#Vary Bad parents jack and Maddie

[moonlight-stalker]

The feral star

Danny's parents were very mean they left him alone all the time and are always down in the lab

Danny spend most of the time with the animals they had some that would disappear into the lab and never come back While others would come back up but different they were a little bit more scary than before but he still love them because they were his friend and family all the animals that had come back had some kind of collar on he had one to. Sometimes Danny would go down in the lab and they would do something it would always hurt but he always was able to come back up and spend time with his friends and family some times instead of the lab the orange and blue humans will take them into a bigger cage and make them do things if they don't do what the humans want they get shocked

Danny has mix black and white hair one eye was glowing toxic green the other a vibrant blue he had Claws the tip of his hands feet and ear are a pretty blue his skin has some patches of blue in the Center of his chest is green lightning that spreads out he has sharp teeth his ears are pointy he has freckles that changes depending on what stars are in the sky that night he can go invisible but and a collar that he could not make dissappear he was vary fast and fought good he can also mimic the animal sounds and once in a while human sounds they don't like when he mimics their sounds

when Danny was eight humans in white came in and went to talking to the humans in Orange and blue he could not understand what they were saying so he went back to played with mama ( mama was a wolf dog and the oldest animal that was there she had dirty orange fur and turquoise eyes she has been with him as long as he can remember she says her name is jazz she named him danny ) orange and blue came in with the other humans in white and started showing the humans in white the animals and started to pick them up and looking at them mama started to growl and hiss at them they did not like that they kicked mama away from him and graped her danny jumped up and was able to bite one of the humans in White the orange and blue grabbed him and put a muzzle on so he could no longer bite ( he hates the mullzzel it was allways so hard to eat with it on ) the people in white grabbed him to look at they poke and prodded at him and he did not like it at all he was able to scratch one of them he got punished for it ( he really hates electricity ) he was finally put back with mama they left the room mama started to comfort him and tell him how brave he was next thing he knew more people in white came in and started grabbing animals and sticking them with something one of them came up and grabbed him and mama to sticked them he stared to get realy sleepy it started to fade to Black

When he woke up he had felt mama with him he was still vary sleepy he got up and looked around he was in a cage they were in a dark room that was moving ( he knew this is not the lab the lab smells vary different than this ) he saw some of the other animals that are also in cages he touch the cage to try and lift him self up to see more the room but got shock he started to whine Mama woke up and tried to comfort him Danny doesn't know how long they sat there but the room finally stopped moving people in strange suits opened a wall and started moving the cages and other boxs out they moved them into a bigger room and they put blankets over them he is very scared he hid underneath mama as the humans came up and brought them into the room and through a blanket over them mama told him to rest that she would protect him he closed his eyes and whent back to sleep

He woke up to Sounds going on outside mama was up and seems to be look at something he tried to look as well but could not see through the blanket all sudden there were loud pops and yelling mama pushed him back underneath of her and try to shield him he was shaking so much he is so scared and then everything started to go quiet he waited a bit before he shuffling out from underneath mama he tried to reach his hand through to see if he can lift up the blanket to see what was going on but the blank was pull off he squeaks standing above them was what looked like a giant bat and was staring at them they stared back until danny heard some thing the big bat lifted up his hand to his head and said something they couldn't understand suddenly he feels a prick on his neck mama growls and hisses at something beside them but he was too sleepy he held on to Mama before it went to Black again.

#dcxdp #my post #dp x dc #Mad scientist Jack and Maddie #Vary Bad parents jack and Maddie #Danny is Feral #dpxdc #dc x dp #raised by animals #Both supernatural and regular animals #jazz is mama the wolf dog she lost her human form but did not want to leave a baby danny all alone #So she foursed her body to change to protect danny #She is very protective over danny #Jazz is one of the first humans that survived the experiment #Danny was the second #Danny is sill half ghost it is just more mix #Danny Dose not have a full ghost form or human form #Danny was sold off with some of the other animals

[britcision]

Alright I think I’ve seen a couple smaller versions of this in bits and pieces so if you have them please share, but I figured that as someone familiar with neither show initially I’m in a good position to do a DPxDC onboarding post!

Since neither source material is particularly helpful in understanding the madness we have created, here is what I consider important to know for each (please add in with anything I miss!)

Danny Phantom (DP)

Main Characters

Danny Fenton - is a Phantom. Died as a teenager by accidentally activating his parents’ portal to the Ghost Zone/Infinite Realms but was also revived, becoming a half ghost half human (halfa)

Is the only superhero in Amity Park, fighting ghosts and sometimes ghost hunters to keep humans safe from ghosts and ghosts safe from humans

Has beaten the Ghost King in single combat, and is therefore sometimes considered to be the new Ghost King

Jazz (Jasmine) Fenton - Danny’s older sister, basically his parent, very into psychology and very against the influence their actual parents have had on Danny due to their obsession with ghosts

May/may not know about Phantom, usually considered the Mom Friend of Team Phantom whether she knows or not

Jack Fenton - Danny’s dad, 6’9 koolaid man, loves ham and fudge and breaking through walls instead of the door beside him. A very bad shot but extremely enthusiastic in that 90s dad cartoon way

Prone to believe absolutely anybody but Danny is a ghost, especially when Danny does ghost things in proximity

Extremely intent on the destruction of all ghosts, convinced they do not have actual feelings and should be destroyed pre Phantom reveal. Afterwards, can be either accepting or homicidal towards Danny

Maddie Fenton - Danny’s mom, ridiculous kung fu warrior and engineer, madly in love with Jack and they are sickeningly cute all times except Christmas

Sometimes notices they have kids that need caring for, sometimes curbs Jack’s wilder impulses, she’s the brains of the team

Same ghost views as Jack, but she’s more perceptive and intelligent, which can be used for good or evil

Tucker Foley - Danny’s best friend, likes meat and technology and arguing with Sam

A Black young man with a signature red beret and PDA in the OG show, usually acknowledged to be on par with the bats’ technical skills as he’s an incredible hacker

Danny’s Guy In The Chair, but he will get out of his chair and throw down as needed

Sam Manson - Danny’s Obligatory 90s Cartoon Love Interest, goth and ultra-recyclo-vegetarian child of millionaires who will not be stopped in her crusade for justice

She’s the one who dared Danny to go into the portal that killed him, the guilt she carries for this varies

She is in combat as much as her humanity allows, but also in a support role most of the time

Dash Baxter - Danny’s Obligatory 90s Cartoon Bully, the usual blond beefy jock. Can be surprisingly sensitive and intelligent, probably from being tutored by Jazz

[ETA] Valerie Gray - former antihero with a grudge against ghosts (her dad lost his job because of Cujo), she was given an anti ghost suit by Vlad and worked for him to fight ghosts until learning he is a half ghost

Canon never names her alter ego but we call her Red Huntress, she’s hot headed and impulsive and absolutely dated Danny while trying to murder Phantom - Danny knew the whole time but she did not

She is also Black

Wes Weston - Does Not Exist In Canon. We made him up because Danny had a bracelet that was supposed to say Sam but was shown backwards all episodes so it just says Wes

Knows that Danny is Phantom, INTENT on telling absolutely everyone, and is never believed

Vlad Masters/Plasmius - the only older halfa in the show, and one of Danny’s main villains. A billionaire who went to college with the Fenton parents and was slowly killed after exposure to the first trial portal

Blames Jack for his exposure and is obsessed with stealing Maddie from him and marrying her himself as he believes should have always happened

Her opinion does not factor into this, and she largely treats him with disdain but tempered for her husband, who adores Vlad unequivocally

Dani/Ellie Masters - a girl clone of Danny made by Vlad, the only clone who survived melting into goo. Vlad raised her to try and kill Danny so he could perfect a different boy clone, and kept her isolated

Now that she’s met Danny and been stabilised by him, they are siblings/cousins/besties but she can’t stay in one place, because she wants to experience the whole world

Frostbite - King of the Far Frozen, which is part of the Ghost Zone full of ice. He’s a yeti, and has the zone’s only functional medical facility

Reveres Danny as the Great One, Saviour of the Ghost Zone, and taught him how to use his ice powers

Clockwork - Master of Time, tends to show up in a purple hooded robe with a clock around his neck and rapidly cycle through ages and speak in riddles

Sometimes communicates by leaving green stick notes on things, but never with a direct answer. Considered Danny’s mentor and sends Danny on adventures through time to preserve the time stream

Notably involved in the whole Dan Phantom fiasco

Dan Phantom - an older version of Danny from the future where Danny’s ghost half was removed from his human half, stole Vlad’s ghost half, and destroyed the world because Danny’s whole family and friends were killed in front of him

They were all together to be killed as part of an intervention when Danny was caught cheating on a test. This gives Danny understandable issues about how easily he could go bad and destroy the world

Skulker - an early recurring baddie who is a Kraven the Hunter knockoff, considers himself the Ghost Zone’s best hunter and wants Danny’s pelt for his wall

Actually a tiny little guy inside the helmet of a big mechanised suit, rarely a serious threat

Ember - a young ghost musician who can hypnotise people with her music, craves an audience and another early recurring villain

Dates Skulker I guess

Johnny 13 and Shadow - ghost biker boy and his sentient shadow familiar, dated Danny at some point, but in a permanent ongoing relationship with Kitty

They usually only cause trouble when they fight, break up, wreak havoc, and then eventually get back together

Kitty - once Overshadowed Paulina the generic Pretty Girl to date Danny to get back at Johnny for their break up

She wanted to be a lawyer before she and Johnny were killed in a wreck, sometimes implied to have been caused on purpose by her father

She and Johnny are often Danny’s allies, against other ghosts if necessary

[ETA] Cujo - ghost puppy, very playful and usually about beagle size, but he can grow or shrink at will into a terrifying house sized attack dog. He can make portals so no, you are never safe from Cujo

[ETA] Wulf - werewolf ghost and friend of Danny’s who can also create his own natural portals. He wears pants

Important Terms

Core - a small glowing orb that houses all a ghost’s memories, thoughts, emotions, and vital organs. Can correspond to an element, granting elemental powers after some intense ghost puberty

Requires ectoplasm to form and be maintained but does not exist in canon

Obsession - ghosts are powered by their emotions at death and an Obsession, usually what makes them become a ghost instead of passing on in the first place - does not exist in canon

Danny’s Obsession is usually Protection, Space, or both

Vlad’s Obsession is Maddie, and acquiring Danny as a son once he learns Danny is a halfa too

Dani’s Obsession is Travel

Halfa - half a ghost, half a human, with the ability to transform between human and ghost forms (usually characterised as a colour inversion of hair and clothes)

Powers are basically Everything That Would Be Funny, because it’s a Saturday morning cartoon

Vlad’s specifically include electrocution, duplicating up to thousands of himself, invisibility, intangibility, hand lasers, super strength, healing, and mind control

Danny’s include ice, strength, bendy noodle body, put self in video game, hand lasers, heat vision, ghostly wail (big ol sonic scream, bad for the throat), duplication, teleportation, and literally anything else that was fun for the episode in question

All ghosts seem to get invisibility, intangibility, flight, telekinesis, and ectobeams (lasers from various body parts)

Overshadowing - similar to possession, when a ghost takes over someone else’s body, gaining access to core memories if they look

Sometimes different from possession specifically and considered less invasive, but still invasive. Danny does not like doing this

[ETA] Anti Ecto Acts - a series of laws signed into existence to declare all ectoplasmic entities as nonsentient creatures, able to be experimented on or destroyed at will

Referenced literally once in canon in a single line that basically says “you are under arrest for being a ghost” - after Danny is outed as a halfa, we have obviously extrapolated it into the worst thing possible

Canon calls them Anti-Ecto Control Acts

[ETA] GIW - Guys in White or the Ghost Investigation Ward, they’re literally a colour reversed Men in Black joke to have a government agency that focuses on ghosts

They don’t care about collateral damage and will blow anyone up on their way ghost hunting

DC (Disregard Canon apparently)

