#ARshipweek

[arshipweek]

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… :) 

[countessrivers]

Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Yassen Gregorovich/Alex Rider Characters: Alex Rider, Yassen Gregorovich Additional Tags: Vampire AU, Vampires, Sparring, Sparring as foreplay, Blood Drinking Series: Part 2 of Scorpia, but make them vampires Summary:

“And the catch?” Alex asks warily.

“No catch. You are good, but you could always be better and you’re here to learn. So, we’re going to practice.”

He gestures to the mat in the centre of the room. Alex looks him up and down, seemingly still looking for the trap, but eventually takes his place.

Ship Week fill for the Saturday prompt “sparring as foreplay”

[turtlesnails]

Til death do us part

https://archiveofourown.org/works/56056771

Ship(s): Yasha/Leo, Yassen/Alex

Rating: T

Word count: 4,800

Tags: Soulmate AU, Canonical Character Death, Temporary Character Death, Soulmate-identifying Marks (Scars),angst with a happy ending

Warning: Graphic depictions of violence

Alex Rider Ship Week day two: Soulmates

Summary: “What about you, Yassen? Think you got a soulmate?” John Rider said between bites of the steak dinner they were sharing. “I think my soulmate is dead.” Yassen responded. Or, snapshots of Yassen's life through the lenses of a Soulmate AU.

Mood board:

This is the first mood board I made. I hope its okay :) Images from unsplash.com, or screen snips of the show.

[polarnacht1]

Tailwind

Pairing: Yalex Rating: T Tags: post-canon, adult Alex, grey morality, betrayal, complicated feelings, angst with a happy ending

Summary: After Alex betrayed Yassen to MI6, they are forced to work together on another mission. It goes as well as expected.

Written for @arshipweek, prompt: forced to work together

Warm. Everything is warm, from the air surrounding them, to the colours of the room to the expression in Yassen’s brown eyes. They morph into hazel in the way they only do when they’re alone and Yassen looks at Alex. Really looks at him, as if nothing and noone else matters. 

Rays of sun fall into their room, dipping everything in a soft glow. Alex sits on a bed, his legs invitingly parted, staring up at Yassen with expecting eyes. Alex smiles, reaching for his lover, drawing him closer and on top of him. Yassen’s hands feel sure and strong on his body, possessive but gentle. 

Read more on AO3

[ravenjames]

When Yassen appears again in Alex’s life after “dying” on Air Force One, Alex suddenly finds himself in the middle of a strange game, where he isn’t the one who has to fight, but the one to be fought for. Is Yassen participating in that game or trying to protect Alex? Or is it a bit of both?

Written for Day 7 of @arshipweek for the prompt “Longing”.

[valaks]

Title: Greetings & Salutations

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Relationships: Yassen Gregorovich/Nile

Characters: Yassen Gregorovich, Nile (Alex Rider), Julia Rothman

Tags: Soulmates AU, Snippets through time, soulmate marks in foreign languages, mentorship meets complicated feelings, idiots in love

Summary: It took Yassen years to understand what his soulmate mark said, and many more after that before he heard the ill fated words. The simplicity of a bullet would have been far easier than years with his mentee nee bonded rooting him back to the humanity that SCORPIA had stripped from him.

Collab with @ahuuda, the captain of the Yassen/Nile canoe

Written for the 2023 Alex Rider Ship Week event @arshipweek

[myulalie]

Alex Rider infiltrates a luxurious reception in an undisclosed location in India. As guests mingle, drinking fresh water from champagne glasses, Yassen Gregorovich lurks in the shadow of the couple hosting the reception, protective and threatening all at once as the prospective murder of one of the spouses looms in the room.

By sundown, one of the hosts is widowed, and Alex is left wondering. Will Yassen retaliate after Alex interfered with his mission and if so, how? (read on ao3)

Chapters: 1/1 Words: 5 224 Pairing: Yalex Tags: References to Drugs, Drink Spiking, Truth Serum, Poisoning, Canon-Typical Violence, Post-Canon, Undercover Missions, Angst with a Happy Ending, Minor Character Death, Yassen Gregorovich Lives

[arshipweek]

Alex Rider Ship Week 2024

20-26 of May is a week to inspire Alex Rider ship content, with each day having a 😈 naughty or 😇 nice theme to choose from.

