#yes this is about Eliot Spencer

[trekscribbles]

One of my favorite tropes of all time is when the biggest, scariest, most powerful character is not taken seriously at all by their friends. Like this character could snap your neck without trying, but everyone around them is constantly tormenting them and picking on them and putting them in ridiculous clothes. Amazing. A+. No notes except to give me more please.

[eepersjeepers]

Blushing, covering my face, giggling, yelling, kicking my feet, losing my mind, falling head over heels, eating my hand-

[leverage-ot3]

at first you’d think eliot is gruff and manly and just a punchy-man, but he literally also lives to cause subtle chaos

this man says the most unnerving things to a mark for shits and giggles

this man literally took a bite out of a live snake to commit to the act

we need to embrace chaos gremlin eliot more

[reinanova]

you know a show/book/media did something right when the fandom writes fanfics that are an extension of canon, rather than a rewrite of canon

[geekynightowl1997]

Okay- but...

Has anyone else noticed that at least with Dean Devlin- Christian Kanes characters all have some sort of ties to each other?

I mean:

Eliot Spencer; A military bred, mercenary trained, with multiple aliases- with a specific skill set, con-artist.

Jacob Stone; An art historian, with multiple aliases, genius brain, eidetic memory (?), librarian.

Alex Walker; con-artist, with multiple aliases, an eye for detail, retired giftshop owner.

The characters might not be the same but there still enough for them to be long lost triplets or something.

[crazyness-overpowers]

every time eliot, hardison, and parker are onscreen together it’s perfect in only a way leverage is to me

[wolves-in-the-world]

so help me I've been thinking again about eliot and shame and moral injury and how healing from that means doing good things to sort of shift your centre of gravity towards something more wholesome and it's making me very, very soppy about every time eliot gets to use his skills - honed through war and murder and I don't like to speculate what else - to help people, and maybe gets to feel a little warm about it, or maybe just gets to sleep a little easier at night, his heart less of a clenched fist inside him.

[faorism]

eliots face is my face knowing these curls exist but i have to personally suffer with the knowledge they gonna iron them out in the next damn scene change

[running-in-the-dark]

hahaha oh this better not awaken anything in me :')

[shadeofazmeinya]

been rewatching leverage and leverage: redemption for distraction and hear me out. trans woman Sophie. and trans man eliot. thank u

[innytoes]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Julie and The Phantoms (TV 2020) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: previous Willie/OC, Caleb Covington & Willie Characters: Caleb Covington, Willie (Julie and The Phantoms) Additional Tags: Good Parent Caleb Covington, Break Up, Post-Break Up, Teen Angst Series: Part 7 of The Care and Feeding of Dragons Summary:

His first instinct, when he heard Willie crying in his room, great big heaving sobs, was murder. He wasn’t sure who or what had made him cry like that, but whatever it was, he wanted to kill it.

Or: Willie experiences his first break-up, Caleb is a good dad who just wants a little violence, as a treat.

In which Caleb experiences the joys of parenting a teen, Willie’s seventh date ends in disaster, and Caleb just wants a little violence, as a treat.

[sheepinawolfsfur]

"Save a horse, ride a cowboy"

- Eliot Spencer, probably

[leverage-ot3]

okay I’ve seen a lot of posts about sterling just being crowley and. guys. the implications just hear me out 😭😭😭

bending lore slightly here BUT let’s say crowley’s body was once inhabited by a human and crowley is possessing the body (maybe he kills the initial inhabitant bc he doesn’t care)

but he still has the guy’s memories. he doesn’t bother keeping up appearances with his ‘ex wife’ because he is too busy building up his hell empire. BUT for some reason he can’t quite identify, he still feels something towards his ‘daughter’. he lets the divorce happen and doesn’t feel the need (or desire) to fight for custody, but he can never quite forget her, to cast her out of his mind for good

some hijinks ensue with the leverage team. it’s mostly because even a grind culture demon wants some off time every once in a while, and for him the insurance investigator stuff is more of a hobby. interacting with the leverage crew is very low stakes for him, and honestly, quite amusing. they aren’t on his level power-wise, but that ford character gives him the mental exercise he hasn’t experienced in, well, he can’t even remember

