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threewaysdivided · 10 months ago

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compared to the other hero's in YJ how do you think Phantom stands up power wise. like Future Danny ripped the world apart and i know in some fanfiction that it is used as an indicator that he is high up there, but i'm interested in your thoughts.

This is an interesting question nonnie!

I generally agree with the idea that Phantom is in the upper-tier of crossover superhero powers, but I do have more specific thoughts so let’s break it down:

Danny’s power level

Just looking at the variety and strength of ghost-powers that Phantom displays in his show, I would put him in the higher rankings of most heroes when it comes to raw ability. I alluded to this in my main DP x YJ Deathly Weapons fanfic, but to me Phantom shows signs of a pretty common power-scaling differential that happens when a solo-protagonist hero gets transplanted into an ensemble setting. Within his own setting, Phantom had to be (or become) powerful enough to solve most problems/ fights all by himself – and some of those ghosts he ended up facing towards the end of his canon were impressively strong. By comparison ensemble heroes are generally less-powerful because working as a collective means they don’t have the same need for aggressive self-sufficiency and also so that no one character upstages or outmodes the rest of the group from a writing perspective.

There’s also the nature of ghost powers. Phantom needed to develop the raw strength to fill the role of solo combat heavy-hitter, but his base powers are versatile to the point of unsettling. He has to physically fight against other ghosts because they have (and to some extent are immune to) the same abilities as him, but in a fight against other species he could potentially avoid, manipulate or exhaust an opponent with strategic use of invisibility/ intangibility/ overshadowing.

The back of Dinah’s neck prickled. With flight to mask footsteps and intangibility rendering them undetectable by touch… Nonthreatening as Phantom generally appeared, she was starting to understand why his kind had developed such an unsettling reputation. The idea that a ghost could be present at any time - eavesdropping, spying, interfering - without any of them being the wiser was… disquieting to say the least. - Deathly Weapons, Chapter 17: Assessment

On top of that, he seems to be in a similar boat to Superman when it comes to physical weaknesses – he doesn’t have that many, and they’re often quite specific or hard-to-find. The most easily-exploitable one is that Danny can run out of power, be slowly starved of ectoplasm or be knocked unconscious; all of which would forcibly revert him back to his weaker human state. After that, he’s vulnerable to certain magics and ghostly-artefacts, which are more likely to be accessible to various DC/ Marvel heroes (although they might not know exactly which spells/items will be most effective or why). Beyond those two, most of his weaknesses need to be specifically known about and actively sought out – anti-ecto-technology is obtainable but not mainstream, blood blossoms naturally repel/hurt ghosts but they seem to be rare in nature (or even extinct in the modern day) and then assuming you acknowledge Phantom Planet there’s ectoranium which is basically ghost-Kryptonite in rarity (and possibly even the same mineral in DP x DC settings depending on the crossover). Much like with Superman, the most reliable ways to take down Phantom require actively knowing what he is and having prepared accordingly.

Based on those metrics, I want to place Phantom in the same power-band as Superman or the Martian Manhunter. I’d consider their powers to be equivalent incomparibles – it’s hard to stack their abilities side-by-side and say one is objectively better than the others. A no-holds-barred, knock-down drag-out fight between those three could get very nasty but it would be hard to confidently call a winner without knowing more about the external factors around them.

That said, I think the thing holding Danny back from being fully at that level is his experience: or rather his lack thereof. Danny hasn’t had much formal training (except maybe some basic self-defence instruction from Maddie/Jack) and he doesn’t have a proper mentor either. His personal experience mostly fits the narrow niche of direct open combat with other ghosts, mostly throughout Amity Park and surrounds (although occasionally in the Ghost Zone or further from town).

Phantom has enough raw power and innate talent as a strategic lateral-thinker to get by, but I think that hyperspecialisation and lack of guidance would leave him with a lot of blind-spots. His hand-to-hand is self-taught and probably missing a lot of best-practice basic techniques. He’s also never had an experienced third party to observe him in the field and offer suggestions on alternative approaches to using his powers/ keep him from developing bad habits. This is something Danny actually comments on in canon; he can take a long time to identify solutions (even obvious ones) that deviate too far from his default throw hands approach to fighting. His powers could be more effectively deployed as a precision-instrument but a lack of coaching means he tends to falls back on using them as a blunt hammer because that was the pattern that came naturally when he was first starting out, and no-one was around to keep that habit from ingraining.

The place where you can see this lack of experience hurting him the most is in his lack of soft-skills. Phantom didn’t have anyone to advise him on de-escalation, damage control, comforting civilians, interacting with authorities etc. Add in the naturally-frightening nature of many ghosts and it was easy for him to fall into a public perception of being “the town menace”. Danny is pretty decent at rallying both humans and ghosts (even erstwhile enemies) to his side in crisis situations but no-one has taught him how manage public relations outside of that. He says it himself: he needs a PR agent.

