Puzzle I Am

sterling is so funny because the leverage crew gives him endless grief and they snark at him and he snarks back but god forbid some other department wants to jail them or something because excuse me that’s his group of bothersome thieves and no one can touch them except him

#idk I just want sterling to be at the ot3s wedding as a joke invite but when he’s asked if he’s going he snatches the invitation and is like #NONE OF YOUR BUISNESS and then proceeds to get a thoughtful wedding gift #or a joke one your choice

The wedding gift is the location and specs of an obscenely high-tech kitchen gadget that actually does something really useful. He doesn’t give them the item, of course–if they want it, they have to come steal it from him. Said gadget is inside multiple nested safes (some computerized, some purely mechanical), inside a secure vault, inside a building with a good security system. There are a handful of not-particularly-assiduous guards (you know, just enough for Eliot to feel like he’s needed, without him having to actually work on his honeymoon). There are elaborate gratuitous laser grids both inside and outside of the vault. Each one has a conspicuously laser-free area just large enough to hold two deck chairs and a mini-cooler of beer and orange soda.

In the innermost safe, next to the gadget, are three feedback forms and a pre-addressed, stamped envelope so they can critique the security measures at their leisure. Mr. Quinn is waiting to “catch” them on the way out to ensure Eliot gets one satisfying, low-stakes fight out of this job. (There are, again, two convenient deck chairs nearby, but this time the cooler is stocked with orange soda and chocolate milk.)

THOR: RAGNAROK (2017) dir. Taika Waititi LOKI (2021- ) dir. Kate Herron

You can’t just leave this kind of hilarity in the tags!!

Captain Marvel (2019) | WandaVision (2021-)

#like fuck marvel you know they’re not going to admit it#but this is ABSOLUTELY#‘my parents got divorced and one moved away for work and i never forgave them’#like come on#monica has two moms#and carol you fucked up#you fucked up so hard you need to grovel#and the mcu is written by fucking cowards#they’ll never go there but they SHOULD (via @racethewind10)

Thinking about how the two main things Eliot is associated with are fighting and cooking, and how beautiful that is. I briefly touched on it in this post here and want to further expand on it because I am, once again, having thoughts.

Like, food is love and love is food. The act of making something for someone, to feed them, to nourish them, both body and soul, but also the act of sharing a meal with someone, to eat from the same plate, to sit with one another and enjoy their presence, or even asking someone if they’ve eaten yet. Like, all of those things that are seemingly simple carry so much love within them and I think that’s so lovely.

So to have someone like Eliot love cooking is so beautiful, especially because even before the writers found out that Chris can cook, they were going to include that about Eliot.

Eliot spent his life fighting. He took lives away from others and as he grew to hate himself more for it, he finally found the courage to leave and say enough is enough. Lost and confused about himself, he managed to find food and cooking, and he realized he was able to create life and not just destroy it, and that gave him another purpose in his life. And the fact that these two acts are the complete opposite of each other, but also similar within Eliot is interesting too.

Like I said already, Eliot went from taking to giving when he switches from fighting to cooking. Whereas one causes harm, the other can heal. But then Eliot meets the crew and in a way, the fighting has become its own form of love within his hands too. Before he met them, Eliot wasn’t fighting for anyone in particular, just whoever had his next paycheck. But then, he found a family and fell in love, and now, though it hurts, he goes into every job prepared to do whatever it takes to keep them all safe, even at the risk of himself. He has something to protect now and of course it hurts, but he’d rather himself than any of them because he knows he can handle it all and more, if he has to, because he feels that’s what he has to offer to show his love.

