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spacedace · 1 year

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hey in your tags you mentioned a “batfam leverage au” can u explain what that is

Happily! :D

So I'm not sure if you're familiar with the show Leverage, but the quick summary is that it's about a group of "bad guys" (a hacker, a hitter, a grifter, a theif and the mastermind that directs them all) that help people who have been hurt by the rich and powerful by using their skills to pull heists and cons on the bad guy of the episode to ruin them and get back whatever was taken/right whatever was made wrong.

It's an amazing show that I can't recommend enough, very clever, very funny, big found family vibes and an OT3 that's *this close* to being canon (and has been supported by the writers). The heists are amazing and it's all around an AMAZING show.

Anyway, the BatPham Leverage Au is basically just: a collection of DP & BatFam members join together to make a robin hood heist team like in the show Leverage. I have a couple versions of the BatPham Leverage AU rattling around my head, but most fleshed out right now are:

Business of Family - the Uncle Oz AU (Penguin Adopts Jazz & Danny): My plan for this story is for Jazz and Danny to decide to start running heists in Gotham on the people in the city that tend to fly under Batman's radar but who are still very much doing a lot of harm to the city and it's people. The Leverage AU part of this story is going to have Jazz as the Mastermind, Jason as the Hitter, Tim as the Hacker, Danny as the Thief/Maker (basically engineer), and Elle as the Grifter (shapeshifting Elle for the win lol).

Another Leverage AU I've been thinking about for awhile but that I haven't turned into a story yet is one where Team Phantom (Danny, Jazz, Sam, Tucker & Elle) are tasked with finding and returning various Infinite Realm artifacts that have ended up in the mortal world. And for some reason Gotham has just so many Infinite Realm artifacts in it. Like most of the artifacts in the world are in Gotham for some wild reason (it's Gotham there doens't need to be more of a reason).

They're on the run from the GIW/Fentons, so they're trying not to advertise any ghostly/liminal powers if they can help it, so they largely do heists without powers (minus Tucker doing all his hacking and everything from the Ghost Zone and some occasional invisibility/intangibility when it's called for, but they really do try and keep any power use to a minimum).

In this AU, Jazz is the Mastermind (again, because I love that role for her haha), Tucker is the Hacker, but that's when I can't quite decide who should be who.

I love the idea of Sam being a Hitter, but I think she'd be able to play Grifter pretty well knowing the rich as well as she does, Danny would love being a Hitter and being able to fuck some assholes' shit up while being completely feral but he could also still be a good Thief. Elle could go either Grifter again, but I like her as a Theif in this one, maybe running into Damian in the vents while she's trying to get into a vault or something lol. (I think it'd go with Danny: Hitter, Sam: Grifter, Elle: Thief, but I have no idea if that'll stick if/when I ever write this lol)

Whatever the team looks like, because there are so many artifacts in Gotham & because they can't just use their powers willy-nilly to grab them and run, they're going to be in Gotham for a long time, possibly years. Which means they need some kind of side hustle to pay the bills, which leads them to doing more heists, but this time on various rich assholes that deserve to lose a bunch of money.

Eventually they get on the Bats radar, and there'd be some fun cat & mouse back and forth with the BatFam trying to catch the Phantom Crew (Danny shouldn't be allowed to name things, but he already told Red Robin that was their team name before anyone could stop him). Eventually the GIW do show up and things start getting even more complicated (and maybe someone activates an artifact, resulting in a powerful entity being released in Gotham that they all have to team up to fight).

I have no name for this au other than the DP X DC Leverage Au, but I do know that'll have plenty of Anger Management, Brain Dead (or really Brain Dead + Everlasting Trio, don't know what the ship name for that is), Serious Chaos.

It'll also have Batman aggressively trying to adopt them all because he doesn't actually have anything against them stealing from these assholes as long as they don't hurt anyone. They're acting outside of the law yes but they're doing it in order to give justice to those who have been made victims by the system and he's all about that (the real final battle of the story is between Bruce & Selina who both want to adopt the Pham, who would like to know if they get a say in any of this - they don't).

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fly-pow-bye · 4 years

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DuckTales 2017 - "Louie's Eleven!"

Story by: Francisco Angones, Madison Bateman, Colleen Evanson, Christian Magalhaes, Ben Siemon, Bob Snow

Written by: Madison Bateman and Francisco Angones

Storyboard by: Stephanie Gonzaga, Rachel Paek, Brandon Warren, Krystal Ureta

Directed by: Matthew Humphreys

Will they make a spinoff of this with April, May, and June in a decade? Maybe not.

