Leverage and Librarians

“First season of LEVERAGE - so he's 21 years old - he shows me his watch designs. I'm expecting, y' know, celebrity strap branding or faces. No, it's engineering schematics of GEARS and shit. Pages of them. Even then, there were none so cool.” - John Rogers

The Leverage Trio

"Why is Eliot pouring your tea? Did you brainwash him again?"

'These apps are the enemy. They're thoughtless, joyless, and our friends are powerless aginst them."

Source

When I was in high school, competitive cheer was just taking off as A Thing. A hot debate, among students but also, like, in newspapers, was "Is Cheerleading A Real Sport?" and the high injury rate was always invoked as a major point in favor of the Real Sport argument. This was literally one of the debate topics in my senior debate class, with the class's only male cheerleader arguing on the Real Sport side and citing the injury rate. The kid who took negative position argued that cheerleading injuries were minor and didn't count.

There were a lot of Serious Articles about the Rise of Athletic Cheerleading, and it was this whole Girl Power Feminist argument of "Cheerleaders are finally being recognized as Tough Physical Athletes doing Tough Physical Athletics, not just girls being pretty on the sidelines!" The injury rate was used to legitimize male cheerleading, too -- "See, male cheerleaders aren't Weak Effeminate Gay Unmanly Sissyboys, they're Real Athletes who get injured!"

Granted, this was before there was so much awareness and concern about the long-term effects of concussions, specifically, but, like, we were all surrounded by middle-aged adults whose bad knees hurt whenever it rained because of some high school sports injury.

So the interesting cultural shift, to me, isn't "We used to think cheerleading was safe, and now we're realizing that it's not"; it's "We used to think teenagers getting broken bones was a good thing, and now we're starting to question that."

Source

When I was in high school, competitive cheer was just taking off as A Thing. A hot debate, among students but also, like, in newspapers, was "Is Cheerleading A Real Sport?" and the high injury rate was always invoked as a major point in favor of the Real Sport argument. This was literally one of the debate topics in my senior debate class, with the class's only male cheerleader arguing on the Real Sport side and citing the injury rate. The kid who took negative position argued that cheerleading injuries were minor and didn't count.

There were a lot of Serious Articles about the Rise of Athletic Cheerleading, and it was this whole Girl Power Feminist argument of "Cheerleaders are finally being recognized as Tough Physical Athletes doing Tough Physical Athletics, not just girls being pretty on the sidelines!" The injury rate was used to legitimize male cheerleading, too -- "See, male cheerleaders aren't Weak Effeminate Gay Unmanly Sissyboys, they're Real Athletes who get injured!"

Granted, this was before there was so much awareness and concern about the long-term effects of concussions, specifically, but, like, we were all surrounded by middle-aged adults whose bad knees hurt whenever it rained because of some high school sports injury.

So the interesting cultural shift, to me, isn't "We used to think cheerleading was safe, and now we're realizing that it's not"; it's "We used to think teenagers getting broken bones was a good thing, and now we're starting to question that."

hey um. we did not get this specific shot in the Wedding Episode and this is actually a brand new image courtesy of Avery's flashback in this ep so uh... enjoy

So off the top of my head we have...

Tristan “wears his heart on his sleeve” Silva being the only one of the throuple to paint his duck and then proceed to share things about himself because he knows himself well? Checks out.

Avery not ever painting the ducks but still ultimately using them as an attempted means of communication in a halfway sort of way, while she's trying to determine who she is and what she wants in life? Checks out.