doranwen | Entries tagged with meta

I've only seen through 3x02, but I'm already prepared to say that Profiler S3 is a noticeably different show from Profiler S1/S2.

( And here's why )

So I'm of the firm opinion that the S3 writers didn't quite know what they were doing, and they definitely didn't have the same grasp on the characters that the S1/S2 ones did. Anyone else agree?

I first watched The Fugitive probably around 15 years after it came out. (I was too young when it first premiered, and it wasn't until my early adulthood that I saw a lot of these sorts of films.) At the time, I enjoyed it - but found it so suspenseful that it was 15 minutes after it ended before I could stop shaking. I didn't think much about it after that, for quite a long while.

Until more recently, when it suddenly hit me that it would be interesting to watch again. And not too long after that I poked on AO3 and saw the tag for it. "Wait, there's fic for The Fugitive? I gotta see this." Most of the fic involved a romantic/sexual relationship between Gerard and Kimble which doesn't work for me at all. (If it does for you, well, it just goes to show we all have different tastes!) But after filtering out the M/M, there were a few good friendship fics - some outstandingly so - and I was suddenly hooked on the friendship between them. I've learned from long experience that the only thing to do with an obsession like this is ride it out and enjoy the ride, lol.

Which meant I had to rewatch the film and start paying attention to every bit of body language and facial expressions. I miss most of those in my first watch of something, because being on the autism spectrum makes it rather hard to pick up on all of that in real life - it goes by way too fast and I just can't process it all. Fortunately, unlike real life, it's possible to replay a scene over and over, and focus on a different part of the body, or face, every time. "Wait, was that a grin? Let me see it again." It means that I can start to piece together what's happening internally, at least a little.

In reading the fics, I started rambling on about the film in the comments to the author, which I'm sure they enjoyed having someone else who adored the film as well, but honestly, that sort of analysis belongs somewhere like here. So I decided I ought to write up some of my thoughts, a bit of meta.

Quoting from my comments, with some editing and additions:

( Ford and Kimble )

( Sam )

( Fic ideas )

Are you a fan of The Fugitive? Feel free to comment here and ramble on about what you love. :D I didn't even mention the music above, and that's fantastic too…

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?

So I started poking around at the Leverage fandom wiki, and I saw that several commentaries say that Parker is on the autism spectrum (TV Tropes quotes "a touch of Asperger's"). Which, I called that early on in my watching. The way she echoes the others, just a bit offbeat, at the very very end of The Homecoming Job, just that little out-of-sync, not reading the social cues right, that right there was a little ping to me. And her inability to grasp people's reactions to stuff emotionally, to know what to do or say… Oh yeah, definitely felt like it. But I was reading so many comments that argued about whether the writers said she had Asperger's or not that I didn't know for sure what they thought, until I saw the wiki line. I'm hoping that's accurate, at least, because I don't think simply having a messed-up childhood would explain some of her difficulties with social interaction.

And here's one place where I actually have some experience, because I also am on the autism spectrum. Probably mild Asperger's like Parker (though everyone's different in how it shows in them), though I've never been officially diagnosed. When I was a child, the only autism my parents had heard of was so extreme on the far side of the spectrum that people on the mild end weren't easily recognized, and I was a girl, so doubly difficult to recognize. They never thought anything was different about me, as I was their first child. So when I had long lists of foods that made me gag at flavor and texture, it was "all in my head", and I faced frequent battles at home (and eating at anyone else's home was anxiety-inducing). When I had difficulty adapting, it was treated as a character flaw, and I received lectures from my dad about needing "adaptability, adaptability, adaptability". When I had trouble with changes in routines and plans, my mom learned to tell me as far in advance as possible and be prepared for me to react emotionally. To adults, my intelligence masked my social ineptness, whereas to children, I was a target of bullying for a few years, before we moved and I was homeschooled for several more years. I attributed my difficulties with social interaction (I thought I was just years behind) to those experiences, which is sort of ridiculous when I look at it now; the vast majority of homeschooled children have better social skills because they're used to interacting with all ages (many homeschoolers are heavily involved in extracurricular activities outside the home) and seeing more perspectives than the limited ones of their agemates who are always trapped with others of their own age. (Look up the Zone of Proximal Development at some point, and then think how that applies when the majority of people one interacts with are all on roughly the same level instead of multiple levels both above and below.)

