#CW seeing no problem with it & Danny not getting the problem until its pointed out to him

[camels-pen]

vague DP x Noragami crossover time~

Hiyori is terrified of Danny; something about him rubs her so so wrong. She tries her best to be nice, but she is the equivalent of a shivering chihuahua puppy in his midst. Danny feels kinda bad about that, but he can't really turn it off without turning human so he tries to stay as calm as possible around her.

Yukine, on the other hand, loves him. He thinks Danny's so cool and keeps bugging him about stuff from America and trying to show off how much he knows about the culture (a very impressive amount actually), and goes nuts seeing all the things Danny can do with his ghost powers. Danny feels the same about Yukine, gushing about his Shinki abilities and urging him into telling stories about his adventures and Japanese culture. These two become good friends.

Yato is kind of indifferent, and then the tiniest bit jealous once Yukine starts looking up to Danny. After getting to know him a little more, Danny has a hard time believing someone like Yato is a real "god".

It doesn't take long for Yukine to start looking up to Danny, just seeing how easily Danny can take care of Ayakashi (named "Phantoms" in the anime, heh) impressed Yukine enough to ask for advice. Thus, Yato's "oh hey potentially a customer!" doesn't last more than a day or two.

Danny does accidentally hang out with Hiyori in human form, and she does not recognize him in the slightest. She also isn't afraid of him at all in human form.

Important note: Danny, to this trio, only know him as "Phantom"

Side idea: I,,, am gonna be honest, I dunno how the naming system would work realistically, but somehow with some word, Yato gets cut off from saying the whole word of something and Danny gets a funny feeling in his chest! By the time he feels two hands holding him tightly, he realizes that he is A) not in ghost form, B) not in human form, and C) he was-

"A Thermos?" Yato asked. "Bit of a random item, but- HOLD ON YOU'RE A SHINKI?!"

Danny did not, in fact, know he was a Shinki.

The idea is: Yato, being a "god of calamity" (if this isnt actually true, F to me), and Danny, being... whatever the hell amalgamation of ecto-energy and ghost shit and human being that he is- they both sort of? overlap? If that makes sense. And so, even though Yato did not intend to call a Shinki, nor did he know Danny was a Shinki (and that he had apparently bestowed a name at some point and completely forgotten about except- that's impossible what the fuck) he had none the less a new Shinki in his possession. One that turned into a thermos.

Idk how this would go plotwise, but Yato would immediately turn around and go "hey, Yukine, isn't this great? We can use Danny to keep food warm in the winter-!" and then he gets wrestled to the ground by Hiyori of all people, who was previously keeping a good distance between her and Danny and also panicking a little bit because it seemed like his smell completely disappeared what-

And Danny is just "what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck" and "did my parents sell me to the calamity god at some point???"

The answer he gets is no, but he's never totally sure and is always suspicious about it.

Some more notes:

-> He freaks out Hiyori because he smells like an Ayakashi

-> Yukine is a little bit drawn to him due to their similar (enough) circumstances.

-> Yato doesn't give much of a shit beyond the usual, at first, because he's used to the presence of death and Ayakashi near him. And Danny's existence isn't much of a surprise to him after hanging out with a sort-of Ayakashi (Hiyori) for so long.

-> After transforming into a Shinki for Yato, Danny can, in fact, blight him! When he changes back to his non-thermos self though, he does not blight Yato.

-> Danny offers to teach Yukine math one (1) time when Hiyori is unavailable and it ends with both of them getting repeat lessons. Danny thinks its a rip-off that he's not in school and yet he's still doing homework.

