#i forgot what tags this fandom has

[nova-rpv]

a redraw of the first drawing i posted here to celebrate the fact that ive been in tumblr for more than a whole year posting my shit and havent deleted my blog in panic yippee \:D/ (mushy rant in tags)

[biblically-accurate-dca]

substitute

[ribbononline]

Still trying to finish other things but in the meantime- updated design for my older May! She's an Ace Trainer

[i-am-abnormal]

[dollypopup]

I'm sorry, but this is THE most vanilla fandom ever. Oh my goddddd. The entire lot of us freaking out over *checks notes* Colin watching porn. like i have legit seen takes of people being like 'Penelope should know his kinks before he CORRUPTS her' and 'won't anyone think of Penelope's perspective in this!!!' and 'she needs to know and agree to his fetishes'

like I'm SO sorry peeps are pearl clutching over Colin being a kinky little freak (allegedly) but like the man BEEN had a thing for watching and a filthy mouth, sorry not sorry, but I'm kind of loving the idea that he's joining the battle against kink and debauchery on the side of kink and debauchery and frankly I think Penelope would, too

[padfoot-lupin77]

Lily: wait, I don’t get it, explain the joke

James: but if I explain it then it’s no longer funny

Lily: I doubt it’s funny anyway so get to explaining

[lucapizzelles]

I was looking at some family legal documents for something and I found my great grandma's "Alien Registration Form" from the 40's and made me think about what kind of government documents seafolk would have,

would they have seafolk registration forms? That function as IDs/Birth certificates? Would there be some sort of specific mark on their IDs that essentially out them as seafolk? How early would all this be instated? ohh my god

also i read thitcs and that had a similar concept with magical people

[glassygate]

I find it funny how DPxDC fandom has replaced the early 2000s "Danny&Dick are siblings/twins" trope with "Danny&Damian are siblings/twins."

But I also wanted to try and figure out why it happened.

The main reason why Damian wasn't originally even considered as posibile relative for Danny is quite simple: Damian literally didn't exist until September 2006; a month before DP season 3 started airing.

Sure, the concept of Talia and Bruce having a son is much older. Kingdom Come from 1996 is probably being the best known example of this and I'm pretty sure there is even older comic where Talia has miscarriage. Plus, when have the fandoms cared about canon relationships when coming up reasons to make two characters related?

But in the early days there was another reason keeping Danny from becoming related to Bruce:

A little show known as Teen Titans.

Teen Titans cartoon originally aired from 2003-2006. This meant that when Danny Phantom started airing in May 2004, it was only natural that the fandoms of these two superhero teen cartoons would overlap.

Teen Titans was also very strong on the "found family" trope. The show had also already shown that the Titans were more than willing to take in additional members (Terra, Januarry 2004) so adding Danny in the team as a new member of the team was an easy base for a crossover. However, even back then, Phandom was just angst and gore loving as it is today so a lot of fic writers wanted a tool to ensure that the freshly traumatized Danny had a reason to trust and stay with group of strangers. And making Danny Robin's brother or twin was a perfect trick for that.

(Plus if you have two shows, with overlapping fandoms, that have characters with even slightly similar traits... You bet that someone in the fandom is going to make them related.)

So that was Teen Titans era... What next?

Well first we had "The Batman" cartoon which was allowed to add Robin in its 4th season thanks to Teen Titans ending (Bat-embargo). I don't really remember there being any bigger crossovers with Danny Phantom, but it did keep the idea of "Dick Grayson is Robin in cartoons" idea living.

2010, we got Young Justice. And once again Dick Grayson is the Robin.

If I remember correctly, Danny&Dick are sibling fics were still a thing back then, probably thanks to TTxDP fandom being still fairly active in FF.net. And of course a lot of these people would be influenced by, or move to, YJ fandom. Heck... I personally was introduced to YJ thanks to its influence and characters bleeding to TTxDP fics.

But YJ had something TT didn't: the Justice League and mentors. The Team being a "training school" for young heroes gave the show multiple reason for Danny to stay around, no matter the backstory. Danny could still be Dick's long lost brother. Or like Connor, he could be a laboratory experimet with no other place to go. Or perhaps, the League had found him solo-heroing like they did with Artemis and now wanted to train him.

So yeah, the Dick&Danny are sibling trope was still alive but slowly losing it's popularity. Early 2010s was also the time when people started to move from FF.net to AO3 and some fandoms and tropes just... didn't seem to survive the move as well as the others.

