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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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Naomi Kritzer's "Liberty's Daughter"

Tomorrow (November 22), I'll be joined by Vass Bednar at the Toronto Metro Reference Library for a talk about my new novel, The Lost Cause, a preapocalyptic tale of hope in the climate emergency.

There's so much sf about "competent men" running their families with entrepreneurial zeal, clarity of vision and a firm confident hand. But there's precious little fiction about how much being raised by a Heinlein dad would suuuck. But it would, and in Naomi Kritzer's Liberty's Daughter, we get a peek inside the nightmare:

https://fairwoodpress.com/store/p148/LIBERTY%27S_DAUGHTER.html

Beck Garrison is a seasteader, living on a floating platform built by libertarian cranks to get away from big government, taxes, and the idea that people owe each other care and consideration. Various kinds of market trufans have built their own fiefdoms: there's a sin city, a biotech free-for-all, a lawless Mad Max zone, and so on.

Beck's father, Paul, is some kind of local functionary. He's wealthy and respected, both a power-broker and a power in his own right. He pays for Beck to get private tutoring (no public schools – no public anything) and if she needs bailing out from some kind of sticky situation, he's got her on his account with Alpha Dogs, the toughest mercenaries on the sea (no police, either). An armed society is a polite society, after all.

Beck has a job, naturally (there ain't no such thing as a free lunch). She's a finder: for all that the steaders worship commerce as a sacrament consecrated to the holy Invisible Hand, there's not a lot of retail at sea. California – the nearest onshore neighbor – has lots of pesky taxes, and besides, it's a long ways off. Besides, space is at a premium on the stead, so people don't have attics and basements to fill with excess consumer junk.

Instead, when a steader needs something – a shoelace, a fashion accessory, or any other creature comfort – they hire a finder like Beck to clamber around between the decks of the aircraft carriers, scows, yachts and other vessels comprising the stead. It's a good way for Beck to earn spending money, and she's a natural at it. After all, she's been a steader since she was four, when her mother died in a drunk driving accident and her father took her to sea.

The story opens with a finding job. Beck wants a pair of sparkly shoes for her client, and the woman who owns them is an indentured servant whose sister has gone missing. Find the sister, get the shoes.

Indentured servant? Yeah, of course. Freedom of contract is the one freedom from which all the others flow, so you can sell yourself into bond labor. Hell, maybe you can earn enough to buy a share in the stead and become a co-owner/citizen.

This is the setup for Beck's adventure, which sees her liberating bond slaves tricked into fatal work details, getting involved in reality TV production, meeting illegal IWW organizers, and becoming embroiled in a pandemic that threatens the lives of all the steaders. It's a coming of age novel, told with the same straightforward, spunky zeal of Heinlein's juvies, but from the perspective of the daughter, not the dad.

Kritzer makes it clear that growing up under the thumb of a TANSTAAFL-worshipping, self-regarding, wealthy autocrat who worships selfishness as the necessary precondition for market clearing would be a goddamned nightmare. She also thinks through some of the important implications of life in one of these offshore libertarian archipelagos, like the fact that the wealthy residents would be overwhelming drawn from the ranks of corporate criminals and tax-cheats, and the underclass would be bail-skipping proles ensnared in the War on Drugs.

But Liberty's Daughter isn't a hymn to big government. Most of the steaders are escaping the US government, a state whose authoritarian and cruel proclivities are well-documented. Kritzer uses the labor dispute at the core of the novel to reveal market authoritarianism – the coercive power that hunger and poverty transfers from the have-nots to the haves. Think of Anatole France's wry observation that "the law, in its majestic equality, equally forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

If you're familiar with Kritzer's work, you won't be surprised to learn that she tells a zippy, fast moving tale that smuggles in sharp observations about the cleavage lines between solidarity and selfishness. Her story "So Much Cooking" – published years before the pandemic – captured life under lockdown with eerie prescience:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/17/pack-of-knaves/#so-much-cooking

More recently, her "Better Living Through Algorithms" is a dazzling display of knifework that'll cut you a dozen times before you even notice that you're bleeding:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/02/wunderkammer/#jubillee

If you habitually read Kritzer's short fiction, Liberty's Daughter might be familiar to you, as it is adapted from a series of stories that originally ran in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Kritzer's YA debut, Catfishing on the CatNet, was also adapted from a short story, "Cat Pictures Please," which won the Hugo Award in 2016:

https://boingboing.net/2019/11/19/setec-astronomy-kitteh.html

"Libertarian exit" – buying a country, or an archipelago, or just a luxury bunker – has been in the air lately. It's a major element of my new novel, The Lost Cause, which came out this month – anarchocapitalist wreckers try to sabotage the Green New Deal from the seastead they've moored to the tallest point in the drowned Grand Caymans and declared to be a sovereign nation:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

Kritzer is great at catching that zeitgeist. Seasteading is part of a long, bitter dream of a certain kind of selfish person to escape society, a tale told in lurid and fascinating detail in Raymond Craib's 2022 history Adventure Capitalism:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/14/this-way-to-the-egress/#terra-nullius

There's a longstanding joke to the effect that you can shut down any discussion of the merits of a libertarian exit by asking three questions about the brave new world:

Whether you can sell your organs;

Whether you can sell yourself into slavery; and

Whether there is any age of consent.