he can feel their frustration and anger when they learn he has become employed by interpol and feeds off it. it’s great, and relaxing in a way he is never able to achieve while conducting hell-related business

one year he gets wind that olivia is in a really bad situation associated with his ‘ex wife’s’ new husband. he’s selling vital hardware to terrorists, and while that might actually be the kind of chaos he would normally support or be entertained by as the king of hell, something feels wrong about letting olivia stay anywhere near that man

he calls upon the body’s adversaries. he wouldn’t admit it, even under duress, BUT he feels slightly fond of them. nate for the three dimensional chess they play, sophie for her ability to charm and disguise, parker for her chaos and slightly unsettling nature (it’s the autism swag and being bad with human interaction but he doesn’t know that lol), hardison for his unapologetic intelligence and eliot for his hardened violent past and take-no-shit persona (he’s fun to tease)

they perform exactly as he expected, right into his carefully crafted plan. and then olivia is under his care and things get more complicated. he keeps her FAR, FAR away from anything related to the supernatural (heh). no one can find out about her, ESPECIALLY not those imbecile hunter brothers (if for nothing else than the embarrassment in revealing he has a weak spot)

not sure how to work it into this post but I also want to add that somewhere along the way he develops feelings for nate and sophie. the frame up job is near and dear to my heart and you can’t convince me that isn’t fighting as flirting behavior. his interpol persona is more of a side hustle so to speak, but he finds it fun (relaxing, even) to fill that role. there aren’t any obligations of other demons, bothersome hunters, or anything like that. nate and sophie are low stakes, except, they aren’t, really. they make him feel things he can’t ever really remember feeling. his heart beats fast when sophie sat in his lap and cradled his face, his hands sweat when nate gives him that certain smug look. he’s exasperated by the way they can run circles around him like no one else has ever before. they annoy him and get under his skin in a way no one else can and it’s infuriating. but also not, at the same time. maybe he likes it

and then the long goodbye job happens

hear me out and suspend your belief here for a second, because I can’t remember if crowley supernaturally knows when ppl die/are dead or not.

so nate is in interpol custody and the interviewer is obviously out of her depth. (most people are, when it comes to nathan ford.) he walks in and pours the man a drink, but he’s fuming. somewhere along the way he came to care about the team. hell and suffering is literally in his (official) job description, but he can admit (only to himself) that he admires what they do. it’s not for him, not anything close to where his passions and interests lie, but he respects their drive and purpose. he is also aware enough to acknowledge that they are a family, a group of misfits that never belonged quite anywhere except to each other.

and nate fucking blew it up, ruined it, because his vice is being so obsessed with the end game that he is apparently willing to let his team, his family, the people that anchor him to reality, die because the ends supposedly justify the means.

not this time. not to sterling crowley

he is enraged. he can admit within the confines of his mind that he cares for nate, for sophie, even for the other three (though nate and sophie have somehow made it a hierarchy where they are more important to him. which he will dissect later in private. maybe.)

nate let them die, he let sophie die, and for what? the black book? hell below, crowley would have made things easier somehow, if he knew that this was where nate’s sights had lied. he would have prevented this somehow. he wants to have prevented this. he doesn’t want any of them dead and is too afraid to check and verify because that would make it real. the idea of sophie (or any of them) somehow making it to hell instead of heaven would probably break something in him he might not be able to reapir fully.

he yells at nate- he’s angry. hellfire burning in his heart because everything is ruined. the deaths aside (however hard it is to set them aside in his mind), nate will not recover from this, not ever. this will be the start of the end, he is sure. a miserable, guilt-ridden existence where he drinks himself to death and nothing will save him. it plays out in crowley’s mind in a thousand different ways that are beyond painful to conceptualize, even in theory.

the story starts to unravel and there is a game afoot. a solemn, miserable, infuriating game because the con is still in session because parker is alive and in the building- which sets another fire alight in his chest. ‘parker even know you got hardison killed?’ he rages for her grief when she finds out. he knows it will double when she finds out eliot has perished, too, because he isn’t fucking blind.

but nate is a brilliant man, lest he forget too quickly. they are all alive, and somehow still the entire crew slips through his fingers. he’s not even angry (he never would have been- he doesn’t actually try too hard to catch them. it’s about the game, not the consequences). he lets them keep the black book because he’s fucking exhausted and honestly, they more than earned it.

