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
criminals and civilians aren’t the only ones in fandom, and not even the only ones in the crime rpf fandom. there’s cops too
sometimes the fbi or someone will give an agent an ao3 account and task them with sorting out what’s based in reality, and what’s completely made up
(”sir there’s a sudden influx of fics wherein hardison owns a brewpub, but we’re fairly certain it’s only a variation of a coffeeshop au”)
and they keep trying to get past the gatekeepers because somehow they know more about these thieves than law enforcement does?????
but hardison personally vets every account that wants access to the source material before they’re approved, and he always flags accounts attached to law enforcement. the mods don’t care if it’s a personal account and they don’t care if they’re a bnf they’re not getting this info
they’re welcome to write all the fic they want, and they’re welcome to even submit new source material (to be rigorously and suspiciously investigated before being made available to the rest of the fandom) but they’re not getting in
hardison says he’s protecting himself, but really it’s because he doesn’t want his lovely little fandom to get arrested en masse for hacking and impeding criminal investigations and shit
OK BUT ALSO CONSIDER, IN THAT VEIN – sterling joins interpol
interpol 90000% has a task force like, assigned to watching this weird crime fandom bc it seems like SOME OF ITS TRUE and they know way more about these INTERNATIONAL CRIMINALS then law enforcement does and what if–
and so, think about the fateful day sterling joins interpol and is brought in and asked in all seriousness if he knows about this. think about jim sterling finding out nate ford and his band of stupid criminal disasters have people WRITING FICTION ABOUT THEM and sterling is considered the bad guy in a bunch of them.
think about all the times sterling’s on a case! or a job! and is called up by the department in charge of keeping track of this fandom to like, confirm or deny if thing x happened. and he’s just like are you fucking kidding me I’m in the mIDDLE OF AN OPERATION– and the person on the other end of the line is just we just need a yes or no, agent sterling. and sterling’s like OBVIOUSLY IT IS NOT except that bit ok that’s pretty accurate– and the next thing he knows, he’s pulled off this case and shipped back to read through all these fucking fics to confirm for accuracy.
He had to read some 300k a/b/o bullshit about him and spencer for gods sakes just because the author got one detail right about the time he was chasing spencer in Yugoslavia. he didn’t even know what a/b/o is and now he does and he blames spencer for it.
When Hardison asks Chaos to join him for The Last Damn Job, in the coffee shop. We improvised some stuff about Sophie cosplaying as Counselor Troi and it cracked us all up.
My all time favorite movie. When I was a preteen I watched it every time a major network reran it. Once I made my family suffer through me taping the audio on a cassette recorder. I played that tape for years, over and over again until I wore it out.
To this day, I have always had some recorded version of it, from VHS, to DVD, to stored on my iPad. I play it when I want something fun and clever to watch.
Henry Gondorff, from “Nice to meet you kid. You’re a real horse’s ass” to, by the end, the only person not to have been conned.
Leverage has all kinds of little shout outs to The Sting. Here’s just one of them:
The Sting’s Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman) plays the hook against their mark, humiliates him in one big play to draw him in to the bigger con. He annoys the mark, Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw), enough that he sets Henry up to take a fall with a hand of four 3’s, but Henry came prepared with a few extra Jacks stashed on him somewhere.
In Leverage, with a little help from the rest of the crew, Nate hooks their mark with a similar move, four 9′s beat by 4 Jacks.