#I swear the rise fandom is literally the best at giving us the most messed up fanfics

[confuzzledhooman]

@cosmoshard GO READ THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T????

No. It has to be me. Anyone else would probably do it wrong

Congratulations to @mutantninjamidlifecrisis for not only being the first fic to make cry in quite a while, but also being the first fic ever to get such a reaction out of me that I had to laid down my phone and just breathe for a few minutes until I calmed myself enough for my hands to stop shaking, this happened multiple times while I read chapter 8, I even had to stand up and walk around my room once to calm down.

anyways if you havent read this fic yet go read it

Bonus lil gif under the cut bc photoshop screwed up the colors when I tried to export the whole page as a gif

[firelxdykatara]

not gonna lie I would love to hear more about the drama and infighting that went on in The Vampire Diaries fandom if you have the time (and also want to use that time to give your experience with the fandom, which from the snippets you've told sounds Not Fun so I get it if you don't want to lol)

oh god, there was like, SO MUCH, i just

i really feel like tvd is one of those fandoms that is so hard to describe without a lot of ‘you’d have to have been there’, but it really felt like this huge and all-consuming beast for about five years until the show finally imploded and the fandom basically turned on it en masse. (you ever see that post going around that’s like ‘if you ever want to know what true regret feels like, ask someone who once called tvd their favorite show’? still a mood, all these years later. basically the entire fandom thought the show should have just bowed out with whatever shreds of dignity it had left at the end of season 6, and became more of a hatedom than a fandom for the last two seasons. when you have an entire fandom cheering news of your show’s cancellation, i think that’s a sign you done fucked up, julie.)

first and most infamous, of course, are the ship wars. which are pretty much inevitable in any teen-centered drama, and i really think the CW fucking thrives on them, but it was particularly egregious in TVD’s case because not only was the base premise of the show a love triangle, but the two main romantic leads were brothers that the show constantly pit against one another--in pursuit of elena’s affections, but also because it kept up this insistence on the ‘good brother/bad brother’ dichotomy which stopped making sense after about season 2 (by which time we have found out that the good brother was never as good as he appeared, and the bad brother has been growing and isn’t nearly as bad as he pretends to be)--and the question of which brother ‘deserved’ elena (and no, what elena wanted very rarely factored into these discussions, especially in the team stefan camp because they turned on her when what she wanted was no longer The Good Brother, but i’ll get to that in a bit) was hotly contested.

i’m not kidding when i say the shipping wars were vicious. i started watching tvd shortly after it began to air, which was late 2009, and kept up with it fairly sporadically over the years. i didn’t come onto tumblr until 2011/2012, and by then, the fandom was already pretty much a garbagefire. there were anti ship and anti character blogs, any time something bad happened for one ship the rival ship would invade the tags to gloat about it (seasons 3 and 4 were especially rough, and i’m not gonna pretend delena fans weren’t just as bad about tag invasion and shit, but as that was my side of the road i saw a lot more of the stelena shippers being assholes, which soured my opinion on the ship a long time before i started rewatching and realized the red flags were there from the start), confessions blogs were popular also toxic as fuck (so much fighting happened in the notes of those posts, good gods), and this was right around when twitter’s popularity was on the rise and the line between Celebrity and Fan was thinning, so the fandom was absolutely atrocious to much of the tvd cast and crew.

(some of them deserved a lot of the later backlash, but in the early years a lot of it was ‘how dare you write the story in a way i dont like, you terrible fucking person’, and gods don’t get me started on the dobsley vs nian Thing)

i think what really encapsulates my feelings on the tvd fandom as a whole, though, is the way they (to this DAY) treated elena gilbert, which can be summed up in one meme that gained a lot of traction around season 3 if i remember right: that gif of pam from true blood, with the text altered to read “i’m so OVER elena and her precious doppelganger vagina!”