‘now we’re even. tell sophie to drive carefully’. they will never be even, not really. crowley would never admit or agree that being human is the superior state of being, but that have made him feel human in a way he doesn’t actually mind. they keep him on his toes and match him in a way unique to them, they remind him that there are other things than the realm of hell. not necessarily bigger than hell, but maybe just as important in a different sense.

watching the van drive away, something inside him settles. when he walked into the interrogation room that day he thought this was the beginning of the end. it’s not the end at all, not an end to anything. it’s a continuation of their story. maybe, he thinks, a beginning to a new era in it

[ithiliien]

everyone wants to fuck him but i want to dissect him psychologically

[riverofrainbows]

Eliot Spencer. Listen to me i am obsessed with the man. He is so incredibly stereotypically masculine, and hardcore so, yet at the same time really isn't in ways that would be damning for the 2000s and early 2010s. Long hair, not unusually tall, the most emotionally aware one and most in tune with his emotions on the whole team. (Not that the others don't also have points in that area, but they're all terrible at it in some way and Eliot scores by far the most points.) He has a hobby that's not James Bond like (cooking), and he gets to be goofy while being unquestioned as the most badass guy in the room. And yes he makes inappropriate jokes about lesbians and goes all no homo at physical affection from other men, and younger people probably don't find him quite as monumental as i do in terms of masculinity. But his behaviour never reflects those jokes or the no homo, and he was the red blooded american former military guy character on a big network tv show in the year 2009. For which he was a severely mild case. He treats the other characters as people and not stereotypes, in the way the whole show does, and he has long hair he puts up in ponytails and half buns that have his side bangs falling out (you need to understand what big of a deal the manbun was in like 2013, so much so that they had to invent a word). He's emotional and doesn't actually mean his gruffness most of the time, and doesn't thinks himself above certain tasks or people. He wears ridiculous little outfits without putting up a show about his threatened masculinity, and he's the most emotionally intelligent one outside of cons. He wears little jewellery in his hair sometimes, and little braids even (yes braided hair was a no go), he plays guitar and sings earnest love songs not just to try to get laid (love songs would only be permissible in the immediate context of romance), and whenever they have a young woman as a client, that reminds him of home i presume, he works with so much effort and respect for them as the one he's in service to, and respects their opinion strongly. He wears glasses, and reads books and is way too nerdy for an action hero type of the 2010s. He is great with kids, and unironically so (there were multiple big shows and movies about the topic of "men needing to deal with children on their own" with the entire premise of that being ridiculous and them being naturally bad at it). He's the most stereotypically action hero type masculine guy on the show, and he does get strive or posture for power or dominance in their team, is content with a contributing role and trusting on the expertise of the others, and he is not portrayed as the most valuable one or as that behaviour being beneath him. He undresses so he and the woman he's fighting with are on equal ground reading undress. He is shorter than the others and continuously portrayed as the most dangerous one in any room, and height differences afe never deemphasised via cinematography (seriously, to be regarded as sufficiently masculine in western films they either get really tall actors or employ a variety of camera angles and boxes to give that impression. But just think of Eliot in the pilot when rescuing Hardison in the first break in, standing behind the group of security guys who all look way taller than him and more physically impressive with weapons and all. And then Eliot just in a t-shirt with no weapon but himself.) He has long hair (again, mainstream sufficiently masculine guys didn't do that back then, or now if we think of it (not that long at least)).

The show and all it's characters were a goddamn marvel back in 2009, and sadly in many ways still are today, 15 years later.