What helped me was I had a strong desire to learn about myself, to understand myself. I took personality tests and self-analyzed in hopes it would help me learn how to deal with people better. Gradually I was able to recognize when someone was bored of me jabbering away about an interest, and started to be able to control the urge to tell them all the things I found so interesting. I used my brain, naturally good with patterns, to pick up the patterns of basic social interaction, bit by bit. Much of it was not conscious, simply trying to mirror others as best I could. Things a child usually does automatically and which I was having to teach myself as a college student.

Now, I can "pass" for neurotypical much of the time, especially when I'm not in a mere social gathering. For instance, at work I'm very comfortable, and I've learned how to function fairly well at church. But put me in a social gathering that's just for chatting and talking (even with people I know), and my stress level goes way up. I can't focus on everyone in a large group, my processing of the emotional component to everything starts to fail and overwhelm me, and I just get worn out and want to leave. Even one-on-one, it strongly depends on who I'm with, whether they're someone I feel I can relax around, or whether I feel like I have to constantly be trying to act "normal".

Which brings me to Parker. If she does indeed have Asperger's, as I think she does, she can learn to act neurotypical, to learn the appropriate gestures and things to say or do, and The Broken Wing Job really does show her growth in that area - with a single neurotypical person she finds nonthreatening. But she's never going to be "normal", and it's not just that the only quirks left are her love for rappelling and skills as a thief, which it feels like the show showed us. I still struggle to read people - it goes too fast for me, which is why I love video; I can replay it and watch all the minute changes in physical expression, and feel like I'm actually feeling what the character feels. With people in real life, it's like a wall between us, with me just guessing on my side what's going on on theirs. For everything Sophie taught her about grifting, it just feels inaccurate to have Parker being perfectly good at it. And I'm not sure the show quite showed that, but the implication by the end is that she's now mostly "normal". Maybe that's just me and no one else sees that. But I want to see more acknowledging that she is still and will always be different.

And I don't think it's somehow wrong to recognize that being on the spectrum is a disability as well as a strength. It's a difference, and differences have negatives as well as positives. Realistically, I don't see it likely for Parker to ever be that good at grifting because of how much it requires of someone's social interaction skills. She can play limited roles, ones with set sorts of requirements (she does very well as wait staff, for instance), but to do what Sophie does? No, I don't think so. I think she can plan for Sophie's skills, which is why I see her learning to be Mastermind as realistic, but she can't actually do them, any more than she can fight as well as Eliot (though she fights very well overall because she's so fit and acrobatic) or hack as well as Hardison (she's learned some things, but we see her limitations there in The Corkscrew Job). And it's not like the show has tried to show her being up to Sophie's level - but I think she would have more trouble with it than they show, no matter how much training she gets. (I could never grift like that. Never. No matter how hard I trained.) I can train myself how to act and react in various situations (a friend in college once told me it was as if I had a giant lookup table in my head), but I will never ever be able to process body language and react to it as fast as I need to be. And I feel like to show Parker getting that good with it sort of denies the reality of being on the spectrum; it's for life. You don't suddenly improve the speed at which your brain processes some things just because you get training from people you love and trust. It doesn't work that way.

I haven't really been reading for that, but I'm definitely going to keep my eye on it more, to see how the fic handles her there. May end up writing a few fics myself…

So I finally got to the finale of Leverage. Which, I'd sort of gotten accidentally spoiled for just about everything that happened in the last five minutes of it, lol, but I'd tried to ignore that and the episode itself was a lovely set of callbacks to the pilot as well as a few other episodes (it felt like the serious version of The Rashomon Job, in some ways, with the revisions).

However, when I actually saw the last five minutes, there were bits I loved - but also hated. So let's start with what I loved.

I loved the proposal. Unquestionably so. Nate and Sophie's arc has been complex and beautiful, but I felt it was always going to head there, and it was very satisfying to see it. I look forward (hopefully) to reading fics of Maggie's reaction (because I love how maturely they deal with each other) to what they do for a wedding/etc. I'm sure there have to be a few written.

