Does Anyone Else Ship Harry Wilson X Roger The Accountant?? Please Tell Me I'm Not Delusional Here

Thinking again about the discussion around "The Fractured Job" rewriting Eliot's backstory and undoing the original series' implication that he was abused by his father. It's a 100% valid read that's supported by the text, but it's also worth noting that it wasn't intended by the creators (at least John Rogers, who's been pretty vocal about it).

From "The Tap-Out Job" commentary:

John Rogers: “And there is—you know, a lot of people look at this one, and ‘Order 23,’ to think that maybe Eliot had been abused or something as a child, and it’s—that’s facile. This is just a guy with a relationship with violence. He’s beaten up, he’s been tortured, he’s a guy who has learned bad things can happen to you and this is how he internalizes it.”

From "The Order 23 Job" commentary:

John Rogers: “And it's also interesting to see how fans react to any sort of storyline like this, where they just assume you're trying to reveal something about the character’s past or some sort of subtle hints that we’re laying in. It’s like no, Eliot doesn't like guys who beat up kids. It's not—I mean there's plainly other stuff going on that Christian chose in order to base his acting around…”

(Thanks to @leverage-commentary for the transcripts)

I find it interesting that in 2009/2010, he devoted commentary time to debunking this. What that tells me this interpretation was prevalent enough to seem worth addressing (probably because they didn't do themselves any favors with how they told their story, leading a huge chunk of the audience to the same conclusion...)

What are some of your favourite Parker and Eliot moments from the og series?

i have the same favourites as everyone else, i'm sorry to say! top three have to be ice cave (duh), parking lot (duh x2) and then my wildcard bonus pick is spy truck.

ice cave is... it's the ice cave. it's THE parker and eliot scene, it's the one everyone keeps calling back to, it's the one that defines parker's arc for a whole two seasons and begins to properly wrap up eliot's. there's a lot you can say about how it affects parker, how eliot kindly guides her away from straying off-track. but it affects eliot, too, or at least reveals stuff; it's so raw for him in large part because it takes place not four weeks after the warehouse. he's still reeling and eliot's whole arc in s4 is basically Processing™️what happened, which starts here. so it's rough and it's raw and it's powerful, plus absolutely INCREDIBLE acting from both beth and christian. everyone's said their peice on this one, and for good reason.

parking lot is obviously an eliot and team scene rather than eliot and parker specifically. she's only got one line during the eliot part of it all, but it prompts the most important exchange of the whole scene.

P: "What did you d-" E: "Don't ask me that, Parker. Because if you ask me, I'm going to tell you. So please... don't ask me."

and yeah yeah yeah everyone's analysed this part in regards to eliot but what we don't talk about enough is how important it is that it's parker who asked and parker who he said that to. because there will always be an innocence about her - yes she's the one who's the most like him, yes she's the other one who'll do the things the rest of them won't, but there will always be an innocence about her. the woman who says she never hurt anyone but is proveably a crack shot with a pistol, the girl who loves christmas and still believes in santa, the thief who thinks jimmy choos refers to a person instead of shoes. she's not a child and the show does an excellent job of not infantilising her, but there's a vunerability to parker that's unique to her. eliot's not begging to not tell her. he's begging for her not to ask. as we see later in the ice cave scene, the two of them are all too often mirrors of one another's pain, and that's seen really clearly here. he doesn't even look at her until telling her to not ask, and then that explanation has him almost breaking down. he'd tell her. he trusts her, and the team, enough to tell. and that's why he can't bear them asking, can't bear her asking. because he cannot let parker of all people see the rivers of blood on his hands.

bonus pick! there's a lot i could have taken as a third option, especially given as you haven't restricted me to three and i've already gotten the two heavy hitters out of the way. but i'm going to say parker convincing eliot to stay in the spy truck in rundown.

