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I was inspired

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how?? just how?

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Oh no, not a link where you can watch the entirety of What’s New Scooby Doo! Who on earth would post something like this???

And one for 46 different Scooby Doo movies including the beloved live action one from 2002 and it’s sequel, Monsters Unleashed??? For shame of me!

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i want 60 thousand votes by next thursday

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DPxDC Prompt #8

Danny was practicing shapeshifting with Amorpho when he felt the tug of a summoning and heard the distant words drifting into his mind.

Normally Danny would just ignore it. Or if it seems like this was a group that needed some sense scared into them, he'd shift into his Horror form and terrify them into never pulling this shit again. But then he heard them mention live sacrifices, and Danny just had to step in before that happened. So he let the summoning pull him on through, briefly forgetting he was shapeshifted into a... less than ideal form.

Danny lands in the circle right on top of one of the intended sacrifices, a group of people in weird outfits and, is that guy green? Irrelevant. Immediately Danny on knows something is very wrong. His powers feel muted and far away. His form suddenly feels, locked somehow.

He casts his gaze across the summoning circle and, to his horror, recognizes the binding ritual. These cultists wanted to bind and seal him in one of these mortal's bodies after they were sacrificed. But they fucked up the spell. Or maybe Danny fucked it up by coming in too soon? Irrelevant again.

What matters is the spell went sideways. Instead of locking Danny into one of the sacrifice's bodies, it locked him into his own form while pulling most of his abilities just out of reach. Now he's here. In the shape of- He's stuck as-

"Dude, is that a pigeon? Did the Ghost King, like, send you to voicemail?"

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To anyone who believes fairy tale romances never happen in real life, may I remind you that JRR and Edith Tolkien met and experienced a forbidden love in their youth, and then were separated for five whole years because of his guardian’s rules that he could not date till he was 21, and she got engaged to someone else only because she assumed he’d forgotten her and lost hope that she could ever be with him, but then on his 21st birthday, he wrote her a letter saying he still loved her and wanted to marry her, she responded basically saying ‘if I’d known you hadn’t left me on the shelf, I would never have said yes to anyone else,’ then a week later she greeted him at the train station and then immediately dumped her fiancé, and they got married and she converted to his religion and danced for him in a flowering field far away from the trenches into which he was drafted, which left such an impression that he crafted an entire story about the most beautiful maiden in the world who danced in the woods and made enormous sacrifices to be with the man she loved, and they had four kids and remained faithful to each other and blissfully grew old together and their gravestones are now marked with the names of that same fictional couple that he created, who broke every rule and overcame every possible obstacle to be together and get a happy ending, who only did all that because he based it all on their own real love story.

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Is Good Parents Maddie and Jack Fenton even possible?

Specifically, would they be able to change their mindset after over twenty years of bigotry and scientific curiosity?

If they saw their human son turn into Phantom, would they still think of him as their kid? Would they love him, accept him and support him?

I, personally, can't see the canon reveals as anything but a kid friendly compromise of giving the viewers the satisfaction of a reveal and keeping the status quo of the light-hearted show going.

But with everything the Fenton parents did, said, and invented... is it possible for them to turn their backs on their research and start from scratch? To admit that they were wrong after decades of being called quacks, crazy and idiots?

The only thing they were right about was the existence of ghosts, but now they endangered the whole world by building their portal that half-killed their son and traumatised millions of people.

So. Is it possible to write a Good Parents Jack and Maddie fic that doesn't shy away from all the awful things they did and how would you go about it?

Thank you for your time!

The short answer: Technically? Yes. Realistically? Probably not.

The long answer: Everyone is capable of change but not everyone will. For all intents and purposes, they are capable of growing as people and learning to recognize their mistakes and biases and leaving those behind... It just likely wouldn't be a simple flick of a switch. At the same time there is reason to believe that the Fentons wouldn't change their minds.

You said it yourself, over twenty years they've acted like this and so logically you would begin to assume that's just how they've always been and always will be. That shows this goes far beyond their parenting style and skills, and has everything to do with who they are as people.

(Buckle up, this one's a long post.)

