behold, my contribution to the leverage fandom
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@incorrectleveragequotes
behold, my contribution to the leverage fandom

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i think that one of the most interesting things about leverage, and one of the things it does better than almost any other show, is use low stakes to build tension in high-stakes situations. in ways that you can often forget on rewatch.
because Leverage is not a show where characters are going to die in mid-season episodes. that's WHY the finale's fakeout works so well; it's the finale, it's the one episode of the show where they genuinely could die and the plot would still work. easy to forget, but nate kicks it at the end of S2 as well - if the show hadn't gotten renewed he'd be canonically dead. but in general, physical danger isn't a huge threat to these characters because they still need to be functional in the next episode. and in a lot of shows, that kills the stakes outright.
so, this is why we have Eliot. bear with me a minute, this is going under a "read more" because it's long.
the average tumblrina would be obsessed with leverage if they were willing to open their hearts
i know i've said this plenty of times before but it's so rare to be watching a television show and know that the audience and the creators are on the exact same page about what parts of the show are the important and appealing ones. leverage really hits its stride immediately in the pilot and doesn't ever let up on it more than incidentally. there's not a single episode in all five seasons thats actually bad, and the worst they ever get is that the episode's main plot will be kind of uninteresting. but the writers and actors all care so much about the characters that it's more than capable of carrying a few weaker one-off plots. its just so much fun ugh!!!
I didn't know this was a TV series and thought you were talking about like... the mechanical/physics concept of leverage until I read the reblog. And just accepted that like "yeah true"
tumblrinas can not get enough of this
@leverage-ot3
I’m making my best friend watch through Leverage with me and jfc I forgot just how much I love this show. I’m sorry barring how lovable the characters are and how cathartic it is to watch them ruin rich people’s lives every episode and it being the best example of the found family trope I’ve ever seen it’s just.
This show is so motherfucking funny.
Like in the Missing Heir Job the mark asks what Parker was doing in the other room and Nate just straight out his ass goes “ummmm stealing! she has a meth problem!” and Parker deadpanning harder than any human has ever deadpanned before goes “I do. I love meth.”
Note that this is after Nate conspicuously keeps trying to loudly work the word “safe” into his convo with the mark to get Parker to stop robbing the guy and come pretend to be the long lost heir of the dude whose inheritance they’re trying to get in the right hands– which the mark buys to such a degree that he immediately tries to have Parker killed.
Nothing is funnier to me than when this group of savant geniuses fall apart in the middle of a con and have to bullshit their way out. Leverage Inc has one brain cell and Sophie has it 95% of the time.
I do love how the competence porn in this show is very much NOT “look at these five experts in their fields doing everything they do to perfection”. It is very much, “hey these guys fuck up all the time but they have the experience and know how to get out of SituationsTM and this is why they are the best at what they do”.
The other, also delicious, flavor of competence porn turned comedy with these guys is that “they’re TOO good at what they do and thus create their own problems.”
For example, being so convincing the guy tries to have Parker killed, as you said above, or a fake ID being so convincing it gets pulled for jury duty, etc.
I like the one where they launch a fake investigation about a fake mole in a company, and end up finding a real one
Poll: Semi finals #1
Who is the coolest biromantic? Parker from Leverage vs Rosa Diaz from Brooklyn 99
Parker
Rosa Diaz
[ Image ID. An image of Parker from Leverage. She is wearing a leather jacket and her hair blonde hair is in a ponytail, she is glancing to the left of the image with a scowl on her face, she is standing next to a wall, and an image of Rosa Diaz from Brooklyn 99. She is wearing all black and a leather jacket and she is leaning over with her hands against a black table, she is glaring at something out of frame of the camera. End ID]

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FINAL SHOWDOWN OF ULTIMATE DESTINY:
Gaang (Aang, Katara, Sokka, Toph, Suki, Zuko) from Avatar: The Last Airbender
VS
Leverage Crew (Nate Ford, Sophie Devereaux, Eliot Spencer, Parker, Alec Hardison) from Leverage
Vote!