P: We agreed we all change. Better or worse, we change together.

it's pretty much the only moment in the original show where eliot and parker's power dynamic is, however breify, reversed. for the most part she's very much someone who he strives to protect, and unlike eliot and hardison you rarely get the sense that they're equals in the relationship (one of the things i really love about redemption is that it remembers to change this about a lot more, and you get parker supporting eliot as a more common occurence). but here, parker's voice is clear and commanding - she knows the right thing to say and for a minute she's the one with the power here, she's the one with the wisdom that he needs to hear. i just love it as both a self-contained moment and a harbinger of what's to come.

What's in a name:

The team leveraging Hardison's first name to get him to take them seriously.

It started with the Grave Danger Job. With Parker's panicked "I need you. Do you hear me, Alec? I need you!" It isn't something that's conscious or anything, but all of them lean into it occasionally.

"Alec, just drop it," Nate stares at Hardison, watching the young man realize maybe he'd been pushing Nate too hard on a topic that was a sore subject. Alec nods grimly and backs down.

"Hardison, how long have you been up?" Sophie asks gently, watching the genius wipe the grit from his eyes, his latest forging project laid out around him. When he mumbles something about not remembering, needing to finish, Sophie catches his chin in a manicured hand and holds his attention. "Alec, go to bed." He goes.

"Come on, man, get off the screen for a little while, let's go get some sun," Eliot pokes him after a long job on top of a new World of Warcraft update. Hardison can't even remember what he said back, something glib he's sure, but he remembers the hesitation in Eliot's voice. "Alec, please. You're gonna fuck up your eyesight before you're thirty, staring at blue light a foot away from your face. Please?" Hardison goes with him. They go to an outdoor gun range. Hardison rags Eliot about them both not liking guns, but listens as his best friend talks him through focusing on targets of different distances. He'll never have Eliot's skill, but it's a quick way to help his eyesight and he turns out to be half decent with practice.

"Alec, I'm serious!" Parker pleads with him, a picture of some conspiracy theory held up in her hands. "I need to know if this is real or not, please. Because it doesn't seem real and then it does seem real and Eliot won't give me a straight answer and Nate won't give me any answer at all, and I need to know if-" if I'm going crazy, she doesn't say, but he hears it now. He lays a hand over hers and explains that it's not real, explains the joke patiently until she understands and can laugh at it and "yes, and" Eliot when that particular theory comes up again.

"Hey y'all, it's Alec," he says, a gun to his head and a phone in his hand, one chance to get it right, to make them understand that this is serious. He can practically hear them all sitting up in the tones of their voices, in the grimness of the rapid fire questions, and he breathes a sigh of relief. They'll come get him. They know it's serious.

it’s criminal eliot and peggy never got to hang out and be food nerds together. bring peggy back in redemption 2k25

Thinking ab what episode would be the sexiest for a time loop. The thing is there are so many options. Steranko episode time loop but the steranko is also caught in it & starts preparing for parker. Hardison & eliot at the pool with moreau with eliot trying over and over to make the conversation that much faster, to find the right words so hardison can survive. Dubenich being the one caught in a loop & using that to manipulate them better in the pilot until they figure out that something is fishy.....

“for nine days I’ve stayed wide awake” -Odysseus

Gilgamesh could NEVER

Leverage timetravel, pre pilot/child ot3 meet their redemption era selves

(I took some liberties re: /meeting/) In hindsight, visiting the US Patent office was probably not their smartest move.  Never return to the scene of the crime, and all, at least not if the job was finished. 

But they'd put a pin in going back for the time machine, and not even a really bad idea could deter Hardison from an actual time machine. Well. Portal, like Eliot had said. 

It hadn't come with an instruction manual, but the three of them, Hardison, Parker, Eliot were professionals at figuring things out on the fly . Even lost in the past. Even scattered. 