ALL media, pairings and ratings welcome!

RULES

Ship content is defined as: - sex or a relationship including at least one of the main characters of the fanwork OR - sexual/romantic attraction from at least one main character of the fanwork towards someone else

Please tag your content with #ARshipweek and we’ll reblog you! If you’re posting on AO3 you can use the official ship week collection.

THEMES

Monday 😇 Legally binding paperwork 😈 Collar

Tuesday 😇 Soulmates AU 😈 Scorpia!Alex AU

Wednesday 😇 On the road 😈 Cabin in the wilderness

Thursday 😇 Fake dating 😈 Honeypot Friday 😇 "We could share." 😈 "I am not a good man."

Saturday 😇 Sparring as foreplay 😈 Edging Sunday 😇 Touch-starved 😈 Possessive If none of those prompts take your fancy you can also pick one of the free day prompts, which can be posted on any day!

Free Days Gun ◍ Canon divergent AU ◍ Venice ◍ Forced to work together ◍ "Another time, maybe." ◍ Sex lessons ◍ Betrayal

[countessrivers]

Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Yassen Gregorovich/Alex Rider Characters: Alex Rider, Yassen Gregorovich Additional Tags: Post-Series, Unusual/Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, (but they're unusual people so), Guilt, Domesticity, Murder as a Love Language Summary:

Alex isn’t sure what he expects when he arrives at the safehouse. There’s nothing out of place, nothing out of the ordinary on the outside, and inside is much the same. The furniture is still there, but as he wanders through the rooms, running his fingers over the walls and the counters and the tables, he can see that all traces of them ever having been there are gone.

It’s empty, in a way he should have expected, but is still almost surprised, unsettled, and maybe even pained to find.

He still stays. Texts Jack that he’s sleeping at Tom’s, stays, and waits.

Ship Week fill for the Friday prompt “I am not a good man”

[nightshade2412]

TV!verse Snake/Eagle for Alex Rider Ship Week prompt “missions”.

[gohard-or-gohomo]

Thanataphobia

Alex rider x Tom Harris

Tags: angst, implied torture, implied death, ghosts

Day one of the Alex Rider ship week! Using the theme Supernatural.

Alex woke up with a start. He was . . . home? How had he got there? Last thing he could remember he had been strapped to a chair, and . . . no. He couldn't think about that yet. Thinking about whatever traumatizing things happened on his mission was for at least a day or two later. For now, he needed to go and check in with Jack.

Getting off of his bed, Alex noticed he felt . . . lighter. Like for once he wasn't weighed down by gravity. He shrugged. Probably imagining it. Walking into the hallway, he heard something extremely concerning. Was that Tom? Was he . . . crying? Suddenly scared, Alex started rushing down the stairs. Had something happened? Had someone followed Alex home from his mission?

Rounding the end of the staircase, Alex was able to hear what Tom was saying between sobs. "I- I just can't believe he's- he's gone. He was my best friend. I never got to tell him- I never got to tell him I loved him." What? Alex wasn't dead. He was right there. He ran into the sitting room, where he saw Tom hunched over with Jack hugging his shoulder.

"Tom! What are you on about? I was asleep, not dead," laughed Alex, walking over to where he was hunched. Neither Tom nor Jack looked up at him. "Come on guys. You can stop pretending. I'm right here." Alex waved his hand in front of the two of them. They still didn't react. "It's just- I never thought he'd actually die. He always came back from missions, you know? With horrifying stories, sure, but still alive," choked out Tom, finally looking up at Alex.

No, not looking at him. Looking through him. What was going on? Why couldn't Tom see him? This was definitely not a prank. Feeling worried, Alex went over to the mirror that hung on the wall. Did he look . . . blurry? Like he was from a photograph that had been run under water. He snapped around to where Tom was still crying. "Tom. Can you hear me?" This time Tom reacted, looking up from his knees.

