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lucky-clover-gazette · 1 year

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For the ask meme: Vio and 7, bc while I know you like the ship, I'm curious about the characters individually!

7- What do you like most about this character?

warning i went on an entire meta philosophical Thought Journey with this one and you will literally be able to SEE where it went off the rails. and then it just continued going off the rails until the rails disappeared from my field of vision and i have no idea if anything i wrote actually makes sense but here just take it

honestly i think part of why I love vio so much as a character is i did NOT expect to like or care about him, and then he ended up easily my favorite. the only thing i knew when i picked up the manga was that i would probably enjoy shadow as a character, which. of course i did. bc he's a very specific flavor of character i always gravitate towards, but vio was like... girl what? why are you in this story and doing the things you are doing? and by the end of my first reading i was just BLOWN AWAY by him and shadow and their entire subplot so i went to tumblr because i felt like i was hallucinating it and here we are now.

re: what i like most about vio... i go into it a lot in this post. vio is fascinating to me as a character from several perspectives, as a writer, a gay person, and just... having the philosophy and experiences that i do. there is such an inherent tragedy to his character that i don't think is lost on the authors--like i say in the post, shadow and vio both don't quite feel like they BELONG in this story, especially with how it ends.

like, i often write vio in particular struggling with the ways he deviates from the narrative set for him, both in canon and out of it. yes a lot of that is tied to queerness, but it also relates to themes of self-determination sub-textually tied to his arc. vio seriously just does whatever the hell he wants a good amount of the time, to like an eyebrow-raising degree. when he separates from the others and joins shadow he's on the Side of Good from the start, but i think he also realizes very quickly that there's more to himself than he'd expected. that doing what he had planned to do, especially to shadow of all people, was going to be shockingly difficult, and perhaps not even the correct choice at all. which is why vio's canon ending kind of falls flat to me, even though i can't imagine it could have ended any other way. this isn't to say he shouldn't have tried to betray shadow--it's an internal conflict he's going through, and a character usually makes the choice antithetical to what actually fuck i just boiled it down to the essentials i know exactly and fundamentally why i like vio as a character holy shit okay

SO normally a character in a story will start out Wanting something and Needing something else, and their entire arc is realizing, "aw beans, my Want actually sucks, i Need my Need" and then they pursue that instead. hero's journey etc.

think about the general premise of vio, and to an extent the other three: character is given individual consciousness to serve a specific noble purpose, and then cease to exist once said purpose has been served. and with the others, that's basically it, minor emotional and relationship arcs aside. but with vio? the premise GOES somewhere. oh no! character finds themselves drawn to the dark side by a "tempting" "evil" person or force, who CORRUPTS them into THINKING they WANT to defy that destiny! that they should be selfish, and bad, and turn their back on what they actually Need to do. so says the narrative, the character NEEDS to accept that they're not meant for anything but being used and discarded, because that's what good people do, and these are the Sacrifices We Must Make to Be Good. does your hero have any kind of unconventional or deviant leanings? well either that shit's getting straightened the hell out, or they are going to perish to save the Pure Good Guys, because that's all they deserve. that is a very common way to handle's vio's exact sort of character premise, and at first glance at the manga, one could argue that it's no exception. link still reforms, after all. arguably this kind of happens with shadow, but i think i like his ending a lot more outside of the shipping context. it says something more nuanced than above, but this isn't the post for going into that.

i would argue that almost every fiber of this manga pertaining to vio is actually trying to do the opposite of what i described above, even though it never is able to come to fruition.

quite simply, compared to the typical Needs and Wants of a corrupted hero type, vio's are like subverted. he's given a corruption arc, and it looks pretty basic at first, but it quickly becomes so... unconventional? and fun? and, dare i say, queer? i say it lot in reference to his whole turn of character once he joins shadow, but vio commits to the bit way more than is necessary to carry out his plan. shadow's not that perceptive and vio didn't need to be so close with him, so snarky and clearly enjoying himself, so bizarrely extra and innovative with the means by which he psychologically tortures his friends. his internal conflict, especially towards the end of his villain era, is less "i'm miserable because i'm a good guy and i want to save the world but i HAVE to pretend to be evil and like shadow," and more "i'm miserable because i'm actually enjoying a lot of these villainous theatrics and also i have become genuinely endeared to shadow, but i know i HAVE to betray him and rejoin the others because the world needs to be saved." i don't think it's a reach to say that that's what vio's conflict is, in the text. we see it in his expressions, his dialogue, and his reactions to things that happen.

i think this whole subversion was something the authors did with his character, whether accidentally or purposefully, REALIZED they did with his character, and didn't want to give up. but still, the story needed to end with vio rejoining the others and reforming the hero, because like. duh, of course it does, nintendo and source material and all that. but with the way a himekawa built up their obvious faves' (vio and shadow's) stories, it's like well shit, we came up with something we love but we can't really see it through. because within this brilliant subversion of the typical corrupted hero arc, the WANT is vio's sense of obligation to turn on shadow, reform link, etc, and his NEED is to say, "hey fuck this actually, i deserve to be a person and have relationships and do things i enjoy, and that doesn't make me any less of a hero. i'm smart and resourceful and there's definitely a way to both save the world and preserve who i am and get through to shadow."

self-sacrifice isn't inherently heroism. in fiction, it's often a deeply shallow and underwhelming resolution, especially when the character spends so much time growing and becoming who they truly are. i didn't grow up with religion, but i have a slight suspicion it plays a huge part in this entire attitude, and it sucks how much that permeates into media culture. doing good isn't something you can just phone in at the last second; it is a constant and ever-changing way of life, based on a moral system you develop for yourself as you grow. pretending to be someone you're not, acting solely under a prescribed ethical code especially as a grown-ass adult, makes you hollow and spineless, as well as unhappy, resentful, and unfulfilled.

doing good is hard. staying alive is hard. making decisions and forming connections and constantly being challenged are all very hard. but when you choose to embrace life, to accept failure and flaws but still try to be good, make meaningful connections and allow yourself to be genuine and happy and queer? that, to me, is the Goodest of the Good. and it's unique to each of us, while being something we all have the ability to choose for ourselves. and it's never too late for that. until the narrative tells you to jump off a cliff because that's, like, way too nuanced to be sustainable, and sure the story's resolved and it ended happily for the purest of heart, but what a bleak happiness that is. fuck that.