i swear at one time i had over half the active tvd fan accounts on tumblr blocked, because i got to a point where i would no longer tolerate elena hate, and she was (and still is, in what remains of the fandom; you’ll see a lot of ‘elena was one of the worst things about the show’ takes from ex-fans, too) one of the most widely despised characters in the entire fandom. because she -checks smudged writing on hand- was a traumatized teenage girl who -reads off a crumpled notecard- couldn’t always perfectly sort out her own feelings and -squints at the ceiling- sometimes made mistakes or bad decisions. (except a lot of the fandom also insisted that she was a mary sue who had no character traits or flaws or faults and it was like....make up your fucking minds???? is she a calculating conniving bitch whose somehow manipulating these centuries old vampires to tie them around her little finger or is she a boring flat character with no depth and no flaws??? jfc)

there was this massive double standard, too--like, stefan and damon could fuck whoever they wanted and that was fine, but elena was constantly raked over the coals for the crime of developing romantic feelings for the two men who had become constants in her life and whom she cared for deeply, and oh my GOD the slut shaming that happened when elena slept with damon was fucking wild. (and also happened in canon lmfao. like the show had one of elena’s best friends basically call her diseased on screen for falling in love with someone other than stefan. it was gross and ridiculous and the friend in question was also being a giant hypocrite at the time since she was happily flirting with someone who was directly responsible for the deaths of like four of elena’s loved ones and her own boyfriend’s mother but that’s beside the point) but like elena was called a slut and a bitch and a whore for ‘cheating’ on stefan (she hadn’t, and she had in fact broken up with him on screen the episode earlier) and ‘immediately’ jumping into bed with damon, even though none of them said fucking boo when stefan had one night stands or damon had fuckbuddies or whatever.

shit, caroline didn’t get any of this treatment when she started falling for tyler while dating matt! which isn’t to say i think she should have, just that i think it’s fucking ridiculous that elena was absolutely demonized by the fandom for daring to have feelings for two guys at once and eventually acting on them--despite the fact that the entire premise of the show was a love triangle. it’s not a love triangle if both sides don’t eventually get explored, and the crew had been pretty explicit about the fact that delena was going to happen at some point--but when it did, a huge chunk of the fandom absolutely threw a fit.

and a lot of these elena haters were alleged stelena stans, and i say alleged because they hated her so much for not wanting stefan’s dick anymore that it was clear they were really stefan stans and only wanted stelena to be endgame because they wanted stefan to ‘win’ at the end of the day, because ‘he’s the good brother’ so he deserved elena more.

it was all very gross and very misogynistic and very sex shaming (apparently delena was a ‘shallow’ and ‘superficial’ relationship because they had sex after two years of unrequited feelings slowly becoming requited and then pining for ages on both sides, and because they had a lot of on screen chemistry that the show capitalized on for years so of course they did a lot of making out and shit but it’s not like stelena didn’t have its fair share of making out and sex scenes, stefan was just too much of a coward to let elena top i’d apologize for that joke but i’m really not sorry because it’s true), and when i say it was egged on by the crew, that’s because they refused to let the love triangle die back in season 4 when it should have.

they insisted on stringing stelena fans along, dropping little bread crumbs to keep them invested, like dreams of a future where they were married and revealing that stefan was also a doppelganger and he and elena were descended from a pair of star-crossed lovers (a plot that ultimately went nowhere, to no one’s great surprise), and then fucking like. julie plec turned around and threw nina under the bus after she chose not to extend her contract and pretended that stelena might have happened again if she hadn’t left the show, which....i mean frankly i wouldn’t put it past her, but it would have been shitty writing. then again, she thought having a vampire pregnancy where a uterus was magically transplanted from a witch into a vampire that could somehow......carry the babies to term.... made sense and was a good way to accomodate candice’s RL pregnancy rather than like literally ANYTHING else, soooooo. but anyway julie saying that around like, end of s6 sparked off a new wave of nina hate and elena hate and ship wars bc they SEers took it as ‘confirmation’ that stelena was REALLY meant to be endgame and it was all just a hot fucking mess

