Warehouse 13/WMG

Myka and H.G. Wells are in love.

 * Or at the very least have some Unresolved Sexual Tension....check out the meaningful glance they gave each other seconds before
 * This is canon, isn't it?
 * Definitely canon. Joanne Kelly confirmed it.
 * Canon on H.G.'s part, Myka's... propably not considering she has a seceret crush on.

Peke and Mika will go on to be famous for something and eventually spawn at least one Artifact

 * H.G. Wells, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, probably a whole bunch of other historical figures have been Warehouse Agents and architects and while the regents are all Almighty Janitor s it seems that many people leave the warehouse famous for one reason or another.
 * alternately: it will be Claudia since she's already a Gadgeteer Genius like HG was
 * It probably will be Claudia since Fredrick has implied she's being groomed for something and HG referred to someone she knew as the Claudia of her time. If nothing else, Claudia's free pass in the warehouse is to keep tabs on her.

Warehouse 13 contains the Lost Ark.

 * The Lost Ark was stored in a large warehouse and it wasn't used during any war etc. Warehouse 13 seems to fit the role of such a warehouse.
 * Then it must also have the Crystal Skull, the Lost Ark remake and James Woods

Mrs. Fredric is a Time Lady

 * Or Artie. He even has the pocket watch! (Of course, that might be considered evidence that MacPherson is a Time Lord...)

Alternately, Mrs. Fredric is a stable time-loop older version of Leena.

 * Seriously, they do vaguely resemble each other, and I've thought a couple of times that Leena MIGHT be Mrs. Fredric's daughter.. but as long as we're Wild Mass Guessing, here...
 * Either Eddie Mc Clintock or Jack Kenny mentioned this theory in the commentary for Time Will Tell. The cast found it interesting, and did not either confirm or deny it.
 * Jossed, now that
 * Not necessarily Mrs. Fredrick is older than Leena so

The female H.G. Wells is, despite her claims, NOT the H.G. Wells that wrote those books, but merely a hyper-obsessive fan.

 * Admittedly this is a thing where MST3K Mantra can certainly be invoked (after all in the Warehouse 13 universe Alice Liddell was a psychopath), but the main problem is that she apparently was bronzed early in the 20th Century (Syfy.com said that Warehouse 12 closed sometime in WWI, so I'm guessing around there), which would make it impossible for her to have written later books like "Men Like Gods", "The Shape of Things to Come" and "Star Begotten", not to mention much of Wells' socialistic writings. Instead, Wells is a very delusional fan (or perhaps one of HG's many mistresses), a Warehouse agent who, through her own encounters with Artifacts and her constant reading of Wells' books, came to believe herself to be Wells.
 * Then again, wouldn't Artie know about it if H.G. Wells was any of those things? Since there is nothing about it in the manual...
 * It wouldn't be the first time Artie has hid some stuff.
 * She never claimed to have written the books. In her first episode, she states that her brother wrote the books, she merely provided the science and the inventions.
 * This would actually make some sense, as with one or two exceptions Wells' work after the point where Fem!Wells was bronzed started to feature less technology and more social commentary. It could be said that her "brother", not having all the science and inventions, had to abandon the genre to a degree.
 * L. Ron Hubbard continued to write book for many years after he died. There are always forgotten manuscripts and unpublished essays lying around after an author dies which their estate can have published.

When you are bronzed, you only have a week or two of consciousness, though it feels like an eternity.

