#adprewrite

[constellaj]

How would u rewrite Sidney Pointdexter? What ep would u come up with for him?

thanks partner in crime @crystalfloe for helping me develop my ideas. as always.

anyway sidney is a redditor and you should hate his guts. here is my samlina episode

danny + sam + tucker are at the mall and theyre making fun of the overly feminine advertisements. tucker sees a line of black lipstick and is like "hey sam this is kind of your color" but before sam says anything danny jsut goes "PSH shes not a GIRLY GIRL, tuck, she doesnt want any lipstick" and sam goes "hahahaha. yeaahhhh". paulina + co are at the same store and the group turns to making fun of paulina for buying out all the makeup in the entire mall. paulina makes fun of sam for being unable to dress herself and being unpopular

tucker + danny head out of town to an academathlete conference -- tucker to compete, danny because jazz is going to the same one and he wants to keep an eye on her (seperate episode premise) -- leaving sam as the "sole protector" of amity park. insert "do you think you can handle it?" [looks over at paulina twirling in a pink dress] "please. i'm more focused than SOME girls."

sam spends most of the week performing mean spirited pranks against paulina. eventually lancer receives an anonymous tip (read: from paulina) about what sams done to her own locker (black spray paint, spiders, etc) and she gets relocated to a new locker while the school fixes the damages.

sidney is haunting the locker, and sam ends up releasing him - but instead of trying to take over her body or anything, the two end up bonding over how much they hate popular kids. sidney apparently used to want to woo this popular girl in his class (her name is barbara), but she essentially spat in his face and mocked him for being such an unpopular loser.

so sam + sid team up to absolutely ruin the popular kids lives and this turns into a violent and destructive prank war. it ends up that the severe property damages land both paulina and sam in saturday detention, where they will be forced to clean the school top to bottom, all on their own.

well, school's haunted. the power goes out and sam + paulina have to work together to figure out how to turn it back on, while the school continues to fall apart around them.

turns out paulina can do backflips and took an electrical engineering summer camp and is actually pretty competent, which blows sam for a loop bc she thought that pink dress girly girls were all pathetic, but THIS pink dress girly girl can also do hypermasculine things, so her respect for paulina grows (but in the wrong direction)

sam recognizes some of the "hauntings" as sidneys pranks and they go to confront him, where hes like. hahahahhahaha you all fell for my elaborate scheme or something. and then hes like sam look i can trap all the popular kids in the mirror dimension and we can be free of those assholes forever but sams had a character grwoth by now and is like "dude thats murder." so they both get trapped. and sidney smashes the mirror.

they think theyre stuck there forever so while theyre trapped there they have a heartfelt talk where sam is like. paulina... i thought u were stupid and girly.... but actually youre very smart and kick ass. youre Not Like Other Girls. and paulina is just like yo what the fuck? is that your criteria for me being a good person is how much i act like you?

anyway barb is also in there. paulina is the only one who can get her to talk bc barb is like. this sam character is rly mean and misogynistic i will only respect a fellow queen. we learn that sidney was never actually a pathetic bullied nerd but in fact he was an asshole who thought he was better than everyone else because he was smart and read books and everyone else was an idiot who liked fashion.

ah, parallels

also from barb we learn that you should be able to escape from any other mirror and sam + paulina remember that paulina has a compact makeup mirror in her locker so it ends up literally being paulinas girliness that saves the day. then they kick sidneys incel ass and throw him in the garbage forever

when danny + tucker get back sam has had a bit of a makeover and yes shes wearing black lipstick bc she went on a shopping trip w paulina. the end

if you want lore; the reason sidney + a bunch of kids are trapped in a mirror dimension is bc amity park (and casper high) were being threatened by a ghost invasion, and sidney invented multidimensional travel in order to save everyone. hes very pissy that people dont regard him as a hero for trapping them in grayscale land. this also foreshadows a later episode where casper high does in fact get destroyed

[constellaj]

ok this is the part of the show where i reveal my very cool valerie and cujo concept