Main Characters

Listen I’m not doing all of them so HOEDOWN STYLE I GUESS

Alfred Pennyworth - best Batman character, super butler, makes the best cookies

Bruce Wayne - Batman, may/may not be good batdad

Dick Grayson - Robin 1, responsible for pantsless Robin and excessive flips, grows up to be Nightwing

Jason Todd - fandom woobie, Robin 2, tried to steal the tires off the Batmobile and hit Bruce with a tire iron, killed by Joker, came back evil and thicc as Red Hood and nearly killed Robin 3

Has the Bad Juice in him cuz of being brought back from the dead so he has Pit Rage, which most people apparently only get for a little bit and then either die or go permanently insane

Tim Drake - Robin 3, abandoned rich kid who blackmailed Bruce into letting him be Robin after Jason died, because Jason was his hero and Tim thinks Batman needs a Robin to stay sane. He’s right, but was Robin-fired basically as soon as Damian showed up, is Red Robin now

Never sleeps, overcaffeinated at all times, a better detective than Bruce and a supervillain in basically every AU

Used to be bi but is legally gay now apparently

Stephanie Brown - girl Robin, far superior as Spoiler and Bat Girl, sassy bitch who tells Bruce to fuck off the most of all the Robins ever and this is an Achievement she must fight for constantly but always wins

Cassandra Cain - assassin baby of Lady Shiva, not taught to talk by her dad cuz he sucks, semi- or nonverbal and deadass supernaturally good at reading people

Decided that killing was bad actually the first time she did it so fuck assassins she’s Black Bat/Batgirl/Orphan now and she does not have mouth holes in her mask (possibly because she is not white, depending on why you think Batman always has his)

Damian Wayne - Consequences from Bruce’s playboy slut days, he knocked up supervillain Talia Al Ghul and thus this bab was raised by assassins and thinks stabbing siblings is an acceptable greeting

Likes the animals and is secretly soft but will fucking kill you before he admits it

Duke Thomas - Criminally Underused, older than Damian but babiest bat as the Signal, Gotham’s only daytime hero and only meta hero. Second Black hero cuz Lucius Fox exists and so does his son

Never a Bruce-appointed Robin but was trained by 4 previous Robins (no idea where Steph was for this) simultaneously, swears as much as Jason but has living parents sometimes so that’s wild

Kate Kane - Batwoman, definitely fucks

Luke Fox - I think he is Lucius’ son, Lucius made all the bat tech but Luke is going to punch bad guys directly, has a hero name probably that might be fox related

Diana Prince - Wonder Woman, an Amazonian warrior who fucks with Cronos I guess

Donna Troy - I have never fucking seen her in dpxdc but she is Wonder Girl I think and she also fucks

Clark Kent - Superman but also a nerd, treats his clone badly and will never be forgiven

Connor Kent/Kon El - said clone, made by Lex Luthor from Superman’s and Luthor’s DNA because what says hate like making a baby! Mistreating that baby and reminding him he’s meant to be a weapon

Deserves all the love and sometimes his powers don’t work because cloning is hard

Jon Kent - Superman’s son with Lois Lane, got all his dad’s powers but apparently not his mom’s cuz he is still a himbo

Lois Lane - the world’s scariest reporter who will make all corrupt officials quail because you can’t fucking threaten her, she will tell you to go fuck yourself and if you try and shoot her Superman catches the bullet

Barry Allen - the Flash, does not believe in ghosts even though he can run so fast he travels in time so he’s clearly the arbiter of what makes sense

But I guess you can’t catch him to tell him he’s wrong so

Hal Jordan - Green Lantern, Space Ho

Lex Luthor - surprising dad energy for a bald supervillain who hates aliens (blame halfagone)

John Constantine - super thot and mage, will sell his soul to anyone who offers to gain immortality because no one can decide who gets to keep his soul so they just spite reviving him

Has the actual worst luck and finds out just slightly more than he fucks around but he hasn’t died yet so it’s working

Zatanna - magic lady who does spells by saying words backwards, the competent adult

Boston - Deadman, an Actual Fucking Ghost Member Of The Justice League, What The Fuck Flash This Is Workplace Harassment

Cannot be seen or heard without magical assistance, so way less of a problem than Danny Phantom ghosts

#dpxdc #dp x dc #onboarding post #dpxdc onboarding #all you need to know about danny phantom #unless i missed something #then it’s just all i know about danny phantom #definitely all i know about dc

[threewaysdivided]

So, I've noticed that DP fans and authors have a sliding scale for Vlad. They vary from "haha look at poor little meow meow who fails at everything" to "Vlad is an absolute psycho and the Fenton parents are criminally negligent for allowing him near their kids". I'm very curious as to how you view Vlad and his relationship with Danny because that variance is so huge, and since it kind of slides between the two in canon as well.

Ah, Vlad.  Perpetual runner-up of Dracula lookalike contests, consistent bronze medallist in the race for most-culturally-relevant-Vladimir, and called by the internet everything from Psychopath to Meow Meow to I regretfully inform you Daddy.

One of the things that makes interpretations of Danny Phantom characters more fluid/variable than others is that (as you said) canon can be rather slide-y at times - something which lends itself to multiple quasi-canonical potential readings.  I think I’ve mentioned before that for me this means I have a bit of an annoying tendency to change my headcanons depending on what best facilitates a given story concept, rather than being wedded to One True Version™.

That said, Vlad is probably the major-character who I have the most consistent read on.

Vlad’s Character

When it comes to the question of whether Vlad is an entertainingly pathetic failure or a dangerously unhinged threat, I would say the answer is that he’s kind of both.

My core reading of Vlad is that he’s a narcissist.  He sees himself as exceptional/ superior, he has very little empathy for others, and he often treats other characters less as people and more as prizes to be won or as existing to support/ serve him.  His ghost powers probably exacerbated this, but since he behaves pretty similarly during Masters of All Time it’s likely that this is a part of his native personality.

Now, on its own this wouldn’t be a consignment to villainy - there can be narcissistic or egocentric hero characters (early MCU Tony Stark is like this, and it’s basically Neil’s whole bit in Class of the Titans) - but Vlad combines it with a bunch of significantly nastier traits.  He’s entitled, he can be extremely petty, he’s immature and he holds grudges to an irrational degree.  He also twists narratives; finding ways to position himself as the victim or somehow secretly the victor/ mastermind even when he loses.  Most of all, he’s controlling and part of that comes out as sadism - he enjoys the power that comes from hurting, inconveniencing, frustrating and generally making life miserable for others.

All of this means that Vlad can be incredibly dangerous toward people/ in situations where his self-concept is threatened, where he feels slighted or where he has been denied something he feels should be rightfully his.  That sadism combined with his lack of empathy, his manipulativeness, his capacity to hold petty grudges for potentially years and his ability for patient, premeditated planning has the potential to be terrifying.  At his worst, Vlad is a malignant narcissistic abuser with wealth and superpowers.

But on the other hand, it’s those same core traits that make Vlad kind of pathetic and even tragic.  Like many narcissistic antagonists (and IRL malignant narcissists) he creates a lot of his own suffering.  Someone else on this site put it well when they said that Vlad doesn’t care about people, he cares about the people-shaped objects he’s trying to stuff into the holes in his lonely, miserable existence.  Vlad had multiple opportunities to course-correct and build the kind of genuine, sincere relationships with Maddie, Jack, Danny and Danielle that deep down he seems to want, but he burned those bridges himself with bad choices and worse behaviour.  He has needs and desires, and on some level he has the capacity to change and choose better, but until he learns to care about people for their own sake and to treat others with consideration and respect he will always end up driving those things away.

Vlad’s strategic plans fall apart for similar reasons.  He’s unwilling to admit when he’s wrong or has been bested which means he doesn’t really change his opinions of people or adjust his strategies accordingly (Jack will always be “an idiot”, Danny will always be “an underperforming fool wasting his potential” etc), he doesn’t really pay attention to people unless he’s fixated on/ wants something from them, and because he sees his perspective as universal and/or doesn’t value empathy, his plans often have big gaping weak spots that people can easily exploit. 

There’s an almost classic-tragedy element to Vlad; his compassionless hubris is his hamartia and it walks him into nearly every reversal of fortune.

But also… yeah, watching him repeatedly trip over that ego and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory is funny.  This is a character who never holds himself accountable or bothers to grow; at some point you run out of sympathy for the whiney middle-aged man who uses his tremendous wealth and power mostly to skulk around a big empty mansion while creeping on a married woman and her teenage son, and seeing him become a perpetual karmic butt-monkey of his own making can be very satisfying.

Vlad is both at once; simultaneously a potentially terrifying villain and a deeply pathetic little man living in a selfish mundane suffering of his own creation.  Forget The Fright Before Christmas, a holiday morality visit from Scrooge’s ghosts would have done Mister Masters a world of good.

My preferred use of Vlad

Okay so, despite everything I’ve managed to say above, I’m now going to cop to the fact that I… don’t find Vlad super compelling as a character.

Don’t get me wrong, I think he’s very useful as an antagonist and source of schemes that can be complex while still being beatable, but in isolation he just doesn’t have a lot going on under the hood for me at that deepest level. 

This might be coming from personal experience - I’ll spare you the details but there are some abusive malignant narcissists in my extended family and I’ve observed this kind of behaviour and its consequences in real life.  And the truth I’ve found is that once you strip all the layers back it’s depressingly simple.

I completely understand other people’s fascination: when you first encounter this kind of mindset, it can seem deeply compelling.  It feels like there has to be a reason, an answer, an explanation.  A lot of time can be spent searching for that; trying to puzzle out how a person could be like this, what kind of moral framework they must have, what internal justifications a sane and reasonable person could have that would possibly excuse doing something that seems so obviously wrong/ hurtful.  But deep down the answer is: they just don’t care.   There is no moral rationalisation because morality never factors into it.  They want, so they do and the only thing that will give them major pause is if it will have negative consequences for them personally.

In this regard Vlad for me sits more in the realm of Fire Lord Ozai, Batman’s Joker or YJS1’s Vandal Savage.  These characters aren’t super complex or compelling in isolation (there’s a reason people write feature-film-length analyses on Zuko and Azula but not Ozai himself).  They’re more like a force of nature and while you can definitely interrogate the specific context of their origins, their self-perception and get a lot of mileage from dissecting the ideology that they use to rationalise their actions to others (and how those arguments often don’t hold up to questioning) underneath all that grandiose posturing the evil they represent is eerily mundane and commonplace.  Just reactionary id and ego run rampant, detached from compassion and placed in a position to exert itself indiscriminately.  Power and control.  Want and do.

I think that’s part of why they’re striking - we expect some grand ideological philosophy to match the presentation and instead what we get is something small, hollow and pathetically human.  It feels unfair and unsatisfying and that’s because it so often is.

Because of this, I’m often more interested in stories that focus on other, more layered members of the cast and their struggles (it’s a bit weird how little involvement Vlad has in a lot of my favourite DP fics and fic premises).  When Vlad is present I usually prefer him to function more as an antagonistic force for other characters to struggle with than stories which try to justify his worldview or make him “relatable”.  Like I said above, Vlad at his worst is a controlling, manipulative, abusive stalker and that can make him a very effective villain in horror-thriller style character dramas.

Vlad and Danny

On a meta-level Vlad and Danny work well as character foils.  They share several surface-level flaws (both can be superficial, immature, judgemental, prone to grudge-holding and tempted to misuse their powers) and in some ways Vlad is a warning for what Danny could become were he to allow his power to go to his head and separate him from other people.  But at their cores (heh) there’s a fundamental difference to do with compassion and responsibility that sets them apart.  Vlad is an exceptional man with power and status but no empathy or accountability, and deep down, beneath all that performance he’s alone­ - still skulking around the fringes of the ghost zone, using threats, lower-power mooks and bribery when he needs someone to do his bidding.  And then there’s Danny, unexceptional by many metrics, who might feel stressed, lonely and overburdened at times but who genuinely cares and tries, and without even realising it has a lot of powerful allies who would rally to his aid as a result.