 * If there is some residual energy left in the bronzed statue and it is all directed at the brain, the brain could perhaps continue to function for a while, but not forever. It would explain why Artie doesn't care about the bronzed people being conscious, but would still allow someone who got bronzed (who have nothing else to do or occupy themselves with) to have a long time to think, as H.G. Wells revealed she had. It would certainly seem like a long time to them, but it is not an And I Must Scream situation.
 * Right. We're dealing with a mythos in which Lucrezcia Borgia's consciousness is transmitted through her jewelry, and a magic teapot spontaneously produces ferrets, but sure, let's draw the line at the notion that the brain can maintain consciousness indefinitely while the body is encased in bronze.
 * Well, yeah, you obviously can't stop age but keep brain activity. Its impossible, unless some brain-life support is in action. Not like anyone cares through...
 * In episode 10 she says she wanted to "awaken in a different world" by getting bronzed, implying that bronzed people are not awake and that indications otherwise are writing mistakes (or else this is an Author's Saving Throw).
 * Not really. Bronzed people aren't standing around watching the world go by. She said she could think, not that she could see. Even if she could, what's there to see? The inside of a box, being transported in a crate to the new Warehouse, minor changes in fashion? It's not a writing mistake of any kind.
 * By getting bronzed, she wanted to be in a future where things were better. Did you miss the comment about the bronzer being "her time machine"?

H.G. Wells new invention

 * Is a time machine. When you hear her ranting about how woman were treated in the past, she brings up a time machine. She certainly seems smart enough, had a lot of time to think and could probably pull it off with the Imperceptor (read:cavorite) technology.
 * Confirmed, although it's a mental-only time machine. Also Jossed, as it is in no way new, and wasn't actually part of her plan.

Mrs. Frederick is immortal and was an agent of Warehouse 1
She was affected by artifact that grants immortality.
 * Jossed:

The neutralizer goo is the good ectoplasm from Ghostbusters 2
That is why negative emotions seem to counteract it's neutralizing qualities. And that is also why it turned Pete and Myka from bickering to playful in one quick splash.
 * AHA! There's another, similar possibility:

The Ghostbusters sold some of their Cursed Artifacts to Warehouse 13 in one of their lean periods
Video game only, but it would make sense for Artie and Mrs. Frederic to want things like Asmodeus' Hotline and the Pin-up Calendar OF DOOM. And, since the game is mostly canon with the films, it seems like this one's ironclad.

Loretta and Sheldon from "Mild Mannered" are actually Kaylee and Simon
After the events of Serenity, the crew drifted apart, with the two lovebirds buying their own ship and traveling the black. One day, they happen upon some sort of Negative Space Wedgie, that shunts them into Warehouse 13s verse. It takes a few years for them to adapt to this different reality, but eventually they settle down in Detroit, change their names, and open a pie shop.

MacPherson is not really dead
He is detached from his body at the moment of death by an artifact. He already had a Heel Face Turn so he will be back and will help.

Mrs. Frederick, after doing a good job of running Warehouse 13, will get a promotion.
She'll end up being put in charge of a super-secret organization dedicated to protecting humanity from Metahumans.
 * Jossed:

Mrs. Frederick has a teleportation artifact.
This is how she manages to make such sudden entrances and exits.
 * Specifically, she has an artifact that allows her to turn any doorway into a wormhole.
 * My money's on those glasses.

A part of Freddie from iCarly's camera, laptop or something on his tech cart is an Artifact.
It's the reason why the webshow gets so so many viewers, and why people think it's so funny. It releases some kind of artifact pulse wave that generates 'happiness' and/or makes anything funny. It may be related to the artifact that caused so many people to die of asphyxiation from being unable to stop laughing. It was probably made by Alan Turing if it's inside or part of the laptop, or John Logie Baird if it's something to do with the camera.

H.G. Wells is planning to commit Gendercide
She got along well with Myka and Claudia, she's mourning a daughter, and she rants about the treatment of women in the past. So far, the only people she shows feeling for or cooperates with (without killing them) are women.
 * Pete will defeat her with the Power of Love.
 * Jossed.

Warehouse 13 is run by the same Secret Masters that run the SCP Foundation and Warehouse 23

 * Because secret organizations are incestuous like that.
 * Let's add O2STK as well.

HG Wells' daughter is

 * Myka's grandmother. Just because.
 * Jossed, H.G. Wells' daughter is dead. Pete and Myka have seen the corpse.

