#LEVERAGE INTERNATIONAL

[leverage-ot3]

leverage tv/cinematic universe where there are different shows following the different leverage international teams when

[three-blogs-in-a-trenchcoat]

This is a tag game, thanks to @confusedspaceotter for tagging me! (Not gonna complain because hey, finally a poll where one of my favourites is guaranteed to win.)

@ante--meridiem @pony-coffee @bidet-of-evil @doggirlbuffysummers @annadeedee you're next.

Rules: make a poll with five of your favourite characters, and tag five people to do the same.

(For people I tagged like an hour ago in a different tag game: hopefully you don't mind.)

Have fun!

[reinanova]

calling all you leverage fans

if i could draw your attention to the movie Now You See Me (2013) bcuz i think you will love this movie and it’s sequel for its similarity to leverage

(literally, as i was watching nysm, i was like is this movie inspired by leverage? or is leverage inspired by now you see me? after watching, i figured out leverage came first based on the release years but still)

Now You See Me (+the sequel) has:

grand scale cons during magic shows

fuck the rich and powerful, we’re gonna steal from them and give away all the money we stole

flashback reveals of the tricks/cons

much thievery and sleight of hand

a mastermind behind the scenes

and more!

also…fans of both…consider

leverage x nysm crossover

the nysm crew is recruited into leverage international

alternatively, the leverage crew is recruited into the eye

(my friend {who introduced me to nysm and who i introduced to leverage} and i are planning on writing said crossover over the summer after he finishes watching leverage 👀)

[hannahhook7744]

The Team is precious 😭

I'm so glad they're still pretty much the same personality wise.

Love that they still use "damn it Hardison!"

[could-they-be-a-pro-wrestler]

How successful would Sophie Devereaux…

[unstablequeerbitch]

Going from binge watched leverage the binge watching the librarians is throwing my brain in a loop.

I knew I recognized Elliot from somewhere but it’s been years since I watched Librarians. I thought I recognized Harry too.

First episode. Boom. There they are

[leverage-ot3]

the kid from the underground job could be the hitter if he ever feels like he wants to pursue a career outside the mines and is looking to blow off some steam (I think his name was cory???)

that OR molly from the carnival job ends up becoming the hitter for that team

sterling would HATE it but I would think it was funny if olivia ended up being the mastermind of the group

I feel like some of the kids that the OG Leverage crew interact with (mostly Shorty & the kid from the Potato Job) grow up and join Leverage International in some form or another.

Shorty does take over the landscaping business eventually and expands it, but she lets International crews use the trailers/equipment for a distraction, or recon. She might also be a part-time thief. 

The Potato kid is a combo Thief/Grifter, where his type of Grift is to be as loud/cause as much chaos as possible so The Mark’s attention is on him and not whatever the crew is after.

[ghostlyarchaeologist]

Happy Knife Day to all who celebrate it!

Leverage Redemption S01E10 The Unwellness Job.

[leverage-ot3]

so I’m about to start work but I have to get this god tier concept out. may post more about it later

derry girls leverage international crew

[somestorythoughts]

There's a higher number of them then their should be with the goal of stabbing someone they really don't like with a fork.

So how often do the hitters of Leverage International quietly mutter, "Well, I'm definitely not Eliot" while punching marks?

[peskyimmortals]

Korean equivalent of Leverage

Very similar plot according to the wiki. I am now so deeply invested in finding it and watching it

[somestorythoughts]

Leverage Team Secret Santa

The Leverage team decides to do a Secret Santa one year.

Parker has no idea what to get Nate, "What do you get a guy with a weird controlling people thing??" until someone reminds her that he's also a "functioning alcoholic" so she looks up well-guarded alcohol and steals him a couple bottles of very nice, very pricey, formerly very secured scotch.

Nate gets Hardison some rare Star Wars and Star Trek memorabilia, along with a shirt that says "Age of the Geek Baby."

Hardison agonizes over what to get Sophie, he doesn't trust himself to do clothes (what if she doesn't like them or they don't fit?!) and eventually gets her a sort of advent calendar of ticket coupons. 12 venues, she picks the date, and Hardison will put her on their guest list/acquire a ticket (options are a couple spas and several theaters).

Sophie gives Eliot a set of high end cooking knives and some animal ice packs for post-mission bruises.

Eliot was going to give Parker money but then decided it'd be more fun to make her some cupcakes and hide a golden dollar in half of them. She thought it was hilarious.

[beautifulpersonpeach]

BTW BPP, what did you think of those HYBE internal documents AKA the HYBE Burn Book? I get market research but some of what was in there seemed to go way beyond that. They talked about idols in such a dehumanizing way and some of the included info didn't even seem particularly relevant.

I could never figure out entirely what I thought of it because you had 95% of ARMYs wanting to brush it off as simple market research and then on the opposite end kpop stans who wanted to use it to paint HYBE as the worst, most evil, immoral company to ever exist that sabotaged every other artist, caused the downfall of xyz group and used fraud tactics for all of their own artists whose achievements were now invalid.