The rest of it, on the other hand… Do I think Parker's the right choice for the next mastermind? Absolutely. She's the only one who can calmly, rationally, plan things out the way Nate can (that line of Sophie's in The Inside Job was a lovely foreshadowing of her potential), perhaps better because she doesn't let her feelings get in the way of her thinking. (She spent so much of her life ignoring her feelings that she's a pro at doing that.) Hardison can't - he's absolutely brilliant, but he lets his feelings influence his actions too much. Should Parker ever be seriously injured or hurt on a con, I think there would have to be someone just yelling at him to keep thinking and doing his job because he could easily fall apart. And Eliot doesn't manipulate as well, plus he wants to protect. He can't lead and protect at the same time.

But what bothers me the most about it is that I feel like it's too soon to send Nate into retirement. Yeah, they talk about it throughout S5, there's bits of hints like the whole "seeing only the bad in people" bit in The D.B. Cooper Job, or the bit where Sophie asks what if eventually comes too late. But I don't think he's ready to quit entirely, and for all that Sophie's "I love directing", I think she still likes grifting for cons. Do they need a break? Oh yeah, I'm all for a nice long honeymoon. But I would love to see Parker and Nate working as equals. Planning together, each taking turns on point for a con, etc. Plus who will be the thief? There are situations where they can't have the mastermind unable to talk to everyone else because she's too busy secretly breaking into a vault without making a sound. The show's a five-hander and the cons show it. And none of them are up to Sophie's level of grifting. Parker's improved, but again, Parker can't do it all. Eliot's limited in his grifting roles because he's too honest, ironically, and Hardison was warned by Nate not to get cocky because that is one of his faults - and cockiness when grifting got them into big trouble in The Ice Man Job. Hardison's improved a lot, but he'll never be the grifter Sophie is. Parker's the only one who can do the acrobatics and she's still the expert at cracking safes and things like that, and she's not too old to still do all of that, she's got years left before she needs to have a replacement for the physical aspects of her role as thief.

And then there's Hardison's "Leverage International" thing, which doesn't make sense to me in some ways. If they dump it onto the darknet, then anyone else can go take a run at the same bad guys - people who aren't necessarily as skilled, who will put them on guard, and then ruin the chances of taking them down. And if Parker's line "every crew from around the world's gonna want in with us" is the truth, then they wouldn't be dumping it on the darknet, because then everyone would have to come to them to work with them, otherwise why would they want in with them if they could just do things on their own? Plus there's the whole bit about the rest of the criminals all being, well, y'know, criminals. Consider that it took the Leverage team a whole season with Nate at the helm for them to be changed so that while they still resorted to some of their former tricks, it wasn't the same and they didn't want to keep them up, they recognized they had changed. The rest of the criminals in the world haven't been through that, and not all of them are good enough down deep to work with, so they'd have to do a lot of vetting and protecting against double-crossing and all of that. So there's some logic fail there, unless I'm missing something drastic.

I'm also bothered by the fact that they're splitting up the family. Nate and Sophie are Team Dad and Team Mom to some degree (I haven't looked at TV Tropes yet, lol, was trying to avoid spoilers - but I'm sure I'll see something to that effect there), and the show made it sound like they were just going to take off and the younger three would rarely see them. And yeah, they've learned to reach out, and Parker's really grown with her new friendship with Amy, for instance, but this is the only real family she's ever had. Archie claimed himself as her father but we've seen nothing from him since, and a girl always needs her mother in her life, even if she doesn't think she does. Plus I can't see the other two having much of family left either (Eliot's family clearly had issues, and his attempt to reconcile with his dad went nowhere, and Hardison has his Nana and I think a brother or so? but we never see them plus his Nana has to be getting old enough that she wouldn't live all that much longer). The last thing they need is to shrink the family they have. So I definitely don't like the idea that Nate and Sophie are taking off and not coming back. A wedding and extended honeymoon, yeah, but they'd better be back and part of everyone's lives. (The writers were even going to do that - John Rogers' blog outright says he was going to have them return for S6 if they had a S6.) I'll definitely be putting that in every single exchange letter, lol.

