#Good parents Jack and Maddie because despite what I write I do love them | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

ganymedesclock · 4 years ago

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So... What do you think about revisiting Danny phantom in general? Revisiting the fandom I've noticed a lot of fanfic that have Danny's parents finding out his deal rather violently, or generally having more violence/angst than the original show..

I’m assuming you’re sending me this ask because of my recent burst of Danny Phantom art, so, it’s probably not a surprise to say I’m doing a certain amount of revisiting myself, and certainly not about to shame anyone else for it. It was a very dear cartoon to me in many ways and left some enduring hallmarks on my own writing, and I can absolutely understand people feeling the same way.

That said, as someone who’s been in this fandom for a while, albeit quietly- there certainly is a thread of macabre interest in fandom spaces, one I don’t always know that I agree with, especially when it comes to the Fentons.

My personal verdict on the Fenton parents specifically is I think they are not handled fairly by canon. This is a problem that Danny Phantom as a show shares with Fairly Odd Parents, though I would argue the Turner parents in FOP are quite a bit worse at this.

Roughly, I think how the Fenton parents are canonically depicted suffers from a phenomenon that affects many parts of the show: DP, as a series, has a bit of a sense of confused priorities between comedy and drama, and as a result, what’s 'real’ in-universe and what’s “just supposed to be a joke”. The kind of humor that DP tends to spring for is exaggerated or shocking behavior- it also tends to be a humor that hinges on the idea that other people are generally inconvenient to the main character. So humor-characterization is inconsistent here- Jack is negligent until it’s more inconvenient to depict him as overbearing (see: Girl’s Night Out and other cases he desperately wants to bond with Danny) he’s a recluse only loved by his wife until it’s more inconvenient to depict him as having an active social life (Masters Of All Time and that he and Maddie are going to a themed party so they’re dressed ‘weirdly’ in public)

A big victim of this is Jack’s sense that ghosts aren’t people and his desire to dissect them. Because here is the thing: it’s all talk, in the worst way. It hinges on the idea Jack- someone who knows enough of what he’s doing that along with Maddie and, in the past, Vlad- ripped two different holes in reality hard enough to permanently alter someone’s relation to undeath- has never seen a ghost before the series as he says in Mystery Meat.

The series has a big problem where it hinges on the Fentons’ inventions and expertise but also wants to treat them like idiots constantly. And if you notice how much I’m talking exclusively about Jack- that’s part of the problem. Maddie, in many ways, outside of episodes that throw her a bone, despite constantly being told by people she’s too good for Jack, is really treated as an extension of Jack. Masters Of All Time even suggests that her choosing Jack in the first place was just a path of least resistance between her two college friends, and she’d have married whichever one stuck around.

The Fentons are not respected as experts, so Jack is given his ignorant line about dissecting a ghost. The Fentons need to remain exaggerated, ridiculous, an inconvenience to Danny- so they threaten his alter ego and point guns at him, but this is funny and not serious and not a reason to be worried about them as parents, because they are not on Danny’s level. Nobody is ever on Danny’s level. There is literally an episode called The Ultimate Enemy. The antagonist is an evil future Danny. The only person who could ever be Danny’s ultimate nemesis is Danny himself.

And when the series stops milking the Fentons for jokes about how they’re so stupid and how Jack is an idiot and Maddie married that idiot but even she doesn’t respect him even though she loves him and dutifully follows him everywhere and god how can these people care about ghosts they’re so ignorant and out of their league-

-then it kinda shuffles its feet awkwardly and goes, yeah. the Fentons love each other, and love their kids.

Yeah, Jack has framed photographs of Maddie, Jazz, and Danny on his personal workstation.

Yeah, in Mystery Meat Jack was seriously debating walking away from his lifework because it upset one of his kids.

Yeah, every time in canon the Fentons find out Danny’s secret they’re immediately all in supporting him.

Yeah, even not knowing it’s Danny, Jack has an amiable conversation with him in Million Dollar Ghost and the ghost containment units designed by the Fentons get some jokes about that they’re a little cramped but they aren’t horrifying prisons of inhumanity- and as soon as Danny Phantom the ghost boy has a good point, Jack lets him go on purpose.

Yeah, Jack is a competent ghost hunter who can take on Skulker and win as well as beat down the giant lake monster Skulker brought with him in Girls’ Night Out and would do this in a heartbeat, no jokes and no sidetracks, because that monster just chewed on his baby boy and nobody does that to his baby boy.

Yeah, Maternal Instinct is an entire episode of Maddie throwing hands with (or deceiving and manipulating) literally anything she thinks was responsible for getting Danny in this dangerous situation.

...And then the series says “but that’s not funny! Here, have jokes about the Fenton Stockades, that exist and have spikes and Jack wants to put his kids in them for time out, when the spikes apparently don’t hurt given Jack is not injured for being put in there. Here, have a joke about Jack attacking Jazz with a vacuum cleaner because he gets hellbent on the idea she’s possessed for no good reason. Here, have an uncomfortable joke about how badly Jack Fenton wants to vivisect a ghost while it screams. Funny funny funny. Why- why are you flinching?”

It basically creates a comedic situation where the show is constantly winding up like it’s gonna punch you- with the idea that the Fentons are bad parents and this has consequences for Danny and Jazz personally- and then laughs in your face if you flinch. It’ll never actually punch you- but it will sure keep swinging its hand really close to your face and laughing at your reactions.

This is, I’m just gonna say- one of the worst elements of the series, this weird relationship it has with “hahaha are we depicting an abusive family or not? ;)” where its actual point is that Jack Fenton is a person who should be shamed for being overzealous, for caring about this niche field, because nobody cares about ghosts! (unless the entire premise of the show does) Nobody wants to think about ghost science! That’s LAME! (unless Vlad does it)

So I think ultimately this creates a polarizing experience in the fandom. What part of this information do you take?

Do you take, say, my personal approach, which is:

“Hey, so it’s pretty clear and consistent that the Fentons love their kids and wouldn’t hurt them. The Fentons are nice people. They can be obsessive or headstrong but there’s nuanced and salient ways to examine this in the basic framework that they care, both about their family specifically, and in general- and while I think they can have flaws or conflicts with their kids, and with ambient ghosts in the world, I really don’t think they’re in danger of torturing a sapient entity in their basement and it frustrates and annoys me that canon ‘makes a joke’ of them doing these things because it thinks they’re so incompetent that these things are not really malicious actions, when- whether or not you successfully shoot them, it takes a certain kind of person to point a weapon you know is dangerous at something that looks, and talks, like a fourteen-year-old, especially when you’re a parent who has probably at least once in your life worried about something happening to your kids, and the ghost of a teenager means something happened to someone’s kid, in a general sense.

So my end conclusion on the Fentons is I think they are being depicted in a kind of metatextual bad faith, that they are not cruel or malicious people, and in my personal take or understanding on the series, I’d massively dial down those elements, and if any remain, take them seriously as problems they have in their relationships with other people.”

Or do you take an approach more rooted in,

“If the Fentons are shown to be negligent parents they are negligent parents, I’m going to examine and depict them as that, and I find this very hard to forgive, so it’s going to have real and nasty consequences.”

Both are basically valid. The place where I tend to get a little uncomfortable is twofold:

First, I think sometimes people just really want some fictional tragedy to either create or consume, and to that end, you aren’t going to get much juicy drama out of the Fentons being reasonable people. This isn’t evil or unforgivable, but for me, it’s definitely my least favorite fannish content to create or consume. I’m no fan of angst for angst’s sake, and I feel like there’s enough misery and heartbreak in the world that I’m not interested in wallowing in it unless it’s got something interesting to say.

Second- and this is a point I’m gonna be saltier: A lot of abusive Fenton fics that refuse to forgive them for the poorer-taste jokes the series makes, simultaneously give Vlad a blank check, when he has done targetedly malicious things to Danny.

Now- do I also have a more sympathetic read on Vlad, and feel like canon also gives him a bad rap? Yeah! But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say, “I can’t forgive the Fentons for stuff that was tagged onto them because canon thought it was funny, but I’m gonna editorialize Vlad’s depiction to lionize him as the ideal parent figure for Danny to run into the arms of.”

And the main reason I get so worked up in this, is I feel like Jack in particular (when Maddie is characterized as subordinate to Jack, following his cues, etc., and that’s its own demon) is... characterized as kind of a mocking caricature of traits that I personally recognize as an autistic and ADHD person.

Because the reality is? In many practical ways, I am Jack Fenton.

I like a bunch of weird stuff people find unacceptable or gross, like bugs

I’m hyperlexic (that means I talk, a lot)

Scatterbrained, forget words or where I left something or, sometimes, to do something important

Passionate and excitable including and especially in situations where it’s not normal, or expected, to have this much energy

I absolutely can forget birthdays, even for people I love dearly that mean the world to me! It’s horrible! There’s almost nothing I can do about it! My brain refuses to hold onto this information reliably and no amount of caring fixes it.

And being this way, living like this? My worst nightmare has always been that people think I either don’t care or that I’m just too much of a stupid, flippant buffoon to get right.

The thing about Jack is he’s “a person like me” and he’s “a person like me” who was designed to be a joke. We’re clearly expected to view him as untrustworthy, stupid, just like a big dumb dog of a man who barks in the wrong directions, who sometimes, when it counts, fetches a stick like he’s supposed to. Good job, Lassie. You got little Timmy out of the well.

And I am going to say with certainty and confidence that feeling like this is how people see me is the most unbelievably crushing feeling I have ever experienced in my life. That my excitement and passion means I’m unprofessional, stupid, don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s nearly painful for me, as an adult, to watch Danny Phantom because the show can never get off Jack’s case. And the few times it does, he hauls overtime arduously to make a difference, to help, to build something that will protect others, to put his own life on the line to stop hostile ghosts.

And immediately, then he goes back to being stupid stupid dog man. ha ha. why does his wife love him? no wonder his kids don’t ever want to be seen with him. no wonder his best friend is trying to kill him and he doesn’t even know, the big idiot.

(never mind that we see a scenario where he does know. and admits he would’ve forgiven Vlad anyway. but he can’t forgive Vlad hurting Danny.)

So to rein in this wild tangent: I’m not saying all must love Jack Fenton and despair. I’m not even telling people to hide their angst. If I have a sincere request, it’s this:

If you’re inclined to thinking of Vlad as a cool, troubled, complex person (as I do!) and are haunted by the implications of The Ultimate Enemy specifically for Vlad, that when Danny lost everyone else in his life that Vlad really genuinely tried to help, and was not gloating and happy and victorious to have Danny as his protege, and when that went badly, he was haunted to the end of his days by not having been able to help-

-but immediately turn around and think Jack is just a rotten awful person who’d absolutely hurt his own kid in spite of canon to the contrary (when there’s just as much, if not more, canon of Vlad being willfully hostile)

It might be good to examine why you’re feeling this way, and if this might not come down to the fact that even when canon has people call Vlad a desperately lonely fruit loop, it has a lot more respect for him than it does for Jack, and this isn’t because it’s actually taking a stance against any of the qualities it gave Jack that someone might find disagreeable- it’s because Jack’s just “a big old fat idiot nobody likes, right?”

and that’s... not something comfy to buy into.

#Danny Phantom #readmore #long post #I have a lot of feelings about the fenton parents #and about how generally cartoons like to normalize child abuse in the context of jokes #and this creates a very upsetting similarity between parents who are otherwise characterized as good and reliable #but given these jokes anyway #and parents who genuinely seem really nasty #but it's tied up in a bow with 'it's Just A Joke'#Anonymous

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dannyphannypack · 5 years ago

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DP/PJO Crossover

Hello losers and welcome back to Taylor Writes A Teaser and Later Deletes the Entire Thing Because She Decides She Doesn’t Like it but She Wants to Put the Teaser Somewhere Else Where Her Grimy Little Hands Can’t Reach it so the Teaser Isn’t Lost Forever to Time! The Series. Today I’ve got a prologue for my upcoming fic, The Phantom Recollection. Enjoy!