like, compare to vio to adora from she-ra. adora got the ending revelation i wish vio could have gotten. the whole, "i am worth more than my usefulness to others, i deserve love and self-determination" thing, and THAT's what really saved the day. adora saw her future, living happily with catra and the others, not dead or used but just LIVING, and said "hey, maybe the real answer here? the key to being a hero and saving the world? maybe it's loving, and letting myself be loved, and not sacrificing myself because someone said it's what i'm meant to do." and holy shit, she was right. and the narrative rewarded her for it, with a kiss from her catgirl gf and also destroying Big Evil and saving the galaxy or whatever.

fucking IMAGINE if that could have been the thing to save the day in the manga, just for a second. if you isolated just vio and shadow's arc and made them the Main Characters, like how adora and catra are in she ra. if it was truly allowed to be Their Story, if it was able to transcend the source material, if if if. it wouldn't even have to be just vio and shadow's story, honestly -- the four could realize, each for their own individual reasons, that maybe they can't unring the bell of their own existence. that they can protect hyrule better as themselves, that they deserve to continue the development they're been experiencing for the past 300 pages. and maybe vio would be the one to set that line of thought in motion, because has it not been set up exactly so he could?? if you've read my main au, you know exactly what i'm picturing here. and while i like some of the manga's canon ending, there's a reason most people who love these characters engage most often with alternate resolutions.

i think i like vio so much because he surprised me, and that's because he surprised the fucking AUTHORS OF THE MANGA. even more than a decade after publication, they made a point to say in their note that they appreciated the way people "got" what they were trying to say with shadow and vio specifically. i can't speak for them, and i will concede that i am mostly overthinking just for fun and none of this is that serious, but... come on. do you not see what i'm seeing here. they did something so fascinating and tragically unfulfilled here, and that all hinges on vio. and it's also just. so resonant to me as a gay person, in the same way she ra was.

obviously i could say more, and this is embarrassingly unhinged and maybe delusional, i don't know. i just wrote a lot of words about something so silly and arbitrary, but i took the time to write them because i care and can't get that time back now. so i might as well commit to the bit like gayass purple boy and post anyway

#asks #vio link #four swords #HEAVY META

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keclan · 1 year

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i also caught up on rwby today and robbie daymond cheshire cat is the highlight for me simply bc i like his voice.

#the rest of it is kind of boring tbh #it’s literally just beat for beat alice in wonderland #which they’ve always done literary allusions but this is literally just the same story #so i’m kind of bored!#ruby failing to stand up to her past self was good #but pulling that scene in episode four is like :/#is the rest of the season gonna pop off at that level? or did you play your best card out of the gate?#is she going to continue breaking down in ways beyond ‘i’m sad’#like is she going to start making bad decisions? is she going to start acting on those feelings?#the song during the chess board fight was fun #and ruby feeling drawn to the doll that turned out to be pennys sword was also good #but it felt so glossed over #the fact that yang couldn’t tell which was her arm but ruby knew immediately the doll was special #inch resting and curious about the shrimplications #and also lowkey most excited for finding out what’s jaunes been up to since they don’t know he’s here and haven’t looked for him #i hope he’s been Enduring Torments and i hope he’s Broken :)#OH ALSO robbie daymond cheshire cat making meta comments about the size of the cast and irrelevant side characters #i usually hate that stuff but i actually liked it this time

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105ttt · 2 years

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List of characters that Vio kins:

Tecna (Winx Club)

Meta Knight (Kirby)

Bob (Animal Crossing)

(Do not tag as Lin//ked Uni//verse or ship.)

#is this anything #I'll remember more later I'm sure #four swords manga #four swords #vio #Blue bullies him for kinning Meta Knight BTW

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maybe-arts · 1 month

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IT'S DONE! HAPPY BIRTHDAY KIRBY!!!

If you've been following me the last month, you've seen me posting invitations to join Kirby Birthday Collab. Well, as today is 27th, I'm proud to present the result of this collab!!

This collab ended up even bigger than the last year's one. When last year we mainly had only Dream Friends (with some special guests like Morpho, Galacta and Elfilin), this year we've got characters from many more groups, including villains! We've almost left no one behind lol

The image above might be a bit scuffed (anti-AI protection, and all that), but no worries! You can click on it to see full, uncompressed image and see everyone's work that's been put into this!

A HUGE thank you to everyone who participated, and to everyone who wanted but either learned about it too late or didn't manage - don't worry! Looks like this thing might be annual from now on (or until i run out of steam lmao), so you'll get plenty of chances to join next year! Just keep your eyes peeled around March-April :3

And now, everyone who participated in this collab:

@squeak-art - Daroach, Dark Nebula and Squeakers + two bonus polaroids (the one with Nebula and the one with Squeak Squad) @sacrificecage - Hyness and Shadow Kirby @aseuki - Sectonia (absolute madlad) @giantchasm - Elfilin, Fecto Forgo + possessed Awoofy and Rick @taranzas-biggest-fan - Taranza and President Haltmann + bonus polaroid with Wave 3 trio and Kirby @sourghostsoda - Dark Meta Knight and Galacta Knight @spidersandtomatos - Zan Partizanne + bonus polaroid with their OC and Zan @kachikirby - Samus Aran and Francisca + bonus polaroid with Samus @eleart - Meta Knight @azumetapraline - Magolor @tinybandee - Sailor Dee and UFO @a-stardusted-sky - Landia @mementomarx - Morpho Knight @xxmooncheetosxx - Ribbon @rosakikoza - DMS and Zero @hascaple - Chuchu @deafeninggardenerpanda - Void and Arthur (also special thanks for allowing me to organize it on his server that i've been advertising all this month lol) @pixbit - Prince Fluff @eryth-arts - Susie and Flamberge @deefighter2739 - Bandee @skitty-kirby - Sword and Blade Knights @hoshi-no-mahoroa - Coo @diroxide - Fecto Elfilis @starrveria - Tiff @nausylemmyj - Adeline @thecreatorlynne (on Instagram) - Miracle Matter + bonus polaroid with all the Matters @thundermarisol - Pitch, Pick, Mine, Shiro, Nyupun and Pitch Mama @michirikapchiyyy - Falspar and Dragato @galapathy - Nonsurat and Nightmare @wybienova - Clawroline + bonus polaroid with Clawroline @mistilteinn-magolor - Gooey @superskullz64 - Spinni, Doc and Storo @starrysorry - Tuff, Fololo and Falala @tazmilygray - Elline and Keeby @icy-dark-star - Leongar @yokyoaaa - Nago and the Meta-Knights (Axe, Trident, Mace and Javelin Knights) @itsquakey/@chickenhoops - Marx @chibihuey - Drawcia, Claycia and Kine (and colored Nightmare) + bonus polaroid with four Kirbies

and yours truly was the one who combined all of this in a single piece + drew Dedede and main birthday boy himself, Kirby!

