AC/ Alice Madness Returns au, initial prompt

 originally posted on tumblr, May 11th 2023

assassin's creed x alice madness return au

after 2012, Desmond ends up in a coma instead of dead, and is retrieved by Abstergo. they modify the Animus to allow for memory erasure and try to delete all his time with the brotherhood while maintaining the memory of the sun flare day, and how to possibly regain control of the Eye of Eden.

the erasure is faulty, and causes Desmond to fall into a terrible psychotic break for several years. As symptoms lessen, he starts to be given the indoctrination 101 which immediately sets him off. He can feel something is off, and tries to regain or reawaken his faulty memories while surrounded by templars who are constantly stirring him away from the truth. as he tries to carry on and be a functional person again, he's often overwhelmed by hallucinations and delusions, often throwing him back to not only his ancestor's memories, but his own fragmented ones.

eventually, he slips deeper and deeper and eventually falls down to the little corner of his brain where Clay's construct still lingers, and now he has to guide Desmond through an Animus' blackroom and piecing together his memories while fending off the templar's meddling. of course, not everything goes according to plan, but when does it ever?

bonus points: Desmond never fell into a coma cus Lucy never got stabbened to death (instead she was uncovered and fled back to the templars, and she's desperately trying to help him out and cover his tracks cus she changed her mind in the whole double crossing thing exactly thanks to him and his faith in her and humanity in general), which is what made him crumble after using the Eye.

surprise round points: the hallucination portions are a frankenstein of raw code Animus blocks and lazers, the weird flickery intro to AC1 with the faceless npcs and shit, and bits and pieces from genetic and individual memories, all with a good dose of good ol' human creativity to glue it all together. basically, the vibe is grungy collage of disparaging styles with some healthy techy urban fantasy on top. very dadaism, very y2k liminalcore.

 

AC/ Desmond, in-game model notes

 originally posted on tumblr, May 9th 2023

So here I am, gathering references for my Desmond study, as one does, and I reach AC3. I brace myself for impact because I have the original un-mastered version, and I find the remaster flattens the models too much and kinda, plastifies them?? which makes figuring out dimensions hard. So I gotta deal with, a lot of lighting and rendering bullshit instead. Fun all around.

I start the game and get to screenshooting, and I notice Desmond has some drastic pale palms going on. Like, oddly so. I shrug it off for now, but then I notice that Bill Miles also has them. And, Shaun? Some more gameplay in and we reach Haytham and, he has the same stark pale palms situation going on. Ngl, I'm baffled.

Speaking of averages and my own observations, people with pale skin don't get that stark pale palms even when they tan. They get some faint distinction, but it's mostly from a tanning gradient, the undersides of your arms don't get as exposed to sunlight so less tan. Meanwhile people with naturally brown skin do have distinct pale palms that clashes even with their own tanning gradient.

Now, I know for a fact Haytham doesn't have enough melanin in him to have naturally brown skin, that's a white man. He might not burn in the sun but c'mon, this feels too stark. Not only that, but the skintone just, don't match? Their hands are too red undertoned while Haytham's and Desmond's faces are much less so.

  

So I decide to do some digging. Now, I have no know-how on how to rip assets in games and god forbid, translate them to something like Blender. But I do know that machinimas were big back in the day, and that includes a lot of AC character models being used for gifs and videos and such, so I delve into DA for some model refs. And indeed, I find them, and...

 

Yeah, that's not the same skintone. And after looking at some other screenshots online, even in game the skintone is very much not a match. So what's up with that?

It turns out that as far as I can tell, Ubi did about three skintones (pale, brown and dark) for each gender, by modifying a base skin texture's levels or smth, thus why the palms are so stark. They used the same skintone for the native npcs, Connor, Haytham, Bill, and Desmond. Likewise, Ziio and Prudence share the same skin texture. Which, royally sucks for reference taking, despite being a fairly common game dev trick to shrink asset production.

Where am I going with this? Nowhere really, I'm simply annoyed. ACR very much whitewashed Desmond, but AC3 did um... something alright.