As for what they have in-story, I wouldn’t really call it a relationship.  They have a dynamic, but to me relationship implies some kind of mutual participation, and I don’t think Vlad sees or treats Danny as a person.  He doesn’t seem to care about Danny’s interests, feelings or needs: his fixation is mostly on shaping Danny into an heir/ apprentice of his own design, and getting yet more revenge on Jack by supplanting Jack as a father figure.  Danny is the son-shaped-object that Vlad is trying to shove into one of those holes, and once Danny makes it clear that he will never willingly submit to that, Vlad goes full supervillain.

From an audience perspective there is a tragic element to this, since we can see how much Danny would have benefited from having a genuinely supportive mentor, and how it might also have helped Vlad as a person… but Vlad burned that bridge himself.

In that regard I think it’s good that Danny doesn’t have any prior attachment to/ affection for Vlad or desire to please him.  Vlad isn’t a healthy person for Danny to be around, and it’s pretty obvious that Danny knows this and tries to minimise contact with him as much as possible (outside of the occasions when he gets stupid-teenager-brain and decides to poke the bear by pettily antagonising him).  I think that that’s really the best outcome; minimising a toxic person’s presence in his life so he can independently pursue things that are actually healthy and productive.  

Ultimately, Vlad is a grown man who makes his own choices, and he is not Danny’s responsibility.  Yes, it is admirable to extend understanding and respect to others but there is a limit on that and a relationship requires input from both people.  As they say, it takes two to tango; it’s not for one to be doing 100% of the work when the other is unwilling to sincerely engage or compromise with them.  And it is especially not the responsibility of a teenager to be playing that role for an adult (particularly an adult who routinely manipulates and threatens him). 

The biggest issue for Danny is that he can’t fully remove himself from Vlad.  Vlad has too much power and influence; as Masters he’s an important businessman (and at times political figure) with sway in Danny’s hometown, as Plasmius he’s a powerful ghost who can use those powers to bypass physical barriers (when he isn’t sending mooks to harass him), and as a person Vlad’s the kind of creepy stalker who will use his power, influence and resource-access to literally plant spyware in the Fenton family home.  But, most difficult to avoid, Vlad is also a close family friend of Danny’s parents from their college days and Danny frequently has to play nice with him for their sake.

And let’s talk about that last one.

Vlad and the Fenton Parents

The Fenton Parents have some the most divisive interpretations in fandom (short of Vlad himself and sometimes Sam).  Their presentation ping-pongs all over the shop and whether they read as “good but flawed” or “absolutely awful” really depends on how much you want to take things at face value, read into implications and/or recognise certain scenes as being purely hyperbolic Rule of Funny Nicktoon gags.  The only readings I would call a mischaracterisation are ones that paint them as actively disinterested, uncaring or malicious towards their kids - the fact that they do sincerely love their children despite their behaviour is part of what makes them compelling.

However, I want to talk about them because - while you can certainly make the case that they are “criminally negligent” in other ways - the fact that they don’t realise how bad Vlad is, or that he shouldn’t be allowed near Jazz or Danny isn’t one of them.  It’s actually pretty believable to me.

Something to remember is that, as an audience observing a story from the outside, we often have a much more omniscient perspective than any of the characters within it.  Even when characters think they are “alone”, we are observing them through the fourth wall - we get to see What You Are in the Dark.  Fandom loves to joke about how obvious it is that Danny is Phantom or Clark Kent is Superman but that’s kind of forgetting that we get to see things from a Doylist perspective while all the actual characters are stuck being Watson.

Just from that viewpoint, it makes sense that Maddie and Jack aren’t aware of the true nature of Vlad’s character.  Maddie might recognise that Vlad is a creep toward her specifically (Jack meanwhile is cluelessly naïve and loyal to a fault) but most of Vlad’s worst moments take place outside of their awareness and he often behaves a lot better in their presence in order to keep them close.  Danny has seen much more of Vlad’s darker side and Jazz is aware of that through him, but since most of it is connected to Danny being Phantom they’re not exactly rushing to share.  From Maddie and Jack’s point of view, “Vladdie” is a dearly beloved college buddy who might be a bit eccentric and incel-adjacent but is otherwise mostly harmless.  And sure their kids might not like him but of course teenagers are going to complain about hanging out with their parents’ friends - they’re teenagers!  Plus, Danny and Jazz have frequently objected to other aspects of their parents’ lives, so it’s not like that would raise an immediate red flag on its own (let’s be real: even at their best, Maddie and Jack are not the most attentive parents).

So to me it’s pretty reasonable that they wouldn’t notice those initial signs.  And (speaking again from IRL experience) even assuming they did notice some of them it would make sense for them to not want to believe it.  It can be really hard for people to accept that someone they’ve known and respected for a long time has done something awful.  We want to give people in our lives the benefit of the doubt and that can lead us to make excuses for/ try to defend them in ways we wouldn’t for a stranger.  There’s also a level of fear and guilt that can get in the way.  If our judgement about one person turns out to have been that badly wrong, then we could be potentially wrong about everyone; suddenly the world is a lot less safe/ certain.  And then we have to face the question of how complicit we might have been by ignoring, excusing, or enabling their actions.  It’s not really surprising that even well-intentioned people can end up reflexively dismissing whistle-blowers and victims; it’s a self-protective impulse as much as anything else.

I think that’s why Danny’s “mutually assured destruction” threat is so effective.  If Maddie and Jack accept Danny being Phantom then they wouldn’t be able to deny what Vlad has done as Plasmius.  And, once they can’t deny that, they probably wouldn’t continue to accept Vlad as a friend.

And that’s another bridge that Vlad has burned himself.

What a cheese-head.

#Danny Phantom #Vlad Masters #Vlad Plasmius #DP Meta #Character Analysis #I feel like 'long essays containing tepid takes' is becoming my signature style #I know 'Vlad is a narcissist' isn't a particularly revolutionary take #but he fits it to a surprising number of levels #kaiobeast #3WD Answers

[ididntsignupforthiscrap]

I need less not-so-subtle dp reveal fics being used as an allegory for parents rejecting their lgbtq+ kids. I mean Im not gonna tell you to stop writing them if you really need to vent something, but like guys…

The Fentons canonically accept their son for who he is TWICE, not even counting PP. so THREE TIMES. It is canon that Jack and Maddie love their dead gay son okay.

So maybe instead of reveals gone bad, we can focus on the fenton parents getting super introspective now that they have to confront their previous biases and the faults that led to those biases in the first place?

Jack is an especially interesting case. We know his ancestors were ghosthunters and pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower. Was his family as religious as his ancestors were? We know He isn’t particularly religious, what if Jack himself turned away from all that because he found his family’s way of life backwards and toxic. The idea of doing something because of tradition and some scripture was nonsense to him because there is no evidence.

No. Jack Fenton does not believe in scripture or dogma, he believes in theories backed by evidence and research. He follows the math, and the math says his family is full of crap and maybe a little abusive (your miles may vary).

But Ghosts are totally still real and when has there ever been a good haunting??? Conclusion: ghosts are evil obviously.

Just because Jack decides to cut off his family ties doesn’t mean he wants to hunt ghosts any less. He’s just going to do it better: WITH SCIENCE and a partner who doesn’t look down on him for his ideas and quirks. So he dedicates his life to hunting ghosts HIS WAY.

At least until he finds out Danny is half ghost. His own son, a boy Jack knows doesn’t have an evil bone in his body. Now Jack has to look back and ask himself was he really any better than his parents at all.

I might continue this later but Thats all for now i guess

#dp reveal fics #danny phantom #jack fenton #headcanon #maddie fenton #fenton parents #character growth #what if jack fenton had chacter depth #extended fenton family #the fentons love their son okay #it’s canon #just watch #reality trip #masters of all time

[redrobin-detective]

all is well

Death is nothing at all, I have only slipped into the next room I am I and you are you Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. ~ Henry Scott Hollard

AO3 link

______________

He hadn’t meant to say it, that much was clear. As much as she wanted to hate him for it, claim it was some sort of cruel manipulation; she knew he was just as distressed as she was. The ghost boy had covered his mouth, bright green eyes wide with panic as his misspoken words brought their battle to a screeching halt. Even the ghost the three hunters had been fighting stopped and stared before flying off. No one moved to stop them. Phantom looked at her fearfully, then over at her companion before vanishing without a trace.

It was a slip of the tongue, an accident, so why did the ghost boy calling her Mom make her blood run so cold?

“I’ve knew a kid who called the teacher Mom one time but I’ve never heard it from a ghost,” the Red Huntress said with a sarcastic chuckle. But her shoulders were tense and it was clear the situation made her uncomfortable too. “You okay, Mrs. Fenton?”

“My son isn’t dead,” Maddie said quietly. She would admit there were times where she’d look at Phantom and see Danny overlaid on top of him but those moments were becoming more and more rare. Maddie liked to think it’s because she could find more differences than similarities between the two but honestly, she couldn’t say who her son was anymore. She saw this damned ghost more than she saw the child living in her own house.

“I know, I’ve seen him around,” Huntress said with steady conviction. It made Maddie pause, as it always did, to wonder just how old Amity’s other human ghost hunter really was. Or how young rather. “It was a mistake, he’ll probably avoid you for a bit out of embarrassment but then things will go back to normal.”

“Yeah, a mistake,” Maddie muttered to herself, finally lowering the gun even though the fighting had ended several minutes ago. Why was this whole thing so unsettling to her? Phantom had said much worse things to her, called her a fake scientist and more obsessive than a ghost. He’d even called her a bad mother once when he’d been particularly riled up. She remembered how offended and angry his unnatural eyes had been as they’d glared accusingly into her.  

“You know his parents are still alive,” Huntress said suddenly. “I found out by accident a little while ago.” She was still standing on her hoverboard about 3 feet off the ground, her gaze was trained away from Maddie. “They don’t know that he’s a ghost, that he’s Phantom,” the girl’s head was still turned away from Maddie but she had a feeling she was being watched none the less. “Maybe you remind him of his mother.”

Maddie felt liked she’d been slapped.

“And why does that matter to you?” she questioned defensively to cover how much the conversation was shaking her - they didn’t know how could they not know, how could they not miss - “I thought you hated him as much as we did.”

“I don’t like him,” the Huntress said vehemently. “He’s annoying and acts like he’s the only hunter in this town who can actually do the job. But I,” she paused, “I think I understand him, just a little bit. Enough that I’ve been combing through Amity’s missing children files in my spare time. Of course, it’s no good if no one reported him missing in the first place. Phantom doesn’t want me prying but it’s not right for a kid to die and no one to care.”

“He’s just a ghost,” Maddie said, her words weak even to her ears. Was that why Phantom was stuck here? Because he died forgotten and unmourned? The thought of one of her children, her babies, dying without her knowing... she was going to be sick.

“Yeah, he is,” Huntress nodded, “but he wasn’t always. And humans deserve to be remembered, even if they don’t want to be.” That said, the girl sped off into the setting sun, the varying shades of orange glinting off of her suit. Maddie stood in the middle of the street for a little while longer, gun pointed limply at the ground as her whole world spun.

She drove home slowly, taking the long way around to try and put her conflicting feelings into words before she talked to her husband. When she and Jack first began their research into ghosts, they told themselves that they had to divorce themselves from the people the ghosts had been before. If you focused on the lingering traces of humanity in every monster then they would never be put in their place. But she was human and she had kids around the ghost boy’s age, despite her attempts to stick to logic her heart ached with sympathy.

“And you call yourself a mother,” the Phantom in her memory spat at her, filled with hatred but underneath it all was grief. “Where are your kids now? All you care about is the dead but when are you going to care for the living?” Maddie tightened her grip on the steering wheel to keep her hands from shaking.

“Mads! You’re home!” Jack grinned enthusiastically as she quietly entered the house. “Jazzy has her nose in her books and you know Danny, in and up to his room without a word so I made us grilled cheese!” He held her a plate with a flourish, “they’re ghost shaped!” The world tilted itself a little more onto it’s proper axis, no matter how crazy things got, Jack would always be her true north.

