#is this how nana raised you hardison

[weprovidehyperfixation]

Can we talk about how Hardison was just straight up eating a bell pepper like it was an apple in “The French Connection Job”?

I mean:

Pure chaos gremlin right here.

[scotchiegirl]

You know, I really really do enjoy how every time we learn something about Parker, we learn something about Hardison as well. Almost in response to learning something about Parker or like... like how learning about Hardison re-contextualizes what we've just learned about Parker.

Thinking about season 1 especially and The Stork Job, one of the first real vulnerable moments where Parker herself not only reaches out to the team but where she actually tells them something about herself. Tells Hardison about herself. She opens up about being an orphan, about being in foster care, and she expects him not to understand. And then he opens up about Nana and how she wasn't his grandmother but his foster mother. And it just softens Parker's story, not by downplaying it, but by giving her another angle to her rigid thinking. It is based solely on that conversation and her conscience that she does a 180 and goes back to fight for those kids.

Thinking about The Juror #6 Job too and how that went down and how Sophie may have been the one to point out that Parker had never reached out to the for help before, but Hardison was the one who got Nate to change his mind and indulge Parker. And he did it by opening up about his childhood, about being raised to be good with his words and charming and to know how to ask for things. And once again it re-contextualizes Parker. It shows what she grew up without and how hard this is for her not on a professional loner level but on a personal scared-little-girl level.

I'm sure there's more, and there's times when the opposite happens and we learn about Hardison through learning about Parker, but yeah. The brilliance of the writing to do it like that... wow.

[skullcandy11111198]

Leveragetober23 Day 3: family

Soon after Breanna came to live with Nana, she got a visit from one of her new big brothers. Nana was all in a tizzy for a few days beforehand, when she first learned one of her children would be coming back home for a few days. Apparently Hardison was a legend around here. Nana was baking like crazy, and when Breanna built up the courage to ask why she was making so much food, she learned that her "big brother and his partners" would be coming to stay with them.

Now, Breanna was pretty open minded, her parents raised her well, but she will admit she did a slowblink when she was first told. No one else seemed to have any thoughts on that topic, no weird or judge-y faces from any of the other children in hearing range, so she shrugged and went with it.

When they finally arrived, she was only more intrigued. Hardison could best be described as a whirlwind. He moved fast and talked faster. His two friends, on the other hand, were the direct opposite. They both smiled when talking to others, and answered rather succinctly, but otherwise they didn't move very fast, and in the scheme of things, barely talked at all.

Breanna wasn't quite sure what to do with them. She had accepted her parents were gone, and her definition of family had to change rather quickly, but every time she met a new child of Nana's, it hit her again how much her life had changed over the last two-ish years. Therefore, she was back in her room, decompressing a bit after meeting Hardison and his "partners."

(After meeting them, she honestly couldn't tell if they were romantic-partners or business-partners. They talked about work, a lot. They were vague about it, but they obviously worked together. On the other hand, Parker was a very clingy person with both Hardison and Eliot. Inevitably she would be hanging off one of them, touching them in some way. Hardison and Eliot were known to share a knowing look with each other too, whenever Parker did something. Parker and Eliot always made sure an orange soda was in Hardison's reach, and Parker and Hardison would make googly eyes whenever Eliot even just talked about cooking.)

A knock on her door distracted her.

She opened her door to reveal a slightly nervous looking Parker, who kept checking over her shoulder while she asked if she could hide in Breanna's room for a little bit. Breanna was unsure about this new person, but eh, why not? When she said as much, Parker beamed and thanked her while sliding inside and sitting on the ground behind where the door would hinge open.

Okayyyy. Breanna hesitantly sat down criss cross apple sauce, facing her. "Not to, like, stop you or anything…but, why are we sitting on the ground, exactly?"

Parker looked at her with a sharp eye. "Well, I'm sitting on the ground. You just decided to do it because I did. Sophie says that has to do with psychology, but I don't remember which theory right now."

"Hey! It feels perfectly reasonable right now to go to ground when the only adult in here right now is doing the same!" Breanna pouted, but all she got back was a small smile from Parker. "And hey, don't distract me! Why are we on the ground?"

Parker laughed, then suddenly went quiet. Breanna started to open her mouth to ask her what was happening when Parker suddenly whipped her hand up to stop her from speaking. A few moments later Breanna heard footsteps walking down the hall, pausing at the end, then turning around and walking back to the main part of the house.

Once she was sure whoever it was was gone, she lowered her hand. Breanna was even more curious now, and slightly worried. She knew Nana, and she knew how she raised her children, but either way there was another woman in her room, an adult, who seemed to be hiding from the other adults. Breanna needed to know what was going on.

Parker must have been able to read her face because when she turned her head back towards the younger girl, she immediately started to explain.

"Okay, so to be honest, I've gotten wayyy better with people. Like, way better. I haven't stabbed anyone with a fork in two months, Hardison and Sophie are really proud of me. But there are still a lot of people out there, and they were starting to get loud, and I don't like loud. Loud means notice and I don't like to be noticed, so I went to the place I was sure no one would check because I know Hardison, which means I know Nana, which means I know they will give you privacy because new people are around, which means people are way less likely to come looking for me in here, and when Nana introduced you, you were really quiet, so you are not likely to be as loud as it is out there. So, safe space."

Breanna's head was reeling from trying to keep track of…all of that but yeah, it made sense, in a weird way. She was the newest kid, and one of the previous kids was coming home to visit for the first time since she arrived, plus they were bringing other people too, so Nana was likely to quietly tell everyone to give her some space.

Breanna nodded definitively. "Okay, that makes sense. But…floor?"

Parker nodded, very serious, "First lesson: even when you're hidden, don't assume you're safe, always hide somewhere in a hidden place. Then you're way less likely to be caught" She paused, eyeing Breanna's head speculatively. "You have really curly hair. That's good. You can hide a lot of things in there, lots of pins, maybe even a key or two." Another pause, Breanna felt like her soul was being weighed. "Do you want to learn how to pick a lock in less than 5 seconds?"

Oh, they were going to be friend-friends. "Okay!"

[suddenrundown]

what dnd class alec hardison falls into depends, i think, on where you believe his magical abilities come from.

he's not particularly religious, although he does have connections to various religions given how he was raised in a multi-denomination household. none of those really stick with him personally, but something that does stick is the love for others, the desire to do right by them and do what you can to lift them up.

hardison has magic. the very first demonstration of that magic was paying his nana's medical bills with the bank of iceland's money, and that was done out of love, not for a god but for someone he cares about. are you ever so devoted, so full of love you create your own magic so that you can help them? that you can heal them?

anyway, he's a cleric.

[thefirsthogokage]

This might be a hot take but (spoilers for Leverage: Redemption episode 6)...

I honestly hate - from a writing standpoint, - Parker, Hardison, Brianna, and - now as we know - Eliot, are ALL adopted.

Like, as a writing decision, that's dumb. It's repetitive. It's copying yourself over and over again. I hate that.

And also, as more annoyance on top, this show is about found family. But now we learn most of the team is predisposed to accepting people that aren't their blood as found family. They were already IN found families. That's easy for them. No one chose strangers as their family over their own blood. And I think that would have been a great, interesting writing choice.

It takes away from Hardison really being the one that knew from the beginning how important non-blood family could be. That why could be family. Sure Parker had that too, but it still wasn't easy from her, and I'm sure she wouldn't have considered Master Thief Guy her dad from the get go, which is something that mad that special and different.

Eliot was the one I thought gave up on his blood who raised him and excepted and was loved by a group of people who weren't that. Turns out that's happened before. Which, yes, that could mean why he was able to do that, however, not being in contact with your blood relatives could also be why he his guard was down with strangers, not expecting them to win him over. Then again, he did take to looking after them quickly, which could fit with adoption.