Gaang
Leverage Crew
#VOTE LEVERAGE#in s2 Hardison and Eliot buy Nate's apartment and break through his wall KoolAid man style to force him out of his broody sadman times#they buy HQs that are Parker-friendly (big vents high ceilings etc)#they all go from lone wolves to begrudging (minus Hardison he loves it) cooperation to utterly ride or die in such good ways#when Parker gets stuck they mount a rescue mission for her before she even reaches out for help#Eliot canonically cooks for them#and just. the fucking. the finale#god#vote for my crime children or Else (via @raindropsonwhiskers)
Leverage is not winning *sob*
Semifinals - Immovable Object
Hardison/Parker/Eliot (Leverage)
Fred/Daphne/Velma/Shaggy (Scooby Doo)
What do you think of redemption?
I've only seen the first half of the first season, so far, but I thought it was solidly 3.5/5. Scratches the itch of Leverage: Classic, but not quite as hard? Breanna and Harry are great additions to the crew, but it felt like the writers kind of forgot how to write Leverage. Most of my issues had to do with the way the heists are plotted; too much of the plot relying on chance and luck rather than sheer hypercompetence, and the latter is far more compelling to me personally. It reminds me of Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again - a fine follow-up, but it just makes me want to watch the original material.
I can speak more on this or other specific questions if people are interested, but that sums up my general opinions.
-Mod L
I love that Leverage really goes out of it’s way to show us that just because you break the ‘rules’, it doesn’t mean you’re breaking the rules. Rules and laws and society are all made up, at the end of the day, and all you really have is your own moral compass and sense of justice; is this just to you? Is it right? Should it be OK for companies to put people in insurmountable debt for the rest of their lives just because our medical care is so expensive in this modern day and age? No law or rule should change what you know in your heart is right and wrong, and I think that’s the key thing that makes someone a good person in my eyes.
#there was a time when parker wouldn’t have noticed, #not because she lacked the capacity to care, #but because she had narrowed herself, #to stay alive she cut off as many unnecessary things as possible, #watching her get them all back, #is one of the glories of this show (via @seananmcguire)
Leverage hands down has the best character development I’ve ever seen.
This scene hit me like a brick. My parents were hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt when I was 16 bc I’d had cancer the year before (my treatment ended up being free but the initial ER bills and such were not).
But somewhere along the line they just… Disappeared. My mom says they’re not being paid and they’re not in collections. It’s almost as if someone out there did…exactly what Parker did.
Ever since I saw this the first time, I’ve imagined it was Parker doing it. That she and Hardison had a free weekend and decided to take it out on a collections agency. That I was one of the lucky ones who got a little Leverage.
Okay but like yeah, that is actually a thing that happens, albeit not exactly like this. I don’t remember the exact process but basically there’s a booming industry to sell peoples debt - the business you owe money to sells it to someone else for a fraction of the money owed, wipes their hands of the whole affair, and now whoever bought your debt is riding your ass to get you to give the money to the. But it’s also entirely possible for people to just… buy up massive amounts of debt for pennies on the dollar, and then just. Forgive it. Because capitalism is a living nightmare, but the system is broken enough that it’s possible to exploit it for good sometimes.
Like, the main reason I know about this is because John Oliver did a piece on debt buying a few years ago, and ended it by revealing that he’d bought 15 million dollars worth of medical debt just so he could forgive all of it. Both to expose how broken the system was because some random fucker like him could buy millions of dollars in peoples debt with zero regulations, and also just to take the record for biggest TV giveaway in history.
A charity where you can do this, right here.
Be Parker! Be somebody else’s Leverage!
Reblogging for the website.
I suddenly woke up stupid early on my day off with multiple weird random aches and pains and a revelation about the Leverage chess metaphors.
They’re all wrong.