We don't actually know all that much about the Fenton parents in canon. We don't see any grandparents or relatives other than Aunt Alicia. Although we have headcanons as a fandom that Jack and Maddie have ghost-related trauma, or it's a family tradition from the Fenton side with Jack Fentonightingale, to explain why they've always been like this, that is still no canon confirmation. (Fentonightingale was a witch hunter, not a ghost hunter after all.)

As far as we are aware, for one reason or another, one day Jack and Maddie started to believe ghosts were real and not just real but malicious. I may not be a scientist by career but even I can tell you they've failed in their duties as scientists the moment they chose their hypotheses over the evidence. That is literally something they teach you in high school science class; you ask a question and then research for evidence supporting that question. (Otherwise known as the "if... then" statement.)

Sometimes that means your first assumption was incorrect, but the evidence cannot be changed. So to me, the Fenton parents aren't ghost scientists, they're ghost hunters and those implications have connotations all of their own. And those connotations reflect poorly on them. And this isn't even to mention their general lack of workplace safety.

When we look at their friendships- they have no friends. They had Vlad in college, but they fucked up that relationship and don't even seem too broken up about it. They hadn't spoken to each other in twenty years until the reunion, and they obviously knew he'd made something of himself; Jazz recognized his name from Billionaire of the Year I think the magazine was supposed to be or something.

When Jack explains what happened to Vlad in "Bitter Reunions", he literally mentions how he thinks Vlad has forgiven him now. So obviously he acknowledges that what happened between them was due an apology.

Do you know something that's noticeably absent? A single apology from either Jack or Maddie. Yes, Jack might be more at fault in his accident, but Maddie ignored him for twenty years too. Vlad can talk whatever crap he'd like about Jack, but Maddie is just as culpable in his 'abandonment' as her husband is. We have proof from "Masters of All Time" that Maddie isn't afraid to go behind her husband's back and do what she wants. If she truly cared about him, she would have made an effort and she never did.

But of course, now we have to talk about them as parents. That's where things get... a lot more complicated.

In "Maternal Instincts" at one point Maddie is shown carrying Danny piggy-back style. It's never explained, it's not played off as a joke. Danny isn't injured and neither is he faking an injury. It's literally just something Maddie did, probably with the idea that she's taking care of and protecting him. And Danny isn't embarrassed by it at all, even when he's been shown to be ashamed of some of his parents' other antics.

In "Girls Night Out", Jack takes Danny fishing as a father-son bonding activity. And I mean that literally, he got the idea from a book called 'Father/Son Relationships For Stupids!'. That might imply that he's a bad parent but that also goes to prove that he's aware of his shortcomings as a father and is genuinely trying to do more for his son. Not everyone comes to parenthood naturally, so for Jack to actively search for advice- even if it comes from a book- says that he wants to do this parent thing.

But in my opinion, the episode that best reveals how the Fentons function as a family is "The Fenton Menace" (and no, that's not just because my blog description references it lol). In that episode, we see Jazz's failings as a supportive sister almost from the very start; in her opening narration, she talks about how she knows his secret and yet when he insists through and through that he sees a ghost, she still thinks she knows better/otherwise. We also get a touching moment where Maddie talks about spending quality time with the people you love (which is a line almost word for word from the show, by the way).

However, there are two things that stand out the most from this episode. This is the episode where we get the line: "Whether it's air, land, or sea I won't stop until we capture a ghost and tear it apart. Molecule by molecule." In response to this, Danny gets visibly upset. It is probably one of the most damning pieces of evidence in the entire series that his parents' behavior genuinely bothered him. He makes jokes about them shooting or experimenting on him, but humor can and often is used as a coping mechanism. After that quote? Danny didn't try to hide his reaction until later on when Jazz asked him. And even then he dismisses it with a quip.

The second thing from this episode also so happens to feed into my main point for this entire argument: This is the episode where Jack and Maddie attempt to 'spin the crazy' out of Danny. That kind of behavior is something you'd find in places like Arkham Asylum, which is notorious for their inhumane treatment of its patients. Decidedly not something you expect to see from supposedly loving parents. That absolutely constitutes as cruel and unusual punishment and yet it's not even meant to be a punishment.

