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I feel like every time Nate grifts he just thinks, "What if I were like half the guys I used to work with?" and runs with it

Sophie grifting: hot duchess. seductive investor. mysterious businesswoman.

Eliot grifting: ridiculously competent chef. hot athlete (any sport). heartthrob country musician.

Hardison grifting: overly-confident criminal. assertive FBI agent. heartthrob classical musician.

Nathan Ford grifting: goddamn piece of shit oily slimy scumbag ambulance-chaser untrustworthy con artist with a stupid fucking voice and a silly hat

the show is not doing Nate any favors in the likeability or attractiveness departments here

(Bonus mention: Parker grifting: autism creature)

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Something tells me whoever named this cat is a Leverage fan 🤣🤣🤣🤣

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Broke af?

But still interested in feeding yourself? What if I told you that there’s a woman with a blog who had to feed both herself and her young son…on 10 British pounds ($15/14 Euro) per week?

Let me tell you a thing.

This woman saved my life last year. Actually saved my life. I had a piggy bank full of change and that’s it. Many people in my fandom might remember that dark time as when I had to hock my writing skills in exchange for donations. I cried a lot then. 

This is real talk, people: I marked down exactly what I needed to buy, totaled it, counted out that exact change, and then went to three different stores to buy what I needed so I didn’t have to dump a load of change on just one person. I was already embarrassed, but to feel people staring? Utter shame suffused me. The reasons behind that are another post all together. 

AgirlcalledJack.com is run by a British woman who was on benefits for years. Things got desperate. She had to find a way to feed herself and her son using just the basics that could be found at the supermarket. But the recipes she came up with are amazing. 

You have to consider the differing costs of things between countries, but if you just have three ingredients in your cupboard, this woman will tell you what to do with it. Check what you already have. Chances are you have the basics of a filling meal already. 

Here’s her list of kitchen basics. 

Bake your own bread. It’s easier than you think. Here’s a list of many recipes, each using some variation of just plain flour, yeast, some oil, maybe water or lemon juice. And kneading bread is therapeutic. 

Make your own pasta–gluten free. 

She gets it. She really does. This is the article that started it all. It’s called “Hunger Hurts”.

She has vegan recipes.

A carrot, a can of kidney beans, and some cumin will get you a really filling soup…or throw in some flour for binding and you’ve got yourself a burger. 

Don’t have an oven or the stove isn’t available? She covers that in her Microwave Cooking section. 

She has a book, but many recipes can be found on her blog for free. She prices her recipes down to the cent, and every year she participates in a project called “Living Below the Line” where she has to live on 1 BP per day of food for five days. 

Things improved for me a little, but her website is my go to. I learned how to bake bread (using my crockpot, but that was my own twist), and I have a little cart full of things that saved me back then, just in case I need them again. She gives you the tools to feed yourself, for very little money, and that’s a fabulous feeling. 

Tip: Whenever you have a little extra money, buy a 10 dollar/pound/euro giftcard from your discount grocer. Stash it. That’s your super emergency money. Make sure they don’t charge by the month for lack of use, though.

I don’t care if it sounds like an advertisement–you won’t be buying anything from the site. What I DO care about is your mental, emotional, and physical health–and dammit, food’s right in the center of that. 

If you don’t need this now, pass it on to someone who does. Pass it on anyway, because do you REALLY know which of the people in your life is in need? Which follower might be staring at their own piggy bank? Trust me: someone out there needs to see this. 

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Of course Eliot knows how to sew, between his military service, medical skills, and the likelihood that he's slept with a seamstress or two. He can, at minimum, hem a pair of pants and do most types of repairs.

Hardison, though? Sure, word of God is that he makes the disguises that the team uses during cons, which could just mean he's ironing "FBI" transfer letters onto windbreakers.

HOWEVER.

Hardison is a cosplayer in the early 2010s. I did my first con cosplay at AnimeNext in '08. Before 2013 or so, you could not Google a character and find sales listings for a ready-made cosplay. If you wanted to cosplay a character who doesn't wear readily available normal clothes, you had two options: you either found someone who could sew and were very, very nice to them, or you learned how to make stuff yourself. I know several people who taught themselves how to sew by taking apart thriftstore finds for cosplay, and I had a side hustle taking on sewing and patterning commissions.

