#they were half thinking jazz was grief stricken

[wolfjackle-creates]

Ghost!Robin Part 4

Here's your next part of the Ghost!Robin fic for WIP Wednesday. I'm gonna start putting fic designation in the title field rather than WIP Wednesday because I think it makes it easier to read.

Also, everyone came out in numbers for last week's segment! Damn! Thank you and I'm glad so many of you are enjoying this little fic of mine. We'll probably get one more week of this before I go back to Bring Me Home, but it'll depend what I feel like. I want to rework some of what I have written next.

First, Previous

1.1k words + a 464 word Omake (cut scene)

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Tim asked more details on the specs of the PDA which Danny happily answered. The things he built with Tucker were always his favorite inventions.

“So are you in school to become an engineer or something?” asked Dick who’d gotten Damian calmed down and sitting. The boy had gotten his knife back and was spinning it in his hands. Bruce seemed to be fondly exacerbated by the scene. Robin had pulled out a ghostly weapon and was trying to copy Damian’s movements, though he wasn’t quite as adept.

Danny shook his head to Dick’s question. “Nah. Hard to get into engineering school when you fail high school.” Danny narrowed his eyes as Damian’s mouth opened, but Dick whispered in his ear again and the boy didn’t say anything.

“I ended up dropping out of high school and getting a GED,” said Tim. “It can work just as well.”

Robin was nodding along and pointing at himself, too. Had he died before he could complete his schooling, too?

“I’m sure. It’s just not a priority for me right now. I don’t need one for my job and I can’t become an astronaut because of my accident when I was fourteen.”

Dick was nodding, but Tim looked confused and asked, “Fourteen? I thought you had your accident when you were older?”

“Why would you think that?” Had he or Jazz made any reference to when his accident was? “No, it happened when I was fourteen. A few weeks before I started my freshman year of high school.

Before Tim could ask anything else, Steph called out from the other side of the room. “Did you say you wanted to be an astronaut? Totally awesome. What made you pick that?”

“I honestly don’t know why everyone doesn’t want to be astronauts! Space is so cool. We can learn so much about the universe by studying it in closer detail. And with how many aliens are now living at least part time on Earth, it only makes sense to explore and see what else might be out there.”

Bruce nodded at him. “I am sorry you aren’t able to become one.”

Danny just waved a hand in the air. “I came to terms with it a long time ago. And my current job is fine. Might not be what I would’ve chosen, but I’ve made it work for me.” Deciding he should change the subject before someone had the brilliant idea to ask more about his accident or job, he asked, “So what is for dinner, anyway? You’ve all talked about how amazing the food is, but what are we having?”

Someone tried to speak up, but Jason held up a hand. “I’m the one who helped Alfie cook. Demon-brat is vegetarian so we have a vegetarian curry. If you like meat, there’s a prime rib roast. Then a half dozen different sides—vegetables, rice, potatoes. Huge salad with all the fixings and a dozen different dressings to choose from. And dessert after.”

“Damn, that sounds amazing. I haven’t had a good home cooked meal in ages, so I’ve been looking forward to this.”

“Has your Grandpa been keeping you that busy?” asked Jazz.

“That, but also getting things in order to take this evening off. There’s just been a lot. I’m spending the night at yours, by the way.”

“I’d be offended if you didn’t.”

Danny knew he could rely on Jazz.

“Ooh, do you have any good stories about Jazz as a kid?” asked Jason.

Laughing, Danny said, “So many! But I don’t think we’ll be able to get to those tonight. I’ve a feeling you’ll be interested in other things by that point.” At his words, Robin grinned and pointed at himself. Danny gave him a slight nod to confirm that yes, they’d be talking about him.

Before Jason could ask for clarification, Alfred came in to announce dinner was ready.

Robin cheered and flew over to sit on Alfred’s shoulders, hand extended, to lead the way to the dinning room. Danny couldn’t hold back the chuckle and Jazz shot him a look which he ignored.

“There better be a place setting for you, Alfie!” called Jason as they followed.

“You made your opinion quite clear, Master Jason. And as I wish to meet your young lady and her brother as well, I have set myself a plate at the main table.”

Tim leaned over to whisper to Danny. “Alfred considers his role as butler very important. He rarely eats with the rest of us unless we join him in the kitchen.”

Danny nodded to show he understood, but had no idea how to actually reply to that. It seemed needlessly complicated.

Once they made it to the dining room, Danny grinned as Robin did a flip off of Alfred’s shoulders and landed sitting down on one of the place settings facing the associated chair. He bit his cheek to keep from laughing as Jason sat down at that same place. Jazz took a seat next to him and Danny sat to her other side. Dick ended up sitting next to him.

The scents of all the food wafting off the table made his mouth water and he closed his eyes just to breathe it in. “This smells amazing. Thanks Alfred. And Jason.”

Even Robin had moved to look over every dish, reaching out a hand to try and take something and sighing when he just phased through it.

Even Jazz looked a bit overwhelmed at the quantity of food. “This is so much effort. You didn’t have to do all this just for Danny and me.”

Bruce smiled at her. “It is so rare for all of us to be together for dinner so we make a spectacle of it any time it happens. And this is the first time Jason has ever brought anyone with him which makes it an even bigger event.”

Danny nudged her. “So, Jazz, what’s it like living with someone who can cook?”

Jason laughed. “Jazz isn’t allowed in the kitchen. You know, I caught her grabbing my chef’s knife before going into the fridge the other day!”

Danny furrowed his brow. “Of course she did. It’s a fridge.”

“Wait, is that a family trait? Why do you grab a knife to open the fridge? There’s gotta be a good story behind that.”

Before Danny could make the obvious statement regarding attacking food, Jazz elbowed him. “We’ll tell you later. It has to do with our parents and that’s a large topic and not one we should get into now.”

Before Danny could ask any questions about what the big deal was, Dick nudged him. “Which do you want—curry or beef?”

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Omake

Ignoring all of it, Danny shook his head and answered Dick. “Nah. Hard to get into college when you fail high school and are legally dead.”

Multiple people, including Jason, exclaimed at that statement and he looked to Jazz.

“Did Jazz not tell you about that? Our parents swear they saw my ghost and had me declared legally dead. I was missing at the time so the coroner agreed. Sighting the ghost of a missing person is all you need to confirm death in Amity.”

Under her breath, Jazz added, “You were only missing because they had you.”

Danny elbowed her and quietly chirped a Safe now.

Bruce was no longer smiling and was looking at Danny with narrowed eyes. “Your parents had you declared dead.”

“Yeah. It’s fine, though. I’ve an amazing doctor if I get into trouble. My grandfather is watching out for me. I’m financially stable. My partners are able to rent an apartment large enough for all three of us. I have other places to stay when I’m traveling. Honestly, it doesn’t impact my life all that much. Just means I’m not gonna go to college. And only reason I wanted to go to college was to be an astronaut, but my health makes that impossible.”

“Hn…” Bruce hummed.

And Danny had no idea what that meant, but Robin was now laughing, and Dick was exchanging grins with Tim, and Steph and Cass were whispering together. Damian was glaring at him even harder, blade hilt gripped in his hand. These people were strange.

Danny looked over at Jazz who shrugged. Jason was glaring at Bruce and said, “Don’t you dare.”

“Look, it’s really not a big deal. I know it’s kinda a messed up situation, but ghosts are generally treated really well in Amity. As well as any living human, at least. So long as you avoid the Guys in White and my parents that is. So outside of interactions with them, nothing has changed.”

“If you are ever in need of a place to stay or a meal or anything, you’ll have a room here,” offered Bruce.

Robin landed on Danny’s shoulders and was sending out happy-celebrate feelings. Steph handed Cass a few bills. Tim and Dick mimed giving each other fist bumps. Jason put his head in his hands and groaned. Duke was grinning at them all.

Damian half stood and said, “Father—!”

But Dick was at his side and pulling him back down to the couch with an arm around his shoulders, hand over his mouth, and whispering into his ear before he could do more than say the one word.

“Seriously, it’s not a big deal.” Trying to think of anyway to change the subject, he asked, “So what’s for dinner, anyway?”

And for the Tag List! (Which absolutely exploded this week. Holy shit.)

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The celebration post for 100 followers will be going out in another day or two! I've just had a really busy few weeks and didn't do as much writing as I was hoping for. But I hope to finish writing today and then I'll just take a few hours to edit.

[popculturebuffet]

Road to Reign Storm Road’s End:  Reign Storm Review!

Hello all you happy people. And ladys, gents, and others, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for. After 8 reviews building up to this, we’re finally at the main event, the thing i’ve been doing this project for: REIGN STORM. My faviorte episode of Danny Phantom and the one I consider to be it’s finest hour... almost literally. 