Allegedly it was the weverse magazine former editor-in-chief who was compiling and putting all of this together too? Which makes me think back on a lot of the criticism for that magazine that has already been discussed. I'm not exactly sure how involved that person was with some of those articles though.

On another note, I was pretty uncomfortable seeing them mention PJMs causing ARMYs to resent Jimin. It was something I watched happen in real time but it was something else to see the company directly take note of it. I'm curious how exactly they were planning on dealing with that too... The parts on Jungkook were also really weird, but I think they were parroting what antis said about him and disagreeing with it, but the whole thing got really tangled up with all the various interpretations and translations and I just gave up on following it.

I just hope the BTS members are watching all this dirt on HYBE being leaked and taking it into consideration when deciding on who they trust and how they want to operate going forward. But I’m sure they already know all that way better than I do. While I'm on that, I hope that at least Namjoon read that whole New Yorker article where BangPD called himself the king of kpop 🙄 it felt pretty disrespectful to BTS in parts ngl, but I know they know BangPD way better than I do so I'm not trying to jump too hard onto the solo/manti hate train for him even if I'm definitely not a fan of him or the people he keeps around at all (I'm still not a fan of MHJ either but I can really sympathize when I think about the kind of men who seem to run so much of HYBE and how they seem to really be holding that company back).

Anyways sorry about the rambling, I was just curious if you had any thoughts or random takeaways from those internal documents.

***

(I ramble.)

Min Heejin had talked about those internal documents since her first whistleblower complaint against HYBE in March 2024. It was one of several issues she found problematic about HYBE's senior management that made her want even more independence from Bang Sihyuk's influence within the company, and like I've said before, I came to be sympathetic towards MHJ after reading her initial whistleblower report.

The existence of those documents have been public since April 2024 and known to anybody actually listening to Min Heejin and/or who understands Korean. The fact it was only after the National Assembly mentioned those reports and excerpts were released, that most other k-pop fandoms became aware of it, shows just how poorly international fans are following this dispute and also how tightly HYBE stans mostly control the narrative around NewJeans and MHJ in international fandom spaces.

You're right that the reactions to those reports both for and against HYBE were predictably extreme, but the fact is those documents are, plainly speaking, bad news. There's market research and then there's whatever the fuck those reports are - because while all k-pop agencies seem to monitor fan chatter around their groups, the HYBE reports show the extent to which HYBE in particular runs more like a well-capitalized psych-op machine, regularly making infinitesimal tweaks to reverse-engineer heightened emotional responses in the fandoms they have access to.

It was Kang Myeong-seok (Weverse's former EIC) who was the fall-guy after the backlash, but the reality is those documents reflect Bang Sihyuk's personal approach to fandom/group management more than anything else. This shouldn't be news because if you've been paying attention, you'd notice he's always put a priority on tapping fandom sentiment with impressive proficiency, since long before HYBE existed. For example, Bang Sihyuk has explicitly stated that since BTS was formed, BigHit will never debut a girl group because he wants to create a moat of perceived exclusivity (read 'assurance') for BTS's predominantly female fandom. If there's anything that tells you how cynically (or some would say pragmatically) he views the fandom, this is it.

That k-pop fans often see their idols as romantic placeholders is well known, but no other k-pop CEO has gone as far as Bang Sihyuk has in reinforcing that perception using the very structure of his company. He literally acquired another agency (Source Music) to develop his girl-groups rather than encroach on ARMY's personal fan space. I suspect the only reason BTS doesn't take their fan service further than they already do, is because of the limits the members personally set. Left to Bang Sihyuk, I highly doubt there is any limit too far, any detail too personal, to marshal towards creating ever more dedicated fandoms and ever more appealing products (aka idols). This is an opinion I've had about Bang Sihyuk for years.

This brings me to your point about the agency of BTS members in this mess. None of the guys are babies - I believe they are aware of those weekly internal reports and choose what to care about, and are also aware that HYBE's solvency, in very literal terms, depends on the members being content with the company. Despite the nonsense in those reports, BTS has a special status in the company, and I'd be disappointed if by now they didn't understand who Bang Sihyuk is, as well as their own positions in this power dynamic. Those reports are much more problematic for groups with smaller influence in the company, such as NewJeans.

At the end of the day, BTS are getting enough of what they want from HYBE and appear to maintain their trust in and allegiance to each other more than they do to anybody from HYBE, including Bang Sihyuk. And that's enough to tell me those reports have no real impact on the members.

For most of the fandom though, it's a different story.

[leverage-ot3]

@leveragedlibrarians: #correct#Ezekiel jones is one of their regular customers

I like to imagine that Parker has set up an actual Thieves-R-Us store for the Leverage teams around the world where they can pick up sleek black outfits and lock picking sets and anything else they might need for optimized thieving

[logicalbibliophile]

Happy International Woman’s Day!