***Essay 2***

My second ramble is actually not as much at the show itself (writers' intentions notwithstanding), but at the fandom reaction. The scene where Eliot tells Nate he has everything he needs, thanks to Nate - what bothers me about that isn't the scene itself, because it's lovely and very much shows Eliot and who he is, but the fact that just about everyone - including the writers - automatically assume that means he's interested in a sexual relationship with both Parker and Hardison. (Mind you, I ship Eliot/Parker, but this is beside that point.) What bothers me about that is that it's essentially saying that for someone to be someone else's rock, their anchor, that they have to be interested in having sex with each other. And that makes me irritated bordering on angry, because sex is NOT the be-all-end-all. Sexual attraction does not define one's deepest bonds, ARGH! To repeat myself, the deepest bonds between two human beings do not have to be formed by having sex or being interested in having sex, and to say that they do is a slap in the face to all of us who have deliberately chosen to live without it for one reason or another. It's saying, "Sorry, you don't get to be as close to other human beings just because you don't get naked and make contact with each other's private parts."

What I've seen all along with Eliot is that he enjoys sex, yes, but he isn't hungry for a permanent sexual relationship; he's longing for a family to call home and to protect, for buddies he can count on and that he can die for if he needs to. It's the only thing that will help him live with the terrible things he has done (not that he's trying to atone so much, he doesn't think he can), and he's found that in Parker and Hardison, not as people he wants to kiss and sleep with (though I'm not averse to reading fics where he does that with Parker, because they get each other better than anyone else on the team ever could, I think), but as his anchor. He needs people to serve and protect to be able to live with himself each day, to have a purpose, and with the team, he does.

One test for the closest relationship in one's life would be - whose input would matter as to where you move? I spent a bit reading up on Boston marriages and romantic friendships and platonic lifemates awhile back, because they acknowledge the fact that in today's society, the only person people consult about where one moves is one's significant other. The automatic assumption is that a sexual relationship is the only one close enough to make that a factor. But when you look at the nonsexual options out there… then you have a broader perspective. And when you recognize that the team is all a family, bound by bonds closer than sex…

So that scene has to be read as OT3 only as long as you assume that sex must be a core element of the closest relationships. I think there's enough people out there that know it isn't to acknowledge the other possibilities. And I'm hoping there's a lot of fanfic out there that also acknowledges that. But realistically, fandom likes to talk about representation of this and that - but it's still overwhelmingly sexual, and to attempt to look at scenes from nonsexual perspectives tends to draw accusations of hate, particularly among the people who like to pride themselves at being so friendly towards this or that representation. *sigh* And most people seem to have reacted with a "yay, OT3s are so rarely represented" - but nonsexual bonds that deep, a platonic relationship that deep among several people to the point that their world is oriented around each other even if they aren't sleeping with each other (and that isn't affected if two of the three are having sex), that's even rarer, and I'm hoping I'm not the only one who wants to see that.

We'll see what I find as I read. I've got like 5,000 fics I haven't even seen the tags for yet, and while I'm skipping the crossovers with fandoms I don't know, and certain ships I just won't read, period, I'm checking out an awful lot.

I've been watching through Leverage for the first time (just finished 4x17 The Radio Job) and reading fic concurrently so I don't spoil myself (soon as I finish an ep, then I can read all the fic posted up to the next ep's air date), and while my thoughts on the other characters are fairly simple, Hardison is much more complicated. I ended up writing a five-paragraph essay (probably a terrible one as far as format goes, but this isn't English class, fortunately) on him:

I loved Hardison in the pilot immediately - he was witty, extremely talented, made a nice counterpart to Eliot, a computer geek (and geek in general! how awesome is that) and he does the information dumps very well. But his character definitely suffered the most from the pilot-to-full-season transition. (You know what I mean - where a character is one way in the pilot and then when they shoot the rest of the first season - and by extension, the whole show - they're just slightly different in various ways, from hair style to personality. Rizzoli & Isles was notable for that, with Maura being far more socially astute in the pilot and suddenly appearing as if she has Asperger's the rest of S1.) As the first season went on, I started to be very annoyed by his immaturity - for instance, we never saw an apology for leaving the team high and dry in the first part of The Mile High Job. And that's a HUGE no-no in my book, when you've gotten yourself into a situation where people are counting on you, you don't let them down, especially because you decided to play a game all night! Saving their lives on the plane didn't excuse his earlier behavior. Like, I know he's young but he seriously needs to grow up there. For example, I love Nate in all his messed-upness but the times I was really ready to shake sense into him were where his failures caused the team to suffer. Anyway, I think that's where I started to sour on Hardison some. The Ice Man Job pulled him way down in my books again; cockiness is a personality trait that really repels me. And the number of times when the rest of the team's in the field and trying to avoid serious danger, and he's chattering unnecessarily on the comms and possibly distracting them… that bothered me too. Like, you're generally safe and sound where you are, dude, but the others are in actual physical danger if you cause them to make mistakes because you can't be quiet for a few minutes.