H. G. Wells will die, do a Face Heel Turn, or get stranded in the future in the last episode of season 2

 * It is called "Reset". The implications here are obvious.
 * Face Heel Turn confirmed. She's now locked away somewhere.

The Regents are all Time Lords and the Warehouse is their TARDIS

 * They fled the Time War, fell through one of those dimensional gateways and ended up here during ancient times. This explains why the Warehouse is bigger on the inside. Every time the Warehouse has changed, they just programmed the chameleon circuit to turn into something new.

== Many artifacts gain their power from a mixtures of the energies of a person or a group of people after they die and their association with the artifact-to-be and their claim to fame by the general public. This is part of the reason the Bronze Sector exists. ==
 * This could explain in-universe why there have yet to be artifacts of the possessions of living people. Artifacts that were actively used in their source time period would have been activated after the creator's death. Dead Artists Are Better, indeed.
 * Gadgets would be similar yet separate from the more supernatural artifacts, allowing tinkerers such as H.G. Wells, Philo Farnsworth, Hugo Miller, Claudia Donovan, etc to work their magic without being six feet under. The artifacts are still in the warehouse because they too unstable for the open use like Farnsworth's Camera/Projector, or because they just have nowhere else to be like Edison's human-powered cart from the pilot.
 * I would like to speculate that there are two kinds of Bronze Sector inmates: Preventatives and Offenders. A Preventative would be a person who would be at risk of crafting a potentially catastrophic artifact that could not be contained. An Offender would be a renegade individual who is in the loop about the Warehouses, such as MacPherson. Bronzing an Offender would indicate that the Regents are giving the subject a chance at parole, or simply because they cannot trust a single move the person could make using conventional prison methods. This troper isn't sure which category H.G. Wells should fall into as of Season 2's 9th episode, especially if she isn't telling the truth about her incarceration. We've yet to hear the Warehouse file version other than "she is a very bad person, much misfortune shall befall us."
 * This idea could be disproven by H.G. Wells whipping out a full-fledged artifact associated with herself, or if some random unremarkable person whom nobody has heard of having his own artifact.
 * That's not disproving. We said many artifacts are activated/created by someone dying. The H.G. Wells Artifact or Random Joe Artifact are just a few of the artifacts that aren't.
 * Jossed by Cinderella's knife. Unless the knife didn't belong to her in the first place, it definitely held its power when Cinderella was alive. Same with some stockings earlier in the season.
 * That's not jossing. We said many artifacts are activated/created by someone dying. The Cinderella Knife is just one of the artifacts that isn't.
 * Qualifying words like "many" are not a cheat code to make you always right.
 * Perhaps Artifacts are actually Wonders, and being bronzed prevents one's Wonders from becoming Orphans.
 * To clarify, Wonders are tied to the Genius that created them. And when a Genius dies any surviving Wonders of his become sentient, as well as developing terrifying new abilities.

The artifact Hitler's Microphone is not an artifact.

 * The finale is supposed to have that artifact as a focus point, but a neat, if maybe a bit common, twist would be that it actually has no artifact powers at all, but everyone assumes it does, and the ideas they have about what it could do make them too scared to test it, so it just sits there, a totally normal microphone.
 * Jossed. Hitler's microphone, according to Jack Kenny, gives the speaker mind control powers.

Artifacts were given their power by the Eureka Artifact.