And he heals my little broken heart regarding gender stereotypes and masculinity, my heart that grew up in the 2000s and has so much difficulty accepting that my gender is valid. Bless him for it.

[soap-brain]

i think one of the nate eliot things is that they're both fucking unhinged. there's something feral about them, something that's capable of disregarding basic humanity. we know eliot is a killer, and a ruthless one at that, and he's not afraid of being in those kind of situations, which in a way dehumanises him, this inability to feel fear.

and nate. nate!! that man is terrifying! get in line, or get out of the way is his motto, and he applies it to absolutely everyone. especially in the earlier seasons, and yes he applies it to sophie (who is unarguably closest to him) too! for maggie he decides that she will get out of the way (because falling in line with him would mean that she would break the law, and she's a Good Citizen, not a Criminal or a Thief, and it never occurs to him that it's not a black and white situation... or that his ex wife matches his crazy).

and if you do neither, he ends you. simple as that. he doesn't kill you and he doesn't physically harm you, but what he does is arguably worse, because he ruins your life in ways eliot can't.

and they very quickly recognise each other as apex predators and both allow the other to use that for their crusade. eliot is a weapon that needs pointing in the right direction, that's what he's getting out of their relationship; and nate needs someone who'll have a go at him and who he can't actually hurt. because nate ruins lives by ruining their reputations, and what reputation does eliot have to lose? and conversely, not even nate ford could convince the world that eliot spencer isn't really fucking dangerous

(sidenote: that's why making moreau watch eliot spencer decrying the evil presidential dog fights is so fucking funny. there's an excellent post about it somewhere on here)

eliot thinks he's further along the path of being something inhuman, and he also thinks nate can still be saved from becoming that too. being an insurance cop, a "good guy" (btw a very laughable concept about how working in insurance makes you a good person. like. if that were the case then how come the same "good guys" let nate's son die so they didn't have to pay for his treatment?), was what kept nate on the straight and narrow before, and now giving him something to do might stop him from going completely off the rails ("how long until you fall apart again? a guy like you can't be out of the game, that's why you were a wreck. you need the chase" is what eliot's saying to convince nate to stay with the team).

unfortunately running with criminals doesn't fix nate the way eliot would like for it to, because the guy suddenly stops recognising any and all societal rules and overcompensates by trying to keep full control of everything all the time. he is so unreasonably mad at sophie for trying to help her friend teresa who got screwed over by marcone.

"she should've known what she got into, her husband working with the mob" and cpl perry from the ep before should've known what he got into, joining the military, but for some reason he's worth helping because he didn't "choose" to become a criminal. did teresa choose to get in with the mob or did she and her husband just not have another chance?

and when the entire team agrees they want to take that job, nate throws a hissy fit. tells them all to walk if they don't like the way he runs the team.

so does leverage fix nate? maybe after five seasons. but at first it makes him worse because between "not having to abide by normal human laws anymore" and the alcohol he completely loses his restraint

and eliot gets that. eliot has been there, has completely lost any and all principles (working for moreau mostly) and is now trying to glue the pieces of himself back together into something that isn't horrible. but nate isn't there yet. nate is still violent and dangerous, and eliot is the only one on the team who isn't disgusted by it. sophie certainly is. hardison and parker are too, even if they don't say it out loud. eliot may not like it, but he gets it.

and in return, nate is the only one who knows about what happened in the big bang job. he can hold eliot back with as little as a gesture or a look and it's not a slight to eliot at all. eliot trusts nate to point him in the right direction because they both need the same thing:

to be a good man.

also:

eliot: what, you think the only thing i know how to do is bust heads? nate: no... well, yeah. eliot: hold a knife like this, cuts through an onion. hold a knife like this, cuts thought like eight yakuza in 4 seconds. screams, carnage... nate: yeah good point actually

like apart from how it's funny, any normal person would react with some version of "that's so fucked up". and nate is just like yeah nah that tracks actually, fair enough, do carry on

also @scotchiegirl something about nate and eliot and violence? sorry for tagging you aslkdjfhasdlkfj i just had ThoughtsTM