#leverageverse

[wistfulwatcher]

Leverage Redemption | 2.13 "The Crowning Achievement Job"

[wistfulwatcher]

#AND XENA WARRIOR PRINCESS (@cirquedereve)

I have realized that the perfect form of media must have a delicate balance between absolutely heart wrenching pure emotional devastation and the most ridiculous nonsense you have ever seen in your whole life

[aardvaark]

i don’t mind suspending my disbelief for leverage’s person-sized ventilation shafts bc that’s pretty standard for the genre, but that doesn’t mean i won’t laugh a bit at some of the egregiously large vents. particularly in the crowning acheivement job (lev: red s2 finale) because - well just look at this lol! harry and parker, two adults, can kneel side by side in those vents. parker can sit upright.

that museum was made for vent crawling purposes. that’s just an extra room in the museum they forgot to decorate. the leverageverse has a thief union that successfully lobbied for a better working environment. these vents double as a playground for museum-goers’ children. i was crying with laughter thinking about this and harry’s vent crisis was NOT helping me remember that there was a serious heist thing going on lol, i love this show.

[onyxbird]

@vickyvicarious It's incredibly weird what briefly-displayed text they decide to actually write versus what they fill with nonsense text. It looks like the paragraph of text at the bottom includes the same text repeated multiple times, but the rest of the text in the (doctored) toy safety report all makes sense for the document!

American Safety Association of Pediatricians

Evaluation of Chubby Snubby Snuffed[sic] Dog

The American Safety Association of Pediatricians has reviewed the safety of the Chubby Snubby 321-X plush stuffed dog toy and given it an overall rating of five stars. The ASA found the toy to be exceptional in terms of quality and manufacture and contained no harmful chemicals, parts or pieces, that may be harmful to children.

Overall safety: 5

Durability: 4

Toxicity: 0

Choking Hazard: 0

The ASA has given the Chubby Snubby it's[sic] highest safety rating level and has been approved for children ages 2 and older.

Testing Procedures

Durability

The Chubby Snubby 321-X was put through standard ASA safety tests including pressure, friction, and tension tests to asses it's[sic] resistance to normal wear and tear as well as extreme situations that may occur. The Chubby Snubby was found to be free of chocking[sic] hazards meaning no lose[sic] pieces, removable pieces, or parts that constitute the whole w to fit into a childs[sic] esophagus.)

[At this point, the initial paragraph prior to the numerical rankings plus the text starting after the "Durability" heading appear to be repeated verbatim based on the visible text.]

[wistfulwatcher]

Leverage Redemption | 2.13 "The Crowning Achievement Job"

[wistfulwatcher]

#i remain FASCINATED by this episode#because i keep finding new things to think about#but i think there's something there about sophie going into this knowing the risk to herself#and finding that she can't actually complete this grift#that statement about giving up enough without being pulled over with the mark#we see sophie give up so little of her past with even the people she trusts most#out of all of them she's the most protective of her identity and her past#(something that clearly changes in the years after she retires with nate#and i love that because it is growth but omg that's a massive slow-burn on her trust)#seeing this through to the end would have required her to give up something about her past to a mark#and also to the team because they would be able to hear her#and it's not that i don't think sophie wouldn't if she got pushed to that point#but being backed into it would have messed her up#in a way that it doesn't parker (via @alinaandalion)

“The idea that the key to the white rabbit is you have to have one emotionally honest moment.” “You have to give something up.” “And this time it was Parker.” “That’s why it’s never been done, because grifters don’t give anything up.” “Yeah, exactly. But Parker was capable of doing it in a way that frankly, Sophie wasn’t.” - John Rogers and Chris Downey, The White Rabbit Job DVD Commentary

[yumekuimono]

does nobody in the Leverageverse wear prescription glasses? Eliot just stole a pair straight off a guy's face

like, my dude. I cannot focus more than about a foot from my nose. if you have 20/20 vision and tried that with my glasses I 100% guarantee you would not be able to see shit.

[maryellencarter]

Rebels thoughts part 2/?

* I keep thinking Vizago’s first name is Cilantro.