 * The crossover episodes mean that the Artifact from the early seasons of Eureka exists in the Warehouse 13 universe as well. On Eureka, it has being shown that the Artifact is capable of strong outbursts of energy, and those exposed to the energy of the Artifact can gain immense powers (the two people affected on the show were at close range, the first Ascended to A Higher Plane of Existence, the second was said to be able to control the "Akashic field" and also exhibited powers like being able to heal others before being separated from the Artifact's energies by a teleporter). It has evidently being buried on Earth for at least millions of years, so if it periodically emitted energy pulses (dampened by rock and distance), it is possible that the people or objects that got hit could have being imbued with some extra sort of knowledge or power (though far less and more limited that the effects of the Artifact at close range). This would explain why most artifacts are connected with people of note (they used their power/knowledge or an affected artifact in their possession to gain fame/notoriety), and why there are so few people working at the Warehouse in modern times (even 40 years ago in "Where and When", you could see other possible collection teams in the background). Previously the Warehouse was a larger organization, but after the Artifact was discovered and contained at Eureka, it couldn't affect as many people, so most of the collection since then is to recover artifacts from before it was discovered, so fewer teams are needed today.

There is one Warehouse for each major civilization in history
Warehouse 2 fell when the Romans conquered Egypt. Warehouse 12 fell when the United States entered and helped win WWI, cementing themselves as the world's dominant superpower. And where was Warehouse 12? England, the dominant power during the colonial era. A rough list (feel free to fill your WMGs for missing sections):
 * Warehouse 1: Macedonia
 * Warehouse 2: Egypt
 * Warehouse 3: Rome?
 * Warehouse 4: Byzantine Empire.
 * Warehouse 5: Ottoman.
 * Warehouse 6: Spain through the Spanish Inquisition.
 * Warehouse 7: Holy Roman Empire.
 * Warehouse 8: Austrian Empire.
 * Warehouse 9: French Republic.
 * Warehouse 10: Kingdom of Prussia/German Empire.
 * Warehouse 11: Russia
 * Warehouse 12: British Empire
 * Warehouse 13: America
 * I've added some. I'm assuming that they were in places that were over-run or warehouses completely lost after the empire was defeated, absorbed, had regressed from it's former glory or were involved in revolutions or major governmental changes.
 * HG stated she used to work at Warehouse 12, making it extremely likely it was in Britain. Most likely it was shut down during the blitz for fear it would be bombed.
 * Lucky Syfy has this nice list.
 * For those who are lazy:
 * Warehouse 1 - Macedonia
 * Warehouse 2 - Egypt
 * Warehouse 3 - Rome
 * Warehouse 4 - Huns
 * Warehouse 5 - Byzantine
 * Warehouse 6 - Khmer
 * Warehouse 7 - Mongols
 * Warehouse 8 - Holy Roman Empire
 * Warehouse 9 - Ottomans
 * Warehouse 10 - Mughal (India)
 * Warehouse 11 - Russia
 * Warehouse 12 - British Empire
 * Warehouse 13 - USA
 * Which raises the question of how the Huns, a very nomadic culture, managed to hold a warehouse.
 * Maybe it MOVED with them. Damn, that'd be AWESOME.
 * It was there only for a very short time, just as long as they were settled in Europe.

There was a Warehouse 0 in Mesopotamia. Alexander the Great destroyed/conquered it when he conquered Persia.
Because it fits. Surely the artifact problem didn't start during the Hellenistic era, and if someone was dealing with it before then, Mesopotamia is the original center of civilization. (Arguably it would have made more sense for it to be in Egypt for some of that time, but we already know the Egyptian Warehouse was during the Ptolemaic dynasty...)

Myka will return at the beginning of Season 3

 * Yeah, sure. Myka's leaving forever. Okay.

MacPherson will be resurrected sometime later in the series.

 * Artie recently stated that there are ways of doing it, just that it's dangerous to attempt. The trick for the writers will be coming up with a who and a why.

HG will return in some fashion to act as a Hannibal to Myka's Clarice.

