Assassin's Creed
| Video game fandom | |
|---|---|
| Name | Assassin's Creed |
| Abbreviation(s) | AC, AssCreed |
| Publisher(s) | Ubisoft |
| Release date | 2007 |
| External link(s) | Official Site at Wikipedia |
| Related articles on Fanlore. | |
|
The main Assassin's Creed franchise consists of the following titles:
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Assassin's Creed is a video game series developed by Ubisoft which was also developed by Ubisoft Montreal.[1] It is often considered to be the "spiritual successor" to the Prince of Persia series, Assassin's Creed took inspiration from the novel Alamut by the Slovenian writer Vladimir Bartol, based on the historical Hashashin sect of the medieval Middle East.
The series combines elements of historical fiction, science fiction, conspiracy and intrigue when fictional characters intertwined with real-world historical events and figures
Since the first release of Assassin's Creed on November 13, 2007, the franchise has grown and is now a sprawling web of characters in many different time periods and in many different media formats: along with the main series games, there are several spinoff games, short films, novelizations, multiple comic book series, interactive web content, a live-action film, and a planned Netflix series.
The World
Assassin's Creed is a science fiction/alternate history themed series. The overarching plot centers on a ancient war that stretches over all of human history, between two organizations that became public during The Crusades: The Knights Templar, who wish for mankind to be united in peace under their control, and the Assassins, who fight against the Templars for the free will of humanity. In the series canon, these groups have existed and continue to exist secretly since early human history (Adam and Eve are shown in one scene, and could be considered the first Assassins) up to the present day.
Each main game has two separate plots. The first is set in the 21st century, where the battle between the Templars (who have become a multimillion corporation called Abstergo), and the Assassins (who have gone into hiding) has turned into one of espionage, subterfuge and black-ops skirmishes. Using a machine called the Animus, the modern-day characters are able to relive the memories of their ancestors: these Animus memory sessions compose the historical plot of each game. The majority of the action is set during the historical plotlines, ranging from The Crusades, The Renaissance, The American Revolution, The Golden Age of Piracy, The French Revolution, Victorian Britain and Ptolemaic-Era Egypt. Assassins and Templars are shown to have participated and influenced in almost every major world-historical event imaginable, with famous historical figures either being Assassins or Templars or non-aligned people supported and opposed by either faction. Due to this aspect, AC fanfic often overlaps with historical RPF.
The fandom is somewhat polarized with regards to the modern-day plot; some fans despise it and see the modern gameplay segments as interruptions from the good stuff, while other fans highly appreciate the modern narrative and wish there was more of it.
The games' overarching plot begins with the story of Desmond Miles, a New York bartender who flees from his childhood home, an Assassin training camp, but is later forced to return after being kidnapped by Abstergo, who capture him in order to explore the memories of his ancestors— famous Assassins from different corners of the globe. The first game covers the story of Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, an arrogant Assassin during the Second Crusade. The following three games, considered amongst fans and critics as some of the best, tell of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, an Italian nobleman in the Renaissance who takes up the mantle of an Assassin after the betrayal and murder of his father. The third game centers around Ratohnhaké:ton, later named Connor, a Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) Assassin who lived during the American Revolution. The fourth game is about Edward Kenway, the grandfather of Ratohnhaké:ton, a pirate-turned-Assassin.
After Black Flag, other characters that were not Desmond's ancestors were presented. Among them are Arno Dorian, a French Assassin living during the French Revolution. Shay Cormac, an Assassin-turned-Templar after the betrayal of his mentor, Achilles. And Evie and Jacob Frye, twins in Industrial Revolution London hoping to liberate their city from Templars, and Bayek of Siwa, an Egyptian Medjay seeking to find who murdered his son.
The Fandom
Assassin's Creed boasts a sizable fandom since its beginning, with very active fans in many communities all around.
DeviantArt
Many AC fan groups have been created on DA over the years, such as "Assassin Brotherhood", "Fun With Assassins", "Eagle Vision", "Eagles of Freedom", "ThisIsOurCreed", as well as groups focused on particular characters or ships.
FanFiction.Net
Despite the migration to websites likes AO3, FanFiction.Net still boasts thousands of AC stories, many of which were in fact copied to AO3 by their authors. As of August 2018, FFnet's Assassin's Creed fic section is the 17th largest in the "Games" category, and the 10th largest in the "Games Crossover" category.
Archive of Our Own
The Assassin's Creed fandom is active in the archive, with gen, crossover, shipping, AU and character studies abound.
As of February 18, 2022, there are 12,400 works under the Assassin's Creed - All Media Types fandom tag. When sorted by hits 8 out of the top 10 most viewed fanfics in this fandom tag are by the author Esama, making them one of the most notable creators in this space. The most viewed of the top 10 is a Star Wars crossover which has 148,111 hits, while the most viewed fic tagged only with Assassin's Creed fandoms has 119,822 hits. Both of these works are by Esama.
Tumblr
The fandom on Tumblr is highly active, with many members of the fan community creating media such as fanfics, fan art, memes, meta and roleplay blogs. Blogs dedicated to confessions— such as AC Confessions- and other popular blogs are Made in Masyaf, Brotherhoot (sadly no longer active, but the blog Brotherhoot Collection is dedicated to find as much of the original poster's material as possible) Dirty Assassin's Creed Secrets, and All Sounds AssCreed.
The Assassin's Creed fandom has an active presence in its reddit.
