#white collar ideas

[iceagebaby]

Despondency / Refuge

that's supposed to be Bennys lighter, the Courier is dealing with cosequences of being thrown into a mess they had nothing to do with

the halo was something that turned out on an accident but i love it

Rant below

[bluejay-makes]

Puppy 🕷

[lefish]

Ok, so you know all those cross over fics where one of the bats is undercover as neal caffrey, right?

So the idea is El gets kidnapped by someone and it’s being live streamed to the fbi people and neal!tim says to peter something along the lines of “i can do something to save el, but you’re not going to like it, so I just need a yes or no. Do you trust me peter?” And peter takes a long moment before saying “ i trust you neal”

so tim is like “bet, ima step out to make a reallly quick phone call then ima be right back”. And tim calls jason and is like “ can you go rescue my friend please” and jason agrees cuz he’s not doing anything and is in the area, so like 20 minutes later the goddamm red hood shows up at whatever wearhouse or basement el is in and beats up her kiddnapers and looks into the camera and is like “ ive done my part baby bird, ill be sure to get what im owed” or some shit cuz he’s dramatic.

So obviously peter and el and the rest of the fbi people freak out cuz “holy shit thats the fucking red hood!!” and “neal what the fuck do you owe him???!!?”

and jason just wants tim to take a nap, eat a proper meal and watch all three legally blonde movies with him or some dumb brotherly bonding shit like that.

If someone writes this please tell me :)))))



[suburbonlegends]

White Collar x Who Lives Who Dies Who Tells Your Story

[takiki16]

I see your "handcuffed together episode wouldn't work bc Neal would pick the locks" and I raise you "Neal refuses to pick the locks for petty reasons, aka Peter made him swear an oath to "not act like a criminal for 24 hours" and Neal is miffed at him about it"

YES. YES. THIS.

The episode opens with Peter and Neal walking to work, arguing about [Trust Issue] and [Crimes]. Peter says that it’s an indication of Neal’s lack of control, and that Neal can’t go 24 hours without Doing Crime. Neal roundly denies any alleged criminal behavior, but takes offense at the implication that crime is a Lower Impulse that drags him down rather than a Game of Skill. The argument goes on in typical fashion until finally, Peter and Neal make a bet. If Neal can go for 24 hours without doing Criminal Acts, Peter will…I DON’T KNOW! Go to a fancy art event with him? Let him see one of his old case files? Never bring deviled ham to a sedan stakeout again?

They then go undercover together to meet some kind of fence of Rare Items and Unusual Weapons - a lower level player, but a necessary step to that episode’s big bad. The fence has a Weird Storefront! They make a break for it through the back! There is a comical fight inside a very small closet full of Fun Kinky Novelty Items that somehow drags all three of them into it, and the fence gets away but Neal and Peter end up handcuffed together!

Peter demands that Neal pick the lock, after a solid hour of searching through the wreckage of Fun Kinky Novelty Items for the key - which of COURSE couldn’t just be a standard issue cuff set! This stopped being fun nyfor Neal after the first fifteen minutes of being yanked around through Fun Kinky Novelty Items, and he says with complete Righteous Indignation that he swore not to do crime! For 24 hours! Wasn’t Peter’s whole ISSUE that Neal is too immature and criminal to control his Crime Impulses?! This results in a solid hour of comedic arguing, after which one of them has the horrifying realization that they need to go to the bathroom.

After a truly awkward interval and a gentleman’s agreement never to speak of what just occurred again, Peter now has to decide what to do since lockpicking is off the table. The office is just a recipe for disaster, and Neal would get to see everything he did at his desk. Peter decides to go with the lesser of all evils and go home. El will laugh, but at least it would be more comfortable to wait out the 24 hours there.

El laughs until she cries. Somehow, so does Satchmo. Neal decides that the situation is funny again. Peter does not.

After an hour or two, the three of them have exhausted every possible talking avenue of (1) the handcuff situation and (2) the case without taking more concrete action. Peter is unwilling to do more than call agents over the phone, which only goes so far, and he flatly refuses to access an FBI laptop or a personal computer when Neal is right there collecting passwords. Peter tries to get El to be his proxy, at least as far as the personal computer, but by now Neal has told her about the wager and El says it wouldn’t be fair to give Peter a leg up. Peter is indignant, and tries to apply spousal privilege. This results in more comedic arguing.