 * Considering how many ways artifacts allow people to get around and things like the time machine allowing forward and back, it wouldn't be hard for HG to be able to communicate if nothing else.
 * Confirmed, albeit as a one-shot thing to convince Myka to go back to the Warehouse.
 * And then later Confirmed and then firmly Jossed

All of the Regents are The Ageless, and there's about one for each iteration of the Warehouse.
That's why the Organization is so top-heavy. The Regents stick around until they die, but putting someone with that sort of experience in a dangerous or even suicidal mission is a horrible, horrible idea. Some of the Regents either have a youthful disregard for their own immortality (like Mrs. Fredericks) and died before they could gain the cautiousness that comes with age, fell into Who Wants to Live Forever? and/or made a Heroic Sacrifice, or were killed in the line of duty. Most of the Regents not fitting the appropriate look for their time period can easily be explained by Magic Plastic Surgery, being a minority of the time, or both.

At least some of the Regents are actually ascended beings.
Hear me out on this one. In the episode "Breakdown", one of the Regents named Theadora disguises herself as a waitress. Oma Desala in Stargate SG-1 is also an extremely powerful being who disguises herself as a waitress. The two look identical to each other, and are played (I think) by the same people.

The Big Bad is gathering a team of Psycho Rangers to oppose our heroes.
It seems that he's interested in hiring a selfish young computer hacker who Claudia herself notes is as skilled as she is. Whether he himself is the counterpart of Artie or Mrs Frederick will remain to be seen.
 * I wholeheartedly support this, and was actually thinking the same thing.
 * Which I suppose makes the FBI lady and the guy who used to be a cop "in another life" the counterparts to Pete and Myka (and Steve too, I suppose)
 * Jossed, more or less

All warehouse employees are alphas.

 * What's the drawback? Pete being immature?
 * How about Pete's alcoholism?
 * Good point.
 * Claudia too, with an Alpha Ability similiar to Skylar's.
 * Lindsay Wagner's character is going to appear on Alphas.
 * So, tenatively confirmed?
 * Pete inherited his ability from his mother so it is genetic. The abilities the Warehouse people have all seem to be more stable versions of those seen in Alphas. It would make sense for the regents to know about Alphas earlier than anyone else and over the years recruit those with useful but mostly passive abilities
 * Their powers are much weaker and less defined than the Alphas. Could it be that they are proto-Alphas or Betas not quite as strong as Alphas because they came before the Alphas in the evolution of man.

Gunpei Yokoi's Game Boy is an Artifact.
Anyone who turns it on loses several hours of time.

Van Gogh's paintbrush is an artifact
Similar to the one about iCarly above, anyone who paints with the brush will be renowned as a fantastic artist, and everyone who looks at their art will be amazed by it's beauty, even if it's weird.

Alternatively, they can paint things to life. But that's too generic.
 * Walt Disney's paintbrush can paint things to cartooney life. It turns out Van Gogh's "Stormy Night" painting is an artifact, so maybe some of his other works are, too.

Warehouse 12 still exists
And is situated under the British Museum. Honestly... do you honestly the British Empire in 1914 would ever let the Americans in charge of something as dangerous as the Warehouse?
 * Except it's not up to the governments of any nation where the Warehouse goes, remember? The Regents make that decision, and they don't report to anyone.
 * Which is why it still exists. They were pissed that the Regents took off for America, so they restarted their copy and are trying to get into Warehouse 13 so they can get full control again. Unlike Warehouse 2, though, they can't actually get the living spirit or whatever it is back online.

== Warehouse 13 (and by extension, Eureka and Alphas) takes place in the "Normal Again" world from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Beatrix Potter was the pen name of Anyanka the Vengeance Demon. == Anya/Aud's worst nightmare was something happening to her beloved bunnies. As her experimentation with mycological toxins for vengeance purposes during the increasingly technological Edwardian era turned back on her, giving her nightmares about her bunnies being put in dangerous situations, harmed, and worse, her fear evolved from bunnies being harmed with her unable to help into a fear of the bunnies themselves (a sort of Pavlovian response).