For those just joining me at the end of this project wondering what the heck i’m talking about: I’m Jake, I review stuff and things and for most of the past year i’ve been reviewing episodes of Danny Phantom on and off. I started with one of my all time faviorites, Bitter Reunions, and ended up having a huge blast reviewing it and revisiting the show after years of having not rewatched episodes, having not done so since close to a decade ago when I got the series boxset, with some not even getting that lucky. So I decided to keep things going ghost and came up with an arc: Road To Reign Storm, where I reviewed the episdoes I felt lead right into this episode which just so happened to cover almost every plot important episode of the show up to this point, allowing me to showcase some of the series best episodes, show how ahead of it’s time it was by incopreating ongoing storylines, being one of a handful of shows at the time (Along with Teen Titans, Xiaolin Showdown and Jackie Chan Adventuers) To push the medium into more arc based storytelling when it came to action shows, while still leaving room for fun one offs. It also gave me a proper refresher course for this mammoth epic so I could cover it properly. 

The only big , status quo changing episodes I can think of I skippped in this little marathon were “My Brother’s Keeper” (where Jazz learns Danny’s secret identity), and Memory Blank, which gave Danny his neat chest emblem, a mild costume change sure but one that took an already great outfit and somehow made it better. The former is one I WILL cover at some point, as it’s one of the shows finest episodes, as well as being VITAL to Jazz’s development as a character and setting up her learning Danny’s id, which is crucial to story episodes after reign storm. 

I also fully intended to keep covering the show. I may not do it on a monthly or close to monthly basis anymore as I have other projects, but this project reinvorated my love for the show and there’s PLENTY of good episodes to cover, from awesome one offs, to the rest of the ongoing storyline, to the other tv movies, with Ultimate Enemy only behind this one in my heart because of the baffling way it sets up the dark future at the center of the storyline. Seriously “danny cheats on a standarized test” just dosen’t feel like a big or tragic enough mistake to kick off everyone he cares about bar valarie dying, and his grief stricken decision to get rid of his ghost half that leads to the birth of his own personal venom. It’s still a an AWESOME film that part’s always bugged me and i’ll likely rant about it again. As for my plans.. you’ll just have ot wait till the end of the review. 

It’ll’ll be a fun ride though,  so follow this blog for more, and if you want to help me keep the lights on and keep making reviews like this join my patreon.

The Link Is Here

Just one dollar a month nets you exclusive reviews, and helps me hit milestones that will get me to review even more shows, with said reviews being on here for everyone.  So if that sounds like your cup of tea and you have some dough to blow, join me over there. For now , Danny’s facing a forcast of his arch enemy’s machenations, an all powerful scottish ghost hoping to take over amity and then the world, feelings for his arch frenemy, and a not entirley ballanced lesson on using your power responsibly. It’s one heck of a storm a comin so join me under the cut and grab your fenton umbrella... which i’m shocked ISN’T something that actualyl wasn’t in the show but it should’ve been. 

We open with an impressive mood setting shot, showing a ghost crow’s eye, before panning out to show the ghost zone and then zooming back in to show Vlad approaching what we THOUGHT was the Fight Knights castle, still being stranded in the ghost zone since the end of The MIllioin Dollar ghost and presumibly having used the weeks between the episodes (Since the handful of episodes between MDG and Reign Storm) to likely escape the guardian of the skeleton key was after last time and find his way to the castle. 

Not a minute in and we’re already to one of the things that makes Reign Storm so special: It rewards you for having watched the show as a whole up to this point. Both of the main story lines continue in meaningful and intresting ways, almost all of Danny’s foes up to this point make at least a cameo and two of the most loved ones end up giving major exposition later, and even things you think wouldn’t probably come up again like the Fright Knight’s castle and the man himself end up being vital to the story as a whole. This is Fanservice in it’s best form: telling a well crafted story that rewards you for having come this far by giving you tons of payoffs, cool moments, and intresting writing. 

The one thing the previous episodes didn’t set up for this though is our big bad, Pariah Dark. Turns out this is his castle, though it being attributed to the Fright Knight still makes perfect sense: as we’ll learn the Ghost King was locked up long before most of the ghosts we know and love in the series died and became ghosts. So the Fright Knight likely had a good few centuries of being lord of the castle before he ended up sealed in the pumpkin. 

As for why this new baddie’s so important, it turns out Vlad’s whole reason for getting the Skeleton Key was to loot his stuff: the all powerful crown of fire and ring of rage. Because let’s facde it when your a god level king of all you survey, your not going for subtely, your going for making your shit sound as metal as possible. 

Vlad gets the ring but finds it’s useless without the crown. This is where we get one of two plot beads in the special that just do not work at all for me. Vlad recklessly opens the sarcophogaus.. and thus awakens Pariah Dark. Now while i’m a self admitted huge fan of Vlad, he’s easily my faviorite animated villian period and one of my faviorite supervillians, part of what makes him intresting is his screw ups are usually due to his own failings as a person. He’s rich, he’s a master tactician and manipulator, he easily reads Danny half the time, and he’s an utter beast in a fight. But despite all that he usually looses because of his own ego and obessions: He lost his first fight with Danny only because Danny played on his own obession with maddie to force him to back off. He lost their second one because his similar obession with making Danny into his own son made it very easy for Danny to manipulate the schmuck into positoin to slap the ghost belt on him. Finally his last defeat was soley because he saw Jack as a helpless idiot and thus was blindsided when it turned out Jack was every bit as capable as his old buddy and easily thrashed him. Vlad’s main weakness is emotional. He thinks his plans through, and relies heavily on manipulation to win the day. As such it just dosen’t make sense he’d turn the key himself, even on impulse and free a potetinally dangerous foe. Sure you COULD say he thought he coudl take the ghost king or thought he was dead.. but given his terrified reaction to Pariah emerging it’s clear he knows EXACTLY who he’s dealing with. It’s just a lazy bit of writing in an otherwise near flawless episode. 

Thankfully things pick up right afterwords as while Pariah wasn’t set up before this, the show gives him a hell of an entrance: his reaction to Vlad trying to manipulate him, as his his nature.. is to toss the fucker through the roof of the castle with a blast of trenemdous power. His encore to this is to free the fright knight.. who then kneels the second he knows his old master is awake. 

Just to underscore how terrifyingly powerful this makes pariah come off: Vlad has been up to this point THE strongest foe danny’s faced. As I said he only won the two times he has against Vlad because he exploited Vlad’s own flaws. He’s brutally thrashed Danny three times at this point, once with, as he cleverly quipped his hand literally behind his back. Meanwhile as covered last month the Fright Knight nearly turned earth into his personal kingdom, and Danny only beat HIM by sealing him back up again, and only was easily able to do that because it was Halloween. These are easily Danny’s strongest foes (Desire is an easy third and is only that far back because her own power is really easy to turn on her)... and in just a minute of screentime Pariah has swatted one away like an annoying fly and cowed the other into obdience just by existing. This is how you set up a villian. It can be tricky having a powerful new villian come in and bitchslap the old one. This one makes it work: it’s geninely satisfying as it is allarming to see Vlad on the other end of a curb stomp for a change, and with the Fright Knight it gives the viewer an awful relization: Fright Knight is indeed a knight, one powerful enough to reshape the world in his image, and this man.. is his KING. 

Apparently the blast restored Vlad’s braincells as he’s back to his normal ways, using a duplicate to draw Pariah’s attention since the Ghost King noticed Vlad stole his shit. In a subtly creepy show of his sheer power though... Pariah quickly figures out it’s a clone. It takes him a second sure but the fact is these ghost duplicates are near perfect copies of their creators.. and he can tell one’s a duplicate just by looking at them, meaning he’s either so seasoned he can spot the trick or his vision is so godlike he can see the diffrence once a beings close enough. 

Vlad naturally is trying to talk the Fright Knight into an alliance, which the Knight is geninely tempted by, but the old man’s back again before Vlad can fully make his play and Vlad once again gets knocked the fuck out.... this time though it’s so heavy he’s left singed, bruise, and sent hurtling all the way through the ghost portal to the fentons lab, and so drained he turns back to human... which works out in the long run but once again shows Pariah as an unstoppable juggernaught: someone SO powerful he left the series big bad a broken wreck in just two moves and can easily topple his signiture move. 

Jack and Maddie happen to be working on something useful as usual. This time it’s the ecto skeleton, a moderate sized powered armor that increases the users strength ten fold, designed to beat back the strongest ghost.. and then notice vlad flung out of the portal, who before passing out begs his “old fat friend” for help, because even when half dead, Vlad still can’t resisit dunking on jack. I’d honestly be more worried if he hadn’t insulted the guy.