another thing is that, while tvd was in its prime before the anti/purity culture shit started picking up any real steam, there was still this pervasive attitude throughout the fandom that if you liked Damon, you were A Bad Person. liking damon was apparently grounds for insults and harassment, and apparently he was The Worst Person on the Show even though literally nothing he does on screen is any worse than shit we know stefan has done (and frankly every other vampire too, but i mention stefan specifically because he was always held up--in the show but especially in the fandom--as the Good Brother while damon was the Bad One, and if you liked damon more then that had to mean your morals were dodgy and you clearly couldn’t appreciate what a heroic and saintly figure dear stefan was and....oops, i’m sorry, my salt keeps leaking -cough-).

meanwhile klaus quickly became a fandom darling despite not even really having much of a redemption arc (on tvd anyway, he just became more ‘affably evil’ as the show went on and more inclined to work with the main characters rather than try to kill them; i have no idea what went on over on his show, though), and like i can 100% appreciate liking villains and not caring that they do dodgy villainous shit, even just liking them bc they’re hot and wanting them to kiss a main character bc they have insanely good chemistry (yes i ship klaroline, no i won’t apologize for it, they could have been Really Great), it’s just really the double standard that gets me.

and all of this, incidentally, required ignoring some truly gross shit stefan was responsible for wrt his relationship with elena, that frankly it has always bothered me never really got addressed in the show. i get why elena herself would never be able to actually call him on it, but the fact is that he stalked her for months after he first saw her and thought she was katherine (meanwhile it only took damon .5 seconds to realize she was someone else entirely, but that’s another topic entirely), and then he deliberately inserted himself into her life because, in his words, ‘i have to know her’. he never gave a thought to how his presence in her life might affect her (or rather, he did, and tormented himself about it in his internal monologue, but never let this actually dissuade him from disrupting her life), and elena would wind up blaming herself for every tragedy that befell her friends and loved ones as a result of getting mixed up in vampire bullshit even though none of it was her fault--she literally blamed herself for existing but most of the fandom didn’t give a fuck about that lmfao--and stefan did shit like find out that she was adopted and then withhold this information from her until she got pissed about another secret he was keeping (her resemblence to katherine) and drop it on her to try and distract her from her very reasonable anger, and like... i should stop before this becomes a whole rant about how much i hate stefan fucking salvatore, but the point is, he did a lot of really sketchy shit he never answered for and elena never really took him to task for, and the fandom just kept eating up his insistence that he was the Good Brother and therefore he deserved to have elena, and if she didn’t want him anymore it was because she was a heinous bitch who didn’t deserve him.

uh.....i think i got off track there. and there’s probably a lot of shit i missed, like i think i was incandescent with rage for most of seasons 5 and 6 so i missed a lot of the interfandom shit cause i was too busy being increasingly pissed off at the show itself, but if nothing else this should give you an idea of how much of a goddamn cesspit the fandom was while the show as in its prime. there’s a reason both the show and the fandom have such a lousy reputation lmfao.

[bellatrixobsessed1]

Goretober Day 5; Crying Raspberry

Prompt: Candy/Fruit Gore Fandom: Avatar The Last Airbender  Summary: An assassin attempts to kill a newly crowned Azula with an unidentified poison from the Foggy Swamp.

It has been several hours since they fixed the crown securely into her top knot.The transfer of power had been peaceful. She admits, with a degree of reluctance, to having shed a tear. Truth be told she hadn’t expected to reacquire her princess title, muchless that of the Fire Lord. But after dragging her to various council meetings, Zuzu has decided that it would suit her.

“You just…” He begins, his voice nearly lost under the lively bustle of the crowning ceremony afterparty. “You’re intimidating and well-spoken.”

Eloquence is her specialty, she agrees. She doesn’t say it, leaving him room to continue.

“I tried the throne for a few days and…”

“You didn’t like it?” She fills in.