#kirby #kirby series #kirby fandom #maybeart #artists on tumblr #digital art #i am NOT tagging everyone this time there's way too many people lmao #kirby anniversary #kirby 32nd anniversary #kirby's birthday #kirby birthday collab #we did it guys!!! we managed #working on this was super fun once again i love it i love you all sm #thank you all!!!!#edit: i forgot to tag one person I AM TERRIBLY SORRY #edit 2: fucking @s broke not even halfway through so i gotta do it manually ig #downside is people aren't gonna get pinged qwq #but you'll see their blog anyways!

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soarrenbluejay · 3 months

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Can’t remember where I’ve seen the idea first but I’ve had this idea of Regular Clowns taking offense to joker’s bullshit for a while now and exacting Vengeance. The man doesn’t even has an egg! His ass never been to clown school! He’s a disgrace to them all!

So four buddies leaving the traveling circus business decide as people who have loved every second of this and are Deeply Insulted by this wanker to Do Something About It.

Three of them are showmen- an acrobat, a juggler, a fire fanatic, the works.

The last one, Jerry, is a stage hand. He is their most powerful member- not only does he have the superpower of self care, but he’s a meta! Minor telekinesis is actually really useful when shuttling stuff around in a stage in a hurry! (And that whole thing of our idea of ninjas coming from stage hands in all black being ‘invisible’ yeah. Cryptid vibes, except it’s just Jerry)

So. A clown car pulls up in Gotham, in the middle of a Joker attack, presumably despite ever Gothamite on the road who saw it making their best effort to take one for the team and mow them down. This is a no good awful sign for Gotham.

But it gets better.

Because out does not step a bunch of goon reinforcements in masks, or some jokerified poor soul, but instead someone in one of those historical jester costumes, bells and dramatic ass sleeves and all. Also, they’re bright orange. It is slightly eye searing. In one hand is the end to a long line of tied together handkerchiefs in clashing neon colors which appears to be infinite bc it just keeps coming. In the other is a comedically oversized hammer with a squeaky sound effect installed but no spring to soften the blow- it in fact has spikes with little Mayfair banners hanging off.

They immediately attempt to strangle/bash Joker to death with a winning smile firmly in place, and actually survive the attempt of which by apparent virtue of being made of rubber or something. And out slides our fire master, in all teal for contrast, who promptly throws smoke bombs at the crowd of goons around and starts all but boa staffing them down with his fire wand, paired with a dramatic speech about how Joker is in insult to the idea of circus and also the most unfunny bitch to ever walk the earth.

Lastly, the juggler. They have come armed. With glitter and hackysacks. A dramatic beatdown ensues, with much shrieking and yelling on all sides. A gif is made of Joker being bonked right through a concrete wall with a move right out of a video game. Several goons get concussions a la bowling pins. It’s all being live streamed by someone through their apartment window and is rapidly going viral. It’s a good time mostly because this attempt at vengeance against the Clown Bitch Gotham did not immediately involve some one getting very anticlimacticly shot.

No really takes note of the guy in all black and ski mask, calmly standing in the middle of the flaming chaos. He occasionally holds out a new set of props for the juggler, an oversized great sword for our acrobat jester, some nitroglycerin for blowy uppy efforts, the works. Until he starts calmly putting together a three story set of scaffolding for the gang to use for the purpose of beating the crime king’s skull in in even more ridiculous ways and also so jester can showcase their absolute lack of a spine.

And Jerry goes back to standing in the middle of this chaos, apparently unaffected by Literally Everything going on. His friends are fucking crazy, he’s used to it.

Meanwhile, Ghost King Danny gets a new urgent appeal at his ghostly royal desk- someone is attempting to enact vengeance against the joker and move approximately 46363883 souls along doing it, except it’s not the Red Hood this time! It’s Some Random Guys that a minor mischief god is now attempting to fast track layering with blessings! Said minor god is officially appealing for the Ghost Monarch’s support. Danny is conflicted- on one hand, he Fucking Hates Clowns. And has a major hero worship thing going on for Red Hood, a fellow supernatural hero (in the dead’s eyes) much his senior. However, the idea of a bunch of nobody’s beating the joker to death at the same time as declaring how shit of a clown he is IS pretty hilarious.

He gives it the stamp of Yes, provided others seeking vengeance (aka red hood, the thousands of joker victims in Gotham, anyone who wants to go spectacular viral) can still intervene to catch some own hands, a minor merriment/will of the people god does a jig on the spot, and back with the Justice Circus Brigade, ghouls and Spectors alike start popping up to join in on the fun! Which our beloved ren faire rejects are actually pretty okay with- big enough circus events in the DC universe have a bad habit of becoming possessed/very obviously haunted/Ooky Spooky like, every few months. And these guys look much friendlier than whatever the hell has been in the house of mirrors these last few months!

Red Hood isn’t sure how he’s suddenly in the middle of upper Gotham when he’s was decidedly Nowhere Near three seconds ago, but that’s a problem for later when the Bitch Ass Clown Extraordinaire is Right There!! So he tables it to be very paranoid about later, shrugs, and starts shooting. Jester starts shouting out points for accuracy/comedy, Jerry calmly asks if he wants some of their backup silver bullets just in case The Target really is an unholy being of some sort. (They have taken Precautions. For Everythinf. Or at least Jerry did.) Jason can’t say no to free extra ammunition and also That’s Hilarious, man he has to hire these guys!

Then fire juggler molotov’s the joker, and he decides these idiots are ABSOLUTELY worth saving from the big bad bat. Fuck it, this morons are the BEST.