Mandalorian/ "Seasons" Fanzine Submission

 originally posted on tumblr, May 9th 2023 

 

 

hellooooo everyone!!! at long last the zines are out and shipped, which means i get to show off my entry! :D

It was wonderful being a part of the contributer team for @dincobbzine , it was full of amazing artists and writers and I hope everyone who got it will enjoy our work, it was made with much love and appreciation <33

 

AC/ the wassa-matta-you Altair scene quick analysis

originally posted on tumblr, may 7th, 2023

no but listen-

you arrive at the one safe corner in the one last possible safehouse for you and your team before you have to risk it all and jump the border. it's a place dripping with memories, and the first thing you see when you enter it is one of your ancestors. the one that started you down this whole rabbit hole, the one that reintroduced you to a war you made yourself believe was just cultist lies.

you're in good terms with your team but they aren't friends yet. you trust them to watch your back but not to see you be vulnerable. you're tired after three weeks of your life are lost inside someone else's memories, three weeks of isolation where you're either spending time with long-dead people or having to decide between resting and spending time with people just as tired as you are.

you and the team settle in, and they all seem to flock as far away from the statues as possible while still making good use of the chamber's space. you though? you make your corner right at the foot of Altair's statue. it's only right, right? who else would? it's ominous and overbearing but, you know the guy better than anyone else possibly could. he's not just some legend, he's also the asshole you relived as and watched find redemption and save his order from itself. he's greater than life, but he's also a long estranged uncle with lots of stories from his youth to share.

you chat up the team, make what little small talk you can manage, get work done. then you run out of things to say and do, and you stand in front of this legendary asshole who's probably the crux of a lot of very conflicting and complex feelings, and you crack a joke. just a little thing to lighten up the mood for yourself, an inside joke only you and him would get. hell, you can even imagine the baffled eye-roll the statue would give if it could. and in comes someone to spoil your one moment of vulnerability, disguised through terrible comedy as it may be. who wouldn't snap back over it?

and don't even get me started about how Des is the one canonically brown person in that team.

AC/ It Will Come Back au, initial prompt

 originally posted on tumblr, May 2nd 2023

desclay fix-it au, GO!

as Desmond gets booted out of the Animus Island before he's deleted alongside it, he's sent into the blackroom and the genetic memory datastream. However, the fragments he finds in the simulation are no longer related to his own memories, but someone else's.

the animus sends him back to his partition, but he finds himself in an unfamiliar Animus Island, fresh and sunny. he can leave yes, but the message he finds makes him stay. as he tries to find the way out, he finds himself reliving the memories of another, and a spark of hope appears. maybe it's not too late to make things right.

slowly but surely, he relives those fragmented memories, failing and falling but getting back up, determined to see this through. as the new path opens up before him, he makes sure to carry all that with him as he wakes up. for a while he wonders if he did it, or if he managed anything at all, until he feels a small voice in the back of his head and for once he doesn't feel dread about hearing things.

as he recovers from a week-long coma on a cabin near the Grand Temple, him and Clay grow a routine and system for the whole two-people-in-one-body situation, but it becomes more manageable once Desmond twist Bill's arm about carrying the Apple himself. it's his burden after all, and everytime his ancestors left it on someone else's hands, it always ended in tragedy. he's not committing the same mistakes.

thanks to the illusion projection of the Apple, Desmond and Clay manage to interact physically again, though it takes some getting used to and stealth so others don't find out. having someone's cyber ghost in your head is quite a stretch to explain after all. having Clay around is sure a boon however, and as they figure out a safeguard for whatever Juno is planning, they also do their own research on how to find Clay a new body, or create it.

eventually December 21th hits, but Juno wasn't counting on two minds using the Eye at the same time. Desmond and Clay end up together in the Grey, but the bonus of it all is that there is still a way out, though they need to bide their time. As Elijah gains control of the Koh-i-Noor and removes Juno from the equation, the way for them through the Grey to the right temple is clear, and through the Fountain of Youth technology, they manage to recreate their bodies and return to the living.

an early retirement isn't quite in the horizon for them, though, as they unite with Elijah and need to figure out how to raise a kid while continuing to destroy pieces of eden and remaining temples.

 originally posted on tumblr, Apr 26 2023 

enjoy this inside joke from my dnd group.

we have an npc (he’s a de-horned unicorn demigod (long story don’t worry about it)) who had to be benched for being a drama queen, and then everything went south. so i put him on a sylvanian travel case for ease of carry <3

AC/ Clay Kaczmarek, portrait studies

 originally posted on tumblr, april 24rd, 2023

today’s lessons are:

