anli-rambles

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Every time I read one of those age gap posts the age where you're still helpless and being taken advantage of gets higher and higher, like 26 years old is too young to interact with older people what the fuck? I have lots of friends who were/are well into doing a PhD at this point. My dad had me at 26 years old. You're a whole grown ass person participating in society, you can vote and join politics, you can work, you can live in your own.

This smolbeanification has to stop, it's frankly embarrassing.

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BRO THIS IS SO ME ALWAYS??? Anyone else????

Found on a post by @fic-dumpster

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I have to say , I respect the hell out of u

for the longest time have felt very alone and unsafe in the AC3 fandom community, specifically surrounding Ratonhnhaké:ton

Which has been devastating because he's one of the most important pieces of representation i've ever had, and i'm actually very close to the same mix as him

And i just wanted to say miigwech for standing up and openly criticising the fandom for its inability to process a very well done a nuance game about the indigenous experience, especially during the colonialism of early America

💚💚🧡🧡💚💚

Giminotaagoziyaan, mii maanda gaye. (I hope I'm saying this right, that's about all I can say in Anishinaabemowin.)

I've been a very vocal native rights activist for about a decade now. I've worked with and in native communities (Mi'kmaq, Wolastoqiyik and Innu-Aimun, to be more specific) and they've taught me so much. As an immigrant who struggled to find an identity and a sense of belonging growing up in a completely different culture than my own, it was them who really made me feel at home here in Canada.

So you can say this is kind of personal to me. And I'm never going to shut up about it.

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I know it's not what you had in mind when you made this post originally but I want to add something here too.

I think there's an astronomical difference between Haytham struggling to say Kaniehtí:io's name and getting it so wrong that she told him to just call her Ziio and Achilles renaming Ratonhnhaké:ton "Connor" bc he couldn't be bothered to even TRY.

Haytham stumbles on the syllables. He's trying to get it right, but bc he's not used to Kanien'kéha pronunciation he messes it up and Ziio, who's probably had to deal with this kind of stuff before, rolls her eyes and tells him to just call her Ziio. If Haytham had done the same thing with Ziio that Achilles did with Ratonhnhaké:ton, EVERYONE in this fandom would be bringing it up constantly. Tbh if he'd done that, he would've lost all sympathy I had for him. Like wtf dude.

Just imagine this happening for a second

Ziio : [My name is] Kaniehtí:io

Haytham : Well, I'm not even gonna try and pronounce that

And then later when they're at the fort looking for Braddock he just randomly goes "if we're working together, you'll need a new name. I'll call you Jenny, you'll blend in with the colonists better that way."

Like ??? FUCKING IMAGINE HOW THIS FANDOM WOULD'VE REACTED IF HE DID THAT. All of us would be (rightfully) calling him out on his weirdo behaviour for naming her after his sister and his blatant racism. Nobody would be excusing that. But — I'm not making this up — I've legit had someone tell me Achilles' racism was just him giving tough love and it was part of his character development. The first part of that argument is appalling and the second one COULD HAVE BEEN TRUE if Achilles EVENTUALLY APOLOGISED TO RATONHNHAKÉ:TON AND STARTED USING HIS ACTUAL NAME. (And I was called racist for criticising a black man on his racism when Haytham was the coloniser and I was "defending" him (defending was a big word, if you read that post you'll see me state loud and clear that I'd take Haytham critics way more seriously if they applied the same standard to Achilles), bc that person didn't understand that you can still enforce colonialism bullshit as a person of colour, and yes, it's still the case even if it affects you too.)

Here's a (quick) breakdown

List of explicitly racist things Achilles has done to Ratonhnhaké:ton : Invalidated the struggle his people faced by claiming it was the same as the colonists ("your struggle is the colonists' struggle", actual quote), straight up refused to even TRY to say Ratonhnhaké:ton's name, gave him an English name because he supposedly could pass as Spanish or Italian (bc it would make sense for an Italo-Spanish person to be named Connor, obviously) which stripped him of his native identity, worked with slave owners, gaslit Ratonhnhaké:ton into believing the Templars were the ones asking for the annihilation of the natives when it was the continental army's doing (aka Washington's) just so Ratonhnhaké:ton could kill his dad.