“Woah.”

Daniel Fenton, newly fifteen, stood outside the Washington Square Park in lower Manhattan with a cardboard box overflowing with weaponry. He stood in front of the park’s Roman triumphal arch, where two statues of George Washington stared down at him. Behind the president on either side were two other people Danny didn’t recognize.

Jasmine, Danny’s older sister by two years, came up behind him toting another cardboard box labelled ‘Samples.’ She nodded toward the eastern pier. “That’s George Washington as Commander-in-Chief, Accompanied by Fame and Valor.” Jazz recited the words as if reading straight out of a textbook. “And the other one is George Washington as President, Accompanied by Wisdom and Justice.”

“Ah, yes,” Danny said as he adjusted his box. Guns were heavy. “My four favorite people: Fame, Valor, Wisdom, and Justice. Love those guys.”

Jazz nudged him with her shoulder and continued through the arch, where a crowd of people were gathered around a large fountain with jets that spewed water 45 feet into the air. A few adults sat around the fountain with their feet in the water and kids ran across the surface in swimsuits and trunks. Danny watched as one kid walked a little too close to the fountain and got pummeled by falling water.

The perimeter of Washington Square was decorated in booths. While one half of the square was shaded by the surrounding trees, the other half was enduring the hot July sun. Some people had been smart enough to bring canopy tents. Others were already baking.

“There,” Jazz said, pointing. A single empty fold-up table on the other side of the square sat in the sun with a sign that read, “RESERVED — Fentons.” Danny used a hand to shade his eyes in an attempt to get a better look at it.

“I told you that you should’ve brought sunglasses,” Jazz said. Danny figured she was rolling her eyes underneath her own pair of aviators.

“Yeah, yeah,” Danny huffed. “Let’s just go before I drop this Fenton-Tech all over the ground.”

A big guy in a bright orange neoprene HAZMAT suit ran into Danny from behind, almost making him fall over. Jack Fenton carried seven stacked cardboard boxes. “Whoops!” he shouted. “Didn’t see you there!”

Danny figured he couldn’t see anyone, anywhere, but a similarly-dressed woman in a bright blue suit came up behind him and urged him along. “Jack, I told you that we could just take a second trip.”

Beside Danny, Jazz hunched her shoulders like she thought she could hide in a turtle shell. “If anyone asks, I’m not related.”

Danny’s parents were … quirky, to say the least. Danny rarely saw them without their suits in public, and Danny even less so with his mom’s hood and red-tinted goggles. Underneath was a chin-length bob of red hair and deep blue eyes, almost purple in color. She was nothing compared to his dad, though, who was easily six feet seven and built like an MMA fighter (minus the rippling muscles). Huge. Stocky. Shaped vaguely like a box. He was difficult to miss. Even behind the boxes, people that walked past were giving him strange looks. Danny figured that was bad, since they were at a ghost convention.

“Not any ghost convention!” His dad had exclaimed, barely a week ago. “The Haunted America Conference in Alton, Illinois!”

“It’s not in Alton anymore, Jack,” His mom had sighed like they’d been over this three times already. “They had to move it due to popular demand.”

“Where is it, then?” Danny asked.

His mom had beamed. “Oh, Danny, you’re going to love this: New York City!”

And that’s how they’d ended up in America’s most populated city, carrying ghost weapons across a supposedly haunted park in the middle of July. Danny was pretty good at telling where ghosts were and where they weren’t, and there definitely wasn’t anybody here. The land had once been used as a mass burial ground during the yellow fever, but the spirits had all moved on since. If Danny had died during the yellow fever, he wouldn’t have stuck around either. Children running playfully over his unmarked corpse? No thanks.

Danny set his box at the foot of the table. His dad was trying to bend down without spilling the contents of his seven boxes everywhere, and his mom was fussing over him. “Don’t worry, Maddie, I got it!” his dad said, and he set the boxes on the pavement a little too roughly. The bottom box made a noise like breaking glass and crumpled underneath the weight. Ectoplasm began oozing out the sides.

“I’ve got the other samples,” Jazz drawled, setting down the box. “If you need me I’ll be by the fountain pretending that I don’t exist.” She shouldered her backpack and walked away.

“I’m just gonna go, uh, walk around,” Danny said.

His mom opened her mouth like she meant to tell him to stay there and help set up the booth, but she replaced the expression with a hesitant smile. “Go have fun. Be back by noon.”

“Thanks, Mom.” Danny knew how much his mother liked physical reassurance, so he stood on his tip-toes and pecked her cheek. “Love you.”

She smiled. “Love you, too.”

Danny turned and started heading around the square, glancing at people’s ghostly booths without actually getting close enough to warrant a conversation. He didn’t get a chance to walk very far, though. While passing a section of the square that branched off into a sidewalk, an old lady in a black hood grabbed him by the hand and pulled him aside. Despite the temperature (and the outfit choice), her skin felt cold. Danny forced himself to remain calm. Not a ghost, he told himself. Still, the woman set him on edge. When she opened her mouth, she sounded like she was hissing. Between gasping breaths, she said,

“Three shall find the child of death

Who loses his mind with one gasping breath

The son of the sea god must attend

To repay the kindness of a forgotten friend

See that his memories are safely returned

Or the reign of the King will be overturned.”

Danny blinked and she was gone, melting into the shadows of a big elm tree. “Wait!” he shouted, but the old woman had disappeared.

A wild animal growled nearby, but it came from all sides and echoed like Danny was in a cave.

He shivered. Get it together, Fenton. You’re losing it, man.

Thinking about how characters in movies splashed their faces with cold water when they were upset, he turned and walked down the sidewalk in search of a restroom.

Jazz sat on the steps of the fountain. With her laptop balanced in her lap, she reached into her backpack and removed a flash drive from her key ring of flash drives. This one was marked by a little cartoon ghost painted in neon green nail polish. She inserted it and opened up the folder. More folders stared back at her. Ghost Psychology, Ghost Physiology, Ghost Physics, Ghost Theories, Ghost, Ghost, Ghost. Jazz pursed her lips. Maybe she should take the ‘Ghost’ out of all her folder titles. The nail polish ghost on her flash drive already told her what it was.

“Hey,” someone said from behind her, and she jumped. Pulling her computer screen down, Jazz turned and looked up at the girl who had spoken.

She might have been a bit younger than Danny, though Jazz couldn’t tell exactly. She had long, curly red hair and dozens of freckles that decorated her nose like tiny paint splatters. Her eyes were so green they practically glowed in the light of the sun, swirling with mirth and curiosity. She was wearing red running shorts and a white t-shirt, so she looked like she had just finished a jog. Jazz supposed that she might have; this was a park, not a year-round ghost convention.

“Hi,” Jazz replied, pushing up her sunglasses so that they rested on her head. She visibly relaxed.

The girl chuckled and sat down beside her. She began taking off her sneakers and socks. “Surprised to see a fellow redhead at the Haunted America Conference.”

Jazz looked up and observed the crowd. She didn’t know how she hadn’t noticed before, but the people wandering about the square were a sea of black clothes and colorfully-dyed hair.

Jazz snorted and reopened her laptop. “That’s why you came over here?”

“No. I happened to see your computer screen.” She leaned in close for a better look. “Ghost Psychology, huh?”

Jazz closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Look, I know it seems weird—”

“No, I love it!” The girl said. “Everybody else here is all, ‘Palmistry, Chakra, Tarot Readings.’ You’re asking the real questions. What do ghosts think about? That’s what I’m interested in.”

If anybody else had said that, Jazz would have assumed they were being condescending. This girl, though … she could tell that she was just curious. “You believe in ghosts?”

“Yeah, sure,” she said, putting her feet in the water and kicking them back and forth a bit. “Why not? Had this weird experience at the Hoover Dam last month. Not a ghost, I think, but—” she cut herself off and bit her lip, like she was trying to stop herself from retelling it. She raised her hand for Jazz to shake. “My name’s Rachel. Rachel Dare.”

Jazz shook it politely. “Jazz Fenton.”

“Fenton, huh?” Rachel looked like that name sounded familiar but she didn’t want to say anything about it.

“Yeah, I know,” Jazz said, preparing herself for the obligatory ‘I’m a Fenton’ speech. “Parents are Maddie and Jack Fenton, ghost hunters extraordinaire. Last year they saved Amity Park from being annihilated by the Ghost King, yadda yadda.

“They did what?” Rachel squeaked, but she sounded more amused than shocked. “Ghost King?”

Jazz mentally berated herself. Without thinking, she’d started spewing the information that everybody back in her home state wanted to know. She hadn’t thought about the fact that she was in New York, hundreds of miles away. Stupid.

Rachel must have saw Jazz wince, because she switched gears. “So, ghost hunters,” she said. “Your folks got a TV show?”

Jazz took a second to process the change in topic. She blinked once. Twice. Suddenly, she burst out laughing.

“What?” Rachel yelled over Jazz’s laughter. “What’s so funny?”

Jazz giggled but calmed down. “Sorry. My parents having a TV show … I can’t imagine.”

“What do they do then?” she asked. “Ghost Tours?”

“Ghost—?” Jazz cleared her throat to keep herself from laughing again. “No, no, no, Rachel, you’ve got my family all wrong. Think, ‘shoot first and ask questions later.’”

Rachel’s eyes widened. “They shoot ghosts? How does that work?”

Jazz jabbed a finger behind her, where her parents had started on the box of weaponry. Her mom set the Fenton Bazooka down. Like anybody was gonna buy that.

Rachel gulped. “So I’m hoping you’re the ‘ask questions, shoot later’ one.”

Jazz nodded mutely and opened her Ghost Psychology folder. At the top was a folder labelled ‘Danny Phantom,’ but she scrolled past it to the general information. “My parents think that ghosts are inherently evil and have no thoughts of their own. They’re just a bad copy of their old human consciousness, wanting to get revenge on humans because they’re jealous that we’re alive or something. But they’re so much more than that. They have these—these ghostly obsessions.” She opened a Word document and began scrolling. “But they’re not evil obsessions. Sure, when they die, they can be like, ‘I’m going to make them pay.’ But usually it’s more of a gray area. Like, ‘I’m going to watch after my family,’ or ‘I’m never going to stop writing.’ What my parents don’t understand is that they’re not unary; they can think about other things. They aren’t limited to one state of mind.”

Rachel looked surprised at the sudden lecture, but she adjusted quickly. “Who is Skulker?”

“Oh.” Jazz paused and bit her lip. “He’s—he’s not the best.”

“What’s his obsession?”

“Hunting,” Jazz said, though she didn’t sound as excited as she had before.

“I’m guessing he’s not hunting for deer,” Rachel said, watching Jazz’s reaction. “Okay. Then … who is Danny Phantom? Why’s he got a folder to himself?”

Jazz’s eyes widened.

“Right. Another touchy subject.”

“No,” Jazz said, shaking her head. “No, he’s … he’s good. Great, even. I think he’s obsessed with protecting people.”

“Well, that’d good, isn’t it?”

“Yeah!” Jazz exclaimed. “I mean, yeah, it’s really good.”

Rachel stared at her. “But … something’s wrong?”

Jazz exhaled slowly through her nose, considering what she should and should not say. “He’s just a little … too protective, I guess. Never thinks about himself. Always rushes in when he could get hurt.”

“Ghosts can get hurt?” Rachel asked.

“This one can.”

Rachel could tell that Jazz didn’t want to talk about it, but she was curious. Choosing her words carefully, she asked, “What’s he like?”

