White Collar × DC

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Fandom
Name(s): White Collar x DC
Abbreviation(s): WCDC
Scope/Focus: White Collar and DC Comics (specifically the Batfamily fandom)
Date(s):
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White Collar x DC (WCDC) refers to the crossover fandom between the 2009-2014 television series White Collar and the multimedia DC Comics series. Despite often being referred to as a crossover involving DC, the fandom is almost exclusively focused on the Batfamily⁠ fandom—and specifically the blue-eyed and black-haired characters Dick Grayson (most popular), Jason Todd, and Tim Drake⁠—without focus on the wider shared universe of DC.

Unlike other crossover fandoms such as SuperWhoLock and Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons, WCDC is more of a fusion crossover, almost always based on the premise that "Neal Caffrey" is an alias for one of Batman's protégés.

Fandom

Popularity

As of January 2023, there are over 1,300 fics on AO3 tagged with both White Collar and a DC fandom.[1] The concept has existed on AO3 since 2010[2] but popularity surged in 2020. A tag for Dick Grayson as Neal Caffrey appeared in 2016, but there were few occurrences.[3] nashequilibrium identifies the fandom as beginning in summer 2020,[4] a few months into the COVID-19 lockdowns, but spiking in August 2021, when White Collar/DC Week began.[5][6]

Engagement

Particularly appealing to some fic writers was the high level of engagement present in the fandom's height. Nearly seventy works (0.05%) have over a hundred comments[7] and more than 370 (28%) have over a thousand kudos.[8]. While it's difficult to calculate an average, it's safe to assume that these statistics are uncommonly high in most fandoms. Destinationtoast found in 2014 that 90% of works have 14 or fewer comments and the same percentage have 97 or fewer kudos.[9]

Tropes

Shipping

The following ships seem to appear most frequently:

Discussion

See also "Cowardly and Superstitious Lots: A Statistical Analysis of White Collar and Batman Crossover Fics on AO3" [10] by nashequilibrium (17 December 2021).

In early 2020, on AO3, White Collar/Batman was primarily written by the OG, Quinis, in 2016. There were others but none were producing as much content as Quinis. She and the other OGs had to do the heavy lifting for the fandom, connecting the two fandoms together to make the crossover work, building a foundation to make Neal a vessel for other characters. Quinis in particular wrote very intricate stories that focused on the lore of how Dick Grayson (because Matt Bomer was a common faceclaim for Dick Grayson which is why there's more Dick!Neal) was Neal Caffrey. This was also the era of the White Collar/Chuck/Batman triple crossover.

After a long period of inactivity, there's the 2020 spike you noticed which was BabyGenius in mid 2020 which then shifted to primarily Spnfandom8, CheetahLeopard2, and elijay in late 2020 to me, astropocalypse, and CheetahLeopard2 in late January to mid February 2021. Mid February 2021 is when more people really started to come in at an exponential rate which, as pointed out by others, is when we made the groupchat.

So the timeline of the WC/DC “renaissance” goes something like this: late 2020/early 2021, Leo (CheetahLeopard2) posts several fics in the crossover. Oliver (impravidus) also is interested in the crossover, so he messages Leo on tumblr, and they talk and inspire each other’s writing. Eventually, they make a discord that they are the mods of (February 7, 2021 is the date, I just checked) and people join from links in their fics. The community definitely led to the increase in fics posted, and the vast majority of fics since 2021 are from members of the discord. There’s currently 339 members, which is wild for a crossover fandom as niche as this one.

[petermaxximof (14 July 2022)]

Can someone please explain to me why there are 970 crossover fics between batman and white collar on ao3. What is the correlation?? Why is this such a phenomenon???? I had never even heard of this show but now I know like all of the main characters names just from fanfic descriptions. Please someone make it make sense.

[chamiryokuroi (14 July)]
As an ex white collar fanatic I have an idea why.

Neal Caffrey is an ex criminal working as a consultant for the FBI, he is a pretty blue eyed, black haired man, with a ridiculous set of skills that at times feels too OP, there’s also not much known about his past, which makes him the perfect character to crossover any of the batfam into. [...]
[sometimes-me (14 July)]
Not just that, it got a sudden popularity the last year because there was a DC/White Collar week event, and a discord server was created, which brought more people talking about it and consequently writing more stories about it.

For reference, 1 year ago there were only 170 crossover fics, so 800 are from last year alone. Before that, it was just 10-30 new fics every year.

#also have you SEEN matt bomer in a blue button up??? thats 100% dick grayson
[mycroftrh (14 July)]
Matt Bomer (the actor of the above-discussed character) has stated multiple times that he wishes he could play Nightwing.
[operationmorewhitecollar (16 July 2022)]
Oh, OP, we feel you, even if from the other direction! Of course, we're not living under rocks, so we do know Batman and family, but still!

Upside: lots more people exposed to White Collar, for which we're forever grateful! Downside: always more new x-over fics than pure WC, and we're selfish enough to say we'd prefer it the other way around. 🤷🏻 (And we can usually tell when the author actually hasn't seen or just doesn't get WC, so they're the ones who really confuse us!) Of course, if DC ever does get around to casting Matty B as Nightwing, we might feel differently about all the batfics!

And lastly, @petermaxximof (and all the bat fans out there), we invite you to go ahead and watch White Collar; we definitely think it's worth the time to get to know the canon versions of the people you've met in fanfic. And besides, we love welcoming new people into this family!

Events and projects

White Collar DC Week

2021

2022

2023

Discord Servers:

Example Fanworks

Fan art

Fanfiction

Fan communities and archives

References

  1. ^ filter, 1,311 on 11 Jan 2023,
  2. ^ The Embarrassment of Riches Heist by Betty (28 May 2010).
  3. ^ Seven Years Running... by Quinis (18 Dec 2016).
  4. ^ I believe I found the fandom in summer 2021, at which point there were around 300 fics. I think it was helped when TheWitchBoy, who was already popular in Batman fandom, posted a crossover at the start of WC/DC 2021 (here, with over 2,000 kudos). —Sobqjmv sphinx (talk)
  5. ^ Cowardly and Superstitious Lots: A Statistical Analysis of White Collar and Batman Crossover Fics on AO3 Chapter 1: Fun With Timelines: When Did This Crossover Get Popular? by nashequilibrium (17 Dec 2021).
  6. ^ White Collar/DC Week 2021 collection, with 233 works.
  7. ^ filter
  8. ^ filter
  9. ^ AO3 WORD COUNTS, DATES, AND POPULARITY METRICS
  10. ^ [1]"archived
  11. ^ Endnote to "An Unexpected Response to Being Shot", Archived version a WCDC fic by TheWitchBoy
Related Concepts, Fandoms, Terms, Fanworks
See also Miraculous Ladybug x DC • DP x DC
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