On the other hand, Phantom’s heroics have inadvertently earned him a decent amount of potential political pull in the Ghost Zone. He has enough positive rapport that some regular rogues will take his side or even actively seek him out for help in the right circumstances, and other more antagonistic ones have at least developed a degree of grudging respect. There are several powerful ghosts that either have direct debts of gratitude to him/his team (Princess Dorothea, Pandora) or who hold him in high esteem for re-sealing Pariah Dark (The Far Frozen). It’s possible that defeating Pariah might even have granted him a potential candidature/claim to an official position, and judging by the way the Observants and Clockwork pay attention to him, it seems that Phantom’s slow accumulation of power/influence isn’t going completely unnoticed. However, again, Danny doesn’t have the awareness, experience or training needed to leverage that effectively – heck, he’s not even doing it on purpose.

With all that taken into account, I think Phantom would rank very highly in terms of overall potential, but at his current level he’d be in the lower ranks of the A-tier. He could become a much more powerful figure with the right guidance but in his canonical state he’s underutilising or outright overlooking a lot of his most effective tools.

TUE Future/ “Dark Phantom”

The “Dark Phantom” presented in the TUE Bad-Future is interesting to me because while he’s a very powerful figure within that story, I don't think he’s a very good reflection of canon-Danny’s potential to do harm.

Gonna complain about The Ultimate Enemy for a bit: I’ve tag-muttered about this before but I’m one of the Phandom members who finds The Ultimate Enemy to be a frustratingly weak episode. It has a potentially fascinating core premise (the “evil future/alternate self”) but the execution is so convoluted and driven by improbable contrivances that the whole ends up being far less than the sum of its parts.

One of the biggest problems is that, rather than being a straight future/alternate version of Danny, “Dark Phantom” is actually a hybrid of Phantom and Plasmius’ worse sides. He’s a distinct, separate entity which means he can’t work as an effective dark mirror to either of them. (Compare and contrast the Justice League episode A Better World in which the Justice Lords acted as a dark mirror of what the actual Justice League members could become if they chose to abandon their morals and compassion in favour of seizing control and instating a totalitarian system of draconian crime prevention.)

The episode also tried to graft on a really mismatched moral of “don’t be a cheat”. Rather than being a lesson on choices/ values/ power/ responsibility, Dark Phantom almost ends up being an offhand biproduct of Danny getting caught cheating on a freshman/sophomore-year career-aptitude test. Instead of learning a lesson about himself/ his ideals/ his personal faults, Danny comes away from the episode with a cool new superpower after deciding not to cheat on the test after all. Not exactly satisfying.

That mismatch and the convoluted levels of moon-logic required to make it fit severely undermine the idea that this version of Dark Phantom is “inevitable”. There are too many steps that are too highly-specific and too easily-avoidable for the threat to feel real: Danny has to care enough about an early-highschool CAT to want to cheat, he has to somehow get the answers which he wasn’t intending to do in the canon timelineand only does as a result of Clockwork’s meddling, making it a self-fulfilling situation, he has to get caught using them, Mister Lancer has to hold the resulting parent-teacher meeting at Nasty Burger rather than a school office for some reason, the Nasty Burger Sauce has to 1. be dangerously explosive and 2. coincidentally explode while not only Danny’s parents but his friends and sister are inside, Danny has to be placed in Vlad’s custody rather than with his Aunt Alicia or closer family-friends, Danny has to ask Vlad to remove his Phantom-half and finally, Vlad himself has to agree to do it. Take away any of those steps and this version of Dark Phantom doesn’t happen. That’s not inevitable, it’s contrived.

But anyway, let’s look at Dark Phantom as his own entity:

One of the things that makes Dark Phantom much more potentially dangerous is that he combines Phantom’s raw power with Plasmius’ experience. Like I was saying before, one of Danny’s biggest handicaps is that he lacks training/guidance and tends to underutilise his most effective abilities. Vlad meanwhile has had years of relative freedom to practice and finesse a lower raw-power level; he’s much more skilled at advanced techniques like duplication and overshadowing (which he canonically used to force through his fortune-making business deals), as well as ecto-constructs. Plasmius is also a lot more tactical and manipulative in how he applies their common powers. Plus, the TUE version of Dark Phantom is a full-ghost, which means he doesn’t have a vulnerable mortal state that can be exploited as a weakness.

