Since Birth You Could See A Counter Above People’s Heads. It Doesn’t Count Down To Their Death. It

Mesopotamian girl sending clay tablets to her best friend who lives five city states to the west: what if..... Enkidu begot Gilgamesh with child?🤭

god. it’s eliot fucking spencer.

because it always has been eliot spencer.

eliot, who let himself be tortured, who resisted torture, in a situation he could get himself out of in five minutes, because they were torturing homeless veterans.

eliot, who only counts himself as saving someone’s life two and a half times because that half time he was the one sent to kill him.

eliot, who was willing to take down a billion dollar corporation, who begged nate to do everything he could, because of one guy with a hardware store and one near-closing grocery store.

eliot, who offered to kill a man for parker in less than a breath because she asked, who broke his rule on killing because nate could take down his biggest demon, who ran toward a bullet because he knew parker could take care of a city-killing virus.

eliot spencer, who started this season stabbed and bleeding, who was told someone didn’t want him to keep taking hits meant for him.

eliot, who was tired and just wanted his own bed.

he wakes up every day and acknowledges that he still has work to do.

and he never, ever, needed convincing to take down a corrupt mayor who was running drugs in his town. he knew that it needed to be fixed, what needed to be done to save the town, that this is the worst of it. he wanted more time. to do it right. so the surprises wouldn’t happen.

and if you’re looking at it, really looking, i think, parker doesn’t try to convince him to stay.

she knows he’s in.

because it’s who he’s always been.

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))

god forbid 5000 year old girls do anything

Extremely messy doodle (even for me) but this fic about Circe (I don’t think the author’s on Tumblr so I can’t tag them!) is currently rent-free in my head, and the bit about one of the nymphs getting stuck on the roof was such a funny image that I had to draw it. Poor thing was probably there for hours before Circe found her — so, you know, she’s probably learned a valuable lesson about not climbing on roofs.

Anyway, go read maybe showing one act of kindness leads to kinder souls down the road, it’s such a brilliant exploration of Circe’s character.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

to be a good man.

also:

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

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

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

(x)

can't believe the plot of leverage is literally 'man gets hired to be a project manager for Crime and then is forcefully adopted by the employees he doesn't want'

Leverage + Mirrors

1x13 - “The Second David Job”

4x2 - “The 10 Li’l Grifters Job”

4x6 - “The Carnival Job”

4x18 “The Last Dam Job”

i got to the morning after job on my leverage rewatch and watching eliot as they get closer and closer to moreau is so good.

eliot says he's watched tapes of vector fighting because "you never know if you're gonna have to fight a guy on ice." ...liar.

so. yes. to be fair it is in character for him to spend his free time watching fight videos just to be prepared. there's something there about the "very distinctive" catchphrase and how much research he must have to do to know all that. however.

in this particular case i think there's something else going on. he knows how vector fights because that was relevant back when he needed to know everyone he might be working with, or he knows how vector fights because he makes a point of knowing moreau's guys now so he knows what he'd be getting into, or both. he's deflecting.

(in my personal opinion there are a number of moments where eliot says mildly odd things that we take at face value when he could fully be lying. he sleeps for 90 minutes a night? uh huh. sure. or he's just bullshitting the team for fun.)

of course there's also "this guy definitely works for moreau. that's how he does things." i've seen this talked about before and,,, yeah. this is 100% intentional foreshadowing. it's so good. why does no one else question how exactly eliot knows this?? are they all too busy with everything else going on to pay attention? do they assume this is just common knowledge among hitters? does eliot not think before he says it? is he hoping they'll notice?

to be fair, iirc I also didn't notice this the first time I was watching so it's maybe a lot to expect of them. but if you watch sophie at the end of the episode she looks like she's Thinking Thoughts, so i wouldn't be surprised if she had a hunch and just kept it to herself.

and finally when eliot is dragging vector away and he whispers in his ear "moreau would like to speak with you." !!! god. you know he must have said that line Before. he knows how to say it convincingly because he was that guy. now he essentially has to be that guy again for a second to deliver the line right. what's going on in his head?? what's it like to deal with those memories and emotional baggage on top of everything else going on right now?? there's so much there.

i just. i love season three and i love the moreau arc and i love the foreshadowing.