I finally realized that there are three things that bother me about Hardison's personality that keep me from enjoying his wit and skills: he whines, he's got too big of an ego, and he doesn't fully respect the others on the team at times. The whining would be minor except he keeps doing it, lol. Eliot grumps about the team not respecting what he does once in a blue moon, and Parker muttered about crawling through ventilation shafts in The Two-Horse Job because no one else will do it, and even Sophie has whined a few times about Nate not respecting her, but Hardison does it way way more, to the point of having a full-out rant at the beginning of The Gold Job. Not like it's not understandable, but I think they ALL under-appreciate each other's work at times. Hardison just makes more of a fuss about it, maybe because they don't really understand what he does at all. But all of their roles are critical and they all need each other so Hardison's focus on "appreciate me, appreciate me" is rather egocentric. They don't do what they do just to get pats on the back from each other.

The ego is also that because he's SO incredibly good at HIS thing, it often seems he thinks he can do everything with a little practice. I don't think he'd ever be more than an average grifter (he can bluff like crazy but he doesn't read people and measure his responses the way a grifter can), there's no way he can really do what Parker does (even if he eventually gets comfortable with rigging stuff), he'll never be able to fight like Eliot though he is improving his basic defense skills a bit, and he will never be as good as Nate at being mastermind (at least the show had Nate point that out in The Scheherezade Job, and reinforce that by demonstrating the way to think in The Gold Job - Hardison is intelligent and clever but this fic really says what I think about being mastermind). If he'd just stick to what he CAN do that he's very very good at, and be content with his role and position, I'd like him a lot more.

As far as the respect goes, it may seem silly to many, but I was very irritated bordering on angry with Hardison in The Office Job when it was revealed that he ate Eliot's sandwich - a sandwich that Eliot had spent a good deal of work preparing. I have mild Asperger's and food is a big issue for me, with lots of flavors and textures I can't eat, so I plan my meals out and often have something special for just me to eat because the rest of the food in the fridge are dishes I can't eat. For someone to go in there and eat my food would be a major upset to my day, especially if I'd put a lot of effort into it, so my sympathies are completely behind Eliot there. For Hardison to just go "I want this sandwich, I'm going to eat it even though Eliot made it for himself, and then I'm going to lie to him about it"… that's serious disrespect to others in my book. They're supposed to steal from rich powerful people, not each other!

So I want to like Hardison, because I'm a computer geek (though I can't hack things) and being into fandom and other related geekery I would have a lot in common with him, but… I'm conflicted, obviously. And just when I'm super annoyed at him, then the show goes and does things like the end of The Boys' Night Out Job, where he reminds Nate of the good they've done. That Hardison? I would like the show to have shown more of him.

EDIT: A friend of mine pointed out that Hardison is probably really insecure about his position, and that he blusters and is arrogant when he's actually nervous, and his worst offenses arise out of his insecurity. Which, I grant, ego can be a front for insecurity inside, so yeah, I can buy that. But then I'd like to see that *dealt* with, and we're not seeing it on the show. Maybe someone's written a good fic that does deal with it - I've only found one that I loved with Eliot pointing out that Hardison's too obsessed over being appreciated to realize it's not about that, it's about what they do *together*. So much of what I said still stands, I think.

EDIT #2: Watching through S5 (up to 5x10 so far), he seems a whole lot less annoying (except for that I still don't feel like he really gets Parker and blows her off at times when he shouldn't), so maybe he's improved? It's hard to get over a lot of past history, though. I've not gotten this annoyed with any of the others, but they haven't been as irritating, and where they've made mistakes, the show's generally shown them apologizing or somehow atoning for them (even Nate grows over the seasons and starts to open up). But these things really haven't been addressed so they're still there and bothering me about his character.