1. don’t skim on the eyebags
2. you’ll think the eyelids are thin enough. they never are
3. the line between hooded eyes and crow’s feet is hell
4. if i see another button or straight nosed Clay, I Will Cry and that’s a threat
5. stealing his frown lines is a crime
6. so is his cleft chin
7. you can never give him too much teeth
8. the hair has been resolved, the evil is defeated
9. he does have stubble i promise, he’s just blonde
10. he also has eyebrows. where are they? no one knows
11. his upper lip is a trap, don’t fall for it

AC/ Organic life (animals and/or living plants) in Lost Archive DLC, a study.

originally posted on tumblr, april 23rd, 2023

i don’t think i need to explain the significance of seeing living beings in this DLC. if lore serves, the Lost Archive happens entirely in “raw code”, in what we can only assume is the human mind experiencing being inside a computer’s head. “no simulations, no environments”. to say that the brutalist aesthetic works like a charm to convey the dryness and inhospitability of such an experience is an understatement. but, as Desmond’s Journey in the ACR main story shows, when memory impressions escape into the code, they begin to make a more tangible appearance in the landscape, and affect the user’s experience.

now, given the DLC is not technically portraying a human mind experiencing code, but an artificially intelligent construct based off a human being’s experiences and thought patterns, itself experiencing said human’s memories… things are gonna get whacky. so i thought i’d make a quick study on when said impressions make a presence. i might do other posts on game mechanics being used to portray stuff like weather patterns, and of course the sceneries and furniture sets, but i thought organic life contrasts against the overall setting of the game and thus leave more of a mark. 

Memory 1, THE END IS ONLY THE BEGINNING:

the animus island. rip bestie, you’ll be dearly remembered. though the overall layout of the island is the same as the one in ACR’s main story, it’s missing the overcast sky, the blue tinge saturation, and quite a bit of decay from the blocks of brutalist cement piercing the island or floating about. it’s also sliiiightly smaller, so one can imagine this is what it looked like before the coding of the blackroom got all wonked up. 

flowers at Clay’s funeral. ngl it’s still a punch to the stomach. still, what’s a funeral without some flowers? a few bouquets by the headstone and a garland, they got the basics covered at least.

roots inside grave path. as you delve through the pathway of the grave plot, you can spot a few stray roots and some leaves poking from a rift in the ground above. it really sells the imagery, for better or worse.

flock of pigeons. ah yes, good trusty pigeons, always there to let you know when there’s a soft haystack just out of sight, or in what direction to aim your leap of faith. not the last we’ll see of them, but their first appearance so early and in such an inhospital setting sure breaks a bit of the tension from the earlier scene. brings you back to simpler, easier times, i suppose. a measure of safety if you will.

Memory 3, ABSTERGO:

garden courtyard. given the setting and the possible european location of the memory, it’s likely to stand for an inner courtyard in an assassin hideout. the cozy warm lighting and overall layout also gives that sense, and it’s a stark contrast for the following office maze hallway you’re sent into when Harold addresses Clay.

Memory 5, BLEEDING EFFECT:

flock of pigeons. i know right, what a place for them to show up again. feel like they (read Juno) are mocking you more than anything. nothing else to be seen when it comes to living things in this memory, to no one’s surprise. i have my own theories on why they are here to begin with, but maybe another day.

 

Memory 7, THE END OF THE LINE:

second garden courtyard. i think it’s quite safe to say this is the code representation of the animus island. not just because of the overall layout but it’s clearly timed to be soon after Clay Prime is on the out bus and uploading the construct into the animus.

the stairway weeds. the first loop flashback makes an appearance at last! it still breaks my heart to see the loop bits finally pay off, but i don’t think this staircase would have stuck with players as much if not for the little overgrowth on it.

seagulls. are you teary-eyed? i sure am. it’s all poetic and shit but, i love that it’s a reassurance that even if he falls, he won’t fall far. seagulls are a sign of land nearby after all, so yeah, back to the start we go~!

AC/ Bill Miles rant

 originally posted on tumblr, mar 26th, 2023

this is it. this is what you're about to read, yipee hurray! i'm about to rawdog this pustule of a man on a table, and i'm dissecting why he's such a tentative yet counterproductive evolutionary reaction to a shitty situation that ends up causing more problems than it fixes. yknow, like a pustule.

this is gonna be long and rough (honestly the innuendos just write themselves don't they)

also if you haven't already, I'd recommend checking out my previous Daniel and Lucy posts for further context as i'll bring back stuff from them in here. call it a series what the heck.

now, onto the Billiam!