Magic clearly hasn't overrun the world in Normal Again as it had in the Wishverse and the "What if Buffy died" verse, so the bureaucratic confusion amongst various government agencies ensures that the Secret Service and DCIS are unaware of the Watchers and the Slayer, and the British are still ticked about Warehouse 12 being moved so the Slayer and most Watchers don't know of the existence of the Warehouse. Most of the creators of artifacts put their own brand of energy into the artifacts by the focus and near-ritualistic repetition of what they did (see: witchcraft and its demon-worshipper equivalents), strengthened (or even changed outright) by their public image. Alphas are probably unrelated to magic, and more closely tie into the Mad Science of Eureka and Warren Mears.

As for the thing in Sector 5? It is (among other things) the heaven-dimension equivalent of a Hellmouth. Beauty, comfort, energy, and a Mad Science field come from it the same way dark feelings, demons, and an increased magical field come from the Hellmouths.

The characters of Warehouse 13, Eureka, Alphas and Haven will all be involved in an Avengers-esque team-up.
Of these shows, only Haven hasn't been canonically confirmed as part of the Syfy-verse, even though it has a lot of natual links to both Warehouse 13 and Alphas.

Jinks will end up being The Mole in the Big Bad's organization
It seems like he's obviously supposed to be lead into a Face Heel Turn, but I have trouble buying the idea that--short of complete Brainwashing--Jinks would turn against his friends so willingly. Whether  was a ploy or was legitimate, he will be approached by the Big Bad to work for them. He will accept, but will try to help the Warehouse team as much as he can. This fits with where the show has hinted (the Big Bad clearly has interest in him,  and watching   crossing his idea of the Moral Event Horizon), since if he went to work for the Big Bad willingly, he'd be joining people he knows are no better.
 * Came here to write this exact message. Seen the same thing on Stargate with Jack.
 * As for how this plays out, it's possible he gets killed to keep the Status Quo.

Jinks will end up Bronzed at the end of the season
Face Heel Turn, Good All Along The Mole, doesn't matter. After he is finished working with the Big Bad, he will be Bronzed, despite him having only tried to have done the right thing. It leaves open the door for his return at any time, if need be. And also makes a nice Call Back to his earlier (accidental) Bronzing.
 * Jossed (for now)
 * This is supported by Artie saying that it would be a "catastrophe" if anyone ever learned how to unbronze people, suggesting that in the thousands of years that the warehouse has existed, no one ever has.

Pete was once a secret, unseen crew member on the Starship Voyager.

 * His Mom is Captain Janeway and his ex-wife is Seven of Nine. Clearly the guy's been hanging around in space.

Congratulations Jinx on your upgrade from agent to double agent.
His disagreement with Ms. Fredericks was real, but after his first chat with Claudia, this is what the regents decided to do with him. That's the only way to explain him being a jerk to Claudia on the phone two episodes later, but being clearly happy to get her text message in the bar.
 * Agreed. Furthermore the behaviour of the Regents clinches it. Doing everything possible to screw over a former member's life but leaving them free is not the sort of action one would expect from an organisation that has lasted for two thousand years by relying on secrecy. If he was considered dangerous enough he would have been Bronzed. If they were going to let him go free they wouldn't be going out of their way to antagonise him. Especially while being targeted by a hostile group who have already made several successful attacks on the upper levels. They're clearly helping him build a cover story for insertion as an undercover agent.
 * Disagreed. Drawing his gun on Mrs. Fredricks was for Sally Stukowski's benefit, and was part of the plan from the beginning. As for his behavior toward Claudia, he was a jerk on the phone because he needed to keep up the pretense, but he let himself smile at the text message because she wouldn't see his reaction.

The Artifacts are the results of Nyrlathotep's manipulations.