This is why I think it would be possible for TUE!Dark Phantom to successfully decimate other heroes in shared-universe crossover situations where ghosts aren’t common knowledge. He’d be an unexpected, unknown enemy that the heroes have no effective way to fight (outside of a few magic users). Combine that with many of the most powerful heroes being visible as public figures, and Dark Phantom having inherited Plasmius’ strategic/manipulative traits and it could be very easy for Dark Phantom to basically launch a premeditated paranormal blitzkrieg attack, using Plasmius’ skill with duplicates and overshadowing to subjugate any hero he couldn’t overwhelm with Phantom’s raw power level. It would also make sense that Amity Park would become one of the remaining bastions in any TUE-style future, since having advanced knowledge of ghostly abilities and access to anti-ecto technology would tilt the balance more evenly and allow them to at least keep the danger out.

Mentally, it’s also worth noting that Dark Phantom is a lot more dangerous than either Phantom or Plasmius. He’s basically the most toxic traits from both of them, removed from their more moderating/ compassionate instincts. Based on the canonical explanation given, TUE!Danny had Phantom forcibly removed in attempt to remove the pain/ rage/ grief he was feeling over the death of his family. This isn’t a model-hero-persona conceptualisation of Phantom a la Splitting Images; the TUE-version of his ghost half is a big ball of churning negative emotion. And what are some of Danny’s toxic traits when it comes to negative emotions: he lashes out, falls into self-blame and self-destructs. Then we add in Vlad’s toxic traits: he’s egocentric to the point of narcissism, he projects negative feelings/ blame onto others rather than accept responsibility for his own actions and he has a controlling/ sadistic streak.

TUE’s Dark Phantom is the worst possible combination of an emotionally devastated teenager and an emotionally immature adult. He’s a ball of pain and rage that blames the world for that pain, lashes out at it, feels worse for doing so and then blames the world for making him feel worse because he doesn’t have the emotional capacity to accept that he’s the one causing it. Grief is love persevering but the feelings of love, connection and guilt that contextualise his pain were left in the human shells that remained of Danny and Vlad. It’s possible that the Dark Phantom presented in TUE might not have the capacity to feel positive emotions or compassion. He was never meant to exist as his own entity – he was an attempt to destroy Daniel Fenton’s negative emotions which went horribly wrong. In some ways it seems like his reign of terror could be an angrier version of Dracula’s scheme from Netflix’s Castlevania or Haliax’s goal from the Kingkiller Chronicles – a drawn-out suicide note from an undead being who’s been dead inside for much longer, destroying whatever peace/happiness he encounters in revenge for being denied it himself, until such time as he either attains catharsis or finally ends the pain by destroying reality and himself along with it. That’s the final thing that makes TUE’s Dark Phantom more dangerous than either Phantom or Plasmius – he has nothing to lose and no “better nature” or personal dreams that other heroes could try to appeal to.

So yeah, the TUE version of Dark Phantom could absolutely rip the world and other heroes apart, but I don’t think he’s a particularly good reflection of Danny’s capabilities in terms of either powers or personality. There’s too much Vlad in the mix, and even then he represents such a narrow and extreme edge-case for each of their personalities that it’s barely representative at all. At best he’s a warning for what these kinds of powers could be capable of in the wrong hands.

Meta-question: What is “power” in narrative?

Alright, now that I’ve (hopefully) answered the question, let’s finish with a self-indulgent thought exercise for extra credit.

There’s an anecdote which I’ve heard attributed to the Stan Lee, in which a fan apparently asked him “who would win in a fight between Superman and the Hulk?” To which Stan apparently replied, “whoever the writer wants.”

While it can be fun to make tier-lists and try to rank how strong different heroes/villains/creatures are based on the rules of their respective universes, I think it can also be helpful to consider that– like all things in storytelling – power is a narrative device. It’s a tool that the character(s) and storyteller(s) can use to create and solve problems.

A character can be extremely physically strong/ skilled/ knowledgeable/ influential in a specific area but how much narrative power they have depends on how well their abilities allow them to influence or resolve story problems. And, as the omnipotent god(s) of the narrative, the storyteller(s) can choose whether to confront them with challenges that play to their existing strengths, or that force them to find other solutions. What’s the best way to kill a vampire?

This is actually part of what makes Lex Luthor such an effective Superman villain. Objectively most versions of Lex are just A Guy™ – on a physical level he doesn’t have anything close to Kal El’s Kryptonian strength or superpowers. But he feels like a serious threat because he often comes after Superman in ways that Clark can’t easily steamroll with that brute strength. Lex uses manipulation, money, influence, connections, politics, public opinion; Superman can’t physically fight him without playing into Luthor’s plans, and trying to face him in those other fields requires tools that Clark wasn’t handed as part of his Kryptonian heritage. An invading alien army is objectively a bigger physical threat to Earth, but a competent Lex Luthor scheme feels more dangerous because – while we feel confident that Superman can beat down a legion of monsters – when it comes to the question of whether he can outwit Luthor, the outcome is a lot less certain.