* So I have a sort of rant about the Force, which fits as well here as anywhere else. I *really* didn’t expect to get along with a Jedi character, okay, which is the other reason I’m probably not watching Clone Wars. See, my thing about the “will of the Force” is that I don’t think it exists. I think the Force binds the universe together, and if you are Force sensitive and meditate it will show you things, but I think every single piece of “it was meant to be such and such a way” is the relevant Jedi projecting their own interpretation on the events they see.

(I also don’t believe things in our universe have that kind of intentionality behind them. Shit happens. Sometimes it seems like the universe is mocking you. Sometimes it seems like it’s on your side. It’s all pareidolia. Which is a belief that makes my life harder, but that’s another post. I think.)

* Um. Where was I? Right. So I really didn’t expect to like Kanan. I think why I do like him is a combination of facts. One is that he doesn’t pretend to understand the Force; he was only a padawan during Order 66 and he knows little more than Ezra in some ways. Another is that, being voiced by Freddie Prinze Jr, he doesn’t really have a default “reverent” setting like most Jedi. XD So we have a Jedi who’s doing his best, but doesn’t act all-knowing with his dignity up his ass like most Jedi tend to do at times. Also, as noted, he is very much the mom friend. Which is distinct from being the friend who has the brain cell, but he’s competent at what he does and he tries hard to protect the others, which are both characteristics I am weak for.

* Hera usually has the brain cell. Not always. Unusually for an astromech, Chopper *never* has the brain cell. XD Ezra occasionally gets to hold the brain cell for a hot minute but it tends to slip through his fingers. Sabine thinks she has the brain cell a lot more often than she does.

* I suspect the first new-canon Thrawn novel will make a whole lot more sense to me if I reread it now that I know whomst the fuck Arihnda Pryce is and why I should be interested in Lothal.

* I was able to deal with loth-rats and loth-cats, started to roll my eyes at loth-wolves, and am really rather irritated with loth-bats. Seriously, I put more work into naming vegetables in a grocery store in “Dutybound” than this show puts into naming anything to do with Lothal. (Okay, Leia put in most of the work naming the vegetables, but still. If meilooruns were native to Lothal they’d be called loth-mangoes or something.)

* I did like Captain Rex. I may wind up watching Clone Wars at some point to borrow clones and parts of clone culture for Leverageverse. I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned, but in @camshaft22 ‘s and my Leverage AU, Wes (the Eliot character) is the first non-clone to become a clone commando, some time after Order 66 was prevented, which is where the AU branches from canon. He’s culturally a clone, and sometimes forgets he doesn’t have a clone face, which occasionally causes trouble for him. XD Anyway, so that’s my main thought on clones, and Rex is a suitably badass one, I like him.

(You knew I was somehow going to bring Wes into this conversation, right? ;P)

* Kanan destroying the Grand Inquisitor’s lightsaber wheel in the first season finale was sexy as fuck. Just saying.

* The Inquisitors being able to fly with their helicopter lightsaber blades was utterly ridiculous and made them ironically less scary.

* I do kinda see why people like Hondo Ohnaka. He’s very much a trickster’s trickster. He reminds me of somebody but I’m not sure who.

* The B-wing episode was pretty damn cute.

* There needs to be a LOT more Sabine/Ketsu. I swear to god, people, this is the single biggest problem with fandom is you can’t get femslash when it’s right the fuck there in front of you.

* (This is not actually the biggest problem with fandom but I have opinions.)

* “Legends of the Lasat” was a really neat episode. It reminded me of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode where Sisko builds an ancient Bajoran spaceship that flies on tachyon eddies, which made me squee loudly in the 24 hour computer lab the first time I watched it. Both of them hit me squarely in the Thor Heyerdahl / Tim Severin fanthingy -- I have a huge soft spot for that whole genre of using ancient techniques to recreate boats and follow ancient travel paths, and doing it in space only makes it cooler.

(No, I am not allowed to tangent off about Odysseus. Some other time.)

* Tarkin and Vader did *not* have the problem of the voice actors not sounding quite right. Whoever does the animated Tarkin’s voice is astonishingly good.

* Kanan being knighted in the Jedi Temple by the ghost of the Grand Inquisitor! That was such a damn good episode. I really like when the show actually leans on the thing where Jedi aren’t just about fighting, where peace and balance are important.