[constellaj]

let me direct the reboot let me direct the reboot let me direct the reboot let me di

[constellaj]

So whos the final threat in ur version of DP?

well conceptually it's pariah dark! although probably not in the way you're thinking

the idea is the crown of fire + ring of rage + one more item (scepter of wrath? chain of fear?), when all worn by the same person, "possess" them and turn them into pariah dark, like Kitty's ring, scarf and jacket in 13. Vlad + evil artifacts = Pariah Vlad, essentially; someone overtaken by spirit of whoever the "original" pariah is, while still being a unique individual.

next to this ofc is the fright knight, who in this version is actively seeking out someone to become the new pariah, potentially coercing vlad into seeking out and donning the artifacts. (i like the idea of vlad going thru almost a redemption arc only to get yanked back under). i suppose this makes fright knight the actual final threat?

some debate/thinking abt making it danny-as-pariah for the *real* threat; you have vlad-as-pariah and they defeat him, and danny's holding the artifacts, and you're like wahoo we did it! but then danny gets pissed off and puts everything on. pariah dark + danny = dark dan. lol. ultimate enemy moment; you get to have everyone except danny working together for the first time bc its a show about Danny; val + sam + tucker back to back and vlad + jack + maddie back to back bc they all care about him and they all want him safe

all up for debate tho. i havent thought on this one in a while, i just think reign storm was really building to something and its a pity we never saw it pan out

[constellaj]

messing around w redesigning undergrowth/plant sam

[constellaj]

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh remember that fright knight rewrite i never shut up about. heres a scene that COULD be in it but very logically should not be

[constellaj]

A bit late to the party but I was reading your answer to the "why Danny has darker skin transformed" and personally I hc that ectoplasm only glows when exposed to oxygen (ie out of his body) so it darken his blood and therefore makes his skin look like that since he's pale (so pretty see-through)

ohh wack

(not to poke holes but then why do ghosts glow? my guess was that its bc they have ectoplasm In them. also idk i never thought of the ghost zone as having oxygen in it but ecto still glows there? but thats canon ofc and your canon almost certainly ignores it. as it should!)

[constellaj]

dashs room has posters of other fictional boybands (love handel. love sentence. sev'ral timez). he is adept at bass guitar and likes musicals but is embarrassed by it. there is an episode where he saves the school by anonymously singing a one direction song over the PA system.

[constellaj]

16

Please talk more about your reboot!

16: If you could change anything in the show, what would you change?

okay so how i would re-do CANON is completely different from how i would talk abt a reboot so im gonna touch on a couple things in both contexts! the reason for the difference is canon rewrites imply i can go back in time and introduce dp fresh and new, before anyone knows what it is; but for a reboot, id be working with an audience that has a better understanding of the source material, so i dont need to spend as much time explaining, but i also need to keep everything recognizable

Valerie

REWRITE: i would def make it more danny's fault that her dad lost his job, like danny was intentionally being reckless and shattered some security stuff, and he has a whole mini lesson about learning to not just run in guns blazing. i would probably remove the dating stuff with her and danny (and tuckers crush) too, I think them wanting to be good friends is good enough for freshman year

REBOOT: the fandom already knows valerie exists, so i would actually skip the whole shades-of-gray introductory episode and have her be present as the huntress from day 1-- probably even before danny got his powers. cujo is also HER dog, and her backstory-- we'd find out in like, season 1, that a natural ghost portal (maybe one wulf opened) ripped open on her dog and killed him, and since then shes had a vendetta against ghosts cause of how reckless they are and their disregard for life-- of course, cujo isnt actually dead. cujo is a halfa. a puby halfa. anyway instead of a hoverboard she actually rides cujo around cause he can fly and its big and epic. valerie has BEEN amity parks ghost-eradicating superhero for at least a year (tho shes been in the shadows abt it) and her hatred towards danny actually just becomes really petty, like them flying next to each other chasing skulker just going "I got this. no I got this. no I got this" and they just get in each others' way and its a mutual grudge.

