#Ian Rider

[eliotquillon]

i think a lot about john and ian and their strange, implicit estrangement. it is never explicitly addressed but it is there. blunt going out of his way to say that ian was a good agent but john was a better one. alex always being compared to john despite ian being the man who raised him. ian never telling alex anything about his parents. john never sparing a thought for ian in the snakehead coda. ash being chosen to be the best man at john's wedding and alex's godfather instead of ian. ian being recruited to mi6 straight out of university while john went military and none of it mattering in the end because it was still john who was chosen for the scorpia mission, john who died the hero, john who got blown up and martyred while ian's own death barely registered. you're twentysomething years old and your older brother has just been murdered after being better than you at the one thing you are defined by and you will spend fourteen years raising his son, and none of it will matter. here's a question: why does ian hate being called 'uncle' so much? here's another: can you still be an uncle without a brother?

[jenna-louise-jamie]

in honour of us finally getting alex rider season 3, some memes for your viewing pleasure

[fortisloid]

smalex's continued quest to become tallex

[mcskullmun]

(Click for better quality)

Alex Rider’s vast collection of absolutely terrible father figures

[icebluecyanide]

You killed my uncle. Alex Rider, S01E01 & S03E04.

[too-many-rooks]

co-parenting lessons; gotta confiscate your teen spy’s phone when he's blundered into danger without making a proper plan

[22mechanicalgoats]

hey so your nephew just dismantled the scariest assassin guild on this side of the hemisphere. yeah that's him there covered in blood. yeah. yeah. mmhmm. yeah he's got a weird friendship with the guy who killed you. how old is he now? oh i guess you don't know, you've been dead for a while. he's almost fifteen. yeah, no, you're right, no fourteen year old should have that much blood on them. we don't know how this happened either. yeah, sorry. no you can't talk to him you're dead.

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

Alex: You killed my uncle.

Yassen: Yes, but you didn't hear what he said to me.

Alex: What did he say?

Yassen: He said, "What are you gonna do? Kill me?"

[basim-ibnishaq]

there's so many things I'm excited to see/hoping to be answered in season 3:

who killed kyra's parents? not sure if it's an unpopular opinion or not but i don't want it to be yassen it just feels obvious and a little cheap, i can see her jumping to that conclusion maybe but i don't want it to have actually been him

is john rider still alive? thanks anthony for the tweet about that dude now i'm STRESSED

what happened between scorpia and the department? there's been hints in season 2 about the department being compromised (could just be me but it feels like it was more than just wilby), mrs jones' comment about something they (mi6) did in the season 3 trailer, them all thinking yassen was dead - it feels like a slightly different set up to what happened in the books like there's new elements that i'm really curious about

why was ian not surprised to see yassen alive in season 1? and have any changes been made to their relationship from the books? there's no connection in the books between them like there was yassen and john but they way they spoke in that scene suggests they know each other more than just knowing of each other via john, like "i'm sorry ian, i really am" "me too", they seem to know each other properly to some degree, was ian involved with whatever made mi6 think yassen was dead??

why is yassen's scar different to how it was in the books? did john still give him it and if so how? he has the scar in the picture mi6 has on file so it's something he got before or during working alongside john, not like he got it at the end of it all in some big conflict/whatever made mi6 think they'd destroyed scorpia completely

how will alex's time with scorpia change now that yassen is alive during it? will yassen try to do for alex what john was intending to do for him, train him up and get him the fuck out? i just can't see yassen wanting alex to be stuck on the same path as him, unlike yassen alex actually has people around him who he trusts and can help him (sorry john i know you tried but your betrayal cut deep and destroyed any trust yassen would ever have in anyone again so good job pal), he isn't doomed to be stuck working for scorpia to survive so will he try and get alex out?

what kind of dynamic are alex and yassen going to have? look i'm an absolute sucker for found family but idk how likely that will be for the show so i'm interested to see what they do, we have already seen how anthony has changed things up for the fans (i.e. yassen surviving) and the found family is a popular dynamic for yassen and alex amongst the fandom so maybe they'll take that route, maybe not i'm just excited to see what they do!