List of implicitly and explicitly racist things Haytham has done to Ratonhnhaké:ton / Ziio (yes I'm holding him to a higher standard just to prove a point) : Struggled to pronounce Ziio's name, worked with slave owners, came to the Americas as a white person ? I guess that's colonialism so sure, it counts. I might be forgetting things, feel free to remind me and I'll add it, but that's all I can think of right now. The list of things Haytham has done that were anti-racist is much longer than that.

I just— I'm so tired of this narrative that you either can't call out a person of colour for being racist bc that's racist too or that pocs can't be racist (we absolutely can) to one another. That mentality is racist in itself bc it often functions on the assumption that there's only two races : black and white people, completely erasing the other ethnicities who are also victims of racism. Whether or not you can be racist towards a white person is another debate, but the fact that I experience racism (from every race !!!! even other Asians !!!!) as a Chinese person doesn't exempt me from being racist myself. If I go around telling native people to just "move on" bc it was "a long time ago" when that colonial bullshit is still affecting them today, you'd be right to call me racist.

Calling Achilles racist isn't us being racist. It's us stating a fact.

Why is there no content with Achilles and haytham,, like. C'mon they're rivals and yet I never see any content where they interact. No fics, art or ananything. I mean like. they literally only have ONE canon interaction in Rogue and that's it like where's the fics where they have to begrudgingly team up for whatever reason. Where they meet on the battlefield more than once and fight. Or where they bicker like old men insulting each other like children and connor has to break it up like there's POTENTIAL.

And I'm not saying I particularly enjoy this ship, but the fact that they're enemies, and enemies to lovers is a very popular trope, I'm VERY surprised they haven't become some sort of ship. In fact, it's so shocking to me that INCEST (conhayth) is more popular than the potential ship of haytham x achilles. Like that isn't as problematic than the ship of a literal father and child 😭😭

Anyway I just really want more content of Achilles and haytham interacting and actually being enemies or SOMETHING BRO💔💔

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Getting real tired of the AC fandom's attitude towards Ratonhnhaké:ton with their "he's just some angry guy" narrative (and by "getting tired" I mean I've been sick of it since Day 1, but I digress). AS IF HE ISN'T JUSTIFIED IN HIS ANGER THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE GAME.

Like, his anger at Charles Lee is completely justified by him believing he was behind his mother's death for 15 years. He grew up with that in mind. Finding out one day that it was some other guy after all this time doesn't magically undo the hatred you hold for someone, especially if they traumatised you as a child. It doesn't undo the bit where Lee strangled him when he was just a boy and called his people dirty savages — just having this mentality makes him dangerous. Lee holds power, he's still a danger to his people, his focus won't be shifting away just because his mother was killed by a different Big Bad White Man™.

But more than that, Ratonhnhaké:ton works with people who keep using him as a tool by weaponising his fear of having his people genocided and displaced from their homeland. They make him false promises, and in the same breath they claim that the "colonists' struggles are his people's struggles too" (Achilles' own words), as if they think Ratonhnhaké:ton is too dense to realise that the situations aren't the same. But he's not ! He immediately calls Samuel Adams out on his bullshit when he has the absolute audacity to claim getting taxed by the British is equal to not even legally owning yourself.

No because for real, imagine having to work with people who are constantly trying to gaslight you into thinking their issues are just as bad as yours and helping them will help your people too because there's no other alternative. I'd be angry too ! Having your own mentor, the one man who should understand how you feel, feeding you this bullshit for years knowing damn well the allies he has you working with are just as dangerous to you is 100% something to be mad about !