Hardison knew he just had to wait, though. They'd find each other. They'd lived through the past once, they could deal with it again, especially knowing everything they did. And it wasn't like they had to live through the whole span of years, either. They just had to find each other, put the pieces back together, scattered with them, and go home. Easier said than done--he was starting to think they might have ended up in different times--but still, the Estimated range was fifteen to twenty years, so that was only five max before they met up, right?

Hardison had gotten right to work. Ads in every major newspaper in the heartland cost plenty, but he had years of criminal practice on top of knowing what tech to invest in, so he really wasn't that worried. He guessed Eliot would be betting on sports games, like in Back to the Future. Parker... well, it was hard to guess where she was. Once he and Eliot met up, they'd have to wait for her to get to them. He did have a few things to do, first.

He knocked on Nana's door, feeling like maybe he ought to be wearing a bow tie. 

"What is it? You from the county?" she asked, when she opened the door. He could see behind her a few curious faces, including his own. Damn, he'd been so tiny. 

"Yes, Ma'am," he said brightly. He could remember this day, vaguely. The box he held was more familiar than his adult face. "I'm here to install your new computer."

"I didn't order any computer," Nana said. "Run your scam someplace else."

"It's not a scam!" he heard his own voice say. "I entered a contest at school."

He had. And he'd lost. Stupid Jake Puckett had won, a kid who could have easily afforded a computer. Alec hadn't known that though, until Hardison'd checked idly. And he wasn't about to just let all of history change. Well, all his own history. 

"You got some proof of that?" Nana asked, and Alec went  scampering off to his room to find his copy of the essay.

Satisfied with the expertly forged documents (wow! it was much easier to forge past documents when you were in the time they were from!) Nana let him in and pointed to a corner desk near an outlet. 

"You ever use your own one of these?" Hardison asked Alec, who shook his head. " just the one at school. I really won?"

"Sure did. Now, let me show you what this thing can do."

~

Eliot stood at the edge of the field, a newspaper crumpled in his hand. Hardison was in Boston, if the ad was right, and of course the ad was. No one else put that much effort into a coded message. 

He watched the football fly. In two weeks, the kid throwing it would be on a bus to boot camp. He closed his eyes. There were options.  Kid wouldn't believe him, of course. There were no secrets yet, to spill as proof. And he was too stubborn to buy the warning.  A good solid tackle, though. Break his arm bad enough...

He'd thought about it. And then about the what ifs. The blood would still be spilled, he knew that. Someone else would end up on Moreau's chain. Someone else would end up with a half dug grave for Flores, and maybe keep digging it.  Everything he'd done for money, the money'd go to someone else. Job might not get done, or it might. 

He'd be there for his mother's funeral. He'd miss Katherine Clive's. Rebecca Ibanez.  the way the drinking might have gone... he'd miss Nate Ford's.  He'd go to school, like his dad wanted, never play college ball. Study something-- art history, maybe -- but no, that was him now. Not him then. Him then would be angry and broken. Him then wouldn't have... his people.

He crumped the paper further. "Dammit, Hardison," he said quietly, and walked away. 

~

Parker had a code. Some things, you just didn't do. Some were big and flashy and obvious. Some were smaller, quieter. 

Hardison would say she shouldn't do this, she knew, and she usually listened to Hardison. He knew what he was talking about, most of the time. You can't change the past. That'd been part of the lecture before they'd gone to steal the time machine.  You can do things, sure, but you always did them. 

Well, Parker hadn't done this. No one had, back the first time she'd lived through this day. But she was doing it anyways, breaking his rule and her own. You don't steal from kids who don't have anything. 