One title sequence later, we’re at school and Danny’s pleased as punch since for once in his life things are going great: he beat Skulker AND ember last night, returning both to the ghost zone, AND got his homework done. But since god hates our boy he picks this time to have Dash lob a football at his head. Danny decides “fuck it I have superepowers” though and uses a ghost ray to knock a sign into him. 

Danny decides to continue the shenanigans and stuff’s dash’s locker with Toilet Paper, which Sam advises as “playing with fire” then gets all smug when Dash finds out it’s Danny because he used “Fenton Wipe” aka toilet paper with Jack’s face on it. You may question the logic of Jack wiping his face on his ass, but A) since when has logic ever stopped jack from making something? and B) Thanks to large orders from Wisconson, it’s what bankrolls his other vanity projects so the system apparently works. Sam smugly says this is Karma. 

Danny pranked a guy who has been NOTHING but an absolute bag of shit, wrapped in a sack of shit that’s decorated with little poo emojis’ to Danny the entire series. He’s been nice to the guy exactly twice so far and both times he had an ulterior motive: he had to be nice to danny during the fight with Youngblood because it was in his best intrest to work with Danny if he ever wanted to see his parents again, and he gave Danny a party invite SOLEY to try to get into Jazz’ pants. If Karma actually existed in the Danny Phantom universe a Velicoraptor would tailwhip Dash in the balls every hour on hour. And not only that it’s not even an equilvent bit of Karma. Danny made a bunch of clean toilet paper fall on the guy and at worst scrunched up his stuff slighty. Dash is trying to PHYSICALLY ASSAULT HIM OVER IT. I’m not saying Danny should get used to using his powers like this, great power, great responsiblity and all that, but I am saying Sam, and implictly the show, trying to paint Danny as wrong for doing so just dosen’t work. I’ll go more into how later as this subplot has only begun to be moralizingly stupid. 

So then Danny ran and he ducks under a table in the Cafeteria.. and runs into Valarie. The two argue for a second over whose hiding spot this is, as Valarie is trying to hide from nathan, a stalkery nerd/plot device who wants to ask her to prom, three years from now and will never be heard of again after this. My money is on Vlad disappearing him and not getting that Valarie MAYBE dosen’t want him going that far. The frost quickly thaws between the two though and they talk casually, likely owning to the bonding session they had in “Life Lessons”. 

After school the newfound buddies are still on the run and add one more to their party, Sam, who herself is hiding from her mom trying to make her wear a horrifyingly poofy dress that i’m pretty sure trying to force a goth into counts as child abuse. The three run for Danny’s house and Sam once again gets on her soap box to moralize at danny whlie only marginally making sense, this time worrying about danny hanging out with “one of his arch enemies” not getting that A) their hanging out due to circumstance B) Danny already has to hide his id from ghost hunters on a daily basis. He calls them mom and dad. Having to add one more to the mix by letting Val into his life, when doing so could also help if he decides to tell her who he is and get her to back off him and focus ont he real threats is a smart move. and C) Val isn’t a straight up villian. While her hatred of Danny is entirely based on a misunderstanding, she not only likely saw Walker’s frame job in Public enemies, so she has reason to think her first impression of him is valid, but as seen in her last appearnce, she DOES hunt ghosts who aren’t danny. Danny’s her main target and motivation, sure, but Valarie does spend plenty of time hunting actually threats to Amity, same as Danny and does so while juggling school and an demeaning job, something SAM KNOWS ABOUT.  Thankfully unlike the Dash thing, where Sam is written to be annoyingly right, here it’s a bit more nuanced: She has half of a point, but it’s also made crystal clear later that part of her issue here is Jealousy. 

Anyways turns out Danny’s ACTUAL arch enemy is waiting in his home, getting served tea and recovering from the intro. Thankfully this time around Danny isn’t the only one in the house suspcious of what Vlad’s up to : Since Maddie knows what a scum bag her former friend turned stalker is, and since said stalker set up a plane crash just to hit on her, it’s clear she knows he’s up to SOMETHING and while not being obvious in her hatred, due to not wanting ot hurt her husband by letting him know the truth, she does hurt vlad plenty with some hot tea to the crotch. 

Unsuprisingly Vlad lives down to their suspscions, as he’s already plotting to stell the exo skeleton and says as much as  “joke” in a classic show of vlad “I’m so confident I can tell you what i’m going to do and still get away with it smugness”. And given he DOES end the specail with the suit , the man really does work hard to justify his own ego. He also adresses Valarie whose understandably confused and put off he knows who she is.... and becaues he’s you know a creepy old white guy who knows her name. That can’t bode well and it does not, if not for the reasons she probably thinks. Danny is also confused he knows about Valarie and the gears are likely turning in his head about how a teenager suddenly got ghost equipment on par with his parents without living with them. 

There isn’t time for Danny to put two and two together go as an alarm goes off and while fenton works has a good chunk of alarms from general proximity to reminding Jack to wipe, this is the big one: a huge surge of ghosts is coming through the portal. Naturally Danny needs to deal with this so Sam trips Jack and Jazz trips maddie. Which begs the question HOW the Fenton Crew didn’t figure out Jazz knew about Danny sooner. She’s about as good at hiding her knowledge of her brother’s secret as Vlad is at hiding the fact he wants to bone down with her mom. Vlad does take this chance to go talk with Valarie in private.

Danny meanwhile heads to the portal and gets the box ghost. He’s relieved for a second, figuring the alarm malfunctioned... only for in a great shot to get swarmed by tons of ghosts, including the bulk of his Rouges Ghoulery.  And if that wasn’t a big enough reveal after a big fight with Skulker, Danny finds out WHY all his foes decides to take an earth vacation at once: their RUNNING.  In what could only have been a few hours, Pariah has razed all their home dimensions. And this isn’t some small feat either: Ignoring just how strong each individual member of the Rouges Ghoulery is, these are pretty expansive places and he trashed pretty much all of them in the span of an afternoon. Not only was Vlad not even a remote match NO GHOST SO FAR is and thehir here for once not to cause mischief or attack danny, but to simply hide for their lives. 

That said just because beating the shit out of Danny isn’t their primary goal, dosne’t mean they can’t spare some time for it. We get another iconic scene as pretty much every Ghost Danny’s fought at this point takes a shot at him, leaving our hero just as badly beaten as Vlad was. 

Speaking of the cheesy dickhead, we get some payoff that’s been brewing since Vlad first gave Valarie the exiqupment back in her first outing as a ghost hunter:  Vlad finally makes himself known as her backer. Valarie understandably asks why and Vlad says it’s because he geninely admires her drive and passion, and sensed the talent to ghost hunt in her. And this part feels genuine. While he’s clearly manipulating Valarie like he does everyone, Vlad isn’t stupid: if he’s going to pick a pawn to manipulate, he’s going to make it a good one. While he likely picked her in part because she had a personal reason to hate Danny, something he likely knows because he keeps a creepy amount of tabs on the fentons at all times, Vlad isn’t stupid. If he’s going to spend the likely millions of dollars it took to build high tech equipment JUST for one person, he’s going to make sure that person is actually worth the expense. If he gave it to just some schmuck who Danny would easily beat and then take the equipment away from, all he’ dbe doing is giving his arch enemy more toys to play with. He had to pick just right and saw past who Valarie was, a prilvaged spoiled brat, and saw who she could become, a driven young woman with the talent to be a true threat, while also keeping Danny nice and sharp incase he decides to come around and see Vlad as a dad after all. Not only that but it leaves him a perfect pawn for whenever he needs one, in this case to take the ring for him , under the guise of it being an heirloom, till Vlad can get the crown. Just to recap so it all sinks in: Vlad spent MILLIONS of dollars and did a creepy amount of research all to set up a capable but still manipulatable pawn.. on the likely but still remote chance he’d need her at some point for something. And it PAID OFF PERFECTLY. If Vlad wasn’t so hung up on stalking Maddie, turning danny or killing Jack, he’d of won by now and this whole scheme proves it. 

At school the next day Danny’s not in great shape and given his arch enemy is sleeping in the room next to him and every OTHER enemy he has is out loose fleeing something worse he knows nothing about, and had to spend all night hunting his foes to no real luck.. yeah i’d be pretty beat too. And because god clearly hates Danny an ectopus steals his lunch just to rub salt in his freshly gained wound. I’m very suprised a ghost horse didn’t just manifest and kick him in the balls after that. 