Hell. Just having him tell you he's not even gonna try to pronounce your name and then gives you some random-ass name (which you later find out is the name of his dead son) from the people actively seeking to kill you and your people would piss me off. And I don't want to hear anyone bring up the "Achilles did that to help Ratonhnhaké:ton blend in with the Whites™" excuse because that's a load of horse shit, too. For one, Achilles says Ratonhnhaké:ton could pass for either a Spanish or Italian person, and then proceeds to give him the totally legit, 100% Italo-Spanish name "Connor". And for two, that's not even true, because every single time, Ratonhnhaké:ton gets IMMEDIATELY clocked as either mixed-race (he gets called a half-breed at different points during the game) or fully native. If people struggled to say his name, which is fair because the Kanien'kéha language has phonemes that are hard for people speaking other languages to pronounce, Achilles could've asked Ratonhnhaké:ton to come up with his own nickname. Ziio had one. Ratonhnhaké:ton is familiar with that concept.

AND THEN, THE FUCKING CHERRY ON TOP, Ratonhnhaké:ton finds out the guy he's been helping all this time, who's been so nice to him whenever he had favours to ask, is the one behind the attack on his village that killed his mom. AND NOT JUST THAT, but he fucking knew it was Ratonhnhaké:ton's village all along, AND HE PLANNED ON DOING IT AGAIN, WHILE HAVING HIM RUN ERRANDS FOR HIM.

Ratonhnhaké:ton is the only assassin we've had who's never actually had allies. Not true ones, anyway. Washington was using him to do his bidding while plotting to kill his people behind his back. Samuel Adams pretended to care about his struggles but dipped real quick whenever Ratonhnhaké:ton needed something that wouldn't directly benefit the revolution. Isaac Putnam used him as a war machine, he wouldn't have cared if Ratonhnhaké:ton died. He was just another man in his army to him.

And Achilles. Achilles, who only took him in because Ratonhnhaké:ton is the son of a man he had a personal vendetta against. Ratonhnhaké:ton was a way to get back at Haytham for what he did to his brotherhood all those years ago. He was a surrogate for him to process his grief for his son through. At every point, Achilles undermined Ratonhnhaké:ton's achievements. I'm thinking about this dialogue bit especially :

"Who are you to lecture anyone ? You locked yourself away in this crumbling heap and gave up on the Brotherhood entirely. Since the day I arrived, you've done nothing but discourage me. And the rare occasions you've chosen to help, you've done so little, you may as well have done nothing at all." — Ratonhnhaké:ton to Achilles

Achilles' only defence can be boiled down to "I gave you weapons and told you stories about the Assassins". But Ratonhnhaké:ton could've procured weapons on his own. He didn't need Assassin history knowledge to kill a guy. Achilles gave him a roof over his head and that's pretty much it. Was it helpful ? Sure. It was a real time-saver. But it was something Ratonhnhaké:ton could've achieved on his own. And then Achilles has the audacity to tell him he's doing things wrong ? To keep pushing him to kill his father, who he's started to bond with and has actual hopes of forming an alliance with once Lee is out of the picture ? Yeah. I'd be mad too. I wouldn't be doing my Assassin job with enthusiasm.

The only "ally" he's ever had who never hides his true motives from him is his own father, who isn't exactly the greatest man and doesn't just work for the Templar Order, he leads them. AND EVEN THEN ! I said "never hides his true motives from him" for a reason, because Haytham isn't above lying to him or hiding other information if it benefits him. Ratonhnhaké:ton can't even trust the ONE guy who was honest with him about working with him out of convenience because their "interests align" on this one thing (killing Benjamin Church). And I don't understand how this fandom apparently misses that part, because Haytham SAYS IT VERBATIM : "the only difference between myself and those you aid is that I do not feign affection". IT'S LITERALLY RIGHT THERE !!

No, actually, I understand how. It's because the people calling Ratonhnhaké:ton "boring" or saying they dislike him for "being too angry" are doing the same thing all of his "allies" have done. They just don't care. They don't even try to see things from his perspective. All Ratonhnhaké:ton wants to do is to prevent his people from getting murdered, a very real fear he grew up with. His village was attacked once before. His mother died. The British army has been doing this shit to other surrounding villages. Of course he's desperate. Of course he's going to work with people who are just as shitty because they're not an immediate threat like the British are. The continental army won't march on native land if they're busy fighting off the redcoats. And it's gonna take some time for them to reorganise once they win and gain their independence.

