ok but even more important: *which* characters at the NSA AU? >:)
damn, this anon knows how to sweet-talk a lady!
so, the NSA AU i was thinking about yesterday was Final Fantasy 12
because i was like "damn, Al-Cid Margrace would be so good at this shit"
(do i turn all my faves into engineers/hackers/etc in my head? maybe)
but in addition to “he seems rather clever,” Al-Cid just gives off very strong Intelligence Community Idealist vibes. like, when you talk to NSA people, the philosophical justification for their work is: a lot of wars happen because of uncertainty. countries get all jumpy and shoot-y when they're not sure how the other country is gonna act, and then people die, and it's Not Good. so if you can just relentlessly spy on each other, there's less risk of unpleasant surprises and bloodshed, more room for diplomatic resolutions, etc. (if you've ever wondered why allied countries never seem to get mad when they're caught spying on each other, or why penalties for said spying tend to be slap-on-the-wrist tier—it's because, like, everyone's doing it and everyone knows they're doing it to each other, so everyone just lowkey agrees to be chill about it, lmao)
anyway, Al-Cid seems like he’d be very much behind that philosophy, and would much rather keep the peace by trading in secrets, and he'd regard surprises as much worse than mere unpleasantness or disadvantagedness.
but if i’m gonna provide some NSA AUs for somewhat less obscure canons...
* Naesala is some asshole senior director in the CIA who's constantly dunking on the NSA as a bunch of dweeby out-of-touch nerds, listen to my field agents instead, not all those math losers. except secretly the only reason his department's so goddamn good at their jobs is because he's got A Guy In The NSA who's tipping him off on The Good Stuff TM. possibly he is sleeping with said Guy In The NSA. or used to be. it's complicated! ("it's Reyson what do you expect")
anyway, Naesala's career ends in some sort of bizarre inside-baseball scandal that he somehow manages to escape from with zero actual consequences (besides losing his job, public shaming, etc), and he goes on a book tour afterwards and all his old colleagues hate the shit out of him but he owns a yacht now so who's really winning here, he tells himself as he cries alone in the middle of the ocean
* ...honestly, the main trio of Three Houses may be Too Jock TM for any of this. like obviously Claude comes the closest to being an NSA dude, and i think he'd have no problem *doing* the work on a technical level, but like. he'd do one internship there and spontaneously combust from having to keep so much shit classified. like yes the man likes having secrets but he doesn't like being legally bound to keep secrets. this man wants to have a blog. NSA people cannot have blogs and they cannot do "teasers," they need you to shut the fuck up and do your fucking job. do you see the problem
* Soren (FE9/10): absolutely terrifying motherfucker who just casually suggests "wait can you do that" levels of backdooring the shit out of allies' critical systems, etc. he probably authored that obnoxious "SSL Added and removed here! :-)" memo. and like ok the NSA doesn't really do war crimes but people know he's probably kinda okay with them. good thing most of his energies are spent being Really Really Good At Crypto Algorithms and he's happy to just hoard money and do math in his office most the time
* Ace Attorney canon: oh my god please do not let any of these humans into a federal agency The Intelligence Community Will Be At Grave Risk
(okay okay, Klavier would probably be fine, but he'd get turned away at the getting-a-security-clearance step, through no fault of his own, really, but because his brother's been on a secret FBI watchlist for years because of his Sketchy Criminal Foreign Contacts, and that's just a bit too close for the agency's comfort.)