Hardison could have commissioned his first cosplay, but I think he'd get sucked in. He'd get really excited about computerized sewing machines. He'd get himself a machine that he can hack and reprogram so it's got extra stitches, multiple buttonhole settings, automatic seam guidance, a controlled heat setting that does a fused edge finish on synthetic fabrics. He digitizes his own embroidery patterns.

At some point Eliot asks to borrow a sewing machine because his job is as rough on his clothes as it is on his body, and he nearly has an aneurysm trying to do a basic darning patch on Hardison's beeping whistling computer-monster. A couple days later, a second sewing machine shows up. It's an old one with sturdy metal innards and mechanical dials to set stitch length and width. It has no screen, no control buttons, and only a handful of settings. One of them is a darning stitch.

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How did Herschel trick your husband into taking him to work? I know from other stories he's an evil genius but still, I'm intrigued (but not surprised).

It is very important for you all to know that right now my fluffy corgi is asleep on her back pressed up next to me with her little paws twitching in the air as she chases something in her sleep.

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They're his children of course. Richard still recognizes them; it's only been two years.

And yet...

Peter is a man. Still six months shy of his draft papers, but he stands, walks, sounds like a man. He always has a pocket knife, he tips his hat to all the females, he sings in a baritone that will only get deeper and richer. The tea he makes is decent, but sometimes he drinks coffee now. He talks about horses and crops and reads Augustine. He can drive a car. He gives orders, and expects them to be followed.

They all look to him, to Peter. Helen calls him to open a jar, Susan questions how her hair looks, Lucy runs to him in tears. As for Edmund, he and Peter are curiously joined, they turn to each other with their laughter, their thoughts, their books and newspapers and letters. As often as his family swirls around him, Richard sees them swirl around Peter, a habit, he knows, born of necessity, but that doesn't prevent it from being strange. Even painful.

Peter moves to take the head of table, catches himself. They both start to say grace, stop, glance at each other. Peter takes the newspaper over breakfast, and is a page in before he remembers. And every time he apologises. Each time he smiles at his father, and it is warm, glad, even benevolent.

One of the first nights, shortly after Christmas, Peter finds him sitting in his old armchair, staring into the fire, after everyone else has gone up to bed. "Dad?" comes the question, and he looks up blinking at the tall man, lamplight crowning him in gold, blue eyes deep and dark with knowledge and certainty.

"I'm not who I was," Richard says, a confession, the kind a father shouldn't burden his son with he thinks immediately, but then Peter is down on one knee, reaching for the mangled hand, tender with the three fingers as he clasps strong calloused palms around them.

"Neither am I, Dad. None of us are." Peter's gaze is earnest, bright. "But you are still my father. And I will always be your son. I am forever grateful for that."

It is as if a great burden rolls off of his shoulders, and he finds no shame in leaning on Peter's hand to rise.

When the holidays end, and the four go back to school, Peter says I love you to each of them at the station.

If Peter is a man now, Susan is a lady.

She sits straight, she walks gracefully, she can cook anything as well or better than her mother. She reads the newspapers with Peter, she scolds Lucy for coming home with twigs in her hair and a tear in her stocking and wet shoes.

She talks less than her father remembers, and there is a woman's sadness in her gazing out the window or into the fire. She is also very admiring of the boys in uniforms, and Richard requests her arm on the way out of church with a father's righteous sense of protection.

But she is also gentler than he recalls, she does not shy away from his injured hand, she takes care of him without making him feel as if he needs care. She sits on a cushion by his feet as she braids her hair in the evenings, leans on his knee as she reads aloud, and Richard thinks, Not my little princess, but a queen now.

At the train station, she kisses him goodbye, and he hugs her close, and there are tears in her eyes as she says I love you.

Edmund is the closest to unrecognizable, the once-obvious four year span between he and Peter seemingly halved. He greets his father wordlessly, all shining eyes and bright smile, and his face is so close to Richard's own it makes his heart break a little.