And if you STILL don't understand my point, here's a post that might help you understand why reducing Ratonhnhaké:ton to an angry dramatic boy with no personality is racist :)

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Was gonna make an actual post going into detail about this but I figured I'd make this one in conjuction with it bc I'm highkey really mad rn. WARNING : this might be controversial. Feel free to hate me in the replies, I stand by my point.

Imagine you're in a fandom where the main character is a non-binary sapphic fighting a tyranical government that's threatening to commit genocide on the trans community and charge heavy fines for the rest of the LGBTQ+ community. But in order to do that, they're forced to work with cisgender queer TERFs because the only other alternative is to get killed alongside the community. They have a transwoman as a mentor, but she keeps misgendering them because their pronouns are confusing. Tells them they pass as a woman and should go by female pronouns to blend in, even if they immediately get clocked as non-binary bc they have a non-binary flag tattoed on their forearm. And the mentor keeps pushing them to work with these TERFS, claiming it's in their best interest to do so because at least they don't openly call for trans genocide. They just, y'know. Don't see trans and non-binary people as PEOPLE. Also, them being queer and getting taxed for it is somehow equal to the mass murder the MC and the mentor are threatened with.

And in this fandom, there's a massive group of people who say they dislike the MC because they're so angry all the time, or call them dumb for working with TERFs and believing in their cause, even if they openly call them out on their bullshit and very much do not support their TERF ideas. Nothing happens if you call these LGB-TERFs transphobic, bc they're all cisgender, of course they can be transphobic. But if you try to call out the MC's mentor for being transphobic for refusing to use their correct pronouns, calling them a female name because it's easier, or claiming the MC's struggles (which is ironically very similar to her own) are the same as the LGB-TERFs, suddenly you're crossing the line. And you get labelled as transphobic bc a trans person "can't be transphobic", especially since the mentor is a transwoman and they're at the very top of the oppression scale within the LGBTQ+ community.

And when you point out to these people that their fundamental misunderstanding of why MC is angry and why claiming their anger isn't justified is transphobic, you get accused of crying wolf about transphobia. And told that they're allowed to dislike that character bc they don't like angry people, which is just proof that they can't empathise with the struggles the MC faces. Bc if they did, they would understand why they're angry. They would understand that it's not a core personality trait : just a result of the shit they have to deal with. Which, ironically, is also the same shit that turned the mentor into a bitter old hag. But she's allowed to be angry, that's fine, I guess.

You got that image ? Good. Because that's exactly what's going on in the Assassin's Creed fandom with Ratonhnhaké:ton in regards to native people. And if it took that comparison to make you understand why this kind of criticism of his character is inherently racist, congratualtions, you've just now been made aware of your own implicit racism towards indigenous people :)

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The bit with Haytham finding out where the name "Connor" came from and feeling betrayed isn't a Rogue-only reference. Connor Davenport is established to be Achilles' son in AC3, you can see his name on a grave behind the homestead. And one of the database entries talks about a raid/attack on the assassins residing in the compound that were coordinated by Haytham and left only Achilles and Robert alive — Haytham very much did spare Achilles' life, whether it was intentional or just bc Achilles managed to escape (because if Haytham had really wanted to kill him, he would've found a way, there's no reason for Haytham not to come back later to finish the job, he knows where Achilles lives). So I wasn't talking about Shay convincing Haytham not to kill Achilles or any of the events of Rogue. I understand that Forsaken came out way before Ubisoft had the idea to make Rogue.

It's also not just the writing I take issue with, but the research as well (or lack thereof). Maybe it's just me being autistic but the fact that Haytham apparently made the trip from Egypt to France in the span of a month is literally impossible with the technology available to him in 1757 and I was compelled to do the maths myself. It would've taken him 2 months MINIMUM, max 4 months to make the trip. (The whole timeline of his travels to find Jenny is completely wrong, actually. It broke the immersion for me as a geography nerd.)

But ultimately my issues are a bunch of little things that pile up on top of each other to make a huge thing, lol. I still can't get over Haytham thinking 'Connor' is the name Ziio gave him. To me Forsaken feels like Bowden threw a puzzle at us and instead of leaving us to complete it (aka, not state things explicitly but give us the tools to put things together ourselves), he left us to craft half of them on our own. It was just... disappointing. And lacking. That's all.

