#my leverage post

[deanmarywinchester]

oh I do love the Leverage Gloat when the mark has only met one or two of the leveragers. POV you are being arrested for corporate malfeasance and your company’s inept new IT guy, a european duchess, and three random weirdos are lined up with their arms folded smugly like a boyband

[weepingfireflies]

The thing about Leverage is that even on the rare occasions where I don't believe a normal person would fall for something, I 100% believe a billionaire who's never been told "no" would. This is the same group of people that tried to visit the Titanic with a video game controller

[businesstiramisu]

A man who goes by his first name

A man who goes by his last name

A woman who goes by just one name

A woman who goes by many names

...and Nathan Ford sorry I can't think of a nice way to end this. Really bringing down the team aesthetic here Nate

[aardvaark]

everyones fave thieves

[united-under-skyfall]

leverage is so fucking funny. man manages to find the most mentally ill and neurodivergent group of thieves on the market + an even more mentally ill guy whose literal job description was trying to chase all of them, and forces them into a found family speed-run by trying to blow them all up. they lowkey stage a full fucking country wide coup and are like eh 🤷 just another wednesday. this might be a fun place to vacation tho i guess. sophie shows up to her own funeral twice. they're so good at convincing people of their shit that they make a guy's body start reacting to an illness he doesn't have because it isn't real. go completely out on a limb and basically hand this one guy a new password for his computer so they can get into it and he goes with it. parker and hardison have straight up just "fake it 'till you make it"d into the fbi without even attempting to cover their tracks beyond just These Two Guys. half their clients never asked to be their clients and don't know they're their clients, and the other half are random people who find them who fuckin knows how, meanwhile no government agency can track them down without selling their soul to sterling. they make a point to have a dramatic scene w a Big Bad Shadowy Government Guy who doesn't actually get caught or brought to justice or anything telling them he's going to hunt them all down, and in any other show this would probably earn at least a minor arc later on but he literally never shows up again. an entire season finale hinged on a cake and a bunch of clams. they accidentally made eliot a celebrity not once, not twice, but three times. parker blew up her foster parents' house when she was like. nine. and it's hardly a footnote. hardison is just casually an artistic prodigy but it's only ever brought up for the most background of background gags. eliot's biggest beef with parker and hardison for like two and a half seasons is that they won't stop making weird food with lasers and refuse to realize they can't make a decent beer to save their lives. sophie's immediate response to being shot is to call her shooter a wanker. there's a character who has literally killed a man with a mop and they had the audacity to only put her in one episode.

[leverageclips]

Leverage Redemption Olympics episode but Eliot can't go undercover as an athlete of a random sport because he's too famous as multiple athletes and so the crew must convince Parker to go in

[werewolfsmile]

Yeehaw, have another product my hyperfixation!!

[watch it on youtube]

This was so much fun to make despite being a bit tedious at times. I hope you all get some enjoyment out of it like I did!

[we-have-a-flying-sword]

[twwings]

was reminded recently that this month is the 10-year anniversary of my Leverage vid Parachute, aka one of the most popular things I've ever made. Happy ten years to this vid! I still adore this OT3.

AO3 link if you wanna kudos/comment after all this time 💜

a few making-of reminiscences about this vid below!

The sound of Parker's parachute snapping in the wind, at the very beginning, was from freesound.org, and one of the first times I put non-source audio in a vid! I love how that little sound takes you into the soundspace and focuses you on the central metaphor of the vid.

This was also one of the first vids where I edited the music in a levelling-up kind of way. I had cut songs before to make them shorter for vidding, but in this one, I needed to add more song—to make the transition from Parker/Hardison to Eliot have more space to breathe. So I copied the instrumental section from elsewhere in the vid and copied it to create some space between the chorus and the verse introducing Eliot.

I accidentally clipped a WHOLE BUNCH of Leverage in the wrong framerate for this vid? This is back when I was using MPEG Streamclip to make clips for vidding, and I input the wrong framerate. As a result a bunch of clips had extra frames that I had to cut out by hand (reclipping would have taken too long—this was in the last gasp days of using MPEG Streamclip when it would chug and huff away for ages to make a clip, because the footage was getting too big for the program OR my computer to really handle easily).

There's one shot of Hardison that I wish I'd colour-corrected (I colour-corrected some stuff in this vid but it was before my era of being super into colour correction). He's way too green! I notice it every time! Poor green Hardison.

Making this vid really taught me about how important it is to know what kinds of shots you've got and how to spend them—in order to create the OT3 in the vid, it's essential to withhold shots of the three of them in the same frame till almost the end. It's twosomes, twosomes, twosomes, up until the end when SUDDENLY you get these fabulous shots of all three of them in frame and it's such a RELIEF to see that. It's not like, a shot of the three of them in bed together or anything, obviously I didn't have that footage (Leverage Redemption, lookin at you) but the fact that those kinds of shots are withheld throughout the vid and then lavished on the viewer suddenly creates a feeling of something snapping into place, I think, that you wouldn't have otherwise.

When I was vidding the Parker/Eliot section, I struggled a lot, because they had the lyric "hand behind my neck/arm around my waist" and I was looking and looking for stuff where they touched, but the interesting thing about them is that they DON'T touch much, Parker just doesn't touch people who aren't Hardison very much, and the vid flowed much better when I gave up on matchy-matching that lyric that was literally about touch and instead showing the moments where Eliot is helping and respecting Parker (eg teaching her to fight, giving her a boost). Sometimes the lyrics should be disobeyed!

I loved making this vid so much that I made another vid right after it, using some footage that I hadn't used in this vid because it was a little too slow or too sad, and I love that vid too but it gets less attention. Anyhow if you like Parachute and you read all this way, please enjoy my other Leverage OT3 vid, which is called "too peculiar for love."

[gnar-slabdash]

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.

[leverage-ot3]

bonus:

[weepingfireflies]

"Of course, I couldn't take Parker home with me and raise her like a normal child. She wouldn't fit in with my normal family." Killing this man with hammers 🔨🔨🔨🔨

[unloneliest]

in the lonely hearts club job leverage asks the question "does romantic love exist?" and answers it by having eliot buy parker a venus fly trap on hardison's behalf, expecting no recognition and revealing eliot remembers a throwaway comment parker made on their second job together.

we all know this.

but was anybody going to tell me hardison already had a browser window open looking for restaurants to buy eliot in portland in response at the start of the episode immediately after that? or was i supposed to figure it out on a rewatch all by myself?!

[aardvaark]

romance nate & sophie style

[motherfucker-somewhat-limited]

[leverageclips]

Succession epilogue where's it's just the leverage crew robbing them blind