They sincerely think that they're trying to help him by doing this. And that's the heart of the issue, in my opinion. Jack and Maddie don't think about other people. They don't think about their feelings or their safety or their privacy. They are so caught up in the idea that they are doing good that they never stop to think that they're part of the problem. Or the entire problem altogether.

The only time that we get some decent self-reflection is during Reality Trip, when Danny's identity is revealed by Freakshow and the Fenton parents and Jazz are taken as hostages. While they're stuck and trapped, they question why Danny had never told them his identity before, which is when Jazz comments about the poor way they used to treat his ghostly side. It's only then that it clicks for them that oh yeah we did that. That's what it took for them to recognize that their actions have consequences and even with good intentions, you are capable of hurting the people you love.

And I think that's one of the best ways to go about it. You need to give them the time and opportunity for that self-reflection and reclamation. Jack and Maddie are- naturally- a shoot first and ask later (if ever) type of people. One way or another, there needs to be a way for them to pull back and sit and look around for once.

There are many ways to address this too and make way for the possibility of Good Parents Jack and Maddie. One of the fics that immediately comes to mind for me is @akela-nakamura's Not Everything Is As It Seems. In this one we focus on Jack's perspective, and this fic made me So Unwell with its quiet gravitas, I can never recommend it enough. But if you want something from Maddie's perspective, then you can read @peachdoxie's incredible Trust Your Instincts fic. It is 36 chapters, already completed, and it's this beautiful journey through Maddie's Outsider POV.

As for me personally, I explored the subject in Chapter 51 of my fic lex luthor's ascent from supervillainy to fatherhood, Interlude III: Dynasty. We actually get two different reactions from the Fenton parents, one that is more from a 'Good Parent' and one from a 'Bad Parent'.

I think the most important part is to never shy away from talking about and exploring all the horrible things they did and have done. It's difficult to discuss, but the subject is complicated and to address it as anything less than complicated wouldn't be fair to those moments where the Fentons genuinely did want to be there for their children.

Does it make any of their behavior right? No. Does it prove that they can change? Yes. Will they? ...That will have to be left up to each individual writer.

If you found yourself in a similar family situation, of course you're gonna want your family or your parents to grow or choose you. Because you love them, and you want to keep them in your life. But at some point you have to think about yourself and your own safety and health. That doesn't mean you give up on them, but you protect yourself from the fallout in case they don't change.

Every person is capable of it, but not every person is willing to. The Fenton parents are no different in that regard.

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Pan teaches Goku how to text.

A idea that I came up with.

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(You'll probably have to click and zoom to read; sorry about my tiny handwriting 😔)

Piccolo can handle a max of two emotions per 24 hour period; any higher and he malfunctions

This initially started out as a test drive for my new tablet and then I blinked and it was 8 pages long. Suffice it to say, my iPad is dead to me lmao

Somewhat based on this:

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i want 60 thousand votes by next thursday

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we still get immediately shoved out of our immersion in tv shows or films when The Girl find a dead body and immediately shrieks - we just don't find it realistic because we're pretty confident most people would gasp rather than shriek (i.e. sharp inhale rather than sharp exhale) and it also feels unnecessarily (and predictably) misogynistic too, as men encountering corpses almost never do the same on screen

also of course please do tell us if you've actually encountered a corpse unexpectedly, because tumblr is absolutely a place where some people have done this thing and we love a good anecdote

suddenly imagining "burst into song" as a potential response

#depending on how gruesome it is i might just assume its some random wierdo trying to pull a prank and just walk away

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Chuck Jone's rules for good animation

All living creatures, fictional or not, have anatomy. Equally true of an amoeba, an angle worm, a mastodon , and a Grinch.

If you want believability in your characters, you must have visual consistency. In animation, each character must move according to its own anatomical limitations: Daffy duck must move with Daffy Duck’s anatomy, Donald Duck with Donald Duck’s structure. The amoeba’s anatomy seems to have only one restriction - its bulk; like an inflated baloon, it can vary its shape, but it cannot change its volume. That is, if you want a believable amoeba

All animals - humanized animals or animalized animals - must appear to stand, walk , run or skip under the stablizing pressure of gravity in order to achieve believeability

There is no sympathy without believability, no real laughter without sympathy.

