#the last dam job

Webcam Model(Payton_Sex) is live
LIVE

littlebigmouse:

Can you imagine, if Archie’s daughter had access to AITA-reddit in 2012, after the Last Dam Job?

AITA for ignoring my father after I found out he has a secret daughter and he disappered on me for days?

I (F, 42) recently visited my father (M, 72) with my husband and daughter. The relationship between me and my father has been a bit strained lately, ever since my mother passed about 6 months ago. Since he’d retired from his job as an accountant a few years ago, he doesn’t really have anything to do. I had been worried he was getting lonely by himself in his old house, and suggested several solutions such as moving closer to me and my family, or even residential care (he uses a cane, and can barely walk at all on bad days) but he always shot me down, telling me he was fine. He’s always been a bit distant, and can be really stubborn, so I didn’t think anything of it, but I live out of state and can’t exactly take care of him like this.

During the recent visit, my daughter, my father and me went for a walk in the neighbourhood, where I raised the topic again. However, we were interrupted, when a strange blond woman (F, early 30s?) bumped into us. My father turned around and called out to her, and asked she return his wallet, my wallet and my daughters candy! She must have pickpocketed us without me noticing, but my father seemed strangely happy about it. I asked whether they knew each other and my father just hooked his arm around the woman, said "That’s my daughter!” and walked off with her. I was too shocked to follow, and by the time I had caught myself I couldn’t find them. We returned to my father’s place and tried to call him several times, but he didn’t pick up. My husband is far more patient than I am, and told me my father would surely be back and that this must be a misunderstanding, but when he still wasn’t back by several hours later, we got worried. We asked around the neighbourhood, but no one had ever seen the blond woman before. We contacted the police but they told us they couldn’t help. The next morning I’d gotten a message from my father, telling me he’d be dealing with some “important family business” for a few days and that we shouldn’t worry about him. I tried calling him again, but couldn’t reach him.

I didn’t know what to do by then, so I started searching through his bedroom and his office. I don’t even know what I was looking for anymore, but after a while I found some hidden compartment behind one of his book shelves, with a box of fake ID’s and newspaper clippings, mostly about robberies all over the world. This on its own wouldn’t be too worrisome, as my father is a an art enthusiast and most of the articles seem to be about art robberies, I’d chalk it up to a weird part of his hobby. But for example one of the newspaper articles is from a french paper about a men dying in a car crash about 10 years ago, which matches one of the fake ID’s. I still don’t know what to think, but there’s clearly more going on. I couldn’t find anything on the woman, however.

By then, my husband suggested we should go home the next day, as the end of our planned stay was coming up anyway and I was clearly shaken. However, the next morning, my father returned, happy and acting as if nothing had happened, and I snapped. I yelled at him about how worried we were, and that I had found his secret stash of ID’s in his office. He got mad in turn, told me that I had no business snooping through his stuff. We said some pretty hurtful things to each other, but in the end he confirmed the woman’s name, and that she was “his daughter”. He told me in no uncertain terms that he would not discuss anything about her, as it wasn’t my business and that we should just “trust him”, but he ensured me that he had never cheated on my mother. I don’t know how he thinks that works, since the woman was clearly younger than me and my brother.

Still fuming I packed up my family and went home.
He tried calling me several times in the following week, but I was so pissed I blocked his number and his facebook. My husband suggested I

should attempt to talk to my father again, and that I should try to calm down and try to salvage the situation, as there was clearly more to the story than we knew. But I have a right to be mad and frankly, since my father is making no effort, I want nothing to do with this mess anymore. Am I overreacting?

Edit: Thank you for the many supportive messages, it feels good to know I wasn’t overreacting. In the end, I informed my brother about the situation, like some of you suggested. He also had no idea what to make of any of this. In the end, however, my father came to visit (unannounced) and we had a long conversation I’m still a bit overwhelmed from.
My father told us he met the woman when she had been a homeless teenager. She tried to rob him, and he caught her and decided to help her out, so over the next few years he gave her financial support. Her recent visit was because she ran into some kind of legal trouble (he remained cagey on what exactly, but assured us the situation was resolved) and reached out to him for help. He said he never told us about her because he knew how it would look if a man like him suddenly came home with a strange child. Our family is fairly wealthy, but at least that would explain all the extra work shifts he used to take on. When we asked why he didn’t put her into foster care, he said that she had had severe behavioural issues back then, and would have just ended up on the street regardless, at least by providing her with money and shelter, he knew she would be fine. There’s still some things I don’t understand and I’m still reeling, but I really hope he’s telling the truth and that he was a misguided philanthrope instead of cheating on my mother. I never would have expected anything like that from him. I still feel like I’m missing something, and he is far from forgiven, but at least some of the situation seems to be resolved.