So naturally there’s no day of life that Dash can’t make worse and wanting vengance for the other day, grabs Danny. Danny is pissed off and in no mood to put up with this, so he makes his chin intangible so Dash’s punch passes right through, and Val, who was sitting with our crew to the other twos displeasure, sliding a lunch tray at the prick knocking him over.. which results in a THUNDERING CHORUS of applause and Sam once again getting all self righteous about. While the full rant’s still a comin, I will say this time is even MORE ludcrious as while Danny did piss dash off, he was ACTING IN SELF DEFENSE, and used the most passive of his powers to do so. All he did was try not ot get hit and make sure dash actually got compuance for hitting him, which again he usually dosen’t because he plays sportsball.  At least last time she had half a point, even if she was way too smug about it and way too self righteous. Here she just assumes Danny’s gone down a dark road because he didn’t want to get punched in the face again. 

Danny’s got bigger problems than School Bullies and self righteous love intrests though as Pariah has assembled his army and instructs them. He’d go himself but Darkseid got him a really comfy chair as a welcome back present. That shit’s geniuine parademon hide, that’s plush. When your old murder college buddy offers you a parademon hide chair you make time for it and let your minons go do the disembowling. I’d also like to point out how much I love this skeleton ghost army: it’s simple but it works, most of them wearing diffrent outfits from diffrent ages giving the impressiont his army has built up over centuries by both it’s commanders to be nigh unstoppable.. and leaves the viewer wondering how they came to be and if the fright knight or pariah did something horrible to regular ghosts to make them into these things. 

So with this the Fright Knight attacks the lab and Jack once again gets to be awesome as he uses the ecto-skeleton’s fabulous kick pants to kick his as and send him packing. It also nicely shows off the skeleton even if it’s not done yet, turning jack from more of a glacial bruiser, if a genius one, into the fastest thing alliiiiiveeee. The Knight withdraws as he realizes Vlad DOSEN’T have the ring.  We also get a display of just how risky the skeleton is to use; just using the PANTS has left jack near death. Naturally Vlad dosen’t bother helping maddie get him out of the pants. 

Meanwhlie the rest of the Army of Darkness wrecking up the town and giving the exiled ghosts a chance to find new domains leading to some fun gags, my favorite being Box Ghost taking over a shipping store

Couple: We need boxes, lots of them! Box Ghost: Never!

Sidney is the only one not really into this, feeling their no better than their pursuer.. and forgetting most of his fellow ghosts are supervillians on any given day so Skulker just mounts him to a wall with an arrow. 

So next up we get back to school where Sam and Tucker try to have an intevention about the whole Valarie thing. The issue is only ONE Of these people has a leg to stand on and suprisingly given the whole “Let your bully punch you it is the way” thing, it’s Sam. As I said she’s written well in this subplot and thus has valid points while also letting her own feelings for danny, concern for his well being, and history with Val blind her to the whole picture. To break it down

Where Sam’s Right: While hanging around Val isn’t inherently more dangerous than being around his own parents, danny starting a relationship with her is. She’s going to get suspcious if he keeps ducking out meaning he either has to let her dump him over it.. or tell her. And like with his parents there’s not a 100% guarantee she won’t try and kill him, either thinking Danny Phantom was controlling or replacing Danny Fenton.. or finding out her boyfriend lied to her and is the person she hates most. She MIGHT accept it, but there’s every chance she might also try to kill him. He can’t know that and while I feel it’s worth the risk as they clearly like each other a lot, and ultimately it’s HIS CHOICE if he wants to roll those dice or not, I can see why Sam might be afraid. 

ON top of that as she makes clear at the end of the special, Val wasn’t exactly a good person before everything went south for her. She was rude, condescending and just as much a bully as the rest of the popular crowd. Her origin story ep also has her sick Kwan on Danny for a simple mistake. Sam has good reason to mistrust someone whose been nothing but terrible to her, and when they did genuinely try to cheer up Val after she lost everything, she was a dick to them.  She also outright manipulated tucker to try and get closer to the Fentons.  Granted tucker was  predatory to her earlier, so I can’t really hold it against her, but I can see why Sam would. So Sam has reasons to distrust Val. 

Where Sam’s Wrong: I’ve already poitned most of this out so i’m going rapid fire for this: Val does the same job as Danny, dosen’t realize his ghost form isn’t dangerous due to understandable misunderstandings and Walker’s whole public framing of Danny as a bad guy. Just because Val’s an anti-heroine dosen’t mean she’s not heroic or there isn’t good in her. Not only that Sam KNOWS Val is having to juggle school, ghost hunting AND a part time job just to go to college.  She knows Val is human underneath the walls she puts up. Finally as Val points out soon, it’s VERY clear at least on some level Sam isn’t happy Danny’s with someone else, though at the very least it’s not a Daphne and Fred from Scooby Doo thing where she’s INTENTIONALLY jealous of the other being with someone else despite them having no romantic relationshpi, just an attraction they haven’t acted on. It’s just something Sam herself either dosen’t realize or is trying to suppress her feelings because she’s understandibly scared of them as it could ruin their friendship if it goes poorly. 

So it’s well balanced and well written for her. Tucker on the other hand.....tucker has NO argument whatsoever given his actions during Val’s origin story: he outright put on breath spray and prepared to hit on her ENTIRELY because she was in a rough spot and thus would be more venerable. He outright says as much, I reviewed the episode, go look if you don’t believe me. That should be enough on it’s own but there’s also the blatant Hypocrisy: Tucker DATED Val in that same episode for the reasons I mentioned, and got defensive when his friends both pointed out she’s trying to kill Danny AND clearly using him, saying “Your just jealous”

So yeah after that incident, Tucker really shouldn't be trying to warn someone off dating val and the writers should’ve been fully aware of it. 

Danny rightfully defends her and his budding relationship with her, she says she likes him too, it’s really sweet. Danny’s ghost sense then tingles.. or I guest frosts up a bit. Whatever point is he senses a ghost but before he can go after it Dash attacks again.... despite the LAST three times having gone poorly. 

Danny, once again pissed off, actually crosses the line this time, possesing Dash and slamming him into a locker. He had other ways around it , phasing, a ghost beam, what he’s used before.. but he went for an option that actively HURT the guy and used his powers to do so and could’ve SERIOUSLY injured him. While Danny does need to get to the emergency and dash does deserve some Karma because he’s a throughly shitty person and Karmic Velociraptors dont’ exist sadly. It’ sthe one time in this plot it geninely feels like Danny actually is slipping into darkness and they aren’t just saying he is to him defending himself. 

Danny finds Vlad and we get to why the above subplot dosen’t work and what i’ve been waiting for. Vlad saying Danny’s actions with Dash make them alike. 

Yeah this is where we finally get to why this plot dosen’t work soooooo

We’ve gone over some problems of it already: Until now Danny has only used his powers mildly against Dash, and every time after the first to avoid a beating, Sam is way too self righteous and the show expects us to back her, and Dash being the second Anti-Christ after Santa Claus. 

But now we’ve gotten to their thesis statment, with Vlad actively saying Danny isn’t so diffrent than him , using his powers on his enemies. The INTENT is good and the idea there also is: Danny slowly slipping into using his immense powers on Dash and thus becoming a bully himself. This is even something the show badly needed a redo on as they also fucked it up with the Poindexter episode last season. We’ll get to that someday. Point is the idea that a young hero needs to be responsible with their powers, that you can’t just exert your power on former tormentors and stuff. Defending yourself is fine, that’s fair. But when you start using super strength to pummel a fucking school bully, your no better than they were. And i’ve seen great examples of this lesson or heroes acting on it: In the recent invincible cartoon our hero Mark gets himself beat up in the first episode for standing up for a classmate being harassed by the local flash thompson clone. He and dash probably network. Later on when he gets his powers instead of use them to fight the guy he simply asks him to “hit me as hard as you can”.. and thus freaks him out by taking a few punches without flinching since he’s you know...

Just like Danny mark used his powers to avoid getting hurt, not that this dickcheese COULD hurt Mark but still, and did so in a way that didnt’ really hurt the bully. Ther’es no harm in using your powers to not get hurt. Saying “a person should get beat up by an asshole” just because heroes don’t use their powers like that is dumb and logic like that is why the Snyderverse John Kent threw himself into a tornado. A similar example is the Rami Spider-Man film, which has peter use his ablities to dodge, but be careful not to actually punch Flash. Simple effective and logical. 

Speaking of Spidey the second set of films has a very good example of why a hero shoudln’t give into anger and pay evil unto bullies just becaue THEY have the power now. And did so very well: after ben’s death because Peter wouldn’t stop a theif after the cashier wouldn’t give him choclate milk and said thief tossed him choclate mlik and good god that scene was dumb. It’s easily the worst version of Uncle Ben’s death I know of. 

