Board games are one of the many delightful White Collar canon themes we love to keep alive in our series. Mozzie continues to play Candy Land with June. He plans a con by using Monopoly. In the Caffrey Conversation AU, we've expanded the gaming concept to include not only board games but other types as well.
Warning for minor spoilers for the Caffrey Conversation AU.
Although Neal strategizes with Mozzie over Monopoly, he prefers chess. That game was used as a plot element in canon when Keller sent him messages within chess moves. In our series, Neal conceptualized a chess match in his head when he faced off against Keller in The Mirror. Neal's love of chess can also be seen in two of his other interests. The sport of fencing is often referred to as a physical version of chess. Henry describes the Hospital Game which Neal invented as being similar to Star Trek's Tri-D Chess. Actually it was Penna, not Neal, who invented the hospital game. To learn more about her wonderful creation, visit her post: Why Neal plays the hospital game.
I expanded the game concept to include video games as another means for the characters to interact. Video games are divided into different genres, including action, strategy, and role-playing. I imagined that Diana would be into shooter games like Halo whereas Jones with his Navy background would be more interested in strategy games. Neal has had limited experience with video games, but I expect a shapeshifter like him would prefer role-playing games.
In addition to being used as a tool to plan a con, games can be used to establish detente. When Neal and Peter are kidnapped in The Woman in Blue, Mozzie keeps vigil with Elizabeth and Travis. He brings along board games to help relieve the tension. That was his first time to meet Travis Miller and I invented a new game for them to play: Star Trek: Warp 9. Despite his initial distrust of the tall stoical agent, Mozzie warmed up to Travis through their mutual love of Star Trek.
In The Dreamer, Jones takes his love for gaming to a new level when he uses the game Battleship to explain his strategy for the operation at Lynx Mountain. Battleship started out as a paper and pencil game during World War I and subsequently evolved through many iterations into a video game. Tournaments are popular in the U.S. Navy, so it was an appropriate choice for Jones, who is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate.
When Neal saw how Jones had used Battleship, he sensed an opportunity. From the time Neal started working at the FBI he's been trying to build bridges between Mozzie and the White Collar team. As an expert con artist, Neal knows the desirability of establishing friendly relations with everyone, whether or not an ulterior motive is involved. By the time of Raphael's Dragon, Mozzie has become friends with everyone except Jones. He finds Jones's manner intimidating and suspects, rightfully, that Jones is the least inclined of all the team members to bend the rules.
For his part Jones revels in his reputation. It's no wonder that Travis suggested he go as a Klingon to a sci-fi convention. Neal knows his bark is worse than his bite, but one glare from Jones is sufficient for Mozzie to scurry for cover.
Yet there is hope. Jones was the first to propose that Adler is searching for a sunken U-boat. Mozzie has long believed in the possibility of Hitler clones. Couldn't a mutual interest in Nazis lead to disarmament? Both men use games to plot strategy. When Jones takes up Silent Hunter III, a U-boat strategy game, and professes an interest in playing with Mozzie online, Neal senses this could be the start of a beautiful friendship.
Games can also have a darker side. Azathoth is clearly familiar with video games. The house where he held Neal and Peter prisoner contained many classic video game traps. In The Dreamer, he plays a cruel hoax by doctoring a playing card from a Lovecraft board game: The Call of Cthulhu. Marta Kolar, an expert game programmer, is suspected either of being Azathoth or working for him. Azathoth has by no means exhausted his bag of gaming tricks.
If you'd like to read about the use of physical games such as Tuesday Tails in Caffrey Conversation, visit Penna's post about playing hide-and-seek in Caffrey Conversation. Recently she added laser tag to our list of games when she included it in the "Casual Day" chapter of Caffrey Vignettes.
Raphael's Dragon on Archive of Our Own
Raphael's Dragon on FanFiction
No comments:
Post a Comment