But that still doesn't change the fact that having MOST of the characters in this show being adopted is rather fucking annoying and uncreative.

Like, I'm sorry to the people at Leverage who have been planning this all along, but I HATE it. Writing-wise I hate it. Creativity-wise, it's lacking. I expected something different from Eliot to get a different type of story. To get different representation going into a found family since some many people - I'm sure including many who watch the show, - have come into a found family situation from different places. Now the rep for people who saw him as them, not being with people you are related to and finding family in people you aren't related to, is kind of gone. And that sucks. Particularly queer kids who were shoved out of or left their less than understanding biological families when they came out.

But we don't we don't have that stand in. And writing wise, that sucks.

I know I found it interesting to think of Eliot as someone who chose non-relatives over blood relatives. Like, I get Hardison and Brianna have a loving relationship with Nana. Parker has a weird bond with her adoptive father. Those are different from what Eliot had but still basically the same origin. It's upsetting to get that same start point.

I just, I really really don't like it, and I hate that the more I think about it, the angrier I get instead of being able to calm myself down accept that this is what Christian, Dean, and Rogers wanted and were finally able to get.

Edit: I would also like to say I'm pretty sure Eliot mentioned having a nephew or something in the OG series, and there were no picture of people that looked like they would have been his sibling and their kid. So, that's annoying that that was seemingly forgotten.

[kimberkingrivers]

But it really works, cause you know none of the rest of the team can pull of that “normal” “average” person look.

Sophie - she can play anyone but it’s not who she is. Even when she’s playing average she’s over the top. It’s her personality it’s not wrong. Sofia flies above the radar, who would dare to challenge someone when you’re the center of attention.

Parker- uh it’s Parker, she needs notecard to get through social interactions, she’s not average. Parker will get there eventually but she can’t process her own emotions let alone manipulate someone else’s.

Hardison- maybe, but not really. He’ll talk your ear off. But it’s not going to be about normal conversation, it’s about the latest technology or the new star wars/ Star Trek movies. HeMs not going to be able to go in and talk to anyone about anything. He’s better behind the scenes. He can hack all kinds of things, but he can’t hack a hick.

Eliot- he’s confident, in how he carries himself. He’s a hitter, he’s not worried about the threats because he is the threat. Most people don’t have that confidence, they don’t carry themselves that way. He’d rather hit you than talk or try and fit in. He flies under the radar.

The team needs Nate, at least in the beginning. At least the way I see it.

Nate’s an honest man, but he’s just as broken as the rest of the team.

Sophie ’s lied her entire life. She’s never heard Nate the closes thing she has to a friend say her real name. (That’s partially her own fault)

Parker has never fit in anywhere in her life. She doesn’t understand other people’s emotions, and as much as she wants a family she was still too scared of getting hurt. She doesn’t think twice about stealing anything. She’s a thief.

Hardison grew up in foster care, until he got to Nana’s. He’s a geek he’s a nerd and he hacks the government databases for fun. If anything the boys bored. Because he’s so smart, most things that would be challenging for other people are a cakewalk for him.

Eliot serial killer, fist for hire. Dude didn’t care who he had to take out, if he got paid and got the job done. It wasn’t about protecting anyone, it was about doing what your boss said. Like a soldier is programmed to do.

They all worked on their own. None of them function in society.

Parker can’t walk in a building without knowing escape routes what’s the easiest way to steal something.

Sophie is always acting, even when she’s Sophie. She’s going to know who she can con, who’s her mark and what the objective of the job is. Grifters don’t walk through doors, they create them.

Hardison can walk into anywhere, you’re gonna tell me he didn’t just mess with security systems and people online calendars just to mess with them so he could get a laugh out of it. It’s Hardison.

Eliot literally killed people.

Nate is the only one that’s held down a job for longer than a con. He’s had a family, raised a kid. Lost said kid. Married divorced. And spent years chasing Parker, Sophie, Hardison and Eliot.

Parker says “I’m glad I don’t live in the real world” and Eliot looks at her funny. But she’s right. They don’t.

Most people don’t work for someone for 4 months and pretend to be a duchess to get into a party. Or climb through Air Vents for fun. Or hack into museum security systems, to change the label of a particular artifact. Or take out 5-7 guys by themselves will trying to steal said artifact.

No most people get up, have breakfast take their kids to school. Go to work, (in this case investigation for an insurance agency.) find a fake dagger, get all the insurance money the artifact owner had swindled from the agency. And then they go home and have dinner with their family.

Nate is the mastermind, but it’s because he understands the system because it broke him.

Eliot wasn’t a part of the system, he killed it. Hardison isn’t a part of the system he hacks it. Parker steals from the system, and Sophie can get around the system because she understands people.

Nate is average, yeah he’s an alcoholic, and an asshole sometimes. But he’s also more than average because he managed to break free of the system, and learn how to play the system to help other people that couldn’t get out of it.

Thanks if you actually read thei far, I didn’t intent on writing all that out. But I guess here we are.

Also I mean no disrespect to @leveragedlibrarians this is just my opinion.

The thing about Nathan Ford is that he is just so very mediocre.

Yeah he's smart or whatever, but despite Leverage really trying to push him as a leading man, he is just Some Guy. He is so startlingly average in every single way, partially due to Timothy Huttons 'Guy who just woke up' looks and partially because his top character traits are: alcoholic, kind of an asshole, divorced, and Plays Chess

He's the most Guy I've ever seen in my life. Truly just unremarkable. His name is Nathan for gods' sakes

[stories-me]

Potential Character for Mrs. Kelsey and Tumblr 9/13/2023:

Alec Hardison, the Hacker of Leverage:

What he’s from: “Leverage”.

Background:

The team’s computer specialist, gadgeteer and hacker. He is a self-proclaimed geek and science fiction fan, with an easygoing manner and a dry, unusual wit. Hardison was raised by a foster parent, an older woman he refers to as “Nana”, and his first large-scale crimes involved sticking the country of Iceland with Nana’s medical bills. Hardison can hack into most forms of electronics, and he is rarely caught. Hardison designed and assembled the computer and video systems in the team’s headquarters, and is responsible for the two-way earpieces (“earbuds”) used by the team on each episode. Hardison is a convincing actor, able to talk his way out of almost any scenario, but he is often too clever for his own good, and whenever he has the opportunity to lead a con, he devises overcomplicated schemes usually doomed to failure. He is also very attached to his electronics (and in particular his van, “Lucille”) and shown to become very depressed when the con takes a turn for the worse and requires his electronics to be destroyed so the team can make its escape. Hardison from time to time will back up Eliot (the “Hitter”) in fighting situations although his skills are not nearly as extensive. Hardison’s and Parker’s (Parker is the “Thief”) relationship develops into a romantic one as time goes on, but it is fraught with personal (and physical) complications.

How he is like me:

We’re both smart and want to help others. Also, we both like computers and believe in justice for the underdog. We also have a sense of humor and can do accents.

Kelsey Notes:

When others show interest in your fan fictions by asking questions about certain stories, it is easy for them to become overwhelmed with the amount of information that comes from reading verbatim from a source off of the internet. 

          Summarizing in your own words is a good skill to start practicing- this will help you maintain a back-and-forth conversation about a character that is more meaningful than reading from the internet**

                    **You’ve made great progress in your conversation skills so this is new territory that you are stepping into**

Even though a character or story’s background is not complicated for you to understand, it can seem really complicated to another person. 

          When someone feels that something is too complicated for them to understand they aren’t likely to want to continue a discussion about it because it’s hard to discuss things that are difficult for one person to understand.

Being able to give a quick summary for characters and stories is important because it can help someone follow what you are talking about, making it more likely that a conversation will continue about the character and their story. 