Jazz smiled. “Oh, he’s great. Always saving the day. You know, everybody thanks my parents for the Ghost King thing, but it was really him. Our entire city was transported to a different dimension called the Ghost Zone. It’s where all ghosts live. The Ghost King had just woken up. People doubted his power. He was going to kill us all to set an example. Let everybody know that he was in charge.”

Jazz took a deep breath. “And then … well, Phantom couldn’t stand for that. He was already upset because … someone else got hurt. So he went up there by himself and beat him. He could’ve died.” Her eyes widened. “Well, not died, but he could’ve gotten hurt.”

They sat in silence for a moment, staring out at the fountain and watching the water splash against the surface. Some little kids ran by them, laughing. Rachel said, “You like this guy a lot, huh?”

That seemed to break Jazz out of her stupor. Her cheeks turned red. “Not romantically!” she shouted. “I care about him like a little brother. Not—” She put her face in her hands.

Rachel laughed and stood, shaking the water off her bare feet. “I’ve got to get going before my dad comes home for his lunch break and finds out that I’ve left the house. It was nice meeting you, Jazz.” She pointed at the laptop. “You keep that ghost science thing up. You never know. You might end up publishing it and becoming famous.”

“Your shoes,” Jazz said, grabbing the sneakers and holding them up to her. Her socks had been stuffed into the toes.

“Oh! Right.” She took them but didn’t bother putting them on; instead, she started walking up the steps and back into the square, barefoot. “And you keep that Phantom kid from doing anything stupid!” She added.

Jazz laughed. “I’ll try!” she shouted back.

Just like that, Rachel Dare was gone.

In hindsight, Danny should’ve known that he’d never get a break. Weird stuff had been happening to him since last year like clockwork. August: get ghost powers. September: fight ghosts. November: find out that a creepy old man has ghost powers, too. December: fight ghosts. On and on and on until now, watching people stumble through the gates of a sandy dog park behind the restroom he’d found. An old lady shuffled past him, screaming bloody murder. “Rabid dog!”

Danny turned back towards the dog park. That thing was no dog. Snarling angrily at a park ranger was a full-grown lion, 500 pounds at least. It snorted a small plume of red-orange fire. Danny blanched. Yeah, so maybe it wasn’t a lion.

Danny was still trying to process its more … interesting parts. From its back sprouted a black ram’s head, with big, curly ebony horns and a sneer almost as nasty as the lion’s. It, too, huffed, but only smoke came from its mouth. Thank god. Danny didn’t know if he could handle two fire-breathing heads.

Then there was the matter of the tail. The golden fur grew in patches before tapering off into tough yellow and orange snake-skin. At the tail’s end was a full, honest-to-god python. As he watched, the snake looked up at Danny and flicked its tongue.

This was a ghost. It had to be a ghost, right? Sure, it didn’t glow like a ghost … and it didn’t float like a ghost … and it didn’t set off his ghost-sense like a ghost … but what else could it be? An animal experiment escapee from the Central Park Zoo? Danny seriously doubted that.

The park ranger pressed his back against the fence, which was a little too high for him to jump, and made a high-pitched whimpering sound. Danny shook his head. He didn’t have time for this. Whatever it was, he had to get rid of it.

Danny glanced nervously at the security cameras attached to the public restroom and nestled between the trees. Okay. He had to get rid of it, but without ghost powers. How?

Looking around for anything he could use, Danny settled on rock and tossed it twice into the air to test its weight. Deciding that it would work, he shouted, “Hey, Alex the Lion!” and threw it as hard as he could. It hit the creature in the back of the head.

That got its attention. Turning away from the ranger, the lion growled and set the floor around the gate on fire. Danny surveyed the fence. He wondered if he could jump it or if he’d seriously have to run through flames to get inside. Danny didn’t like heat. It wasn’t his thing. If he channeled a little flight into the jump, would it be too noticeable?

He didn’t have to think about it for very long, though. A boy and a girl, apparently unconcerned with the security cameras, catapulted over the fence on the other side and somersaulted into a standing position, one holding a dagger and the other holding an entire sword.

A sword. This day was just getting weirder and weirder.

The girl kicked the guy in the back of the knee, causing him to fall. She pushed him toward the lion. “Mmm, look, yummy demigod!”

“Annabeth!” The guy spluttered, standing. Just in the nick of time, too. Their entrance had caught the creature’s attention. It lunged forward. The kid jumped out of the way.

Danny raised his eyebrows. The girl, Annabeth, had her wavy blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. She wore jean shorts and a hazard orange t-shirt similar to Danny’s dad’s suit. The guy was wearing the same shirt, though he had a pair of black basketball shorts on instead. Together, they shared a matching gray streak of hair. He wondered if they’d dyed it together.

In the other corner, the park ranger fainted.

With nothing but sand and rocks to fuel it, the flames around the gate died, allowing Danny to walk in like a normal person. Unlike the other two, he’d rather not high-jump a fence with security cameras watching. Even in New York he needed to keep up appearances.

The creature rushed toward Annabeth and its snake head-of-a-tail wrapped around her arm, squeezing until she dropped her dagger with a pained yelp. She looked down at it and kicked it in the general direction of the other guy.

Okay, my turn, Danny thought. He grabbed another rock (this one sharper, yay!), stepped through the gate, and threw it. It cut a long gash through the ram’s cheek. The lion turned to face him.

Both of the strangers looked surprised to see him there, like they hadn’t noticed a fifteen-year-old kid standing by the front gates. Honestly, Danny was surprised that he was still there, too. He had seriously considered running away when he saw them jump the fence. He had thought, Great! Back to my vacation, but his feet stayed firmly planted on the ground.

Annabeth recovered quickly. With the lion-goat-snake-thing distracted, she ripped her arm free of the snake’s grip and tumbled away.

The lion head roared, shooting fire across the park at Danny. He rolled out of the way and stood, bouncing on his toes. What he would give to be able to fly right now.

The other guy stared at him.

“What?” Danny snapped.

“Your pants are on fire.”

Danny looked down. Sure enough, the hem of his jeans hadn’t been as lucky as the rest of him. Patting it out, he shouted, “Dude!”

And then the lion was on top of him.

Now, Danny had been in some pretty sticky situations. The lion had his arms pinned on either side of his head. Danny couldn’t help but flash back to another time, when a ghost panther had been on top of him in the same fashion. It wasn’t the same, but still. Two giant cats pinning him to the ground in a year? That was sad.

On one side of him was Annabeth, on the other, the guy. Annabeth pointed frantically to his right. His eyes flicked in the direction she was indicating. Ah, yes, the dagger! He’d never be able to grab it with the creature’s full attention on him, though.

“Percy,” Annabeth said in a harsh whisper. He didn’t seem to notice. With a stomp, Annabeth ground out, “Per-see!” and nodded her head toward the dagger. He opened his mouth like, Ah, hyped himself up by jumping up and down, and started running top speed with his sword held high above his head, screaming.

The lion gnashed its teeth like it was annoyed. The goat head bleated angrily. The snake hissed. In one swift motion, the creature lifted one of its massive paws and hit Percy across the stomach. He flew backward into the metal fence.

Fortunately for Danny, that was all the time he needed. With one arm free, he reached for the dagger, got a hold of it, and pushed it into the lion’s chest. He cringed, bracing himself for the five hundred pounds of lion-goat-snake-thing that was about to die on top of him. Instead, it began raining sand.

Danny opened his eyes, sat up, and immediately began gagging. “It got in my mouth!” he yelled, though it sounded more like, “It got in me mouf!”

Percy, who had been thrown into the fence and didn’t look much better than Danny, had the audacity to start laughing. Danny turned and glared at him, using his hands to brush lion-goat-snake dust off his tongue. He only succeeded in adding more sand from the ground to his mouth.

Annabeth held out her hand for Danny and helped him to stand. Percy cleared his throat, like, Hey, aren’t you gonna help me up, too? but Annabeth just looked Danny up and down with a puzzled expression. Her eyes were gray like a storm cloud. “Who are you?” she asked. It sounded like an accusation.

Danny was still spitting sand and monster dust all over the ground. “Danny,” he said between gagging. “Bleh.”

“First time?” Percy quipped, helping himself up by leaning heavily on the fence behind him. He winced and held his stomach.

“I’m Annabeth,” Annabeth said. She gestured flippantly at her friend. “That’s Percy. I’ve never seen you before. Where did you come from?”

Danny furrowed his eyebrows, thoroughly confused. “You ever meet a tourist?”

Annabeth continued to stare at him. Shaking her head, she asked, “Where’s your parent?”

“Uh, parents? And they’re at Washington Square.”

“You have a stepparent?” Percy blurted.

“What?”

Percy changed gears. “You’re adopted?”

“What? No!”

Percy’s eyes widened. He muttered, “You’re like Rachel?”

“Who?” Danny and Annabeth asked in unison. For once he wasn’t the only one out of the loop.

“Look,” Danny said, brushing himself off. “This has been super fun, but I’ve got a ghost convention to get back to.” He turned on his heel and started stalking out of the dog park. What was up with them assuming he didn’t have parents? And people thought he was nuts.

“Wait!” Percy shouted. Danny paused mid-step. “Thank you.”

Danny considered that. He wasn’t supposed to be a hero in human form. It was dangerous. Even now, he was running through scenes in his head of these two stealing the security footage and putting him on YouTube or something. Highly unlikely, but anxiety twisted that in his head and made him more and more uncomfortable. He turned back around. “Look … don’t tell anybody about this, yeah?” Then, to disguise his nervousness, he said, “My parents would flip if they found out lion-goat-snake hybrids existed.”

“Chimera,” Annabeth said.

“Bless you,” said Percy.

“What? No! Percy, you of all people should know this. The Chimera is a Greek monster. Bellerophon shot it with the help of Pegasus. Do you listen to anything we tell you in camp?”

Percy shrugged noncommittally.

Annabeth fumed. “I—”

“You could come with us, you know,” Percy said, cutting Annabeth off. “To camp, I mean.”

Danny pretended like he was considering the offer. “Hmm, a camp with a Greek mythology class? No thanks.”

“It’s not a myth,” Percy said, rushing to get what he wanted to say out before Danny lost interest and left. “The Greek gods, I mean. They’re real. We could really use someone like you.”

Danny considered this. Right, so … crazy. They were crazy. If the Greek gods existed, why would there be a Ghost Zone? Didn’t spirits go to the Underworld in Greek mythology or something? But then again … what else could that lion-goat-snake thing be? It definitely wasn’t a ghost.

Danny shook his head. He had enough things to worry about. This was crossing into the Too Weird category. Turning, he said, “Thanks for the offer, but I’ve gotta go throw rocks at some other monsters. See you around.”

He walked out the gates and down the sidewalk towards Washington Square, thinking, I could really go for a sandwich right now.

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threewaysdivided · 5 years ago

Note

I appreciate the response. Yeah, among other adjustments, had the plot been handled a little differently, I feel like Sam’s relationship with her parents could have evolved into something like that of Danny and Jazz and their parents. And don’t get me wrong; I still like Sam, too.

(In reference to this post and follow-up ask.)

Good to hear from you again 😊

I think there were a lot of things across the board that could have been tweaked or edited to improve the integrity of the series. If I had to boil down the problem with DP to a single point I’d probably say it’s that the most interesting parts of the show are the characters/world/implications but the writers (or some of them anyway - I suspect there might have been some conflict between Hartman, the lead writers and the execs’) wanted certain plots, aesops and gags, and chose to brute-force them in regardless of whether they actually worked with what was already there. Basically, it lacks consistency and internal logic.

