#leverage rant

[aardvaark]

i love that sophie spends so much of early leverage trying to act kind of impressive or cool or mysterious or powerful, even to the team - BUT the leverage team all know she’s a dork. they’ve known since day one when they first saw her, giving her very awful theater performance, and they really, really don’t care. they love their weird dramatic theater geek grifter friend. she tries to be all cool & mysterious and they’re just like "that’s great soph, but we’ll be hanging out at nate’s apartment the HQ watching a movie when ur done with that".

[anghraine]

Is there a good post outlining all the evidence against Gaiman? I know the podcast has it and that's what people pointed to me, but considering it has been days I was wondering if someone had gathered it all into seperate post so one does not have to listen to someone advertising their work every few minutes in order to listen to the important parts.

Belatedly (given that at least three other women have accused him since my post), there are some. The best of the original ones is probably "Manufacturing Consent" by Annabel Ross, but there are also transcriptions of the original accusations that, iirc, weed out some of the editorializing and focus on the raw material (which is, just be warned, very raw).

This (long) thread provides the important links in terms of the accusations conveyed by Tortoise, I think (a more to-the-point list is here at muccamukk's Dreamwidth account). I included the long thread because I'm in strong agreement with the final person in the chain that, Tortoise's many failings notwithstanding, they provided enough evidence for the SF/F community to judge and respond more appropriately than with a collective blanket of silence punctuated by occasional cavalier or desperate dismissals of the accusers, before the other accusations broke.

In all honesty, I'm pretty appalled by the idea that, well, now there's enough to start talking about it with a modicum of decency and respect but wasn't before, because apparently it was okay to use trans people (who had nothing to do with any of this) to justify defending a cis guy beloved of fandom from very thorough rape accusations.

I particularly feel this way about the parts of the community dedicated to publicizing news and major ongoing discussions that simply said and did nothing. Scalzi's "I'm horrified, might take awhile to process, here's a link to RAINN" personal statement was fine (Vernon's wasn't), and I don't think every random author was obligated to make their own statement as such. But spaces that exist specifically for covering ongoing discussions and news in the SF/F community not saying anything at all—even that the allegations existed—was far worse and really disheartening. So I wanted to link to a discussion that acknowledges how very few people lived up to their stated principles when there was solid evidence against an influential, popular man in their own circles who knows the right catchphrases and terminology.

I was particularly unimpressed with Mike Glyer's handling of discussion at File 770 and, as far as I could tell, Tor only acknowledging the whole thing on their German-language site. The German article seems to be very good, but ... they're based in NYC and Gaiman is an English-language writer, why was their only commentary for weeks shunted away from the English site? US law should absolutely cover acknowledging the existence of the accusations.

There was, let's say, a lot of disappointment to go around, so I'm also grateful for the other women who kept the ball rolling, awful as it is that they a) had similar experiences and b) had to reveal those to get the whole thing taken seriously.

[lindseymcdonaldseyelashes]

Leverage 3x9 - "The Three-Card Monte Job"

[geekynightowl1997]

Okay- but...

Has anyone else noticed that at least with Dean Devlin- Christian Kanes characters all have some sort of ties to each other?

I mean:

Eliot Spencer; A military bred, mercenary trained, with multiple aliases- with a specific skill set, con-artist.

Jacob Stone; An art historian, with multiple aliases, genius brain, eidetic memory (?), librarian.

Alex Walker; con-artist, with multiple aliases, an eye for detail, retired giftshop owner.

The characters might not be the same but there still enough for them to be long lost triplets or something.

[devereaux]

[firebirdsdaughter]

Rewatching again, and…

… There's no denying that 'Eliot, Parker, and Hardison' are a 'trio' w/in the team, but I'm also subject to an ongoingly increasing appreciation for the 'Nate, Sophie, and Eliot' trio.

