I'm a professional geek, and this is where I come for my daily doses of fandom squee, cute stuff, and social justice. I post original content elsewhere online and use this account for an alarming amount of reblogging. You have been warned.
i’ll never get over how fascinating eliot’s characterization as a hitter. obviously he’s trained- military, hand to hand, weaponry, martial arts- that’s to be expected. but so often I think in media about like. the Best Hitters in this genre and etc they’re characterized by like? not getting hit. they’re sooo good that the avoid every punch and catch every kick in mid air and dodge bullets and etc and that’s not Eliot at all. he lets himself get punched in the face. he gets kicked and bowled over and uses that shift in momentum to his advantage. he gets knocked to the ground and the guys he’s fighting think he’s down for the count for only one moment before Eliot Spencer gets back up. because he always gets back up- but that character trait is Only compelling IF he gets knocked down enough for it to MATTER. and he DOES! and his fighting skills- they’re not innate, they’re not a natural inclination to fighting, its training and knowledge- he can talk about details and styles at length, he can (and does!) teach the others how to take and throw a punch, which speaks even more to his skill and knowledge and ability. he’s the hitter because he’s been doing it so long. because he fights to survive and he isn’t afraid to get hit and lose the fight to win the battle. god. Eliot Spencer. character of all time
It’s like the writers went “The Worf Effect ruins itself if overplayed? Not if our Hitter never actually loses” and they are absolutely correct. As we see with Quinn in the hanger fight, it is almost *more* intimidating that Eliot refuses to stay down than if he never went down in the first place. Other hitters may be good and hit hard, but Eliot knows himself far better. He knows exactly how much punishment he can take, and that he’ll still be able to dish his share out before the end.
Also this, yes, can’t forget this. Hot men with slutty tank tops & hair flips is already good. Add on blood, sweat, and dirt? Top tier. How nice of the Leverage writers to bless us with such delicious eye candy on the regular.
i am so delighted when i think about how easily the leverage writers could’ve made parker this sexy international super thief and instead they said “well what if she was just really fucking weird”
Parker is a master thief, and she is the best of the best of the best in ways that all of Leverage’s characters are the best of the best. And superficially, she looks like the kind of woman you see on TV. So she’s young, and she’s slender, and she’s blonde, and she’s attractive but in a sort of approachable way. And all of that familiarity is brilliant misdirection, because the thing is, there are no other women like Parker on TV. Because Parker—even if it’s never explicitly stated in the show—Parker is coded incredibly clearly as autistic.
Parker is socially awkward. Her speech tends to have limited inflection; what inflection it does have is repetitive and sounds rehearsed a lot of the time. She’s not emotionally literate; she struggles with it, and the social skills she develops over the series, she learns by rote, like they’re just another grift. When she’s not scaling skyscrapers or cartwheeling through laser grids, she wears her body like an ill-fitting suit. Parker moves like me. And Parker, Parker was a revelation—she was a revolution unto herself. In a media landscape where unempathetic women usually exist to either be punished or “loved whole,” Parker got to play the crabby savant. And she wasn’t emotionally intuitive but it was never ever played as the product of abuse or trauma even though she had survived both of those—it was just part of her, as much as were her hands or her eyes. And she had a genuine character arc. My god, she had a genuine romantic arc, even. And none of that required her to turn into anything other than what she was.
I always appreciated that Parker improving her social skills was seen as … just another skill. Like, she’s never going to be amazing at interpersonal stuff, but there’s stuff she can learn, and she works on it. And this is great on several levels.
Firstly, because it stresses that a lot of the “grifting” job - the interpersonal and social stuff that greases the wheels of the jobs - is work. That it takes effort and skill. And secondly, that this is a skill that can be learned. We see in Leverage: Redemption that Parker and Hardison did a bunch of stuff with flashcards to help Parker make scripts and deal with people, and it helps.
thirdly, Parker needs help with social stuff because she’s bad at it, but she helps her teammates with stuff that she’s good at and they’re not, just like they all do. It’s on the exact same level as Hardison walking team members through tech stuff. There’s zero shame in Parker being bad at interpersonal stuff, it’s just a thing about Parker. She improves because it’s a useful skill - while the whole team is working on cross-skill development.
Okay, actually, I have more to say about this. This is the exact reason I did not like Tara on my first Leverage watch.
(2x09)
-I bet you aren’t even a real lawyer.
-Aw, Sophie was right. You are adorable.
-Excuse me? [overlapping chatter] You don’t get to call me adorable.