BOTH: i am NOT keeping in vlad giving her the suit to watch danny under any circumstances. it was only utilized half assedly in canon (when vlad couldve just had an invisible duplicate watching him instead) anyway, and I dont have any reason to keep it in a reboot either. instead i want her tech to be a combination of half-stolen and half-gerryrigged stuff and she slowly slowly learns how to build her own.

I also dont want anyone knowing her secret identity, except maybe her dad, and sam or tucker. i think it works better if danny isnt privy to this magic info

Freakshow

REWRITE: i would honestly just remove him. the episodes hes in arent particularly interesting, theyre just generic "we need a plot about x" filler and he's not compelling enough a character (at least in writing) to carry a better plot that another antagonist couldnt. i'm serious

REBOOT: unfortunately in a reboot he's gonna have to pop up somewhere or else ppl will be like "where IS HE" so I'm going to stick with running some kind of ghost circus, maybe a few occult things, but cut out a lot of the spooky magical knowledge and mcguffin stuff. maybe i could make him like, someone from vlad/jack/maddies college who always felt pushed around by them and so he has a vendetta? and theyd be the only reason he even learned abt ghosts in the first place. idk in either way I want to force him into being irredeemable but also include LYDIA (the tattoo girl ghost) way more-- I want to give her an arc that ends in her tossing freakshow aside and running off to be a ghost vigilante.

BOTH: dear god the infinity gauntlet is stupid that needs to GO AWAY. especially for the reboot cause it would exist in a post-mcu world and way too many people would complain about it

Vlad

REWRITE: amp him up to a far more sinister and villainous character. the crushing on maddie isnt enough, I want to show him on-screen performing experiments on ghosts and himself, dismissing everyone else cause he thinks hes smarter than them. i want him to be actively sabotaging the fentons at every turn. i would also clarify that he doesnt actually want danny as a son, but as a trophy-- a line where danny says something along the lines of "you don't want a son. you want a slave". i want to make him a character who wants to destroy the entire planet and put it in the ghost zone so he can be the true ghost king and i want to make this all evident from day one. if i'm writing a series villain you can bet i'm going to write a GOOD one. less petty drama here and more actual stakes.

REBOOT: it seems silly but sense with reboot we have the benefit of hindsight and recognizing that vlad wasn't a big series villain, theres no way i'd actually go back and write him to be such. for starters, of course, theres the fact that anything he does would really be an exaggerated part of the original, and it would bore an audience to see the same story again-- theres also the fact that it doesnt seem right to take a character who was treated as a joke half the time and suddenly make them big and important. no, instead for my reboot i want to lean into the petty gay uncle vibe. he had a crush on jack and now just casually insults him. he moves mansions every now and again by just haunting the family who lives in the one he wants, and taking over-- i mean, who is gonna believe that an actual ghost haunted you. he dislikes danny not because he has some concept of 'evil' and 'good' but bc danny is just too damn active. of course he actually does care about danny and his safety deep down, it's just on the surface they have very conflicting motivations-- not to mention that danny has been raised on legends from his parents of the villainous Wisconsin Ghost, who has to be stopped at all costs.

BOTH: i want jack and maddie to KNOW he's a half ghost and to actively be hunting him down for it, maybe bc they think hes possessed, or been a ghost tricking them this whole time, or the victim of a tragic lab accident who needs to be put to rest, etc. whatever the case it will give vlad actual tangible reason to despise them and genuinely suspect they dont have dannys best interests at heart. i think it would be neat if vlad was cynical and every time danny hit him with the "I'll expose us both. at least theyll still love ME" vlad could be like in the back of his head "oh god theyre going to kill this child"

Dani

REWRITE: cut her out. we don't need her character at all. maybe replace her with a more ominous shadow duplicate / clone that actually looks like danny himself and doesnt really have a name? you could probably combine her and dark dans characters for their arcs

REBOOT: instead of a clone from vlad, she's a guys in white creation using some of dannys dna after he was captured (and vlad broke him out bc he was like "ugh i guess i have to save this child")

BOTH: vlad actually cares abt her (duh), shes nonbinary (double duh), she gets the funny dissolve into goo powers

i had more i thought i was gonna write but this post is already very long and also im running out of coherency for this LUL

[constellaj]

You said that in your world, Dani is a GiW creation. Could you elaborate on that? And what is her purpose?

