March 21 is Neal Caffrey's birthday, and this year it has me reflecting on how I started watching White Collar and "meeting" the canon characters. It's a long story, and it brings me new insights into the fan fiction AU I created with those characters.
Let's go back several years before White Collar aired. There were probably TV shows I was a fan of, but none were particularly memorable. I was more into reading. I was particularly entranced by J.D. Robb's In Death series. Set in a futuristic New York City, the stories are about a police detective named Eve Dallas, a smart and determined woman with a tragic past. So tragic in fact, that she'd repressed most of the memories of her abuse. She's paired up with a mysterious, sexy, dark-haired Irish billionaire named Roarke, who also has a tragic past. He's been a thief and a con man, but starts to put those activities behind him out of love for Eve. Surrounding them is a growing group of co-workers and friends, including a rising rock star, a fashion designer, a psychologist... The more I think about it, the more I see parallels to the friends and family I've been gathering around Neal and Peter in the Caffrey Conversation AU.
Sometimes I imagined what Eve and Roarke's daughter might be like, if they had kids. In the stories I spun about her in my mind, I called her Grace. Some of her look and personality went into the character who became Angela Caffrey in my White Collar fic.
The problem for me as a reader was that Eve and Roarke were solving particularly brutal, violent murders and the darkness was wearing me down. Eventually I stopped reading the series. In fact, I skipped over to fantasy for a while. I started with Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden stories, urban fantasy about a wizard in Chicago. I added on the Sookie Stackhouse vampire stories by Charlaine Harris, and Patricia Briggs' stories about werewolves and other paranormal creatures, and C.E. Murphy's Walker Papers series about a shaman. Eventually a friend convinced me to start reading J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. However, each series grew darker the longer it lasted, and again I sought something different.
I returned to mysteries but focused on humorous stories. First it was Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels about an inept bounty hunter in New Jersey, and then I started reading mystery series set in bakeries, bookstores, and so forth. Too many had love triangles that became tiresome, and I went looking for another change.
One day I was cruising through the channels on TV and stopped at the USA Network. They were in the midst of repeating multiple episodes of a show about a guy who used his con artist skills to solve mysteries. To my delight, the show was often light and funny. The main character had a smart but slightly kooky best friend who added to the humor. There was a touch of angst about the main character's father -- a cop -- and the writers teased viewers with references to something that had led our hero to run away from home at the age of 18. Fans wanted to know about his adventures during his years as a runaway, but it was mostly left to our imaginations. We just knew that he'd picked up a lot of skills and experiences.
Sound like Neal? Yes, but in fact this was Shawn of the show Psych. Watching Psych, I saw ads for White Collar and the idea of a mystery about white collar crimes appealed to me. Mysteries about something other than murder? What a refreshing change!
The pilot had me intrigued by the characters. Two nice, smart guys with different approaches and backgrounds working together to solve mostly nonviolent crimes was a scenario that felt perfect. Peter with his refreshingly strong marriage and principles was nevertheless a complex character. Neal, the sexy, mysterious, dark-haired thief and con man living in a mansion in Manhattan was irresistible. You never knew what he'd do next. It's like I'd returned to where I'd started as a mystery reader. Here were some of my favorite elements of the In Death series without all the death. It was a less silly Psych (not that I mind silly, but variety is good).
Looking back, it seems that in the Caffrey Conversation AU I took White Collar and layered on elements from other stories I'd enjoyed. As in the In Death series, the AU features a tragic, repressed backstory for Neal with a psychologist mother-figure and musician best friend pushing him to face his demons. Like Roarke he has a big, overwhelming Irish family and like Eve he accumulates a close set of friends, giving him the emotional entanglements that come with accepting membership in that extended family. Actually, both In Death and Psych have a maternal psychologist who worries about the main character. My Noelle was influenced by Psych's Maddie while my Robert was originally a twisted version of Psych's Henry. I'm sure we could find more parallels with stories I've loved if I kept digging through my subconscious. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why my own stories are filled with references to other books and movies that inspired me. The most recent short story "chapters" in Caffrey Vignettes, for instance, reference Nancy Drew and Harry Potter. By the Book referenced Pride and Prejudice. Caffrey Aloha featured the Wizard of Oz.
My AU characters have come to feel like family to me. I love their quirks and feel them pushing their stories in the directions they want to go. It's been a fantastic experience getting to know them, and I'm grateful for each step that led to me "meeting" the White Collar characters. Although they do face sadness and setbacks at times in my stories, I can assure you that I envision happy endings, true to the USA Network "blue skies" philosophy that drew me to Psych and White Collar in the first place.
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