"Did you hear that? Jack, did you hear that?" He looked around wildly, eyes wide. "I could swear I just heard Alex's voice. He was- he was right over there!" He pointed in Alex's direction. Looking incredibly sad, Jack put her arms around Tom again. "Tom. He's- he's gone. You're going to have to accept that." Tom slumped back down again, looking even more heartbroken than before.

"It's just that. I never got to tell him how I felt, you know? I was going to ask him to the Christmas dance and everything." Tom smiled at this, in a way that nearly shattered Alex's heart. "Tom, I'm right here. Of course I'll go to the dance with you! I- I love you too mate. Really. If I'd known-" suddenly feeling as heavy as a stone, Alex sank to the floor. How hadn't he known?

Alex felt like an idiot. Why hadn't he told Tom before? All he'd done was gloss over him, relying on him being there. Being there for Alex. And all Alex had done was . . . what? Nearly got him killed? Unloaded all his problems on him? "Mate- mate. I'm so sorry. I should have said something before. I should have been there for you!" Alex screamed the last bit, forcing it out of his mouth with every last bit of emotion he 

had.

And then he felt something crack inside of himself. He was awful. All he did was take and take and TAKE- And with that last thought Alex exploded into tears. Heaving sobs, the kind that shook him to his core. He put all the emotions that he hadn't thought about in years into those tears. Ian dying, his parents dying, just the thought of Tom dying. He cried and cried, for everything that could have been. For a simpler time, when he didn't have to worry about any of this. Where his biggest worry was if Ian would let him go to a party that weekend.

As the tears began to peter out, Alex looked up at Tom again. Looked at his hair that Alex wanted to run his fingers through, at the hands that Alex wanted to hold. All these things he'd never been able to do, simply because he thought he had time. But he hadn't, had he? He should have known. No MI6 agent ever did, no matter how invincible they seemed.

With that last thought, Alex stood up. "Tom. I know you probably can't hear what I'm saying right now, but I just want to tell you this. I really did love you. I wish I'd told you. I wish I'd done lots of things really, but, well- doesn't seem like that's going to happen. There's just one thing I'd like to do though. Let's hope this works." And with that, Alex leaned over, and kissed him gently.

His lips were soft. They felt like coming home, like this was where he was meant to be. But just before he could really enjoy what was going on, Alex started to tingle. Starting at the tips of his fingers, it spread through his whole body. And before he could say anything else, confess any more deep secrets, Alex started to fade. It was slow at first, but soon started to speed up. And with one last glance at Tom and Jack, he disappeared.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tom looked around the living room of his best friend. That was ironic. Living room. If Alex had been there Tom would have whispered to him, and he would have burst into those stupid, over-the-top guffaws of his. But he wasn't. That was the whole point.

Tom had thought he had been, for a second. He had heard something that sounded distinctly like Alex, like Alex calling out to him and Jack. And then had felt a light brush on his lips, exactly how you'd think a ghost kissing you would feel. But it couldn't be. Alex was gone, body probably beat to a pulp somewhere in America, or wherever those bastards at MI6 had sent him this time. That time. The last time.

He looked over at Jack. "What are we going to do for the funeral? We can't just let those government arses handle it." Jack still looked like her world had collapsed but she had somehow survived. "I- I don't know. They said they weren't able to find the- find him. But we'll be able to hold a service. Something casual. He would have liked that," she whispered, and pulled Tom into a tight hug, tight enough to squeeze out the empty gap Alex had left there for a moment.

Tom had loved Alex. Loved him with his whole heart. And even if he was gone, even if he'd never see him again, at least Tom had one thing to reassure him. Alex had too. And even if he'd never said that when he was alive, he'd come back. Just for a moment. Just for one stolen kiss.

[polarnacht1]

Giving In

Ship: Yalex Rating:E Tags: Adult Alex, Post-Canon, Established Relationship, D/s Undertones, sub Yassen, mentions of past rape/noncon, sparring, explicit content Summary: During a passionate sparring session with Alex, long buried desires surface in a way that makes them impossible for Yassen to ignore.

Written for @arshipweek, free day, prompt: D/s

Yassen feels Alex panting against him, hot breath tingling pleasantly against heated, sweaty skin. He’s only wearing a tank top and so does Alex, the thin layer of fabric the only barrier between their naked bodies. For a fleeting moment Yassen wishes it weren’t there.