He nods. “I just think that I’d be better suited for something else. I liked traveling the world with Aang. I’m good at that and you’re good at this.”

“You aren’t worried?” She asks as a waiter sits a few glasses before them. He wears an intricate, probably hand-carved wooden mask. All of the servers are masked but he is the only one of them who has chosen to wear wood over metal or plastic.

“About what?” He asks.

“That I’m going to snap. Lose it and set fire to the Fire Nation. That I’m going to ruthlessly…”

She feels a hand on the small of her back. “You aren’t father. I think that you want what is best for your people. I trust you.”

A kind warmth fills her belly and she tries to keep a smile from spreading across her face. She can’t let him know that she has gone soft, not even slightly so. “Good, you should. If you don’t trust me then you’ll fear me.”

He rolls his eyes. “You don’t need fear. Believe it or not people still respect you.”

This time she can’t keep the smile from emerging. Can’t keep the relief from bleeding through. “I hope that you’re right. I…” she trails off. “I feel as though I won’t be taken seriously. I don’t think that there has been a Fire Lord so young.” So young, so feminine, so unhinged. But she isn’t unhinged, she reminds herself… “They’re going to approve. As long as you treat them well, they’ll get used to you.” He gives her a warm smile. “They got used to me.”

.oOo.

And, just as he had said, they warmed up to her. Most of them. Protests didn’t fall on def ears, but she wasn’t giving up her crown. She tries to appease them and she has some success. But there are still plenty of people who’d like to see her dethroned and dishonored.

She knows it and accepts it. And yet it still comes as a surprise when someone finally has the courage to act upon their hatred.

The third celebration commemorating the end of the war comes to a close and Azula doesn’t feel right. She feels queasy and heavy, despite having only a drink and a half and a small snack. There is a lingering sweetness on her tongue. The sugary taste of strawberry and peach. Maybe a mocking hint of cherry, a faint callback to her last tragically ending reign. And she knows, she just knows that it was the man in the wooden mask who has done this to her. He must have slipped something into her drink. Or he might have swapped their cups. The hows don’t matter. What matters is that the poison is churning in her stomach and possibly her veins.

Her tread is awkward and off balance; a combination of a dizzy head and an aching stomach. She splays herself upon the bed and promptly folds in on herself. But this only makes her feel worse. With a shudder she unbunches herself and rolls onto her back. She doesn’t fancy sleeping on her back, but her stomach is too delicate for her to sleep in any other position. She holds her hands firmly against her tummy as though that will coax the feeling to pass. Even to the touch it feels taut and distended. This in itself, leaves her feeling doubly ill. Something is definitely wrong. Undeniably wrong. She tries to run through a list of poisons that might have this effect. But she can come up with none. None that her own.

Azula’s stomach rumbles and  turns and she clutches it harder still. She manages to heave herself upright, even that leaves her with a mild motion sickness. She carries on regardless of it, she was a fool to try to sleep it off. She should be in the infirmary. She finds herself unable to manage something as simple as making it  to the door.

She doubles over, clutching her middle, feeling strangely bloated and nauseated. Somehow more than before. She takes one more step--a mistake--the liquid shifts unpleasantly in her belly. The sickly feeling intensifies until it is overwhelming. She hunches further over, it is more of a reflex than a conscious action. Still she tries to hold it back; the feeling of bile rising is probably one of the worst feelings, it is the sensation she dreads the most when afflicted with illness.

Vomiting leaves her feeling dirty. Unsanitary and with a burning sensation in the back of her throat. And it is never just once, she usually ends up heaving twice, or thrice if her stomach flu is bad enough. It steals her breath, comfort, and her dignity in one fell swoop.

She finds that she has made another mistake in repressing it. The queasy sensation doesn’t abate, it is however accompanied by a pressure now. An intense one that builds behind her eyes and in her nose. A congestion that leaves her head with a dull ache. And that dull ache swells into a rattling sensation, it feels like she is drowning from within.

