Some questions about the Leverage S5 finale

[doranwen]

So I was thinking about the Leverage S5 finale again, lol. Because I feel like some of it was absolutely brilliant and some of it was terrible, lol. And some of it was so vague that it makes it impossible to properly write anything set after. (I'm seeing a lot of VERY hand-wavy fics, glossing over all the A-plot stuff.) I already rambled about the last five minutes as far as the people elements went, but I only mentioned the non-people elements a tiny bit, so here I'm going into more of it.

What I do not understand is several things:

a) What exactly does the "black book" have in it? Nate says they took "all the files of all the people they could have prosecuted, all the savings accounts of all the stolen money, and they filed it away" to create it. Obviously it's information on the bad guys. But when he says "all the savings accounts", does that mean they know where the accounts are but they need something from each of the marks to be able to access it? (Because I presume they can't just access it with the black book info, otherwise Hardison would do everything and there would be no cons necessary.) Or is it something else?

b) What can they safely put on the darknet? If they put the bad guys' names, then anyone else could warn them (assuming they wanted to). If they put just the general information, then how do they vet the people they want to run the other cons for them?

c) Who can they even trust to work with them on this? Keep in mind that Tara was mercenary enough to demand payment, and Quinn had previously taken jobs against the team - he also followed the money. I'm going to assume they're on the nicer side. Then you have people like Chaos, who planned a double-cross - and then a murder so his double-cross would succeed. And then there are the people like Moreau's men - of which group Eliot used to be a part (before his conscience rose up to bother him). And the Leverage team is considering trusting bad guys like that with the information they have????

I find those lines vague or ill-thought-out enough that they really feel like the writers were just like "let's tie up all the loose ends we can, and not worry about thinking it out properly". It really really feels like that, the last five minutes. Which is partly why I like to erase half of it. (That and I really really love Nate and Sophie's interactions with the others and I find it extremely annoying to cut it down to just the three younger ones. Sort of like taking half the color out of a picture, or leaving out a bunch of the flavoring in a dish. Everything feels dull and bland and lacking a dimension. Plus Hardison with just the other two makes me want to escape. Like I need Nate and Sophie there for him to not be overwhelmingly annoying. But that's beside the point of this post.)

Anyway, I can't picture how to even write any of the next bit, even in my "let's undo the bits I don't like" AU, because I can't even process what Hardison's doing with the accounts per a). Since b) and c) both make no sense to me, I can rewrite all that bit, but I still have to know what the black book actually has and how the team can use it. Any ideas, anyone?

Comments

[mxcatmoon]

I agree, that part seemed rushed and not well-thought-out. Certainly, a group of thieves like them, with a conscience, is a rare thing. No way could they trust strangers on the darknet. Maybe Nate was hoping to turn more over to the 'good side', like he did with his team, but that's a bit overly optimistic for me. Maybe just putting the stuff out there is painting a bullseye on the marks, and they'll be forced to stop their nefarious activities? LOL. I don't know either. I'm glad I don't write fanfic for this show! Frankly, I'd probably hand-wave it too.

[doranwen]

Yeahhhhhh, that's why I'm thinking I am going to have them undo their "let's share this info" when they actually talk it out. Mind you, I still have to figure out exactly what info they have and how they can use it themselves, but I don't think they can just dump it on everyone else. It took Nate years to mold them into a team of "thieves with a conscience" (as you more or less said). Everyone else is basically either one or the other, they're the only ones who walk that gray line down the middle.

[mxcatmoon]

Good luck!

[doranwen]

Lol, that's the easy part! The hard part is coming up with jobs to have them do to write all the rest of everything around. I am terrible at casefic plotting (as I found when trying to write R&I and WMC fic). Heist/con plots are even harder than murder casefic. Wish I knew people who wanted to just plot them and let me write them, lol. :)

[mxcatmoon]

Yeah, casefic can be tough! Hurts my brain just thinking about it. LOL.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

This is why the show had a writers' room of people with oddball knowledges.

Sounds like you need to put together a team. ;) (Not sure what the fanfic equivalent of a hitter is. Probably the spatial awareness/physics nitpicker. I need to read up an write a Falcon missing scene.)

[robinhood41]

Oh yeah case fic or con fic is difficult for me as well. Especially the multilayer is not the easiest for me as I've spent a past good bit of time writing more just direct super hero/vigilante stuff, not quite mystery element so my actual skills in the more mystery side has diminished down.

One reason why I kind of enjoy the slice of life stuff more at times, with the con/case fic being more background at times, lol.

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

The way I took it (I just watched the last few eps recently) was that the pinnacle of the people that got away with draining wealth out of the economy were so powerful, that Hardison was putting the black book on the dark web so they'd be subjected to the death by a thousand paper cuts. It's very similar to the data dump Natasha did in CA:TWS.

It naturally is Handwavy As F. It's sorta the obverse to the denouement of Watchmen (the graphic novel)--here the ultrarich and ultra powerful were 'too big to fail' and the system gave them cover. Much of the dark web is either going to be 'training' cybersecurity, getting caught overreaching in an exploit.

Offers you a Jarod from Blue Cove (The Pretender). Have a Miss Parker and a Broots.