[actuallytalldumbass]

I had a dream in which there were 2 alex rider fanfics (based on the show) where after Ian's death Alex found out Wilby was a traitor and he started hating him so much that he ordered Yassen to kill him for Alex. I wasn't able to read the whole fic before I woke up😭

So if anybody wants to write that let me know

[turtlesnails]

Thinking about Alex’s bedroom in season 1.

First off the lighting for this is amazing! But the details!!!!!

The plates/bowls on the bookshelf- that probably should be in the kitchen sink to get washed.

Tom on the laptop!

The pile of clothes Alex threw haphazardly around in his room.

A guitar! (I wonder if Alex can play it?)

The books on the book shelf too- it’s hard to see them in this image but one says Anthony Horowitz and the other says “secret Weapon”.

I’m sure there are more Easter eggs!

[jenna-louise-jamie]

i cannot stop thinking about ian rider. more specifically, how alex had so many unprocessed feelings about him after his death. imagine being an orphan, getting adopted by your uncle as a baby, having him raise you for 14 years then discovering he lied to you your entire life. that he [unintentionally or not] trained you to be something you never wanted to be under the guise of bonding with you. never being able to ask him what his actual intentions were because he's dead. never getting closure for it. im going to throw up.

[andybug1]

the true wonder of the alex rider series is how anthony horowitz never ran out of generic white guy names

[fortisloid]

small alex (smalex) shenanigans

[mirabilefuturum]

no ok I'm officially back on my bullshit

I was eating strawberries and this just came to me

Ian: why are you eating strawberry with sour cream. normally it's just cream

Yassen: in Russia we use sour cream for that

Ian: well of course, you're Russian so you like everything sour

Yassen: of course. you, for example

[icebluecyanide]

Rider family + languages

I've been going through the first seven Alex Rider books looking for references to what languages Alex and his family know, so I thought I might share my findings.

Alex: Is consistently said to speak French, German, and Spanish, although his proficiency level varies. John: Is said to be fluent in seven languages, one of which is French. Helen: Enjoyed foreign films and planned to move to France with John, likely spoke French. Ian: Taught Alex French, German, and Spanish, and talked about Latin and etymology with Alex.

Evidence/quotes given under the cut.

The Evidence

I mean, [Alex]’s lived abroad, so he now speaks French, German and Spanish. (SB, p.78)

But Ian Rider had made certain that his nephew spoke French almost as soon as he spoke English. Not to mention German and Spanish as well. (PB, p.122)

Then [Garcia] had spoken at length, in Spanish, with Turner. Alex had spent the best part of a year in Barcelona with his uncle and understood enough of the language to follow what they were saying. (SK, p.183)

The older of the two called himself Hunter. He was English, although he spoke seven languages so fluently that he could pass himself off as a native of many of the countries he found himself in. (ES, p.10)

[Alex's] French was almost as good as Jack’s, but then he had started learning when he was three years old. (ES, p.135)

Italian was one language Ian Rider hadn't taught him. (S, p.16)

“Funambulism,” Ian Rider said. “What's that?” “It’s Latin, Alex. Funis means rope. And ambulare is to walk. Funambulism is the art of tightrope walking.” (AA, p.82)

[Alex] is known to be fluent in two languages - French and Spanish - and is also proficient in German. (SH, p.35)

[Helen] went to the cinema a lot - she preferred foreign films if she had a choice. (SH, p.190)

[John]’d start a new life in France with you and your mum. I should have mentioned that he spoke fluent French, by the way. If things had gone the way they'd planned, you'd be speaking French now. You'd be in a lycée in Marseilles or somewhere and you wouldn’t know anything about all this. (SH, p.194)

+ Bonus Yassen:

Because he's part of the family in my heart. And because he's noteworthy for speaking nine different languages, including English (with no or only a very faint Russian accent), French, and Japanese.

On this night [Yassen] had been working with a tape recorder and a well-thumbed exercise book. He was teaching himself Japanese, one of the nine languages he had made it his business to learn. (ES, p.204)