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letmetellyouaboutmyfeels · 5 years

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I love your leverage meta so much! Do you have any more thoughts on Archie/his relationship with Parker? You touched on it a bit in your allies post but I’m thirsting for more.

I’m glad that you like my meta! Honestly I don’t really have a ton of thoughts? I mean, I think it’s very clear that Archie’s problem is he wanted an apprentice and a legacy in the thieving world and Parker wanted a family and as the adult it was his job to recognize that and provide that for her.

We all want a legacy. We all want to be remembered after we’re gone. Archie had a wife and kids, and he was getting older, neither of those are conducive to being a cat burglar going after museums and such. But he didn’t want to fade into obscurity and have his name be forgotten by his community, so he decided to train an apprentice. Because every time someone brings up Parker, someone would then say, “you know Parker was trained by the famous Archie Leech, right?”

Making Parker a master thief was a way to keep his name alive. He would never be forgotten.

As a result, he treated Parker like a tool. Like a weapon. He didn’t treat her as much like a person as he should have. Oh, I’m sure he did, since Parker has such affection for him and he clearly does care about her, and Archie’s not a psychopath. He loves Parker, but loving Parker wasn’t his goal, wasn’t in the plan.

It’s very telling what he says to Nate: “You ruined her.” Archie made Parker the best of the best, in his own image, and Nate--in Archie’s opinion--ruined that by helping Parker to understand people, to understand herself, by teaching Parker morality and compassion. Emotion now enters Parker’s thinking, morality now enters her thinking, and that changes how she makes decisions and the kind of jobs she takes on and it gets in the way of her being a perfect thief because tools do not have emotions. Weapons don’t have morality.

Archie made Parker a thief but Nate helped her to become a person, or rather he and his team helped provide a nurturing environment so that she could grow into her own personhood. And to Archie it’s sacrilege and it shows that what he really truly cared about at the end of the day was not Parker the person but Parker the tool, Parker the legacy, Parker the final handprint he left upon the cement of the criminal world.

In fact, that whole you ruined her line shows that even more because throughout the entire episode Archie doesn’t act like Parker has any damn agency. He blames Nate for her behavior as if Parker can’t think or act for herself. It’s infuriating. Parker makes her own choices, sorry if you were so controlling over her that you assume she can’t be a person on her own and will latch onto another mentor who will also control her every action the way you did.

Archie keeps talking about Parker like she’s a toy that Nate didn’t take care of and that, again, sums up how he feels about her pretty damn well. He doesn’t see her as her own person. Nate, thankfully, does. He knows he can’t make any decisions for Parker (the one time he tries, and makes her go to jury duty, it backfires on him).

We see this again in The Last Dam Job. Parker goes to recruit Archie to help them and Archie is with his daughter. When Parker shows up, Archie does not say, “oh [daughter name] this is Parker, the one I told you about.” He instead just walks away without intending to give an explanation, and when his daughter is understandably concerned, asking who Parker is, he quips that Parker is “my daughter.”

Now this is kind of touching and funny in the moment but it means that even after everything they went through with Archie and Nate and Parker nearly getting arrested or murdered for Archie’s sake, he still hasn’t learned how to really treat her like a person. She’s still his legacy first, his daughter second. She doesn’t know his family, and he had no intention of her knowing them, until the chips are down and he realizes he’s going to have to reveal her to his daughter.

It would be nice to imagine that after the job, Archie brought Parker home and finally introduced her, along with some excuses, and that was that. Parker sometimes stops by for dinner or something. But I don’t honestly think that’s what happened. I think Archie went home and made an excuse and Parker never really met his family and they returned to their old status quo.

Because again, Archie does care about Parker. He nearly murders Chaos (or severely wounds him) because Chaos spoke about Parker in a derogatory manner. He fears for her life when she does the thieving job for him that puts her at risk. And he admits to Parker that he could have done some things better while she was growing up and he was responsible for her. But “you ruined her.”

Yeah, I think that sums up Archie’s feelings on Parker perfectly.

Does he feel bad about that, to an extant? Yeah, clearly. But I can’t ever truly like Archie, charming as he might be, because he took in a child who needed a family and he treated her like a weapon. He saw her through the lens of himself, through the lens of his own legacy and his own desires. He saw her not as her own person but as a reflection of himself. And he kept her separate from the rest of his family a) because she might let slip his work as a thief and b) because Parker is “different” and “difficult” and he didn’t want to expose his family to her and her trauma (I don’t remember the exact wording but Parker says this multiple times and Archie admits it at the end of the episode).

That, to me, is incredibly selfish. So I’m glad Parker loves him, I’m glad he loves her, I’m glad they have a good relationship in spite of everything, but I can’t like him. Parker was a child, not a tool.

Nate didn’t ruin her, Archie. First of all, Nate can’t make Parker, or anyone, become something. Parker chose to become that. She chose to listen to Nate and she chose to dig into the morality and personality that was there inside of her all along, just waiting for the right environment in order to bloom.

Second of all, if anyone ruined her? It was you. Children. Aren’t. Tools.

The end.

#mads answers things #leverage #leverage meta #parker #parker meta #this isn't exactly a proper meta more of just me word vomiting my thoughts

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