[dressesandalchemy]

Oops I tripped and now I’m DEEP down the Leverage obsession on Tumblr. I missed season two of Redemption coming out due to dissertation finishing and moving and new job so I started from the beginning and now my elbow deep in all the gifsets and headcanons. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[dramarants]

i only want love triangles if it's whatever fucked up polygon junmo kicheol and euijeong have going on

[miseryinyou]

I need to talk about Eliot telling the team he was adopted because it's SO important.

Eliot is 50ish (we don't have canon confirmation but Kane turned 50 in June so I'm running with it). How much do you want to bet this is the FIRST TIME he's ever told anyone he was adopted (at least in 20+ years).

He grew up in a small town. People just knew he was adopted. There was no other explanation for a little white boy being raised by black folk. He didn't talk about his family when he enlisted - it hurt too much. Then it just didn't stop hurting to think about them let alone talk about them.

So here he is - 50 years old - daring his found family to judge him for being abandoned at a hospital and subsequently adopted.

He's still insecure about it. It doesn't matter that his adoptive parents loved him because a part of Eliot will always hold on to the fact that someone who was supposed to love him abandoned him at a hospital. Maybe they did it out of love - they knew they couldn't care for him the way a child deserved to be cared for. But there's still a tiny voice in Eliot's head that thinks "MAYBE they just didn't want him."

AND DAMN. The fact that he is a transracial adoptee. I mean. I'm just imagining things like his parents taking him on a rare family trip to Oklahoma City (where no one knows their family) and poor little Eliot being dragged to the police station because some stranger accused his parents of abducting him. What that must've done to baby!Eliot. To his self-esteem. To his view of the world. Depending on how old he was - he must've been so confused and scared.

My heart breaks for baby!Eliot and I just can't stop thinking about it.

AND OF COURSE. The team didn't care at all that Eliot's adopted. Breanna and Hardison seem genuinely delighted that Eliot was raised by a black couple. But mostly, the team just seems a little upset that Eliot never told them. Still, they swallow their hurt because they know Eliot's a private guy and they know he's in a lot of pain right now. They can talk about his adoption when this case is over.

[blessed-artist]

What are the 5 shows that are necessary for someone to understand who you are as a person?

[deadqueernoldor]

Nghhh chewing on finweans and realizing how self-sacraficial is so deeply instilled in that family, and that that particular trait is prevalent in each generation.

Finwe knew he couldnt win against Morgoth, but he could try and protect his grandchildren. He fought regardless.

Fingolfin knew he couldnt twin against Morgoth in 1-on-1. He fought regardless.

Finrod knew he would die on his quest for Beren, and still fought the wolf to save his friend. He did.

Celebrimbor knew he could protect others by dying, protecting the knowledge about the rings. He did.

It stands to reason that Elladan, Elrohir or Arwen, would have come upon a similar fate.

[overly-hubristic-mad-scientist]

ok so given everything went well the the Bride’s Reanimation what exactly did Dan decide to do? Because while he did agree to her creation with the agreement that she would be his replacement Meg, she’s not she has a different brain and based on what we saw a different personality what will Dan’s reaction be if she’s not what he originally wanted? Will he get discontent and look for happiness elsewhere like he did with Herbert? Will he resent her for not being Meg? Even if she was similar enough for him there’s no guarantee that she would love him back, which is extremely understandable since he is essentially her parent. What if the Bride just isn’t into Dan at all and just wants a dad? Will he leave? Will he blame her? Will he blame Herbert? Will he just lose it and try to inflict harm (he’s not emotionally stable especially not when it comes to romance) I’m kinda curious to know what will happen

[applejuiz]

Look, am I completely biased towards Parker because she’s my favorite Leverage character and one of my favorite characters ever? Yes.

Am I still right that Leverage: Redemption (especially season 2) functionally ignores her? Also yes.