Point is after that, Peter is in mourning and when his usual tormentor Flash tries talking to him, Peter snaps and tries to beat up the guy.... only for it to be revealed Flash.. .was actualyl being a goood guy this time: instead of bullying peter he was GENINELY offering his condolences and snapping like this makes peter realized how far he went. He attacked a guy just for talking to him. 

And the latter is what their trying to do.. but by also villianizing the former. And it just does not work. The show is not great with bullying, showing that dash is an unreptenant asshole, that he only gets punished if the teachers have to APPEAR fair.. yet TWICE now it thinks “oh well Danny should just take it.”. The show just treats Dash bullying Danny like something that happens and sucks but you have to suck it up and take it. And this is something I entirely blame Steve Marmel for

Yup. Look i’m a fan of the guy, have been ever since i realized just how much of what I loved about the series was his, from the overaching stories to some of it’s best episodes. While he was far from the only reason the show was a success: Butch, as much of a fuckup as he is, did have a great concep, Stephen Silver’s character designs are iconic, and the show had a LOT of talented writers besides Marmel. But it was Marmel’s direction that gave the show the focus, character development and strong continuity that made it a masterpiece.  But just because a creator is excellent.. dosen’t mean their flawless and this flaw in the show is squarely Marmels: He wrote this one, made the story for Splitting Images, and also wrote Fright Knight. He puts werid moral logic in his stories where because Danny retaliates against a bully or screws up a bit, hes going to turn out bad. He dosen’t get that Danny’s you know 14: Teenagers screw up all the time. Adults screw up all the time. People, Marmel included, are flawed and make mistakes. You have to ballance your hero fucking up with a proportinate response, not assume every time his morals slip just a bit, he’s slipping into darkness. The Locker thing is about the only time he’s really gotten this, being something brutal, excessive and unecssary. But most of the time when Danny slips up he just wants to get some revenge, and it comes off less as “revenge is dumba nd only makes things worse” which it does and more “You can’t do bad things your the hero you need to not do bad thigns”. It’s just so simplstic from a show that has far more depth to it it’s baffling. 

Danny is NOT bad for wanting to ocassinaly prank Dash, using his powers to avoid a whopping, or ocasinally making an oopsie. He’s just a teenager. It’s okay for characters to fuck up and okay to explore the consequences. Things don’t have to be TGIF levels of “you screwed up so god must punish thou” and it’s grating that in a show that has such intresting characters and fastneating storytelling that it falls back on this simplistic BS. It’s beneath Marmel and I hope he did better on this sort of thing in his later shows. 

Before we move on, one last thing about this plot: Sam. I feel episodes like this are WHY a lot of fans hate her. Me... I feel she’s not a bad character, she just has a LOT of episodes where she’s poorly written, either taking her soap box sadie tendencies seriously instead of treating them with the shades of gray the series does at it’s best, or having her constantly nag Danny and try to serve as the angel on his shoulder despite not really having an argument as to why she’s right. I don’t hate Sam Manson the way people do, but I do feel she’s written inconsientaly and deserved better, though she’s far from the only character with this issue as Tucker and Jack also heavily suffer from this.

The two naturally fight which goes as poorly for Danny, same as it ever was, while inside Sam tries to lay into Valarie... only for Val to cut her to ribbons with three simple words “You Like Him”

Sam stumbles to try and defensively deny it.. but it’s VERY clear she’s trying to tell herself it’s not true as much as Valarie. But i’ts Val’s response to all this that shows how much she’s grown: She tells Sam she needs to make her move now or “someone else” will. Even just in her last episode Val would’ve gotten into a shouting match instead, she gives someone she has no reason to be nice to a clear shot at dating someone Val is very intrested in, simply because she can tell Sam is struggling to tel lherself she has a crush on Danny let alone tell DANNY about it. It’s a mature, classy move: Val will still swoop if Sam makes no move.. but she’s giving Sam a wide berth to do that first. 

So while that’s going on the news reports on the Army of Darkness surging on the school, which sends all the parents running to help, while Vlad asks Danny

As he smacks danny into it and tells the boy he isn’t the problem. Sure enough the Army of Darkness show up, forcing the two into a figh with the Skelleys. We get an AWESOME shot of Danny and Vlad back to back, and Danny reluctantly agrees to trust Vlad. I do love me a good villian hero team up, especailly when it’s arch enemies like this and this one is great: After so many great fights between the two we see the two working together, fighting back to back, and it is so freaking cool.

And it only gets Cooler as naturally, Val joins the fray and we get a great joke as Vlad realizes that he’s created the perfect instrument to impale himself as Val attacks them mid battle. The look on his face as he realizes this, and his deadpan “she’s really qutie good”  and danny’s response of “she also thinks we’re the enemy” is fucking classic. 

Danny is forced into playing peackeepr and uses the same point as vlad: they don’t have to like each other, but  they NEED each other. Val reluctantly agrees to a truce, and so we ge tthe three best characters in the show, the center of the show’s story and th ecore of it’s best moments, all fighting together. It’s as beautiful as it sounds.

The Fright Knight eventually decides he’s had enough and makes his own play, stabbing his sword into the football field near the goal, scoring a touchdown.. and opening a massive barrier that slowly surrounds amity, trapping everyone inside. The barrier sequence itsle fis awesome, showing the sheeer scope as it tears amity apart sealing it off. the Knight gives his ultimatium: give him the ring and the barrier goes down, removing his sword means they surrender and anything besides those two means death. Val wont’ back down, she stands her ground.. and gets whalloped by the Fright Knight for her troubles. Vlad skedaddles and Danny is left with an unconscious and heavily injured Valarie.. right as her dad shows up. 

His mom also shows up.. and as @jess-the-vampire pointed out when we watched this, as of last time she’s joining me whenever I watch these, she looks pissed and it makes no goddamn sense. Why would she think her son beat up another person or MUCH WORSE for no reason. My god this implies some awful things abotu Maddie. Danny does indeed explain and they skedaddle for Fentonworks. 

At Fentonworks danny’s friends ONCE AGAIN try confronting him about the Val thing, as they noticed the ring of rage before she left to get ready for some football and think it’s a tracking device. We get a fun gag as she happily waves at danny when he peaks his head out to look and he does the same back. It’s really fucking cute. Danny makes the connection that it’s clearly the same ring the Fright Knight was talking about and that Vlad  gave it to Val. Tucker makes a quip that “isn’t he a bit old for her”. Because an older creepy man manpulating a 14 year old is SO chucklesome. It REALLY dozen’t help I saw Last Night in Soho this weekend so an older man manipulating a venerable young woman REALLY isn’t a subject I find hilarious right now or ever. 

Danny decides to say “Hey, what’s going on” after spendign the special forced to react to everything going to shit around him. So he cleverly decides to just outright ask the hiding ghosts about it since their his only lead that isn’t a skeleton bones, a known lying manipulator or a known lying and manipulatin skeleton bones. This leads to a brief fight with Skulker after Danny enters his Bass Pro Shop Lair,  and Skulker refuses to stop his Kraven the Hutner Schtick for five minutes to talk to Danny. Sydney once again plays the voice of reason, and this time is heard pointing out Danny can help them. Given he’s beaten both of them, Skulker MULTIPLE TIMES, Skulker concedes his point and the rest of the ghosts gather. 

And so we finally get Pariah’s Backstory: Long ago, before most of the ghosts we know at this point even existed, there was Pariah Dark. With the limitless power provided by the Crown of Fire and Ring of Rage, Pariah was unstoppable and ruled with an iron fist... and we’ve seen it it’s a dang cool iron fist. Eventually 6 powerful ghosts united to seal him, just BARLEY doing so after taking the ring from him. Why they thought putting both him and the ring in the same place was a good idea I don’t know.

Until Vlad woke him up. Danny tries to get the rouges help against him and gets the response you’d expect

So with that Danny decides to confront Vlad, luring him outside and leading to another fight and them getting ready for some more football. Vlad once again poitns out “your not so different you and I”

And Danny decides to say fuck this and pull the sword. Naturally though pulling the sword left by the spooky ghost knight that made a giant green imepndtrable dome DOSEN’T end well, something Vlad knew about but choose not to tell Danny till he was about to pull the thing. 

