Questions are here.

B. A pairing–platonic, romantic or sexual–that you initially didn’t consider, but someone changed your mind

Sometimes I like ships because I like the challenge of trying to make it work, headcanon- and writing-wise. Which is how I felt about Sophie/Parker until @alinaandalion unintentionally sold me and then The Polygeist Job came out and now I am weirdly feral about this not-quite-romantic-not-quite-platonic ship that I feel like probably exists in a very specific way under very specific circumstances and may not be fully physical and asdfghjkl anyway my fic comes out soon.

T. Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending? 

I’m trying to think in terms of Leverage for you. The answer of course is yes and they're all about Sophie because I am??? predictable.

Small One: remember when Peggy and Parker became friends and Parker asks the team if Peggy would be down to steal a painting together? Sophie clocks that immediately and later, Sophie and Parker do go steal a painting together. They are the kind to hang out on their own outside of work together very early on. Also Parker gets bored of big thefts without the team, and I suspect Sophie was getting a little bored too (otherwise why would she be retired when og Leverage starts?). And while stealing together isn't as satisfying as doing it with the whole team, they both probably like doing something new with someone who has the other's back. Their idea of a girls' day (aka crime).

Big One: I think that Nate is Sophie's soulmate and that Sophie is Tara's soulmate. And I don't necessarily see this as an angsty thing? I think Sophie really takes to partnership in a way Tara never will. And that's fine! I see Tara being Sophie's secondary partner a few years into Sophie and Nate's marriage.

One That Seems Like Crack But Is Surprisingly Canon Compliant: Sophie and Eliot hooked up at least twice before the show started. Sophie doesn't count it because it was under a different identity, and Eliot does count it, but he also knows Sophie doesn't, so he doesn't really bring it up. Also that would have been in Eliot's wetwork years so not a good time for either of them.

Not a Far Stretch But I Will Die on the Hill: I mean we saw some of this on the show, and I wrote about it, but in very specific and private instances, Hardison calls Sophie "Mum", regularly.

One Not about Sophie: Tara was in the military. The reason why she became a full-time criminal is directly related to the scar on the back of her head, and I think Tara's story is actually a lot like Sam's story. Except Tara was not a child, lived, and got real nihilistic about systems and so turned to crime.

I have others but I need to stop ahahaha.

V. Which character do you relate to the most?

Breanna. There are sections of her dialogue on the show that are lifted directly out of my soul.

but as far as leverage goes, i think some of my favourite things about the show are:

really great characters!! an honest man who’s lost his family struggling with morality, alcoholism & the group of criminals he has accidentally adopted/who adopted him lol (who he used to try and track down as part of his job in insurance investigation); the grifter who’s in love w him but has her own problems to sort out, who can pretend to be anyone for a con; an ambitious young hacker who’s the sweetest kindest guy ever & WILL make this group of emotionally stunted thieves into a family, so help him god; an ex-hitman who no longer kills people (and is still the guy who fights ppl but like knocks them out with killing them) and grumbles about everything while also loving to cook & deeply caring about his teams health & safety; an autistic cat burglar who loves stealing and is the worlds best thief, who is learning to trust people after a lifetime of trauma.

an awesome con + heist each episode. they’re always in some kind of Situation. they’re pretending to be wedding planners. they’re robbing a bank that’s already in the process of a robbery. they’re doing a magician show. all while at the same time doing very cool serious thief stuff. all of them are extremely good at what they do.

great character development, they each have their issues to work out, quirks to accept about themselves, things to learn.

very sweet relationships <3 both the romantic relationships & the platonic ones. i once saw it described as "found family speedrun" lol which is very accurate!!

genre is action/heist/crime sorta thing but also has many funny comedy moments. eg the characters who don’t grift attempting to grift and either really overdoing the alias or being very socially awkward.

makes you feel a little better about all the shit happening in the world. like. their clients are regular people who have been wronged by some kind of huge company or or corrupt politician or billionaire or something. and the team always somehow takes down the corrupt/exploitative/shitty person and get compensation & justice for the people who have been wronged.

Hi! I’m so sorry I didn’t answer this sooner because I appreciate the effort you put into this!

Here are the prompts if anyone else wants to send them to me!

Ok, so I'm not sure if this is just Sophie, just Hardison, or Sophie and Hardison, but I love Sophie and Hardison, so I'm just going to do all of them. (◕‿◕✿) I hope that is okay with you!

💅 Sophie Devereaux

I'm not sure if I've ever talked about this outside of fic, but I just kind of came around to deciding that she doesn't really sleep immediately after cons because she gets such a rush from doing them? This is inspired from my days as a theater kid when it would take me hours to get to sleep after a show because I'd be on such a high just from performing.

Like I give it maybe a day or so after the con before she crashes and then just sleeps A LOT. But she doesn't really need to sleep during cons. Her love of performing just drives her.

(This would also make her a great person to cool off a mark, because she could use this trait productively.)

She's also not a morning person, which I think we briefly, briefly see in like a single s1 scene. But after s1, the crew is running so many cons consecutively that we tend to see her energized in the morning just because she's still on the high from the night before.

But like after the con? She crashes for like a good 12 hours. It's just the way she works.