AC/ Daniel rant

 originally posted on tumblr, Mar 19th 2023

 i can and will complain about the horrid treatment Desmond and Clay got in the games, but i certainly will NEVER forgive ubisoft for how dirty they did Daniel.

that man is brimming with potential. we had two comics showing how he was used as a tool by the templars, how all of his life was informed and affected by what they did to him as a child. how he was left on the side of the road without clothes or a name to him, bereft of support and answers to his hallucinations, which led him down a turbulent and traumatic life. how the one community and support he found, the same one that gave him a direction and goals and a sense of belonging was violently ripped away from him because in the end, even that was just a lie, another illusion. everything he worked for for years in the brotherhood, meant nothing, was nothing, because the templars caused him to burn that bridge and the moat and the castle all in one stab of a blade. and now, he has no choice but to throw it in with the people who ruined any and all chances he ever had of a normal or stable life. they are the ones with the animus and the drugs that he needs to continue to exist, much less function somewhat normally. he has no other choice but to surrender himself as a tool, and he's always desperate to prove himself useful because he knows that once he's not, he'll be discarded again, and that will be a fate worse than death for him. if the brotherhood doesn't get him, then the drugs and the violent outbursts caused by the hallucinations will.

he was - is - a perfect foil for Desmond, who has been treated as a pawn, by the assassins and the templars and the isu, he's just the right person to be at the right place at the right time, thanks to a sprawling line of causality that leads him solely to it. he was a tool before he was even born, the community he was born in treated him as such too and so he left. he condemned himself to an isolated and dangerous life to attempt to be a person and find self-actualization, and look how that turned out. sure he chose to stay with the brotherhood and help, but in the end was that really his choice or did the calculations just compute his willingness to it? did he ever have a choice at all or was it all just numbers on a tally of probability?

Daniel is the worst case scenario Desmond could have ended up as. A man used and abused to the point where he has no choice but to make his peace with the role that was decided for him. he's Desmond's shadow of the soul as it were. they are both just playing their roles and they both are more aware of it than most people could ever be. Desmond said it himself.

"It just keeps happening over and over."
"What does?"
"Everything..."

and to further expand on on the narrative foils, Daniel and Clay also are mirrors of each other. Both stepping stones on the grand scheme of things, ultimately disposable but never dismissable. But while Daniel became a victim of the Animus and his need for it to function, wanting to ditch it but unable to, Clay had no choice but to surrender himself to it in order to see his duty to the bitter end. Daniel can barely handle existing in the real world anymore, and Clay had to leave it to continue existing in the simulation. Neither ever wanted his, but they both needed to do it to make something, anything, of themselves and the pain that was inflicted upon them.

worst of all, the game seems aware of all that!! even setting the last mission's confrontation in the Animus chamber in Italy, the place and machine connecting the three men together. Desmond having to use the Animus as a barrier between himself and Daniel, the thing that doomed both Daniel and Clay being his one protection at the time... it was all setup so beautifully for a poignant meaningful scene between those two, maybe even a proper boss fight--!

but what do we get? an absurdly deus ex machina bleeding effect that turns Daniel into another chase assassination. No fighting back, no words, no discussion or debate. Not even a fucking confession cutscene. It's disgraceful, it's pathetic, and it's so, so offensive to your audience and the story you're writing.

Witcher/ Calanthe and Pavetta

 originally posted on tumblr, Feb 15 2023

“You have fine tastes, don’t you, córeczko?”

@cerbin-aen-feainn​ asked me for Calanthe holding baby Pavetta, and if I don’t post it then I’ll just keep fussing with it until it’s not a sketch anymore, so here we are!

