#<3<3<3<3 kjvahbvekiurjhbg;.ewh. ... <3

[raetttriestowrite]

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Thank you TK for the ask!!!! Fanfic Writers: Director’s Cut - author's pick!

So author's pick is a cruel cruel joke bc as soon as you sent that my head emptied of like. everything ever that i wanted to talk about 😂 and i could talk about a lot of things.

So! i'm going about this bit from Take the Photographs (and then like. The Bleeding Effect as a whole):

"[The animus] doesn't work like that," Desmond disagrees, shaking his head. "To pick up the skills you have to synchronise, and to synchronise is to invite them into your head to Bleed. Can't have one without the other."

So! Okay!! My kinda headcanon kinda How It Works in BTMTMIM for the Bleeding Effect, and the reason Desmond's all kinda fucked up about it.

There are 2 ways that the animus could work:

you watch your ancestors memories as like. a movie. 3rd party observer style

you experience the memories as though they're your own.

Rebecca is trying to move the animus towards the first way, to reduce the Bleeding Effect. But. okay. how much do you learn if you just watch someone else do a thing? i could watch martial arts videos all day and at the end i'd still be just as incapable as i was when i started. SO. Realistically the first way would achieve nothing to help train Desmond into a better assassin, which was the whole point.

Therefore, the second way, where you experience the memories as though they're your own, would be the way to gain the abilities of your ancestor. you'd build muscle memory off of their actions bc you're remembering them as your own actions. so it'd be functionally the same as practicing for the amount of memory-time that pasts. Kinda.

Which is where i come in with the sync thing. So obviously there's sync rates - higher is better, lower is worse. So the way i'm thinking of it is like. the more you can immerse yourself in the memory, the higher the sync and the more effective it is for learning shit, bc you move away from the 3rd party observer thing. but like. a memory is not only actions. it's thoughts and feelings. so the more Desmond sync's the more he feels like you is his ancestor, bc he's remembering the events as Altair or Ezio or Connor would remember them, and he remembers being Altair or Ezio or Connor. He remmebers being them. In that memory he stops being Desmond and becomes his ancestor.

And that? that lingers. right. so sure there's 25? years of memories rattling around in his skull in which he's Desmond Miles. But there's also like. a decade worth of being Altair, and fucking. 4 decades of Ezio and another 2? or Connor. and there's a part of him that is convinced that he was that ancestor for that time. they're his memories.

(Which is what fucked up Clay so bad. He could remember too many people and couldn't figure out who was who was when.)

Anyway. So. Desmond achieved high sync which meant lots of memories of not being Desmond. and so the Bleeding Effect is just. when his memories of Alltair or Ezio or Connor are more who he is than Desmond. for that brief instant. So now he's desperately trying to organise the memories into some kinda way? and hoping that if he can box it all up right, acknowledge each memory as whose it is as Desmond and make it Desmond's memory, rather than his ancestors, he'll manage to curtail the Bleeding Effect personality shifts he's dealing with.

And then there was this bit from You'll Find a Man:

"It's good to meet you," Booker says perhaps halfway down. He's moving better now, easier, the drugs having worn off a bit. "And no offense, Jack, but I'm glad to be out of your head." "You as well, fratello mio," Jack says, crooking a smile at the pale blue-gold figure. It's as good a name as any of his others.

which long story short, and was not have been 100% clear in the story, but Des got a new personality wholesale bc like. He's wildly fucked up and Desmond couldn't deal with being in That Room in Abstergo. Self preservation kicked in and he ended up just. remembering everything from everyone, (where usually the Altair/Ezio/Connor shift's only remember themselves) and accepted the new name bc he wasn't really any one of them, but all 4. bc all memories.

and That. spoilers. is going to eventually lead into my Fix for Desmond's fucked up brain problems, where he does get a handle on the Bleeding Effect. bc like. Clay did it... (Clay doesn't count he rend himself down to code and could rewrite his whole being if he wanted.)... actually. there is a hint of this eventual solution in When The Lonesome Whistle Cries. kudos if anyone can pick it out and draw the correct conclusion. I've been building towards this for fucking ever and cannot wait to get to it proper in the fic.

i'm actually fucking pumped to get that whole bit out, even though it's. uh. ???? idk when it's gonna happen but it's there. it's one of those threads i've been carrying along from the start. Apologies if any of my readers wanted to wallow in the uncertainty and angst of the if Des will ever fix his brain. spoilers, i guess?

Anyway. there you go. that's my mildly incomprehensible and incoherent rambling thoughts on the Bleeding Effect, as it exists in Bless This Mess This Mess Is Mine 'verse. Thanks for letting me talk about it!! <3<3<3<3