“Gracias,” she said accepting the plate. “Can we talk, privately?” She gestured her head down to the basement. Conversations from the kitchen could easily be heard upstairs and she really didn’t want her children to overhear her asking if she was a bad mom. She didn’t want their confirmation that she was right.

Jack’s goofy grinned smoothed out into something softer and he put one hand gently on her back as they walked down to basement. He kicked her usual stool her way and they sat in silence while they ate their dinners, staring at the swirling vortex of the portal.

“You remember that time Phantom called me a neglectful mother?” Maddie asked quietly after a few minutes.

“Mads, you can’t let that sneaky spook get to you. Everyone knows you’re a great-”

“Jack,” she interrupted harsher than she needed to but she didn’t need comfort from a husband but the unbiased opinion of a fellow scientist. “He accidentally called me Mom while we were fighting today, I don’t - I don’t think he meant it, he looked more scared then I’ve ever seen him before he ran off. Huntress was there too, she said.” Maddie gripped her plate tightly in her hands. “She said that Phantom’s family is still alive, that they don’t know about him.”

“Not know? You mean about him being-”

“Apparently,” Maddie squeezed her eyes shut to fight off the unwanted sympathy she felt. “He’s always been the Ghost Boy, the Ghost Kid. I never - I never fully absorbed what that meant. He looks,” Maddie set the plate aside and dropped her head into her hands. “He’s about Danny’s age.”

“Maddie,” Jack said softly, setting aside his own plate and wheeling himself closer. “Whoever that boy was, he’s gone now and all that’s left is an echo, an obnoxious and powerful echo but he’s not... he’s not a child. Not anymore.”

“But he remembers,” Maddie gasped, angry she was letting herself get all worked up over a stupid ghost. “He called me Mom, Jack. Huntress, she said maybe I reminded him of her and,” her eyes filled with tears now. “He’s comparing me to someone who didn’t even notice that he’d died. What does that say about me? About my relationship with our children? I feel like all I do is argue with Jazz these days and god knows where Danny goes to half the time-”

“Maddie, don’t do that to yourself,” Jack said softly, tilting her face up towards him with a gloved hand. “Once you go down that rabbit hole, there’s no digging yourself out. I think it’s just part of being a parent, always worrying that you’re not doing things right. Sometimes,” Jack gaze dropped, troubled. “Sometimes I enter the room and Danny looks at me and freezes like he expects me to do something terrible... He’s just easily startled but it still hurts.”

“Phantom is an echo, not a child,” Maddie nodded quietly to herself, trying to fall back on her usual logic but it tasted wrong in her mouth. He was a ghost... but also a child. “I wonder what he was like when he was alive? His personality seems remarkably preserved, he must have been a vibrant young man.”

“Or his death was particularly traumatic,” Jack mumbled. “Painful deaths usually leave powerful ghosts. And most healthy teens don’t just drop dead for nothing.”  A chill fell over the lab.

“How could they not notice?” Maddie whispered with horror. “What sort of parent wouldn’t see that their child was dead, what? Now two years in?”

“Not everyone is as good a mom as you are, Mads,” Jack said, pulling her into his chest. “Neglectful parents are a dime a dozen sadly. He could’ve been a runaway too, ran off and died leaving his folks still holding out hope that he’d come home. Or maybe...” he frowned, “maybe he’s pretending he’s still alive.”

“No, he couldn’t keep the charade for this long,” Maddie gasped but the horrible idea had been planted none the less. Phantom always seemed in such a hurry, like he had somewhere else to be. Was another woman tapping her feet as she waited for her boy to return like Maddie often did, not knowing her child was long gone?

“He’s a wily one, incredibly solid for a spirit. Sometimes I look at him and swear I see his chest moving like he’s breathing. Dampen his glow, dye the hair, change his clothes, he could probably pass as human so long as you didn’t look too close.”

“Jack,” she pulled back and looked at her husband in a panic. “Jack, if he’s pretending to be human when he’s not fighting then there’s a good chance he goes to Casper.” Her and Jack’s eyes widened with realization at the same time.

Their children’s high school has had an unprecedented amount of ghost attacks since the portal opened. They could never figure out why the ghosts targeted that school and ignored the other elementary, middle or even the other public high, Wendy. “What are we going to do, should we pull out Danny and Jazz? Even just until we figure this out.”

“That might tip the ghost off,” Jack said evenly but his teeth were biting into his cheek with worry. “We don’t want to set him off, who knows what he’d do if his cover was blown.” He might look like a harmless teen but Maddie had seen first hand how devastating Phantom could be when threatened. “I think we should tell the kids.”

“What? Why? You know they’re supportive of him!” Well Jazz certainly was, differing opinion on Phantom seemed to be the cause of half their arguments. Danny, truthfully, she didn’t really know his opinions on the ghost boy. He always looked so uncomfortable talking about ghosts with them so they just didn’t.

“Supportive maybe but they’re smart and observant,” Jack countered. “They could be our eyes and ears inside the school. They know better than to provoke a dangerous ghost,” Jack let his eyes drift over to the portal. “Besides, if the worst comes to pass, I want them to be prepared.”

“I don’t like it but you’re probably right,” Maddie grumbled. “If it keeps them safe then I’d do just about anything.” Jack smiled and leaned forward to kiss her gently, his lips a perfect match for her own.

“And this is why you could never be a bad mother,” he said. “Come on, let’s talk to them before they go to sleep.”

“Or Danny sneaks out again,” Maddie said to herself as she followed her husband up the stairs and heard him call for a Fenton family meeting.

It went about as well as Maddie had expected. Jazz alternated between being angry and anxious, telling them emphatically that Phantom wasn’t hiding among them at school and wasn’t a bad ghost to begin with. Maddie didn’t know what had come over her but she hardly recognized this irrational and emotional young lady as her daughter. She hoped it was just Senior year stress and hormones and not some ghostly influenced. Danny, as usual, sat there like he was a piece of the furniture and didn’t say much at all.

“Danno,” Jack said gently as he interrupted Jazz’s rant to engage their youngest. “You would tell us if you noticed anything unusual with one of your classmates, right? You know we’re telling you kids this because we trust you, love you and want to keep you safe.”

“Have you considered that keeping guns around the house, threatening to hunt and torture ghosts doesn’t make me feel very safe?” Danny said quietly, looking down at the table. “So what if he sometimes goes to school, maybe he wants to have something normal in his life. All I know is that if I was Phantom, maybe I would want to hide too. So people like you didn’t find me.” For the second time that night, the words of a teenage boy stopped her cold.

“Danny, what do you-” Danny didn’t elaborate and instead pushed his chair back and headed towards the door.

“Young Man, where are you going? It’s almost curfew and we’re not done here,” Maddie scolded even though she knew that neither her or Jack were in the control of the situation. Danny opened the door and didn’t look back.

“I won’t be long, just a lap around the block. I just, I just need some air, okay?” The house became quiet, no one quite knowing what to say. Jazz excused herself a moment later and walked back up to her room. She slammed her door shut. The ticking of the clock was the only sound to be heard in the suddenly silent kitchen.

“Is that how he sees us?” Jack asked quietly, looking down at his large hands. “Danny used to think what we did was so cool, when did that change?” When did he change? was the silent, unasked question. Or maybe they'd all changed, grown apart so slowly that no one had really noticed. Maddie stood up abruptly and stalked towards the door, strapping an ectogun to her hip as she went.

“Mads, maybe you should give him-”

“You know as well as I do that this is the peak time for ghosts. Danny, he might not trust us but I won’t let a disagreement get him killed.” It was full dark outside and she was halfway down the block before she realized she didn’t know which direction Danny had gone in. The night air was chill for mid-April as it shook off the last dregs of winter. She was feeling cold in her protective hazmat; Danny had left in short sleeves. Maybe she should run back and get his jacket for when she found him.

“Nice night for a walk,” Maddie jumped at the voice to find Phantom lazily floating in the air above her. His posture was casual but his eyes were sharp, searching as he always was. Green eyes glanced at her gun before meeting her eyes. “Looking for someone? Perhaps chasing someone who doesn’t want to found?” No way was she going to let him know her son was out here, alone and vulnerable.

“You actually,” she lied. He raised a disbelieving eyebrow but didn’t call her out. How could he be so expressive and so hard to read all at once? Against her better judgement, she thought again about the ghost as a human. “You called me Mom earlier, I want to know why.”

“What, you’ve never called someone something dumb by mistake?” Phantom flinched, crossing his arms defensively. “It was an accident, I’m just as upset as you are, believe me. Now if you don’t mind, I was trying to have a nice flight to clear my mind. Good luck finding whoever you were really looking for.”

“My husband thinks you’re pretending to be alive, that you’re lying to the town, going to school.” She searched his face for some sign that she was wrong but his expression was still as stone. “You’re putting people in jeopardy, I thought you wanted to play the hero!”

“I’m not doing anything,” He growled, his eyes flashing ominously in the dark. “I’m just doing the best I can, okay? If I go to the Nasty Burger or sit in on English Poetry when there’s no ghosts to fight then who’s hurt? Only me for trying to hang onto something real, something normal!”

“But the ghosts-”

“News flash! The ghosts would be here with or without me because of your stupid portal! I can’t even legally drive and yet you blame me for everything.” He scoffed and looked away, “you really are just like my mother.”

“So I do remind you of her,” she stated. “Your mother.”

“That’s a great thing to say to some kid you shoot at regularly,” Phantom said, icily, his green gaze boring into her over his shoulder. “What do you want me to say? Yeah, you do. It’s not just your voice or your face but the way you look at me like I’m nothing but a disappointment. How you make me feel like I’m some damaged child you need to hammer into shape.”

“You can’t - I’m not disappointed,” she said before she could think otherwise because how else could she react to such a charged statement? What kind of abusive, miserable home had he come from? Her heart clenched again to be compared to this woman.

“Yeah, I can tell,” Phantom snapped at her sarcastically but, like the time when he’d called her a bad mother, underneath the anger was sadness. “None of this matters, we’re both going to keep doing our own thing without each other’s approval. We’re enemies so let’s just forget this all happened and go back to you shooting at me while I beg for you just stop and listen for one second-”

“Alright, I’m listening!” Maddie shouted back, frustrated and sympathetic against her better judgement. “What is it you want to tell me so bad?” Phantom froze, like he hadn’t expected her to just stop like that. His shoulders hunched and his eyes were wide and he looked so much like a lost teenager that it pulled painfully at her heart. God, why did this one ghost bring out so many contradictory feelings in her?

“I want,” he stopped, swallowed and floated to the ground so they were near eye level. Sometime in the last year, he’d gotten taller than her. She hadn’t realized ghosts could grow, could age. Phantom was always the exception to every rule they had. “I want the same thing you want. I don’t like seeing ghosts coming through and hurting people. Before I was Phantom, I was nobody, I couldn’t help anyone. I can now and keeping people safe, it gives me a purpose I didn’t even have when I was human. Ghosts might just be the untethered remnants of dead people but we still love and feel and value things, just differently than you do. I want to keep ghosts from attacking people but without damaging them, we’re not all evil just... trying to find our own way to the finish line. If you’d just, not attack on sight, I could show you.”

It was perhaps the most she’d heard Phantom say all at once. He was rubbing his gloved fingers anxiously against his thigh and there was a desperate bit of want in his tragically young face. He wanted her to believe him, like a child looking to their mother for approval. As more time stretched on without her speaking, his hopeful look fell into a kind of sad acceptance. He looked like Danny had at the kitchen table not 15 minutes before.

“Okay,” she said finally. “We can give it a try for a bit. It’s not a truce exactly but so long as you’re not causing harm, Jack and I won’t shoot at you.” It wasn’t much but the boy looked like he’d handed her the moon and then some. He floated up a little, his boots jittered with excitement. She gaped when he reached forward and grasped her hand only to shake it enthusiastically. His hand was chilled but solid in her own.

“Yeah, you got a deal! Don’t worry, Mo- Ma’am you won’t have to worry about me, I’ll be a good little ghost, scouts honor! not that I was, uh, ever in the scouts. If things go well, I’d be happy to tell you more about ghosts and the Zone. I’ll even give you a tour if you’d like.” His smile was infectious and she bit her lip to resist the natural urge to smile back.