Our episode begins with a special performance by the Three Caballeros. Donald Duck begins to sing, only for Panchito Pistoles to take over for him for pretty obvious reasons, much to Donald's annoyance. Jose Carioca changes the song completely before he could get to the good part, much to Panchito's annoyance. Eventually, they get into a fight, knocking down their curtain and revealing they were performing for Scrooge, who was busy with his bath.

Unfortunately, Scrooge wasn't too impressed with this bath-interrupting showing, and he wouldn't have been impressed even if he wasn't bathing. He summons Duckworth from the afterlife to kick them out of the mansion, using his ability to turn into a demon ghost. For those just joining the series, yes, this is completely normal.

Apparently, performing in bathrooms is also normal for them, implying that they're getting desperate for that big break. They could accept an offer from anyone, even one of Donald's nephews, who is followed with music fitting for a heist. Donald's a little hesitant, but Panchito and Jose go along for the green one's scheme.

That scheme? IT. No, they're not going to get a job where they tell people to turn their computers off and on again, nor does this scheme involve any sewer clowns promising candy, rides or balloons that float, but it's "it" spelled with all caps. Specifically, this is about The IT List, a website run by "famous taste-maker" Emma Glamour, who we will see later.

Dewey butts in to talk all about why this is so important: anything on the IT List becomes super famous, and he should know because she tells him exactly what he likes. That's some interesting commentary; people can blindly go with trends without forming their own opinions. That's partially why I'm doing these reviews in the first place. While DuckTales 2017 being "the good reboot" is a popular consensus from what I can tell, I want to see if that's really the case. So far, yeah, I agree with the trends in that case. There are some others I don't, of course, but that's a different story.

A great way to get on the IT list is to be invited to her exclusive party at the Duckburg Museum, and Louie has a scheme just for that.

Louie's going to help them out under the condition that they sign a contract giving him half of the money they make when they get famous. Of course, Louie still has that Louie Inc. inside of him despite no longer owning the company. Donald is hesitant again, but Panchito and Jose sign it immediately. It seems like the Three Caballeros and their constant disagreements would be a major plot point just from these last few scenes, but it's merely more of a running gag than anything major.

This plan is titled Louie's Eleven, a reference to Ocean's 11, a 1960 film, which inspired a whole series of films in 2001, involving a heist involving 11 different people trying to steal a highly guarded casino vault using their individual skills. An Ocean's film did come out when this episode was in production, and it was following the then trend of having an all-female ensemble. Louie decided not to go with that idea.

Throughout the episode, he introduces these eleven people, one by one as soon as they become relevant:

Louie - The brains behind the operation and the closest character to Danny Ocean from the films this episode is a parody of.

2-4. The Three Caballeros - The talent(?), with a question mark that suggests that Louie isn't so sure of this. Apparently, he didn't have very many flattering photos of any of them; not even his uncle, whose photo portrays him being chased by bees.

Dewey - The specialist. He wanted to be the inside man, even having a photo ready of some person in a tuxedo with his face taped over it to show that he's the guy with the license to chill. Can't really blame him; he is now a certified Dew-ble-O-Duck. He accepts the specialist role, just because it implies he's special. Also, he wants to do yo-yo tricks, even if he's not very good at it.

We get two more of Louie's Eleven already, only to show up for one little scene each. That will be a theme with most of these members, actually. I should cut them some slack; it's not like they have 90+ minutes to spare.

Huey - The forger. Despite being the real brains of the triplets, he doesn't suspect a thing even if he's specifically told to copy Emma Glamour's signature.

Gyro Gearloose - The tech guru, who clearly is only in this just to test out some earpieces that he promises will not explode in their ears. To his credit, they never do.

They make it to the party, sneaking around the outside and peeking into the window, giving us our first shot of Glamour's personal assistant: Daisy Duck. Louie fills him in on this personal assistant of Glamour, but...

...it looks like he's already lost in her eyes with romantic music in the background and a fitting expression. Prepare for the endless amounts of daydream sequences where they just do stereotypical things without any reference to their previous character traits. After we see him with bubbly eyes, he then returns to his normal expression and says...

Donald: (shakes head) Whatever.

It's hard to buy this sudden lack of caring, but at least there's some sort of resistance to the "love at first sight" cliche that anyone would expect when these two shared screen time. Not that the cliche would be out of place as just pairing two people of the same species together; Daisy is Donald's girlfriend, after all, and that was established since her first appearance. In this series, he's not quite there yet. Daisy is unaware of this, as she is busy getting this party to be...