Situational disempowerment is another of the ways a narrative can reign in an otherwise “overpowered” character: placing them in circumstances where they either aren’t given many opportunities to showcase their best strengths, or are kept from using them because the drawbacks/ risks/ consequences of using their abilities makes their power(s) a liability. I’ve mentioned it before, but this is actually one of the tricks I’m personally using to keep Phantom’s massive powerset balanced against the other proteges in Deathly Weapons. It’s also something I’ve been struggling with when it comes to Conner’s place in that story since the stealth-mission plot structure doesn’t allow as much room to highlight his core powers and personal strengths.

Stories can create additional stakes for powerful characters by giving them emotional arcs which their powers can’t resolve. For a published example, consider the series One Punch Man and Mob Psycho 100. Despite how high-ranked Saitama and Mob are within the power-scaling of their respective stories, those powers don’t kill the emotional stakes because the things they actually want/ need can only be gained through self-improvement or making connections in ways separate from their powers (and in some regards their power level actively gets in the way of that). This is also something I’m doing with Danny’s main grief arc in DW.

Final Conclusion time

In terms of physical strength and range of abilities, I think Phantom would be pretty near the top of the power-scale in most superhero crossovers. While the Dark Phantom presented in TUE might not be a particularly good reflection of Danny’s specific potential, a crossover version of the TUE timeline offers a pretty good litmus-test for how dangerous a strong ghost could be in a given universe: the combination of power level, ability range and highly-specific/ inaccessible weak-points poses a strong strategic threat.

On the other hand, physical strength isn’t the only strength. Phantom has a decent level of potential political sway as well, but he also lacks a lot of the soft skills and experience needed to make use of his toolset to its full ability.

Stepping back further, the answer to how powerful Danny is in a narrative sense is really just “however much the writer wants”. Phantom’s narrative power depends on the kind of story he’s in and the challenges placed around him – there are as many ways to situationally nerf our ghost-boy as make him OP, all without needing to alter his on-paper powers.

#you asked me for thoughts which is a dangerous game to play as I have many #dp x dc #dpxdc #danny phantom #DP meta #dark phantom #the ultimate enemy #TUE Critical #I know that AGIT did a different take on TUE Dark Phantom and that's totally cool! This is just me unpacking the OG episode writing #on writing #writing superpowers #anonymous #3WD Answers

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starry-bi-sky · 10 months ago

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Danyal Al Ghul's missed potential - this kid is not gonna behave like his canon self if he's with the league of assassins until his late formative years, and my reasoning why

(feel free to take this all with a grain of salt this is just my thoughts on it, this is all mostly amusing to me and isn't trying to be negative towards anyone else)

similar to how i was talking about how danny growing up in crime alley would affect him, demon twin aus with danyal al ghul make me laugh a lot (affectionate) because... whose teaching danny to unlearn all the ecofascism he picked up from the league of assassins? whose teaching him to be kind? to be gentle? Not the LoA thats for certain.

(you could plausibly say Jazz but she's only 2 years older than Danny and do you really expect a fellow child to properly explain why X is wrong to another child and have it be 100% effective? i don't doubt it'd help to an extent, but not in the same way an adult explaining it would)

plus a ton of other things, like whose teaching him to value human life? not the LoA. Whose teaching him how to adjust to living with American society after he ends up with the Fentons when he's 8-9-10? Who teaches him that killing is wrong, whose enforcing that?

(not the Fentons if you're going the neglectful parent route, and Jazz can try but i really don't think Danny is going to listen to her, a stranger who isn't even part of his grandfather's league)

How do you teach a child to value human life when the greatest development window for that opportunity has closed and he's already formed his own opinions?

You're not gonna get a Danny whose exactly like his canon attitude if he's staying with the league during his formative years (0-8 years old). you're not. You could get someone LIKE it, potentially, or someone who has traces of it or is similar -- like danny's wit and jokes and sarcasm, and on some level his kindness. but you're not gonna have a carbon copy. Development doesn't work that way. "nature" can only do so much in the face of nurture.

If anything, it doesn't even have to be a major change -- in the league he cans till be kind, but it's probably going to manifest in a different way than what is considered normal. Tough love, for one. But there's gonna be something that affects him negatively. Why make him 'always good/kind' when you can make him a brat who develops into a kinder (if spikier than in canon) person?

TLDR: Danyal Al Ghul would not be like how he is in canon if he's with the league until his late formative years -- not without any lasting pr permanent impacts from the league at least. Missed potential to make him an absolute nightmare like damian was -- especially in his early years when he first arrived to the Fenton house.

(this doesn't apply to danyal al ghul aus where he's either given to the fentons as a baby/is reincarnated/etc. this is mostly aimed for danyal al ghul aus where he fakes his death at like, 7-10 and somehow ends up, personality-wise like his completely canon self by 14 without any differences.)