Look, I obviously adore the white knight/black king motif, and it works really well for that very specific discussion of Nate’s shift in morality and position at the opening of the series. But the show as well as I and other fans have then tried to take that equation and apply it to other jobs and to the crew as a whole. This is fun and awesome, but I believe you’re going to get it wrong every time if you start from the white knight/black king line.
Because in all other situations, Nate is not the king.
Couple important things about kings in chess: 1. They don’t move much. They can only move one space at a time, and for most of the game they stay in their own little box, well guarded by other pieces. This is because 2. When the king is checkmated (threatened with capture and no possible escape), it’s game over. There is no more hope. This is the sole requirement for losing the game. No matter who else is in play, if the king is down, you lose.
This is NOT how Nate operates. Yeah, he makes the plans, but he doesn’t just hide in the office while everybody else carries them out. He’s almost always right up in there playing the most obnoxious guy you’ve ever met or smashing windows or something. And if Nate gets captured, it’s not game over, in fact, it often isn’t even a PROBLEM. Let’s look at a few times that happens, just for fun: - In The King George Job, Nate’s getting beat up and Eliot slightly panics and is about to run to help, when Sophie says “NOPE, don’t do that, I can fix this without blowing our cover” and saunters in at her leisure. The jig isn’t up and she’s not even particularly concerned about him getting punched. I love it. - In the Maltese Falcon Job, Nate sacrifices himself to save the team. This is a classic thing to do in chess and chess metaphors, but, I cannot stress this enough, you cannot sacrifice your king. That’s just called LOSING. -In The Long Goodbye Job of course the whole con is structured around Nate getting caught. I guess this one kind of makes sense because the whole point is to look like they HAVE completely lost, but then at the end it appears that Nate’s going to secret prison and everyone else is escaping WITH the black book, so they STILL would be losing Nate but winning the job.
So if Nate isn’t the king, who is?
Hardison.
Let’s look at our points about kings again:
1. Doesn’t move as far or as quickly: Yes, Hardison ALSO gets out there and participates in the cons, everybody does. But Hardison does stay in the background more often, because that’s where his power is. He does the behind the scenes tech stuff and the remote stuff, he can wreck your shop without showing up through the power of the internet. He also does the forgeries of identities and objects, which are also done in his own space. At the same time, he has less physical power and less range – you don’t want him in a fistfight, or a gunfight, and his grifts are notorious for being a little… uh… interesting. So he has limited physical range and power but at the same time… .
2. The game is over if you lose him. That far-reaching behind the scenes power is absolutely vital for 90% of the jobs. He does the massive amounts of research and hacking legwork needed just to START a job, even before you get to actually completing the job. You are pretty much dead in the water without Hardison. But that’s just from a practical standpoint. Losing Hardison is also a crisis from an emotional standpoint. He’s our moral compass and our sweet baby brother and when Hardison gets in trouble there is no “well he’ll be fine for a few minutes” and no “well he kinda had it coming.” No, when Hardison is in trouble everything else grinds to a halt and everyone comes running. (See: The Experimental Job, The Grave Danger Job, The Long Goodbye Job.)
So like, yes Nate is in charge. But the king isn’t in charge on a chessboard, the king is just a piece with a very unique role, which Hardison fills much better than Nate does. So, now that we have our real king, who are our other pieces?
Queen: Parker. This has nothing to do with her dating Hardison. The thing about the queen is she can do a little bit of everything – she can move in any direction, making her the most dangerous piece on the board. Parker’s whole character arc is about learning all the different roles and how to access the whole playing field. She’s the only one who plans and executes an entire episode-length job by herself (okay, with a little help from her girlfriend). Plus, the other cool thing about a queen is she has a built-in transformation story – a pawn that crosses the board can become a queen, which Parker mimics by initially being dismissed as “the crazy one” and ultimately becoming the mastermind.