And with that we get ANOTHER awesome sequence as the barrier collapses.. and amity park is brought into the ghost zone.. and into Pariah’s domain, meaning he can finally make his entrance. And he once again shows the sheer SCOPE Of his powers, as he treats our heroes as if they were mere insects and swats them down to their unconcous human states with horrifying ease. The only reason they don’t die this time is that Val noticed they were missing and shows up just in time to save both and get them under the Fenton RV”s ghost shield. Jack and Maddie have expanded it, with damon launching a ghost probe, a nice nod to how Damon was a scientest before his firing and thus can likely easily grasp the more complicated systems the fentons use. Maddie also announces Jazz has cookies and boys she’s single like any good wingmom.  Val realizes their after the ring and not realizing how bad an idea this is, sends it away on a missle to distract Pariah while she gets the boys to safety. just BARELY getting to the shield after the fright knight attacks her. Val sets danny down then passes out herself, with Vlad noping out the second he’s awake again. 

After jack walks in on the two and assumes their just hanging out, and likely dosen’t worry about his heterosexual teenager son sleeping next to one of his classmates because of the fresh box of fenton condoms he gives danny every week, Sam and Tucker do, and Danny wakes up. Danny feels guilty: Val got hurt because of his impulsive actions, and had he tried to learn what was behind this sooner, he might’ve been able to stop it. Everyone’s in danger and while i’ts not entirely his fault, it’s his responsiblity to finally end this.. and he knows exactly how.  Danny intagibles down into the basement to get the Ecto-Suit, where Maddie is explaning it and planning to go herself afte rknocking jack out.. onlyf or Jazz to knock her out and eventually a conga line of every adult in amity other than Valarie’s dad conks themselves out of conciousness. It’s a good bit. So danny prepares to take the suit, knowing how dangerous it is.. but also knowing it’s the only way he has ANY chance of being strong enough to defeat Pariah.  it’s another good Spider-Man style moment of determination: Danny knows his odds of winning this even WITH the suit are incredibly slim and his odds of surviving are almost non existant.. but he’s also the best shot they have and if he has to go down swinging.. then so be it. 

Unfortunately there’s one last obstacle as Val is up, planning to do this herself, and planning to shoot danny in the head. We then get another classic moment as Damon, Val’s pop, enters.. and Danny unmasks his new love intrest, with damon keeping her out of the way while Danny takes the suit up top. Now in almost any other circumstance, unmasking a hero is a pretty low act.. but here Danny is low on time and a fight with Val just means he’d be more exausted going into a fight where he needs EVERYTHING he can muster if he’s going to win, much less survive. Revealing Val’s id is a desperation move and he’s doing so to someone who at worst is going to be miffed she’s been putting her life in danger without telling him and ONLY Damon. 

So with that Danny gets up top, with his friends waiting to both see him off, since he might not make it back. Sam ALMOST tells danny how she feels but then dosen’t. I bring this up because Nick has a REALLY bad habit of using any shipping material in an episode to convince the viewers to watch it. In this instance. promos gleefully used the above you like him thing and this moment to make you think something would happen.. only for it not to. This show got it light ill grant but they absolutely were obnoxious with it when it came to Avatar the Last Airbender and Zoey 101. Granted both shows were VERY bad at teasing at a relationship instead of having any actual progress, so it’s not entirley nick’s fault, but it still isn’t a nice thing to do to kid just to get them to watch, even if it worked. 

My ranting now done, Danny goes ghost, which neatly also gives the Ecto-Skeleton a nice makeover, and flies off in easily one of the shows best and most iconic scenes: Danny flying into danger, the entire town of amity cheering him on as he heads into the fire. And when Paulina tells him to “Go get him Invsio Bill” we get an awesome line to close out the scene

“It’s PHANTOM, Danny Phantom!”

God this special is awesome. Danny arrives at Pariah’s Keep, finding the army of darkness in it’ sfull force, a near endless army. While their no match for Danny in the suit, since i’ts own tricks work perfectly with Danny’s powers, fighting them starts to drain the poor ghost boy. Luckily Sam and Tucker arne’t one to sit this out and drop off some reinforcments: the ENTIRETY of danny’s rogues gallery, pulling a changed my mind kid. It’s a great shot and while we don’t get any conformation on screen why they choose to do this it’s very obvious why: Pariah has brought Amity into the ghost zone, their no longer safe from him, so helping Danny survivie this and beat him insures their own survivial. We then get a spectacular battle as every one of Danny’s foes, and Klemper and Sydney whose riding the dragon princess... anyone ship those two? Anyone? Anyone? Just me. Okay then. 

Danny heads in and we get out show stopping climactic fight: Danny against someone with the power of a god, going head ot head. The fight is utterly gorgeous, well paced and brutal, with danny reguarly strugglign due to the strain of using the suit, leading to a great exchange as Pariah notices danny’s exaustion and waxes on the burden of having so much power.. while Danny points out the usage has been the problem. Grante dI don’t agree with the dash thing but I do like the parallel here: Pariah, a being with unlimited power , wastes it as a conquerer and subjgator, perfering to make people bow to him than actually help anyone. He could do anything, change the ghost zone for the better.. but he’d rather make it his. Danny in contrast has a severe drawback to his power upgrade.. but takes it on because that power is the only thing between his town and the innocents inside and this power mad monster. Despite being outmatched, out experincfed and outgunned, despite knowing he will probably DIE doing this, danny fights anyway. 

And in the end it’s persitance, heart and bravery that win out as we get the moment tha’ts been built up for an entire season: Danny FINALLY multiplies using the power of the suit, and all four of him tell Pariah to “get out of my town” before combining their blasts to utterly wreck a god. Danny tehn steals his crown and shoves him back in, though even with only one half of his powers, Pariah is STILL so strong, as we’ve seen before, that Danny can barely manage it and awesome moment of willpower tha theavily reminds me of the iconic image of spider-man under all that rubble. Sadly unlike Spidey, Danny ends up tapped... but gets help from an unexpected source: Vlad, who uses the same key that started this whole nightmare to end it once and for all. As Danny starts to pass out, not understanding why the Fright Knight is suddenly by Vlad’s side or what this was all about, we get easily my faviorite line of the entire series, and Vlad’s best moment in the entire three season run of the show. 

“ What? That I used two fourteen-year-old pawns to turn a knight and topple a king? It's chess, Daniel. Of course you don't understand. But then you never really did. “

It sums up vlad in one sentence. Sadly due to Marmell’s leaving the Fright Knight thing never pays off but ti dosen’t make this line slap less. It does however bring up a count i’m going to need for the rest of the series going forward

Dropped Plotlines count: 1

So with that Danny wakes up at home, with Vlad having naturally claimed credit for saving him. Maddie forgives vlad for the act, which feels... off. while Vlad did do something really kind in her eyes.. he still you know tried to seduce her and insulted her husband and could’ve just saved danny to get in her good graces.  It dosen’t qutie work for me. 

What does is the next part as a news report shows the town is cleaning up from the disaster, sweeping up dead skellys and what not... wait can a ghost die? what WERE they. Not only that but Danny’s heroic actions have finally undone the damage Walker did: while not everyone trusts him, danny is now seen as a hero by the majority of amity park.. except for val who shoots her tv, and then has to hide it because her dad now knows what her ecto gun is. 

So we get our final scene which is .. not great. Danny wonders what Vlad’s up to, and tries being the bigger man to dash.. who wedgies him on a flagpole. 

God what a waste of a character. Who the hell looks at flash thompson and thinks he’s BETTER with no character development? Good god Dash sucks.  Val talks to Sam and Tucker, who admit they don’t trust her, and val admits she wants to go out with Danny so they sick nathan on her. HAHA GET IT BECAUSE THEY DON’T LIKE HER GOING OUT WITH HIM THEY SICK HER STALKER ON HER HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

Gee I can’t fathom why people would prefer sam with Val over danny> It boggles the mind. 

Final Thoughts: While I had some issues with the episode on rewatch.. Reign Storm is still a masterpiece and is still my faviorite episode> it ties together everything so far into an utter epic that juggles a ton of plot lines.A nd while ONE OF THESE obviously did not work, the rest are gold: Vlad trying to play Jack while Maddie keeps an eye on him, Vlad finally revealing himself to Valarie, Valarie and Danny’s budding romance, Vlad being forced on the defensive for once, and every last one of Danny’s foes forced to hide in amity. As I said before and i’ll say again this special is fanservice in the best way possible, gladly repaying you if you’ve been watching the show and making you wonder what you’ve been missing if you hadn’t. This episode stuck with me for 16 years and it always will.  It may not be perfect, but it’s easily an incapusation of everything that makes this show great. 