Carefully, she picked the lock on the child's bicycle chain. 

i think one of the nate eliot things is that they're both fucking unhinged. there's something feral about them, something that's capable of disregarding basic humanity. we know eliot is a killer, and a ruthless one at that, and he's not afraid of being in those kind of situations, which in a way dehumanises him, this inability to feel fear.

and nate. nate!! that man is terrifying! get in line, or get out of the way is his motto, and he applies it to absolutely everyone. especially in the earlier seasons, and yes he applies it to sophie (who is unarguably closest to him) too! for maggie he decides that she will get out of the way (because falling in line with him would mean that she would break the law, and she's a Good Citizen, not a Criminal or a Thief, and it never occurs to him that it's not a black and white situation... or that his ex wife matches his crazy).

and if you do neither, he ends you. simple as that. he doesn't kill you and he doesn't physically harm you, but what he does is arguably worse, because he ruins your life in ways eliot can't.

and they very quickly recognise each other as apex predators and both allow the other to use that for their crusade. eliot is a weapon that needs pointing in the right direction, that's what he's getting out of their relationship; and nate needs someone who'll have a go at him and who he can't actually hurt. because nate ruins lives by ruining their reputations, and what reputation does eliot have to lose? and conversely, not even nate ford could convince the world that eliot spencer isn't really fucking dangerous

(sidenote: that's why making moreau watch eliot spencer decrying the evil presidential dog fights is so fucking funny. there's an excellent post about it somewhere on here)

eliot thinks he's further along the path of being something inhuman, and he also thinks nate can still be saved from becoming that too. being an insurance cop, a "good guy" (btw a very laughable concept about how working in insurance makes you a good person. like. if that were the case then how come the same "good guys" let nate's son die so they didn't have to pay for his treatment?), was what kept nate on the straight and narrow before, and now giving him something to do might stop him from going completely off the rails ("how long until you fall apart again? a guy like you can't be out of the game, that's why you were a wreck. you need the chase" is what eliot's saying to convince nate to stay with the team).

unfortunately running with criminals doesn't fix nate the way eliot would like for it to, because the guy suddenly stops recognising any and all societal rules and overcompensates by trying to keep full control of everything all the time. he is so unreasonably mad at sophie for trying to help her friend teresa who got screwed over by marcone.

"she should've known what she got into, her husband working with the mob" and cpl perry from the ep before should've known what he got into, joining the military, but for some reason he's worth helping because he didn't "choose" to become a criminal. did teresa choose to get in with the mob or did she and her husband just not have another chance?

and when the entire team agrees they want to take that job, nate throws a hissy fit. tells them all to walk if they don't like the way he runs the team.

so does leverage fix nate? maybe after five seasons. but at first it makes him worse because between "not having to abide by normal human laws anymore" and the alcohol he completely loses his restraint

and eliot gets that. eliot has been there, has completely lost any and all principles (working for moreau mostly) and is now trying to glue the pieces of himself back together into something that isn't horrible. but nate isn't there yet. nate is still violent and dangerous, and eliot is the only one on the team who isn't disgusted by it. sophie certainly is. hardison and parker are too, even if they don't say it out loud. eliot may not like it, but he gets it.

and in return, nate is the only one who knows about what happened in the big bang job. he can hold eliot back with as little as a gesture or a look and it's not a slight to eliot at all. eliot trusts nate to point him in the right direction because they both need the same thing:

to be a good man.

also:

eliot: what, you think the only thing i know how to do is bust heads? nate: no... well, yeah. eliot: hold a knife like this, cuts through an onion. hold a knife like this, cuts thought like eight yakuza in 4 seconds. screams, carnage... nate: yeah good point actually

like apart from how it's funny, any normal person would react with some version of "that's so fucked up". and nate is just like yeah nah that tracks actually, fair enough, do carry on

also @scotchiegirl something about nate and eliot and violence? sorry for tagging you aslkdjfhasdlkfj i just had ThoughtsTM

Thinking about Sophie’s dramatic death in the “San Lorenzo Job” today and how many Leverage altered things will be written in history books people will have no explanation for.

i need the ao3 tag wranglers to tag wrangle so it's easier to find the united healthcare shooter fic (there are 23 fics about him currently) (i did manually count) (i don't know what to tell you the internet is a bizarre and hilarious place sometimes)