Knight: Sophie. I know, I wanted Eliot to be the horsie too, but this makes more sense. The knight’s deal is that it’s sneaky – it’s the only piece that can turn corners – and it can jump over obstacles. Sophie’s whole philosophy of grifting is that she shouldn’t need to know about safes or security systems, she should be able to bypass (jump over) all that by insinuating herself with the mark (being sneaky by playing a character to get behind enemy lines)
Rook: Eliot. This is the straightforward one – it goes in a straight line. It also literally represents the castle walls. It’s also so, so fucking helpful to have around, I fucking hate losing my rooks. It’s your solid right hand man, basically. Is this a little reductive of Eliot? Absolutely, but I’m jamming five complex characters into five predetermined boxes, it’s not all gonna be nuanced. And I think Mr. Punchy would like being seen as the fortress that everybody depends on, and to let all the nuance go under the radar. That’s where he likes it.
Bishop: Finally, here’s where Nate is hiding. While the rook can only go straight (lol), the bishop can only go diagonally. Nothing can be straightforward for the bishop, he always has to come at things from an angle. Like, you know, constantly looking at all the different angles of a situation and finding the right angle to come at a mark from. Also, the bishops sit right in the middle right next to the king and queen. I don’t know that this is historically accurate, but when my dad taught me to play he told me that was because the bishops were important councilors to the rulers, they were the ones who had important wisdom that would tell them the best plan of attack. So the king here isn’t necessarily the one making the plans – that’s the bishop. And finally, apparently the bishop is called lots of different things in other languages, but we’re operating in English, which means it makes Nate a priest, and that makes me happy.

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Leverage + @screenshotsofdespair (1/?)
thinking about the Sterling & Eliot fight scene in the context of that thing where Eliot seeming to be out of control is pretty much always a grift. It’s something I didn’t properly twig until reading this meta of the french connection job - and it surprised me how perfectly possible it is to watch the show and believe his performance at every turn.
(even with the example early on of Eliot using this trick - anger as a performance, quickly switched off - to get Sophie to admit that she wasn’t apologising. I will never be over season one Eliot successfully tricking the team’s grifter that way. And for such a gentle reason.)
so we get Nate strolling casually up to the table to ask Sterling what he’s doing here - which, big mob boss vibes there, it’s gorgeous - and I’m just thinking about how Eliot ‘snapping’ and going after Sterling allows Nate to be civilised, because Nate doesn’t have to threaten Sterling or remind him not to mess with them; his man, working for him and under his control, has already done that. And Nate being civilised and calling the shots allows Eliot to safely lean into his don’t-mess-with-me angry hitter persona, probably to make a point, probably to have a little fun as well. (Really I don’t even stop to justify that scene. It just causes me so much joy as it is.)
the first time I saw the french connection job, the ‘call off your dog’ bit bugged me. Nate hearing that and (after a moment) doing so meant he was implicitly agreeing with the idea that Eliot was his dog, and that Eliot wasn’t capable of standing down by himself. Which goes entirely out the window if it’s a grift. Reading it as almost transactional, an agreement between the two to enable each other to lean into their respective roles in little plays for their marks’ benefits - and their own - makes it so much better. Nate gets to come across as reasonable and in control of powerful assets; Eliot gets to scare people into believing that he really would hurt them badly if they gave him a reason, and his reputation survives another day, and people don’t look too closely.
“You know, people underestimate you, Eliot.” “That’s kind of the point.”
there’s quite a bit of trust in it, both ways - and an unspoken understanding of what’s really going on - and it just… I just think it’s neat.