By early afternoon, everyone except El (who could at any time leave but has called in sick for the express purpose of enjoying the situation) is stir crazy. Peter tries to break out of the handcuffs himself - first with tools (all loaned to Chad next door) and then by just pulling (which El and Neal both veto with prejudice). After the hammer Peter keeps in the junk drawer fails to have any effect (Neal dramatically flinches and whines about never playing the violin again), Peter gets desperate enough to try and pick the lock HIMSELF. For the joy of seeing this great thing, El and Neal agree that she can access their personal computer for YouTube tutorials, if any exist for these specific weird handcuffs. Neal has MANY, many comments about Peter Giving In to CRIMINAL IMPULSES, but after a vein starts twitching in Peter’s forehead El rules that Neal has to limit his heckling if she’s going to continue providing YouTube tutorials. Fun comedic interlude once again, as Peter tries and fails to pick the handcuffs.

It is now early evening, and dinner time. Thankfully Neal is ambidextrous, so eating isn’t an issue, but the questions of Shower and Bed are now looming in everyone’s mind. There is less comedy now, bc it’s been a long day and also because Neal genuinely respects Peter and Elizabeth’s marriage. Coming into their bed when he isn’t wanted touches on a lot of tender issues for him. Peter wearily says he and Neal will take the guest room, but rounds off with a snarky comment about how Mister Criminal over here isn’t willing to get over himself. Neal snaps - does Peter understand what ACTUALLY bothered Neal so much about the first argument, the reason behind the bet? Or has the whole day been lost on him? There follows a conversation in which El insists that everyone listen to each other, Peter does some introspecting on condescending comments to Neal, and Neal acknowledges that he can be impulsive and Take The Bit too far. Satisfactory emotional arc work is done, and Neal agrees to pick the cuffs.

It’s dark now, and the light in the Burke’s home at night is always warm. Neal is picking the lock, brow furrowed in concentration, and Peter asks him what about the bet. Isn’t Neal giving up his great favor? Freedom from deviled ham? A trip to the museum, outside his radius? Access to a fond memory?

Neal looks at Peter, and looks at El, sitting beside them in the warm light, and he says he will call the bet off if he gets a kiss right now.

From which one of us, says Peter, barely breathing.

Either one. Both. Just once. It doesn’t have to mean anything. Except it does. It does, it does, it does.

Neal gets one kiss from each of them, on the lips. First kisses, tender and slow and sweet, and when it’s done they all three sit together in the warm night, looking at each other as the beginning of a new thing thrums between them.

The lock clicks open loudly, and the moment is broken but the new thing is not. Peter inhales sharply and leans backwards, Neal stays frozen in place with the skill of long practice, but Elizabeth doesn’t flinch. What breaks the moment is Peter clearing his throat and asking in a shaking voice what was the sound that lock just made. Neal takes a quick breath and says oh, it’s a sound that such and such type locks make, they’re really unusual actually, only a certain kind of company from Such and Such makes them. This makes the episode plot penny drop in Peter’s head, because of course company from Such and Such has an obscure tie to So and So, which is the key to finding their lost fence and bringing down the villain of the week.

When it’s all over, Neal turns up at the Burkes’ house again, a hesitant look on his face. In his hands are the handcuffs, still open. And of course, they invite him in.

[warren-keplers-funk-band]

white collar (2009) and the man from u.n.c.l.e (2015) fusion fic... napoleon solo the art thief gets released into agent illya kuryakin's custody to help him solve cases... i'm cooking tell me i'm not

[sanhaoche]

i'm in my white collar rewatch era for like the 293854 time and this show is THE show of all time. it's so good. what if i was a straight-laced FBI agent locked in mutual obsession with the dashing conman i put away. and i was the only man who could ever catch him and then he put himself entirely in my hands. and we became best friends and every day our lives depended on each other as we risked it all to give some rich guy a big fine. and he was like my son and my prize show pony and he showed me the flaws in the system i'd devoted my whole life to. and i fell in love with him and so did my beautiful wife to whom he is weirdly similar. and i trusted him with my life but also stayed up all night watching his GPS tracking dot move around New York in case he lied to me about going grocery shopping instead of robbing a museum. and every so often in moments of high tension i entered a fugue state where my body and mind were possessed by a higher force intent on using and explaining the random features on my car to my friends lovers and colleagues.