Edit²: So it has been a while, but I guess you people deserve an update because a lot has happened since then.
Since my father refused to give out any information on the woman, I kind of dropped the subject and our weekly calls, because I was still mad at him from keeping such a big secret. However, since my brother and I both felt like we were missing information, he ended up badgering my father about the woman’s contact information, and my father eventually caved. We managed to contact her, and she essentially confirmed what my father had told me about her. She used to be a homeless orphan until my father caught her pickpocketing. They hadn’t had much contact over the past few years anymore, and he had explicitely forbidden her from interacting with us the entire time they knew each other. I don’t think she felt too comfortable interacting with us, but I felt kind of bad and extended the offer that we could keep in contact… She really didn’t seem like she was lying, and if anything, the whole situation isn’t her fault anyway.

Long story short, we called each other a few times since then, and I ended up asking her about the fake ID’s and some other weird things she mentioned. She went really quiet and said that this was my father’s secret to tell.

Fed up, my brother and I joined forces to get all of the answers out of my father once and for all. It was a very intense conversation, but here is the gist of it:
Apparently, my father was faking being an accountant for our entire lifes. He used to be a successfull international art thief up until about ten years ago, when he “retired from the business” by faking his death in a car accident, which was about the time he found the pickpocketing woman. He let her stay in a warehouse (?!) and trained her up to be his successor as a thief, although my father claims she also got out of that business recently and is now running a restaurant with her boyfriend. My mother never found out about any of this. Also, his cane doubles as some sort of taser, which I found out because my daughter almost zapped herself with it.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought anything like this could be real, and I really hope this is the last surprise in this particular mess. Thank you for your support and all the comments. I’m still mad at my father, but the entire situation has become so absurd I really don’t know what to think anymore.“

eyrieofsynapses:

So, in between the absolute and utter chaos of This Is The Real Life, I’ve been sitting down to rewatch Leverage here and there, for the sake of preserving my sanity, and I did The 15 Minute Job a few days and noticed something.

Here’s the thing: this is the third (and last) time I can recall Nate telling Eliot to walk away from the job. (Well, kind of.)

Nate: All right. We can still make this work.

Eliot: I don’t know why I’m sitting here listening to a new plan.

Parker: Well, the first one’s not going all that well.

Sophie: This playing-with-fame thing, it’s reckless.

Eliot: You’re not controlling the mark. All right, we’re operating without a net. Somebody’s gonna get hurt.

Nate: Eliot, why don’t you just take the rest of the job off?

(Eliot gives Nate a long look before pushing back his chair and leaves the table. Parker does the same)

Sophie: Consciously or not, I think you look at Reed Rockwell and see everything you hate about Nathan –

Nate: Any way I can get you to not finish that thought?

Sophie: Every time something goes wrong, you push harder, and now you’re pushing to ruin Rockwell so hard, you’re going to end up ruining yourself. Maybe that’s what you’re trying to do.

(I’m keeping Sophie’s bit in for a reason, by the way. We’ll get to that in a minute.)

Now, this is the fourth season. It’s more than a bit out of the ordinary at this point, actually, because for the most part Eliot and Nate rarely conflict anymore. But it follows an old pattern: Nate goes over the edge, Eliot calls him on it, Nate gets annoyed and tells him to back off.

There’s two other instances of this that I can remember: The Snow Job (waaaaaaaaay back at the start) and The Maltese Falcon Job (you know, where it all went to hell). Admittedly the latter is less “walk off the job” and more “seriously insult,” but either way, both times it’s Eliot calling Nate on his bullshit—

Nate: Guys, you got to trust me, all right? You’ve trusted me before, and with your life.