* Rant, continued: The prequel Jedi especially go on and on about bringing balance to the Force, but they don’t want balance, they want the light side to win. They don’t get it. They don’t consider what they’re actually saying, and that drives me crazier than anything else. Balance requires the existence of both light and dark, order and chaos in equal measure. Ethan has a tangential rant I don’t think we’ve ever actually done anywhere, about how modern culture is so very regimented that the only way to move toward balance is to be aggressively chaotic. That’s an argument we probably need to have in more depth at some point, because I like order and agree that I need to be better at chaos but I also very much want to stay within the confines of society and not be a semi-homeless jobbing magician, Ethan.

* Ahem. Where was I? Balance in the Force, right. I have thoughts about Kanan and the Bendu that are still processing. The Bendu really, really reminds me of Tom Bombadil, which... I can go into more depth in if anyone wants, but short version, I’ve never found Bombadil annoying or pointless, and I have an essay on what approximately makes me think this way, but there will be a lot of Elvish in it.

* I really love Chopper’s friend AP-5. He reminds me a whole hell of a lot of Squeaky. I think one of my very favorite moments in this whole series was the episode where it’s Zeb, Chopper, and AP-5 against the infiltrator droid, and Zeb and AP-5 are sniping at each other like Squeaky and Ton Phanan the whole time. :D

* “Twilight of the Apprentice” was one hell of a season finale. I wonder if they thought they weren’t getting renewed, or if that was a worry, because *damn*. Blinding Kanan, sending Ezra halfway to the Dark Side, blowing up Ahsoka, finishing off the Inquisitors... they certainly did close with a bang.

* Baby Wedge was cute but didn’t have much personality. That seems to be an ongoing problem with new canon’s Wedge, from what I hear. Still and all, rather have Wedge than no Wedge. I wish they’d have gone with more Wedge-and-Hobbie though -- poor Hobbie never gets any damn screen time. It’s a sad case when Starfighters of Adumar is still his best outing with two whole memorable moments. :P

* Saw Guerrera (sp?) makes me very uncomfortable. I know he’s supposed to, to show the way the “good” side can become extremists, but I was one slip of an Overton window from becoming him myself for a long time, and I don’t like being reminded. Nor having the writerly part of my brain noticing how I could write him more realistically.

[aardvaark]

requirements for being a good hitter in the leverageverse:

have long hair (eliot, quinn, roper, mikel dayan)

share your name with a poet (t. s. eliot, percy shelley)

taunt and condescend your opponents in the middle of a possibly life-or-death fight

maybe a little bit of knowing how to fight or whatever. pretty sure the above stuff is more important tho <3

[leverage-ot3]

a couple years later you seem him on a late night hockey game as a newfound underdog player

almost a decade later ur kid is watching a videogame tournament and in the background eliot is wearing a headband is apparently their chef because go figure I guess

Wanting Eliot Spencer dead must be so baffling. This week he’s become a famous baseball player. In a few more months he’s going viral as a country singer. Then he’s a world-famous chef. Somehow you can still never catch this man.

[thexanderzone]

@twentypcundsofcrazy // ✖✖✖

“I’m looking for my friend, and he didn’t mention any blondes.” Xander took a second to appreciate her body because, come on, she had a figure. Then he was back to glancing around without taking his eyes off her. There weren’t any traditional escape routes, but already, he could tell this one was all about non-traditional. That just made this more fun. When she said duck, he smirked. “I’m not gonna fall for that. Nice try, though.” Closing the distance between them, he stood close enough she could have kicked back and hit him pretty hard if she knew how, “I’m gonna check if you’re carrying.” She didn’t look like she was, and maybe this was half an excuse to feel her up while patting her down, but he was protective of his friends. He didn’t have many, not ones that really lasted like Eliot. Taking his time, once he was done, he clicked his teeth. “You’re good. You can turn around, long as you tell me who you are.” 

[weaknessforgallantry-blog]

"Don't Say It"

Home, to Remy, means something a little different than it does to other people. It’s because Remy learned what it was like to have a home only when he was ten, plucked off the streets to live with the Thieves Guild. Home is a little unsettling and a little challenging, but there’s food there. Food he doesn’t have to pay for, but does have to share. Home is safe, but sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. 