It’s understandable that he would become upset or depressed when he has to destroy a device that he spent time creating. 

In order for the team not to get caught it seems like he is faced with having to start fresh from time to time

          This can relate to being a writer- you are constantly having to come up with new ideas when you finish a story

Rather than feeling doomed when you have to come up with something new or when you have to take a story in an unexpected direction for the reader’s understanding, try to remember that this is generally a strength that a writer posses  

[onyxbird]

Occupational Hugs and Safety: Keep Exits Clear

It took a while to put it together, but Hardison could connect the dots. Eliot was skittish about physical affection, especially hugs, and on the rare occasions he initiated a hug, reciprocating tended to put a stop to it pretty damn fast.

The first time Hardison deliberately did not reciprocate a hug, he wasn't really sure what to expect. It wasn't much—the same sort of abrupt, wild-eyed death grip he'd gotten from a rattled Eliot in the past. A fleeting, desperate contact before stepping back, eyes skittering away to avoid meeting Hardison's, pretending it had never happened. The only oddity was the slightly puzzled look Eliot shot at him out of the corner of his eye as Hardison pivoted to deal with the next crisis.

The second time was odder. Hardison had anticipated this one. These marks hadn't gotten anywhere close to burying him alive, but Eliot's tolerance for him being kidnapped was exceptionally low. The hug was sudden and crushing, and Hardison deliberately relaxed his arms so he wouldn't even start to raise them.

The pressure of Eliot's bear hug lessened after a second, and Hardison assumed that was that, but after a brief, charged hesitation, it cautiously tightened again. Eliot's forehead sank against Hardison's shoulder. The jittery tension ebbed away with painstaking slowness. Hardison simply waited, letting the moment stretch out without a word, without any action to call attention to it.

Hardison wasn't entirely sure how long they remained there, but he estimated several full minutes before the sound of Sophie's voice approaching made Eliot jump away.

Twice seemed to be enough for Eliot to connect some dots of his own.

The third hug was a complete surprise. They were back from the latest job, most of the equipment put away and Hardison still bemoaning the laptop that had gone to a watery grave during a speedboat chase, when an arm snaked around him from behind and a warm weight settled against his back.

"Oh, hello!" blurted Hardison, and he could have kicked himself. He'd been so careful about not responding to the hugs, and now he'd... Huh... Not ruined anything, apparently, considering Eliot's arm was still wrapped around his chest, and long hair still tickled the back of Hardison's neck. Interesting.

It didn't last long before Eliot disappeared towards the kitchen with some bluster about checking whether they had all the ingredients for dinner. When he did, Hardison found Parker watching inscrutably.

The fourth time, he was only semi-surprised by the vice-like grip that wrapped around his neck and shoulders from above while Eliot was in plain sight across the room. Or by the strong legs that wound around his waist. "Hey, mama. How was the safe?"

"Boring," Parker huffed. Her breath tickled the side of his neck. He chuckled and continued methodically assembling Sophie's—or rather “Eva Rinaldi's”—new Italian passport without otherwise acknowledging the warm body wrapped around his torso.

After that, he frankly lost count. It felt like each was racing to catch up on a lifetime's worth of hugs, stolen in odd moments when Nate and Sophie weren't around.

Hardison had no objections, except a distant ache at not being able to reciprocate and pour his feelings into a gesture that could replace all the words Eliot would refuse to hear and Parker wouldn't quite believe. But that was a trivial consideration—he could imagine dozens of reasons for either of them to be skittish about being grabbed, and one-sided hugs were better than none.

...

Hardison swallowed around the lump suddenly caught in his throat and tried to blink back the moisture welling up in his eyes. "How did you know?" he choked out.

The table was buried under the trappings of Nana's best birthday breakfasts, from the huge pan of homemade cinnamon rolls—an absurd quantity for three people—to the ridiculous birthday hat sitting in front of his chair. He'd been quietly mourning the loss of those old family birthdays for the past week. He knew Eliot and Parker would do something for his birthday. Eliot could be relied on to come through with an absolutely decadent cake despite his grumbles about the sugar content, and Parker loved presents. He knew would love whatever they came up with because it was from them, but... neither of them had a wealth of experience with warm family birthday celebrations, much less the specific ones he craved.

There was no possible way this could be a coincidence. Everything was perfect. "We talked to Nana," said Parker, with satisfaction.

"You talked to—? Oh, god, I love y'all so much." He didn't even realize his hands were moving until they were already half-raised for a hug, and he floundered, wondering if he could pass the gesture off as something else.

Parker gave him a penetrating look, and exchanged only the briefest of glances with Eliot before announcing, "You can hug us if you want."

Hardison blinked. "I—I can?"

She nodded solemnly. "Right, Eliot?"

Eliot's eyes skated away, but he agreed, gruffly, softly, sincerely: "If you want."

Hardison didn't need to be told twice.

He pulled them both close, lightly at first, and then tighter when they willingly leaned into him, one of Eliot's arms looping loosely around his waist while Parker's arms wrapped snugly around his chest. He closed his eyes, breathing in the faint citrusy scent of Eliot's conditioner and feeling Parker's nimble fingers toying aimlessly with the seam of his shirt.

Eliot's low grumble about why he'd bothered to make fresh, piping hot cinnamon rolls if they were just going to stand here and let them get cold vibrated through Hardison's chest as well, the complaint undercut dramatically by the fact that Eliot's face remained willingly tucked into the side of Hardison's neck. (Hardison mumbled back that they could always nuke them to warm them back up, eliciting predictable outraged sputtering but no pulling away from the hug.)

Hardison didn't push his luck, ending the hug before the others could get noticeably antsy. (Also because Eliot's cinnamon rolls were making his mouth water, and he did, in fact, want to stuff his face with them while they were still hot.) He was left with a lingering warmth in his chest and a giddy smile on his face.

One-sided hugs were good, but this? This was the best.

Also on AO3:

[hedgiwithapen]

For Dammit Hedgi Day: What if the OT3 death in the finale wasn't a con?

Cuffed to the desk in the Interpol holding cell, Nathan Ford knows that there are three sounds  that no drink will ever erase from his mind. He will hear them for the rest of his life, though he knows with that same certainty that it will not be terribly long.  The sound of a heart monitor screaming one long, sustained note. A van door closing too late behind a gunshot.  Water breaking around him. He sees the bodies.  He is not the only one. Interpol, the FBI, every law enforcement agency on six continents  want their whole dark world to know; this is what happens in the end.  This is what happens when you challenge too much. This is how Order fights back. This is how Order wins. No one comes to claim Parker’s body. On Interpol’s paper, she has no next of kin, no one to notify. Thieves in the night may mourn, but they will not show their faces at Interpol’s morgue. They are, if superstitious, not sentimental, and if sentimental, not stupid.  A call is placed on behalf of Eliot Spencer, but when the recipient hears the cost to fly the body to Oklahoma there is a long sigh and then a dial tone. An old woman, leaning on a cane on one side and a teenager girl on the other, marches up to the desk, a folder full of forms and files, to demand Alec Hardison’s body. She shows ID, and signs her name, and waits, one eyebrow raised. “And the others?” she asks, and the desk agent frowns.  Nana does not back down. “My boy, and his husband, and my girl, too,” she says, and Breanna slides expertly forged documents under the man’s nose. It’s not strictly the law, that to lay claim there has to be a paper trail of kinship, but it makes things simpler. A marriage license, one set of faked adoption papers, one real. It’s not ideal, but the law never did care about ideal or not. Breanna and Nana take care of it, the way it’s written in Eliot’s precise handwriting in a letter that came months ago with instructions not to open it until. Until now. There’s one grave, an ash-fed olive tree spreading branches above it, and a diamond with one manufactured flaw in the heart of it, tangled in roots and fingers. 