[bleeding-seraphic]

what is the white collar au?

OOOOOH MY GOD TY FOR ASKING

The White Collar au is a fic im writing right now, it’s about 50k words in and yet I have not posted a single chapter yet as I am Lazy™️

The gist is that it’s set in a city full of crime with different districts, each controlled by a mafia. Our favorite lamb owns a daycare is just trying to get by until they get two new students- odd little twin boys- and now have to interact with their suspiciously mafia-boss-like father

[puppetmaster13u]

Thinkin' of WOF Au for DC, but like, it's a Gothamite and Fawcett thing. (And Amity Park if crossover)

Like those are the most magical areas in the world, even if Gotham is cursed as fuck. An unspoken secret of sorts that while they present themselves as human to outsiders, they are all Very Much Not.

Which means hilariously in the league, when everyone expects Batman to be suspicious and short with the new guy- even made bets on it- they are then shooketh when both visibly relax and start talking. And half the shared complaints don't make sense!

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Now Gotham technically has no Queen, nor does Fawcett, but Batman and Captain Marvel are the closest things. Not in the traditional sense of back when they were in separate tribes (& maybe from a different dimension but shh that was millennia ago) but in the sense of, they're the ones patrolling and protecting the cities along with calling the shots in disasters.

Which does sort of change the dynamic they both have in their city. If one of them calls to arms, the city would follow them. They could declare war, and their cities (begrudgingly in Gotham's underbelly's case of strongest is in charge) would follow. And while Billy is oblivious, both Marvel-the-not-hivemind and Batman are. They know they have to be very careful.

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I'm sure we all want Nightwing Bruce but no. Bruce, like both his mother and father and father's father and so on before him, is actually an Icewing. The Waynes however, have a case of melanism running in their bloodline. Thomas Wayne? Only his quills and part of his back were darker, but Bruce? Practically pitch black scales that shadow his eyes.

Now Alfred on the other hand, is a Nightwing. No special powers there, though you would hear many a child protest with how he seems to know everything.

Commissioner Gordon is a Mudwing, big stocky and very tired, which translates to his human disguise as a large trenchcoat. He finds this very amusing. Barbara similarly, is half Mudwing. Her mother was a Hivewing, making her a hybrid between both. Which does ironically mean that Batgirl does in fact have insectoid wings. Though that does ponder the question on if they'd all go by their original vigilante names.

Dick is a Silkwing. Wingless as he watches his parents fall and unable to do anything despite this place supposedly being safe for beings like them. He grows into his own, and his wings, when they come in, are dark Gotham colors through and through, with the deep blue of the sky he's come to crave.

Jason is a hybrid between a Mudwing and a Skywing. He's also an animus- not that he knew that. He doesn't find out until he's dying, telling himself to not die, to get back to Gotham, to his dad, his family- And then he wakes up in his Coffin, alive.

Now Cass, raised to be the perfect killer, is also a hybrid, just one between a Nightwing and a Rainwing, egg set out under the moon. Which succeeds, partially. She can't straight up read minds, but combined with her talent in reading body language on both human and inhuman bodies, it's a near thing.

Tim is a Seawing, borderline abandoned by his parents who seek treasures and more wealth as he's trapped back in a city where the water is dark and poisoned. But he's Gothamite, through and through, and he adapts. Scales darker than the original blues he was born with, and glow shifting to that sickly white of the Gotham's Bats.

Now Steph, is a full-blooded Rainwing, and can in fact change her scales, but can mostly be found in purples and golds. Though for a short time she was in another set of colors, thought dead before she slithered out of the shadows older and wiser than before.