For Sam in particular I think there are a few things that could have been handled better:

First one’s more a general complaint at the show and might light a fire under my notes but heck lets go there anyway but the writing has kind of a sexist bent that really doesn’t fit the characters or need to be there. Considering how much Danny and Jack are shown to love and respect Maddie and Jazz there’s no way they’d call their involvement in Genius Magazine “the swimsuit edition”. Paulina might be traditionally feminine but “She surrendered her individuality for a boy! I’m so proud of her!” is not a line that any human girl in the history of human girls would say unironically. There’s also a few too many jokes that basically boil down to “male character is emasculated/ vulnerable/ likes feminine-coded things, hyuk hyuk hyuk”.

I’m bringing this up not just because they’re gross cheap gags but because for Sam specifically, this pervasive low-key contempt for women and femininity in the writing, especially the tendency to portray almost every non-sympathetic girl her age as one-note, brainless boy-crazy cliches that she can’t connect with, really does not help her character. I would have loved to see more genuine interaction between Sam and the other girls, even if it most of it was Kim Possible-Bonnie Rockwaller style antagonistic rapport. We could have seen her develop some kind of tenuous connection with one of the A-listers, or even just have a secondary-female-character to be cordial towards - kind of like Mikey is for Danny and Tucker. Hold up, outside of Valerie, Star and Paulina are there any named secondary girls at Casper High? Sam doesn’t seem to have a single female friend in the show and considering how vocally judgemental she is, it can almost read like she’s rejecting them outright for being girls, which really undercuts attempts to make her seem feminist. (I mentioned it in a past tag but this feels like an early-2000s-male-writer mistake of equating Female Empowerment™ with the ability to tear down other women and belittle traditional femininity - which isn’t so much Feminism as it is Internalised Misogyny.) Even just mixing up the pairings to put her with Star instead of Kwan in Lucky in Love would have helped.

I’d have also liked to see more awareness of and consistency in the conflict between her activism and her wealth. It kind of undercuts the significance of her activism when you realise that she’s wealthy enough to make these choices with little cost to herself; it’s much easier to go vegan or buy renewable/ recyclable /sustainable /fair-trade when price isn’t an issue, especially if you also have serving staff to offset the time cost. Once you notice this it makes her activism feel more tokenistic, and also like she doesn’t really understand her own privilege when she tries to push her agendas onto the school/ her classmates without considering why they mightn’t be able to do so as easily. It’s also weird because the source of her family’s wealth is a cellophane-toothpick-wrapper (i.e. something that basically produces litter) but she still seems very comfortable enjoying the material benefits despite her pro-eco anti-consumerism sentiments. It’s bizarre that she’s more concerned with the social consequence of ‘fake friends’ than the ethics of capitalism. It can come off a bit “do as I say, not as I do”.

It would have been nice for the show to give more screen time to reinforcing that Sam is aware of that conflict and is making an active effort to hold to her principles even at the cost of personal comfort; maybe showing some unease at the source of her wealth, trying to live below her means and only spend up on ethical/ eco-friendly/ sustainable products, op-shopping or hand-making her goth accessories, going out of her way to re-use or re-purpose things even if buying a new one would be ‘better’, actually showing or referencing her doing substantial hands-on activities (e.g. going off-screen or taking the boys to do tree-planting, litter pickups, soup kitchens, animal-shelter work etc). Just something to help make it clearer that she genuinely cares and isn’t just doing the low-mess lip-service activities because she enjoys indulging in the image of Wokeness™.

These things would have helped regardless of how her family was written but let’s hop back on topic and talk about them. I don’t have any prescriptive preference but let’s spitball a few different options and how they could have played:

#1 Sam’s parents don’t respect her interests and want her to fit a mold

In this case I’d make it that they don’t really pay attention or show much caring for who Sam really is as a person; their image of and interactions with her are more of a fantasised version of the ‘perfect’ daughter they want, they make very little effort to encourage her actual interests and are perhaps restrictive about what they let her do in the few moments when they do bother paying close attention (you might compare to some versions of Tim Drake’s Parents from DC Comics). Classist, overly image-conscious, snobby and superficial.

This would be the most sympathetic portrayal of her character without changing it very far from how it is in DP canon - helping contextualise why Sam is so fiercely defensive of her autonomy, why she pushes so hard when trying to get her opinions across and why she’s so judgemental of rich people and disdainful towards classic femininity - even possibly explaining her more hypocritical/ manipulative/ entitled traits as learned behaviours. It would also give her more legitimate reason to be less empathetic towards others - after all even if they have struggles and family troubles it’s still better than what she’s dealing with (Danny’s parents may not be attentive but hey, at least they love him for himself, right?)

For this version I’d probably put her arc around growing past the “suffering olympics” model of viewing other people’s pain, but also in her finding family in Danny/Tucker/her Grandmother’s circle of connections, learning how to have healthy power-balance and communication in her relationships with others (aka: getting over her hypocrisy and realising that assertiveness is about communicating that “I matter, and so do you”) and pulling away from her parents’ influence - maybe even living with Ida a lot of the time.

#2 Sam’s parents are well-intentioned but overbearing

For this one, Sam’s parents would genuinely want the best for her… only they have an overly old-fashioned and restrictive view of what “the best” is and are a bit set-in-their-ways. They’d probably view “hippies” and “goth” stuff as “dangerously rebellious hooligan-activities” and likely to be somewhat patronising about Sam’s passion for it being “just a phase”. They’d be worried about her hanging around “the Fenton Kid” and “the Foley Kid” both because Danny’s parents are kind of irresponsible screwballs about safety but also because they put a lot of value in image due to their belief in social connections being the way to get ahead. Them pushing Sam towards classic femininity and specific activities would be less about disrespecting her identity and more about their overly narrow view of “success” and worrying that she’s going to end up losing valuable opportunities and “wasting her life” if she keeps on down her current path.

This would still give Sam more sympathetic context for her views on femininity and pushiness about self-expression.

Personally I think the arc I’d like to see here is one themed around responsible/considerate assertiveness and valuing alternative perspectives. Sam coming to realise her own hypocrisy - that she can’t push her views onto others while complaining about her parents doing the same - developing more sympathy for Danny as she realises that he’s in a similar position with Jack’s insistence that he’ll inherent Fentonworks and his parents’ narrow-mindedness about ghosts, interacting with other girls and seeing their perspective, learning how to assert her opinion while making allowances for others’ (maybe an alternative version where she connects with Star in Lucky in Love and, after Aragon’s defeat in Beauty Marked, Sam still says she personally thinks it’s dumb but then steps down and lets Star win because she understands that Star values it), and getting her Grandma’s help in convincing her parents to widen their perspective while still responding to their concerns.

(This one has the overall kindest message and I think I like it best).

#3 Sam’s parents are trying and Sam’s actually the problem

This one is the one that’s the least sympathetic to Sam. Her parents still don’t get the Goth/Activist thing and they have some concerns about safety but they understand that it makes her happy and they’re okay with it so long as she’s not getting into trouble or mixing up with anyone that could hurt her. Them pushing her towards more feminine/optimistic things is less pushing and more trying to encourage some hobbies that offer a bit more common ground. They might have reservations, and they might not always have time, but they would like to be part of their daughter’s life… except for the problem that Sam has wrapped herself up in a teen-drama persecution complex and got it into her head that they “won’t accept her” are “pushing her to be someone else” and “don’t understand” so there’s no point even trying to explain or connect. In this one Ida isn’t taking sides on purpose but she ends up accidentally enabling Sam a little because Sam reminds her of her younger days and she likes spoiling her granddaughter (and doesn’t much care for her daughter-in-law).

In this case Sam’s flaws would be framed much more as flaws born of her making superficial snap judgements, thinking she knows better and being too proud to admit she’s wrong. There would definitely be moments of her coming across as an entitled, privileged holier-than-thou brat who invents problems because she likes feeling sorry for herself, especially early in her arc.

This version of the story would go the hardest on Sam with the general lesson being “you need to respect that other people are people who have their own problems, feelings and needs that are as real and valid as yours”. She’d still have good qualities and Danny and Tucker would still obviously like and value her but there’d also be times of strain where they don’t want to hurt her feelings but are clearly getting worn out with the nonsense. At its worst, maybe a “you’re like mustard. Great in small quantities, but a lot of you is…a lot” type confrontation.

I’d also give the secondary cast the most fleshing out, agency and sympathetic-ness here, and have beats where Sam has to realise that they’re lot more complex than her 2D stereotyped view of them and are dealing with actual serious problems to which hers are largely non-issues by comparison. I’d probably play Dash and Paulina similar to in the fic Alibi (go read it, it’s good) - Dash being gay and performing aggression because toxic masculinity, insecurity, and being terrified of anyone outside the A-listers finding out (still not okay that he’s a bully but at least more understandable), while Paulina is hiding high emotional perceptiveness behind her pretty face and deliberately bearding for him to keep bigoted parents/ teachers off his back. I’d also probably have a subplot in an alternate Life Lessons where Sam follows Valerie around because jealous/possessive and, like Danny, ends up realising that she’s working two jobs to help her Dad with their financial problems. Basically she’d be getting hit with the Reality Stick a lot.

There’d also be more instances of Sam getting directly called out by the other girls. Fleshing them out as people and showing that their dislike is less superficiality and more because she unfairly judges and antagonises them all the time. Giving them more agency in Beauty Marked and have them be direct about “we know you’re just here to be smug about how much ‘Better’ you are but have you considered that we’re doing this for ourselves and actually enjoy it?”. Having Paulina be less “tee hee I am indeed a Witch” in Parental Bonding and more “Ugh fine, fine, I don’t really like him that much but you were being so obviously Jealous and Judge-y and I figured if I played a little you might actually step up. But fine, if you’re sure. Here’s your necklace back, I’ll let your dorky ‘friend’ down tomorrow. But pro-tip? You like someone you gotta go for it - otherwise don’t complain when your boy-toy gets taken by someone who actually means it.” (Still petty, but emotionally intelligent pettiness, which… not really much better, but at least more interesting.) A lot more of Sam realising that she’s not a particularly good feminist and that she’s no more entitled to Danny’s affections than anyone else.

To be honest, while I could say the most about this version and there’s a lot of potential drama there it’s the one I like the least because it means canonising my least favourite proto-abusive bad-faith narcissistic reading of Sam, casting her as an almost-villain and essentially punishing her over and over until she character develops into a decent human being. Sure it’s an important message about how you treat others but it’s not a very nice or kind story and while there might be the odd fic that makes it cathartic I can’t say I’m a huge fan.

Again, if I had to pick, I’d probably go with something like #2.

But there we go. Another thrilling instalment in the “overly long posts about Sam Manson” saga.

Hope you enjoyed it and thanks for stopping by!

#Danny Phantom #Sam Manson #Character Analysis #Storytelling suggestions #the mustard quote is from John Green's Turtles All The Way Down BTW (haven't read but heard it and thought it was a good turn of phrase)#there was so much potential in this show #they were really not good at writing girls in particular #cw: mentions of abuse #cw: sexism discussed #anonymous #3WD Answers

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farfallasunicas · 5 years ago

Text

My Ocs

Let’s try this again Shall we!?

Kinsey Noelle

FC: Melissa Benoist

Age: 24

Fandom: Supernatural AU

Pairings: N/A

Story: Untiled

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13271863/1/An-Untitled-Supernatural-Story

A/n: I haven’t written her in a while as I have no muse or inspiration for her at the moment.

Character Info: Kinsey is the Nephilim child of Mary Winchester and an unknown angel as well as the half-sister of Dean and Sam Winchester. Due to her mother dying when she was born she was adopted when she was a baby. Her adopted Family named her Kinsey Noelle though her birth name was Noelle Rose Winchester. Her adopted family kicked her out when she was 12 because they blamed her for not being able to protect her younger sister who got killed by a monster which Sam and Dean saved her from. She then was raised by many hunters as she went into the life for revenge. When she is 24 her powers come into full power but she has no idea what or who she is until Cass (spelling this was cause that’s how it is in the subtitles and Kripke said it’s that way so people wouldn’t think it was pronounce CAZZ) tell her what she is. She then moves into the Bunker and joins Sam and Dean in Hunting.