Eliot (slams his hand down on the table): Not when you’re drunk.

Nate: Oh, come on.

Eliot: You’re not in control of yourself.

Nate: So, what, you’re gonna control me? Is that it?

Eliot: Ah, I ain’t your daddy. You can drink yourself into a coma as far as I’m concerned, but you take me down with you – then it’s my problem.

Nate: You know, you talk too much. You ought to just go skip some rope.

Eliot: What? What? (gets up angrily)

Nate: Skip some rope.

Eliot: You want me to skip something? (heads across the room)

Sophie: Hey, hey! (gets in front of Eliot)

Eliot: I’ll skip your drunk ass off this marble floor.

Sophie: Okay, I need to speak to Nate alone. For a second.

Eliot (turning away): Yeah, do that.

(Eliot leaves, followed by Hardison and Parker, who lingers to give Sophie a meaningful look. Sophie sits on the arm of the couch)

Nate: Now, don’t you dare give me the “we’re all a family” speech.

Sophie: Mnh-Mnh. No speeches. Just a question. Is this helping you? Hmm? If you give Wayne Scott back what he lost, will you be satisfied?

Nate: You know me. I can do this.

Sophie: I knew you two years ago.

Nate: Well, I’m still the same person.

Sophie: No. You’re not.

Nate: No, I’m not.

— in Snow Job, and—

Nate: Don’t worry about Sterling.

Eliot: Did you just say, “Don’t worry about Sterling?”

Nate: Yeah, don’t worry about Sterling. What you don’t think I can beat Sterling?

Eliot: I think in the last six months, Nate, I’ve heard you talk about beating the Triads, beating the Russians. All right? Maggie’s boyfriend. Huh? How’d that work out? We all said that meet was a bad idea, right? But you got a taste for taking down this Mayor and you can’t resist.

Nate: You wanna walk away? Walk away.

Eliot: I’m not walkin’ away. It’s not my job. My job is to get your back. And, Nate, I’m gonna do it. All the way down. But I need you to do your job.

Nate: And what’s that?

Parker: Be Nathan Ford. Be the person we came back for.

…inMaltese Falcon

Intriguingly, Eliot does walk away—for a bit—in both Snowand15 Minute. But he comes back both times. And you know what? Kudos to him for walking away, because that’s exactly what he needed to do. Snowobviously wouldn’t have ended well, and 15 Minute was just waiting to blow up. He demonstrates healthy anger management beautifully: walk away, cool off, and then come back to the problem later with a clear head.

Also, based on the conversation in Maltese, I suspect that Nate knows full well he won’t walk away in 15 Minute too. I’m guessing that’s more an “I’m done with you pushing me” warning instead.

Notice something else about those times, though?

Sophie.

Both times, Sophie doesn’t interrupt or try to add on to Eliot’s piece, and then, when he leaves, proceeds to metaphorically grab Nate’s ear and ask him about the thing that’s putting the job at risk… and, incidentally, the thing Eliot’s worried about. Because every time, every single time, he’s hit exactly the right mark. If anything, that’s why Nate gets angry. He knowsEliot’s right; he just doesn’t want to believe it.

Thing is, Eliot’s wake-up calls are a bucket of ice water, whereas Sophie’s approach is, well, hers. She’s more artful about it, and she knows how to dance circles around Nate. There’s also their respective dynamics. Nate respects Eliot (…most of the time), but, because it’s Nate, he tends to take those wake-up calls as a challenge rather than a warning. (…something something Nate’s problems with toxic masculinity and refusing to back down, probably.) But he’s a whole lot less likely to do that with Sophie, perhaps partly because he knows she’ll probably just use it as ammo if he does.

This is, in a way, pushing at Nate on two fronts: Eliot’s upfront and blunt warnings, and Sophie’s gentler pushing. Eliot cracks down, Nate gets the hard “I’m doing something wrong but I really don’t want to admit it” moment, and then Sophie snares him and forces him to keep staring that wrongness in the face. Does Eliot intend to give her that opening? Probably not (certainly not in Snow, and, for obvious reasons, not in Maltese). But she’s able to take advantage of it pretty well.