They’re sparring against each other for the better part of an hour now, both breathing heavily, both trying to hide a smile.

Read more on AO3

[rirren]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Alex Rider (TV 2020), Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz Rating: Explicit Warnings: Underage Relationships: Yassen Gregorovich/Alex Rider Characters: Alex Rider, Yassen Gregorovich Additional Tags: Catboys & Catgirls, Catboy Yassen Gregorovich, Crack Summary:

Alex didn't mean to trigger a strange cat's heat.

[myulalie]

The blessing is ancient and traditional, and Alex lets it wash over him as he momentarily forgets about world-threatening conflicts of interest and the dashing Russian assassin that somehow sneaked into the wedding reception. (read on ao3)

Chapters: 1/1

Words: 6 204

Pairing: Yalex

Tags: Assassination, Murder, Implied/Referenced Suicide, (All Minor Character Deaths), Poisoning, Bugs & Insects, Allergies, Wedding Night, Post-Canon, Canon-Typical Violence, Undercover Missions, Angst, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Infatuation, Unrequited Crush, One-Sided Attraction

[arshipweek]

AR Ship Week - Fandom in 2024

Another year, another shipweek, and another State of the AR Shipping Fandom post. This is the first weekly post leading up to the Alex Rider Ship Week. Just under 4 weeks to go!

This post focuses on pre-S3 fandom, since the data was scraped before the season was released, but we might do an update for post-S3 fics. For methodology, it can be found both on the graphic analysis pages and in the notes at the bottom of this post. For those only curious about the popular pairings this year (1), feel free to read right on.

This year, we have analysed a few specific shipping stats to get a look at us as a fandom.

We have also created an interactive dashboard of all the graphs for you to explore. This is where the following data was taken from, as well as some bonus visuals!

A Timeline of AO3

For a blast from the past, we took a look at the shipping timeline - the count of fics and authors per year for the top ten most popular AR ships - and found immediate proof that as a shipping fandom, we're still small enough that a few, determined people can make a difference. AR fandom's use of AO3 as its primary fandom purveyor is fairly recent, as most of its history can be found on FFnet, but with a total of just under 3k fics as of April 20th, we're gaining on FFnet's 4.5k of AR fics at a very respectable pace.

Some particular developments were:

The number of Yalex authors was about the same in 2021 - 2023 (just around 40) but the number of Yalex fics in 2022 was almost double that of 2021 and 2023. This was not due to a sudden, imported backlog that we could see but a handful of popular events/challenges and potentially the release of S2 in December of 2021.

Tom/Alex and Yassen/Ian both had a peak of fics in 2021, most likely because of the release of S1 that gave Tom a much larger part and offered an intriguing look at Yassen and Ian's potential past.

Fiona/Sabina had a huge spike in fics in 2023 due to a Femmeslash February event (2) that sent it firmly up the ranks of popular ships.

The State of the OTP

For the top ten AR ships, we also took a look at how many of the writers that had written other AR ships (and which ones) to look for interesting patterns and to see if there was any real difference to spot. As it turns out, the answer was a resounding yes:

At one extreme, we have Alexmis (Alex Rider/Artemis Fowl) which is a fandom unto itself. Only 20 percent of the writers of the pairing have written for other pairings in AR fandom fics, and Alexmis fics as a whole tend to lean more towards adding Alex to the Artemis Fowl world rather than vice versa (3).

In the middle range, we have Yalex and Alex/Wolf - two pairings about as old as the fandom itself, and which both have an OTP percentage around 55 - as well as (mostly) newcomers Tom/Alex and Kyra/Alex, both with an OTP percentage in the 40-50 range.

At the other extreme, we have Yassen/John with an OTP percentage of just 4. Fiona/Sabina does it one better with an OTP rate of 0 (!) but the sample size here is so small it makes no meaning to compare it.

So what other pairings do these writers enjoy indulging in, then?

Yalex writers really like their Yassen pairings. Out of the combined number of non-Yalex fics the Yalex authors have written, 24 percent of them are Yassen/Ian and 22 percent are Yassen/John. This means that almost half of their non-Yalex pairings feature Yassen in some way.