Madalyn Jaymes Winchester

a/n: Madalyn will appear in stories at different ages as I was inspired for both so her info will show the same FC at different ages with different Bios! There is no story for her right now but I’m working on some drabbles to see how people like her before writing more. I’ll post my drabbles as soon as I can get to a computer as I have a hard time typing long things on mobile.

Younger

FC: Young Elle Fanning

Age: 5-8

Nicknames: Maddie or Mads

Fandom: Supernatural AU

Character info: Madalyn is the half-sister of Sam and Dean. Due to her reminding him so much of Mary, John took her in when her biological mother died. She knows nothing of the Hunting life and thinks her Dad and brothers are just traveling mechanics or salesmen. When Sam left for Stanford he wanted to take Maddie with him to give her a chance at a normal life and so she could go to good schools, however John refused. Maddie and Dean secretly visit Sammy every now and then and Maddie often runs away to Sam’s as she wants to stay with him when her dad and Dean are on a hunt instead of a hotel by herself or with some random person John knows.

Older

FC: Present day Elle Fanning

Age: 17ish

Fandom: Supernatural AU

Story: TBA

Link: TBA

Pairing: her and Jack as best friends

Nicknames: same as younger

Character info: Maddie now knows all about the hunting life and what her family does , but she doesn’t want to have any part of it, which Sam and Dean fully support. She has been doing online school since she was 5 due to moving around all the time, however when they finally settled down in the Bunker as their home she finally convinced Sam and Dean to let her go to public school. She was very close to Charlie when she was alive, considering her the older sister she always wanted. She is currently dating the most popular guy in school and is best friends with Jack though Dean is convinced that they have crushes on each other.

Sarah Michele Puckerman

Fc: Bailee Madison

Age: 15-19

Fandom: Glee

Story title: “A Thousands Cuts”

Link: TBA

Pairings: best friend/brother-sister relationship Blaine Anderson

Friend: Kurt Hummel

Best friend in Wellwood: Kinsey Rose (fc was Melissa Benoist in Glee)

Romantic relationship: Sebastian Smythe

Info: Sarah is honestly based on a character I used to RP in @wellwoodrp with the URL of @saribearpuckerman (Still on as an archive if you want to read some of her interactions). This rp was an AU glee twin Rp that was a twist on the master/slave theme where characters like Sarah, Blaine, and Sebastian were residents and characters like Kurt, Kinsey and Joe were Residents. I just loved her and couldn’t part with her even though I left the rp for personal reasons, especially the relationship she had with Blaine known as Blarah with @justbreatheblaine. At the time of the RP she was 15 but sticking to the time line she’d be about 19 right now. I’ll also post info from her bio from the rp as well.

Character info: Sarah is from the small town of Wellwood. She is the younger sister of Jake and Noah Puckerman and due to the fact that she doesn’t like the idea of servants she has a very strained relationship with her mother. Sarah had to transfer to Crawford her sophomore year of high school due to bullying. At Crawford she was in the glee club, even becoming the captain her senior year. She is dating Sebastian Smythe (who was bi in the rp) and is like a little sister to Blaine Anderson. His family is basically her 2nd family and she considers Mrs. Anderson her 2nd mom and refers to her as “Mama A” as she lived with them when her mother kicked her out. Blaine was Sarah’s first crush (Before she knew he preferred princes to princesses as she put it) and he was the first boy Sarah ever kissed ( Blaine has having a panic attack and Sarah didn’t know what to do so she kissed him like she saw in movies hoping it’d calm him down). People at Crawford and Dalton assumed that her and Blaine where biological siblings and often referred to her as Blaine's sister during introductions. The teachers would even address her as Miss Anderson. After a while Sarah just quit correcting them. When she left Wellwood to go to College with the approval of Blaine and Mrs. Anderson after Blaine called her Miss Anderson when he wss getting on to her,she started using Anderson as her last name.

RP BIO for Reference

Sarah Puckerman was born Jan 1 and is 15 though she often acts mature for her age, though sometimes she acts like she is five years old. Sarah is also a very sensitive person who hates disappointing people though she can sass you at any given moment she’s actually pretty shy until she gets to know you. She is what’s known as a “girlie” tomboy. She likes to dress up in girly clothes, but given the choice she would be out playing sports with her brothers or any of the other boys in the neighborhood or riding horses despite the fact that her mother would try to enter her into beauty pageants and threatened to put her in finishing school if she didn’t stop which has caused Sarah and her mother to have a very strained relationship. Luckily for Sarah though neither one of her parents are around that much and a lot of times her Grandma Evie is taking care of them who herself was a servant that married a resident and understands Sarah’s beliefs on servants.

Sarah is very close with her brothers as their father abandoned them when they were younger, and their mother was too busy going to as many social events as possible. It was left up to Noah and Jake to look out for her, and in a way raise her, though she feels closer to Jake than she does Noah. Since Noah often took the place of a father figure to Jake and Sarah, she often sees Noah more like a father. In fact when she was little she often called him “Daddy puck”. Jake however is her Jakey bear and she is his Sari bear… names that are only known to the two of them. If Sarah slips and says it in public, Jake acts like he honestly hates that name.

Sarah is also one of the nicest Residents or so she’s told. She refuses to let servants call her miss, preferring Sari as it is a nickname and distances her from her family or Sarah. She does not give her Servants too many things to do, or anything too hard and often chooses to go against her family’s wishes and do her chores herself, occasionally asking her servants to help her with homework, or to come to her room to talk to her about things she’s not comfortable talking to her brothers or parents about. Sarah also has a habit of making her friends such as Blaine, Kurt and Kinsey honorary siblings. The Puckermans are also considered one of the poorer resident families.

☆ KEY TRAITS: Tomboy acts girlie for her mother’s benefit, shy, sassy, sweet, adorable, outspoken, independent, sensitive, and brave.

☆ FEARS: Storms, disappointing people, that people will hurt her or leave her like her father if she lets them in.

☆ FACE CLAIM: Bailee Madison

☆ FAVORITES

»COLOR: green

»SEASON: Autumn and Winter

» FLOWERS: White Roses, Peppermint and Marble Poinsettias.

» GUILTY PLEASURE: Sweets!

#occommunity #ocappreciation #ocap #oc writing

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darks-ink · 6 years ago

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What A Nice Surprise CH.3

Yay, Jazz is finally here! Can you believe that I initially started writing WaNS because I wanted Jazz to meet Danny in this AU, and then it took 10.000 words for it to actually happen. Yikes.

(First Chapter - Previous Chapter - Next Chapter) (AO3 - FFnet)

Danny rushed through his breakfast. He had been planning on leaving the house early and then waiting a bit before dropping back in as Phantom. Just to make sure no one would connect the two, even if he had been seen hanging out with himself before. Better safe than sorry and all that.

But, unfortunately, he had slept in a little longer than intended. It wasn’t entirely his fault; there had been a couple of ghosts during the night that he had had to fight – including Technus, who put up an actual fight.

Sometimes Danny wished that he knew enough about technology to hack Technus’ robots. Or that Tucker was there, so he could do it for him.

It was just wistful thinking, however. Danny had no time to learn hacking. And he definitely wouldn’t endanger Tucker – or Sam – by dragging them into his fights.

With his breakfast done, Danny chucked his dishes in the sink and shouted a goodbye to his parents down in the lab. Their echoing voices called back, and he ran out of the door. He would’ve turned into the alley next to the house, but a little more time between him leaving and Phantom appearing would probably be good.

So he walked down a few streets. Moved closer to Amity’s park before ducking into an alley. Shifting to Phantom was as exhilarating as always – the feeling of cold energy crackling down his skin, through him.

Then he zipped off. Back towards his house, although the journey was far quicker now. The advantages of flying at high speeds, he supposed.

He made sure to go invisible before he got back. It was a bit of a habit – making sure that no one connected Phantom to the Fentons. Even if they did have a truce now.

The doorbell rang. Loud footsteps could be heard almost immediately, and Danny smiled despite himself. As much as his dad annoyed him sometimes, he couldn’t help but love the man.

“Phantom?” his dad asked, already stepping aside to let him come in. “Mads and I were just in the lab. Want to join us?”

Behind him, the door clicked closed. Danny dropped his invisibility, shooting his dad a smile. “Sure. Lead the way.”

Jack nodded, walking past him to the kitchen. Danny knew where the lab was, of course, but Phantom didn’t. Sometimes it was a little concerning how natural it came to him, pretending to be someone he wasn’t. Someone else.

But then he remembered how often it had almost gone wrong. The times he almost endangered himself or other people. All the work he had put into making it come natural.

His dad entered the lab, and Danny floated in right behind him. His mom looked up, her face brightening when she saw him. “Hey Phantom. Came to get the Thermos?”

“Yeah,” he said, hovering closer. “But I’m in no rush, so if you want you could continue your ghost studies.”

She nodded, leaning over her worktable. When she turned back to him, she chucked something at him.

He caught it by reflex. Looking down, he saw it was a new Fenton Thermos – shiny steel and green accents just like the last one. It was impeccable, smooth metal with a white lid. The only thing that differentiated it from the last one was the metal ring attached to the cap.

“I added a loop so you could attach it to your belt,” his mom explained, seeing his confusion. “Unless you prefer to sling it over your back?”

“No, uh. This is fine.” He bent down to hang it off of his belt as she suggested. “I didn’t like the back strap a lot anyway – too much risk of it getting crushed if I get slammed into a building or the floor.”

“Good thinking, kid.” His dad sat down next to Maddie, still with a smile on his face.

“Thanks.” He grinned back. Somehow he never got over this – over getting complimented as Phantom. Especially by his parents, by the people who had been Phantom’s biggest opponents for years.

It was a little bitter-sweet perhaps. And maybe, maybe, he shouldn’t have forgiven them so quickly. But they were his parents. They would always be his parents, even if they don’t know. He can’t hate them. That’s just… not the kind of person he was.

“So, uh.” He gestured to the lab as a whole. “Ghost studies? What are you interested in learning about today?”

“Would you be opposed to examinations?” His mom folded her hands together, looking pensive. Her goggles were pulled up – a rare sight in the lab. “There is much we could learn from how ghosts function on a physical level.”

Danny grimaced. He didn’t think he could count the amount of times he had feared dissection – at his parents’ hands, mostly. “I, um.”

“Nothing serious!” she assured him. “We will explain everything we’re doing, so you’ll know what’s happening. And you’ll be allowed to tell us to stop any time.”

“It’ll be like a medical checkup,” his dad added. “If we know what is normal for ghosts, for you, we’ll be able to use that later. If we don’t know what your normal body temperature is, we won’t know if you have a fever. If we don’t know what your pulse is, we won’t know if it’s dropping. That kinda stuff.”

That… made a lot of sense. “And I’ll be able to quit whenever I want?”

“Of course sweetie. And anything you’re uncomfortable with, you tell us and we won’t do it.” Her violet eyes were warm, loving. The kind of look he associated with Fenton, not Phantom. He barely repressed the urge to check if he was still in ghost form, even though he knew he was.

“Alright,” he said. Then, more strongly, he repeated, “Alright.”

He wrung his hands together, then squared his shoulders. “What’s first, then?”

“Let’s start with body temperatures,” his dad suggested, digging a thermometer out of a box. “Normally we would try and measure the temperature of your core as well, but I can’t think of a way to do that without, well…”

Danny snorted. “I get it, I get it.” He took the thermometer from his dad, looking it over. “D’you think it would work if I turned it intangible? I could try phasing it part-way through my chest so you can measure my core?”