In the sympathetic recognition of any character there must be some evidence of one’s own self, one’s own weaknesses, one’s own mistakes, no matter how well self-concealed, buttoned down or pigeonholded.

The flimmaker as well as the viewer must be able to find the character within himself. We cannot fashion personalities from what we SUPPOSE another person to be.

If you start with character, you probably will end up with good drawings. If you start out with drawings you will almost certinly end up with limited characters, caught in the matrix of your limited drawing. Therefore…

It is not what or where a character is, nor is it the circumsances under which he finds himself that determine who he is. It is only how in a unique way he responds to that enviorment and those circumstances that identifies him as an individual. hopefully, an interesting character becomes interesting because of that uniqueness among his contemporaries.

For identity, you do not DRAW differently, you THINK differently. It is the WHO of the character , not the WHAT that counts. Walk- through circus clowns depend upon WHAT they look like for their brand of comedy. That is WHAT they are. Comedians depend upon HOW they move for comedy and pathos - their wonderful who-ness.

As the writer John Buchan said, you will never succeed in playing a part unless you convince yourself that you are it.

Animation means to invoke life, not to imitate it.

no great children’s book, film or fable was ever written for children. It was written for the witer, the artist , the flimmaker. Again, the mark of any ’ great work ’ for children, from one by Beatrix Potter to a book br Dr. Seuss , can be easily identified: if it can be read with pleasure by adults it is probably a very good, possibly a great, childrens book.

you cannot write DOWN to an audience or to your subject. you must write UP to them with the certainty that you cannot ever do justice to your subject, but must bend every creative nerve and muscle of your heart and brain to its full capacity in an attempt to do so.

The least you owe an audience is the best you can do

No art form can exist without restrictive disciplines. Most of the great paintings in history have been caught in the terrible discipline of the rectangle. The flimmaker finds himself trapped in the exact and severe disciplines of both the rectangle an time. Most cinema features are in a time warm of 90 to 120 minutes, most animated cartoon shorts in a confinement of 6 minutes.

You must not complain of your restrictions. If you cannot live with them, find a discipline you can live with.

——————-

Above is a section from Chuck Jone’s book Chuck Reducks. I’ve bolded some of my favorite and most inspirational rules. Forgive me some spelling errors. I was staring at the book while I was typing so I wasnt really watching the screen haha.

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We Didn’t Start The Fire

“See man, the moon!” Kid Flash said as they came outside, standing on the pile of rubble.

“And Superman! Do we fulfill our promises or what…” his voice trails off as a grinding clanking sound echoes behind them.

They turned around, confused to see a tricked out pale yellow Volkswagen bug trucking its way up the rubble and crumbled building blocks. It stopped before it got too steep, a man in a familiar white lab coat stumbling out.

Immediately, they were on guard, the man haphazardly climbing towards them.

Robin drew two batarangs in each hand, standing in front of Superboy as he got closer. It didn’t even matter that the Justice League had just landed behind them, if this CADMUS scientist tried something, Robin would be the first to defend Superboy. Without hesitance.

The man stopped in front of them, huffing for breath.

“You’re-!” He stopped, leaning over his knees with gasping breaths, “Sorry, one sec!” He held up a finger, gasping for another few seconds before stepping forward-

Chains of water surrounded him before they could blink, Robin looking back surprised to see Aqualad standing with extended weapons and a grim face.

“This is odd.” The man looked at the water wrapped around him, wriggling a bit before shrugging. His eyes zeroed in on Superboy, “You’re okay!” He said with a blinding grin.

Superboy recoiled and Robin immediately stepped between them.

“What.”

The man glanced at him briefly before looking back over Robin’s head, “You are okay right? I mean I tried my best but I couldn’t figure out a way to get you out- I mean if I’d known you were there to begin with I’d would have never-but then I wouldn’t have-

“Who are you?” Superman asks, suddenly close from behind them.

The man’s mouth clicks shut, looking between them all before a grimacing smile rises to his face.

He extends his hand at the elbow between the liquid chains, “Dr. Danny Fenton, ex-biochemical engineer of CADMUS labs Mr.Superman,sir.”

Flash zips forward, the eyes of his cowl narrowed, “Ex?”