Kritzer tackles the first two, but tacks around the third. Instead, by giving us a young adult protagonist who has been raised in a rusting libertopia, she finds a decidedly less incendiary way to think about the role of autonomy in adolescents, and thus generates far more light than heat.

The result is a cracking read with a sting in its tail.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/21/podkaynes-dad-was-a-dick/#age-of-consent

#pluralistic

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arshipweek · 6 months ago

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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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gaylos-lobos · 2 years ago

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Foreigner Wittebane (Eihort the pale Beast)

Active skills:

Witch Hunt:

Burns the enemy for the next 3 turns 500 to 1000 damage + inflicts extra 500 burn pro attack for the next 3 turns and grants extra damage 15% to 25% to burned enemies

Brothers Bond:

Buster up 20% to 30% + applies invincible 3 hits for 5 turns + charges own nobel phantasm 20% to 30% and if forest of Gravesfield is active grants self hp recharge for 5 turns 500 to 1500 and total debuff resistance for 3 turns

A thousand piercing eyes:

Grants burn damage rate and poison damage rate up 50% to 100% for 5 turns + stuns the enemy for 1 turn and grants self attack and defens up 10% to 20% for the next 3 turns

passive:

existence outside the domain a-

divinity b-

insanity c

madness enhancement b+

Nobel Phantasm:

Labyrinth of the Forest:

The brothers erect the forest of their town around the enemy, this leaves them disorientated for the next turn (one turn sleep) and infuses them with Eihorts brood which activates a turn after leading to a curse activation of 500 (np1) to 2500 (np5) for the next 5 turns 20 (np1) to 40 (np5) defens down and as long as the forest of gravesfield stays activated the brothers gain a 15 to 30 attack up and 15 to 30 defens up and halves the damage from caster class enemies

Witterbro FGO servant concept where they are summoned as a duo in the foreigner class, first ascension in their statue outfits, the second one in proper witch hunter outfits and the third one where they have a more fucked up witch design to them because of the outer god their melted with (second ascension having already some visual clues to them in the bg and some in their outfits) finally ascension is a hopeful reenactment of the statue mixed in with haloes and some saint like imagery.

Their classes on a normal summoning would be Berserker for Philip, specifically because he is remembered for his unconditional love for his brother and the world (like with nightingale) interpretating this as a form of insanity, because it can not explain this as anything else, because his love for him lead him down the same path of his brother, cause it burned so bright that it killed him. (of course no one knows he’s alive)

Calebs class would probably be a ruler, because he’s reminded as a dutifully son to his parents, a loving and kind older brother and an honorable member of his village who most likely protect them to the very end (at least he is remembered like that)

Also the final ascensions of their solo versions complementing each others, like Karnas and Jinakos do. Philip on the ground kneeling, looking up full of sorrow but also hope, as light shines on his face (maybe a broken haloe behind him and THE knife in one of his hands). While Calebs is all more saint like full of light, haloe behind him, his body angled 1/4 to the side, his hands reaching out and placed like he’s about to grab a face (philips) carefully, a soft yet proud expression on his face

#worked out their skill set over the past two days and decided on their max bond ce (mask and carving knife)#i also worked out their individual bond ces calebs being evelyn with flapjack sitting on one of her fingers her back turned to us.#a welcoming forest in the bg showing us calebs new begining. philips being the knife he used to kill caleb #also i need to rework calebs entier individual servent concept considering the town knows about him going of with evelyn #debating if I wanna do proper skill description for the servant profile but at that point i could just write a full one #ramblings

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sexilydrawn · 1 month ago

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What are Alphonse and Baldwin's marriages like? You said they were for "function"

Oh oh it's time for Trevelyan loooooore!

Alphonse had little to no interest in marriage. He's the oldest and knew he'd have to without question marry whoever his mother chose for him, but he couldn't get along with any of the candidates. Alphonse wanted to sing he liked the theater, but as a firstborn, he had no choice but to be a servant of the military or the chantry. He grew up very bitter with no thoughts about romance, so he married a girl of great influence but questionable reputation. Lady Paloma had a lot of trouble finding a husband because of a rumour that her uncle deflowered her. Whether true of not only Alphonse knows. He told her he had planned to go to sea as soon as his first son was born, and since she agreed, he married her. Over the years, they have bonded and remain together. Theirs is a marriage of friendship and respect, but no real romantic love.