[digs up old art]

L-E is a White Walker experiment, a clone of corporeal ghosts to better understand their biology, and perhaps hunt them down. Although most samples of L-E were taken from the phantom of Amity Park, the phantom was broken out of the facility before final samples could be taken. Luckily, the specimen who broke phantom out was the heretofore-unnamed Wisconsin ghost, who announced its name as Plasmius. This ghost, strangely, is just as corporeal as the phantom, and samples from it were taken (once Plasmius was captured) to fill in the missing DNA gaps.

L-E appears to be an unstable human in a state of half-death, capable of ‘switching’ between a human form and a ghost form. How human DNA entered the equation is unknown. The abundance of ectoplasm in it, as well as what may be shoddy workmanship or simply misunderstanding the biology, gives it an unstable form. L-E has been fitted with stabilization cuffs to both prevent it from reverting to pure ecto and DNA, and to suppress its powers.

..

Ellie is this WEIRD CLONE we found in a GUYS IN WHITE lab on what was SUPPOSED to be a rescue mission for Vlad and she’s just here now, I guess? She was super close to breaking out but she’s got these freaking, power crushers on her wrists. It’s really weird how much she looks like me. And acts like me. ...wait she’s MY CLONE oh my god-

I don’t trust leaving her with Vlad-- no, yeah, Sam, no shit, I get it--  but he was like, weirdly normal about it. Well she doesn’t have a dad to kill, and she definitely doesn’t have a family right now-- and he was, uh, pretty enthusiastic about making new cuffs that could stabilize her without, yknow- YES I told her he was evil- no, she’s already wearing Packers merch. It’s too late. I know. F in chat.

--

Danielle is an incredibly boisterous and enthusiastic child. She has the intelligence of a ten-year-old, but none of the life knowledge. It’s lucky for her she is half ghost, lest she fall victim to some death trap.

Regrettably, my studies have confirmed that her stabilization requires constant background radiation from other ecto-sources. While cuffs can keep her alive, they are clunky, dangerous, and need to be recharged. It may be in her best interests to move to the Ghost Zone... permanently.

I despise my weakness in growing attached. I have no need for a child, be they son, daughter, or otherwise... and yet...

--

she’s nb (she/they) and after being vlad’s BEST gremlin daughter for a few days/weeks, moves to the ghost zone with a gang of other background ghosts/rejected clones, constantly of course being checked in on by vlad. one hand shoots green beams, the other shoots red, and you KNOW she has that morph-into-ecto-goo power that neither danny nor vlad ever had.

(also, just in case:)

[constellaj]

25 for danny ghost boy because i'm like 99% sure you got Thoughts And Opinions on that

25: How would you end XXX/Would you change the ending of XXX?

HAHAHAHAHHAHA GOODDD YEAH

ok so in angies perfect brain world hellscape: vlad adopts him and he and vlad work together bc the fentons have found out dannys secret and vlad/danny are sure hes going to di eand are trying to protect him and the fentons are chasing him cause Oh No our son has been possessed by a ghost or smthn this Entire Time but then theres a climactic battle with like the guys in white and danny helps them and they go Oh No Oh Geez but **before that** vlads secret comes out and he gets to yell at the fentons for making danny scared and also this entire time sam and tucker are trying to stop both the fentons and the giw and almost succeeding at every step to keep danny safe and danny only actually meets his parents face to face bc the giw want to lock down the entire fenton family and study them for ghost things. and danny almost saves them but he fails cause hes 14. and vlad almost deserts them but he RELUCTANTLY goes "ugh i dont want these bitches DEAD" so he actually saves the day. not in a self sacrificial way he continues to be a weird ghost uncle who hates jack/maddie both

and uhhhhhh [throws dart] also dash is his boyfriend by this final episode bc i wouldve put in more episodes before but if i cant do that then within this episode when the secret comes out dash has at least somewhat of a moment of "fenton. i think i am gay at you" near the end and they blush and look away and then hold hands.