[somestorythoughts]

#the happy platonic ending thing is beautiful and right to me up until I try to square that away so I kinda don't#my ONLY criticism of the nana quote is like… I don't think it has to be normal to be good and okay.#but the quote is very… ''matriarch of a large family and deeply supportive.''#it's ''I got the weird kids and dedicated myself to making sure they knew they were right just as they are''#it's nana welcoming parker and eliot with open arms no matter how they're there.#it's nana raising breanna to be the person who could make the speech she did; heartfelt and open.#and I feel like maybe it's something she said to alec or others when they were upset about Not Being Normal#which seems like a v kind way to address it for an upset child.#''their definition of normal is the wrong one; the right one will always include what works for *you*. okay?''#just... thank you nana hardison excuse me I need a sec <3#also haha whoops fun way to find out I'd been slightly misquoting it#and also that the top search engine result for the misquote is. uh. my fic.#I have said enough in the tags now someone drag me out with a shepherd's crook please and thanks <3

At least for the aspec part of the leverage fandom, I’m guessing it’s the heavy themes of found family between the entire crew and the queer platonic vibes of the OT3

yeah. yeah. oh man. like we have a story that prioritises relationships that aren't shown to us as romantic just as highly as the relationships that are, and we have parker who regardless of how you interpret her can be read as a-spec and loved and supported by the people around her and that's great, and we have a happy ending that says "actually, our tough guy (who doesn't seem to settle down with anyone romantically, though we see him date) would be most fulfilled with hardison and with parker, with no explicit romance, but with a lifelong promise of mutual devotion."

(it's a very important thing to me that the story works like that, with parker+eliot+hardison being totally platonic. I love other readings. I do. but what we were given, viewed through the least shippy goggles available, works. and it packs a hell of a punch.)

and listen, I've said it before but "my nana used to say that what's normal is whatever works for you" is such a beautiful sentiment to be applied to SO many things (gender, neurodiversity, queerness, polyamory, queerplatonic relationships, choosing a life of crime instead of a 'proper' career, etc), and it is lovely.

which is to say… yeah. agreed. it's great. and it does make sense. :D

[bisexualeliotspencer]

Eliot and Parker like to find the worst fandom merch, especially t-shirts, to give to Hardison as gifts.

Partly cause they love him, and partly because they get to see him go through the five stages of grief as he reads what monstrosity they've dropped in front of him this time.

On one hand these are so bad that he considers them more criminal than everything he has ever done in his life, but also these are his people. His people were tihkning about him, even if its to cause psychological damage, they still thought of him.

Hardison: Oh you guys... You shouldn't have

Hardsion internally: they really shouldnt have...

Hardison internally: Pull yourself together, nana didn't raise an inconsiderate son

Like yeah this tshirt with darth vader cookie monster is the ugliest piece of graphic design Hardison has seen this millenium. Is he gonna wear it in public? Hell yeah he is! Cause parker told him "I saw this and thought of you!" with the sweetest grin possible and now he will be leaving it to his grandkids in his will

Eliot buys him those fake marvel muscle t-shirts and jokes about how if he actually joins Eliot for training he'll soon be able to just wear a normal tshirt and get the same effect. (The boy knows damn well hardison has a great bod but he's a simple man with simple pleasures. Including winding up Hardison)

Just Hardison's growing collection of shitty hot topic t-shirts/mugs/stickers that he cherishes dearly despite them clearly being a crime against taste

(Thanks to @be-gay-do-heists for enabling this)

[be-gay-do-heists]

hello yall :) the holy month of elul started last night, which is typically a time for contemplation, so since it is impossible for me to stop thinking about leverage, i decided to write an essay. hope anyone interested in reading it enjoys, and that it makes at least a little sense!! spoilers for leverage redemption

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Leverage, Judaism, and “Doing the Work”: An Essay for Elul

When it comes to Elul and the approaching High Holidays, Leverage might seem like an odd topic to meditate on.

The TNT crime drama that ran from 2008-2012, and which released a new season this summer following its renewal, centers on a group of found-family thieves who help the victims of corporations and oligarchs (sometimes based on real-world examples), using wacky heists and cons to bring down the rich and powerful. In one episode, the team’s clients want to reclaim their father’s prized Glimt piece that had been stolen in the Shoah and never returned, but aside from this and the throwaway lines and jokes standard for most mainstream television, there’s not a ton textually Jewish about Leverage. However, despite this, I have found that the show has strong resonance among Jewish fans, and lots of potential for analysis along Jewish themes. This tends to focus on one character in particular: the group’s brilliant, pop culture-savvy, and personable hacker, Alec Hardison, played by the phenomenally talented Aldis Hodge.

I can’t remember when or where I first encountered a reading of Hardison as Jewish, but not only is this a somewhat popular interpretation, it doesn’t feel like that much of a leap. In the show itself, Hardison has a couple of the aforementioned throwaway lines that potentially point to him being Jewish, even if they’re only in service of that moment’s grift. It’s hard to point to what exactly makes reading Hardison as Jewish feel so natural. My first guess is the easy way Hardison fits into the traditional paradigms of Jewish masculinity explored by scholars such as Daniel Boyarin (2). Most of the time, the hacker is not portrayed as athletic or physical; he is usually the foil to the team’s more physically-adept characters like fighter Eliot, or thief Parker. Indeed, Hardison’s strength is mental, expressed not only through his computer wizardry but his passions for science, technology, music, popular media, as well as his studious research into whatever scenario the group might come up against. In spite of his self-identification as a “geek,” Hardison is nevertheless confident, emotionally sensitive, and secure in his masculinity. I would argue he is representative of the traditional Jewish masculine ideal, originating in the rabbinic period and solidified in medieval Europe, of the dedicated and thoughtful scholar (3). Another reason for popular readings of Hardison as Jewish may be the desire for more representation of Jews of color. Although mainstream American Jewish institutions are beginning to recognize the incredible diversity of Jews in the United States (4), and popular figures such as Tiffany Haddish are amplifying the experiences of non-white Jews, it is still difficult to find Jews of color represented in popular media. For those eager to see this kind of representation, then, interpreting Hardison, a black man who places himself tangential to Jewishness, in this way is a tempting avenue.

Regardless, all of the above remains fan interpretation, and there was little in the text of the show that seriously tied Judaism into Hardison’s identity. At least, until we got this beautiful speech from Hardison in the very first episode of the renewed show, directed at the character of Harry Wilson, a former corporate lawyer looking to atone for the injustice he was partner to throughout his career:

“In the Jewish faith, repentance, redemption, is a process. You can’t make restitution and then promise to change. You have to change first. Do the work, Harry. Then and only then can you begin to ask for forgiveness. [...] So this… this isn’t the win. It’s the start, Harry.”

I was floored to hear this speech, and thrilled that it explained the reboot’s title, Leverage: Redemption. Although not mentioned by its Hebrew name, teshuvah forms the whole basis for the new season. Teshuvah is the concept of repentance or atonement for the sins one has committed. Stemming from the root shuv/shuva, it carries the literal sense of “return.” In a spiritual context, this usually means a return to G-d, of finding one’s way back to holiness and by extension good favor in the eyes of the Divine. But equally important is restoring one’s relationships with fellow humans by repairing any hurt one has caused over the past year. This is of special significance in the holy month of Elul, leading into Rosh haShanah, the Yamim Noraim, and Yom Kippur, but one can undertake a journey of redemption at any point in time. That teshuvah is a journey is a vital message for Harry to hear; one job, one reparative act isn’t enough to overturn years of being on the wrong side of justice, to his chagrin. As the season progresses, we get to watch his path of teshuvah unfold, with all its frustrations and consequences. Harry grows into his role as a fixer, not only someone who can find jobs and marks for the team, but fixes what he has broken or harmed.