Ed is no more little boy, he is tall, slim, oddly graceful, but his handclasp is strong. He holds himself the same way Peter does, with squared shoulders and lifted head, but he wears that nobility in a quieter fashion. He's quick to see, quick to hear, quick with a wisecrack that makes Peter laugh out loud. He plays the violin now. He returns the family Bible to the living room with an apology for having kept it since the summer holidays. He reads Agatha Christie as a personal challenge, whispers to Susan in French, and his chess games with Peter are fierce battles of strategy that Richard cannot keep pace with.

In discussions of the war and its movements, he is sober and considerate, he meets each of Peter's moods with a balancing counter, he has a way of phrasing questions that pull out stories Richard had never planned to tell.

A few nights before the children return to school, Richard sits up in bed, certain he has heard a faint cry, and he slips away from his exhausted wife to check on his children, remembering how Edmund had suffered from night terrors as a child, imagining little Lucy inflicted with some dark dream.

But all he finds is shadows in the boys' room, and quiet whispers—Peter's apologies, Edmund's reassurance, and allusions to things Richard has no context for. He lingers by the door, an outsider in his home, until silence falls, and he returns with morning light to find them curled together in Peter's bed, Pete with an arm over Ed, and the father's love is bittersweet.

They have fought their own battle over here, on the home ground, Richard reminds himself. In their own way they have each faced terror and learned to conquer or be conquered, but perhaps he can meet them somewhere in between. Only time will tell.

On the train platform, Ed hugs his father tightly, gives him a smile, tells him to keep out of trouble.

Lucy is the least changed, though she too is taller and stronger, and her eyes are deeper. She still sings, still dances, still tries to make friends with all the animals, still smiles and speaks kind and stares dreaming at the Christmas tree.

She still gives fierce hugs, still climbs into her father's lap, though her head comes up higher on his chest, on his shoulder.

But then he finds gaps in his library, and Lucy returns the medical books with a winsome apology, she asks questions about his practices in the field, she winces but does not shy away from the blood and broken things he speaks of.

Then she recites long poems, words spinning off her tongue until they become half song; she dances swift and graceful, she and Peter laughing and stepping and clapping and spinning in intricate patterns to the swing song on the radio; and it is she who, breathless, quotes Byron: "On with the dance! Let joy be unconfined!"

Her comfort is both generous and thoughtful, and she strokes her father's hair with a motherly hand that makes his eyes sting, and he kisses her fingers, looks up at her to whisper, "Don't- don't grow up quite so fast, my darling."

When she hugs him on the platform, Susan waiting for her, the boys already gone, she doesn't want to let go, and there are tears on her cheek, that he wipes away gently. "Be careful, Daddy," she whispers. "Get strong. Take care of Mummy."

"Yes, little mother," he smiles back.

And then they are all gone, and he takes a cab home, weary of his still-recovering body.

He will have to learn his children all over again, he thinks. But he is proud of them still. That has not changed.

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It's probably because given the state of the world right now, it's really cathartic to watch a bunch of rich jerks get what's coming to them.

Tumblr is telling me leverage is trending rn and I feel like I’m missing something.

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One of my favorite Klinger scenes is when Hawkeye comes in the office for something and finds a Life magazine with pictures of his hometown in Maine. He gets all excited about it and Klinger let's him take it, saying someone just left it and he could care less about it. Hawkeye leaves and finds the mail guy sitting on his Jeep and devouring a giant sausage. He asks him where he got the sausage and the mail guy says "your dumb company clerk traded me it for a Life magazine". Klinger is probably the sweetest person in the 4077th, second only to Radar.

The thing that I think is most important about Klinger as a character is that he's deeply kind. He couldn't get a section eight because he wasn't willing to commit to making himself a danger to others. His dramatic wardrobe and escape acts never impacted anybody else (other than giving Henry and Potter some extra paperwork on occasion), and he's still a first rate soldier when they need him. He's always in the thick of things carrying litters or donating blood or delivering x-rays. The example I always remember is when he pretended to think he was in Toledo. He wore civilian clothes and talked to Potter as if he were a traffic cop, but he was still doing his job correctly and efficiently. His behavior is a protest more than anything else. It's a statement that he may be acting like a soldier to save lives, but they'll never make him think like a solider; he will do his part to lessen the suffering but he cannot support the war itself.