Maybe Phantom was a ghost, a sad child who’d died far too young but he was also someone’s son. That woman, however, hadn’t been able to protect him, to support him. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to give the ghost boy a chance and maybe Maddie could fill in something his other mother couldn’t. Perhaps she could even learn how to give her own children what they needed too.

“We’ll see,” Maddie hummed. “Now, you were going to go flying and I need to find my son before he catches his death, that is, if he’ll even talk to me.”

“He will,” Phantom said softly. “My mom messed up, hurt me sometimes but I knew she loved me and I love her. I don’t know your son but I do know what it’s like to be a son and your mom is... whether you’re living, dead or in-between, she’s always your mom. Maybe he’s worried you won’t love him, the things he’s done or believes in.” He looked away and rubbed the back of his neck, “Of course, I don’t really know you and your family. Usually try and avoid you guys, being ghost hunters and all. Even your daughter is pretty scary.”

“That would be pretty weird, a ghost surrounded by hunters,” her lips twitched upwards despite herself as she imagined Phantom chatting with Jack and Jazz in the living room. The image wasn’t quite as strange as she’d initially thought. Who knows where this shaky truce would lead them? Phantom took that as his excuse to leave and flew off into the night. Maddie watched him go, she started up the block when she got a series of texts a few minutes later.

Danny: I’m home, sorry for running off like that Danny: I don’t like the way you talk about ghosts the way some people talk about race or gender. I want to make opinions based on facts and understanding, not half baked theories Danny: I’d be willing to talk more, if you’d stop being so stubbornly certain you’re right and just listened for a change Danny: I love you, Mom I don’t think I say that enough. Sometimes I feel scared to, like you won’t understand Danny: Jazz came down and Dad brought out the special fudge Danny: Come home, its cold out

Maddie brought her phone to her lips, looking up in the sky as if she might see Phantom still flying around. That boy still loved his mother, the mother who’d hurt him. She didn’t want to be like Phantom’s mom: distant, cruel, unwilling to listen. If she could hold out an olive branch for her enemy, then she certainly could for her son.

Mom: I love you too, baby, never doubt that. I think I'm ready to listen now. Mom: I’m on my way home, save some fudge for me.

I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, Just around the corner. All is well.

#danny phantom #my writing #this seriously came out of nowhere #it took several twists as it just kind of unfurled underneath me #was halfheartedly searching poems about death when I foung this one #it just jumped out like lightning to me #that even though death and circumstance have seperate Maddie and Danny #they're still connected #still mother and son for good or ill #there's love there and a chance for renewal #idk Im just tired #this has been written for like 3 hours its just taken me this damn long to edit

[dramaticnerdwithanxiety11]

Mother(Ghost) of Mine but Danny's parents come home

https://archiveofourown.org/works/24227953/chapters/58372924 <THE FIC THIS IS BASED ON

@kattythingz @laylatheqhitta

btw I read like.. three chapters so far of the story but i'm already in love and I suddenly realized that you didn't include Danny's parents and wanted to write a oneshot of them showing up and just being really confused as to why Danny is suddenly a mom. Also, I modified Dan so he was slightly more physically a kid, so he looks like.. sixteen or something, instead of thirty.

(I also originally submitted this post to you directly katty so sorry if you get it-)

Clockwork was the reason Danny's parents had been gone for two months on a 'hunting trip' and Danny was just now finding this out when he flew to Clockwork Tower to try and figure out what the hell he was going to do when his parents are coming home today and he has two kids.

"What do you mean you know?!" Danny shouts, waving his arms around, easily more dramatic in his panicked state. He was trying to get this solved quick as well, since he left Dani and Dan in Jazz's care. 

"I mean exactly that, Daniel, I know they are coming back," Clockwork replies with a sigh, "I am the one who sent them away in the first place, I gave you time to be accustomed to Danielle and Dan, and now that you are you should be able to handle this as well," Danny went pale.

"Please, Clockwork, send them away again, I don't want my kids getting.. getting," he waved his arms around again, "Experimented on! Mom and Dad will probably pull guns out the moment they see them and shoot before asking questions!"

Clockwork turned away from the looking clock and towards Danny, "Trust me, Daniel, you can handle this. And if you can not, I can go back," he shrugged.

"Clockwork, I don't know about you, but I still don't want to watch my kids getting blown to bits, even if I know you can fix it," he ran a hand through his glowing white hair, "Please, Clockwork," he begged, not even entirely sure what he was begging for. Does he want his parents to never come home..?

"No, Daniel, I am sorry but you must deal with this alone," he turned back towards the looking clock, "You may want to be heading back," Danny looked at the glass and his eyes widened when he realized his parents will be pulling in in a couple minutes.

"You're a jerk, Clockwork!" he shouts as he shoots off out of the tower and towards home.

-=-

Dani is pacing, Jazz is guarding the Lab (where they're waiting for Danny to come back) and Dan is biting at his nails pretending he isn't about to combust with panic. They had their initial panic when Danny came flying (literally) into Dan and Dani's room (They had modified the guest room and completely forgotten that hey, it'll be kinda weird when Danny's parents come home and find the guest room turned into a bedroom for two ghost kids they don't remember having).

He was panicked and he gave them absolutely no further explanation than, "I'm going to clockworks, Jazz is in charge, she's waiting for you in the lab, do not leave the house!" and then he phased through the ground.

The kids, reasonably, panicked and ran down to the lab, hoping to get further explanation. Jazz is biting at her nails, staring at the closing portal. She turned when she heard them coming down, made a relieved noise and ordered them to stay in the lab while she stayed by the door.

It very much felt like some big bad murderer was coming to kill them, Danny and Jazz trying to protect them.

"Mom!" Dani shouted and Danny came through the portal, he turned towards them and let out a relieved sigh, flying over.

"Jesus christ," he pulled Dani into a hug, looking at Dan over her shoulder and seeing the jealous scowl on his face. He switched kids after a moment, "Okay, you guys need to stay down here a bit longer, okay?" he told them once he pulled away, "Don't make any noise, don't try and leave, just stay put, I'll come get you when I can," Dan and Dani turned to look at each other worriedly, before silently nodding to Danny, "Okay, I promise everything is going to be fine," and then he switched back to his human form and ran up the stairs.

"Jazz, they're gonna be pulling in in a few minutes," he warned, closing the lab door and locking it in the hopes it would slow down his parents if they tried to go down there.

"Clockwork isn't going to help?!" Jazz exclaimed, "What the heck does he think we're gonna be able do?"

"Not sure, but as it turns out he is the entire reason they left in the first place, and his only backup plan is to just bring me back in time to before-," he glanced at the door, having turned around so they could do their best to look casual for their parents. 

Jazz turned with him, minutely confused before her eyes widen, "Seriously?! Oh my god," he ran a hand through the part in her bright orange hair and Danny nodded with a dramatic sigh.

"It's fine, we can, tell them before they have a chance to do anything rash," 

Jazz gave him a look, "Your first idea wasn't to hide them?"

"Where the hell would I hide two eleven year old ghost kids? I don't have an accessible lair and they sure has hell don't wanna leave," he exclaimed, Jazz went to respond before the loud rumbling of the Fenton RV interrupts them.

They both turn to the front door with wide eyes, look at each other, then sprint to sit on the couch and look as casual has possible. Three minutes later Maddie and Jack Fenton come barrelling through the door carrying as many bags as possible.

"We're home!" Maddie calls into the house, before turning and spotting them on the couch, "Oh! You're already downstairs," she laughs, "Can you help us with bags?" she request. Both kids give a varied response that implies a yes, give each other a worried look, glance at the lab door before smiling fakely at their parents and rushing outside to grab things.

"Are you sure you wanna tell them?" Jazz asks hushedly as they speed walk past their parents and begin grabbing bags, Danny nearly forgetting he's supposed to be a frail teenager when he went to grab half of them at once.

"What if I tell them.. I convinced you to come with me into the ghost zone, and I accidentally got stuck in something and it popped out two ghosts that were really similar to me, and they just kinda came home with us and now they call me mom?" he explains his fake story on the spot, fleshing it out slightly in his head.

Jazz hesitates slightly, beginning to walk towards the front door, "You could try..? And if It doesnt work-?"

"I get clockwork, or like, tell them the truth," he shrugs, "I don't know, Jazz! I just want to avoid them killing my kids," he feels the need to throw his arms in the air, and almost does, before remembering he's carrying a bunch of bags and would end up throwing them. Jazz give him a small smirk,

"You just called them your kids," she teases, and Danny lights up in blush.

"Shut up," he groans dramatically, kicking the door open the rest of the way so they can get through. Only to see his parents missing and the lab door open, "Oh shit," he whispers, before dropping the stuff in his arms and rushing down to the lab, "Guys?" he calls anxiously, looking around the lab. The ghost portal is open, Jack is looking at it confused and Maddie is already working on something at the table, it looks like Dani and Dan must've gone through the portal when they realized Maddie and Jack were unlocking the door.

"What's up, Danno?" Jack calls, reaching to close the ghost portal before turning to him.

"Uhhhh," Danny leans back, "Uhm, me and Jazz got the bags, what do you want us to do with them?" he asks, doing his best not to sound like he's covering something up.

Maddie turns to him, "Oh! Sorry we'll come up, don't worry about it," she smiles, setting her stuff down. Her and Jack make their way upstairs, Danny stepping out of the way and getting his hair ruffled by his mother. He follows them up and glances at Jazz who's standing by the door. 

'They're fine' he mouths and she gives him a weary look before smiling at their parents.

"Hey, uh, mom? Dad?" Danny calls, fiddling with his hands, they pause reaching for their bags.

The two adults share a look before Maddie asks, "What's wrong, Danny?" Danny fiddles with his hands.

"Uhm, so, me and Jazz went into the Ghost Zone and we ran into these like ghosts that looked kinda like Phantom but they were uh, not him and they somehow ended up just hanging out with us and we brought them home and this was at like the start of you being gone on your trip so we kinda just kept them here in the guest room and now they call me mom so I have ghost kids now and I really don't want you to kill them," he spits out, nearly choking on his words a bajillion times and pulling in a lungful of air once he's done.

Maddie and Jack stare at him for a second, seeming to not register what he just said before it's suddenly them bombarding him with questions, How far did you go? What was it like? The ghosts are friendly? Why did they take to you as a maternal figure? Was it safe? Were you safe? Where are the ghosts now?

"Mom, Dad!" Jazz shouts, causing the already reeling Danny to flinch, their parents pause their questioning before apologizing quietly, "We don't know where they are, we left them in the lab but they fled when you came downstairs,"

"I can go get them," Danny says quietly, quickly escaping the situation, he hears Jazz stop them from following him.

-=-

"Dani, Dan!" Danny shouts into the ghost zone once he's gone through the portal, floating in his ghost form. He doesn't get a response, so he calls again, moving further into the zone. Eventually he spots the bright white flames of Dan's hair and hears Dani's crying, "Guys?" Danny calls one more time, both of them jump up from what was very close to cuddling and turn to him.

"Mom!" Dani shouts, flying into him and sending them both spinning a few feet into the zone, "What happened?!"

"We saw Maddie and Jack come downstairs and left," Dan explains quickly, his voice a low rumble.

"It's alright, that was smart, but you guys have to come back now," Danny lets go of Dani, "You're going to meet my parents, and if they try and kill you we can live in the Ghost Zone for the rest of our lives," he laughs slightly, but it does nothing to ease the fear in both his kids' eyes.

"Okay, whatever," Dan grumbles, crossing his arms and floating over towards them, somehow seeming smaller than his usually bulkiness, Dani does nothing to mask her fear, and just nods slightly, curling inwards probably unintentionally.

Danny gives them a reassuring smile and begins the trip back to the portal with them.

-=-

Upon returning Danny made sure to transform before he went into the portal, so as to not give away another secret on top of his unintentional kids. It takes a minute for Dani and Dan to follow him, but eventually they do and they find Maddie, Jack and Jazz on the other side.