“It’s worth a shot.” His mom pulled a notebook closer to her, clicking her pen. “Try measuring your temperature normally first, and then you can try repeating that with the thermometer intangible. If that matches your normal temp, you can try using it on your core as well.”

“Sounds good.” Danny twirled the thermometer around, then stuck it in his mouth. He had to admit that he was a little curious. He knew some of the very basics of how his ghost form worked – but only the things he had to know. How blood and ectoplasm measured up against each other, how ectoplasm was visible in his blood but blood wasn’t visible in his ectoplasm. More mundane things, like his body temperature, he had never checked.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Danny couldn’t talk with the thermometer in his mouth, and his parents didn’t seem to be bothered by the resulting quiet. Maybe they just enjoyed the moment of peace that they had achieved. A ghost and two ghost hunters, sitting around. Like a family.

Which they were, but, well. The other two didn’t know that.

Finally his mom gestured for the thermometer. Danny pulled it out of his mouth and handed it over without comment. He simply leaned forwards, elbow resting on his knee, and asked, “And, what’s the prognosis? Am I gonna die?”

She snorted, shaking her head at him. “Might be too late for that, Phantom. Although your body temperature is fairly high for a ghost. Still nowhere close to a human, though.”

Danny nodded. He had figured as much. Ghosts felt cold to him when he touched them, and humans felt warm. It was to be expected that he was somewhere in the middle, then.

His dad pulled out some other equipment. The stethoscope, Danny recognized. He wasn’t sure what the other machine was for, though. He frowned.

“This is used to measure your heartbeat,” his dad explained, apparently catching the cause of his confusion. “It might pinch a little – it’ll inflate to put pressure around your arm. Do you want to start with this, or with your breathing?”

He shrugged. “Might as well start with the pulse thing, right?”

Kneeling, his dad started fastening the armband around Danny’s upper arm. “We’ll measure it twice, if that’s okay with you. Once now, and then again after a few physical tests. See if your heartbeat gets elevated, and if it does, what your normal max is.”

“Sounds good to me.” The machine hummed as the band started to inflate. Like his dad had said, it felt a little uncomfortable, a little too tight. But it was alright. And knowing what it was supposed to do, the purpose behind it, made it feel less like a trapping and more like… well, like the machine it actually was.

After a few minutes the armband deflated again. “Well kid, if you were a human I’d be worried.” But his dad said it with a smile, so Danny wasn’t too concerned. Besides, he already knew his heartbeat was slow, even in human form.

“Good thing I’m not, huh?” He phased the armband off and handed it back to his dad. “Breathing first, or exercises?”

“Let’s do breathing first,” his mom suggested, looking over the notes Jack had taken. “If you’re okay with it, we can test your abilities for the exercises.”

He hummed an affirmative and started to unzip his jumpsuit. It felt a little weird to sit around his parents bare-chested, but, well. They had seen him naked plenty of times, hadn’t they?

His dad kneeled in front of him with the stethoscope. Danny had to repress a shiver when his dad gently put the thing to his chest – the metal was cold even on the skin of his ghost form.

A couple of breathing exercises later, Jack stepped away again and Danny gratefully pulled his jumpsuit closed. It hadn’t been anything spectacular – take a deep breath, now huff it out again – but it was a bit of a hassle.

It might come in handy later, he knew. But for the moment he was mostly doing it to placate his parents.

“Let’s do weight next,” his mom said, snapping Danny out of his thoughts again.

“Weight?” he repeated, frowning at her. “What do you need to know that for?”

“Curiosity, mostly.” His dad shrugged at him, still smiling. “Your structure is a lot more complicated, a lot more human, than most ghosts. We want to see how that impacts your weight.”

A scale was dragged out of one of the many boxes in the lab. Internally, Danny marveled at all the stuff his parents owned that he never knew about. Why did they even own some of these things? A heartbeat monitor couldn’t be normal equipment for people specializing in researching ghosts, right?

Obediently, he stepped on the scale. Made sure to tamper down his ghost powers as much as possible without shifting back. Floating, after all, came naturally to him in ghost form.

“Interesting.” His mom noted down the weight. Danny had to repress the urge to lean over and see what she wrote down. So sue him for being curious! He was the kid of scientists, after all. “Heavier than most ghosts, but not by as much as I expected. Ectoplasm is ectoplasm, I suppose.”

Danny shrugged. “I guess so? I never really looked into it.”

Now his dad stepped forward again, a measuring tape in his hands. Frowning, Danny turned to him. “And measuring my height is good for what, exactly?”

“You look like you’ve grown since you started protecting Amity Park, but we have no real way to prove this.” His dad held up the tape, as if presenting it. “But if we measure you now, and then try it again later, that might do it. If you get taller, that’ll be official proof that you do grow.”

“Oh, I see.” He cocked his head towards the nearest wall. “Want me to stand against that to make sure I stand straight?”

“Good idea, kid.” His dad followed him to the wall, and Danny pressed himself against it. Made sure to flatten himself completely – and made sure not to stand on his toes. He would’ve worried about his parents connecting his two forms because they just happen to be the same height, but his parents haven’t measured Danny’s height in forever. And with his teenage growth spurt (his unfortunately very slow growth spurt) he no longer matched that, anyway.

“5’7,” Jack concluded with a nod. “A good height for a teenager, but with room for more growth.”

“That’s what I’m hoping for.” Danny shot him a grin, leaving his parents to conclude if it was a joke or not. He already knew that he grew – his ghost form continued to match his human one, and he had kept a fearful eye on his height. He hadn’t been able to repress his fears that he might be too ghostly to grow – stuck the same way forever.

Thankfully this hadn’t been the case – and he was not doomed to be a teenager forever. Or the shortest one in his friend group.

Well, he hoped he was still gonna catch up on Sam and Tucker. Sam, at least, he could surely surpass. His dad was enormous – Danny couldn’t imagine being short for the rest of his life with genes like that.

“So, uh. Powers?” he asked, realizing that things had gone quiet.

His mom nodded, flipping to a new page in the notebook. “Well, we would like to record all of your powers, of course. If we know how many you have now, and how good they are, we could look into a training regime to help improve them.”

Wow. It was like Vlad, except less “let me kill your dad”. And less knowledge about ghosts, but that was something that Danny was more than happy to give up on in return for the “no killing” thing.

“Sounds good to me. But I can’t show you everything. Some things, like enhanced healing, I can’t really demonstrate.”

“Of course kiddo.” His dad pulled out another box, revealing a bunch of weights. “But we’ll start with the more mundane things, so we can count them as exercises.”

Danny floated closer, then landed on the floor next to his dad. “Let me guess. We’re starting with my physical strength?”

He grabbed one of the weights out of the box. It didn’t feel very heavy. “So am I just supposed to hold as many of these as possible?”

“Yup.” His dad grabbed a weight in each hand, then handed one over to Danny. “I’ll pile them on for you, you just have to hang on to them.”

Nodding, he took the two weights from his dad. After a moment of thought, he curled his arms against his chest, forming a pit of sorts he could stack them in. “Load me up!”

With a laugh, his dad did exactly that. He started stacking them on two at a time, occasionally glancing at Danny to make sure it wasn’t too heavy.

They kept that up for a while before Danny’s knees buckled and he almost crushed his dad under the weights. The final weight was noted down, despite Danny swearing up and down that he has carried more than that before.

“We’ll try again after getting your elevated pulse,” his mom soothed as his dad pulled out the stethoscope and monitor again. “It’s possible that you can carry more while you’re flying. After all, flying depends on the low-gravity properties of ectoplasm, which might make it easier to carry heavy weights.”

“Yeah.” The armband was fastened around his arm again. “That makes sense.”

So, as it turned out, his elevated heartbeat matched his human one. It made him a little curious to see what it would be in his human form. Maybe he would swipe the monitor at a later moment to test it himself. Like his parents had said, it could be useful to know!

And maybe he was a little curious. Maybe.

Per his insistence, they went back to measuring his strength. And, as his mom had suggested, he was able to carry more while flying. That, especially, was a good thing to know. Knowing that he could lift more while airborne would help him keep people safe, after all.

Testing his enhanced senses was a lot easier. While his range of vision and hearing were the same as a human’s, they were more sensitive. He could see further, had almost impeccable night vision (while in ghost form at least), and he could hear noises from much farther away. Taste and scent were, thankfully, equal to when he was human. He couldn’t imagine those being of much use, anyway.

After that, testing his enhanced reflexes was a logical choice. His parents would throw objects at him, often without warning. Although they did switch to bits of trash or other disposable objects after Danny destroyed the first few things by reflex.

So sue him, usually if things flew at him while he was Phantom they were meant to hurt him! The few times he had caught the weapons, they had always been turned against him. 9 out of 10 times they would turn out to be explosives, or otherwise traps.

Thankfully he hadn’t hit his parents – or anything besides the stuff they threw at him. More training might be a good thing after all, if only to make it so that he wasn’t so quick to lash out.

Wow, it was almost like he always used his ghost form to fight ghosts. If only he had more people in the know, he could spend more time as Phantom without fighting. There was, after all, a limit to how much time he could spend in the Zone with his allies. Sooner or later his parents would start missing him.

Maybe he would have to start visiting more often as Phantom. That might be… nice.

“We have no way to test your enhanced healing, so I think it’s time to move on to your regular ghost powers. Don’t you agree, Phantom?”

Danny snapped out of his thoughts, locking eyes with his dad. “Um. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. Starting with the three main ghost powers?”

“Yes. Let’s start with intangibility, please?” His mom clicked the pen in her hand, ready to take notes.

“Uh, right.” Turning himself intangible, Danny flew out of the lab and back in through the walls. Then he dove through a few tables for good measure. “And as you know, I can turn objects or people intangible as well. But last time Jack said that it felt weird, so I don’t usually if I can prevent it.”

His mom turned to raise a skeptical eyebrow at his dad. The man just shrugged, a sheepish smile on his face. “It felt kinda tingly. Made me feel weird in the stomach.”

“Tingly?” Danny repeated, brow creased. “Yeah, I think that that describes it well. That’s how I first started identifying it as well, when I couldn’t control it well yet.”

“You couldn’t control your powers at first?” She turned back to him, looking intrigued. “I would assume that ghosts form with perfect control.”

“Nah. Not over all their powers, at least.” Danny shrugged. “I know I didn’t have good control. I couldn’t maintain powers well, and I kept accidentally using them as well. It was kind of embarrassing. And new powers are difficult as well, but that seems to be common. Most ghosts don’t gain new powers very often, but they often need guidance with them if it does happen.”

She nodded, quickly noting it down. “Would you mind using your intangibility on me as well, then? I have to admit that I’m curious what it feels like, now.”

Laughing, he flew over to her and grabbed her shoulders. “Sure. I’ll fly through the wall and then back again, okay?”

Another nod, this time of approval. Danny tapped into his intangibility again, this time letting it flow through him and over his mom. She shivered but didn’t protest.

He flew them through the wall and then immediately back again. From experience, he knew that it was weird to be fully underground while intangible. A little scary, even. There was always this fear of going tangible again while buried. It had gotten better for him – he often used the ground now to hide for ambush attacks – but his mom wouldn’t be protected by that.

“That was…” she trailed off, falling silent.

Letting go, Danny floated a little back. “We warned you that it would feel weird.”

“Yeah, you did.” She shook her head. “But let’s move on to invisibility, okay?”

“Sure.” And he blinked out of visibility instantly. Slowly, he flew some laps around the lab. While he could turn himself invisible, he could still give himself away with the wind that rushed past him.

Coming to a halt right next to his dad, Danny leaned in right next to his ear. Then, quietly so his mom wouldn’t hear, he whispered, “Don’t be scared, it’s just me.”

Then he laid his hands on his dad’s shoulders and turned the man invisible as well.

His mom started, turning in the direction where Jack had been. “Phantom?” she asked, a little wary.

