Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

bonehandledknife:

grrlinthefireplace:

In the course of my rewatch-all-5-seasons-of-Leverage binge over the past few months, I’ve realized that my favorite long-running gag is Eliot choosing the wrong thing to get mad about.

• Sophie accuses him of sleeping around with waitresses and stewardesses?  “FIRST OF ALL, THEY’RE CALLED FLIGHT ATTENDANTS”
• Hardison denies stealing Eliot’s sandwich and says “you probably ate it yourself and forgot about it?” “OH, MY SANDWICH IS FORGETTABLE????“ [launches into insanely detailed cooking techniques of what, to be fair, does sound like a bonkers delicious sandwich]
• Hardison announces that he’s bought a brewery in Portland where they can hide out slash take cases slash brew their own beer?  Everyone else is like “why the eff did we have to move to this new town with no warning” and Eliot is LIVID that Hardison is underestimating how hard food and beer pairings are.  “THE BREWPUB MENU IS THE HARDEST KIND OF MENU TO DESIGN!”

I literally never get tired of it.  I could watch Christian Kane get offended at implausibly bizarre perceived insults ALL DAY.

You know what though, like, to me what’s glorious about Elliot is that, to me, he’s always choosing the RIGHT thing to get mad about.

1) ignoring the sex shaming because he’s not gonna dignify that with a response but standing up for how the women choose to identify themselves.

2) attacking the most obvious lie because it has been established that Hardison appreciates the Elliot!food (a squeeze of lemon) and how dare Hardison not only lie so obviously but also choose to call into question all of Hardison’s appreciation of what Elliot had made in the past. I mean he might as well have called Elliot himself forgettable, which is a LOW BLOW, especially for a man who recognizes and makes an attempt to remember what makes things distinct.

3) Everyone else is being upset that the team is together (in a new location) but Elliot has already accepted that the team is together. And is going to be in it, for better or worse.

In sickness and in health; and through bad beer and difficult to pair foods.

‘Til his dying day.

(But that doesn’t mean he’d not gonna have old-married-couple fights about the details.)

(via renew-leverage)

amusewithaview:

bydaybreak:

oh my god ok, you guys, so @blackdogrunning​ and i were talking about rpf and crackfic, and something amazing has occurred to us, which is this:

even before team leverage was team leverage, they were all (save nate) pretty well known, in certain parts of the population, for doing what they do. but you know what happens with any group of well-known people?

THAT IS CORRECT, FRIENDS, IT IS FANDOM. consider the way that mattingly says, ‘wait, the parker?’ and his face is like holy shit this is all my guilty spank bank fantasies come to life. somewhere in the leverage universe, in some weird corner of the internet (lbr prob on ao3) there lives rpf crime fandom. it pops up every yuletide and normal people who aren’t criminals are never sure if it’s, like, rpf, or if there was an unaired pilot for something that didn’t get picked up, or what, but there it is, every year!

so starting even before team leverage gets together, we’ve got, like:

• infinite fic about sophie’s backstory, none of which is anywhere close to the truth, all of which she reads, some of which she uses to create new personas, none of which she will ever admit to
  
• (it’s still kinda flattering tho)
  
• there’s a part of fandom that’s convinced that she’s the descendant of the grand duchess anastasia and the government is after her, and that’s *very* flattering, even though it’s obviously ridiculous
  
• there’s another theory going around that she’s actually twins, or triplets, because surely no single person could–
  
• shippy fic about hardison and cha0s. and hardison KNEW THAT WOULD HAPPEN because he knows how the internet works, ok, and it makes him kinda crazy because that dude is the WORST and he would never do THAT, and certainly not in the weirdly domestic way that some of these fics suggest
  

Keep reading

# LEVERAGE # ELIOT SPENCER # ALEC HARDISON # PARKER # SOPHIE DEVEREAUX # LIKE I’M NOT EVEN SORRY ABOUT THIS # WE’VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT IT FOR LIKE THREE HOURS # AND WE’RE STILL FUCKING GOING # APPARENTLY WE’RE GOING TO DIE IN THIS UTTERLY RIDICULOUS BIN # SO I HOPE THAT EVERYONE IS COOL WITH ME REBLOGGING MY OWN SHIT SO I CAN ADD TO IT # BECAUSE THIS IS ENDLESSLY HILARIOUS TO ME # LIKE ENDLESSLY # E N D L E S S L Y # THINK OF THE SWEET SUMMER CHILDREN WHO READ THE YULETIDE FIC AND WERE LIKE WOW THAT WAS GREAT # AND THEN SUDDENLY ARE NECK DEEP IN WEIRD CRIME FANDOM # AND THEIR ONGOING FRUSTRATION THAT THEY CAN’T FIND THE SOURCE ANYWHERE # LIKE WHAT # IS IT REGION LOCKED # IS IT ONLY AVAILABLE ON VHS IN CZECH # WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE # SORRY THAT I’M BASICALLY THE WORST Y'ALL - @bydaybreak

(via amusewithaview)

wordsandshadows:

fanfic that I need to exist:

• Leverage!AU of The Librarians (ie Library crew as grifters etc)
• Librarians!AU of Leverage (ie Leverage crew in the Library)

(via renew-leverage)

letsgostealafandom:

So, here is the thing. I don’t believe that Parker has a plan M. She doesn’t have a plan C, an NOPQ. Parker has her plans, and yeah, they’re basically labeled the same as Nate’s were, but there’s not a single one in which Hardison dies.