⌨️ Alec Hardison

Hardison grew up in a few foster homes before he got to Nana's, and when he got to Nana's, he was with a bunch of Alexes, Alexises, Alexandras, and a Lexie. And that's not even counting the number of those he was with in school.

So!!! In-universe, he's used to going by "Alec" and "Hardison" because it just made it easier for everyone when he was growing up. (I know Rogers loves to call people by their surnames and liked the sound of "Hardisonnnn" and so that's why he goes by that on a Word of God level.)

Also, "Hardison" sounds badass, which he would have really liked as a little boy and teenager.

💅 + ⌨️ Sophie & Hardison

I'll give you two, because the first one is related to something I've already given you.

Sophie probably struggles to understand Hardison's job the most, but she does run the team between s2 and s3, so I think she really steps it up. Because she is so much in-step with the OT3 during s3 (irl this is probably because everyone including Gina was just SO HAPPY to have her back, but I like to have my in-universe explanations too). Like she still doesn't really understand what he does, but because of her sleep issue, she'll stay up with him after the cons while he's doing all of his post-con work. They don't talk a lot beyond sharing snacks, but it's a lovely time that just belongs to the both of them.

Okay, so I am the eldest child and my mom leaned on me a lot after my dad passed. But then I moved away for the better part of 14 years, and because of that, our relationship changed. We weren't talking as much about day-to-day stuff, but it also became easier for her to tell me big and heavy things, because I was this space away from her daily life and so it was just a different safe place for her to park information. And like, Sophie confesses (probably on comms but still) to Hardison in Redemption about how she's borrowing from the past to get through the present (which is not good for her!!! This would feel to her like what she was doing when she and Nate started working together, which wasn't a good time for her!). So I think he becomes something like this to her. Parker and Eliot get her day-to-day stuff, and Hardison gets these sparse but heavy kernels of truth from her life, because he's grown up and she trusts him.

i’m thinking it might not be such a tight two-part finale considering how short the season is, like it might be two related episodes but probably not to the extent of, say, big bang/san lorenzo, which flow into each other like one long episode. also the episode descriptions make it seem like they can’t be super closely related, the main marks definitely seem to be different people.

the description and title of e10, "the side job", suggests parker is, well, doing a side job, and the team won’t know exactly what she’s up to. my theory (based on the trailer) at the start of the season was that we’d get some episode where the team thought parker might have done something really bad - like killed someone - although most of the related stuff ended up being in the grand complication job, where sophie was worried her and astrid would kill each other, and it was parker who got the death fake-out. the finale might still be something along those lines though, the team thinking parker’s done/going to do something drastic, and deciding whether to trust her or stop her or what. it seems a little reminiscent of the inside job, which 1) nearly has the same title lol and 2) involved the team being cut off from parker and confused about what she was up to, having to catch up to her and eventually help out. of course, parker is a mastermind now, so perhaps this is all part of her plan.

one big question is why parker wouldn’t tell them all the details of what she’s doing. is she actually considering hurting someone? is this a personal favor to someone (if so, who)? does the job involve something from her past that she’d rather not bring up? is the team being genuinely in the dark somehow part of the plan?

hardison seems to be back for the finale and i definitely think we’ll have to get some answers about what he wants to do moving forward and what part parker’s gonna play in that. she’s made it pretty clear that she’s never gonna stop stealing/doing heists, but everything else is up in the air a bit. it makes me nervous cause i know how much she loves what she does! also because it reminds me of how nate & sophie left at the end of og leverage… like, what if this is hardison and parker stepping down?? i’m guessing it’s gonna have to be a bit open ended though, since it’s currently unclear if there will be another season or not. leverage is a little evil with some of the season enders that were almost series ends, like the end of og leverage s1 (they decide to split up! what if that had been it?!) or s2 (nate goes to JAIL???? imagine that being the last thing we saw).

Ooh, I like your predictions. Yeah, Leverage is really good with those season enders that technically tie everything up but also leave you screaming for more.

Agree that this season is emphasizing Parker's leadership, her capacity for violence, and how her thinking is just so far ahead of everyone's? Hell, they even brought back Tara to remind us that Parker will go nuclear if you come for her people. Veeery interesting. Thinking of The Last Dam Job and how it played around with Nate's limits there. Parker's cooler-headed than Nate ever was (hell, even Nate knew that), but who knows what could happen?

We've seen Parker withhold information when it's for the good of someone on the team (like Hurley). But that's all I got there. The only thing I am thinking of is that when Sophie left for six months way back then, we didn't know back then that it was going to be six months, but she came back when the team needed her in a big way.

I do expect that we'll hear again about Breanna and college?

Oh and ep title The Side Job makes me think of The Inside Job, which was a really big Parker episode! And The Grand Complication Job had some similarities to The Inside Job.

Oh that's so cool!!! If you happened to have a post on them or just wanted to talk more I'd love to have a read! I love merms that are more realistic :) Not always in the way of "these mermaids are hyper realistic and what it would look like if humans evolved to lead an aquatic lifestyle" — though I'm a big fan of those too, the designs are very creative — but rather "let's take the concept of mermaids and expand upon how they would live, how they would behave, what their traditions and culture would be like, etc." sometimes with an explanation for how they came to be.