Intriguingly, we get a swappedversion of this in The Last Dam Job, when Sophie tries to get Nate to listen about killing Dubenich and winds up calling on Eliot to talk him down instead. Her softer approach won’t work in that situation, so she needs Eliot’s ice-bucket instead, because this time it’s the only thing that might get Nate to wake up. But her initial approach softens him up for Eliot. It’s easier for Nate to hear him out when he’s already had that seed of doubt planted in his mind, and Eliot takes a gentler approach that time around.

Also worthy of note: in both Snowand15 Minute, while Nate goes on, he does seem to listen to both of them. He backs off a bit. Not much, but he does. It’s unvoiced, but they do shift his perspective.

And in Maltese Falcon, when Eliot puts his foot down and says I will notwalk away, Nate listens to him then, too. However, that time, Sophie isn’tthere to push at Nate—and while he cools off a little, he doesn’t have her to push that point all the way home… and the crew winds up nearly getting themselves killed until she steps in. Tara says that Sophie had the plan built in because she knewthe trio would follow him “all the way down,” as Eliot puts it.

This is, I think, partly because Eliot knows he cannotwalk away. If he does, someone’s going to get hurt. So even when he thinks it’s at the worst point, even when he’s surethat it’s going to end badly… he stays. Because he knows it’ll end way worse if he’s not there.

Except Nate knows that. Which means that he willkeep going, if he’s being really blind and stubborn about it, and so Sophie is essential to pulling him back too.

Anyway. It’s a good demonstration of how both Sophie and Eliot wind up pulling on Nate in their respective ways, and how they’re both essential to keeping him from getting the crew killed. They’ve both got a lot of influence on Nate in ways Parker and Hardison don’t. Eliot’s seen stuff, and if he says something’s too dangerous, it’s too dangerous. Not that Nate always listens, and they do pull through. But whenever Eliot puts his foot down, it’s really important to listen, because he knows exactly what he’s talking about.

Trouble is, Nate’s a reckless jackass—who, moreover, really likes a challenge, and really hates losing, and thus has precisely zero idea when to back the hell off. Sophie’s important for any number of reasons. But one of the big ones is getting him to listenwhen Eliot says “this isn’t right.”

So… yeah. They’re counterweights, basically. (And definitely the only reason why the crew is still alive.)

vickyvicarious:

astra-queenofhell:

vickyvicarious:

onyxbird:

darkfinch:

quinn, desperately trying to make small talk during the last dam job: so uhhh that archie guy seems pretty cool at least, right, love the whole murder cane thing, need me one of those haha

eliot:

quinn:

eliot:

quinn: or—okay, or not, or—

eliot, who has been on the brink of a 45 minute long rant for 3 days: no no let’s Talk About Archie

Nate pops his head in intending to grab his hitter to discuss an aspect of the con and finds the guest hitter sitting politely in his chair listening to Eliot’s full-on rant accompanied by a painstakingly crafted Powerpoint (Hardison asked him to learn how to operate the briefings–he needed a practice topic, OK?) on “Why Archie Leach is an Asshole Masquerading as a Nice Old Man and Should Be Punished” projected on the big screen. Nate quietly backs out and decides his question can wait.

Does Nate back out, or does he politely join the audience, nodding along at key points?

No way Nate can “just sit politely,” He would probably take over the rant/presentation

Youre so right… He INTENDS to sit politely, but then interrupts to clarify 20 seconds in. And then this very orderly PowerPoint devolves into two men just angrily talking over/interrupting one another in a furious rant. They both agree with the other but keep “and another thing-"ing and not letting the other finish.

Quinn is just sitting there, head back and forth like he’s watching a tennis match. Perhaps stealthily snacking.

Eliot: "Dammit, Nate! I will get to that!” *smashes remote button several times to get to the slide devoted to the point Nate just interrupted to make* “See?Nowas I was saying…” *backs up to slide he was on when Nate interrupted and resumes rant.*

(Sophie has by now slipped in to sit next to Quinn, nodding supportively at every successive point.)

vickyvicarious:

flmuseumgirl30:

vickyvicarious:

onyxbird:

vickyvicarious:

Eliot went to pick up Quinn in Kiev, but they’re both wearing the same clothes when we get to the batcave briefing scene which is in either Boston or New York, not sure.

