Criminals are a cowardly, greedy lot. We provide... leverage.
Also: the developmental psychology of group minds.
Marathoning Leverage again (Why do I procrastinate the most during the most deadline-heavy month of the year? Because it's the most deadline-heavy, and hence stressful, month of the year, of course. It wouldn't be a maladaptive behavior otherwise, would it?).
Anyway, one obvious observation is that the Leverage crew is, to all intents and purposes, a Batman gestalt a la More than Human (although this is somewhat true of every such group in fiction). That is, if Batman were more focused on issues of class and political inequality as drivers and enablers of crime.
As he probably should. (My counter-argument is that, yes, Bruce should dedicate his money and absurdly polymath genius to fixing up the politics of Gotham rather than beat up thieves one by one - I know it sounds implausible, but come on, so is Batman - but against a costumed criminal Batman is still the best response, and even if you buy that there would be no rogues without Batman, which I don't really do, there's Ra's and the JLA-level ones. Crime Alley needs a clean GCPD, not a Batman, but the world does need a Batman.)(My counter-counter-argument is that Gotham might be the urban equivalent of an evil metahuman, a semi-supernatural metastable Petri dish of insanity that can only be kept in check by something as insane as Batman.)(But I digress.)
I drafted a quick description of the series arc as a psychodrama about Bruce Wayne (Nate's the Bat, and Season 5 ends up with Bruce growing up and becoming 120% more badass because of it; if you compare the end scene of S1E01 with the end scene of the series, the Nate-driven gestalt does what it does because Nate is broken, and the Parker-driven gestalt does what it does because Parker isn't), but that probably only shows that (a) I need to pause my marathoning, (b) should get more sleep, (c) relate everything to Bruce fucking Wayne.
Marathoning Leverage again (Why do I procrastinate the most during the most deadline-heavy month of the year? Because it's the most deadline-heavy, and hence stressful, month of the year, of course. It wouldn't be a maladaptive behavior otherwise, would it?).
Anyway, one obvious observation is that the Leverage crew is, to all intents and purposes, a Batman gestalt a la More than Human (although this is somewhat true of every such group in fiction). That is, if Batman were more focused on issues of class and political inequality as drivers and enablers of crime.
As he probably should. (My counter-argument is that, yes, Bruce should dedicate his money and absurdly polymath genius to fixing up the politics of Gotham rather than beat up thieves one by one - I know it sounds implausible, but come on, so is Batman - but against a costumed criminal Batman is still the best response, and even if you buy that there would be no rogues without Batman, which I don't really do, there's Ra's and the JLA-level ones. Crime Alley needs a clean GCPD, not a Batman, but the world does need a Batman.)(My counter-counter-argument is that Gotham might be the urban equivalent of an evil metahuman, a semi-supernatural metastable Petri dish of insanity that can only be kept in check by something as insane as Batman.)(But I digress.)
I drafted a quick description of the series arc as a psychodrama about Bruce Wayne (Nate's the Bat, and Season 5 ends up with Bruce growing up and becoming 120% more badass because of it; if you compare the end scene of S1E01 with the end scene of the series, the Nate-driven gestalt does what it does because Nate is broken, and the Parker-driven gestalt does what it does because Parker isn't), but that probably only shows that (a) I need to pause my marathoning, (b) should get more sleep, (c) relate everything to Bruce fucking Wayne.