#dc x dp #dp x dc #also can anyone find me that one fic where like the gang plus vlad dimension hop #and end up putting themselves in clone bodies in an abandoned Cadmus base #and superboy discovers them and the Wayne’s panik #pls I have such ideas for art of these nerds but no artistic ability #prety colors #the joker: I will kill u #a jacked acrobat juiced up acrobat powered by god and anime: I declare thee stupid. Bonk #a failed college dropout disaster twenty something: dISGRACE UPON YOU #ON YOUR COW #etc #and then there Jerry

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where-the-water-flows · 3 days

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hey no wait. hang on, wait. wenjing is like, explicitly the secret sword, right, the one basically no one knew about, it's part of the reason the court is like 'mmk seems legit' when fang doubing is like ~I am totally for real his disciple~ because he knows about the sword at all

but li xiangyi/lianhua is clearly like. practiced at using the sword, which does not move like basically...any other weapon. that man has spent a fuck lot of time training to and straight up developing how to use a sword that is basically the most unswordlike sword to ever sword. that sword is like a slap bracelet with bladed edges that can also cut through....anything? nearly anything?? it does not move or react like your standard mostly rigid bar of folded metal sword, is the gist here.

which brings me to two, semi-related, points:

when saintess rocks up to steal di feisheng from the zombie cave and also is like 'I'm going to kill you uh actually lol nope fuck that I'm outtie peace bitches', is that literally the first time she's even got a hint that li xiangyi/lianhua has a sword that is basically nigh impossible to block because it can straight up bend around obstacles? (obstacles such as, say, anyone else's sword) if yes, no fucking wonder she's like mmmm I see no thank you I need to go wash my di feisheng's hair, so busy, catch you later because like. how the fuck do you even deal with that. a guy who should have been horribly and messily dead literally a decade ago rocks up and is like 'I lived bitch! also surprise, I have a sword made of glowing Go-Fuck-Yourself metal', like, I too would fucking split! you would only be able to find me by the cartoon dust cloud left in my wake. RIP to everyone else in the jianghu but saintess is making the objectively correct choice here, which is wild because, like. saintess.

how many people's last fucking moment was seeing throat cutter, probably glowing and covered in their blood? because like. Li xiangyi clearly used it! enough to be good at using it. enough to know that it glows blue when there's blood on it, even if he apparently was just like sometimes swords just glow for reasons I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. so. if no one outside of sigu sect high command knows that wenjing exists*, that means everyone else who ever saw that sword -- which there has to have been people, given that li xiangyi was out there uhhh using it -- those people who saw it presumably also uh. died. in a pretty confirmed kinda way. likely via....that sword. throat cutter** indeed

*and not even all of the inner sigu sect command folks knew about li xiangyi having it! they're pretty explicit that five people total know about the sword, which is the four court heads, and then presumably either qiao wanmian or xiao zijin, but not both of them (which, lmao, what the hell were sigu sect internal politics for real), and even that's if we assume shan gudao is not being included in the count because he's "dead"

**yes I know it's a reference to a friendship/relationship you'd cut your throat for per @murderedbyhomework's recent great meta, but also, like. it's still a cut throat, y'know? words can have multiple meanings, and also this is mostly a pun on the name. the rest of the post stands as is tho.

#mysterious lotus casebook #li xiangyi #look I know it's a staple of the genre and etc #but also. li xiangyi is a straight up ruthless little fucker and I just feel like sometimes that gets a little glossed over #man has a secret second sword. absolutely insane.#(also sidebar I feel like there's somehting about how di feisheng's dao is Notably Fucking Weird #and li xiangyi's sword is. Also Notably Fucking Weird.#but everyone knows that di feisheng's sword is Fucking Weird #or at least. you do if you're looking. he's not hiding that.#he's built his whole fighting style around how Fucking Weird his sword is #and only a few people know that li xiangyi also has a Weird Sword and that sword is otherwise explicitly secret #like idk. the parallels or whatever.)#(also haha di feisheng literally the only person in the world for like. a decade.#who's faced wenjing and lived to talk about it afterwards)

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satoshy12 · 9 months

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My wife's dad is more scary then Batman and my grandfather Ra's al Ghul

Estelle as name for Dani or Estrella

4 Baby Talons (clones of dick Grayson)

It had already been a few months since Damian got married to his friend Ellie, and he was very happy. I'm not sure how to explain it to his family or, worse, her family, but that can wait. It happened while he was traveling with her together on vacation through the countries. And he chated and wrote her like four times a day.

While Damian hid it from his family, Dani didn't, as she first told Sam. Jazz and Maddie are working on how to tell Danny. And then Danny learned about it, and he left to meet that boy in Gotham. It had been a long time since he had been in Gotham. And the observers wanted that one person called Doctor Simon Hurt; too many souls died thanks to him.

He was joined by Skulker on this mission. Skulker was just happy to hunt something new, as he didn't try to hunt Danny anymore. The pain that Danny did to his Robot Body he felt on his real boy!

Well, Dani kind of followed Danny; she wanted to make sure he didn't turn her into a widow! She didn't even tell him about her being a meta!

There was something not many people knew about Danny that he himself never noticed, as Amity Park had known him since he was a baby. And being pretty carefree in your demeanor doesn't help. But once outside of Gotham or at Gala with Vlad, people notice it, like Lex Luthor that very short moment in the Gala.

Here in Gotham,

Danny met his son-in-law, and he found the boy interesting. Sam had told him about the child of Bruce Wayne, the playboy billionaire. But he wasn't sure why the boy was so jumpy. I mean, Skulker isn't even near them; already, with few of his duplicates had found Dr. Hurt and captured him already. And Danny others looked if that Owl group still existed since the last time he cleaned them up.

Danny is too powerful for most normal people to fear. Only with good instinct will he notice how formidable he truly is.

So poor Damian's whole body was in horror at this moment. His instinct made him able to notice it fully.

Damian twitched as he was just near Dani's Father, no matter how he tried to hide or stop it. This man made him think of his grandfather, General Zod or similiar. He wanted to draw his Sword, but he didn't have it near him.

Damian smiled at Dani as he tried to play it cool. But when you notice your father-in-law's shadow moving, HE HAS SEEN WORSE! He can do this!

And after a good dinner and talk he got the support of Danny; Ellie smiled; she wouldn't be a widow; and Damian was happy he was accepted and didn't have to fight this villain, maybe? or in the future. Damian didn't get to sigh in relief as Danny left and whispered something about collecting something.

No! Damian, doesn't care!

He wants alone time with his wife. Only to be told "he was to come with his family to Amity Park to meet the Fenton. Damian's family should meet theirs."