Damian is his father's son, but he's also an Al-Ghul. The not-quite dragonet is half Icewing, and half Sandwing. And struggled to adjust at first, to a place so different from his first home where the only other dragons were blood related. But like any Wayne before him, he adjusts, and he adapts.

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Billy wasn't a Beetlewing originally, and perhaps he would have hesitated if he'd known it would change him, would change his body and the last thing he had of his parents. But his friends, his Team and new family help. And he can pass as a Silkwing like their sort-of foster mother. All six of them can do so now, even if the others look more like hybrids themselves thanks to not being the Champion. They might not be, but they're his family. And that's enough.

[whitecollarcrimekids]

Okay listen. White collar already landed me back here on tumblr. I would complain but im so far past that. Im unashamedly so happy to be back.

However. What are the odds white collar also becomes the reason i start writing fanfic again? I think I’d die.

[thieves-never-say-die]

So glad to encounter another White Collar fan! I've enjoyed following your watch of the series and reliving memories from my first watch, and I'm intrigued about the fics you mentioned you're working on. Can you share a little about the fics?

I'm glad you're enjoying my watch! It's been a wild ride and I'm so happy I got around to finishing the show.

And I will take any excuse to talk about my fics SO there's a few that are just general Neal whump, one in specific that I'm still thinking about and haven't actually written anything for yet is for s5e4 Controlling Interest, because they really didn't do enough with Neal getting drugged twice in (I think) one day??? Insane that there were no side effects. Also I think it would be interesting to go into depth about what Neal tells Peter before Mozzie gets there, because we know he's talking about his childhood and they only give us like one line, but I'm kind of waiting to finish the series and see if they fill in any more gaps about his mom themselves before I go out and write that one (they have to tell us more about his mom. right? please someone tell me they give us more about his mom, we've gotten like two lines and they paint a very sad picture)

The other two are VERY angsty AU's. The first of which is 'what if Neal kills Keller in s3' (I think in ep 11? when El gets kidnapped?) because there is NO REASON for Neal to be good with guns. Why is he that good with guns. There is no precedent for Neal to be that good with guns. I just think it would be interesting (read: very sad) if Neal accidentally kills Keller while trying to protect Peter.

The second is at the end of s4 when Neal is trying to keep James around so Peter isn't charged with Pratt's murder, James shouts "don't make me do something I'll regret" which my brain immediately went "ok but what if he did something he'll regret". Which started off simple but has spiraled out into a much longer fic so that one's taking a while to write.

[oldfarmhouse]

swapping linens for knitware

https://www.pinterest.com.

[wtfwhy]

As someone who enjoys Dick Grayson as Neal Caffrey fics quite a bit, I am begging for some Dickori ones 🙏 please

[nonbinaryphantom]

i like thinking about character design and picking it apart bc i do think the most important thing when it comes to character design is informing the character in a visual way. like uh maddie and jack

they mix up the traditional american suburban family with an addition of wacky ghostness. like if you ignore their suits they dont look that odd. they look pretty neat too.

i love how their colors complement each other. orange being more loud and boisterous while blue is more understated and subtle. jack is very open with his thoughts he talks about blathering about ghosts like. word for word. while maddie tends to be the more grounded one out of the two.

also i think its really fun how we never see them in ordinary clothes even on their wedding cake topper they still nod to their ghost hunterness with the jumpsuit and goggles

its just fun to see bc it really shows how neurodivergent they are much they care about their work. its a reflection of passion! its a part of who they are, practically a second skin its something that unites them as a pair. it makes them stick out from the crowd and being unashamed about their eccentricity. jumpsuits are also something that connects them with their family

danny is the only other fenton with a jumpsuit consistently. jazz i dont believe has ever been shown to have her own while danny has a very plain one its black and white which are very neutral colors but theyre also a blank slate which given that danny is a teenager, kinda helps that idea. also it connects him with his parents bc he’s the one that takes after them in the ghost hunting business even without them realizing it. which makes jazz not having one something that separates her from them bc she craves normalcy. she wears maddie’s jumpsuit. once in maternal instincts but thats the most its shown. she’s not a ghost hunter, hardly a combatant either and she seems like an oddity out of them which says a lot about her relation to the family as well

i was meant to just talk about jack and maddie but i lost the plot. sorry.