"Mom, Dad, this is Dan," he gestures to said character, "And Danielle, they're, uh,"

"We're Phantom's clones, who's first name is Danny so we've got similar names to him," Dani pipes up, talking a bit too fast for it to seem like anything but a lie but Jack and Maddie don't ask any more questions.

"And you.. aren't going to kill us or hurt us?" Dan asks, closest to the portal and refusing to come any closer in case they decide to try and kill them.

Maddie and Jack seem incredibly hesitant, before Maddie assures them, "No, of course not sweetie," she smiles gently, Danny looks back at his kids, "Uhm, you guys have been living in the guest room?" she asks, the kids nod, "Well, then I don't have to make you a room at least," she smiles awkwardly.

Dani and Dan's eyes widen significantly, "We can stay?!" Dani exclaims, flying higher into the air in excitement.

"Well, of course! You're like.. our adopted ghost grandkids!" Jack exclaims, throwing his arms out. Dani squeals excitedly.

Dan floats up next to Dani, "Do we have to call them grandma and grandpa?" he whisper to her, and Danny snorts when he hears it, covering his mouth. Dani giggles as well.

"I mean, I might," she shrugs, keeping her voice low, "We already call Jazz auntie," Dan nods in response, keeping his eyes trained on the adults.

"Thank you," he calls to them, "for not killing us," Danny and Dani both give him wide eyes, neither of them hear him act so sincere very often.

Maddie and Jack just give him a smile before Jazz claps her hands, "Who wants to make Pancakes?" 

"Oh, no! Last time you let them make pancakes you burned down the kitchen!" Danny exclaims.

"But, mom! We fixed it in the end!" Dani whines, "Plus Jazz will be helping!"

"Absolutely not! If anybody is making pancakes, it's gonna be Jazz and Jazz alone," he decides, "I will not have you two burning the house down right after you get accepted into it,"

Maddie giggles quietly at the fact that Danny of all people is really acting like a parent, and how casual the fact he's the mom to two ghost kids is for him and Jazz. Jack smiles fondly as they argue, Dan and Dani beginning to pick on each other's cooking skill, Jazz giggling and Danny looking absolutely exhausted. 

It's a happy ending, and that's all anyone ever needs.

#fanfiction #fic #Danny Phantom

[anotherhystericalqueen]

Silver Linings- College!Joe Mazzello x Reader

Summary: This is my HalloQueen gift for @lap-of-the-gods​ . Have a wonderful and happy Halloween and I hope you like it!! It’s inspired by all your asks and a similar situation that happened to be back in college. And a huge thank you to @dtfrogertaylor​  for putting this event together! It was so much fun to do and participate in!

Y/N and Joe’s plans for a relaxing night are thrown a curveball by Y/N’s roommate, luckily Joe has some ideas in mind to save their night. 

Word Count: 1.7k+

Warnings: Light cursing and lots of fluff

You squeezed Joe’s gloved hand as the two of you walked through the center of campus back to your dorm room from your study date in the library. He was talking very excitedly about a new short film he was working on with some friends and gesturing with his free hand to help express his excitement. You watch his face light up while he talks about how he wants to shoot a specific scene as the setting sun brings out the red in his hair. As the two of you got close to your dorm, you and Joe began making plans for later that night. 

“I have the room to myself tonight if you want to come over.” You suggested. “We can get some dinner and watch scary movies.” 

Joe nudged your shoulder with his in agreement. “That sounds like fun. How does 7 sound?”

“Sounds perfect.” You squeezed his hand one more time as you reached the steps of your dorm building. “See you tonight Joey.” 

Joe placed a quick kiss on your forehead before going into a longer kiss on the lips. “See you tonight, Y/N.” He gave you a quick wave and blew one more kiss before backtracking down the stairs to his own dorm. 

Walking down the hall back to your dorm room, you were admiring everyone’s door decorations for Halloween. Some had covered their doors in orange and black paper to resemble a jack-o-lantern, and several took the route of just covering their whole door in caution tape. The door for your dorm was covered in fake cotton cobwebs with plastic spiders hidden in it. Just as you were fishing your keys out of your backpack, you saw your Residence Assistant, Brooke, power walking towards you. 

“Hey Y/N, do you have a second?” She called out just as you pulled out your keys. There was no reason or way to avoid whatever she wanted to talk to you about, so you held off on going in your room to see what she wanted. 

“Yea, what’s up?” You answered, fidgeting with your keys out of part habit and part nervousness. 

“Are you and Maddie are still good for tonight? The trick or treaters should be coming around 7:00 and I’m doing final checks right now. Where’s your costume?”

You were stunned and confused. Trick or Treaters? Costume? You stood there staring at your RA for a minute before it clicked. Maddie, your roommate, must have volunteered the two of you to help out with your university’s annual “Halloween Haunt” for local kids to come trick or treat in the dorms and students volunteer to help pass out candy to the kids. 

“I...it’s in my room.” You lie, hoping that she would believe you. You didn’t even have a costume for Halloween night, much less one you could pull together in such a short notice. “I just got out of class and didn’t want to wear it to class. My professor isn’t big on Halloween costumes in class so I was about to go in get changed.”

Luckily Brooke shrugged at your explanation and kept walking. “Okay, just be ready before they start coming down the hall.” She called out. 

You nodded and gave her a quick thumbs up before slipping inside your dorm room and letting out a quick string of curses, aimed mostly at your roommate. 

“Shit.” You cursed, pulling out your phone and immediately texting your roommate. “Shitshitshit this is bad.” You paced between yours and Maddie’s beds as you typed out your message. 

Y/N: Hey, Brooke just came by and said that we’re on the trick or treat route for Halloween Haunt tonight. Did you know anything about it?

Maddie

:

Yea…… I signed up because I thought it would be fun, but I can’t do it because something came up and I won’t be there all night. Can you do it??? It’s super easy, you just have to hand out candy to the kids that come by to trick or treat.

You started to panic. Maddie did have a habit of bailing out on commitments at the last minute, but you didn’t think that she would rope you into covering for her. 

Y/N: I don’t have any candy to hand out!! And I already had plans with Joe tonight

Maddie: I’ll pay you back for the candy Y/N I promise. Can you pleaseeeeee just cover for me please? I won’t be back until super super late so you can invite Joe over if you want

You rolled your eyes in frustration. This was definitely not how you planned on your night going so you texted Joe with the sudden change of events. 

Y/N: Hey looks like we may not be able to have movie night until a lot later :(  Maddie signed our room up for Halloween Haunt and forgot to tell me so tonight’s plan includes handing out something for the kids since I don’t have any candy to hand out

You tossed your phone on your bed and began focusing on the most important task at hand, what could you pull off into a passable and appropriate costume and what you could find to pass out to the kids coming by your door. You started pulling potential ideas out and placing them on your bed. Once you found a couple of options of what could possibly work, you checked your phone to see if Joe had replied to your text. 

Joey: Oh no! I can be there in 45 minutes. I have something that may help!

You took a deep breath of relief, maybe there was a silver lining to this night after all. 

Y/N: You are the absolute best!! See you soon

Just before it was time for the kids to start showing up, you heard a knock on your door. You were in such a frazzled state trying to pull together a last minute costume that you just yelled that the door was open. You looked up to your visitor to find your boyfriend standing in your doorway with two large shopping bags in each hand. 

“How’d you get in?” You wondered, knowing for sure Joe didn’t live in your building and usually needed you to buzz him in whenever he came over. 

“The doors are already buzzed open for Halloween Haunt so I snuck up with some trick or treaters

“What’s that?” You asked, pausing from your chaos to see what Joe brought over. Joe dug into the bag and placed two large bags of Halloween candy on your bed. One bag was filled with all of your favorite candy while the other was filled with a wide variety of candies for trick or treating. 

“One bag for us,” He pat the bag of your favorite candy, “And another for the kids. And I got something for us I think you’ll love.” He turned over the second shopping bag and spilled two colorful heaps of onto your bed. Joe grabbed them and held them up to show the full outfits, matching dinosaur onesies for the two of you, one with varying shades of green with red spikes on the back and tail, and the other one varying shades of pink with matching purple spikes in the same place. 

You gasped covered your mouth in surprise. “You didn’t!”

Joe’s goofy smile told you everything you needed to know. “I know it’s a bit cheesy but I think they’re pretty good quality costumes. And I did bring one last thing for us since I know you still want to do a movie night.” He reached into his backpack and pulled out a copy of Jurassic Park, your favorite movie. 

“I know it’s not pizza and scary movies, but Halloween candy and Jurassic Park with dinosaur onesies is a pretty good backup.” He laughed. 

You were speechless with how thoughtful Joe’s idea was. Words tried to form, but failed to come out of your mouth 

“Thank you Joey.” You mumbled into his sweatshirt. “I don’t know what I would do without you.” 

That night went so much better than you originally hoped for. You and Joe’s matching onesies were a hit with trick or treaters, their parents, and even the other students on your floor. The two of you ended up putting on Jurassic Park on while the Halloween Haunt was going on, which was a great distraction for the times when there were no trick or treaters on your floor. 

The best part of the whole night was by far was when a little boy no older than eight years old came up to your door dressed as Tim Murphy and his parents both dressed up as dinosaurs. Watching Joe’s face light up at the little boy dressed as his character was the highlight of your night. The boy’s parents recognized Joe and asked if he could take a picture with their son and Joe was more than happy to join in on the fun. The boy, Taylor, was starstruck to be meeting the real Tim Murphy. You managed to get some really cute pictures of Joe and Taylor, your favorite one was Taylor pretending to chase after Joe because the both of them looked like they were having so much fun. 

“Thank you for coming over.” You grumbled into Joe’s chest as the two of you laid on your small twin-size bed, rewatching Jurassic Park after all the trick or treaters came by. The extra bag of Halloween candy was strategically wedge between the two of you so both of you were able to reach inside. “I had a lot of fun, and these onesies are amazing.” 

Joe laughed and kissed the top of your head. “No problem Y/N. I always have fun with you.” 

Halfway through the movie, you felt your phone vibrate in the pocket of your onesie. You thought it was going to be a text from Maddie but instead were greeted with a post notification from Instagram. 

“Joe_Mazzello tagged you in a post”

You tapped on the notification and unlocked your phone, revealing Joe’s instagram post of you two in your matching onesies and a few other pictures from the night, including the picture you took of Joe and Taylor as the first photograph. 

Joe_Mazzello: Hey that kid looks familiar. I can’t place where I’ve seen him before though. Any hints?

You gave the post a quick like and tossed your phone to the end of your bed, focusing back on your boyfriend and the movie. 

“Happy Halloween Y/N.” Joe muttered, pulling you closer to his chest. 

You laced your fingers with his and leaned back for a long kiss. “Happy Halloween Joey.” 

#halloqueen gift #joe mazzello #joe mazzello x reader #Joe mazzello imagine

[quillium]

Look... as much as I love angst... Danny’s parents post-reveal has so much fluff/crack potential. So what if they accept him... but a bit too much? And I don’t mean in a bad way. I mean in an embarrassing, “mom please stop I’m a teenager” type of way. So some ideas for a post-canon, post-reveal fic:

Danny wants to find a solution to getting rid of ghosts besides just “punch them and shove them back in the ghost zone” so he asks around and starts helping ghosts pass on

Of course, Sam, Tucker and Jazz help the ghosts pass on. His parents are still mostly processing... or so Danny thinks. In fact, they are plotting...

A ROAD TRIP to help ghosts pass on. They deck out the van with lame stickers and tags and call themselves a super lame name like the “Ghost Helpers” and Danny is dying inside

This is kind of their way of compensating and being like “We love and accept you, Danny, and we’re going to go over the top to help you”

Danny: I know that you love and accept me. I know a bit too well. Stop.