So with that the road to reign storm is over. And as I said i’m not done. Next up is a fun one off: it’s christmas next month after all so have a fright before christmas. After that I’ll be doing Flirting with Disaster for a one two punch of a valentines and black history month review. After that I plan on covering the rest of the story episodes eventually.. but if you have any episdoes your dying to see me cover, don’t be afraid to tell me via my ask box or the comments on this review

I’d honestly love to hear what YOU want to see next and would be glad to oblige. And if you want to talk danny phantom , other fine cartoons and whatever other nonsense pops into my head, feel free to jaunt on over to my public discord server

RIGHT OVER HERE

For now though i’m going to kick back for a bit and watch Krampus for the next review. Thanks for reading. 

[soundwavereporting]

fic for @doorwingdings for the @transform-or-treat Halloween fic exchange! She requested Jazz/Prowl ala Pet Semetary. Hope I did the concept justice. This is vaguely IDW-flavored. cw for grief/mourning, alongside vague references to pretty much anything you’d expect from Pet Semetary.

“Y’know, I’d always thought of myself as level headed. Reasonable. Willin’ to do what needed to be done, say the right words to the right people, set your processor to it, and it’ll get done. I swore I’d never be one of those mechs who loses it after their sparkmate passes. That wasn’t me.

Taking him to the Acid Wastes was a mistake.”

It was not a legend, or even a myth. Jazz would have had to struggle to call it a rumor outside of the place it originated: a small town on the outskirts of Carpressa, straddling the border between a true city and the desolation of the Acid Wastes. The way the story went, the smelting pit was a relic from the Golden Age, built over a tunnel leading to the Afterspark itself. This tunnel, lined with veins of Primus’s own innermost energon, was the conduit to guide a mech to his final resting place.

Or to bring him back to the living world.

Its original name had been lost to time: there was no way the Primes and Senators would ever have deigned to have their bodies lain to rest in a ‘smelting pit’. But it was a smelting pit, cold and lifeless as the gunmetal gray forms that had been buried there.

Through the haze of rage and grief, Jazz had reasoned that even if this didn’t work, if the smelting pit was just a figment of a mech’s overactive imagination, it wouldn’t do any harm. Prowl had held little sentiment or attachment to his frame: he, Jazz thought, would have done the same thing were he in Jazz’s place.

If there was a chance: even the slightest chance, that leaving a mech’s dead frame in the cold smelting pit would bring him back? Would bring Prowl back?

Jazz would take it.

“Here’s the secret: this whole thing, start to finish? A mistake. We never shoulda pressed our luck.

“I think Sentinel knows. He signed off on ‘Prowl’s’ request for an extended leave of absence way too fast.”

Jazz had also reasoned that if it didn’t work (which it would, it had to), this would simply be an unspoken incident he would shove into long-term storage immediately. He would take Prowl’s frame back to Iacon, let Sentinel or the stylus-pushers handle the details of the funeral. Jazz would fight for Prowl to be smelted in Iacon, not Petrex. And that would be that. He would wallow in his grief for a half-million years and come out of it smiling. And if the smile was a little tinged with insincerity, or his gaze seemed distant, well.

The last thing Jazz had reasoned was that it just wasn’t fair. If Prowl had to go out before his time, it should have been helping someone. The mech had a habit of sticking his nose into places it didn’t belong, and Jazz loved him for it. He had been investigating a mech named Render for selling contaminated energon cubes. If Render or one of his mechs had shot Prowl? Jazz would’ve been competing with Sentinel and a good chunk of his Security Services to get first shot at the mech’s spark chamber.

But an accident left no one to blame.

Not entirely true: Jazz could blame the mech operating the transport. He was a minibot named Greenspark, overworked and undertrained, barely tall enough to see the controls on the vehicle he was required to operate, nonstop, five cycles at a time. He could blame the company that had ‘employed’ Greenspark, who had recruited him from an employment agency that was shadier than a clearance sale in Kaon.

Shaking his fist at the world wouldn’t do anything.

So Jazz took Prowl’s lifeless frame to the cold smelter.

He bribed a mech with six hundred shanix to take him—them—there.

In hindsight, Jazz was certain he could have found it himself: it looked nothing like the nondescript smelters scattered around Kaon or Iacon. This place was massive, a testament to the opulence of the Primes and the mecha they favored. More crypt than smelter, Jazz privately thought, and had things been different, he and Prowl would have enjoyed spending a few days exploring the place.

It was a shared hobby of theirs, one they never had as much time to indulge in as either would have liked. Both enjoyed architecture and history, things that Cybertron had in excess. It was not an unpopular pastime among Cybertronians but prior to his grief-fueled research, Jazz had never even heard a whisper of this place.

As he lay Prowl’s cold, gray form on the ornately engraved platform, he wondered if Prowl had known. Had Prowl known, and kept it a secret? Had Prowl known what Jazz might do of the situation came to it?

No. Prowl wouldn’t do anything like that. Prowl—his Prowl, vibrant and alive, with shining blue optics that caught Jazz’s attention the minute he walked in the door of Kaon Security Services—would trust Jazz’s intuition. Because that had always been them, hadn’t it? Prowl’s logic, Jazz’s intuition. Two sides of a chic-chip, blurring into sameness when Prowl’s leaps of logic came out looking like a hunch or Jazz’s explanations same out looking like a intellectual-class mech’s thesis on statistics and probabilities.

Before meeting Prowl, Jazz had been certain he was complete. He still was his own mech—Prowl hadn’t changed that. But Prowl had come into his life and added something to it: a dash of comforting stability amidst the chaos of a mech trying to maintain a semblance of normalcy in post-Functionist Cybertron.

Now, Jazz was adrift, unmoored. Anchored only by the thin ray of hope that this cold smelter in the Acid Wastes might bring Prowl back.

His quick examination of the place had revealed no trace of corpses, which left two options: mechs came and took the gray frames away after it didn’t work. Or…

Jazz couldn’t bring himself to remain inside. He camped outside the cold smelting pit, optical visor trained on the entrance as he scanned for life signs.

As these things happened, he slipped into recharge.

Jazz awoke to see a mech standing in the grand entrance to the cold smelting pit. His optics registered it as Prowl: his Prowl, standing tall and proud. His frame still bore the damage of the injury; the plating on his torso was warped and dented, but he could see the hint of a spark shining in the early morning light.

“Jazz.”

Prowl’s voice was as flat as ever. Upon closer examination, Prowl’s armor was still desaturated; the brilliant red of his chevron was a muddy shade of rust.

He hadn’t realized he had leapt to his feet, closing the distance between them.

Prowl’s frame was cold to the touch.

Jazz didn’t care.

On the sixth cycle, he commed Sky-Byte.

They met in a Stanzian café. It wasn’t often Jazz visited; he preferred the real thing on his rare trips back to his home city, but today he needed a taste of normalcy.

He tried not to think of the way Render’s innermost energon had tasted on his lips.

“It’s about Prowl,” Sky-Byte said, without preamble.

Before Jazz could reply, Sky-Byte spoke:

“Grief-stricken ending before lonely spark flies beyond the carbon”

“Hell’s that supposed to mean?” Jazz asked, immediately grateful for the distraction.

Sky-Byte’s optics narrowed.

“It means you are in mourning.”

An hour later, Jazz returned home from the café with more questions than answers, accompanied by a slowly-growing sense of dread he couldn’t put a finger on. Prowl was still in the habsuite, secured behind the best locks shanix could buy. Jazz couldn’t find it in himself to muster up the energy to even pretend to be happy to see the thing that was inhabiting his conjunx’s frame.

Jazz headed into the spare room that had quickly been converted into a second bedroom. After a moment’s consideration, he locked the door behind him. He had spent half a day attempting to soundproof the rest of the habsuite to muffle the sound of the shuffling footsteps as he incessantly paced the rooms, before realizing the absence of sound was worse than the sound itself.

“I don’t need to go over all of it again. You know what happened. How I fed him.

“They were—are—bad mechs. Ones who others whisper about when they think no one’s listening. This latest one, Render? Made his fortune selling empty cubes wholesale to th’ Dead End’s energon distribution center, a hundred cubes a shanix. No need to waste money on mechs who can’t be bothered to take care of themselves. What he didn’t tell the center is the cube quality isn’t fit for a turbolouse, much less a mech.

“Or maybe he did, and they didn’t care.

“The number of bad mechs on this planet ain’t infinite.

“If you’re seeing this, ‘Byte—one of two things happened. No matter what, I need you to call Sentinel and get a security team up to my habsuite. The number and my auth codes are at the end of this message.

“I’m not tryin’ to get myself killed. I’ll take him down and be out of the habsuite before security shows up, or I won’t.

“Either way, I won’t be around. I’ll head to Staniz. Maybe Kalis. Anywhere but here.

“Take care, Sky-Byte.”