So why was Hardison the one to make this speech?

I do maintain that it does provide a stronger textual basis for reading Hardison as Jewish by implication (though the brief on-screen explanation for why he knows about teshuvah, that his foster-parent Nana raised a multi-faith household, is important in its own merit, and meshes well with his character traits of empathy and understanding for diverse experiences). However, beyond this, Hardison isn’t exactly an archetypical model for teshuvah. In the original series, he was the youngest character of the main ensemble, a hacking prodigy in the start of his adult career, with few mistakes or slights against others under his belt. In one flashback we see that his possibly first crime was stealing from the Bank of Iceland to pay off his Nana’s medical bills, and that his other early hacking exploits were in the service of fulfilling personal desires, with only those who could afford to pay the bill as targets. Indeed, in the middle of his speech, Hardison points to Eliot, the character with the most violent and gritty past who views his work with the Leverage team as atonement, for a prime example of ongoing teshuvah. So while no one is perfect and everyone has a reason for doing teshuvah, this question of why Hardison is the one to give this series-defining speech inspired me to look at his character choices and behavior, and see how they resonate with a different but interrelated Jewish principle, that of tikkun olam. 

Tikkun olam is literally translated as “repairing the world,” and can take many different forms, such as protecting the rights of vulnerable people in society, or giving tzedakah (5). In modern times, tikkun olam is often the rallying cry for Jewish social activists, particularly among environmentalists for whom literally restoring the health of the natural world is the key goal. Teshuvah and tikkun olam are intertwined (the former is the latter performed at an interpersonal level) and both hold a sense of fixing or repairing, but tikkun olam really revolves around a person feeling called to address an injustice that they may have not had a personal hand in creating. Hardison’s sense of a universal scale of justice which he has the power to help right on a global level and his newfound drive to do humanitarian work, picked up sometime after the end of the original series, make tikkun olam a central value for his character. This is why we get this nice bit of dialogue from Eliot to Hardison in the second episode of the reboot, when the latter’s outside efforts to organize international aid start distracting him from his work with the team: “Is [humanitarian work] a side gig? In our line of work, you’re one of the best. But in that line of work… you’re the only one, man.” The character who most exemplifies teshuvah reminds Hardison of his amazing ability to effect change for the better on a huge stage, to do some effective tikkun olam. It’s this acknowledgement of where Hardison can do the most good that prompts the character’s absence for the remainder of the episodes released thus far, turning his side gig into his main gig.

With this in mind, it will be interesting to see where Hardison’s arc for this season goes. Separated from the rest of the team, the hacker still has remarkable power to change the world, because it is, after all, the “age of the geek.” However, he is still one person. For all that both teshuvah and tikkun olam are individual responsibilities and require individual decision-making and effort, the latter especially relies on collective work to actually make things happen. Hardison leaving is better than trying to do humanitarian work and Leverage at the same time, but there’s only so long he can be the “only one” in the field before burning out. I’m reminded of one of the most famous (for good reason) maxims in Judaism:

It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to neglect it. (6)

Elul is traditionally a time for introspection and heeding the calls to repentance. After a year where it’s never been easier to feel powerless and drained by everything going on around us, I think it’s worth taking the time to examine what kind of work we are capable of in our own lives. Maybe it’s fixing the very recent and tangible hurts we’ve left behind, like Harry. Maybe it’s the little changes for the better that we make every day, motivated by our sense of responsibility, like Eliot. And maybe it’s the grueling challenge of major social change, like Hardison. And if any of this work gets too much, who can we fall back on for support and healing? Determining what needs repair, working on our own scale and where our efforts are most helpful, and thereby contributing to justice in realistic ways means that we can start the new year fresh, having contemplated in holiday fashion how we can be better agents in the world.

Shana tovah u’metukah and ketivah tovah to all (7), and may the work we do in the coming year be for good!

------

(1) Disclaimer: everybody’s fandom experiences are different, and this is just what I’ve picked up on in my short time watching and enjoying this show with others.

(2) See, for example, the introduction and first chapter of Boyarin’s book Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man (I especially recommend at least this portion if you are interested in queer theory and Judaic studies). There he explores the development of Jewish masculinity in direct opposition to Christian masculine standards.

(3) I might even go so far as to place Hardison well within the Jewish masculine ideal of Edelkayt, gentle and studious nobility (although I would hesitate to call him timid, another trait associated with Edelkayt). Boyarin explains that this scholarly, non-athletic model of man did not carry negative associations in the historical Jewish mindset, but was rather the height of attractiveness (Boyarin, 2, 51).

(4) Jews of color make up 20% of American Jews, according to statistics from Be’chol Lashon, and this number is projected to increase as American demographics continue to change: https://globaljews.org/about/mission/. 

(5) Tzedakah is commonly known as righteous charity. According to traditional authority Maimonides, it should be given anonymously and without embarrassment to the person in need, generous, and designed to help the recipient become self-sufficient.

(6) Rabbi Tarfon, Pirkei Avot, 2:16

(7) “A good and sweet year” and “a good inscription [in the Book of Life]”

[darkfinch]

ok im bad at thinking about the money of it but u kno how you said hardison helps eliot squirrel away some secret funds and internally he’s like. “u ok. we just got a $35m payout. bud.” but he wouldn’t say anything bc manners his nana raised him right etc

but. ur post abt how eliot is like “oh just went 2 do a job in pakistan it’s cool no one got hurt….no one got hurt who shouldn’t have. big payout. etc etc.” what if

ugh. why is this in my brain. ugh. ok. so parker loves money, not stuff, money. so what if she’s the one to figure out just how buckwild eliot’s finances are. and then parker is the one to help eliot put money in little hidey holes no one but The Legendary Thief Parker could find. and like. that’s how eliot starts to feel more financially free from moreau.

and then. that makes it worse when parker finds out abt the con. bc he didn’t just con the team he didn’t just con her into caring for him. he conned her into helping him w the one thing she knows. people are hard money is easy and what if eliot never cared for her and was just taking advantage of her

pebbles u are killing me physically

okay i also am ALSO bad at thinking about the money of it...so i think parker is the CASH MONEY expert but alec is ur go to for sketchy fudging of sketchy numbers and hiding ur sketchy funds in a sketchy manner. like. non-tangibly

so it's less "i'm gonna hide some dollars" and more "i just got a payout and i'm going to need to report this money to Damien Moreau, World's Evilest Banker, but i'd like to skim some off the top into an unfindable yet easily-accessible account for. emergencies. some i will take out as cash and hide in various places. but he can't ever know anything's missing or that this account exists or i'll die" less hard cash more suspicious digital activities etc

i DO think that once he HAS withdrawn some of his top secret emergency money, parker walks in on him taking apart the chair in nate's living room and frantically shoving bundles of cash into it and is like. hey buddy. there's gotta be a better way

:( bonding over cash-hiding field trips :( parker keeps secret eliot money in her best hiding spots :( oh no

and then it's not just a betrayal of the team its a betrayal of her, specifically, when she shared this thing with him and what if that wasnt even payout money, what if that was moreau money, what if she has moreau's blood money tucked away next to bunny in her safehouse,

COOL GREAT IM FEELING NORMAL ABOUT IT thank u

[vickyvicarious]

Leverage Redemption Pros/Cons List

Okay! Now that I've finally finished watching the first half of Leverage: Redemption, I thought I'd kind of sum up my overall impression. Sort of a pro/con list, except a little more just loosely structured rambles on each bullet point rather than a simple list.