Dani told him they would come, and she would Call them 1 or 2 days bore that first before Damian could say anything.

+++++

As Danny was outside of Gotham, Skulker came to him with his few duplicates, holding four tiny blue-gold mixed-eyed children. "Skulker, you destroyed how they were created and so they can't do it again?" Skulker:"Yup, destroyed both Dionesium and Electrum and let few pets out to eat them, it wasn't Lazarus Pit which is needed after all and has nothing to do with us in the Zone. Also I sent copies of the Court members, very damning evidence of their crimes to many newspapers and reporters all around the US. Did you know they blackmailed a few Senators? It will be a comedy in a few days; you can tell that goth girl to tell her family." Danny nodded his head at that. " The cover-ups for this one?" Skulker:" Yes, Mr. Freeze will do it, as last thanks for helping to heal his wife." Danny:" Good, we can leave then. I am hungry."

Skulker:" Didn't you just eat?"

++++

At Amity Park, it didn't take long for Jazz to just accept the new 4 Owlet babies and raise them, she really is wanting to raise them. True, Danny had no plan for them, but that works too. And now they just have to wait for Damian to visit with his family.

++++

At Gotham, after the chaos was fixed by Mr. Freeze and the new chaos started by the news and police forces and even villains attacking the higher class… Bruce meets and learns about his son's wife, and he is told to meet her family in Amity Park. Damian warned his father, his new father-in-law, that this is very scary and not normal.

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gethoce · 2 months

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Valfrey joins the @kirbyoctournament

Name: Valfrey

Reference Image/s:

Notes on Personality: They are a being of duality which is reflected in their personality. Whimsical, but with a strict code of honour. violent, yet merciful. She loves theatrics, drama and music, speaking with a masculine singsong voice.

Backstory and Lore: Valfrey was one of the beings who helped shape the universe by creating the many suns that scatter across the galaxies using her Plasma Ability. She then made it her responsibility to take care of the souls of the dead, guiding them into Yomi. On her journey she met Morpho Knight, who became their spouse. For many years she was a central figure of worship together. At one point she was tricked into believing that her best friend was killed by Dark Matter and she went on a crusade against the species for many years until she was sealed away using Dark Nebula upon targeting the wrong individual and caught off-guard. It wasn't until the four individuals who were tasked to create the Master Sword and Crown came along that she was freed. Her power was used to enchant the Master Crown, but she didn't go down without a fight and had to once again be sealed away, this time in the body of the blacksmith who forged the crown. For aeons she was locked away until she was freed in an effort to eradicate Meta Knight sometime before the events of Kirby's Dreamland. Since then she has been roaming the world looking for a new purpose.

More info can be found on her Toyhouse profile!

#Valfrey #Kirby OC #Kirby OC Tournament #Decided to go with the Frey instead of Heiadoze #mostly because Quan will join with a character that is NOT Necromancer #Also because it'll sting less to lose if I choose a character of mine that isn't my most popular one #Gethoce

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arshipweek · 27 days

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AR Ship Week - Scorpia Backstory in the Book and the TV Show

This is the last weekly post in the lead up to Alex Rider Ship Week. Only one week left!

This week we have a guest post by @icebluecyanide about the differences between Scorpia in the book and TV canons.

Scorpia Backstory in the Book and the TV Show

After two seasons of ominous statements and mystery, series three of the TV show finally dove deeper into the criminal organisation known as Scorpia, and the way their history intertwines with Alex’s. But what is their backstory, and how does it differ from what we see in the books?

In this meta, I will be diving into some of the changes in how Scorpia is presented in the book (Scorpia) and the TV show. Since this is a rather broad topic, and could potentially lead to me listing every single difference from the book, I will focus specifically on the Scorpia backstory and on the structure of Scorpia as an organisation.

I’ve used book quotes throughout this meta, including page numbers. The page numbers refer to the 2014 Walker Books (UK) edition.

Scorpia

Let’s start this off by taking a look at how Scorpia is described in both the book and the show. I’ll first give an overview of Scorpia in the book, then move on to the TV show and do a comparison.

Scorpia in the book

Scorpia was all over the world. It had brought down two governments and arranged for a third to be unfairly elected. It had destroyed dozens of businesses, corrupted politicians and civil servants, engineered several major ecological disasters, and killed anyone who got in its way. It was now responsible for a tenth of the world’s terrorism, which it undertook on a contract basis. Scorpia liked to think of itself as the IBM of crime - but in fact, compared to Scorpia, IBM was strictly small-time. (Scorpia, p. 39)

In the book, Scorpia is a criminal organisation that has its roots in the early 1980s, during the last decade of the Cold War. As we learn in Scorpia (2004), it was founded by people who were involved in the Cold War as spies or assassins or secret police for various governments, and who realised that as the Cold War came to an end, they would be able to make more money going into business for themselves.

It was a fanciful name, they all knew it, invented by someone who had probably read too much James Bond. (Scorpia, p. 38)

The name of Scorpia is taken from their four fields of operation: Sabotage, Corruption, Intelligence and Asassination. They will take on any client that is willing to pay them, and don’t care about who gets caught in the crossfire. They’re a powerful organisation, and as Julia Rothman mentions, sometimes even the intelligence agencies make use of their services for jobs that cannot be traced back to them. They operate very much as a business, and they don’t make things personal, but they also are ruthless in getting even and don’t make hollow threats. Scorpia don’t forgive and they don’t forget.

Scorpia is led by an executive board consisting of the original founders. Of the original twelve, only nine remain at the time of the book, including Julia Rothman (the only woman on the board) and Max Grendel (the oldest executive). The executives on the board are equal partners, but for each project one of them is assigned as the leader, in alphabetical order. (It’s unclear how this works for The Australian, who in some editions doesn’t have a name.)

At the time of the book, the project that Scorpia is focused on is Invisible Sword, and the executive in command is Julia Rothman. There is a client, who is offering a great deal of money for Scorpia to break the special relationship between the UK and the US, and most of the Scorpia board seem unconcerned about the principal target of the weapon being children. The only exception to this is Max Grendel, who is old and has grandchildren of the same age, who has enjoyed getting rich working for Scorpia over the years, but who now wants to retire and not be a part of the new project. Sadly, his retirement gift is a suitcase full of deadly scorpions, so his retirement is rather brief.