“Sorry,” he said from much closer, popping back into visibility. A smirk was on his face, and a wide smile on his dad’s face. “I couldn’t resist.”

She shook her head disapprovingly, but sighed somewhat fondly. “I suppose all ghosts are pranksters, even if they aren’t malevolent, huh?”

“Might just be a teenager thing,” Jack suggested with a wink. “But it was a very interesting experience! Didn’t feel as weird as intangibility, but it was a lot different visually.”

“Yeah?” That was interesting. Danny never heard about what his powers felt like to others. The only reason why he knew about intangibility was because his dad pointed it out before – and sometimes people he saved complained that it felt weird. Invisibility he rarely shared with other people. Or never, even. “How’s that?”

“Well, for starters, seeing myself see-through was strange.” He raised his hands, wiggling the fingers. “And being able to see you while you were invisible was pretty unexpected as well.”

“Really?” His mom frowned, eyes darting between the two of them. “You could see Phantom even while he was invisible?”

“I think it makes sense,” Danny admitted with a shrug. “He was piggy-backing off of my invisibility, so it makes sense that he was immune to its effects. I can see anything I turn invisible as well – it just makes sense.”

“Yes, if you put it like that it makes perfect sense.” Maddie shook her head, pen scribbling on the paper. “But knowing that it works the same the other way around is very interesting. Flight next?”

His legs melted together in a ghostly tail. “I’ve been flying around the whole time. What else do you want to know about it?”

“How fast can you go?” his dad asked, looking interested. “Top speeds seem to differ between ghosts, but you might be one of the fastest we see in Amity Park. And it would make sense – you need to be able to catch up with enemy ghosts.”

Danny blinked. Yes, that did make sense. “I’ve… never measured it. Never thought much about it, to be honest. Do you guys have some way to measure speed?”

“We should.” His mom put the notepad down, eyes roving over some of the storage boxes. “There should be a speed gun in one of those boxes. We used it to measure the top speed of some of our inventions – like the GAV and the Specter Speeder.”

He flew over to the boxes, hovering over them. Then he turned his hand intangible and stuck it in, rummaging around. “Shaped like a gun, right?”

“Well, yeah, but you won’t find it–” his mom started to say. Then he pulled his hand back out, white gloved fingers clenched around a speed gun, “– like that. You can touch things even while intangible?”

“Uh, yeah.” He played with the gun in his hand, slowly floating back to his parents. “I can reach out with my power to kind of… ‘feel’ the objects? Like turning them intangible on touch, except I don’t actually supply enough power to do anything?”

“Clever,” his mom complimented, taking the gun from him. Then she grew serious again. “Does intangibility affect your speed?”

“Nope.” He shook his head for good measure. “But corners do, so I’ll fly through the wall.”

She aimed the gun at the wall, then nodded at him. “Ready when you are.”

Zipping through the wall, Danny forced himself to go as quickly as possible. Not just for himself, not just to prove he could do it, but to make his parents proud.

He hadn’t realized how little he saw them with pride in their eyes until now. Seeing how they looked at Phantom whenever he impressed them. It made him realize how far he had grown apart since he had become Phantom. Keeping his secret away from them, from everyone… it had caused a divide. One he hadn’t noticed until now.

Confident that he had reached his top speed, Danny dove through the wall. Wind whistled through him – not just his ears, but his entire body – and he saw little more of the lab than colorful blurs.

Once the world had gone dark again, he slowed and turned around to phase back into the lab.

Panting a little from the effort, he leaned back against the wall he had come through. “And? Any good?”

“Well, 186 miles per hour sure isn’t shabby, kid.” His dad grinned, wide and bright and proud. “That’s about 300 kilometers per hour, too.”

Danny couldn’t help his impressed whistle. “Damn, that’s even higher than I thought.”

“Language,” his mom snapped. Then her eyes widened as she realized that, once again, she had corrected him for cursing.

“Darn, that’s even higher than I thought,” Danny repeated, emphasizing the first word. He re-angled himself so his feet touched the wall, letting himself stand on the vertical surface so he wasn’t floating anymore. “Was that better?”

“How’re you doing that?” his dad asked before Maddie could say anything. “Are you standing on the wall?”

“Uh, yeah.” He walked around a little, demonstrating. Then with a shrug, stepped onto the ceiling instead. “It’s like a subset of flight. But it’s kind of useless – most ghosts prefer regular flight.”

“Fascinating.” His dad’s voice was quiet with awe. Or, well, as quiet as Jack Fenton got. “But what would make a ghost prefer this over flight?”

Danny let himself drop from the ceiling again, flipping mid-air to land on his feet. “Usually overshadowing ghosts prefer it. I think it might be because the bodies are so much heavier than the ghost is used to carrying? But I dunno. I don’t overshadow a lot, but it never bothered me.”

“But you’ve overshadowed people before?” His mom looked at him critically. Criticizing.

He grimaced. Couldn’t exactly tell them that he had overshadowed his dad before to get out of trouble with school. “A couple of times,” he ended up admitting. “But only for short moments, and usually only to drive out other ghosts. It’s either that or ecto-rays, usually, and neither are well-received.”

“No, I would imagine not.” But her eyes softened, and the corners of her lips turned up a little. “The lesser of two evils might still be seen as evil, after all.”

“Let’s not give this one a field test, then.” His dad clapped him on the shoulder, and Danny almost stumbled at the sudden contact. “I already know what it’s like to be overshadowed, and it’s not a power we should train.”

“Definite agree.” Danny lifted up a little, floating at shoulder-height with his dad. “I don’t like using it anyway.”

His mom looked over the notebook, then glanced at the clock. “Maybe we should save the rest of your powers for another time. It’s getting late, and we haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“Same, to be honest.” He looked at the clock as well, surprised to see that it had been a good few hours already. “Jeez, it’s like 3 in the afternoon already. Time flies, huh?”

“We’ll make it a light lunch,” his mom decided, closing the notebook and laying it down on a desk. “If we eat too much it’ll mess with dinner.”

Then she turned to face him, a warm smile on her face. “Speaking of which, do you want to stay for dinner, Phantom?”

Danny froze. Licked his lips, uncertain. “I, uh. I sh– can’t. Gotta patrol Amity, make sure no one is causing trouble, y’know?”

She wilted a little, but nodded. “I see. Will you stay for lunch, at least?”

His stomach rumbled, answering for him. Sometimes he forgot how much energy he burned through using his ghost powers – and maintaining his ghost form in general. “Yeah, I can do that. Just can’t stay until tonight.”

Lunch was a rather familiar event. Not just for him, because this was his family, and it felt natural to sit around and eat together. But also, it seemed, for his parents. Maybe they, too, settled naturally around him because he was their son, even if they didn’t know it.

Or maybe he just ate lunch with them too often. He was pretty sure that this was the third time he had eaten with them as Phantom, despite it only being his fourth visit.

The three of them had teamed up to do the dishes. His mom washed them, his dad dried them, and then Danny floated them to the right places using his telekinesis. He had to ask for instructions a few times, pretending he didn’t know where the dishes were stored, which was a little weird. But not too weird, considering, well, everything about his life.

Besides, it was good practice! Telekinesis was still new to him, after all. And while he had enough control over it to not drop small items, moving with precision was still tricky.

He didn’t even hear the front door opening. Not until a sharp gasp came from the doorway.

The sound startled him so badly that he lost grip of his telekinesis. He lunged forward to catch the glass. Barely saved it from shattering on the floor.

“Phantom?!” his sister said, incredulous. She turned from him, lying flat on the floor with a glass in his hands, to his – their – parents. “Why is he here?”

His mom, having just dried off her hands, took the glass from his hands. He shot her a grateful smile, pushing himself off of the floor again.

“Well, as you could see, we were doing the dishes,” he explained, with the smirk he knew frustrated his enemies. The stupid snarky smile that everyone loved or hated.

The dry look Jazz shot him back just made him grin wider. “Uh huh. And was that all you were doing?”

“He was just helping us with some research Jazzy-pants, no worries!” Jack quickly started drying the last few dishes. “Nothing he wasn’t okay with.”

She still didn’t look very convinced. “Right. And he chose to help?”

“Well, yeah.” Danny took the dried plate from his dad and put it away – this time not using his telekinesis. It was already tricky enough while he wasn’t maintaining a tough conversation. “That’s kind of the point of our truce, isn’t it? They help me, I help them?”

“Are you telling me you guys have a truce?” Jazz, eyes growing wide, looked between him and Maddie. “Since when?!”

“Couple of weeks, a month? Something like that.” Jack handed the last dish to Danny. “He dropped by heavily injured, and we helped him. After that he forgave us for hunting him, and we’ve been working on being, well, better.”

Putting the last plate away, Danny rolled his eyes. “There was nothing to forgive you for, you know? You were just doing what you thought was best.”

“Unbelievable,” Jazz said, voice quiet. “You’re all frigging unbelievable. You’re just gonna move past all the trauma, just like that?”

“Uh. Yeah?” Danny shrugged, turning to face her properly. “They didn’t do anything too bad, anyway. And they’ve been really helpful since – I wouldn’t be around anymore if it wasn’t for them.”

“Oh.” Some of the tension drained from her posture, and suddenly she looked more tired. Still, she eyed him speculatively. “You’re… different. Not how you usually are.”

“You know, I’ve noticed the same,” his mom admitted, now also eyeing him. “You act different in public.”

“Of course I do.” He sat down on a chair, gesturing for the rest to join him. Might as well sit down for the conversation, right? “Out there, I’m like a hero, right? An icon for Amity Park, a protector. So I gotta be a hero. Not just do heroic things, but I have to act like one.”

“But the snark is all you, huh?” His mom smiled at him, knowingly, as she sat down. “The constant jokes?”

“Oh, definitely. Besides, it’s got a purpose. A well-placed quip can act as a distraction, letting me take the upper hand in a fight.” He shrugged. “Gotta take every advantage I can get, y’know?”

Jazz sat down as well, taking the chair opposite of him. “Doesn’t that ever hurt, though? To put up a facade, to constantly fight for Amity and never get appreciated for it?”

“Absolutely.” He huffed out a breath. “Especially back at the start, when everyone hated me and called me Inviso-Bill instead of my name. When people framed me and ruined the reputation I worked so hard to build up.”

He shook his head. “But I couldn’t – can’t – let that get to me. Protecting Amity Park and its people is more important. Whether or not they liked me didn’t matter.”

“But why,” she insisted, her elbows resting on the table as she leaned forward. “Why is this so important to you? I thought ghostly obsessions were a disproved theory?”

“They are.” He rolled his eyes, looking away from her for a moment to collect his thoughts. “But as I told your parents the first time I was around, I got a good reason to protect Amity. Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean that my family is.”

She pulled back, her eyes growing wide again. “Your family still lives here? Wow. They must be really grateful that you’re here to keep them safe, then.”

Oh, the irony. One day they would look back to this and laugh. But not now – he wasn’t ready to reveal his secret. Not yet.

“Not really,” he said instead. “They don’t know that I’m Phantom. I never told them – they hate ghosts, and I didn’t want to hurt them with that. With knowing that their own kid became the thing they hated most.”

His mom sighed, sad and weary. “I just wish you would tell us who they are, Phantom. Maybe we could convince them. Don’t you miss them, your friends and your family?”

“It’s fine the way it is now,” he insisted instead. “They’re… getting better. They’re changing, slowly but surely. And it’s not like I never see them, anyway. I can keep an eye on them, and when the time comes…” He fidgeted with the edge of his glove, looking for the right words. “When the time comes, I’ll tell them.”

And he wanted to. He really did plan on telling them, eventually. Because, sooner or later, they would all find out.

It had happened before, after all. In alternate timelines, changed realities. And they had always accepted him – in the moment, at least. But he couldn’t know it would go afterwards. Would they still let him hunt ghosts? Would they insist on endangering themselves, trying to help?

