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#rich girl advocate sam vs crime alley kid danny FIGHT
starry-bi-sky · 5 months
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I am of the DPxDC belief/headcanon that any variation of Danny who grew up poor in Gotham during his formative years before moving to Amity Park would not be friends with Sam without friction at first. It makes things more interesting and imo allows for more exploration of different themes plus character growth for Sam that she doesn't really go through in canon.
(this doesn't only apply to a DPDC au where Danny grew up in Gotham poor, but it was the first thing that I thought of where this might happen considering my Childhood Friends au.)
Now Sam's a compassionate girl, it's one of her defining character traits, but so is her hypocrisy and judgy-ness. She's the Not Like Other Girls' girl. This is in part of the show's narrative framing that makes her out like this, unfortunately though its still showing how she is as a character since its consistent enough to be part of her character description. There are also times where the show's depiction of her activism makes it look like she's performative about it. All of this makes her dynamic with a Danny who grew up poor in Gotham very interesting.
Anyways, Sam is aware of her privilege to an extent, but still has her blindspots - glaring ones, in some cases. Her self-righteous attitude would not go over well with a crime alley kid Danny. He'd like her, at first, but then she'd do something to make him mad - personally I think her judging people for not being vegan would annoy him the most, or at least would be the breaking point for him, because it was only recently that his family started actually being able to consistently put food on the table at all, good food nonetheless. And being vegan is expensive.
Any other behavior he noticed from her he'd slowly stop tolerating - her judging conventionally attractive girls and automatically assuming they're vapid and shallow for being feminine. Her anti-capitalist beliefs start coming off as superficial at worst, and Danny would eventually figure out that Sam either came from a family that was well off, or that she wasn't aware if her family was experiencing financial struggle.
He would still be friends with Tucker, but since Tucker imo is still friends with Sam, they'd still run into each other often enough to butt heads. Sam's got a nasty habit of refusing to take responsibility when she's wrong, but when Danny is arguing with her, and counterpointing her with stuff she can't retort back at without compromising her own beliefs, then forces her to start reflecting on herself. Especially when Tucker eventually starts siding with Danny and agreeing with him.
Does sam genuinely care about her beliefs and philosophies? Survey says yes. However that doesn't mean she's not ignorant, and she definitely is at times throughout the show (like when she released the purpleback gorilla thinking it 'wanted out of its enclosure' despite the fact that it was endangered and in an urban area) and I think it'd be a real fascinating dynamic between Danny and Sam to explore.
This isn't Sam hate btw, nor am I trying to make her out like "the worst person ever" bc she's not, i wanna make that explicitly clear. Sam Manson has a lot of positive traits about her but she also has an equal amount of negative traits that I think should be explored, she is not immune to the character development.
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