This got way out of hand from what I expected so I'm going to put it all under a cut. If you want the actual bulletpoint list, here it is:

PROS

References

Continuity

Nate

Representation

Themes

New Characters

General Vibe

CONS

'Maker and Fixer'

Episode Twins

Sophie's Stagefright

Thiefsome

You might notice the pros list is longer, and that's because I do love the show! I really like most of what it does, and my gripes are fewer in number and mostly smaller in size. But they do exist and I felt like talking about them as well as the stuff I loved.

PROS

References

There is clearly so much love and respect for the original show here. Quite aside from the general situation, there's a lot of references to individual episodes or character traits from the first show. For example, Parker's comments on disliking clowns, liking puppets, disliking horses, stabbing vs. tasing people. The tasing was an ongoing thing in the original, the stabbing happened once (S1) but was referenced later in the original show, the clown thing only had a few mentions scattered across the entire original show. The puppet thing was mentioned once in S5, and the horses thing in particular was only brought up in S1 once. But they didn't miss the chance to put the nod to it in there; in fact with those alone we see a good mix of common/ongoing jokes and smaller details.

We got "dammit Hardison" and "it's a very distinctive..." but also Eliot and Parker arguing about him catering a mob wedding, and Eliot being delighted by lemon as a secret ingredient in a dish in that same episode (another reference to the mob episode). Hardison and Eliot banter about "plan M", an ongoing joke starting from the very first episode of the original show. We see Sophie bring up Hardison's accent in the Ice Job, Parker also makes reference to an early episode when describing "backlash effect" to Breanna, in an episode that also references her brother slightly if you look for it.

Heck, the last episode of these first eight makes a big deal out of nearly reproducing the iconic opening lines of the original show with Fake Nate's "we provide... an advantage." And I mean, all the "let's go steal a ___" with Harry being confused about how to use them.

Some of the lines are more obviously references to the original show, but they strike a decent balance with smaller or unspoken stuff as well, and also mix in some references between the team to events we the audience have never seen. If someone was coming into this show for the first time, they wouldn't get all the easter egg joy but most of the references would stand on their own as dialogue anyway. In general, I think they struck a good balance of restating needed context for new viewers while still having enough standalone good lines and more-fun-if-you-get-it callbacks.

Continuity

Similar to the last point, but slightly different. The characters' development from the original to now is shown so well. I'm not going to go on about this too long, but the writers clearly didn't want to let the original characters stagnate during the offscreen years. There was a lot of real thought put into how they would change or not.

It's really written well. We can see just how cohesive a team Parker, Hardison, and Eliot became. We get a sense of how they've spent their time, and there's plenty of evidence that they remained incredibly close with Sophie and Nate until this past year. The way everyone defers to Parker is different from the original show and clearly demonstrates how she's been well established as the leader for years now - they show this well even as Parker is stepping back to let Sophie take point in these episodes. Eventually that is actually called out by Sophie in the eighth episode, so we might see more mastermind Parker in the back half of the show, maybe. But even with her leading, it's clear how collaborative the team has become, with everyone bouncing ideas off one another and adding their input freely. Sometimes they even get so caught up they leave the newbies completely in the dust. But for the most part we get a good sense of how the Parker/Hardison/Eliot team worked with her having final say on plans but the others discussing everything together. A little bit more collaborative than it was with Nate at the helm.

Meanwhile Sophie has built a home and is deeply attached to it. She and Nate really did retire, at least for the most part, and she was living her happy ending until he died. She's out of practice but still as skilled as ever, and we're shown how much her grief has changed her and how concerned the others are for her.

There's a lot of emphasis on how they all look after one another and the found family is clearer than ever. Sophie even calls Hardison "his father's son" - clearly referring to Nate.

Nate

Speaking of Nate! They handled his loss so, so well. His story was the most complete at the end of the last show, and just from a narrative point, losing him makes the most sense of all the characters. But the way he dies and his impact on the show and the characters continues. It's very respectful to who he was - who he truly was.

Nate was someone they all loved, but he was a deeply flawed individual. Sophie talks about how he burned too hot, but at least he burned - possibly implying to me that his drinking was related to his death. In any case, there's no mystery to it. We don't know how he died but that's not what's most important about his death. This isn't a quest for revenge or anything... it's just a study of grief and trying to heal.

Back to who he really was real quick - the show doesn't eulogize him as better than he was. They're honest about him. From the first episode's toast they raise in his memory, to the final episode where Sophie and Eliot are deeply confused by Fake Nate singing his praises, the team knows who he was. They don't erase his flaws... but at the same time he was so clearly theirs. He was family, he was the man they trusted and loved and followed into incredibly dangerous situations, and whose loss they all still feel deeply.

That said, the show doesn't harp on this point. They reference him, but they don't overwhelm new viewers with a constant barrage of Nate talk. It always serves a purpose, primarily for Sophie's storyline of moving through her grief. Anyway, @robinasnyder said all of this way better than me here, so go read that as well.

Representation

Or should I say, Jewish Hardison, Autistic Parker, Queer Breanna!

Granted, Hardison's religion isn't quite explicitly stated to be Jewish so much as he mentions that his "Nana runs a multi-denominational household", but nonetheless. He gets the shows big thesis statement moment, he gets a beautiful speech about redemption that is the emotional cornerstone of that episode and probably Harry's entire arc throughout the show. And while I'm not Jewish myself, most of what I've seen from Jewish fans is saying that Hardison's words here were excellent representation of their beliefs. (@featherquillpen does a great job in that meta of contextualizing this with his depiction in the original show as well.)

Autistic Parker, however, is shown pretty dang blatantly. She already was very much coded as autistic in the original show, but the reboot has if anything gone further. She sees a child psychologist because she likes using puppets to represent emotions, she stims, she uses cue cards and pre-written scripts for social interactions, there's mention of possible texture sensitivity and her clothes are generally more loose and comfortable. She's gotten better at performing empathy and understanding how people typically work, but it's specifically described as something she learned how to do and she views her brain as being different from ones that work that way (same link). Again, not autistic myself but from what I've seen autistic fans find a lot to relate to in her portrayal. And best of all, this well-rounded and respectful depiction does not show any of these qualities as a lack on her part. There's no more of those kinda ableist comments or "what's wrong with you" jokes that were in the original show. Parker is the way she is, and that allows her to do things differently. She's loved for who she is, and any effort made to fit in is more just to know how so that she can use it to her advantage when she wants to on the job - for her convenience, not others' comfort.

Speaking of loved for who you are.... okay, again, queer Breanna isn't confirmed onscreen yet, and I don't count Word of God as true canon. But I can definitely believe we're building there. Breanna dresses in a very GNC way, and just her dialogue and, I dunno, vibes seem very queer to me. She has a beautiful speech in the Card Game Job about not belonging or being accepted and specifically mentions "the way they love" as one of those things that made her feel like she didn't belong. And that scene is given so much weight and respect. (Not to mention other hints throughout the episode about how much finding her own space meant to her.) Also, the whole theme of feeling rejected and the key for her to begin really flourishing is acceptance for who she is, not any desire for her to be anyone else, is made into another big moment. Yeah, textually that moment is about her feeling like she has to fill Hardison's shoes and worrying about her past, but the themes are there, man.

Themes

I talked a bit about this yesterday, so I'm mostly just going to link to that post, but... this series so far is doing a really good job in my opinion of giving people arcs and having some good themes. Namely the redemption one, from Hardison's speech (which I'm gonna talk a little more about in the next point), and this overall theme of growing up and looking to the future (from above the linked post).

New Characters

Harry and Breanna are fantastic characters. I was kind of worried about Harry being a replacement Nate, but... he really isn't. Sure, he's the older white guy who has an angsty past but it's in a very different way and his personality and relationships with the rest of the crew are correspondingly different. I think the dynamic of a very friendly, cheerful, kind, but still bad guy (as @soundsfaebutokay points out) is a great one to show, and he's got a really cool arc I think of learning to be a better person, and truly understanding Hardison's point about redemption being a process not a goal. His role on the team also has some interesting applications and drawbacks, as @allegorymetaphor talked about. I've kind of grown to think that the show is gradually building up to an eventual Sophie/Harry romance a ways down the line, and I'm actually here for it. Regardless, his relationships with everyone are really interesting.