When Tara heard Parker’s naiveté (read: sussing out what is face value and what is fabricated by a grifter she had no reason not to trust), she immediately gave her a backhanded compliment in a patronizing tone. Parker defends herself - as well as Hardison and Eliot amongst the overlapping chatter - and says that Tara doesn’t get to call her adorable (presumably, the way that she would permit Sophie to do so). Parker (and the team) is aware that she is being infantilized and rightfully resents it.
Cut to the season finale.
(2x15)
-You know, you actually had me worried for a second that you were going to drop me.
-[Laughs unconvincingly] That is silly.
Tara completely underestimated Parker on the rooftop. She tried convincing her to hear her out, but all Parker saw was betrayal and was more than happy to eliminate the threat for her team. Back in the car, Tara lets herself assume that Parker would not have punished her for hurting the team, which Parker does not overly care to reassure Tara about. Because Parker was absolutely about to drop Tara off the rooftop and had no qualms about it.
The Parker/Tara dynamic is such an interesting parallel to the Parker/Sophie dynamic. While Sophie sees innocence and trauma in Parker, she also sees an adult capable of paving a life for herself and seeks to be her friend and mentor. Tara doesn’t bother adjusting her preconceived notions of Parker and sees her as an ingénue who can be easily manipulated or used. None of that is true to her character. And Parker knows this because, despite how the fandom loves their selective amnesia about it, Parker is so, so self-aware, and this is highlighted in the Sophie/Parker reunion when Parker hugs Sophie.
-Oh! Parker touching!
-Kinda, yeah.
Parker knows she isn’t touchy-feely. She knows she has trust issues. She knows physical affection is a big deal from her. Parker is not an idiot, and she is not a child. The show depicts Parker’s nuance, growth, and introspection very organically and without fanfare, the way they would with any neurotypical character. This is so much more respect than what we’re used to seeing with characters like Parker.
Not only is Parker allowed to be multifaceted and break the “only one personality type” mold, but the show calls out other people who try to belittle her. It’s just above and beyond what most other shows have brought to the table, and it’s one of the million reasons Parker is such a beloved character and Leverage is such a beloved show. She is an adult dammit, and a fully-realized, fully-capable one at that.
I love that Leverage really goes out of it’s way to show us that just because you break the ‘rules’, it doesn’t mean you’re breaking the rules. Rules and laws and society are all made up, at the end of the day, and all you really have is your own moral compass and sense of justice; is this just to you? Is it right? Should it be OK for companies to put people in insurmountable debt for the rest of their lives just because our medical care is so expensive in this modern day and age? No law or rule should change what you know in your heart is right and wrong, and I think that’s the key thing that makes someone a good person in my eyes.
I love how Hardison takes this information in stride. Fortune cookie breakfast? Okay cool, how does that work exactly? He wants to know everything about her. What she does and why she does it.
Meanwhile Eliot’s face is the face of a man who is slowly realizing that the people he cares about are going to die of poor life choices without him to mom them into submission.
aka angrily cook for them. ALL THE TIME.
Eliot: HOW DO THE TWO OF YOU NOT HAVE SCURVY. EAT THIS FANCY MEAL WITH CITRUS
Hardison: Actually, man, my orange drinks–
Eliot: *HISSES LIKE AN ANGRY CAT*
Hardison: Nevermind.
Eliot: *TURNS TO PARKER* CHOCOLATE AND DRY GOODS ARE NOT A MEAL PLAN, PARKER. I MADE THIS SUPPLEMENT SHAKE–DRINK IT WHILE I WATCH.
Parker: …can I dunk my fortune cookies in there?
Eliot: *TWITCHES IN FURIOUS RESIGNATION* I ALREADY CRUMBLED SOME UP IN THERE. DRINK.
See, this kills me because it’s a pretty fucking fundamental driving force in Eliot Spencer’s character - “you can’t make that promise to more than one person.” And yet he ends the series doing exactly that.
The evil writerly part of my brain wants to know what happens when he can’t be there for Parker and Hardison both at the same moment. Whether it’s a heist gone wrong and he has to choose who to protect, or they’re in conflict with each other and he can’t avoid taking sides - what happens?
Hardison. (At least for the job gone wrong, and assuming nothing in the job fundamentally supercedes it by putting other’s lives in danger.) Parker would tell him to get Hardison out and he’d do it, because that’s what makes them…them.
And when Hardison demands why, Eliot tells him, “she said to say, there’s never a plan M.”
I keep changing my mind on which moment in this series is the most blatantly canon!OT3, and this one is a serious contender. Look at these boys, so proud of their girlfriend!