...perfect, as Louie unknowingly says in unison. Dewey immediately jumps out and saying he's going to dance on the red carpet, only for Louie to pull him back and say that he should be following his plan. It's Louie's Eleven, after all, and as long as there's no surprises, this party crashing will be just fine.

As to tempt fate with that last sentence, they find out that Falcon Graves is there, showing off what happens to people who violate the "no party crashers" policy. He's throwing out Percival P. Peppington, who already tried to crash a party before. I wonder if we'll ever get to see him in a major appearance; his resemblance to Willy Wonka can't be just because of that purple outfit.

Dewey definitely recognizes him, as the last time he encountered him, he made him lose a lot of money and he threw him off a building. We can even see Graves do a double take when he thinks he saw him, proving that he does remember the events of that episode, too. What are they to do?

Dewey dresses up as DJ Daft Duck, a costume he apparently was carrying with him this whole time, and the Caballeros switch their hats and wear sunglasses to pretend to be his entourage. Graves doesn't really get the chance to look closely at the forged invitation, as Daisy tells him to move the line along. Even with how much fear Dewey had, he still couldn't help himself but show off that he's ready for the fun time, much to Louie's annoyance.

This does give a little more of a point to the Caballero's disagreement on how they're going to perform, which shows up again here, as it mirrors Louie and Dewey's conflict with how they should do this plan. This conflict shows up again when they attempt to get past a different guard, only to get pushed out of the way because they don't have a stage pass. Louie has just the plan to do this, as much as Dewey wants to attempt to woo the guard with his yo-yo tricks, and it involves his number 8:

Jane - The inside woman, who managed to get a gig at this top of the line party despite being an employee at Funzo's Funzone. Considering what kind of crazy things have happened there, though, she may be overqualified at this point.

Her only action in this scheme is to spill something on Daisy, who has that all important stage pass, so that she can go off in a corner so that Donald can distract her long enough to get it. With Daisy out of the way, Louie wants to use his Louie charm to get Glamour ready for the big performance.

Falcon Graves is now right next to Glamour herself, with him showing off to a random passerby of what happens when someone violates the "no photographs" policy. She does look a little familiar, actually, and there is a reason for that.

Thankfully for Dewey, it's here where Louie decides the specialist needs to do something to divert that skilled bodyguard's attention. Unfortunately for Dewey, it's not as cool as what he thinks his yo-yo tricks are, as Louie's #9 turns out to be...

Harpy - The diversion. Yeah, it's a long story how they ended up with a harpy on their side, even if this particular harpy seems to be unwilling.

There are several reasons why the Harpy is here. First, the harpy does indeed distract Falcon Graves, getting him out of the room. Second, it shows how little Louie wants to have Dewey do anything cool. Third, hey, it's another reference to a previous episode! Other than that, yeah, she just kind of disappears after this; other than those three, she's only here so Dewey can be miserable.

Meanwhile, Daisy goes to the elevator, letting out her rage on a poor vase, something Donald would totally do. Donald, sneaking behind her, runs towards the elevator, getting his foot caught in the door. Not before he motions to Daisy to let her in first, of course; he has to show he's a gentleman!

With Donald and Daisy in the elevator, Louie tells Donald to grab the card sneakily and get out of there. How Louie thinks his Uncle Donald is that careful is beyond me, but he does know that he would need to stop that elevator in order to keep Daisy out of his way. With who? His number 10!

Webby - The tactician. Wait, wouldn't Louie be the tactician? I'd say the technician would be more fitting, considering what she does. She appears for a little bit more than the harpy, at the very least.

Donald immediately says he's got it, as he feels he could easily grab that stage pass right off of her, and Louie interprets this as that he's got the card and he's already out of the elevator and tells Webby to cut the power. Needless to easy, nothing is easy for Donald, and he eventually gets caught up in Daisy's bag. He eventually admits to Daisy that he's crashing the party, and unfortunately for him, she understood that perfectly.

Louie, who decided to go radio silent so he doesn't know what's not going down or up with his Uncle Donald, runs up to Glamour, ready to use his charm. He does this right after telling off Dewey, who felt he would be perfect because he likes everything she likes because she tells him what to like.

As a bit of karma, Glamour's first word to this random kid showing up at her literal throne and pretending he's some sort of hotshot like her suggests that she figured out his entire plan. The only thing she got wrong is that she assumed he was the one that wanted to be on the IT list...though that may not be wrong, either; there's certainly some subtext for this.