As for Breanna, first of all and most importantly I love her. Secondly, I think she's got a really interesting story. She's a link to Hardison's past, and provides a really interesting perspective for us as someone younger who has grown up a) looking up to Leverage and b) in a bleaker and more hopeless world. Breanna's not an optimist, and she's not someone who was self-sufficient and unconcerned with the rest of the world at the start, like everyone else. She believes that the world sucks and she wants it to be better, but she doesn't know how to make that happen. She outright says she's desperate and that's why she's working with Leverage. At the same time, Breanna is pretty down on herself and wants to prove herself but gets easily shaken by mistakes or being scolded, which is a stark contrast to Hardison's general self-confidence. There are several times when she starts to have an idea then hesitates to share it, or expects her emotions to be dismissed, or gets really disheartened when she's corrected or rejected, or dwells on her mistakes, or when she is accepted or praised she usually takes a surprised beat and is shy about it (she almost always looks down and away from the person, and her smile is often small or startled). Breanna looks up to the team so much (Parker especially, then probably Eliot) and she wants to prove herself. It's going to be so good to see her grow.

General Vibe

A brief note, but it seems a fitting one to end on. The show keeps it's overall tone and feeling from the original show. The fun, the competency porn, the bad guys and clever plans and happy endings. It's got differences for sure, but the characters are recognizably themselves and the show as a whole is recognizably still Leverage. For the most part they just got the feeling right, and it's really nice.

CONS (no, not that kind)

'Maker and Fixer'

So when I started writing this meta earlier today, I was actually a lot more annoyed by the lack of unique 'maker' skills being shown by Breanna. Basically the only time she tries to use a drone, the very thing she introduced herself as being good at, it breaks instantly. I was concerned about her being relegated into just doing what Hardison did, instead of bringing her own stuff to the table. But the seventh episode eased some of those fears, and the meta I just wrote for someone else asking about Breanna's 'maker' skills as shown this season made me realize there's more nuance than that. I'd still like to have seen more of that from her, but for now the fact that we don't see a lot of 'maker' from her so far seems more like a character decision based in Breanna's insecurities.

Harry definitely gets more 'inside man' usage. His knowledge as a 'fixer' comes in handy several times. Nonetheless, I'm really curious if there are any bigger ways to use it, aside from him just adding in some exposition/insight from time to time. I'm not even entirely sure how much more they can pull from this premise in terms of relevant skills, but I hope there's more and I'd like to see it. Maybe a con built more around him playing a longer role playing his old self, like they tried in the Tower Job? Maybe it's more a matter of him needed distance from that part of his past, being unable to face it without lashing out - in that case it could be a good character growth moment possibly for him to succeed in being Scummy Lawyer again down the line? I dunno.

Episode Twins

This was something small that kind of bothered me a little earlier in the season. It's kind of the negative side to the references, I guess? And I'm not even sure how much it annoys me really, but I just kinda noticed and felt sort of weird about it.

Rollin' on the River has a lot of references/callbacks to the The Wedding Job.

The Tower Job has a lot of references/callbacks to The White Rabbit Job.

The Paranormal Hacktivity Job has a lot of references/callbacks to the Future Job.

I guess I was getting a little concerned that there would be a 'match this episode' situation where almost every new Redemption episode is very reminiscent of an old one. I love the callbacks, but I don't want to see a lack of creativity in this new show, and this worried me for a minute. Especially when it was combined with all three of those episodes dealing with housing issues of some kind. Now, that's a huge concern for a lot of people, and each episode has its own take on a different problem within that huge umbrella, but it still got me worried about a lack of variety in topics/cases.

The rest of the episodes failing to line up so neatly in my head with older episodes helped a lot to ease this one, though. Still, this is my complaining section so I figured I'd express my concerns as they were at the time. Even if I no longer really worry about it much.

Sophie's Stagefright

Yeah, I know this is just a small moment in a single episode, but it annoyed me! Eliot made a bit of a face at Sophie going onstage, but I thought it was just him being annoyed at the general situation. However, they started out with her being awful up there until she realized the poem was relevant to the con - at which point her reading got so much better.

This felt like a complete betrayal of Sophie's beautiful moment at the end of the original show where she got over her trouble with regular acting and played Lady Macbeth beautifully in front of a full theater of audience members. This was part of the con, but only in the sense that it gave her an alibi/place to hide, and I always interpreted it as her genuinely getting over her stagefright problems. It felt like such a beautiful place to end her arc for that show, especially after all her time spent directing.

Now, her difficulty onstage in the Card Game Job was brief and at the very beginning of being up on stage. @rinahale suggested to me that maybe it was a deliberate tactic to draw the guy's attention, and the later skill was simply her shifting focus to make the sonnet easier for Breanna to listen to and interpret, but he seemed more enraptured when she was doing well than otherwise in my opinion and it just doesn't quite sit well with me. My other theory was that maybe she just hasn't been up on stage in a long time, and much like she complaining about being rusty at grifting before the team pushed her into trying, she got nervous for a moment at the very beginning. The problem there is that I think she'd definitely still get involved in theater even when she and Nate were retired. I guess she could've quit after he died, and a year might be long enough to make her doubt herself again, but... still.

I just resent that they even left it ambiguous at all. Sophie's skills should be solid on stage at this point in my opinion.

Thiefsome

...And now we come to my main complaint. This is, by far, the biggest issue I have with the show.

I feel like I should put a disclaimer here that I had my doubts from the beginning about the thiefsome becoming canon onscreen. I thought the famous "the OT3 is safe" tweet could easily just mean that they are all still alive and well, or all still working together, without giving us confirmation of a romantic relationship. Despite this, the general fandom expectations/hopes really got to me, especially with the whole "lock/pick/key" thing. I tried to temper my expectations again when the character descriptions came out and only mentioned Hardison loving Parker, not Eliot, but I still got my hopes up.

The thing is, I was disappointed pretty quickly.

The very first episode told me that in all likelihood we would never see Hardison and Parker and Eliot together in a romantic sense. Oh, there was so much coding. So much hinting. So much in the way of conversations that were about Parker/Hardison's relationship but then Eliot kept getting brought into them. They were portrayed as a unit of three.

But then there was this.

I love all of those scenes of Parker and Hardison being intimate and loving and comfortable with one another and their relationship. I really do. But it didn't escape my notice that there's nothing of the sort with Eliot. If they wanted a canon onscreen thiefsome, it would by far make the most sense to just have it established from the start. But there aren't any scenes where Eliot shares the same kind of physical closeness with either of them like they do each other. Parker and Hardison kiss; he doesn't kiss anyone. They have several clearly romantic conversations when alone; he gets important conversations with both but the sense of it being romantic isn't there.

Establishing Eliot as part of the relationship after Hardison is gone just... doesn't make any sense. It would be more likely to confuse new viewers, to make them wonder if Parker is cheating on Hardison with Eliot, or if they have a Y shaped relationship rather that a triangle. It would be so much clumsier.

Still, up until the Double-Edged-Sword Job I believed the writers might keep it at this level of 'plausible hinting but not quite saying'. There's a lot of great stuff with all of them, and I never expecting making out or whatever anyway; a cheek-kiss was about the height of my hopes to be honest. I mostly just hoped for outright confirmation and, failing that, I was happy enough to have the many hints and implications.