The closest we come to getting a Parker-centric episode in Redemption is The Paranormal Hacktivity Job and The Date Night Job. (I’m counting a Parker-centric episode as one where her emotional arc is the one with the most weight/screentime. I can see an argument for The Hurricane Job being Parker-centric in the same way as The Date Night Job but I think Eliot’s arc is given precedent and also I hate The Hurricane Job.) That’s one episode out of 16/13 per season. I can also count on one hand the number of emotional moments she gets outside of those episodes (her convo about Hardison leaving, her being nervous about mentoring Breanna, her being worried about Eliot leaving, her giving Eliot advice about Maria, and I’m literally blanking on any from season 2). Everyone else, new and old, get to have episodes where they face an exceptional challenge, confront their past or something that reminds them of their past, or just get too invested in the client like in og Leverage. But not Parker! She just is there to be comic relief where the joke is look at how weird and zany she is. And sometimes she is allowed to mention that she misses Hardison. (Actually it does feel a little like the show doesn’t know what to do with her without Hardison, and seems to forget that her relationships with Sophie and Eliot are just as deep and important to her as her relationship with Hardison. Which is a little yikes.)

(Also I don’t have a better place to put this but Sophie sending Breanna along with Parker when Eliot’s going to visit his father because apparently nobody trusts Parker to be emotionally competent enough to handle the situation was a line seemingly constructed as a personal attack against me. Parker has been Eliot’s friend for fifteen years! Sophie once believed in her ability to connect to people despite her neurodivergence! Did the writers of this show even watch The White Rabbit Job?!?!)

I was foolish enough for one second to think that The Museum Makeover Job would be about her. One of her international teams need help, and they’re up against an Interpol agent she has a past with. Surely, we will get to see her go into Mastermind mode or reflect on a past job that had emotional weight or confront something challenging for her or get too invested in the con or— oh wait, the Interpol agent is Sophie’s daughter and the whole thing is a ploy to get revenge on her and she and Eliot will have their deep convo about redemption and purpose while Parker talks about vents for the dozenth time? Cool. (And not to be exceedingly bitter, but then also the whole joke is that Parker’s actually the one overly invested in her rivalry and it isn’t important at all to Astrid and we never get a beat of resolution for that at all. Thanks, I hate it.)

My bias might be showing, but Parker is the character in the og series that grows the most, and watching her development is one of the great joys of the original series. She becomes the Mastermind because of how much she learns and changes in front of us. She was allowed to be funny and competent and weird but also emotional and scared and loving and she got to feel things and to learn things and to be things. I used to think that Redemption was exaggerating her neurodivergence in a way that felt ooc, and while that might have some merit, I think the real issue is that they just took away everything else that made her a character. Her being WeirdTM and a TheifTM and ParkerTM is all that remains to a once complex and revolutionary character.

Maybe I should just be glad that I don’t have to watch Redemption potentially butcher her character on the main stage instead of in the background. But it does leave a pretty bad taste in my mouth that she is uniquely sidelined and ignored by a show that once ended by handing her the reigns.

[leverage-ot3]

I need to know the story behind you breaking into an abandoned asylum! That sounds interesting as hell!

okay so I’m prefacing by saying if you actually looked it up you could probably tell the area in which I grew up, but I don’t live there anymore so I don’t really care and I don’t feel like any of you would, like, look for my identity so it’s fine

so one summer day I was going to hang out with my friend and we wanted to do something fun. I’m like hey K, do you want to go to holy land? I know you’ve never been there before and it’s a cool place to look around (having been there once myself before

for those of you not native to connecticut, holy land usa is an abandoned christian theme park (no, I am not making this up). I won’t go into the whole history because that’s not the purpose of this post but you can read it here. there has been a murder or two there but it has in recent years been bought by a church and is now semi-maintained again (as in, it doesn’t count as trespassing anymore and they sometimes hold religious services by the 56 ft illuminated cross)

ANYWAYS so I drove us 30 minutes from where we lived to waterbury and just as we were about to pull in SOMEONE FUCKING CLOSED THE ROAD so nope, we couldn’t go :(

so we’re in the car driving back home, still wanting something semi-spooky so I’m like, hey, I’ve never seen fairfield hills (abandoned asylum) up close, why don’t we stop by and take a look???

