#been drawing a lot this week because i had covid which meant i didnt draw for 7 hours at the office first before coming home to draw 4 fun:

[assassinscreed-photomode]

softish Spoilers for the final final chapter (Hunting Alfred)

😭

long, sorry. also I have an identity crisis at the end. Fuck england

Gods I hate that final final hunting king Aelfred quest, erasing that from my memory in 3 2 1...nope, everyone was just horribly injured, but survived and they all got everything they wanted, and lived full happy lives until the end of their days! Woo fiction!

Seriously, my delicate heart can’t take the whole trope of bringing in all these wonderful fantastic characters only for them to be used as pawns to sacrifice in the final chapters for the emotions.

I actually ended up skipping through a number of death scenes and similar because I was so desperate to get to the end. I don’t even know for sure how many of the characters died lmao......It really draws you in with those first few chapters, oh look how fun and interesting everyone is, here's a low stakes saga to get you started and then BAM dead dead dead.

I don’t know what it is. 

I think because this game is set in my country, one that I have a complicated relationship with. Many of the regions I know and love, places I have not been able to go to or anywhere this year due to covid,  I found myself feeling deeply emotional in regard to certain visual and regional aspects  of it, and then that high emotional state would transfer onto the characters and story. It mainly manifested in me having deep deep empathy for our Eivor, so much that I felt I was hurting on her behalf. Especially in regards to Sigurd, all those visions, the shit that went down in Norway like girl ARE YOU OK? Someone hug her, please.

There were times I was playing this where I genuinely felt distressed and anxious on behalf of Eivor, mainly in regards to Sigurd’s sudden anger after Suthsexe, but that's a whole other thing. I tried to be perfect around him so he wouldn’t shout at me, which obviously didn’t work. which is literally what I learnt to do as a small child and have been working through now I’m an adult. Did Sigurd fuck with my mental health progress? Omg that’s kinda amazing lol.  (though it did work out with him returning to Ravensthorpe with me because I didnt fck his wife and punch him in the face, so lesson.....learnt???) 

AC games can be stressful because they chronicle somebody’s whole life from start to finish, and that can feel like a lot of pressure when you are playing through the game and growing very found of the character you are using.

It’s also a bittersweet ending because you know that historically.................y’know with Alfred and the Danes, it’s no fairy tale. Its a shitshow, the danes do not conquer england or leave, they slowly lost more and more land over the century and their culture just blurred in with all the others

That SHIT IS NOT OVER.

England’s history is so so ugly. I’m talking England specifically, not Britain. It’s hideous, truly. There has not been one age in England that hasn't be fraught, fractured and rotting. From when the Romans showed up and started killing off and kicking out the indigenous celtic people, to god damn last week.

Like, as an english person who has roots and ancestors deep in these regions from as far back as my family can tell, who am I meant to be rooting for in this story? Who are me? The Saxons? They shot up from germanic regions a few hundred years before, are they my people? The Vikings? Danes the like invaded and took the land, for...reasons? I suppose? I mean, I did grow up in a town names for a viking raid of the monastery there...?

Should I root for the celtic britons? Don’t get me wrong Rhodri was evil, but is he my people?

By the time england became england, where there any celts still there? All kicked out of killed off by invading forces. Should I be rooting for the Picts from Scotland and the Pagans from the West Country? Indigenous Celts, who stick out and stand out in Valhalla’s England but were once the only people there, do they count as me? Or whatever is left of Roman descendants? Am I all of them? Centuries later the French took over, sort of. It was all mixed together at that point, genetically, culturally.

What does it even mean to be english? It’s like an ancient version of america. We all came from somewhere else, or left. What counts as being from somewhere?

I mean, I kind of knew this history before, but this game has really cemented in me just how fucked up the concept of england is. The last 5 years or so, politically, has made me resent and hate england in many ways. Not britain, england. I couldn’t imagine myself loving it ever again. But I think I do, I think I understand what it is now, more than I did before. 

A mish mash of fractured ancient cultures clashing together trying to resemble a country. Its a wound that may never truly heal, but that is what makes it different from its celtic neighbours . NOT BETTER but it just had a different and very ugly start in life. I always joke about needing to move to scotland, to escape. But  I know I never will, I’ve always known. I can’t do it. When Ivarr was talking about Ubba in that drinking scene, saying he disagrees with what Ubba is doing and what his goals are but he CAN’T leave him, he’s his brother. Yeah, that’s kind of how I feel about this stupid ancient busted up land. 

I just want Eivor to be happy. I’m reminded of an amazing post I saw here on tumbler years ago, it went something like: I feel like a lot of people fail to realise that for some,  loving fictional characters is the closest thing they have to loving themselves. Self love, self compassion, it can be so, so hard. So when you see someone else on screen, someone you can relate to, you pour your heart and soul into loving them. You want to protect them and give them all the love you can’t quite convince yourself you deserve. And by doing that, maybe just maybe, they can bring you one step closer to loving yourself.

I feel like I’ve been trampled by a fucking horse. This started out as a joke post about head canons and turned into me delving into my life long relationship with national identity. All I’m going to do in Valhalla now is fish.

Wow, successful therapy session, thanks all

._.