Jazz is like NO, I have PLANS for the summer and they don’t include a lame road trip with my parents

But obviously, she goes because a) she has to and, b) she can’t leave Danny alone with her parents

So that’s all built up to say this entire fic will be a fluffy crack road trip thing

Jack forgets to pack anything besides stuff to help them find ghosts to help pass on and Maddy packed the bare minimums

Jazz is like “I knew this would happen so I packed all our toiletries and anything we might need”

There’s this running side gag of Jazz trying to be as productive as possible whenever they make a stop and Danny is helping ghosts pass on--to varying levels of success

One example: Danny is helping the ghost of a little girl in a haunted mansion pass on. Jazz is trying to volunteer at a nearby museum. The little girl wanted a trip to the museum (once she goes, she’ll pass on) so Danny takes her and Jazz has to try and prevent any damage from happening (ex. everything starts floating when the ghost enters and Jazz is like THESE ARE PRICELESS ARTIFACTS) while getting credit for college applications or something

Another example: Danny desperately needs Jazz because the ghost is willing to pass on as soon as they get one therapy session and Jazz is the closest they’ve got but Jazz entered a singing competition earlier and now her voice won’t work and Danny’s like “WE NEED TO HELP THE GHOST PASS ON” and Jazz is like “MY VOICE DOESN’T WORK” and it’s mostly funny

Also: Jack and Maddy trying to help but Danny and Jazz are like maybe that’s not the best idea so at first there’s also a running gag of them trying to keep Jack and Maddy away

but obviously the theme of this story would be family or something so in the end Danny lets his parents help and it’s a bit of a mess but it works out

Danny’s parents trying to do bonding things but they always do it with a twist

Example: Jack sees on TV that normal families play board games, so instead of buying Monopoly, he turns the entire city into a giant life sized board with some machine on the hottest day of the year and Danny and Jazz don’t have any other obligations but they just really don’t want to do it

They pretend there’s a ghost thing but then Jack is like “GREAT I’ll tag along!!! :)))” and they’re like “oh no what do we do” and it’s a huge misunderstanding comedy type thing

In the end they play the game together and get slushies and ice cream and it’s really cute and they do end up bonding

Anyways, I just want a fluffy fic in the DP fandom. Feel free to add on, I might add on later.

#danny phantom #Is it just me or is everything in this fandom angsty??? #like where's the fluff? the comedy? #road trip au

[phantomphangphucker]

Ectober Day 26: High Score - This Is Not In Vain Chap.2: Look In Vein

Just how does he stack up?

After a bit they all separate, Danny looking around and rubbing his neck a bit awkwardly, “so I’m guessing you’re not too upset with me? Or freaked out?”.

Jack pats Danny’s shoulder as he sits down in one of the chairs, “that was very weird yes. But that’s normal for Fenton’s!”, throwing his hands out to the side slightly, “and you have powers! The flying was really cool! Everything was so small!”.

Maddie nods at Jack but worries her lip and looks at Danny, “it seems like you...get hurt a lot”, cupping the side of his face and visually inspecting his nose, “how do you even forget broken bones sweetie? And I’m not sure whether to be happy or bothered that you did a good job setting your nose”.

Danny chuckles and rubs over the bridge of his nose, which Maddie cringes at slightly but tilts her head, “it’s...healed”.

Danny drops his hand and gives a little nod, “yeah, um, I heal quick”, looking to his dad, “and yeah dad, flying’s great. It’s, well, it’s one of my favourite things”.

Jack grins wide at that, which Danny tilts his head over, “are you guys okay? that I like my, um, abilities? That I have them?”, shrugging and looking at the floor slightly, “I lied to you guys. For, like, a long time”.

At this they both promptly hug him again. Jack rubbing his back a bit, “son, Danny-boy, we’ve already decided we accept it. So long as you like it and accept it”.

Maddie nods as they pull back, “even if it’s quite strange and we have no clue how it’s possible. Though if I’m honest sweetie, it does seem rather wrong, you’re not a ghost”.

Danny frowns and looks away, nodding a little, “yeah I kind of figured. Ghost stuff, you don’t exactly like them”.

Jack clears his throat, “about that...That puppy really was a lot like a normal puppy! And Tucker said you actually have lots of ghost friends! And well, you wouldn’t be friendly with monsters. So we don’t know what to think on that”.

Danny blinks and looks at his dad wide-eyed, “he did what?!? Tuck”, Danny shakes his head, “I guess I did sort of tell you the same though. And his name’s Cujo, Dad”.

Jack blushes a bit at that but nods. Maddie decides to sit down too, so that Danny’s looking down at both of them, at least a little, hoping it makes him more open, “why though?“.

Danny rolls his eyes, “why not? They’re the same as humans, just with powers and more varied bodies”.

Maddie sighs, “I don’t know Danny. But you seem to be doing fine, skilled actually, so that’s your choice to make. We can support you without loving everything you do right?”.

Danny rubs his neck and gives a weak smile, “I mean, I guess? And yeah I’ve been getting into fights like that for a while”, glaring at the air slightly, “Walker’s one of few I actually hate. He also hates me”, shrugging, “mutualistic I guess”.

Maddie and Jack share a look, Jack patting Danny’s shoulder slightly, “we definitely don’t like him either. But about that, what did he mean by ‘half creature’? That sounds like an insult”.

Maddie nods and makes a point to smile slightly, “Tucker mention halfa, I know you didn’t really answer us when we asked about that, but you didn’t know it was us at that point”.

Danny sighs, “yeah that’s an insult dad. The whole halfa thing is part of why he hates me. And, um, I’m called that because of the powers and stuff, while still being, you know, alive”.

Both parents nod, it did make sense. It meant he was a bit ghostly. Maddie touches Danny chest lightly, “I’m guessing having a core makes you able to handle all the ectoplasm in you. There’s an awful lot more than we thought”.

“Heh heh, yeah and thanks for leaving that alone after the initial discovery, or whatever, of it. Core’s are kind of...sensitive”.

Both nod rapidly, Maddie speaking, “as soon as you mentioned it could freeze you over we made sure to leave it alone. Can it really do that?”.

Danny nods and rubs his chest slightly, “oh yeah it can. Pretty sure it nearly killed me. I have to use up its ecto-energy or it’ll freeze me basically”, Danny makes a fist and then opens it, revealing a little ice flower. Twirling it in his fingers and making more pelts form on it till it’s rather large.

Maddie takes it gingerly and spins it nothing ‘wow’, because it was incredibly pretty. Still so off that he could just make ecto-ice but not so bad.

Jack smiles, “you’re good at that! Guess you’d have to be! Seems like a strong power!”, tilting his head and glancing around the lab, “think we could see just how strong?”.

“I’m not turning the lab into an ice rink dad”, making everyone laugh a little.

Jack shakes his head with a smile after a bit, “I mean a meter reader Danny-boy. See just how much icy energy you can put out”.

Danny looks around and rubs his neck, “I dunno, I mean, I uh, um, okay, I am totally curious about that myself. But, like, your guys stuff, you know, saves the data and that would have been awkward. Though I mean, I have totally had Tuck use radar guns on me, you know, speed and that. Flying. Yeah”, shrugging, “doesn’t really matter now I guess. So I um, yeah. Okay”.

Maddie scrunches up her eyebrows, “is that a yes sweetie?”.

Jack beams and stands, “of course you’re curious! You’re a Fenton!”.

Danny nods at his mom while his dad busies himself finding things, “yeah, yeah it’s a yes”. Maddie gets up and kisses his forehead for that, whispering to him, “thanks for trusting us. We’re, especially Jack, a bit upset over finding out all this the way we did. On accident. We’d rather have you tell us on your own terms and knowing it was us. Even if it took longer”.

Danny smiles warmly at that, making a damn point to not tear up at all, “thanks. That means a lot”. Making a mock disgusted face as she kisses his forehead again. Before Jack comes over with what looks like a tuning fork attached to a big ass battery.

Danny sits down and chuckles a little, as Jack touches it to his chest, “no need to explain how it works. I’m familiar”, making both his parents smile. While Danny pushes his Core’s power at the machine. Thankfully he knew this stuff wouldn’t actually deplete his ectoplasm, none of their inspectors would. Humming a little as the machine beeps.

Jack blinks at the screen, a fair bit stunned, “wow Danny-boy! It’s strong! Strongest we’ve recorded actually!”.

Danny snorts, of course it was, figures. Looking over at the screen, “jeez that’s almost double the second highest?”.

They all look at each other before Jack glances to where all the other inspectors are. Danny, way too curious now, nods with a slight grin.

Maddie quickly clears the little side table before Jack dumps the inspectors on it. Danny chuckles, “you’ve built one for everything at this point. Why don’t you make something that’s universal?”.

Maddie quirks her lip, “we are actually. Just much more difficult”. She knew he never seemed to mind the ‘harmless’ inventions.

Danny dips his head, “logically”, as Jack slides over with an ecto-field reader. Which Danny hovers his arm over, easily feeling when he was close enough for it to be contacting it.

And just like before, way higher than every other reading.

From there it continues on much the same. Thing after thing, reading after reading; Danny’s consistently way higher than every other recorded level or score. This also results in Danny pretty well showing off his powers, being a little awkward about it at first but growing more comfortable at his folks not reacting poorly. He firmly decides against anything a little too weird for now. Duplication, body manipulation, the wail, his ghost form, and overshadowing. Even if overshadowing one of them would be really comedic right now.

Maddie eventually stands in-front of all the readings, it was a bit concerning but also incredibly funny. Danny seems to find it pretty funny for sure. Based on the smirking and snickering. Just the fact that the weirdly high readings were making him a bit more comfortable made her happy though. So it’s okay.

Shaking her head with a smile and looking at Danny, “you, a human, are stronger than every ghost we’ve ever recorded”.

Danny rubs his neck and looks around, before looking back with a slight smile, “Fenton’s and our weird huh?”.

Jack laughs, clapping Danny on the shoulder, “indeed! Ghostly weird is even more suiting! I can just imagine the looks of jealousy, shock, and some rage on the ghosties faces now!”.

Maddie ruffles his hair, and thinking of his skill in battle, “I’d say that most have an idea that you’re very strong. You clearly suspected”.

Danny shrugs, “pretty much yeah”.

Maddie makes a point of giving him a more stern mothering face, “not that I like you fighting on your own. Or that it’s actual fights instead of what we do”.

Danny shrugs, “usually it’s more like sparring. Testing each other’s skill and power sort of thing. A little bit of fun”, frowning, “not Walker though. He’s a prick. Same with Plasmius. Pricks, the both of ‘em”.

Jack raises an eyebrow, “what about that Skulker that you mentioned?”.

Danny tilts his head, “Skulker is kind of unique. What I was talking about back there, with him, his girl was insulting his hunting skills, again, so he decided to prove his skill by hunting me a bit more aggressively, again. Skulker’s basically a ghost hunter. Goes after anything ghostly that’s unique or rare. You know, like me. But he has more respect for strong worthy opponents, so it’s usually sparring between us. Frenemies”.

Jack chuckles, “a ghost who’s a ghost hunter! I’m still going to deck him though”.

Danny smirks, “aim for the head then. Very tiny ghost piloting a Mecha. You shrunk him once and I may have froze him in an ice-cube tray”.

Jack laughs again, “good then! Seems like you might have caught more ghosts than we have! What’s your scoreboard like?”.

Danny tilts his head, “huh?”.

Maddie smiles and ruffles his hair, “surely you keep track of how many you nab, or win against I guess”.

Danny screws up his face, snorts and then starts laughing. Shaking his head, “I gave up on that years ago, after a hundred it felt kind of pointless”, snorting again, “well, okay I keep score of the Box Ghost because it’s ridiculous”. This gets both of them to nod and laugh. All of them having frequently not even bothered to actually catch that one.

Maddie smiles, “I think everyone in town has a scoreboard for that one”.

Jack pokes Danny, hoping the question is obvious and clear. Danny nods, “fifty-two thousand and eighty-nine. Highest in one day was fifty-seven”.

Both cough, definitely startled. Danny was an overachiever.

Maddie smiles mischievously, “fourteen thousand and two”.

Jack smirks, “nine thousand on the nose”. Danny smirks at that.