But the question still remains.

Why and how Damian replaced Dick as Danny's sibling?

And to answer to this question, we need to narrow down when it happened.

Though Damian had made several animated cameos over the years, his first big role as animated Robin started in 2014 thanks to the DC Animated Universe films (Son of Batman ->). When it came to Dick, he aged naturally into his Nightwing identity and ended his 10 year career as the main animated Robin.

So surely; this was the turning point that started it all?

Well... It turned out... that the answer to that is no.

Let me show you AO3's "Danny and Dick/Damian are siblings" tags

Damian didn't appear in Danny Phantom fandom tags until 2015; a whole year after his movie debut. And even after that, it took almost 7 whole years for "Danny and Damian are siblings" tag to appear.

(Sure, the "Danny Fenton and Dick-or-Damian are siblings" excludes a lot of potential fics (including the oldest ones), but it seemed to be the parent tag and gives a good idea of how this trend has evolved.)

Heck! Damian Wayne is tagged in Danny Phantom fics only 24 times by the end of the 2021! I knew Phandom is going through its "DC renaissance" but with his ever growing role in animated media, I still assumed Damian to be more commonly used character.

So the new question is: what the heck happened in 2022?

All animated and video game appereances I can find for Damian are from before 2020s. Sure, shows like Harley Quinn continued after that but I don't think that is the reason for Damian's sudden popularity.

So I decided to dig a little bit deeper.

In AO3, the first time I could see a fic with Damian and Danny as siblings is January 2022. The parent tag "Danny Fenton and Damian Wayne are Siblings" appears later the same month.

Before August, the tag has been used 3 times.

Then 22 times in the remaining 5 months.

And when I looked into those 22 fics, "What happened in 2022" turned out to be a completelly wrong question.

What I should have asked was WHO happened.

Because out of those 22 fics written between August adn December 2022... 14 were written by a single author.

I'm not going to name them in case this post causes unwanted traffic for them. Plus they might just be the one popularising the tag but not the trope itself. However, I have read some of their fics before this little project and they are a good writer. So no surprise if they managed to inspire other people to use this idea more often.

I also know I am probably missing something. The previously mentioned DCxDP renaissance was already started/starting back then. Of course it made people to make up a biological connection between Danny and Bat-family member with similar-ish age. It is the same logic that early 2000s fandom used to connect Danny to Robin the first time.

But if you just look at AO3 statistics... It creates an image of a trope being created by handful of fics and less authors than I have fingers to count.

And that is definitely one of the main reasons I love internet fandoms.

[bonestrouslingbones]

glanced at multiple au ship tierlists and found myself thinking "how have none of these had cherryberry on it when that used to be like right under kustard for the most popular sanscest ship" im going to bed

[alicelairds]

i hate how people can just easily erase and forget and overlook a platonic relationship that had key importance to the show/movie they're apart of, like people talk about them at first, but when the second a romantic relationship is "more important" to talk about, most of the fandom drops it and forgets it when it's convenient for them because apparently it's not as important as romance 😒

[kaiba-fangirl]

Oh dear 😳

Well, I've looked, and-

*pops back over to Yu-Gi-Oh*

Ahhh... I don't know how we made it through the growing pains, but we did. Hopefully other fandoms will someday, too.

[jaguarys]

Hmmmm thinking about how the portrayal of scientists as unfeeling people who don't care about anything but scientific advancement, even at the cost of humanity, contributes to the demonization of science. Which in turn leads to people being afraid of scientific advancements and a misunderstanding of the many many people who use science to work towards amazing things that will help people. Which in turn leads to people being distrusting of these advancements and works in service of capitalism, traditionalism, eco-fascism, etc. But surely it means absolutely nothing

[selfspinninglies]

I am sooosooso normal about the death note musical do not ask me about it

[bistaxx]

I try to keep things positive on here but todays kinda the exception- I use the tags ‘negative’ or ‘discourse’ on here if you guys want to blacklist those

Also Most of my grief is towards chatters/twt not towards the tumblr fanbase 👍

[qveenpoppy]

why do i feel awkward mentioning matt lanter in that last post lol, as if i'm worried my followers don't remember my timeless days

[headphonemouse]

As soon as I finish these other art requests in 1-5 years I'm opening up requests again someone give me strength