objectively this is the weaker of my two options but this one is funnier and more lighthearted and also works off the assumption that i also get to rewrite the entire series so. theres that.

but.

if i have to be CANON COMPLIANT/i cant eradicate every other episode perfectly and i only have phantom planet to remake, id want to actually pick up where reign storm left off where vlad wants to become the ghost king, and he does, and hes doing this whole tyrannical rule thing after thinking he killed pariah dark, but heres the issue is if you remember how Kitty worked in her debut episode, wearing her clothes basically just summoned her back into the hosts body-- and wearing the crown of fire / ring of rage will do that with pariah, so vlad is being a bitch and an asshole but hes slowly getting taken over by pariah and becoming even more bloodthirsty (and keeps contacting/subjugating clockwork to make more ppl to fight on his side. see: dark dan also gets a payoff) and in the climax danny realizes Oh. This Isn't Vlad Anymore and has to actually restore him tohis Him. maybe with blood blossoms or something and literally eradicates the half-ghost out of vlad. vlad is still bitter and morally questionable but he can start being a good person now even without his powers. in this ending i dont want the secret to come out in just the last episode so dannys identity actually does remain a secret and the big ending is that the crown/ring are shattered and there will never be another ghost king

[constellaj]

I will pay you up front if you can rewrite the Urban Jungle episode. Please, I am begging you

I love undergrowth and his character but the episode was just, awful

*Alright* I am going to approach this as if it is part of the original series; I won’t be making it stupid gay, changing the overall tone or messaging of the story, making it any rating past pg-13, etc etc

with that in mind: urban jungle feels like the episode where danny and sam should have started dating (going with sam x danny to fit with the ‘original series but good’ angle). the line “i always thought you ruled” is fucking banger so what we’re going to do is extend that out into the actual theme of the ep: sam and self-esteem

sam has friction between tuck already (vegetarian vs meat eater) and in the beginning of the ep we also are gonna bump up the friction between her and danny, with how she thinks his powers should be used for good and how he just wants a break etc etc. sam gets really caught up in activism and her friends kind of snap at her for it due to burnout, so they break up what was going to be a group movie night and sam goes back to her house alone while danny and tuck go to danny’s place.

i don’t want undergrowth to magically appear, and I don’t even need it to be anything to do with urbanization necessarily; instead let’s take a popular fan theory of summoning and combine it with the premise of the episode ‘what you want,’ where tucker gets ghost powers. let’s say that sam, while digging into the occult, is like ‘if i had ghost powers/plant powers/could drive out oil industries i would in a heartbeat’ and learns about a ghost she can summon (undergrowth). danny and tuck are busy playing doomed while she does this. undergrowth takes one look at her and is like “ohoho, i can tell you love plants just so much.” he will be manipulating her and preying on her rage and feelings of inadequacy for the majority of this episode

cool, undergrowth is here now. let’s keep the enslaving-people-into-plant-zombies thing, but instead of instantaneous let’s make it a little scarier, with creeping roots sinking into the water source and slowly moving through amity, bit by bit. danny is unaffected cause he’s a ghost, and he and tucker manage to realize something’s up with the fentons before tucker gets zombified too. they’ll run to check if sam is okay, and on first glance they’ll think she’s been zombied, but of course she isn’t in the same way everyone else is. she’s a host body for undergrowth, and she’s actually actively repressing his possession (shes had a lot of practice, working alongside danny), and she’s super bitter about literally everything they’re doing and kicks them out.

it has to be shown earlier in the episode that sam feels like a lot of what she does is performative/etc and that danny and tuck are in the wrong with treating her sorta like garbage.