Scorpia are an international company, with offices and people all over the world. However, Alex first runs into them in Venice, where Mrs Rothman has a large mansion on the grand canal that is referred to as the Widow’s Palace. On the island of Malagosto, near Venice, Scorpia also has a school where they have a training and testing facility for their assassins. This is where John Rider and Yassen Gregorovich were tested and trained, and it’s where Alex also takes part in lessons.

Scorpia in the show

Blunt: At that time, we already knew that SCORPIA were the single most dangerous emergent threat since the Cold War. (3x07)

At first glance, the Scorpia we meet in the TV show appears to be from a canon divergent AU where the organisation was all but destroyed around the time when Alex was just a baby. This is a fascinating change, and also makes intuitive sense, as of course the third series of the show came out twenty years after Scorpia (2004) did. From the start, we get hints that Scorpia in the show is different from the one in the books.

We first learn of the name Scorpia at the end of s1, as Mrs Jones and the rest of the Department realise that Yassen Gregorovich was behind Ian’s death, and that he is still alive. Going by the descriptions we are given, Scorpia was as powerful in the past as they were when Alex met them in the book:

Smithers: I know the file, of course. At one point, they were responsible for a tenth of the world’s terrorism.

Crawley: And political assassinations, personal vendettas. All available to the highest bidder, without remorse or compunction. (1x08)

In 2006, Scorpia was taken down by the Department, in a well-coordinated operation based on the info John Rider was able to gather. Alan Blunt was in command as all over the world, the bases and known locations of Scorpia were raided. In the chaos, some members of Scorpia went missing and managed to escape, such as Julia Rothman and Yassen Gregorovich, but when they failed to resurface in the five years that followed, their files were closed and they were assumed to be dead.

After this, Scorpia seem to have retreated to the shadows, and operated almost entirely in secret. While they no longer have the same presence in the world, they still have both funds and technology to continue their work. They have no problem spending several millions to fake the payment for the assassination of the US president in season 2 at Yassen’s request, and they have a system set in place with a phone line that can be reached only with a specifically assigned code, or else the number will be disconnected, as we see when the Department pretend to call as Martin Wilby to determine who he got his orders from. In the first two seasons, Scorpia took jobs such as helping with Dr Greif’s plan at Point Blanc, and Damian Cray’s Eagle Strike plan, and they still appear as ruthless as in the book, not caring about the deaths those plans would cause.

At first, we mostly encounter Scorpia in the scenes with the Department, where Scorpia (through Yassen) have turned Martin Wilby to pass on information about the Department and got him to lure Ian Rider to his death at Yassen’s hand. Interestingly, Ian appears to be the only person still looking for Scorpia:

Crawley: I don’t think they ever went away. I think they just got better at hiding. And we were so confident we’d finished them. Only Ian was still looking, of course. (1x08)

Ian seems to have been aware of Yassen’s survival, and presumably who he works for (“Oh Martin, you have no idea who you’re working for.” - 1x01), but none of the rest of the Department have any idea until Alex mentions having seen Yassen at Point Blanc:

Blunt: Scorpia.Mrs Jones: It explains everything. The sophistication, the global reach, and Wilby. Given our history, of course they would target us.Crawley: But we finished them.Blunt: Well, clearly not. (1x08)

In season three, we see Alex (together with Tom and Kyra) actively looking for Scorpia by visiting old locations mentioned in the files on Smither’s phone (that Kyra stole). These include Berlin and Venice, where presumably Julia Rothman had her Palace like in the book. They end up finding Julia in Malta, where she is from. This is a change from the books, where she is Welsh. We meet Nile, her apparent second-in-command, and Max Grendel, who apparently also survived the takedown.

As Alex is pulled into Scorpia, we also learn that they are planning an operation called Invisible Sword. Unlike in the book, this is not a job they took on for a client, but something Julia Rothman came up with personally. As the season goes on, we discover that while she explained it as a way to demonstrate Scorpia’s power and boost their reputation, the real objective was to take revenge against the Department for the blow they dealt Scorpia seventeen years ago.

Scorpia Leadership

Let’s narrow in further for a moment on the question of who is in charge in Scorpia. There do appear to be some changes in the leadership of Scorpia in the TV show, and part of these can be explained by the canon divergence, while others suggest that perhaps this has always been a different Scorpia. Firstly, it’s good to note that instead of talking about an executive board, the leadership are referred to as council members:

Nile: I wondered if perhaps one of the other council members decided to push their luck. (3x01)

In general, the show appears to have less of a ‘business’ vibe compared to the book. It may be that this is a change that only came with the new Scorpia, but this may also always have been different in this universe. Similarly, we hear that Julia Rothman was elected as leader, which suggests that also the way of picking a leader isn’t the rotated schedule from the books. It appears that Julia Rothman has been elected after the failed jobs with Dr Greif and Damian Cray, in an attempt to bring Scorpia back to prominence.

Razim: We elected you because you promised to restore our influence globally. And so far, we have seen nothing. (3x01)

Speaking of Razim, we get another change from the book. The name Razim is a reference to one of the new board members brought on in Scorpia Rising in the books, and he wasn’t present in the original Scorpia book. It makes sense that with most of the organisation taken down years ago, they will have filled their ranks with new members. However, there is some suggestion that perhaps Razim was actually part of Scorpia leadership before Julia:

Julia: Razim’s always resented me. He thinks when Nicolai died, inherited my place at the table. (3x01)

Julia Rothman

Max: And besides, we both know you earned your place. (3x01)

It appears that unlike in the books, Julia Rothman was not a founding member of Scorpia in the show. This also matches up with what we learn about her from the Department file on her, where it states she ‘possesses broad knowledge of Scorpia Operational Structure and is being groomed for command’. She was most likely part of the inner circle through her husband Nicolai, given the comment about inheriting her place.

Nicolai Rothman/Mrs Rothman’s husband definitely appears to have been alive and married to her for longer in the TV show than in the book, although in both she is eventually known as the Widow.:

Mrs Rothman’s multimillionaire husband had fallen to his death from a seventeenth-storey window. It had happened just two days after their marriage. (Scorpia, p. 45)

Also an amusing detail is that in the book Nicolai Rothman is a multimillionaire, while in the TV show he’s referred to as a billionaire. Julia Rothman is canonically richer in the TV show!