Forsaken honestly has me torn because on one hand it's the one piece of media we have that is entirely about Haytham, but on the other it was handled so poorly that aside from the moments I can clown (like the Spanish Cheese Fiasco of 1747), I can't even say I like it. Because I don't. I have so many issues with the way Bowden chose to portray Haytham. His relationship with Ziio was butchered, his feelings about his father's death were never explored (no, seriously, the first entry in that book is disturbing to read, you cannot tell me a 10-year-old child wrote that thing two days after he witnessed his father be brutally murdered), and he retcons a lot of the things that took place in the game to the point where I was left completely baffled at times. (You cannot make me believe Haytham's reaction to Connor telling him how Ziio died was faked, that man looked and sounded genuinely panicked when he was trying to convince Connor he could not have been behind all of this.) Haytham was emotionally stunted, yes, but Bowden forgot that emotionally stunted doesn't mean feeling numb to everything all the time. Haytham had feelings, he was just trash at recognising what they were. I get that writing a character who's basically the definition of cognitive dissonance is hard, but the way Bowden chose to tackle the challenge turned Haytham into an empty shell, almost as if it was written by AI with very limited knowledge of who he was.

...anyway, all of this to say, I feel like I could write a novel about every issue I have with that book but instead I'm just gonna rewrite my own version as a completely self-indulgent thing lmao

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The AC games will always try to shoehorn every relevant political entity of the era into the game, it's always been this way and probably always will be. But I'm not sure what you mean by "fanservice" here, because I had a completely different experience playing the game.

Sure, if we're talking about how they treated Washington, then I'd say they went way too soft on him likely because USAmericans are kind of known to idolise their presidents, especially the Founding Fathers, and I think Ubisoft didn't want to cause an uproar among their USAmerican player base by treating Washington with the disrespect he deserves.

But I'm genuinely confused by what you mean by "this historical figure is your best friend" because that's the LAST thing I got from playing AC3. Instead I saw a grieving boy being used by one side of the conflict. They weaponised his worry about his people to make them run errands for them, but none of them really cared about him at all.

Samuel Adams had the audacity to tell him the colonists being taxed by the British were just as oppressed as people who literally didn't even own themselves. Washington was SO eager to use Ratonhnhaké:ton to get rid of Church when he was not only his mother's killer but was also actively planning an attack on his village and other indigenous peoples in the area. And when Ratonhnhaké:ton found out and rightfully threatened Washington to kill him if he tried to stop him, Washington just stood there like 🧍🏻‍♂️. He clearly didn't care about him at all.

So I really have no idea which historical figure you're talking about by "this historical figure is your best friend and this other one idolises you", unless you're talking about Haytham. Then I can kind of see what you mean, with Lee and Johnson and all the others ? But we're only with Haytham for 3 sequences, it's not enough to call the WHOLE game "worse fanservice than AC2". So... I'm still a little confused, lol.

Playing assassin's creed 3 as a non American just feels like fanservice, and yes, even more than AC2 with Leonardo.

Like. Here's this famous historical figure: he's your best friend.

Now here's another famous historical figure, you gonna help him with his side quest!

And this other historical figure, who's also your best friend and looks up to you!

And THIS historical event you are the one doing it actually!

And this other (...)

It feels more like a fanfiction than the other assassin's creed I played, but maybe that's because we get USAmerican history rubbed on our faces everytime we do anything at all online. We know less about our neighbouring countries than the US history because we're drowning in US politics and history and geography and it's the default online.

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Oh I absolutely understand that. Haytham being an unreliable narrator is necessary to make it feel like it's his actual journal bc the man is the definition of cognitive dissonance.

The issue I have with Forsaken is that Haytham sounds way too robotic to feel like it's him. Haytham would try to portray himself as this cool, rational guy, bc that's how he sees himself - which means that he would slip up sometimes. He'd describe a series of actions he took, claim they're only logical, but anyone with an ounce of reading comprehension would read this and go "hum. no that was clearly an emotional response." THAT'S what I meant.