i’m cutting the ice powers cause that’s dumb. instead we’ll have danny and tuck working together to try and find a solution, and learning (probably through old fenton records or tucker being smart) that liquid nitrogen can get rid of undergrowth until summoned again, so they have to go all the way back to the lab at casper high and hook up some machine or other to clear the town. (retroactively, let’s make one of the earlier arguments between them and sam take place during a lab, and throw in a sidebar about liquid nitrogen; lancer saying that it should be here, dash and kwan fucking around with it, danny just touching it cause hes ghost, etc, something like that) 

as they progress undergrowth/sam starts putting spores out, meaning tucker’s also getting infected, all while theyre fighting back these different plant people all in the town. plant people still retain some of their original personality and stuff as a joke though. insert joke about plant-paulina zombie-lumbering towards Phantom, creakily going “how about a kisss” and danny just, morphs back into Fenton, and she goes “ew. gross” and leaves. that kind of thing. it’s a lot of strategy and we get to see other characters interacting in a pseudo-dreamworld with danny and tucker, and a lot should focus on self-esteem or making them feel bad to drive the point home

also what needs to be shown earlier is sam’s crush on danny.

during the progression danny has to be getting really worked up about this and eventually let slip ‘and can you believe i was going to ask her to [x event, movie, dance, etc]’ and tucker like, balks. tucker says ‘she has had a crush on you for like two years man’ and danny is like “WHAT” and now, encouragement to get things done faster. course then dramatically tucker gets turned into a plant. here we learn that the plant people are mouthpieces of sam’s self esteem issues right cause tucker just goes “well why would you like her. she’s a sweaty goth girl. she’s too loud. she’s so bossy” which are all things that sam would have said about herself/danny would have said about sam earlier when they were fighting

so danny rushes to the school and grabs the liquid nitrogen but uh-oh, of course undergrowth/sam is already there ready to stop him. something something she probably heard his conversation with tucker through another plant person, maybe valerie on a hoverboard. anyway she wants to possess danny and make him a plant person and we get the “together we can rule / I always thought you ruled” line that was the only good part in the og episode. this inspires sam to break out of the undergrowth mindset partially but, naturally, she was just a pawn for undergrowth who’s been preying on her self-esteem issues this whole time, and so now he’s like “ugh well if you’re not easy to manipulate what’s the point. i have to take over the entire planet with plants now bye”

epic fight scene with danny and sam working together to blast the man with liquid nitrogen while sam slowly gets possessed/plantified. something something something, they run out of nitrogen before sam gets totally planted, ghost breath is very cold (also needs to be referenced earlier). it’s probably tucker’s idea, but danny gets to do a magic kiss so she comes back.

it’s super awkward and she punts him at first. but then on for the rest of the series they actually ARE dating and there’s no more weird back and forth drama about things. danny’s ‘ice powers’ are now just being able to slightly control his body temperature (jokes later on about him faking sick by artificially making a low temp). sam is never once weirdly sexualized and instead she’s lashing out because she thinks her friends don’t care about her as much as they care about each other. undergrowth isn’t giving sam special treatment, she just happened to be the easiest pawn to reach

[constellaj]

I feel like dash is the obvious candidate for the headcanons meme bc that's your whole strick so how about my son tucker <3

:oo !! fair warning almost all of these are ‘fuck canon’ bc i hate that canon tucker is just a creep <3

REALISTIC - he’s actually very smart and gets the highest grades out of the trio! he feels pressured to adhere to authority/expectations (he and sam are always in a tug-of-war over what they think danny should do) and he expresses this by dedicating himself to his schoolwork. he refuses to skip class and is in advanced math classes specifically (he likes 2 program!!)