The idea of Calanthe using polish terms of endearments is by @bookcalanthedaily​

 

Commissions, 2023

 All my commission posts from 2023, with the relevant links and texts 

 originally posted on tumblr, May 3rd 2023 

commission for @bookcalanthedaily thank you sm!! <3

just two grandmas having a good time, as they deserve

 

 originally posted on tumblr, May 30th 2023

commission for @windflowerofskellige of their Foltest design and baby Arabella. thank you so so much!! <3 

 

 originally posted on tumblr, Jun 20th 2023 

commission for @realkaijuhavecurves for a cutey tabby kitty. thank you so much for your request, it was a blast! >w< 

 

 originally posted on tumblr, Jun 22 2023

 

commission for the bestie @mt07131 of her Iveani and @cerbin-aen-feainn’s Lin. always lovely to draw them uwu <33 

 

 originally posted on tumblr, Jul 27th 2023

commission for @robin-in-the-library of beloved Angelo Poliziano and kitty Telemacus! thank you so so much for the lovely comm!! <3 

 

 originally posted on tumblr, Jul 28th 2023

 

commission for @windflowerofskellige of their Radovid design and @cerbin-aen-feainn’s Stella. thank you so much for the wonderful comm!! <3 

 

 originally posted on tumblr, Aug 3rd 2023

commission for @blastflight of Skadala Flintlock! thank you so much for the wonderful comm, this dwarf lady was a joy to draw!! <3 

 

 originally posted on tumblr, Aug 24th 2023

Icon commission for the wonderful @hcdragoncat!! thank you so much, it was wonderful drawing your boy! :D 

 

 originally posted on tumblr, Sep 3rd 2023

Another icon commission for @hcdragoncat!! thank you so
much, Phoen is such a lovely fellow! :D 

 

 originally posted on tumblr, Sep 26th 2023  

commission for @windflowerofskellige of their Radovid as a bebe and Philippa. thank you so much for the comm!! <3 

 

 originally posted on tumblr, Sep 26th 2023 

Once again, an icon comm for @hcdragoncat!! thank you so much for this, your lad Abyss was so much fun to nail down! :D 

 

 originally posted on tumblr, Nov 3rd 2023

commission for @ohnoanalien for their Celestial Fusion AU! thank you so much for the comm, it was a blast!! :DD 

 

originally posted on tumblr, Nov 29th 2023

commission for @vvitchdokter of their oc Viatrix in her human form and getting a, not so good first meeting with Geralt. thank you so so much for the comm, it was a blast!! :D

 

originally posted on tumblr, Dec 12th 2023

commission for @bookcalanthedaily of Pavetta and her two oc Calanthe children, Ceran and Coram! thank you so so much for the comm, always a pleasure <33 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AC/ Godkiller au, initial prompt

 originally posted on tumblr, Sep 1st 2022

cw: Valhalla modern timeline, cus god knows i hate it and i don’t wanna subject anyone to it who doesn’t want to either

but okay, godkiller au

Desmond from a different timeline decides Juno’s bullshit ain’t it, starts to go back in time to undo the damage she’s done until eventually, he can get to her and stop her from being born in the first place. Desmond from canon timeline as the Reader, trying to stop him before he completely messes up the timelines more than he already had, thus chasing him across time and trying to get their ancestors to change his stupid mind. Also yes the modern gang is also there in snippets and flashbacks, and of course there’s also Clay trying to knock sense into both Desmond cus jfc you two, not a moment of peace in this damn Grey. Lots of sci-fantasy actions scenes, lots of slice of life moments too cus we all deserve it, lots of killing mirages and remainders of Isu, lots of existential philosophy cus I can fucking do that too Ubi.

 

AC/ Clay headcanons

 originally posted on tumblr, Apr 5th 2022

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.

AC/ Desmond headcanons

 originally posted on tumblr, Jan 18th 2022 

Desmond headcanons that only make sense to me:

• He can play the guitar, something he learned by hitching rides with a band as a groupie (poser) and that skill helped him have at least enough loose change for a coffee and toast on his drier days;

• He had a rundown old guitar he always spun as a heirloom from an uncle, when in truth he snuck it from a yard sale one time, along with a blanket and a pack of faded 80s stickers;

• Some time after, he slipped the money on an envelope to the yard sale house, now that he could afford paying back for the items;

• He really likes bird watching, and he even befriended a flock of pigeons that lived near a Virgin megastore where he worked for a season;

• Early on his escape, he did a lot of hitchhiking which dragged him in a zigzag around the eastern half of the US before he finally headed to New York, and he sincerely regrets never going to Las Vegas or California before that;

• He did however take a diversion on his way to New York to go to a week-long music festival in Miami, and to this day he’s not sure how he managed to survive that for a number of reasons;