He couldn’t know, and he didn’t want to risk it.

“No wonder that Spectra was so fixated on you,” Jazz mumbled, breaking the silence. “She was crazy for negative emotions, wasn’t she?”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his eyes, trying to focus back on the present instead of what-if’s and could-be’s. “She’s a nasty one.”

“What’s this?” his dad asked, leaning forward as well. “What are we missing here?”

“Phantom saved me from a nasty ghost, back when he was still new.” She shrugged, looking surprisingly casual about it. “She wanted to kill me, I think.”

“I saved you?” Danny snorted, incredulous. “Dude, without your save with the Fenton Peeler she would’ve wrecked me.”

“Alright, so we saved each other.” She smiled, but the corners sagged and she looked more sad than anything. “Either way, what she said was wrong. You shouldn’t believe anything she told you, okay?”

Wait. How much had Jazz heard of that conversation?

“I know. That’s what Spectra does. She finds the thing that hurts you most, that you feel most insecure about, and digs in. And then the negative feelings make her stronger, and she then makes them worse, and it becomes this horrible spiral you can’t break out of.” He paused, licked his lips. “But, uh. How much did you hear from that?”

Wow. Smooth, Fenton.

“Not much,” Jazz admitted. “Only the last bit, I think. But I heard enough.”

She shook her head, frowning. “’Who cares for a thing like you’, jeez. Like you aren’t constantly out there, making a difference. Like it matters that you’re a ghost.” Her smile widened again, becoming more genuine. “If my parents, the most ghost-hating individuals in Amity Park, can be convinced that not all ghosts are bad, what does it matter?”

He huffed out a laugh. “Nothing Spectra says matters. She just spews vile lies. And when you fight her off, you start realizing that. I already knew she was wrong. But, uh. Thanks.”

“No Phantom, thank you. For keeping Amity Park safe.” She looked from him and to their parents. “For doing the right thing, even when everyone was against you. I can’t imagine how hard it has been for you.”

She turned back to smile at him again. Her hand came down on his, the warm fingers curling around his gloved ones. “Thank you, Phantom. And if you ever need someone to talk to, just remember us. Okay?”

“Uh. Yeah.” He tugged his hand away from hers, a green blush crawling up on his cheeks. It felt a little like Jazz was crushing on Phantom, and that thought made him more than a little uncomfortable. “Um. Thanks, everyone. For everything. But I gotta, uh. Gotta go.”

“Patrol, right?” His mom shook her head, resigned. “Stay safe, Phantom. And drop by more often, will you?”

Nodding, he was already lifting out of his seat. “I will, for sure.” He gave a short wave. “See you guys later, and stay safe!”

As he flew off, he heard the three of them shout back, “You as well!”

#danny phantom #dp fanfic #phanfic #phanfiction #dp fanfiction #dark writes #danny fenton #maddie fenton #jack fenton #jazz fenton #me? leaving out details i can't be bothered to come up with? it's more likely than you think #also tumblr just kinda does whatever with links so i'm just gonna use em and pray someone will see this #what a nice surprise

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42wallaby-way-sydney · 5 years ago

Text

The OCs: Jamie Jackson

Full Name: Jaidee Jamie Jackson

Nicknames: Jamie (to everyone except for her parents). Lek (by her parents). Cara/Tesoro (from Michael). Printsessa/Lyubimaya (from Vasya).

Emojis: 🥋📝⚖🌶🍷

Birthday: June 15th

Place of Birth: Hells Kitchen, New York

Sexuality: Bisexual polyamorous.

Misc:

- Her parents, Malee and James, met while he was on a business trip to Chiang Mai, Thailand. He ended up extending his time there and the two fell in love. Malee came with him back to New York and a year later they were married. Less than a year later they had Jamie.

James’s mother is Norwegian, so growing up he spoke English and Norwegian when at home. He’s gifted with learning languages and his job is as a translater. Jamie speaks little Norwegian as she only spoke it when she would be visiting her grandparents.

Malee and James thought they were going to have a boy so when Jamie was born they had already picked out a name for her and fallen in love with the name. So they just kept it since Jaidee is a unisex name.

- She was very small in her father’s hands when she was born and her mom gifted her with the nickname Lek, meaning ‘small’.

Her name, Jaidee, means ‘kindhearted’.

- Her favorite colour is rose gold.

- Her lucky number is five.

- She sleeps cuddling a stuffed panda. Toto sleeps beside her knees.

- Jamie has very bad anger issues as a child so her parents enroll her into taekwando with Taka. The two begin doing kendo together as well when they’re fourteen.

- She’s Buddhist and her favourite holiday is Loy Krathong.

She’s a very good cook thanks to her mother teaching her and she cooks for every holiday. Her specialty is her eggrolls.

- Her favourite movie is Yes or No.

- As a child she loves playing dress up in her mother’s chut Thai and jewelry. When the family goes to Chiang Mai, Jamie always becomes very ecstatic to wear her own sarongs.

- James and Malee are very doting parents and adore their only child with all of their being. Malee never received a full formal education as she had to be pulled from school in elementary school to help cook for her family so she wants Jamie to do better than her. Malee never wants Jamie to have to do as much work as she’s had to do.

Malee cannot read or write in English and often has trouble in Thai. She’s taught Jamie how to speak the language, but she can’t teach her anything else.

- As a child she didn’t understand why some of the kids would laugh at the food she would bring for lunch or why they would make fun of her mother’s accent when Malee would come to pick her up. She grows to love her heritage as she becomes a teenager and hates that she wasted so much time being embarrassed about a part of herself.

She and Marie have this in common.

- When she’s six, Malee tells her that she’s enrolling her into music lessons. Malee let Jamie pick the instrument and fully expected for her daughter to pick the piano and was pleasantly surprised when Jamie picked the flute.

- Her favorite fairytales are A Tale of Two Rice Birds and East of the Sun, West of the Moon.

- Her favourite types of tea are a tie between Thai boba tea and jasmine tea with honey. She doesn’t like coffee in the morning but rather drinks tea. The only time she drinks coffee is when she goes to a coffee shop and orders herself a latte.

- Jamie, Peyton, Alexei, and Taka are all neighbors and so growing up together, the four of them were very close friends. Jamie and Peyton always had a rivalry of sorts growing up and it just never went away much to the amusement of Taka and Alexei.

- Jamie is a big daddy’s girl and very close to her dad. If her mom says she can’t do something, she asks her dad. James half of the time gives her the okay. The other half of the time he says to ask her mom.

- Despite being close to her parents she’s still terrified of coming out to them, especially when shse realizes she’s polyamorous.

- Taka and Jamie date for a very short period when in highschool and it nearly destroys the friendship between them, Peyton, and Alexei.

Alexei had a huge crush on Taka for the longest time but never told anyone except for Peyton so he becomes very bitter towards Jamie while she and Taka are dating and it causes a lot of tension between the friends. Jamie and Taka decide that they’re better as friends and they would rather stay friends than have their frienships with Alexei and Peyton destroyed.

- She’s twenty when she meets Michael and the two begin seeing each other then dating. She finds out about his mafia work very early on but is honestly kind of an idiot and decides she doesn’t care about it. He only deals with weapons and drug distribution, is her excuse. It’s a poor one. She is aware but a fool in love.

- As one of Michael’s cover stories for running the mafia is a restaurant, Jamie and Peyton get jobs as hostesses at his fine dining Italian restaurant. Sometimes they both help serve just for some extra pocket money.

- Her favorite foods consist of her dad’s homemade buttercake, her mom’s Pad Thai, Michael’s fra diavolo, and Vasya’s potato and cheese pierogis.

- Though she often picks mild fun at Vasya’s very casual clothing taste, Jamie loves to steal borrow Vasya’s sweaters and cardigans. They’re warm and fluffy and smell like Vasya’s perfume.

- She learns a few steps for a few traditional Thai dances but she feels like she looks ridiculous when she dances.

Malee self taught herself some dances when she was growing up in Thailand by watching the dancers during festivals. She dances sometimes when she hears Jamie practicing music on the flute.

- Jamie has a shih tzu named Toto. He is like her child.

- She’s fond of poetry and has been known to take a poetry book with her to a coffee shop and sip on a latte.

- She was on her highschool’s debate team. It’s no surprise that she would further her education by becoming a lawyer.

This would be how she re-meets Vasya. Jamie is interning at Nelson & Murdock & co. and one day Vasya comes over with Maddie so the two girls can talk to their dads. Jamie nearly drops the coffees she brought for everyone when she sees Vasya and just quietly, “Oh my god...” When Vasya sees her she later yells at Matt, “Why didn’t you tell me there’s a pretty girl here?!” Matt doesn’t tell either that the other girl likes each other, just lets them fumble around cluelessly.

- The first date between Michael, Jamie, and Vasya takes place at Michael’s penthouse where he cooks for them. The first date outside of their homes is at Fogwell’s where Vasya takes them. She and Michael both are surprised when Jamie is very capable of fighting back. Matt is not the only Murdock to have gotten laid in that gym...

- Jamie hates bugs, doesn’t matter what kind it is, she does not like them.

- Her favorite type of fast food is Popeyes.

- She loves frozen yogurt, her favorite flavour being cake batter. She enjoys putting granola on her yogurt, frozen or not.

- Generally, Jamie is very reserved and quiet. Often times when she’s talking, she doesn’t realize just how softly she’s speaking and is told to speak up. This always makes her flush and grow very annoyed and snappish.

- Her favourite flowers are lotuses.

- She loves mango. The fruit, mango candy, mango flavoured icecream, mango smoothies. If it’s mango, she loves it. Needless to say, when she makes herself sticky rice, it’s topped with mango.

- She’s very ‘girly’ and likes make up. Her eyeliner is always on point and winged beautifully. Shopping is a favourite past time of hers.

- She’s allergic to most boxed hair dyes but not bubble dye. Peyton helps her dye her hair anytime Jamie gets in the mood to do so.

- The one time she was taken hostage to be used as bait against Michael and Vasya, Michael snorted, “Your funeral.” Once he hung up he took a deep breath and, “We really need to go get Jamie back.” Vasya just nodded. “Quickly is preferable.” Jamie did not take kindly to being kidnapped.

- When Vasya leaves to go to school in Moscow, Jamie cries the hardest.

- She hates Michael’s father and elder brother, Angelo. Mostly because of how they treated Michael growing up but also because Angelo kidnapped Peyton, thinking she was Jamie, and Peyton is her best frenemy. She finds Raphael to be amusing though.

- She and Jack get along fairly well. She thinks he’s even more amusing than Raphael and is very smart. He thinks she needs to loosen up and have more fun.

- When they get Vasya back, Jamie loves and adores Smolya the most. He is her little baby. It’s very common for Michael and Vasya to find her passed out on the couch with Smolya sleeping on her, tiny fist clenching a lock of her hair. Rebuilding the relationship between the three of them takes much work, love, and patience.

- When she finds out that she’s pregnant she’s extremely anxious. The baby is named Aranya, nicknamed Ari, and takes after all three of her parents. A few years after Ari is born, Vasya is pregnant with Alessia.

Aranya and Alessia are super close but get on each other’s nerves.

- Jamie adopts a Siamese kitten and names it Pringles.

6 songs that she probably has on her phone/fit her well:

I’m a Ruler by Tommee Profitt ft. Ruby Amanfu

Cliché by Candy Mafia

Second Hand Love by Bedroom Audio

What I Need by Hayley Kiyoko ft. Kehlani

Princess by Fletcher

Youth by Troye Sivan

#my writing #the ocs #jamie jackson #the ocs bio #the ocs aesthetic #domestic au #my edit #the ocs playlist #aesthetic #music

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haikujitsu · 7 years ago

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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

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