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1. disturbia by rihanna, 2008

Me watching Leverage for the 485th time: Hardison is the most talented wonderful person in the entire show. While all the main characters are shown to be extremely skilled in their fields, Hardison is consistently shown to be remarkably good at picking up and mastering new skills in a matter of days and even hours. He is able to master enough of old book manufacture to convince a historian his fake is authentic, he is able to explain to someone over the phone how to land a plane, he picks up a violin for the first time in years and, with a bit of manipulation from Nate, manages to play one of the most difficult pieces ever written. When Hardison expresses worry about saving an entire city, and theoretically the entire world, from the spanish flu, a disease that previously killed about 1/30th of the world’s population, Eliot says he’s not worried because Hardison is the smartest man he’s ever met. When Moreau says he has the media, the guns, and the government, Nate responds with “I have a 24-year-old genius with a smartphone and a problem with authority. You never really stood a chance.”

Hardison does almost all of the background work for any given con, with little to no thanks. He creates all the aliases, all the backgrounds, scopes out the ideal places to set up shop, organises all needed travel, runs backgrounds on nearly every person the team meets, and then packages all the relevant information into a little 3 minute slideshow that is easily understood by everybody in the room without being condescending.

He’s also one of the more emotionally mature of the main characters, tied only with Eliot. Unlike Eliot, however, Hardison is not only in touch with his feelings but able and willing to express them outwardly in non-self-destructive ways. He has a variety of hobbies (MMORPGs, brewery, watching movies, remixing music, etc) instead of just one or two that he’s shoehorned into whenever he has free time (drinking, stealing, bungee jumping, fighting people).

He is repeatably shown to be the most concerned with keeping the team together and also repeatably shown to be the softest. Parker, Nate, and Eliot are shown to make questionable decisions if they believe it’s for the greater good (of the con, of the team, etc), and Sophie is rarely in position to make a decision like that and often chooses her own survival in situations where she is, but Hardison, consistenly, has massive amounts of empathy for others, to the point where Eliot tells Parker that Hardison would have died in the ice cave on the mountain, because he would have tried so hard to bring the man’s body back to his wife. When Parker is unable to express explicitly that she likes Hardison, saying she’s having feelings about pretzels, Hardison’s response is to offer pretzels and say that they are there when she decides if she wants them. He doesn’t pressure her into making a statement or a decision, even by saying that he likes her (because there’s an inherent pressure to reciprocate those feelings when you’re under a microscope like that).

From what we know of the main characters, Nate’s first act of crime was one of revenge, as was Parker’s. Sophie’s was of self-interest, and Eliot was following orders and went too deep, then felt he couldn’t turn back.

Hardison’s first crime was stealing money from an institution that could readily afford it in order to pay the medical bills of his caregiver.

Contestant 1: *BUZZ* Solicited nudes from minors!

Youtuber: -incident that-

Contestant 2: *BUZZ* Said a slur during a stream!

Youtuber: -occured on my trip-

Contestant 1: *BUZZ* Went to a foreign country and disrespected a holy place!

Persephone: Oh no sir, today is my first day out of doors and Mamá forbade mirrors in the house lest we fall victim to vanity.

She felt undeserving when she was appointed as UN Women goodwill ambassador and sought out Gloria Steinem to learn about feminist activism.

She thinks the criticism she received for being a white feminist was useful because it made her educate herself.

She says there’s a desperate need to reform the education system in the UK to change the way they are taught the history of how Britain has been involved in foreign affairs and how they profited from slavery.

She felt anxious about approaching 30 because there’s a lot of pressure to have a husband and a baby by then and she’s still figuring her life out.

She was so young when she was casted in Harry Potter that she doesn’t remember much of her life before it and she went to therapy to deal with her issues with fame. She used to feel very guilty for being unhappy because she thought she should enjoy fame more.

The interviewer is a transgender woman and they discuss transgender issues for a while. Emma is in regular contact with a trans child which makes the topic of trans rights emotional for her because she’s very anxious for this kid’s safety.

She talks about her role as Meg March in the new Little Women movie and defends that unlike what many people say choosing to be a wife and a mother doesn’t make Meg a less feminist character and quotes a line from the movie, “Just because my dreams are different than yours it doesn’t mean they are unimportant.”  

She wishes more people would realize she’s not Hermione Granger but also understands why they want to see that in her because Hermione is a symbol for her too.

She used to think she could never be happy without a partner and now that she has learnt to navigate that better and is genuinely happy single she’s started to think of herself as self - partnered in contrast to the time when she thought of herself as single = lonely.