Regardless, it means they’ve just spent at least 12 hours straight traveling together, assuming they just left immediately after Quinn agreed to the job.

OK, so…The scene of Eliot finding Quinn in Kiev is the first in the sequence that continues with Parker finding Archie and Hardison negotiating with Chaos. The Eliot/Quinn scene is also the only one stating a location, implying that someone thought 1) it was important that we know where Eliot had to go to find Quinn and 2) it wasn’t relevant for the others.

Somebody in the writing room: “Look, there’s a lot in the episode, and the travel time really isn’t important to the plot. We can skip that.”

Somebody else in the writing room: “IT IS VITALLY IMPORTANT THAT PEOPLE KNOW ELIOT AND QUINN SPENT 12 HOURS ON A PLANE TOGETHER! LOOK!” *holds up handdrawn concept art of Eliot and Quinn watching the inflight movie together, Eliot and Quinn comparing scars in locations that are acceptable to display in public, Quinn asleep with his head on Eliot’s shoulder…)

@onyxbird Imagine the montage splitscreen of Eliot+Quinn and Hardison+Chaos on their respect planes if they had similar length flights

  • Eliot and Quinn chatting while waiting for the plane - VS - Hardison and Chaos arguing
  • Eliot and Quinn watching a movie and sharing snacks - VS - Hardison and Chaos fighting to stop the other from STEALING snacks
  • Eliot and Quinn pointing out scars and telling stories - VS - Hardison and Chaos fiercely battling it out in virtual Jeopardy or something
  • Quinn asleep on Eliot’s shoulder and Eliot looks at him and kinda smiles and lets him be - VS - Hardison and Chaos both pretending to fall asleep but not trusting the other not to mess with him so watching one another intently all the while (or maybe nudging one another every time they start to fall asleep)
  • Eliot and Quinn running to catch a connecting flight and just jogging along talking and smiling - VS - Hardison and Chaos running and Chaos trying to trip Hardison down the escalator or something

@vickyvicarious THANK YOU!!! It’s the montage I didn’t know I needed.

Only thing better is if Parker and Archie are behind Hardison and Chaos the. whole. time and Archie keeps giving Parker the “HIM???” side-eye and Parker aggressively confirming HIM.

I don’t wish to tarnish Chaos and Archie’s actual first meeting, though, and I don’t think they were in the same area…

If Parker and Archie were in the montage, she would be doing that mirroring him thing. They would just be moving with the exact same timing/precision throughout their part of the splitscreen.

Ideally we would start just showing Eliot+Quinn, then they’d slide to the left to reveal the much less harmonious Hardison+Chaos trip, and then right when those two are at peak dissonance in come Parker+Archie, the picture of harmony. (This also corresponds to length of trip maybe, with Parker and Archie being the closest.)

Eliot grabs Quinn’s bag for him as Chaos tries to implicate Hardison for stealing someone else’s luggage as Parker and Archie separate to walk around a pair of people and then both hold up their hands to show some little trinket they stole as they passed and smile at one another.

I have a lot of feelings about this quote. But beyond all the obvious ones about the whole his father would be proud of him for murder thing, which is a serious but obvious issue, the bit about the ice cream says a lot about Nate’s relationship to his father.

Now, I’m not sure how it goes in other families, but in mine, ice cream stopped being a standard way for my parents to show they were proud of me long before I was an adult living on my own. That’s just not something that comes to mind for parents wishing to express pride in their grown up kid. Ice cream is something used to reward young children. And that is exactly why its mention here is so interesting.

It could indicate a kind of child-like lost feeling in Nate at that point. The line is meant to draw a link to his childhood because of how he feels at having lost his last remaining parent. And we don’t know when his mother died, but if it was when he was young, and I tend to think it was, then this could draw a link to how Nate felt at that point.

It could also imply that, true or not, the last time Nate actually felt like his father was proud of him was when he was young enough that ice cream would have been usual reward. Given their interaction in The Three Card Monte Job, I think this may be accurate. So to Nate, ice cream is synonymous with parental approval, even though at that point Jimmy Ford would have been more likely to buy Nate whiskey than ice cream.

loading