[poetrybooksya]

DISCUSSION: New #ReadSoulLit Picks | Why I Don't Read Much Black Literature

oOo For more posts like this, visit my DISCUSSIONS TAB. oOo

I'll admit that I don't read a lot of black literature, and as a young, black woman of color who wants to expand my reading tastes, I needed an outlet to help guide me. I grew up reading books that had predominantly straight white characters, with easygoing plotlines, characters that didn't really go anywhere. But I never questioned my reading because just the fact that I was reading whatever I wanted stood above me reading about white characters.

With that being said, I still read books with primarily white storylines. But then, this tag on social media called #ReadSoulLit captured my eye to see about opening my reading tastes to include black reads. Created by Didi Borie of Brown Girl Reading, she made this tag event to promote black contemporary writers of color during Black History Month in February 2015. Even though it's clearly not February today, I still wanted to share my appreciation for celebrating underrated writers and stories of color. 

From Didi's interview with folkloreandliteracy:

Ideally I’d love it if publishers expressed a desire to sponsor #ReadSoulLit.  I think this would allow them to see that there are more people out here than they think who are prepared to support black authors.  I hope that publishers will try to collaborate more often with black literary influencers like myself to promote all books in general. Publishers need to see that we are here, enjoy reading, and we’re talking about what we like and what we don’t like in books.

Homegoing by Ya'a Gyasi -  Synopsis: Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia's descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.  One of my Current Reads, this story revolves around family and how a long family line also means many secrets. I've been reading this slowly since last year, and it's very fascinating. Following every slave's story from beginning to end, even some of the slave owners, is something you really have to pay attention to, which is why I haven't finished it yet.  The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison -  Synopsis: The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves' garden do not bloom. Pecola's life does change- in painful, devastating ways. What its vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child's yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. This sounds so sad and heartbreaking and I'm so here for it! Plus, I don't get to read from a child's point of view too often because of their immaturity and naivety. However, with this book, I'm able to make an exception.  

Tar Baby by Toni Morrison -  Synopsis: Jadine Childs is a black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women. This reminds me of The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, not the police brutality against black people, but more how the main female black character, Starr, has a white boyfriend, Chris. Starr doesn't know how to navigate herself properly because on one hand, she's known in one way at home. On another hand, she's known for trying to be this conservative girl who's attracted to someone of a different race. Chris doesn't understand her points of view when it comes to hardships as a black woman in America, but he wants to at least try because he loves her. That's what I hope Tar Baby will represent; I'm all for supporting interracial relationships and love, but if Jadine's boyfriend shows more ignorance than compassion, then we're going to have a problem. But, I am still hopeful for a good read.  The Mothers by Brit Bennett -  Synopsis: It is the last season of high school life for Nadia Turner, a rebellious, grief-stricken, seventeen-year-old beauty. Mourning her own mother's recent suicide, she takes up with the local pastor's son. Luke Sheppard is twenty-one, a former football star whose injury has reduced him to waiting tables at a diner. They are young; it's not serious. But the pregnancy that results from this teen romance—and the subsequent cover-up—will have an impact that goes far beyond their youth. As Nadia hides her secret from everyone, including Aubrey, her God-fearing best friend, the years move quickly. Soon, Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey are full-fledged adults and still living in debt to the choices they made that one seaside summer, caught in a love triangle they must carefully maneuver, and dogged by the constant, nagging question: What if they had chosen differently? The possibilities of the road not taken are a relentless haunt. At first, I wasn't going to pick this up because while I don't hate love triangles, I've outgrown them a bit. Everytime they're used as a plot device in a story, they turn into something corny or unrelatable. But with this one, I think it could be promising. 

The Nix by Nathan Hill -  Synopsis: Meet Samuel Andresen-Anderson: stalled writer, bored teacher at a local college, obsessive player of an online video game. He hasn't seen his mother, Faye, since she walked out when he was a child. But then one day there she is, all over the news, throwing rocks at a presidential candidate. The media paints Faye as a militant radical with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother never left her small Iowa town. Which version of his mother is the true one? Determined to solve the puzzle--and finally have something to deliver to his publisher--Samuel decides to capitalize on his mother's new fame by writing a tell-all biography, a book that will savage her intimately, publicly. But first, he has to locate her; and second, to talk to her without bursting into tears. I've read orphan/founding family stories before, but they were mostly of fantasy genres. So seeing this new one come from a historical drama or fictional background piqued my interest. Hope I like it!  What are some of your favorite new #ReadSoulLit picks? Comment below!

Click to subscribe for more! Follow me on: Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads | Bloglovin' | Instagram Tumblr | Pinterest Thanks for reading!  

via Blogger http://poemsbyayoungartist.blogspot.com/2018/05/discussion-new-readsoullit-picks-why-i.html

[yawshii]

@tittyblade I'm back. Here's your damn fanfic.

♥*♡∞:｡.｡　Blissful Ignorance　｡.｡:∞♡*♥

Trigger Warning: Not safe for work dance scenes, OOC, Genderbent Lorax....objectification, Major Character Death

Word Count: I am dead inside.

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Onceler and Greedler were sitting on the couch. Crisscross apple sauce style. Their arms intertwined heavenly with each other. As they watched the latest Netflix rom-com movie and laughed at the silliest of punch lines. Though they seem calm and chill, there was a bubbling tension that was rising over them. Like a kettle demanding to be released from its hell. Though who would answer was debatable, as they spoke in near-silent ignorance to their closeness between their sweet juicy thighs between them. But, it was inevitability Greedler as his hot breath was breathing on Onceler’s sensitive neck as he shivered intensely.

“Hey don’t you think we should, you know, do the thing baby kitten?” Greedler purred. Onceler embarrassingly blushed as red as roses.

Onceler asked with a bit of a stammer, “But w-we have socks on, w-we can’t do this, w-what happened to ‘no homo’ bro?”

Greedler simply snickered to Onceler and put his callous, large yaoi hands to Onceler’s cherry mouth, and shushed him gently. Their chocolate orbs locked on to one another, deeply gazing in their deep jawline as they slowly smooched each other. Greedler slowly put their hands to both of their feet and much to Onceler’s shock and delight, removed them passionately and lovingly that it would make Aphrodite proudly tear up.

Soon, they began doing the do. The ultimate showdown. The tango bango. The macarena macabanga. The shimmy shuffle. The cha cha slide and all the other jazz. They bonded deeply with each other WHEN SUDDENLY a loud bang at the door interrupted their twister blister. It was the Lorax with a grief-stricken look on her face. She was obviously devastated. After saving Onceler from greed and that one time where she almost killed him and now she gets this sort of treatment? AND They both have the audacity to cut the sofa in half just for a freaaking dance? Unbelievable!

She calmly walked towards them as her ecto bodakadonks (don't ask) breasted boobily towards every angle possible. Her mouth perched into one of disgust.

Onceler and Greedler both looked downwards. In shame or of intimidation of her? Who knows, but what happened next shocked both of them to their core.

"Look I can't deny how much property damage you've cost. But,...can I...join your hoe down, please?"

Both of them had stars in their eyes. To think they can finally learn how to tap dance AND dance with a furry is a dream come true. They welcomed her as they got on with their previous activities. They did the holekey pokey. The mambo cumbo. The limbo limpo. And so many more wonderful activities!

You can even hear the author's cry of agony as they have to read and bleach this with their own two eyes! Such joy!

But then a shadowy figure approached the door, and again, slammed the door harshly, that its hinges fell off.

The Lorax shouted in dismay, "I am the Lorax and I speak for these two, in it, I say: hey, that isn't very nice- oh wait hello Philza Hardcore Minecraft famous for his 5-year hardcore run."

"Hello, Lorax, a character from the Dr. Seuss' book and the movie 'Dr. Seuss' The Lorax (2012)' from the company Illuminations."

Philza inspected his inventory before smirking in delight. He grabbed his belt from his bucket hat and bonked all three of them to death.

"I'm not sorry, for God has given me the duty of ridding those who won't treat their belongings with kindness and respect," Philza muttered under his breath as he glanced at the broken couch and TV in his vicinity.

The End.

As always constructive criticism is always welcomed ^-^

Someone, please bring me to mcytblr jail. I need someone to persecute me for my crimes.

Rolan Tittyblade I saw that ducking Onceler image. No indescribable fear have I felt from seeing that image come up from my dashboard. I am in tears. I AM IN SHAMBLES. I want you to pay for my hospital bills. This is antioncelerophobia. How dare you. You've just summoned a whole fandom. I want you to proofread my oncelest and lorax polyamarous shipping fanfic. I'm basically a god kin. His name is Philza and he is q

ITS NOT MY DAMNFAULT BLAME SCAR FOR DRESSING UP LIKE THE ONCELER