(and even then if he's five or four, or even three, he would still be traumatized and influenced by the league. he'll just have more time to adjust. the sooner he leaves the league the more likely he is to be like his canon self, but not like an exact copy)

(more under the cut)

Anyways what I'm saying is that there is prime missed Danyal al Ghul potential to make him an absolute NIGHTMARE to the Fentons however way he ends up with them, just like Damian was with the Waynes! Cuz why does Damian get all the fun? Danny got the same training and endoctrine as him! He is also an ex-assassin! Why is Danny the only one who is 'well adjusted and non-violent' hm? Hmm?

Why can't he also be mean, and stabby, and a total stuck-up in some way or another? Have fun with his characterization, its prime opportunity to play play-doh and clay with him! If he starts out as X how does he get the personality traits of Y, and thus become XY?

Like take this with a grain of salt if you will, but make him arrogant. Make him an asshole! Make him a bad person at first! Because he will be! He's the blood son of the batman and you mean to tell me that damian is the only one arrogant about it at first? Make him stabby and mean even at 14 when he's begun to chill out! Have fun with it! If he's with the Fentons at any point past the age of four or five then he's gonna be a nightmare to handle because he still remembers the league and his time there.

(and while it gives him more time to chill the hell out, his time at the league is still gonna leave an impact on him.)

also what im saying as well is have him and sam potentially get along like a house on FIRE. Again, Danny grew up under the views of an ecofascist cult and nobody to challenge those views to him until he got to amity park at whatever age in late formative years he was at. He could be about as intense or even MORE intense about environmental awareness/rights than Sam is!

(also him being supremely unimpressed with Sam's wealth. he gave up a palace in the mountains for this town. because that's funny to me - like let his past have more influence on him! it'll be fun!)

you could have a danny who doesn't kill but doesn't fully understand the value of human life because jazz is like two years older than him and isn't that good at explaining why people's lives are important. he won't kill but he's not morally opposed to it. there's very little chance he actually gets bullied at school because he nearly killed Dash the first time he tried anything.

Danny could have scars, physical ones, because its implied in multiple canon that training starts at toddling (my best bet is 3 at minimum and ~maybe~ 2 but only on the later side of 2. Good fucking luck getting any infant under 2 to do anything you ask, ESPECIALLY assassin training. They're gonna stick the weapon in their mouth sooner than they're gonna do katas. This is coming from a daycare teacher.)

there's more examples of how danny being at the league during his formative years would affect him, but those are just some of them. he could have a sword! An appreciation for weaponry and nature. Maybe he still speaks all shakespearan and formal, does he still make bodily threats to people? If Damian is still threatening people at 14 why can't danny?

#dpxdc #dp x dc #dp x dc crossover #dpxdc crossover #dpdc #tldr danyal al ghul has a ton of missed potential of what his behavior would be like if he left the league mid-to-late formative years #this post is specifically directed towards those danyal al ghul posts where he ends up with the fentons when he's like. 8 #like great. who taught him to unlearn all of the LoA's programming #how is he exactly like he was in canon despite being with the LoA during his early childhood #source: i've taken multiple child development classes #this isnt to bash those aus at all its just me thinking its hilarious that danny would even remotely be like his canon personality #especially if he's in the league long enough for damian to remember him #like i love danyal al ghul aus i just think there's not enough being taken into account about how the league would permanently impact him #especially if he leaves later on in life #people are not ponds they are puddles of mud. if you drop a rock into it it's gonna change its shape #its also good creative exercises on how to flesh characters out better and better understand how things in a story may impact a character #good thought exercises with the additional bonus of making danny a violent gremlin like damian is #i dont wanna say this is bashing but i guess it is kinda a criticism on the writing in those aus because you’re telling me this had NO #affect on danny on his personality beyond just ‘oh league bad. league scary’?? cmonnn have some fun #like you mean to tell me that being a child assassin had no lasting impact on him or his personality?? like at all???#he doesnt have an ounce of self-importance/arrogance/anger like damian did?? like none of that *stuck?* he’s just the normal and sane #sibling right off the bat??? five years with the fentons turned him into a complete blankslate?? he has no lasting impact from the league??

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p0ssym1lker · 2 years ago

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Damian: I will kill you

Danny: i'll make sure that your pets won't find you once you both are dead

#damian was aware that danny is dead and the king #but he made the critical error of forgetting that he isnt immortal and neither are his pets #danny phantom #danny fenton #dc x dp #dp x dc #dc #damian wayne #dcu crossover #dcu comics #dcu

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jinxknight · 2 years ago

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Matt was on the Tabletop News livestream yesterday playing Pretty Pretty Princess (which was incredibly hilarious), but here's some interesting things he mentioned at the end of that stream:

"We're cruising into some fun stuff in Campaign 3 of Critical Role. The party is divided across expanses of land and we have some fun guests, two of which that just recently came in - Aabria Iyengar and Christian Navarro. And then soon we'll be hopping over to the other half with some other fun guests in there as well.