There's an episode with a guy who actually gets a section eight, and he's so clearly contrasted with Klinger because the other guy isn't just talking to his socks, he's firing into the minefield. Klinger tells Sidney that he hates the war so much because of the death, that he can't stand being a part of all that killing. If he just wanted to go home then he could do it, but that wouldn't actually help anybody. He's a lot like Hawkeye in that way. Sticking around and making it clear how much they hate it while working every day to save lives is the best way to fight "the war against the war" as Hawkeye calls it.

On a less serious note, Klinger is also just a really nice guy. He's even friendly to Frank, who only ever has awful things to say to him. He's surrounded by hate and violence, he's constantly overworked; and yet he shows up, goes above and beyond in his duties as a corpsman and clerk, is genuinely kind to everybody he meets, then spends his free time sewing elaborate outfits and constructing getaway schemes. That's just plain incredible. He never lets his hatred for the war turn him hateful, and instead he makes an effort to brighten up the 4077th with his wackiness.

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I saw Beth in a NCIS episode where she played a video game geek and immediately thought, "Oh my gosh, Hardison taught Parker to love video games."

Leverage has done this thing to my brain where I can't believe the actors in any other role to be real. I realised Beth was in Criminal Minds as Reid's gf who they didn't meet the whole episode and he conversed with only over the internet and then she died tragically right before they could save her and I was like of COURSE Sophie must've run the con this time coz who else would do such an elaborate death scene. I saw Aldis Hodge as a DC character and I was like oh Hardison is really playing with fire I mean using technology to spoof being a superhero among actual supers? What job are they even pulling this time? I saw Christian in SPN and went oh so they're stealing something occult back oh that's nice. Like. Every character they've ever played and will ever play could be their leverage character undercover pulling a con

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Not Hardison saying "sammiches" 🤣🤣

Leverage 4x12- "The Office Job"

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actually i need to borrow this gif because holy shit this is EPISODE THREE and Nate can just DO that. Can just. Grab Eliot Spencer while he’s holding a knife.

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Eliot just giving up when Parker tells him they already measured his head is the cutest freaking thing.

I know it’s not the same thing but Hardison and I are gonna be here for you forever.

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The slow increase of measures to try and make the cat go through the correct way is just killing me

bro choose every possible cheat code 🐈😺

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Watching this while also being a fan of Leverage is hilarious. I also feel slightly validated because there are a lot of times where I go, "How do they not hear Parker?"

been mainlining mythbusters episodes while i work on art stuff and this bit where they attempt to test sneakily entering a building through the air ducts caught me deliriously off guard

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Mark Rober is not as fun because he doesn't have the same "why not?" attitude that the Mythbusters did. Sure he's entertaining and I love the anti-package thief glitter bomb and squirrel obstacle course episodes, but they aren't "let's see what happens" episodes.

In the genre of "watch some engineers do some crazy shit," before Mark Rober, there was Tested, and before Tested, there was MythBusters, and in the process of getting from one to the other we lost something. I dont know why Mark Rober is not nearly as fun as MythBusters is, but he isn't and im sad there's no MythBusters for kids who wanna see some engineers do some crazy shit now.

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watching Season 14 Episode 8 of MythBusters is so fucking wild. they're wearing tuxedos in the desert. it is 0°C (32°F) with extreme wind chill DURING THE DAY and they're going to the Grand Canyon with nothing but bubble wrap and rolls of duct tape. they're rappelling 150 feet straight down using duct tape rope. Adam made a kayak and Jamie a floating couch with said bubble wrap and duct tape to traverse RIVER RAPIDS whilst wearing fucking 'life jackets' which are made of, you fucking guess it, MORE DUCT TAPE AND BUBBLE WRAP. how they are both still alive at this point is a fucking miracle.

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Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.

Adam Savage Mythbusters