 * They either belonged to famous people or are the centerpiece of famous stories. Odds are he used the power of rumors to bring truth to the tales of distinctive items belonging to the famed being powerful in their own right (the downside rule is him being a douche),

The watch Artie received from MacPhearson is a Reset Button.
Or, alternatively, a basic time machine that, unlike HG Wells', could actually change the past.
 * Agreed. Specifically, the watch will allow Artie to go back in time just a minute or two, at which point he can tell H.G. Wells
 * Seems unlikely, Mac Pherson's words regarding it are "I hope you never have a reason to use it", implying something much more sinister then minor time travel.

As of the double-length season finale, Janus' Coin has been coded to
He was potentially still useful information-wise when he was Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves, just a liability if he had any way to physically interfere, and the villain may not even have know that Jinks. Since we have yet to see the coin again, it's certainly possible. The only thing that really counts against this is that the other option involving the coin would have given him another chance at beating the chess lock.

Steve will come back wrong.
Every artifact has a downside, and the metronome's will be a doozy. Which leads into ...

The Warehouse will come back wrong.
See above, but substitute "pocketwatch" for "metronome".

Jinks will have some serious religious issues with his forthcoming revival.
I'm pretty certain the Buddhist cycle of reincarnation doesn't include zombification by magic metronome.
 * Even if it's not the metronome, any sort of death prevention strategy or Virtual Ghost could result in major Cloning Blues issues once belief in reincarnation is involved.

Some people (Nikola Tesla, H. G. Wells, Claudia Donovan) have The Spark of Genius, possibly because of an Artifact.
Their inventions are clearly not considered to be artifacts, and they can sometimes be duplicated or even (with the help of another gadgeteer/Spark) improved upon. However, the inventions are far beyond the understanding of typical science at the time (and can still be beyond typical engineering capabilities of the present), being based on logical leaps that happened to work despite not being obvious to anyone in the past or future. Georg Joachim Rheticus may have been one of the few Sparks who spent enough time in The Madness Place with a single, emotional project or item that an artifact (the compass) was created, or many minor artifacts may be produced by any strong/emotional Spark. M. C. Escher was probably not a spark, but rather someone the Regents hired to think outside and through the box and give the actual Sparks someone to give them ideas and further their own ideas in interesting directions.
 * Interestingly, I would consider H.G. Wells to be a much less powerful Spark than Claudia or Tesla; While she managed to build a Mental Time Travel machine and completely reconfigure the output of a destructive artifact using only 19th-century materials, all of her inventions have some form of Artifact-based Magitek (see again, Rheticus' Compass). It's plausible that she's the sort of Spark that has enough Sparkiness to make the logical leaps and be a Gadgeteer Genius, but not enough to completely subvert the known laws of science without Artifact help. Claudia (at least early in the series) and Tesla, on the other hand, routinely create and rework non-Artifact Warehouse tech to wholly surpass current scientific progress.
 * If The Spark of Genius is caused by an Artifact, it is by far most likely to be some sort of Artifact that promotes the formation of Sparks, releasing their potential, rather than something that directly powers them. If I'm wrong about how the hypothetical Artifact works, it will probably be Played for Drama and come as a shock to Claudia's sense of self-identity. If I'm right, it will probably not result in a De-Power for anyone who has already built up Sparkiness or had a Breakthrough.

H.G. Wells' request to keep her love of literature before most of her was hologrammatized was intended to be a Xanatos Gambit.
She had memories related to her love of reading and literature that she hoped they wouldn't be able or willing to destroy after promising that she could keep her love of literature. She might have been able to break through the programming, depending on how the artifact worked (it seemingly did not work that was, from what we know), or might have been able to find herself through flashes of odd memories that she had every time she remembered certain books. This is in no way contradictory against her sincerely wanting to not in any way lose her love of literature.

Claudia will do a Face Heel Turn in Season 4
Claudia is pissed off at the Regents for letting Steve die, and she wants to use the resources of the Warehouse to save him. She's "tired of arbitrary rules" and wants to bring back a loved one, no matter the cost. This is exactly the same frame of mind that both H.G. Wells and MacPhearson were in when they began their Start of Darkness.