#because I Do have official designs. the ''who're your friends'' is basically it for Danny & the crows if you're curious

[daddyplasmius]

So, you wanna know about Flying Over the Pit of Death, aka Magpie AU

Hi, it's me, Plasma, also known as fuckinart & daddyplasmius, here to introduce a little project I've been working on since 2020 (but the AU of which has been haunting me since 2016) called Flying Over the Pit of Death, or as I call it, FOtPoD, the Magpie AU.

On top of the panic, the anxiety, the disbelief, Danny thinks idly to himself that he has always wanted to fly. After an accident with his parents’ Portal, Danny Fenton finds himself no longer human in more ways than one.

I would like to say first that Magpie AU is 100% a crack AU that I accidentally started taking way too seriously, because I find identity shenanigans & losing your sense of self & humanity to be the perfect recipe for angst. The original idea that inspired Magpie AU was something called Bird AU by @rest-in-peachs & you can find the original Bird AU post here, though I used almost nothing from the original & added a whole lot more, hence the renaming to Magpie AU.

The fic itself is called Flying Over the Pit of Death, which is based on the quote, "We go down into the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above our heads and wake thinking to find ourself in the presence of angels." by Virginia Woolf (which I now see is the incomplete version)

So, what actually is FOtPoD? Well, there's 3 main things you need to know about Magpie AU first:

Danny goes through the Portal Accident aloneーSam & Tuck aren't there. This is a No One Knows AU.

Danny's arm & leg are damaged from the Accident & he is held back by this in human form. He has chronic pain & limited mobility. And,

The whole reason for, well, everything, Danny's ghost form is a (ghostly) magpie. He can't shapeshift any more than he can in canon, he's just a magpie when he goes ghost now. There is no real reason for this.

So, again, what is FOtPoD? I explained the AU, but this doesn't really say anything about the fic itself, & the description is pretty vague.

To put it simply, FOtPoD is a pseudo-rewrite, with each part based on actual canon episodes. It focuses a lot on Danny's struggles with how humanーor inhumanーhe is post Accident, his degrading mental health, & his straining relationship with his friends & family while attempting to keep his hoard of secrets from them. Also, because I can't make Danny entirely alone here, he gets some crow friends, hence the art of him surrounded by crows.

If you haven't caught on already, this is heavily inspired by Animorphs since that's what I was reading when I gave in & began writing FOtPoD, as well as the Alex Rider book series which inspired the more current version & really helped me figure out how to write that particular mental health downward spiral.

So, what's to be expected? I've already planned & mapped out 12 parts, 60 chapters in whole, as well as a mini comic thing based on one of the later chapters which was actually one of the first chapters I'd planned & wrote.

Currently, I'm deep into editing & rewriting FOtPoD to better fit my plans & the themes for the third time, so posting it is looking a lot like

in the meantime, I'm going over my older fic, Phantom, for reasons, which be will updated regularly for the next 10-ish weeks on Wednesdays/Thursdays, & uh, expect more FOtPoD (& generally DP) art I guess xD