But here is the other thing, and that is: Parker has contingency plans and backup plans and backup plans for her backup plans for her backup plans, but she doesn’t have a plan B. Or a plan F through L. There’s no Z, or A prime, or anything that allows for Eliot dying. And there is, especially, no plan where Eliot dies so that Hardison lives. I just don’t buy it.

Once Parker discovered what family – real family – is, she grabbed onto it with both hands and will never, ever let go. They’d have to pry it out of her dead, bloody fists before she’d let it go, and that doesn’t only include Hardison. Her family’s not one person big. Eliot is not somehow less than because they’re not fucking him (yet), or because Hardison came first, or because Eliot’d understand being sacrificed.

(Eliot just assumes that there’s a whole bevy of plans where he dies for them, where his dying day comes so long before theirs he’s barely a blip on their radar. Eliot is wrong.)

There’s no plan where people die, because Parker is not Nate v2.0. Parker is not playing a giant game of chess, where what’s most important – important beyond everything else by far – is the win. Parker is better because she knows when to lose. She knows when to walk away and try again some other time, when to fold and let down the people they’re trying to help because nothing, nothing, is as important as keeping her family alive and with her.

And, you know, maybe that actually makes her worse than Nate. Maybe it means that they’re doing less good, now that it’s her in charge, because she can’t bring herself to look at Eliot, to look at Hardison, and think “tomorrow you might not be here”. But she also can’t bring herself to care.

So, yeah, I just can’t buy Parker as Nate v2.0, or Nate Lite. I can’t buy her being willing to lose anyone. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

On Hardison’s paintings

parvasilvi:

The painting of old Nate had started out as a joke, but after he’d finished it, Hardison found he couldn’t just stop there. He needed to have the whole set. So he painted them all; stunning Sophie, powerful Parker, enigmatic Eliot, even Hardison himself. Old Nate was blown up, but the other four portraits are still kept safely in one of Hardison’s safehouses.

Sophie’s portrait is the busiest, but your gaze is drawn immediately to her dark, smoldering eyes. She holds your gaze there despite the many paintings that hang in the background behind her, despite the expensive vases on delicate antique tables. It takes more willpower than you can explain to avert your gaze and take in the rest of the painting. She’s seated on a dark-red settee, twisted slightly to show off the curve of her body, her hands on her knees. At first, you think the glittering golden fabric covering her is a dress, but you notice her legs end in a fish’s tail, and you realize they’re scales. The portrait is titled “Siren Sophie”.

Parker’s portrait is much starker, almost empty compared to Sophie’s. In a silver rectangular frame, it’s background is completely black. Cutting through the darkness are bright white lasers, spreading out from the centre in a web-like pattern. At several places, a small origami fly is trapped in the web. Upon looking closer, you see they’re folded from 100 dollar bills. In the dead-centre of the painting is Parker, hanging comfortably from her rig. Her legs are bent underneath her, one hand on a thigh, the other wrapped around the dark chord above her to keep herself steady. She’s looking out at you with a half-grin on her face, like you’re just another 100-dollar fly she’s about to ensnare. A circular sign at the top of the frame reads “Spiderwoman”.

Eliot is the only one of the group who is not centered in his own portrait. Instead he stands to one side in his usual hitter-pose: arms crossed, feet firmly anchored, an unimpressed scowl on his face. What isn’t usual is his clothing: he’s wearing a long, dark golden cloak. A matching circlet is in his long, loose-flowing hair. He’s standing in the middle of a yellow desert, impossibly blue sky above him. In the centre of the painting is a huge pyramid, with two more in the background. The title is carved into the simple dark wood frame: “Sphinx Eliot”. You wonder idly what kind of riddle he would pose.

As weird as the first four paintings were, Hardison’s is the most unexpected. You’ve come to expect overconfidence from the boisterous geek. Maybe “Hero Hardison” surrounded by his favorite tech gadgets. You’re unprepared for the honesty you find in the hacker’s self-portrait. The painting looks like you’ve just thrown open the door to go outside. On the doorstep is a young, curly-haired boy that you hardly recognize as Hardison. The boy, dressed in a suit and bow tie, stares up at you with wide eyes. In one hand he holds a worn little suitcase. In the other is a slip of paper that reads: “Please take care of this boy”. The title is written on a similar, slip of paper pinned to the top of the simple frame: “Alec Paddington”.

(via renew-leverage)