Eventually, everyone goes up for food. And Maddie, watching Danny eat remembers something. Swallowing her food, “sweetie? Question?”.

“Yeah?”.

“I’m sure I felt fangs earlier. You don’t look to have any though?”.

Danny blushes and shifts a little, no point in not showing them. So he opens his mouth and extends them. Which Maddie goes a bit wide-eyed over. Closing his mouth and licking his tongue over them, “Iz pretty vwell only have them outz in fightz. Kinda hardy to eatz or talkz with them”.

Jack blinks a bit before laughing a little, which Danny blushes more over. Jack patting his shoulder, “I can see why! They’re way too big for your mouth!”.

Danny rubs his neck and chuckles, fangs noticeably still out, “Iz growz into them. Eventuallyz”.

Maddie ruffles his hair some, fangs was creepy and rather wrong to see on him but if he could be okay with it then so could she. Tilting her head a little, “isn’t fang size a bit of a status thing? Like wearing fur or well-tailored suits? Being naturally better looking?”.

Jack nods a bit erratically, “like high cheekbones? Or chiselled jaws?”.

Danny snorts and nods, “yezz, pizzzez Plazmiuzz offz”. Danny licks over his fangs again, having basically butchered Vlad’s last name. But this time even Maddie can’t help but laugh.

End.

#Danny Phantom #phandom #ectober #ectober2019 #scores #ectobiology #science #Maddie Fenton #jack fenton #danny fenton #fanfic #phanphic #have a fic suck my dick #phantomphangphucker #my writing #was gonna do something different for this prompt but that idea is going to turn into a massive fic #no time

[haikujitsu]

THE SHADE IN SHANNON'S HOUSE. WHAT THE FUCK. Does being on the thermos for so Iong affect VIad's mind? WiII Shannon ever find out about the shade? Do Shannon and Danny stiII hang out afterwards? Does Shannon ask for ghost stories from Danny? WiII Danny's Doctor continue studying paranaturaI stuff after Danny? What was your favorite SOAD scene to write? which scene was the hardest? What wiII Danny go on to study, how often does he get to see Shannon and the gang?

Hokay, where to start…

Favorite Scene to Write

Oh, gosh. This is hard because it’s such a flippin’ long story and I wrote it over such a long span of time. I think… hmmm.

I really loved writing the Jack and Danny reunion near the end. Jack was one of those characters I didn’t like much initially, but he grew on me as the years passed and now honestly he’s one of my favorites. Being able to bring Danny home and letting them hug it out just felt so satisfying and cathartic.

I also enjoyed writing Mrs. Foley because she’s so wholesome and such a good influence on literally everyone. The Spectra cameo was also neat since she’s one of my favorite ghosts and bringing her into a psychological drama seemed fitting. Also that action scene where Maddie steals a ghost bike and rides it home? Super fun to write.

Hardest Scene to Write

Easily Maddie and Danny’s confrontation at Shannon’s (which in the end was split over Ch. 59/60). It needed to be a balance of getting it all out in the open, acknowledging the truly devastating nature of what Maddie had done, and yet allowing room for empathy and understanding and forgiveness.

It’s incredibly hard to make that choice to face your own pain and accept someone’s repentence– and incredibly powerful to see it happen. I did my best to bring the characters to a point where they were capable of that reunion. I spent weeks reworking and tearing up and reassembling the dialogue to make it feel real and hit alll those notes of anger and grief and loss and love in a way that felt sincere. It didn’t ring true for everyone, but I did what I could.

Vlad

Yes, it seriously affects Vlad’s psychological health, not to mention brain function. More on this in another ask!

Shannon

Being able to fly upwards of 100 mph makes it surprisingly easy to maintain a friendship across state lines. Danny’s a little shy about visiting at first, but Shannon is so matter of fact about it that they end up having monster movie and spaghetti nights once or twice a month.

Shannon mostly leaves the ghost topic alone because she senses that Danny wants to get away from ghost talk– but when he brings it up she always settles in for a crazy story. Once you leave the borders of Amity Park even the existence of ghosts feels more and more unbelievable… but Danny sitting at the table (or sometimes floating above it) is a constant reminder of the strangeness of the world.

He has to learn to be careful about the superpowers though, since there’s invariably someone staying in one of Shannon’s spare rooms. In a year or so she decides to become an official foster mom and the kids she takes in get a lot younger (grade school and teens). Danny develops a reputation as someone who doesn’t care how dark your problems get; he can also make bullies mysteriously lose interest and is pretty good at video games too. Danny finds out he likes being the big brother for a change.

Shannon’s place becomes a sort of safety zone for Danny. When he has a bad day, when he needs a break from ghost hunting, when he has a problem that he can’t talk out with his friends, when his parents cross a line and he needs some space. Shannon starts keeping Todd’s room reserved for his visits, which, depending on the reason, can last for a few days.

The Shade

Recap for those who don’t remember: There’s a shade (powerless proto-ghost with minimal self-awareness, only visible to humans with spectral abilities) that haunts Shannon’s house, and it’s heavily implied that this is Shannon’s long-lost younger brother, Todd. Danny, Gabe and Harley are aware of its presence but Shannon is not.

Shannon still hopes that her brother is alive, so at first Danny doesn’t tell her. But sooner or later it gets to him– maybe talking with Jazz and realizing how heart-wrenching that uncertainty is, maybe Shannon reminiscing about Todd, maybe just visiting and seeing the shade drifting around in perpetual purgatory.

He tells her. That’s a whole heart-wrenching conversation as you can imagine, but in the end Shannon believes him and accepts that Todd is dead. That’s not enough for Danny, who can see the shade literally inches from Shannon even as they talk about him. Danny wants to reunite them somehow.

So he goes to his parents. Which, by the bye, is a huge step because Danny’s still super uncomfortable with them in their role as ghost hunters/scientists. Maddie and Jack realize that and they handle this as delicately as they know how. Which is…not very delicately, but they try.

They know that if they just present raw ectoplasm to the shade that it would manifest in a seeable, sentient form. But it’s dangerous because the sentience and visibility that ectoplasm provides comes at a price– it typically enhances aggression, self-fascination and obsessiveness to the point where the ghost becomes a simplified charicature of his former self.

If Todd were to become a ghost like Ember or Technus, he might not even remember Shannon at all and would very likely be a threat to humans.

Danny, as usual, turns out to be the key. Because the ectoplasm used in creating the portal was so carefully purified, he escaped the worst of the ectoplasmic side effects. The Fentons theorize that if they create a controlled environment where they can slowly introduce purified and denatured ectoplasm, they can give the shade a physical form and encourage sentience without causing insanity and aggression.

With Shannon’s permission they rig up the living room with equipment and are able to trap Todd’s shade and try out their theory. He manifests successfully. Whether they can only sustain it for a few minutes or it’s a lasting solution, I don’t know. But at the very least they see each other, and Shannon can say goodbye.

Dr. Wagner

I feel like ectoscience is one of those things where, once you’re aware of it, you can’t just… stop being involved. It’s too niche, too bizarre, and too interesting.

Especially since Dr. Wagner is now one of three medical professionals (four if we’re counting Dr. Kerza) aware of the existence of ghost/human hybrids, period. He’s one of the few people informed enough to competently treat Danny, Valerie, and anyone else like them.

So yes, getting involved with Danny forever changes Dr. Wagner’s life. After his residency is up, he moves to Amity Park and gets a job under Dr. Stein–that’s Danny’s original doctor from his first hospital stay post-PoT; he was brought into the loop about the halfa thing at Dr. Wagner’s insistence.

The two doctors trade off patching Danny up on the occasions where he needs serious medical attention, and in the meantime work together to create legitimate scientific studies pertaining to ectoplasm and its interactions with human physiology. As the epicenter of ectocontaminated injuries, Amity Park General Hospital is the ideal place to conduct this research.

Most of the existing data has been collected by either the GIW (which rarely publicizes its findings) or scientists in non-medical fields with varying levels of scientific integrity, so this turns out to be an excellent way for a young, hardworking doctor to make a name for himself.

He also dates a certain redheaded psychology grad student for a while, but nothing comes of it… except a very awkward few months of ecto-charged glares from his primary patient.

Danny’s Studies

Danny does eke his way into community college with the help of some online classes and Jazz’s tutoring. No one can figure out why his new campus has a sudden spike in ghost activity, though the Fentons make a public statement with some handwavey ‘spectral wave pattern fluctuations’ explanation.

I’m honestly not sure what he’d end up majoring in… I do feel that he’d change majors at least once before he settled into something he liked. His academic performance is directly linked to the level of ghost crisis in Amity Park–though he’s gotten much better at sharing responsibility with Valerie and his parents.

He’d probably go in with an interest in Engineering, Applied Science, and Astrophysics despite his bad math grades–which, let’s be honest, are probably a direct result of his ghost hunting and not a lack of intelligence. I think he’d surprise himself by doing really well in Sociology and Anthropology-related courses. Nothing like being thrown into a bizarre xenoculture made of a mishmash of human history to prepare you for higher education, ey?

#soad ama #soad asks #xiulric #dropping this under a readmore actually

[asexualtuckerfoley]

Hope Over Hate

He hadn’t really dealt with it after the first time it happened. Losing your autonomy? Your personhood? It was no wonder he buried it beneath layers of false confidence and bad one-liners. Maybe it was because she was an outsider the first time it happened, but Jazz saw it all: the anger, the pain, the hatred. Danny liked to pretend it wasn’t hidden deep inside him, but it was. Just like every other human being out there.

The second time it happened, Jazz wasn’t surprised, though she was the only one. Sam and Tucker thought any darkness in Danny died when Dan was captured. The public and their parents didn’t think he had any to begin with. He was framed multiple times, but he still tried to save people. How could there be any darkness in that? Jazz saw it. Lurking around corners and hiding under the bed. Jazz knew Danny could only take so much, and every piece of kindling added up over the past year, just waiting for a match.

That match came in the form of Vlad with some sort of gas that took negative emotions and amplified them. Just like that, all of Danny’s happiness and false-serenity was gone, replaced by a cold, callous villain. For the first time since the Disasteroid, Jack and Maddie Fenton had taken up arms against their son.

After the second time it happened, Danny would have no choice but to face it.

Danny’s eyes blinked open, and he looked around the lab as the memories came flooding back. Then, he let out a sob. Jazz pressed the release button on Danny’s restraints and took one of his hands in her own. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s all gonna be okay.”

“Did I- is anyone-”

“No.”

Between sobs, Danny muttered “thank God” under his breath. He tightened his hold on Jazz’s hand and began rambling. “I was so angry. Everything bad that’s ever happened, every hateful and malicious thought I’ve ever had just came back to me and I took it out on everyone else.” He turned his head to see that Jazz had three butterfly bandages on her forehead holding a cut closed, and the skin surrounding her left eye was black and green and varying shades of purple. Danny let out another sob, using his free hand to cover his face. “I’m so sorry. I should have never said any of those things I said to you or attacked you. I’m so sorry, Jazz.”

“I know you are,” Jazz assured him, rubbing the back of his hand with her thumb. “I’ll heal, and so will you. We’re gonna get through this together.”

“How can you say that?” Danny asked with a hiccup. “You should hate me.”

Jazz just shook her head. “You’re my little brother,” she said. “There is nothing in this world that could make me stop loving you, and I would move heaven and Earth to prove it. I promise you that what happened these past few days is just a bump in the road, and I’m gonna help you move past it.”

Danny took a shaky breath, Jazz managing to calm him down somewhat.

Everyone else in Amity Park was surprised by the attack. Surprised that the great hero had any darkness in his heart. Surprised that he would take it out on them. Surprised that he resented his parents for the accident and their hunting him, that part of him hated his friends and sister for being able to be so normal while he would always be a halfa, that he wanted revenge for everything the town had down to him, both as Phantom and as Fenton.

Jazz wasn’t. And she didn’t care.

#dannymay daily #dannymay #danny phantom #danny fenton #jazz fenton #i'm a day behind shh #myfic #fanfiction #danny phantom fanfiction