One of my quirks with regards to White Collar is that I tend to think Neal is kinda overloaded on narrative shininess, and so even when it might seem more congruent to give him wacky supernatural stuff, I tend to balk and aim the supernatural stuff at whoever else is in the vicinity instead. Which mostly translates to Peter. Sometimes Peter and Diana both. (Unless the supernatural stuff inconveniences Neal in some way, like that braintic I have where Neal died at eighteen and then got accidentally resurrected.)

But, you know, it tickles me when Peter gets to hand-rear a dragon hatchling or gets solicited to perform Great Works for various deities or gets to be a BTR-style guardian angel or has made friends with the eldritch creature that lives in Records and has been granted superpowers or, you know, etc.

So today I got the idea that Peter should have draconic blood. And some people with draconic blood hoard gold or jewels or sports cars or cats or something, but Peter? Peter hoards evidence. Also puzzles. Clues. Unsolved mysteries books.

And then it just kept getting better.

( *My* draconic blood only makes me hoard ill-advised braintics. )

…though I feel like at some point I should give Jones some supernatural awesome, because poor Jones always gets left out.

Okay, at this point I think everyone who reads this and cares about White Collar spoilers has watched up through 3x11 Checkmate, but just in case, I'm cutting this. (squeemu, this may potentially be of interest to you? In a what-I'm-getting-you-into sort of way? And also an I-will-complain-about-this-in-your-general-direction-forever sort of way.)

( On fics, consequences, my curmudgeonly fandom opinions, and the inadvisability of allowing me access to an expansive tagging system such as AO3's. )

See the Rift exposition post for too much context. Or just keep reading for too much context again.

One of the reasons I don't really plan on doing more with this universe than braintics is because Jack Harkness is about as overpowered as you can get, and I don't think that three hundred thousand works of Jack O'Neill being shown up by the 280-something-year-old Special Ops man from the future is good fic. Jack Harkness can be put in his place by a few things – one of his alphas (and oh, isn't there a whole other post to be had about what that entails), overwhelming force, and his own utter ineptitude when it comes to dealing with his own emotions and his own damage, but none of these things are really O'Neill's forte. Which means that in the Battle of the Jacks, Harkness is almost a shoe-in to win. ...and I don't really like crossovers where the takeaway seems to be "My Canon's Character Is Better Than Your Canon's Character," even though in this case SG-1 is usually more my canon than Torchwood.

Phwah. SG-1 and Torchwood would be my Facebook "It's Complicated"s, if Facebook believed in polyamory.

(All of this pretty much boils down to to the fact that I should write a lot more with Harkness and Daniel, because Daniel can kick Harkness' ass before Harkness realizes it's been kicked, at least in the emotional insight corner. And O'Neill needs to make friends with Sam Tyler, because Tyler is a no-nonsense, authority-respecting sort of guy who can also kick Harkness' ass if it comes down to it.)

(...strangely enough, damageverse is pretty much my one grand foray into the world of slash, and is Jack Harkness/Sam Tyler. Whereas Jack O'Neill/Sam Carter is my foremost Stargate pairing, in that very special way where I ship it only so long as they both ignore the ship because saving the galaxy and being upstanding soldiers is more important. storyinmypocket and I came to the conclusion that Jacks need their Sams. Not always in a romantic way, and not always in a, er, healthy way, but it seems to hold true. ...we also came to the conclusion that the group names are "a confusion of Jacks" and "a repression of Sams". Just try to tell me it doesn't seem right.)

( But anyway, I was talking about Jack and Jack. )

...hey, who wants more braintics?

( In which discussion is had about all this. Tortury discussion. )

( In which O'Neill remains not-okay with this whole thing. )

...which may say a lot about my headcanon and very little about anything else, but wahey.

The Sam Carter in my head just kinda... loves people, occasionally falls in love with people, without any expectation that things can, should or will come out of it. Love is this anomalous emotional stimulus with no ingrained response, for her. It's a concept that's completely distinct – almost isolated – from the concepts of things like starting a relationship or starting a family. Those are acts of social construction. Those are learned; they're activities with strategy and arbitrary cultural form, like navigating a conversation or the ins and outs of polite smalltalk.

I just... oh, kids.