so we drive there and park. now, it’s not especially spooky NOW because part of the huge complex has been, like, converted into community buildings (like a community center, rec center/gym, a fire house I think) because after an internationally known tragedy happened the community got a shit ton of money and they invested a lot of that into community resources

so we park near one of the still abandoned buildings and get out to walk around. mind you, it’s still 100% STILL FUCKING DAYLIGHT out.

we round the corner backed by woods and what do you know- there’s a hole in the fence and an open second story window. my friend and I look at each other like 👀👀👀 and decide, fuck it, let’s try it. yolo and all that

she boosts me up as far as she could and I used the outside little ledge (I wish I had a picture because this is a flex) and pull myself through the window. I then pull her up from the ground and get her in too.

we look around. we are somewhere in what used to look like some sort of wooden cubicles which were no longer really there. her phone is dead, we only have my phone flashlight, but it’s still sunny out and barely any of the windows are boarded up so it’s fine

we walk around, obviously people are in here frequently because there is graffiti EVERYWHERE, some wrappers, a few c*ndoms for some reason, I think maybe a needle or two (yikes). so like, it’s frequented but we didn’t think anyone was there with us

it wasn’t even really that spooky during the day (I would probably never go at night because 1. more of a chance other people would be there and I’m not going to risk possibly having a negative interaction yk, 2. I feel like more police would be patrolling it then, and 3. I’m not all that superstitious but I would never go there at night as a group of two)

we found what we assumed was an old rec room with a still mostly functional pool table (and an old dress in the window???), some bathrooms, an elevator stuck between floors, and some cool graffiti

we were in one of the stairwells with cool large windows when we saw a police car further away in the parking lot and went NOPE and continued down into the basement. aside from the little windows towards the ceiling it was PITCH BLACK and my tiny phone light did fucking NOTHING lmao.

we were able to get into the attic and I REALLY wanted to find out how to get into the bell tower but one of the doors was locked I think and we couldn’t find another way :(

all in all, I wish it was spookier but it couldn’t really get that spooky in the daylight, but I like that I can say that I did it because it’s a fun story. I would honestly love to go again now that I have lock pics and investigate some more but I don’t live there anymore

here are some pics and a video:

[just-about-nothing]

the leverage channel on the samsung tv keeps showing the episode where nate's dad gets blown up & it's like ok we get it girlie!! show something else now

[may-be-magic]

The more I think about it the more I really, really hate that ending for Ted. Most of the episode I loved but Jesus. Ted, to our knowledge, has no active support structures in Kansas. In one foul swoop he loses his best friend, his therapist, his emotional support bros, his gossip pals, and the group of men who have helped inspire him to keep going over the past three years. Yes he gets Henry back and that's wonderful but like. He has no one else? And a kid cannot be an emotional outlet for your baggage.

Michelle can't be his support. Even if they develop feelings for each other romantically again, we've seen she's objectively bad at recognizing when Ted needs support. (I personally dont trust her after the Dr. Jacob shit but to each their own). When his panic attacks were revealed she just figured he was laughing it off with no issue based on one text conversation. She didn't even call. I understand that man is no longer your husband but aren't you still friends? Shouldn't you care about WHY he was having panic attacks?

So yes, Ted goes back to support his kid. And I'm sure he'll do all he can for Henry. He's a good dad. However, I genuinely fear for the state of Ted's mental health now that he's back in Kansas. Your kid cannot be your only friend. It just feels like a more bitter than sweet ending. Because while the show may not have been all about Ted, his story MATTERED. His influence was not the sole story. His personal growth, overcoming his panic attacks and recognizing his limitations better, that was the central story of the show. This ending just feels insufficient.

I'd almost say unfinished but the writers won't even confirm if this is the actual show ending or not.