But he also shows his love through food too. Like, I said earlier, food is love and love is food, and that love comes in so many different ways. He cooks for the crew to show that love because his job is to protect all of them. So out of their home, he can do that by fighting, by offering up his body to protect theirs, but within their home, he cooks and feeds them to keep their bodies nourished and going because they need the energy to keep working at their peak. Nate lives off a diet of alcohol, Hardison off of orange soda, and Parker off of cereal and sweets, and Eliot knows someone has to do something to make sure they’re still alive and healthy. So maybe they won’t fully understand all of his foodie talk and maybe all of them grumble about him making them eat sometimes, but they understand the meaning behind each meal he makes, each snack he brings them while they’re planning, each little detail he remembers about their likes and dislikes.

Because at the end of the day, it’s love. It’s all love, love for each other and love for humanity, that keeps them going, and I just think it’s beautiful how everything that Eliot does is a reflection of the fact that he simply loves too much.

I love him with my whole heart

Black Sails 2.10 - “XVIII” // Margaret Atwood, “Lusus Naturae” in Stone Mattress: Nine Wicked Tales // Once Upon a Time 3.13 - “Witch Hunt” // thefactsofthematter // Taylor Swift, “I Did Something Bad” // Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994) dir. Kenneth Branagh, screenplay by Steph Lady & Frank Darabont // “No Good Deed” from Wicked // William Shakespeare, Richard III (I.i.28-31) // easy A (2010) dir. Will Gluck

He's our king

white boy summer getting an early start i see

love how that lady in the bg doesnt even notice him

No one commenting on his padawan braid?

someone tagged one of my quinn & eliot posts like “quinn/eliot was such a good ship” in the PAST TENSE listen. im. just bc my boy was in 1.2 episodes of this tv show and has not been mentioned even in passing since 2012—

Quinn: *shows up in episode 15.*

Harry: “So who is this guy?”

Parker: “Quinn. He’s our boyfriend-in-law.”

Harry: “…”

Harry: “Just to be clear, which of ‘us’ are included in ‘our’, and what’s a ‘boyfriend-in-law’?”

Parker: “Me and Hardison. He’s our boyfriend’s boyfriend, but he’s not our boyfriend, so he’s our boyfriend-in-law.”

Harry: “…”

Quinn, who technically isn’t sure who Harry is either, but is used to how Parkerish explanations progress by now: “Eliot is the boyfriend.”

Harry, even more confused: “…OK. Thank you…I think…There’s…a lot to unpack there.”

Harry’s moment of panic that by joining this team he has automatically acquired this random boyfriend/boyfriend-in-law is killing me.

(As is him, in theory, not minding it if that were the case. Quinn is an attractive man…)

Given that we only know Quinn by his surname, I’m picturing Sophie (not present for the above conversation) casually referring to “our Mr. Quinn” in some context, throwing Harry into a further existential crisis of whether he has become a designated boyfriend-in-law (and to whom???) by joining the team and this is just Sophie’s standard way of recognizing this status. From the description, he thinks he’d have to be someone’s boyfriend first, which he assumes he’d know about, but he’s not 100% sure of that. If men joining the team become Eliot’s boyfriends by default, he’s not necessarily opposed, but he would have expected to be informed.

(Oh, crap, has he been a bad boyfriend because he didn’t realize he was supposed to be? Eliot hasn’t really been acting like Harry’s boyfriend, but if Harry didn’t pick up that Eliot and Hardison were boyfriends, then maybe he just hasn’t been picking up on things. Should he apologize? Would that just make it weirder? If he asks “our Mr. Quinn” flat-out, is he likely to get a clearer answer? If he has become a default boyfriend, does that make Harry and Quinn boyfriends, too, or just boyfriends-in-law?)

Harry making a list of all the Leverage team members to try and figure out whose boyfriend he is before he makes things awkward later. The only one he is certain he can rule out from the start is Breanna, she’s way too young. Hardison hasn’t been around most of the time so it’s probably not him.

He… wants to say not Parker? But she and he have had some great bonding moments. The standard seems to be Eliot gets the boyfriend - but then again, it sounds like Eliot already has two boyfriends and a girlfriend, how many more is he gonna get? Maybe it’s Sophie. They have definitely had some moments together and he’s absolutely not opposed to that either - except she’s still mourning her husband, isn’t she? Maybe he is Quinn’s boyfriend after all… except they’re just meeting now, it seems weird to assign them as boyfriends before they even met.