That's why I said Haytham is emotionally stunted but not numb. Haytham wouldn't be able to say he was sad or happy or even in love, he can't put words on how he feels. But he can describe how those feelings manifested (and then mislabel them as something else - him wondering what his life would've been like if he stayed with Ziio is him clearly being in love with her, but Haytham would claim it's just him exploring alternative scenarios. He could even try to convince himself that he made the right decision not to try and reconcile with Ziio.)

Forsaken lacks depth. It also retcons many things about the game that make no sense (like the example I gave of Haytham CLEARLY panicking when Ratohnhaké:ton accused him of being behind his Ziio's murder, Haytham cannot lie to save his life even if he thinks he's slick, that reaction and the shock when he says "what" was NOT faked, I refuse to believe it, compare it to how he pretends to be shocked at finding out about Washington's plan to attack the Kanien'kéha:ka again and you'll see what I mean).

To me it feels like Bowden was only given a script of the game and ran with it. Reading Forsaken is a completely different experience than playing the game.

On a personal note, and if I were to give an example of what I mean, I would've loved to see Haytham's reaction to finding out "Connor" is the name Achilles gave him and why he chose that name specifically. I think just that simple moment (where Haytham feels disgusted, weirdly betrayed ("I spared his life and this is how he repays me ?! By using my son as a surrogate for the one he couldn't keep alive ?!"), and unbelievably angry) would've given us so much more insight on how Haytham views Ratonhnhaké:ton. Haytham wouldn't outright say he's mad because he cares about him and it feels like Achilles is trying to "steal" him away from him. He'd say it's a matter of principle. That Achilles did this to send him a message or try to "one-up" him. But anyone reading it would be able to tell he's pissed because Achilles is trying to take his son away.

Forsaken honestly has me torn because on one hand it's the one piece of media we have that is entirely about Haytham, but on the other it was handled so poorly that aside from the moments I can clown (like the Spanish Cheese Fiasco of 1747), I can't even say I like it. Because I don't. I have so many issues with the way Bowden chose to portray Haytham. His relationship with Ziio was butchered, his feelings about his father's death were never explored (no, seriously, the first entry in that book is disturbing to read, you cannot tell me a 10-year-old child wrote that thing two days after he witnessed his father be brutally murdered), and he retcons a lot of the things that took place in the game to the point where I was left completely baffled at times. (You cannot make me believe Haytham's reaction to Connor telling him how Ziio died was faked, that man looked and sounded genuinely panicked when he was trying to convince Connor he could not have been behind all of this.) Haytham was emotionally stunted, yes, but Bowden forgot that emotionally stunted doesn't mean feeling numb to everything all the time. Haytham had feelings, he was just trash at recognising what they were. I get that writing a character who's basically the definition of cognitive dissonance is hard, but the way Bowden chose to tackle the challenge turned Haytham into an empty shell, almost as if it was written by AI with very limited knowledge of who he was.

...anyway, all of this to say, I feel like I could write a novel about every issue I have with that book but instead I'm just gonna rewrite my own version as a completely self-indulgent thing lmao

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if anyone feels bad that their fic might contain medical inaccuracies, be comforted to know that whatever creative liberties you take with your medical scenes can never be worse than the one I just read. where one character tries to stop the bleeding on their friend's head wound by putting a tourniquet around their neck

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"actively hungry" + "none of the foods sound good at all" is one of the worst combinations. who let this happen

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happy disability pride month to people who aren't proud of their disabilities. to people who would do anything to be able bodied or have a 'normal' brain. I see you

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reblog if it's okay for your mutuals to message you and create an actual friendship, not just interactions

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“Women don’t have rights in Iran, they are homophobic in Iran!”

A black woman’s dying body was used to incubate a fetus because the state said so and the Supreme Court, regurgitating debunked talking points, ruled that trans kids could be denied gender affirming care that is proven to save lives. Does that justify a foreign power bombing New Jersey indiscriminately? Like some of y’all don’t give a fuck about LGBTQ Iranians or women in that country because I never saw a people get free through just having their shit blown up

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Reblog to hug prev

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