We also have some fun announcements to come in the weeks ahead of us on both the Darrington Press and Critical Role side, with some future content and other fun things on the horizon. So keep your eyes peeled."

#critical role #matt mercer #darrington press #cr3 #maybe a new exu?#another game for dp?#i'm excited to find out

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phobos-exe · 3 months ago

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i love deadpool and wolverine as much as the next guy, will forever continue to praise it and never shut up about it until the hyperfixation dopamine wears off by the end of the month, but there is one thing about the movie i don't really vibe with in hindsight.

spoilers!!

namely how the film kinda lost sight of the main plot after the first half an hour (give or take). the overarching story of deadpool having to save his family and universe from destabalizing and ceasing to exist, and how wolverine's death had a great deal to do with it. its supposed to set up the stakes of the entire movie and be the driving force of it all, but i shame this movie for never showing it. we are only told that it will happen. thus that entire narritive, for me, gets outshined by the entire middle and climax with the gratuitous cameos, the fucking fighting, the big emotional moments.

so the entire time you kinda don't care as much as you should for these people who are apperently about to die along with their reality. they only ever appear in the beginning and at the very end, with really short flashbacks and cameos sprinkled in between. or at the very least the lack of urgency presented to the viewer (not mentioned by the characters) doesn´t bode well for making the main plot enticing, you tend to be more invested in whats happening moment for moment and the b-plot surrounding cassandra nova than what wade and logan are actually fighting for in the long run.

i think what could have saved it in my eyes would be to include the original supporting cast more, have some sort way for them to interact with dp and wolverine even if they are extremely physically apart the entire time, or better yet some relevant excuse to actually show what's going on in their reality. we revisit wade's earth for the iconic deadpool variant fight but nothing seems wrong in it other than the tva/cassandra nova trying to destroy it for reasons.

it kinda reminds me about how ryan was continuously bouncing ideas for this movie hoping something would work for years, then when hugh signed on still bouncing ideas for a team up story. which idk could be a contributing factor to what i think sucked about the story.

#santi talks #a bit too focused on wolvie and dp #which i get the movie is literally named after them #but the PLOT! follow the plot!#i was more invested in the cameo characters than the characters that actually mattered to the story #deadpool #wolverine #mcu #marvel #deadpool and wolverine #deadpool and wolverine spoilers #deadpool 3 #deadpool 3 spoilers #mcu critical #x men

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illogicaltriangle · 7 months ago

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Gravity Falls x Danny Phantom phanfic

Stan banged on the control panel. The whirring sounds of the machine had long since gone. Until it came back again.

Through tear-filled eyes, Stan looked up, to see the portal flickering, on and off. It did that a number of times until it spat a figure out - a human.

Almost on instinct, he had scrambled to grab an item from a nearby desk, where Ford used to place equipment that wasn't in use. Stan was no good at using the equipment to do something positive, but he was sure as heck awesome at using it as a weapon. Living life on the streets really did that to a person.

The figure stepped closer, their eyes glowing in the room's darkness - the portal was the only thing illuminating it, but it couldn't anymore. It was unsettling and eerie, but when did Stan not have to deal with that before?

The man wasn't fazed - too much, and took a step closer, making it as loud as he possibly could to show who was dominant. It seemed to work, as the figure went back. However, Stan had recognised something in their eyes. Fear. Like somebody had just thrown them there and told them to get on with life.

Stan pushed down his nose and flicked on a switch. He wasn't expecting to see a teenage boy, let alone one that he had recognised. Clearly, the boy had a similar reaction

It was Maddie's son, Danny. He had fondly recalled the boy's 10th birthday party where Maddie had found a way to revert time to be 10 seconds before. What a joy it'd be if he had the machine now.

"Uncle... Stan?" Danny asked, as if it could be anybody else.

Stan looked at Danny, "Danny?" He asked, just to confirm. He had to fight a shapeshifter before he made his way to Ford's place, so it was plausible.

"Uh, what're we doing here?" Danny questioned, looking around whilst admiring the now-broken portal.

Stan rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. "Well it's a long story, kiddo."

Danny was already next to Stan as if he had teleported. "Spill it." He said.

"No." Stan said. "Don't you have parents to get to, kid?" He asked, a tad bitterly, recalling his own situation. Danny looked at the floor, sadly, but only for a split-second before perking up. "I'm sure they won't mind." He said. "Besides, I was going to go to Uncle Ford's place anyways, but this works."