He doesn't get to ponder about that for long, though, as a bunch of mercenaries show up and tie up everyone with rope, including most of Louie's Eleven. Much to Louie's mismay, it turns out there's somebody else doing a scheme tonight. Considering these are the same mercenaries that were in the first episode, it must be the self-proclaimed scheme master himself...

...Falcon Graves?! What a twist! Much more than terrified that this seemingly invincible bodyguard is now an unavoidable villain, Louie is disappointed that Louie's Eleven isn't the only scheme in this building.

In reference to that, Dewey points out that there's still one more member in Louie's Eleven we have yet to see! Who could this 11th member be? GizmoDuck would be too heroic to participate in this scheme, they probably don't want Glomgold anywhere near them, and we already got one person associated with Greek mythology. Could it be Launchpad, possibly with the help of what remains of his inner Double-O-Duck? As everyone hears galloping in the distance, we get to see who it really is, and it's...

Manny the Headless Man-Horse - The enforcer or muscle depending on whether you go with Louie's line or what he put on the photo.

Admittedly, I wasn't expecting him to show up in this episode, so he does bring the element of surprise. Does he add anything else, though? All he really does is show off how terrifyingly strong Falcon Graves is, as he defeats him in about as long as it takes to read this sentence. After he's defeated,the episode seems to continue as if he didn't even exist, with only a mere "that was odd" from Graves before he demands to have Glamour's phone.

We cut back to the elevator, where Daisy is still quite angry that this crazy man has crashed the party. However, she reveals, along with a nice dress that she designed herself, that she wishes Glamour would listen to her, too. Donald connects with this, saying that nobody seems to understand him. There's some seeds planted here and there, with that Daisy getting into a Donald-like rage scene from earlier, but this scene is where this romantic subplot really starts to bloom. It even leads to Donald singing a song, as Daisy specially requests it.

The thing is: Daisy doesn't seem to mind his speech impediment. Not only is she the only person who can understand it, she loves Donald's singing voice! Don't worry; Dominic Lewis, the series' composer, fills in for Donald for the sake of anyone else's ears for everything but the first and last lines. This amazing voice inspired her so much, she decides to throw her bag up to the ceiling, revealing an emergency ladder, helping them escape.

Meanwhile, we get to learn why Graves wanted the phone: he wanted to sell it to a very, very wealthy high bidder. A bidder that couldn't possibly be one of his former employers, who would have a vested interest in knowing what is IT, especially himself.

It turns out to be Mark Beaks. He's even revealed to be Glamour's son in a way that totally suggests he has certain issues. Dewey says this actually makes sense, and I can only assume this is referring to how they're both people who seem to be associated with the internet, and not just because they're the only gray birds in Duckburg.

Don’t worry or unfortunately depending on one's point of view, he doesn’t get to do much. As Louie is moping about his failed plan, Dewey finally decides to do his plan.

Following in the footsteps of K-Strass the Yo-Yo Guy, Dewey manages to sneak onto the stage and do his not-so-well-practiced yo-yo tricks. Even one of the mercenaries manages to be memorized by how terrible he is, as is Graves. He's so memorized, that he doesn't notice when Donald and Daisy are ready to kick him right in the face.

Much like the last episode, which was also much like the last episode, this ends with a massive fight scene with everyone in the room. It seems like almost every episode seems to end with some massive fight scene with everyone in the room. There's even little scenes with some of the seemingly forgotten characters, including Webby, who fights one of the mercenaries. I'm not complaining, this is cool.

This fight scene also proves that Daisy is a force to be reckoned with. It does kind of make Manny even more useless, being shown up by a lady with a great dress, but I kind of expected that at this point.

To make a long story short, Graves ends up losing the battle, and a few other plot threads get their conclusion, too, including the Three Caballeros finally performing with no creative differences whatsoever. They didn't really do anything to resolve that one; it just kind of happens.

After all of this, do the Caballeros get to be on the IT list? Here's a hint: Donald finally gets to sing, and Dominic Lewis is nowhere to be heard. At least one person likes it, though.

How does it stack up?

I haven't had a good track record with romantic subplots in rebooted cartoons, but I'd say DuckTales 2017 did pretty well with this. It’s not boring, it doesn’t go too far in either direction, and we got a good performance out of it, even if it was only one in-universe to Daisy’s ears.

The Ocean's Eleven plot is pretty good too. I'm not against a good movie parody, even if I'm not that familiar with the movie in question, but it is entertaining nonetheless. 4 ducks.

Next, come on and slam, and welcome to Japan.

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#fpb dt 2017 #fpb reviews #ducktales 2017 #ducktales #disney

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