#Playing Nate’s pet hitter is kind of just a different spin on his “power negative” grifts. #In one version he pretends the mark is the one with the power. #In the other he pretends that Nate’s the one in power and that the mark is in danger from both of them. #But either way Eliot rarely assumes the role of the person in charge #even though he’s the most ready to call Nate out of anyone on the team. #He doesn’t want to be in charge. But he has standards for how being “in charge” should be done and he will enforce them. [tags by @onyxbird]
When we write Eliot playing the cons, he tends to — and this is a lot of Christian’s acting choice — he tends to play the character very power negative. It’s a subtle thing but he’s actually the second best. Eliot is the second best after Sophie on the cons. Parker isn’t comfortable enough with people, Hardison always goes over the top, and Nate is too distracted and to a great degree, particularly in this season, really is working through his addiction to vengeance and control. - John Rogers, 2x02 Audio Commentary
leverage is so funny cause they start out with like, really Sympathetic Pretty Victims for the people who love cop shows like “poor ceo just trying to make airplanes :(” and “patriotic war vet” and “priest” and then like a season later theyre like “anyway landlords are scum, all cops are bastards, have you considered that prison is an inherently racist and violent institution”
like episode 9 isn’t about any sort of mob boss or corrupt person doing secret Evil Crimes, its about how it’s entirely legal to screw poor people over with forclosures just to make a buck, and also includes a cop randomly showing up to do some light brutality against nate just to intimidate him. leverage really said “okay now that i’ve got you on board with how sexy heists are, lets talk about how fundamentally broken the system is and how the law isn’t remotely just”
So I’ve started watching Leverage again…
#i think that eliot was supposed to be way more cultured and hipster at first#hence this scene#but then they just decided to go with country boy thug#which okay#but i still miss THIS eliot#leverage#favorite character alert
actualmenacebuckybarnes: okay but can’t he be both though? Like, okay, I get the backstory, as it’s been given to us, but this is my number one pet peeve about the perception of Southerners, country people and of violent characters generally.
Eliot Spencer is incredibly smart and very cultured. When other characters talk about pink collar jobs, Eliot corrects them and is far more aware of that sort of thing than they are (Sophie says ‘stewardess’, Eliot immediately tells her ‘flight attendant,’ etc.). He has a great knowledge of not just knife technique, which, okay, but wines, distillery, flavor composition, etc. He routinely passes as professions deemed higher class than that which is perceived to be his own (doctor, lawyer, accountant), and he uses his means of accomplishing tasks, violence, with skill and discernment and not mere force.
He also reads Nate better than anyone, including Sophie, and calls him on his bullshit directly all the time.
When we see Eliot interacting with the rest of the team, it’s not that he’s uncultured or less of a hipster trope, it’s that it reads different coming from him than say, Hardison because he has a Southern twang, a gravelly voice, and a tendency to punctuate with the word “damn it.” Which is a local dialectical thing, honestly, I do it, my mom’s boyfriend does it, a lot of people around here do it.
Eliot with the Leverage crew is Eliot relaxed. He’s code switching. When he knows something, he tells them, ‘it’s a very distinctive,’ which is like our tumblr shorthand ‘for reasons.’ They come to trust that when Eliot says ‘it’s a very distinctive’ he means, ‘It’s complicated and I know it from experience, but it’s not important enough for you to know that I have to explain, so move on.’ He doesn’t have to turn on his charm or put forth any sort of airs, they know him, they know how he operates, they know how he thinks, so he can just grumble and swear and threaten and keep working, so he’s happy.
He doesn’t like talking. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t like anything else, he just doesn’t like talking. Some people don’t. Doesn’t mean they don’t think, I mean, there’s that old proverb about removing all doubt, right?
I never see Eliot as a thug. I see him as a country boy hipster whose professional life is punching people in the face, and, aside from the resume, I know that guy. I went to school with that guy. I’ve banged that guy on multiple occasions. He’s a great guy.
This description means I have to find this show. I married this guy.
A lot of people with that twang don’t like to talk because talking too much is discouraged in this geographical location. We’re taught to include being taciturn as part of the masculine ideal.
Eliot is a brilliantly written character.

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Parker: You killed one of ours, Olga. Now we’re coming after you. You will be dead by nightfall.
Nate: Hey, it’s Öga För Öga, idiots. Swedish for “an eye for an eye.” It means the Swedes tried to kill Eliot.
Parker: ... wrong number. Have a lovely day.
You said that if you ever were going to do a same sex experimentation, it was going to be with me.
Tara, to Sophie