Living with Logan is like that, and for a long time Remy doesn’t mind. Dinner with Logan is good, and so is sleeping with him and waking up next to him and cooking him breakfast. It's better than it ever has been with anyone else, because Logan knows that Remy's a filthy thief and doesn't mind, but eventually Remy has to admit to himself that sometimes it's also worse than it's ever been before. He can't go on with the relationship indefinitely, no matter how much he'd like to.

Logan must know it’s coming. He’s a tactless asshole, sometimes, and more willing to punch people than to listen (and Remy can relate, honest) but Logan isn’t stupid or oblivious. Remy’s been trying to put it off, to hide it, but as good as Remy is at lying he’s never been able to keep from flinching. Logan must known it’s coming, but they’ve been ignoring it. Maybe because Remy is hiding enough that Logan doesn’t think it’s out of the ordinary. Maybe because they’re both optimistic. If a relationship with the Wolverine could ever be considered to have a honeymoon period, Remy supposes that they might still be in it, after all.

It must seem like Remy is afraid of Logan. He’s not, not really, not since Logan became his partner, and then his partner. You can’t work with a hitter you don't trust, and Remy’s never been the kind of fool to fall into bed with someone who scares him, but…

It’s the claws.

From the moment Logan first unsheathed them to threaten Remy into helping him investigate Logan’s past, Remy has been unable to look at them without remembering Sabretooth. Not just because the sight of them makes Remy smell sewage and blood, but because Logan has the same violent, feral edge to him that Sabretooth had. Maybe there is and maybe there isn’t a solid link between Logan and Sabretooth — it’s not as if Remy is ever going to bring Sabretooth up in conversation with Logan, after all.

Logan was stubborn, and Remy considered himself dedicated. They could probably work it out. But eventually Logan would find out that Remy had been on a crew with Sabretooth, and what that crew had been hired to do. Remy would prefer that he and Logan were on strictly business terms by the time Logan learns the truth, because Remy prefers being stabbed by business partners rather than bed partners.

"Took a job in Moscow," Remy says, finally, when they've just finished wrapping up their latest job together. "Alone. Figured dat we could use a break."

[aardvaark]

Who's your favorite Leverage side character? Like Tara, Hurley, Quinn, etc.

hi! ooh its hard to pick, i really like how leverage often gives a fair amount of personality to even just single-episode characters, let alone recurring ones. i love tara, love some of their villains-turned-kinda-allies like sterling & cha0s, etc.

however, maggie is probably my overall favourite. well, more accurately, parker is my favourite main character and her interactions with maggie are very sweet & funny, and therefore that makes me like maggie even more lol. it’s sweet how parker immediately becomes sort of attached to maggie when they meet properly in the second david job. see the following Q&A from john roger’s blog post about the zanzibar marketplace job:

aw parker <3

but anyway, maggie is great just in general, too! i like how she can spot the con stuff that no one else in the leverageverse seems to see. she notices the button camera, mentions that "the receptionist" (parker) at the plane hangar disappeared, recognises sophie & doesn’t just brush it off when sophie pretends to be someone else, hears the difference in nate’s normal speaking vs talking into comms, etc. she’s very perceptive probably bc her whole job is spotting inconsistencies - seeing the little details that mean an art piece is a forgery.

i like to imagine that the leverage team runs into her about once every year or two, some way or another. like "ah no maggie got kidnapped again ://" or "why are YOU at this art auction??" etc. and i think parker, hardison & eliot would occasionally check in on her post-nate & sophie’s exit. she’d get christmas cards, you know? sometimes the team is in town and maggie knows this because parker has inexplicably appeared in her living room in the dead of night. etc. about 99% of the time, maggie lives a pretty normal life, and then occasionally she’s watching tv and eliot is on the news holding a puppy or hardison is advertising some children’s toy and she just has to exist with that knowledge lol.

recently i’ve also been thinking about peggy & hurley a bit too. in the girls/boys night out jobs, they met and it seemed like they might get together. and in redemption, parker has mentioned that peggy and hurley are still her friends. we’ve also seen that hurley has become part of leverage international. it would be cool if peggy & hurley were still together, and at some point peggy has had to learn a bit more about her friend alice white and what her bf/husband does for work! i mean, even if peggy & hurley are not together, i kinda wanna know what parker’s friendship with peggy is like now! it’s been over a decade, does she know what alice/parker does? or does parker like keeping that part of her life, her alice identity, somewhat separate? plus not knowing would probably help prevent endangering peggy. idk! thoughts anyone??

thank you for the ask!!