Her eyes water. Though water isn’t exactly what it feels like, the consistency of her tears feels thicker, stickier. With nerves and anxiety her stomach seems to turn itself over completely. Her grip on it tightens once more, her nails digging into her sides. She opens her mouth too late. The pressure releases itself.

Fluid spurts from her nose, smelling strongly of peach and strawberry. It drenches the backs of her hands and pants, as sticky as the liquid leaking from her eyes. Her eyes burn so terribly. The pressure that builds behind her eyes has her fearing that they might burst out. If for no other reason than to expel the liquid and prevent such a thing, she cries. And when she does the fluid comes forth like raspberry jam. She thinks that it is raspberry jam, seeds and juice stain her cheeks and spatter on her collar as it spills from her eyes. She tries to wipe it away but only succeeds in smearing it and adding peach and strawberry to the mix.

Her face is tingling, it still feels so full and swollen. She isn’t sure if it really is and she is too afraid to find out, not that she’d be able to make it to a mirror if she tried. She just knows that her head feels as though it will explode.

There is a rumbling in her ears, like the sound of an ocean or a waterfall. She swears that the dreaded explosion is coming. Instead, her waterfall analogy becomes literal. Twin fountains of cherry pour from her ears, their small pits are grating on her ears as the juice pushes it forward.

Her face is leaking from almost every crevice and her stomach is still lurching over and over again. Azula opens her mouth to scream. She begins to, but finds herself choked off by another gooey juice. It is liquid at first, a combination of pineapple and kiwi with a dash of lime. Touched by hysteria and panic, she finds herself inwardly laughing about how delicious it tastes. Perhaps if she lives she’ll fix herself a glass of pineapple, kiwi, and lime juice.

The liquid thickens into something more like molasses and seems to catch in her throat. She finds herself gagging, pushing against her stomach in an attempt to push it forward and out of her throat.

Her eyes are still expelling raspberry jam, her ears are still bleeding cherry, and her nose is still gushing peach and strawberry. It is dripping down her chin along with pineapple juice and saliva. She is on her hands and knees but the ground is slick with juices and when she moves her hand, it slips. She is fully laying on the floor in the sticky mess that she is still adding to.

Azula shudders, the raspberry jam feels like warm blood clots. She continues to choke and gag and finally the molasses in her throat comes up. It is a ball of pomegranate seed and honey. There may even be a few watermelon seeds in the mix. It certainly feels as though she has swallowed a watermelon and that it has taken root and grew to fruition in her tummy. Regardless, she can breath again. She can breath and the pressure is growing less, though the flow of juices is still as heavy as a punch fountain.

She lies on her side and lets the fluid run. She isn’t sure how long it takes but the spill is beginning to slow into a trickle. She finds the strength to get back to her hands and knees and empty her stomach. She heaves until she can no longer feel the juices sloshing within it and until at least some of the heaviness abates. Until her arms go shaky and weak.

Azula flops back down onto her side, breathing deeply and savoring every unobstructed breath. She remains on the floor in a pool of sickly sweet smelling vomit and bile. The last of it seeps between her parted lips. For a moment she thinks that she is going to die. But her breathing stabilizes and her tears are pouring out salty and watery again.

She lies there panting lightly as she tries to shake off the last of the nausea. The taste of pineapple and kiwi still lingers on her tongue and the scents of peach and strawberry refuse to leave her nose.

.oOo.

Azula’s stomach is still tight and delicate when she wakes up a few hours later. Zuko is rubbing her hand, he pauses briefly when he notices that she is awake. She finds herself flushing; her hair is probably disheveled and her clothes and skin are probably a sticky, stained mess. She feels gross. “I need a bath, Zuzu.”

He rolls his eyes. “Your bath can wait. The doctors already cleaned you up pretty good.”

She touches her cheeks and her chin; there are still sticky spots but, mostly, Zuko is right. She realizes that she is in an infirmary gown. “What the hell was that?” She asks weakly.

