#I'd adjusted the picture(s) in Photoshop to match how they look in-person. ...Except they probably look different on different screens.

[asjjohnson]

What if Danny's and Vlad's accidents were reversed?

In college, Jack, Maddie, and Vlad were going big. They wanted a portal large enough to enter.

After that went wrong, Jack and Maddie decided it might be best to start small instead.

I just wanted to see Danny and Vlad as though they'd had each other's accidents—Danny with slightly lighter hair and ecto-acne, Vlad with... uh... slightly darker hair. (And maybe also do a little pondering about how Danny copes with his accident being plain on his face. Especially with how he'd already been bullied in school. And, would he be quarantined in a hospital for a year or two until the acne goes into remission? That would be tough. I'd always figured Vlad's accident happened just before graduation, since he must've graduated with Jack and Maddie to be part of their class reunion. But Danny's only a little way into his first year of high school.)

However... their appearances switching would also mean a lot of other things switching. Like... exactly how their accidents took place.

Vlad would've of course been inside the turned-off portal as he said it wasn't going to work, and it would have come on with him inside it. Maybe Jack would've plugged it in right after Vlad said it wouldn't work (and, well, with Vlad being involved with the project, he might've turned the on button on ahead of time or else had edited the schematics to not have a button there at all).

Twenty years later, Danny would have been in the basement with his friends, and peeked through the porthole portal. He's just looking around, telling his friends about his parents' project, glancing at it to see if he sees anything interesting. Maybe he had absently set his hand on its base as he leaned over to look through it, and that base happened to have an on button on it. And maybe Danny's parents hadn't tried turning it on earlier; hadn't walked away in disappointment. Maybe they've finished it, but they're waiting for a more special time to do a ceremonial 'turning it on' thing. Like when the whole family is together later in the day, rather than turning it on while the kids are at school and unable to witness the occasion. But Danny comes home with his friends, doesn't see his parents around, and assumes the porthole portal is still unfinished. He doesn't know it's plugged in and ready to turn on. So he ends up with a blast of contaminated ectoplasm to the face.

I've switched the 'on' method for the two portals so that Vlad's accident would have still been Jack's fault, and Danny's accident would still be his own accident. It would make sense, though. Maybe the on button had been Maddie's or Jack's idea, while the remote control had been Vlad's idea.

...Here's the part that would change everything, however... (Sigh, so much for a simple switch)

If the 1981 accident happened the way Danny's original accident had... then Vlad would've stumbled out of the portal in ghost form. Right in front of Jack and Maddie. (Originally, Vlad's hair had lightened and his eyes glowed icy blue, but the ghostliness seemed concentrated only to his face. With the portal shocking his whole body, everything's going to invert and he'll be noticeably a ghost.)

No matter how they react, it's going to change what happens twenty years later. They would be checking to see if Danny had become a halfa. They would know halfas are possible. They would instantly jump to that possibility when Danny ends up with physical effects from the porthole portal. Whether they'd stayed close friends with Vlad and became his version of Sam and Tucker, or whether they'd turned against him for being half ghost.

...I mean, unless you think they would see ghost-form!Vlad leaving the portal and assume this horrible ghost just so happened to exit the portal right after Vlad had disappeared into it... Then the timeline might remain the same...

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In which case. If it's so hard to tell ghost-half and human-half are the same person... It would be pretty funny if, when Danny had accidentally pushed the on button in his original accident... some random ghost had coincidentally walked out of the portal, and Sam and Tucker just assumed it was Danny. Like... Tucker: (Gasp!) "The portal turned Danny into a ghost!" Ghost!Danny(?): "Hello, dearies. Would you like a piece of cherry pie?" Sam: (taking the ghost's arm) "Come on, Danny, you need to hide! Your parents could show up any minute!"