FUNNY - h hes a furry........................ see @ nastyburger

HEARTBREAKING - hes terrified of the supernatural and of ghosts especially because its stuff that defies science and he HATES it (although of course he DOES roll up his sleeves and tries his absolute hardest to understand it). this means a) hes never confident enough to help danny/sam fight ghosts and theres multiple times when they get hurt and hes like ‘i shouldve done something’ and b) as time goes on he finds himself sympathizing with the fentons more and more. ghosts are fucking SCARY and WEIRD and if his own best friend wasnt one hed be on their side. hes bandaging danny after a fight one day and finds himself thinking ‘i wonder if his circulatory system matches ours’ and has to physically stop himself from grabbing a scalpel. he doesnt want to hurt danny and he doesnt want to be like his parents and he HATES that he finds himself wondering what its like dissecting a ghost but hes terrified to say it out loud in case it makes it come true

FUCK CANON - he’s gay/ace!!!!!! this man does not have ANY interest in dating and he respects women SO FUCKING MUCH. my ember episode rewrite has tucker and dash being the only two people who ember cant hypnotize because theyre gay. 

[constellaj]

submission: Will other ghosts like Ember, Walker, Skulker, THE BOX GHOST!!!, etc. Have any character development in your reboot?

--

generally speaking i'm saving the BIGGEST chunks of character development for the human characters, because they're more recurring than the rogues gallery and can have multiple-episode arcs without stealing the spotlight; plus, being recurring, theyre in much bigger need of said character development

that said! walker + bullet will have "development" insofar as a series of flashbacks explains why they are the way they are; skulker + technus, while maybe not having a deliberate onscreen development, will have situations and dynamics with one another change over episodes; and a good portion of ghosts (youngblood and dora come to mind) have episodes centered around developing themselves. DEFINITELY not all of them, though. I can probably count on one hand the ghosts whose development I'd consider substantial.

[constellaj]

How would you rewrite Control Freaks?

control freaks is... fine? it feels a little cheesy and the part i hate the most is when danny is like “r e v e a l your true self at CIRCUS GOTHICA” and as an audience member youre like “OH SHIT HES GONNA GO GHOST” but then he just. doesnt.

id give tucker a more prominent role (maybe as the “guys are you sure we should go to this circus” guy, definitely as the one who does the research into the Evil Orb while sam does the ass-kicking part). tucker is aware that something’s up w danny (who almost DOES out himself like a hundred times, but only gets stopped last minute by tuck), but sam is just excited to share her goth mode w danny the whole time. i mean until he like, stops going to school altogether and when texted just texts back “at circus gothica >:)” and tuckers like “i fucking told you something was weird” and sam’s like “shut up”

i dont like danny actively like... stealing jewelry? or whatever? but i think if the circus ghosts show up and danny just sort of blanks while sam and tucker have to deal with them that’s a nice call. its minor also but i think there shouldnt be a “reveal” of “omg the reaper is danny” it should just be fairly obvious from the outset. 

i also would give those circus ghosts, particularly Lydia, like, actual characters. maybe freakshow deliberately kicks her out when he recruits Danny (something something this orb can only possess so many minds at a time) and sam and tucker have to work with her to take freakshow down entirely. the train fight scene is fine as is but i’d cut the danny x sam bits and focus more on the other ghosts beating the shit out of freakshow

the one gag i do want to keep is lancer being stuck in the janitors closet. that shit is so stupid. i love it

[constellaj]

How about A for Reality Trip for the episode rewrite thing?

my biggest issue with reality trip is that its just a series of travelling around to non connected locations to get the mcguffins, and while danny’s secret being public matters somewhat, it doesn’t really impact the fact that they’re on the move too much. I also don’t like the ‘maddie and jack accept him perfectly and then he wipes everyones minds anyway’ cause that doesnt do anything. i DO like the “our summer vacation plans got ruined thanks to a ghost” angle so i want the themes of the episode to focus on danny’s frustration that nothing ever goes right and how he doesn’t even know what he wants

so i think in my rewrite:

-danny’s secret is out almost immediately, and it’s because the GIW shot him w a destabilizer and he publicly morphed (he got away thanks to shenanigans similar to the onstage debacle in canon) how this is thematic: he thought he didn’t want the secret out at all but, weirdly, a lot of the popular kids are fine with it. he’s still afraid of what his parents will think but he’s also frustrated that he had unfounded fears