#dp crossover #DPxNoragami #danny phantom #noragami #nemotime #might add to this later when i'm further along in my rewatch of the anime and remember more stuff #tho i definitely remember that Rabo guy and it would be quite fun to consider him fucking shit up for Yato AND Danny #i wanna make Danny and Hiyori decent friends when he's in human form but i find it so funny making her just hiss at him out of fear #and then going 'omg im sooo sorry. i dont know what came over me- *HISS*' but like. she is completely 100% geniune #poor girl. it is very amusing to me however #possible reasons for Danny not in school - vacation. graduated. errand for Clockwork. etc. idk yet) #will probably make it so that Hiyori eventually gets used to having him around and then she's the one to make the connection #about his human form. but for now. crying screaming hissing on the floor etc #YOOO #HOW FUCKED UP WOULD IT BE IF CLOCKWORK WAS ONE OF THE BIG TIME 'gods' AND HE JUST MADE DANNY HIS SHINKI #WITHOUT TELLING HIM???? #ohhhh #this fucks me up oh man #CW seeing no problem with it & Danny not getting the problem until its pointed out to him #that he can't remember a single time before this when he was used / turned into a thermos #because when you make a spirit a Shinki and give them a name #they transform. so Danny should be able to remember transforming *at least* once before now. and yet. #i mean its not that hard to figure out right? Master ('god') of all time. Likely to be very volatile Shinki. Just rewind and you're good :) #and maybe CW does rewind. when Danny starts blighting him kinda hard. and Danny doesn't notice much out of place #he just thinks he got knocked out during a fight and asked what he missed #later. Hiyori and Yukine will try to jog his memory and Yato will be doing ... something sus probably in the background to try to help #oh man i also gotta figure out Danny and Yato's whole deal with the accidental Shinki + blighting mess between them #anywho bed time for meee

[quietly-sleeping]

Dp x yi City arc????

Danny drops into yi City, kinda confused but dealing with it, knows language already since dead ppl spoke it so he's fine on that front. Little confused about formalities but stumbles through, gets labeled the weird outsider from some secluded village

Rants at cw for a bit, cw essentially pats him on the head and cites experience with new culture/gaining a new understanding of how death is handled elsewhere

Finds out about cultivation the hard way, gets jumped by walking corpse, fights it like normal ghost, very confused when it doesn't act right. No core, no reaction to communication either verbal or nonverbal

Gets helped by xxc, who just came into town with xy and a-qing, xxc kills corpse and lectures Danny thoroughly about nighttime safety

Xy eventually runs across kid in town, tries fucking with him a bit, kid is very unimpressed, follows him back bc he smells like death, but like wrong death

Danny just sits down and doesn't fucking leave, just chills and helps with chores, xxc doesn't mind it, worried about a unsupervised kid just, out there, when yi City has its massive corpse problem.

Xy does not care. Wants the kid out actually, having a kid who can see makes things more difficult for him, but kid doesn't know a damn thing about cultivation or any cultivators, doesn't even know what sects are. Xy eventually gets used to Danny being around, is very concerned and intrigued when he spots Danny straight up taking to the dead at some point and the dead talk back

A-qing is dubious, what the fuck is this kid doing? Why does he look like that (gesturing to all of him) also does he not see the issues with xy? Xy blatantly threatens on a daily basis, just like a-qing but he is unbothered, in fact he does it back?? But more playful?? A-qing has had more migraines since Danny dropped in than ever before in her short life

And it is not the dehydration talking, Danny. She drinks water, just not when Danny's around.

Plus she's seen his eyes glow at night, multiple colors actually, and can't figure out how to convey this to daozhang without fessing up to being able to see

Everything kind of balances out over time, Danny settles with them better, makes a bed for himself, and sometimes vanishes for a few days before popping back up.

This really concerns xxc, who is almost certain Danny is a cultivator at this point, bc who let this child go on night hunts by himself with no older martial siblings around? He could try and send xy with Danny, but xy still doesn't know xxc knows that xy is a cultivator and not just some dude with talismans.

Also he doesn't quite trust the two to not cause more problems while solving whatever Danny is off chasing.

In the end they hover about each other until sl finds xxc

Danny was following xy around a lot that day, sometimes deliberately trying to get a friendly fight out of him when sl drops in.

Sl stares at Danny, just standing next to xy, not even reacting when sl name drops xy and calls him out as a murderer, even as xy tries to stab him while doing so.

Danny, who has gotten very used to xys violent tendencies and has mostly categorized him as a liminal of some sort with really bad instinct control, just shrugs

If they managed to provoke baby liminal xy to homicide, either they done fucked up or it was self defence.

How massacring an entire clan down to animals was self defence, Danny can't answer that, but he does know that the scent of death on xy has pretty much stayed the same since he met him. So Danny was mildly sure he hadn't committed any murders in a while, and what you do while in your adjustment phases as a liminal, Danny can't really hold it against him.

Sure he's upset xy is a mass murderer, but people change, a long sentence doing community service might help, like Dan, but xy was mostly mortal and didn't have that kind of time. Plus xxc had multiple long talks with all of them on the morals of the Justice system.