Other popular sites are the assassinscreed livejournal and Asscreedkinkmeme on Dreamwidth.
Ships
Some of the most popular pairings include Malik Al-Sayf/Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, Ezio Auditore da Firenze/Leonardo da Vinci, and Shaun Hastings/Desmond Miles.
Character/Reader fics are also common, with more than 1000 reader-insert works on AO3 as of December 2018, and many more on Tumblr and deviantART.[2][3][4]
- Evie Frye/Henry Green
- Gérald Blanc/Aveline de Grandpré
- Arno Dorian/Élise de la Serre
- Daniel Cross/Hannah Mueller
- Desmond Miles/William Miles
Common tropes
Modern AUs[5] in which characters from the different games and time periods interact with each other are greatly popular, comprising the second largest tag within the fandom on AO3. Their popularity on FanFiction.Net is less, comprising only 3% of all fanfics as of 2016.[6]
Due to the series' heavy focus on ancestry/family, afterlife fics are also somewhat common, usually about a character being welcomed by ancestors after death, or a deceased character watching their living relative from beyond.
Examples of Fanworks
Fanfiction
Fan Films
Assassin's Creed - The London Chronicles - a short fan film by Azeem Mustafa
Challenges
Criticism
See also Female Protagonists in Assassin's Creed Series.
Both Assassin's Creed and Ubisoft have been criticized many times for the lack of playable POC characters,[7][8][9] with only two out of nine protagonist of main games being mixed race (Syrian-White and Native American-British respectively) and six out of seventeen main characters in all of the Assassin's Creed universe being POC in general.
This criticism was brought back when the cast for the live-action film was revealed, many believing Michael Fassbender would play the role of (intentionally[citation needed] racially ambiguous) Desmond Miles. However it was abandoned when it was revealed Fassbender played an new, movie-original character.
Another criticism was about the series' lack of playable female characters. The already rocky reputation of Assassin's Creed: Unity, thanks to its many glitches, repetitive and laggy gameplay and lack of cohesive storyline, was worsened due to it. These already existing critiques were furthered by Élise's death, with many players stating that killing her was unnecessary,[10] and others stating that Arno (the main character of the game) dying in her stead would've made a more interesting story.[11] Other complaints included the erasure of important and influential women in the history of the French Revolution, such as real-life assassin Charlotte Corday.[12]
Ubisoft did not help these claims when, in an interview, the company claimed that the reason female characters weren't widespread in their games was due to them being harder to animate,[13] and that it would take days for them to do so.[14] Many fans countered by reminding them of other female characters in their games— among them Lucy Stillman, Rebecca Crane, Claudia and Maria Auditore, Rosa, Maria Thorpe, Aveline de Grandpré, Ziio, Anne Bonny, Mary Read, several Animi avatars in other games, and was later on brought up again with the inclusion of Evie Frye and Shao Jun as playable characters. The reveal that fandom-popular characters such as Axeman and Ice Cream were in fact simply recolors of Arno Dorian, already very similar in appearance to Ezio Auditore, also disappointed some fans.
See also
- asscreedkinkmeme
- Nothingtrue
- Fanworks Around the World, an Assassin’s Creed challenge seeking stories set in countries other than the US
- ProtoCreed
- Category:Assassin's Creed Characters
- Category:Assassin's Creed Doujinshi
- Category:Assassin's Creed Relationships
- Assassin's Creed Unity Lack of Female Playable Character
- North American Assassin's Creed Guild
Essays & Meta
Links & Resources
- Assassin's Creed Wiki at Wikia
- Assassin's Creed Official Tumblr Page
- Assassin's Creed fanworks at AO3
- Assassin's Creed fics and crossovers at FanFiction.Net
- Assassin's Creed fics on adult-fanfiction.org
- Assassins Creed Lore with Ev4sIoN (both sites are now offline, archived link and archived link))
- Le Verità dell'Animus (Fansite in Italian)
References
- ^ "Assassin's Creed". Archived from the original on 2022-07-01. Retrieved 14 April 2013.
- ^ "AO3 search for the reader-insert category in "Assassin's Creed" fandom".
- ^ Assassin-x-Reader and Heart of the Creed are two AC reader-insert groups on DA.
- ^ "tumblr tag #assassinxreader".
- ^ Alternate Universe - Modern Setting tag in AO3
- ^ FanFiction.Net search for modern
- ^ Tumblr user wh1lly. "post".
{{cite web}}:|author=has generic name (help) - ^ "confession in Assassin's Creed Confession, now inactive". Archived from the original on 2018-12-04.
- ^ "Assassins Creed and Diversity". Archived from the original on 2018-12-04.
- ^ user melancholicenthusiam. "Assassin's Creed: Unity - Why the ending had me so angry". Archived from the original on 2018-12-20. Retrieved 5 August 2017.
{{cite web}}:|author=has generic name (help) - ^ elisebaelaserre. "post accessed 5 August 2017". Archived from the original on 2018-12-04. Retrieved 5 August 2017.
- ^ Dan Golding (13 June 2014). "Notes on Ubisoft's Charlotte Corday". Archived from the original on 2021-12-22. Retrieved 30 January 2019.
- ^ VideoGamer. "article accessed 5 August 2017". Archived from the original on 2022-06-02. Retrieved 5 August 2017.
- ^ Megan Farokhmanesh (11 June 2014). "Animating women should take 'days,' says Assassin's Creed 3 animation director". Polygon. Archived from the original on 2022-04-12. Retrieved 30 January 2019.