Stan sighed. "Fine, fine, I'll tell you the story of it all." He said. "But not here. Place gives me the creeps."

He pressed a button on an elevator, letting Danny enter first, before leaving for himself.

Okay, story's over, no idea to keep adding anything or what. Can somebody give criticism? It's a little short but like, what can you do about it?

#fanfic #dp #gravity falls #stanford pines #danny fenton #danny phantom #ghost king danny #constructive criticism welcome

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darkmodepls · 9 days ago

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Can we get some more Jason 'Angel' Fenton ?

Also do you have a ao3?

I mainly use my ao3 account to collect bookmarks and haven't posted anything in a while, sorry.

To make it up to you, here's some more backstory from Jason 'Angel' Fenton.

Due to Amity's tendency to drift around and how that motion is based on its citizens' subconscious, the city actually got relatively close to Gotham for a brief period of time.

It was long enough for Oswald Cobblepot to reconnect with his cousin and goddaughter, and for Waylon Jones to decide on moving closer to his half sister.

It was also just long enough for Angel to be recognized by LOA operatives and kidnapped.

***

Angel had no memory of who he was before waking up in a GIW lab, only briefly flashbacks to rain and wet earth and a statue of his namesake. His past remained a mystery throughout the Seige of Amity Park and the City Council's attempts to clean up the mess left behind. And while he would love to get some answers, the young mad had more important things to worry about.

Angel was a grad student halfway to a doctorate in English and a new husband with a toddler. Between all of that and his blackouts, he genuinely didn't have time to pursue his origins.

***

Angel's blackouts were an ongoing problem for him. Every so often, he would 'wake up' somewhere else with no memory of the past several hours. According to Jazz and their friends, he would still do things during these blackouts, but it would be clear that the lights were on, yet no one was home.

It was more annoying than anything.

This time however, he woke up on a plane surrounded by people speaking a foreign language.

A subtle glance out the window revealed they were over the ocean, so he decided playing dumb would be the best decision for now.

***

He would continue to play dumb for the next several weeks, feigning catatonia as he tried to find a form of communication that wasn't being closely monitored.

Most of the people, ninjas? In the base have elected to ignore Lady Talia's new pet including the apparent king of this weird cavernous base.

Talia herself seemed to grow gradually more concerned and frustrated with his lack of reaction. She constantly tried to get him to respond to her, calling him Jason and insisting that her son call him brother.

#Uncle Oswald #Uncle Waylon #Jason Angel Fenton #dp x dc #anger management ship #Yes Jason still gets some league training and a dip in the pits #Damian may not like having older brothers but he's ecstatic to be able uncle #The reason Jason has blackouts and amnesia is because of supply shortages when he was rescued from the GIW #the Seige of Amity Park #The Seige was in full swing and they had to prioritize critical injuries and frontline fighters #Angel did act as rear guard and protected the refugee camps and medical centers during the conflict #but no one realized another dose of dejecto might fix the blackouts #The pit did fix Angel's blackouts but he subconsciously doesn't WANT to remember his past #And Liminals' bodies respond to their subconscious #Especially when it concerns their healing factor #halfa jason todd #Halfa Jason

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xysidhequeen · 1 year ago

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Did Jason open up his trauma to Jazz? Since she is the group team mom

Oh my Ancients, yes. She cracked that boy open like a walnut. It took a bit, but Jazz reminds him somewhat of Barbara and Harley, so he warmed up to her fairly quickly overall. She really taught him what it's like to have a big sibling(sorry, I love Dick but he was a shit older brother before Jason died).

Jason will talk to Jazz about things he'd never say to anyone else. He actually opens up to Ember and Kitty too, but they're more for when he wants someone to cry with and to have get all enraged on his behalf. Jazz is who he talks to when he wants to fix it.

It wasn't always like that. He had to learn how to differentiate. Had to learn when he needed help, when he had things that needed to be fixed. He had to unlearn the emotional constipation and phobia of talking about his feelings he learned from Bruce too. But Jazz is used to dealing with teenage boys who won't admit they're hurting even on pain of death. She's good at subtly working their pain out and helping them confront it. (She learned a lot from helping Danny and from her Psych classes so she's more crafty about it too)

Jazz is one of the biggest reasons Jason is as stable and emotionally healthy as he is. He's not healed completely. He won't be until he gets closure with Bruce and the Joker. And there's some things that will always stick around. Trauma leaves scars. But without Jazz, we wouldn't have the Jason we do in TKAHRK we'd have someone far closer to the Jason from UTRH.