Malagosto

Let’s take a moment also to look at the differences in how Malagosto is portrayed in the two canons. In both the show and the book, Malagosto is a training facility for Scorpia operatives, but that appears to be where the similarities end. The location is different in the two canons, with it being on an island near Venice in the book, and on Malta in the show. Specifically, we discover that there is a Scorpia base located underground in an old Cold War listening post on Malta. It might be that the original location had to be abandoned after Scorpia was raided, but the fact that The Department show no recognition to the name later suggests that they have never heard of it before. Definitely, the base in Malta was not known before.

This raises some questions about whether John Rider actually trained at Malagosto in the show as he did in the book. We do have the following quote from Julia Rothman, which if taken literally suggests that he was on Malta with Alex:

Julia: Twenty years ago, your father stood where you are now. Ready to join Scorpia. (3x04)

However, if John trained at Malagosto, it is strange that this location wasn’t known to the Department or raided in the operation to take down Scorpia. So perhaps the quote should be taken metaphorically, with Alex being about to join Scorpia as his dad was, and perhaps John never trained with Scorpia. After all, in the book, he was likely only tested rather than trained, so he may have been tested elsewhere and simply put to work.

THE STUDENTS

Another difference related to Malagosto concerns the students or recruits who are present when Alex is there. In the book, d’Arc (the principal or headmaster of the school) mentions that there are usually around ten to fifteen students. Most of them appear to be people who were either part of the intelligence world or soldiers who have defected:

Alex knew all of them by now. There was Klaus, a German mercenary who had trained with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Walker, who had spent five years with the CIA in Washington before deciding he could earn more working for the other side. (Scorpia, p. 174)

They are people similar to John Rider, who already have had training of some sort that makes them suitable for Scorpia. In this sense, the school is firstly a testing facility, where Scorpia checks if people have the right skills to become part of Scorpia. Alex himself is an exception due to his age, but as d’Arc and Mrs Rothman discuss, he already has experience from both his missions and his uncle’s and MI6’s training. The other students are all older, but treat Alex surprisingly well and are friendly to him.

In the show, the recruits are all orphans and likely closer in age to Alex himself. There is no indication that Alex himself is an outlier in terms of his age. The other recruits also don’t appear to have had prior training if we take Alyona and Oleg as examples. They seem to have been children without families, either taken from orphanages or similar. Some, like Oleg, may have shown a propensity for violence which drew Scorpia’s interest, but they were not the trained soldiers or intelligence agents we see in the books.

This change could perhaps have been a result of Scorpia needing to operate from the shadows. While in the books they could recruit rather blatantly and without worrying about being noticed, they have tried to keep a low profile in the show. Perhaps they have shifted to training teenagers into operatives instead, as they have ‘No baggage, no background. It helps.’ (3x04).

It’s also noteworthy that there are only four other students aside from Alex present at Malagosto. Again, this is easily explained by Scorpia having shrunk in size and operating in more secrecy, and no doubt it made it easier for them to make the commitment of training teenagers. Sadly for Alex, they are not as nice as in the book, and he gets beaten up for being seen as weak on his first day there.

THE BUILDINGS

Another change seems to be in the buildings themselves. As mentioned, Malagosto in the show is located in an old listening post dating back to the Cold War, and that’s reflected in the lack of natural light and the bare, metallic and industrial vibes of the interior. The listening post also appears to be on a remote part of the island, but all that’s visible on the surface is a few abandoned buildings, and Scorpia seem to keep their presence low-key.

In the book, we see the same outside appearance of abandoned buildings, as Scorpia has retrofitted an old monastery for their needs. The appearance is deceptive, however, as the insides have been modernised and Alex’s own room is much more luxurious than the one he gets in the show:

They left the main building and walked over to the nearest apartment block that Alex had seen from the boat. Again, the building looked dilapidated from the outside but it was elegant and modern inside. Jet showed Alex to an air-conditioned room on the second floor. It was on two levels, with a king-sized bed overlooking a large living space with sofas and a desk. There were french windows with a balcony and a sea view. (Scorpia, p. 164)

Alex was left alone. He sat down on one of the sofas, noticing that the room had a fridge, a television and even a PlayStation 2 - presumably put in for his benefit. (Scorpia, p. 165)

The other buildings are similarly updated, and students can train outside as the island is sheltered by trees and away from the mainland. It makes sense that in the show this is less of an option, because Scorpia are much more motivated to keep their presence hidden from the authorities. In the book, they have a legal reason to be there, as they bought the island on a lease from the Italian government, but in a world where Scorpia is assumed to be destroyed, they would need to be more careful. This explains why we only see the students go outside once for training, and that was during a night incursion exercise.

THE TEACHERS

Malagosto is a training facility, and a training facility needs instructors. This plays a larger role in the book, where we are introduced to several of the teachers at Malagosto in Alex’s time there. There is Gordon Ross, the technical specialist who teaches about weapons and explosives, Professor Yermalov, who teaches martial arts and practical skills, and Ejijit “Jet” Binnag, who teaches Botany (focused on poisonous plants). There are classrooms and textbooks and lessons as if it were a real school, but also more practical lessons such as diving and gun practice.

In the show, it’s a bit unclear who normally teaches at Malagosto. We only see two people acting as instructor – Nile and Yassen – and Yassen appears to have been assigned to Alex as a tutor rather than having general teaching duties. Nile appears to take on the role of instructor, but we also see him running around taking care of things for Julia Rothman outside, so he can’t be a full-time teacher. Perhaps we simply don’t see other instructors (much like how we don’t see the catering at Malagosto), or the training is handled more informally, with students working on their skill individually as we saw Syl doing in her first appearance.

One other thing related to the teaching at Malagosto is that in the book, John Rider is mentioned to have been an instructor there. During this time, he was also in charge of Yassen’s training for a while. This isn’t mentioned in the show, and while we get Alex asking if John trained with Yassen, we never get an answer. As Malagosto wasn’t known to the Department, as mentioned before, John was probably not a teacher in this universe.

Since we already touched on him briefly, let now take a look at John Rider and his mission to dive deeper into some of the changes.

John’s mission

Blunt: The intelligence John gathered during that time enabled us to strike at the very heart of Scorpia. Within months, we’d dismantled their entire operation. (3x07)

Based on what we are told, John’s mission is largely the same in both the book and the series. We learn that John was a decorated soldier who was in the Parachute Regiment and had seen combat before (in Afghanistan and Iraq in the show, Northern Ireland, Gambia, and the Falklands in the book). But everything seemed to go wrong for him when he killed a man in a bar fight, and was sentenced for manslaughter.