Zuko shrugs. “They found it in Mai’s cup too.” He gestures to the bed next to her own. “It was meant for me, but Mai stole my glass…”

“I’ve never heard of a poison like that.” She replies quietly. She still feels as though there is a sticky gunk in the back of her throat.

“They think that it comes from the Foggy Swamp by the spirit banyan.”

Whatever it is, wherever it comes from, Azula knows that she doesn’t want to have so much as a sip of it ever again. Agni knows what would have happened if she actually finished her second glass. She clasps her hands over her belly, the swelling is lessening but a dull ache lingers.

“Here.” He offers her a glass of water.

She shakes her head, “not yet.”

He puts it aside. “You should try to get some rest.”

She nods in agreement. With any luck, she will wake feeling normal and refreshed.

[threewaysdivided]

Idea for an Age-swap AU

We’ve recently seen some age-swap and role-swap AUs floating around the DP fandom.  The most common of these are the direct reversals, where Vlad is the teenage protagonist and Danny is the adult villain.   Now, I’m not the hugest fan of the straight-swap versions because it’s not particularly interesting or in-keeping with the canon characters.  If Danny becomes the amoral villain and Vlad the plucky protagonist then you basically just have the original Danny Phantom again, except with the characters wearing each other’s skins.

However, a version of the age-swap that keeps the characters closer to their canon personalities has great comedy potential.

Imagine this:

Young!Vlad is a disaffected but highly intelligent freshman whose ‘genius’ is seemingly unrecognised by everyone in town.  Pretty much everything sucks for him - he’s bored at home because his parents are always away on work, he’s bored in class because he finds the material too easy, the school’s head jock and posse make a policy of ruining his day, the student body president is ‘inept’, and - despite Vlad’s intelligence and apparent ability to analyse people - he never seems to make it into the spheres of the influential or popular classmates.    He’s aloof and vaguely disdainful towards everyone around him, except for his two best friends; the naive and eccentric but occasionally brilliant Young!Jack, and the beautiful and sharply intelligent Young!Maddie.  He hangs out with them partly due to their mutual interest in the paranormal, but also because Maddie is the only person in town he sees as an equal and he really wants to date her (too bad she’s always making eyes at Jack).   [If you’re looking for a reference he’s basically a cross between Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole and Velma Dinkley from Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated]

Like in the original series, the three of them attempt to build a proto-ghost portal as a step in their research.  This one goes even worse (after all, it was built by teenagers) and Jack rushing to activate it gets Vlad blasted with way more ectoplasm than in canon.  Just like the original it lands him in hospital for a bit - but in this case only a few months.  On coming back to school he is very resentful (mostly towards Jack though he’s a bit miffed that Maddie didn’t come to visit his room while he was awake) both for the accident and the Danny-like power-problems he’s experiencing.  Although in Vlad’s case he hides them from his friends and outwardly acts like everything’s been forgiven.

As he gains controls of his powers, Vlad decides to put them to use ‘correcting’ some of the ‘wrongs’ in his life; serving disproportionate comeuppance to the jocks, subtly embarrassing Jack in from of Maddie, scheming and manipulating his way through the school’s systems, and generally messing with people to alleviate his boredom.

It basically turns into a Deathnote-like moral situation, in which Vlad is a nominal ‘hero’ on the best days and an entitled, arrogant person at worst.  He may be the protagonist but he’s sure not the ‘good guy’ of this story. (He still makes himself a vampire-style suit and goes by Plasmius in ghost-mode because despite being highly intelligent he’s also a dumb 14-year-old who unironically thinks it looks cool.)

How does Danny get involved?

While Vlad is still in the nominally-heroic part of the story (dishing out retributions to people who actually had it coming, chasing away some minor ghosts that were attracted by the portal explosion, manipulating outcomes that fix genuine problems etc.) he starts to notice an older person hanging around and following him. At first Vlad’s concerned - has someone caught on?  Is it an enemy ghost?  A rival trying to take out the competition? - until Phantom introduces himself.  Danny’s a lot of things but subtle is not one of them.