So Danny was pretty sure rehabilitation was on the table.

So sl finds himself being marched back to the coffin house alongside xy, with Danny dead set on getting xxc to handle this

#Probably not in character #Can't find it in myself to really care honestly #Love for someone more fluent with Danny as a character to handle this that'd be great #Dp #danny phantom #mdzs #crossover #Idea throw up #I havent actually seen dp so this is based on my limited understanding i got second hand

[truthbeetoldmedia]

Fear of ‘Moonlighting’: The Consequences of Refusing to Commit

What is “moonlighting”? Also known as “Shipping Bed Death”, it’s the phenom by which the audience loses interest in a story after the main couple finally gets together. The anticipation of characters becoming an item is believed to be more interesting to viewers than the actual conclusion of the romantic arc; the conflict that permeates a “will they/won’t they” relationship naturally disappears once the couple finally decides they will.

Exacerbating the problem is the fact that many writers don’t know how to successfully write a happy, healthy relationship; believing that internal conflict is the only way to maintain audience investment, the characters undergo just as much drama while together as they did apart.

Here’s the thing about the moonlighting curse: it’s not a real thing.

Audiences who become invested in a story primarily because of the potential for a relationship between two characters (also called “shippers”) have a rough go of it: in many cases, either tantalizing hints of a romance will be dropped but never capitalized on throughout the entire run of a TV show in order to maintain a level of anticipation, only to receive the satisfaction of the “happily ever after” at the very end — and sometimes not even that; or the couple will get together earlier on but be thrown apart continuously by manufactured drama, until the characters themselves are unrecognizable or the relationship is no longer worth investing in.

Creators who are unwilling to forgo the tension of a will they/won’t they relationship for the satisfaction of finally allowing two characters to get together run the risk of stagnating their plot (because there are only so many places characters can go if you refuse to move them forward), losing the interest of your audience (who become impatient if a slowburn ship is dragged out too long), and/or ruining a relationship that is the foundation of the show (because if romantic tension isn’t resolved by committing to a relationship, it tends to dissipate unsatisfactorily).

Many, many couples have fallen victim to the idea that happy couples make for bad TV, or that constant drama is needed to keep a relationship interesting. Mindy and Danny (The Mindy Project), Ross and Rachel (Friends), Arizona and Callie (Grey’s Anatomy), Blair and Chuck (Gossip Girl) and Damon and Elena (The Vampire Diaries) are all examples of relationships that happened relatively early and ultimately ended up being the endgame, but with so much drama in the middle that rooting for them in the end became impossible.

On Teen Wolf, Stiles and Lydia share their first kiss in the third season but then, when the writers were unwilling to commit to the relationship so soon, were kept apart until the show’s final season. Although technically dating in Season 6, their screen time was extremely limited due to Dylan O’Brien’s other filming obligations, there was no emotional payoff, and the series ends on an extremely underwhelming note for the couple.

Bones and Booth on Bones suffered through six seasons of a will they-won’t they relationship before finally getting together; although the couple were married for a number of seasons, the manner of them getting together was underwhelming, by skipping out on the resolution to the tension entirely and jumping ahead to when they were already domestic.

Likewise, Mulder and Scully of The X-Files have an extremely drawn out slowburn of a relationship (with the showrunner even going so far as to claim that there would never be a romance between them), finally becoming romantic in Season 7. However, unlike with Bones and Booth, Mulder and Scully’s happily ever after didn’t last forever; the couple split up offscreen sometime between the old series and the beginning of the new one, and the end of Season 11 (which is likely also the end of the series) doesn’t provide a satisfactory resolution to their relationship.

Starbuck and Apollo on Battlestar Galactica were soulmates who had a deep and admitted love for each other — including “one night that lasted forever”; their relationship was passionate in both its love and anger, and they were more vulnerable with each other than they could be with anyone else. A relationship of such a strong nature unsurprisingly attracted a large number of viewers, but it was never capitalized on and fizzled to an unsatisfying end.

The one that sits closest to my heart and stings the most is Bellamy and Clarke on The 100. The 100 has been my favourite show for a handful of years now, Bellamy and Clarke have been among my favourite characters, and the relationship between them has been, without a doubt, one of the best things about the series.

Originally at odds, Bellamy and Clarke bonded over the fact that they became the de facto leaders of the Hundred — a group of under-aged criminals sent to Earth to see if it was survivable in the series premiere. Throughout the series, Bellamy and Clarke become extremely close, with a number of undeniably romantic cues teeing them up to become a couple at some point in the future.