He goes to jail for two years in the show, while in the book Mrs Rothman claims he was there for less than one, and there is some ambiguity about whether he went to jail at all:

“Everything Julia Rothman thought she knew about your father was a lie.” Mrs Jones sighed. “It’s true that he had been in the army, that he had a distinguished career with the Parachute Regiment and that he was decorated for his part in the Falklands War. But the rest of it — the fight with the taxi driver, the prison sentence and all that — we made up. It’s called deep cover, Alex. We wanted John Rider to be recruited by Scorpia. He was the bait and they took him.” (Scorpia, p. 347)

Scorpia took the bait, and John was recruited by Scorpia. In the show, we learn that John spent three years embedded in Scorpia, learning names and details about the organisation, including their long term goals and ambitions. In the book, the timeline is fuzzier, but we know he spent several months in the field as an assassin before working as an instructor at Malagosto. We are simply told that he ‘had told [MI6] as much as [they] needed to know about Scorpia’ (Scorpia, p. 348).

The reasons for breaking off the mission were similar then in both the show and the book. The risks were increasing, John had discovered most of what he set out to discover, and Helen was pregnant with Alex and John wanted to be with his family. In the book, we also specifically learn that there was a risk due to Julia Rothman, who had fallen in love with him.

This is a point where the canons seem to deviate slightly, because the show is more explicit about John being asked to get close to Julia Rothman. The file on the Widow (Julia Rothman’s codename) mentions that a Department operative Hunter (John Rider) was assigned to develop a relationship. Julia Rothman herself told Alex that his dad was a ‘very close friend’ of hers, and showed him what are clearly love letters describing John’s feelings for her (3x03).

Now, some of this is also in the book. Julia Rothman tells Alex she was very attracted to his father, and that he was a handsome man. And one of the letters from the show is taken straight from the book:

My dearest Julia, A dreary time without you. Can’t wait to be at the Widow’s Palace with you again. John R. (Scorpia, p. 151)

Interestingly, we do see that Julia apparently went by her code name despite the fact that she and John became close enough over the years that she passed him information about Scorpia. John himself was known as Hunter to the Department rather than this being his Scorpia code name like in the book (although the code name isn’t mentioned in Scorpia itself). He signs the letter with his initials JR in the show, and she clearly knew him as John Rider.

It’s well possible given the way Julia Rothman doesn’t mention Alex’s mother in her initial story to Alex about John, that she was not aware at the time that he was married or that John was already with Helen. In the book, she specifically mentions that while she was attracted to him, he was married to Alex’s mother, suggesting that they never acted on the attraction.

The story of John’s capture is roughly the same, there is a trap set for him (on Malta in the book), and he is captured. A few weeks later, Scorpia kidnap a senior British civil servant (or his son, in the book) and MI6/The Department make them an offer to return John Rider to them in an exchange. This takes place on Albert Bridge in the book, while in the show it’s on another bridge somewhere. John’s death is faked, and the idea is that he will be given a new identity along with Helen and Alex so they can live quietly and without Scorpia knowing he was actually a spy.

This is the point where we get the biggest divergence in the backstory, as in the show the information gathered by John’s mission is enough to take down most of Scorpia. The operation is largely orchestrated by Alan Blunt, which is part of why Julia Rothman’s plot in the show is also aimed at him:

Mrs Jones: I’ve been looking at how we brought down SCORPIA 17 years ago. Really was an astonishing operation. Dozens of agents. Coordinates across three continents. Forty-seven key figures, dead or arrested. The entire SCORPIA hierarchy decimated overnight. You waged a private war against Scorpia, made it your mission. (3x06)

It’s not specified whether the take down of Scorpia happened before or after John and Helen’s plane was blown up by a bomb. Blunt tells Alex that ‘within months’ they were able to dismantle Scorpia’s entire operation, while Julia Rothman took six months to track John down. It seems more likely that Scorpia was taken down first, as this would give the Department an extra reason not to suspect Julia Rothman as being behind the bomb on the plane. Blunt’s reaction to Alex’s suggestion that it was Julia Rothman suggests that they didn’t have a clear suspect for all those years, which makes sense if Scorpia were believed to be defeated and not heard from again (aside from the bombing of the plane itself). WIth Scorpia gone, it also makes sense that perhaps someone became too careless in hiding the fact that John Rider is alive, as there would have been less reason to worry.

In the book, we are first told merely that there was a bomb on the plane, which exploded and killed John and Helen and the pilots instantly. Mrs Jones and Alan Blunt seem to have no doubt about it being Julia Rothman, who had discovered the truth, although they are not clear on how she learned about it. MI6 learned valuable information about Scorpia through John’s time as an undercover spy, but they either don’t know enough to take Scorpia down for good or they don’t act on their information.

In a way, the book takes a more cynical approach to the relationship between Scorpia and MI6. Scorpia are too large to take down completely, and any half-hearted effort to destroy them will lead Scorpia to seek revenge. And if you can’t beat them… As Julia Rothman herself points out, the secret services may nominally oppose Scorpia, but they are not above making use of their services:

The secret services can’t do anything about us. We’re too big and they’ve left it too late. Anyway, occasionally some of them make use of us. They pay us to do their dirty work for them. We’ve learnt to live side by side! (Scorpia, p. 132)

Wrapping it all up

So what does it all add up to? As we’ve seen, the show’s portrayal of Scorpia shows an organisation that was nearly brought down seventeen years ago, and that has been operating in secrecy ever since. This single divergence explains most of the differences that we see in the present day structure of Scorpia, from younger recruits to the new leadership. However, we also saw that some aspects have always been different in this universe. The code names for both Julia Rothman and John, as well as the fact that John never mentioned Malagosto show that the backstory in the show was different even before Scorpia was taken down.

In the end, Scorpia is a different organisation in the book and the show, but in many ways it is also still the same. They are a group of people who are ruthless in their pursuit of power and money, who have no compunction about killing and even enjoy it. Scorpia may have been brought to the brink of destruction in the show, but even while hidden from the world, they have been able to keep up their activity for seventeen years.

Until they encountered Alex Rider, that is… :)

#Alex Rider #arshipweek #meta #mod posts #julia rothman #scorpia

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