leveragedlibrarians

[leveragedlibrarians]

the rundown job aka the episode that just kept on giving

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clean version

[leveragedlibrarians]

why do i only paint my girl crying

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w/o the colour grading

[leveragedlibrarians]

the entire fridge is filled with orange soda. what is this show

[leveragedlibrarians]

the rundown job aka the episode that just kept on giving

other art

clean version

[leveragedlibrarians]

alright so i made a vague allusion to having leverage/pjo crossover thoughts in some tags. and then @aardvaark sent me an ask about it, and then @artistica18 implored me to yap further, and then @leveragedlibrarians ALSO @'d me about it so i think at this point i need to elaborate.

i am certifiably not normal about leverage, and there was about a decade of my childhood solidly defined by the percy jackson books. suffice it to say, i have a lot of weirdly specific thoughts.

so! headcanons. in a pjo au, i think we can solidly divide the team in half as thus: Went To Camp and Did Not Go To Camp. remember, prior to the fusion of the two camps at the end of heroes of olympus, greek demigods were just unceremoniously spat out after they stop being kids and are left to fend for themselves. i can see nate and eliot spending their childhood summers at camp half-blood, heading home for the rest of the year; we're trying to alter backstory as little as possible here.

sophie and parker both moved around too much as kids (parker shares a homeless-in-new-york-as-a-preteen backstory with a disressing number of pjo characters) for that to make sense for them. doesn't mean they aren't half-bloods in this au, just that they had lifestyles that made it pretty impossible for satyr's to track them down and bring them to safety. see again the books - it's pretty clearly implied that without thalia's power drawing in monsters, annabeth and luke might not have been scouted. prior to percy's edict at the end of the pj series, unclaimed kids got missed all the time - makes sense for parker and sophie.

hardison could go either way, but i like the idea of him finding his way to camp only after settling with nana (who, as a foster parent, has probably seen more than one half-blood kid in the past).

oh and everyone i've seen talk about this crossover is fucking. wrong about the parentages. if i see one more person give nate athena as his godly parent i am going to scream. nemesis is right there y'all. goddess of justice, and revenge, and retribution, and balance, and punishment for the sin of hubris, and proportion, and righteous indignation, and counteraction of fate. people. people it's the themes of the show. bonus points, she's personified in the percy jackson books as very much a dangerous chaotic neutral power who her kids make some bargains with to the loss of their personal health. there is just... so much potential in so many different ways.

sticking with greek gods exclusively, i don't have that strong of a set of feelings about the others (except for eliot, we'll get to him). from what i can tell, people are 50/50 on giving sophie aphrodite or some niche minor deity - my vote goes to peitho, for the record. everyone picks something random for hardison because computers didn't exist 3000 years ago, i'm not even gonna try (as a fun bonus, breanna is totally a hephaestus kid). if you don't assign parker hermes then you are trying too hard. he's the god of theives, she's a thief, it's her defining characteristic, seriously stop trying to be clever. the hermes kids in the books have probably the widest spray of abilities and personalities that we see.

eliot... stop blindly giving him ares? yes, if you look at the domains in the mythology and how powerful the ares kids can be in the books, i can see why you're going that way. if you spend half a second paying attention to the characterisation of ares as a person and his half-bloods as characters as they exist in the books... ehhhh. the problem is that as far as i cant tell there's... not really a better fit. thanatos would be a nice call from a greek mythology perspective, but as far as pjo goes it's pretty heavily implied in the last olympian that he doesn't tend to sire half-bloods. similarly, phonos and androktasia are just, like, waaaay too niche and minor. same's true of enyo but in addition she A) overlaps waaaay too much with ares and B) literally seems to not exist in the pjo universe (seriously it's weird, the olympians books wax lyrical for AGES about how bellona doesn't have any sort of greek equivalent and i'm just here like ?????). ares it is, i guess. i'd switch tacks and assign him something roman (as much as ares wouldn't work, mars totally would) if access to camp jupiter wouldn't have completely changed his life (and CJ is much much better at reeling in demigods than CHB is, so can't use that trick again). also, it is damn fucking annoying that the more ancient and powerful deities don't tend to spawn demigods in the pjo universe, becase greek mythology has some titans and miscellanious cthonic crap which'd also be great candidates. i still say thanatos.

if you've watched episode three of the librarians, then i think you've got a pretty good idea of how leverage jobs would change in a world with gods and monsters knocking around. this agricultural company is secretly throwing people into the labyrinth is exactly the kind of shit that would happen!

also, magic powers make any AU a little bit more fun. it's why i like peitho so much for sophie - kids of minor gods get less powerful abilities in the pjo universe, but a leettle push from the goddess of persuasion would go a long way to helping sophie's career (something similar is also true if you take the regular aphrodite option). also, parker's pickpocketing already tows the reality line - i would love for the team to not be able to tell if she's using demigod abilities or is just That Good. i have intensely mixed feelings about any superpowers-adjacent leverage au (catch me in the future with my Basically The Only Magical Ability That Makes Sense For Eliot Is Allomatic Atium From The Cosmere rant, ✨coming to a deranged tumblr blog near you✨, if i ever write it - it's half the reason i struggle to come up with good headcanons for eliot here) but i can't deny that it's fun.

we've also got the general question of how close any of the team are to their godly parents. i say nate has only had direct contact with his mother once and it was summoning her to just fucking yell after sam died. sophie's never made direct contact, but has more than once woken up to find some token of favour by her bedside. whoever hardison's godly parent is, i don't think he was ever officially claimed - but he makes sacrifices anyway. parker was claimed, but we knows as per pjo canon that hermes has a habit of wistfully moping about his kids but not actually intervening. he manipulated some things behind the scenes to push her towards archie and towards the team, though.