Baldwin married for love at first, but his wife died. He was so distraught that despite not having secured a son, Bann Trevelyan let him go to explore the west like he asked as he feared staying in Thedas would kill him. He married a woman in the west and has several children, curiously most of whom are girls. Baldwin loves his "savage" wife, but mostly as the mother of his children.

As the 3rd son Max was always free to pick either a woman or a man for himself. The 3rd son is little more than a trophy. He only faced difficulty after becoming Inquisitor elevated him in the family, and suddenly, his bloodline became very valuable. Still, as he cemented the Trevelyan name in history, his wish to marry Dorian could not be denied, and after much convincing, he achieved that rare thing, a marriage of pure love.

#dragon age inquisition #dragon age #inquisitor trevelyan

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sun-death · 3 months ago

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One cannot say that the revolution had taken aim at the first two privileged estates; rather it took aim at the little monarchies of the estates in general. But if the estates and their tyranny were broken (the king too was only a king of estates, not a citizen-king), the individuals freed from the inequality of the estates were left. Were they now supposed to be without estate and “going wild,” no longer bound by any estate (status), without a common bond? No, because the third estate had declared itself a nation only in order not to remain an estate beside other estates, but to become the sole estate. This sole estate is the nation, the “state” (status). What had the individual now become? A political Protestant, because he had come into direct connection with his god, the state. He was no longer, as an aristocrat, in the monarchy of the nobility; as a craftsman, in the monarchy of the guild; but like all, he acknowledged and recognized only one lord, the state, as whose servants they received the equalizing title of honor, “citizen.”

Max Stirner, The Unique and Its Property (trans. Wolfi Landstreicher)

#max stirner #the unique and its property

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eeriecode-fgo · 3 months ago

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FGO FanServant - Kairi, the Princess of Light

(artwork by TamTam88, originally found here)

Will contain spoilers up to Kingdom Hearts III after the break

Ascension Stages

First Stage: Kairi's outfit from Kingdom Hearts II, wielding Destiny's Embrace.

Second Stage: Kairi's outfit from Kingdom Hearts III, still wielding Destiny's Embrace.

Third Stage: Kairi is now dressed in a black leather dress, with a dark pink skirt underneath, a light pink jacket on top of it, and black leather boots. Her hair are also longer, close to their length during the events of KH2.

Parameters

Class: Caster

Alternate Classes: Foreigner (Traveler)

Source: Kingdom Hearts

Region: Destiny Islands

Voice Actress: Risa Uchida

Rarity: SR

Alignment: Lawful Good

Attribute: Earth

Deck: Arts (Buster: 2 hits; Quick: 4 hits; Arts: 3 hits; Extra: 3 hits)

Traits: Humanoid, Seven Class Servant, Female, Weak to Enuma Elish, Keyblade Wielder, Light User, Unrevivable

Passive Skills

Magic Resistance - Rank C

FGO Effect

Increase own Debuff resistance by 15%.

Guardian of the In-Between - Rank C

A standard skill among Keybearers who travel in the Lanes Between. Mere possession of a Keyblade grants its wielder a constant supply of magical energy, while the act of travelling across worlds marks them as alien to Proper Human History.

FGO Effect

Charge own NP gauge by 3% each turn.

Gain 1 C.Star each turn.

Pure Light - Rank EX

A unique skill representing Kairi's status as a Princess of Heart, her heart of pure light offers a near unbreakable protection from darkness.

FGO Effect

Increases own Debuff resistance by 30%.

Increases own damage by 300.

Increases own damage against [Darkness User] enemies by 700.

Reduces own damage taken from [Darkness User] enemies by 1300.

Custom Append Skills

Healing Boost

Replaces Append Skill 3

Increases healing given (50%~100%)

Bond Skill

Apply Delayed On-Death buff (1 time)

-- On Death: Gain 30 C.Stars.

Active Skills

Life Magic - Rank C+

A common ability among Keyblade users, this skill allows the user to treat wounds and status effects. This ability is strenghtened by Kairi's affinity for light, allowing her to perform feats that would normally require multiple different incantations with a single spell.

FGO Effect

Cooldown: 9~7 turns

Recovers HP for all allies (2000~3000)

Removes debuffs from all allies.

Increases all allies' DEF for 3 turns (20~30%)

Heart of a Princess - Rank B

An offensive manifestation of Kairi's affinity for light. While normally she would use this power to enhance her Shotlocks, as a Servant Kairi can manifest this as a set of buffs focused on banishing darkness.

