Fair warning I change fandoms a lot, and rarely reblog hyperfixations in real time. Not a minor just here for fandoms, whump, and bad jokes. pfp is an oc of mine made using this picrew https://picrew.me/image_maker/1342558
My favorite thing about Eliot Spencer is how invested he gets in whatever job/role he’s doing for the con. He has to play a caterer? He will give you a gourmet menu and poach some pears for dessert. He has to play a minor league baseball player? He will hit a home run and he will be excited when the local deli names a sandwich after him. He has to play a police officer? He will make Hardison respond to a call that’s nearby because there might be kids in that house. Eliot commits.
I think there are key differences in how Eliot and Hardison over-invest in their roles, which is why Eliot fusses at Hardison about it without equating it to what he does himself. (Note: I’m focusing on original series only here.)
Eliot gets over-absorbed because he gets really into what his character does (chef, baseball player, etc.) and loses focus on what the con is trying to accomplish, which isn’t helpful but tends to add authenticity to his individual role. Eliot’s main risk is getting so immersed that he forgets it’s just a con and tries to be that persona rather than doing just enough to fool the mark. He may have some broad-strokes backstory in his head in case someone asks, but his main way to sell his character is just to play the role to the hilt in the current moment. (Prior to the team, he didn’t have a hacker or do long cons, so his main grifting option was to keep things simple, play the role, improv as needed, and hope no one asked too many questions before he finished the job. And be prepared to punch his way out if they did.)
Hardison doesn’t forget he’s playing a role. The part he overdoes is building an “interesting” (often meaning complicated) role and tending to over-act, which tends reduce the authenticity of his performance. The obvious example is “The Ice Man Job,” but it’s the same thing with the overall con in “The Gold Job”–he’s thought out every backstory detail and how to deliver it to the mark, but he lays on the perfectly constructed backstory too hard without reading when to dial back the complexity or exposition. (Prior to the team, it’s implied that he did most of his criminal activity on-line rather than in-person, so the exhaustive planning and documentation was his practical grifting approach.)
If you assign Eliot to be a chef, he’s gonna be a chef. He’ll get distracted from the con by the fact that they’re running out of onions and he just can’t get the flavor of this sauce quite right, but everyone around him will believe he’s a chef. If you ask him where he went to culinary school, he’ll glare at you and maybe throw out some sparse details (trusting Hardison to back it up if anyone tries to check it)–dig too far, and he’s probably gonna be relying on dodging questions or having Hardison in his ear feeding him backstory details.
If you assign Hardison to be a chef, he’s going to have thought out and documented every detail of his backstory, researched his character’s favorite recipes so he can discuss them in detail, etc. You ask him something–anything–about his character and he’ll answer in such detail that your head will spin. But if you tell him the kitchen’s down to its last onion and ask what he wants you to do about that, he’ll be caught completely by surprise and flummoxed about what to do (unless Eliot is in his ear telling him who to send on a supply run to and what menu items to scratch in the meantime).
Hardison just really loves the performance, especially diving into the costumes and the trappings and the toys of each new role. He’s playing a cop? He’ll go out of his way to get a real squad car. A chef? You know he has to play with lasers and dry ice. Foreign diamond smuggler? Time to break out the fun accents and jewellery. He’s having fun! Hardison’s artistic process is all about the extra flourishes.
We fans do talk an awful lot about the various heirs to the Lightning Crown and who has the better claim and who exactly Orotine is talking about here, but nobody seems to be talking about the funniest option, which is:
ZEETHA FOR STORM KING!
Pros:
exact same claim to the Lightning Crown that Gil has
PLOT TWIST
life bond with the Heterodyne Princess? CHECK
funny
actually an actual princess already, okay
recognized as royalty by Albia
already dances with all the princesses
funny
it will upset Terebithia so much
it will upset Martellus so much
it will upset pretty much everyone we don't like
c'mon, this is hilarious
Cons:
Zeetha still wants to go home to Skifander
....
COUNTER-PROPOSAL:
Move the Court of the Storm King to Skifander permanently (1).
Pros:
already a royal court
Zantabraxus gets her daughter AND also probably her husband back
everyone who cares can push off to Skifander and leave Gil and Tarvek to run the Empire in Europa
Court of the Storm King now a separate diplomatic entity from Europa entirely, see also: just let Gil and Tarvek work okay
Court of the Storm King now a guaranteed nonthreat to the Wulfenbach Empire (Zeetha doesn't want to run Europa)
Zeetha can go back and forth through the Mirrors whenever she wants, and the Court probably doesn't need permanent Storm King supervision anyway
spymaster general Higgs can be on long-term assignment to the Court of the Storm King (that's where all the scheming nobles are)
the scheming nobles get to whine about being in exile; they'll love it, such drama, they're sooooooo suffering
backstabbing is OUT
frontstabbing is IN
bikini armor might be the official diplomatic dress of Skifander
so every time there's an official Wulfenbach Empire visit to the Court of the Storm King, Agatha gets to put her boys in these outfits:
(whole sequence included because Agatha having to think about it makes me laugh every time)
getting everybody to dress like that could be a Foglio brick joke. We don't know. how would we know
Cons:
possibly in a hundred years the Storm Kingdom of Skifander goes to war with the Wulfenbach Empire of the future
but that's the Triumvirate great-grandkids' problem and/or entertainment
ZEETHA FOR STORM KING!
The choice is clear.
(1) assuming the Queen's Mirrors are going to be fully functional by this point
The thing about Ian Rider is that he could go either way. Did Ian groom Alex Rider into a dangerous life of spying for MI6 from a young age, or was he encouraging Alex's natural talents and trying to give him the skills to survive in a world where very dangerous people were always going to have a grudge against him simply for who his father was? Who knows! Either is entirely plausible!!! MI6 executed an immediate and terrifying level of manipulation and coercion upon Ian's death to get Alex to put his life on the line for them. Is this something Ian could have expected? Did he want it? Was it planned with his input? Did he actually leave Alex's custody to MI6, or was that a lie? Who on earth has the answers now besides Alan Blunt? And we know we can't trust a word he says.
Alex is very motivated in the series by information on his parents, something both MI6 and Scorpia use against him. Did Ian set him up for this by withholding that information in his childhood, or was he struggling with his own grief over his brother and trying to keep Alex safe by staying quiet, since so much of John's story was classified? Who don't know. We can't know.
Ian is a ghost over the entire series. Helen and John Rider are too, each in different ways, but Ian is interesting in that you think you have more of him than you really do. Alex does not seek information on his uncle. Is it because he thinks he knows everything already? Or because he can't face the admission that he doesn't?
We don't even know Ian's real relationship with MI6. Did they blackmail him like they did Alex? Or was that treatment only for Alex, since hiring him is so shady to begin with? Did Ian Rider ever sit in a room with Alan Blunt and give a report on his nephew? Or is he spinning in his grave over everything that his employers did to his nephew once he was no longer there to stand in the way? We don't know! We can't! I'm going insane!!
I honestly wonder if the Leverage crew could’ve coalesced without Alec Hardison, the one (1) member of the crew who doesn’t have mile-high-and-thick emotional walls.
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