[leverage-ot3]

your boss is a suave friendly funny guy and for the first time you actually enjoy your employer. you get paid well (WAY more than minimum wage), as many sick days as you need, generous vacation days, excellent benefits, childcare support, the list goes on. by far best workplace you've ever worked at. randomly comes into the kitchen at least twice a month with a new food gadget that drives the head chef INSANE. hosts local D&D nights for folks in the neighborhood- one for adults and one for youth. make sure the brewpub hosts the portland pride afterparty every year and openly dotes on his gf. seems a bit fruity, possibly having something homoerotic w the head chef

his girlfriend? super weird but not in a bad way. shimmies up into the rafters for fun at random times, always keeps cereal boxes behind the bar for easy access (ONLY for her, but if a staff member brings in a child she will probably share). the reason why they were still finding confetti and glitter in the restaurant five (5) months after pride ended. either doesn't want to be touched whatsoever or clings to the boss (and surprisingly, the head chef...)

the head chef? thank god you just wait tables, bc yeah no one says he's mean in the kitchen but his face, posture, etc just seem intimidating. you hear he's wickedly good with knives and makes some weird references, but you also see him making funfetti waffles from SCRATCH (not on the menu) with chocolate syrup for the boss' girlfriend. legit made a recipe for edible glitter for her. he rolls his eyes and complains but even you can tell it's preformative. the blonde can poke him even when he's annoyed and he still just lets her (even calms down!). you once came in early and walked into the kitchen to see her hanging off his back while he was mixing cookie dough. you backed out slowly (they noticed you, just gave you the grace to not be embarrassed). your boss brings in stupid food doohickes and chef acts mad but you can tell it's more fond than anything. wore a bi pride pin last june which makes you wonder...

to us they're hitter, hacker, thief, but to the brewpub employees its: the boss, his girlfriend, and his head chef

[lindseymcdonaldseyelashes]

i didn’t mind the "fixer" title as far as it sounding real enough, but i think that’s cause i read/watch too much stuff with fixer lawyers lol. like that’s very much a thing but the implication when it comes to harry is a bit awkward lol. like calling a corrupt lawyer a fixer is not exactly a compliment, and harry’s trying to NOT be a corrupt lawyer anymore.

"maker" sounds a bit more made up to me. i always thought "hitter" was a bit of a funny title too so i guess ill get used to it. i know that technically hitter was already a word before leverage but its just so uncommon. it sounds like a gender neutral term for hitman… which i guess it basically is, right? and im sure that just naturally came into being but the scenario that makes in my minds eye is so funny… that women & trans ppl in the Murder Industry sat down & decided on a more inclusive term for hitman… "hmm hitman or hitwoman?" "no, what about nonbinary people?" "hitperson?" "theres gotta be a cooler sounding option than that". i think that’s how it would have happened in the leverageverse to be fair lol, life’s just a bit more quirky there. i think a leverageverse hitter would respect my they/them pronouns right before they kill me. like "oh yeah, i get it, my colleague Freddie uses they/them too. they’re an excellent hitter - that’s a gender neutral term agreed upon at the Crime World convention. Freddie got to speak on the ‘Trans, Intersex & Gender Diverse People In Assassination’ panel there last year. interesting panel, i learnt a lot. anyway i gotta poison you now."

I think it's interesting because I'd definitely heard "hitter" before in the same context, so I guess it never sounded weird to me, but I can't remember where for the life of me? I feel like it pre-dated it being an issue of inclusivity but I could be remembering wrong. Your version is more fun, though.

And "fixer" is another one that's been around forever, but when you try to put it in any order with "maker" and the other names it starts sounding real goofy to me for no good reason

[wistfulwatcher]

little crew moments (5/∞) | hardison & sophie in the debutante job