FGO Effect

Cooldown: 8~6 turns

Increases all allies' ATK for 3 turns (10~20%)

Further increases all [Light User] allies' ATK by 20% for 3 turns

Decreases all enemies' DEF by 10% for 3 turns

Further decreases all [Darkness User] enemies' DEF for 3 turns (10~20%)

Seven Crowns of Light - Rank A

A crystallization of Kairi's status as a Princess of Heart. As one of the seven people in the Realm of Light who hold the key to Kingdom Hearts, the light in her heart gives her an authority and potential beyond comparison: however, since Kairi hasn't truly used that power to its fullest in life, the rank and power of this skill are lowered.

FGO Effect

Cooldown: 10~8 turns

Increases all allies' NP Gauge (20~30%)

Increases all allies' Critical damage for 3 turns (10~20%)

Increases all allies' C.Star Drop Rate for 3 turns (50~100%)

Increases all allies' NP Gain for 3 turns (10~20%)

Gain C.Stars (10~20)

Noble Phantasm

Door to Light - Rank EX

[Thinking of You, Wherever You Are] Rank: EX Type: Anti-Event Range: 1000 Max Targets: 1

A full manifestation of Kairi's power as a Princess of Heart. Unleashing this Noble Phantasm lets Kairi tap for just one moment into her full potential, allowing her to willingly perform feats she's only done subconsciously in life. The potential of this ability is massive, as expected from one of the cornerstones of the Realm of Light, allowing Kairi to perform miracles that come very close to True Magic: but even for a Princess of Heart, breaking the laws of the world like that will incur a heavy price...

FGO Effect

Arts Noble Phantasm, 0 hits

Revive 1 K.O. ally (30~50% HP. Priority is given to the leftmost ally at the beginning of battle. Allies with the [Unrevivable] trait cannot be revived)

Increases the revived ally's ATK by 30% for 5 turns

Increases the revived ally's NP Gauge (30~50%, scales with Overcharge)

Apply Invincibility to the revived ally for 3 hits, 3 turns

Apply Death to self (all Guts effects are disabled. If the user is affected by unremovable Guts effects, the Noble Phantasm cannot be activated)

Writer Notes

Ah, the dilemma of writing a fan-Servant version of a character who barely gets any time to shine in her series. I may have had a clear idea of what I wanted her Noble Phantasm to be like from the beginning, but everything else still feels so slap-dashed together...

The outfit for Kairi's 3rd Ascension is inspired by this concept art for a possible KH4 version of Kairi. All credits for the design goes to hollypolllyy.

As a general design note, after FGO's... interesting approach to game design shown during the 9th Anniversary, I've decided to only write down the Append Skills different from the standard (so, as of this writing, just the 3rd skill). This will remain true for any future fan-Servant.

So, why that effect for her Noble Phantasm? Think back to the three numbered entries in the series, to the thing Kairi has consistently done in all those games (apart from getting captured): - KH1: when Sora got turned into a Heartless in Hollow Bastion, she managed to turn him back into a human - KH2: when Sora and Riku were trapped in the Realm of Darkness at the end of the game, her letter to Sora managed to reach them and open a path to bring them back to the Destiny Island - KH3: when everyone got TPK'd in the Keyblade Graveyard, she managed to tether Sora to the Final World, which in turn allowed him to bring everyone back. If there's one thing that has been true throughout the whole series, it's this: whenever things are at their bleakest, Kairi is always there, a light in the darkness to allow her friends to keep fighting. As such, I think it's only fitting to focus Kairi's skillset around that: she's not a conventional DPS or support, but a joker who can bring your other fighters back during your darkest hour.

For balancing reasons, her Noble Phantasm cannot revive Kairi herself, mostly to prevent a Double Kairi System where they keep rezzing each other forever. Sorry, Kairi, I may have made you a Caster, but you're no Doctor Strange, you did in fact come to die! I'm on the fence on whether that trait would also prevent her from being revived via Command Seals, though I think it would be a fair drawback, given how strong her NP can potentially be. And yes, that note about unremovable Guts means that, if an hypothetical battle sticks you in a situation where you cannot die unless it's in a very specific way, she cannot escape that fate.

As for the rest of her skillset, I mostly focused it around supporting the team, to give her a role in battle outside of just "come in, cast Revive, leave". The numbers are a little low due to her being an SR: I know her kit would easily make her SSR-level, but she's had a role too small in her series to justify putting her in the same rarity as Sora and Riku (and yes, this does mean I plan to write Riku too eventually. As soon as I figure out his gimmick...). Plus, you know, can't have all of them be SSR!

And finally, sorry, I couldn't resist that joke on her 3rd skill's name. It's just an in-joke because of the coincidentally equal number, I'm not planning to actually make her a Beast: contrary to apparently Lasengle, I do have some standards!

#fate #fate grand order #fate fanservant #fanservant #modern fiction fanservant #kingdom hearts #kh kairi

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