• Most of his early days in New York was with squatting groups, who supported him a lot and helped him get a bit of a grip on his trauma in the Farm, and once he was well-off enough to rent his own place, he always made sure to donate some of his tips back to them;

• He is in fact, very left-leaning when it comes to politics, but he's also impeccably chill about it. If he doesn’t vibe with a person because of their views, he just cuts ties and moves on;

• He’s taller than both his parents, a handful of inches compared to Bill but a whole foot compared to his mom;

• His mom is called Francisca Martinez (she didn’t change her last name) and she’s from spanish and indigenous descent. Her nickname is Cica (pronounced See-sah);

• Desmond has a fondness for radio pop, as it was the first type of music he heard once he was out of the Farm, and 20s and 30s jazz, because of his father’s inheritance vynil disks;

• On a related note, becoming a bartender was a bit of a bitter irony, since his father got those vynils from his own mother, who ran a speakeasy bureau during the Prohibition;

• He in fact has a very sweet tooth, but it only comes in bursts. One moment he’s eating chocolate and drinking Coke every two hours for a few weeks, then he can barely stand looking at a candy for too long;

• He has a habit of collecting recipes wherever he finds them, from magazines to the back of packages, or even asking people if they can share theirs. It started as things he wanted to try making once he had a place of his own and could afford to cook things, but afterwards it became a ritual of his; he can’t keep pictures or afford that many souvenirs, but recipes are easy to store and then remake to relive memories;

• That said, getting used to spicier or heavier foods was a learning curve to him, since most meals at the Farm were a far cry from what he could find most of the time. He did take it as a personal challenge though, which helped;

• He’s an incredibly fast reader, a skill he learned early as a kid devouring book after book in the Farm library, small as it was. He only got sharper as he sped through every pamphlet and billboard and sign and booklet he could get his hands on after he escaped, catching up on years of cultural knowledge he missed out on;

• He befriended a group of bikers at a diner one night, and three days later he came up with the design of his arm tattoo and one of his friends tatted him up for free and taught him how to ride;

• Desmond promised that once he got his own bike, he’d go find them and join them on a cross-country roadtrip;

 

AC/ Terminator AU, compilation

originally posted on tumblr, Jan 15th, 2022

was my Terminator AU idea just an excuse to draw post apoc 2012 Desmond in the iconic Sarah Connor outfit? yes. yes it is.

 

originally posted on tumblr, Jan 16th, 2022

 nobody asked but terminatorAU also has college freshman Clay because of course

 

originally posted on tumblr, Jan 16th, 2022 

Clay rescues baby Elijah from terminator shenanigans and now he’s gotta be a dad while tracking down current timeline Des and dodging two ancient factions and one crazy goddess, everything is great <3 

dropping out of college to raise your future husband's kid off the grid, more like world's best foster parent. also yes shag haired Clay is my peak 2000s character design moment of the year

 

originally posted on tumblr, Jan 17th, 2022

[aggressively hums the Terminator theme]

Turns out, the game was rigged from the start. Desmond did everything he could, and the world still burned, thanks to Juno’s schemes. It was only a matter of time before she swallowed the Templar Order whole, having leaked out into the world after the opening of the Coliseum Vault and using the Eye in Abstergo’s satellite to take control of all world’s defense systems. It wasn’t even a fight, really.

There are pockest of resistance across the world, growing as communication arrays recover or are reestablished, and the First Civilization ruins that have been unearthed thanks to the tectonic shifts gave rise to a boom of Isu-Human technology. For better or worse, the Animus technology has given rise to cloned supersoldiers, infused with Isu technology and effective to a fault.

The key to world domination is one Sage in particular, Elijah. After many struggles, the resistance managed to steal him away from under Juno’s grasp, and hide him safely, but she has one last trick up her sleeve. Hidden in the Central Vault in Turin, is the remainders of the Eye, retrofited to finally allow for time travel. She sends forth two of her newest soldiers, one to retrieve Elijah as soon as he was born, and another to kill a particular thorn in her side, Clay Kaczmarek.

Another very annoying thorn on her other side however, won’t let this fly. After a one-way infiltration to the Central Vault, Desmond Miles sends himself back in time to save his son, and the life of the one who really started it all, the one who found The Truth and gave him a fighting chance. Back to 2003, before Clay even knew what future awaited him.