i also just wanna throw up the fact that themes of fate, religion, family, systems are like... central to both franchises. both the leverage and the pjo universe are built around some fairly similar thematic conciets.

look. i'm me. percy jackson was my first ever major special interest, leverage my most recent and personal favourite. i know so much about both these universes. i haven't reread any riordanverse books in ages, and while i feel i've solidly grown out of them on account of now being 22 instead of 12, i'm sure i'll go back someday and check out the more recent books (i tapped out after jason died, lol). and if you've ever looked at this here sideblog of mine you'll know i am pathologically incapeable of being normal about leverage, so... yeah. i'm never gonna actually write a leverage/pjo crossover, but my head is still a wonderful stew of misdirected brainworms.

so, uh, yeah. pretty sure there's nothing here that other people haven't also said but - whelp. i've written all this now. please steal and discuss all my thoughts.

[leveragedlibrarians]

worlds best hacker

more: parker / eliot / hardison

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[leveragedlibrarians]

the show leverage is so corny but also it is healing something in me. like heist vibes + fuck corporations. i could cry

[leveragedlibrarians]

*cough cough* everyone go watch leverage

clean version if you care

[leveragedlibrarians]

it's been said before, but leverage season two really is a masterclass of writing around a lead actress' pregnancy. they knew they'd have to give her time off for maternity leave, so they set up a character development plot line near the start of the season which was a natural direction for the character to go based on how she'd already been written. then for the first several episodes leading up to her leave, film her from the chest up or show her back, with only some reliance on loose shirts and large jackets. have her character's development/crisis require her to take time off for herself, but write small scenes that can easily be pre-recorded, so she's never actually gone from the show. then let her return.

it's a great combination of understanding the character, being able to plan good plots ahead of the time, and not being so misogynistic that you resent actors for getting pregnant.

[leveragedlibrarians]

Alright okay fine i did it i started watching leverage are you’re all so correct it is a beautiful sexy show about the most autistic people in the world doing robin hood crimes and flirting with each other. And i love it.

[leveragedlibrarians]

I love the Leverage episodes where they're truly just psychologically tormenting a guy.

Like obviously they first establish that the guy is a terrible guy who does terrible guy things. And we really do need the terrible guy to be doing a lot of terrible guy things because this is kinda an ethical nightmare, but don't worry, they are reliably doing a lot of terrible guy things.

But then it is just like "hey, let's convince this guy that he's made first contact with aliens and also that aliens are trying to kill him" or "hey, let's make this guy believe he's contracted a deadly disease and is going to die in quarantine because medical staff are abandoning him" or "hey, let's first try to persuade this journalist that the government is secretly creating Guantanamo Bay 2: Underground Boogaloo in your backyards and when she doesn't run with that story, let's then make her think that oops the government accidentally leaked some kind of bioweapon into the waterways and now water is gonna kill you instead."

[leveragedlibrarians]

[leveragedlibrarians]

I think non-Americans need to calm down on the ‘respect the dead health insurance CEO’ policing of Americans who are forced to live in a system where they have to pay for healthcare.

Like there’s always going to be a bit of a “Violence is never the answer” throwaway line, but that’s not really true, is it?

[leveragedlibrarians]

I love the Leverage episodes where they're truly just psychologically tormenting a guy.

Like obviously they first establish that the guy is a terrible guy who does terrible guy things. And we really do need the terrible guy to be doing a lot of terrible guy things because this is kinda an ethical nightmare, but don't worry, they are reliably doing a lot of terrible guy things.

But then it is just like "hey, let's convince this guy that he's made first contact with aliens and also that aliens are trying to kill him" or "hey, let's make this guy believe he's contracted a deadly disease and is going to die in quarantine because medical staff are abandoning him" or "hey, let's first try to persuade this journalist that the government is secretly creating Guantanamo Bay 2: Underground Boogaloo in your backyards and when she doesn't run with that story, let's then make her think that oops the government accidentally leaked some kind of bioweapon into the waterways and now water is gonna kill you instead."

[leveragedlibrarians]

I like how leverage has a genius character and an autistic character but the autistic character isn't the genius character. the genius is a 22 year old black man with adhd who becomes an expert in anything you give him within 24 hours and the autistic character is a white woman who jumps off buildings for fun and once stabbed a man with a fork because he encroached on her personal space and sense of moral conduct

[leveragedlibrarians]

i'll never get over how fascinating eliot's characterization as a hitter. obviously he's trained- military, hand to hand, weaponry, martial arts- that's to be expected. but so often I think in media about like. the Best Hitters in this genre and etc they're characterized by like? not getting hit. they're sooo good that the avoid every punch and catch every kick in mid air and dodge bullets and etc and that's not Eliot at all. he lets himself get punched in the face. he gets kicked and bowled over and uses that shift in momentum to his advantage. he gets knocked to the ground and the guys he's fighting think he's down for the count for only one moment before Eliot Spencer gets back up. because he always gets back up- but that character trait is Only compelling IF he gets knocked down enough for it to MATTER. and he DOES! and his fighting skills- they're not innate, they're not a natural inclination to fighting, its training and knowledge- he can talk about details and styles at length, he can (and does!) teach the others how to take and throw a punch, which speaks even more to his skill and knowledge and ability. he's the hitter because he's been doing it so long. because he fights to survive and he isn't afraid to get hit and lose the fight to win the battle. god. Eliot Spencer. character of all time

[leveragedlibrarians]

any time parker has a fancy little hairdo i just imagine her sitting on the ground in front of eliot while he works on it with a mouthful of bobby pins