The grimace turns into a wince. “Oh.. heh, yeah, I’ve found that arson is usually a pretty good kickstart of sudden unemployment,” there’s a thoughtful pause as he looks over the rubble, “It’s usually accidental though.”

Nobody responds.

“What? You didn’t think that lab fire started on its own did you? How else was I supposed to get you here?”

“There’s a Justice League public phone! That’s literally its entire purpose!” Kid Flash shouts, throwing his hands in the air. At this point, Aqualad cautiously lowers his water bearers, releasing Fenton.

“Oh, sure, I call a bunch of superheroes and tell them my boss is doing a Grow-Your-Own-Superman in the boiler room. That’d go over well.” He pauses, “Though the sidekicks was a surprise.”

The comment goes uncorrected, as the rest of the league has snapped to face Superboy the moment he says it.

Superman looks stricken as Superboy reveals the logo on his torn shirt.

Fenton unceremoniously breaks the tension, “Sorry I never asked, do you have a name? I’d feel really bad just calling you-“

“… They called me.. Superboy..” He says, still not looking away from the man of steel in front of him.

“That’s not-“ Fenton rubs his temples and sighs harshly, “Okay, I can fix that later, whatever-“

“You’re not gonna be ‘fixing’ anything, Doctor.” Robin snarls.

Fenton blinks. “Huh?”

Batman steps forward, “Green Lantern.”

Green construct cuffs snap around the Dr.Fenton’s wrists, though he looks at them puzzled.

“Superman, check for survivors in the damage, Flash find some salvageable evidence before it finishes burning. The rest of us, we’ll continue this interrogation at the hall.”

“Wait what?” Dr. Fenton says, perking up like a meerkat even as Batman turns away with swirl of his cape.

“What about me?” Superboy asks, desperation in his hesitant step forward.

Batman looks to Superman. Superman nods, and then shoots off into the rubble and emergency vehicles.

“For now, you come with us.” Batman says, and Superboy’s shoulders loosen just a hint.

The dark knight pauses again before turning completely, “And don’t think we’ve forgotten the rest of you,” he says, cowled eyes narrowed over his shoulder, “Robin.”

Robin shirks back, “Heh.. Right.”

“Wait what’s going on?” The Fenton scientist yelled back over his shoulder as Green Lantern pulls him away.

He starts to say something but the construct fully engulfs him now, shifting from a platform to a soundproof bubble.

It seems to shock him enough, Fenton tapping at the walls and looking like he wants to take it apart and take a sample.

Robin grit his teeth.

He was not gonna let these CADMUS freaks touch Superboy again.

Not Fenton or anybody else.

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Tumblr: Only neurotypical people do X. Neurodivergent people never do X. It's literally never necessary to do X, and if you do, you are by definition acting out of malice.

Neurodivergent person whose neurodivergence primarily expresses itself as X:

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New headcanon: the batsiblings name Bruce's stuff, not him. One day Dick looked at Batman's car and said "this is a batmobile" and Bruce was like "you are absolutely correct. this is indeed a batmobile."

Before Jason, batarangs didn't even have a name. They were just random weapons. Jason names them batarangs and ever since Batman also calls them batarangs.

Babs named his computer batcomputer and ever since it's the batcomputer. It's the official name. Don't you dare question it.

In a similar way, rest of the batfam just randomly name the bats and he just goes with it. Steph calls one specific bat Bruce Jr and now it's official name is Bruce Jr. He always recognizes it and uses the correct names

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I DIED

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Ok so today I was on the bus with another trans guy and we were talking about how hard it is to get testosterone. The waiting lists, the price, all the doctors you have to go to, that kind of stuff. Except, we were calling it ’T’, like you do when you’re both closeted and in public.

Then suddenly the elderly lady sitting behind us was like ‘young men, either I’m going crazy or you both have never heard of supermarkets, they have shelves full of tea there! Do you need directions to one?’

To which my buddy starts to explain, because why not. ‘Well you see, we’re both trans, and… ’

The lady didn’t wait for him to finish his sentence. ‘Oh no, I don’t mind that at all! Now do you want to know how to get to a place that sells tea? I’m actually heading there right now!’

We let her take us to the supermarket. We let her show us, excitedly, where the tea was. We both bought loads.