And then Season 5 happened, using a six year time jump as an excuse to put Bellamy in a relationship with another woman and shattering everything about Bellamy and Clarke’s relationship that had made it special. It remains yet to be seen whether Bellamy and Clarke will ever get back to the same place they were in emotionally in the Season 4 finale, never mind progressing any further romantically. Even if they do become romantic in some distant future, it’s unclear whether all the waiting will have been worth it; many fans have become exhausted with the constant dragging out of the relationship and feel that their special bond has already been damaged beyond repair.

The perceived inability of a show to maintain a long-lasting relationship speaks more to the skill of the writer than it does to the disinterest of the viewers. Many shows have proven that they cannot only succeed but thrive when committing to their central couple before it’s too late in the game; fans of these pairings don’t simply disappear overnight after the couple becomes “canon” but instead continue to support them, watch for them, and take joy in their obvious love.

If you’re a character on a Mike Schur comedy, your odds of getting a happy ending are pretty high; Jim and Pam (The Office), Leslie and Ben (Parks and Recreation), and Jake and Amy (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) all had relationships that progressed naturally to dating and eventually to marriage, with minimal squabbles or manufactured drama along the way.

Barry and Iris of The Flash are the “Gold Standard” (according to Barry Allen himself) of the CW’s DCVerse. Best friends since childhood, the two harbour mutual romantic feelings for each other over the show’s first two seasons before getting together at the end of the second season. Barry and Iris face all the problems a superhero faces together, and even got married in the show’s fourth season. Their relationship has been the foundation of the show every season, something that is only enhanced by their marriage.

On Fringe, Peter and Olivia were the perfect example of a flawlessly written slowburn relationship. From colleagues to best friends and beyond, the romantic nature of their relationship is established in no uncertain terms at the end of Season 2. Pulled apart by circumstance in Seasons 3 and 4, they always manage to find their way back to each other; their love for each other is what saves them. After a long journey of fracturing and healing and reconnecting, they finally get their happy ending in the fifth season.

And it can be hard to find love in a post-apocalyptic wasteland like the one on The Walking Dead, but somehow Glenn and Maggie managed. They had a classic relationship that started in the second season and provided many of the show’s few happy moments; they were tender, humorous, and heartwarming. The two even get married, before Glenn meets his unfortunate end in the show’s seventh season. Even then, Glenn’s last words ensure that his love for Maggie — and her love for him — will continue on long after: “I’ll find you.”

Why did these couples succeed? Simple: the central conflict of the show was never about whether they would get together and so when they did, the show didn’t fall apart. A good writer will recognize that while there is obvious tension between two characters who are attracted to each other, that tension doesn’t just vanish when they get together, it just manifests differently.

There are ways to insert tension into a relationship without it resulting in a breakup or infidelity or some other heinous act that makes it difficult or impossible to root for the couple anymore. Or instead of using internal conflict, make the conflict external, and have the couple face it together. On Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Jake and Amy’s first fight is over a mattress — which was only a metaphor for each person’s uncertainty over their partner’s commitment to the relationship. On The Flash, Barry and Iris even go to couples counselling to solve their communication issues.

These are just a few examples of something that has become more common in recent years: the idea that love sells, just as well as anticipation does. People turn to TV for stories of hope and comfort, and would rather see themselves reflected in a relationship that is long-lasting and realistic than one with so many twists and turns that you lose sight of which way is up.

Here’s a message to all TV writers: yes, romantic tension is great — even essential — and can suck viewers into your story, but it has an expiry date. Your most passionate viewers will be borne from the potential of a relationship, but they are also the ones you risk turning against you should you waste that potential.

It’s not progressive or “edgy” to refuse to label a relationship as romantic or to avoid following the “obvious” storyline; the very reason people root for a romance is because the path towards it is well-lit and well-laid. And the rare chemistry between two actors which often leads to people shipping their characters isn’t something that should be squandered, it should be capitalized on.

As a writer, your first and only priority should be to the characters you’ve created and the relationships you’ve nurtured, not the conflict that drives them apart or the shock of an unexpected ending. Anything else is not only a disservice to the integrity of your show but to the fans, whose viewership and investment are what keeps it on the air.

#Moonlighting #Shipping Bed Death #Romance