#zee answers #dp x dc #danny phantom #dc x dp #dpxdc #dp x dc crossover #the king and his red knight #the king and his red knight au #tkahrk #tkahrk au #jason todd #Jazz is a QUEEN and a GODDESS #shes a fucking miracle worker #I also mention in the story she helped him settle on his vigilante name. they went through weeks of discussing it #arguing over reclaiming a name and if it would trigger him and if the message was worth it if he was only picking it for revenge #or to hurt Bruce. Jazz was hughly critical and really made Jason THINK about it. they settled on the name and i explained why #But Jazz knows everything. more than even Danny knows about Jason. Jazz is the person Jason cant keep secrets from and never does #Jason is a mama's boy but Jazz is his mom here.#honestly tho if Jazz ever meets Bruce or the Joker in a dark alleyway its going to be on SIGHT she will throw all the hands #like she honestly HATES the Joker for what he did and Bruce is skating on thin fucking ice where shes concerned #hahahaha bruce run when she finds out that Tim is being negelected and you didnt notice

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absolutely-esme · 1 year ago

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My Headcanon for Liminals

I've been having a lot of fun posting headcanons, and I'm starting to realize just how many I've built up over the years, so here's another one.

So I've stated before that part of the reason why Danny and Vlad are so different is because Danny was inside of a portal when it turned on whereas Vlad just got a face full of energized Ectoplasm and other assorted nastiness. The still human and already ghostly halves of Danny fused into a cohesive whole in order to survive the opening of the portal and continued supporting eachother. Vlad's human half forcibly integrated his resistant ghost half as it formed in an effort to survive. Rather than a cohesive whole, Vlad is two dischordant halves.

That said, I do not consider Vlad's state the default result of humans being exposed to ectoplasm.

Part of it is because the exposure was violent and his human body was so incredibly unwell that it made sense for the part of him with less emotional attachment to it to want to escape. This illness did not stem directly from the ectoplasm. We know this much because other people exposed to ectoplasm did not get ecto-acne, and figuring out the involvement of the cola was what allowed the Fentons to cure it.

Part of it is because Vlad has a superiority complex. This means that, in any given state, Vlad considers his current way of being superior. As a human, Vlad considers humanity superior. As a ghost, Vlad considers ghosts superior. This leads to a whole lot of clash between the parts of his psyche which each consider the other half to be lesser. Combine this with the fact that each half despises the illness and associates the illness with the other half, and you get a whole lot of internal toxicity.

For the average person with ectoplasm exposure, there wouldn't be so much of a clash. They would take on some ghostly traits (more and more over time, with continued exposure) and maybe start doing some prep-work for ghosthood, but they wouldn't be trying to leave their human lives early. They probably won't have insane healing factors like Danny, but they won't be tearing themselves apart like Vlad either.

They're preparing for the afterlife, but they wouldn't be so eager to discard the human life they are still living. If you've ever had a favorite hoodie that you wore all the time until you loved it to pieces and it came apart at the seams, that's kind of the feeling. It's not the end of the world when you can't wear it anymore; you can wear other jackets when you're cold, but you want to hold onto it for as long as you can.

The more someone is exposed to ectoplasm (in terms of both frequency and amount), the more ghostly they will become over time.

A random person who just happens to live in Amity Park on the opposite side of town from Fenton Works and and was somehow never at the sight of a ghost fight, will probably just experience a slightly increased awareness of ghost-related stuff and perhaps a slightly smoother transition when their time comes.

Other kids at Casper high, who attend school with Danny every day and get caught up in ghost attacks sometimes will probably start to form the wispy beginings of their ghostly self. Sometimes you just catch a glimpse of what sort of ghost they are going to be. They may also develop some slight powers while still alive.

You look at Paulina carefully shaping and lacquering her nails into something both beautiful and dangerous, and for a split second you just know that, someday, she's going to be all claws and glittering scales and passionate pursuit of her goals. She will transcend the human form and shape herself into a work of art of her own design and a powerhouse none can deny. Then she turns to her friend and giggles over a funny story, and the moment passes; she's just another kid steadily making her way to adulthood.

She's just another kid until some jerk at the mall oggles her a little too blatantly and her jewelry flashes brighter than the lighting should allow, blinding him so that he trips into a fountain, and Paulina smugly watches him sputter before turning to walk away with a satisfied spring in her step.

Sam and Tucker, Who hang out with Danny every day and frequently explore the ghost zone with him, will start forming more of the foundation of their ghostly selves and probably develop more powers sooner. They are more likely to develop to a point of being able to take on a ghostly form while still alive.

Typically, a halfa formed through extreme, prolonged exposure like this would have a bit of separation between their human and ghostly halves, but without much discord between the two. However, with Sam and Tucker spending so much time around Danny during their formative period (and having so much less contact with any other ghost than with him), it's entirely possible that they would subconsciously learn the integrated system approach, in much the same way people pick up habits of speech from the people around them.

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