[suburbonlegends]

Two different sets of prompts for the White Collar holiday season!!

I tried to find a good balance between fluffy ideas and angsty ones, so hopefully any writers or artists or any other creators can find some inspiration if they want to make anything!!

I don’t really have an idea for like a time frame for these, like this isn’t a whumptober thing, it’s just for fun! If you want to plan ahead and post these in December, go for it, if you get inspo don’t let me stop you from posting sooner 😅

[crimsonbreeze]

I need to talk about Kate Moreau

Because I have never seen any character be given such importance only to end up being so under utilized. The lack of explanation to the mystery that was Kate just left me feeling cheated. I wanted to know this character. I needed to know this character. Even just a little bit. I got..well, next to nothing.

(Spoilers for the whole series ahead so new viewers read at your own risk.)

Kate is the driving force for all of Neal's actions for the entirety of the first two season and yet throughout all of this, she remains nothing more than a plot device. There isn't any one scene in the show where we ever get to see anything from Kate's perspective. We only ever see Kate from other people's POV or we hear other people talk about her, see how they feel about her and how she influenced some aspects of their lives but never see how other people influenced her or how she felt about them. Maybe this was just me but I just kept on waiting for a scene or an episode where her actions would be explained and we would get to see exactly why did everything she did. I kept feeling like it was coming but it just never happened. All we ever got was a quick minute of Adler confirming that Kate really had been on Neal's side all along but the plan went somewhat sideways and so he killed her. It just didn't have the impact that it should have and it was made so much worse by the fact that Neal seems to kind of just gets over it after he gets this answer and then is just entirely focused on the treasure in the next season. The lack of insight into Kate leaves the storyline feeling incomplete despite having spanned two entire seasons.

There's just so much wasted potential. I particularly would have loved to see the dynamic between Kate and Peter had she lived. Kate and Peter were sort of pulling Neal in two different directions and it would have been so interesting to see them interact some more. Peter clearly didn't trust her but it also heavily seemed like he just didn't like her. Same goes for everyone else too, honestly. So did they just dislike/distrust Kate as a person or was it just because they didn't like how much Neal loved her? Pretty much everyone was telling Neal that Kate was playing him by the end of the season to the point where he truly begins to doubt her. I needed the aftermath of that and I never got it. I wanted to see Neal be angry at himself for doubting her when all she wanted was to run away with him. I also really wanted some kind of confrontation between Neal and Peter where Neal's guilt kicks into overdrive and he lashed out at Peter and blamed him for making Neal question Kate and for Peter never giving her a chance (because seriously Peter vilifies her from the get go). Even as a plot device she's under utilized.

The scene in season 5 when Neal is running to Rebecca triggered something for me (cause that hug they had was the hug I had been waiting for between Neal and Kate that I never got) I couldn't stop thinking about it especially after learning that Rebecca had all that intel on Neal's old girlfriends. For some reason, I can't help thinking the person she she was emulating the most was Kate. I don't know why but the feeling wouldn't go away cause even though we knew pretty much nothing about her, it was what I had been imaging Kate to be like the whole time. So I wound up going back and rewatching all of the scenes that Kate is in or mentioned cause I needed to get to know this character and I thought rewatching the scenes and focusing on her would help. But no.

Kate has no personality. We never get to understand her motivations or emotions before she's just very suddenly killed. Which I could accept if we got even a little bit more insight into her character but even though they spent an entire season with Neal trying to figure out who killed her and why, her death still doesn't feel like it got the attention that it should have because we never get to see Neal grieve. I wanted to see him missing her, thinking about her, maybe wanting to talk about her but struggling with it. I wanted more flashbacks even if it was just him seeing her face for a split second or remembering her laugh. Literally anything that would have given us some sense of what she was like as a person.