70 percent of John/Helen shippers have written other pairings, too - probably because of the pairing's nature as a background part of Alex's story and not necessarily the focus of a shipfic they're in. 30 percent of the fics written by John/Helen writers outside of the ship are Yalex (and 6 percent are Yassen/John).

The case is even more extreme for Yassen/John, which is firmly entwined with the Yalex pairing. 96 percent of the writers have written other AR ships, with three quarters of those fics being Yalex.

Text Analysis

Interactive dashboard with graphs and visuals

We also ran a text analysis on the shipfics to look for patterns and recurring details in the writing - first in general, then for specific ships. The amount of detail for each ship depends a lot on the sample size, which results in a detailed, varied word cloud for Yalex and somewhat less so for several of the smaller ships.

For that analysis, we recommend clicking around to explore the word clouds and get a feel for the different ships, but for the ambitious types, we have a word hunt ready as well (4):

Word Hunt, Significant Phrases edition:

Tools of the Trade:

Duct tape

Frying pan

Krav Maga

Sniper rifle

Zip ties

I Know That Reference:

Fer de Lance

Air Force

Albert Bridge

Point Blanc

Brecon Beacons

Getting Kinky:

Boxer briefs

Dimly lit

Lower lip

Pressed a kiss

Yes sir

Feel free to comment with any particularly entertaining/intriguing/otherwise just plain fun word cloud combinations you've spotted, and we will see you again next week!

______ 

Note on methodology:

The two Alex Rider sections (main + TV) were scraped over the course of two days in early March 2024, except for fics that were locked to AO3 users only (5). For the author specific statistics, we excluded orphan_account and anonymous authors. Median measures were chosen over average the majority of the time to account for outliers, especially in the case of the rarer pairings (6).

For ship-analysis, a fic counts under every pairing it has. This means that someone who writes Yassen/Alex, Yassen/John and Yassen/Ian in the same fic (7) will count as an author for all three pairings and under the Yalex OTP analysis, they will have an additional fic marked under both Yassen/John and Yassen/Ian.

(1) Yalex. It's Yalex. Look, we're not even going to bother posting the stats for that. It's still Yalex, trust us. Though we can talk again next year, considering how well Kyralex is currently doing post-S3. (2) Proving that a few, determined writers can make or break the non-Yalex ship rankings. Please use this power for good; if someone manages to get Sayle/Nadia Vole or something into the top three next year, I'm outsourcing that part of the stat post to a particularly enthusiastic raccoon with a keyboard. (3) Canonically, the wholesale kidnapping of Alex is pretty on-brand for Alex Rider supervillains so really, Artemis is in excellent company. (4) Technically two, but there is unsurprisingly a lot of overlap between the general wordcloud and the Yalex one. For those curious, here's the Word Hunt, Yalex edition:

Adam's apple

Bottle of lube

Cock

Index finger

Nerve endings

Pale skin

Scar tissue

(5) As of April 20th, 225 out of 2961 fics were locked to AO3 users. (6) Meaning anything non-Yalex, let's all be honest here. (7) Because sometimes, like a particularly persistent Pokémon player, Yassen also needs to catch them all. Traumas or Riders is dealer's choice.

[countessrivers]

Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Alex Rider/Julia Rothman, Yassen Gregorovich/Alex Rider, Alex Rider/Julia Rothman/Yassen Gregorovich, Minor Yassen Gregorovich/Julia Rothman Characters: Alex Rider, Julia Rothman, Yassen Gregorovich Additional Tags: Threesome, scorpia alex, Cunnilingus, Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Manipulation

Summary:

“You keep surprising me,” she says. “I’d like to be surprised again.”

Julia shifts her legs a little further apart, and Alex can’t not catch her meaning.

“I’ve never...” His eyes flick away, and he noticeably swallows again.

“I know,” she reassures him. “Maybe you’ll surprise yourself. I have a feeling you’ll be a natural,” she adds with a knowing, leading smile.

 Julia, Yassen, and Alex are out on an assignment together. Julia in particular enjoys herself.

Ship Week fill for the Tuesday prompt ‘Scorpia!Alex AU’