Older!Danny is in his early 30s.  His parents were some of the first modern ecto-scientists and successfully built a working portal (the source of the accident that gave him his powers) but because the hauntings stayed localised near the portal (never spreading beyond his own hometown) their ecto-research didn’t reach mainstream science beyond a few ‘professional ghost-hunters’, paranormal aficionados and an obscure branch of government that mostly just makes messes bigger in their attempts to ‘contain and study all unauthorised ectoplasmic entities’.

Despite his unease, Danny is honestly happy to meet another half-ghost. He might have reservations about actual teaching (“I’ve got an Engineering degree, not a Dip. Ed.”) but he genuinely wants to help this new kid through what he remembers being a tough period of power-adjustment and guide him to use his abilities productively.   Unfortunately, Vlad is having none of it - who is this condescending fool to tell him what to do?  In his eyes Phantom is either trying to recruit him so that he can use his power (after all, that’s what Vlad would do) or he’s an idiot for wasting such potential. Actually, he must be an idiot either way because who else would try to manipulate someone of Vlad’s intelligence?

Eventually this devolves into a cat-and-mouse game in which Young!Vlad uses his brains and abilities in attempts to manipulate his way into Maddie’s affections, positions of influence and possession of powerful items, with Phantom having to step in and ‘defeat Plasmius’ before someone gets hurt.  Unlike in canon, where Vlad mostly toys with Danny to demonstrate his superiority, Young!Vlad learning techniques from their fights is intentional on Older!Phantom’s part. Phantom really wants to give this kid a chance to turn things around, and figures that letting Plasmius experiment with his powers in a relatively safe space might help Vlad get under control and avoid the temptation to do something truly stupid.  Unfortunately, all this actually does is teach his accidental-arch-rival to be a more competent villain.

Shenanigans ensue:

Vlad deliberately creating dangerous situations so that he can impress Maddie by ‘dramatically rescuing’ her from the ‘evil Plasmius’.  What he forgets is that, under her pretty face, Maddie is a top-tier asskicker - at least a third of the time the love of his life hands his ecto-hide to him long before Phantom can intervene. He’d find it attractive if it wasn’t so humiliating.

Jack also proves disturbingly competent with his ‘anti-creep stick’.  It’s literally just a baseball bat with a cross-stitched handle and the club logo sprayed on the side but Vlad still makes a point of stealing and destroying them whenever Jack makes a new one.

Maddie concludes that Plasmius and Phantom are both evil and working together.  

Vlad: “Of course, but as the older and stronger, Phantom is clearly in charge.  If we get rid of him then surely Plasmius will leave.”

This results in Vlad doing a very careful dance whenever he and Danny are in ghost mode while Maddie and/or Jack can see them.

In attempt to ‘eliminate the competition’ Vlad considers alerting the Guys in White to Phantom’s status.

Danny: “Look, kid. Vlad. If you go to them with that intel they’re going to wonder how you got it.  I might survive - my company holds the patents for a lot of their tech - but you’re a high-schooler.  You really want to risk outing both of us?”

This is one of the few things they eventually agree on: Under no circumstances is anyone to intentionally involve the GIW.

Vlad tries to recruit other ghosts in attempt to keep Phantom distracted.

This mostly consists of him failing to intimidate Skulker with his scrawny teen stature, then flattering him into it because “surely as the first and strongest of his kind Phantom would be a much worthier prize for such a skilled hunter.”

He has more luck with the resentful Yiddish vultures, although they can’t do much beyond being a nuisance.

The Box Ghost offers his services.  Repeatedly.

Vlad travels to Amity Park in attempt to steal ecto-tech from Fentonworks.  On arrival he is horrified to see just how haunted the town is due to its permanently active portal.  He beats a fast retreat after getting cornered and resolves to come back with better plans.