Eventually he just gives up and decides to assume he’s everyone’s boyfriend until proven otherwise.

Harry gets everyone “just because” flowers (including having a bouquet sent to Hardison, of course). Sophie is complimentary of her bouquet. Breanna gives him a funny look (Harry hopes that the included note makes sufficiently clear that he isn’t trying to woo her–that would be inappropriate–it just seemed mean to leave her out). Eliot raises his eyebrows, but grunts a “thanks” before sticking his in a vase on the bar. Parker inspects her bouquet avidly at first but quickly loses interest. As Eliot tucks Parker’s flowers in among his after she fails to put them in water, he casually remarks, seemingly to the flowers, that Parker isn’t really into plants that don’t do anything.

Harry grapples with this new information for a while, carefully fitting it together with everything else he knows about Parker, before making his second attempt.

This time, the vase sitting at Parker’s spot contains several spikes of brightly colored flowers. Harry watches nervously as Parker curiously inspects the new offering. He can see Eliot smiling slightly out of the corner of his eye.

Eliot leans over Parker. “Hmm, snapdragons…”

Parker wrinkles her nose. “Snapdragons?”

With that, Eliot reaches around her to pinch the sides of one of the blossoms, making its “mouth” open.

Parker goes completely still for a moment before scooping the vase to her chest with a squeal that makes Harry jump. “They’re puppet flowers! I love them!”

Harry sinks back against the bar in relief. He is going to get a good grade in boyfriending, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve.

Robert Irwin made sure he got the perfect picture of his sister’s engagement by reenacting a faux proposal for the big surprise. 

🤣 This kid

they’re such good kids. steve would be proud.

My favorite thing about this is that he 100% perfectly predicted his sister’s body language.

this also implies robert doesn’t wear anything but that outfit and that outfit only

Hey tumblr zoologists, does anyone know whether there's a plausible theory as to why, out of all the big cats, lions somewhere along the line decided "ooh wouldn't it be cool in evolutionary terms if our tails had pompoms on the end?"

What is it for please

The ol' razzle dazzle

The judges will accept that

just i am in love 🥰 / (source)

true, he looks like wet cat 😅

There are no happy accidents, just YOUR ENTIRE LIFE BEING AN ACCIDENT.

Excuse me. You have not been good to her. You have all treated her like shit to steal back a fortune that you lost and she deserves. You’re a pack of bloody vultures at the feast, but you’re not getting bailed out, not this time.

KNIVES OUT (2019) dir. Rian Johnson

I really like the subtle way they emphasized that in this episode’s back half. The reveal almost always has some moment where it looks like the crew is overwhelmed but then you see it was all part of the plan. But this one especially is focused on Eliot, approaching the elevator, seeming to buy into this guy’s plot. It really seems like he’s being naive.

But of course he isn’t, and of course everyone was right to trust his expertise in handling matters like this when Sterling tried to denigrate him as merely a “punch-up guy” or whatever. Eliot was very alert and figured out what was actually going on and also a workable plan to retrieve them all safely. He stepped into the role of leader and everyone trusted him to know what to do and they were all perfectly right to do so. 

It’s an ongoing theme with a lot of Eliot’s roles and even here it doesn’t fully take center stage, but I love that they gave us this moment of Maggie recalibrating Eliot in her head a little, Nate and the team understanding him so well, and Sterling… well, he made the mistake in the first place, but then took advantage of the eventual plan really well, so it was a great character moment for him too.

I love this scene because I feel like this is also sort of revealing something about his character in general. Eliot is really smart and really knowledgeable about a lot of things but because he’s the hitter a lot of people are going to stereotype him into being just a dumb strong guy so he goes with it and uses that to his advantage. He catches people by surprise by out smarting them and that’s part of what gives him his edge.