Decided To Rewatch The Carnival Job Tonight And As Much As I Love When The Cons Get Goofy, Or There's

we gotta talk about eliot looking back at his early relationships in the car with parker. the intimacy and detail there between both stories, putting them on the same level as if we should recognize them. there's mention of a rescue mission, without pronouns, and we know of at least one guy who saved eliot after he was shot in the army. what im saying is aimee is obviously story one, and paul orozco is story two. there was a way eliot stumbled over himself, like this is the first time he's saying out loud that paul counts, even if it was purely emotional. and then bi panic. im all for bi the whole time eliot, obviously, but this is my acceptance of him finally opening up.

how did we go from "we agreed we all change. for better or worse, we change together" to "everybody changed. i thought we were done changing."

Im so utterly enamoured and charmed and impressed by Breanna. She is so unbelievably great as a character, and i adore the actress and her skills.

Also i like how she isn't forced to be feminine in the way most female characters are, yet also not forced to be serious and grave. I love her style. I'm not sure/qualified to call her butch, but it does come into my mind (and she is seriously butch compared to most other characters on tv, and specifically also on leverage).

She is so cheerful and goofy and energetic, and while she is all that, it's also just a cover for her deeper issues and darker life experiences, and they let it blink through beautifully.

I like her so much, I'm so excited about any minute, any second we get to see of her.

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...)

Post-wisdom saga Athena’s reaction to a sudden hug would be to remove her armor to not hurt Ody- change my mind

I hope fifteen or twenty years after redemption ends we get another reboot of leverage in which Breanna leads a completely new crew who only ever heard of the original leverage team as heros of legends.

And they tell stories of them like they are mythical figures.

They tell stories of Nate Ford and Sophie Devereaux, how they chased each other across the world before joining sides in the middle to bring together the first leverage team. (They have the Old Nate painting in the current headquarters. Everyone in the new team knows without a doubt that is Leverage Founder Nathan Ford.)

They tell stories of Alec Hardison, Eliot Spencer and THE Parker, the trio who can make anything happen, who made this organisation into what it is now, the patron saints of every leverage team. If a job goes really sideways, they will come to save you, you don't even have to call them. They know.

(The stories range from mildly simplified to wildly inaccurate. Breanna finds this whole mystification fascinating to see, she even kinda gets it on some level, but it's also really weeeiiird. that's just his brother and his insane partners. She just gifted them matching plushies the other day. (She does know where they live and how to reach out to them but she never ever in no way would ever call them for a job. She can do this without them dammit) (but of course they'd still come out once or twice in every season sorry breanna i need my cameos dammit))

so, there's this leverage fic, what we owe each other by @trivalentlinks. (it's one of my favorites. eliot/quinn with a solid dash of moreau. highly recommend. but i digress.) and in this fic, there's a running thing about these tunnels under paris. quinn introduces eliot to them and makes him promise not to use them for crime, and then moreau happens, and, well, it's a whole thing.

and then in the first episode of redemption s3, what do we get? the paris catacombs. and I know that the catacombs are not quite the same as the tunnels from the fic, but I still can't help but wonder what it would be like for that eliot to end up in the tunnels again in the context of l:r 20+ years later. there's just. so much potential there. these ponderings are built firmly on the foundations of a 60k au fic and as such will not go anywhere but i'm just hoping someone else may have read this fic too and understand where my mind went.

God I love the episodes of Leverage that are like “yes Eliot is working class. yes he grew up surrounded by trades people and “menial” labourers. yes he knows so much about those jobs and will ALWAYS support those workers and their job choices.”

Because it’s something that really does set Eliot apart from the other characters. Like, Sophie is all about the finer things in life, and even if she did ever grow up poor or around labourers, she doesn’t exactly respect that life style. She’s all about getting away from that, if she ever was that lower class, which I don’t think she ever really was. Nate is Office Worker tm, just in vibes. That man has never seen a shovel. And while Parker and Hardison both went through the system, they’re both very city centric. And I mean, Parker has never once thought about real jobs or anything, ever. And Hardison definitely has a bit of a thing about age of the geek, and def starts out looking down on “menial” jobs.

But Eliot, throughout the entire show, is very much all about that. The mining episode in particular is such a favourite just because of the respect and care for these workers that Eliot shows. And I really like how different all of the leverage characters are, not just in skills but also in backgrounds, and how those backgrounds affect how they treat people. Eliot comes from a family of workers and a community of workers, and he holds those people in such high respect.

every time i see someone call kirk and spock the oldest ship, i'm filled with the urge to go "hmm actually the holmes and watson girlies have been here for a hundred years now", and i refrain because i know the natural conclusion of this game is gilgamesh and enkidu

They should install public grappling hook points