Vlad returns to Amity Park in attempt to recruit more minions from the thronging masses. This is somewhat successful, but a few rogue ghosts follow him home - forcing him to try to contain the situation while hiding it from Maddie and Jack.

Youngblood starts messing with Vlad’s schoolmates (interfering with some of his social schemes in the process).  As an adult Danny is incapable of seeing him, and Maddie and Vlad’s tendency to act older than their age means that Jack is the only one with a real handle on the situation.  Eventually (to his intense horror) Vlad has to do things Jack’s way to solve the problem

Jack: “You know what V-Man, I’m glad to have you back.  You’ve been so serious these last few months, I was worried you’d forgotten how to have fun!”

Vlad: *audible teeth-grinding*

Vlad refuses to swear because he thinks it’s a sign of inferior intellect and therefore beneath him.  Danny doesn’t swear because he’s desperately trying not to teach this kid any more bad habits.

Vlad makes a deal with Technus to steal some software for use in a financial scheme. Too bad that they make this arrangement in the same week that local Information Technology rising-star Tucker Foley is invited to speak at the school’s career day.

Vlad’s plans failing because his ‘superior intellect’ leads him to over-engineer excessively complex schemes.

Danny: “You know you could just have done this, right?”

Plasmius later tries Phantom’s suggestion and Danny is kicking himself because darn it I was trying to get him to knock it off, not give him pointers.

Vlad attempting subtler social schemes (e.g. overshadowing staff and student council members to make changes).  These sometimes work but other times Jack messes up the plan with his overenthusiastic support for his ‘best friend’.

Danny eventually recruiting one of Vlad’s classmates Red-Huntress-style because look, I’m running my parents company, volunteering at the observatory and trying to keep the ghosts under control.  I can’t be constantly flying to another town to make sure Plasmius isn’t bringing on the ecto-apocalypse.

Out of respect for Vlad’s privacy Danny doesn’t reveal the secret identity thing. Instead he asks them to keep Plasmius under control and also look out for Vlad Masters because the ghost might be interested in him.

What Danny didn’t notice was that this kid really doesn’t like Masters and has a pretty big grudge against Plasmius after being on the receiving end of one of his schemes.  What should have been a simple recon job instead ends up with them aggressively pursuing an intense rivalry with both of Vlad’s halves.  They also get overzealous in their ecto-hunter task and start going after Phantom as well.  So now Danny has two problems.

Jazz Fenton (a qualified and practicing psychologist in this AU) takes a job as the school’s councillor.

While there she works to convince Vlad of the benefits of altruism, tries to wheedle him into confessing his connection to Plasmius (Danny told her everything) and attempts to foil his social manipulations.  The first two aren’t met with much success but she does get in the way of the third a few times.

For his part Vlad tries different schemes to get her fired or make her leave so that he can continue plotting without interference.

Vlad sneaks into the Ghost Zone in attempt to steal a powerful item (Ring of Rage, Pandora’s box, the Fright Knights Soul Shredder etc.).  This goes about as badly you’d expect.  Unlike in canon, where Vlad bails and makes Danny deal with it, Older!Phantom drags Young!Plasmius back by the ear because you made this mess so now you’re going to help clean it up.

Phantom: “So, did we learn anything today?”

Plasmius: “I should do more research before handling powerful objects.”

Phantom: *aggrieved sigh* “You know kid, I honestly thought you were smarter than this.”

Whether Young!Vlad eventually learns his lesson or keeps spiralling until he becomes a canon!Vlad level criminal chessmaster is something that could go either way.  

What I’m getting at is:  Can someone please do a version of the age-swap AU where Vlad Masters/Plasmius is an intellectually snobbish, overly theatrical, entitled adolescent ‘mastermind’ (who isn’t quite as bright as he thinks) and Danny Fenton/Phantom is the well-intentioned and experienced adult hero (but poor teacher) who really wants to give this kid a second chance but is getting more and more done with all the villainy nonsense.