At first, I kind of blamed it on bad acting by Alexandra Daddario but after watching the scenes a few more times, I think it has more to do with just bad writing and I think she actually did a pretty good job in the flashback episode. The bones of the story are so good but it's just not enough so it leaves the entire storyline feeling hollow. I feel like they just couldn't decide if they actually wanted Kate to be good or bad so they just told the actress to be mysterious which lead to her not really being able to show a lot of emotion. We see a lot more emotion at least in the flashback episode from Kate and get a small sense of what she might be like but again, it's ALL from Neal's pov. Same thing when she has that meeting with Peter. it's all from Peter's perspective and we see it as him retelling what happened in that meeting to Neal and Kate is skewed by his perception of her ( i looked into her eyes and I didn't see concern for you). The only time I remember see kate's feelings or reactions to something is for a few seconds in 1x06 when she's on the phone with Neal where she smiles when she says hi to him and then the five seconds of focus we get on her when Neal tells her he's not telling her where he hid all the things he stole.

Kate feels like a puzzle where we've been given a lot of the pieces but I can't get them to fit together. We never see her emotions or hear about her feelings but we get snippets of the kind of person she is. The easy and obvious stuff is that she's beautiful and into art. On a less obvious scale, it's implied that she's very smart. Based on the flashback, she spent somewhere between 1-2 years just avoiding Neal and hiding from him and Mozzie while working (most likely solo?) as a con artist and a fence. How was she managing that? She wasn't a conwoman before Adler took off with her life saving so obviously, she picked up on things quick for her to be able to pull off hiding from Neal for as long as she did. She knew immediately when Neal tried to con her and she called him out on it. Was she working a legit job and fencing on the side? How was she affording to be moving around from place to place every week? What was her living situation like? Did she have family other than her dead father (we never got to see what clue she had left there for Neal, only the flower from Alex instead)? How did she feel about the fact that she was the reason Neal eventually got caught the first time? Did she feel guilty? Did she blame herself for him being in jail? How did she feel when she found out he broke out with only 3 months left on his sentence just for her? How did she feel about him working with the FBI? How did she feel about Peter? He used her as bait to catch Neal and then years later basically threatened her to keep away from him. Did she think he was using Neal or did she believe him when he told her he was Neal's friend?

She seems to be scared for Neal's safety but she was bold enough to make a deal with Fowler and later go above him to make a deal with Adler to let them both go once he got the music box and to point a gun at Peter (even though they make it pretty obvious she didn't have it in her to actually pull the trigger, you can kinda see her hand shaking as she points the gun and Peter doesn't even flinch cause he knows she won't do it which is the only unbiased thing about kate we get from that scene). What was going through her head during all this? Was she scared? Was she angry? Desperate and just throwing a hail Mary? Why was she in contact with Adler when even Fowler wasn't? Did he contact her when he learned Fowler had roped her into his mission to get the music box? Was Adler upset about Kate getting involved? She seems to stay calm under pressure, she's funny and charming and friendly from what we get from the flash back episode that gives her a certain gentleness that contradicts what most characters kept saying about her to Neal in the first season. The later seasons paint her more and more as a victim and an all around good person. Her leaving the painting for Neal in season 3 when she could have taken it, Neal using the word innocence to describe her in season 5, Keller telling Neal that Kate was dead the moment Neal laid eyes on her making it seem once again that despite his love for her, Neal was the worst thing that ever happened to Kate...

Again, so much wasted potential. I feel like we could have had such a great, nuanced female character in Kate and we were robbed of that cause the writers decided they wanted to move on from the Kate storyline without ever actually giving us her side of the story. Don't get me wrong, I loved the mystery and the intrigue it created but the mystery needed to be at least somewhat unraveled at the end and what we got just wasn't enough.

Anyways... this disappointment has lead to me creating an entire personality and backstory for Kate in my head based off the very little we do see of her. I think she had the potential to be an amazing character and also, I just wanted to see more of the couple. My obsessive rewatching of those scenes led me to me fall in love with the Neal/Kate ship in all it's tragic glory. Causes the one thing the show did make very clear to me was that these two loved each other more than anyone and I think they were perfect for each other. I still would have loved to get to know Kate a little bit more but I also get the sense that maybe the writers couldn't figure out a backstory for ther that made her so special for Neal. Seriously what is it that could make Neal Caffrey fall that hard? I can make do with my head canons but it just sucks seeing the groundwork and realizing how great the character and the ship could have been.