But then Marshal Maria Shipp came along. And I don't really have anything against her as a character - in fact, I think she has interesting story potential and will definitely come back. But the episode framed her fight with Eliot as a sexyfight TM, much like his fight with Mikel back in the day. And then his flirting with her rode the line a little of "he's playing her for the con" and "he's genuinely flirting." The scene where he tells her his real name is particularly iffy, but actually was the one that convinced me he was playing her. Because he seems to be watching her really closely, and to be very concerned about her figuring out who he really is. I am very aware though that I'm doing a lot of work to interpret it the way I want. On surface appearance, Eliot's just flirting with an attractive woman, like he did on the last show. And that's probably the intention, too.

But the real nail in the coffin for me was when Sophie compared herself and Nate to Eliot and Maria. That was a genuine scene, not the continuation of the teasing from before. And Sophie is the one whose insight into people is always, always trustworthy. She is family to the thiefsome. For this to make any sense, either Eliot/Parker/Hardison isn't a thing, or they are and Sophie doesn't know - and I can't imagine why in the hell she wouldn't know.

Any argument to make them still canon leaves me unsatisfied. If she knows and they haven't admitted it to her - why wouldn't they, after all this time? Why would she not have picked up on it even without an outright announcement? Some people suggested they wouldn't admit it because they thought Nate would be weird about it, but that doesn't seem any more in character to me than the other possibilities. In fact, the only option that doesn't go against my understanding of these people and their observational abilities/the close relationship they share.... is that the thiefsome is not a thing.

And furthermore, the implication of this conversation - especially the way it ended, with Eliot stomping off looking embarrassed while Sophie smiled knowingly - is that Eliot will get into another relationship onscreen. Maybe not a full-blown romantic relationship. But the Maria Shipp tension is going to be resolved somehow, and at this point I'm half-expecting a hook-up simply because of Sophie's reaction and how much I trust her judgement of such things. Even if she's letting her grief cloud her usual perceptiveness... it feels iffy.

It just kinda feels like I wasn't even allowed to keep my "interpret these hints/maybe they are" thiefsome that I expected after the first couple episodes convinced me we wouldn't get outright confirmation. (I mean, I will anyway, and I love the hints and allusions regardless.) And while I'm definitely not the kind of fan who is dependent on canon for my ships, and still enjoy all their interactions/will keep right on headcanoning them all in a relationship, it's just.... a bummer.

Feels like a real cop-out. Like the hints of Breanna being queer are enough to meet their quota and they won't try anything 'risky' like a poly relationship. I dunno. It's annoying.

.

That's the end of the list! Again, overall I love the new show a lot and have few complaints.

[featherquillpen]

Preview of the Jewish Hardison fic I'm working on.

(No direct spoilers for Leverage: Redemption, though the fic is inspired by some dialogue in episode 1. Content notes for internalized racism and anti-Semitism.)

Once the thrill of that first job with Nate Ford faded, all that was left was shame.

Alec had first gotten into the crime biz to pay off his Nana’s medical bills. Just one big score so she’d never have to worry about bankruptcy, and that would be the end of it. But getting away with robbing the Bank of Iceland had been such a rush. So then he’d started sneaking himself into the Oscars, and when his internet friends had said, “pics or it didn’t happen,” he’d shown them the anonymized pics, and become a legend.

He’d forgotten all about the important stuff. About taking money away from the Bank of Iceland and giving it back to people like Nana. For him, crime had become all about the rep.

Lost, confused, hating himself, missing the crew he’d only just met, Alec barely left his hotel room in New York for days. Then he remembered something from years ago. He searched through his old files and found it: the congregation that had put out the notice for his mama’s Bat Mitzvah, a little over thirty years ago. They were still around. Alec looked them up. There was a senior rabbi and a student rabbi. The student rabbi didn’t look like any rabbi Alec had ever seen before. She was a woman with deep tan skin and a wild cloud of black hair named Rahel Cardoso, and she was leading a guitar song circle for Kabbalat Shabbat tomorrow night.

Why am I doing this? Alec asked himself. It’s not like anybody’s gonna remember Mama. Her ghost ain’t gonna rise up out of the Torah to tell you what you gotta do next. But the next evening, he went to the service anyway.

If he’d been looking for some kind of spiritual revelation, he didn’t get one. Mostly, he felt painfully awkward. He was the only Black dude in the room. The Jewish songs were pretty, but it felt like he was the only one who didn’t know how to sing along. At the end, when everyone said the prayers for the wine and bread, Alec just mumbled.

That was when the rabbi found him, standing all alone munching on his piece of challah. “I haven’t seen you around before. What’s your name?”

“Hardison.” He could barely look at her. He felt like he’d failed some kind of test. He said in a rush, “I’m sorry I didn’t say any of the prayers right. I grew up in the system and I don’t know anything about - and my foster mom, she always told me I gotta respect people’s faith - “

“Your birth family’s Jewish?” Rabbi Cardoso said gently.

“My mama went here,” Alec admitted. “To your congregation.”

“Then you belong here,” Rabbi Cardoso said firmly. “Why don’t you help me clean up after the service, and we’ll talk?”

Alec stacked chairs, and the rabbi explained everything from the service he hadn’t understood. Then she said, “So what brought you here on this night, of all nights?”

“Have you ever,” Alec began. He swept challah crumbs off the table. “I have a gift. A one-in-a-million kind of gift, my Nana always says. And I realized I’ve been wasting it. Using it for the wrong reasons. So now I’m trying to figure out the right reasons.”

Rabbi Cardoso gathered the little paper cups for the wine and tossed them in the recycling. “Moses was a little like that. He had a gift, too. He was adopted by the Egyptians, raised in privilege. It wasn’t until he saw an overseer beating Jewish slaves that he realized he couldn’t just live in comfort. He had to use his gifts to liberate his people.” She smiled at him. “Is that the kind of thing you want to do, Hardison?”

Yes. Yes, it was. And that meant he had to get back together with Nate Ford and his crew.

[dangcommaannie]

A while back, I talked about Eliot pretending not to understand technology for Hardison and I’ve talked about Hardison not knowing how to cook, but thinking about the French Connection Job, I am now thinking about how Hardison is definitely pretending to not know what he’s doing for Eliot in that episode.

Like, maybe in the beginning of their relationship, Hardison didn’t realize it, but by this time, having also taught him about tech stuff, and seeing how much information and knowledge Eliot has stored away, he definitely knows that Eliot has been playing dumb now.

The “It’s a very distinctive ___” is a great running joke and there’s also the “I dated a ___” too, but thinking about it, those are both indicators of how observant Eliot is and how receptive he is to new information that he can recognize and recall it at a drop of a hat. Literally, the episode before the French Connection Job is the First Contact Job. He literally just saw Eliot play the country bumpkin card and also spout off space facts like it was nothing.

So yeah, Hardison has definitely has picked up on Eliot keeping his intelligence hidden to keep people underestimating him because he’s no fool either. So that, when paired with the fact that they’re constantly teasing and bickering, leads to Hardison definitely pretending to not know how to cook, not only to mess with Eliot, but also to just further emphasize that yes, he may be the tech guy and he’s smart too, but Eliot’s got his own brand of smart and he wants everyone to know it.

There’s also no way Hardison’s Nana would’ve let him leave her home without knowing how to cook. She raised a responsible and caring young man, and there’s no way she’s about to release him into the world without having some basic life skills.

It’s just that Hardison knows that cooking is Eliot’s thing, just like how Eliot knows that technology is Hardison’s thing. It’s why he lets Eliot take the reigns when it came to the brewpub. He knows how much cooking means to Eliot and sure, it may seem like he’s just being annoying, but he wants Eliot to be able to talk and lecture about the thing that’s he passionate about, just like how Eliot lets him talk about technology. Because it’s not just about teaching or showing off how much you know, it’s about showing support and listening, it’s about sharing your love and your soul, and knowing you’ll be accepted.