thought I would have had. As always, feel free to adopt this bun, just link back if you decide to do anything with it.

More TOG Ideas | More MISC Ideas | More Terrible Fic Ideas

[tsalala]

Exploring the Enigma of Genetic Memory in Animals - Londolozi Blog

An African Safari blog which features news on leopards, lions, elephants, our camps as well as the rest of the Big 5 on Londolozi Game Reser

On a recent drive, I was telling my guests about the Ntsevu Breakaways, who have been living a nomadic life since leaving their pride at the end of 2021. Despite being relatively young lions, from the start they have been incredible at successfully hunting buffalo. We got onto the topic of their fathers, the Birmingham Males, and reminisced on how incredible, and well-known, the coalition was at also hunting buffalo. I wondered out loud if there was any correlation in the “buffalo hunting” trait, and whether, despite probably seldom watching their fathers hunt buffalo, there had been a trait passed down to the younger lions. In a passing comment, my guest brought up how these lions could be experiencing some kind of genetic memory. This phenomenon stuck with me, and I was excited to see if any research had been conducted, and ultimately if animals truly possess this remarkable capability.

[spaceaudyssey]

One thing that I think no one has pointed out yet about this doctor who episode (the star beast) is it's take on the genetic memory theory

According to Wikipedia:

In psychology, genetic memory is a theorized phenomenon in which certain kinds of memories could be inherited, being present at birth in the absence of any associated sensory experience, and that such memories could be incorporated into the genome over long spans of time.

And BBC news:

Behaviour can be affected by events in previous generations which have been passed on through a form of genetic memory, animal studies suggest. Experiments showed that a traumatic event could affect the DNA in sperm and alter the brains and behaviour of subsequent generations.Dec 1, 2013

While there is more studying that needs to be conducted in order for this to be fully proven, it has been theorized as a possible reason as to why people may be born with certain fears or phobias to which there is no other explanation for. ADHD and other forms of neuro divergence are another human trait that has been theorized to be as a result of genetic memory. Again, it has not been fully proven, so I don't want anyone who reads this, to think that this is 100% fact. Read this with caution.

In the case of Rose in the star beast episode, She grew up her whole life, subconsciously remembering little things her mother experienced, and a lot of those experiences have fully affected Rose's own life, from the toys she makes, to how she even chose her own name.

Before I go on, I want to add that, on the comment of gender, from what very brief research I have done, I will not speak on behalf of gender when It comes to genetic memory, as I have not seen studies conducting gender identity in connection to genetic memory. While it could be possible that Rose is experiencing this gender identity because of the DoctorDonna meta crisis effect, this does not mean that she definitely is experiencing this because of DDME or genetic memory in general. Gender on its own is a complicated concept, a social construct, and that's its own set of scientific research that should be respectfully explored before we even consider that genetic memory can interfere in any part of one's gender identity. Also this is a work of fiction. Keep that in mind.

As I have stated before, The DDME is a major part as to why she has made the toys that she has made. It has basically become present in her imagination and probably her dreams. And without knowing it consciously, she helps out in saving London by pressing buttons she never pressed and saying words she's never said before. The instinct (DoctorDonna) in her mind and body kicked in when it needed to. In addition she shares this connection with her mother and it's all because of her mother, and the doctor. It was a connection she didn't even know that she had until it happened.

While I don't think it was done on purpose, the DDME is in a lot of ways a more fictional and exaggerated metaphor for genetic memory theory. While I don't think people can remember the exact things that their parents and grandparents experienced, and y'know, glow and start acting completely different, I feel that any kind of traumatic experience that is very intense to any individual, has the possibility to change the brain chemistry of future offspring and create more or less, a defense mechanism. I.E. the body keeps the score. It can also have the ability to give future offspring the similar likes, interests, and abilities of their predecessors, but to a lesser degree (because there are a lot of other factors that need to be considered when it comes to the development of an individual person's personality, such as their environment, and who they're friends with etc).

At the end , Rose states that basically she feels like herself now. Part of that is in comment to her gender identity, but it's more than that, because now she realizes why she has made those toys, why Rose is her name, and maybe other things that we didn't see in the episode, like maybe her personality, her dreams, her imagination, any reasonings behind decisions she's made in the past (similar to her mother giving her lottery money away), and maybe anything about her that might come across to others as "different". The main difference between her and someone in the real world, is that she has a major answer as to why. We people of the real world can only make a guess as to why we are the way we are. But Rose has the gift of having that answer (or the answer to some things she might have questioned, but probably not everything). And now she is fully embracing it and feels at peace with herself. It has also probably made the bond between her and her mother even stronger because of those shared experiences.

Basically I'm just fascinated in the topic of genetic memory theory, and this episode really brought it back up for me. After noticing the behavioral patterns of women on my maternal side, and how it made us connected in a way, I started to think that the possible reasons for why I have anxiety (or partly) could be due to traumatic experiences of past ancestors. This might not be true, but it would be quite a life changer if it actually was proven. Being able to have that knowledge in general would be quite powerful in the studies of mental health.

Oh and one more thing, in river song's case, I don't know if it's the same or not. The tardis interfered with her genetics, but idk if it shaped her personality, or her regular non-timelord abilities or whatever, but I guess it's possible. It's also been a while since I've watched any of her episodes. I just thought I'd bring that up because that's another person that has been affected by the doctor since before birth in some way.

[xspookyxspaghettix]

(genetic memory)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[found this in my files :: this is basically the conversation that I had with my brother last weekend]

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In the week since Rep. John Lewis died, I’ve returned to something Imani Perry wrote in another time and in another context — on grace ::

“In the Catholic tradition, there is a form of grace, the sanctifying one, that is the stuff of your soul. It is not defined by moments of mercy or opportunity; it is not good things happening to you. Rather, it is the good thing that is in you, regardless of what happens. You carry this down through generations, same as the epigenetic trauma of a violent slave-master society. But the grace is the bigger part. 

It is what made the ancestors hold on so that we could become.”