-however, when danny (terrified) goes to his parents: theyre gone. freakshow has taken jack/maddie/jazz/etc and frozen them in some magic bubble bullshit or mind control or whatever so they don’t actually know. freakshow is sending danny on a fetch quest for the gems thematic relevance: he just hyped himself up for this conversation and they got yanked away

using these two, i think we can keep a similar opening/setup for the ep, ie freakshow in GIW containment until he breaks out, for setup-payoff

regrettably this still keeps the fetchquest aspect that i think makes reality trip broken in the first place, but since the first freakshow ep was about danny being evil I think it could be neat if we had some of that carried over into this. the ‘reality stones’ (since we live in a post mcu world now, we regrettably would have to change some of this, but i digress) respond highly to ecto activity or whatever, basically meaning that with every new one they get danny becomes a little more powerful. since everything is going wrong for him (see: the theme) and he doesn’t know what he wants, he starts to get a liiitttle power-hungry. A little messed up in the head.

ideally then there should be a way to work Vlad into this plot too. i’m a sucker for dadvlad tbh so let’s say that... when the Fentons first get kidnapped danny begrudgingly goes to vlad like “my mom and dad are kidnapped” and vlad may be a dick but he doesnt want his college crushes (or crush singular if i’m forced to be canon compliant) locked up so he’s helping. at first hes like “oh my boy daniel let Me hold the Magic Rocks surely you trust me haha >:)” and then later hes like “....son these rocks are turning your brain into goo.” course nobody believes him cause its all a ploy all the time forever and always

since danny’s secret is out too that means theyre actively on the run and vlad can’t always be There because he’s relatively high profile in either form, just for different reasons, so we can make him more of a “i did research offscreen and i think this gem is in x location but I can’t go there because i’m a bitch” type character

i DO like the intelligent aladdin-like ploy of ghost envy in the original but ‘ghost envy’ as a theme has to be reworked at least slightly for this, so also with danny being evil let’s say he’s feeling the scales tip especially after his reveal to the point where he’s feeling like he’d be better off if he was living his life entirely as a ghost. 

of course when they get the things to freakshow danny has the gauntlet and hes all like “im evil now and i will kill you” and sam/tucker/maybe vlad are like “but danny. you have friends.” and we get a montage/list of allusions of those times that they actually helped him on this fetch quest, like idk sam at a rock concert using loud horrible teenage music to chase the GIW out etc. they got souvenirs from everywhere they went. so danny sees this and hes like “oh noooo my humanity” and drops and in that split second freakshow grabs the gauntlet

and dannys like “oh great even NOW nothing EVER goes right for me” but because i put vlad here and because i like parallels vlad is like “so what are you gonna wimp out” or whatever he says. they probably had a somewhat heartfelt speech earlier about “why are you helping” “I care about jack and maddie being alive” “bro they hate you” “not everything has to go right for me to give a shit, daniel” or w/e

so before danny can overreact with his rage he remembers to work with what he has and pulls the fast-thinking “oh i bet you wish you were a ghost huh” trick that allows him to put freakshow in the thermos. then danny goes to get the glove and hes like “wait... no... that turns my brain into goo” and vlad is like “how about i get it :)” and danny is like “no youre evil” and vlads like “damn u caught me”

so sam and tucker actually use the gauntlet bc theyre not ghosts so their brain wont get fucky wucky. obvs they make the decision to wipe peoples memories of dannys identity but theyre also like “danny... don’t you at least want to see how your parents would react before we do this” and danny just sorta. shakes his head and repeats some “not everything has to go right for me to give a shit” line from vlad or something and of course its cause hes still insecure but also he’s okay with not having PERFECT control over everything now which is what he struggled with all episode so. character growth!

i feel like me saying “vlad should be here :)” is a staple that might lead to his character losing some of that original allure but like... honestly. vlad should be here :)

before the memory wipe dash makes out with him but that was a given